0:00 A lot of people are enjoying the
0:02 breakdown of all forms of authority. And
0:06 it's not necessarily for uncynical
0:09 reasons. Much of the counterculture is
0:12 not the counterculture anymore. It's the
0:14 culture because Donald Trump has won the
0:16 election. Because Donald Trump's won the
0:17 election. The podcasters have won. Joe
0:20 has probably more influence on public
0:23 debate than the Washington Post these
0:26 days. There comes a point to quote
0:29 Spider-Man I think where with great
0:31 power comes great
0:33 responsibility. Hello and welcome back
0:35 to Unheard. He has become one of the
0:38 most recognizable commentators in the
0:40 world talking about some of the most
0:42 controversial and difficult topics there
0:44 are. Immigration, Islam, Ukraine,
0:48 Israel, the list goes on. His new book
0:50 which I'm holding here on democracies
0:52 and death cults has already become a
0:55 bestseller. It has just been
0:56 enthusiastically endorsed by none other
0:58 than President Trump. And his
1:01 appearances on podcasts even in the last
1:03 week, like the Joe Rogan Experience,
1:05 have become talking points across the
1:07 world. But who is Douglas Murray? How
1:10 did this British intellectual become the
1:13 person we see all over our social media
1:15 streams every day at the moment? Well,
1:17 he's with me here in the studio at
1:19 Unheard, and we're going to do our best
1:21 to understand that question. Welcome,
1:23 Douglas. Very good to be back in the
1:25 Unheard studios. So before I dig into
1:28 this book that we're mainly talking
1:30 about, I thought it'd be really
1:32 interesting to just get a bit of the
1:33 history of how you got here because some
1:36 people won't know. So let's cast our
1:38 minds back to before we even met. I
1:41 think we probably met around 20 years
1:43 ago or something. But even before that,
1:45 you had written a book about Boosezie,
1:48 the lover of Oscar Wild. You were
1:50 studying literature. you seemed like you
1:52 were on track at that early stage in
1:55 your younger life to becoming a kind of
1:58 literary artistic person. What happened
2:02 since after that? I suppose well I I I
2:04 when I was at Oxford I um used to do
2:07 something quite rare which is I used to
2:08 buy and read the newspapers and took an
2:11 interest in the world beyond the
2:13 university. I wanted to write about
2:15 politics and international affairs in
2:18 particular. I was deeply gripped in the
2:21 1990s by the wars in the Balkans and uh
2:25 I I suppose I was lucky in having a
2:27 number of friends who I'd gravitated
2:30 towards mainly older uh from quite a
2:33 wide variety of backgrounds including
2:35 from parts of the Middle East and so on
2:37 and I had my interest peaked by events
2:39 there. So was there a point at which you
2:42 kind of made the decision that it was
2:44 going to be more politics? Well, I
2:46 suppose several reasons. One is that I
2:48 started to realize that everything I
2:51 love um culture, literature, uh art and
2:57 much more is history is all reliant on
3:02 politics. You know, you can't separate
3:04 out the two particularly in a age like
3:06 ours. Perhaps it was always the case.
3:09 One of Leo Strauss's pupils once said
3:11 that I think it was Harvey Mansfield
3:12 said that to the extent that there was
3:14 an overriding philosophy in Strauss he
3:16 wanted the world of politics to be
3:17 organized in such a way that it made the
3:19 world safe for philosophy. Yeah, I want
3:22 to see uh the world of politics arranged
3:25 in such a way that we can do culture. In
3:28 other words, that I'm interested, very
3:29 interested obviously in the ups and
3:31 downs, the twos and fros of
3:33 politics. But I was never so interested
3:35 in who was deputy under secretary of
3:37 works and pensions as I was in questions
3:41 of whether or not we were doing anything
3:43 meaningful, doing anything good, finding
3:45 things out, discovering things, creating
3:47 things. And uh I suppose I started to
3:50 notice that the conditions for that were
3:53 were far from optimal. Everything had
3:56 become or was becoming politicized. So
3:58 there's a kind of connection. I think
4:00 there's a very clear connection between
4:02 the two. And the people who I gravitated
4:05 towards, who I was interested in and who
4:07 to a great extent sort of mentored me
4:09 and uh encouraged me were people who
4:12 also made that connection like
4:13 Christopher Hitchens, Chris Hitchens,
4:15 Roger Scrutin. Can we just spend a
4:16 moment on them just before we So
4:18 Christopher, you you first met him in
4:20 your early 20s then when when you had
4:22 published that book. He reviewed that
4:24 first book and indeed my second book we
4:27 became friends I suppose because he'd
4:28 written nice things about me which is
4:30 often a good way to start a friendship.
4:32 But yes and then I was very fortunate in
4:34 my first internship uh at a small media
4:37 organization much like Unheard was many
4:39 years ago. It was a place called Open
4:41 Democracy which I think still goes. It
4:43 was a very unhappy place. It was a
4:46 collection of well left-wing mal
4:48 contents who had set up the idea that
4:51 you that they would do a uh an online
4:56 site where right and left politically
4:58 and culturally engaged at their most
5:01 honest and meaningful as opposed to the
5:03 most shallow. Of course, it didn't work.
5:05 It was a total bust. And not least
5:07 because if anyone uh even remotely
5:09 conservative as I then realized I was
5:11 with a small C wrote anything, you
5:14 immediately had thousands of leftwing
5:16 attack pieces responding to it. But I
5:19 was very fortunate that Sophie Scrutin
5:21 worked there. And one day I saw in the
5:24 office sitting there reading the
5:26 occasional contributor to Unheard, Roger
5:28 Scrutin, who very movingly noticed that
5:31 we had similar interests and concerns
5:34 and indeed loves. Uh we both had a deep
5:37 love of our country, a deep love of our
5:39 history and our culture, of our
5:42 buildings, of our literature, of our
5:44 music and much more. And he kind of
5:46 spotted me as I was on my £50 a week uh
5:50 salary to make coffee occasionally
5:52 venturing into writing uh political
5:54 pieces. And uh Roger, I remember one day
5:57 said to me, "You've probably worked out
5:59 by now, Douglas, that this place
6:01 consists of um about 50,000 leftists
6:06 versus us." And then he went on in a
6:08 very scrutiny way to say, "So it's a
6:10 fair fight."
6:13 Um and uh and he was a great great
6:16 influence and encourager. And uh so
6:19 they're the two that you Well, there
6:20 were others as well. the president of my
6:22 college at Oxford Anthony Smith uh was
6:25 an enormous encourager and he knew much
6:27 of that leftist generation from the 60s
6:30 who had come up James Fenton and Martin
6:33 Amos me and Mchuan he knew those people
6:35 who sort of come up and I found very
6:37 very interesting because they had let's
6:40 say liberal uh views on things but were
6:42 also shifting in an interesting way
6:44 particularly in the wake of 9/11 and so
6:46 yes I mean there was a whole generations
6:48 before me that I was very interested in
6:50 and very fortunate to it's not just luck
6:53 of course there's also that you orient
6:55 yourself towards people that you admire
6:57 and would like would like to be it's I
6:59 think probably not that well understood
7:02 about you that actually you have this
7:03 sort of origin in in culture music
7:06 poetry literature and the scrutin thing
7:10 is interesting because the the politics
7:12 kind of comes out of that that it's a
7:14 it's a defense of those things is the
7:17 where it starts I mean are we allowed to
7:20 swear on this program. Yes, please do.
7:21 Okay. I don't like people all
7:23 over my country. I don't like the thing
7:26 I started to see in the early 2000s in
7:29 particular, which was people, you know,
7:31 defaming Britain
7:33 um lambasting England in particular.
