The Duran Podcast - Neil Oliver: Technocracy, Trial by Jury and the End of Democracy

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

Neil Oliver: Technocracy, Trial by Jury and the End of Democracy

All right, Alexander, we are here with the one and only the great Neil Oliver, first time on the Duran, and we are very happy and very honored to have Neil with us. Neil, thank you for joining us on the Duran. And before we get started with what will be a very interesting conversation, where can people follow your work? Oh, well, I'm absolutely delighted to be with you both. As followers of all of us will know, I've had you as guests a couple of times now, which was a great thrill for me, but I'm absolutely,

I'm almost overwhelmed by the thought that the Duran would have me as a guest because I, you know, while I know your credentials, I see myself very much as an archaeologist, unemployable TV presenter who accidentally stumbled into this arena. To find myself in your august company, I feel very privileged about that. In answer to the question, where can people find me? My handle on X is the Coast Guy,

which is a relic of my time on terrestrial television from the distant past. I have a YouTube channel. I have a Patreon presence where people can find me by name. I'm on Rumble. I think a casual search of my name should turn me up, but I'm thrilled to be with you both. And there's no need for anyone to search for your name because I will have those links in the description box down below,

and I will also have all of those links where you can follow Neil as a pinned comment as well. So Alexander Neal, let's get into it. Let's us indeed. And it is actually a great pleasure and a great privilege to have Neil with us today discussing various important topics today, which I actually feel that he's perhaps best qualified to discuss than anyone else that I know. Because what we're going to be talking about today, in my opinion, is the enormous collapse in. trust and confidence in our political systems that we see, to a greater or lessor extent, right across the West.

We are obviously going to focus on the country which each of us, but Neil and I know best, which is Britain, which is our own country. But I think what we're looking at is a phenomenon and altogether Western phenomenon, Western world phenomenon, but one also where we will undoubtedly be touching on some of the various events that are taking place in the world today. We'll no doubt touch a bit on the Middle East, the crisis with Russia, all of those things. Because everything, everything in these sort of things is connected. Well, in Britain, I think we can agree, Neil and I, that we are indeed in a strange period of political crisis.

And let me read a slightly edited version of a comment that an improminent labor politician or former labor politician close ally of David Blanket published in the, of Tony Blair, a man called David Blanket published in the financial times, which I think conveys very, well, the sense of anger and the sense of betrayal that exists in Britain, specifically towards the Labour Party, but which I think has spread across the political system. And this is in connection with campaigning in the local elections in Britain, which took place recently in early May. And this is what David Blunkett said. His friend, who is a Labour politician, emailed him. It was beyond difficult on the doorstep during the past four months.

I have never had so much hate thrown at me. Not anger, pure hate and vitriol. I was screamed at, sworn at, accused of supporting. and then we were told all sorts of terrible people. Circled by off-road bikers, threats of urination when I leafleted. It was like this on a daily basis. So, extraordinary anger directed at politicians, labor politicians, across Britain. I've heard many stories like that.

First of all, do you think, Neil, that this is an accurate reflection of the mood in Britain, specifically towards the Labour Party, but perhaps towards the political elite in general? I do. I've seen enough of similar to know that those emotions reported being expressed there by the friend of David Blanca are absolutely out there in the population. They're directed at Labor at the moment because Labor is the party in power in Britain. But we saw the same in relation to the Conservative, the Tory Party, while they were still in government. I think it becomes a question of whether or not what we're watching is organic, natural collapse of the political class or alternatively, it controlled demolition. I tend to suspect myself that we watched previously the controlled demolition

of the Conservative Party to the extent that I don't think they just lost an election. I think it becomes an existential question of whether or not the Conservative Party can ever come back. And I think we're watching the latest installment of the same soap opera with, I would say, a controlled demolition of labor, because they seem to be, under the stewardship of Sir Keir Starrmer, the Prime Minister, going out of their way to enrage people. Their every word and gesture, every policy seems choreographed and designed to enrage. Things to do with energy, procurement and supply, things to do with taxation, all sorts of policies around, things like the diversity, equity and inclusion model.

