Bret Stephens, newly minted COMMENTARY contributing editor, joins the podcast today to discuss his blockbuster article, "Memo to President Biden: Please Don't Mess Up the Abraham Accords." Give a listen.
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Welcome to the commentary magazine, Billy Podcast today's Monday January eighteen, twenty twenty one, I'm John upwards. The editor commentary magazine
rose. Him is off for the next couple of days with me, as always associate editor nor Rossman High Noah
secular, whether a green waldheim again and for
first time on our podcast and for the first time in more
in twenty years on the commentary. Mass TED are newly minted contributing editor, Brett Stevens High Brett
hi John, it's actually more like twenty five years, but yes, well, you're out, you know, if you guys know Brad he's predator young
Doing so. Unlike me, I look like I'm eighty he's it is made for it is they who looks like you
twenty. So I keep forgetting how old he is, but bread began. His career,
commentary right out of college.
jammed am has rejoined us, while
continuing as the Pulitzer Prize
women columnist that he is contributor to the New York Times and has now
during our cometary, we're here to discuss brats blockbuster piece in the fair,
where a twenty twenty one issue, which is available for your reading pleasure at commentary magazine dot com, the title of which is memo to President Biden. Please don't mess up the Abraham accord so Brett. What is it that Joe Biden might be in danger of messing up? Well, I mean many things, but what I am hoping is that in at least this one case, he will have the good sense to
not look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth to accept that the Trump administration had
a signal triumph in the Abraham Accords, which, as unsure everyone listening to this package, knows refers to the peace deals that Israel struck last September with
rain and the United Arab Emirates, but more generally means peace accords that its
creating with Morocco, with Sudan, with Oman and possibly either
with Saudi Arabia effectively spelling the end of the arab israeli conflict
and what are you in the peace John, is that these are simply sort of discreet agreements that Israel has has opportunistic we struck with
with some of its near neighbours in the arab world, but the accords are also occur
if a revolution
in the way in which the United States and Israel have approached p
making in the region, and I think, probably most promising avenue as yet as yet entered,
so. Let's hope that the Bite administration doesnt simply retreat to formulas that failed for fifty years and just accept that this is a much better way to achieve some of its own strategic goals. You you go into the history
of you know what you call the arab israeli conflict. Obviously, the conflict with the palestinian people specifically continues, but the arab israeli conflict, of course pre dates were is, is a is a is a leading factor in the creation of the state of Israel in the war of independence, in which twenty two,
Arabs after peasants. Nations are soon to be nations at the time attempted to
strangle is real in its cradle failed to do so. There was an armistice steal, one thousand nine hundred and forty nine and then the peace process. As we understand it began in the wake of the nineteen sixty seven six day, war in Israel defeated the combined might of the arab countries arrayed against it took the Westbank took Gaza took the Sinai, and then the West decided that it was the role of the
to do what he could to end the conflict in some mass way where Israel, in its arab neighbours, through some peace deal with the Palestinians, could find some kind of a car
for them. Of course, its mouth fifty
years later and of theirs peace with Egypt. There is peace with Jordan. There is a kind of cold peace with with a bunch of other colleagues, implicit peace with a bunch of us.
countries, but this was something new. What happened here? Can you lay out what was different about the Abraham?
accords. Well, I mean obviously the great differences that their trumpet
The situation for once took my advice. I say that happened just what they
it is a big decoupled Thee
really arab conflict from the israeli palestinian conflict and day, and that was
eyes because along is solving the is really arab. Conflict depended as a pretext.
mission on solving the israeli palestinian conflict,
Then he was never going to be solved simply because for reasons we can go into, Palestinians are not prepared to live in a serious peace with Israel, at least not at a price that,
Most Israelis are willing to pay. On the other hand, there is this confluence of interests that has become
much more notable and obvious in the last seven years between Israel and its Arab, its arab neighbours,
not only in so far
as IRAN and the right,
Iran is concerned, but more generally in Seville,
the arab world has had a kind of reckoning with the failures of its past failures that have led to miss governance, extremism and social collapse.
That was the promising avenue and that's the Abbe
That jarred, Kirshner and MIKE Palm Pale
and other members of the Trump administration. For all my criticisms of them had the wisdom to to pursue. It means that it might be possible.
