TRIGGERnometry - Is MAGA Falling Apart? - Michael Malice

CRM was supposed to improve customer relationships. Instead, it's shorthand for can't resolve much.

Which means you may have sunk a fortune into software that just bounces customer issues around but never actually solves them.

On the ServiceNow AI platform, CRM stands for something better.

With AI built into one platform, customers aren't mired in endless loops of automated indifference. They get what they need, when they need it.

Bad CRM was then. This is ServiceNow.

You came dressed the park as we want to talk about North Korea. There's also another thing you wrote a great book about which is then you write.

What do you, you know, techno anarchists and Christian nationalists and race realists and other groups have in common.

And now, you know, they're kind of turning on each other and I don't know where this goes but I do know it'll be entertaining.

There will be a lot of people on the right going, we voted for Trump because he promised to keep us out of wars. I didn't want any of this. This isn't what I voted for.

The idea like you're going to kill the Ayatollah and the Sun is going to be more moderate after that.

Where you kill the Sun. Okay. Are you just going to keep going?

Yeah, this is what doesn't make sense to me. Who is going to be the one who's doing the surrendering?

I don't think it's at all factual to say that Iran was an imminent threat to the U.S.

The idea that Iran is going to shoot drones at California. I mean, obviously.

God, let's hope so.

My God, I mean, someone just save us.

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Hillsdale College. Right after this episode, go check out the incredible online courses which are absolutely free at Hillsdale.edu.

Slash Trigger.

Michael Malice, welcome back to Sturgeonometry. Thank you so much.

You came dressed the park as we want to talk about North Korea.

But there's also another thing you wrote a great book about, which is the new right, which is obviously what's going on now.

What's going on now, Michael?

I think you have to be a little more specific, don't you think?

Well, I don't know. What's going on?

Well, my plan started. Some of them are doing well.

You wrote a book a while ago predicting that there would be a kind of realignment and a fracturing on the right.

That's right. And that is why I think it was fair to say we're seeing.

Oh, very much so, especially in Europe, it's even more kind of realigning than here in the States.

I've been following European politics very closely, and it's very interesting how it plays out in different nations.

Czech Republic just had this party called Modris for ourselves.

And when the guys is kind of accused of being this closet gripper and now he's in cabinet.

So they're the first ones to kind of break that barrier.

Okay, but go back to the big picture.

What did you say in your book and what did you predict in your book?

I think, well, I think that is the big picture.

The big picture is that the so-called conservative movement of recent decades has largely fallen away in polls in the UK, for example, the tort.

You both just look down simultaneously.

The Tories, which is like that.

Yeah, the Tories and many polls are in fourth place, something which has never happened before.

And is regarded as largely unthinkable, although now labor is giving them run for their money and coming in fourth place.

You have the Swedish Democrats in Sweden, Georgina Malone is the PM in Italy.

The party was considered the for this right party as a five minutes ago.

The National Rally came in first in terms of votes in the French legislative elections, formally the National Front, Marine Le Pen's organization.

In Norway, the Liberal Party, which are actually the Christian Democrats, are in first place in the polls.

So wherever you Spain, the party is called Vox, which is regarded as the so-called far right party.

And there's that coordinates on its air. They're not going to work with them.

They're in third and they're spiking really heavily in the polls at the expense of the main two parties.

And the US, you know, the premise of my book, then you write, is the question was on the dust jacket.

What do, you know, techno anarchists and Christian nationalists and race realists and other groups have in common.

And I said nothing other than their opposition to.

Well, they hit the left, right.

Thanks for stepping on the punch line.

Other than their opposition to progress.

Thanks for the spoiler.

So I was going to get their constant. Don't worry.

Forgive me.

No.

Point being.

Three mature interjections.

Human beings define themselves by opposition.

We see this in non-political context because you have a party.

And there's adults and kids. The kids view themselves as kids as opposed to adults.

But when the adults leave, it becomes boys and girls.

So people, this is why negative attack ads are often more effective.

It's much easier to be like, I'm against Francis than I'm for constantly.

So with the heavy defeat of leftism in the 2024 Republican election,

you know, people are kind of a bit surprised that this Trumpian coalition has fallen apart.

But you shouldn't really be surprised because what they're against,

although they're making a bit of resurgence in recent days, has fallen away as a common enemy.

And now, you know, they're kind of turning on each other.

And I don't know where this goes, but I do know it will be entertaining.

And Israel seems to have become like the focal point.

I've tracked the same thing and I kind of thought that it would all start to break down

for the exact reason that you described.

But Israel is served as a kind of single explanatory point in a lot of people's minds.

And that seems, in a weird way, that's what the battle is about,

which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the one thing that I, you know,

the narrative that, you know, President Trump is controlled by Israel

just doesn't seem to me to stack with the personality type that he is.

You know what I mean?

Like the idea that he's being puppeteered by someone like,

of all the things you might say about him that are critical,

the idea that like he can be used by other people seems quite unlikely.

Well, you used to control their separate concepts.

I don't like this puppeteer metaphor because I'm not going to absolve George W. Bush

and Tony Blair and Dick Cheney of what they did.

I don't think that they had to have much pressure in order to launch,

you know, the Iraq war, which was, you know, obviously in retrospect,

an enormous disaster.

The other point is human beings, and let's get into this,

some extent, human beings aren't truth-seeking animals.

They're narrative-seeking animals, right?

So it's been a week now as a record of the Iran War.

I don't know where this is going or when the end goal is.

I certainly feel solidarity, as I think most of your viewers do.

All these people do with the Persian people and hope that everything works out well for them.

I'm not exactly confident that it will.

But the point is, this isn't the Iraq War.

Like it's like a weekend.

It's like, oh, it's the Iraq War.

Well, the Iraq War was Vietnam, but when it started, but it didn't end the same way as the Vietnam War.

So as for the Israel thing, I can still man that argument pretty well

because Trump campaigned on, you know, not getting us into war like Woodrow Wilson had.

It's hard to make the case that the Iranian War is in America's interests.

I don't think it's at all factual to say that Iran, it was an imminent threat to the US or Israel,

which I think a lot of people have been claiming this idea that Iran's, you know,

made from getting a nuke.

If Saddam had had nuke, he'd still be in power.

You know, if you look at Pakistan, they harbored Osama bin Laden,

and that country's name never comes out of President Trump's mouth.

So I think also it's easy to have.

I'm not easy, sorry.

It's important for people to have, and this is something I hate, this kind of one factor.

It's all the trans people or it's Israel or it's Trump.

You get rid of this, everything, you know, goes away.

In my view, and I think this is basic kind of liberty analysis,

if Israel vanished today, if every Jewish person vanished today,

I don't think the American war machine would pause for one minute.

I remember not that long ago, there was a big concern in some conservative circles

that there are too many black people who are getting food stamps, right?

And then the response was, oh, you know, the majority of people in food stamps are white,

and then the people were like, oh, what do you call per capita?

And then, you know, black people actually became majority and everyone stopped talking about it.

My intention is, if every black person in America got a food stamps,

or if they all vanished, the food stamp budget would not increase by $1.

There was always a rationalization for a budget.

It is never based on reality, and it's the job of every bureaucrat or general,

or secretary of whatever to maintain and grow his budget.

And we even saw this explicitly, not the long ago,

the Pentagon asked for however many trillion,

and Congress gave them even more than they had asked for.

So the point of anyone running an organization is to maintain its strength and control.

And as long as you have a military, especially kind of an interventionist military like we have,

they are going to find excuses to stick their nose where they don't belong.

So you think the Iran war is the military and just a complex basically finding another target?

To make all money.

To some extent, to some extent, obviously there's something that Israel wants,

and Ben Yagwin Trump, have an extremely close relationship.

I don't think the puppeteering thing is true because he's a 79-year-old guy from New York,

whose daughter converted to Judaism.

Like, this is the textbook demographic for being a Zionist.

So, but at the same time, it's very hard for me to understand his logic

because he hasn't laid out an end goal.

Like, what does the wind condition look like?

My biggest fear with Iran, and I haven't heard people say this,

and I think about it all the time, because this has happened a bit with Afghanistan,

is Trump is very explicitly telling the people,

rise up, take over your country, and my fear is that they're going to do that,

and he's going to be like, all right, good luck, deuces, and leave,

and they're all be slaughtered.

We saw what happened in Afghanistan where all those people who worked with us

of the U.S. for all those years, they were left to the Taliban,

and there was a reporter, I saw an interview asking, remember, the Taliban?

Can you guarantee those people won't be killed in torture?

He's basically like, sorry.