All of these things are just making people angry. So I do, it's absolute, people are justifiably angry. There have been and there are still the ongoing revelations about the grooming gangs in every other town and city, the length and breadth of the country, you know, the rape and abuse of underage girls. People, of course people, that's true. These crimes were being committed in unimaginable numbers over decades, and people are absolutely, rightly, appalled, rightly furious.

But all manner of divisions have been and are being stoked in society on racial grounds, on religious grounds, on class grounds, on sexuality grounds. Every snowstone has been left unturned. As I say, I think it becomes a question of, are we coming to the end of, politics as we have known it because it's in the natural order of things. Or, and this is where I, but this is what I think, I think it's being a controlled demolition because I think democracy,

just the word, people have all sorts of notions about what democracy means, but I think people are being deliberately, in a calculated, controlled manner, sickened about democracy, sickened about the political class and politics, because I think the intention

is to remove that altogether and to bring in a technocracy where decisions are made for us, not by us. I would just confirm some of the points that you made. Firstly, in relation to the Conservative Party, it experienced an electoral collapse

in 2024. That electoral collapse continues. Its popularity continues to fall, even as the Labour Party's popularity collapses as well, the Conservative Party's popularity continues to decline. This is an extraordinary thing in British politics up to now. If Labour fell, Conservative rose. If conservative fell, Labour rose. Now we see both parties declining together and declining fast. That is the first thing I wanted to say. Secondly, the part of the

the comment that David Blunkett's friend made that he'd heard on the doorstep, which I skipped, was clearly a reference to the gangs, the things that you mentioned just now. And thirdly, if we're talking about controlled demolition, I have to say that I have never seen anything like this in Britain before. I have, I cannot recall as some of the people. who studied British history, modern British history, seeing anything like this previously, or at least in modern British history, reading about this previously, if you look at, for example, the replacement of the Liberal Party by the Labour Party in the 1920s, that took place in the context of enormous confidence and trust in the operation of the overall political,

constitutional and electoral system. It was a very smooth transition indeed. It had none of the quality of crisis that we are seeing now, and none of that sense of anger that we are seeing now. So this is unique and it is extraordinary. Now, you mentioned intentional demolition. You, somebody who, as an archaeologist, have explored this in the past. Can you tell us something about this and how intentional demolition, in your opinion, might work?

I think amongst the sophisticated, by that, I mean, you know, the cognoscenti, people with their hands on the levers of power, whether that is generational and whether it's the stuff of secrecy or not. I think there is an understanding amongst the powerful that this two shall pass, that you can't have the one entity, however large, however seemingly omniscient and omnipotent. Eventually people start to see it. and that it must be replaced. The power has to be passed from one maybe increasingly unpopular

entity to another. But it's about the perpetuation of power. And so, you know, I suppose people would, people talk all the time about empire by which they either mean the British Empire or the Roman Empire for most people. The Roman Empire was the Roman Empire was there for half a millennium, and then it was replaced.

Now, you're invited to contemplate all sorts of reasons why that happened, barbarians at the gate, corruption within, and all of these things will undoubtedly have played the part and more. But I would say to continue the notion of control to demolition and the handover of power, the time had come. And I think the movement, manifest itself in the way in which Christianity replaced the Roman Imperium.

But the purple of the emperors simply fell on the shoulders of the religious leaders and the Imperium continued. The mechanism for control of people and control of money and control of power in armies just moved into a, another iteration. And so I think people talk about people worship the idea of a revolution now. You know, let's have a revolution. Let's sweep away the bad and a new broom sweeps clean and

we can start again. But even just a casual contemplation of the reality of revolution, at least makes a person suspicious that revolutions never come, they're never organic. They never come from the mob. It's a factional split. The people in power, see that the time has come to change the uniform, change the face, make it seem as though there has been a replacement of one thing by another. And subsequent to that, having been engineered and having happened, the mob is reverse engineered, persuaded into thinking that they had a hand in it. I don't think they ever do. You know, I look at the, any look at the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian revolution in 1917 and thereafter, you can see that it was, it was, it was,