7:36 They seemed to really hate this society
7:39 and and I love it and uh I wanted it to
7:42 go on and I always thought that it was
7:46 complete rubbish that uh the things that
7:48 were being told about it not least
7:50 because if we were such a horrible
7:53 terrible country with so little going
7:54 for us why was the world trying to come
7:56 here as I've often said you know you
7:58 don't have any very large in infusion of
8:00 people from the west trying desperately
8:02 to get into the freedoms of Pakistan uh
8:04 or Bangladesh and and and largely that's
8:07 because actually we people do know that
8:09 our society works or at least worked and
8:12 if if something works then you should
8:14 try to make sure it keeps going as
8:16 opposed to turning it over blowing the
8:18 whole thing up and um believing that you
8:20 can start again on the other side of the
8:23 detritus. So if we're going to try and
8:25 get from there to the book and today
8:28 there's a kind of middle section which I
8:30 think we should just spend a moment on.
8:31 You wrote a book in the mid200s,
8:33 neoconservatism, why we need it,
8:35 appeared at the Henry Jackson Society.
8:37 There was a sense that you were a
8:38 neocon, and that's always discussed.
8:40 I've actually seen in some of the
8:42 responses to your Joe Rogan appearance,
8:44 even just in a few days ago, it's the
8:46 same thing. Oh, he's a neocon. He's, you
8:48 know, he's he's there to push the neocon
8:50 agenda. How do you now think about that?
8:53 Do are you a neocon?
8:55 Well, I don't think in the sense that
8:58 people understand it now. I mean, my
8:59 book on it was mainly a an explanation
9:01 of what the neoconservative movement had
9:04 been, and I wrote it in part because it
9:06 was the other n-word in the 2000s. And
9:08 it's interesting that it's come back
9:10 again now. Uh, and now, just as then,
9:13 people didn't really understand what it
9:14 meant. it increasingly became and I
9:17 think it's become a sort of an
9:18 unsalvageable term because what it came
9:21 to mean was uh simply
9:25 warhawks and principally it was used as
9:27 a kind of Jewish warhawks thing. The
9:30 best definition of neoconservatism was
9:32 given by Irving Crystal. Irving famously
9:35 described neoconservative as a a liberal
9:37 who'd been mugged by reality. I remember
9:40 Irving once said to me, um, did you
9:42 spend any time on the political left,
9:44 Douglas, like we did? And I said,
9:46 possibly, but it was a matter of
9:48 minutes. So, I can't claim to have had
9:50 that sort of long left-wing gestation. I
9:53 guess what they would mean then is that
9:55 you, you know, supported the Iraq back
9:58 then. You know, I'm sure your views have
10:00 evolved about that. But there's still
10:03 the the core that remains is that you
10:06 seem to object as strongly now to back
10:09 then to a kind of relativism and moral
10:12 relativism. You prefer what you describe
10:14 as moral clarity. So saying okay these
10:16 two sides are not the same. There is it
10:19 may not be a goody and a baddie but
10:21 there is one that is preferable. Is that
10:23 is that the thread? I mean I think
10:24 there's lots of problems in liberalism
10:26 obviously is a shape-shifting word. It's
10:28 extremely difficult to pin down. kind of
10:29 means different things when you go into
10:31 different countries. You across the
10:33 border from America and to Canada and uh
10:35 well you still can for the time being
10:38 and you you liberal means a different
10:40 thing. Liberal party in the Netherlands
10:42 is the Conservative Party. The Liberal
10:44 Party in Australia is the Conservative
10:46 Party and and so on. If we have the sort
10:48 of
10:49 old school classical definition of
10:52 liberalism, it seems to me it's
10:54 obviously always had a set of inbuilt
10:57 time bombs. The liberal tendency of
10:59 understanding of course is very
11:01 important of openness very important but
11:04 but there is a moment where you open
11:07 yourself up so much whether it's uh in
11:11 your own uh inter interior world or
11:14 whether in the political world or in the
11:16 world of borders as a moment where you
11:18 open yourself so up so much that you you
11:20 you will no longer be able to defend the
11:23 thing that made you and I think that's
11:25 that's a problem which to be fair to
11:27 them a lot of left-wing and liberal
11:29 thinkers have tried to contend with. But
11:31 it's an innate problem and it ends up
11:34 with this sort of um who are we to say
11:36 on the societal issue. I'd say the
11:38 biggest problem comes in what I've
11:40 described as the movement from very from
11:43 one of our best qualities as societies
11:45 and I think the one of the best
11:47 qualities we can have as people which is
11:49 to be self-critical. But there's a
11:51 moment in self-criticism both personally
11:53 and uh
11:55 nationally where um self-criticism turns
12:00 into self-
12:02 laceration turns into self-hate. I said
12:05 this many years ago in a book I
12:07 contributed to I think I said in that
12:09 this was really one of the the questions
12:11 we had to think about which was we'd
12:14 spent already by then years in Britain
12:17 saying who are we? what are we? But what
12:20 does it mean to be British? And I always
12:22 thought that was a a really um
12:24 unsatisfactory debate, not least because
12:26 it was shallow and ended up with shallow
12:28 answers like, you know, to be British is
12:32 the Q or to be nice, you know, things
12:34 like this. This is this is it's really
12:36 pathetically shallow analysis.
12:39 And I used to say then that with
12:41 nations, as with people, um I think you
12:44 can make them have a nervous breakdown
12:46 quite easily. I mean, you have a sense
12:48 of who you Freddy says are, but if I
12:52 said to you, I maybe a poor sense and
12:55 it's not at all the sense that all the
12:56 rest of us have of you, but maybe that
12:59 you're living in wild blindness,
13:01 cognitive dissonance, terrible,
13:03 embarrassing. But you have a sense of
13:05 yourself. But if I wanted to to destroy
13:08 that sense of self, I think one way in
13:10 which I could do it would be to ask you
13:12 to lie on a psychiatrist's couch and ask
13:14 you all hours of the day and night, who
13:17 are you? What are you? What is the
13:19 essence of Freddy Ses? What is but I
13:22 don't understand. You're not giving me
13:23 the answer. It's not. And eventually I
13:26 think you we're hoping to find the
13:27 essence of Douglas Murray. Well, that's
13:28 why I'm deflecting on Freddy Ses. This
13:30 is a very it's a destabilizing
13:33 destabilizing process embassy
13:34 selfquesting. Yes. And I think that much
13:38 of your sense of identity as a country
13:41 and as an ind and and as an individual
13:43 is in just doing you know you are what
13:46 you do and what you have done. And so I
13:51 think there's been this endless sort of
13:54 demoralizing drilling down on ourselves
13:57 has made us both forget who we actually
14:00 are, lose sight of it, and have a sort
14:02 of existential crisis. And I uh I think
14:06 to be blunt I mean um neoonservatism in
14:09 the 2000s was I think it was my friend
14:12 Peter Teal who first made this
14:13 observation was sort of one of the few
14:15 intellectually coherent ways in which a
14:19 sense of reasonable responsible pride in
14:24 our own achievements and in our own
14:26 society could be defended
14:28 intellectually. So you don't disavow it.
14:30 You don't reject the label. I reject it
14:33 only because once a term becomes so
14:35 polluted that everybody thinks it means
14:37 something it doesn't. There's no point
14:39 much in using it. I I describe myself as
14:43 a small C conservative without any neo
14:45 in front of it. But if anyone wants to
14:47 shove the NEO in front, they they will.
14:50 If we fast forward to your conversation
14:52 on Joe Rogan last week, the thread
14:55 connecting back to those days is very
14:58 much intact, isn't it? like the the
15:00 reason Dave Smith and those people feel
15:03 so strongly about questions like Israel,
15:05 it very quickly goes back to Iraq,
15:07 doesn't it? So, they will look back at
15:09 what they consider to be the
15:11 neocon catastrophe and they'll probably
15:15 say that people like you have sort of
15:17 not learned the lesson adequately and
15:19 not stared in the face of that those
15:22 mistakes. rather presumptuous to say
15:24 that because I don't think there's any
15:26 mistake I've been involved in which I
15:28 haven't stared in the face of. How do
15:29 you now look back at that period? Well,
15:31 I think that it was a moment there were
15:33 two things that happened after 9/11. One
15:35 was that America quite rightly wanted
15:37 revenge on the people who carried out
15:40 9/11. And then secondly, America got
15:43 caught in something which actually
15:45 America does not want to do which is
15:49 remain in countries for a long time and
15:51 govern them effectively. Afghanistan got
15:54 dragged into that quite fast. Iraq did.
