The Duran Podcast - Denying Liberty, Eroding Democracy With Thierry Baudet, John Laughland And Alexander Mercouris

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Denying Liberty, Eroding Democracy With Thierry Baudet, John Laughland And Alexander Mercouris

So let me now introduce our guests for this program. This is going to be a very interesting program, a program discussing lots of matters about international affairs, democracy, the state of our world. Can I first of all introduce Thierry Baudet, a member of the Dutch parliament, leader of the Forum for Democracy, a political party in the Netherlands, but also an international grouping of people concerned. about the state of democracy, and can I also introduce John Laughland, who is the director, as I understand it. And both John and Thierry have made a particular political stand defending democracy, defending the values of democracy and freedom and liberty, which used to be core values in the West, values that people thought for, that were established, and which are being eroded away. And when I say they've been eroded away, we've had an extraordinary period that we have just been

through in which the whole of Europe, the whole of the West, much of the rest of the world also, was in lockdown. People were placed in effective detention, often in their own homes, unable to conduct their businesses, unable to live their lives, and severely criticized and subjected to legal action if they protested or spoke out against what was done to them. And this is all related to a pandemic. Of course, we've had many pandemics in the past. Nothing like this has ever happened in the modern world before, but it did happen on this. and it happened internationally and it was also it also took place nationally it was also enforced by national governments all without exception with great rigor and both John and Thierry both scholars I should say they've written wonderful books on

many subjects they've looked into this subject they lead they are involved in a political movement which is the only political movement across the Western world in effect that challenged right from the start throughout every aspect of this enormous restriction and denial of liberty and that is the first point I think where we will start because in a way it was both symptomatic of where we are going and also it was a further catalyst accelerating the trend to where we're to where we're going and theory if I may start with you you've written a book on this topic

perhaps you could introduce us tell us a little bit about the book and then we can perhaps explore this subject in a little more detail thank you thank you for inviting me and inviting us it's a real pleasure I've been a follower and admirer of the Duran for some time and and indeed it's quite exciting to do it to present the book with you today because it's it's appearing this all this summer. The COVID conspiracy was a number one bestseller in the Netherlands,

so it gained quite some readership. And I really hope that an international readership will also be interested in this story, because what I try to tell is of much greater importance than just the situation in the Netherlands. As you rightly said in your introduction, this was obviously a global phenomenon. And the interesting thing about it, I would say there are two things, two elements in this this COVID craze, this COVID mystique that has taken over political and social life during at least two years from, mind you, from January, February 2020, till the moment when Vladimir Putin obviously cured COVID when he invaded Ukraine.

That very day, COVID was over miraculously. But okay, so during those two years, we witnessed effectively two things. The first is that all societal checks and balances, not merely formal checks and balances in terms of fundamental rights, freedom rights, an independent judiciary, parliamentary restrictions on what the executive branch may or may not do, all these formal checks and balances of democracy vanished overnight. So the state operated as one block, imposing these restrictions which indeed have not been imposed since the dawn of time, essentially.

But also not just these formal checks and balances, but also the informal, the material checks and balances of a free society stopped functioning. Journalists were of one opinion only. They silenced every critical voice, academic institutions, corporations, businesses. The entire fabric of society in the way that I used to understand it as a diverse series of different players with their separate interests that were sometimes aligning, sometimes conflicting, and that resulted in this quasi-cautic manner through an invisible hand, as it were, in a free society. where more or less rational conclusions were drawn

through all these players that had their thing to bring to the table. This vanished. From February slash March 2020 onwards, there was one narrative that was pushed across the board. Lockdowns work to limit the spread of disease, such as that mortality rates are not to be looked at a statistical level, because we are dealing with something that is so beyond anything rational and anything we've ever seen before that we're going to give Ebola virus status internationally

to this virus which means that all comparisons are off. You were not allowed to compare it to the flu. You were not allowed to say, look, the mortality rates are actually quite similar to what we've seen in the previous years and so on and so forth. You were not allowed, thirdly, to question the very very very very. vaccine or the efficiency of the vaccines or the very technology behind it, the MRNA technology as a means to effectively vaccinate people against viruses. You know, these are all serious questions that up until January, February, 2020, people

were allowed to ask. And all of a sudden, the entire fabric of society, all institutions overnight, they started pushing the same narrative. And that was extremely frightening to me, especially because this happened internationally, not just in the Netherlands, but also here in Britain, in France, in the United States, there were a couple of governors here and there. In Sweden, there were some people who were asking questions. There were some outliers here and there, but they were very, very marginal. And this was the case of mainstream media, as I said, academics, big corporations, government institutions, they all went along with this story.

And so, and the second, this was, for me, this was, it was really, really a very, very shocking thing to realize. There was absolutely nothing you could do, big tech, the formerly free internet, stop being free. I'm very aware that we're having this conversation right now, and it's possible that it's going to be taken down from YouTube, from Facebook, that the big tech platform. firms are going to say, no, you're not allowed to talk about it in such a way. So it was not just the realization that all quasi-rational or countervailing procedures that used to exist stopped existing, but also that these irrational and even dictatorial, tyrannical policies that were being implemented, were implemented internationally. globally. So the two conclusions that I drew from the COVID period were first, okay, our free

democratic society is effectively, it's maybe not that, but it exists only at the mercy of the government. If the deep state behind the government or whatever you want to call it, if they allow a free debate on a particular subject, then we'll have a free debate. But if they don't, everybody stands in line. Secondly, this is an international phenomenon. So we may believe that we live in sovereign nation states, where we have parliaments, where they have discussions about things, and then the parliament decides A and another parliament decides B. So you have a concert of nations, that kind of thing. That's history. That's not the way the world apparently works, because this was implemented on the very same day. March 16,

2020, Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, France, they all went in lockdown. It's impossible, it's inconceivable that this was a sort of spontaneous decision. And thirdly, and perhaps even most frighteningly, I haven't mentioned it yet, but the sheer tyrannical nature and heartlessness and inhumane nature of the nature of the policies. We are being governed by people that are a irrational which is obvious. There was there was from April, May 2020 onwards there was absolutely no discussion anymore professor Yoannidis major studies all confirmed by so many other scientists of the mortality of COVID which was comparable to the

flu there's no serious discussion about secondly lockdowns that they don't work to limit spreading of diseases. There was from May, June onwards, it was, the numbers were clear, the statistics were there, it was absolutely unarguable that it was working. Now, so on and so forth. So the irrationality of the decisions being taken, the international nature of these policies, and thirdly, the ability, apparently, of our institutions of authority. the decision makers, those in power to implement policies that harm people to the extent

that it has left elderly people to die alone. It has caused enormous numbers of depression amongst the youth. It has destroyed businesses on a scale that is just, we're still suffering from it, the consequences. These three realizations made me change my life, the course of my political party, party. It has changed my understanding of the world fundamentally and I found myself to be the only elected politician in the Western world, maybe even in the world, but I'm not that familiar with people in India, for example, there may be other, but I was literally the only one in Europe, in the EU, who opposed not merely, let's say whether or not we should,

have a curfew that starts at 9 or 10 o'clock or whether or not we should have social distancing of 90 centimeters or 1 meter of 50 or whether or not we should mandate the vaccines or merely make them freely available if you choose so. I fundamentally attack the very idea that governments may impose lockdowns in the first place. This to me is just beyond the license of governments, beyond the rights that governments have. And I attacked the mortality rates. I criticized the idea that it's equal to Ebola virus and so on. And I was literally the only one.