it was choreographed from above. It did not grow up from the grassroots. You could certainly make the same claim about the French Revolution. You could certainly make the same claim about the English Revolution. These are not organic. And so I think it always,

it still comes back to this question that I suppose I labour with and I'm tormented by the extent to which it's always about right, this too has had its day. We must bring that down, that edifice, but we must remain in control. So how do we affect the transition? And I think that's what we're seeing now. But on an optimistic note, I would say that this time, what we're seeing at the moment is doomed. I would say, not in the short term, but in the medium to longer term, because too many people see it.

the handover is not being affected in a way that's persuasive. It's too late to reverse engineer the mob this time into thinking that they had a hand in this. Because I think too many people sense that they are treated collectively and individually with contempt by the powerful and that they're just being manipulated. Too many people see it. You know, the way in which so many of the divisions are on obvious lines that of course, make people furious. Let's target a religion. Let's target a racial group. Let's target a gender or a sexuality. People are looking on now and seeing it happening in front of their eyes. So I think,

I've been a bit long-winded there, but I think the powerful this time have overplayed their hand. I've never known in my lifetime such cynicism about the political system as we see today and such insecurity on the part of the political class and so much mistrust of everything that people hear and see in politics as I see now. Not just in Britain, but as you probably know, I follow events in Germany very closely where I have connections and in France too

and obviously in the United States and in every one of these countries in some form or other, not identical, but it's basically the same. There is immense cynicism, immense frustration, a great, very great sense of anger, and colossal distrust pretty much of everybody and every single thing. Now, having said that, we have these very dysfunctional systems that we have at the moment, which may be heading to something like some kind of massive transition or collapse. But what is that doing in the meantime to the way governments work?

And is that perhaps also why we're seeing such a very tense international environment as well? Why we're seeing all these wars, why we're seeing all of these conflicts between great powers. It's because the political systems in a key part of the world are simply not working properly anymore. I think increasingly it's part of what I'm trying to describe. People are seeing that government is not for them. It's not people are not, you know, the very notion of democracy being people governing themselves has been undermined. I think it's been hold below the waterline. That faith that people ever had that they make the decisions that they govern themselves,

I think that has gone now. And it's a terribly dangerous, volatile moment that we're living through that too many people, I would say, have drawn the accurate conclusion that it's just about power in the hands of the few and the way in which, the different ways in which, the powerful, you know, seek to manipulate the people. So people, there's a, people are aware of an atomization of society. You know, the, the mass migration that's going on, and that is undeniable. We could argue till the cows come home about how choreographed that is, how deliberate that is,

the extent to which it's being driven and stoked by, you know, malevolently and for nefarious intent, we could, or whether it's organic. We could talk about all of that. But, but people see, that the result of in too short a space of time, too many new people arriving in a new location is diluting and dissolving the ties that bind amongst the indigenous populations within which the new people arrive. But too many people are seeing that that works in the face of a tiny elite that needs to be able to manipulate, weakened people, because the last thing that a powerful, a small, powerful entity wants is a cohesive bodies of people

that have an understanding about themselves, that feel a sense of belonging, that feel a sense of meaning, that feel as if they've inherited something from the past, that they can, a flame that they can keep going and that they can pass on to the future, that's the last thing that a tiny, powerful elite wants because all of that interconnectedness makes people in a very real, in a very literal sense, safe.

It makes them safe from forces from without, and forces from within. It makes them safe from the government if they have that cohesion. You know, it's like I would make the analogy of, you know, individual trees in a forest. You know, you can go in and a lumberjack goes in and cuts down a single tree because a single tree is vulnerable. But there is also at the same time, I mean, the largest living organism on planet Earth is a plantation, is a growth of aspen trees somewhere in Colorado, where the trees are united by the mycelium beneath them.