15:58 Uh I at any rate among other many other
16:01 things learned about the quicksand of
16:03 war. Unless you saw some of that up
16:05 close, unless you saw the debates about
16:06 it up close as well as the wars, you
16:08 it's quite hard to understand how that
16:10 happened. And it's sort of inevitable
16:12 that people would come in afterwards
16:13 who'd seen relatively little of it or
16:15 understood less who would understand how
16:18 that sort of thing happened. Would you
16:20 kind of look back at your younger self
16:22 and warn him about some of that? Would
16:25 you feel like you
16:27 also, you know, got too dragged into
16:30 that vortex? I don't think it's a
16:32 vortex, but I suffered from a type of
16:34 youthful optimism, which I don't
16:36 anymore, which included, you know, uh
16:39 that that America was capable of nation
16:42 building in a way that I don't think it
16:43 is because it doesn't have the desire to
16:47 stay involved. I mean, people may scoff
16:49 at this. I know they will. But I always
16:51 found one of the most moving things
16:52 anyone said about America was Coen
16:54 Powell who said at one point in the
16:56 2000s when people accusing America of
16:57 becoming an empire when America has gone
17:00 into countries to um to fight whatever
17:03 the cause uh the only land they've asked
17:06 for is the land to bury their dead. I
17:08 think that one of the things of the
17:09 breakdown of expertise that has uh
17:12 started to bed us in recent years
17:16 uh is a breakdown caused by the loss of
17:22 trust which is suitable on many
17:24 occasions in institutions and in the
17:26 idea of expertise. One of the issues for
17:29 the Republican party in America in the
17:31 last 15 years has been that nobody
17:35 wanted to hear from the generation of
17:37 foreign policy experts who were involved
17:40 in Afghanistan and Iraq. What that meant
17:43 was you had a whole generation of
17:45 expertise that was effectively sidelined
17:47 because it's like well you were
17:48 responsible for this and so you just
17:50 keep out and and that's undoubtedly led
17:54 to a darth of foreign policy expertise
17:56 in America. But you can understand the
17:59 impulse behind it. Absolutely. I
18:01 understand. And in a way that's what
18:02 your the Joe Rogan conversation ended up
18:04 being about quite a lot is to what
18:06 extent should there be a requirement for
18:09 expertise or authority to have these
18:11 conversations. Well, yes, and I'd add
18:12 the other one which is one that you were
18:13 very on top of which was the COVID
18:16 issue. And co obviously scrambled a lot
18:19 of people's minds in lots of ways
18:21 because there we saw something in real
18:24 time much faster fall apart which was
18:27 trust in expertise in science and that
18:30 one is has been I think especially
18:33 dangerous and demoralizing because all
18:35 of us know nothing humanities types had
18:37 always sort of held on to the hope that
18:39 uh at least the scientists you know the
18:41 medical experts knew what they were
18:43 doing and then um when a lot of them
18:46 showed that They didn't I think the last
18:48 area of true trust in expertise in our
18:51 society essentially almost like
18:54 evaporated. But just consider it for a
18:56 moment. I
18:57 mean I'd say two things. First of all I
19:01 don't actually think this is just about
19:02 anti- Iraq anti- Afghanistan. I think
19:05 there's a movement on the right that now
19:07 mirrors a movement on the left which is
19:09 essentially anti- US. And that's what I
19:12 mind. I don't at all doubt that our
19:17 societies need to
19:19 improve. I don't at all doubt that our
19:21 societies can do better. But for us to
19:23 do that, we have to
19:25 survive. And we have to do well. And I
19:29 say that in part because I know what the
19:33 rivals and competitors look like. And so
19:37 whatever criticisms I have of an era of
19:40 American dominance, I know that it's a
19:43 hell of a lot preferable to the era of
19:46 Chinese Communist Party dominance. And
19:49 therefore, I'm very very wary of those
19:51 people who seem not to just have
19:54 criticisms of us, but for instance,
19:55 think that all problems in the world are
19:59 made by us. And there's an inevitable
20:02 reason that people do that which is that
20:04 it's first of all it's the easiest one.
20:06 It's so much easier if you just think
20:08 that all problems are created by us
20:09 because that would mean that you don't
20:11 have to contend with the other ways of
20:14 thinking that exists in the world, the
20:16 other forms of governance, the other
20:18 forms of philosophy, religion and much
20:19 more which undergur other societies and
20:22 other groups. You don't have to contend
20:24 with that because you can just say well
20:25 it must mean something we did. If Edward
20:27 say had ever been right about
20:28 orientalism, this would be the moment to
20:30 accuse people of orientalism. Literally
20:32 looking around the rest of the world and
20:34 seeing only our own reflection in a way.
20:37 Not quite what say meant, but it's a
20:38 variant of it. So I I don't like the
20:41 anti-Americanism. I don't like the
20:43 anti-westernism. I don't like that uh uh
20:45 endless critique of that. But on the
20:47 issue of
20:49 expertise, I do think we have to find
20:52 some kind of reasonable attitude towards
20:54 this because we do recognize expertise
20:57 in certain areas and we we certainly
21:00 should be able to realize that there is
21:02 there are varieties of knowledge.
21:04 There's greater amounts of knowledge and
21:06 lesser amounts of knowledge.
21:08 Um, something that a friend of mine
21:10 pointed out to me over the weekend is
21:12 that although I mean Joe's a friend and
21:15 I was trying to be gentle with him about
21:18 what I regard as being a a dangerous
21:21 tilt that he and some other uh
21:23 podcasters are encouraging. What I
21:25 really maybe should have said then can
21:27 now is that um everybody recognizes
21:31 expertise in the areas they know about.
21:33 If you had gone on Joe Rogan and sought
21:37 to spend three hours talking about MMA
21:39 fighting wouldn't be very convincing.
21:42 That's my guess. I mean, it may may
21:44 surprise me, but I would think that
21:47 quite early on he would work out you
21:49 didn't really know what you were talking
21:50 about. And if you said, "Hey, I never
21:52 said I'm an MMA expert. I just want to
21:54 keep talking about it." Then at some
21:57 point they would have to call
21:58 on you and they'd get very annoyed.
22:01 Well, okay. Uh that's the same with lots
22:04 of other things. I get very annoyed when
22:08 I hear people who are in no way um
22:13 recognizably
22:15 historians, in no way
22:18 recognizably expert in the subjects they
22:20 talk about,
22:22 regurgitating false versions of history
22:26 that I saw debunked already in my
22:28 lifetime. I mean, there's an area of the
22:31 American right which is at the moment
22:34 simply reheating David
22:36 Irvingism. We saw that off 30 years
22:41 ago. Everybody knew that there was a
22:44 type of revisionist scholar who had a
22:47 very specific game in mind. And I say
22:49 it's a game, it's a very dark game. The
22:51 game that they engaged in and they're
22:53 engaging in again is you minimize the
22:56 the sins of the Nazis. You minimize the
22:59 crimes of Hitler. You maximalize the
23:02 criticisms of and the and the crimes put
23:04 at the door of
23:06 Churchill. You have this moment of
23:09 par and then you make the move which is
23:13 actually Churchill the allies
23:16 worse. And there is a part of the
23:19 American right that is indulging in this
23:22 stuff before. Again, as I say, David
23:24 Irving and others did this many decades
23:26 ago. You diminish the number of people
23:29 killed in the Holocaust. You maximize
23:31 the number of people killed in Dresden.
23:34 You say there's moral parity and then
23:36 you make the move which is actually the
23:37 allies were the bad. Do you think just
23:39 on that particular podcast, do you think
23:42 you made an error in that you allowed
23:44 yourself to be caricatured as someone
23:47 who was making appeals to authority and
23:49 kind of credentialism where maybe you
23:51 should have just said these are
23:52 ideas. they should be defeated rather
23:55 than being an expertise because there's
23:56 all these mashups that are now on social
23:58 media of you you having said earlier in
24:01 life things about rejecting the idea of
24:04 appeal to authority and saying I'll talk
24:05 about whatever the I want to talk
24:06 about certainly will talk about whatever
24:08 the I want to talk about. I don't
24:09 think that that precludes the idea that
24:10 that there are some things you're expert
24:12 in and some things you're not. I mean,
24:13 there's a technical issue with some of
24:15 these people, which is that they present
24:17 themselves in a shape-shifting light.
