The Duran Podcast - UK elections and democracy erosion w/ Dr. Neema Parvini (Live)

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

UK elections and democracy erosion w/ Dr. Neema Parvini (Live)

Okay, we are live with Alexander Mercuris and joining us on the Duran for the first time. We are very excited and very honored to have with us, Dr. Nema Parvini, someone who has been requested by our viewers, hundreds and hundreds of times to join us on a show. Dr. Parvini, thank you very much for joining us on the Duran. I have the links to your YouTube, your substack, your website in the description box down below. Is there anything else that you would like to plug or anywhere else people can follow your work? Yeah, well, I mean, the two things I'll mention is that I have, due to the state of the British education system, I've set up something called the Academic Agency where I sell courses. is one of the best selling courses on there

is the classical trivium, you know, logic, writing, rhetoric. And, you know, it's kind of non-ideological, but that is something I direct people towards because it's, you know, they're only cheap compared to university courses, but a lot of people have had value from that, you know, how to write a sentence,

how to pass rhetoric and how to make logical, valid and true arguments. The other thing I'll mention really quickly is that today, a lot of the ideas I'm going to be talking about can be found in my book, The Populist Illusion. There's also a follow-up called The Prophet of Doom, which is slightly less relevant to what we're going to be talking about today, although it is ultimately relevant

because the profits of doom is about the rise and fall of civilizations. And, I mean, much of the state of the UK does feel like a nation in decline. So I'll see both of those books are relevant if people are interested. Great. I will add those links as a pinned comment as well when we finish the live stream. So let's get started and begin this show. Real quick, Alexander, just a quick hello to everybody that is watching us on all our platforms.

And a big shout out to our amazing, awesome moderators. Alexander, Dr. Parvini, let's get started. Indeed, let's get started. Now, we're in the middle of a general election in Britain. I get to say straight away, I have lived through 15. I did a count just before we started. I go back all the way to 1970. I do not know of a single general election that has been as bleak and as sad for me personally

as the one we're going through at the moment. And it does seem to me Dr. Pavini spoke about Britain being a nation in decline. I think that is true. And I think that there is no better person to discuss. us that with, than with Dr. Parvini, who is, of course, an academic in Britain at the University of Buckingham, I believe, but also a person who's written extensively about these matters. He mentioned the book called The Populist Delusion, which we will come to. He's also written Prophets of Doom, which covers people like Julius Evela, Oswald Spengler,

Arnold Toynbee, Gobino, all sorts of heavyweight figures of that kind, who've written about decline in various ways and problems, Sorokin, Pidirim Sorokin, and also about Defenders of Liberty, which is a very interesting, important book as well. Now, Dr. Parvini, I think with that introduction, that short introduction, I think the best thing to do since we never have unlimited amount of time in these programmes is to go directly and to ask you for your thoughts about the election and about why it's playing out in this bleak way that it is, at least I think it's bleak and what your general thoughts, what your general thoughts are. Well, I mean, the first thing I'll say is that I, like

everybody else in this country, have been absolutely disgusted with the Conservative government of the last 14 years, particularly in the last two or three years. The, I have never known the country to be in such a sorry state, you know, we received an email the other day. I live in the southeast, but from a water company saying, oh, the water, you need to buy three days' worth of bottled water because we may have poisoned the water supply. And that to me is kind of symbolic of the sorry state. I mean, nothing works. You know, we're talking kind of real, practical, everyday things. And the state of the high street in most towns now, the sense of kind of dilapidation and decline,

everywhere. For that reason I have been calling for the past several weeks for the Tory party to get zero seats. In fact, I put out a couple of kind of spoof videos and things like that with some help from some friends. And I've been quite stunned by the extent to which that small thing, which I just put up on my YouTube channel and on my Twitter feed, has travelled very far and very wide. It's been picked up by lots of people who I don't know. And it's been. it seems like it kind of captures a feeling in the country, which is that this Tory government has been so bad on so many different issues. I mean, the biggest of which is immigration, by the way, that the country has had enough. Now, I watched a video that you guys put out called the

Uniparty, agrees to the general election. I happen to agree with a lot of the analysis, that you said that this was a kind of an attempt by what we call the regime to shut out insurgents. However, I do have a slightly different, I have the view that if the Tory party are low enough, i.e. if we get as close to zero seats as possible, the Labour Party actually will be in a worse position than if the Tories have more seats because essentially they'll have to carry the can, i.e. it will be unambiguous that they are in control, and Kiyosthama then will have to deliver on some of his election pledges. And my hope is that the victory for Labour is actually so big that it destroys what I would call political khefe. That is the notion that there are actually two different

parties and we can talk a bit more about that later on. I do know that other people, yourselves included, are a bit more pessimistic about the prospect of Kiyosthama. But my view is that the regime is actually in so much trouble that it needs to, it actually needs to make some containment moves. And again later on I'll explain exactly what I mean by containment. Right. Well, that's a very, that is interesting. It's not impossible. that the Conservatives might go down to, maybe not zero, but I've seen one poll which says 66 seats, which would be, I think, a catastrophic collapse

for a Conservative Party which has dominated the political landscape in Britain with important interruptions, well, since the 19th century, the late 19th century, when it basically established itself as the dominant party in Britain. But I'm interested that you think that, a huge labour victory might be, in some respects, an opening, provide opportunities. And perhaps you could enlarge on this, because you're quite right in saying that, you know, we look at the situation the two of us do, and certainly I do.

