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0:54

I

0:58

think this is the same problem that you're having with Trump and

1:01

other things, which is you're being

1:03

invited into the abyss. Hey

1:06

guys, Trigonometry needs your help.

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There is no other podcast where you'll hear

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on the same platform. You know the mainstream

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You know they can't be trusted. The

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us. Support us and help change the

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way we have conversations and make

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the world saner. And

2:29

welcome both.

2:31

The reason our show works is neither Francis

2:33

nor I pretend to be experts and

2:35

we ask the questions that are on the minds

2:37

of most people or at least we try. I

2:40

think the question that are on the minds

2:42

of most people now is that

2:44

we are in a moral quandary

2:47

because we simultaneously believe many

2:50

things about Israel

2:52

and Palestine that are incompatible and I'll

2:54

give you a list.

2:56

I don't want

2:57

innocent civilians to die and

3:00

Israel has to destroy Hamas. These

3:04

two are already internally contradictory

3:08

and we can keep going further and further

3:10

into exploring that. But what

3:13

I see is that the

3:15

thing that is right to say on social media

3:18

to look smart and sophisticated

3:21

and balanced and nuanced is

3:24

impractical. It puts you in a position where you don't know

3:26

what to do.

3:28

So how do we think about this? How do we think

3:30

about this issue, Sam?

3:32

Well, I'm not saying anything on social media. That's

3:35

one life hack that I would recommend. I've

3:39

been looking at social media and I've been seeing that

3:42

it's, I just think

3:45

it's poison for us. Even the good

3:48

parts are making it impossible

3:51

to, I think

3:55

it's making us ungovernable. I

3:58

think it's eroding the basis of democracy. It's

4:00

like even the true information, even

4:02

the virtue

4:04

of it is that it's giving some kind of transparency

4:07

that you fear would not otherwise exist

4:09

and that is, you know, good for

4:12

error correcting on some level. But

4:15

even that in surplus

4:18

is toxic and then there's all

4:21

the distortions of it. They're the things that are performative

4:24

that wouldn't be happening in the real world, but for

4:26

the fact that they're going, it's going to be broadcast on social

4:28

media. I just think it's,

4:31

as I've said many places before, I think

4:33

it is a kind of psychological experiment

4:36

that is deranging us. Agreed. But

4:39

let's come to Israel and Palestine because I think that's

4:41

what people want to

4:42

think about rationally. How

4:45

do we think about that issue?

4:47

I think

4:53

the most obvious error that people will

4:55

make now is to

4:58

imagine that body count is

5:01

the only measure

5:03

by which the moral balance

5:05

swings. So if Israel goes into Gaza

5:09

and inadvertently kills

5:11

more people than were killed on their side,

5:15

they've done too much by definition,

5:17

right? That's

5:20

wrong in all kinds of ways, but the obvious

5:23

way that it's wrong is that it

5:26

completely ignores what

5:30

people are actually attempting to achieve on both

5:33

sides, what kind of world they're attempting to build,

5:35

what their intentions actually are. What would

5:37

they do if they had more power? If

5:39

the asymmetric power in the region were reversed,

5:43

how would Hamas behave vis-a-vis

5:46

Israel? And the one thing that's

5:48

obvious, Israel for decades,

5:52

if it had wanted to perpetrate a genocide

5:54

against the Palestinians, could have done that on any

5:57

given day. It would have been

5:59

trivial. Tomorrow they

6:01

could kill everyone in Gaza if they wanted. They

6:04

obviously haven't wanted that. They obviously

6:06

don't want to do that. Now, if

6:08

you reverse that balance of power

6:11

and ask what would Hamas do, what would

6:13

jihadist organizations anywhere

6:16

do, they

6:18

would kill all the Jews. And they have told

6:20

us that ad nauseam. The founding

6:22

charter of Hamas said that explicitly.

6:25

It looked forward to a time where Qur'anic

6:28

prophecy would be realized

6:30

when the earth itself would cry out

6:32

against the Jews, where the rocks

6:34

and the trees would say, "'Oh, Muslim, there's a

6:36

Jew behind me. "'Come kill him.'" Right? Except

6:39

for one tree. Except for one tree, yes,

6:41

yeah, that's right. So the

6:45

difference in intention, while

6:47

people think intention is

6:49

this abstraction, intention

6:54

is the software that everyone is running. Intention

6:57

is the best predictor of what

6:59

people will do if they're given an opportunity

7:01

to do it, right? If they have the power to do it. If

7:04

they have the technology to do it. What

7:06

will a jihadist organization do if it gets nuclear

7:09

weapons? What will a jihadist organization do if

7:11

it gets a

7:14

viable bioweapon, right? We know

7:16

the answers to these questions. These people

7:18

have been telling us this for as long

7:20

as I've been alive. And in

7:24

isolated cases, absolutely

7:26

proven to a moral certainty

7:29

their commitment to nihilism and

7:32

massacre. I mean, the

7:34

Islamic State, if

7:36

you knew the details of what was happening in the Islamic

7:39

State and couldn't understand that

7:41

these people mean what they say and believe

7:43

what they say they believe, then you're living

7:46

on another planet. So anyone who's surprised,

7:49

the only surprise here is that there

7:52

was an assumption and a historically understandable

7:55

assumption that Hamas was not as

7:57

extreme as Al Qaeda.

7:59

for the Islamic State.

8:01

And it certainly seems that

8:04

some among them are prepared

8:06

to be that

8:07

extreme. So what?

8:11

I mean, we're splitting

8:13

hairs. I mean, jihadism is a

8:20

fairly unified concept,

8:22

whatever the methods, whatever the

8:24

methods and the past behavior.

8:27

And we just have to acknowledge

8:29

that there is a subset of people in the

8:31

Muslim world for

8:34

whom it is true, as they say of themselves,

8:37

that they love death more than we love

8:39

life. We being free,

8:41

secular people everywhere, Jews,

8:44

Christians, moderate

8:46

Muslims, there

8:49

are people who actually want to be martyred

8:52

and see their kids martyred. They're

8:55

not bluffing. They're

8:58

perfectly willing to die for

9:00

the pleasure and opportunity

9:05

of killing non-combatants, intentionally

9:07

killing non-combatants. So the moral error that people

9:09

are going to make now, and they're already making

9:12

it, is to think that when

9:14

Israel tells people to evacuate

9:17

Northern Gaza, and they don't because

9:19

Hamas is telling them not to do it, or

9:21

it becomes practically impossible and Egypt

9:24

doesn't let them out, et cetera, and

9:27

they drop bombs targeting Hamas

9:31

installations that have been purposefully

9:33

put next to civilian areas that will cause

9:35

carnage when Israel bombs them, like

9:37

hospitals and schools and mosques. When

9:40

Israel bombs those targets and

9:43

kids die, which is obviously

9:46

horrible, that is the same

9:49

thing as Hamas

9:52

jihadists coming in under

9:55

cover of rocket fire at dawn

9:57

and murdering babies in their cribs. And

10:00

not the same thing, and body count doesn't

10:02

resolve. Okay. That's

10:04

very good. Agreed.

10:05

So we'll come to you in a sec, Eric. But

10:08

what? Just doing this. As are we

10:10

all. But what does that mean,

10:12

Sam? Let me ask you this, right?

10:15

The United States dropped a nuclear

10:17

bomb on Japan, two of them. And

10:19

after Hiroshima, I

10:22

think it was Hiroshima, not Nagasaki, the

10:25

US Army went in and they measured the blast

10:28

impact. Not the release

10:30

of energy from the nuclear bombs, but the actual destructive

10:33

impact.

10:35

And then they measured that

10:37

and said, how much conventional

10:39

munitions would we have to use to

10:42

achieve the same destructive impact? In

10:45

the last year and a half of World War II, the

10:47

Allies, the British and the Soviets and

10:50

the Americans, dropped 50 Hiroshima's

10:52

a month

10:53

in Germany.

10:54

We flattened it,

10:55

right? Because it was a death

10:57

cult that took over that country and Hitler

11:00

said, we're gonna make a last stand. We don't care about

11:02

civilian casualties. We're gonna stand to

11:04

the death. What

11:07

you're saying is Gaza

11:09

is in the grips of a

11:11

death cult of the same nature or worse.

11:15

What does that mean? I don't want a million

11:18

children in Gaza to die and

11:21

be burned in bomb shelters like the Germans.

11:23

I don't want that.

11:24

I wouldn't defend our

11:27

aerial bombing of German cities and

11:30

our drinking of the bombs on Nagasaki

11:33

and Hiroshima. I think there there was

11:35

a calculation that, and

11:38

again, I don't consider myself an expert

11:41

on recent scholarship on this. I

11:43

know that 20 years

11:45

ago, A.C. Granely, the British philosopher

11:47

wrote a book about the, specifically,

11:52

the Allied bombing of German cities. And

11:56

concluded that it really was ethically

11:58

unjustifiable. We

12:00

told ourselves a story about how this

12:05

was necessary to win the war, and it was not a compelling

12:08

story even at the time. I'm not so

12:10

sure what analysis is true

12:13

there, but what

12:15

I think

12:18

Israel is held to a higher standard

12:20

than certainly we were 70 years ago, and

12:24

even than we, the British

12:26

and Americans are now. I

12:30

think they should hold themselves to

12:33

the highest possible standard. I mean, they certainly

12:35

should be alert to the difference

12:38

between committing war crimes and following the

12:40

international law that governs how

12:43

you wage war. I

12:47

think they should be as

12:51

reluctant as they can practically be

12:53

to kill innocent people, and

12:59

knowing that it's impossible not to kill some innocent

13:01

people when you're trying to fight militants

13:04

in a crowded city, especially

13:07

when those militants, based on their own completely

13:09

deranged moral worldview, are

13:12

committed to using their own people as human shields.

13:15

I mean, that disparity is,

13:19

as far as the moral algebra

13:21

that can give you insight into the

13:23

difference between the two sides, that

13:25

disparity says everything

13:28

to me. It's like somebody has recently

13:30

said in my own podcast, but if you just imagine

13:33

the Israelis attempting to use their own noncombatants

13:36

as human shields in any conflict

13:38

against jihadists, let's say Hezbollah comes across

13:40

the northern border, and the Israelis line

13:42

up with their own women and kids, putting

13:44

the barrels of their weapons on the

13:46

shoulders of their children, thinking that

13:49

Hezbollah is going to be reluctant to shoot through the bodies

13:51

of their children to kill IDF soldiers,

13:56

I mean, it is a completely

13:59

surreal,

14:01

Monty Python sketch where all the

14:03

Jews die. It is not, it

14:05

is laughable, it is unthinkable, it's

14:08

unthinkable at every level of it, it's unthinkable that

14:11

the Jews would treat their own children and non-combatants

14:14

that way, given what they

14:16

believe about everything, and it's

14:18

unthinkable that they would think that their enemies

14:20

would be deterred by that behavior, right? But

14:23

when you reverse it, as it is the

14:25

case in the real world, we Westerners

14:32

and the Israelis have had to confront

14:35

this behavior on multiple fronts in every

14:37

conflict against jihadists. They

14:40

routinely use non-combatants as human

14:42

shields, and Hamas is doing that now. I

14:46

think Israel has to figure out how to navigate

14:49

around that and eradicate

14:53

jihadists, you know, eradicate Hamas.

14:56

We're confounded to some degree by our terminology

14:59

here. We keep talking about terrorists, and

15:02

we had a war on terror for, you know, a

15:05

quarter of a century now. Terrorism

15:09

is a tactic. Terrorism is not the thing we're fighting.

15:12

We're fighting jihad. What's

15:16

the difference, Sam? Explain to people what the difference is. Well,

15:19

jihadism is the radical

15:27

core of Islam.

15:29

It is this principle of holy war

15:31

that can be justified in various

15:33

contexts. Yes, there are many, many millions

15:36

of Muslims, thankfully, who

15:38

would justify it in ways that we would recognize

15:41

as something we could live with,

15:43

right? A defensive war, right? A just

15:46

war theory. Okay, great. There

15:48

are other Muslims who say, no, no, no, you don't understand

15:50

jihad is just an inner spiritual struggle. Okay,

15:53

great. But historically

15:55

and practically now, jihad

15:57

has all—a component of jihad has always

15:59

been— in, you convert,

16:05

subjugate, kill the infidel.

