The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - The Truth Behind the Groyper Panic and Immigration and Iran

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Noam Dworman, Dan Naturman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by Eric Kaufmann. Kaufmann is the author of multiple books, including The Third Awokening: A 12-Point Plan for Rolling Back Progressive Extremism. He is a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of the Center for Heterodox Social Science.

This is live from the table, the official podcast, at the world famous comedy seller, available wherever you get your podcast. Dan Natterman here, along with Noam's Wormon, owner of the comedy seller and composer of the opening theme song you're listening to at this very moment. He's a musician in addition to a businessman. We have Periel Ashen brand here, as always,

and with us via Zoom or whatever... Zoom. Zoom or... Okay, Zoom. We have Eric Kaufman coming all the way from London, Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham, director of the Center for Heterodox Social Science, a prolific author with numerous books and articles in his bibliography.

We welcome him virtually to our show, and thank him for joining us from London. How are you, Eric? I'm doing well. Thanks. It's good to be back on the show. Now, a couple of years since you've been on, right? Or maybe more than that. Yeah, I think it has been a few years, actually. Too long.

Okay, before we get into your most recent thing about the Groyper's, looking back on since that, the world has changed a lot since then, what were you wrong about it? Were you wrong about anything, or is the trajectory of the world exactly as you said it would be three, four years ago? Well, I'm trying to think when we last spoke, I mean, the sort of pandemic had various effects, including dampening national populism. You know, you couldn't predict exactly what would happen, but clearly that's roared back since then,

on the back of, you know, very high immigration levels in many countries. So that's maybe one thing that wasn't quite evident at the time. But I can't exactly recall what we were, what predictions I would. was making in the last show. But I'm never wrong, generally. Me too. I think you're a little, look, you're kind of an immigration, it'll all work out skeptic, meaning like the people who just felt like, you know, this is magic soil, and we can just all, we can just mix it all together. And there's really anybody who even alerts us to the fact that there's actual psychological and real human issues that we're going to have to contend with. They're racist. They're, they're, they're,

right. Is that, is that a good way of describing your general position? Yeah, I think that's right. I just think this is a much more far-reaching change than some of the more glib accounts we're willing to, to admit. And it's, it's mainly because, you know, in a population, there's a, there's a sort of, there's a range of views, a range of psychological makeups, but there's a lot of people who would see, you know, rapid cultural changes as disorienting and are for that reason then going to be drawn to national populism. And I just think there's no real way of glossing that. And there's really no way.

I mean, I think post-pandemic, there was a surge of immigration in a number of countries. The U.S. is one, but Canada, Britain, Australia, Ireland, and they've all seen backlashes. And in all of them, the authorities have had to sort of quickly backpedal. And I think that sort of says a lot about the sort of elites and institutions not really understanding what's behind populism and not taking really this seriously until it really starts to drive populist voting. So it's kind of, it is amazing given that there was the initial populist surge post 2014 and then the European migration. crisis and I kind of thought the lesson was learned, but I guess not. I guess it just seemed to be quite easy to slip back into the old ways. So yeah, I think that's kind of an interesting

development right now. So you're saying certainly across Europe and now even in Australia, populist parties are hitting record, record numbers. So yeah, I think, and it's all really about immigration. I tend to see a lot of issues the way I'm going to describe right now is that although everybody always talks about them like one side is all right and the other side is all wrong. Really, quite often both sides have a point and it's a matter of how you want to prioritize it. The example I always like to give about this issue is like, well, you know, I wouldn't want 20 million Hasidic Jews in the country. I wouldn't begrudge anybody for complaining about the fact that all of a sudden they were living, you know, in a Hasidic Jewish-dominated society.

at regard I name it as anti-Semitic. So as you get more and more extreme, it's perfectly reasonable for people to allow for people to say, listen, I don't want this. This is too far away from my culture. And the speed of which it happens is also a natural thing, give people a chance to get used to things. So I see you want to say something.

Go ahead. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's, it would be nice if we could talk about the pace of immigration and cultural change, the way we talk about tax rates. You know, one side wants more tax and spend and the other side wants less. And we kind of don't have a big problem with saying, okay, we'll arrive at some kind of intermediate number.

But when it comes to immigration and cultural change, it's you're either on the open side or the closed side, and if you're not in favor of, you know, the open side that you're a closed person, bigot, et cetera. There's a much more emotional, much less grown-up conversation, and it just doesn't seem possible. It just doesn't seem like we can get to a place where we can sort of have a reasonable conversation about that issue, the way we do about tax and spend. And until that happens, you're going to get repeated backlashes because the system can't adjust. The mainstream parties can't properly reflect public opinion and come to an accommodation the way they can on tax and spend. And this is really what's behind the crises we keep seeing. Let me, let me add, and then

we're going to turn it over to the Groyper's thing. I know Dan and Perry, I'll have read the article too. Let me add one ingredient to this debate, which, although it was always, we were aware of it, but it's really come into sharper focus now. And this, I think America, the debate in America is quite different from Europe, where they're having a, a, just different problems that we are. Americans are not having children anymore. There is no way to turn that trend around. We are going to head, if not for immigration, as I understand it,

we're going to head into population decline, which if we think we have problems now, this is a horrible problem. We are, instead of looking, more and more, instead of considering us misfortune that we have this huge border with Latin America that is so changing so quickly our recipe, you know, our ratios of populations, I've begun to think, thank God, because without these people, where would we be? They do all the work. I have to acknowledge, I do think part of the reaction is simply because they're visually identity.

identifiable if Mexicans look like white Europeans. Well, some of them do, but they're not coming. Yeah. If the general Mexican that we saw look like a white European, and we just had to react to the actual difference in their culture and their, you know, like we would barely detect it, actually. And so given the fact that we have to deal with the world that's possible and turning population growth through.

and does not seem possible, how does that issue, how should that issue temper our, you know, I wish it was this, but, you know, this is not so bad actually considering the alternatives. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole bunch of questions there. I mean, my first sort of response would be, it would be good to, for example, run immigration lower, maybe lower than is optimal for a while so that people can see, oh, okay, maybe there are some economic costs here. I mean, we may want to readjust upwards. Yes, I agree with that. That would be a healthy situation instead of always running it ahead of where people want it.