Solve the israeli palestinian conflict, as he might not sure, but it might be possible to do it from the outside in as opposed to the previous paradigm, which was trying to go
from the inside out from solving these really palestinian issue and then hoping that dominoes would fall in in the inn and outward direction so that what we have here is an interesting discontinuity. Add that represented by the Trump administration, little hints of it during the second Bush administration and at a different understanding of what it would mean for the for there to be forward movement in the region in the most destabilizing region in the world. On getting past these old school erotic,
conflicts that seem to be based in nothing worse or based in a base to me in an delusional idea that somehow this one entity
air sitting in the Middle EAST could somehow be extirpated or removed from existence or could be ignored or could be, or that these oil, rich
countries could say well, you know there's this one place, we really don't like and we're just going to pretend it doesn't exist or we're going to try to destroy it or something like that and that something else has happened
the discontinuity it seems of the Trump administration was really made possible by the Miss behaviors miscalculations of the Obama
administration can you yeah, I'm in love. The Obama illustrate a few years ago.
mine joke, did Obama
Actually I deserved,
well prize. He one in two thousand and nine just after he became president
because he so enraged Arabic
and israeli leaders alike, that he cried
kind of a surprising unit
of of views between the men. In fact, that's the anecdote with which I start his peace. John. Is this some visit that we had in at the moment. I was at the walls
eternal and twenty thirteen with Prince Albert Leap into law, not hitherto known as particularly friendly too.
we also missing hey, you know saudi interests and is really interests are actually totally line.
There were line against the Obama administrations. Outreach to Tehran
were aligned in their discussed with what Obama had done
Egypt in twenty eleven first abandoning the Mubarak regime and having the sort of halfway embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood
government. They were aligned in their dismay at Obama's general effort to minimize. If not you re,
America's footprint
in the Middle EAST and stand behind its allies against against its enemies, and so that sort of
got the ball rolling, forgive the cliche in in
in creating a new sort of sense of shared interest me the reality- and this is a point that I note that can't be stressed enough. If, if results, there tat had governed the calculations of most arab regimes for the past,
sixty or seventy years they would have made their peace with Israel
a long long time ago, and that didn't happen in part, because this fantasy
was maintained in the West and in the United States. That, first of all, you had to solve the palestinian issue and then everything else would fall into place and for a long time that was politically condemn,
four arab regimes because it serves to deflect from their own Miss governance
But another thing that happened in the last ten years or so is that he was increasingly hard for those arab states not to sort of look at their own failures in the face and start to.
with them only happen really when they realise that the alternative to meaningful reform- and I don't just mean policy reform at a kind of a reform of their mentality-
Failure to do that was gonna result in something like Libya or Yemen or Syria, or some of the other calamities that has befallen the region and in the last few years, so Brett hidden in reading your piece in here, you now discuss the the kind of fantasy
that had reigned in the? U S treatment of the region prior to
the trap administration. I started to work.
maybe you can understand why you think there's
kind of a silver lining to our current unrest in this, in the sense that given our extensive domestic troubles,
we are less likely to indulge in the kind of foreign power
see fantasy that week that we serve you know can take on in time
more relevant relative stability at home. You know it's. It's has convened that kind of ambition seemed in others.
A kind of realism, not in foreign policy, traditional foreign policy sense, but the distance or reality sense, a kind of
Elysium imposed on us on the of the limits of of what we can do at the moment that might curb the this worst.
So it is an interesting way of putting it. I mean. Look, I
I dont think any one of us wishes that America should be so consumed in its own travails
make or social or whatever that we can sort of
attend to our responsibilities as these security gap.
And tore up
The liberal international order, if you will,
you're right in your sense that maybe the Obama administered,
so. You know this one. We can leave look well, we can. We can let well enough alone.
I still want to bite administration to understand aid. These accords are actually not just the basis for achieving.
a more peaceful Middle EAST, but it
She can be the work that the basis for achieving
grander, strategic vision, Obama's idea of pivoting to Asia right as far as the next sort of
centre of gravity and in America's global interests, is not a crazy idea. Right I mean we do face our group
its GEO political challenge today, not in the Persian Gulf, but in the south, China Sea,
not in the streets of horror movies, but in the in the format? You know in the foremost illustrates in the in the waters between Taiwan and TAT in China.