it's the world wide wood, as it's been dubbed, that is one functioning whole, which is a useful metaphor for a functioning society. And ironically, I think the malevolent, powerful elite, need to dissolve that so that people just feel that they're just individual trees that can be cut down, that they have no brotherhood with the rest of the forest. And that's achieved just by moving people around,

atomizing people and just dropping them and diluting and dissolving the ties that bind. But all of these things have been tried before. All of these mechanisms are from a playbook and different pages are referred to in pursuit of change down through the millennia. I think interestingly what is happening at the moment is that too many people are seeing it. And it is because of the World Wide Web. It is because of the presence of the internet, which has turned out to be an incredibly powerful but double-edged sword. You know, on the one hand, it was instituted by DARPA and developed with the intention of harvesting data about us and moving us into where many of us think were going, you know, the technocracy, the digital cage.

But at the same time, the other edge of that sword is also giving too many people the opportunity to see what's going on. And I think it's what makes it simultaneously a frightening time, but also a very exciting time, because I think the old playbook is worn out because too many people have effectively been given the opportunity to read it. What does this do to government in the meantime, though? Because we have elites which obviously control the levers and pull the levers, but we have government, which is something that also performs various administrations, administrative functions. Because one of the things that I've always noticed in these periods of transition, when I've read them about them in history terms, and you as an archaeologist

are going to be even more familiar with this than me, much more so, in fact, because you're dealing with the actual material substance of past societies, is that, yes, you can have a massive change in political systems, but if there's also governmental break, down, that does create a major change. So if we're talking about Rome, you spoke about Rome before, you had a functioning administrative system in, say, 400 AD, which by 500 AD had basically gone. So, you know, the cities that existed across the empire, the aqueducts, the whole techniques of administration. I mean, they changed and they changed fundamentally. So that's government.

That's a crisis of government rather than a crisis of elite control. Are we experiencing a crisis of government now? Yes, and I think I would direct people to the anisiclosis that's described by Polybius, although it wasn't his idea and he wasn't the first to describe it and he certainly wasn't the last. but you know this idea that you know you start out with something very strong because it's founded on on something heartfelt and sincere and authentic you know a good king but the succeeding generations his children his children's children but take it for granted and are less and less worthy of the position so a monarchy is is replaced by an aristocracy

which is fine at first but then the quality of the aristocracy declines and it's replaced by an oligarchy. Then that's replaced, that that descend, that's replaced by democracy, let's say. And then the whole thing keeps on moving, but it's about the succeeding generations becoming less and less deserving of it because they're taking it for granted.

I think we're definitely seen, we've seen that in Britain. I can certainly say that, I myself, I mean, I turned a blind eye to local elections, general elections, I don't need to worry about that. Somewhere someone will take responsibility and will do the right thing. How wrong I was, how naive I was, how irresponsible I was in thinking like that.

But I've held my hands up and admitted that that's the way I felt. But I think it's just that sense of entropy that comes into a system. And I think eventually corruption, entitlement and all of the rest of it was part of caused the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. It's corruption from within and pressure from without. But again, again, I do think what we're living through is a period where that has been identified as the problem and we're being nudged. People are being, there's an attempt being made to nudge people collectively into the next thing, which will just perpetuate the power of the powerful. But that too many people are seeing it.

In Britain, I'm absolutely preoccupied with the fact that trial by jury has been taken. is gone. At least, I mean, people talk about Magna Carta, 1215 and the centuries that have passed since then. But trial by jury is older even than that. It was only codified and restated in Magna Carta. But the fact that that's been taken, because if you don't have trial by jury,

then the people do not govern themselves. This illusion of general elections, that's just finding the administration. of a system. It only functions as a democracy, people governing themselves if you've got trial by jury. We're on a moment by moment basis, it's not just accused people's innocence or guilt that's being determined by a jury of their peers using their conscience and considering the evidence. It's only there that the legislation that's been used to bring the accused forward is in itself tested for its inherent justice. And if the legislation is found to be

unjust, it can be cast out. Now that has been completely undermined over people have been taught to be, you know, who wants to do jury duty, who wants to have anything to do with that, archaic system. And so now the time has been right. And the travel by jury has just been, well, that's an anachronism, let's take that away. Which is, but we're now in a situation in Britain where the administration can draft legislation, decide that it's appropriate, it employs the judges, There are no juries. So that's textbook tyranny. And we have, the people of Britain have been sleepwalked into that situation.