Let them feel the pinch, right? Let them feel the pinch. Oh, you think you wanted this. Now you see, it wasn't realistic. I agree with that. Well, yeah, I mean, if the issue is, and of course, the link to the economy is, relatively small and tenuous, more tenuous than people think. There are all kinds of things. You have to think not just about young people coming here to work, but where they're going to be in

30, 40 years when they're not working and they're now requiring, you know, a pension and medical care. And so you have to actually look at the full lifespan and not just when they're young and fit. And actually, when you do that, the benefits are much, much less and in fact often are negative. depending on which house killed the immigrant is. And what you attribute to AI and productivity in the future? Well, yeah, I think the other, there is, you know, you certainly write that birth rates are below replacement and have been for a while. In the U.S., not for as long, but the question, I suppose, is, is it not, it may be better to have a smaller growth rate or even to shrink a little bit for a certain amount of time than to, have large-scale, you know, culture and ethnic transformation or faster ethnic

trend. And it's all about coming into a rate, you know, agreeing upon a rate that is what the democracy wants without taboos telling you you can only favor faster or more open. Then I think you'd have people accepting whatever rate people decided upon because there was an open discussion, right? And of course, the democracy is very complicated and immigration is not actually a solution to an aging problem, ultimately without getting a hold of the birth rate problem. Because why, it's because, you know, you look at birth rates in Latin America, they are, as far as I can tell, in many countries, they're below the American birth rate. Is that because of Catholicism?

Well, yeah, you're, it's not just Catholicism, but around the world, we're having this birth rate collapse in all societies. It's a bit faster in the non-Abrahamic, actually. But because of that, you know, immigrants may come in, they may fill slots in the labor market, but then they're going to age too. So then they're going to need people to pay for their health care and their pensions. And so the whole thing is kind of a bit of a Ponzi scheme.

As long as you're constantly bringing these immigrants in to maintain an age structure, they get older. They then demand more immigrants in a rising curve. And so the thing doesn't really work. You won't, the only real way to get a hold of this is to try and figure out how to address the fertility rate problems, which I admit is very difficult. The main predictor of fertility rates in developed countries is religiosity. Bringing in a lot of just bringing in a lot of hot Hispanic girls is not going to hurt that necessarily. What?

Yeah, you're going to screen. Other than. You're going to screen for hotness. Sorry. Other than ethnic makeup, what cultural changes are people worried about with heavy Latin immigration? I guess language potentially? Anything else? Well, yeah, I could be language or it could be.

Now, clearly, the Latin American immigration is more, is closer to the host society in the United States than, let's say, immigration from Middle East, North Africa, into Europe. So it's not as distant, culturally Catholic. There's a lot of similarities, but I mean, it's not exactly the same. There might be differences in terms of, for example, trust levels,

the degree to which people trust each other, support for freedom of speech, some of these values. Now, with assimilation, those differences will erode over over generations. But the book, The culture transplant by Garrett Jones, his argument is it takes two to four generations for that assimilation to occur. So, you know, it's a question of immigration versus assimilation getting that balance right.

What worried me, and by the way, just to say something, in 2015, I think I was saying something along the lines of what you just said. I said, you know, if they would actually build the wall and limit immigration in a meaningful way, the first people crying uncle would be the Republicans. they own businesses and they need and they need the labor and although you describe you talk about economics some sort of like an aggregate statistical way in a much more just everyday level um who's going to do the work that needs to be done like whether whether it increases GDP or decreases like i'm building a new club and you can't help but notice that when you go there it's not my crew it's the contractor's crew there's not anybody or very almost nobody that was born in America doing that work, and they work beautifully.

Eastern European and Latino? Eastern European and Latino, you know, and like you cannot say enough positive things about the way they work. I have a lot of immigrant workers for me. They are fantastic. I mean, this is really being coarse here, but in general, the average of Mexican employee could replace three homegrown employees. I'm not exaggerating.

However, the only thing that has always bothered me, and it's anecdotal, but it's, I'm pretty sure it's true because I've really been looking into it for a long time now. They don't have a positive view of America, our civilization, they grew up thinking America is like the bad guy in their national story. It's not like my parents who are immigrants who would literally cry at any kind of sentimental depiction of America, despite having lived through anti-Semitism in the 40s and 50s. And I just worry about the country. And I guess that'll be, you know, it'll be ameliorated, diluted over time.

But I just wonder if the days of a truly patriotic America that loved itself and took pride in its history and what it believes. believed in, even if that was not warranted, if that's just done and gone forever, and will the country not be worse off with that self-assurance? That worries me. Yeah, I think those are all good points, and it takes time for immigrants to assimilate, you know, the kids are going to probably feel more attached. But I just, I mean, first on the first point, I just want to say that there's a real range of the immigrant experience and there are some groups that clearly are on welfare in much larger numbers than others. So I think it's probably maybe misleading to generalize from one work group.