And I don't find very much inspiring in the Labour Party at all. And, you know, inspiring is obviously an important word because you can find things inspiring and still disagree with them very strongly. But I just don't find very much of anything. But anyway, perhaps you can explain why this, you know, Titanic thing, if it comes, this massive labour landslide, if it comes, might provide a way opening, a way forward. Well, there's actually two things. The first is that, I mean, K-Fave is a term taken from professional wrestling. You will know, for example, that once upon a time, Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan had a massive match at WrestleMania 3, okay?

And they were deadly enemies, okay? But of course, in real life, WrestleMania 3 was an event put on by Vince McMahon, and Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan were the best of friends behind stage, behind closed doors. And they were actually cooperating. And it was predetermined that Andre the Giant would lose on that occasion. Okay. And that Holggan would remain the champion. Now, in many ways, Western liberal democracies have developed that this dynamic is essentially there.

That is why you call it the Uniparty. Everybody knows that the Labour and the Tories are not the worst of enemies, just like Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. Now, what that does, that dynamic of Labour versus Tories, is it gives the both parties constant kind of ephemera froth that they can deflect from the actual business of governance and of, you know, solving the problems in the country. So, for example, under normal circumstances, if Labor got back in, but the Tories had, let's say, I don't know, 250 seats or something, they could constantly, deflect by saying, well, like, you know, look at who this politician is cheating on their

wife with, or, you know, that they can, they can just, you know, I mean, one of the, one of the flim-flam issues of today is the issue of kind of transgenderism. You know, the Tory party made a tweet yesterday saying, well, at least we can say what a woman is, right? Well, These are kind of symbolic, symbolic matters that matter actually to a very, they actually affect a very small number of people. And in this way, they can basically direct everybody's attention to these fake fights and not deal with things like potholes in the road and the fact that, you know, Hammersmith's bridge has been closed for five years and all of the other terrible things in this country. So what I'm hoping is that if you,

if that dynamic was broken enough and if there was such a kind of rump left of the Tory party, that Labour would have no choice but to concentrate on the actual governance. And the international dynamic is important here as well, because it does seem like they're gearing up for something, some conflict, war, and maybe the actual realities dawning on one has frankly been a delusional elite over the past couple of decades will finally mean that they actually have to sort some of these things out, even if it's for the very, very cynical purpose of getting people to enlist so they can die in their wars. Gosh. Let's talk about the elite, because I know you've been written about elites and about

the control of elites over societies. And I think in Britain we're becoming increasingly exposed, even those of us who actually have these illusions that in fact, you know, there are real party politics taking place, and parties are different from each other and that they fight each other. But I think even over the last couple of years, it's become very difficult to take this entirely seriously anymore. I can remember it, but there were differences between parties.

Certainly at the moment there are. But perhaps you can discuss this. Can you, you know, discuss elites generally and perhaps if you can discuss elites in particular, the British elite in particular, and what we're looking at the moment. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of the stuff I've written on

is taken from something called elite theory. If people are interested, most of the ideas I'm going to talk about, go back to people like Pareto, Giantyrano Mosca, Robert Michelle's, and some other thinkers as well, like Carl Schmidt, who was, German and in fact involved with the government in Germany in the mid-century there, Bertrand de Juvenel and people like this, people are interested.

But the first thing you need to do is to kind of step back and try to think about what is the nature of government and power. And there are a number of different principles which I will just outline briefly for the audience so that people can kind of keep up with this discussion. The first thing is that power is always, everywhere and always, the organized minority over the disorganized mess. In the West, we have this partly due to the myths of the 1960s and people like Martin Luther King and so on. We have this notion that power is bottom up, that the people are sovereign and the leaders listen to the people. This has only ever been a delusion.

In fact, there's plenty of evidence to show that even the 1960s was an elite project. Christopher Colwyn, I think, shows that very well in his recent book. So the organized minority over the disorganized mess, okay? This is everywhere and always. Think of an army. You know, you want to take out the officers because without that, you know, the 100 organized men will be able to defeat the thousand disorganized men 10 times out of 10. The second thing is that power seeks to eliminate rival castles.

A rival castle is basically anything that is a genuine threat to power. Think of the way the Bolsheviks simply eliminated the Kulax or Henry the 8th, taking out the Catholic Church. You know, you can name your own examples from history. And this is always happens, you know, given a long enough time frame. The third thing is that, and this will be the one at which you, Alexander, may, you know, as a man of a legal man, may balk out the most, power will make exceptions to the rule of law for its friends and enemies. That is, the normal rule of law will be suspended when friends are concerned, and it will be applied, especially harshly, when enemies are concerned.

And I think any Americans in the audience will see the treatment of Donald Trump and be very quickly able to see that for themselves in real time. The fourth thing is that power will legitimate itself with political formulas. My short hand for this is simply BS BS, BS, therefore I rule. The BS, people might call it ideology,

it could be religion, but essentially people, people have to buy into that for the regime to be legitimate. So our BS is something like we live in a free society, a liberal democracy, or it has been. And what we're seeing is that people are no longer believing that and they're seeing the BS for what it is. And the fifth thing is that because of all of this, states tend to converge around single stories, i.e., there's a tendency towards what you might call in political terms absolutism, even if that has that, absolutism is hidden with these kind of stories and myths that you tell yourself. Now, to make all of this easier to understand, there's a number of examples I will give out. These things I have been talking about are true of every system. So when George Orwell wrote 1984, he wasn't talking about Stalin's USSR or even about Hitler's Germany. He was talking about Britain. Britain under Clement Attlee, as it had