16:10

Islam is a religion of conquest. It

16:12

views itself as a religion of conquest. It

16:15

expects to win these

16:19

contests for believers at

16:21

the end of time. And it has

16:24

an explicitly martial

16:28

ethic, which is we

16:33

have to win through force, right? And

16:35

we're happy to die trying. However

16:38

long we fail, we're ultimately going to succeed,

16:40

but we're happy to throw

16:43

our bodies and the bodies of our children into

16:46

this because this life

16:48

is a total illusion. It has absolutely

16:51

no value. This is just an anti-room

16:53

on the thresholds of either

16:56

heaven or hell. And the

16:58

only thing that matters is where you go after you die,

17:01

right? And only the true believers go

17:05

to paradise. And

17:07

if you kill them inadvertently, if you blow up a crowd

17:10

of Muslim kids in an attempt to kill some

17:12

soldiers that are handing out candy to them, as

17:14

happened in our conflict in Iraq

17:17

and Afghanistan, there's

17:20

no factor. The kids, the good

17:23

Muslims, the real Muslims are going to paradise. They're

17:25

going to thank you, right? No problem. And

17:29

the bad Muslims, the fake Muslims, the

17:32

infidels, the idolaters,

17:36

they're going to go to hell sooner, and

17:38

that's good. That's an intrinsic good. That's exactly

17:40

what the creator of the universe wants. It's

17:43

impossible to make a moral error when

17:45

you're a jihadist, right? If you die, it's

17:47

good. If your family dies, it's good. If

17:49

the infidels die, it's good. This is a death

17:52

cult. And

17:54

we have been lying to ourselves in

17:56

the secular West that

17:58

there's some other... logic, some other

18:01

variable that explains this behavior, is economics,

18:03

is politics, these are much, the assumption

18:06

is that when you see people

18:08

behaving in this extraordinarily

18:10

destructive and, you know, psychopathic

18:13

way, they must have been

18:15

pushed there by some awful

18:18

treatment that would explain it, right? This must

18:20

be ordinary human rational behavior in extremis,

18:24

right? These people have been so tortured

18:26

by the occupation, by the

18:29

apartheid state of Israel,

18:31

by the open air prison of Gaza, I mean, these

18:33

phrases that are now, you know, used reflexively

18:36

in the media. I'm not saying life in

18:38

Gaza isn't horrible, I'm not saying it's

18:40

not intolerable, we can talk about that,

18:43

but there's a layer of this phenomenon

18:45

and of this behavior that we've been living with, you

18:49

know, most clearly

18:51

since September 11, 2001, but it obviously precedes

18:54

that, which is

18:56

explained only by the religious ideology,

18:59

right? When people are doing the unthinkable,

19:05

again, you can find so many cases where they're doing it without

19:08

grievance, right? Where somebody drops out of the

19:10

London School of Economics to go join the Islamic

19:13

State for the pleasure of killing

19:15

Yazidis and, you know, raping

19:17

their women, right? It's just this

19:19

is, and this is what was happening, you

19:22

know, ad nauseam, right? From 100

19:25

countries. So this is, so what we saw

19:27

Hamas do in Israel last

19:29

week is a subset,

19:32

it's just another example

19:34

of that same behavior. Yes, it has this

19:36

local political, nationalistic

19:40

struggle over territory context, but

19:42

that's not the thing that explains the behavior.

19:47

And we have to get our heads around that. We again,

19:49

I'm not talking about, I'm not even

19:51

talking about non-Muslim, I'm talking about all moderate

19:53

Muslims desperately,

19:56

the world waits in desperation

19:58

for moderate Muslim. to

20:00

get their heads around the problem of jihad.

20:03

And Eric, would you agree with Sam's

20:05

assessment of the situation? I disagree

20:08

first of all with Constantine before

20:10

I even get to him. Excellent. There's

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com. So, you know, you phrase this immediately

21:44

as what's going on in Israel and Palestine.

21:47

From the perspective

21:49

of Hamas, what do you mean? It's

21:52

all happening in Palestine, right?

21:55

So the idea is that there's a European

21:58

occupier sitting in Palestine. you

22:01

have an open-air prison, people are oppressed,

22:03

it's completely unlivable, and

22:08

resistance was taken against

22:11

the European oppressor in

22:14

Palestine. So I don't know what you're talking about.

22:17

So that perspective, for example,

22:19

has to do with the language.

22:21

So as soon as the frame is in place, I

22:24

can tell you what the argument is.

22:26

It's like looking at different

22:28

opening tic-tac-toe moves. I've

22:31

got all the games memorized, and so I just

22:33

don't want to even participate as soon as I hear that.

22:38

Because of these different mindsets. Now, to Sam's

22:40

point, I had a big disagreement

22:43

in some sense with the way in which the

22:45

new atheists took on the problem

22:49

of jihad. And that is because

22:51

it comes out of totalizing. Totalizing

22:54

ideology is really the problem. There's

22:58

a North Korean totalizing

23:00

ideology. There's a jihadi

23:02

totalizing ideology. So I'd like to interrupt.

23:05

Just for clarity, for these people who might not know, what does

23:07

totalizing ideology mean now? Well,

23:10

what I mean in this case is that there's an entire worldview

23:12

which solves and addresses

23:14

all of your issues. How

23:17

should we structure a family? What is the purpose

23:19

of life? What risks

23:23

may be assumed? When

23:26

may one kill? You have

23:28

an entire worldview that

23:31

is effectively incompatible with the

23:33

outside world. All notions

23:35

of tolerance of coming up with

23:38

two people who don't really agree but agree

23:40

enough in order to serve each other coffee,

23:43

maybe marry into each other's families, whatnot.

23:48

There is a sort of way

23:51

in which you're open through moderation

23:54

and through tolerance to the points of view

23:56

of others within a relatively

24:00

broad but still restricted spectrum. This

24:02

is outside of that spectrum.

24:04

So the issue

24:07

is not Islam to me. The

24:09

issue is totalizing ideologies

24:12

that provide all answers. And

24:14

there aren't that many of them left. Like

24:16

Soviet communism died

24:18

off. It was a totalizing ideology. You

24:21

see the art, the music, the cinema.

24:24

You can spend your entire life in a Soviet

24:27

mindset based on what

24:29

was produced during that period. But not

24:31

all totalizing ideologies are the same. No,

24:34

they are. So the

24:36

martyrdom completely changes

24:38

the game theory. If

24:41

Putin was a martyr, we

24:43

would feel differently about it. I'm getting there. I

24:46

promise. Let me drag you there. So

24:51

the first problem I have is that

24:53

totalizing ideologies

24:56

are

24:57

dangerous because there's no way

25:00

from outside

25:02

to check them.

25:03

So if there's an error, then you

25:05

end up with whatever that area is to

25:08

the 10,000 power. Now,

25:11

when you drop in this as a strategy,

25:13

the next reason

25:16

I can't really respond to what God said is that

25:18

the language

25:20

again that we use, like both sides. Oh,

25:24

so what about Christian

25:28

Arabs? Somehow they're

25:30

not part of the Islamic

25:33

jihad or Hamas, but

25:36

on the other hand, they may have sympathies with them. Or

25:38

on the other hand, they may secretly hate it and

25:41

say, how can we get better

25:43

representation? Some of them made pine

25:45

to live in Israel. I lived

25:49

in Israel for two years and I had all sorts of crazy

25:51

conversations. And the spectrum of Arab

25:54

perspectives or Druze perspectives

25:58

is a much richer. place. And

26:01

I worry already about the both sides,

26:03

because it ain't both sides. It's

26:06

so many different factions. And

26:09

then in order to get at this, because

26:11

the Israeli government will have to

26:13

take action against the

26:16

Hamas government, right? And so that

26:18

is the both sides. So let's talk

26:20

about that, because you're arguing with the frame.

26:22

So give us the frame the way that you

26:24

think the frame should be. Well, my first

26:27

comment is that you're going

26:29

to use words like Palestinians. You're

26:31

going to use words like occupation, occupied

26:34

territories. Somebody else may use Judea

26:36

and Samaria. Somebody else might say Palestine.

26:40

As soon as I know the language, I

26:42

know that the arguments are going to be okay. This

26:45

is not my language. And I don't believe these things.

26:47

And I've agreed to be more or less silent

26:51

on a bunch of things while there was a peace process,

26:54

because peace processes are about BS

26:57

to certain extent. You have to lie through

26:59

a peace process in order to get something

27:02

at the end of it. And that failed. So,

27:05

you know, the first thing I'm going to say is, I don't believe

27:07

that this is an occupied

27:10

people. I don't believe

27:12

that the Arabs are under occupation.

27:15

And that's going to sound crazy, because you're not exposed

27:17

to any perspective that sounds like that. So how

27:20

could you ever come to that conclusion? You

27:24

have groups of people who are offered a state who

27:27

we are not listening to. They do not want the

27:30

state that they're offered. They're

27:32

offered a choice between a state and a chant.

27:36

And if you know the chant, it's from the river to

27:38

the sea. From the river

27:40

to the sea is what they chose. You

27:42

could have a state, or you could have

27:44

a chant. And they

27:46

want the chant. They are

27:49

the tip of the spear in

27:52

the global battle against Western

27:54

hegemony, against an occupying

27:57

European power in... holy-era

28:00

blend. And

28:03

they're not going to give

28:05

up on that

28:08

as a collective political entity for

28:11

a relatively modest,

28:16

prosperous state trading

28:19

with the occupier, with

28:21

joint economics, joint fate. That's

28:25

very troubling to us because we have this idea, why

28:27

wouldn't you want a state? You can have a state, you can be prosperous,

28:30

you can send your kids to Purdue. And

28:32

that's

28:37

not easy for us. This is basically,

28:39

if you think about motherhood, you

28:42

don't think about monk house and by proxy. Now

28:46

what do you do when you

28:49

have a mother who comes to the hospital with

28:51

a child who's continuously getting sick,

28:54

and getting harmed. You

29:00

have to ask, well,

29:02

is it possible that the mother is harming the child?

29:04

So you're about to see tiny

29:08

children pulled out of rubble in

29:11

northern Gaza. You're going to see it

29:13

ad nauseating. You're going to see people

29:15

rushing to the hospital. You're going to see mothers wailing.

29:18

So we can talk about the whole thing, about the

29:20

martyrdom, and how everybody prays that their family

29:22

will be martyred. And you know what, sometimes

29:25

it's true. Sometimes you see on camera somebody saying,

29:27

thank God they took my son, blah, blah,

29:30

blah. But those are actually much

29:32

more complicated things. Sometimes you turn the camera

29:34

off and the person is crying because they know

29:36

what they're supposed to say and they

29:38

know what they're actually feeling. So my

29:41

problem with this is that this

29:44

is so much more complicated than

29:46

the discussion we're pre-programmed

29:48

to have that is guaranteed to fail. The

29:51

richness of this problem

29:53

where Hamas is effectively the mother

29:55

in a monk house and by proxy situation.