But there's also the issue of, you know, there's AI, there's robotics, there's mechanization, there are other ways of dealing with labor scarcity. There's paying higher wages, which probably will raise costs to build things, But I suppose if you say, you know, you're in a democracy and you have to do what the average voter wants, and maybe that means opting for a higher wage, higher cost, society where maybe you can't get fast food and services at quite the same price as you do now. That's a loss, but maybe on the plus side, you have more homegrown workers who feel more attached to the society. maybe that helps with social cohesion of patriotism and trust. So I guess I think it would be interesting to try going for a lower migration model

to see how that works out, try and work on your native human capital a bit more. It's not to say you'd have no immigration, but to rely on it, I think, the way it's been relied on, I'm just not sure that's good for the good society. You know, it would be my... Sorry, on the issue of social cohesion, which I'm very concerned about, And this is a good jumping off point to the Groyper thing you wrote because it's a question of like perception versus reality, which is what your article is about. If you come to my restaurant at the olive tree on like a Friday night, you see group after group of mixed race, mixed sexual, you know, preference. You see beautiful and real social cohesion across.

widely different groups that is not artificial. These are people all called each other, hey, you want to go, you know. And it's heartwarming and it just, you know, I do understand that at a time of scarcity, this could really begin to become undone. But it does, I can't, at the same time, I can't say it doesn't work or that it's an impossible goal because I see it, I see it in my own life, but I see it, you know, ubiquitously around the city of New York. so it just needs to be acknowledged that there can be tremendous social cohesion across groups like this

well i think there's a difference between people getting along which i think can happen at a sort of surface level or even you know even in terms of friendship um that sort of thinner interaction and assimilation is one thing so people not killing each other or having fights or you know i mean deep affection i i i think I think it's fair to describe. Right, right. And now, of course, at the same time, we might have, we could also have, you know, ethnic gangs and turf wars and things in other parts of town,

which could equally be part of the story. But in general, you know, you're going to have good interactions. But then there's, you know, the scholarly research, for example, would point to things like, do you trust somebody to return a wallet? Do you feel attached to your neighborhood? Do you trust people generally? And what they would tend to find is that in the more mixed and diverse neighborhoods, you would tend to get lower trust almost universally.

I mean, many studies have been done. Attachment to neighborhood would be lower. Willingness to lend things borrow from a neighbor would be lower. Knowing your neighbors would be lower. So this isn't catastrophe. This is not going to lead to killing and fighting. It's just it's a different type of society. It's a more loose-bounded, kind of weaker ties type of society.

We know, for example, that interpersonal trust is now at an all-time low since records have been kept in the U.S. since 1972. I think, and if you take young people only 8%, we might mention this with the Groyper stuff, but only 8% say people can be trusted. So we have a very low interpersonal trust in the society, which is connected to higher diversity to some degree. Do you think that's hard? So what I'm saying, yeah.

No, you think that's hardwired this mistrust of people of other ethnic groups or just because it's a new thing for many people to interact with other ethnic? Can it be overridden? Can the code be overridden? Oh, yeah. I mean, look, this isn't sort of all or nothing. You know, most people get along just fine. This is just, you know, the more diverse areas are going to have lower trust.

But it doesn't mean they're going to have no trust and the other areas are going to have complete trust. So there's a slight difference. And that trust can have effects on ability to start businesses. So there have been studies, for example, of Northern Italy, has a higher trust society, Southern Italy, lower trust, for various historical reasons. It can affect crime. It can affect a whole bunch of things. But again, it's not like white versus black.

These are all shades of gray. So I don't think this is fatal. We're not going to start killing each other. And there is mixing. That's absolutely true, but let's not forget that the rule actually is most people are still marrying and having friends within their own. So even in a highly diverse place like New York City, if you take, say, the average white New Yorker, most of their friends would be white, even in very diverse neighborhoods. So actually the city is more living apart together and is more segregated. then would be the case in a sort of more small town rural area that is not as diverse,

but where the typical white person may know some non-fights. And so it's just not out as out of character. Because if you imagine distributing friends randomly in the population, you would expect the average white New Yorker to have, you know, two-thirds of their friends as non-white. And it's very, very much not that way. So I just don't want to overdo. There is mixing.

There is positivity, but I don't think we should. be kidding ourselves, that it's the same kind of society as one where you have deeper social ties. And now maybe we don't want that. So these are all about trade-offs. And as long as we can openly negotiate that, that's fine. So let's just recognize what we're giving up. I think you'll agree with this, what you're describing about people having more friends that are white or black, if they are that, the same race. I'm sure that's true. And I'm sure it, well, I would say that, but if you were to control for race, the number wouldn't be as stark as it is,

meaning that a lot of that is because in certain professions, everybody, there are very few black people in certain professions. There's very few Asian people, other professions. So that also dictates who your friends are. What neighborhood you live in can be an ethnic neighborhood, but if the neighborhood you were born in was quite mixed, then you'd have a different statistical profile It's not just, it correlates with race, but it's not necessarily caused by race.

That's the way I want to put it in. Yeah, there are going to be other causes, you know, socioeconomic. If there's any socioeconomic ethnic stratification, then that'll affect it. But even when you control for all of that stuff, and I should also say residential choice, also even controlling for, you know, age and income and where you start from and a whole bunch of things. People want you in their own. And the same race is very important in residential choice, and it's even more important in social, familial, or sorry, friendship choice. So I just think, look, it's not the only factor. There's plenty of mixing. And, you know, in 100 years, you know, three quarters of people are going to be have some mix in them. So it's not that it's not happening. It's just we just notice, you know, we tend to be drawn towards, oh, there's a mixed race couple. We don't tend to notice, oh, there's a same race couple or a same race couple or same race.

race friendship group. So I just think these things we have to bear in mind the whole lov. And yet, a majority of us Jews are intermarrying. What does that say, Dan? Let's get to the, let's get to the, let's get to the, how many are divorcing? We can't stand each other. I can't stand ourselves. Okay, which is something Nick Flint does would probably chuckle at. So, okay, so the Groypers, you think we're overreacting to the Groyper's, to put it very zoomed out. Tell us about, tell us, you've looked into it, tell us what we should think about the Groyper's, because I'm quite worried about it. Yeah, so I did a survey, first of all, to try, no one had done a survey that just asked people,

you know, which of these new media influencers people tuned into, you know, Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, or Candace Owens, amongst some others. So first I was trying to just get a measure of, you know, how popular these people are in a survey, because when you're talking about listens on a podcast, I mean, that can be anyone in the world, there could be bots involved. There could be, you know, so there's all kinds of factors. And what you saw really was like even amongst, you know, it was only a few percent that tuned into, say, a NIC Fuentes,

like two or three percent. And amongst even Trump voters under age 35, it was about 7 percent. So it's still pretty small. The other thing was that you saw a real, there's this stereotype of the kind of person that tunes into the, this podcast, they're kind of a white guy in his basement who's, you know, a white nationalist, who doesn't like black people, doesn't like Jews, and maybe doesn't like women. The reality is actually much, much more varied than that. So, for example, what you see is there's, you know,