been under the Allies. In 1941, James Burnham pointed out that all three of the powers in the war, that is FDR's USA, the USSR and Germany and of course Britain, had effectively become, by that point, total managerial states. Now, no one has a problem with the notion that Stalin would not have tolerated any non-Stalinist in his government, or that Hitler would not tolerate any non-Nazerat, in his government. But partly because of the lies, liberal democracies tell themselves, people have a harder time seeing this with our elites, okay? But our elites are just as intolerant of rival castles. In other words, power is not going to tolerate anyone but their friends in government. And the moment I want to take everybody back to is the 2010 general election, when it was

was Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg in the debate. Do you remember? I agree with Nick. Do you remember that? Absolutely. This was the apex moment of the current neoliberal elite. And the system is constantly trying to get back to that moment where it was Clagg, basically three flavors of Tony Blair. Okay. Now, it's a, sorry, sorry to that I monologue a bit, but these things are important to understand.

It's sometimes easier to see all of this through analogy with nations that the West typically criticize as being autocratic, such as Putin's Russia or Iran under the Ayatollah. Now, both of those systems, but that is both Russia's and Iran's, are technically democracies. Iran's constitution was actually modeled after the French Revolution. But everybody knows that whether its president is Racy or Ketami or Ahmadinejad, who actually within the Iranian political system represent different positions in the parameters of allowable opinion in that country. But everybody knows that regardless of who the president is, the real ruling class are the Mullers. And in Russia, it's even more transparent. You know, Putin is in charge.

friends of Putin get positions in the government, enemies of Putin, well, you know what happens to them. They end up in jail or they get put in prison. The point is that our system is basically identical to this. All of those things happen in our system too. In Iran, candidates are pre-selected by something called the Guardian Council. That is, no one who is truly anti-regime will be allowed to run. In this country, candidates are screened for political correctness. and again, truly anti-ranging candidates will be weeded out. Some people may know that just before Nigel Farage took over Reform UK, which happened yesterday, Richard Tice had deselected many candidates who were deemed unacceptable by what is essentially a far leftist activist organization will hope not hate.

We watched Kea Stama purged dozens of candidates in the past couple of weeks who will not tow the party line on Israel. The Tories have routinely gate kept out anyone who was actually conservative from the Tory party since David Cameron got in. So the function of the Guardian Council in Iran is carried out here by another name. And the last thing I'll say, and this is something that I have been particularly hard on in the past couple of years, because this is much more difficult for people to see. But I think the two of you will recognise it more because you look at country, other than our own on a regular basis, which is that regimes, all regimes, have more advanced tricks that they have up their sleeve. And the biggest trick is something called containment,

where you can contain dissident energy to look like you're doing what people want in order to stay in power. Again, to use Iran as the example, Katsami, who I mentioned was a reformer. Amaddinajad was the Iranian equivalent of a nationalist populist. Note he didn't wear the turban. He was secular leader. Razi, who's just died, was a hardliner. Now, everybody knows that ultimately, regardless of which one of these is in power, you know, which one of these is the president, the regime maintains control.

But it's actually useful for the regime. to kind of vent that to allow people who have the same opinions, say, Ahmadinejad or Razi, to kind of feel like they've been listened to. And it's like a pressure valve is released. I'll note, by the way, that once Amadinajad, who was useful for a period that, when it was peak neocon era in the 2000, once his usefulness was over, he was not allowed to run in 2012. And similar dynamics play out in this country where the parties tactically pivot to what is allowable opinion. In fact, during that same period of the period of where Amadinajah was a president, there was a lot of what I would call allowable bigotry that entered into the British and the American political discourse of that time. When that was no longer politically convenient, again after about 2010, that was called Islamophobia.

But when they were trying to get people up for the Iraq war, it was actually actively fermented by Hollywood movies and by newspapers and all the rest of it. And getting people to see, so I think people can see a lot of the other things I talked about. But this particular move, I think, is more difficult for people to see. And it also creates difficulties for our analysis because it's not always clear who is containment and who is not. For example, you know, this election was looking to be a bit of a damp squid. You know, let's face it. But then yesterday, sensationally, you know, to use my wrestling analogy, like Stone Cold Steve Austin with a chair, Nigel Farage, dramatically announces he's going to run. Now is that a genuine threat to the regime or is a farge part of the regime?

And frankly, at this point, it's very hard to tell. So over to you guys. Gosh, just to quickly say, I'm not a, I, the point about lawyers, there is a thing that lawyers say to each other. It's not widely known. But they say, well, they say two things. One is bullshit baffles brains, which is very much part of what lawyers do. But the other about specifically the point you said is that, It's a well-known phrase, going all the way back to antiquacy, that the law catches small flies but cannot hold big ones.

It's like a spider's web. It can only catch the small flies, the big ones, the well-connected people, they've always been able to fly away. What I would say is, and this is important about the administration of law, is that it has to look convincing. And I think that one of the things that has been happening in the United States to an extreme degree, I think over the last few months, but years as well, but also increasingly in Britain too, is that the fiction that the law is impartial and administered evenly is starting to look very threadbare and the problems are becoming visible. And that brings me to the next point because, of course, what you said about the fact that there is a very threadbare and the problems are becoming visible. And that brings me to the next point because, of course, what you said about the fact that there is an elite behind always in control. The one writer that you mentioned, whom I'm familiar with is Michelle's, who I think said that behind every political system,

there is always an oligarchy that actually controls things. And I think one of the most powerful thinkers, by the way, amongst those. I think it's true. but there are competent oligarchies and there are less competent oligarchies. And I do get the sense that in Britain at least, there has been a decline in oligarchical or elite competence, which has been underway for a fair amount of time, but which has now become again visible. What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, I mean, there was, I was watching the other day a BBC documentary, which you guys may have seen called Putin versus the West. Do you guys see that? I mean, you know, there was a lot of propaganda in it, but it's notable because a lot of heavyweights.

