Pinchbeck speaks with Melik Kaylan, a journalist who has covered international politics and conflict zones for the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and Forbes, and who wrote for Connoisseur when Pinchbeck worked there. Kaylan argues that Donald Trump is not an American anomaly but one instance of a global authoritarian-populist archetype. He traces the campaign script, warnings of civil war and of foreigners overrunning the country, to a 2012 election he covered in Georgia in the Caucasus, where an oligarch used near-identical lines four years before Trump's first win, which led him to suspect a shared origin. He attributes the pattern's success to genuine grievances, particularly over immigration and demographic change, that incumbent Western parties were too cautious to address. Toward the close they discuss Peter Thiel's enthusiasm for The Sovereign Individual and proposals to displace the dollar with crypto.
Guest: Melik Kaylan
In brief
- Kaylan argues Americans misread Trump as a domestic phenomenon when he is one national instance of a populist-authoritarian type appearing worldwide.
- He reports encountering the same campaign talking points in a 2012 Georgian election that resurfaced in the 2016 US race, and suspected at the time they originated from a common script.
- Kaylan contends the populists succeed because mainstream Western parties refused to engage real public grievances, especially about immigration and demographic change, leaving the issue to whoever would claim it.
- Pinchbeck notes the sharp change in the American ethnic composition since the 1965 Immigration Act as background to that grievance.
- Kaylan predicts popular backlash will limit the Trump administration's crypto ambitions, since Americans cannot be compelled to adopt it.
- He expects considerable disruption and media manipulation but doubts the damage will prove permanent within a four-year term.
Full text
hey everybody uh today I'm here with uh the wonderful journalist and uh New York Bon viant melik Kalin who I've really been enjoying getting to know over the last year or two Mel writes for Forbes writes about culture and War zones and all sorts of stuff for the Wall Street Journal I remember him from years ago I used to edit a magazine called conosur and he was um an important feature writer for for connoisseur that was many many you know few decades ago and also I remember him writing for spy magazine Back in the New York Magazine Heyday uh and I thought you know melik and I talk a lot about kind of like geopolitics history we have somewhat different views in some ways but I'm actually always very happy to talk about these topics he has a a sort of a breath and depth of knowledge and I thought considering the uh peculiar threshold that we find ourselves in it would be great to uh yeah to dive in with so Mel thank you for making the time I know you're not feeling like great today no I'm I'm feeling sort of a bit chesty and coffee and so on um a little bit like you really yeah yeah um so what what so what's happening how let's just start with the basics that you know Trump obviously got elected again with a bit of a mandate uh how are you feeling about that how are you seeing that did you expect it was it surprising for you okay so I take a um a particular view on that which is that Trump is not just he's everybody thinks that he's an American phenomenon and what I've been trying to encourage people to do is to think of trump as a an international phenomenon that is occurring in different countries worldwide he's a he's a kind of archetype and um he's a populist authoritarian and each country that has one thinks that they are blessed cursed by their own phenomenon Trump is not the the kind of uh popular the kind of popular authoritarian populist authoritarian politician that Trump is is not unique many countries have it he has been wished on us with his own talking points uh and so on by a kind of global movement at the moment so that's the first thing that I want people to think about is Americans tend to think that their own world is a completely insul world that they're they're sort of um uh unique in the world and and um so far away from everybody it can only happen here it's not true Trump is something that we see around the world a lot yeah so that's my first thought on it that totally makes sense but but why are we seeing it uh so much uh now why why are we seeing to be in this like Rising tide of authoritarian populism everywhere well of course um it begins earlier I mean he was elected before I saw it first when I was covering the election I I covered the uh russos spere a lot over the years and um I was doing a a cover story for Newsweek actually back in 2012 when Newsweek was Newsweek uh in which there was an election in a place called uh in in in Georgia in the Caucasus uh in tii and um there was a pro-american president who had been very popular who'd resisted the Russians and then there was a populist authoritarian who came in and all the talking points that he used to win that election against the pro-american I saw again in 2016 halfway across the world in Trump's first election and so I and I was absolutely astounded because he was a tiny little country in the Caucasus and all the same talking points were repeated in an American election that helped another oligarch win uh and they were things like if you don't vote for me there will be civil war if you don't vote for me there will be you know World War um foreigners are are overrunning the country and so on and I was astounded these were at that point very very rare talking points you didn't hear them uh hither to in in Western elections um and all of a sudden I heard them for the first time and I figured it's a KGB uh kind of script um because why would they have it in in a tiny uh russos fere country like Georgia and then have it in America almost exactly and I wrote a thing for Politico at