29:58

Right? And the children in You're damn

30:00

straight you're gonna be pulling babies out of that rubble because

30:02

that's what Hamas wants and Israel

30:04

cannot figure out how to extricate herself

30:07

from this dance of death But

30:10

that's why we're here. That's what we're talking

30:12

about

30:13

right, so what I'm trying to say is You

30:16

don't get out of this you

30:19

have a very unconventional foe in

30:21

Hamas and in and in totalitarian

30:24

Islam and in jihad and in ISIS

30:26

and al-qaeda and for some reason

30:29

mainstream media Refuses

30:32

to show us the images that they showed us during

30:34

the Vietnam War through

30:37

mainstream outlets if you

30:39

saw what I've seen If

30:43

you if you watched

30:46

the Hamas

30:47

videos the ISIS videos the If

30:52

you read the beak if you did any of this stuff

30:55

You You'd be

30:57

sick to your stomach you'd be a changed person

31:00

And we don't have that. I remember that the night my

31:03

parents turned off the TV during the Vietnam

31:05

War So one of my earliest memories, I

31:07

believe it was GI's heads on

31:09

pikes carried by the north of the Viet Cong

31:12

You're watching American severed heads on

31:15

sticks If you think about all

31:17

the Pulitzer Prize winning photographs from the Vietnam

31:19

era, right? You're watching a monk burned

31:21

to death You're watching a street

31:23

execution right to

31:26

the head You're watching naked

31:28

children with their children with their clothes burned off

31:30

from Nepal You

31:34

didn't see falling man the most famous

31:36

picture from 9-11 was basically

31:38

not shown in the United States there is this layer

31:41

that is determined to push a fiction

31:43

to us, which is a transparent

31:47

fiction about The

31:50

general nature of Islam Islam

31:52

is complicated you have to study it There

31:55

are multiple schools of thought beyond

31:57

Shia versus Sunni versus the Mahdi You

32:00

know you you can just in Sunni Islam

32:02

different schools of jurisprudence which lead to totally

32:05

radically different Outcomes between

32:07

the Salafists and the Hanafi adherence

32:11

and what we've done is we've come up with this this

32:13

childlike concept of an oppressed

32:16

people and a religion of peace and

32:19

All of this stuff is unworkable and it's all mind

32:21

control and it's all propaganda And what my

32:24

feeling is again is I

32:26

don't want to start the conversation from where

32:28

I think you guys want to start it from I want

32:30

to start from the fact that none of us are prepared to have this conversation

32:33

Because we haven't been exposed to it. We

32:36

don't know what the real issues are and if we take

32:38

the terms that are handed to us

32:41

We have the best and most intellectual conversation

32:44

that will still be completely morally Yeah,

32:46

let me just disagree with the general thrust

32:48

of what you said there because much of what you

32:50

said is true, but doesn't actually Confound

32:54

the the argument that I'm making which

32:57

is that All of that complexity

32:59

is true. There's the complexity of Islam

33:01

is this very gated culture

33:05

and it interacts with cultural

33:09

Contingencies that have nothing to do with religion, right? so

33:11

even if there's there things that we would object

33:13

to under Islam like, you know female genital

33:15

mutilation, which It doesn't

33:19

have a direct really direct connection to theology

33:22

right and yet it's correlated with The

33:25

Muslim world but it's not exclusive to the Muslim world

33:27

etcetera, etcetera says all this hair splitting

33:29

we can do But there is a very

33:32

simple core to this right the concept of jihad

33:34

the concept of martyrdom that the

33:36

very clear Totalization

33:38

difficult again, yeah death to apostates

33:41

right all this is this is the clearest

33:43

piece of code This is like, you know eight

33:45

lines of code that every time you

33:48

run them Clear species of

33:50

cosine. It's the fact that it has no

33:52

repressor bound to it to borrow a metaphor

33:54

from DNA Okay, but in so in the in Deuteronomy

33:57

we have repressor. Yeah down to

33:59

the edge

33:59

code so the code doesn't run. The

34:02

problem is that all the safeties are off the gun,

34:04

you've got promoter rather than repressor for some

34:07

collection of people. For some other collection...

34:09

Explain that in a different way. It's too complicated.

34:12

It's not that complicated. It's not

34:14

that complicated for you, but it's too complicated

34:17

for me to understand and therefore for a lot of people watching.

34:19

So explain it simpler.

34:22

We have code in Deuteronomy. A lot of the

34:24

bad code in Islam comes from Judaism.

34:26

So Christianity and Islam

34:29

are two of our most popular options. And

34:32

bad code has an inheritance property

34:34

that sometimes it permeates through the system if everybody

34:36

agrees that the Old Testament is important. In

34:40

Deuteronomy, I believe there's a passage...

34:42

By the way, what you said before about it being Quranic,

34:44

I believe you were actually referencing a hadith. I don't

34:46

know if that's accurate about the ground. Yeah,

34:49

yeah, yeah. So I want to be clear about it. In

34:52

Deuteronomy, there's a passage that says, for

34:54

example, if somebody says, let's go worship

34:57

God's unknown to our fathers, set upon him

34:59

with a stone. I don't think there's any

35:01

record of Jews stoning an

35:04

apostate, an apostolatizing apostate.

35:08

However, how you

35:10

get that code not to run is that

35:13

you come up with some justification. For example,

35:16

too bad about the second temple, they're being destroyed. If

35:18

we don't have a second temple, then we can't convene

35:21

the Sanhedrins. If

35:23

the religious courts aren't enforced, then who

35:25

decides whether this is just and unjust?

35:28

So unfortunately, the code can't run. So

35:30

we have got bad code that

35:32

doesn't get run because

35:35

it's blocked from running. And

35:38

quite honestly, in many places in the world, you

35:40

have got bad code that is blocked from running.

35:42

And so I don't want to have a conversation about you can read

35:44

it right in the text. It's true. You can read it right in the

35:46

text, but you have to think about the epigenetics.

35:49

What is it that determines does this code run or

35:52

is this code blocked? So the problem is

35:55

you have got a totalizing death

35:57

cult with all the safeties off the gun.

36:01

for some subset of people and then

36:03

we're going to have this conversation about are

36:05

we going to be fastidiously accurate

36:07

in which case it'll take 17 hours and nobody will

36:09

want to watch it or is somebody

36:11

going to say you know do the conservative thing to

36:14

say well there's some something's going wrong with Islam

36:16

and then you've got all the collateral

36:19

damage of reasonable normal people who

36:21

are you know a vice president for inventory at some

36:23

company who happens to go to the mosque

36:26

and he's thinking like what does this have to do with me and

36:28

then you have got the weird issues about the sympathies

36:31

where you've got sympathies for

36:33

completely insane positions from completely

36:35

moderate people including now generically

36:39

college students college students are

36:41

up for people firing

36:43

automatic weapons into porta potties having

36:46

no idea who's inside there's a mother you

36:48

know nursing a child inside the porta potties

36:50

who cares and to

36:52

say I stand with Palestine and

36:55

show a hang glider for black lives matter

36:57

think about all the black lives matter signs

37:00

I threw out the entire George Floyd thing I was saying

37:03

don't support black lives

37:05

matter now black lives matter was a piece

37:07

of genius called declarative

37:09

marketing I don't know if you've ever heard it so we had products

37:12

in the 70s called gee your hair smells terrific

37:14

or I can't believe it's not butter was the name of the product

37:17

so the name of the product is called black lives matter

37:20

how can you disagree with that you know so

37:23

save save the adorable puppy dogs is what I would

37:25

call a terrorist organization if I had to because

37:28

how can you disagree with save the adorable puppy

37:30

dogs we're deranged by language

37:32

we're not watching things in mainstream

37:35

context that would make us sick to our stomachs

37:37

and we are becoming infused

37:40

with a radical ideology through the Democratic

37:42

Party that is as if it

37:44

was liberalism adjacent

37:46

like you cut radical left-wing death

37:49

cults

37:49

that want revolution for the oppressed to

37:53

have a seat at the Democratic table at

37:55

the same time that somebody like Sam or

37:57

myself traditionally

37:59

a democratic. completely unwelcome. And

38:02

you know my claim is that you're seeing

38:04

an echo of this madness of

38:06

jihadism inside mainstream

38:08

American campuses.

38:10

And this one thing that I would like to add as well

38:12

is that my grandfather was an Arab. My

38:14

grandfather was Venezuelan but he originated

38:17

from Lebanon. His surname was Saud

38:20

and he was Coptic Christian and

38:22

he was a doctor and when

38:25

he retired he became a historian and his

38:27

books won prizes in

38:31

his third language. And we went to Israel

38:33

on holiday. Now I'm a Catholic, all

38:35

our family are Catholic and they said to my grandfather,

38:38

we said to my grandfather, would you like to come

38:40

to Israel with us? Bear in mind this is a historian, this

38:42

is a learned man and he said as long

38:45

as I live I will never set foot on Israeli

38:47

soil, I will never put money in

38:49

an Israeli pocket. And I think

38:51

the other aspect to this conversation

38:54

that we're not addressing is the

38:56

hatred that exists on

38:58

both sides. And we misuse

39:01

that word hatred a lot. I hate

39:03

peanuts, I hate the opposition football

39:05

team. This is hatred to its

39:08

core. And what do you do with

39:10

two groups of people, some

39:13

of whom hate each other in its truest

39:15

sense, can you resolve that?

39:18

It's worse than hatred and

39:20

it's simpler than Eric

39:22

you're making it out. It's not, granted

39:25

there's a ton of complexity but

39:28

the complexity

39:30

isn't the

39:31

main problem here.

39:33

So it's worse than hatred in

39:36

that, again I really do

39:38

think this is a failure

39:40

of empathy on the part of secular

39:43

rational people. They just can't get their heads

39:45

around what it would be like to actually

39:48

believe in paradise. They've never met,

39:51

at most they've met people who pretend to believe in paradise.

39:55

They just don't know what

39:58

true belief is like.

39:59

and therefore they can't kind

40:02

of sympathetically run

40:04

this particular piece of code and see

40:06

its perfectly rational implications.

40:09

I mean, how would you live

40:10

if you believed

40:11

that there was nothing more important

40:14

than waging war for the one

40:16

true faith and dying in the

40:18

process? The only straight path to paradise

40:20

was to be martyred. The only

40:23

thing that bypasses the resurrection and all of

40:25

the uncertainty of whether you're going to get there

40:27

is just this is... You're

40:29

just whisked past the velvet rope and

40:31

you're in the bottle room with God waiting for your

40:33

friends and family to arrive. Right.

40:37

People can't

40:39

understand what it would be like to actually believe this

40:42

and so they think there must be

40:44

some other motive. So when you

40:46

read an issue of David,

40:49

right, you know, the Islamic State's highly

40:51

professional newsletter or magazine...

40:54

Great production class. It

40:56

was shockingly good. I mean, when I commented

40:59

on it, it was actually a very

41:01

bad sign that it was as well written and as

41:03

well copied as it was. They know their stuff? It

41:06

was a big... It kind of shows you the quality

41:08

of people they were recruiting from Europe

41:10

mostly.

41:13

But

41:14

it's... And I

41:17

disagree with the analogy, the

41:19

epigenetics analogy we ran because

41:22

it's not... This is a much

41:24

shorter piece of code. It's

41:26

a much more unified code. There's

41:31

much less self-contradiction in

41:33

the Quran than you find in the Bible. The

41:36

Bible simply does

41:38

not present a unified message and it's very easy

41:40

to pick and choose. And especially

41:42

if you're a Christian, you wind up with

41:44

Jesus in his better moods and

41:46

you could live a completely benign

41:49

pacifist sort of life. Or you

41:51

could be a

41:54

religious lunatic who's dangerous and

41:56

divisive. You can sort of have it however you want

41:58

to have it. It is much... harder

42:00

under Islam. It's not to say this is impossible and

42:03

as I said earlier It's much better designed. They

42:06

absolutely need to find their repressor hardware

42:09

to figure out how to make jihad

42:12

just a matter of just war and just

42:15

war theory you know as you

42:17

know the Christians have it more or less and spiritual

42:22

struggle. That would be great they have to figure out how to

42:24

do it it's damn hard to do it

42:27

especially when you look at the example of

42:29

the prophet Muhammad who's not a guy who got

42:31

crucified and told everyone

42:33

to wait for the end of the world. He was a conquering

42:35

warlord I mean it's like having Genghis

42:37

Khan as your as your Savior

42:40

I mean it's just it's just not a... Islam

42:42

is much better designed for

42:45

holy war as for endless

42:47

conflict. It's not a morally normative

42:49

observation. It had the opportunity

42:52

to look at Orthodox Judaism or Judaism

42:55

and Christianity and

42:57

it became a piece

43:00

of code that is incredibly

43:03

difficult to deal with even down to the engineering

43:06

of a priority

43:08

of operations. I

43:10

forget how it works that you have the

43:12

chapters the Surahs Yeah,

43:15

yeah. The ones that abrogate the other ones

43:17

yes but the more violent ones that abrogate

43:20

the contradictions but you also have an order of operation.

43:22

So

43:24

as a piece of design we can marvel

43:26

at Islam

43:29

but you still have two very

43:31

different traditions one clerical one

43:34

more akin to Protestantism of a direct relationship

43:36

to the code. In

43:38

Sunni Islam you do have multiple schools

43:41

of jurisprudential thought. What

43:43

I'm trying to get at is you became

43:46

fixated on the fact that normal

43:50

ordinary Americans, median Americans

43:53

cannot figure out how to talk about

43:55

the problems that come out

43:57

of totalitarian jihadi ideology.

44:00

But

44:00

worse than that, it's to the point

44:02

you just raised about what's happening on college campuses.

44:05

We've got the most privileged and ostensibly

44:08

well-educated people in our society, students

44:10

right now today at Harvard

44:13

and Stanford, who are signing

44:15

open letters in support of the murder

44:19

of infants in their cribs because … We're

44:22

in support of message killing. Let's be very

44:24

specific. It's not murder and it's not the

44:26

number.