Nick Fuentes followers over a third are minorities, for example. You know, Candice Owens, it's over half female, her followership. The other thing, too, is that the number of people who actually have a very negative view of Jews is quite low, even amongst people who tune into Owens, Tucker Carlson, or Nick Fuentes. Now, it's a bit lower amongst Fuentes followers, but still, even amongst followers of Nick Fuentes, the average warmth towards Jews is higher than the warmth towards Palestinians, for example. Now, that's not necessarily saying much, but what I did find is that, for example, there wasn't that much difference between those who tuned into Ben Shapiro and those who

tuned into Tucker Carlson in their warmth level towards Jews. It was a few points difference. And in fact, many of the people who tuned into the one, tuned into the other, show so there's a lot of overlap in the right wing podcast ecosystem between people who are listening to Shapiro and Carlson and and you know even to some degree Fuentes so it's a lot more of a nuanced complicated picture when you when you get granular on on the audiences for these shows and one thing you see is what what I've argued is when it comes to the larger podcasts like Tucker Carlson

or Candace Owens, there's very little effect on attitudes towards Jews. With Fuentes, there's more of an effect on attitudes towards Jews, but it's a very small audience. And therefore, the sum total of all this noise and activity in terms of public opinion is pretty modest. A good analogy might be to think about, you know, the war in Iran now. the fact that, you know, if you listen to podcasts like Tucker Carlson, you'd think that there was this massive upsurge of opposition to the war on the right. But if you look at opinion surveys, it's like 90% of Republicans are approving of this. I think that what this

is telling us is there's a huge difference between what you see on X or on podcasts and what you see in public opinion. I mean, the distance is just very large. And so I think we really get the wrong end of the stick if we focus too much on the noise, on social media or on the podcast, rather than on representative or general surveys of public opinion. Dan, you want to ask something? Are you saying that a lot of Shapiro's listeners don't like Jews? Because they're roughly to say. No, no. You said they had the same warmth level as listeners to these other podcasts.

Well, if we take Shapiro's listeners, you know, in my survey, they may have assigned Jews about a 65 out of 100 on the thermometer, which is pretty good, pretty warm. If you took Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens's followers combined, it's 58. So, I mean, there's a little bit of a difference, but it's not much of a difference. It's not that different from average. How do they rate other people? How do they rate blacks? How do they rate Italians? So blacks would be sort of 55.

to 60 on average, so maybe slightly above Jews, depending on who we're talking about. Among young Trump voters, it would 55 to 60. So it's roughly similar to ratings of Jews, not that different. Whites would be slightly ranked slightly higher, Palestinians would be ranked. That would have been much higher. That would have presumably been much higher in 1980, right? Not really, actually. And this is the thing.

If you, you can go back, there are. the American National Election Study, we can take this back to trying to think when those thermometers. 1960s, the warmth toward Jews, for example, had started to rise quite a bit in the sort of, after 2008, not sure whether Obama's election might have had something to do with it. But in any case, yeah, it went from the sort of mid-60s,

which is where it had been really since the 1960s. It kind of rose into the low 70s. If you were to look at, say, young Republicans, you know, it's kind of oscillated in the 60s for a long time. Now, it's the latest data point we had was 2024, which showed a slight dip of, I think, two or three degrees on average. That was in the margin of error? So it's now in the last 60s. Yeah. So it's just historically, it's a blip.

It's like a nothing. And that's why I think it's very important to look at. The full breath of public opinion going back many years, really what we're seeing is just within the range of what we've had over the last 50, 60 years. Okay. So it's, yeah. You wait. Sorry. Yeah, let me say.

So, I mean, of course, we're talking about Jews where we are not going to probably, oops, we're not going to get into the distinction between Jews and Israel and all that stuff. But, and we also have to acknowledge that many people. who feel a certain way may not say it when asked because they know they're not supposed to feel that way or not supposed to admit to feeling that way. But there are certain other indicators that I see, I wonder what you think about them.

So for instance, in 2008, Barack Obama did everything that he possibly could to be clear that he had no relationship with Lewis Farrakhan whatsoever because to be seen as even having a fight, photo with an anti-Semite-like. And he's nothing, his anti-Semitism was much less blatant than what we're hearing from Nick Fuentes.

And I would argue even Tucker Carlson, even though Tucker Carlson doesn't utter the words. Now, polite company in both parties does not have that revulsion to people who play footsy with people. And if you take Candace Owens, for instance, Candice Owens, who actually says every year at Passover, Jewish, Christian babies disappear and Jews kill them, you know. So that's a huge change that doesn't seem to be harmonious with the fact that the temperature hasn't changed at all, right? Right. And so I guess what I sort of argue in the report is what we're seeing is a rise of conspiracyism.

And that conspiracism, you know, Jews are very much going to be part of that, whether it, be Epstein or whether it be Mossad or a whole bunch of theories involve Jews, you know, as a group that maybe over-indexes in terms of political or economic success, you know, there's a rise, I think, in conspiracy thinking. So, for example, one of the, you know, the strongest predictor of a belief in Holocaust denial is a belief that the moon landings were faked. I mean, even more than saying I identify as an anti-Semite, like the strongest predictor. This was in the Manhattan Institute data I looked at. Moonlandings were fake, 9-11, an inside job.