We have no, without trial by jury, we have no democracy in Britain. But it's all, it's all been about people, sickening people. Now people are sickened with trial by jury. People are sickened with the political class. It doesn't matter where you look, left, right, in the middle. They're all just corrupt. They're all just on the take and on the make, which they are in large part. But nonetheless, it's been part of a process of sickening people.

But I get always, I'm tormented, as I said earlier, by the question of the extent to which all of this is just choreographed. I think it is. And if someone like me, archaeologist, come TV presenter, has spotted it. I take great comfort from thinking, well, if I can see it, increasingly everyone can see it. And I think for the first time, not for the first time, but for the first time in a long time, that realization by the likes of me poses a. an existential crisis for the people who manipulate government and are in the business of the exchange of power. It's an existential threat which I would say they have never faced before.

I should say there's somebody who worked in the legal system. You're absolutely correct. Trial by jury is melting away. It's basically dying. The presumption of innocence is dying. The right to silence is dying. and the principle of double jeopardy, jeopardy has completely gone. Double jeopardy, meaning that you can't be constantly arrested and prosecuted for the same thing

again and again and again all over the, basically for the same crime based on the same facts. So all of that is gone. Now, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago, that would have been inconceivable. All of these were fundamental props of the criminal justice. justice system. But in an incredibly short space of time, with basically no debate at all, barely any discussion, no sustained protest, all of these, all of these things that we've just been talking about have just basically either are either going away or have gone away. And that does seem to me to be absolutely a sign.

of political and administrative decay, and also of a great drive, as you rightly said, towards control, which goes directly to the point you're making. Is this sustainable? I mean, can this continue? I think, again, I am optimistic. I mean, I get accused all the time of being a merchant of doom. you know, the old line

of a, you know, never being difficult to tell the difference between a Scotsman and a ray of sunshine. You know, I have that labelled at me, but I do have to declare again, I have an underlying optimism about it because I think, as I say, a hand has been overplayed.

Now, but the challenge is that it does come down to us. You know, there is, this, I grew up, I was an emblem of it. I trusted that someone somewhere had my best interests at heart. Now, I now see that's a fatal mistake for a citizen to make. You can have trust, but you can't have blind trust, and blind trust is what I had. And the vulnerability, the way in which that had made me vulnerable

was crystallized for me during the COVID debacle. When I suddenly realized that, God, they're doing this to me. This is being done to me, to my detriment by the very people that I had assumed were, you know, had my best interests at heart. And so, but there's a, once people, once we take responsibility and people, there's been a long process by which you can get as conspiratorial as you want about this, but people have been deeducated or miseducated, certainly in my country. And I suspect it's a symptom across the, across the West. the net effect of which has been to make too many people think they're too stupid to understand fundamental concepts. So people think that the justice of the law, oh, that's the that's the, that's the purview of lawyers and judges and how an economy works. Oh, that's too much for me. That's that's

economists and the rest of the theorists and we'll they'll sort that out. But look where that has brought us. Too many people can now see are talking all the time about fractional reserve banking, for example, being little better than a Ponzi scheme. And plenty of people are talking about the reality of a Ponzi scheme. And a global currency or a national currency fundamentally comes down to people believing that it is what it purports to be. And all of those things, the whole tapestry, Once you pick it one thread, the thread for me was COVID. But once you pick it one thread on a tapestry, the whole picture just starts to shimmer,

and you think, oh my God, I'm just looking at a fiction. Is there anything real here? If the economists are perpetrating essentially a complicated fiction, you know, and if our ability as people to judge the justice of the law under which we are expected to live, if indeed we are a democracy where people govern them, cells. If those fun, but there just simply comes

a moment when you think, no, I can handle this. The basics of this, the axioms of this, truth are well within my grasp. You're presented with, you know, Michelangelo's pietta, and you think, how and what,

