Carne Ross, the former British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq War and became an advocate of anarchism and bottom-up governance, returns to discuss the collapse of the rules-based international order. Ross calls Peter Thiel's techno-libertarian self-presentation dishonest, pointing to his chairmanship of Palantir, whose aggregation of citizen data across US government agencies he regards as a form of state power beyond what is usually meant by surveillance capitalism. He argues Trump is a consequence rather than a cause: falling living standards across the West, inequality, and a Democratic Party severed from ordinary voters created the opening. Unless capitalism is systemically reformed, he says, instability will keep producing figures promising to control the chaos. Pinchbeck raises Naomi Klein's disaster capitalism thesis and scenarios of engineered US debt default.
Guest: Carne Ross
In brief
- Ross argues that Peter Thiel's self-presentation as a techno-libertarian is contradicted by his chairmanship of Palantir, the engine of surveillance for much of the US government.
- He describes Palantir's aggregation of data on individuals across government as an unprecedented concentration of power, worse than surveillance capitalism.
- Ross reads Trump as a consequence of pre-existing disorder: inequality, declining living standards, and a Democratic Party that had cut itself off from ordinary voters.
- He predicts instability will deepen unless capitalism is systemically reformed, and that more leaders will offer an illusory promise of control to people who feel they have none.
- Ross notes that in his last book, published roughly twelve years earlier, he warned to beware a grinning new dictator in sharp suits with a good television manner.
- Ross contrasts London, where public housing is spread across rich and poor districts alike, with New York's sharper economic segregation.
Full text
the same types of controls that you might see in China or in Russia. You know, the the plan is to institute those here, you know, which is ironic because one of the big points of the right-wing, you know, over the last few years was freedom of speech and they felt that, you know, culture, progressive culture was was restricting um freedom of expression and that that was something they really needed to correct, you know. Yeah, that's a lie. I mean, that's a complete lie, isn't it? I mean embodied in in the hyp hypocrisy of Peter Teal who sells himself as a kind of techno libertarian but is chairman of Palanteer uh which is the engine of surveillance of much of the US government and indeed Israel and and lots of others.
I mean Palanteer is um at the vanguard of software that aggregates all data across government about us as individuals. It's an extraordinary and unprecedented power and knowledge that the government, the state and indeed companies, you know, it's it's much worse than surveillance capitalism. So, for people who don't know, Horn is a former British diplomat who then became a anarchist. We're going to be always an anarchist, but we're hiding out. Uh, and um, yeah, you still advise different countries, I believe on the diplomacy and so on, and I saw your most recent piece is on the the collapse of a rules-based order, uh, which does seem to be what's happening right now.
So, yeah, I mean, I've really enjoyed our talks of the past. I felt it would be great just to like beam in with you and, um, see where you are in the current, uh, you know, state of things. It's certainly a very um eerie, an ominous, ominous time in the United States. Um you know, certainly we seem to be descending into a kind of lawless fascism if one was to name it. Um and it's happened quite efficiently and with shocking little resistance, I would say. Um I would be curious, I guess, how you perceive that. Um is it surprising for you? has this happened or you know is this kind of like just a continuation of business as usual just in a more direct um way?
Uh no I mean I'm watching it very closely with great concern. I mean my wife and children are America as you know I lived for 17 years in New York City. Um and it's good to be back with you Daniel. Thank you for inviting me to this chat. Um, no. I mean, we watch with enormous alarm and distress what's going on. I don't think it's to be expected. Um, in a sense, you know, one could have expected it. And indeed, 12 years ago when I wrote my last book, I said we should beware a grinning new dictator in sharp suits and with a good television manner.
Um, and indeed that's kind of what we've got. um every I I don't I don't I don't find his suits very sharp. Well, well, I think I mean the, you know, it was a very vague prediction, so easy to get right. But the the, you know, the issue is that things were bad beforehand. Um, chaotic, even, disordered. Um, society was coming apart largely because of inequality, largely because the large bulk of the American people like across the West um have seen their living standards decline. um and people don't feel represented by supposedly democratic government and there would be a consequence to that and Trump is that consequence.
He's you know the many many other things that have led to him not least the uh separation of the Democratic party from any connection to quote unquote ordinary voters. um you know the fact that it has become a completely cut off lead party uh with its own corrupt interests um etc. That's obviously another factor. Uh but I do see what is happening with Trump as part of a kind of reaction to what is already happening in the world. Um which is instability and growing instability. And that instability I think will get worse I'm afraid. Um, capitalism unless profoundly reformed, systemically reformed will continue to cause chaos both socially within society and uh with the planet.
Um, and reaction to that there will be individuals who pop up and say I will control the chaos. I will speak for you. You who feel you have no control. Um, I will offer you that control. It's a an elucory offer. Of course, it's a lie. It's a fraud. Um, but they will offer it because, you know, they're egoistic and want want power like most politicians. Yeah, there's obviously a lot to unpack and think about there. I mean, um, um, one theory that I that I've heard that's been interesting to me is that, um, yeah, I mean, obviously, uh, this is connected to phenomena we're seeing all around the world with the rise of, you know, right-wing populism, as you mentioned, uh, in America.