So I felt and I had huge, obviously, a huge number of attacks. My party was the largest party in the polls. We had just topped the polls. We had won the Senate elections. I was on track to become a member of the Dutch government. I was, you know, we were having drinks with former ministers, the former leader of the currently governing party had dinner with me and he ordered a nice bottle of French white burgundy and he said you know you can have any position you want that that was

the energy I was in and all of a sudden I found myself to be the number one enemy of the stake the number one outcast in politics and I felt I had to write this book to tell my story because I think this is, I may have been the only one to stand up, but I'm absolutely confident that a lot of people across the world have felt the same things that I have felt, have thought the same thoughts that I have felt. And this story tells the story of how this cartel behind the scenes is able effectively to push people into acquiescing in the dominant narrative.

People are very afraid to speak out because they don't want to lose their job. They don't want to lose their friends. They don't want to become an outcast. They don't want to lose access to all the benefits that you get when you are a nice, jolly old part of the game, part of the party, part of the crew. So I feel this book that is now coming out. It may touch a nerve that people have, they sort of have a sense. I think a lot of people have a sense that our liberties, our freedoms are sort of being taken away, but where exactly is it coming from? Right?

There's a very, there's a very vague sense of, you know, something is off here. Something is just isn't right, but where is it coming from? How is it working? And as far as I know, I'm the only one who was in a position of power within the ranks of the system, speaking out, breaking out, and, and, um, and everything that followed from the attacks in the media, to all the classical names that they drop. You know, you're a racist, you're a fascist, you're a misogynist, you're an anti-Semite.

Obviously, you are a, what have you not, anti-gay activist, you're anti-democratic, you're a denier, you're a COVID denier, you're a climate denier, you're a climate denier. They have these, all these, all these, words that I just throw at you and repeat in the press endlessly. And obviously you're a Russian spy. That is a sure thing you're always going to get. But it tells this story and I think it's it still all these mechanisms, even though COVID may be sort of over or feel like it's over,

maybe it's coming back, but nobody really knows. But it's essentially the same thing with the Ukraine situation. It's the same thing with the EU, the Euro. The Euro. The Euro. currency, CBDC that's coming for us, immigration, climate change. They have a way, and with they, I mean the global international deep state, those who shape the dominant agenda, they have a very effective way to create the illusion of consensus. They manufacture consent to quote the famous Noam Chomsky who wrote a book about this. They manufacture consent. And it is our job, and that's how I would like to make the bridge to John sitting here.

It's our job to create a platform that counters this dominant narrative. We have to create a counter narrative. And that is why, during COVID, as I was fighting my fight in the Netherlands, and I I wrote the book and it was just within the Netherlands, it's a very vivid debate and I think we are amongst the nation and I do pride myself a little bit on having contributed to that a little bit with the lowest number of support for the lockdowns, the lowest number of compliance with the lockdowns,

and the lowest number of vaccination status. So the highest number of people that were sort of doubting like, hmm, why are we doing this? And I think that's very important. So by creating a counter-narrative, you can actually change the general mood in the country. And I'm not saying that I was the only one to do that. Obviously, there were other people, great people in the Netherlands and elsewhere, Bobby Kennedy, international, other people.

But this just does create a difference. And I felt coming out of the COVID period that we needed to sort of scale up and bring the openness of the debate in the Netherlands. We have obviously a long tradition of publishing Montesquieu and Voltaire and Enlightenment books. And the Netherlands is sort of a, it's a country where sometimes new things come up. We had to create a platform to push this at an international level. And that's when I reached out to John. John has been an old friend and someone I've been admiring for many, many years.

I consider him he's the intellectual mastermind behind Brexit. He has written the book on sovereignty, which is called The Tainted Source. but he should read that. He's using great works on international law. And I really felt that someone like him, or actually just him, he should do this. We should do this together. And that's why it's also exciting to be in podcasts together and to reach out. And I hope if people see this and if they listen to this, they might reach out, want to reach out to us.

And perhaps we can organize a conference soon. And it would be wonderful if you would be there. We really need to create this because that's the final point I'll make. and then I'll shut up and you can say whatever you want. But the conservatards, as I call them, the mainstream conservative movement or the established rights, the mainstream right has really betrayed us. It's clear now that this is,

because this is a place where we both come from. We come from a sort of mainstream conservative right. And I know you come from a different place, and that's why it's so exciting that people like us are now sort of having a conversation. We're like, oh, hey, we agree on this, we agree on that. That's very interesting. But the mainstream right has really shown its uselessness

when it comes to defending the actual principles that we're fighting for. So what we need to do is create something new, create a new movement. And the term that I've sort of come up for with is anti-global, the global anti-globalist alliance. That's sort of the line. That's the line along which I'm thinking and that includes obviously defense of sovereignty but also of national currency.

Therefore, it's an opposition against CBDC and so on and so forth. So these are just the grand contours of where I am and how all of this came about. And can I say this there's a lot of work, all of that is in the book, but also other things. And I mean, things like, for example, if I can come to you. John, the collapse of law because what has happened, what Thierry is describing, would not be possible without the collapse of law. And the collapse of law has been underway for some time. Now, I used to work in the Royal Court of Justice in London. I was right at the heart of the legal system. I used to work with judges, high court judges, people who it would have been inconceivable to me,

once upon a time that they would be parties to this this sort of thing and yet they were they they they let it happen they're letting lots of other things happen too with every day that passes I see decisions coming out of courts which as legal decisions are generally truly do not understand and in my opinion it started again through quasi-international courts, as they're called. I remember reading many years ago,

a book that you wrote about the trial of Slobod and Milosevic. And you discussed there the whole way in which the Hague Tribunal that was looking into war crimes in Yugoslavia, it was set up in a very strange way. It was changing precedence, all the time. It was throwing out safeguards all the time. I know some of the people who are working in those kind of international courts, tribunals. I've had arguments with them. And what is frightening to me is how the culture that started there in those very international

institutions, that this is where we're going to come to the topic of sovereignty and the disappearance of sovereignty, those international institutions, the culture that developed out of those international courts, has now worked its way through into the national legal systems. And, well, do you want to discuss this? Well, that's exactly what I wrote about. When I wrote about the Milosevic trial and the Hague Tribunal and the other international, the growth of international criminal law, my specific warning was that these backershue bad practices would indeed percolate down and so it has proved.