44:27

Message killing is different than regular

44:29

killing. Message killing is when you engage

44:31

in an act and you make it cinematic and

44:33

you make it hurt and you make it psychologically so

44:35

disturbing that you amplify

44:39

power

44:40

of each death. Saddam

44:43

was an incredible

44:47

practitioner of message killing. When you

44:49

think about… Luca Brasi

44:52

in The Godfather showing up with

44:55

a vest with a fish in it, nobody knows how to read

44:57

the message. You

45:00

have kids on college campuses who

45:03

are supportive of message

45:05

killing and

45:06

you think about how do you deliver the maximal

45:09

amount of pain to a father. But

45:12

these are the same people who are whinging

45:15

about microaggressions and

45:17

they need safe spaces, they need trigger warnings,

45:20

they think words are violence. No,

45:23

they don't think any of that. There was no woke

45:25

ideology.

45:26

You could not tie your shoes

45:29

if you imbibed wokeism. It's such a contradictory

45:32

collection of things that don't make sense. My

45:35

homalis said on our show recently something

45:37

that I think is not untrue

45:40

which is that these people don't use language to

45:42

communicate, they use it to manipulate. However…

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fastest college

46:38

towns. It's also why Bowling Green State University

46:41

is the number one school in the Midwest that

46:43

students would choose again for the fourth year

46:45

in a row.

46:46

One of the things that always worries me about our

46:48

space is we

46:51

critique others and we

46:53

don't model and we don't talk

46:55

about how to think. And I've asked, we've spent 40

46:57

minutes, I've asked part of you how to think about this issue. We

47:00

are nowhere near that. So let's try. You both

47:03

put some ideas forward about how you see

47:05

this problem. How do we think about this,

47:07

Sam? If you're right, let's

47:10

just for the sake of argument, this is all about

47:12

jihadism. I have an answer for you, but I'd certainly preface

47:14

it by saying that one, I'm not

47:16

an expert in any of the relevant

47:18

areas that would give me confidence in

47:20

this answer. This is the internet, I've never stopped anyone.

47:23

So I'm not like, so I'm very... You've been

47:25

on Twitter, Sam. Not

47:27

much recently. So

47:31

I'm very happy that I'm not in charge here.

47:34

So I can say this knowing

47:37

that I have absolutely no responsibility to actually make

47:39

this kind of decision. But

47:43

what I think we in the

47:46

West, however you want to conceive it, should

47:49

do is recognize that

47:52

we are perpetually at war with

47:55

aspiring martyrs. We're at war

47:57

with jihadis. Now how many people...

48:00

fitting that description actually exist in the Muslim world

48:04

is as yet undetermined. But

48:07

it's more than we should be

48:09

comfortable with and still

48:13

most Muslims do not fit that description obviously.

48:15

And then there are kind

48:18

of concentric circles of decreasing

48:20

support for the project

48:24

of jihad. But we have to recognize that

48:26

we're at war with jihadism and in

48:30

whatever guise, whatever organization

48:32

or non organization it exists

48:35

in. And

48:38

we should

48:41

be killing jihadis. We're

48:43

not going to negotiate with jihadis, we're not going to live

48:46

peacefully with jihadis. When

48:49

you raise your hand and you say I'm a jihadi,

48:51

that should make your life much more dangerous

48:54

officially from the point of view of the

48:56

Israelis, the CIA, anyone

49:00

who's part of this project. But

49:03

then we're back to Dresden. This

49:06

is why I brought her up. I think

49:08

this mostly should be covert. I

49:11

don't think we need to take credit for this. I

49:13

don't think the Israelis should say we dealt with

49:15

a problem over here and the US should say we dealt

49:18

with a problem over there. How are you distinguishing

49:21

those? Clandestine

49:23

means secret, covert means deniable.

49:28

I'm not sure

49:30

I understand all that you've... When the

49:32

CIA takes a covert operation,

49:35

the idea that if

49:38

discovered it will be denied and

49:40

that the links to the sponsor

49:43

will be severed so that it cannot be

49:45

traced back to the CIA. In other

49:47

words,

49:50

it's a pretty big distinction. I just didn't

49:52

know whether you were... Yeah, I don't know if it's important in this case. This

50:00

is an idea that doesn't originate with me. I think I

50:02

first encountered this with the

50:05

war correspondent and journalist

50:07

Robert Kaplan, maybe. I

50:10

think it might even be before 9-11 he wrote on this. But

50:15

just the idea that we need to, that

50:18

all of this has to be public, all of this has to

50:20

be demonstrative, all of this

50:22

has to be framed by speeches,

50:25

that we need to declare

50:27

that we're going to go to war in Iraq, right?

50:29

We're going to go to war in Afghanistan. If

50:34

my thinking about anything has changed since 9-11, I was never

50:36

a supporter of the war

50:41

in Iraq. I was never a critic of the war in Iraq.

50:43

I never knew what to think about the war in Iraq, except

50:46

I noticed that it seemed like a catastrophic

50:48

distraction from the war in Afghanistan, which I absolutely

50:50

did support,

50:51

and which was a hopeless

50:54

failure, it certainly seems.

50:58

If my thinking has changed about anything, it's just

51:00

the idea that we can do

51:03

this project of nation building. By analogy

51:05

with what we did post-World

51:08

War II with Germany and Japan,

51:10

which are miracles of

51:13

resurrection, really. Look at the enemies

51:15

we had in Germany and Japan, and

51:18

look at the state of the world now. It's

51:21

just the idea that they are our friends and

51:23

collaborators, and have been for virtually

51:26

as long as we've been alive. It's

51:30

an amazing reboot of civilization

51:32

after it's near destruction.

51:38

The idea that we can accomplish that in the Middle

51:40

East and accomplish that in a Muslim culture just

51:43

because we think everyone must want

51:45

freedom on some level and must want to run

51:48

the same democratic code as we do, and

51:51

die their fingers and say they voted. Much

51:56

more pessimistic about that project ever

51:59

being fulfillable. in the lifetime of anyone

52:01

hearing this than I was.

52:04

And so I think we should be very circumspect about

52:06

owning anything. Because the other

52:08

thing is that, because all of this is seen

52:11

through religious lens on the other side,

52:14

and it's all a matter of sanctities and their

52:16

trespass, as far as the eye can see. So

52:18

you bring in infidel troops, even with the best

52:21

of intentions, to do anything good. And

52:23

it's a sacrilege worthy

52:25

of the murder of non-combatants, right?

52:27

So many people subscribe to this worldview, beyond

52:30

just jihadists, that

52:33

you just can't,

52:35

the project is over with the best

52:37

of intentions even before it starts. So I think,

52:40

again, this is, and I say this is someone

52:43

who doesn't

52:45

know all that I'm getting wrong here, at least pragmatically.

52:47

Like, I don't know, in terms of covert

52:50

or clandestine operations, how

52:52

you go about killing jihadists, wherever

52:55

they exist. We

52:58

should get as good as we can get at that, we

53:01

should get as good as we can get at that. So

53:03

the leaders of Hamas in Qatar, those

53:07

guys, the clock should be ticking on those guys. It is.

53:10

Yeah, so that's

53:12

the most important piece, from my point of view. Jihad,

53:16

as a job description, Jihadism

53:18

has to be failed. But these people aren't cowards.

53:20

These people who organize this expect

53:23

to die. So what do you think that would be saying? We should

53:25

fulfill that. Cowerd, cowardly, it's not true.

53:28

I would never say that. No one has

53:30

said that. Let's stop arguing with stuff. Sorry, as

53:32

the old joke goes, Sam, what's the difference

53:35

between a moderate Muslim and a jihadi? The

53:39

harassment of his sister at an Israeli checkpoint.

53:42

The problem is you can't just go around killing jihadis

53:45

because a lot of people express

53:47

support for jihad, who are never going to pick up

53:49

a gun or strap themselves into the suit. That's

53:52

a distinction I'm making. I mean, there are people who, the

53:56

other very depressing thing is that if we

53:58

have poll results going back. decades,

54:01

when you ask Muslim communities,

54:04

not just in the Muslim world but in the West, what's

54:07

your level of support for suicide bombing in defense

54:09

of Islam, the numbers are awful.

54:12

And so that's

54:14

not what I'm talking about, the people who

54:16

are actually deciding to be jihadis.

54:19

They're going to get up tomorrow morning and

54:21

their goal, their job is how do I kill

54:23

people? When did suicide bombing in Islam start?

54:26

What was that? When did suicide bombing in Islam

54:28

start?

54:29

This is not, we don't have to talk about the camel tigers.

54:32

No, no, I'm telling you, it started

54:34

with the Beirut barracks, right? So

54:37

we're talking about a relatively recent phenomenon. Yeah,

54:39

but bombs are a relatively recent phenomenon. No, no, there was the golden

54:41

age of hijacking before that. I'm not making any excuses

54:44

for it. I'm trying

54:46

to say that you're talking about something of such consequence.

54:49

The idea that we should, if I

54:51

take covert, that we should have an

54:54

official policy of trying to identify

54:57

people who are jihadi, whatever that means, which

54:59

is very complicated. They identify

55:01

themselves, right? They

55:03

literally moved to Syria. I

55:05

had a friend

55:07

in Cambridge, Massachusetts who you would have

55:09

identified as a jihadi. And

55:11

he said to me, once you go to Israel,

55:14

we will never be friends again, we will never speak. I

55:17

will have to hate you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He

55:19

was the one who told me about the hadith with the, he says,

55:21

you know, remember that this is the tree that

55:24

is the tree of the Jews that will hide you in the earth

55:26

cries for your blood. It's

55:28

an incredible mindset. You

55:30

and I are allied on it. It's a mindset

55:33

that Americans have difficulty thinking through. But

55:35

what you're talking about, when you

55:38

talk about the decision boundary of

55:40

which jihadis to kill. Yeah,

55:42

so air on the side of conservative,

55:44

right? I'm just saying we have to

55:46

recognize we're in a, we're in a hot war.

55:49

I think the problem that you're having with Trump

55:51

and other things, which is you're

55:53

being invited into the abyss. Well,

55:57

you're not understanding. Wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait.

56:00

recommending here because if you're not understanding it,

56:02

the audience isn't understanding it. What I'm saying

56:05

is much more conservative, at

56:07

least in my view, with respect to collateral damage

56:09

and the ethics

56:11

of warfare

56:12

than what is likely to be happening. Certainly

56:15

what I think is likely to happen

56:17

in Gaza, right? I think

56:19

we should... You want a lot of targeted

56:22

surgical stuff. Hold on. Two things. First

56:24

of all, let Sam finish. And the second

56:26

thing is, Eric, I want to hear a positive

56:29

proposition from you because you're kind of

56:31

positioning yourself in a critique place

56:33

from which it's much easier to operate. So let

56:35

Sam finish this point and then I want to hear from you

56:38

what you think we should do because otherwise it's

56:40

kind of asymmetrical. So go, Sam. So

56:42

our

56:42

progress morally as a

56:45

civilization, especially

56:48

in the West, as a global civilization, especially

56:50

in the West, has been on many

56:54

fronts. But one crucial

56:56

front is that we have become more and more uncomfortable

56:59

in taking

57:02

innocent life,

57:03

however

57:05

defensively, when

57:07

we wage war. So

57:09

collateral damage, that phrase is a euphemism

57:12

that hides just the ghastliest

57:16

outcomes where you have children

57:20

orphaned and children blown up and every

57:22

permutation of that horror.

57:25

And because

57:28

we've become more and more transparent to ourselves

57:30

in how we wage war, we

57:32

are increasingly less and less capable

57:35

of waging war the way we did in World

57:37

War II and

57:40

Vietnam. And I think that's

57:42

a good thing. It's a good thing until it isn't,

57:44

right? I can imagine us getting into a war

57:46

where we have to finally say, fuck

57:49

it, we have to roll back our moral

57:53

compass to 1945

57:55

because this enemy is hiding

57:57

behind so many beautiful blondes.

58:00

little girls, all those girls are

58:02

gonna die, otherwise we all die, right? So

58:05

that's conceivable to me, but

58:06

I

58:07

certainly hope we don't have a future

58:09

like that. And so I think we should

58:11

have a bias toward being more

58:14

and more compassionate, more and more scrupulous,

58:16

more and more aware of how intolerable

58:19

it is for, in this case, completely

58:22

innocent families in Gaza to

58:25

have 500-pound bombs dropped on

58:27

their heads, right? It's

58:29

completely unacceptable. The details are unacceptable.

58:31

And I don't share your view that if we just

58:33

saw more of the imagery, that would

58:36

help us calibrate here because the imagery is so

58:38

provocative. The imagery of a dead baby

58:40

being pulled out of rubble is so provocative, it's

58:43

impossible to think about what should happen in the

58:45

world on the basis of that data point,

58:47

right? That doesn't guide you, that just confounds you.

