The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 102 | The People Who Pray for the Apocalypse | Benjamin Teitelbaum | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: March 27, 2021

Did you realize that there’s a group of incredibly powerful people from all over the world who are praying for the apocalypse? It’s called Traditionalism, with a capital “T." Professor Benjamin Teitelbaum describes it as the "most transformative political movement of the early 21st century." He writes about it in his book, “War for Eternity,” which Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald called “an indispensable text” for understanding “the most profound and tumultuous political shifts defining societies on every continent.” It’s a bizarre story, involving Steve Bannon, Hinduism, Hitler, mysticism, Aleksandr Dugin, the Constitution, and tons and tons of money. And it’s exactly how the Left wants to paint conservatives — but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Staying healthy is tough, especially if you have a sweet tooth. Fortunately, there’s Built Bars! They’re made with real chocolate, high in protein and low in calories and carbs, and taste exactly like a candy bar. Go to https://BuiltBar.com and use promo code “BECK15” to save 15% off your next order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2021, the world is a very tricky place, endlessly complicated. Society is in decline or appears to be. It's only March. And already the targets of cancel culture include Dr. Seuss, Pepeleapue, Dumbo, Gina Carrano, Sharon Osborne, Bill Burr, Shakespeare, Parlor, the guy from Bachelor, the other guy from the Food Network, and most of all, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. holy cow. Meanwhile, we have gained racist strippers at the Grammys.

After three years of non-stop cancel culture, the left claims that cancel culture doesn't even exist. In their next breath, they claim that, and this is a direct headline from the Washington Post, nobody loves cancel culture more than Republicans, end quote. Just like Antifa, it's just like, an idea. Even so, I don't think that we should trust any idea that causes an unprecedented amount of damage to almost every major city in America, but that's just me. But that all wouldn't matter because we can't even agree on whether or not truth still exists. I'm going somewhere. I'm going to the podcast, and that's what this is all about. A growing number of radicals claim that truth doesn't exist. which leaves people like us who believe in the traditions of the Enlightenment, the idea that there are certain truths that are self-evident. It leaves us feeling more and more isolated.

All of this stuff is happening so fast that we barely have time to comprehend one ridiculous disaster before another dozen pop up. A few months ago, I met a guy who is remarkable because of what, what he's done and what he can explain. Today's guest has spent the last 10 years examining the movements that have led to all of this chaos. He wrote about it in his book, War for Eternity. Now, this is a book that defies political classification.

It doesn't fit neatly on either side of the fence because what it talks about is the war for eternity, a global war. This is probably why Glenn Greenwald called it an indispensable text for understanding the most profound and tumultuous political shifts in defining societies on every continent, end quote. Ditto for me. On top of being an author, today's guest is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a scholar of radical nationalism. This one, every person on the right needs to hear. Today, Benjamin Titlebaum. Staying healthy is really tough, especially if you're like me and you like pie.

I mean, look at me. I'm not exactly a health nut. When we rounded the corner on a new year, I had resolved to lose weight, and I have 11 pounds. And I'm working on it. It's difficult for me. I like pie and candy and candy bars. Oh, no, I get you a fruit roll up. No, I get you a protein bar.

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They're made with real chocolate. They taste like a candy bar. These things are high in protein, low in calories and carbs. We're talking three to five net carbs. So it's incredible if you're doing something like the keto diet. Best of all, the flavors are the best. Carmel brownie, cookies and cream, raspberry, mint brownie. I mean, the list goes on and on, and it is really good.

So don't give up on your resolution. Go to BuiltBar. They're the answer. builtbar.com. Use the promo code Beck 15. Save 15% off your next order. Promocode Beck 15 at builtbar.com. When I found your book War for Eternity, I don't know if it was like I found a lost brother or if I felt like, oh my gosh, there's now a club of three of us that are paying attention to this. this is, I believe, the one of the most important subjects that can be talked about today, especially for people who are on the right.