These tribunals are a disgrace, they violate all the principles of due process, above all, of course the principle of the presumption of innocence, but many other rules besides. And I could see it coming and so it has proved. And what you say about the judiciary is very interesting. My own uncle was a high court judge and he made his name defending, you may remember a man called Clive Ponting, the thing with Michael Heseltine, the Falklands War, the SS Belgrano and so on. That was a generation or two ago when judges stood up against the government, rather as journalists used to. Whereas now, as we know, for the last few decades, it's exactly the opposite.

Journalists, and now also the legal profession, regard themselves as the guard dogs of government. And that is why the COVID issue is so important. The COVID issue, although it sprung upon us and we didn't expect it, we didn't see it coming. Now that it's come and we hope gone at least for the time being, we can see, I'm sure you agree with me, that the way that the COVID pandemic was treated was, COVID is obviously an illness, was itself a symptom of a sick society, of a society which was already sick, of states which were already sick. They were already corrupted.

They were already infected by various weaknesses, by various political viruses, which meant that when the initial panic struck, they were unable to react in the proper way. And when I say six societies, one of the things that strikes me most about the horrible way that COVID was dealt with is that it was precisely the most liberal societies, supposedly liberal societies. Canada, Australia, France to a large extent, although France is much less liberal, of course, than Britain or the other Anglo-Saxon countries. Those countries with long liberal traditions became the most dictatorial. Now, why is that? Why is it? In my view, it is because those societies, those liberal societies with their post-national, post-historic, post-Christian, post-modern ethic, have created entirely dislocated, societies. People don't know where they're from, they don't know whether they're a man or a woman,

they don't know, they have no sense of history, they have no sense of rootedness. And it's precisely in that sense of unruitedness or deracination that people coalesce around or rather against a scapegoat. And that is, of course, what we saw in COVID. People were scapegoated if they were anti-vax or whatever. In other words, the virulence of the reaction was, of course, what, you know, the scapegoated, if they were anti-vax or whatever. In other words, the virulence of the reaction was itself, as I say, a symptom of societies which had already become sick through liberalism. And Thierry has entitled his book, The COVID Conspiracy. So that's a radical title, and it's a provocative one. But what you've just said, Thierry, about the narrative.

You said there was only one narrative. We should never forget that on the 7th of April 2020, a press conference was given in Downing Street by the chief of the general staff of the British army, General Sir Nick Carter. The British army at that point was building the Nightingale hospitals. So you could say it was okay for the army to be giving a press conference because they were actually doing stuff.

But in his press conference, he mentioned not just the hospitals they were building, which by the way were never used, But also the important work that the 77 Brigade was doing in countering COVID disinformation. 77 Brigade is a sci-op's unit, psychological operations unit within the British Army. And its role was to control the narrative, all right? The 7th of April 2020. There was no counter-narrative yet on the 7th of April 2020. Because the few little glimmers of resistance in this country had not even stated.

If I'm not mistaken, the Daily Skeptic Toby Young's website, was created, I think, on the 5th or 6th of April. It had hardly got going. In other words, they went straight for the jugular. They already knew that at a time when most people were probably quite frightened and were probably happy to go along with lockdowns, they already knew that their goal was to control the narrative. And that has now become the primary action of Western societies, is controlling the narrative. And we recently had in the Netherlands in May, at the end of May, the Dutch intelligence services published a report suggesting criteria for forbidding political parties, for closing down political parties.

And it's absolutely obvious when you read this report that it's Forum for Democracy, which is the target, potential target. But what is the argument? The argument is that it doesn't mention Forum for Democracy, but the, the, the, the, A danger to democracy is posed if there are narratives, if people believe certain narratives, in this case that there is an evil global elite governing the world. So the idea is now is to take en route in many countries,

including above all I would say in intelligence services, that narratives pose a danger to the state. Which is an astonishing development. It is an extraordinary state of mind, because a few things to say about narratives, because of course the people who promote narratives are the very people who are imposing and enforcing all of these things. They're the people who don't want to discuss facts.

Because we're talking about narratives. We're talking about debate. We're talking about discussion. But they don't want discussion. On the contrary, they want to impose narratives. Because what Thierry was describing in his book is an effect. a narrative. It was a narrative that was enforced upon people about COVID and everybody had to go

along with that particular narrative. It's people who were challenging the narrative who are the people that you go against. So it's again an extraordinary twist. You turn it round, you talk about other people coming up with narratives when in fact what you're doing is enforcing a narrative of your own. It is a most sinister development, a profoundly totalitarian one. Profoundly totalitarian. The other thing is, and this is again very symptomatic of totalitarian thinking, is the use of science, or at least what is called science. Quasas, the abuse of science. Remember how scientific Marxism was used to implement Soviet policies because it was the same

Absolutely. So you have, you say this is a scientific position, therefore anybody who challenges this position, this position is by definition, irrational, is not in tune with modern realities, cannot argue with experts, cannot debate with experts because you're not yourself an expert. And you must always follow the expert view. Again, coming back to what you just said, Thierry, that's actually a Soviet position. And the Soviets were very much taking that long. It's been going on for quite some time. I did my PhD on sovereignty, and I was writing a lot about the implementation of the euro currency. And the interesting thing was that when I was starting to debate this subject, and this was between 2006 and, let's say, 2016. That was 10 years.

I was doing all kinds of journalistic work. I was working as a newspaper editor and a television program editor. And the interesting thing was that whenever this was during the financial crisis. So people were talking about, is the euro a very good idea? What should we do with the inflation rates and so on and so forth? Interest rates. It was very, very difficult to find renowned economists who would speak out against the euro. So what happened was that the entire journalistic class, which was, I would say, semi-literates.

The people that I encountered at newspapers, they were semi-literate. So they had sort of, they got a sort of a bachelor's degree somewhere, and then they started working here and there, but they weren't actually familiar with rigorous academic work. They weren't academics themselves. They were sort of, so they had this huge feeling of authority for it. a professor, university professor. It was like, oh, well, so if there was no renowned university professor who would speak out against the euro currency, in their mind, they would conclude this is a consensus subject. This was, this was literally, this is the way the brain

of these people functioned. And then, you know, someone of a renowned name, a Harvard professor, would say, you know, I question the euro, whatever. And that would, we would, we would, we're really be a game changer for these journalists that I worked with. But the game changer would not be that they would start thinking about what is an optimal currency area, what are the conditions for a currency to function, what are the actual tasks of a central bank. No, they weren't reaching through the abstract, they were watching it from a sociological perspective and like, oh, someone of authority is taking a different position, well, maybe the debate

will shift rather like you would watch a sports game without understanding the actual rules of the game you would see one team advancing and then another team advancing and you could sort of describe it without saying this team is right or that team is right now it's a it's a sociological process and that is how now with the climate change the same thing is happening there's these IPCC which is a fraudulent organization which is set up specifically to to monitor man-made, the impact of man on the climate. It's not there to research the climate.