24:20 And it was a light that I first noticed
24:22 in America. You could say John Stewart
24:24 started it, where he started off as a
24:26 funny comedian and ended up being a
24:29 barracking bore really about politics.
24:31 The first person I noticed who did this
24:33 same move in the UK was Russell Brand.
24:35 He used to infuriate me that he had that
24:38 that the media so much the media fell
24:40 for this trick of saying I'm going to
24:42 explain to you how the like the global
24:44 revolution is working or I'm going to
24:45 explain to you how to how to rearrange
24:48 the economy. And then if you remember
24:49 Evan um Davis on Newsight once invited
24:53 Russell Brand on and asked him about his
24:55 views on the economy and at one point
24:57 showed a chart and Russell Brand
24:59 memorably said uh I ain't got time for
25:01 no charts. I'm a comedian. M
25:04 well this is something I've had my eye
25:06 on for a long time which is this is a
25:08 very specific
25:10 trick. I'm a comedian. I'm going to tell
25:14 you about serious stuff. If you counter
25:16 me on the serious stuff and I'm wrong. I
25:18 say I'm just a comedian. The reason it's
25:20 kind of put people's backs up is because
25:22 it sounds elitist. It sounds like stay
25:24 in your lane. First of all, I don't mind
25:25 at all putting people's backs up. It
25:27 doesn't bother me. I don't think anyone
25:29 engaged in public debate should worry
25:31 about that. But it sounds like to people
25:33 that oh you're saying you know only
25:35 people with the right letters after
25:37 their name or the right degree and they
25:39 will then say well you know you began
25:40 life as a cultural person you're talking
25:42 about policy. It might sound like that
25:43 to some people but everything sounds
25:44 like something to to somebody. Some
25:46 people could fundamentally might try to
25:48 be missing that point which is everybody
25:50 has the right to talk about anything
25:52 they want. But if they
25:55 sustain an interest in it and stay in
25:58 the field and keep doing the move of I'm
26:02 not an expert. I never claim to be an
26:04 expert. Well, but I'm talking for 5
26:07 hours or I'm talking for a year and a
26:09 half about a conflict in an area I've
26:11 never been to. There are certain
26:13 standards we used to have. For instance,
26:15 in journalism, it was funny. I saw
26:17 somebody sent me over the weekend a
26:19 media report from somewhere said that it
26:21 was outrageous that I said that that I
26:23 have this rule of trying to make sure I
26:25 don't talk about countries I haven't
26:27 been to. They thought this was
26:28 preposterous. This used to be a
26:31 completely normal standard in the media.
26:34 They're trying to get you on Iran on
26:35 that one. I've seen Oh, are they? You
26:37 haven't been to Iran. Ah, how can you
26:40 talk about Iran? Interesting. Well, I'd
26:42 say two things to that. One is the only
26:43 time I applied I wasn't allowed a visa.
26:45 I've been to about every country I can
26:47 uh which I haven't been barred from
26:49 which is fortunately only a couple. But
26:52 you'll notice for instance that I will
26:55 criticize the Iranian regime for its
26:57 public
26:58 pronouncements. But I don't think you'll
27:00 ever find me explaining exactly what
27:02 people are feeling on the streets of
27:04 Thran. I wouldn't presume to say that
27:07 because I don't know because I've not
27:08 been there because the regime won't
27:10 allow me in. So there are certain
27:12 standards that are meant you're meant to
27:13 adhere to. The late Robert Fisk used to
27:17 be rather on the borderline of being
27:19 allowed to continue writing journalism
27:22 because he kept on being found uh
27:24 writing about countries he wasn't
27:25 sitting in as if he was there. But if
27:27 you were reporting on a foreign
27:31 conflict and talking about it at length
27:34 as if you had firsthand expertise and
27:36 you never been there in
27:39 journalism, even in our own you'd get
27:41 called out. You should you wouldn't just
27:43 get called out. You wouldn't do it. You
27:45 wouldn't be allowed to do it. wouldn't
27:47 be published if if you were a
27:51 historian making really wild claims that
27:55 were not backed up by any of the primary
27:58 or secondary sources, you would not be
28:01 regarded as a historian. If people
28:04 misunderstand this, they should simply
28:06 think of the areas in their life which
28:10 they know about and whether or not they
28:12 would tolerate the endless churning
28:15 around of about it. If you're a
28:18 plumber and somebody comes along who
28:20 knows nothing about plumbing but claims
28:22 that they can sort out this house's
28:24 plumbing, how long is it into the
28:27 disaster until you identify that they're
28:29 not qualified? If you're going into an
28:33 operating theater for brain surgery, at
28:36 what point after the brain surgeon who's
28:38 meant to be operating you on you says,
28:40 "I'm just the comedian." Do you say,
28:43 "Would it be possible to get a better
28:45 trained person?" And if that if that
28:48 sounds like an appeal to expertise, I'm
28:50 sorry. We all in our lives appeal to
28:53 expertise.
28:55 And I think
28:57 that I'm sure some people are trying to
28:59 misunderstand this. Some of them may
29:01 genuinely be misunderstanding it. Some
29:03 of them may be deliberately
29:04 misunderstanding the point. But if they
29:07 think of the things in their lives which
29:09 they rely on and they trust in and they
29:12 believe in and need, they would not be
29:14 playing this game. One other thing on
29:16 that which is of course what is actually
29:18 happening underneath that seems to me to
29:21 be that a lot of people are enjoying the
29:24 breakdown of all forms of
29:28 authority and it's not necessarily for
29:31 uncynical reasons. I think frankly it
29:34 points to something quite important
29:36 beneath that as well which
29:38 is much of the counterculture
29:42 particularly in America less so in
29:44 Britain much of the counterculture is
29:47 not the counterculture anymore it's the
29:49 culture because Donald Trump has won the
29:51 election because Donald Trump's won the
29:52 election the podcasters have won Joe has
29:57 um probably more influence on public
30:00 debate than the Washington Post these
30:02 these days and and there that's great. I
30:06 love it. I love the guy. But there comes
30:10 a point to quote Spider-Man, I think, uh
30:14 where with great power comes great
30:16 responsibility. And when you get the
30:18 power of actually getting the megaphone
30:20 in the public
30:22 space, you should exercise your use of
30:25 it judiciously. And it seems to me that
30:29 uh exercising it by inviting people on
30:32 who have invented views of history, have
30:35 claims about things in the present they
30:37 have simply not seen or reported from or
30:41 been to or done anything about is not
30:44 the best use of it. And before you know
30:46 it, you know, everyone ends up just
30:49 endlessly speculating and riffing on
30:51 things they just don't know about. And I
30:53 I I you know if people want to think
30:55 it's elitist to believe in expertise and
30:57 I you know fine. Final question before
31:00 we turn to your very much firsthand
31:03 accounts of what you saw in Israel when
31:06 you were talking there about the the
31:07 plumber who would be found out. I
31:09 couldn't help but think of President
31:10 Trump in a sense and I want to know what
31:13 your views are on that
31:14 because do not the same kind of
31:17 principles apply that you need a certain
31:19 level of responsibility and expertise to
31:21 do a job like that and you can look at
31:23 the whips soaring in the financial
31:24 markets the general kind of chaos the
31:27 appeals to a lot of these kinds of
31:29 characters that you're talking about who
31:31 have a somewhat upside down version of
31:33 politics or history that is absolutely
31:36 infused in this administration and come
31:38 to the same conclusion I mean, President
31:39 Trump has endorsed your book. How do you
31:41 feel about being seen as close and
31:44 supportive of someone who might fit
31:45 exactly that description? I don't agree
31:47 with the the chaos, particularly. I
31:50 mean, the tariff thing has led to some
31:51 market chaos. There's no doubt about
31:52 that. I think in the long term, he's
31:54 quite likely to be right. It's only I'm
31:57 I'm for American jobs coming back to
32:00 America, just I am for British jobs
32:02 coming back to Britain. I don't agree
32:03 that it's chaos otherwise, particularly
32:05 in DC. I think actually in the almost
32:08 100 days since the the president has
32:10 come back to office, it's been very
32:13 disciplined, very impressive, done a
32:15 remarkably large number of things in a
32:17 very short space of time, mainly by
32:20 presidential order. I think he's got a
32:22 very good
32:23 cabinet and where there are people in it
32:27 who I, you know, have been skeptical of,
32:31 I've said. So I mean um at the New York
32:33 Post we were very critical of RFK Jr.