58:50

So I think what

58:53

I'm arguing for, and

58:55

again, I don't understand the practicalities

58:58

of this. I mean, we need to bring in Delta

59:01

Force and the CIA and people who actually

59:03

know how you do things on that front

59:05

to

59:07

know what's possible. But

59:08

I think,

59:10

yes, anyone who joins a jihadist

59:12

organization who's

59:15

in the business of waging jihad, right,

59:18

that should be a death sentence. That

59:21

should be suicide, right? We should figure

59:23

out how to make that within the

59:27

possibilities here, we should figure out how to make that so.

59:30

And I mean, so we have our friend Douglas Murray, who

59:32

we both love and who's incredibly

59:35

courageous and wise on this particular

59:37

front. He's

59:39

walking around saying that anyone who

59:42

supports Hamas, right, even just

59:44

anyone who gets out on the sidewalk and stands

59:46

on one of these signs, as

59:49

they have in

59:51

this week,

59:52

supporting what happened in Israel,

59:55

those people should lose their

59:57

citizenship and be...

59:59

evicted from the UK.

1:00:02

I try to map that onto your free speech

1:00:04

concerns in the US. How

1:00:07

practical is that? How ethnicized that is? My free speech.

1:00:10

Well, just so you know, guys, Hamas

1:00:12

is a prescribed terrorist organization in the

1:00:15

UK. Therefore, to express support for

1:00:17

it is a crime. Okay, so, but

1:00:19

try to map that onto the American context.

1:00:22

We've got Stanford students who are effectively

1:00:25

those people, right? Not only are we

1:00:27

kicking them out of Stanford, which I could

1:00:30

sort of support. I mean, there's more to talk about there,

1:00:32

but like,

1:00:33

yeah, I mean, there's a certain form of cancel culture that

1:00:36

would make some sense to me at this moment. But

1:00:39

on Douglas's account,

1:00:40

we just send them to Gaza, right?

1:00:43

Just drop them in Gaza and say, good luck. This is

1:00:45

what you wanted. This is your worldview. Okay,

1:00:49

that's, when you're talking about extreme

1:00:52

derangements of our civil society and

1:00:54

our politics and our way of life,

1:00:58

and boundary problems, how do we

1:01:00

like, like just what sort of what constitutes support

1:01:03

for Hamas in these last seven

1:01:05

days, right? On social media

1:01:07

and on the quad. It's

1:01:09

an impossible problem. So you can be as judicious

1:01:12

as you wanna be. I

1:01:14

just, and I would advocate that, but I think

1:01:16

we have to recognize euphemisms

1:01:20

aside that terrorism is not

1:01:22

our problem. Jihadism is

1:01:24

our problem. And it's

1:01:26

not that we don't have other problems. And North

1:01:29

Korea is also a problem. Other totalizing dogmas are

1:01:31

also a problem. This is a very specific

1:01:33

problem that is not going away. It will be with

1:01:35

us for as long as we're alive and as long

1:01:37

as our kids are alive.

1:01:39

Great. So Eric, what

1:01:41

is your vision for how

1:01:44

we start?

1:01:46

My father's vision so that, okay,

1:01:48

look, because you asked for it, I

1:01:51

think in all of the appearances, I've

1:01:53

never actually shared this publicly,

1:01:56

but you're forcing the issue and I'm not

1:01:58

hiding from it. It's just... If

1:02:01

we don't do anything different, we're

1:02:04

going to get what Hamas wanted. So

1:02:07

the level of disagreement is very

1:02:10

weird because it's 100% agreement

1:02:12

on all sorts of actual things that you and I agree

1:02:14

on.

1:02:16

But

1:02:17

no, the pictures really do matter because

1:02:19

when you pull a baby out of the rubble, the

1:02:21

key question is, is that rubble due

1:02:24

to Hamas? Or is that rubble due

1:02:26

to the person who dropped the bomb? So

1:02:29

we have this concept of suicide by cop. You're

1:02:32

about to see suicide by cop or infanticide

1:02:34

by cop or of monchasm by proxy via

1:02:37

cop where the cop is the idea. Agreed. Okay.

1:02:40

If you want a positive vision, the

1:02:43

baseline is Israel is going to flatten north

1:02:45

Gaza and there's going to be

1:02:47

tons of death and destruction. And I would

1:02:50

love to stop it. The right thing to have done,

1:02:52

in my opinion, which will not be popular,

1:02:54

to be much more hated by Arabs than

1:02:57

the idea of killing

1:03:00

families through collateral damage. It's

1:03:03

very simple.

1:03:05

I know where you're going. I

1:03:07

think I've read your mind. But go ahead.

1:03:11

Israel has a claim on a lot of land that

1:03:13

it controls. And the

1:03:15

Arabs have a claim on the same land. There's two competing

1:03:18

claims. If you take the Israeli claim, you say, look, this

1:03:20

land is ours, but we

1:03:22

are not pigs and we

1:03:25

are not so attached to this land and we are not

1:03:27

so blind to your needs that

1:03:29

we would not give you a portion of land

1:03:31

that we consider to be ours because it comes from

1:03:34

our tradition. We have a schedule.

1:03:36

If you want to live as brothers in peace, there

1:03:40

are arguments between brothers and families. If

1:03:43

you want to prosper a

1:03:45

state, you go this many days without any

1:03:48

loss of life due to terror, jihad

1:03:51

or any of these things. And we

1:03:53

will cede this land to

1:03:55

your future state so that they're

1:03:58

guaranteed that there will be a Palestine. even

1:04:00

though we consider the land to be ours. You're

1:04:04

interested in rape? Here's how many

1:04:08

acres we will annex. You

1:04:11

interested in murder? You interested in blowing

1:04:13

up families? You want to take an egged bus

1:04:15

over a cliff? Whatever it is

1:04:18

that you're thinking about. Here's the schedule

1:04:21

of the acreage that you will lose. We will have

1:04:23

an annexing ceremony, and we will

1:04:25

name it after your victims. Whatever

1:04:28

town, whatever settlement that we're going to put in that, and

1:04:30

it will be permanently a part of Israel. And

1:04:32

so that way, when you do something to us

1:04:35

where you're begging us to kill you and

1:04:37

your children, to blow up your buildings, to bulldoze

1:04:39

your houses, we're not going to fall for it

1:04:41

anymore. What we're going to do is we're

1:04:43

going to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony. And

1:04:46

what we're going to see is a larger and larger

1:04:48

and larger state of Israel as

1:04:51

your moronic death cult continues

1:04:54

to grind against innocent life. So

1:04:57

rather than have a single death, you're going to have

1:04:59

a transfer of acreage. Okay?

1:05:02

But

1:05:02

that entails a lot of death. Right. You're

1:05:05

taking that acreage with tanks. Because

1:05:07

every time...

1:05:10

First of all, there's a lot of land that

1:05:12

Israel already controls that doesn't need

1:05:14

to be taken by a tank. You have

1:05:16

a different situation in Gaza in particular,

1:05:18

right? So Gaza, first of all,

1:05:20

was not occupied, it was given. It's

1:05:24

controlled in terms of its borders, but when you

1:05:26

make videos showing how, oh look, you know,

1:05:29

we dug up all these pipes, we figured out how to get

1:05:31

over the fence with paragliders, etc., etc., you

1:05:33

understand now why the borders

1:05:37

are being controlled. So yes,

1:05:40

there's a certain amount that you have to do, but you

1:05:42

can certainly minimize this if

1:05:44

suddenly a giant chunk of land

1:05:47

disappeared from the West Bank,

1:05:50

and that was the response. And nobody died,

1:05:52

for example. But how... there's people

1:05:54

on that land. I mean, how does nobody

1:05:56

die?

1:05:57

Well, first of all, people have been transferred from

1:05:59

Gaza. land. Second of all, there are chunks of land, you know,

1:06:02

there are settlements and things that have not yet

1:06:04

been formally annexed to Israel. What

1:06:07

I'm trying to say, Sam, is that you're

1:06:10

speaking to somebody who speaks only

1:06:12

the language of violence. And the thing

1:06:15

that I don't know how to communicate is

1:06:18

I have a rule that I can't care about somebody else's

1:06:20

children more than they care about their children. They

1:06:22

speak a different, they speak a, there's even a

1:06:25

more important language, which is the language

1:06:27

of religious symbols. This is where I thought you were going. I was, it

1:06:29

turns out telepathy isn't real. I don't know.

1:06:32

Because, um, no, actually I was going there, but

1:06:34

I saw what they were doing. There's

1:06:37

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1:06:39

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1:06:41

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They care much more about

1:08:08

buildings than about their children. If

1:08:11

you really want to see the

1:08:13

wheels come off, Israel could say, listen,

1:08:16

return the hostages in 48 hours or

1:08:18

we blow up the Dome of the Rock. And

1:08:21

they just rig that building to explode. What

1:08:23

do you think happens? The entire world

1:08:26

lights up. Right? We're talking

1:08:28

about it's like that's Armageddon,

1:08:31

right? Over a building.

1:08:33

Right? This is it's completely crazy.

1:08:35

It's all upside down. The ethics of this are completely

1:08:38

upside down. You don't mean buildings because there

1:08:40

are plenty of apartment buildings where Hamas

1:08:42

has, you know, headquarters

1:08:44

and builds rockets. I'm talking about the Dome of the

1:08:46

Rock. Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:47

Yeah. So. But

1:08:50

like if you can talk about emotional leverage,

1:08:52

that's the point of emotional leverage. That's that's

1:08:54

more than we're going to kill all your kids

1:08:57

that we're going to kill this one empty

1:08:59

building. Right. I don't know where we

1:09:01

are. Exactly. I'm just saying that that like that, that is

1:09:03

if you're talking about this, this

1:09:06

is where I thought you were going. Israel,

1:09:09

Israel does not have leverage saying

1:09:11

we're we're going to go back and take Gaza

1:09:14

for ourselves. Are we going to take more of the West

1:09:16

Bank? That's not leverage. The whole

1:09:18

place is as big as a living room. It's

1:09:20

a tiny if you annex land

1:09:23

to Israel.

1:09:24

I guarantee you the world will

1:09:27

freak out. It won't freak out as if you threatened

1:09:29

to Alexa. And I don't even want to talk about this

1:09:31

because I don't want to get in.

1:09:34

In my saying, I recommend that I'm saying that

1:09:36

is that is how upside down the situation

1:09:39

is. That would be the most provocative thing

1:09:41

they could possibly do. That's actually under

1:09:43

their control. Let's interrogate this idea

1:09:45

of annexing land, because I think some criticism

1:09:48

that I hear, some

1:09:50

critique rather, that I hear

1:09:52

and agree with is that if

1:09:54

you start annexing land, you are going to have to

1:09:57

do it by force, which is when you're back to square

1:09:59

one. Israel is the occupied state, flattening

1:10:02

cities, killing babies, etc. How

1:10:04

is that different to where we are now?

1:10:08

I'm trying to say that in the cycle of violence,

1:10:11

what is sought by the architects

1:10:13

of murder, misery and horror

1:10:17

is reprisal, physical kinetic

1:10:19

reprisal. I'm saying deny them

1:10:21

that.

1:10:22

But you're not going to deny them that. You're

1:10:24

going to make them the jihadis

1:10:26

if we accept that they exist, which of course they

1:10:29

do. They are going to scupper

1:10:31

that process with everything they have by committing

1:10:33

a crime. And then you're going

1:10:35

to have to annexland them which Palestinians live,

1:10:38

in which case you're back to collateral

1:10:40

damage. Again, you've got

1:10:43

a terrible situation.

1:10:44

I'm not coming up with this

1:10:49

as this is what to do when you have two

1:10:51

normal foes that are in

1:10:53

dispute over mineral resources. We

1:10:56

know what that is. This is not

1:10:58

that. This is, please

1:11:02

flatten our apartment buildings so

1:11:05

that we can pull the babies from the rubble. We

1:11:08

have the cameras and we know how to do this in 4K. This

1:11:11

is a completely different sort

1:11:13

of an enemy. And my claim is the story

1:11:23

of Israel exercising power

1:11:27

over Arabs who are not Israeli citizens

1:11:29

is a cancerous story.