So, part of me even wondered if that was part of the deal that they were handed over

as part of the America's escape from the Taliban.

So, that is my biggest concern at the moment.

Not to mention the more obvious concerns, which is international cataclysm and escalation.

I think it's very odd that Iran was bombing all these Muslim majority countries

in their region, who otherwise would have been at least putting the pressure

in Israel and the U.S. to some extent.

The conflict between Saudi and Iran is obviously nothing revelatory for me to point out.

It's curious that Putin seems to be helping Iran in the background to some extent,

but China is basically kept their mouth shut, and that's an interesting one.

Well, I actually made the very same point, I think, on diarrhea,

before the conflict started, because Stephen Bartlett was asking me,

are you excited about the possibility of the Iranian people are protesting?

I was like, well, the purpose of encouraging people to rise up

is that you are going to back them to the hill, so that then, you know,

it's like in Ukraine, it's like, go, go, go Ukraine,

but then you don't actually provide the support.

Why were you encouraging them?

You should have been honest with them and said,

we're not actually going to help you properly.

Right.

And you saw this all-stopping has been as well.

When Shabbos was in power, they would have protest.

I think it's good to just stand there and machine gun everybody.

Yeah.

So there's thousands of people already dead in Iran.

And this is what I foresee happening, and I'm very, very worried about it.

The worry is also, as well, when it comes to strategy,

when you look at the actual logistics of what's happening on the ground in Iran,

and you think to yourself, you have the IRGC, which is effectively an army.

They're number around 200,000.

Not only are they an army who are military trained, they're also fanatical.

How are you going to deal with that?

How are you going to deal with the secret police?

How are you going to deal with the supporters of the regime?

All of these things you're looking at and going,

do you actually have a plan for how to not only get rid of that,

but also install something else in its place?

Right.

And it seems like Pavlavi is someone who's been kind of making a lot of noise

and Trump's very obviously uncomfortable with him, kind of reinstating the stomach shot.

So to your point, no one has articulated an endgame,

but he wasn't at all clear that he was just going to,

I was on Roseanne Bar Show.

Right?

A Roseanne Bar.

I was like, yeah, two days we're going to be bombing Iran.

I'm like, okay, crazy lady.

And then two days later, we're bombing Iran.

So maybe we should ask Roseanne Bar how this is going.

But it's going to be interesting as well to see what the effect of the Iran war is on the right,

because you have a lot of isolationists in America, particularly on the right,

who did not want to be part of a war.

Correct.

Can't blame them.

Yeah, but you can't blame them.

You can fully understand it.

And if this war goes south, and not only that, it then has a spike on oil prices.

Which has, yes, happened already, yes.

It's so happening already, but it continues to grow a spike on gas prices.

That in turn affects the cost of living, food, whatever else.

There will be a lot of people on the right going, we voted for Trump,

because he promised to keep us out of wars.

Not only did he get us involved in an unnecessary war,

where bodies have been flying home.

On top of that, it's made my life worse.

I didn't want any of this.

This isn't what I voted for.

Do you know who this is really screwing over, right?

JD.

So JD Vance is trying to walk like two tightrope simultaneously,

which is literally impossible, maybe not literally, but I don't think any of us could even do one.

Because he has.

You haven't seen me, Mike.

That's true.

That's fair point taken.

He is, you know, trying to be Trump Jr.

You know, as kind of as air to take over the nomination in 2028.

And at the same time, he was clearly uncomfortable with this sort of thing.

He was being very explicit, you know, about it in years past as that Trump in himself.

So I think it's going to be very hard for JD to figure out a lane.

Because on one hand, he's close with Tucker, Tucker son works for him.

And Tucker is obviously extremely against this and quite understandably.

So other than Trump is this is the best thing ever.

It's just done in a week.

We just won.

So sick of winning.

So I don't know how he navigates this in terms of getting the nomination.

Because what can easily happen is he's trying to do what Hillary tried to do in 2008,

where she was regarded as the presumptive nominee.

Don't bother running.

She's got in the bag.

She's going to be the nominee.

Let's worry about the general.

If his numbers, if there's the thing is there's plenty of people in the Republican party who are sociopaths and narcissists.

So it's going to be very easy for someone to run just for the sake of improving their platform,

getting speaking fees, getting book deals.

They don't run for the intention to get the nomination.

They just run to be like, okay, like now everyone knows my name.

And I can parlay this and something bigger.

This happened in British politics all the time.

It's called a stalking horse.

But if that stalking horse gets any sort of traction,

then the gates will be wide open and it'll be ruined for somebody else to kind of come in

and put their hat in the ring.

So I don't think 2028 is a lock for JD as it looks two years out.

Because if you looked at 2014 for the Republican party,

no one is even mentioning Trump.

That was not even an option.

Well, Vance is whether you agree with his politics or disagree.

He's clearly very smart.

And if you understand public communication and have been watching what he's been saying,

every time President Trump has gone into a round 12-day war or now,

it's very clever positioning for Vance because he always says,

the president is the greatest president in the history of presidents.

And I trust the president.

The president knows what he's doing,

which kind of puts him in a position to later say,

well, I voiced my opposition internally,

but I'm a team guy, but privately,

I was not in favor of this.

I understand why you're shaking your head,

because that is a difficult line to control.

No, that's how I'm shaking my head.

I'm shaking my head because I think what you're saying is impossible.

Because President Trump, in his second administration,

the only thing he chose for was loyalty.

And if I don't think there's anyone left, Stephen Miller,

I actually Googled it.

I said, who from the first administration is around the second administration?

There are three people.

Every other bridge has been burned.

The guy from Alabama, I forget it, Jeff Sessions.

You had ban in his gun.

You had Bill Barbari, who always get their names confused.

Omarosa, they all turned on each other.

Right?

So he is very hypersensitive to people speaking out against him.

And a JD Vance starts trying to do this thing.

Oh, I supported Trump, but I'm a different person.

I don't think Trump with his ego is just going to be like,

say what you throw me under the bus in order to get ahead.

He's not going to keep it to mouth shut.

Can anyone imagine this scenario?

So your point is this isn't going to work.

I don't know how, I think JD Vance is extremely smart.

Yeah.

In all the ways that don't matter in politics.

So Trump, I think JD thinks Trump is in many ways a buffoon.

And in many ways he is from the perspective of Yale or Harvard,

although he obviously went to an Ivy League himself.

But when it comes to politics itself, Trump is extremely savvy.

The fact that he took out, I think it was 14 Republican candidates 2016,

that he took out Hillary Clinton, who has had the biggest juggernaut

behind her in terms of culture of any candidate,

certainly in my lifetime, maybe since FDR, that is no mean feat.

The fact that you are your approval ratings were in the toilet after January 6th,

your regard as a complete pariah, during the midterms most of the candidates

or all of them, that you endorsed who were in kind of swing races they all lost

to recapture the nomination and to recapture the presidency.

This is something that's historically unprecedented and is a testament to many ways

this political acumen.

He was the one who's like, let me go on the podcast circuit

and put myself in front of that firing line for three hours at a time in Rogen.

And this guy is again, no spring chicken.

So I think JD thinks like Elon did, I'm going to work with this guy.

I'm going to use him to further my agenda.

But Trump is really, really crafty with stuff like that.

And I think he's going to be very sensitive to any of these machinations.

And he's doing it very publicly.

He's playing for Vance against Rubio.

There's all these articles about Lego.

Trump doesn't know which one to choose.

And a lot of that's leaks.

When you buy seafood, what do you worry about most?

Nutrition, sustainability, taste.

I've asked all of those questions.

This is why Wilder Laskin Company caught my attention.

It is the best way to get WildCorp perfectly portioned nutrient-dense seafood delivered to your door.

You've not tasted fish this good.

When we first got a delivery from Wilder Laskin Company, it stood out immediately.

The care that goes into it, the packaging, the clear sourcing, their attention to detail.

You can tell this is a company that does things properly.

What makes Wilder Laskin Company special is how they source everything.

100% WildCorp never farmed.

No antibiotics, no GMOs, no additives.

Just clean real fish, frozen off the boat to lock in flavor in nutrients like omega-3s.

You get flexible shipments, expert cooking tips,

and a box that genuinely feels like it's come from people who care about what they're sending.

My favorite variety is their Pacific Halibut.

Firm and meaty, it cooks beautifully in a pan, on the grill, and goes with almost anything.

And there's no risk.

If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, Wilder Laskin Company gives you a full refund.

No questions asked.

Get seafood you can trust.