32:36 being put forward for health principally
32:38 because some of his views on
32:40 vaccinations have been I think deeply
32:42 troubling. So you're not worried that
32:44 the sort of anti-expertise culture has
32:48 literally taken over the administration?
32:49 No, not at all. I mean Pete Hexith is
32:52 the expert in the military served in it
32:54 for many years and is very impressive
32:56 guy. No, I I don't think that Trump is
32:59 anti-expertise like that. And obviously
33:01 he's not anti-expertise in the
33:03 presidency because he's done it before.
33:04 And one of the striking things of course
33:05 is that he actually he having had four
33:08 turbulent years to begin with, he's come
33:09 back with an agenda that he's very clear
33:12 on and seems to be able to institute
33:14 which he couldn't first time. Let's talk
33:16 about Israel and talk about this book.
33:18 I'm going to hold it up again for the
33:20 people who haven't seen it. On
33:21 democracies and death cults. This is the
33:24 very opposite in a sense in that it's
33:27 absolutely full of your
33:30 firsthand experience of what you saw in
33:33 Israel. So it you can really sense that
33:36 you took the decision to kind of go
33:39 towards this tragedy and understand it.
33:41 I'm talking about the 7th of October.
33:44 Understand it very deeply and make sure
33:45 that you knew what you were talking
33:47 about. There's a quote actually you say
33:48 I decided in short not just to work out
33:51 what had happened but to become a
33:53 witness. Yes. That quite sort of
33:56 powerful word bearing witness. It
33:58 clearly moved you very deeply. Um tell
34:00 us a little bit bit about that
34:02 experience. I was in New York on the 7th
34:04 of October and there were two reasons
34:06 why I decided to go to Israel as soon as
34:08 I could and to uh cover the the the
34:11 atrocities that happened and interview
34:14 the survivors uh the families families
34:18 kidnapped, the wounded in the hospitals,
34:19 the dead in the morgs and much more. and
34:22 also then to be with the IDF, embedded
34:25 with them in Gaza, in Lebanon and
34:27 elsewhere because I wanted to see the
34:29 atrocity as much as I could of it
34:32 firsthand in order that yes, I could
34:34 sort of bear witness to it as it were
34:37 and partly that was out of an instinct
34:39 that the world was going to move on very
34:41 fast because that happens in Israel
34:43 related wars. A lot of the media will
34:45 focus very briefly on the thing that has
34:48 started the war. It's an attack on
34:49 Israel and then we'll and this happened
34:51 on the 8th with the headlines around the
34:53 world were world fears Israeli response
34:56 blah blah blah blah blah and they're
34:59 always obsessed with the response but I
35:01 wanted to see the response as well and
35:05 got to see uh a lot of that up close. So
35:08 yes, I think that as well as trying to
35:10 work out what had happened uh on the
35:13 atrocity, I wanted to work out what was
35:15 happening in the war. Again, why I
35:17 slightly resent people who haven't tried
35:19 to do any of that or haven't put in any
35:20 of the hours or the ground work and the
35:22 leg work sounding off about things they
35:24 haven't seen or known. And you were
35:26 evidently very personally moved by it.
35:30 Well, yes, I was moved by several
35:33 things. I mean, one was just the scale
35:35 of the atrocities and the barbarity of
35:37 them. The thing I say early on in the
35:39 book, the thing that first struck me
35:40 when I saw the atrocity videos and saw
35:42 the sites was the sheer orastic delight
35:46 in death that Hermes demonstrated that
35:50 day. Um, it is it was a level of evil
35:57 that is um is hard to comprehend. And
36:01 I've spent the last year and a half
36:02 trying to comprehend it again. But I
36:05 mean, I quote early in the book one of
36:08 the young Hamas terrorists who quite a
36:12 lot of people may have heard the call by
36:14 now. It was in the 47minute video. This
36:16 young man calling back home to his
36:18 parents in Gaza saying, "Father, father,
36:20 I've killed 10 Jews with my own hands.
36:22 With my own hands, your son has killed
36:24 10 Jews." And put put WhatsApp video on.
36:27 I'll show them to you. and and he says,
36:28 "Oh my gosh, this is wonderful. Let me
36:31 call your mother. Mother, mother, your
36:32 your son has killed. A thrill and a joy
36:35 and a boastfulness in the savagery,
36:38 which is of a kind which we did see with
36:40 ISIS. We saw it with al-Qaeda and Iraq.
36:43 But this was a sort of next level or at
36:46 least a more organized level when 4,000
36:49 terrorists broke into Israel, invaded
36:52 Israel, and and went massacring their
36:54 way through the communities in the
36:55 south." and and and one I suppose which
36:59 I mean there were many stories that that
37:01 deeply affected me but one was meeting
37:03 the survivors of the Nova party because
37:06 this was just a dance party where you
37:08 know hundreds and hundreds of young
37:10 people were dancing in the early hours
37:13 of the morning when when this death cult
37:17 came and and raped and beheaded and
37:21 murdered and machetied and shot and
37:23 chased and machine gunned across fields.
37:26 as they were running and kidnapped
37:29 and and I was
37:32 amazed that the
37:34 world's sympathies didn't linger for
37:38 much more than a second on these on
37:41 these young people who had gone through
37:42 this because I thought this is something
37:44 that any of us would know people at or
37:47 friends would have been at in in any
37:50 other country and you know the survivors
37:52 of the Ariana Grande suicide bombing in
37:55 2017 the concert in Manchester. You
37:58 know, the world only has sympathy for
38:00 the victims there. The world only has
38:02 sympathy for the Pulse nightclub victims
38:04 or the victims of the batter theater
38:07 attack in Paris. So, I had this follow
38:09 on thing which really impelled me to to
38:12 spend the next year and more there,
38:14 which was why is the rest of the world
38:17 found this such a challenge? Why has the
38:22 rest of the world in a fight between a
38:24 democracy and a death cult decided to
38:26 empathize with the death cult and not
38:29 with the democracy? And this this seems
38:32 to me to point to one of these things
38:34 that I have spent much of my career
38:36 trying to alert people to, which is this
38:39 hatred of ourselves and the hatred of
38:42 things in ourselves. I regard Israel as
38:45 being a central part of Western
38:49 civilization, a central pillar of the
38:51 Judeo-Christian
38:53 culture. And so when I see people in
38:56 cities like the one we're sitting in
38:58 marching by their hundreds of thousands
39:01 against Israel and in large number in
39:04 support of Hamas, I don't just know that
39:07 it's an assault on the Jewish state, the
39:11 one Jewish state. I know that it's done
39:13 by people who also hate this country and
39:16 hate America. And of all the protests
39:18 I've seen and been to in Britain and
39:20 America and Canada and Australia and
39:23 everywhere else in the West actually in
39:25 the last 18 months, I think
39:29 that extraordinary backlash at home is
39:33 one which I wanted to not only uh
39:37 identify but to explain which I think I
39:40 do. Mhm. What do you say to the critique
39:44 or the criticism that in a way you've
39:48 got too close to it? You've been
39:50 spending so much time in Israel. You've
39:52 obviously been personally very moved by
39:53 those stories and the book is very much
39:57 from the point of view of is it's it's a
40:00 pro-Israel book. It's a it's an
40:01 explanation of their action. It's
40:03 certainly not pro- Hermes, but there's
40:06 very little almost nothing on the
40:10 response in terms of, you know, the the
40:13 people who have been killed in the
40:14 counter attacks. You know, you asked Joe
40:17 Rogan to be fairer. Um why why is there
40:20 not more in the book trying to
40:22 understand how Palestinians have
40:24 experienced the last year and a half?