Theresa May, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, I mean, I say heavyweights, you know, people of prominence. Let's just pray that way. And anyway, the episode I was watching went back to 2011. where there was this big light show put on in St. Petersburg. You may remember this. And apparently Putin at that time was furious about what was happening in Syria. And the light show was delayed. It was delayed until like one in the morning or something. And the meeting with David Cameron was going to take place at 2.30 a.m. in the morning.

And Putin basically wanted to confront Cameron over Syria, okay? a very, very serious diplomatic moment in history. And David Cameron was sitting there smugly. And, I mean, you could see that he was pleased with himself by the look on his face. And he said, at this moment, this is when I raised with Putin, the issue of LGBT rights. As if he's, I mean, this is not a serious person. You know, this is somebody who, you know, is playing, you know, Putin is, wherever you make of him. He is a serious actor on the world stage.

And Cameron is talking essentially about, you know, playground issues here. And I do think there's been a marked decline even from Tony Blair to David Cameron. I think Tony Blair, whatever you make of him, is actually a kind of truly Machiavellian figure who understands implicitly whether he knows it not. Many of the things that I've talked about, whereas the, whereas the Tory part, party since the Cameron takeover really has been pathetic. So what is what has thought about this elite degeneration? I know that you've been interested in the educational system, which is an issue that I'm quite interested in as well. I get the sense that there has been aspects of the

education system that have been going seriously wrong. And of course you also also mentioned the fact that there is a kind of operation underway to police comments and discussions, very aggressive one, which is making it more difficult for discussion to take place in any form about economic matters as well, but mostly about these social questions, which also impacts on politics too. Are these things connected? Is it partly, as I said, is it a product of the way

the education system is organised? Because I have to say this. Again, I speak as somebody who has, you know, whose wife works in higher education. It is certainly a concern of hers. Anyway, what are your thoughts about this? Well, I mean,

this may not be very, very popular thing to say that I actually think that it was it was a mistake to open up the universities for, you know, 50% plus of the population. Speaking of Tony Blair, that was one of his banner policies. The analogy I will always make is to is to pineapples, okay? Once upon a time, a pineapple was a status symbol, right? In fact, it was so difficult to get hold of a pineapple in the West and in Britain

that people would literally, they put a pineapple up on their mental piece and it would have rot. It would be like a rotting pineapple there, but they wanted to show people that they could get one and the value of it came from hence. And obviously once you could buy pineapples and tins, they were too, you know, they were to a penny. Nobody thinks of a pineapple as something that's going to be, you know, make anybody else think more highly of you. And of course with the education, with education, once you democratize it, a similar thing is going to take place. Not only will the perceived value of degrees go down, but also just like you have to standardize the production of pineapple cans, you also have to standardize education to the point where

you know, it has to appeal to the, you know, to the lowest baseline. I mean, I remember when I used to give lectures, you know, I was lecturing ostensibly on Shakespeare. But I'd have to take the first two lectures to fill in a thousand years' worth of European history because they didn't have it. If I said the Renaissance, for example, or the Elizabethan era, kids did not have a sense of where in history that was. You know, I mean, I'll never forget.

I mean, I won't name any individual students, obviously, but I'll never forget that I received an essay once that I marked. And it started, in the Victorian era, William Shakespeare, and it was just like, I mean, I know, it's a silly student error. But this is what I'm talking about. It's like that there is something about, the way education has gone, that means a lot of people just have very little knowledge of things that would have been standard even a few years ago.

And even in our lifetime, like, you know, I'm a fairly educated guy, but I cannot speak fluent Greek and Latin, which would have been absolutely standard, you know, 50 years before me. So there's, I mean, I even think there's been interpine from the professors who would have taught me to me. Because the things that have led to this, I think, is a combination of certain technologies that have impacted the way people process information. But also the role of wealth cannot be overlooked comfort. a lot of the periods that people look back on and think, well, this was a great moment, this produced a lot of great things, tend to come from struggle.

They tend to come from a sense that you're up against it. And frankly, since World War II, in what I would call the moment of the American Empire, because let's face it, that's what we're living in, people have been too comfortable. and it has led to decline across the board, including decline at the elite level. Are we locked into decline then? Because I think one of the points that you may, perhaps you can enlarge upon it, is that when we're looking at conflicts, when we're looking at essentially it's the displacement of one elite by another. I'm undoubtedly not providing explaining your ideas clearly,

but if you can explain them as well. The trouble is I don't see, at the moment, in Britain, an alternative elite in a position to take over to replace the one we have. So that elite is getting less competent, but I don't really see rivals to it at the moment. I don't see any organizing forces that might be rivals, rivals to it. I don't see signs of social movements that might crystallize different elites,

like you've seen in other places, like you saw in France, in the United States at one time, in Russia too. So, I mean, anyway, over to you. Yeah, I mean, one thing I should say is that the British system is the best in the world. And even Moscow recognized this when he was writing back at the turn of the 20th century. The British system has always been the best in the world at containing dissident energy. And what we have watched from Brexit to now has been an absolute masterclass by the ruling establishment, likes of Tony Blair, you know, literally Tony Blair and his institute and other forces like that, of locking down, of basically shutting out.

dissident energies, you know, the Corbyn takeover of Labor has been completely reversed. I mean, completely purged in a ruthless and almost brutal way. They have, they managed to tie up Brexit and reconfigure it and subvert what Brexit was meant to be. Most, most, I mean, I voted to remain, by the way, typical anywhere, liberal elite as I have. I don't know how many joking. But I did vote remain. But a lot of the people who voted Brexit were voting as a kind of FU to the system. They were voting on immigration.