Can we do that? What we can do that perhaps by accepting
that a robust alliance between a powerful Israel and its arab friends can at least fill the gap for us as we sort of shift resources, sources and attention over to the Far EAST, and it were better served.
that approach than trying to untie the gordian knot of israeli palestinian peace or otherwise
Immense resources to that region. So if you read the article, your notice that I'm trying to make the case what necessarily to commentary readers of course to come to redress, but not only to comment
rivers, but also to the bite into in itself why a democratic foreign policy is well served by a bye.
Advancing and sustaining the Abraham accords.
so I wonder I mean looking for
but a little bit, obviously good, Madame Administration had these grand.
plans to reorient american posture towards Asia and the Middle EAST interrupted too
Extend that happen to the Trump administration, to it's likely that this will happen to the Obama administration, as well as around becomes an is remains the chief to history.
Egypt problem in the region for us and our allies and their efforts to acquire nuclear fissionable vision,
Would you really nuclear technology suggested
Can it be the big problem in the next four?
Yours too, so
judging by what you're talking about the Obama Ministration, how it re policy in the Middle EAST,
required sort of some creative thinking on their parts, sort of asylum system, kind of creative thinking that nevertheless creative in so far as they wanted to reorient the region
more towards Tehran, give Turann more authority in Iraq, provide the militias under Durant's control with more power to police. The region give them some cover some strategic cover to get out and that facility and create the can.
That led to the sooner kingdoms and the Sunni states it get really paranoid about the region. So it's kind of a Kirkpatrick.
The abandonment of the Kirkpatrick, like double standard,
in favour of a single standard which turned out to be relatively disastrous for the region, but good in the long term for farmers are geostrategic interests. Does
The abundant does that bind administration counter those same problems? Will it look at this region and say well, we need to be creative with this thing
We need to find some way out of more armed conflict with
and in its allies in its proxies and try again,
to reorient the region around some sort of a power sharing relationship where you can have this in a where these two
conglomeration of states balance against each other in some sort of a stable dynamic
seems to us to be crazy, but from the perspective of the White House, it's not entirely crazy. Theoretically, it should make a lot of sense. It just created the conditions in which you know
we facilitated this peace between Israel and the Sunni state sorts. It might did. Michael
kind of attractive to them, right to pursuing Obama, style reproach,
I mean it could question, and I think you know,
from my great worries about the bided demonstration is that they really have learned nothing.
there are four years out of office, and by that I mean most of the most of the senior by
People were were seniors or deputies
there is in the oven in in in the
in the Obama administration, and I think there
like Jake Sullivan Tony blanket are gonna have to really stop and think you know what have we learned over the last four years and what needs to what needs
change. I mean the idea that tilting toward IRAN is is a good strategy for the United States or at least creating what you suggest.
this potentially stable. Balance strikes me as totally insane among, among many reasons
It's an invitation at some point. Four,
drill and and the arab states to potentially go to war against IRAN, which is, I assume, not what the Obama what them, what the incoming Bite administration is, is hoping for. One second,
the United States still does have major strategic interests in the region, even as it pivots towards the persist,
one of them is a can allow forty percent of the world's oil production to either be
put in jeopardy or come under the dominion of a hostile foreign power, and that that is is sword. What they're playing
if they try to once again in around the third thing, is no one,
lessons of the ran deal is that far from sort of it
announcing the cause of the moderates in Tehran. It turbo charge
uranium in intervention in Yemen, in Syria elsewhere.
in the region. It was a massively destabilizing massively destabilizing fatter and
My final point is were reminded again in the last few days that simply,
maybe politely, to put their nuclear programme in the storage locker for a few years doesn't solve, doesn't really solve their problems on the key.