40:26 Well, I do of course um I do do that. I
40:30 spent plenty of time in the West Bank,
40:31 Judea and Samaria, and spoken with many,
40:35 if not most, of the Palestinian
40:36 leadership over the years. Gaza, I've
40:39 been to many times. Uh it's it's tricky
40:42 to get uh access to the people that
40:45 Hamas doesn't want you to get access to.
40:47 That's for sure. But I'm not at all
40:51 hiding the perspective of which I come
40:53 from. I said from the beginning of this
40:55 conflict that I'm not a six of one half
40:58 a dozen of the other person. The
41:00 sufferings of the people of Gaza have
41:02 been brought upon them by electing Hamas
41:04 by then by Hamas starting endless wars
41:07 against their neighbor and that has
41:10 brought and I've seen firsthand a lot of
41:13 devastation to Gaza. But the cause of
41:15 that devastation is Hamas.
41:18 If they if they had used their 18 years
41:21 of governance in the Gaza to bring up a
41:24 new generation of Gazins to believe that
41:26 they should live in peace beside their
41:28 Jewish brothers and
41:31 sisters, history would be different and
41:33 Gaza would look different today. But
41:36 they didn't take that choice. I believe
41:38 that uh it's perfectly true that some
41:42 people will write a completely uh
41:45 morally neutral view of this, but I'm
41:48 not morally neutral on it because I
41:51 believe that it's an extremely clear
41:53 choice. I'm not saying this is true, but
41:56 I'm wondering would it have been
41:57 strengthened to include more sort of
42:00 evidence signposting of the fact that
42:03 you've spent time thinking about the
42:05 experience of the other side? Maybe you
42:06 could have talked to relatives and
42:07 friends and people who are in touch. I
42:09 think I've done plenty of that and I
42:10 quote plenty of the leadership. As I've
42:13 said before, there is a a technical
42:16 problem of reporting from Gaza, which is
42:18 there's two ways in. You can go in with
42:20 Hamz or you can go in with the IDF. And
42:22 my preference was for going in with the
42:24 IDF. By the way, the journalists who
42:26 have gone in with
42:27 Hamas get a much more one-sided view of
42:30 it because Hamas, if if you go in with
42:33 the IDF and you criticize Israeli
42:35 actions, you'll you'll be lorded. If you
42:38 go in with Hamz and criticize Hamz,
42:40 you'll add to the number of hostages.
42:43 Um, I don't I I don't take that as a as
42:47 a valid critique. people know where I'm
42:49 coming from and I don't hide where I'm
42:52 coming from on this because I think this
42:53 is we started this conversation thinking
42:55 about who is Douglas Murray you know
42:57 what is the kind of your what is your
42:59 intellectual approach to these problems
43:01 and I think that is really at the heart
43:03 of it that what you would call moral
43:05 clarity you know rejecting the both
43:07 sidesism the relativism which made you
43:10 have strong views on Iraq back in the
43:12 2000s and means that you have strong
43:13 views now that's your sort of trademark
43:15 is that you you look at a problem you
43:17 say okay I've decided that this is right
43:19 and I'm going to say that with without
43:22 fear or or without caring if people
43:25 don't like what I have to say and some
43:27 people experience that as a kind of
43:29 black and white a sort of manian
43:33 worldview where you're dividing into
43:34 goodies and baddies. Yeah, I I think any
43:37 reader of this book will see that I
43:40 uh I express among other things deep
43:43 sympathy and empathy with the people of
43:45 Gaza
43:47 uh where it is
43:48 appropriate. But I'm also not by any
43:51 means blinded by moral relativism about
43:54 it for lots of reasons. One is that when
43:58 the Gaza was given, handed over to the
44:02 Palestinians in 2005 and the then
44:04 American administration very unwisely
44:06 encouraged elections in Gaza and Hamas
44:09 won and then killed their fatar
44:11 opponents and then never had another
44:14 election. Um when they did that they
44:18 made a set of very very serious
44:20 mistakes.
44:22 But if you look at the footage from the
44:24 morning of October the 7th and you see
44:28 the footage of for instance raped uh
44:31 Israeli girls being paraded through the
44:34 streets of
44:36 Gaza or girls who've had their tendons
44:38 cut so they can't run away being taken
44:41 on the back of jeeps or indeed the mut
44:44 mutilated body of Shani Lau. If you see
44:46 the footage of these girls and others
44:48 being taken into
44:50 Gaza, 80some year old Israeli pensioner
44:54 on a buggy, you will see the citizens of
44:57 Gaza in their entirety and the visible
45:00 ones um celebrating. They celebrate
45:02 this. Um the men will hit the naked
45:05 bodies of the women or beat them or spit
45:07 on them. Um and uh there is this
45:11 societal glorification in
45:14 death and the Israeli hostages that have
45:19 been released and there are still dozens
45:21 in captivity as we speak one and a half
45:23 years
45:24 on. If you speak to the the the people
45:28 who have been
45:30 released from captivity in Gaza, none
45:33 have stories of any Palestinian in Gaza
45:37 showing them even the least bit of
45:39 humanity. And I would submit that this
45:42 tells us not just something but quite a
45:44 lot. if a truck came down the road now
45:48 in
45:48 Westminster with any type of terrorist
45:51 group parading the bodies of raped
45:55 girls. I think even in London today we
46:00 would expect that the public would turn
46:02 on the people doing that would stop them
46:05 from doing that and would hate them for
46:07 having done that.
46:09 I'm not sure that sitting in London
46:12 people realize the extent to
46:15 which Sinoir and the leadership of Hamas
46:19 spent their 18 years of governance in
46:22 the Gaza trying with considerable
46:24 success to create a generation of
46:26 sociopaths.
46:28 So do you think most people in Gaza are
46:31 sociopaths? I think that the generation
46:34 that has grown up under Hamz has been
46:36 taught that and um it's much to the
46:39 detriment of the Palestinian cause that
46:42 that's the case. As you point out those
46:44 videos, people cheering. Do you think
46:46 it's more than 50% of the if you were to
46:50 guess of the inhabitants of Gaza who are
46:52 sufficiently supportive of what you call
46:54 a death cult that you can fairly call
46:57 them bad people? if the Palestinians in
47:00 Gaza can rise up against Hamz. And there
47:03 was an attempt the other week by some
47:05 people it seems, including a very brave
47:07 young Gazan man who uh was promptly uh
47:10 tortured and murdered and his body
47:12 dumped on his family's doorstep. You see
47:14 several things. One is of course the um
47:17 the the grip that Hamas still sadly even
47:19 after the decimation that Hamas
47:21 leadership has suffered in the last 18
47:23 months, they still have a grip on the
47:25 Gaza. And as long as that's the case and
47:27 as long as the hostages are still there,
47:29 the war can't
47:30 end. Uh because those are the two stated
47:32 war war aims of the Israelis. The second
47:35 thing is that it is the nature of
47:37 totalitarianisms that and of death cults
47:40 when they own a society run a society
47:44 that rebelling against them is can be
47:49 usually is deadly. We speak on the the
47:52 day that the news comes out of Mario
47:55 Vargas Loa's death. I recently read his
47:58 great masterpiece, the feast of the goat
48:00 in which he talks about the Trillo
48:02 dictatorship in the Dominican Republic
48:05 from the 30s to the 60s and it's among
48:08 other things a brilliant reminder of
48:09 exactly this that a dictatorship can you
48:12 know people say why don't people rise up
48:13 you know one reason is that the people
48:15 who rise up get disappeared and that's a
48:18 hell of a lesson uh to keep everyone
48:20 else down so it's possible that the Gaza
48:24 has a significant number of people who
48:28 would like Hamas to be overthrown, but
48:31 they just don't have the capability to
48:32 do
48:33 it. Everything I've heard first and
48:36 indeed secondhand suggests that that's
48:38 just not the case. If there is a
48:40 rebellion against Hamz now, it will be
48:43 in very large part simply
48:45 because some Gazans may by now and have
48:50 have got wind of the fact that uh the
48:54 destruction of Gaza, significant amounts
48:57 of Gaza is caused by Hamas starting a
49:01 war. So you it sounds like you do think
49:03 most people at least we can't be certain
49:06 but it would appear to you that most
49:08 people within Gaza are supportive of
49:10 this death cult. Uh it seems that way I
49:13 have to say and I would just add that
49:17 even after these years of indoctrination
49:20 funded and fueled among other things by
49:22 our taxpayer money at UNRA and other
49:24 organizations that were meant to oversee
49:26 the education of of um of
49:31 Gaza what textbooks you see that they've
49:35 been using. I'd like to think there
49:37 could be a d-radicalization process, but
49:40 I think I think there's no one capable
49:41 of the job. I don't think that there is
49:45 a
49:46 burgeoning liberal civil society that
49:49 wants to live in peace with their
49:51 Israeli neighbors. And until such a time
49:54 comes about and until such a generation
49:57 emerges, I do believe that the conflict
50:00 continues. And that is why I've said
50:02 completely openly from the beginning, my
50:05 hope always has been that this is not
50:09 the eenth Gaza war, but the last one.