And the Tory party basically took that and they inverted it. They said, actually, you're voting for a more global brism. The problem with the EU is that the EU is too racist. And it gives us scope to bring in more people from outside. And that is exactly what they've done, by the way. I think was it 2.4 million people have arrived in the past three or four years? I mean, I read a statistic the other day, 43% of all of the people born outside the UK have arrived in the past 10 years.

I mean, it's just extraordinary. But so what I think has happened now, though, if we can get back to the election, is that their ability to use all these little tricks, these persuasion tools, these craming devices, these selection games that they play. I actually think that in this election, which has been designed, as you guys correctly pointed out, to keep out those dissident energies, I think they are now so overwhelming, so in your face the problems with the country, that even the British establishment is struggling to prevent happening here, what has happened all around Europe in Italy with Salvini and Maloney,

Builders in the Netherlands, Le Pen, AFD in Germany. And in fact, if you notice, both of the parties, both Labour and Tories, have made immigration a central issue. In fact, last night I read through a Sun article, which was an exclusive interview with Kia Stama, where Kea Stama's platform sounds like something that if anybody had come out with it five years ago would have been instantly branded far right

and booed at by people on question time. But now Labour have made it a central manifesto pledge for the election. And the reason they're doing that is that, and this is something that Tony Blair has talked about openly, many, many times, they believe that the elites now, if they can actually get a grip on this issue and reduce the immigration numbers and solve some of the problems that have given rise to populism in the first place, they'll be able to head off for the pass and restore faith in the system. And that may work, but there's a lot of reason

to believe that they may not make good on their promises. So that's up to people to decide for this election. So in a sense, if we have a Labour landslide, there's possible chance that the elite might start to do what elites are supposed to do, which is to keep things operating, functionally. But again, if they don't do that, if things continue to slide, in effect, they've created a larger target. Am I, am I, you know, misconstructing this?

That is essentially the gambit that I wish to play. I mean, if I had total control over what would happen, that's what I would seek, because in order to, I think it was Lenin who said something like, in order to bring down a system, you need to find its weakest link, right? Well, right now the weakest link is the Tory party. If we can destroy, if we can, through our voting, destroy the Tory party who are the central node of containment, by the way, I'm talking about they are the biggest accelerators of decline. You know, they're effectively a pure traitor party in my view.

if we can take those out, it presents the Labor Party with a very big problem. And in fact, sorry to go back to Tony Blair again, but there's an anecdote that he wrote, in his book, My Journey, he told an anecdote that on the night of the 1997 election, the results started coming in. And it was showing like dozens and dozens, hundreds of Labour seats. And the Tories were just on six at that moment in the night. And he said everybody else around me was ecstatic. He started to freak out because he believed that he may have done something unconstitutional.

He said, you know, I wanted a handsome victory, but I didn't want to wipe the Tories out. Because Blair, as a true student of politics, understands the structural role that the other party plays in a two-party system. They need each other. So if we can take one of them out, you know, regardless of what the Labour Party do, it will be good. It will make all of these things that we've been talking about more clear. And also it will, I mean, I also hope Nigel Farage gets in, by the way, because I've just got a vision of George Galloway and Nigel Farge sitting next to each other in the House of Commons, holding Starmes's feet to the fire so that he can't start backpedaling on a lot of these pledges that he's making.

And so, frankly, if the elites don't start listening to the population, then we may see what Pareto is called the circulation of elites. That is, if this lot aren't going to listen to us, that's, I mean, that is when you get, when you get a completely disgruntled population who feel like they're not being listened to, and they feel like there aren't any routes out, there's no exit, that's when you start getting up.

That is when you start getting uprisings. So, you know, and frankly, I mean, just to talk about America for a quick second, I've been waiting for the common sense, because what I'm talking about is the common sense thing to do, right, from the Starman government. And I've been waiting for common sense and kind of sensible, sensible kind of principles of power

to kick in in America. And they just don't do it. They just keep on accelerating towards crazier and crazier outcome. So, you know, Lord knows what will happen over there. But I do, I actually expect the, star my government to be marginally better than the Tory one, which I know will shock a lot of people. Well, it could hardly be worse. Yeah, exactly.

It's not one thing to say. I think we've heard an, I mean, I think you provide us with a huge amount to think about, actually. And certainly I'm going to go away and think about this. I'm going to stop now, and I'm going to hand over to Alex. He might have some questions. If you can stay for just a little while, I know you're, always busy. I know how busy academics can be. But I'm just going to hand over to Alex. If there's any questions to just like two, two three questions. Just to say also thank you very

much. And my wife is floating upstairs listening to this program as well, just to say. All right. Two, three questions. Is that all right, Dr. Parvini? Yeah. From Russell Hall, be careful what you wish for destroying the illusion of multiple parties by handing absolute power to one party may permanently cement single party rule. Your thoughts? Well, I mean, the thing is, is that, you know, in the book The Populous Lusion, I talked about how power is almost always top down, okay?

