When James Holland was on the show, he pointed out that democratic Germany was actually doing rather well, and it was only when there was an economic shock in the form of 1929 that we actually saw Fascism (as well as non-Russian communism) appear as a serious geopolitical problem. Considering that Britain, France, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, certain US states and myriad other countries in Europe and the Anglosphere are playing Russian roulette with their economies, am I right to be worried that one of those could turn into the next Venezuela, Nazi Germany, or even just a Turkey-like country which is willing to play both sides depending on what's convenient, thus eliminating the peace, prosperity and security of Western Europe?
Holland is perhaps a little optimistic about the pre-crash period in Weimar Germany. Many civil institutions were thriving, but many had also become increasingly embroiled in political activism/extremism of one form or another. It's worth reading Hannah Arendt on the subject: she is quite clear that many of the societal forces which the Nazis would later use to gain power were there in an embryonic form before the crash.
However, Holland is also right. Economic crashes also act as a triggering event, bringing deep ressentiment and dissatisfaction at social and economic conditions to the fore.
Think of it this way: the 2008 crash brought a backlash against neoliberalism to a head. The social and political crisis it caused was a reaction to stored up anger, frustration and bitterness brought about by accumulated social damage, with the fingerprints of community destruction through deindustrialisation and bad trade deals writ large across large swathes of America. Both Bernie Sanders and Trump capitalised on the same frustration at a political class that failed to recognise they had got the economics completely wrong. They were also both successful in exactly the same regions- once proud manufacturing hubs which had been hollowed out by a flawed economic ideology which was only a net positive at the global level.
The key insight is understanding that economic value isn't the only type of value. People also place a high premium on reliable employment, strong, somewhat homogenous communities and social cohesion, as well as the pride which comes from engineering accomplishments, but is completely absent from a successful finance sector.
The 1929 global depression was an accelerant to an already destructive fire. America had cut it's labour surpluses in the twenties by restricting inward migration. The Europeans had no such mechanism as the excessive labour supply was driven by large scale migration from rural to urban by internal populations.
Even then, would Germany have been Hitlerian if it weren’t for the crash? Radical politics has always existed, and indeed even did exist during Weimar Germany in its ‘foetal stage’, but it was very much a fringe movement. It was only once 1929 happens that it wasn’t fringe anymore.
Think of it this way, Zac Polanski is pushing fringe politics to the centre, but if the right was able to unite, and Kemi/Nigel/Rupert were able to be the Thatcher of our time, the economy starts booming, cultural problems with migration are a thing of the past, and everything actually works again, would Polanski’s politics be the same threat to British democracy as if the right didn’t unite and things continued getting worse?
You're right, probably not- at least not in the short-term. However, I do think there is high probability that either a non-limited socialist government, or reactionary Prussian militarist state might have taken control by the late thrities.
Triggering events like crashes seem to act like accelerants, increasing both the radical conversion rate and the degree of radicalisation towards extremism. The economics don't produce the atomisation, alienation, or fury at a political class which fails to acknowledge fundamental problems with their worldview, what the economics do determine is the length of the period which people will put up with a dystopian condition and the extremity of the response when they organise towards drastic change.
It's worth noting that Niall Ferguson gave a talk at Google Zeitgeist before Trump was elected for Trump 1.0. He called it 'A Recipe for Populism'. He had done research for the talk and found that with each of the four times that America had veered towards populism two conditions were in effect: a rise in foreign-born migrants above 14% of the population and a major economic downturn. In each of the preceding cases before Trump, conventional politicians acted to restrict immigration, thus stealing the wind out of the sails of their populist competitors and consigning them to obscurity.
The politicians should have learned the lessons of history. Popular sentiment expressed through the ballot box is an important safety valve. Often ordinary people spot genuine problems long before the political class is willing to admit them, also because the politicians themselves are largely insulated from the problems. In most high education, high income neighbourhoods, migrants tend to be of higher quality and far more integrated. We even have data on this: Hofstede's Power Distance Index shows the better educated migrants are far more acculturated to Western values. This is why highly selective high immigration systems, like the one Australia operated before it relaxed the veto on blue collar jobs, can work far more successfully than systems which are not selective.
Critics will point out that Australia does have problems. These arise from two areas. First, the disastrous decision to take in refugee populations with a low degree of compatibility with the West. Second, the relaxation of the formerly great points-based system to include skilled blue collar jobs.