the time um so that's my perspective on it is that there's a historical phenomenon and a global phenomenon that equ that's equivalent to Trump and Americans don't know about it and they should so that's my first point right okay but but but even okay I mean always there's always going to be the possibility for you know strongman authoritarian you know rule it always happens someplace but still it seems kind of like there must be underlying reasons why you know it's like you could always get a cold you but the but sometimes your immune system is strong enough to Ward it off so somehow the immune system hasn't been strong enough anymore to Ward it off you know one good point and I think the um you know these talking points are not plucked out of nowhere they responses to grievances that uh populations have and the fact is that the incumbent political ideologies of Western countries have not addressed them they've been too C LLY to address them and so the first person who comes along to address them becomes very popular and they are genuine issues like for example in the US you know nobody voted for um completely changing the population um uh the ethnic population of the US it just happened and it was accepted as a kind of weather phenomenon you know climate and if you try to put some kind of a prevention on it you were racist fascist this that and the other and you know if you if you attack people for trying to protect their nation state every single day of the week you'll lose and that's what's been happening in all these countries because the populist authoritarians have taken that issue to heart and they're using it and people feel strongly about it and when they do in something that was considered perfectly normal uh I don't know 10 15 20 years ago is now considered to be rabidly exclusionary and racist and of course it it hands a victory over to the populist authoritarians because it's something that people care about you know that the the U the population that exists already cares about it yeah well I guess in the US there was like what was the Immigration Act in ' 65 the idea was that we needed a lot more people here to build the Industrial Systems all the all the companies were growing and everything um I I was really surprised when I looked at the numbers I think even in 1970 the non-white population was like 11 or 12 or 133% uh and then just over the next decades it increased rapidly so now I think it's like 44% or something um but I mean I think the idea was I mean I guess Steven Ratner uh was a adviser maybe for um Obama and so on but his thing you know he was like look like we actually need the US needs a million immigrants coming in every year um just to replace the Aging population just just to maintain us where we're at and actually to um you know considering the population more loss we're having you know because it's an older population we would actually need something more like four million a year to to grow at the historic rate of growth so so maybe that's really where the sort of you know neoliberal kind of Democrats are at is that actually you know we don't we may people may not like it but this is actually necessary for the country to keep you know having a strong and so on well the country should be the one to decide um how much they wanted at what um uh at what degree of uh of influx um how much they want to change the to change the stable populations of cities and and Country as they exist um and also how strict you are about apportioning who to come in to the country in what numbers uh any country should be able to decide that uh this country and and now much of Western Europe apparently if you want to decide who comes into your country and who doesn't you're racist and this that and the other and of course that alienates everybody and and gives the bad guys a chance to win in elections and once they win they don't go away so it's just not worth it um and the other argument which i' I've heard and I think it's a good one is that it's great the the numbers of immigrants and the whole immigration principle is always justified in terms of the economy and the argument against that is you're building it's great for an economy but it's not necessarily great for a country because you're building a country uh you're not just building a a system system an economic system uh which after all you're going to then globalize and every single country is going to be like that and ultimately we're all maybe going to be better off having exploited all the poor people that come in the working classes of each country are going to be very angry and excluded um and ultimately we're going to be Global individualized consumers with no sense of place or national identity that's the long long-term tendency of of of that argument and it's very easy for populists to take advantage of it right I mean I I hear that but I guess also like for instance I on my corner in the East Village there was a uh Catholic School which closed down a few years ago they turned it into a processing center for uh all these Asylum Seekers who've been coming in in the last couple years and so in Winter there were like lines around the block all these like African guys and you know Venezuelan guys and finally I was like oh where are a lot of these guys coming from I learned that a lot of them coming from Ivory Coast then I did some research like what's what's going on in the Ivory Coast that that that's so bad that they're all coming here and it turns out that um you know the Ivory Coast is very exploited you know by American companies like Nestle and hershy uh we grow like 50% of the world's chocolate in the Ivory Coast and uh we pay the workers there because the the companies these corporations have made deals with the government we pay them 78 cents a day uh to do this horrible back breaking work and meanwhile as the chocolate Farms have grown the country is now largely deforested it's