Hurry. Emily kicks the canned on the road, possibly for for a couple of years, but
the speed with which ran has been able to reconstitute its nuclear programmes. Despite all of the subversive covered efforts again
I really just tells you how little that deal actually actually achieved
We need some kind of new deal, so
I think the by demonstration probably needs to spend a few months sort of doing a deep rethink of where it wants to go in the region and presume
we simply returning to the J C p away, which I dont think is really seriously in the cards. Maybe maybe it is but not source in the cards is it is. It is an attractive option for them. I have a follow up. Go home,
and so the obstacles there than our domestic constituents on them on Joe Biden left to regard guard. All of this is a problem to be fixed who regard american foreign policy orientations
Israel as a moral, as certainly is strategically in out, who see Americans America's new,
burgeoning energy independence in the form of hydraulic fracturing technology to be a problem to be fixed. All of this is facilitated these conditions abroad, but the by demonstrations gonna have to battle at least
not maybe not aggressively but tacitly go to war with its left flank. To preserve all of these achievements, can I
just cause. But what I want to say adds to that others. It there's another element that which is also that the left has now become very anti Saudi, but in the wake
the killing of cash yogi and be also because Tromp has Europe tied himself more closely
to have had been salmon, and I think that also risks, possibly the what
had I remember when the was a right wing was right,
yeah. But what will other? Certainly good reasons to be decided and in some respects, but but but I fear that
May imperilled what had seemed like a kind of inevitability that that Saudi Arabia would become to be included in the Abraham Courts,
yeah that that is that. That is certainly true. On the other hand, I dont sense that the real passion
the energies of the left arm,
engaged in the fine print of Middle EAST diplomacy as they used to be
Maybe I am maybe
I'm deluded end and mistaken, but it's not as it was in the first decade after nine eleven kind of the the.
central enemy?
impulse in in a left wing and evil in in left wing thinking. It's it's more. It's more of an afterthought
Do I see the bided administration sort of taking a page from the left and trying to?
divorce ourselves from the saudi kingdom, as we as the Obama administration wound up doing with the move
our regime not really
I mean. Maybe you can never. You can ever really forecast the future, but I'm
I'm not really sure. That's that
What's going to happen, so look at
keeping an open mind. I'm hoping that this,
illustration sort of things you know we don't actually have to simply
play the same chess game using the same moves in the same pieces with the expectation getting a different result. But we'll say I don't know. I mean, in other words the question I guess here goes too,
whether the other squad do. You know whether,
Elsie and proceeded to leave, and I honour
firstly and
oh
Omar their ideological discussed with Israel, which
it is all well and good, and their own, in their own heads and in the world of a progressive politics with, doesn't really seem to have much meaning, except as a kind of moral garment that they know that they can put on and say that there are enough that they're talking about oppression and colonialism and apartheid will will thee Biden Administration
be able to resist that moral suasion in the same way that in an odd way, very complicated point to make, but it needs
resists, the moral suasion.
Rounding the Saudis and cash yogi in the sandwiches
Obviously we we, we know where we think we know that Mohammed than some of the most powerful personal, Saudi Arabia ordered the killing and dismemberment of this critic in Turkey, who was living in a Meda, was a basically under american protection, though he was in Turkey and in the notion that the entire,
politics of the entire region, and you know a a once in a century. Possibility, for the resetting of the diplomatic map might be interfered with because of an event.
something had happened to one person in one place by an admittedly
somebody who are the only we really take away from it is that you can't really make a deal with a guy who is so crazy and sows that psychopathic that he
order, the this law.
If somebody in it, in a diplomatic consulate in in another country, just four for being nasty,
to him I'd. Maybe that would be like you know what you gotta keep her hands off the sky, because you can't trust them and on the other hand, you know with threats, diplomatic history, you have to make dirty deal. We have to make deals with people whose hands
right I mean look, there's no. Turning looking away from the fact that what happens to show gate was demanded, an evil and
and not entirely surprising, given the fact that Saudi Arabia it's sort of new
a quasi reformers. Credentials notwithstanding, is a violent, dangerous and repressive and in many ways
lawless place
we should also bear in mind. That ran has also been kidnapping. Journalists in foreign countries and bringing them back for four
executions. I'm not sure if I've seen the squad or
Liberals in the media denounced that with wood with equal fervor.
