The Chaser Report - Crash of Civilisations

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

In this topical episode, Charles lays into someone that the rest of the Australian media has left untouched for too long. Samuel P. Huntington better watch out, because there's no way his theory on the clash of civilisations stands a chance against the intellectual might of Firth. NO ONE IS SAFE.---The Chaser Report: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/chaserreport Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. What's on your mind today? Now, the other day, we were talking about Jimmy Kimmel, being uncanceled. I love podcasting because on live radio, you would have heard Jim or Kimmel Kimmy, which I think is a much better name. Jimal Kimmy. Jimal Kimmy. Yeah, yeah.

It is a better name. That is better. being cancelled and how in some ways that was sort of a little blip of hope in a world of despair. Sorry, so not the cancellation, but the reinstatement. But one of the things that I wanted to discuss with you is the idea of what defines the success of Western civilization. Right. That's an amazingly, Jimmy Kimmel would be very flattered to hear his name and what happened to him being in any way connected to Western civilization as a whole. I mean, is he the canary in the coal mine of the whole project?

This is the question. Yeah, and look, just in case you worry that this is going to get into a sort of heady definitional academic style conversation. Which does seem quite likely at the stage. How can you pull it? The way I'm framing this is it's based on a sort of reinterpretation of Samuel Huntington's theories around Western Civilisation. Really glad Huntington.

Huntington hasn't had enough airing on this podcast too far. You know, the clash of Civilizations. Highly problematic text. We'll deep dive into that and borrow heavily from the works of Dave Graber, the social anthropologist. Gosh, I was really hoping Dave Graber would get a shot because, as you know, I'm a big fan of the Graberian approach. Have you read debt? No. Oh, you've got to read debt.

And bullshit jobs? That was his breakout book. Bullshit jobs? Bullshit jobs. Yeah, we're talking. Yeah, that's where Wankhamix borrows all of you. Oh, is that where you've got it all from? Oh, okay.

But anyway, so we're going to. We're going to borrow from some of that and have a chat about what defines the success of Western civilization and why actually the Jimmy Kimmel effect is part of a sort of 600 year long history. And my theory on why all the success that Western civilization has had is about to completely evaporate. Hang on a sec. So this is one of those ones where everything goes down the Google, is it? Okay. Or maybe, maybe, maybe not.

Like, who knows? It'll be replaced by something better. I just in the same way that if maybe ABC were going to cancel Jimmy Kimmel, maybe they would have replaced it with, I don't know, someone who wasn't yet another white guy called Jimmy. Like, they were literally, there was Jimmy, Jimmy and James at one point, all them with late night shows. And not a single woman, by the way.

Anyway, that's, damn it, that's me being awake. I've got to cancel that in this era. A-CAS powers the world's best podcast. Here's a show that we recommend. Who was Elon Musk before he was so loved and so hated? Saved free speech. He created so many different great things. Before the billions, before the rockets, before the never-ending headlines. I'm Jacob Silverman, and my new podcast explores the prequel to the Elon Musk era.

Let me tell you what you don't know about the world's most notorious billionaire Understood the Making of Musk Available now wherever you get your podcasts Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcast everywhere Acast.com So, Samuel Huntington, this is back in the mid-1980s

He wrote this amazing book called The Clash of Civilisations, right? And it was all about how Western civilization was, I think, essentially innately superior to Islam. Yeah, I mean, even the word civilisation is problematic from 2025, isn't it? Exactly. Like, sort of, it had this coded idea that, well, in, we were civilised in the West. I mean, we, we, where there are various civilizations, but some are more civilized than others. But the, the thing is that his text was fatally flawed. I remember, because, like, how do you define Western civilization?

How do you say that there's any continuity? Like, what is Western civilization? Is it, you know, things that we would say is Western civilization, like freedom of speech and democracy and, you know, representative democracy and, you know, all the, you know, property rights and things like that? All of which did not exist until a couple hundred years ago, you know, except for, you know, Back when they were sort of in ancient Greece for about 30 years. Which was only men.