1:11:32

And if Israel does not figure out how

1:11:34

to get out of that story, even to

1:11:37

the point where it's got a state that it has to go

1:11:39

up against in a war, and I agree with Sam, that

1:11:42

we fetishize now a

1:11:44

level of morality due to professional

1:11:47

military ethics

1:11:50

that is probably unsustainable in actual

1:11:52

war

1:11:53

between

1:11:55

comparable rivals. We're

1:11:57

going to have to get a lot less squeamish. to

1:12:00

die. This is what happens in war. There's always

1:12:02

collateral damage. And

1:12:04

the situation

1:12:06

that I want, and again, this

1:12:09

isn't particularly good for this

1:12:12

50th anniversary attack of the Yom Kippur

1:12:14

War. I wanted this in place 20

1:12:17

years ago. Nobody would listen. And

1:12:19

that was based much more around

1:12:22

blowing up a pizza parlor. Okay,

1:12:24

great. So the land that we've always thought was

1:12:26

ours and we're going to formally take it and we're not going to have

1:12:29

a reprisal and we're not going to have a

1:12:32

bulldozer knock over a house. Because

1:12:34

Israel is being induced into

1:12:36

a game theory according to the local

1:12:39

rules of the Middle East and then

1:12:41

broadcast into a

1:12:43

somewhat anti-Semitic West,

1:12:46

this is the strategy

1:12:49

of the Arabs in this situation. It's

1:12:51

just how to get Israel to

1:12:53

play by local rules of the Middle East for

1:12:55

exports into a sophisticated,

1:12:59

somewhat mildly anti-Semitic

1:13:01

West for people particularly

1:13:03

on the left who don't

1:13:05

particularly like Jews and

1:13:09

want to be engaged in some sort of

1:13:12

recapitulation of the civil rights era or

1:13:15

South African apartheid.

1:13:16

I agree with that 100 percent.

1:13:19

But that does not mean that the solution you proposed

1:13:21

works. And that's the thing that we're

1:13:23

talking about. We just have to imagine what happens when you grab

1:13:26

all that land. Then

1:13:28

Israel just has different borders but there's

1:13:30

still a war with jihadists and Hamas.

1:13:33

There's going to be a war with jihadists forever.

1:13:36

That's not going to end. And to be honest, and

1:13:38

I can't believe we're not pushing back on this,

1:13:40

the idea of killing people with sympathies

1:13:43

with jihadi ideologies. I know. I said jihadi. That's

1:13:45

no what he said. I said killing jihadists. Yeah.

1:13:48

Not sympathies. It was sympathies

1:13:50

for jihadists and you've got... If I join a jihadi

1:13:52

organization, does that make me a jihadi?

1:13:55

Well, I mean... Then we've killed majid.

1:13:57

Let's make it clear.

1:13:59

He wasn't a, I mean, he wasn't a, that wasn't a jihadist

1:14:02

organization. He wasn't a jihadist. No. Okay.

1:14:06

I mean, so it's, the book I wrote

1:14:08

with Majid based on this, you know, verbal debate

1:14:10

we had, Islam and the Future of Tolerance

1:14:12

is there to be seen. And Majid

1:14:14

makes lots

1:14:16

of interesting distinctions between jihadists,

1:14:20

Islamists, jihadists are a subset

1:14:22

of Islamists, but they're also revolutionary

1:14:25

Islamists who don't, who aren't, you know, signing

1:14:27

up to be suicide bombers. And there's also

1:14:29

Islamists who are not inclined

1:14:32

to use violence. They're inclined to use

1:14:34

the democratic process in order to impose

1:14:36

Sharia law, but it's, but it's, they're very

1:14:39

patient and it's, they don't support Al-Qaeda

1:14:41

and they don't support ISIS, et cetera. And

1:14:43

then there are conservative Muslims who don't support any of that,

1:14:46

but they're still way more conservative than you'd want them

1:14:48

to be when you're talking about things like honor killing

1:14:50

or the rights of women or et cetera.

1:14:52

So a lot to talk about. I'm

1:14:55

talking about the people who are

1:14:57

committed to waging jihad.

1:14:59

Who's like, that's the, that's their gig now,

1:15:02

right? If the idea is that there's a

1:15:04

bright line, which is that you own multiple

1:15:06

suicide vests, you know, or,

1:15:09

or even though you've never put one on, but you're,

1:15:11

you're certainly, you know, but like, but like,

1:15:14

but yeah, the leaders of Hamas who are, who are just

1:15:16

sitting in Qatar right now, right? Like that,

1:15:20

those should be the target. I certainly hope

1:15:22

not.

1:15:24

Right. But

1:15:27

like, but that's the front line for me is there.

1:15:29

It's not, I already

1:15:32

assumed that those people are, knows that they're

1:15:34

going to die at Israel. Well, you know, I

1:15:36

don't know. I mean, we have, we have a non assassination

1:15:39

policy, right? In the US. Well,

1:15:42

yeah. I mean, democratic societies generally

1:15:45

would say that you'll have

1:15:47

a non assassination. No, no, no, I'm

1:15:49

not. But it

1:15:52

would be disavowed. It's anathema given

1:15:55

our current again. I'm not even, I'm

1:15:57

not even sure I know the rules

1:15:59

of war that. that would govern Israel

1:16:01

now. But you need a military

1:16:04

lawyer to talk about the details here. What I'm

1:16:06

saying is that we

1:16:09

should recognize who the enemy actually

1:16:11

is and what

1:16:13

the problem actually is. And it's not

1:16:16

that

1:16:19

it's a matter of people with understandable

1:16:22

rational grievances who've just been pushed

1:16:24

too far. And if you could only cater to their demand.

1:16:27

My vision is going to be killed. Yeah,

1:16:29

well, so that would be a good thing, right?

1:16:32

Nobody's arguing that. Okay, but there

1:16:34

are jihadists in a hundred countries,

1:16:36

right? I understand that. So I'm trying to figure out this idea

1:16:39

whether the CIA or the Mossad, because

1:16:41

those are two very different organizations that work together.

1:16:44

They should be unified on this front. We should recognize

1:16:46

that jihadism is a

1:16:48

non-starter for the future of

1:16:51

a global civilization that works. Assume that the people

1:16:54

in our covert agencies already know

1:16:56

that.

1:16:58

Well, I don't know if that's

1:17:00

a safe assumption, but that would be... Do

1:17:03

you remember the Abu Dhabi, I think it was Abu Dhabi

1:17:05

video, the guy checks into a hotel,

1:17:08

and then all the Israeli teams descend

1:17:10

and they track all of them in and all

1:17:12

of them out? Okay, but

1:17:14

given the failure of the IDF

1:17:17

to

1:17:20

not even respond to

1:17:22

what happened last week, what do you mean failure to respond?

1:17:24

It hasn't happened yet. No,

1:17:27

no. What happened in the first 24 hours? What

1:17:29

did you expect it? What

1:17:32

was it? Everyone was expecting a better...

1:17:36

No one was expecting people to be hiding in their

1:17:38

houses for 24 hours begging to be rescued by

1:17:41

an IDF that didn't seem not to exist.

1:17:44

Right. I mean, this is a colossal

1:17:46

intelligence failure. It's a

1:17:48

failure to even know what's happening at the border.

1:17:51

It's a failure to respond to an emergency once it was unfolding.

1:17:54

Do you know how degraded Israel is? Okay,

1:17:57

but that's my point. assume

1:18:00

that the Mossad and the CIA have

1:18:02

this assassination program that I'm

1:18:04

wishing for Christmas well in hand,

1:18:07

I can't make that assumption when you have a 1,500 jihadis come

1:18:13

across and there's no response, right? Because it's Shabbat and everyone's

1:18:15

doing something

1:18:22

else, right?

1:18:25

I don't think we can take for granted that

1:18:27

we have this problem, that

1:18:30

enough people understand what the problem actually is because

1:18:32

there's so many euphemisms and so much political correctness

1:18:34

and so much multicultural bullshit

1:18:37

confounding a very clear

1:18:39

discrimination that relates to

1:18:41

the power of specific ideas, right?

1:18:44

You get one issue of Dabiq,

1:18:47

you should understand who the enemy is,

1:18:50

right? And in

1:18:52

my experience in talking to

1:18:56

people, especially over educated

1:18:59

academics, you talk to an anthropologist

1:19:01

about this, you just get a wall of confusion,

1:19:04

right? So

1:19:08

hopefully, again, I don't know how clear anyone's

1:19:16

thinking is when

1:19:19

in the immediate aftermath of

1:19:23

women, of young women being

1:19:26

raped and stolen as

1:19:28

hostages from a peace rave,

1:19:31

you have their

1:19:34

counterparts at Harvard and Stanford

1:19:37

celebrating it,

1:19:39

right? I

1:19:42

don't think we can assume

1:19:44

people know what the hell is going on and what

1:19:47

they should be motivated to pay attention to now.

1:19:59

know how degraded Israel is. And

1:20:02

I don't think people understand that. And I certainly

1:20:05

don't. So could you just expand on that, please, Eric?

1:20:08

Sure.

1:20:09

It is my belief that

1:20:11

we have an idea that the US is the superpower

1:20:14

that won World War II. And I claim

1:20:16

that we are not the same country that won

1:20:18

World War II. We are so different from that country.

1:20:21

Agreed. We are also different from the superpower

1:20:23

that we were during the Cold War. Unfortunately,

1:20:28

we have incredible capabilities,

1:20:30

particularly due to our technology.

1:20:32

And we have

1:20:34

some sort of problem in our own

1:20:37

ability to project power that was manifest,

1:20:40

let's say, in the pullout from Afghanistan, particularly

1:20:43

with respect to abandoning

1:20:47

the base in the wrong order of operations.

1:20:51

The people who carry out certain, who

1:20:54

are tasked with carrying out certain operations are

1:20:56

at different levels of readiness. Now, the big issue between 67

1:20:58

in Israel in the Six-Day

1:21:01

War and the 73

1:21:03

Yom Kippur War is that

1:21:06

Israel felt very, very vulnerable

1:21:08

before 867 and then sort

1:21:10

of revealed its military

1:21:13

brilliance and power in 67. And

1:21:15

then a short six

1:21:19

years later, it is

1:21:21

caught unprepared,

1:21:24

the wrong image of its foes.

1:21:27

You know, the Arabs are always weak, they'll always

1:21:29

surrender, they don't want to want to fight, blah,

1:21:31

blah, blah. They don't have the wherewithal.

1:21:33

Okay, well, those beliefs

1:21:36

completely cost Israel in 73. This is

1:21:38

a recapitulation both directly and

1:21:41

indirectly of the 73 situation, where

1:21:44

we find out that Israel is not the Israel

1:21:47

that we thought it was. And

1:21:49

as a result, it's going

1:21:51

through a psychological, Sam,

1:21:54

you don't remember 73, do you?

1:21:56

I do not, no. So I

1:21:58

remember, you know,

1:21:59

I remembered a little

1:21:59

bit. It was totally shocking. Right

1:22:03

now, I think what we found is that parts

1:22:05

of the IDF are greatly degraded

1:22:07

and Israel is going through incredibly

1:22:09

stupid internal strife

1:22:12

over Netanyahu right before

1:22:14

this. And you know, I hear

1:22:16

about intelligence failure. I'm sorry, I'm

1:22:20

not part of the modern world. It's not an intelligence

1:22:22

failure. You said a reminder

1:22:25

that your grandmother is turning 97 on your

1:22:27

calendar, so it comes up two days ahead of time. So you

1:22:29

remember to call. You don't set a reminder

1:22:31

on the 50th anniversary of the greatest

1:22:34

surprise in modern times and modern Israel.

1:22:37

I just, it's almost to the day. It's

1:22:39

like people, you know,

1:22:41

I think Peter Thiel was the person who pointed out

1:22:43

to me that the Battle of Vienna, you

1:22:45

know, happened on September 11th or something

1:22:47

like this. We should have a reminder

1:22:50

on all of these things having nothing to do with intelligence.

1:22:52

This is a complete screw-up

1:22:55

and it's reflective of the fact that,

1:22:58

and I'm very concerned about this, I don't think the US

1:23:01

is the US that thinks itself to be. I don't think

1:23:03

that Israel is the powerhouse that

1:23:05

it thinks itself to be. It may get there in two

1:23:07

months. It may be that it's not so

1:23:09

degraded that it can't snap out of it. But

1:23:13

I'm very concerned, you

1:23:15

know, we're mostly seemingly,

1:23:18

you know, troubled by whether

1:23:20

or not our SEAL Team Six is transgendered

1:23:23

enough. We

1:23:27

have to recognize that we have world responsibilities.