It's there to pick out those studies that say something about the influence of man on the climate. And then they have all these corrupt means of filtering out dissenting scientists, papers that have different finds, besides the whole, the very thing that they're doing, is projecting things into the future, which by definition is not falsifiable, therefore doesn't meet the fundamental principle of science, scientific research.

But so, but the effect is that journalists, they get these papers of 3,000 page long, there's no single journalist in the entire world who is going to read it, let alone understand what is it, actually being said in these studies, but they get this report. And they sort of, they write, like there's huge report which says, and then in the executive summary it says something. And that is how the science is used, or the quasi-science.

With the vaccines, it's the same thing. So I was questioning the Dutch minister of healthcare every week during these two-year COVID, months, the two years. And there is absolutely, there's no question that he had no clue whatsoever what M RNA is, what a spike protein is. There was no way that he understood this, anything about it. Or what the difference is within your immune system regarding naturally survived infection or vaccine-induced immune response.

There was absolutely no way. So I was reading all these papers. I was actually studying the matter because immunology is a very interesting subject. But a minister, apart from the fact that these people generally don't have the kind of brain that allows them to understand these complex issues, but also they don't have the time.

They don't have the time. They have meetings all day, journalists, civil servants standing around them, And that explains, in part, the sheepish willingness of national governments to just go along with an internationally created narrative. Pfizer and obviously the CIA and Moderna, when CIA and Moderna are obviously very, very linked. All these organizations have hundreds of people creating very complicated executive. statements and that they go out to ministers and the ministers are like oh well I trust the experts and that's that's how democracies die that's how public debate dies and it's

happening right in front of our eyes and the the the the reference as you say exactly the reference to science is one of the most stifling and destructive and and dangerous things there are because people are like oh if it's if it's proven, who am I to, but obviously it's never proven. That's not the way science works. It is in fact sinister because of course the nature of science, if you know anything at all about the history of science as it developed from the 16th century onwards, is that it thrived on debate.

And in fact, debate did not happen to any extent over the COVID crisis, over the so-called climate crisis, over any of these crises, because a scientist today who goes against the scientific orthodoxy, the scientific narrative, if you like, takes on enormous risks. Just as, and again, I perhaps shouldn't over-stress these points, but just as in the 1930s in the Soviet Union, if you argued against Lysenko over genetics, you would find yourself in great difficulties.

You would find yourself in great danger, in fact. career danger if not worse. So it's again an imposition ultimately of a totalitarian concept on science. You're no longer using science as a mechanism of inquiry. You're using science as a mechanism of control. You control the scientists and through the scientists, you control the debate, and through the debate you control people and society. And you also provide.

arguments, equipment to use, to enforce all this narrative through the law? I don't think we should be too blue-eyed, as they say in Dutch, in other words, naive about the scientific paradigm that you've referred to, the idea that for centuries scientists were just interested in discussing and exchanging ideas and whatever and always pursuing the truth. There's always been in science, at least since, Francis Bacon at the beginning of the 17th century, a desire on the part of scientists themselves

to exert power through science. Francis Bacon wrote in 1605 that the purpose of science was to control nature and to establish man's control over nature. Man would no longer be the victim or the subject of nature but would instead establish control over it. And if you think about it throughout history from that point onwards and possibly,

possibly even since before then, literary figures and commentators have been very aware of the dangers of government by scientists. It's in Gulliver's Travels, it's in what's he called, Kyle Chappek's book about when robots take over the world. There are many, many, many examples of this is brave new world, obviously, Frankenstein. And I mention that, not just to make an academic, digression, but because in the case of COVID, Professor Neil Ferguson gave an interview a year after lockdown to the Times, and he said, we didn't think lockdowns were possible. And then when we saw what was being done in Wuhan and then in Italy, we realized that it was possible. In other words, this was a scientist taking a political decision. Politics is

the art of the possible. He thought it wasn't possible, then he realized it was possible, and so he went for it. With all the, I would say, cruelty that accrues to a scientist like him, because as it happens, Ferguson is not a medic, he's not, he's never, he doesn't have any expertise in medicine at all, he's never cured, he's not a doctor, he doesn't, never cured people, he's a theoretical physicist and statistician who is predisposed as are many other scientists to regard and including economists, to regard society as a machine and not as an organism. Absolutely. That is absolutely correct.

Now John and, John, you talked about Chiaisberg, you said the word conspiracy is a powerful one. And it is. And I'm going to make here an observation based from personal experience, legal experience, because the way some people talk about conspiracies is they give the impression that there are never things like conspiracies. Now, any lawyer who's worked in the legal system knows that conspiracies exist. They also know something else, which is that if everybody in a certain type of situation, say in a case, if everybody in the case is saying exactly the same thing, that is, and I again speak from experience here, that is an almost definite clue that you are dealing with some kind of conspiracy.

because people do not always automatically say the same thing, even when they are predisposed to agree with each other, unless there's some sort of something going on, there will always be differences, there will always be nuances, there will always be disagreements, there'll be dissonances. I'm sure you've all seen, you will know, the famous Japanese film about, you know, the murder in which everybody sees it from a different angle,

angle but they're all describing essentially the same event. If you actually analyze it, they're describing the same event. But if everybody says the same thing, that is usually a sign of conspiracy. And I have to say that it's becoming very difficult, even for somebody as generally skeptical as I like to believe myself to be, to avoid the evidence. the mounting evidence that we are seeing concerted moves at some level and we come back to the point that both of you are making about sovereignties because if you are doing away with sovereignty you're doing away with that fundamental mechanism of control which has existed within the only functioning systems that we're doing away with that fundamental mechanism of control which has existed within the only functioning systems that we we've ever had that have led to democracies, which are nation-states. If things operate globally, internationally, as they have for COVID, climate change, whatever, the Ukraine war will come

to that, then you're dealing with unaccountable people. And when you have dealing with unaccountable people, you can't control them. And that, in effect, fosters a culture where, in my opinion, conspiracies can happen and conceive their way down. What are your thoughts about this? If I briefly jump in there, I think you're absolutely right. Lawyers and the law deals with different companies that make plans. We know from world history that people are inclined to all kinds of evil things and include willing to lie for it, willing to conspire to achieve their several goals.

And so the idea that the governments now, or any person or organization in power is somehow entirely benign. And there's never going to be some kind of plan to mislead the public or whatever is quite absurd. and testament to the actual power that the, I'm going to talk about it again, the deep state apparently has, because the word conspiracy, to label it in a negative terms, derives directly from a CIA conspiracy. I'm not sure all your listeners will notice, but this has been widely documented. After the murder of JFK, the assassination of John of Kennedy in 1963, obviously, the Those presenting alternative explanations to what had happened there, alternative to the dominant

explanation, which was a lone wolf, was one guy shooting from a ball of a warehouse. Everyone who had different experiences or theories about what might have happened was deemed a conspiracy theorist and was a very negative term, and you were effectively a lunatic, you were crazy, were not to be taken seriously and on with it. And so it has been revealed with documents and everything included that this was a deliberate operation, a SIOP as it's called, a psychological, sociological operation by the CIA to reestablished faith in the government institutions, in the secret service, in the system as it were. So we are actually effectively dealing with some.