But I think some people sometimes misunderstand that, okay? Regardless of what the system is, whether it's a king or a dictator or whoever, you know, whatever the system is, there is a kind of tacit agreement whereby the population have to be okay, they have to buy into the legitimacy of that government. And once that is gone, it's actually quite difficult for elites to just kind of hold power through force indefinitely. And I think the example of the Soviet Union showed that, okay, it took 80 years. but basically those elites just gave up.

I mean, they lost, they stopped believing in their own, in their own BS and they lost the will to rule. And, you know, so there's, they can get away with a lot. People in power can get away with a lot, but the elastic is not indefinite. And if they try to stretch it too far, there are consequences to that. And that is why, you know, leaves. have to engage in what I call containment. I mean, the correct way to think about Magna Carta, as a famous example, is that it was King John,

skillfully containing dissident energy in the country in order to remain in power, which is ultimately what happened. And that is the wise thing to do. So if they become more and more authoritarian, that sort of stuff is just not going to, it's not going to wash with the population who have been used to believing that we live in liberalism and in freedom and so on.

It takes quite a lot. The other thing I'll just mention really quickly is that Pareto, following Machiavelli, outlined two different types of elite, a fox elite and a lion elite. Now a lion elite relies on force in order to get things done. You think of Stalin or Saddam Hussein, These are lion leaders, okay, and they're used to using force.

We have lived under, since 1945, foxes. And foxes rule through persuasion and perception management. This is why PR is so important in our system. If our regime try to change from being a fox-based elite to being a lion elite, that will be an extremely difficult transition. One of the things they talk about is that foxes struggle to use hard power. And when they do, it always comes across as being clumsy. The example I would give is Justin Trudeau.

Do you remember when he started cracking down on the protest over the lockdowns or whatever it was? You know, it came off terribly. And so there's a big question. to be asked of how far they're prepared to go. And it is actually, you know, to go back to the example of Iran, which I've drawn on a few times, it is the, to quote Spengler, the hour of decision for any, for any regime. When the Shah in 1979 told his generals to open fire on the crowd, they said, we're not going to do it. And that was it. And so will, so if they go keep on going down that route, that time will come also for our government. But I actually,

against so much evidence, counterintuitively, I believe that there are enough clever people, confident people in the elite to prevent that from happening, at least in the short term. You know, I mean, who knows they could put Trump in jail and I look like an idiot in a six-month time. but I somehow believe that more of them are going to come to their senses. That seems to be what's happening at the moment. Let me put this one up here. Marcos 588. One of Dr. Parvini's friends describes it well.

Complacency of the oligarchs and their apparatchiks, intentional neglect of our institutions, the phenomenon of biolanism across all Western social strata. Yeah. I'd agree with that. And just to explain for people who aren't familiar with the concept of bio-Leninism, this is where over time people are selected for their loyalty to the regime over their skills and talents.

And it actually, it's named after what happened in the Soviet Union when the Bolsheviks stopped selecting people because of their abilities and just select them because they knew they knew they were going to be loyal. And much of what people call woke or the woke phenomena or DEI diversity and all of this sort of thing is actually, it's just that. Because if you've been hired or if you're in a position, not because of your skills and talents, but because you tick the right boxes, you know it's at the back of your mind that you owe your position because of your loyalty to the regime.

And, you know, this is not unique, by the way, to the West. All regimes have this problem, including, I'm sure it even happens in Iran. I know it happens in Iran. But I'm sure it also happens to some extent in Russia as well. Let's do a couple of more. Ronald McNugget says, it seems AA is saying these elites won't abandon mass migration or actually fix anything. Pure managed decline.

No, I actually believe that they will at least be seen to fix these, start to fix these problems because they have to at some point say, we've listened to you, we understand, and we're going to do something about it. If only to take the energy out of what fuels populism. everywhere. Because they know that nobody believes them. So they need to make a big show. And this is one of the strange dynamics in British politics. The way I put it is people like David Cameron and

Boris Johnson and so on, they lay awake at night thinking about what will be written about them in the Guardian or in the Independent. Whereas Blair, Mandelson and Now Kiastama, they stay awake at night thinking about what's written about them in the Sun and the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. So there's a very perverse thing where the Tory party virtue signals to its left and the Labour Party virtue signals to its right. But because a lot of people will only begrudgingly vote Labour, they then have to prove that they are the things that they're going to say they're going to be in a way that the Tories do not.

Because the Labour can take left-wingers for granted. That may actually not be true in this election, but usually they can take people on the left for granted because they know they're just not going to vote for Tory. So they have to work for the votes of the people in the middle and the centre-right. And I will say for as bad as a rap that Tony Blair gets, he did do a lot of things that by today's standards would seem quite, again, far right. Do you remember, Asbo's, the hostile environment,

90% rejection rate of asylum seekers, David Blunkett saying he'd shoot prisoners with a machine gun. This was tough on crime and the causes of crime. You know, Labor have to play that game if they want to be in power. You know, they'll talk tough on law and order and immigration and on the military because they know that those are the areas that people don't trust them. And economy. People don't trust labor on economy. Unfortunately, for the Tories,