I always thought it was kind of a special case um somehow because I guess we had so much power and so much wealth and um yeah there was a kind of um you know the Democrats were unable to address the needs of the working class um in a way that led to deepening frustration uh and in a situation where you only have like you know choice A or choice B you know ultimately everybody's going to choose choice B whatever choice B is you know so all these people have chosen choice B and um um what choice B has turned out to be is you know they kind of told us most of it I guess beforehand we could have been we were sort of warned uh but to some extent it feels like um to me anyway that there's kind of like a global oligarchic mafia that is behind the scenes um I don't know if exactly pulling the strings in a kind of conspiratorial way but um I guess One interpretation of what's happening I've heard which I thought was sort of interesting was that there was sort of like this sort of global you know wealth oligarchy kind of determined uh you know some years ago and it was kind of time for the United States to fall in the same way that Russia had you know the USSR had fallen because essentially capitalism you know has all this money pulled at the top and um there isn't really you know particularly with ecological decline and energy decline there isn't really new markets anymore for so if you if you have you know what Naomi Klein talked about is like the shock doctrine or disaster capitalism you have like a massive breakdown it actually liberates a lot of potential for capitalism because for instance you know I mean I I I suspect that that one of the plans here is ultimately to make it impossible for the US to actually pay back its debt. So then you have uh some kind of you know default or whatever that means or just um you know so then the US is forced to sell off public assets public lands to the highest bidder and yeah it liberates a lot of assets for capitals that that's one of the things that seems like it might be going on here and it's almost like the way that the US is systemically destroying its own brain trust is also hard to explain from even the perspective of far-right you know question evangelical. Why would you want there to be no diabetes research? Why would you want there to be no cancer research? But we're we're forcing, you know, all of these scientists and researchers to to flee to other countries.
Um it feels like a deliberate act of destruction against the US from within the US to some extent. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. Well, anti-intellectualism and anti-science uh sentiments are of course a fairly common trope of dictators of authoritarians um because they claim to speak for the ordinary man who is skeptical of experts who they think talk down to them. Um I don't necessarily feel there's a kind of sinister plot behind it. I always feel in you know my political analysis that usually or in fact almost invariably what is going on is on the surface. There isn't anything else to see and Trump has declared what he is and the oligarchs have pledged their support to him.
So you know I think it's pretty clear what that what what is going on. I mean it's it's very parallel albeit in a less extreme form to vimar Germany um you know a a sense of decline in America a sense that democracy is not working for the ordinary man and a a dictator steps forward who is able to articulate that almost kind of um gnostic sense of uh distress is far beyond ond policy prescriptions. It's it's a kind of elemental thing that uh Trump is able to channel uh is able to express almost by chance. I don't think he does it deliberately, but when he gets angry and channels the anger, he's somehow reflecting what uh clearly a lot of people in America feel. Um go back to the anti-intellectualism during the uh Brexit campaign here in Britain.
um a senior Tory who was uh no you know anti-intellectual himself he declared it in some press interview or something uh we've had enough of experts he was told you know that experts believed quite correctly that le Britain leaving the EU would be a disaster and he said we've had enough of expert everybody has had enough of experts and I I thought that was a very striking statement um uh of a rejection of kind of upper middle class elitism. Um, you know, urban elites who, uh, people outside of those groups feel are looking down on them. And that's certainly a phenomenon here. It's a phenomenon in the US, too. Uh Trump's vote is concentrated outside the coastal urban areas just as the right-wing Brexit Brexit and reform vote um which is our own kind of little Trump uh is concentrated outside of the big cities in decaying northern towns, coastal towns that that are in pretty bad shape and where people feel quite reasonably um very ignored um by the urban elites.
who concentrate on identity politics and yada yada yada rather than the needs of the common man. And I say man deliberately because there is a definite gendered aspect to this. Yeah. I mean um uh I do tend to think there's there's a little bit of a hidden orchestration around. For instance, like the um the day after Trump announced his first round of tariffs on liberation day, it was like a golf tournament sponsored by the so Saudi sovereign wealth fund. Um you know, it it just feels like, you know, these types of policies that Trump is doing, you know, everyone's like, "Oh, he's so chaotic. He doesn't know what he's doing." Um it seems like it actually does support.
I mean, for instance, these tariffs are kind of um a uh strike against the middle class, the upper middle class in the US primarily, you know, and the sort of lower even the lower millionaire class. So, if you have a little bit of a small factory overseas or export import, you know, vintage furniture from Europe or something, you know, you're you're you're stuck like you can't you can't you can't do anything because you don't know when these things are going to change. You can't plan for the future, you know. So it seems like I mean they learned a lot from um yeah other other dictators who tried to centralize the country power in in in a in a very high speed way and the tariffs are actually part of part part of that. Um the tariffs are not really happening yet.
I mean I know they're still threatened uh but Trump keeps putting them off as as become well known. And of course Trump tariffs hurt everybody. They don't just hurt a particular segment of society. Uh, I mean they hurt farmers. They hurt steel workers. They hurt car car manufacturers. Uh, um, they push up inflation for everybody in society. I mean, they are incredibly stupid and decades of trade policy has been devoted to trying to get rid of them around the world. And it's I mean again there's a parallel with Brexit and Trump is that Trump and Brexit Britain are the only two places that have actually sought to increase trade barriers rather than decrease them.
So there's there's an interesting parallel there. It's a kind of isolationism. It's a kind of erroneous belief that the rest of the world can pay for their own problems rather than the US or uh anyone else having to pay for it themselves. I mean, it's a deeply nationalistic um American centric view of the world. I I don't necessarily see evidence for it being planned though. I mean the the the tariff imposition the announcement was so incredibly chanded so fantastically stupid you know that it was the tariffs were calculated on the basis of the trade deficit with each country not on any other calculation of the actual barriers to trade with that particular country but just as a result of the trade deficit.