The best way to think of it is like a cumulative load. Economics sets the parameters for when the load becomes too high, but it doesn't really influence the accumulation of justified frustration and resentment. That's because labour is pretty inelastic. Better economic conditions only really filter down to the people suitable for the narrow portion of the socioeconomic spectrum the political economics is trying to prioritise. Neoliberalism made a great deal of heterodox economics. It's a good point, but nations require internal heterodoxy of labour opportunity just as much as overall trade benefits from regional specialisations.
You argue that the calibre of British politicians has declined. But why? Did worse people enter politics or did politics itself become a profession that increasingly selects for the wrong kind of person?
Would Churchill, Thatcher or Attlee even survive the modern political selection process, with social media scrutiny, party vetting, 24-hour news and the demand never to have said anything off the cuff?
During the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas Israel has repeatedly been condemned for killing of journalists. However Israel claims that these are not legitimate journalists but a mouthpiece for Hamas Propaganda.
While I fully agree that journalists do a vital job and should be protected while they do their job, do you believe that a journalist can also be a terrorist and if so are they a legitimate war target?
The left state believes they are the best parents, as communist countries do. Women are encouraged to work and hand their children to state child care from three months. Do you think we have female emancipation backwards? The greatest joy and your future is your children and we are handing them to others who have betrayed that trust and filled them with fear and hatred of the West?
The population crisis is for me both deeply personal and scares me on a wider basis. I have two children, an IVF miracle daughter who has grown up to sterilise herself in the trans cult, and a son who has a girlfriend who is scared of her own body, is convinced the world is overpopulated and ruined by the West, and is in her mid thirties and will not countenance children. I am fearful for their futures. I provided as a sole parent the best education I could, and in doing sealed their "woke"futures. It is a microcosm of Europe, apart maybe from Poland. How did politicians arrive at the idea that population is best solved by introducing replacement foreign population with none of our shared beliefs or reverence for the stuggles of our forefathers?
How do we convince people the fertility crisis is a problem? Because the ones not having children are on the left, and they seem content to have foreigners imported as a a solution.
Has the advent of an exceptionally short media cycle led to inaccurate reporting? And is the second order effect of this the politicians that we get today who sound great in a 5 second sound grab, but could not sell a meat tray at pub on a Friday afternoon.
In Australia at least the media often seems to be co ordinated toward reporting a specific narrative. Is this an organic state, air a specific process driven by the organisations themselves?
When people say they do not have kids because of reasons like the economy or climate change, do you think they're being honest with themselves, or do they simply not want the responsibility of parenting?
I think it is a hedonistic culture. Hanging out with your friends is everything. Children are hard work. We have forgotten the main lesson that anything of value is worth striving for and brings the greatest reward. Sadly they will work this out when it is too late.
When exactly is violence and war justified, if not in self-defence against an illegal invasion? If we acted without quangos of international human rights lawyers, we would be solving this in a week. The only reason this issue cannot be resolved is due to the extremists in our midst putting the lives of pretty much any migrant above the life and safety of fellow Englishmen.
Suicidal Empathy gives far too much leeway because suicide insinuates the destruction of oneself alone. Whereas what they are doing here is destroying themselves, but also the country and millions of people around them.
When the harmful consequences of a policy are known, publicly debated, widely predicted, and pursued anyway, the people responsible are not committing an act of self-harm — they're imposing a foreseeable, unconsented cost on millions of people who never agreed to bear it. That's not suicide, it's reckless disregard for the safety and consent of others, and if applied the other way around, it would be on BBC News at 10 with panorama investigations into 'undemocratic government' everything is so one sided.
Hi there, i understand it is a cliche but can you say your guess as a percentage likelyhood that the whole media is controlled by some secret blob manipulating the world - I have never believed it and dont want to but to anyone looking at the evidence of what is happening cannot help but come to this conclusion? Is it just a freak clash of everyones individual interests aligning with the outcome? I get fed up thinking about it, but feel ignorant if i ignore it.
Why not just do as Poland does and give tax benefits or breaks on an increasing scale when you have 2 or more kids. We could also give longer time off for maternity leave.