And that's also why I wanted this word in the book, because it's a defiance, it's an act of defiance to use this word against the dominant narrative. There we have it again, that conspiracy, that talking about conspiracies is somehow something that is beyond the acceptable. Now, when it comes to the actual COVID situation, I think it's very important to understand that there is a very thin line between scenario planning and conspiring.

And I would like to elaborate a little bit on this point because I'm not sure how often people make this distinction. It's very subtle and it might even be that scenario planning turns into conspirating and vice versa in a sort of 50 shades. of gray gradual gradual trend whereas they sort of they had the event 201 which was a huge simulation of a the outbreak of a coronavirus which was held in November 2019 it was organized by the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation by several government agencies including the CIA which was present the CIA had a high representation present at that event. It was a physical event held at the Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

And they simulated what would happen if a global coronavirus would break out. And they came up with all the conclusions like lockdowns, face masks, vaccines, censoring different opinions that were then implemented half a year ago. Now, is that a coincidence? We may not know, but we don't know for sure. But the fact that such scenarios are being planned is already, as we're putting an implicit conspiracy in place, you might say, to get governments, to get businesses aligned when such an event would happen. And there have been about 10 such simulation events. Clayd X is another one, crimson contagion. They've been held throughout the years, three, four times a year, for some. several years. But we also have simulations now being held or have been held on what would

happen if, let's say, a war breaks out in Ukraine. And so you can see there are all these training events where government officials and journalists and businesses are being told what, how to respond in the event of. And out of ten possible scenarios, you know, there are 10 possible scenarios and possible events, one may materialize, let's say, coronavirus, or another one may materialize, let's say war in Ukraine, right? Those are two. And then the other eight may not materialize at all, like an alien invasion, whatever. There are all these scenarios that they, a hack attack, a complete destruction of the Internet. They have all these scenario planning, and then they make a guidebook with principles and protocols.

If you plan or organize 10 or 15 of these scenarios, you can always say, look, it's not a conspiracy because we also have made scenarios for things that have never actually occurred. But still, you are moving into the direction of a world where everything is centrally controlled. And that is why I think it is entirely legitimate. to talk about conspiracy because this is a this is a this is the realization what we've seen during COVID was the realization of a conscious plan that was discussed and developed within a very small group of people that have held most of the crucial parts of the information hidden from the public and that worked its way through to all the governments that sometimes knowingly sometimes

knowingly implemented the ideas. And there's a larger trend looming behind that, which is the trend that Tocqueville warned against in the early 19th century. We are moving in the direction of soft despotism, bureaucratic despotism. And all these events, so I mentioned that there's like 10 events, breakdown of the internet, 10 scenarios they're planning, the outbreak of a virus. a war somewhere, this and that alien invasion. They have all these scenarios,

and they continue to create them and work out how to respond. But the result of all these events is always the same. The outcome is always the same. More centralization, less freedom of speech, less checks and balances in society, a weaker middle class, public-private partnerships,

which means multinational corporations, and supranational organizations fusing into a sort of corporatism that we see in the World Economic Forum, that we see within the European Union, that we see in all these international organizations that are not accountable, they give permissions and licenses to huge corporations that then can reap the benefits. But if things go wrong, they're going to be bail out by taxpayers. the politicians that have given these corporations these huge markets effectively and often legal immunity as in the case of Pfizer, Moderna and so on, these politicians will probably

after a few years get a job as a lobbyist for these organizations. So they will also get a piece of the cake. We see the same thing with the military industrial complex. It's exactly the same thing. The politicians that have started wars will then become lobbyists for the war machine or come from a board position, board of directions position, from Lockheed Martin, for example, and so on. So it's a circle.

It's a closed circuit where they plan scenarios. They decide what to do in the case something happens. They may or may not. That remains an open thing. They may or may not have actually pulled the switch of unleashing the virus from Wuhan into the world we don't know that there's probably no way that we can know it but it's not important either because the important thing is there is a grand direction a grand strategy a grand plan if you will to move towards this world of you've mentioned

brave new world I'd like to mention the matrix the movie a matrix where we are effectively as humans as individuals completely brought under, we live a biological life, but we don't live a free life anymore. And whatever happens in the world, the conclusion will almost always be more centralization, less freedom, and more privileged as to an ever smaller oligarchy that exists at the global level. Absolutely. Can I just say again what you said about planning, a scenario and that leading to... Yeah.

I mean, that is a concept very well known to criminal lawyers. Yes. If people get together and plan something, the temptation to act on that plan is always extremely strong. In fact, sometimes it is irresistibly strong. And again, I speak from experience. I have seen it happen. I've seen scenarios where precisely that thing took place.

So there's nothing surprising about that. That shouldn't even be controversial. But it's also, I am a very unparticular, atypical politician. Normally, somebody goes into politics because they are interested in power. I went into politics because I was interested in truth. And that is a very odd thing for them.

They are not in, my colleagues, the people I meet in politics, I've hardly ever encountered a politician who was interested in what is actually going on in these situations. Now, they're interested in how to use a certain situation to further their position, right? That is their activity. That's what they get energy from, and then they have a dinner with the French ambassador in the evening, and then they go to a press conference. That is what excites them.

That is their human motivation. And so it's not very hard to see. and for anyone. If you unleash a certain situation, their response is always going to be, what can we do to step in? And, you know, can we make rules? Can we make new laws?

Can we take money from these people and put it there? And that is the nature of at least democratic politics. Can I just say because, of course, I come from a political background. My aunt was a very prominent politician. in Greece she was a cabinet minister she was minister of culture and what you say is absolutely true and a politician who is interested in truth is going to be very very unsettling indeed for other politicians I can say that with absolutely

definitely but again politicians are people who in the West we sort of came to know how to control because We had a kind of democratic politics in the past. And it came from below, but we had politics. It was all very much constructed around the nation, around the state. We had elections, we had political parties. We had electoral blocks to which those politicians

were ultimately accountable and to which they had to interconnect, they had to worry about their electoral bases. And you're absolutely correct. I come from the left. I mean that my background politically was a left wing one. I think that's a historic reality today. I don't think the left today that I see has any relevance or connection to the left that I used to know. But that was how it was. There was a left. It was a political movement. That is impossible today in the kind of political environment that we have now. Now, a short time ago, we had on the Duran an interview with Vatchelof Klaus, who was the former president of the Czech Republic. And he made a very interesting observation because he was very unhappy about the fact that the Czech Republic was being pushed into the European Union.