I have said so clearly for so long, just because people say they're with you on X, Y, or Z, it doesn't mean that they believe the same thing. that you do. And we are in a society now talking about right-wing extremism. And I think the media and everybody else wants to make that into just everybody who voted for Donald Trump. But this is right-wing extremism. And it's extraordinarily concerning and confusing. Right? Yes. Yes. And I have to say, Glenn it's really a to your a compliment to you that you're interested in patrolling this this area of your own political coalition because you're

entirely right this is all politics where you bring together different factions you're going to overlap in some area that's why you can form a coalition with somebody but the question is what about those areas where you don't overlap right important is it and how how polarized are you on those topics. And the problem with this, the reason why I say this is confusing is because I first

discovered this by reading Dugan from Russia. And if you read his work, you can read it as an average person, and I could get three chapters in to one of his books and go, yeah,

I feel that way too. And if you don't understand the difference of what he's saying using the same words you might use you are on it's the difference really between the road of death and the road of life am i overstating that i i don't think so i don't think so when i think that sometimes small differences are are consequential here we it's interesting there's i think when i'm presenting this this body of thought especially to conservative especially to religious conservatives,

you will hear them say that, oh, this is sounding good, 90% of this, 95% of this is sounding good. And then there's a little sliver of something there that makes them that I actually had Rod Dreher once say to me, all of a sudden he'd be reading this and they get the feeling that there was like someone in the room watching him. A creepy feeling that we come over this. It's hard to pinpoint.

It's hard to pinpoint, but it's there. And I think that that feeling of something, something over your shoulder is, I mean, I read, I read this stuff and I feel it's evil. I mean, it is darkness as much as you would get from somebody who believes in the 12th, the mom, you know, and the end of the world. It is that dark and that evil. So let's start at the beginning. And I think if the average person was asked to define what a traditional is I might define myself as a traditionalist. I believe in the constitution. I believe in the founding fathers. I believe in America. I go to church on Sundays. You know, I believe in, you know,

God and mom and apple pie and Chevrolet. But that's not what we're talking about. Everything that you just described, I think, could be labeled traditionalist with a lowercase T. And that's the only little bit of help that we get here in identifying what this is. When we talk about an uppercase T traditionalism, we're talking about a very, very small, spiritual and eventually political movement that really comes into existence in the early 1900s. And yes, they might share with you a belief that things used to be better or that maybe the principles that we should live our lives through today and which we should hold to in the future were established in the past.

And therefore that we should be critical of the notion of progress, right? But they wrap all of that in something far more arcane and esoteric. And they wrap it all in a sort of worship of the past and also a belief that where we are headed right now is going to lead us to destruction and that that destruction is good and necessary. And Dugan describes this as, and we'll get into who Alexander Dugan is in a little while, but I don't know if this is the way the American traditionalist, and we'll explain what that means here in a minute. Doogan describes this as the apocalypse or the end of the world as described biblically and but they're working to bring it on because it's good.

Yes. Okay. And that's the way it is with traditionalists all around the world. It is really the biblical apocalypse. Not quite. Okay. So maybe right here is where we start to see a distinction between, let's say a conservative Christian and one of these capital T traditionalists.

Okay. So the way, let's say in the apocalypse, that you would hear about in the Bible, in that biblical tradition, it tends to be followed by some sort of heavenly utopia. Right. Right. A rapture. Right.

The traditionalists instead see an earthly apocalypse as being the prelude to an earthly utopia. And it's in this that might seem like a small difference there. So there's no Jesus returning on this one? Not in the sense. that they are talking about. Okay. They are talking about human society, secular, political, worldly, material society, returning to a utopia.

Right. And again, that might seem like a small difference, but it means that destruction can become the tool of a politician, someone working with actual material politics in the world today, who could bring on destruction in the most concrete sense that we would think about, based on the promise that afterwards everything is going to be better here. And that's because we've destroyed progress. We've destroyed the modern world.

Yes, correct. Including the ideas of the Enlightenment. Including especially the ideas of the Enlightenment. So this is where this goes off the rail so quickly if you know what you're looking for. But if you said to a lot of people, even on the left today, I mean, the extreme left, you'd say the ideas of the Enlightenment, we got to stop that. There is no empirical evidence of anything. That works with the philosophy for a lot of people on the extreme left. Right?

Yes. Yes. Opposition to individualism, opposition to meritocracy. All of those principles that come from the Enlightenment are, yes, are being targeted on the left. of course. Right. Right. How do these people fall into, have they just inserted themselves into the right-left spectrum?