The United States in the Middle EAST has to have a kind of
here. I view that in the long term, we want to encourage moderates and reform
mergers in the near term. We have to deal with the the world as it is,
and outside of Israel. We don't have
if you only morally pristine choices in terms of our
pursuit of national
of the national interest,
my my senses. Overall. Even
this administration understands that there is
you know immoral, a humongous moral difference between sort of softly offer,
Terry Monarchies, like Morocco,
the United Arab Emirates and you don't work, Kuwait,
My friend and
and what we're dealing with with IRAN, which is a revolutionary regime that send,
Not only that
genocidal, Anti semitic, but also, ultimately aimed directly at the heart of part of the west, and we can't remain neutral between those two to sign.
this is this is, should not be a tough call for the left which happily make common cause with Joe Stalin
You know what he was busy slept in a short the after his slaughter of millions of collapse in Ukraine. You know you, don't we,
go into this in the peace. But I guess one mass of difference between the incoming by migration and the abominable assertion from which it springs is that there was this deep personal antipathy that Brok, oh Mamma, had forbidding them yeah who- and it cannot be overstated- how much effect that had on
policy in a way that one really wishes. One really serve expects leaders not to quite.
personalized policy in this fashion and Michael Organs memoir just talks about this- the heat, the waves of disgust, that's her get up emanated from the from the oval office toward
Netanyahu that just colored all is right
all american reactions to israeli behalf.
Heavier, and I guess, judging from the way Biden talks about baby. He does not have that feeling
yeah I mean you know it's funny, but that the trumpet
when a strange and, in my view, was so bad that it sometimes makes me forget how bad the Obama administration, but please any of the things, the special meetings. I care deeply deeply
that's absolutely right. There was this kind of bizarre personal venom that Obama felt for for baby,
it's never seem to crop up in any of his very sort of matter of fact. Relationships with other law
years I've been, I remember in the last year, has been administration. He was wantonly insulted at his
at his arrival in in China by the chinese leaders, who wouldn't put out a proper red carpet for him, but that didn't
the color of his views of g or his efforts at at least his first six years of efforts at a reset with
where the with Latvia prudent and I dont sense from Biden this kind of screen
personal animosity, it might color the views of some
the people lower in the
lower down in in in his administration but you're. Not so again, I think it's worth
thinking about the by the differently from the Obama administration. Thinking that it might have learned something that the temper
of the man on top is fundamentally different. His experience is fundamentally different.
You know. As a Bob Dylan One said, things have changed
a different world today than we were in twenty sixteen
Bobby's airman from having Minnesota getting the last word, so bread Stevens. Thank you very much.
congratulations on joining commentary, for this
I can time in Europe are rarely honoured to be a part of this noble crew, noble and, and
our- and you know right about now-
things for many many years you can't be being
about most things for many years, but most things. So thanks thanks, so much
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so gentlemen, the news just never stops. Does it here's my question yesterday we had this
Normous story in the middle of the day, terrifying story about how the FBI was actually doing background checks on twenty five thousand national guardsmen
to make sure that their wasn't. You know alone, Wolf in the pack. Who would attack on
the new regulation day as part of the of the twenty five thousand people who have been sent to the nations capital to secure it after the riot on general
hurry sex? Then, when you read the story, it turns out that there's no indication whatsoever that anybody that this wasn't the result of intelligence,
anything that led them to believe that there was some kind of clear and present danger, it's just a kind of another being a super careful. So what is worse in this context is worth
that their being super careful and then their leaking stories about how they're doing these background checks on twenty five thousand people, because we can no longer trust that our armed forces are Lloyd. That people and armed forces are loyal to the government of the United States and its continuity in the transitional period. Or is this just? Have we moved from a genuine, proper fear of you know, unrest and civil
Miss behaviour to a kind of hysteria. Again I think part of the problem here is that, in a crisis situation, all choices are somewhat bad, I mean but made by
by the fact that many of them are necessary.