Go to wilderlaskin.com slash trig for $35 off your first box of premium WildCorp seafood.

That's wilderlaskin.com slash trig for $35 off your first order.

Thanks to Wilder Laskin Company for sponsoring this episode.

The thing is with Trump as well is that he's a once in a generation political figure.

Yes.

In the same way as Blair was, in that it's very rare for somebody to be able to unite a party

and a political faction.

Yes.

That is incredibly rare.

Because you're asking people to essentially put aside their differences and work together.

That's hard.

Yeah, and also there's this argument online that like who is mega, who is it?

Like a mega is Trump.

Mega means that which Trump's like.

It's not a ideological, you know, Aristotelian worldview.

It's just basically a series of vague preferences, most of which I think are good ones.

But it's not this kind of well thought out coherent, you know, natural review philosophy.

And you see that with the support for the war because for all the 90% I saw in a month ago.

Well, for the chatter online, mega republicans are just like, well, Trump said it's good.

So it's good.

I don't mean to satirize too much their position, but given the level of inconsistency

between his stated policy positions before the election and what he's doing now,

whether you like that or not, it's still quite remarkable to have that level of support.

And I can also steal mandate case because I think Trump for many of these people

is the first time in their lives.

They feel seen by a politician.

They feel this guy understands me.

This guy speaks for me.

You can say positive things about the bushes if you like.

It's very hard to make the case that George H. W. Bush or George W. Bush

is kind of this like, you're not going to see them in McDonald's, right?

And Trump eats McDonald's ironically, but also not.

He actually likes it.

And I think that speaks and being a New Yorker, like a real New Yorker,

I think that speaks to a certain level of character on this board.

And what do you make of the idea that, you know, Venezuela, Iran, now Iran,

to this is all part of a big 5D chess strategy.

And, you know, the rabbit will be pulled out of the hat.

And the magic of this anti-Russia, anti-China thing will be revealed in all its glory down there.

Well, I placed 7D chess if you follow me.

Let's talk Venezuela.

Because this is your...

Bienvenido.

I've been to Venezuela since twice.

I have enormous sympathy and appreciation for that country.

It is...

It's such a case study of how something, which is just this jewel of South America,

and amazing people, if you ever meet any Venezuelans, God bless you,

they're just...

It's with one exception.

They're smart, highly educated, great people.

That's the bridge, Paul.

Yeah.

That's amazing about what happened with Maduro.

When I saw that photo of Maduro with the blindfolds and handcuffs, I thought it was AI.

Because I'm like, wait, this is really it.

But we tele...

Basically, teleported in.

The United States teleported in.

Grab the leader, teleported out.

It's like, okay, bye.

And the Democrats were like, what do we do?

Like, you can't say, oh, you went in there and killed everybody.

You can't say, it's in chaos, because it was the chaos before the regimes.

I don't even understand really the point.

Now, there's several conspiracy theories and how to use the term derisively.

One of which is, they told Maduro, do you want to go get arrested and go on a nice vacation?

Or do you want to get shot?

And he's like, vacation, please.

The deeper argument is that he's going to reveal something about the voter machines in 2020,

because Venezuela somehow involved.

The third situation is, okay, we got your guys.

So the number two person is now going to have to play ball.

But I was discussing, you know, in Rogan couple of weeks ago,

we just kind of stopped talking about it.

And this is something that's never happened before.

We just go in natural leader advantage.

And I mean, of course, my hopes are for the villains willing people,

but I don't know where this is going.

And I don't know where anyone else knows who's going.

Well, I don't think most people know where this is going.

Venezuela and people are very hopeful,

but that comes more from a sense of desperation than anything else.

That's right.

I've been under a totalitarian leadership for 26 years.

I think what they want to do is effectively Venezuela is a de facto colony of the United States now.

So we're going to see the oil companies come back.

We're going to see the oil infrastructure be repaired.

Oil is going to start pumping.

And what we're going to have is a leadership,

which is going to hold Venezuela, make sure it doesn't crumble,

but also going to be answerable to the green goes.

And I think if you asked a lot of Venezuelans after not only Chavez or Maduro,

but then Chavez,

but also our own disastrous flirtations with democracy,

which have been simply haven't worked.

Let's be honest about it.

They almost prefer that option.

Oh, yeah, you can't blame them.

But here's the other one, Cuba.

Like as we speak, Cuba is about to run out of water.

There's this enormous black aid.

Marco Rubio is, you know,

can I say this on a nightly basis rubbing one out

to the idea of a free Cuba?

You can't blame him.

Humans are amazing, based people.

Cuba was like the Las Vegas of the Caribbean in the 1950s until, you know,

it all wanted to hell.

And I think a transition from Cuba to a free country

would not be that difficult.

And I think the people are hungry for it.

And their standard of living is solo.

And a needless in the law, obviously, it's just a function of the government.

I mean, they're very entrepreneurial.

They're very quickly reestablished themselves as the crown jewel of the Caribbean

that they were.

But who knows where that's going to go also.

But come back, come back with me to this 4D chest idea,

which is some people have argued that the reason the Trump administration is doing this is

part Monroe doctrine, which is don't fuck around in our backyard China Russia,

which they were in Venezuela.

Sure.

Sure.

And then their run thing is about, look,

I think you're based on my understanding.

I mean, obviously don't have access to the secret information.

But, you know, we talked a lot of people about it.

Iran didn't have a functioning nuclear weapon or a program,

but they weren't reaching uranium to levels which are not remotely necessary for civil and use.

And, you know, there's some debate about,

because I don't think we in the West really are capable of processing intellectually,

because it's not an intellectual thing.

Are they these jihadi extremists who are waiting for the end of the world,

for their Messiah to come back, which they will happily bring about using nuclear weapons,

or are they more interested in having the threat of nuclear weapons

so that they can dominate the region, which is a much more rational, logical thing.

Or the third one, which is if they have nuclear weapons,

they know they're not going to be attacked like Pakistan.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

So those options are on the table.

And the Trump administration is like, well, you can't have nuclear weapons.

We can't have more nuclear proliferation.

Not least because, and I'm sure North Korea, which we're going to come to eventually,

is different, right.

North Korea doesn't have proxies all over the place.

It's not attacking other countries.

It's not shooting missiles into South Korea every three days, etc.

Right.

And so the 4D chess explanation is, well, Trump is basically trying to rearrange the world

to the benefit of the United States.

And that is why he's doing this.

I don't, I would disagree slightly.

I don't know that he is doing it to the benefit of the United States.

I think Trump knows he's got four years.

And I think Trump's like, I've got a big stick and I'm going to use it.

And I'm going to do what I can in the White House in the time I've left

to kind of make the world in his respect of the sort of Pax Americana.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

That's literally what I mean.

Right.

He's using the time he has and I don't have to give a shit anymore.

Attitude that he has to try and remake the world in the best interest

in what he perceives America's best interest to be.

Sure.

And I think that's also one of the reasons why North Korea was basically his first issue

in the first term because it's kind of the lowest hanging fruit in terms of

it's going to take theoretically not that much effort.

You could have maximum increase of freedom.

So that does seem to be the case that, you know, he, the extreme,

the fact that we are sitting here having a conversation about the U.S.

getting Greenland.

I think at a certain point, it's very difficult to have a mental model

for what is going through his head.

Sure.

But I think the explanation I gave seems to me to be the most logical,

but the problem is with that, and I think it's the one you identified as early,

is I have no idea how that is compatible with regime change in a run.

If he just went in and destroyed more nuclear facilities,

I believe that makes perfect sense.

He went in and destroyed the drone factories,

which Iran uses to produce drones to send to Russia to use in Ukraine,

makes sense.

If he bombs Iran so they can't supply all to China anymore,

makes sense to me.

But regime change?

Like that.

I mean, like the idea, like you're going to kill the Ayatollah

and the Sun is going to be more moderate after that.

Well, you killed the Sun.

Okay.

Like you're just going to keep going.

Yeah.

This is what doesn't make sense to me because, you know,

for anarchists like myself advocate for like political violence,

it's like, you know, if you kill a senator,

there's going to be another senator.

It's not like you kill the office.

Oh, now we're down to 99 senators are like, lock and load.

So if you kill the Ayatollah, it's not like, all right, it's not chess.

It's not 2D chess where you take the king.

It's like, I ran, checkmate.

The other point is if he's saying they want complete unconditional surrender,

how are you going to have anyone surrender if you keep killing the leaders?

Who is going to be the one who was doing the surrendering?

I think, I think it's hard.

First of all, I don't doubt that someone in the White House sat him down

and had some sort of plan.