like 80% deforestation um so these people can't survive in their home country you know partially because of what you know maybe largely because of our extractive Industries uh so then you know just for survival they try to get here uh the family like flies them to South America and they walk North they try to get across the border I mean don't don't we then have some kind of maybe we actually do as you know also we're we're the country that more than any has created a huge amount of you know the warming that's happened through CO2 pollution and so on that's actually really negatively impacting Global South and making more and more areas of the world kind of unlivable so you know maybe we do have a bit more of a moral right to you not only allow these people to come in here but actually to to to to help them in some way well I think then you what happens there is you make that argument uh to the population and you try to solve the problem on the ground over there it doesn't help anybody that they become depopulated families break up they go on Long dangerous tracks around the world and it's not just happening in America it's happening in Europe um and it it it's even happening in India where a country that's accustomed to being the the supplier of of Poor Labor to the rest of the world suddenly he finding Africans coming in and uh and is doesn't take it very kindly uh as is the same in Italy another country that's been supplying immigrants uh to to to America and so on they don't particularly like Africans coming in there because their attitude is hey we've just saved our own asses what's going on here um so the solution is not this uh at any rate uh maybe it is to look at each of those countries and help them I mean it's also um much deeper systemic historical issue uh the rest of the world has become industrialized or the industrialized world has become industrialized Africa has not done that it's had a population explosion it doesn't it's it's sort of asynchronous with uh with the forces of development and so on and therefore it has its own problems in the meantime modern medicine is helping the the population to propagate and to multiply and what's going to happen with all those people so it's it's much bigger impersonal forces than just Western exploitation of the continent um but sure it needs to be addressed I don't think this is the solution for anybody yeah Mass immigration to to industrialized countries uh okay let's let's talk about a few other topics uh yeah once again I always appreciate that you and I have slightly different perspectives um uh I think it's it's it's healthy uh so yeah I noticed that you just wrote a piece for Forbes where you're talking about you're sort of trying to figure out what are the likely consequences of um Trump's victory for Russia and the Middle East and so on um you want to talk a little bit about what your what your perspective yeah let before we get into that let's think a little bit about the the the domestic a little bit more about the domestic future of a a trump Administration uh back in 2016 I wrote a thing for Forbes uh saying I think it was something called um you know what to expect from a trump Administration and what I did was I talked to a number of people from abroad who were who were dealing with populist authoritarian regimes they lived in them um and I've covered a lot of the world both analytically and on the ground I've been to the russos spere the Far East uh the Middle East and often covered Wars there uh so I don't speak as um some um self-opinionated loudmouth um amateur these are things that I've I've looked into and I've written books about it and so on um so the the point the reason I give that background is that one of the one of the uh points I mentioned in that column which I Do by quoting a Hungarian this is back in 2016 uh who said to me he said populists don't solve problems what they do is they invoke or create very loud controversies almost all the time um issues they bring up you know this and there's going to be an and and uh you know this is an outrage and that is a and then they don't solve that problem they just move on to the next one so the population is in a continuous state of of Crisis and panic and Terror and um and and nothing gets resolved and in the meantime deals are done behind the scenes um and this of course is is the the sort of Putin esque model but it's definitely true of of for example Hungary with Orban and so on uh where you're about to be overwhelmed by you know foreigners coming into the country and then boom you forget and you move on to the next thing which is uh NATO is trying to take over our country and and well you're a part of the EU you know what are you talking about so that that was Hungary and and the Hungarian intellectual that I interviewed back in 2016 in that forms column uh made that point to me that populists create controversies but don't resolve problems and it's one controversy a week basically very loud uh so I think that's something uh that we're going to have have with the with the Trump Administration that we should expect um another thing I think should be will be he will try to deadlock the Machinery of administration and of democracy um against itself and we're seeing this now already um with tulsey gabard being in charge of of the intelligence community and so on so on he'll he'll basically booby trap aspects of the the running of the country uh the the Machinery of the running of the country and ultimately it'll mean a hundred different problems in front of the Supreme Court and there's no way it that will be resolved and so the the wheels of running the country will grind to a hold and when that happens of course what happens is that the person in charge is able to do stuff unilaterally and by the time you catch up with it and litigate it and and and find ways to get to stop it and so it'll be too late so that's what I would say we