Even though they are, they incur thereon
problems, and this is this- is one of them right. So being vigilant is good in the broad sense, but of course than brings with it
The problem of hysteria reminds me quite a bit of what happen,
after nine eleven eleven mule. Also, there was this other story over the weekend about on police having stopped someone by the capital with
guns, and I wondered rounds of ammunition and when I got right right ended and it turned out to be an pulse credentials and false credentials red and it turned out to be much less of a story than that. He would use employed
security in some sense in May, and the credit for they just right
what were they weren't? Where he wasn't? He had got lost crosser along bread. She lives in live. Seventy miles away from the sea was a new job,
right. So this is, and others ever reminds me of- of what happened after nine eleven. If you recall, in a bright after the
pack on the towers and the Pentagon. There were all these stories a van
found on this bridge with number of weapons in it, and people were seen
conspiring here chatter
There is chatter picked up there, it that that happens,
I wanna, be along. I've read a little bit because in that Mps story there was this line which lacks a lot of specificity, aching story about the about the twenty five thousand about the the fact. The era
throw you from garden. Uniform police officers quote so far. Only a couple of current active doing national guards members have been arrested in connection with the capitalist salt. Is that too?
is that more. I, like
I'd like something much more specific there, because too is too many nevertheless,
and I dont want to minimize this sort of thing. But what Abe you're describing is is the as this epochal event like nine eleven, and I think that this was. I think that the sacking of the capital was this kind of seminal Levant, that
well last in part because of the psychological trauma associated with it, we ve seen. I do you know if you with your answer for media forgiven amount of time. You'll see some very prominent members of the press who have lost their minds, who are completely
the thoroughly radicalized by the events of the capital on January sex, and I dont think that
a responsible approach to this sort of thing, because it with such a seminal event? As I said, such events-
and an insult on and to the
american, politically those that it does jet justified
if not necessitate, that kind of psychology
orientation towards this sort of thing that that the threat is everywhere that it said that it could
possibly be around the next corner and ended perpetual vigil
and over reaction is justified in response to the gravity of this threat, not launch
when is facing us from what we ve seen in the media law enforcement is facing threats in fifty states from White
nationalist militia types who are in
Ancient chowder mine about the sort of thing in its incumbent on their own law enforcement, to figure out. What's aspiration, let's intentional, and that has a design behind it.
They don't know, we don't know so being right,
Why seems like a justified response but
in time your job
clearly sowing the seeds for a conflict, a domestic conflict that will last
our generation at least, if its, if nine eleven as the appropriate parallel. Maybe I may have
the same time. We know, while one is our, I am inclined when I see this kind of thing, and I see the posturing under the posturing of of you know, of of of liberals and leftists who are you know who who are talking about this in these apocalyptic terms, because it also reinforces their power,
Irish and gives them in any illogical leg up on on on the people that their trying to destroy none the less as the days pass. These videos come out. These are the new Yorker, the video that Sir, that's on the New Yorkers website by Luke, while Wilson of what what went on inside the capital building.
And our Miguel asses pretty remarkable story on pro public where he watched? What appear to be hundreds, if not thousands, of little video clips and things that were on parlor? Remember: parlor got a shut down, but it was on a word press platform and someone was able to hack it and get everything that was ever on parlour and and put it somewhere and Selma Gillis watched all these videos and this story. You know I hate using pop culture. Amounts could be boys in these hates Saileth, like our hearts, like a disaster movie, but that the video and stuff looks exactly like the scenes in the dark night return:
Earns when the mob takes over New York City after bet, you know if you, if you guys, have seen the darkness returns. It is a movie about how New York of a terrorist, basically
isolates the island of Manhattan and turns it into our it's like robes, Pierre. It's the great terror
I take over Manhattan and everybody is forced to live in this kind of
Alex Harry and state and- and there is a cord and the people who live in in the main court building in New York. Some,
Basically Robespierre, like figure, takes over and start sending people out on the ice to to die, and it is a kind of law
like that, like I've, never seen anything quite as we know with the with the guy, with the ghetto q shaman sitting in though in the speakers chair and stuff, like that of the four
in the Senate chamber carrying read it had that it has that look of a kind of nightmarish
this Toby and movie come to life more.
anything else that I've I've ever seen in it
so in that sense, some of this is getting worse, not better. You know it's like. Oh look, I'm index or blocky shot. They kind of God in the things got out of hand,
let's not over- let's not overreact to this and yet
know that you can really overreact to it
and, on the other hand, you know like Maria,
They have been able to see to indulge winning over reaction to the thing.
like when I regard this as well as good as the greatest
all the major American considered compact. That requires a robust response.
every institution, while the open reaction is not political. The of reactions, cultural and interestingly enough speech related, I mean I would say that seems very clear- that the direction of the. How are we going to stop this all from happening or how we gonna nip in the bud or something all involves, the quashing of or the dealings
modulation of speech. Now you know you do not, as we now you dont have unlimited free speech to scream fire in a crowded theatre right, that's the famous test case you can't
provoke, a riot? And that's literally what happened, and so that's why the shutdown of parlor orb, so they D, Platt, forming of we trump on twitter or something.