People now don't trust them on anything at all. So that's why they're facing the zero seats. And one more from Marcos 588. Do the Krakis Sula and Caesar make the cracks appear, or do they arise due to cracks appearing first? Or is it elements of both occurring in unison? Yeah, one of the things I would say is that, and James Burnham, when I mentioned is particularly big on this point, is that most regimes collapse not because of an insurgency

or the coming of a Caesar or the coming of some external threat. Most of them collapse internally due to a loss of will from the elites. So it's not to say that those other figures, those figures rising are not a factor, but they tend to be a symptom of something that has gone wrong with the ruling class in the first place. It is often, and that is a difficult thing, I think, for a lot of people to get their heads around. You know, it is not that, you know, Lenin rose to power because, you know, millions of people around Russia wanted communism. And it is actually that the previous ruling class, you know, the Tsars had, you know,

they had lost their way and they had lost their ability to rule. And it just so happens that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were the most organized minority. And they took over control in the vacuum because power cannot abhor a vacuum. Somebody has to take over. And in fact, to go back to the Iranian case, the exact same thing happened there. The Shah had lost his way and he'd lost the ability to rule and the will to rule. And he was actually overthrown by a vast coalition of all sorts of people from across Iranian society. It just so happened that the Mullers and the Ayatollah was the most organized minority.

And after he got into power, after initially saying that he'd go into the mountains and, you know, be a holy man. He ruthlessly crushed his rival castles and now they are the ruling class. And so it, and so it was with Hitler and Germany in any other case where you have the collapse of one system and the coming in of an system. So that's my long answer to that. Fantastic. Dr. Parvini love AA, love the Duran. Thanks, guys. Thank you very much. Academic Agent A.A. Dr. Parvini, thank you for joining us on the Duran. I have your information where people can follow you in the description box down below. I will also add the links as a pinned comment as well. Thank you so much for joining us on this show. Thank you very much, Dr. Pavini.

Thank you so much. Take care. Much to think there. Much to think about. A lot to think about. Let's answer the revaded questions. Alexander. We do have a lot to think about that. By the way, can I just say, just, just, just to quickly say, I started working through these books. They are compelling and they're very, very readable. So if you really want to read really good analysis of political thinking, get a sense of the state of things, follow up all the points that we've been hearing today, go to these various books. You can find them all on Amazon. Defenders of liberty, profits of doom, the populist illusion, they're all there.

Yeah, it would be great to have Dr. Parvini on again. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Be interesting to see whether things turn out is the way he wants, and we really do get a Conservative Party that's down to zero. They don't deserve anything better. Zero seats. They really do not deserve anything better. Yeah. Fragments of the USSR says, I recall the call in ear when I asked if you've heard of academic agent, both you said no.

I recommended him to you, glad that you finally met, gentlemen. Thank you for that. We did. We followed. Yes. Ralph Steiner says, dear Alex Alexander, I would like once again to plea for the intercession in the restoration of the chat rights of John Ashley Smith so that he can keep on chatting in the free world. Very much appreciate it. Yes, Ralph, we will do that, absolutely.

Let's see. Fragments of the USSR said Trump said he is going across the border after the cartels. Alexander Orilov was right. The group behind Rand want a new war on terror against international crime. Their candidate is Trump. Well, interesting. I mean, end one war, start another, which is not to say, of course, that the problems of the cartels aren't real and that there isn't real problems, that they don't create real problems. But whether this is the right way, I am skeptical. One of the things, and this is not a theory. It's been looked at academically. There have been studies about this going back decades.

One of the great problems with the international trade that the cartels are involved in is that there is so much complicity and collusion with them from the very highest circles of power, including in the United States. States itself. Go back all the way to the 1960s, for example, the French connection, the French connection in Marseille, famous from that film, smuggling heroin into the United States. They were able to get help from the French Secret Services and the US Secret Services because they were seen as a force to control Marseille, where there was a powerful Communist Party. So that, I think, is the better way.

It's to actually go through the government, say to themselves, look, we've got to be united about this. We really want to get on top of this problem of this international trade, not going to Mexico, but actually not to assist all the time these people in doing the things that they do. Patty and Patsy, thank you for that super sticker. Elsa says, how important is the outcome of the election in the UK? Does it have an impact on European international politics? You know, I was about to say that it's not going to have much importance because we're looking at, you know, two parts of one elite, one part is going to replace another, but overall the politics can't change. But you think about Britain is that for whatever reason, it is, it does make the weather to some extent. there's a conservative collapse and be very clear the Olensky curse will be playing a role in that.

I mean, the fact that they were involved in all of this, if there is a conservative party collapse like that, it might shake things up in other places as well. But that collapse has to happen first and we'll see if it does. Ralph Steiner says the illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion at the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, it will just take down the scenery. I know, here, by the way, I do agree with Dr. Parfina. It is not easy for foxes to become lions. If they go too obviously against that system which they've constructed, and it's a system, it's not just a system of police and security forces and that

kind of thing. It's also a system of ideas as well. If they go against it too openly, then they will bring everything down, including themselves. I thought the example of Trudeau was excellent with the truckers. Excellent. That was an excellent example. Yeah, the fox in line. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Grass, Grasino, thank for that super sticker. Ralph Steiner said they will put back, they will pull back the curtains. They will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater, Frank Zappa. Very good. That's very, very good indeed.

Bank Zappa is great, by the way. Russell Hall says, just once, I'd like for people who throw out the talking point of Putin jailing political adversaries to provide a list of examples besides Navalny. Well, yes, I understand that. And this, one can go over this many times. I have done. Let's not get distracted and focus instead on the very, very searching analysis that we've just heard.