There was a sort of like predominant, yeah, it's slave-based society. And then there was another 1,800 years of nothing like that. But when we say West, when we say Western civilization, Charles, is that actually just saying white people? Well, exactly. Where does, say, Japan fit into that? Where does India fit into that? Like, clearly, there are some things that they have in common with so-called West the West. They don't.

So where are the edge case is this? also Islam came, you know, like 800 years after, like, is arguably part of the same Western traditions. Like, you know, like Jesus is in the Torah, is in the Quran, isn't it? Like, you know, like, he's one of the disciples, isn't it? Like, it's all sort of part of the same thing. I think you might have just cancelled yourself with, with several major religions their child. Anyway, but the point is, so it's very, very stupid. I'm very glad so you finally, we're finally got stuck into Samuel Huntington. That guy deserves everything it gets.

Topical, topical podcast here. But what I'm going to say, and this is where Dave Grave has written a brilliant, I mean, he's dead now, but he wrote this brilliant essay about it, saying that actually, maybe at heart, if you did want to sort of define something that was a bit sort of, you know, special about and had real continuity in Western Europe across, you know, especially the last maybe 2,000 years, then perhaps the defining feature, you know, in that area of the world was pluralism. That actually, you know, like even before, you know, there was individualism, the sort of 18th century,

you know, before that there was sort of guilds and associations and monasteries. And there were all these different, you know, even the sort of kings never had, you know, they maybe had a monopoly of violence, but they were always contested by the, the sort of local, sort of religious sects, like monasteries and convents and things like that. And there was all these overlapping forms of power. And, you know, the guilds had enormous power as, you know, the West industrialised over the past sort of seven or eight hundred years.

So you had, you know, the local, you know, I don't know, bootmakers guild would just have a completely sort of its own power to sort of protect. its own industry for for centuries on end. And I suppose what my argument would be is, okay, so that has been a defining feature of, you know, arguably might actually be one of the keys to success of Western civilization. But that with capitalism, what is actually going on is that that pluralism, which made the West so strong, is actually being completely corroded because capitalism turns everything into the same thing.

Like, there is no contestation against capitalist forms and structures. And in actual fact, in some ways, even our governments are being corporatized. They have to run along the same risk-managed lines that everyone else has to.

And they fit within, they see their job more as just to enable greater amounts of capitalism. Well, hasn't corporatization worked brilliantly well in the university sector in recent? times, getting consultants in to make universities run more like big companies. Yes.

Playing a blinder. So universities, which have a thousand year history in working out how to manage a whole lot of incredibly problematic but very intelligent people into being in a safe space where they can actually create new human knowledge, right? And there being a huge amount of sort of problematic things that have to go on. but, you know, the idea that they should have independence of thought and the ability to sort of shape their own direction is something that was sacrosanct for much of the last thousand years of universities.

And then it's only been in the last 30 years that suddenly it's been like, oh, no, no, no, no, this guy from McKinsey has made up a five-step process to run your institution. That'll be much better than the, you know, academic values-led system that you've been running for the last thousand years, and it's been a total disaster. I assume that in their slide deck that the, you know, KPMG or McKinsey consultants present,

there's a little line about academic freedom. Yes, it would be one of the, it would be like the purpose statement or something bad. And then the whole idea with that is you just pin it up in the kitchen and then forget about us. Well, I mean, based on UTS's approach, I think all you need to do with that is ensure

that staff have the ability to wash their own underwear for mental health. I think that doesn't really matter what you do to them as long as they have the ability to, you know, have a self-care underwear laundering service. It's just the fact that someone sent that email out without doing a basic absurdity check just goes to show what's wrong with some of these processes. But it also shows the extraordinary condescension that management. So for people who don't know the story, UTS management was wanting to sack 400 staff.