I wish I could have something smart to ask that you two won’t cover at all… yes discuss the calibre of whats on offer, but perhaps add projections one what the potential consequences of those people in power are, and how the people will react…
When James Holland was on the show, he pointed out that democratic Germany was actually doing rather well, and it was only when there was an economic shock in the form of 1929 that we actually saw Fascism (as well as non-Russian communism) appear as a serious geopolitical problem. Considering that Britain, France, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, certain US states and myriad other countries in Europe and the Anglosphere are playing Russian roulette with their economies, am I right to be worried that one of those could turn into the next Venezuela, Nazi Germany, or even just a Turkey-like country which is willing to play both sides depending on what's convenient, thus eliminating the peace, prosperity and security of Western Europe?
Holland is perhaps a little optimistic about the pre-crash period in Weimar Germany. Many civil institutions were thriving, but many had also become increasingly embroiled in political activism/extremism of one form or another. It's worth reading Hannah Arendt on the subject: she is quite clear that many of the societal forces which the Nazis would later use to gain power were there in an embryonic form before the crash.
However, Holland is also right. Economic crashes also act as a triggering event, bringing deep ressentiment and dissatisfaction at social and economic conditions to the fore.
Think of it this way: the 2008 crash brought a backlash against neoliberalism to a head. The social and political crisis it caused was a reaction to stored up anger, frustration and bitterness brought about by accumulated social damage, with the fingerprints of community destruction through deindustrialisation and bad trade deals writ large across large swathes of America. Both Bernie Sanders and Trump capitalised on the same frustration at a political class that failed to recognise they had got the economics completely wrong. They were also both successful in exactly the same regions- once proud manufacturing hubs which had been hollowed out by a flawed economic ideology which was only a net positive at the global level.
The key insight is understanding that economic value isn't the only type of value. People also place a high premium on reliable employment, strong, somewhat homogenous communities and social cohesion, as well as the pride which comes from engineering accomplishments, but is completely absent from a successful finance sector.
The 1929 global depression was an accelerant to an already destructive fire. America had cut it's labour surpluses in the twenties by restricting inward migration. The Europeans had no such mechanism as the excessive labour supply was driven by large scale migration from rural to urban by internal populations.
Even then, would Germany have been Hitlerian if it weren’t for the crash? Radical politics has always existed, and indeed even did exist during Weimar Germany in its ‘foetal stage’, but it was very much a fringe movement. It was only once 1929 happens that it wasn’t fringe anymore.
Think of it this way, Zac Polanski is pushing fringe politics to the centre, but if the right was able to unite, and Kemi/Nigel/Rupert were able to be the Thatcher of our time, the economy starts booming, cultural problems with migration are a thing of the past, and everything actually works again, would Polanski’s politics be the same threat to British democracy as if the right didn’t unite and things continued getting worse?
You're right, probably not- at least not in the short-term. However, I do think there is high probability that either a non-limited socialist government, or reactionary Prussian militarist state might have taken control by the late thrities.
Triggering events like crashes seem to act like accelerants, increasing both the radical conversion rate and the degree of radicalisation towards extremism. The economics don't produce the atomisation, alienation, or fury at a political class which fails to acknowledge fundamental problems with their worldview, what the economics do determine is the length of the period which people will put up with a dystopian condition and the extremity of the response when they organise towards drastic change.
It's worth noting that Niall Ferguson gave a talk at Google Zeitgeist before Trump was elected for Trump 1.0. He called it 'A Recipe for Populism'. He had done research for the talk and found that with each of the four times that America had veered towards populism two conditions were in effect: a rise in foreign-born migrants above 14% of the population and a major economic downturn. In each of the preceding cases before Trump, conventional politicians acted to restrict immigration, thus stealing the wind out of the sails of their populist competitors and consigning them to obscurity.
The politicians should have learned the lessons of history. Popular sentiment expressed through the ballot box is an important safety valve. Often ordinary people spot genuine problems long before the political class is willing to admit them, also because the politicians themselves are largely insulated from the problems. In most high education, high income neighbourhoods, migrants tend to be of higher quality and far more integrated. We even have data on this: Hofstede's Power Distance Index shows the better educated migrants are far more acculturated to Western values. This is why highly selective high immigration systems, like the one Australia operated before it relaxed the veto on blue collar jobs, can work far more successfully than systems which are not selective.
Critics will point out that Australia does have problems. These arise from two areas. First, the disastrous decision to take in refugee populations with a low degree of compatibility with the West. Second, the relaxation of the formerly great points-based system to include skilled blue collar jobs.