1:23:29

We have several politicians who want us to cultically

1:23:32

retreat into ourselves in a multi-polar

1:23:35

thermonuclear world

1:23:37

with new biological capabilities.

1:23:40

I've been

1:23:42

at the top of my lungs screaming. Sam took

1:23:44

me to Sydney, Australia,

1:23:46

where I got up on stage and said we need to be

1:23:48

exploding rare thermonuclear

1:23:51

weapons above ground so people remind themselves

1:23:53

of how dangerous the world has become. But

1:23:56

we're in some sort of complacency

1:23:58

in which we we think Israel

1:24:01

is this powerhouse but it isn't

1:24:04

and you know it's also the case that the human

1:24:06

intelligence is probably degraded

1:24:09

because operation magic carpet and

1:24:12

the like pulled Jews out of all of these places

1:24:14

that natively spoke all

1:24:17

these languages in Muslim

1:24:19

land you could pull an you know

1:24:21

an Ellie Cohen and have an Egyptian Jew

1:24:24

infiltrate the Syrian high command way

1:24:27

back when

1:24:28

but how many how many Jews

1:24:30

can you recruit how many Jews are currently operating

1:24:32

secretly

1:24:33

inside of Gaza with access to Hamas.

1:24:36

Hamas is bragging that only five people knew

1:24:38

the date and time you

1:24:40

know of this attack and so you

1:24:43

know my concern is that Israel

1:24:47

is much more vulnerable because it isn't

1:24:49

the state it thinks itself to be which is exactly

1:24:51

where it was in 1973 and it's

1:24:54

not a coincidence that they picked the exact anniversary

1:24:57

yeah well I certainly agree with all

1:24:59

those concerns the

1:25:02

one thing I actually am confused about is you

1:25:04

raised the concept once and we haven't talked about

1:25:06

it. I'm not confused about jihadism

1:25:09

and I can't pretend to be

1:25:10

confused about it but

1:25:14

anti-semitism I find genuinely confusing

1:25:17

why? just the dynamics

1:25:19

of it the fact that even

1:25:21

in the immediate aftermath of something like this it

1:25:25

is operative in

1:25:26

the places that it's operative at

1:25:29

Harvard, at Stanford. Sam are you really confused

1:25:32

about that? yeah because Eric actually disagrees

1:25:34

with me on this and I want to hear what you have to say because

1:25:37

we had a private conversation about it that we didn't

1:25:39

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1:25:56

hey Scott what brings you into the pharmacy?

1:25:58

I'm thinking about getting one of

1:25:59

the updated COVID-19 vaccines.

1:26:03

Great. Do you know

1:26:05

which

1:26:05

type of vaccine you'd like?

1:26:06

There's more than one. Yep,

1:26:08

there are different types of vaccines available. You can

1:26:11

learn more about them at wedovaccines.com. If

1:26:13

you have questions or want to make an appointment, give me a call. What was that

1:26:15

website again?

1:26:16

Wedovaccines.com.

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Thanks, I'll check it

1:26:20

out. This message was brought to you by Novavax.

1:26:22

But isn't this the thing that all four of us have been talking about and have been considering?

1:26:24

Woke.

1:26:25

Call it what you want, ideology, worldview, a set

1:26:27

of disconnected slogans, whatever. The central core of it is oppressor-oppressed

1:26:30

dynamics. And Jews,

1:26:31

where do they land on that?

1:26:33

But not in this case. Oh no, it's the oppressor being

1:26:35

slain by the oppressed is the argument. Right. And

1:26:38

Jews, where do they land on that? But not in

1:26:41

this case. Right.

1:26:43

And

1:26:45

Jews, where

1:26:46

do they land on that? But not in this case. Right.

1:26:50

And Jews, where do they land on that? But

1:26:52

not in this case. Right.

1:26:56

And Jews, where do they land on that?

1:26:58

But not in this case. Right.

1:27:02

And Jews, where do they land

1:27:04

on that? But not in this

1:27:06

case. Right. So

1:27:08

what's the argument then? So

1:27:10

what's the argument then? The way in

1:27:12

which they are slain by the oppressed is the argument, right? So it makes

1:27:15

perfect sense that you'd celebrate that. Yeah,

1:27:17

it doesn't... Well, first of all... I

1:27:20

mean, it's a perfect example of the ambient

1:27:23

anti-Semitism in the US during

1:27:25

the Holocaust and after. So

1:27:30

it's like... Just the durability

1:27:32

of this animus, whether

1:27:35

the Jews are on top or whether they're obviously

1:27:37

on the bottom, I mean, literally, whether

1:27:40

they're

1:27:42

practically eradicated.

1:27:47

I just want to... Yes, I understand its

1:27:50

historical origins and

1:27:52

they are actually theological. So it

1:27:54

is Christian and Muslim theology

1:27:56

that caches

1:27:59

it out ultimately. But I just don't understand

1:28:01

there. So many people are anti-Semitic

1:28:06

and are interested in the idea that

1:28:09

there's some Jewish conspiracy

1:28:11

that's controlling everything. And the Jews are,

1:28:14

if you're very far on the right, the

1:28:16

Jews are not white. So if you're a

1:28:18

white supremacist, the Jews are not white, and therefore,

1:28:22

the object of your bigotry. But if you go far enough left,

1:28:25

the Jews are extra white, extra privileged,

1:28:28

and therefore, they lose

1:28:31

in this victimology game.

1:28:34

It's just the fact that it's so well

1:28:37

subscribed, whatever changes

1:28:39

on the landscape,

1:28:40

I find perplexed. Thomas Sollman is a

1:28:42

very good ex-Sora Francis, just this one. Yeah.

1:28:45

Here's a very good explanation. He has a chapter in

1:28:48

Black, Rednecks, and White Liberals called the

1:28:50

Art Jews Generic. And

1:28:52

he talks about middlemen minorities

1:28:55

all over the world always finding themselves

1:28:59

in this situation because

1:29:01

of the role they fill in society, of

1:29:03

the jobs that they do, being

1:29:06

middlemen. They're simultaneously

1:29:08

misunderstood by the larger society.

1:29:11

And also, This is the confusion that

1:29:13

Kanye had about his agents and

1:29:16

managers. Pretty much. Pretty much. Where's

1:29:19

Kanye, everybody? Oh, well, he's off

1:29:21

the floor. He was sitting here.

1:29:25

This episode would get a lot more views,

1:29:27

let's be honest. But to me, anti-Semitism

1:29:31

comes from a lack of control

1:29:33

in people's lives. Now, if you look at, for instance,

1:29:36

the far left, they would say the Jews are in

1:29:38

control of the banking system. That's

1:29:40

what the Jews control. If you look at the

1:29:43

far right now, the

1:29:45

new conspiracy

1:29:47

theory is a great replacement theory. And

1:29:49

what is that? The fact that the Jews

1:29:52

are in control of Muslims

1:29:54

coming to the West

1:29:57

because they once were eradicate white

1:29:59

people. I mean,

1:29:59

It's obviously completely nonsensical.

1:30:03

But this is what these people believe. But there's

1:30:05

so few Jews. And so

1:30:09

even in an area where they're massively overrepresented,

1:30:13

even among Nobel laureates in physics, there's

1:30:15

still a minority. They're not a

1:30:18

majority of anything. And

1:30:20

so the idea that they're in control is just a- It's

1:30:25

moronic, but that's what these people believe.

1:30:27

And they believe that this group,

1:30:29

because that's what a

1:30:32

lot of conspiracy theories come down to, this

1:30:34

group are in control, whether it's a

1:30:36

world economic forum, whether it's Jewish people.

1:30:39

But it's people who feel that they have no control

1:30:42

over their own lives. They are powerless.

1:30:45

Therefore somebody else must have the power.

1:30:47

Therefore it's Jewish people. Go

1:30:51

on, speaking as a Jew,

1:30:53

do you understand it, Eric?

1:30:56

Well, better than this. What

1:31:00

a loving insult. Not

1:31:03

men. I'm kidding. Go for it, please.

1:31:08

There's a spectrum of

1:31:10

antisemitism. And we're talking

1:31:12

about it. We're talking about the whole rainbow

1:31:14

at the moment. And this

1:31:18

sort of mutant rainbow has

1:31:21

very different origins. So

1:31:24

the reason, calling

1:31:27

it woke doesn't really point to the fact

1:31:29

that it's revolutionary. It's

1:31:31

violent revolutionary thinking. That's what's

1:31:34

behind woke. The

1:31:36

idea is we have a campaign.

1:31:42

And our campaign is that oppression

1:31:44

leads to poverty. So

1:31:47

now you've got a real problem when you've got a very

1:31:49

clearly oppressed group that

1:31:51

is not poor. Because that breaks

1:31:54

the entire syllogism

1:31:58

that is being used to sign. people up.

1:32:01

So the radical revolutionary

1:32:03

left has to hate Jews because

1:32:05

they are the counter example that gives

1:32:08

the lie to the entire program. And

1:32:10

so that is why

1:32:13

you have to have a position

1:32:16

on the Jews from the revolutionary

1:32:19

left. Do they hate Japanese Americans as much? Well,

1:32:22

they say the overseas Chinese Parsis...

1:32:27

That's because they're middlemen minorities.

1:32:33

We can come back to this, but I was gonna

1:32:35

say then on the right you have a different situation,

1:32:37

for example. People on the right

1:32:40

who are... I keep thinking about doing a

1:32:42

show called My Friends the Anti-Semites because

1:32:44

I'm actually in dialogue with many of them, not

1:32:48

to name names. And a lot

1:32:50

of them are very supportive, in fact, of Israel right

1:32:53

now because their issue

1:32:55

is who came up with ethno-nationalism?

1:32:59

That Swedes caring about Sweden is

1:33:03

ethno-nationalism? F-you! You

1:33:05

know, people have a right to be in their country

1:33:07

without somebody say, oh that's just blood and soil like

1:33:09

from the Nazis. So their

1:33:12

feeling is how can you have a state

1:33:16

that is a Jewish star on

1:33:18

its flag and not

1:33:21

bring up ethno-nationalism? So these are the

1:33:23

people that crowd your Twitter comments

1:33:27

with, you know, for me but not

1:33:30

for thee. That's their line. So their

1:33:32

feeling is, hey, you should go

1:33:34

defend yourself and get these killers and

1:33:37

you should go back home to Israel where you belong,

1:33:41

right? And so that's totally

1:33:43

different than the left-wing thing.

1:33:45

But now the question has to do with

1:33:49

a word that needs to be taken out of

1:33:51

our vocabulary, which is underrepresented.

1:33:55

Now underrepresented, we talk about

1:33:57

an underrepresented minority. I

1:34:00

don't know why somebody's underrepresented.

1:34:04

Between 1987

1:34:05

and the start of the Boston Marathon

1:34:07

in 1897, I don't think there were any

1:34:12

Kenyans or Ethiopians who won the

1:34:15

Boston Marathon. And then after 1987,

1:34:17

it's basically straight Kenyan Ethiopian, occasionally

1:34:20

a Japanese guy.

1:34:24

Are they – are Kenyans

1:34:26

and Ethiopians overrepresented? Are they

1:34:28

underrepresented? Are the rest of us underrepresented? Well, you're

1:34:31

holding a competition that's basically anybody

1:34:33

can start and anybody can finish and some people seem

1:34:35

to be better than others. All

1:34:38

right, now if you look at, you

1:34:41

know, the so-called JQ, which

1:34:43

is the Jewish question, why are there so many Jews

1:34:45

in all of these powerful positions? If

1:34:48

you believe in proportional representation,

1:34:51

then Jews are overrepresented. And

1:34:53

so you have to – if you believe in underrepresented

1:34:55

minorities, you have to get rid of the overrepresented

1:34:58

minority. So these are all these language

1:35:00

traps and language games. And people

1:35:02

fear how can there be a people

1:35:04

that look more or less like they're

1:35:07

of European descent

1:35:09

who

1:35:09

often have names that don't tell you who they

1:35:12

are, like McCormick or something like that,

1:35:16

who are privately subscribed

1:35:18

to some sort of secret rhizome

1:35:22

in a world in which nothing adds up. So

1:35:25

particularly right now, anti-Semitism

1:35:27

is always going to get bad when people can see

1:35:30

that they're being lied to at scale.