Yeah. And everyone was getting very stressed about it and was creating huge amounts of stress. I don't think everyone knew who was going to cut in it. No, it wasn't clear who it was going to be. It kind of goes from there. And so it was creating huge amounts of stress during, you know, throughout the staff. And so UTS sent out this email going, look, if you're feeling stressed, go home and fold your laundry. Yeah.

Yeah. Literally, literally, literally soak your pee encrusted underwear. That's the, that's the way to get through this. Oh, thank you. And it's so, like, just so condes. And it so shows you how, you know, These professional staff who have no academic qualifications whatsoever, who literally, they're just pretending that they exist in the university system.

And you can just imagine someone, some bright spark in the kind of HR team going, hey, I realize there's a bit of blowback. Don't worry. They've got exactly the email. And getting a kind of prefabricated list of things. And telling university professors to go home and, you know, have a hot cupboard team. You may be about to get sacked. Yeah.

But a cup is a really good. Oh, thank you. Just the unbelievable arrogance of that. And the idea that... And the idea you would try and make these institutions more efficient. And the way to do that is to cut academics, not the people who send the email telling you to fold your underwear at a time of crisis. I reckon they have self-identified as redundant in many cases.

And I think UTS might be... I heard this statistic the other day. I don't know whether it's true, but that 60% of staff at UTS are now professional staff. They're non-acadictics. staff that essentially there are more administrators than there are academics at UTS. Well, it takes, how many administrators does it take to draft an email about washing your underwear? But isn't the point that it'll only get worse because the professional staff are never going

to identify professional staff as being the staff that need to cut? Like the ultimate university, it's like the yes minister thing, which is, you know, they launched a hospital and the only problem was the patients and they said the hospital would be far more efficiently run. Well, it would be because if there weren't any patients. We wouldn't need doctors either. Yes, exactly. You could just have the administrative staff. That's right. The Chaser report. More news. Less often. So where did we get to with all this? Sammy Huntington had some problems. So what I'm saying is, but maybe there was a sort of kernel of truth there, which is there is a sort of robustness to Western, you know, like if there's some

sort of through line in continuity over the past couple of thousand years in what we would call sort of, I suppose, Western Europe and Western civilization is how Samuel Huntington would very carelessly define it. It is this whole idea of pluralism. And the one thing that's destroying that is the sort of rapacious capitalist management system that's now just going through everything. And that actually, if we want to really fix anything in our lives, Part of it's about going, no, no, no, we have to, for the sake of, of, you know, our lives, actually stop making everything the same thing. Stop making everything be a capitalist thing. And that's where, you know, like our idea for a club where you go and sleep, it perfectly fits in.

But it would fit in until Accor bought it. Yeah. And then turned into being the same as all the hotels. But you see it in, like, sports clubs. Like, you know, my kids do cricket, and you have these wonderful sports clubs that are totally managed outside the capitalist system. And then the local real estate agent or the local, you know, I think Optus did it one year where they sponsored the whole organisation and the kids are required to go around with their ads on their shirt. And you're going, fuck off. Like, give us your money, absolutely.

But don't fucking make my child be an ad billboard for you. Like, what the fuck? All the public schools around where we live in Sydney, inner west, have ads on them from the local real estate company. Yes. They've figured out a loophole whereby they can turn public schools paid for by the taxpayer with countless millions of dollars a year into billboards for their bloody real estate agent down the way. But, Charles, this is the thing right, is that in the clash of, let's just say, systems,

let's decouple it from. The loaded. Capitalism has been very good at innovation. And this is the thing that has made the key competitive difference. when it comes to, you know, war, but also even in peacetime in recent years, the success of the system. And so you see things like where, and this is happening even at the moment in Russia that they simply can't, the military can't innovate enough,

it was actually trying to win the war in Ukraine. But the problem that's happening is that because you now have these giant conglomerates that are almost beyond the nation state, I wonder if the innovation is dropping off. What happens when ever ever a new interesting business crops up in Internet, land is it just gets bought by one of these big conglomerates, and the disruptive aspect of it gets taken out of it. I mean, just look at what's happened with so many products coming out in the tech space in recent time, whether it's been bought by Microsoft or Apple or META or something, and the guts