So you've got these extraordinary aberrations of Vietnam and islands populated only by penguins getting high tariffs. I mean it it doesn't speak of a carefully prepared kind of uh two um or or secret machination. It instead speaks of an incredibly idiotic um you know incompetent regime perhaps. I mean, I like this comment that that Jerry Weinstein made in the chat here. The chaos around the the tariffs is their point. Um, but the the and and yes, the impact is across is across sectors, but obviously if you're the owner of, you know, Walmart or, you know, one of Trump's, you know, billionaire corporate cronies, you have the cushion of of of wealth uh to, you know, not really be impacted.
Whereas if you're a small farmer, you know, who now can't even, you know, harvest your food because of illegal immigrants and then you have tariffs, I mean, you're basically going to go out of business, that's going to allow a larger, you know, aggro business uh to corporation to buy up that farm. So, so, so you know the the theory would be you know it is chaotic it is turbulent they are they are in some ways stupid but there the underlying logic is centralization control and forcing you know kind of the the mid-range of businesses and industries just just you know out so that there's a there's a further consolidation of wealth and power at the top which benefits them you know yeah I I think that's right Daniel I think that's absolutely right I mean in a way it's an acceler eration of what was already happening in capitalism generally because we've seen you know the disparity between the grotesqually wealthy and everybody else grow in every single capitalist country. is happening everywhere and Trump is just accelerating it and selling it on the basis that it's not capitalism that is to blame for people being disempowered and disenfranchised democratically and economically humiliated. It is illegal immigrants who are to blame for that and that's a a very common authoritarian playbook. the you know the question is whether the American electorate will buy it if they have a chance to vote again because I suspect I'm afraid that there is a good chance they won't have a chance to vote again that Trump will declare a state of emergency or something you know some combination of drugs and terrorists and illegal immigrants and Mexican drug cartels or whatever and we'll declare a state of emergency and suspend elections on on those grounds.
Uh, I think that's a really plausible scenario, I'm afraid. And that maybe he already knows that he's not going to be able to convince the majority that, you know, his centralizing agenda, as you put it, is actually in their interests. You know, the the uh the people will see that the king has no clothes. However, there isn't any sign that they're seeing that the king has no clothes yet, is there really in America? I mean, poll still standing up for Trump. there's no sign of erosion of his core base support. Yeah, I've been trying to understand that. I mean, you know, I mean, obviously his popularity has sunk.
I think it's like, you know, below 40% or something, but that's still a lot and and his core constituency is still holding fast. I mean, um yeah, and some of that is, as somebody else asked in the chat about Christian evangelicals and kind of um um they're just all in for this. they they believe that that that Trump is uh sort of the the agent of a divine reckoning or or of the revelation or the apocalypse or like um uh and yeah I mean obviously um I mean I think in some ways you know among the fact that it's very sad to be you know to see this happening anywhere um and to think of all the misery and unnecessary cruelty and suffering that's being inflicted on people uh for no good Um, you know, one of my fears is that really what's happening is, um, you know, they're they're trying to build a model to export around the world. You know, just as the American Revolution became the template for kind of like, you know, modern nation state, you know, liberal nation state, you know, democracies of various limits. Um, this is like a second American revolution.
And, um, you know, there are these different factions and forces that have come together. So in terms of the the tech oligarch side like Mark Andreid and Peter Teal um and uh you know one of their big influences is um book called the sovereign individual uh which was written by two I think English libertarian economists which basically argued I think this back in like 2002 or something that because of the you know information technology revolution the nation state was ultimately obsolete And ultimately where we would go would be what they talked about as commercialized sovereignty. Uh and another person who's part of that group who's been articulating this is this guy Balagi Savvasan who wrote a book called the network state. And so essentially the idea is that um there's no more any public sphere or public goods. There will be like um private jurisdictions you know kind of like corporatized controlled areas.
So people will be kind of in this sort of surfom relationship to these you know sort of corporate state commercialized sovereign districts you know that can be virtual or territorial or both and that's how people will be given you know the basics of their of their living. Uh so yes so you know that would make sense you know with this sort of um effort to kind of like wipe out a lot of uh you know whether was federal government or you know the realm of public goods or the commons and so on. But I think that this is a model combined with sort of the mind control of social media and Fox News and so on that they fully intend to export everywhere if they can if you know once they as they finetuned Europe. Um so that makes me concerned about really just um the sort of uh you know stet of emancipate you know freedom human freedom and democracy you know in its limited and imperfect form as we've had it you know as something that that that that that could be really on its way out everywhere. I don't know how you feel about that.
Well as you were describing that vision I thought well you could be describing America or indeed much of the West and capitalist society already. I mean, you know, the commons have been uh eroded, have been completely undermined, have been appropriated by the very rich. Uh the bulk of society sustained on low wage labor or welfare at the lowest possible level for survival. Um health care, well, you know that better than me, but in this country, health care is rationed by waiting. People die just as they do in America because they don't get adequate health care. And you know it is all propped up by a kind of system of ideological control.
Um what um oh I forgotten the name of the author thing he called um capitalist realism. This sense that we're in Mark Fisher. Thank you. Um uh this sense that we're in you know this situation and it is immutable. It is a kind of Darwinistic inevitability uh that we cannot change. And that is an ideological uh uh um piece of propaganda uh because it's not actually true because of course we can change anything if we choose. So what you're describing is is in to me just a kind of re more extreme reiteration of what we already have. I mean the state does not exist uh to protect the whole.