If not him, they, they gain this out.

But I don't, I feel like the underpants knows from South Park, you know,

step one, you steal the underpants, step two, step three profit.

What's step two, right?

So I don't know what their win, like I said earlier,

what their win condition is going to look like.

I think it's going to be almost impossible to, if you start killing and bombing,

this isn't Japan, this idea of unconditional surrender,

the thing that happens with these countries, as Kadoffi found out,

is when they let down their guard, they, the people at the top are personally murdered.

And if you had a free Iran or Persia or whatever,

I don't think all these people at the top are just going to go to club med,

if that still exists.

They're going to face prison sentences.

So there's every incentive for them to dig their heels in.

Obviously the Saudis are a big problem for them as well,

and many other Arab countries in the area are not particularly happy with Iran.

So I don't see how this, as we said earlier,

it's, every day it seems like he's ready to be like,

all right, mission, he said anything mission accomplished,

which was that infamous banner that George W. Bush stood in front of,

you know, during his administration.

I mean, it's very plausible he just came like, all right,

he bombed them, now we're going to go home.

It's like, okay, what did that accomplish?

Absolutely.

And then you factor in the ideology,

which is a radical version of Islamism.

Sure.

So you go, how are you going to de-radicalize a huge sway of the population?

Because if you kill them, then surely you're going to radicalize their family,

their friends, are the members of the population.

Right.

If someone got forbid came to the U.S.

and took a foreign entity and took out the president,

Americans would rally very heavily behind whoever the vice president was.

We saw this in after 9-11,

I think George W. Bush had 98 or 91% approval rating.

Everyone's like, right, you know, the kind of rally behind the flag.

So the same thing certainly is happening with Iran,

where if the, in around the buildings were shaking,

it sounded like the doors of hell had been opened.

Or someone who sits in there, you know, give that quote.

You're not going to be like, I'm in favor of the guys who are bombing us through oblivion.

And it's also, you look at, they were talking about arming the Kurds.

Right.

So then you, my mind went back to Iraq when essentially Iraq collapsed.

And you, you look at Iran and you go,

well, this could be a civil war, couldn't it?

Because the Kurds want their own nation.

That has been clear for a long time.

Right.

And if you arm them, they are going to want to take it by force.

So they're going to destabilize the country,

which is on the brink as we speak.

And America also has a history of arming people and then trying to fight them.

It's just really this kind of, we laugh,

but it's just like, you know, we're shaking hands with the Taliban one day,

the next day, we're invading Afghanistan.

So it's the army, again, arming the Kurds.

Like we are, there's this fear in the states right now that Iran is activating

all these sleeper cells supposedly.

That's what we're doing there.

Like if we're arming the Kurds and saying rise up,

we're calling out our sleeper cells.

And are you worried about that, Michael?

Because I've seen some new stories.

I mean, the idea that Iran is going to shoot drones at California.

I mean, obviously, God, let's hope so.

My God.

I mean, someone could just save us.

I mean, imagine saying that what you know.

I mean, they might set the whole city on fire.

I think it's terrible.

Yeah.

But it just seems implausible to me, right?

It seems like a bunch of bullshit.

But, you know, individual people doing crazy shit and killing people

doesn't seem that difficult at all in a country with millions of guns and whatever, right?

Do you think there's a real worry now in America that that could happen?

I'm going to give an answer that sounds like a joke, but it's not.

We're at the point now where there's so many daily mass shootings

that the only difference would be that they speak foresee instead of, you know, being trans.

So I don't think that that's a big concern.

I think if they were going to be smart, they would all have it all done on one day,

like a day of terror.

That would really shake America and that would really move the needle

in one direction or other.

I don't think a move needle in a direction they would want.

Right.

But so I don't.

Because if that happened, you would get, we were talking about this last night, actually,

because obviously there's a very strong anti-war sentiment

and there will be lots of people who say Trump did that.

Correctly.

But I think there will also be lots of people who say America has been attacked.

Right.

So it's, it's, but that's a dangerous card to play on their part.

And I also think then you're going to have some a lot of style there from Europe

who's had to deal with this sort of terrorism.

And a lot of them are going to, you know, maybe their spines are going to look stiff

and maybe not secure, but maybe Germany or, or certainly France.

Well, we obviously hope that that doesn't happen.

Do you think part of the problem is is that we in the West

simply don't understand other mindsets, but particularly other ideologies?

Oh, oh, yeah.

I mean, my God.

It is.

Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question.

Because one of the things I've been focusing on recently,

one of the things I'm trying to defeat is this idea of universalism.

And we're taught this in school since we're very young

that everyone is basically the same under our skin.

Now in certain contexts, it's absolutely true.

Everyone feels pain.

Everyone loves their family.

You know, everyone mourns when someone passes away.

But in this, I think all of us are in the same kind of tier

in terms of intellect, meaning I don't think there's anything I believe

that I would not be able to explain to the two of you or vice versa.

Maybe there be some follow-up questions, but be able to understand each other.

I also think of three of us sat with a nuclear physicist

and he tried to understand, explain nuclear physics to us.

It would be just a gibberish.

At a certain point, be like, okay, I can maybe I can file these analogies,

but I'm really not understanding it in the same way you're understanding it.

But that also applies to before dumber.

So if you look at sitcoms, people think dumber people just have fewer facts

or they're slower to understand things.

That's not the case.

Unintelligent people think processed data in ways that are completely different

from other people.

And this is something that's very deleterious to democracy.

And you see it all, one of the great things about social media

is A, people who in times past, great examples, Lawrence Tribe,

who's like a dean at Harvard Law,

in times past they would be on a pedestal.

This guy's at Harvard Law, he must be amazing.

You look at his feed and this old lesbian is tweeting like your grandma

on Facebook, it's an embarrassment.

The same time when unintelligent people express themselves,

you're like, holy crap.

This person's cat in human.

And if you sit down and explain to them,

they still don't pick up what you're saying.

And they just regard nouns and verbs as basically a soup

and connect things in ways that are completely gibberish to other people.

So one of the other things that happens is,

people cannot understand things outside their framework.

So everyone is forage is the Trump of England

and the Philippines, he's the Trump of the Philippines

and the Trump of Brazil, Bolsonaro.

And this one's the, maybe they're roughly analogous

in that they're like a populist loudmouth,

but these are not all the same phenomenon.

And if you ask any American about some other country,

they would say, who are the Republicans and who are the Democrats?

Well, it doesn't always parse out that way.

In fact, in America,

Jeb and Trump are not the same phenomenon.

They're both Republicans and Bernie Sanders,

all those independent AOSA AOC and Hillary Clinton.

They're also not the same phenomenon, all the Democrats.

So human beings broadly speaking,

not only have no empathy,

which is an ability to see things from other points of view,

they're violently opposed to it.

I always say that people don't run a true false filter.

They run an us dem filter.

You see it every time on social media,

if you say something, oh, you sound like a Democrat.

And the implication is therefore you're wrong.

It's it's it's deranged,

but that is how unintelligible process information.

And it's such a good point.

And then you put in an ideology is extreme as Islamism.

And we in the West simply can't get ahead

around it because we value life.

What is that?

I hate that.

That's I hate that word.

What do you mean by extreme?

AI adoption isn't the challenge anymore.

Knowing whether your AI investment is actually working,

that's the real problem.

And right now, most enterprise leaders

genuinely cannot answer that question.

CFOs and CIOs are being asked to justify

AI spend.

Managers can show ROI.

But when your developers and teams are spread across

dozens of tools with no central view,

that question becomes impossible to answer.

Not because AI isn't delivering,

because you have no visibility into whether it is.

Larry Dinn fixes that.

It's an AI impact intelligence platform

that tracks real utilization,

developer productivity, governance compliance

and actual business outcomes,

not log-in counts, real data.

It also flags where you're leaving value on the table

so you know exactly where to invest next.

They won the 2025 Intellects Digital Innovator Award

and they're backed by their Andreessen,

Horowitz and Bloomberg beta.

This is a serious platform in a space full of noise.

If AI is already running inside your organization,

now is the moment to get control of it.

Head to LarryDinn.com today

and book a demo to start maximizing impact from AI.

What do I mean by extreme?

A version of Islam that wants to establish

a global Islamic caliphate that doesn't want there

to be sovereign nations,

and it will kill Maine and destroy as many people,

countries, in order to achieve its aims.

But if you think you're here serving Allah

and you think that that's the correct course of affairs,

wouldn't that be the correct thing to do?

Within that framework.

Yes, but the rest of us can look at that

and say if you want to kill millions of people

in the name of Allah, you're extreme, right?