Just believing in any of these conspiracy theories predicted believing in the other conspiracy theories, regardless of whether they're about the right, the left, Jews, non-Jews. So I think part of what's happening is just the conspiracy level that has really, really been cranked up, and we see that in these online influencers. But what's interesting is, I think there's a, that sort of conspiracy dimension is relatively orthogonal detached from the hating Jews dimension, which is also quite orthogonal from the white nationalist dimension. So, for example, the share of Fuentes followers that want immigration cut to zero that say

you have to be white to be an American, it's all like 20% or less, very low. very few white nationalist beliefs or the sort of deep-seated hatreds. So I think we have to also, I think, understand that what we're dealing with is just a rise in this conspiracism. Why? Well, because it's, first of all, it's a lot more titillating and it's a lot more anti-establishment. It's a lot more exciting, maybe quasi-religious and mysterious than just some sort of the real explanation. which might be just something, you know, arose, you know, COVID-19, whatever it arose out of either a lab leak or some kind of more mundane process. Those kind of mundane, quotidian incremental kind of explanations, unintended consequences.

That's just unsexy. And I just think amongst a low trust young population, and especially this is what the Manhattan Institute data shows, it's sort of a young group that moves between parties. They'll vote Democrat, they'll vote Republican, they're disproportionately black and Hispanic, they are heavily likely to believe in these conspiracy theories. This seems to just be a growing style. Now, of course, that doesn't mean it's not got implications for anti-Semitism.

If you have then a permission structure where you can say outrageous things, you can insinuate that Israel is behind, various plots, then it may emboldened actors who genuinely are anti-Semitic. And so, you know, extreme left ideologues, Islamist ideologues. If I were to take as true the 10 conspiracies that Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens regularly spout, I would have a lower opinion of Jews, right? Like, how could you not? If they're behind killing Kennedy and behind, uh,

you know, and they're killing Christian babies, and they're talking, and they trick Netanyahu into war, and they purposely bomb the U.S. liberty. And, I mean, they go on and on. They're not all coming to my mind, you know, and, well, you could, you know, like, I'm just not so sanguine as you are. Well, I mean, I add to that,

if you believe Israelis are bad and half the world's Jews are Israelis, then that's going to color your interpretation. view of Jews in general, I would imagine. Well, these people are not distinguished between Israelis and Jews. Yeah. I just think, well, I mean, there's different dynamics. So on the left, what you see is this intense hostility to Israel amongst younger

Democrats and liberals, but with still very high warmth towards Jews. Now, we can say, okay, they're just faking it. No, I think they are actually less anti-scent. I made this point on this show many times that, and believe me, I hate the left. and I don't want to say what I'm saying. I find myself just acknowledging certain things that I see right in front of my eyes that the typical left-wing person

who people will call an anti-Semite would have zero problem bringing a Jewish boyfriend a girlfriend home to their parents, marrying them. So that's a unique, it's a new type of anti-Semitism. But this new, this, you know, recurring, what do you call it? this new outbreak of the old anti-Semitism on the right, these people you would imagine are much less likely to want to start a family with a Jew

or to trust a Jewish person to do business with. They seem to be more hateful of actually of Jewishness. Yeah, there's so many different layers here, right? So because on the right, there's less, there is anti-Israel sentiment, but young right opinion has not turned against Israel the same way young left opinion has. It's more a disengagement, a detached,

well, I don't care what happens over there. That sentiment is risen. But there's still, if people are going to pick aside, I mean, as we saw in the America Fest turning point conference, I mean, it was overwhelmingly pro-Israel if you're going to choose between the two. But the ones who are very negative on Israel

are on the right are going to be more negative on Jews, I just kind of want to get us back to the big picture, the big public opinion picture, which is that actually the effect overall is very small, partly because people are partly consuming Owens as a kind of recreation and laughing at it or not taking it seriously. I think that's part of what's going on or it's not cutting very deep. It's not shaping attitudes very much, according to my data. That's one thing that's happening. And of course, there's also their accusation.

using each other of being conspiracists, you know, talking about conspiracy to kill Charlie Kirk and, you know, MacRaw and all these crazy theories. I mean, so I just don't know, I know there's, obviously, it sounds shocking. The question is how much is it really, really affecting attitudes? If we look at actual anti-Semitic incidents as recorded by ADL and others, I mean, these are heavily concentrated on university campuses, for example, to do with encampments, programs, against Israel. So it's not, I mean, that right-wing stuff is mainly happening online in a diffuse way. Part of the reason that the left is associated with more anti-Semitic incidents is just they're in cities, they are protesting, they're more political, so it's more

concentrated, and so the sharp end of it kind of shows up more. Whereas I think with the right is just this diffuse almost entertainment, I'm not sure. Yeah, I just do think there's an error either in, obviously we can't dismiss it entirely, but I also think we don't want to panic because I'm not sure that's productive generally, even for the sake of, you know, Jewish well-being, I just think to overread into this insanity, genuine antipathy towards Jews. I think I would need to see a lot more kind of right-wing, anti-Semitic, sharp and incidents should be convinced otherwise. So, you know, you're presenting a snapshot. Like, I could

show you a snapshot of water at a particular level, and you would have no way of knowing if that's water on its way up or it's water on its way down, right? And, you know, as a business person, I always imagine that I'm always in an upward trend or a downward trend, and I want to try to figure that out before it's too late, right? So this is the thing about this anti-Semitism thing. Obviously, see the war is accelerant and that can fade and the water level could go back down. But one thing

I just can't help is that, to switch my analogy, is that we had a dam that was there to protect us against the high water and that dam was like

social disapproval. Everything that I explained you said before about the kind of Farrakhan as an example and how even people like Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly was outraged and anybody would not clearly identify Farrakhan as an anti-Semite and now she embraces

a much worse Candace Owens. So the dam is gone and we're just at the mercy of the weather now. And that's a big change. And hopefully everything's going to be calmer. But we have,

we lost a layer of protection which was just societal attitudes. And it's, I feel it's ominous feeling to me. I know all us paranoid Jews probably feel the same way, but I try not to be an alarmist.