That's what it claims to do. But it actually protects the interests of the few over the interests of the whole. It protects capital uh over labor. That's why that's what that was my f that's why my first question for you was around like do you see this as something new or more like a logical extension? I mean, I guess in some ways it's both. But I but I do want to say that um there are there are things that are new about it like the kind of um you know potential, you know, kind of like assimilation of all forms of data, you know, on on the citizen and how that can be used, you know, in in all sorts of sophisticated ways to manipulate or silence people and so on.
And also, I've never really experienced in my life a fear of speaking out. I mean, I now have a lot of European friends who, you know, hope to travel to the US or or live here as naturalized citizens and they're like scrubbing their, you know, social media of anything related to Palestine or Gaza or anti-Trump. Um, yeah. So, yeah. So, you know, this this, you know, whatever the internal contradictions of America and however much it actually was a sort of capitalist uh monstrosity more than a, you know, democratic republic or whatever, uh, I mean, now we're see it does feel like a um a shift from a from a sort of soft paradigm to to to a very harsh paradigm.
um where the same types of controls that you might see in China or in Russia, you know, the the plan is to institute those here. um you know which is ironic because one of the big you know kind of like points of the right-wing um you know over the last few years was freedom of speech and they felt that you know the liberal you know culture progressive culture was was restricting um freedom of expression and that that was something they really needed to correct you know yeah lying I mean that's a complete lie isn't it I mean embodied in in the hypo hypocrisy of Peter Teal who sells himself as a kind of techno libertarian but is chairman of Palanteer uh which is the engine of surveillance of much of the US government and indeed Israel and and lots of others. I mean Palanteer is um at the vanguard of software that aggregates all data across government about us as individuals. It's an extraordinary and unprecedented power and knowledge that the government, the state and indeed companies, you know, it's much worse than surveillance capital uh capitalism as Shashana Zub Zubof um wrote about uh it is now aggregate the state is aggregating the data. Um, I'm sure you saw the piece in the New Yorker recently about the Australian who was stopped at the border uh because he's written a sub substack about the protests at Columbia University.
Now, of course, the DHS is not reading substacks. Uh, this is data that was collected by some AI that is going around the internet collecting data and aggregating data on all of us and red flagging particular people. I have no doubt for instance that my name is under some red flag. You know my relationships with Turkish mil Kurdish militants, Sahawari uh rebels, God help us. You know, the list is long. I speak out about Gaza. I uh speak out about Trump. I'm not risking coming back to the US anytime soon, which is tragic because I love America and I loved New York City. It was, you know, I see it as my second home and, you know, as I say, my family is from there.
But um it is an extraordinary new power and I think we're only just beginning to see the beginning of what it really means. I'm sorry to say. I mean we're heading we should look at very square at the fa in the face of China what's going on in China the sort of complete surveillance uh that they have in China where citizens are marked on a kind of index of how well behaved they are and on the basis of their score on that index they can get holidays discounts and if you score low on that index you're not allowed to travel you're not allowed to move city etc etc and I think we're heading towards that uh because the pattern has been that where China has innovated particular forms of surveillance the west has uh soon followed and that's because it's not just techno techno athoritarians like teal who want this the state wants this the state is inherently an a a a tool of control exists to provide this contract of security for the people and that security is getting harder and harder for them to provide And thus the state will always reach out for tools of control whenever they are available and they are unfortunately now more available than they have ever been. It's a very very worrying time and not just because of Trump but also because of the relation you know this deeper level of the relationship between the state and the population which I think is going to become much more hostile. Are you seeing any um encouraging signs or plausible resistance strategies or kind of like uh alternatives emerging?
Well, um when I first started talking about anarchism, you know, 15 years ago, nobody listened. They'd laugh you out of the room. Um and they would literally giggle when you'd say anarchism. And now you get an audience. And I know a lot of people who identify themselves as anarchists. I personally believe either we go towards anarchism or we will drop into the abyss of uh of authoritarianism that Trump is is and others are opening for us. We have to fundamentally change the way we operate democratically, economically. And I, you know, you talk to young people, they need no convincing that we're in a chaotic, uh, deeply troubled situation.
Um, you know, they don't believe the status quo is going to hold. Something is coming. And whether that is good or bad is kind of up to them to a degree. And I think that realization has gripped a lot of people in the younger generation, which in a sense is encouraging. In a sense, it's kind of awful for them. my feel for them. Um the other thing is technology also works for us. Uh you know social media I see as an still you know you had Mika Cria on the other on chatting with him the other day of course he was the great um promoter of technology as you know the personal democracy forum that he and um Andrew Russier used to hold in New York City.
you know, the technology and the internet would be tools of of democrac democratization instead in and instead they'd become something else. But social media is still incredibly powerful. I think of Gaza and you know the the anger uh and uh criticism of Israel over Gaza is largely a function of social media. uh the fact that even though Israel has kept out international journalists, there are still huge amounts of video of what is going on in Gaza and that that kind of democratization of the means of communication um and the mean means of advertising what's going on I I think is is still very powerful. It's a really And the other example I thought of actually on that score was um that video that I'm sure everybody has seen of people where was it in California yelling at ICE um ICE uh officials trying to arrest people and sort of saying get the out and go home and all this kind of stuff.
I you know you would not have seen that necessarily 20 years ago let alone 75 years ago. And that is a a powerful tool of resistance. Um, and what what what uh are you working with particular countries right now in an advisory capacity? Uh, yes, I work with northeast Syria. I mean, it's not a whole country. It's an autonomous region. Uh, is that Rajava? That is Rajava. It's majority Kurdish, but it's not only Kurdish, it's also Arab and Yazidi and the Syrian um Christian uh and is a separate autonomously run area of Syria um which nobody talks about. Um it's a bottomup democracy. It's a feminist democracy where women have leadership positions in every institution.