But I would just say you're principled.

Sure, but those two things don't have to go against each other.

You can be principled and extreme

because the principles you adhere to are extreme.

But I don't need to extreme consequences.

Sure, but there's this negative connotation

to the word extreme that I'm not comfortable with.

Well, the extremism, I mean,

Gandhi was also very principled,

but in some ways quite extreme too,

but I guess the violent nature

of what Islamists do in reality seems quite extreme to us,

to those of us who are not part of that framework.

But I think what happens is when you have that mindset,

you end up with Rotterdam

and you end up with where the UK is right now.

Which mindset?

This fear of extremism

and this idea that we're going to blood ourselves free.

I don't follow how those two things are connected.

Sure, because if you have this idea

that violence in the service of your ideology

is something that's really off the table

and something only people who are really out there would do,

when violence might otherwise be necessary,

it's not regarded as part of the often window.

Violence is the state, right?

The state, which I know you're not a fan of,

but the state is controlled, organized,

and legislated violence.

And I think the counter-argument,

well, otherwise you can rather miss,

I wouldn't advocate for the response to Rotterdam

being a mirror image of what Islam is doing.

I would say that's where the state has to do its fucking job.

Well, that's where you and I differ, I think.

That's exactly the crux of it.

Right.

And my argument would be that we have a police force for a reason,

and we have laws for reasons.

Yeah, the police force there to protect the perpetrators of Rotterdam.

Well, they were in that instance,

but they don't have to be.

I don't know what that means.

If they just, well, because their job as officially stated

is to enforce the law,

what these people did was against the law.

But as officially stated in nonsense term,

it doesn't mean anything.

It's like, if I tell you I've got a car and it flies officially

and it doesn't fly, who cares?

No, I hear you, but the police do do their job

in most instances of enforcing the law.

Right.

So let's worry about the times when they don't.

Yeah, yeah.

But that wasn't a police issue,

what that was is, hold on, Michael.

What that was is a failure to enforce the law

because they were prioritizing other concerns,

which they were effectively encouraged to do

by the society in which they lived,

which is you placed social cohesion.

They weren't encouraged by their overlords to do what they did.

They did the signal unilaterally.

From the evidence that we've seen,

a lot of it was quite low level sensitivity

about social cohesion.

Right.

So a person at a fairly low level

was worried about investigating something

because it would mean the day they'd be called racers.

Right.

It wasn't necessary.

It wasn't as far as we know,

the people at the top going don't investigate this.

I don't think that's statistically possible.

There's just these few outliers

because it was so pervasive.

I didn't say they were outliers.

I think on the contrary,

it was a pervasive culture.

Right.

I mean, I'm not certain.

In fact, I'm quite confident based on what we've talked

a lot of people about this.

We know.

That this was not a top down.

This is what you're supposed to do.

I'm not supposed to do.

It was actually something that happened

because there was a pervasive culture at the lower levels

of social workers,

of police officers and others,

who just thought,

A, the sensitivity is about

what would it mean for community cohesion

and all this other culture.

And also, you know,

we had Maggie Oliver,

who was a police whistleblower,

who blew the whistle on the stuff.

It just said,

because of the social background

that a lot of the victims,

there was just like,

oh, they don't matter.

Right.

Which also unfortunately does happen.

Sure.

I don't think my point is,

I don't think it's necessarily

the dynamic you're presenting,

which is either you tolerate this

or you engage in extremism

or the use of violence

in an unorganized way on your own side.

Well, it could be organized.

It's not the unorganized.

But that's what I mean,

that's what the state is for.

Ostensibly.

But in this case,

the state is not for that.

None of these people

who are accomplices,

state agents or accomplices

in these atrocities

at any consequences,

as far as I know,

certainly not the kind of consequence

I would like to see them have happened.

And what any organization,

if it faces no pushback,

it will continue in perpetuity

to try to maintain

and increase its power.

So until there are,

and one of the great things

that Trump did when he came to office,

is people faced consequences

for the first time,

for the crap that they tried to pull.

So unless they are until and unless

they are caught,

none of all of the governors

in America during COVID,

who sent in diseased people

to nursing homes,

killing elderly people,

they all got elected.

They had no consequences

for the murders that they committed.

Keir Starmer was a barrister

defending some of these people

who found no mistaken.

So until and unless,

or he had some involvement legally with that.

He was a director of public prosecution.

Yeah, but you know,

as you can imagine,

not a big fan of Keir Starmer,

he wasn't personally defending these people

and or doing it out of choice.

You know,

criminals are entitled to legal representation.

Sure,

but he also made a point

in early 2025

to try to put a caboch

for the investigation.

Yes, yes, yes.

And it's despicable.

And they will,

if they fail electorally,

and if,

unless we get a red-green alliance

at the next election,

they will be punished for it.

Yeah.

I don't think Keir Starmer

will go to prison though,

but you know.

That's not, yeah.

Yeah, no.

It's a totally fair point,

but we started this,

everything you're saying is perfectly legitimate,

but we started this with your quibble

over France's use of the term extremism.

Right.

And I think the point he's trying to make is,

I mean, in America,

this is easier for you guys to relate to,

because you have some of your own religious people

who are kind of on that end of things.

It's just because we have our guns.

Yeah.

Yeah.

True.

But I think for the Western mind,

broadly speaking,

it has become quite difficult to relate empathetically,

as you were talking about earlier,

to people who are willing to blow themselves up

among a bunch of innocent girls

at an Ariana Grande concert.

Can we talk about that for a second on concert?

Yeah.

Because that was one of the greatest moments

in my opinion of British history.

Do you know what Queen Elizabeth did after the concert?

Did we talk about this?

No.

This is going to sound like a troll.

And I want everyone who's watching this

through Sumam Lying

and look up the footage for themselves.

After that Ariana Grande concert,

where people blunt the smithereens

and many of us were injured,

Queen Elizabeth got rest or soul,

went to the hospital and visited many of the victims.

And they were very honored to see Queen Elizabeth

had a beautiful hat on,

and then she went from bed to bed.

She's like, oh, so did you enjoy the concert?

Did you enjoy the concert?

Well, you know,

other than seeing my friends head blown off,

you know, that encore was really something was your majesty.

So it was really a crazy moment in British history.

So just come back to the production.

No reaction.

Okay.

Well, sorry.

I'm like, I want to get to the end of the argument.

So the point being that we struggled to understand

the mindset of somebody who's willing to do that

because we in our, we would never do that.

Maybe.

Okay.

I can explain that.

Okay.

I understand it very easily.

And I can explain to you very easily.

And I cover this in my book,

The White Pill and the Anarchist Handbook.

In the 1800s, when Nobel invented dynamite,

this was the first time for people who believed in workers' revolution

that they felt that they had a sense of equality.

And there was an essay in Emma Goldman's magazine Mother Earth

talking about how the ruling class has navies,

police, military, the workers have dynamite.

And the point being they can, they, the ruling class

could come at us with everything they have.

Now we can blow them to smithereens.

And there was someone named Johann Most,

who from Germany moved to the States.

He published a pamphlet,

which basically taught people how to make bombs.

And this was a big kind of crucial moment in terms of free speech.

Are you going to allow this pamphlet to become publicized?

In the late 1800s, there was a meeting in the Haymarket Square in Chicago.

Someone we still don't know to this day through a bomb.

Several people, anarchists were put on trial.

Some of whom weren't even there.

And one of the defendants, Louis Ling,

who was on the cover of the anarchist handbook,

his lawyer said not in so many words,

my client couldn't have thrown the bomb

because he was at home making bombs.

So several of them hanged.

They were posthumously pardoned.

They were a memorial to them in Wal-Time Cemetery,

in Chicago, point being,

when people, especially young men,

feel a sense of desperation.

When they feel that they have no hope of achieving anything,

that there's no upward mobility for them,

and they have an opportunity to make their name

and to, and same reason people join the military.

A lot of people join the military,

but for positive reasons, thinking,

okay, I'm going to fight for my country,

I'm going to do what's right,

and it might cost me something

that at least I'll go out heroically

instead of pushing pencils behind some desk.

So the idea is, look,

yeah, I might martyr myself,

but I'm doing it in the hope of pursuing the goal

of something greater than myself in terms of my principles.

But what about killing civilians?

Same thing happens in the military, right?

You bomb people, you're going to be bombing civilians.

Not deliberately.

But in this, I think their argument is,

you can't make a normal without breaking a few eggs.

And it's easier in their argument.

This is not me.