I try to be accurate. I don't know what you're coming. I think the first thing I would says, I do think that the high tide of, you know, the Fuentes and Tucker and others, I mean, there has been a lot of pushback on the right against

these people as being nuts and conspiracist and anti-Semitic. So I don't agree that this that anti-Semitism is now okay in a way, you know, even though, of course, you're going to have Fuentes and you're going to have these people who are, you know, on X or on social media and they're going to say what they're going to say. But I don't think that necessarily means this is somehow acceptable. Well, J.D. Vance, I would say J.D. Vance seems to think that it's true, but he may be under the

misapprehension that your article is designed to disabuse people of because it's weird the way he obviously He doesn't want to say the wrong thing about Candace Owens and about Nick Fuentes. He's always mealy-mouthed about it. He's a political animal. That's what I think. Well, what will be interesting is, you know, you look now with the support for the Iran action on the, you know, in Republican public opinion. This is just one indicator. Another was that America Fest turning point poll of 30,000 delegates, you know, showing pretty over.

overwhelming support for Israel. And I just think, I mean, we've seen a number of demonstrations now that this online right really isn't cutting through that strongly to anything like a mass audience. And I think the more that's recognized, the less concerned, I think, that some of these people are going to be about what Tucker says or Nick Fuentes says. So I think, my sense is their influence has waned. in, if we take the last six months, for example, I think it's on the wayne.

Compared to where it was, there was a real full-blown, I mean, I think when Rod Dreher was saying, you know, oh, 40% of staffers are groopers, and I just think their power is actually on the decline on the right. That's my sense. I think you're right about that because they had open road for a while,

and finally people are saying things. And this goes back even to the, I mean, the conspiracy stuff is very real. like the whole COVID thing, you know, stuff that was going on on the Rogan show and,

and, you know, Nate Silver demonstrated in a way that I think was completely convincing that this got people killed. People in the red states were dying at higher rates than the blue states

because of this conspiracy stuff. And yet I would also add, even though I so reject all that stuff, I'm not immune to a more primitive Pavlovian emotional leakage

that when I went to get a COVID vaccine recently I had a little anxiety and I had to say to myself that's all a bunch of

bullshit no and what's the matter with you you know but it does have a little effect on you and I'm a

pretty tough mental person and I think that similarly with all these conspiracies but let's

focus on the Jewish when you hear constant horrible repulsive things about the Jews it does register in you in some way.

It's not costless. Okay, I just say it as a mentally not tough person. I have no problem with the COVID vaccine. What, you're crazy? Oh, that's all. Yeah, I mean, it's unpleasant. And, you know, I guess we just have to trust that, you know, we do have to trust, I suppose, in the common sense of a Democratic public in a free society.

I mean, that's partly what. free speech is about. I'm not as concerned because I'm still looking at the macro picture where I just don't think these things are. I think they're losing influence. They had a sort of a little bit of a blip. But there is a deeper question which is in a society where trust is now so low interpersonal trust, trust in institutions and government. How do you rebuild that? I think if you had a higher trust society, then I do think that it would be hard to be hard. for some of these theories, perhaps to be as widely disseminated. And so I guess one of the questions is how to you...

Get rid of the Jews. What's that? Get rid of the Jews. Well, I... I just throw it out there. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I mean, but look, yeah, I mean, it's not... It is a concern, but I think...

Yeah, I mean, how do we... I mean, part of the problem is that the... elite institutions are now very polarized or polarizing, you know, trust in media is in the basement, you know, trust in universities is collapsed, you know. The only thing people trust in the U.S. across the partisan divide is the military. I think that those institutions really did themselves a disservice by, you know, spouting progressive slogans on BLM, for example. Yes.

I think they lost a lot of credibility with conservative audiences. I would just, you know, one possible way back is for the institutions to take bipartisanship more seriously, to try not to be so disproportionately populated by one political view. Like universities, you know, I'm in academia. You know, you look at the Ivy League universities. It's, you know, 98 to 2, Democrat to Republican and donation. You know, you can't, I just think that's extremely unhealthy. and without any attempt to try and rebalance that.

The newspapers, I think, actually have done some, the New York Times tries to have some conservatives. Okay, they're not MAGA, but at least they're trying. You know, universities aren't trying at all. I think there's a huge problem there, and you see that in government as well. So I think that's maybe one area where you could start to rebuild some trust, which might, because I think in an atmosphere of mistrust,

that's where these conspiracy theories get more legroom. Yeah, this idea of a temperature is an interesting way to look at things. So my feeling about that is that if you were to take the temperature of how the average Republican feels about universities, I think the number you'd come up with is pretty close to where I would put it. But I think if you would take their temperature about the New York Times, I think they very much exaggerate how bad the New York Times is. The New York Times has had a few very conspicuous misses. But day to day, the New York Times is not as bad as people want to see.

say in a cliche way. I think they're they're pretty good as an institution. Well, they've improved. They have improved though, I think from the sort of Nicole Hannah-Jones kind of 1619 project. That's one of the conspicuous thing. That's what I'm saying. Like if you want to talk about 1619, but that doesn't mean they're Iraq reporting or their Iran reporting is shit, you know? No, no. And you're right. And in fact, one interesting thing was that a lot of Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson listeners, like 40 to 50 percent consumed New York Times content, which I think. that was really interesting. They've really stepped it up with the games as well, spelling B and Werdle, etc.