He didn't like the Lisbon Treaty at all. He was coerced into it. And he spoke about an argument that he had with Vatchel of Havel. And Klaus said, what I wanted was parties. I wanted real political parties. I wanted political competition between the right, which of course I was a part, but I also wanted the left. I wanted to have a left.

I wanted to have diversity. Because for me, that is what not just democratic politics, but politics is about. Havel said, we don't want political parties in the Czech Republic. We want everything to be structured around what he defined as civil society. Haver was fully supportive of the European Union, full integration within the European Union. Klaus was very unhappy about it, but was pushed into agreeing to things, And today he told me, he told us that he bitterly regretted having gone down that route.

Now, you've used the word globalist, you've talked about the deep state, you've talked about all of these international institutions. I've said how taking my cue very much from your previous books, I've seen how national legal systems, have become corrupted and distorted which with what is coming from these very same international institutions. Is this internationalization of politics because ultimately the problem? Is that what is what is the problem? Because it's becoming an even worse problem. You said, Thierley, one thing that stood out for me, and it's absolutely true about companies like Pfizer being given immunity protections before they did anything wrong. That's not a legal position, that's anti-legal position.

That is actually anti-law. It's difficult to explain to people how completely contrary to the whole legal tradition that is. But is that where you, do perhaps John, Do you think this is where it's going to be? I think this is where it's going to. I think if you have to define the problem in a brief and easy to understand way, I don't have a problem with that.

I think that's a good way of describing it, because the centralisation of power, the alienation of power, into the hands of various cartels, whether they be international organizations or collusion between big companies and governments, whether national or international, This alienation of power is of course favored by international bodies because as I've said many times in the books I've written about international tribunals. The key thing about an international organization is that there is of course no structurally no accountability. There's no possibility of accountability between the decisions that that body takes and the people over whom it has power.

So if, to take an example, if a war crimes indictment triggers a revolution in a country, so let's say the war crimes indictment of Gaddafi triggered a revolution in a civil war in Libya in 2011, aided, of course, by NATO, the International Criminal Court, which by issuing the arrest warrant against Gaddafi, of course explicitly, I won't even say implicitly, explicitly supported NATO, Is there any blowback for the 10 years of civil war, more than 10 years now, for the hundreds of thousands of people who have died? Of course not. Because structurally, there is a structural disconnect.

And the fact that it's a legal body is, in a sense, irrelevant. What I mean by that is that you have the same structural disconnect, of course, with the World Health Organization or the European Commission or whatever. But unlike in a national system, okay, judges, of course, always independent. They don't, they're not, apart from in some countries, they're not elected or whatever, but they're independent, on the contrary, they're independent in their functions. But if there is a dysfunctioning somewhere in the legal system, they are, of course, embedded within the overall constitution of a state. And so one hopes that the legislature and the government

can correct whatever dysfunctioning, dysfunctionality it is. So, for instance, take the British case, they could rescind the Human Rights Act or whatever. They can take some decision to bring the judicial system back under control. But of course that mechanism simply doesn't exist. And yes, I think internationalization is also a problem in the sense that we were talking about conspiracies a moment ago. When you look, and I mentioned this recently in a lecture in Amsterdam, when you look at the documents about the creation of the CIA in the 19, period 1945, 1996, 1947. I just mentioned the CIA because it's the intelligence agency that everyone's heard of,

but there are in fact 17 intelligence agencies in the United States. There isn't just one, there are 17. But when you look at the documents, the various minutes and so on, behind the creation of the CIA, you can see that the whole purpose of the CIA was not to collect intelligence at all. That was absolutely not its purpose, and never has been its activity. It was on the contrary to conduct psychological operations, to influence the narrative, to penetrate the left,

because within the context of the Cold War, they wanted, of course, to neutralize the left, which they succeeded. Francis Stoner's fantastic book on the Cultural Cold War shows all this. But of course, it was masquerading the CIA, like the other intelligence agencies, as something directed to abroad.

So it was an element of foreign policy, if you like, it was an element of international policy. So that is another example of how internationalization corrupts. And of course, these organizations work on the need to know principle. So if the president of the United States says, we would like to see, then the CIA responds, sorry, Mr. President, you don't have need to know. That's right. And nobody controls them.

There's absolutely no control over their powers. And incrementally over the decades, because we were taught, we began our conversation about COVID, But prior to COVID, for I would say at least two decades prior to COVID, so let's say from the 2000s onwards, probably from the 1990s onwards, there had been, I would say, for several decades, there had been no more disagreement about foreign policy. It started in foreign policy. So in the Vietnam War in the 70s,

some people were in favor of fighting communism and other people were against the Vietnam War. There was a big debate about it. By the time you got to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, there was only one narrative. If you read the Daily Telegraph or the Guardian, you found exactly the same position. And that unanimity, that single narrative, which we now see, as I say, in health policy and in climate and other things, that started in foreign policy. Because the foreign policy establishment, like the intelligence establishment, like international organizations,

and ultimately like big corporations, they can act with impunity because they can impose things, so to take the case of the Americans, on other countries, let's take the example of wokeism, which actually does not work so well at all in the United States, because there's lots of opposition to abortion and other progressive policies.

But the foreign policy establishment has free reign abroad because there's no structural accountability. Absolutely. Can I just say what you said about the CIA, not being good at intelligence or even interested in it, gathering information? That's been confirmed to me by former members of the CIA. They're not good at that, but they're interested in it. And Thierry, I know that you're interested in cultural matters. CIA has been very heavily involved in questions of culture. And for example, in the 50s and 60s, they promoted musical modernism, a, tone music, all that kind of thing. And it's always interesting which direction they have been pushing us towards. Yeah, the CIA fought the Cold War,

not in the name of traditional society, but in the name of modernism. The West was going to be more modern, more progressive than the Soviet Union. That was the whole, that was the narrative. And now we're stuck with, with a society that is deeply infected by what I tend to call cultural Marxism. So you had economic Marxism behind the Iron Curtain, obviously, but you had cultural

Marxism which penetrated the CIA through the Frankfurt School. This is also well documented the thinkers of the Frankfurt School that created cultural Marxism, which believed ultimately that if Europe wouldn't do a way, with the classical father figure and the classical family structures and history that we were proud of and aesthetics and national identities that we would ultimately we would always get back into fascism we would fascism would follow where a traditional family exists there fascism will follow that was the basic which I think is a is a

is a ridiculous conspiracy theory, if I may use the word in that context right now. But that is what they believe, and that penetrated completely the cultural, academic world of the West after the war, but also the secret surface, and it was part of the denazification plan of the allies, essentially,

of America, primarily, but also Britain, to make sure that no job German would ever march on tonal music again. That's why Karl Heinz Stokhausen was promoted, who was a, I'm not sure everybody knows, but was an extreme promoter of atonal music. It was impossible to listen to and breaks every glass that is nearby, but he was promoted to be the head

of one of the most influential musical institutes in Germany. And modern architecture was promoted, modern abstract Expressionism in the arts was promoted, and also a very liberal sexual morality, which followed directly from the work of people like Herbert Mark Hughes, who believed that if we don't liberate the sexuality of the man,

then through the Oedipole complex, he will ultimately become a fascist again. And that is also why in the authoritarian personality, which is a huge study that another member of the Frankfurt School, his name was Adorno undertook, an empirical study. A huge emphasis was placed on this sexual life of, quote-unquote, fascist-minded people, which were right-wing people, traditionalist people.