Makes sense- but you know when I, when I read this former- had a facebook when I read that this guy went on a brain, smelters, reliable sources and said
You know we have to do something about the access that people are getting to other people's brains. We, after you know we have to
Shut them down or Ben
mass in the New York Times actually doing this peace saying that in other problem is Fox Foxes Fox created all of this,
and an after you know, twenty years, a basically anti free speech, activism on college campuses, drenching.
the minds of the elite and the idea that there are worse things than for that freedom of speech is bad cause, a top full speeches hurtful and all that that I think, is where this is heading
and I'm not talking about the oh, it's not fair, that trumped doesn't have a platform. Actually, I'm talking about something else and time at this idea that conservative speech is uniquely hateful and- and you know where that is where this is going on now I think I we will even agreed that there's something.
different in the black lives matter, protests which involved you know- I mean I think they talked about more than twenty million people, say you're talking about a whole different level of them, of of civic involvement than in other than the scenes on the on the hill on January. Sixth, but of course they really warrant directed by the presently United States. That's where that's the different that, on the one hand, the because everything was was much more.
Was much larger and there was much more criminality actually and much more data destruction,
well more death and more death and
other hand, it wasn't pull it wasn't organised
and these stories about how.
senior Whitehouse officials Mo Brooks
That a senior Whitehouse official contact in him, the congressmen to ask him to go speak at the rally on the day before the rally someone on the public payroll was or was organizing. The Trump rally on on January set
that's just a violation of the Hatch ACT. I don't know what that's a violation of you know everything that is good in it in the world, so I'm not so there is
thing different here, but but this notion somehow that you know that that that something
is to be done about Fox something needs.
Down that away. Something needs to be done about what does it mean needs to be done, but that is the phrase that was used by this former facebook guy on brain cells or show you know, and one would caution such people that when you you know, there's no stopping this. You know you start
Something needs to be done about people whose speeches bad and then they come after your speech to, and you know,
is on the right who have shown some sympathy, varying degrees of sympathy for the monstrous assault on the capital
have wasted no time in seizing on bees calls the tune
Who crackdown on speech
further exacerbate the rage on on. Among these
among among the people on the right in this is saying see we told you this. Is this
This is what this is why we can no longer afford to voice.
Our grievances, in through the through ordinary, peaceful chow
Also there they're, not even open to us any more yeah
gonna, go down the road of root causes what were witnessing on the right,
is say, a mirroring of the kind of profound persecution complex that the left has turned into a form of currency over the course of a generation. I was thinking about that point earlier, and you know I think you can make an argument that perhaps Europe
not on the country. But if you just look at the political landscape, Donald Trump, most lasting impact is to have turned the right into the left. Beginning
from the very start, beginning with his adoption of identity, politics, but re purpose as white I did.
Politics stretching true the idea
that elections can be trusted and
rigged. In that you don't accept your loss and finally
embracing and promoting the kind of
violence, mass violence that that we saw the capital, so the weird
there are, though, is that
Judging by the numbers alone. The effort on our part
there was an effort erode about my book that the present and try to organise identity politics adopt a version of it for himself. Is that
It didn't work is that the electorate had not responded in that way. We don't have blocks of white voters behaving like blocks of of an ethic classed as a sort of a tribe which you would.