that's, how did a mortal man do that? But he didn't start. Michael Angela was an undoubted genius, but he didn't start with the pietta. He was born and raised in a quarry for Carrera, marble and he was mixing with artists and there was a process by which he acquired the skills which he then excelled. And he becomes that. People have been persuaded into thinking that

they're powerless and they're not clever enough and they don't have the skills. Neither could they acquire the skills with which to take a meaningful part in society. And ultimately that is the cruelest and the most invidious and malignant thing that has been done to people. Because people are more than capable of understanding the fundamentals of the society under which they might feel they want to live. And that has been the inadvertent consequence of the overplaying of the hand. And it's why I'm fundamentally optimistic. Yeah. Because without, can a society survive completely without trust? I mean, somebody has to trust something. I mean, if there is no trust in authority, can authority ultimately function?

No, no, it is a city is a dream. It's a collection of buildings and streets and parks, but Glasgow or Vienna or London or Paris, it's a shared dream. You need to have a majority of the people sharing the idea of what it is. Otherwise, again, it's just, atomized human beings, you know, moving about as though they were avatars in a video game.

There has to, and the dream is trust. People have to be that interconnectedness like the forest with the mycelium. There has to be an underlying, unifying shared belief that we are part of something meaningful, that functions. And if you drop acid onto it, or if you drop acid onto alkaline, the whole thing just fizzies and falls away like an aspirin in a glass and just, and it's gone, then there are consequences for that. People don't just accept powerlessness.

People don't just accept meaninglessness. Whether you believe in God or not, whether there is a God or not, people in the absence of meaning will find meaning. One of the mistakes of the anti-human agenda that we see all around us is because it's being perpetrated by what people are invited to call a psychopath. pathic class. And we know what psychopath means. It means people without empathy. It means people

that don't really get, they're very clever and skilled and manipulative and all of the rest of it, but they don't really get what it is to be human. They don't do human very well. And that's a fundamental flaw. And people are seeing that because most people are not psychopaths. Sometimes they can spot psychopaths. Sometimes they can't. But we know what psychopaths are. Most people aren't like that. They have an innate desire for a shared meaning, a shared purpose. They want lives of meaning. They want to take care of one another, really. They want to spend their time meaningfully.

They want to raise their children safely. They will be prepared to look after other people's children as though they were their own. These are all innate characteristics. And the mistake that powerful is making at the moment isn't thinking that just because you can't do human. Don't make the mistake of thinking the rest of us can't. And it's that anti-humanness of their traits that people are spotting en masse. If I can just take you back to my earlier question about foreign policy, is this one reason why foreign policy has become so aggressive in recent years,

in that foreign policy at least does serve as a point for elite consolidation? They can at least agree with each other about this. And it also gives them a route to reach out to society more widely and to justify some of these administrative controls that you've just been talking about. You can get rid of all of these protections because you need to protect people by telling them that the Russians are coming or, else, whoever else is coming, you need to do away with all of that. So it has a kind of integrative purpose, at least at an elite level.

I think foreign policy always seem to see in the West is war. You know, the appetite for, you know, Gerald Chalentie, you know, famously says, I don't even know if it's his own quote, but he certainly says when all else fails, they take you to war. And we seem to have, certainly since the end of the Second World War, we seem to have allowed the establishment

of an ecosystem of the predator, of the warmongering class. That seems to be all we see, that we've got economies in the United States of America and elsewhere that are predicated upon a war and once war has been prosecuted for long enough as it's judged by the warmakers in one place, you know, then pieces, so-called peace is established so that the banks can benefit from investment in those places and the circus of war moves on to the next place.

We're not seeing diplomacy. I grew up, I'm 59. and I grew up witnessing the activities of diplomats that seemed to seek alternatives to war. And, you know, we've already invoked the Roman Empire. You know, for a long time, the genius of, some of the genius of Rome was its syncretic determination to tolerate what was not,

genetically itself. But you could worship whatever you wanted as long as you paid your taxes to Caesar. You know, give us the share of the gold or whatever else and go about your crazy business. Do your thing. You know, that tolerance, that in there's some of the essence of diplomacy in there.