It's also an ecological society. I mean, all of this sounds great. Of course the reality reality is a bit more compromise than that but it and it's a work in progress but as an a project of democracy it's an extraordinary and isolated example of the kind of society I would like to see and um I do do what I can to support them primarily diplomatically because that's my experience um and that's what I can offer some practical help with. Um so I'm closely in touch with them. I speak to them pretty much every day. That's awesome. I mean, um, when I wrote uh my 2016 book, How Soon Is Now, where I was trying to figure out how we would redesign post-industrial civilization to avert ecological cataclysm.
Uh, I stumbled on the work of Murray Bjchen who's a social ecologist, wrote this book ecology of freedom. Uh, where he, you know, he's basically an anarchist. He said that private property in itself could not be um you know would not allow for the emergence of a ecologically sustainable world like what we would need something beyond private property but I know that Ocelon who was the sort of philosopher who inspired Rojava uh somehow hooked into Rochin's ideas when he was in was when he was in prison and based his like political philosophy I think he's still in prison actually on Yeah, is um uh Abdullah Ojalan is the leader of the Kurdish resistance movement in Turkey called the PKK, the uh Kurdish Workers Party. Um and uh he's in fact in negotiation with the Turkish government at the moment because he's declared the end of the armed struggle of the PKK against the Turkish state and has said that armed struggle is no longer the way to go. And as you say, he was exposed to Bchin's ideas whilst he was in solitary confinement on this little island where he remains um and read Buchchin's work and sort of transposed them to the Middle East context and came up with a concept called democratic conferralism.
Um which is basically of a bottomup governed society. um where the commune is the kind of basic political unit um and where necessary for decisions at a larger scale those those common communes confederate to make bigger decisions there's also strong feminist and ecological aspects to it ecological from bookshin's thought feminist more from the fact that the PKK is very much a kind of um women have a very powerful role in the PKK as fighters as leaders as uh theorists of revolution and the idea of the feminist democracy that we see in Rajav is a result of PKK Carter's you know thinking about what kind of society they wish to see where um it's not just women's rights women are absolutely central to defending the the state it's not a state sorry the entity itself uh that uh unless you have women who defend themselves then you don't have a viable society and it's the self-defense not only of the territory but also of the woman in the home. So it's a comprehensive revolution a social revolution of interpersonal relations as well as a political revolution of how we should govern ourselves. It's the most the most extraordinary thing. Uh have you have you gone down there and visit it personally?
Yeah, I went 10 years ago um and made a a film um that you can see online with that's partly about uh Rajava about 15 minutes of it is about Rajava is called accidental anarchist um and it's it's kind of my story but the bit about Rajabra is also excer excerpted is that the right word um on I think my Facebook page um and a couple of other places uh so you can you can see it. That was 10 years ago. Uh but uh you know what has changed since 10 years ago? Of course, the the Assad regime fell at the end of last year. And we have a new government in Damascus, um which unfortunately uh although it's a lot better than Assad who murdered, you know, 150,000 of his people, um is threatening to become a kind of uh theocratic semi-authoritarian state.
um I'm afraid to say um even though the leader um Ahmed al-Sah is is putting a very good face in it and the people in the northeast of Syria are very skeptical of what's going on in Damascus. Uh but that's that's yet to really play out. Um you know what kind of Syrial we will see has yet to be determined. And is that um I mean do they basically arm everybody at this point? I guess like it's almost um you know we have a Democratic socialist candidate for mayor in New York that's created a lot of excitement. Uh he very likely will will win. I would I would assume.
Um I almost wonder if I mean it's you know I hate to be thinking in this way but uh if we need to be able to um actually have you know the the liberals and the and the Democrats have to start arming up uh because um uh I'm beginning to feel a premonition of concern uh with what's happening with ICE uh where they were just given a budget of1 $150 billion to build potentially concentration camps all over the US. Um that we could be gearing up for something here that is you know familiar from u the 20th century and beyond. Um, but it could be that, you know, following the logic to the extreme, uh, I could see us ending up with a kind of internal genocide here, not just of, um, illegal immigrants and, you know, minorities, but even of of sort of liberals and sort of urban intellectuals. It seems like they're really setting the table for that right now. There's this guy Jack Pobiac.
uh he and this guy Josh Leysk are you know white Christian nationalists with large followings on Twitter. B Soviet traveled with Vance to Munich and he wrote a book called they wrote a book called unhumans and the theme of the book is that leftists you know communists you know liberals even you know progressives are not fully human they don't need to be treated as humans and that actually uh pinocha and Franco and Peter's helicopter killings is what we need in the US and this book came out before the election and I was I think there was one New York Times oped about it but it got get that much coverage, but both JD Vance and Donald Trump blurbed the book and said that this is the right plan for the US, you know, and you now see um Trump keeps upping the and once again, you might say, you know, it's chaotic, but it it feels like either he's just reading the room intuitively or, you know, um one analysis of him I read recently said that he's an interesting figure, Trump, that he's just an episodic person. He doesn't really have a core sense of self or core set of beliefs. He just, you know, takes every moment as whatever it is. But anyway, on Saturday, he gave a speech uh after the the the budget bill where he said, "I hate the Democrats.