Are they using the European right-left spectrum? Or how do they fit into right? Because that's not, I know they are fitting into the right, but they don't fit once you know who they are. Absolutely. Absolutely. These are not people who are going to be in partnership with Ted Cruz, with Paul Ryan. When you ask if they could fit into the right, yes, it is typically the European nationalistic right that they're going to have more resonance with. Remember, one of the key objects, one of the key targets of this way of thinking is the free market, is universalism, you know, the belief in universe. human rights or universal truths, the sort of conceptual world that we see communicated in the U.S.

Constitution, rights, we take these rights as being self-evident, for example, for all people. A universalism and Christianity. They instead, they want to see a world that is a little bit more siloed, a world where individualism is subordinated to the collective, a world where capitalism is subordinated to the nation state. Are there strains of that, let's say, in American conservatism? Yes. But they're much more pronounced in the European context. So it's not an accident that when we see this come into American politics, it is when the

American right is starting to fuse a bit more with that populist, nationalist right that we see in Europe. And that is happening in America. It's so important to separate Europe from America. But it happens when populism happens here because you connect on the things like, I believe in God. I believe that these traditions shouldn't be lost. I believe in some of the old ways where conservative means to conserve the things of the past that worked, not to reject the future and progress, just conserve the things that work.

They don't, they reject the future and all. modernism. But you again don't know that. So when you're talking populism, they can just slide in covertly and you don't know. Absolutely. Absolutely. This is an example of that coalition building. And populism overlaps more with this way of thinking. Correct. Than free market liberalism or libertarianism, like what we tend to say in the United States. Right. So they're the coalition as populaceous. It conflicts with populism as well, though. Here, too, we see a sort of marriage of necessity between this capital T traditionalism and populism.

And they will work together for a while. But the question is, as if let's suppose one of them succeeds, let's suppose Trump's movement, let's say, really materializes and achieves all of its goals. At that point, we would see potentially these two strains of thought break apart. They can also collaborate with libertarians up to a certain point. So both of them oppose the establishment. Right. Oppose a strong, you know, liberal government, you know, a centralized federal government. Question is what happens with that government is disassembled.

Correct. Is it left that way or is a new sort of theocracy put in place? I found that's where the disqualification. I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with a very strong. strong environmentalist. I am, I consider myself an environmentalist. I'm concerned about the environment. I also can read a thermometer,

you know, global warming. And I also will give the fact that if there is warming, it doesn't seem logical to me that man doesn't have a role when we have done what we've done to the earth and the air. Yes. However, I disagree on the solutions that are proposed. Yes. And I found myself with a guy who believes in carbon credits that the government needs to be involved 100% deeply.

And he found that what the World Economic Forum is doing with ESGs is a sham. Now, he's in one of the biggest hedge funds, BlackRock. And he said, for a while there, I thought, well, at least we're doing some good. now I realize, uh-uh, we're not. This is actually very harmful. And we can agree on those two things. And he was kind of in bed with something that is diametrically opposed to him when it comes time to actually do something. Right?

Yes. Okay. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there again, we see that a small, a small difference. Yeah. becomes big in the end.

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So before we get to the American side, which is really very important, I've been ringing this bell. Honestly, Ben, I've been looking for you for a long time. I'm like, how are we the only ones that are talking about this? And I've been ringing the bell about Alexander Dugan for a long time and even his influence here in

America, especially in the churches. He's very well financed and very well connected all around the world. Let's start with him. Yes. Who is he? That's quite a question because he's difficult to define. You could call him a philosopher. You could call him a media personality. You could also call him a diplomat or you could call him a political operative. Some people would call him a warmonger. And at different times, appears to be all of those things. He has written some very influential books in Russia. He wrote really a seminal text called the Foundations of Geopolitics right after the fall of the Soviet Union, which essentially outlined a plan for Russia to reassert itself against the United States once the Soviet Union had disintegrated. And it was it was elaborate, although he left

out a lot of his, a lot of his earlier esoteric occultist yearnings and interpretations of the world. Dugan has a very complicated background, which we probably don't have time to get into. So he writes that text, it becomes essentially required reading for the next generation of Russian military generals. And when you have someone like that, and you're talking about intellectualism, I'm sure you know this, Glenn, it's hard to quantify their influence. Yeah. How do you quantify the influence of someone like,

Sean Hannity, yourself, Bill O'Reilly, Rachel Maddow. This is a soft pattern. So that's where Dugan enters the stage in the late 90s. Later on, we see him being employed as an advisor to certain members of the Duma in Russia. We see him almost inexplicably showing up in situations of profound diplomatic tension. When Russia was having this conflict with separatists in Chechnya, Dugan turns up to be one of the mediators in their debates. This is officially, again, just a philosopher.