Their argument is,

if it's easier to kill a few civilians

and get someone to bend the knee,

then to help full-blown war.

Which day would lose?

Which day would lose, right?

Yeah.

And it worked.

In Spain during the Iraq war,

Spain was part of the Iraq war.

They bombed, I think, a train station or something.

There was an election.

The leftist came in and Spain pulled their troops right out.

So I worked in that regard.

But it's also the way the Islamist target,

for instance, the Ariana Grande concert,

where it's little girls.

Sure.

And we've seen with the bombing of the school in Iran,

the girls school,

that has become a national scandal

in the way that it simply wouldn't in an Islamist country.

Sure.

I obviously think there's few things more important

than killing children, especially deliberately.

I mean, this is as bad as it gets.

But I'm just trying to explain kind of their thought process.

Oh, yeah.

No, no, no.

But that's not what we're arguing.

As you discussed earlier,

the three of us are capable of having

an intellectual disagreement and a conversation

which we still understand each other.

Francis' point, I think,

is that as a general, as a society,

the average person in our society

struggles to understand the mindset of an Islamist.

Because you could not get a bunch of Americans

to strap bombs to themselves

and go and blow up a children's concert.

Sure.

But I think, right,

but I think the point also is this is their argument is

it's a way to break down a country

because at a certain point,

if enough people's kids are killed,

you just give up and you're like,

you know what?

Fine, well, we're put on the hijab.

It's a lot easier that way.

I think most people would rather go where they feel safe

and where the power is

than any kind of, you know,

ideology or where another.

Yeah.

It's a good point.

And I think one of the things that we come to now

is talking about, you know, authoritarianism.

Sure.

And I...

Oh, there's the segue.

That is the segue.

And when we're going to talk about career,

but it's also,

I don't think Americans really understand

what it's like to live under a totalitarian regime.

Oh, yeah.

And we see this all the time.

Like, I walk past buildings in Austin

and I see things like,

this is a fascist state.

You know, fascist police, you know,

authoritarian regime.

And you just think to yourself,

you literally do not understand the meaning of the word.

Or maybe I don't.

I don't know anymore.

Well, I can't speak for whether you...

That was very postmodern at the end there.

Yeah.

Maybe there is no truth.

But here's my truth.

Yeah.

The very premise of my book, The White Pill,

it starts with Ayn Rand testifying

in front of the House American Activities Committee

post-World War II.

And, you know, she's talking to a congressman.

She was the only witness who had lived

under what became the Soviet Union.

And he's like, you know,

the way you talk about Soviet Russia,

he's like, you know, don't people have picnics

and visit their mothers-in-law?

And she goes,

it is almost impossible to convey to a free people

what it's like to live under a totalitarian dictatorship.

I can give you a lot of details.

Sure they visit their mothers-in-law.

They have picnics.

But you understand it's impossible

if you'd wrap your head around it.

And in a way, it's good that you can't even conceive

what it's like.

Try to imagine what it's like to live in constant air

for morning till night.

And at night, you're waiting for the door,

for the doorbell to ring,

or someone to knock at your door.

To live in a country when a human life means nothing,

less than nothing, and you know it.

You cannot wrap their heads around it.

Because one of the things in a,

even a largely free country

is you can get away from the politics.

Like people complain that there's too much of a woke

in movies or music.

There are infinite choices.

If you want to read a non-woke book,

or even anti-woke book, anti-non-woke music,

every form you need to like.

But when you are in a totalitarian country,

total, it is everywhere.

And the other thing that Americans cannot wrap their heads around

or they saw during COVID,

the first creep,

is what it's like having to wonder

what happens if Francis betrays me or constantly betrays me.

Am I safe telling him this?

Until I was like in my 30s.

And I don't know how this got in my head

because my parents never sat me down.

Whenever I said something to someone,

I ran a scan to be like,

all right, if this person turns on me,

it's safe for them to know this.

Later, I stopped doing that

and it kind of backfired on me,

but that's fine.

Point being,

it's a mindset that,

and also knowing

that everything in public life is dishonest.

You had this system of public lies,

private truths.

You go outside,

you put on your pin,

you smile and nod,

and when you're behind closed doors,

you kind of whisper

with the expression,

North Korea is,

the walls have years kind of thing.

So we cannot wrap our heads around it.

Well, we're starting to in a way

because,

well, not just that,

but I think also what's happened is,

you see it with the Epstein files, right?

Because there's obviously terrible wrongdoing within that.

But then there's like a guy who sent an email

that had nothing to do with it.

But like,

every single email you ever sent

can now be used against you

if something then later turns out to it.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Yeah, but hold on.

You're Russian also.

You know not to put in writing.

Come on.

I don't tell you this.

Am I wrong?

I'm just saying,

if someone,

the average person,

if someone was to hack their phone,

they would not have a job on Monday.

I don't know.

Pack their phone

and publish it on the internet.

I don't know.

The jokes you make with your friends,

the stuff you say in confidence to your wife,

like all of this stuff.

Maybe I'm being pedantic.

I don't think the average person

is very controversial.

So I don't know that that's true.

But there's certain things

that they would be embarrassed about,

you know, certainly.

Yeah.

Well, that's what I'm saying.

Sure.

I would just don't think they'd be fired.

I don't think everyone's dropping

and bombs privately.

Maybe it's different.

It's different for yourself.

For your employees.

Join our WhatsApp group.

But one of the things

when we talk about authoritarian regimes,

which I find very interesting,

and I'm really interested to hear your opinion on this,

is we can't understand them,

particularly dictators.

So we framed them as crazy.

Oh, good.

Yes.

So, right.

Right.

The reason I wrote my book, Dear Reader,

was because it was driving...

I'm sorry, I didn't want to cut your office.

No, no, no, no.

It was driving me crazy.

He's written a lot of books.

Yes.

Yes.

He's a writer.

It's...

It drove me crazy how people

regarded North Korea as the sort of carnival.

And I was like,

there is a...

They've outlasted everybody else,

except for Cuba.

There's a reason they're still there.

This isn't an accident,

given the pressures that they're facing.

And the story in Dear Reader

is a step-by-step, you know,

description from Kim Jong-il's perspective

of how North Korea went from a Japanese colony,

no, free World War II,

to this totalitarian dictatorship that they are today.

This didn't happen overnight,

and this didn't happen by accident.

It was like a jigsaw puzzle piece by piece

as more and more elements of freedom

were taken away from the North Korean people,

you know, and here we are now.

You know how at the beginning of every year,

people say,

this is a year things change.

Then by February,

everything looks the same.

If you've been sitting on a business idea for months or even years,

2026 is your line in the sand.

The most common thing that separates people

who talk about building something

from the people who actually do it

is taking the first step.

And if you want this to be the year

you finally launch the smartest move you can make

is starting your business with Shopify.

2026 is the year you launch your business.

The year you transform into an entrepreneur,

founder or boss.

One powerful move puts your future firmly in your hands,

starting a business with Shopify.

Maybe you've got a product you can't stop thinking about.

A skill everyone tells you to monetize,

or a store you've already imagined in your head.

Shopify is how you make that real.

Shopify provides everything you need to sell online and in person.

Millions of entrepreneurs have already made this leap.

From household names to people launching their first ever business.

Shopify gives you all the tools to build your dream store easily.

You can choose from hundreds of beautiful templates

and customize everything to match your brand.

Set up as fast,

thank to Shopify's built-in AI tools.

They write product descriptions and headlines for you

and even help you edit your product photos.

Marketing is built in too.

You can create email and social campaigns that reach customers

wherever they scroll.

As you grow, Shopify grows with you.

Handle more orders,

expand into new markets and manage everything from one simple dashboard.

In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify.

Sign up for your £1 a month trial

and start selling today at Shopify.co.uk.

Slash Trigger.

Go to Shopify.co.uk.

Slash Trigger.

Can you tell us the story of North Korea like assuming that people listening,

by the way, including myself,

literally no fuck all about North Korea and its history?

Can you just give us first before we delve into the details,

the big picture of it?

How did North Korea even come to exist?

And what was the process for that?

So do you want their perspective of the truth?

Ah, well, why don't you give us the truth first?

Okay.

And I think telling that perspective will then be actually very informative.

That's very offensive.

That truth.

Yeah.

Tell us that truth.

All right.

The indigenous truth.

The Western truth, which is not really very controversial or in dispute,

is Korea was a nation for many centuries.

Japan conquered it and colonized it.

The Japanese tried to exterminate Korean myths in the sense that they were trying to

diminish use of the language, encouraging Korean people to take Japanese names.