would expect on the domestic front what do you think about uh there's a kind of question of whether you know because he's going to have an unprecedented scenario you know with the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress you know the question is whether is he like figting kind of like uh you know fascism or is it more going to go in that direction I mean for instance he and JD Vance both blurbed this book called UNH humans which said that basically liberals and leftists and so on are not actually human and don't have to be treated like humans and that actually uh what p and Franco did to their people is more or less what we need to do here um so you know some people like you know Tom Hartman is is is a is a writer who I follow like he said yeah like we'll see the immigrants you know coralled into camps first then after 6 months you know nine months a year it'll be you know independent journalism blah blah blah do you think we're going to see that or or or uh or or is that not going to happen here well the great um consolation for us is that Trump is so inefficient uh and erratic and what one should expect is a lot of the people working uh with him in Congress and even in his own Administration as we saw last time will be so astounded by you know his um his outrageous sort of incompetence and and vanity that they'll resign and so as his own Administration is failing he will be trying to make the rest of the government Machinery fail but I don't think hopefully he won't be that successful because he is so inefficient um so I'm I'm semi less despairing than a lot of of other people because if we had somebody you know like other people other countries have who are vigorous and focused and populist and so on you're likely to get an transformation of the country with all the the Strategic Points of Power taken by the um the pro populist uh personnel and I just don't think he's he he's going to meet resistance with his within his own group and uh a lot of the uh the government's bureaucracy is going to dig in um now that does mean that there's going to be huge amount of uh Conflict at least uh intellectually and emotionally within the country and hopefully it it won't spill onto the streets but I think we really have to be careful not to be calling people fascists or neo-nazis or anti-semites or it just uh it's that's that way lies victory for Putin uh civil Strife uh danger to assult you know just analyze the stuff don't give it names uh at least names that are are way too loud uh to deal with um don't be calling people names too easily and that's the way we get through it I think try not to alienate the other side too much um that that all makes sense yeah a weird way I found his like very chaotic uh and impulsive kind of nominees in a way kind of like relaxed my nervous system a little bit because you don't have the sense of there being some like wellth thought out uh plan it's more like very reactionary like let's you know let's let's you know put a middle finger to The Establishment in this way and that way and stuff like that right and I think that that the that America also is not accustomed to um cow Towing to corruption from the top uh there may be a tradition of local corruption and and this and that but not of the kind that you get with authoritarian or totalitarian systems people do hear resist when they find that um they're being pushed into um falling in line with with power um now that's not true of a lot of countries like Eastern European countries and so on they have longstanding bad habits of accepting that and seeing that their bread is buttered on that side and the and it's very quick for a Judiciary to get corrupted for example uh I don't think it's he just won't have time uh to do that to a a a system as Broad and deep as the American judiciary um but he'll try to dismantle it he'll put people here and there at various of like the intell like Tulsi gabard and the intelligence Community he intends for there to be an incessant confrontation there and what that'll do is it'll completely neutralize them they'll just be taken off the table and that's kind of what he wants because he he probably has secrets that he doesn't want them to reveal about him um I mean who doesn't um and he must have a lot of them and his attitude is here you deal with her and that'll keep you busy I think he'll be doing that a lot and what do you feel about the sort of uh I I guess it started with Peter teal in 2016 but now there's a strong alignment between the sort of you know Tech technocratic oligarchs uh and Trump you know I mean Elon musk obviously being the most noticeable but Mark Andre uh and obviously Peter teal and also I guess Larry Ellison um the um you know the director of Oracle um and you know because they could also potentially be a much more um efficient uh crew uh if uh if they were if they were allowed to operate yes so um again the model as we see internationally for this is that someone like erdogan for example in Turkey um and Putin uh what they do is they pyramid the economy uh so that what they're at the top their cronies and Friends uh are rich enough and powerful enough to employ uh big chunks of the population and ultimately those big chunks of the population will vote for the regime uh because that's what the way the patronage flows so what Trump is doing here is gathering um the sort of oligarchic structure or pyramiding the economy in that way the problem is that a he'll have fights with those people fairly quickly uh and or at least the problem for him is he'll fall out they'll fall out with each other and also the American economy is too big and too varied to Pyramid that effectively uh that quickly even if the entire Tech bro World decides to collaborate with Trump and with each other it's just not going to um uni unilateral lie the American economy um so they'll get a lot of resistance it's too varied um and and it won't work