I hate all the Democrats." And um yeah, I could just see a situation where kind of like the hoous and the tootsies uh where you have this, you know, armed infuriated rural population that's been fed mind poison for decades and is read like the Turner Diaries, which is like a fictional fantasy of a Yeah. you know, massacre, you know, and so on. It's like it it just feels like it's it's sort of like heading in that direction. And um you could you could well be right, Daniel. I mean the I mean the history of Germany of Hitler's Germany tells us a number of things. I mean Trump is not Hitler.
Let's make that clear. Um but uh one of the things about Hitler was that the population who resisted him. The resistance if you like consistently underestimated him all along right up until the Second World War. They thought this guy is chaotic. He's a buffoon. um he's not going to do what he says he's going to do. The the other thing is that he was absolutely clear about what he was going to do from a very early stage. Um you know mine was very clear about his hatred of the Jews and his desire to get rid of them. uh you know, Dal, the concentration camp was built in 1932, I think it was opened when Hitler first came to power and the persecution of the Jews only ramped up all the way through the 30s.
And yet, there were still people who believed that, you know, it wasn't going to be that bad. The persecution ebbed and flowed. Of course, Hitler said, "We're not going to annihilate the Jews. We're not going to wage war on our neighbors." And people chose to believe him. And uh as a result any resistance against him was was completely crushed. Uh you know people were arrested on mass tortured uh executed or murdered um you know who who stood up against him and he was able to establish ab absolute power as we know. But I'm I'm struck by the fact that, you know, there wasn't really a secret agenda.
Although the the final solution eventually, you know, the uh extermination of the Jewish population of Germany and the rest of Europe was in in a sense planned in secret, the idea of um eradicating Jews from the German population was completely open in Nazi ideology, in Hitler's ideology. You know, he was really clear about that. the idea of uh Germany having to have um living space leen um was again something he was completely open about and people just chose not to believe in and you know I think the minimum we should be doing is taking Trump and Vance and you know their philosopher the philosophers who stand behind him we should take them very seriously uh we should take them at their word uh what they say is what they mean and we should prepare for the possibility uh that their words will actually eventually turn into actions and I think that means we should you know very seriously think about what resistance looks like. It's not just you know it's far far from having a good progressive candidate for New York City mayor. uh it's far far from electoral it's actually about physical survival in ultimately uh one doesn't want to be alarmist but um I think it's worth thinking in those terms it's very hard to imagine you know as an urban liberal intellectual you know who's also you know I'm like 59 I'm not like 25 at this point I don't really imagine you know my type of people even the younger versions of them you know forming militias and buying, you know, machine guns and, you know, building preparatory uh tunnels and and all that stuff, you know, in like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and so on.
Um, but they left a lot of people left. A lot of people, the ones who survived in Germany are the ones who got out. Yeah. I mean, no, they couldn't. They No militia could beat the, you know, the SS or the, you know, the stormtroopers. that was impossible of the Gestapo. It was an overweening powerful state. I mean I and as we've just discussed the power of surveillance in the hands of the state now mean that I think resistance is is you know going to be extremely difficult. Um but the you know the the people who survived got out. The people who underestimated it, who played it down, who said this guy I mean Hitler was a kind of idiot in every respect except his ability to galvanize the masses to to voice what the masses wanted.
His economic policies were chaotic. He got up in the middle of the day. He didn't look at policy papers. He let his advisers argue it out. I mean, who does this who does this remind you of? Yeah. So your advocate advocacy for people in the US should be to escape the US right now. I think um you know I'm I'm saying this to my American friends uh and my American family. At least have a lifeboat ready um you know for the the moment when things get worse. Uh I'm I hope we're really wrong. I hope they won't get worse. Um, but they may well, and I think if that happens, you know, have thought through where you would go, get your passport ready.
Um, you know, dig out your Irish greatgrandparents, um, or your Polish great-grandparents. Get an EU passport if you can. I'm sorry to put it in such dramatic terms, but, you know, I've got I know quite a lot of people who are doing precisely this, right? And then what happens in the US? I mean, you know, this becomes a full-fledged totalitarian state. You know, I mean, Germany ultimately was defeated because there wasn't America. If there's no America, then what's the end point for this uh for this system? Well, well, uh I one simply doesn't know. I mean, but the the seeds of Nazi Germany's destruction was sewn by Nazi Germany.
I mean, it was an unsustainable venture. Um this idea of invading the rest of Europe to create room for Germans was crazy. Uh I mean, it wasn't just obscene and uh horrible, it was actually crazy because it was completely unsustainable. Um, and the Nazis had to keep going forward otherwise they would collapse. And there's a sense of that with with Trump that stability and kind of doing the same thing every day isn't enough. There always has to be something new. Um, there has to be something more. um there has to be momentum towards some goal which he he never really articulates what that end point is apart from you know America being great again.
Um and it's always about the journey and uh what that says to me is you know there's inherent in it a risk that the the bicycle will topple over when they have to stop and they will have to stop at some point. Are there any things that I've been looking at some books about kind of um resistance movements? There's a nice book about the Serbian uh kind of you know kind of movement that sort of the what's that? Yes. Botpaw. Yeah. Run by my friend Sergio Papovich. Exactly. I think it's book his book that I'm reading. Serge's book. Yeah. Yeah. Is there stuff from that that you know could maybe help our situation at this point or is it too far gone for that or um I do remember when when Bush when Bush was president uh there was a there was a time where it felt like you know there was going to be endless war and sort of pseudo dictatorship and so on and then I really remember that I think it was like Steven Colbear speaking at the press correspondents dinner.