50:12 This isn't the third Lebanon war, but
50:14 the last one. For that to
50:17 happen, the leadership of Hamas
50:20 Hezbollah has to be not just defeated
50:23 but to be seen to be defeated. which is
50:26 why the um intelligence and military
50:29 successes against Hezbollah in September
50:32 last year were so striking because you
50:35 know it was Hassan Nazala the late now
50:38 head of Hezbollah who said many many
50:41 times in his misspent life that he said
50:45 the uh the weakness of the infidel he
50:48 said is that they love life whereas we
50:52 love death and this is a weakness we can
50:56 use against them. The leadership of Hamz
50:58 said the same thing. They always said,
51:00 as jihadist groups and death cults like
51:02 them always do, they said, "We love
51:05 death and you love life, and that's how
51:08 we're going to win." What do you say to
51:10 people who sympathize deeply with what
51:14 you've written about in this book, are
51:16 completely appalled by the events of
51:18 October 7th, also realize the depth of
51:21 the problem, how farreaching it is
51:23 within societies like Gaza, and yet
51:26 still find it morally unconscionable to
51:30 kill as many people as the Israelis have
51:32 found it necessary to do in their
51:34 counter assault. Is holding those two
51:37 positions simultaneously just both
51:39 sidesism and lack of moral clarity or
51:42 can that position be a respectable one
51:44 to you? I I understand it and I disagree
51:47 with it. I understand it because I think
51:49 a lot of people are very very
51:51 misinformed. The they've done two
51:53 things. One is that they've embied Hamz
51:55 figures about the dead in Gaza, which by
51:57 the way Hamz revised down quickly the
52:00 other week. If the CIA were to release
52:04 figures, skeptics across the West would
52:07 say, "Ah, but how can we trust the CIA?"
52:10 I think although it's not so degraded in
52:13 this country in terms of the trust I
52:16 think that if MI5 released a set of uh
52:19 uh figures for the dead in say our or
52:23 MI6 released figures for the number of
52:24 people that our armed forces and the
52:26 French Americans killed with our Kurdish
52:29 brothers and sisters in uh in Syria and
52:32 Iraq in the last decade. I think that if
52:35 if if MI6 released the figures, there'd
52:37 be significant skepticism about it. So
52:40 why does why again and this is a sign of
52:42 what I was trying to describe earlier is
52:44 why is the skepticism towards our own
52:47 side but not against people who profess
52:50 themselves to be our enemies and that is
52:53 the case with her when when Hermes
52:55 releases figures and the BBC and others
52:58 just report the figures as if they're
53:00 the
53:01 figures that's it's a it's an important
53:03 detail but it's not you can have the
53:06 argument about the figures but clearly a
53:08 lot of people
53:10 to some people's mind. Many too many
53:12 whether it's 10,000 or 50,000. It's
53:16 still so far beyond what would be
53:18 morally acceptable. Well, it's not of
53:19 course because we've morally accepted
53:21 that for many years in conflicts which
53:23 we support. Nobody wanted to know how
53:26 many people we killed in uh ISIS
53:28 controlled territories after the attacks
53:31 on Paris and elsewhere. We just did. We
53:34 weren't interested and nobody bothered
53:36 to find out. We trusted that the Kurdish
53:38 fighters did their job and gosh did they
53:40 do their job. But we didn't work out
53:42 what the collateral damage was in places
53:44 like Mosul. And that's because we wanted
53:46 ISIS
53:47 annihilated. We didn't want them to be
53:50 able to rampage through Paris and other
53:52 places. Well, the Israelis have the view
53:55 that they also don't want terrorists
53:56 rampaging through their towns and cities
53:58 and parties and much more. You can get
54:00 on to the actual figures. the best
54:02 figures we have for any western military
54:04 expert. John Spencer from West Point who
54:07 some people are dismissive of because
54:09 again he's not Hamz. So why would we
54:11 trust him? He's merely an American
54:13 military expert. His figures he says
54:16 that it's about a one:1 terrorist to
54:18 casualty terrorist to civilian casualty
54:21 ratio. Maybe that's the case. I I would
54:24 very much hope it's the case and it
54:25 would be the lowest such case of
54:27 collateral damage in warfare in our
54:29 lifetimes and certainly much lower than
54:31 what the British and American militaries
54:33 have been willing to tolerate in terms
54:34 of civilian casualties in war. I agree
54:37 in that of course many people who are
54:41 not actual fighters at the time
54:45 terrorists in Gaza will have been
54:47 killed. That is all down to Hamz because
54:50 Hamas have used the conflict as they
54:53 always do to hide in civilian buildings,
54:55 dress in civilian clothes, uh uh torture
54:58 people in civilian houses, fire RPGs for
55:00 mosques, launch rockets from hospitals,
55:04 um use hospital basement as storage
55:06 points, use churches as arms dumps, and
55:09 so
55:10 on. If you do that, you will inevitably
55:14 invite civilian casualties. And that's
55:17 what Hamas wants. Now, that produces a
55:21 serious problem for the IDF, the
55:23 Israelis in their in their response. My
55:26 observation is that they have performed
55:28 as well as a as an army could in those
55:31 exceptionally trapped, deliberately
55:34 booby trapped situation.
55:36 But when people say, "I just can't bear
55:39 the idea of civilian suffering. Can't it
55:43 all just stop?" I have a challenge for
55:46 them which I've put out a number of
55:48 times. I have yet to hear an answer for.
55:50 Israel is a country of 9 million people.
55:54 Britain is a country of well almost 70
55:57 million people these days I think. What
55:59 would it be? It would be
56:01 about 9,000 British people being
56:04 murdered in one
56:06 day and about 2 and a half thousand say
56:11 kidnapped.
56:13 What would you
56:14 do? Extrapolating out by population.
56:17 What would you do actually if even
56:19 though Israel is much smaller than the
56:21 UK, what would we do if tw if not 22
56:25 people as the girls who were massacred
56:26 at the Manchester Arena bombing were
56:28 killed, but if 1,200 people had been
56:32 killed on British soil in such a
56:35 barbarous way in their homes and much
56:37 more, what would we be? What would we
56:39 do, even much bigger a country as we are
56:41 than Israel, if 250 British citizens
56:46 were kidnapped into territory very near
56:48 to this country were were were known to
56:51 be being tortured and raped and
56:53 brutalized for 18 months, what would we
56:56 not do in Britain to get them back? And
57:00 let me put it the other way round. If
57:03 anyone
57:04 has a better
57:07 way of getting back the
57:11 hostages and killing or capturing the
57:15 leadership of the group that carried out
57:17 these
57:18 atrocities, please send it to me and I
57:21 will send it on to the chiefs of staff
57:24 in Israel and to the Israeli war cabinet
57:26 because I know they would be fascinated
57:29 and interested to know if there was such
57:31 a policy. I hear occasionally from
57:34 comedians and
57:36 types that negotiation is the way to do
57:40 it and they point to the fact that in
57:42 some of the pauses in the fighting
57:45 Israel has managed to get some of its
57:47 hostages back. That's true. What they
57:50 utterly utterly fail to
57:53 understand is that no hostages have been
57:56 given back because Hamas has suddenly
57:59 turned into a liberal group. They have
58:02 been given back because young men and
58:05 women of the IDF have been fighting for
58:08 18 months in Gaza and in Lebanon to
58:12 exert kinetic military force to force
58:15 Hamas to give back the hostages.