You know, live and let live. You know, we can benefit from this, but we can perpetuate a system for centuries by making sure that everybody else, you know, has the, has the, have the things that they need, meaning and commodities and all of the rest of it, to have, you know, meaningful lives. And you're able to perpetuate an imperium for centuries. But everything is becoming increasingly short term. You know, the Soviet empire only lasted a lifetime. And then it, and then it failed because, well, of course it was going to fail because it was because of its activities and because of what it was built upon and the way in which,

operated and it failed. And, you know, people talk about whatever, the American Empire. If there even is such an entity, it's obviously not going to last because it's predicated on war. People don't want that. I mean, the thing about war is that countries that are successful at war are countries where there is a high level of trust. Because war, unless you're going to all the way up the nuclear war, is by its very nature a cooperative enterprise. I mean, that's what the Romans were. I mean, they had very high levels of trust in their political system. They had very high levels of organization. Everybody worked together with each other. Rome was a team. What you're describing is not a team. And is that why we're having so many problems?

In the one hand, we're becoming very aggressive. On the other hand, because trust within our society is corroding, we're not really able to do war as well as we did. We can't produce weapons because people aren't producing weapons in order to equip armies, but to make money. We can't prosecute wars intelligently because we no longer have the trust in that. And I who have had over the last four years, especially many contacts with people in the US military as well, Although one of the things that has struck me about them is how mistrustful they have become of the way in which the political elite uses them. So just a question there.

I mean, is this why we're not doing war so well, even as we do more of it? I mean, if it's naive, it's naive, but my understanding is that war is only supposed to be a tool or a resort and, you know, the last resort at that. It's not really supposed to be the point. even for an entity like Rome that had mastered war the way it had, it wasn't just about war. Because that's, you know, that's not sustainable. You know, you can't, well, you see what happens.

We're seeing what happens when you have economies and foreign policies, you know, that are just predicated on forever war. we've got what we've got and but one way or another people people are seeing it it I fall back on on cliches all the time

you know it wasn't meant to be like this and people know it people people have a physiological response to the truth it's what makes people laugh at a joke a witty one-liner people it. Before they have time to process it, they react with a laugh or, you know, that would be one

manifestation of it. And that people are responding to what they're being offered at the moment in the way that they inevitably will, which is to see it as inauthentic, false, short term, and doomed. It feels as if all we're watching at the moment is a supermarket sweep of an entity, a once powerful, a once powerful, cohesive entity that knows its time. is up and it's just running up and down the supermarket shelves sweeping as much as it possibly can into the trolley before the, you know, before the clock stops and the lights go out. And again, I say people, people are seeing that. And I think, you know, so of course, yeah, we don't, we don't do war because war's not supposed to be the be all and end all. You know, look,

I mean, I've made a career, I made a career on television. You know, I was, I was, I was telling stories from the 20th century amongst other things. But I look back in it now and see that what I was actually doing for most of the time was reciting an orthodoxy. I was repeating for the general population a canonical version of events that was part of the perpetuation of authority, certainly in the West. But you can also look back at the First World War. And you can see that to some extent the meaningful consequences of the First World War,

apart from the mountains of corpses and the destruction, but the Balfour Declaration and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. And you could look at the Second World War and say, well, what really, apart from the destruction and the corpses were the consequences of the Second World War? And you could say, well, it was giving the Soviet half of Europe. people were told in Britain were going to war to save Poland and to bring democracy back freedom for a free people.