The propaganda is like the Japanese, the big brother, Korea's the little brother.

And I don't need to tell British people when you're the colony,

it's not always so great for you.

I mean, yes, they build railroads and infrastructure,

but at the same time, it's heavily exploitative.

Come world, and here's the thing, the Japanese,

it's kind of fascinating that people understand the depravity of the Nazi regime,

but we don't really talk about how bad the Japanese were before World War II.

We've talked about that on the show.

It's crazy, man.

It's very adorable.

They experiment on a people, they call them logs, you know,

what was done to women and sex slaves.

Yeah.

This is just.

And they were really the horror of the Nazi war,

not extermination effort, it was, it was very German.

It was organized and it was,

these guys just basically stabbed millions of people to death with bayonets and showrooms.

Yeah.

It was really, and it's funny, because when you go to North Korea,

which I can't right now, because it's no longer legal,

but they hate the Americans, but they hate the Japanese.

Like, they think, you know, the Americans are,

they're American, American government, and, you know,

they think every American is a spy, but the level of hatred for the Japanese

is just, it's something almost supernatural and understandable.

So at that break of World War II, they're Japanese colonies, right?

Yeah, I got you.

Yeah, yeah.

So just try and help you along.

I know how to even narrative.

After the defeat of World War II,

the US and the Soviet Union were basically trying to divide up, you know,

Germany and Japan's specialies, former colonies.

So we got the Philippines, I forget who they get,

and then it's like, what are we going to do with Korea?

So basically they sat down and drew a line just north of Seoul,

because we wanted Seoul, and the premise was,

Soviet Union is going to demilitarize the north half,

the US is going to demilitarize the south half,

and we'll worry about what's going to happen later after that.

Can I have a guess?

They demilitarized both halves and then had a war.

Oh, yeah.

Well, it didn't have to end that way.

But point being the Korean, North Korean still,

to this day are very salty, because they're like,

we weren't antagonists in the war.

The only two countries that got split was Germany and us.

We didn't have anything to do with it.

We didn't have anything to do with it.

We were the property of Japan.

Like, why are you splitting us in half?

So Stalin and Stalin installs the Great Leader Kim Il Sung

in the north.

We install, the Americans, excuse me, install our own strongmen,

Sigmund Rhee in the south.

Both of them eventually declare themselves

the legitimate government.

The Great Leader Kim Il Sung launches the Korean War.

It goes back and forth over a few years.

The US joins with the south with the forces of the UN

because Russian, some others boycotting it.

So we got that resolution through.

Stalin and Mao give back up to the North Koreans.

And, you know, in many ways, not many ways in every way,

the Korean people paid the price.

Because you have these two rocks coming in there in the middle

and it was bombed to Bolivian.

The only things left were like chimneys.

You could just see these landscapes.

It was just complete desolation.

At one point, I think the North Koreans like 90% or 95%

of the peninsula, there was one.

And it went to stalemate.

And it's been, it's, they're still technically at war.

I know one of the things President Trump was hoping for

is to have this, you know, kind of armistice signed

into like an official treaty.

And in North Korea, they use lowercase N and lowercase S

for North and South because they say Korea is one.

That's their big slogan.

And the South is not a different country.

It's a region under American occupation.

Now, they had this big monument of these two women holding the Korea

over a highway and symbolizing Korean reunification.

They recently destroyed that monument.

So their hope, which of decades that the Korean people

would want to be reunified, has now kind of fallen away.

If you want to cry, I would encourage everyone watching this

to go on YouTube and watch Korean reunification videos

because these are families who were separated for decades

because you can't communicate with foreigners in the North,

seeing each other, you know, and, and they're allowed one day

and then they have to separate again, never to talk to you.

You're not going to watch this and not cry,

because it's just the most heartbreaking thing imaginable.

So that's the fact of history.

The North Korean argument of history is this.

Korea was the first country on Earth.

Korean was the first language spoken on Earth.

Korea was and remains the only genetically pure people on Earth.

So every other country in a married or were invaded

whatever Koreans are the only pure country.

I'm going to use a slur.

Excuse me.

They always, when in their language, they, or in their literature,

they always say wicked jab devils or American imperialists.

They never say Japanese.

It's always used arbitrarily.

So the wicked jab devils come in, conquer Korea, you know,

devastate it.

The people want to rise up.

They don't know how to do so until because the masses need a leader.

So the great leader Kim Il Sung emerges at a very young age,

rallies the people.

They're trying to get him and his guerrilla forces.

There's something called the Arduous March where they're fighting

the way through snow and all these situations.

Finally, pretty much singlehandedly,

the great leader Kim Il Sung drives the Japanese,

the wicked jab devils from Korea.

Reclaims it according to their literature.

There's a book with this title.

The US imperialist star of the Korean War.

That's literally the title of one of their books.

Reinvade them.

The great leader Kim Il Sung had a so-called strategic retreat

during the Korean War.

And eventually he kicked us out of the North.

And now they're still occupying their brethren in the South.

So that's kind of their version of how the two Koreas came about.

Now that is fascinating.

And could I say what there's one more call?

No, go go go.

It's been said that when refugees learn that the great leader Kim Il Sung

star the Korean War,

it would be akin to one of us learning that we bomb the Japanese

at Pearl Harbor.

Because it is the entire basis of their history.

So when you learn it's the opposite,

like your brain doesn't even know what to do.

And look, you come from reaching from communist countries.

Both of you, I have mum from a communist country.

There's different flavors of communism.

You've got the OG, we've got the AIA flavor.

The AIA, the Omiro, the communism.

That's racist.

I know, but it's enjoyable.

So no one cares.

There's those end bombs again.

What type of communism are they practicing in North Korea?

Is it very similar to the Soviet style?

Is it their own thing?

So I will, this, I don't know how to say this about something like

a making a joke, but they no longer identify as communist.

So according to North Korea,

there's something called the Juche idea,

which is Kim Il Sung's great revelation,

which is, man is the master of everything and creates everything.

Right?

And what this means is it's an ideology just for Korea,

and for Koreans.

And it's this idea of total nationalism,

and this total sense of,

we're going to create everything originally,

and we're not going to have to take things

from other nations, especially ideas.

So for example, they have like an arc de triumf

in the middle of Pyongyang,

which is where the great leader Kim Il Sung was sworn to office.

And there's, I think the same number of bricks

is every day he was alive,

or it's the number of bricks is something significant.

And even though it looks exact to the one in Paris,

it's actually based on a Korean medieval like fortress.

And they have this big obelisk,

which just looks the tower of the Juche idea,

which looks just like the Washington monument.

No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not based on that.

It's based on some Korean thing.

So their insistence is,

everything has to be from Korea, by Koreans,

and for Koreans.

So they don't acknowledge,

especially decreasingly,

anything to other countries.

So in the Soviet Union,

they have the hammer and sickle on their flag.

It's the symbol of the workers,

and the farmers,

they added a writing brush for the intellectuals.

So it's completely different.

Has nothing to do with the hammer and sickle.

It's just hammer and sickle writing brush.

So they increasingly downplay

what role other people,

other nations had to have.

They'll mention map a little bit,

helping in the Korean War.

They'll mention style a little bit.

But the argument is,

they did it pretty much themselves.

And they take pride,

understandably,

in that this small nation

is taking on, you know,

Japan and America,

and basically forcing us to our knees in their perspective.

And the regime is effectively

a hereditary monarchy at this point.

So this,

what I learned from the North Korean literature,

which I found extremely interesting is,

they acknowledge foreign criticism

and they reply to it.

So when Kim Jong-il,

the dear leader,

the son of the great leader,

Kim Jong-il,

was announced as the next leader.

This was, of course,

in communist circles,

the second world enormous,

a controversial,

because we're against kings,

everyone's equal.

And their argument is,

no, no, no, no, no, no, you idiots.

He wasn't picked because he's the son,

he was picked because he understands Kim Jong-il's son,

and the Jewish idea better than anyone else.

And all of the propaganda post that

was meant to kind of buttress this idea.

And if you read their newspapers,

it's interesting.

Like, when I was in the plane

they gave me newspapers two weeks ago,

it doesn't matter,

because the news is all the same,

because it's not necessarily that the leaders are gods.

It's the idea that everyone in the country

is a major scruo.

So you'll have some factory,

your glass factory,

and when you read the propaganda,

no one's named except for the leader.

So they'll say, like,

the dear leader Kim Jong-il went to this glass factory,

and there's a problem with the machine,

and everyone's standing around

and didn't know what to do.