It was like suddenly like it punctured the whole balloon like the satire suddenly um nobody could quite take the whole venture seriously after that and it really had a cascading effect. So and and you know I do wonder if there's something you know it's you can't expect that or anticipate that but but you know the sort of uh the ideological fervor you know can somehow get uh dismantled in in some sense. Yeah. I mean, you know, look, I mean, in Nazi Germany, the large majority of Germans supported Hitler, the large majority. You know, he would have pleth, you know, obviously there was intimidation and cheating and whatnot, but he'd get 98% of the vote.
Uh, that wouldn't happen in America. There's a very clear probably majority of people who don't want Trump, who resist him. So, it's a it's a very different balance of power. Um yes, there are things to be learned from, you know, the resistance to dictatorship, whether against Mubarak or Assad or um Serbia's authoritarians, the successors of Malassovich. Uh Sergio's book is well worth reading. But also, you know, Sergio learned uh at the foot of uh you know, the genius of nonviolence resistance who is Jean Sharp who wrote who literally wrote the book of nonviolent resistance and you know gave us a handbook of techniques is there's no way you can claim you don't know what nonviolence resistance looks like because Gan has written it out.
Uh it's all there and there are various iterations of that. You can download it on the web, you know, and I I I read that book and wrote about it recently. Yeah. He has like 198 different uh tactics. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And there's various other books like that in the genre, you know, and and you know, one of the one of the things that we're one of the things that we have to appreciate about the world, of course, is its complexity. Things connect in ways we cannot see. We're dealing with an a whole system whose um machinations are basically uh unintelligible to us. We cannot tell what action A will lead to action B.
That pathway is not linear. It is a nonnewtonian world. We can't tell what will work in fighting incipient dictatorship. And what that says to me is that we have to try lots of things and see what works. And it may be, you know, a child in Missouri who invents the thing or leads the movement, establishes the meme that becomes the thing that uh destabilizes the regime. I don't know. Um in a sense that's a cause for optimism. I don't think there is necessarily one model of resistance. I don't think there should be one leader of the resistance um Mandani or anybody else because if there is a single leader that person will become the focus of the regime's attempts to suppress them they will be you know probably murdered as Martin Luther King was murdered RFK was murdered um you know I hope Mandani has good bodyguards already um but uh you know I I I don't think it should be a leaderless movement uh but there should be lots of leaders leaders.
They should be in a sense redundancy built into the system and we should try lots of different things. Yeah. I'll let you go in a few minutes, K. It's great to chat again. Uh maybe I'll visit you in England as I I have an Irish I have an Irish. So come here. Find your asylum here. I'm going to look into my Irish grandmother situation. Yeah, that's uh Yeah. Uh but I was curious also um I saw you were writing a bit about Israel and Palestine and Gaza and so on. Um and I guess you know I'm just curious what your perspective is as to kind of um yeah why the um the you know sort of western world um continues to kind of um you know line up behind Netanyahu to such an extreme degree uh even when there's so much popular protest and it's obviously you know the people in Germany or or whoever, you know, hate hate that this is happening.
Uh and um I mean you know I think the US is kind of um a special case maybe because um I mean on the one hand yeah there's a lot of you know integration with Israel on a military level but um I think also for you know the the white Christian nationalists backing Trump you know they love Israel not just because of the prophecies and revelation and all that stuff they they think is going to happen but also because Israel is this model of a ethnoreigious state that ruthlessly purges and and suppresses and does whatever it wants to its minority population and that's what they want to do here. Um but yeah, I'm curious, you know, do you think there's like um blackmail underlying it? You know, fear of Israeli assassinations, you know, what what what do you think is, you know, the reason there's such a lock step behind Israel even at this point? Well, I start by noting that that lock step seems to be um breaking up. I mean, political support for Israel seems to be in decline in in quite a precipitous way in the US across party spectrum.
And I was very struck by Steve Bannon's criticisms of the US for supporting Israel and its attacks on Iran. Um but uh uh I mean the reason for western support and America one reason is uh is of course complete naivity about what kind of people we've got in charge in Israel. Um you know I think the the West's governments are about 20 years behind political developments in Israel and the kind of people who are actually running the government and calling the shots you know these are extremists. These are uh you know racists, ethnationalists, people who openly call for the expulsion and if necessary the annihilation of the Palestinian population and they hold the whip hand in Netanyahu's cabinet. Um he they are why Netanyahu Netanyahu is continuing this grotesque campaign in Gaza.
And I think people in many people in the west you know instead want to believe this kind of very very outdated model of Israel as this kind of rights respecting lawabiding democracy. It's not a democracy. I mean the Arab population it's an apartheite state. They're treated as secondclass citizens in all kinds of different ways. I thought the most striking recent example was the lack of bomb shelters um in Arab villages and and uh areas of big cities uh when Iranian missiles were falling on Israel. There were uh plenty of bomb shelters for Jewish Israelis but none for the Arabs. And if that isn't a kind of demonstration of an apartheite, a deeply unjust society, I I don't know what is.
And I think you know um people in the west can be very very naive about that. I still hear on national radio Israel described as you know the only democracy in the Middle East um and it's not a democracy. It is illegally occupying somebody else's land uh very violently and has been doing so for many decades um and has resisted all attempts to end that occupation. Um, so I, you know, that for some reason people are willing to be blind to that. The Christian nationalists in America are arguably more honest about it because they see a reflection of their own ideals in the Zionist dream. Um, you know, which is basically a colonial dream.
Um, that dates back um, you look at where its intellectual forefathers were. they were um you know echoing European colonialism at the time and a notion of racial superiority and that clearly drove them to a degree and Israel today you know reflects that and uh uh obviously there are parts of America uh that are quite happy about that that it reflects you know America's own history of appropriation of indigenous people's land um in the name of um greater uh vision of a new state. Uh you know in America you all know what the vision of the new state was supposed to be. The American dream, liberty, freedom from persecution. The Zionist dream is not a million miles from there.