From Mark Hewitt, did you see Neil Oliver's monologue on Bojo, the clown parading with an NAZI flag and the lieutenant colonel attempt to cover for the Azov? I have not seen it, but I have heard about it. And a lot of people I know have commented about this. and it's something I absolutely do want to see. I'm afraid that it's another example of the decline and fall of Johnson. Once upon a time, I say this about him, he had more understanding of how to conduct politics than he seems to do today.

Ralph Steiner says, government is a true religion. It has its dogmas, its mysteries, its priests. Submitted to the individual discussion is to destroy it. It is given life only three. through the national mind, that is to say, by political faith, which is a creed. Joseph de Mastre. Interesting.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Sancho Relaxo says, do these new incompetent elites actually believe in overpopulation in imminent ecodum in zero-sum outcomes? I don't think so. I think that, again, one shouldn't perhaps overestimate. how, you know, deeply they think.

They do understand power, and I think that is something that Dr. Povini was talking about, or at least they did. But I don't think they really believe in these things. And as I said, if they do, then it's very bad news for them because what they're playing with is fire,

which will burn them. Alex Glans, thank you for a super sticker. Joe Nader Games. Welcome to the Duran community. Peter, Gustafson, thank you for that super sticker. Jimbo Elrad, welcome to the Bradd Community. Tim Gibson, thank you for that. Awesome, super sticker.

Marcos 588 says, A Tour de Force with a wonderful guest. Nice to see the Duran and the wider dissident sphere meeting in the middle here. Please do a follow-up soon. I would love to do a follow-up. I would love to do, four-level. Two-de-force describes it perfectly. I think there's a lot to get into.

Yeah, absolutely. A lot more detail. Very intense minutes, if I can say. Sparky says, Viva George Galloway. And finally, user 1990 says, do you suppose Captain Ritter savagely head-budded and bit the federal thugs who attempted to detain him without cause? No, I don't think I'm very,

the passport issue. The passport is true. I mean, I don't know what actually happened in terms of the removal of him from the plane, but whatever, you know, happened at that moment. I mean, what has happened is appalling. I gather Judge Napolitano has experienced the same thing. To me, it has a look of panic about it, actually. It has a look at panic.

I mean, it's Justin Trudeau, you know, doing that. Exactly. It's ugly. I mean, he goes to Moscow to attend another conference. I mean, a wise elite would not care. I mean, you know, they wouldn't bother. But here they go. Here they go.

this is how they are. They have to haul him off the plane, take away his passport, engage in completely unconstitutional acts, do those sort of things. Can I make a get? Go on. No, go on.

They will not. It's going to turn out. It's not going to turn out well for them. That's what I'm saying. I completely agree. My guess is that if the Switzerland conference was not crumbling, the way it's crumbling,

they wouldn't have done this. I think they want to make sure, given everything that's happening with their conferences, especially the one in Switzerland, the Peace Formula Conference, they want to make sure that the St. Petersburg Forum is tarnished, is diminished, is humiliated, because I think they got really bothered with the turnout or the lack of turnout for the Swiss Peace Formula thing. That's my hunch. I don't know. I entirely agree.

but the whole Swiss formula plan conference was an absurd one from the staff. Why did they ever imagine that it would work? And I mean, if they're really getting angry and a hauling Scott Ritter and judging Napolitano of planes and digging their passports away,

but all I can say is, I mean, they're completely disconnected. From reality, both of the... They are. I mean, anyway, it shows... I mean, it's another symptom, if you like. overly decline. Yeah, they are. You know they are.

One sec. We got some more that came in. A, B, B, C, E, B, C, E. Thank you for that super chat. Angry Warhark says Britain has been plutocracy since 1649. This is when the king was executed, I think, if I'm right. Charles I first. Charles I first. Utis 4321 says, what do you think of Douglas McGregor's efforts to create an organization to crystallize a counter elite.

I haven't, I haven't, I'm not familiar with it. So it's something I'd have to learn more about. Yeah, I agree. I haven't really, really read much about it. Commander Crossfire says, any thoughts on the new Mexico president? No, I haven't. Again, it's somebody asked me yesterday, but I just haven't had the time to catch up on this. I don't think, Alex said it yesterday in a program.

I don't think it's going to make any difference to Mexico's overall political orientation. But I need to follow up this a lot more deeply than I have. Sparky says in many places, organized crime is more organized than the government. That's true enough. And Sparky says Ritter went hard against Israel. So like with TikTok, they stepped it up against him. Well, maybe. But I think.

I don't think so. I don't think that's the case. I is about Russia, really. I think that's a real obsession. I think it's Russia, the St. Petersburg Forum and everything that's going bad for their events. Yeah, that's what I think it is. But we'll see. Who knows?

Either way, I agree with you, Alexander. It's definitely an act of panic. It doesn't look good. That wasn't the best thing for them to do. That's everything, I believe. Your final thoughts, Alexander, while I just do. Oh, it's a fantastic program, as I said. And I look very much look forward to having Dr. Pervini again.

Yep. It would be great to have them back. All right. Thank you to everyone that joined us on Rockfin, on Odyssey, on Rumble, YouTube, and to our amazing community at the durand.com. Thank you to our moderators, reckless abandon, Zareel. Peter and I think that's everyone that was moderating for today. Thank you for everything that you do.

Have a great, what is it today? Tuesday. Have a great Tuesday, everybody. Take care. Thank you.