1:35:32

I don't care who's doing the lying at scale, the

1:35:34

Jews will be assumed to be behind it. That

1:35:37

part is mysterious to me. I mean,

1:35:40

that could just be legacy code. We had

1:35:42

the protocols, the elders of Zion, and then that just got

1:35:44

grandfathered in so that people resort

1:35:47

to that. But the idea that that

1:35:50

would be the story

1:35:52

that everyone reverts to. Say more. Like

1:35:55

why the Jews under those conditions? You

1:35:57

say it's just as though we could just.

1:35:59

Here's a sound that says, like, if you look at, for

1:36:02

example, who founded Facebook and who founded

1:36:04

Google, right? Tech giants.

1:36:09

You've got Jews in both situations. If

1:36:13

you imagine, okay, so our

1:36:16

electronic communication with

1:36:18

each other is largely

1:36:21

mediated, our ability to search,

1:36:23

for example. So if I put in American inventors

1:36:25

and only black faces come up at

1:36:28

Google, I know that somebody's put code

1:36:30

in there to make it appear

1:36:32

that most of the inventors in American

1:36:34

history are black. Who

1:36:38

would do such a thing? Like, it's such

1:36:40

an obvious bad faith thing to

1:36:42

do on a search engine. And then

1:36:44

of course it's gonna be, well, it's Larry

1:36:47

Page and Sergey Brin, you know, or if

1:36:49

Mark Zuckerberg doesn't allow a story

1:36:51

to circulate or whatever. And so in

1:36:53

part, and by the way, you

1:36:55

may start to see this with Indian Americans. There's

1:36:59

this very quiet, you know, to use

1:37:01

the vernacular of our day, Indian

1:37:03

Americans are having a moment. And

1:37:07

you're suddenly going to realize that you don't understand

1:37:09

what's going on with the BJP. You

1:37:11

don't know who the Shiv Sena are. You have no idea

1:37:14

what Indian Americans care about. And suddenly

1:37:16

they're in all these powerful political positions. So

1:37:18

when you have a powerful minority, and particularly

1:37:21

one that's visually indistinguishable

1:37:23

from others, there's

1:37:26

always gonna be a fear that

1:37:28

because you have high ranking people

1:37:30

in media, banking, universities,

1:37:35

all of these fantastically

1:37:38

successful

1:37:41

Jewish populations are always

1:37:43

going to be on the hook for the

1:37:45

fact that people can see that their information is distorted.

1:37:48

And why aren't you successful, Eric?

1:37:50

Well, you know, the

1:37:53

old answer I gave Joe Rogan when he asked me

1:37:55

about why one quarter of 1% of

1:37:57

the world's population would get 25% of the physics. No

1:37:59

vote. surprises that we cheated physics. But

1:38:02

nobody believes that. I

1:38:05

think one way of answering this question is, I don't

1:38:08

know. I don't know why 99 of

1:38:11

the top 100 chess players in open

1:38:13

competition are male. It

1:38:17

feels like a trap to answer the question. I

1:38:19

would say that our culture is very clear that

1:38:22

if we want to survive, we have to do really, really

1:38:24

well, and we have to contribute back. So as

1:38:26

a diaspora culture, in

1:38:29

part, our strategy is over

1:38:34

succeed, over contribute to

1:38:36

your host society. Otherwise, we can't

1:38:39

make our equation work. So

1:38:42

in part, it's a question of anthropics. You're

1:38:44

only asking the supposed

1:38:46

JQ because there are still

1:38:48

Jews after this many thousand years, and strategy

1:38:51

works. If

1:38:53

you're in the US, for example, go look at who donated the

1:38:55

wings of your local hospitals and tell me

1:38:57

what the last names are. And I guarantee you that

1:38:59

some of them are going to be Jewish no matter where you are.

1:39:02

So in part, this

1:39:04

is how we live. We live by

1:39:06

being a net benefit to the

1:39:09

societies in which we

1:39:11

reside. And we drive ourselves

1:39:13

incredibly hard knowing that we're always going

1:39:15

to be fighting anti-Semitism. So the example I was

1:39:17

going to give is during COVID,

1:39:20

I didn't understand that our

1:39:23

family's reaction was use the time in the

1:39:26

indoors to learn as much as you can,

1:39:28

push yourself as hard as you possibly can, would

1:39:31

be badly received in the outside

1:39:33

world, which is like, of course, you're doing that because you're

1:39:35

in a position of privilege. And you just have this attitude

1:39:38

of, for f's

1:39:40

sake, if you want to look at

1:39:42

a similar culture, there's

1:39:45

a female comedian named Zarnagar, who

1:39:48

is explaining sort of the Indian tiger

1:39:50

mom approach to parenting your own children. You

1:39:53

cannot major in history. You can't

1:39:55

major in art. You're going to major

1:39:57

in computer science. This sort of drives.

1:40:02

to excel and succeed is very, very costly.

1:40:06

And I understand a culture that doesn't

1:40:08

push their kids as hard. But to

1:40:10

be honest, if the Jews are going to survive, they

1:40:13

have to compete, they

1:40:14

have to do very, very well in the competition,

1:40:17

and they have to give back. And anyone

1:40:19

who attempts to talk about

1:40:21

proportional representation is fundamentally

1:40:24

messing with the Jewish equation for survival. If

1:40:26

we cannot compete, succeed,

1:40:29

and give back,

1:40:30

we have a serious problem as

1:40:32

Jews. What about IQ?

1:40:35

What about it?

1:40:37

I have heard that different groups have different

1:40:39

IQs. I've heard the same thing. And Ashkenazi

1:40:41

Jews, I have heard, have a higher IQ

1:40:44

than the average. You know, no offense

1:40:46

to that. I think what you really want

1:40:48

to say is, is there anything to Jewish genetics?

1:40:51

And, gosh, I would hope so. Because

1:40:54

otherwise we don't know anything about genetics. Why

1:40:56

can I spit in a tube and it tells me what

1:40:58

my belief structure is and what language I pray

1:41:00

on Friday night? It's, you know,

1:41:03

clearly it's both

1:41:06

a genetic group

1:41:09

and a belief structure that has

1:41:11

come and traveled. But for

1:41:13

IQ, I always find this really strange.

1:41:17

IQ is just not that interesting

1:41:20

in the upper reaches. So

1:41:23

I'm totally up for believing

1:41:25

that Jews have a genetic advantage. But

1:41:27

I don't think that a few extra IQ points

1:41:30

accounts for the level of creativity

1:41:32

and the level of contribution. I

1:41:34

think IQ is really powerful below 100.

1:41:38

It's much less powerful above 100. This

1:41:41

is sort of something that Nassim Taleb and

1:41:44

I have discussed. The

1:41:47

fetish about the fact that it's measurable

1:41:50

causes this real problem because

1:41:52

it's a nightmare indicator. It's

1:41:55

good enough to suggest that something is very

1:41:57

real that can be tracked that has a

1:41:59

genetic advantage. component, but it's not

1:42:01

good enough to explain creativity. And

1:42:04

I think that, for example, if you talk, if I talk

1:42:06

to my East Asian friends, a lot of them are confused.

1:42:10

And they say things like, where does Jewish creativity

1:42:13

come from? We also are supposed to have very high

1:42:15

IQs and we're still

1:42:17

in a leader follower mode. How is it that

1:42:20

we get into this Jewish creativity

1:42:22

mode? So I happen to think that

1:42:25

because people are dissuaded from talking

1:42:27

about IQ, because they're dissuaded from talking

1:42:29

about genetics, they

1:42:31

want to focus on IQ as if it is intelligence,

1:42:34

which it is definitely is not.

1:42:36

It has a component. It's related

1:42:38

to intelligence, but it isn't.

1:42:40

And then you have this problem, which is that.

1:42:45

In some sense, what really matters is the creativity

1:42:48

that the the co-travels and how much of

1:42:50

that is genetic, I don't know. But it's

1:42:53

not a terrible thing to say that

1:42:55

people are genetically different and that there

1:42:58

are tradeoffs. You know, the Jewish contribution

1:43:01

to the National Basketball Association has

1:43:03

been pretty meager. Eric,

1:43:05

do you think it's also the fact that Jews have always

1:43:08

tended to be outsiders.

1:43:15

And when you're an outsider of a

1:43:17

group to a group, you're always

1:43:19

looking in, which means that it

1:43:23

tends towards being creative, because

1:43:25

then what you are doing is you're reflecting the society

1:43:28

in a way that people who are a member of the in group

1:43:31

simply cannot. You will. There's

1:43:33

a lot of people who say comedians tend to

1:43:35

be outsiders. Comedians are the ones who

1:43:37

are reflecting what is happening to the society.

1:43:40

And Jews and comedy.

1:43:43

I mean, they go together pretty well. Trauma and

1:43:45

Jews. I mean, it's a perfect combination. I

1:43:48

don't think that works because like Roma would be outsiders

1:43:51

to society. And, you

1:43:53

know, I don't think you've seen the same sorts of behavior

1:43:57

patterns. Having taught the Roma, having

1:43:59

to have been spent.

1:43:59

long time teaching Roma, they are much

1:44:02

more segregated, they're segregated, they're not

1:44:04

really part of society in the way that Jews

1:44:06

are.

1:44:07

There's also a lot of creativity in that culture

1:44:09

but without the same, you know,

1:44:12

in-system accomplishment. I think that Jews

1:44:15

tend to be in-system, they tend

1:44:17

to work within the structures that they find

1:44:20

and you know, my wife being from the Jewish community

1:44:22

of India, you know, I have an opportunity

1:44:25

to see a very different world about,

1:44:29

you know, the impact

1:44:32

of, let's just say, the Sassoon

1:44:34

family or the way that the Parsis mirror the

1:44:37

Jews inside of an Indian context.

1:44:39

So I think that, you know, there's, I don't

1:44:42

know why we're afraid of talking about genetics

1:44:45

and cognitive ability, I don't know why we're afraid

1:44:47

of talking about culture and cognitive ability, I don't

1:44:49

know why we're afraid of talking about culture and

1:44:52

drive together, but the world is

1:44:54

not uniform and there

1:44:56

is a Jewish strategy. The great part of the Jewish strategy

1:44:59

is that most of it is pretty much open

1:45:01

source and if you want to push your children

1:45:03

really, really hard to survive and if

1:45:05

you want to tell them you've got a dragon with

1:45:08

fire, breathing fire down the back

1:45:10

of your neck because you've always been oppressed and you'll never know

1:45:13

when you have to leave very quickly on

1:45:15

short notice, you can duplicate

1:45:17

the Jewish experience. Good luck.

1:45:21

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1:46:21

Tim, do you have any thoughts on this before we move on?

1:46:23

Please don't. I

1:46:26

have zero interest in IQ,

1:46:29

as I've always said, even though I've gotten a lot of pain

1:46:31

for having never touched the topic. My

1:46:33

only interest in differences

1:46:36

in human intelligence,

1:46:39

as measured by IQ or otherwise, between

1:46:42

groups is that we

1:46:44

need to solve the political puzzle

1:46:47

you just mentioned, which is why does anyone

1:46:50

think that discovering these differences

1:46:53

would be a political catastrophe?

1:46:57

We know, this is what we should, we

1:46:59

should go into the science knowing this.

1:47:02

I'm not saying we should look for these differences, but these differences will

1:47:04

ambush us because insofar as we understand

1:47:07

intelligence or anything else at the level of the

1:47:09

brain or at the level of the genome, we will

1:47:11

just, you know,

1:47:14

23andMe is just going to tell you that there are

1:47:16

these differences between groups in the relevant

1:47:18

genes.

1:47:21

So

1:47:23

I'm not saying we look for these things, but we're going to be ambushed by

1:47:25

them. And we just have to know in advance

1:47:28

that any human

1:47:30

trait that is governed by genetics

1:47:32

to whatever degree is

1:47:35

going to be, the moment it becomes measurable,

1:47:38

it will be at some different mean value

1:47:40

in different populations, however

1:47:43

you define those populations.

1:47:45

Even spurious populations, you could take Yankees

1:47:48

fans against Red Sox fans and

1:47:50

it will be a miracle

1:47:53

if the hundred traits you're

1:47:55

interested in to inventory have

1:47:58

the exact same mean level. across

1:48:00

those two groups. Now in

1:48:03

many cases these are just going to be spurious comparisons, but

1:48:06

in so far as there

1:48:08

is a there

1:48:11

has been a genetic

1:48:14

kind of canalization through

1:48:17

throughout human history where you can look at someone

1:48:19

and give a pretty good guess that

1:48:21

they're you know they come from sub-Saharan

1:48:23

Africa or from or from the Indian subcontinent

1:48:26

continent or Japan or Norway

1:48:29

and you can do that you