Well, apparently Wirtle is how they make all their money. Yeah. The news organization is a lost leader for Wirtle, or I guess that's not quite right, but you know what I mean? Okay, before you go, you want to talk about Iran? Can I just ask you just real quick about the situation in England? Is it analogous? Do they, are Candace and Tucker and Nick big over there?

they got their own homegrown people. Boy, that's a good question. I mean, they would undoubtedly have followers. Like all of these people have an international audience. But, boy, I haven't seen any polling. Again, I would suspect the impact on, you know, opinion about Jews on the right, I think is probably marginal. It's certainly nothing that you would pick up. I mean, pretty well all of the threats are around, you know,

essentially marches of protests on campus or in the big cities with a strong Muslim flavor but also a far left student flavor that is really where the sharp end of it is attacks you know so I just I think the right-wing anti-Semitism is really just it's on it's diffuse and online I'm just not sure that's it's not a main factor that that I can pick up in Britain now of course some people will disagree and they'll be alarmed at things that are said and done online. But I just think, you know, online, Twitter is just not real life.

It has a very small impact, I would argue, in many cases. Now, what about, do you have any opinions? Are you into foreign affairs at all? Iran, do you have any opinions on it? Um, yeah, well, I guess I'm, I mean, I guess I do believe in international law, international norm, so I'm not thrilled when countries kind of just act on their own. Now, on the other hand, it is a despicable regime. I have no love loss for them. I hope it winds up soon. I think these kind of things tend to distort public opinion and politics a lot.

So I guess that's sort of where I am. One thing that is interesting, though, is at least currently, is that high Republican voter support for the action. And, you know, despite all the splits in the, you know, online, I think it seems pretty unanimous amongst the voting base. So that's, that kind of is a neat illustration of how what's happening online often doesn't really bear much relationship to what's going on in public opinion. The issue with Iran that I can't get away from, maybe because of my age, is that my whole life, very sensibly, I thought, nuclear proliferation was considered to be the biggest threat to the human race. And we were ready to go to war rather than to let the Cuba, you know, Russia put missiles in Cuba.

I tweeted about this, if you Google or chat GPT, a list of all the close calls of nuclear accidents that there have been in the world. We've more than once been down to like just luck, just pure dumb luck that we didn't have an accidental explosion. And that was between the most responsible two nations in the world at the time,

the Soviet Union and America, and the thought of a backward, I mean, if you watch that, movie, the miniseries, Chernobyl, just about, again, the Soviet Union, just how backward they were in terms of their fail-safe measures to prevent an accident. And you imagine Iran being ten times worse than that. Now they're not going to have a nuclear football and codes and keys and fails. They're going to have, you know, as I said, they're duct-taped circuit breakers and who the hell knows, and their jihadists and martyrdom.

And then all the other countries feel now threatened. So they feel they need nuclear. weapons and international law shim international law like if the human race actually has a catastrophic event

this is very very likely how it's going to come about the accident like I've said probably the lab leak

was the the horrible event the deadliest event in modern history was the lab leak not the actual use

of the biological weapons not the imagined use of this gain of function research, the sloppy lab leak and the risk of the sloppy lab leak, as it were, of spreading enriched uranium around the Middle East, to me, you've got to stop it.

And if you have an opportunity now where they're totally exposed, they have no defense, I know you're trying to get in. It's like, this to me is a no-brainer. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but it was worth the shot. That's how I feel about it. Yeah, I mean, I suppose the, yeah, it's very difficult to, so you could make the argument, for example that they should have got the support of Congress,

got a coalition together, or at least made some phone calls behind the scene to get some kind of, at least nominal assent, and then gone in and tried to sort of... That's another matter, yeah, that has its own ledger. I mean, yes, I agree that it's a good thing

to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon, yes, absolutely. Now, is taking out, you know, they all were in one room, is taking out that leadership structure you know, it'll probably make, who knows, will it make it more likely? Yeah, probably it'll set them back. I mean, we'll have to just see how much they can respond.

So certainly preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon is laudable. Can you, could you have done it in a somewhat more orderly principled way? Again, that's for the historians. I'm just, you know, watching Trump. Now, of course, I'm Canadian, I see Trump sort of out making claims on Greenland and Canada. I know it's just hard air, but the sort of haphazard and unprincipled way in which he conducts himself, I think, is not a, I just don't think that's the way to go. I think it would be better to have, you know, a set of principles. Yes, you can deviate them from them occasionally, but at least try and have, you know, because that sort of post-war, post-1945 order has resulted in, you know, fewer interstate wars.

have been very few interstate wars, non-proliferation, a whole bunch of good things, and I think it's worth preserving. So I'm just not as much of a fan of states just acting in a real politic kind of unilateral fashion. So that's kind of, now having said all that, I think these institutions, the international ones like the UN, are heavily corrupted by ideology.

And so, again, that needs to be addressed. So I'm not an uncritical supporter of some of these institutions. It's difficult because you need to, what's hard is you need kind of pop, some populist disruption of the institutional order. You absolutely needed that, but you also need to kind of retain that institutional order, normative order. And that's this tough balance. So, yeah, so this harkens back to what I said way earlier in the conversation,

that both sides are right, just matter of how you prioritize. Everything you're saying is absolutely true. and, you know, I don't know, especially about Trump's, you know, his manner, his vulgarity, his recklessness. I don't know if he could notify Congress and be confident that it wouldn't leak out. He doesn't know that. I don't know if it's worth the risk. Certainly Thomas Jefferson didn't have to worry about word getting to England when they declared war, you know, that he could do that and still have his surprise at most likely.

So, you know, the modern world makes some of these things. It's not such an easy call. But having said that, my kind of way of, I found this mental way of looking things

to be very helpful to me, which is that every administration gets reduced to four or five bullet points in a middle school student's history textbook. And all this other stuff, the messaging, This is not going to be part of the bullpoint. The bullet point will be Trump either got rid of the Iranian nuclear threat.