And then the dear leader saw

that there's this dirt trapped in this crack,

and he popped it out,

and then all the circuitry was working again.

Everyone starts clapping,

and it's like,

okay, great.

And that's tomorrow,

we're going to go to the box factory.

So the idea is only he's basically competent

and but for the leader,

everything's going to go to hell,

and that also applies militarily.

Because the argument is,

just as the US imperialist invaded us

during the Korean War,

we are biting our time to reinvade.

We have based in South Korea,

and but for now Kim Jong-un,

they will be here tomorrow,

and they will kill you all.

And this national trauma of the 1950s

is still very much a part of their culture,

and you can't blame them.

I mean, the blitz is obviously a part

of the British culture,

and that was nothing compared to what the Korean people

had to experience.

So what is life life for the average Korean?

North Korean.

North Korean.

Absolutely.

Well, they did South Korean as an North Korean.

So they did something,

the thing that's beautiful about these

totalitarian regimes,

is their language.

Because everything is portrayed in great terms, right?

So in North Korea,

they did something called the Understanding People Project.

It had several iterations.

That was one of them.

Sounds great.

I want to understand people.

You guys want to understand people.

What they did,

they did this repeatedly.

They interviewed every single person in North Korea.

And they figured out what was your family background?

Were you part of the great leader,

Kim Il Sung's team of guerillas?

Were you a priest or a capitalist landowner?

And it went up to your second cousin.

Based on this,

you were assigned a Songbun score.

Songbun is their caste system.

And there's three broadcasts,

favored, hostile, and wavering.

And there's subcasts.

I think it's like 50 or 30 out of even remember this.

I mean, here it is.

It's like a credit score.

The social credit score that China is trying to do.

You're not told your Songbun,

but you could figure it out

because your teacher will treat you a certain way.

This determines every aspect of your life,

including whether you can even step,

you can't travel internally without permission.

You can't even,

I've met refugees who had low Songbun.

And they're like,

you've been to Pyongyang.

Is it amazing?

I'm like, no.

Don't you realize it's not amazing?

But to even step foot in Pyongyang,

you have to have high Songbun.

If you're going to be a guide,

like, you know, when I went on my tour,

your Songbun has to be through the roof.

You have to be very reputable.

If you have,

the thing is in the 90s,

when the famine hit,

those cities, towns,

which had a poor Songbun,

were the last ones to get food.

And they were the first ones to start.

So it was explicitly genocidal,

in terms of using food distribution

to maintain the regime,

and to kind of get rid of the people who you don't like.

And Kim Jong-il explicitly said,

having too many people make socials and difficult.

And let's touch on the famine.

Because when I was reading about it,

it was horrific.

And I couldn't believe that it happened as comparatively recently as a 1990s.

So the UN,

because the thing is for people watching this need to understand,

famine is only an issue for political reasons.

There is enough food produced worldwide.

I think to feed everyone three or four times over,

the only reason people go hungry,

I was talking years ago to someone,

my friend was dating a communist girl,

and she said,

as many Americans starve as people in North Korea.

And I'm like,

all right, let's look it up.

And it's turned out the only Americans who had starved

were like people who had been like captives.

You know, like someone kidnapped you and killed you.

It's not a thing.

The UN went to North Korea to feed distributed food,

and they would take them to village one on Monday

and everything's fine.

They took them to village two on Tuesday.

They went back to village one on Wednesday.

And the people,

he's like, we're here before it.

No, you weren't.

They weren't allowed to have Korean speakers on the staff.

And they, Kim Jong-il said,

if you have these foreigners giving them food,

they're not going to need us.

So this was a conscious decision in the part of the regime

to allow the people to starve

to maintain their hold on power.

Eventually, the UN gave up and went home.

So this was a,

I think 10% of the population starved,

sewage broke down,

holio came back.

And do you know what they called it?

The Arduous March,

the same thing that the great leader Kim Il Sung had to do

and he was escaping the Wicked Jack Devils

in the pre-World War II days.

Now, we as a nation,

calling on that narrative,

are walking around Arduous March.

We got to stay the course,

and we're going to see things through to the end.

And is North Korea now from a kind of west

on the global perspective now effectively a contained issue?

So it's terrible for the people who live there.

But it's not a country unlike Iran or the Soviet Union

that's going to try and project its power externally

and mess things up in terms of.

Yeah, North Korea's biggest excursions

internationally were with South Korea.

You know, they blew up a South Korean airliner

because South Korea got the Olympics

and Kim Jong-il was salty about it.

I talk about that and do a reader as well.

But they're, they're,

they're, they're,

they're a size of like,

they're, they're the small country.

They're, the idea of expansions,

where are they going to go?

They're peninsula.

They don't have this huge navy to go elsewhere.

China, of course, and then have a contentious,

but you know,

a strong relationship in many regards.

So yeah, they're not,

the Juche idea is four Koreans only.

They, and they say this explicitly.

You can't export it to China.

And although the conceit

is that all these countries around the world are,

you know, very interested in Kim Jong-il's own teachings

and their books are translated.

Oh, we all care about him so much.

But the point is,

this is just four Korea.

And it's not like Iran.

And did they pursue nuclear weapons

so that regime change will be impossible?

Right. So Kim Jong-il explicitly said,

we are going to make North Korea like a hedgehog.

Because a hedgehog is a small animal

with spines on its back, pointing every direction.

And that could take on the American wolf

and the Russian bear and the Chinese dragon.

And he's right.

And what's the extent of the nuclear arsenal?

We don't know necessarily exactly,

but it's not minor.

And they're expanding on it.

And here's the thing.

You don't need,

Seoul is,

I remember during Trump's first term

where Trump named John Bolton

as national security adviser.

And John Bolton had been an editorial

on the Wall Street Journal saying,

basically like,

if we want to strike North Korea,

I don't think we even need to tell Seoul

or we need the approval.

It's like,

Seoul is just across the DMZ.

That's where the border was drawn

between the two Koreas.

They can hit Seoul with population of several million

easily and quickly.

So it is a very dangerous game

to be provocative with North Korea.

At the same time,

as you saw in Romania,

as you saw in Libya,

if that North Korean regime falls down,

those people at the top

are going to personally be hanged.

And they understand this very well.

When Chucheska was shot in Romania

on Christmas Day,

Jim Jong-il took that footage,

played it every day

for the party cadre,

and said,

if we go down,

this is what's going to happen to all of us.

And he's not wrong.

And one of the interesting stats

about the Chucheska demise

is that two days before

there was an opinion poll in Romania,

which said that he had 93% approval rating.

How, I mean,

are the people of North Korea basically

oppressed slaves

or is there actual real support for the regime?

It's a mix.

I spoke to someone who is fairly,

I can't, whatever.

They know what they're talking about.

I don't want to out them.

The CIA.

Mossad.

Obviously.

His point is

that the people at the top

and especially in the cities

know what's all bullshit.

Like they know that Jim Jong-il

is not the greatest things in sliced bread.

They know it's nonsense.

But there's an enormous incentive for them

to stay the course

and do what they can to try to keep the machine running.

Something I want people to appreciate is

and this often is a problem

when we talk about Asian countries.

These aren't robots.

These are human beings.

And I said this for over a decade now,

what's surprised me the most

is how great of a sense of humor

the North Koreans had.

They are fun people.

And that is, in a sense,

makes it more tragic.

The way I ingratiate myself

through the North Korean people,

my guide,

is I took every racist joke I knew

and made the punchline Japanese.

So how do you keep a Japanese man

from drowning?

Take your foot off his neck.

What do you call a thousand Japanese

at the bottom of the ocean?

A good start.

My guide was in tears.

And for a week,

I was the funniest person in North Korea.

So,

and they,

what I did when I went there

is I got everyone's face and waived

as a noctious American

because I knew they would give me a real reaction

because they're not going to have those improv skills.

And you see grandmothers

with their grandkids

and you wave with the grandkids

and the grandma smiles.

She's proud or grandkids.

And you see the teenage boys

in their Adidas track suits

and they're all surly,

chewing gum and looking you over.

And you see the girls laughing and giggling

and you see,

we went to the

maternity hospital

and in the lobby,

there's a military guy holding his baby

and you get what thumbs up

and he's proud, you know?

So the humanity

is pervasive there

and shockingly normal,

which makes it that much more tragic.

They also do have

a much greater sense of community

than we have in the West.

There really is this sense of

and I think this happens

in poor neighborhoods here too.

Like, I don't have a lot.

You don't have a lot.

Like, okay, I'll do your dishes.

You do this for me.

They do have this sense of community.

I guess you have to,

but that is a positive.