The best way to think of it is like a cumulative load. Economics sets the parameters for when the load becomes too high, but it doesn't really influence the accumulation of justified frustration and resentment. That's because labour is pretty inelastic. Better economic conditions only really filter down to the people suitable for the narrow portion of the socioeconomic spectrum the political economics is trying to prioritise. Neoliberalism made a great deal of heterodox economics. It's a good point, but nations require internal heterodoxy of labour opportunity just as much as overall trade benefits from regional specialisations.
You argue that the calibre of British politicians has declined. But why? Did worse people enter politics or did politics itself become a profession that increasingly selects for the wrong kind of person?
Would Churchill, Thatcher or Attlee even survive the modern political selection process, with social media scrutiny, party vetting, 24-hour news and the demand never to have said anything off the cuff?
Or did we all just get older and start scrutinising our politicians more? 😂
After such a distinguished career in the media, why did you leave it, and do you have any regrets?
During the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas Israel has repeatedly been condemned for killing of journalists. However Israel claims that these are not legitimate journalists but a mouthpiece for Hamas Propaganda.
While I fully agree that journalists do a vital job and should be protected while they do their job, do you believe that a journalist can also be a terrorist and if so are they a legitimate war target?
The left state believes they are the best parents, as communist countries do. Women are encouraged to work and hand their children to state child care from three months. Do you think we have female emancipation backwards? The greatest joy and your future is your children and we are handing them to others who have betrayed that trust and filled them with fear and hatred of the West?
The population crisis is for me both deeply personal and scares me on a wider basis. I have two children, an IVF miracle daughter who has grown up to sterilise herself in the trans cult, and a son who has a girlfriend who is scared of her own body, is convinced the world is overpopulated and ruined by the West, and is in her mid thirties and will not countenance children. I am fearful for their futures. I provided as a sole parent the best education I could, and in doing sealed their "woke"futures. It is a microcosm of Europe, apart maybe from Poland. How did politicians arrive at the idea that population is best solved by introducing replacement foreign population with none of our shared beliefs or reverence for the stuggles of our forefathers?
How do we convince people the fertility crisis is a problem? Because the ones not having children are on the left, and they seem content to have foreigners imported as a a solution.
Has the advent of an exceptionally short media cycle led to inaccurate reporting? And is the second order effect of this the politicians that we get today who sound great in a 5 second sound grab, but could not sell a meat tray at pub on a Friday afternoon.
In Australia at least the media often seems to be co ordinated toward reporting a specific narrative. Is this an organic state, air a specific process driven by the organisations themselves?
When people say they do not have kids because of reasons like the economy or climate change, do you think they're being honest with themselves, or do they simply not want the responsibility of parenting?
Is the fertility crisis self perpetuating where the less you see kids, the less you want them and so the less kids there are to see?
I think it is a hedonistic culture. Hanging out with your friends is everything. Children are hard work. We have forgotten the main lesson that anything of value is worth striving for and brings the greatest reward. Sadly they will work this out when it is too late.
When exactly is violence and war justified, if not in self-defence against an illegal invasion? If we acted without quangos of international human rights lawyers, we would be solving this in a week. The only reason this issue cannot be resolved is due to the extremists in our midst putting the lives of pretty much any migrant above the life and safety of fellow Englishmen.
Suicidal Empathy gives far too much leeway because suicide insinuates the destruction of oneself alone. Whereas what they are doing here is destroying themselves, but also the country and millions of people around them.
When the harmful consequences of a policy are known, publicly debated, widely predicted, and pursued anyway, the people responsible are not committing an act of self-harm — they're imposing a foreseeable, unconsented cost on millions of people who never agreed to bear it. That's not suicide, it's reckless disregard for the safety and consent of others, and if applied the other way around, it would be on BBC News at 10 with panorama investigations into 'undemocratic government' everything is so one sided.
Hi there, i understand it is a cliche but can you say your guess as a percentage likelyhood that the whole media is controlled by some secret blob manipulating the world - I have never believed it and dont want to but to anyone looking at the evidence of what is happening cannot help but come to this conclusion? Is it just a freak clash of everyones individual interests aligning with the outcome? I get fed up thinking about it, but feel ignorant if i ignore it.
Why not just do as Poland does and give tax benefits or breaks on an increasing scale when you have 2 or more kids. We could also give longer time off for maternity leave.
Are you aware of the mouse utopia experiments? Do you think there's any relation to the fertility crisis?
I wish I could have something smart to ask that you two won’t cover at all… yes discuss the calibre of whats on offer, but perhaps add projections one what the potential consequences of those people in power are, and how the people will react…
Thanks and good luck team