And it was stated, it was claimed. I think this is all pseudoscience, it's quasi. This is a typical example. The Frankfurt School is a typical example of a, of a thesis that is proof of its own value. It's a circular argument they're presenting, but they stated that these traditionalist people, you know, right-wing people,

people that were more conservative in their ideas, had more conservative sexual morality, and therefore that it was likely that they would be more susceptible to fascist behavior, and they developed this test, which is the F scale. Anyone can Google this, you can do it online, you can do the F scale test,

and have all these questions being posed to you. And then the solution was to D, to make America and the West less susceptible to fascism, whatever it may be, it's never defined. They never define fascism, they just refer to it as the worst. And we all know what it is. But it's very, it's actually, It's a very difficult question, how to define fascism,

what really happened during the Second World War in terms of ideological clashes. And wouldn't you say that the essence of fascism is really corporatism, which is public-private partnerships? Hey, that is interesting. Wow. I mean, these are all very interesting, relevant discussions, but none of that ever interested in the Frankfurt School.

They had just set their mind on destroying the traditional family and the traditional sexual boundaries of European life by promoting sexual... How do you say this? Diversions in English, is that the word? Anyway, like LGBTIQI plus. That is an intrinsic part of the philosophy of denazification of Europe, which still haunts

the mind of Europeans and conservatory. You only have to use the word anti-Semitism, you know, everybody's so afraid, racism, ooh, it doesn't have to have any relation to the actual ideas of the person. Someone says, I think maybe we should reconsider immigration. Oh, you know, racist, oh no, no, no, no. And it's just, it's a way to scare people into obedience.

again it's been going on for so many decades and it's it's hardly being discussed it's really I would not be able to name three conferences or three major publications or or television programs or whatever where people are having these kinds of conversations about the state we're in where where it all comes from how limited our quote-unquote sovereign democracies really are in deciding their policies that they would like to implement through all these international treaties and so on. And again, that is why I think it's so important that we're setting up this, the forum,

this international forum that you're here, that we can be here with you. And I think we really need to do this a lot more. Absolutely. Can I just say, because of course my aunt was Minister of Culture in Greece. She was of course left wing and she was also... a populist left-wing person and a working interested in working-class people in the 80s and of course I had many many conversations with her and she would say she would say many of the same things that you have just said from the position of a classical old-fashioned left-wing minister of culture what she was worried about and of course she was interacting all the time with working-class people in piraes which is the port in athens She said that the kind of culture that is being imposed is dissociating working class people from the dominant culture.

And she was extremely worried about this. Her concern was to bring back culture and people together because she saw that as absolutely fundamental to strengthening democracy and society. and in fact to promoting, to raising up, if you like, working class people. And that was by no means an unusual left-wing position. That was in fact in some ways the classical left-wing position. So it's bizarre today to hear all of these views being, you know, said, people say this is on the right. On the right, people call it, and just people say that this is fascist to talk in that fashion.

Yes, but I keep... But I keep having these... It sets again the whole thing on its head. And that's so, that's why this is such a creative period in time because I am also realizing that I was working with this label, you know, right wing or conservative, and you're a left wing, oh, so they're designed to be oppositional. Like, I'm a left wing, oh, I'm a...

But now we're sort of, we're seeing the world anew, and we are seeing each other anew. We're having genuine conversations and genuine encounters with each other, and that is really a new thing I find and that is a wonderful thing and probably the thing that they're most afraid of which is why they are doing everything to to suppress the narrative that we're creating they want us to be separate the same is by the way true as much as I oppose immigration and unlimited immigration open borders there are these Muslim communities

immigrant communities in for example the Netherlands which country in our best, that are entirely up to speed with all the things that I talk about, I write about. Okay, yes, we have our differences and yes, I think immigration really is, we have to stop continuing, but they agree with that. They are very aware that the continuous immigration is not going to make the country safer and economically more vital and all these things. So once you do away with this distinctive thinking and, oh yeah, I'm, I'm a way.

I'm right, I'm left, I'm a nationalist, or I'm a multicultural, whatever. You are actually forming a real alliance and I think sometimes in my darkest, most conspiratorial moments, I think that that is the thing they're most afraid of that. We are reaching out to each other and making friends and seeing the real issue and the bigger enemies that we have to deal with, the bigger issues. Absolutely. So we, shall we talk a bit about foreign policy? foreign policy is central to this whole thing. We're now in a period of extreme international

tension. There's no debate about this. This is completely the same as what we've been hearing about and all the other topics. We can't really debate foreign policy. It's very, very dangerous to come out and take a stance against the militarization of our relationships in Europe. We all have to agree with the line that's been taken about Ukraine. We can't talk about the previous history of this crisis in Ukraine. And you can take any people are at liberty to take different views about it. But it's not acceptable even to talk about this anymore. And what I again find very alarming is that I read things.

in the Western media about this conflict, which are so factually wrong, so completely opposite to things that have actually happened. So entirely delete or ignore actual events that led us up to the point where we are now, that it is impossible that the people who are writing these things are not conscious of the fact that they are suppressing these facts. They must know what they are doing because in order to suppress them so completely, they must know them.

They must know about them before. Can you give an example, but you're thinking? Well, the Minsk Agreement. I mean, it's a simple one, I mean, nobody talks about the Minsk agreement. Or the history of the dog. Nobody, the history of the, or even what it says. But if you read the Financial Times, the Guardian, if you go to the BBC, Metzger Agreement is a topic that is completely not spoken about anymore.

Well, I think that this war is being prosecuted also for the reasons connected to the kind of things that we've been talking about. I was very interested what you said about your aunt and her desire to see working class culture remain in place because clearly what she feared, what she saw coming, was the shock doctrine, was the Naomi-Clectorin. shock doctrine which would atomize otherwise cohesive societies in order to make them easier victims of capitalist exploitation. It's as simple as that. And one of the reasons we can leave aside the issues of NATO and all the rest of it, but I'm convinced, I've said this for many years, that one of the reasons why Russia is so hated is precisely to do with these issues of sexual politics that we are, that we were talking about a moment ago.