out the way it does in a lot of other countries uh whether it's it's tii Georgia whether it's turkey you know or Hungary uh in those places the economies are are limited enough or unilinear enough that you can do that you can't in the US um yeah that makes sense somebody else was telling me that um also the uh the stock market in a way is protective because Trump is going want to do things that um you know destroy the value of of companies assets and so on so if you acted too destructively too quickly um you know that that would degrade the value of of um you know Assets in the stock market no I think that's right but the the what a lot of people I mean the way the model works is that a lot of people will discover that um investors will prefer to go along with the oligarchic block and with the guy in charge of it just because regulations and and non-interference in and so on in in in the the value of something will be enhanced if it's on Trump's side yeah and if it's not he will you know Target it as as they do in other countries and um force people to come to heal Force businesses to come to heal um so that's the idea the the stock market is a little bit impersonal it doesn't give a if it looks like uh being a body of trump is going to make your div dividends higher then people will vote with their dividends for you to collaborate with Trump um but I I still don't think that I think what will happen is that um Americans are very quick to um take offense and respond to bullying and so on so there'll be a lot of that and the economy will um recoil and and again him um so hopefully there'll be like a dialectic in that situation what do you think the election revealed around the uh the Democratic party I mean I I've been um I guess most persuaded by kind of like more kind of like uh leftish analysis like David serota and Bernie Sanders that basically argue that the um the Democrats made a huge mistake sort of abandoning the working class and never fighting for like a raised minimum wage or you Healthcare things that basically 70% of the population wanted um and would have easily been like home runs uh they just simply refuse to do because it alienates their um you know their financial sort of donor base um I mean do you think that this is a reckoning for the Democratic party in any significant way um or I yeah I mean I I'm a lifelong conservative and I don't have much Sympathy for the the nostrom and Solutions of of the left but um I'll tell you what I think about that though is that I don't think whatever you offered in terms of the dollars and cents aspect of benefits for the working class um you you just were not going to get sympathy from them um because of of not protecting them in other ways you know in Immigration and um that and and and jobs um and you know that the kind of things that are a little bit more cultural um they I think they felt that there was an assault on their identity um and that's really the the thing that people like je like Leen in France and and uh and other countries uh that populists take advantage of is they very quickly switch on the um tap into the workingclass vote that's necessarily being ignored by the globalist um and the V workingclass vote is not just a matter of Economics it's a cultural thing too so I don't know that it would have worked you know to to guarantee their economic base um so let's talk about uh Russia and Ukraine if if if you're ready for it okay yeah so understanding that you've been you know fairly strong supporter of Ukraine um you know and you think that it's a just war that the US should be supporting and pushing back um against Putin in that in that situation right so I've got a long history of um being anti-putin uh and it started off with covering uh the Caucasus and Georgia and um that whole area and Ukraine and Central Asia uh where I've been a number of times also um and it's been very clear to me that Putin is a danger uh to the West on on many many levels but also this idea you know that NATO threatened Russia by coming into its backyard has completely dumbfounded the idealist in me because my thought was well those countries wanted to become europeanized and closer to Europe and Russia said no you can't now don't we isn't that a Continuum of our great struggle with Moscow and don't we owe these people who desperately want to join the West uh some kind of responsibility because we took their side and freed them from the Soviets and so on so it always astounded me when people said oh we shouldn't have encouraged on the russos spere as if the Russians have some kind of a uh Eternal right to the countries and they near abroad anyway so I've been in that struggle for years uh watched it very very closely written many things about it wrote two books about the new Cold War uh Russia China and the new Cold War and so on um and what I see in the current situation my my column in forbs now uh that's up uh is about that is that I think there's going to be a deal with the Trump Administration dumping Ukraine and Russia dumping Iran and Israel will be allowed to I think go in and and clean up Iran uh in a fullscale way in a way that the US didn't permit before um and Russia will be will be given a ceasefire that more or less imposed on on Ukraine uh and so there'll be a kind of quid proquo uh an agreement between Putin and Trump uh to each to dump uh their Ally and uh I mean I guess the concern has been that any ceasefire with Putin simply is an opportunity for him to like rebuild his army and and hit it again because he seems inexorable tendency to kind of like keep rolling it out absolutely and that's what will happen and um Trump knows it all the and and JD Vance know it and all the people who are going to support that idea in the name of saving lives and and so on know it perfectly well because we've seen it before um and what will happen is that zinski will get likely ousted for making that deal when which