have been ripped out of it, and it's been made not good anymore. Yes, yes. Well, I mean, the fact that the iPhone was launched, and then basically from then on, the key, like all the brightest minds of a whole generation of silicon belmont. workers was tasked with the idea of how do you make better targeted ads. Like essentially Netter took over and Google took over that whole space and went all the innovation is going to be in making sure that I can sell a bar. Yeah, profiling the people who use these things.

And so what we didn't realize when we all bought iPhones because they looked really nifty and Johnny I have made them look cool is we were actually, what we were actually buying was a profiling device that would profile us and turn us into a commodity because of the deal that Google did to make itself the default search engine on Apple, which they pay Apple billions of dollars a year. Yeah, 23 billion dollars. And crazy amount of money, because what that means is it allows Google to profile every single person as an iPhone through the default search.

And so, yeah, I mean, it's, hang on, we've just, we've just gone down to depressing spiral again, haven't we? But as against that, there's podcasting. We don't care. We don't care who you are. But I think that this is one of the joyful things about podcasting is it still exists in this slightly weird non-capitalist space.

Like, sure we run out. This is a non-capitalist podcast. But it sort of, it hasn't been, like the podcasting space hasn't been completely ruined yet. No. And there's, yeah,

there aren't really influences to the same degree. I mean, people will read sponsored ads, but the whole point of the, it's not like Instagram where... Have you heard my sponsored ads?

I haven't yet, actually. No, thank you for doing those. I've got some good ads. Sadly, I can't record those anymore. So I'm good on you for doing that. So capitalism is. is still paying the bills. So, but podcasting, I mean, the point of podcasting is that it does actually get back to kind of fundamental human connection of having a conversation at the very least.

But capitalism is also just an absolute parasite on our backs. Like, the value of our work is far greater than what we receive for it because capitalism steals the rest. And that's true across the board. We would be better off without, like, yes, it's an interesting model for social organization and decentralized decision making. It's not the only one. Well, let's take it away from just ourselves for a second and look at what's happened to musicians. It used to be the case that musicians could actually sell recordings of their work

and earn money because they wrote a good song and people wanted to own that song. And somehow, Spotify and the others have inserted themselves in that process so that they get all the money. And we all, like I pay, every month, I pay a Spotify premium subscription to listen to whatever song I want and none of that money goes to the artists. Where does it go? Spotify doesn't even make money.

Where does the money that we pay Spotify go? I honestly don't. One of the great mysteries of the modern era. And Spotify is in huge financial trouble last time I looked. Maybe because they gave all the money just to Joe Rogan. Perhaps that's the answer. But yes, capitalism has somehow just taken all of the value out of that equation. So the artists are struggling.

We're just paying money for nothing. Yes. Where does the value go? I love it. I love it. It's just completely evaporates. It's like the whole world is sort of run as a sort of kind of scam. Oh, you can't sell that anymore.

Yeah. It's extraordinary. Anyway, that's what we live. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for the meagre income we get from the ads that Charles has to voice. Because there's one thing you really want to do, Charles, it's voicing ads, right? That's what gives meaning and purpose to your life. I get up in the morning and I go, I hope there's an ad to voice.

I mean, or you could subscribe. But also, and we're forced to shill for subscribers. How humiliating is that? No, I think that's fine. That's not. It's like just, it's... Give us a tip, sir. Please.

Please, please buy our $7 or whatever it is a month subscription. please. It will mean so much to us. It would. It actually does. This is the sad thing. It actually does. We've got our digital hat out in the street busking. Although, I mean, the fact that we have to have such long conversation, buskers play a song. Why didn't we do that? We're part of the iconic class network.

Subscribe now. I hope that didn't get too academic. I think Samuel Huntington would be delighted.