think would lead Democrats in particular the left, not just Democrats, the laughs generally activist left, which has no doesn't really have an affinity for Democrats, as we understand them to sort of retrofit
what we saw in the capital in the sixth into this narrative, our colleague Christine shot out this peace that wasn't no. The Washington postage is probably the
central example of this sort of thing where you had african american pressure
depends in this right in saying that there are just evincing a form of whiteness that is under explore of an unidentified. Like you more
right at the heart of darkness. Like a sociologist here- and I get it- I know this in an ample logical way. This kind of whiteness that persists among among,
African Americans. Are minorities generally ended? It is on its face superficially insane and silly
but it has so much cash on on the left- is so powerful, organizing theory, the theory of everything that they they can't let go of red. But it's not just that. I mean it's, it's it's it's extra,
merely self defeating in this sense, which is your right. That white voters do not behave as white voters. However, if if, if it is viewed as praiseworthy that ninety six to ninety seven percent of Democrats vote in one direction and not the ad black Democrat blacks about African Americans vote for the Democratic Party in one direction, that that is the key to democratic political success. If the, if the logic is that it is proper form for minority group to vote in a block to be like Ultra Orthodox Jews, who votes in the one thousand four hundred twelve to nothing in in the town of Muncie or new city
in in New York, because the because the the ROV tells them whom to vote for, and they do it as a block in order that demonstrate their political power. The more you go down this road them and and the more
as worthy you make. It appear that this is how one is supposed to behave.
or you will create almost necessarily the conditions under which there could be a white vote, and if you do that, and the White voters republican, the Democratic Party is finished as white people make up. Seventy six percent
of the population of the United States, and I know that what people say is all this is happening. We're heading inexorably to a multi cultural future. This is the pass trumpets. Evoking past were white. People are in charge and blah blah blah and all that. Well, you know it may be the pet it's not the past, yet we are not in the
multicultural future, yet at a lot, can be done, as we just saw the last four years a lot,
be done in the in the non
the cultural present, if you know, if you and if
had been done more cleverly unless vulgarly- and I mean to put
To give you an example of this not to get totally insanely dust opium and using literary examples but or beauty
cultural examples but Michel well, it backs novel submission posits at an Islamic. Take over of France and
secret of the Islamic take over France. It's not really a very good book, but it's a very provocative book is, of course, that its
after the Islamists tour who are taking over France are mean an ugly and nasty and terrorist they're nice. There there their kind there friendly there a friendly face,
Use, the logic and language of of of post liberalism, and they want to just you know, be welcoming and thoughtful and and and and
attractive and all of that kind of like a mirror image of Martine Le Pen or something like that, you know is it the head:
The head of this party is like a is a lovely person with great manners and all of this, and then he starts slowly. Seducing people like
married her with the idea that you know what, if you join us, if you convert we'll get you a fifteen year old wife, it's great, you knows you were you know: you're, like your beer
forty five years old, your masturbating alone in your apartment, you know your life
going. Nowhere will. Allow will fix you up. Everything will be good. You know that, so I only bring this up to say that there is this notion, somehow that where were you always get
asked Rob and we're out of the woods into a wonderful multicultural future is pretty demented. I think, and with that, not that I'm sure
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So we are going to have a new president in two days, and I commend the people not that I'm often in this in this round, but if you, if you want serve
gossipy horror stories, gonna axiom some Red Johnson's ones. I think it is now up to four parts with this account of of of of the trump.
Trump and the Trump people, how how they got out so far on a limb on the stolen election fronts and how Trump started from being relatively cool, I
though full of in looking for some waiter making,
pace that the election had been stolen and how he like
but he was actually seduced by the consumer.
theories of Sydney, Palin, really Giuliani and others and Linwood into believing almost anything that could be could be said to him. It, sir. It's in its good, it's good reading, I will say, even though it sooner by evil level, maybe people. So I guess what that we will.
Close up shop untold tomorrow when we will again not have Christine with us, but on Wednesday we will be doing ourselves after the inauguration and they doggerel speech, and I believe,
no ma am I right that we are going to be joined by megaton became. I mean that
The planned that's the point on the grounds that Maghreb became
It never works out, so called ruin. That's right! That's right! So, hopefully than I was no work out with yes Mega Mccain, who is has been very
yeah generous in her support of this parliament,
on twitter
swear. I will be our guest on Wednesday, so
until tomorrow for four
nowhere in the absent Christine. I'm John passwords keep the camel burning.
Transcript generated on 2021-07-27.