That was a good thing or Trump fucked up in Iran and this was a bad thing. And that's where I want to start. I think it was worth the risk. And I think if he could accomplish that good thing, it would definitely be a nice bullet point in the textbook. And if he could do it without all those things that you're saying in a micro level, I wish he would and as many other unintended consequences of him doing it not in a more careful way. But, you know, it's a different issue to me. Is his plan to get a regime that we can negotiate with, or is his plan just to destroy the nuclear infrastructure?

My just, I haven't even followed that closely. My gut is that ideally they're hoping that whatever it was that was allowing 30, 40, 50,000 people to risk their lives and get killed in these protests, which must represent millions of people who agreed with them, that he wants to just, you know, what's the word for,

what's the fancy word for cutting some of these balls off? Castrate? No, not neuter, not castrate, is a better word. Anyway, he wants to, he wants to make the Iranian regime impudent, and hopefully they hope that they'll rise up and take over. But if they won't, setting them back 15 years

and scaring the shit out of them so they think three times before they reconstit, ain't the worst outcome either. So, you know. Yeah, I mean, exactly. And so much will depend. It'll either be a genius move. But, I mean, I guess, you know, there may be risks.

Who knows what the downstream risks are, for example, of this? Do we have norms changed around, for example, violating state sovereignty or attacking the leaders? You know, is that a bad thing? I mean, it's very difficult to say in the here and now. They'll only know in like 10 or 15 years. It's a bit like the Iraq war. Okay, that turned out not to be so good,

although good if you were Kurt, probably, but maybe not so good for others. But it's very hard. I wouldn't pretend to forecast this, because I'm not a foreign policy specialist, and I think it's, if anyone thinks they know exactly what's going to happen, I think they're wrong.

All right. Any last hot takes on the world you want to give us before we let you go? Well, I mean, only just to say, say with regard to the whole Trump project that I do think that we need to have some

kind of, I think what's missing in the Trump project really is a sort of principal critique of the previous order. Someone who can carry off a sort of moral critique of the previous dispensation which didn't respect

Americans' desires or for national sovereignty border control for freedom of speech, for equal treatment, and a whole bunch of other things. And it's just, it would have been nice, I guess, to get that. So I think it's

one thing to have the hard power and to crack down on Harvard and to throw your weight around the world. But I think without the soft power legitimation, without having a kind of moral story that you are also telling, I think it just weakens the effect. So that's

just one thing I think to think about is how can we have a sort of different kind of soft power that's countering WoCouria, this countering the radical progressive dispensation that exists and say prior to Trump.

I just, I think even though it's been damaged, in fact, I'm just not sure whether it's been damaged morally the way it probably needed to be. And so that's perhaps a disappointment I would have with the whole Trump project. Are you pleased with Musk's

what he's done with Twitter and making it more free? Good question. Yeah, I think it's, well, I think it's definitely better to have it free, even with all of the slop that's on there. And I mean, I think there's plenty of things about Musk's Twitter I don't like in terms of the way it penalizes content that's posted from other sources. But in general, it's better to have, I think, a freer speech rather than curation by political bias. which is really what Twitter was in the past, where shadow banning and other forms of speech control

were exercised behind closed doors in a very sort of politically biased fashion. I think that's a real negative. And so, yeah, on balance, I think it's better to have it out in the open. And even with things like the slop being pushed by the Fuentes of this world, well, we see who they are,

we see who the people are, we see how popular they are, and in fact it leads people to then attention. them online to make fun of them. And in some ways, I think that's having an effect and it's reducing their impact organically. And that's maybe better than just going for a ban. Whereas in Europe and in Canada, where I'm from the online speech regulation apparatus, which is heavily politically biased, that's the route they're taking. I actually don't think that's going to produce a more harmonious outcome. So yeah, that's sort of where I am on that. I think we're, I agree with it. We need

free speech and I think our cultural reflexes and understanding of how to interpret what we read and see is lagging and I think over time we'll get better at that. I think our kids need to be taught even in school how to analyze what they're seeing. I'm surprised already that every time we see some clip on Twitter, there isn't already instantly the context which is available to us so people could like we will get these things over time so much of what we get on Twitter that is

actually deceptive and pretty easily exposed if we just have the easier tools to to see the context well there was an interesting paper I saw which was arguing that actually AI will return us to a more fact-based

yes I think that too it is if you use AI it's very good yeah yeah it will spot you know and community notes and grok and these things on Twitter, can spot factual errors and can bring sanity back in? So I think on the optimistic side, I suppose AI might be a force for restoring sanity and checking some of the conspiracy theorizing. So that's trying to make a positive takeaway. By the way, the word I was looking for was gelding.

Gilding is a noun. I think it was a noun. You're trying to use it as a verb or something? As I said, we want to gild. Oh, is Gelt a verb? It's a verb, yeah. Geld can be used as a verb, okay. Yeah, I think it's a verb.

Anyway, all right, sir, you know, I don't know. You must get to New York from time to time and never come down, but we love to get a few drinks with you at some point. I'd love to. When next time I'm in town, yeah, I'd be delighted. You've been on Coleman Hughes's podcast too, right? Yeah, and that's when I was in town. And so, yeah, Coleman's great.

Yeah, Coleman's a regular. I knew him when he was an undergrad, actually. met him. So did we. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. He comes here a lot.

He plays in the band here Monday nights. How long is it? How old? Is he 30 already? I mean, he goes so fast. He just turned 30 last month. Wow. God, they grow up so quick.

He seemed like a teenager when I first met him. He's amazing. All right, Eric. Very nice to see you again. I hope to see you in person. I hope the hour was provocative and enjoyable for you. And I hope we are above the, how did you just put it like above the mean in terms of I don't know how our questions.

I think we do better than average job, yes. All right. So long, sir. Thank you. So long. No. Bye. Bye.

By the way, Steve, I realized why I kept asking for you talking about my because it's plugged into the... I kept on the...