You know, to a a degree America sees itself or certain Americans see themselves in Israel, but I think it's it's coming to an end when when we see what has been done in Gaza. um when finally journalists are let in and we get the proper death tolls which are going to be far above the 60,000 now reported, I think things will change for perceptions of Israel. I've heard that it's um I mean I've been looking all over for reports of what the actual death count is. Ralph Nater an article in commentary that's 375,000 something like that. Have you heard any more specific figures around that? No, and I don't know how you would come up with a figure in these circumstances.
Uh, you know, it's it's absolutely chaotic. Um, and you know, you can see what's happened to Gaza. It's been reduced to rubble and many tens of thousands of bodies are under that rubble. Yeah. A nice com comment from a woman on our comments here, Marjgerie Shalita. She said, "Those who have the means and foresight to make plans to leave the US need to think again. The natural urge to leave speaks to our lowest uh instinct to survive which while it must be respected must also be overridden by our higher longing to evolve. Listen to that voice inside that comes from wisdom, integrity and courage. Uh what do you think of that perspective?
Total respect for that perspective. Total respect. This is an individual decision of gravity. I would never say to anybody, you know, they must leave. It's their choice. and if they want to stay and resist, you know, I'm not actually saying leave right now. I'm saying prepare your lifeboat, you know, for the eventuality that it may get worse. I think that's only sensible. Totally. I mean, I'm a, you know, enough of a history scholar. I'm a big fan of Walter Benjamin and he just left like a, you know, a few days too late, you know. So you never know also when the when the sort of um you know Trump could declare a national emergency tomorrow and close all the airports and so on.
You know absolutely it could happen very rapidly. I mean he all he needs to do is sign an executive order declaring a national emergency. He's already declared an emergency on the southern border. He's already naming Antifa people who damaged Tesla dealerships as terrorists. It would take very little for this to be actually concretized into a national emergency where civil liberties are are um um you know abolished. And I wonder how much resistance there would be to that. you know, the rhetoric of the threats to America from everything from Venezuelan street gangs to narco cartels to illegal immigrants or you know whatever uh is so pervasive uh particularly on right-wing media that I wonder to what extent the population would would actually complain if civil liberties were removed.
I mean again that's another lesson from Nazi Germany is that you know when the economy was getting better and I think that is a prerequisite for Trump's survival u but as long as the economy was getting better and people felt things were better they didn't care about democracy or civil liberties. Yeah. Um all right then I think uh what else is there to say at this at this particular moment? Uh what are you enjoying these days? Um, what am I enjoying? I'm enjoying doing video casts. Uh, that's a new thing uh for me. I'm enjoying working with Syria, which is extraordinarily interesting. And I mean, I I would It seems very difficult.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. We should be in touch, Daniel. I can help you get there. Um, it's doable. It's a bit of a ship. You have to go in through northern Iraq. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, but it's actually much better to go now than it was 6 months ago because the Turks were bombing Rajava regularly uh six months ago and that stopped. I'm glad to say. Yeah. Um so I'm enjoying all that. Uh I'm enjoying London. I have to say this is the first time I've lived here for an extended period for a very very long time. I spent most of my life abroad and London has changed extraordinarily from the city of my childhood.
You know, it's now something like 50% foreign born. It's incredibly cosmopolitan. You know, on the bus you hear erdo, Ukrainian, Chinese, there's a huge influx of Hong Kongers, of Ukrainians, but you know, every different national in many ways it strikes me as more diverse than New York City, uh, which is saying something. Um, so it's it's going through a good moment even if I challenge you there because I I feel New York is also, you know, incredibly diverse and and amazing right now in you know it's like yeah it's I mean you know these two cities are great examples of um yeah kind of multicultural you know um uh cooperation in a way like you know it's it's I agreed I agree but the big difference I have to say Daniel is that New York is economically segregated in a way that London is not. Um there is no kind of you know lower Manhattan um or upper east side.
I mean there are areas of London that are rich but they're cheap by jail with much poorer areas. Public housing is not all to be found above 116th Street. It's uh it's all over the city, you know, including in the richest areas of the city. So you don't get that sense that there are areas of the city where you know ordinary people just do not tread. Perhaps there's a bit of nightsbridge you know which has been bought up by um Russian oligarchs and shakes and u you know all kinds of dodgy people. Um bits of Nightsbridge are like that but apart from that everywhere in the city is is you know much more economically mixed which is great.
Cool. All right. Well, let's just uh stay in touch. We'll do this another time. Uh or maybe we'll find a third uh interlocutor, which you can do with this Substack top, you know, program. Uh do you know my friend Melik Kylin? No. He's a writer for Wall Street Journal and Forbes. I mean, he's considerably more conservative than I than I am in many issues, including immigration and so on, but he's also extremely wise and intelligent, and I really enjoy. He's like somebody I can have different differences of opinions with in a in a in a in a in a civil and and sort of shared curiosity kind of a manner.
It sounds great. And uh you know it's been wonderful to talk to you Daniel. Thank you for talking with me and greetings um to Jerry Weinstein who I see is on on the call. Yeah he's got a lot of great comments. I know from occupy days. So greetings Jerry. Good to see you. And please everybody follow K some stack follow line if you don't already and we will do this again soon. It's great to great to see you K. Yeah you too Daniel. Thanks so much for having me.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.