You know, Putin, his public persona is that of a real man, a bit like Erdogan in Turkey, and there may be other examples. You know, he's macho, he's not only macho, but he is a bit macho, a bit like Balusconi was, and there may be other examples. And I think that the fact that Russia has this leader who is admired by his people, because that again is a thing that we've lost in the West. Nobody, almost no Western leader is admired by his electorate or her electorate anymore. They are perhaps they're not even controlled anymore, but people, we don't even have

people that they can admire. The idea that you have a man of stature who exudes virility and who exudes authority, exactly the thing which Adorno didn't want. He called it authoritarian, but actually its authority. Those I think are the subliminal emotional reasons. And of course the fact that Russia is renewing with her national history and trying to do what the Germans called Fergangen Heights Beveltegong

to sort of comprehend her own very obviously tragic history in the 20th century. Whereas Europe, of course, is turning its back on its own history and pretending it didn't happen. All these things, I think, are the deep, at the deepest emotional level, are the reasons why there's this complete obsession with Russia. Can I just say one of the most interesting things

if you follow Russian affairs and Russian internal discourse that's been developing recently. Of course, the Russians, and I don't just mean political Russians, I mean a large part of the Russian intelligentsia, which has historically and traditionally focused on Europe. They've been seen developments in Europe. Europe and they don't like them. Yes, yes.

And they say that what we must do is we must preserve the best of Europe here in Russia. We are becoming the last refuge in effect, the fortress, if you like, defending European values. You've said that, Terry said that in a speech. The old thing is that the Iron Curtain, while obviously destroying the economic system, system in Eastern Europe also protected it against cultural Marxism. So the countries in central Eastern Europe, and certainly in Russia, the European part of Russia, has not been, has perhaps even been immunized against these cultural Marxist trends that have now taken over, it was most completely the conscience of Western Europe.

And indeed, when I look at Russia today, I do feel that there is a it represents a sort of a natural antidote to a lot of these trends. And if I just may mention one final one in that respect, is that Russia is probably the natural leader of the opposition against the climate change mystique because of his vast fossil fuel resources. It is the country, the opponent to this idea of an energy transition, which is not going to work, which is based on. on fake science and which will destroy our entire industry

and thereby wealth and economy and everything we have built over the past 200 years. So in that sense also it seems to be the last vestige because the rest, the whole of the West has been taken up by this mystique, this millennialistic idea that we must prevent a sort of nesting, sort of new flood like in the Old Testament. Because of our sins, the sea is rising.

Absolutely. We've heard that story before, right? We've heard that story before. So where do we go? How do we resist? You've created the Forum for Democracy. I'm absolutely horrified, by the way, with what John said that there is, in fact,

a law being discussed in the Netherlands. I think that's one of the most sinister things. I've heard over the course of our democracy. over the course of our discussion. I mean the Netherlands coming around to even talking about banning political parties and I'm going to guess that it's not provoked the kind of uproar and anger and protest that perhaps the scariest part.

That's the scariest part. Nobody stands up for you because they're like, well, I'm not that party. But then of course they're coming for the other parties and then there's no one to stand up for you. But so how do we go about? I think the answer is twofold. Firstly, it is absolutely essential to create platforms such as yours, but perhaps also John

and I are going to create more platforms, perhaps we're going to try to organize at least once a year at a big conference where anti-globalist, if I may just for the time being perhaps we can work with that term. People like us, like-minded people from the left and the right, previews left and right, can come together and discuss this but also podcasts and so on. This is essential and that's also how I use Parliament because it's a part of the platform. It's a place where I can speak to the nation and reach people and hopefully get them to think about these things and think differently about them and we publish books and so on and so

forth. So that's the first thing. The second is that we are building a network that is social and economic. We have launched an app on your iPhone, which is the forum app, and we're now working on internationalizing it. So making it available, accessible to people from other countries, where you can offer services, you can set up your web shop, you can offer products, you can get your house on like an Airbnb network, you can go on dates, we have a sort of Tinder function, we have a chat function, all these things. And this is specifically to build the network

because people don't come together, as Robert Nisbet, the sociologist famously said, simply to discuss things, they come together to do things. You need to create a social and economic framework, which is, I mean, this epit just one example. There are obviously other, and the term for that may be a parallel society. We need to start buying stuff from each other, hiring each other's services. We need to make sure we have some infrastructure, perhaps a bank. God knows how urgent that is if you see what happens to my friend Nigel Farage, who has just been debanked in the UK.

Can you imagine for political reasons? If it happened to him, it may happen to all of us. Nobody's safe with our money. And this is going to happen with all these services, essential services that we need. Like applying for a job. It's very difficult for students who are, for example, not vaccinated, to find an internship somewhere, find a job. We need to get our network together and we need to start realizing.

again I said this before but we need to start realizing that we must help each other and that is something that to my great disappointment many people that I've met in my life that were like-minded that had the same directionally the same ideas they were very unwilling to do that the conservatives I've met so in the past when I still defined myself as such they they were much more eager to get a tap on the back from the establishment from the left even then to help another conservative they were they were very willing to distance themselves to to disavow and we should stop doing it and completely just we are in the same

boat and we may agree or more or less with each other sometimes somebody does something we say oh I maybe I wouldn't have said it in such a way but fundamentally we should not go along with the cancel culture that is designed to play us out against each other. And I think through a social and economic framework, there can also be a real upside to this. Because obviously this has a big downside. If you start to stand up to each other,

you may also get a punch in the face. But if there's a real upside where we create a high trust network for people that don't, yeah, that are not willing to stab each other in the back, then there's a, There's a real reason to be part of this club. And that may be strong enough to survive this flood, to stay in these biblical terms or in these climate change terms, this flood that is coming, this totalitarian flood that is going to run over us with almost unstoppable pace.

But we may be able to resist it and ultimately be there to restructure, rebuild society after it. I'm confident if we do that, that we can resist it. I always say councils of despair are always bad councils. Simply because this tide is coming, it doesn't mean that we're all going to drown in the flood. We can always build our little places. Little platoon.

Absolutely. We can come through. And John, you would Thierry calls you, I think, with good cause actually, as the intellectual force behind Brexit. You look a little embarrassed when we say that. But Brexit, the referendum itself actually, put aside what has happened since

when the establishment basically took it over and what has happened. The referendum itself was a breakthrough. And I think that's a thing which people should not overlook. Yes. What it showed and what has massively frightened the political class here in Britain is that it exposed to them the truth that the country, a large majority of people in England do not think as the establishment wants

them to them to and has the agency, the capacity to express itself. and make its own decisions. And if you live in Britain, as of course I do, you know that this is having a major impact still in the way in which politics are conducted here. The political class in Britain, in my opinion, has never felt more insecure. And if you want to understand why,

go back to what happened in 2016. So given that that is so, there is no cause for despair, There are plenty of people out there who would be anxious to join the kind of movement that you've just described. Thank you. Thank you very much for having us. My pleasure. My great pleasure. And welcome to the journey. Let's do it again. Let's definitely do it again. John.