he'll have no choice but to make uh because the US will be threatening cutting Supply cutting um Aid and so on um as soon as that happens zalinski will probably be ousted uh Ukraine will turn into a turmoil and Russia will win that situation either way ultimately I suspect they will get their own person in power in Kiev who say look I'm here to stabilize things um just let me you know let's just stop all this fighting so which is what happened in tii a essentially pro-russian guy came in and said look let's just take our you know solve our own problems and they include foreigners coming in here and this happening and that happening and by the time Trump allows us to think about Ukraine again it'll be too late just in the same way that we barely think about Afghan now will be barely thinking about Ukraine and that's the plan and hopefully what about don't don't the doesn't the rest of Europe have a vote there I mean are they going to give up so easily in terms of supporting Ukraine or is it really just up to the us alone to be kind of the um good point good point and I and it's the a point that I discussed in the column as well which is that first of all Ukraine is not United uh secondly uh JD van is already picking a fight with NATO and Ukraine and so he clearly intends that the US have those battles they will become big loud controversies we'll be distracted by that we may or may not withdraw from NATO we'll probably like stop our funding to Nato um Europe will then try to uh support uh Ukraine without the us but NATO is part you know as you see Germany doesn't quite want to get fully uh onto that um uh on onto that side um IT Supplies a lot of money and some weapons but it doesn't so it Poland will be engaged um the Scandinavian countries will be engaged but probably you know France will make a lot of noises without being engaged Germany will and and therefore NATO itself and the EU will be slightly fragmented and support will EB for Ukraine at first there'll be a spike a lot of trump hating America hating but over time uh they will be exhausted with that in the meantime Russia will be incrementally uh nibbling away at the ceasefire borders while also destabilizing Kiev um so you know Ukraine doesn't win in that scenario hopefully I'm wrong but that's the scenario that I see from my experiences uh in around the world and how these things work I mean as a conservative well you don't have to tell me if you don't want to but did you support Trump in this in this election or were you no what's that no not at all I go back to the days when um when I was writing for spy magazine um where we made fun of trump all the time anybody who's lived in New York all these decades knows about Trump and to not possibly you know we could barely stand being in the same room as him let alone vote him in as president he's such a charlatan uh and and so unbearable as a person I'm sorry to say uh and I think a lot of the people who worked for him in his last Administration and ended up resigning uh found out exactly the same thing but you know spy invented the idea of him being a short-fingered vulgarian um so I go back many years in um in knowing a lot about Trump and disliking him uh even though I'm I'm a conservative and I don't believe he's a true conservative no he's a populist you know that's a completely different thing um so I I have never voted for him um I I would have rather uh the Democrats won in this instance at least the country would have uh survived another four years along broadly the same lines the same uh you know Democratic Republic kind of Freedom lines uh but I'm just not sure that it's it's going to be just too chaotic to predict from here on whereas the the Democrats I would have predicted four years and then they would have been ousted in a general election by a reasonably decent conservative because Trump would be too old by then uh melik you're slowly sinking into uh to Darkness oh sorry it's nice if you sit up a little bit and come a little closer we got a better better look at you maybe I should um turn on the lights too it's getting um that be nice daylight is fading uh yeah and and so let me know also what so what where are you now with uh Israel what's happening there right so again um I was in Israel uh at the um a little bit uh in this last year on and off and uh spoke to a lot of friends there and got a lot of information from them um I think what Netanyahu needs to do uh and has been doing is continuing a war that he presents as a uh an existential struggle which actually he's creating into an existential struggle by taking on more and more more and more uh borders and the next one is going to be Iran and he will um with us backing but because Trump doesn't want to put boots on the ground and has defines his identity by being sort of non Obama um he he won't agree to military forces are boots on the ground in that area but he will give full support to Israel um bombing uh Iran uh and taking out the nuclear um installations and ports and this that and the other um and that I think is the exchange with the Ukraine thing that's going to happen um hopefully what will then happen is that the the uh Saudis and others who are going to be relieved of the fear that Iran is exploiting the Arab Street um are then going to sign on to an actual peace process that gives the Palestinians some relief uh without Hamas being included and the Lebanese some relief without Hezbollah being included hopefully that's the long-term plan and will actually be beneficial um cool thank you um yeah what else what else has been on your mind I know you wrote a book about Russia and China in the new Cold War um you know how do you see relationship playing out that's interesting because obviously the issue is going to be if Teran is is put into this um this corner where they won't have their Russian allies to help them they will turn towards the Chinese and say you know will you