By the end of the war, that wasn't even attempted. Poland was thrown to the wolves. There was no often... It wasn't true. And so, you know, people are... increasingly people like myself are wondering about the narrative that we grew up with. Because again, it does come back to trust

and it comes back to people fundamental trust belief. People have to believe in something. And now too many people are looking back at the 20th century, which was the world in which their parents and grandparents grew up, and they're thinking, was that what I've been told about that, is that true? Is that the only way to interpret what was done? I, you know, I don't, I don't hold myself up to be an expert in anything. But what I do consider myself to be, which is what my first,

first newspaper editor told me I was when I worked for a local newspaper. He said, you represent the ordinary guy in the street. It's your responsibility to ask the questions that he would want asked if he had your opportunity. That's all I do. And I think that I have a sense that the questions that are occurring to me are occurring to me because I'm just a reasonable person. and I know that more and more people are, I know they're asking those same questions because they're more than capable of realizing, you know, that so much of what we have been given

is a fiction that too many of us don't believe in anymore. Last question, Neil. You say that, you know, you still have hope. What do you think is, what do you think is, likely to happen if your hopes are fulfilled because we do indeed have a far better educated and informed public than we've ever had at any time, I think, history. So what do you think might happen? Where, if you like, Mike Deliverance come from?

I would like to see a turning away from in that kind of horse whistle. The horse whisperer way, you know, the horse whisperer was that, you know, horses are herd animals and the people that seek to train them. You turn away, you ignore it because it can't cope. It doesn't, it needs to belong. It needs to be within. And I think if we collectively turn away from the administrators, if we were to turn away from the technocracy and the technocrats and the oligarchy and the oligarchy and the And I know people say, how are you supposed to do that? But you're asking me the question, what has to be done? I don't believe we'll vote our way out of this. I think the vote, as has demonstrated, goodness me, look what's happened in Kentucky with Thomas Massey. You know, the extent to which that is controlled one way or another and is not authentic

anymore. So I don't think we're going to vote our way out of this. But I think, and I think people have to take a great deal, draw a great, great deal of power, energy, confidence, determination from the understanding that they are more than capable of asking for and getting something that's better than this. We're not powerless. We're not stupid. On the contrary, we are capable of so much more. And we, I think, on practical levels, I think something, I believe that something existential is threatening the money power at the moment. All these machinations around the data centers, artificial intelligence, all the things that

Larry Fink's insisting trillions of people's pensions and savings need to be invested in to keep going. I think fundamentally, you know, follow the money. I think that's all coming back to an existential crisis that's facing the money power. And without control of the creation of and flow of whatever we call money, they are powerless. So, I mean, a decentralized, a decentralized medium of exchange, commoditized data, which some people say is Bitcoin, you know,

that's out with, that's beyond the grasp of the, you know, the existing, the incumbent money power, all the things are, but I think, the answer to your question,

why I'm optimistic is that I believe that there's a tipping point, there's another cliche, I think a tipping point has been reached. I think enough people now realize that they've been, they've been given bread and circuses for long enough

that the administrators that they don't really elect do not provide government that means anything for people that democracy because of the loss of trial by jury is no longer meaningful. People need to turn away from all of that and contemplate that none of it's gotten. Everything that matters that's important is still there. The wood is still there.

The bricks are still there. the steel is still there. The crops are still there to be grown. All of that is still there. People are in the same way that the menu is not the food and the map is not the terrain. People need to remember that if you turned up on a building site as a builder and you were told,

oh, we can't build any houses today because we'll have run out of inches and meters. you'd say inches and meters of what? Aren't the bricks still here and the people still here with all their muscle power and all their ingenuity and their creativity? Isn't all of that still here?

What do you mean? What do you mean we've run out of meters? People need to remember that everything they need is each other and build again from that. I mean, I know that's, I'm sure that'll sound like a platitude for people

but I think we have got to the point where it is that basis. I agree, actually. I absolutely agree. Neil Oliver, thank you very much for coming on our program and asking my questions, and let's definitely do this again in the future. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alexander. Thank you, Alex. It's been a pleasure for me. Thank you. Thank you, Neil. Before we let you go, real quick, where can people follow your work? I am the Coast Guy on X. I have books. I've published, oh, 13, 14 books by now, available wherever you acquire your books. I'm on patreon.com. You can find me there. You can support my channel, my YouTube channel, you can support my Patreon channel. And I'll be delighted to welcome you into those small families that I live within.

All right. Those links are in the description box down below and as a pin comment as well. the great Neil Oliver. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.