58:19 But if various comedians and others have
58:22 a different plan, I'm all ears. Final
58:26 question before I let you go. And in a
58:28 way, it returns to where we started. In
58:30 this book, you write, "Friends and
58:32 family occasionally remarked that I had
58:34 changed. Readers sometimes noticed it
58:37 too. Has this past couple of years
58:39 changed you? And if so, how?" Very much
58:42 so, actually. And uh the book finishes,
58:44 as you know, on a rather positive note
58:46 because of the two conflicts I've
58:48 covered in the last couple of years, the
58:50 Israel Gaza conflict and although I've
58:52 managed to spend less time there, the
58:55 Ukraine Russia conflict, I've been
58:57 deeply inspired by being with frontline
59:00 fighters in both uh war zones. I've
59:02 covered many war zones before, but both
59:05 of these wars have felt different to me
59:07 for various reasons. And really it's
59:10 because it's it's uh people in societies
59:13 I recognize as being similar to our
59:16 own being tried and tested and raising
59:20 themselves to the moment. I was with a
59:22 unit at the in the zone between the
59:26 Ukrainian and Russian front lines the
59:29 other week in Ukraine whilst uh uh they
59:32 were launching drones against the
59:34 Russian lines which were about a
59:35 kilometer and a half away from us. And
59:38 when you see these young Ukrainian men
59:40 and women,
59:42 uh, you know, who have families
59:45 and sometimes, you know, 20 km, 30 km
59:50 behind where we were, they're all doing
59:52 the sort of jobs that we do or our
59:53 friends do or people we know do. And and
59:56 here they are in uniform because their
59:58 country's been
60:00 invaded and they're not willing to see
60:03 that happen. And so they fight. It's the
60:06 same with the young generation in
60:08 Israel. My belief has always been that
60:10 those of us who grew up in the wake of
60:13 World War
60:14 II always had this question in our heads
60:17 which was we knew the stories from our
60:19 parents' grandparents of what they had
60:22 done in the 1930s and 40s to stop
60:25 Hitlerian
60:27 fascism. And there was always this
60:29 question that that was on all of our
60:32 minds. I think it was sort of in our
60:34 hearts as well, which was could we do
60:36 it? Could we do it?
60:39 And the further you come away from
60:43 conflict, the more you inevitably sort
60:45 of ask yourself that question, then
60:47 doubt it. And I give examples in the
60:50 book of horrific polls which opinion
60:53 polls which have been carried out in the
60:54 UK and the US in the last few years
60:56 asking if young Americans or young Brits
60:58 would be willing to to to to stand and
61:01 fight if their country was invaded if
61:03 our country was invaded in this way and
61:06 the results are not good. They say no.
61:09 They mainly say no. Yeah. uh
61:11 particularly people in the age that our
61:14 forebears went off to fight in 1914 18
61:17 and
61:18 193945 which was you know 18 to 40
61:21 pretty much the 18 to 40 age group in
61:24 the UK largely says that they wouldn't
61:26 fight even if our country was under
61:28 existential threat and I think there's
61:30 several reasons for that one of course
61:31 is that we have been as I said earlier
61:33 demoralized as a country if you've been
61:35 told your country is rotten why would
61:37 you lay down your life for it I mean it
61:39 would be ridiculous so I think the
61:41 demoralization and the the attack on
61:44 ourselves, our past, our culture, our
61:47 history can be said to have some very
61:49 serious effects. But the good news is
61:54 that I had heard for years in Israel a
61:56 similar thing. Now they have
61:58 conscription uh of course and young
62:01 people go into the army and they serve
62:04 their army service and then are in
62:06 reserves and so on. So it's different.
62:09 People who had fought in the wars when
62:10 Israel was invaded in 1967, then again
62:13 when Israel was invaded in
62:15 1973, remember October the 7th happened
62:17 on the 50th anniversary of the Omapour
62:19 surprise attack on Israel. The one thing
62:22 about the jihadists are very very keen
62:24 on
62:24 anniversaries. So it was one of many
62:27 failings that I identify in the book on
62:29 the Israeli side. Again, it's worth
62:31 pointing out I'm very critical of where
62:33 the Israelis made mistakes on the
62:35 seventh. I've been deeply moved by the
62:39 fact that the younger generation in
62:41 Israel, the people I've seen on the
62:43 front lines are much more. They are of
62:45 the generation whose whose elders
62:48 thought they'd become weak, too li
62:51 liberal, decadent, just wanted to party
62:53 in Tel Aviv, just wanted to be on Tik
62:55 Tok and Instagram. And I've been
62:58 enormously encouraged by the fact that
63:00 these remarkable young men and
63:03 women have risen to the moment and shown
63:05 themselves to be magnificent warriors.
63:08 Absolute warriors, fighters, and not
63:11 crucially with hate in their hearts, but
63:14 with a knowledge of what they're
63:15 fighting for. They know what they're
63:17 defending. They're defending their
63:19 country, their people, their families,
63:21 their faith, their tradition, their way
63:23 of life after it's been so barbarously
63:27 attacked. And one of the questions I
63:29 pose and I hope answer in the book, but
63:30 one of the questions I I suppose I'll
63:32 leave you with is this thing that
63:33 connects a lot of what I've written
63:35 about in my life essentially comes down
63:37 to this question of would we be willing
63:39 to take our own side in an argument
63:42 ever?
63:43 and much of the intellectual rot I've
63:45 written about in my career and much of
63:47 the thought rot I've written about that
63:50 is the question you have which
63:52 is would you be able to would we be able
63:55 to think our way out of that if a moment
63:58 of trial came or would we stay indulging
64:02 in this culture of boring victimhood and
64:05 uh oppressor oppressed you know the
64:07 person who can claim to be most
64:08 victimized wins the the biggest minority
64:11 wins and and and so Do do we want to be
64:14 like that which western men in
64:17 particular have been told they should
64:19 play and you know it's also that it's
64:21 part of the war on masculinity the
64:22 dampen it down toxic
64:24 masculinity. Can't we just be more
64:26 empathetic and take on various presumed
64:29 female traits? Can't we can't we realize
64:31 that we've been the bad guys, etc., etc.
64:34 You can do that if you want, but it's a
64:38 total losers
64:39 game. And I would like instead of
64:43 blaming the young Israelis who have been
64:45 so heroic in my observation in the last
64:48 18 months, I'd like to think instead of
64:50 blaming them, people should emulate
64:52 them. They've been remarkable and we'd
64:54 be so lucky as to produce people like
64:55 that. Douglas Murray, thanks for your
64:57 time today. It's a great pleasure. That
65:00 was Douglas Murray, someone who is
65:02 currently all over a lot of people's
65:04 social media feeds. He's arguing and
65:06 talking a lot about Israel, a lot of
65:08 very contentious, difficult topics and
65:11 many people might be coming into contact
65:13 with him for the first time at the
65:15 moment. So I thought it was interesting
65:17 to remind people of his history and
65:20 rather than being just a one issue
65:22 person, look back at how he formed the
65:25 world view he now espouses. something
65:28 that started years ago writing and
65:31 thinking about culture and poetry and
65:33 music, writing books and biographies
65:36 about cultural figures. How that sort of
65:39 gradually evolved into his political
65:42 worldview, his foreign policy worldview,
65:44 and this search for moral clarity,
65:47 deciding who's right and who's wrong,
65:49 being a kind of guiding principle of his
65:52 writings and talking ever since. I
65:55 thought that was really interesting.
65:56 Thank you to him and thanks to you for
65:58 tuning in. This was unheard.
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