be uh our backup if we have a full-scale confrontation uh with Israel and they won't get the Chinese to back them up the Chinese are they don't want to enter into a World War um but I think it it then comes up the question of whether they'll be able to replace the regime in Iran uh whether Israel's actions will lead to a an overthrow of the irgc and the mullers and finally they'll get some sort of freedom and democracy and that I don't think will happen because I think the Russians don't want that they they're they're happy for the Iranian projection of power in the Middle East and the nuclear capability of Iran to be depleted they're not happy for Iran for the regime seem to be replaced by a bunch of uh Democratic um you know Freedom loving um Iranian youth uh they'd rather it stay monolithically um you know authoritarian and therefore sympathetic to to to Moscow so what what they'll do is they'll support the mullers in putting down civil unrest uh they won't defend the mullers against Israeli onslaughts so the regime's not going to change and China's not going to get involved Iran will find itself Alone um a lot of this is in my column uh everybody read my column in fors that I posted a couple of days ago um and and you'll see it in um black and white there I mean even in terms of Iran historically I mean um would you say that the you know the US and at that point England made a historical Mistake by going all the way back to like 1952 they overthrew mosc who was the last democratically elected I guess president of Iran which then led to the Sha which then led to repression which then led to Islam Islamic fanaticism and fundamentalism as the only counterveiling force with enough strength to to to move the situation uh okay so um the thing that nobody tells you about madc which is is constantly pared as an example of colonial Imperial manipulation of politics uh anti-d democratically in a country uh in the typical old-fashioned way and that's the post Colonial analysis and so on first of all who invented the country who defined its borders yeah uh number one uh because when the Russians and the Brits were occupying it uh the borders could have gone anywhere in any direction um so they invented these largely the Brits invented Iran and its borders uh in the present day form and therefore invented the voter um groups uh and and the balance of of populations in the country that's number one number two they didn't offer nobody offered Iran what the people the actual populations were concerned about at the time including mosc there was a whole lot of nationalist noise um and you know Iran for Iranians and that but but who are you talking about the top third of the country is aarani and turkey speaking the bottom you know chunk of the country is is um Kurdish and Kurdish speaking another chunk is where a lot of the the oil things are is arabic speaking so arbitrarily you've created this country and then you this guy gets voted in without any of those groups being offered anything to do with their own particular concerns or identity um this guy gets called madic gets in and so what I'm trying to say is that he himself was a con construct he himself was an invention uh who by the intellectual Elites who wanted to say yes this is Iran and now we have our own you know this and they had those Elites had absolutely no connection to um the poor of the country or or the rural communities or the tribes um so yeah okay you had a kind of colonial intervention but a colonial intervention into something that itself was a a mythical construct you know yeah a falsehood so I wouldn't be so you know black and white about the whole madic thing yeah okay well listen so I get a sense you know so you think um you know we're sort of heading into a period of uh you know increasing turbulence yet I don't think sense the sense is that you don't think the USA is about to suddenly flip over into a kind of like totalitarian thing no more a confused kind of a of a situation thank God uh he's um Trump is just way too old and incompetent hopefully fingers crossed what do you think what do you think about the sort of you know the the theories around kind of the tech Libertarians actually wanting to I mean like Peter Teal's favorite book is called the sovereign individual where it talks about how you know the nation state should be destroyed and you know they're interested like kind of you know ruining the dollar and substituting crypto as like you know the reserve currency of the world and so on um you know how what you have any thoughts about all all that type of uh stuff going on well I mean I think there's going to be a good deal of that um but you they can't make us us um invest in crypto and the minute they try to do that they're going to have a popular backlash on their hands so that's the kind of thing I think that's going that will keep the Trump administrations you know their machinations in check is that the Americans will just not go there uh in the direction that they want in large numbers um there'll be you know the media will be manipulated hugely I guess by both sides yeah so that it'll be presented as a vote against the MSM or something or the Dems if you buy crypto or some such you know um but I don't think people are going to go for it um I think it'll it'll gradually uh lose momentum there'll be outcry after to outcry and there'll be lots of confusion but hopefully in four years there'll be a change and I don't think they'll do too much damage right cool I don't want to keep you too long today I hear your your your call you know be funny it I'll read from you and what's going on in the world uh maybe we'll do this again when you're more at your your your your top form yeah you know and um yeah so um thanks for thanks for sharing a little time with me today great happy to do it we'll do it again soon yeah many thanks okay byebye
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.