Later on, 2015, when Russia, Turkey, Syria have a major diplomatic crisis over the shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkish forces along the border to Syria and Turkey, we don't know how all these players got together and solved the situation. It was very tense for a while. And about a month or two after everything had resolved, Ankara and Moscow had come up with an agreement. It turns out Alexander Dugan was the mediator again. So throughout all of those instances, we don't quite know what his official role was. He has met Putin. He's never been an official advisor to Putin, but he seems to be used in these key places. So we're talking about a public intellectual.

kind of a guy that you wouldn't want to publicly connect with if you're a Russian politician, I think. I mean, I've seen his interviews, whatever the big interview show, kind of like our 60 minutes where they sit around that big, huge tables, and it's a one-on-one interview.

He has, I mean, he has talked about to the guy's face rationally. He's like, yeah, I think some people need to be exes. And the host said, would I be one of those people? And he said, well, yeah, yeah, you should be gone. I mean, he is, he is as frightening in some ways as Hitler must have been in 1930, 1928.

A guy with no power really, seems like a fringe player. But the things he says, if you take him seriously and literally, he's an extreme danger to the world. well think of it in this terms if you if you compare him to someone like hitler who he says if i'm not mistaken he says hitler's problem he didn't go far enough right i'm not sure if you would still say that today okay um but he has okay well he has think of it in these terms in these terms he he looks at the united states he looks at let's say the founding principles of the u.s and considers them to be a sort of metaphysical evil, looks at the universal values that are espoused in the Constitution, enlightenment values, the individualism, and says that these are values that anyone opposed

to them cannot coexist with. That sets us up for a sort of all or nothing conflict. And he believes that Russia, Eurasia in particular, have a sort of also a of metaphysical mandate to push against the United States. There's not a lot of room there for coexistence. So when you see a sort of apocalyptic yearning in this way of looking at the world, that's where it's rooted, is a belief in a fundamental inability for us to coexist. And that's one reason why throughout his history, he's also wanted to see a coalition, not just with Russia and let's say China, which is fairly well publicized.

But he's also been quite interested in bringing Bujahideen, Islamist enemies of the United States, together so that all of these anti-American forces can collaborate against the West. And again, for him, this is more than just geopolitics. Geopolitics and states represent a metaphysical, spiritual conflict in his mind, secularism, individualism, enlightenment values, modernity versus the pre-modern versus tradition versus eternity, which is represented by these these other states. And again, it might sound, it might sound wacky, but this is, this is a person who has had a major platform and has figured into high level diplomatic actions.

Okay. So, the thing that stuck out when I first started looking into him is that his symbol for his philosophy or whatever you would call it is the ancient symbol of chaos. correct? The chaos. Right. And anybody who's been watching or listening to me for a long time knows that I said beginning in 2006, I think the thing to look for in the future will be those who want chaos. That's the real danger, is the chaos theory of just tear it all down and somehow or another it'll magically be better.

This is the philosophy of the extremists in Iran with the 12th the bomb. This is his viewpoint as well. He rejects capitalism, fascism, and communism. He says those were the three that were really tried in the 20th century and all of them failed. But his fourth political theory is really more of a, of a, of a, hybrid of all of the bad parts of each of those, right? You can see, yes, it almost, it looks at those, at those other modern political ideologies, fascism, communism, liberalism, and tries to find in them a way to consistently oppose

individualism, individual freedom, you could say, an interest in economic advance and progress, finds a way to oppose all of those ideas and wraps them, wraps them into one. Okay. Yes, absolutely. Okay. His religious, the religious side of this, he is, in fact, I'm pretty sure he doesn't even believe in God, does he? He says he absolutely believes in God. Okay.

But not a God really that I would recognize. I know he cloaks him. or tries to bring back the, you know, a renaissance of the Eastern Orthodox Church. But I, it seems to me that that's more of a vehicle than an actual belief. Am I right? Well, let's let's back up for a moment. Okay. So most traditionalists, these capital T traditionalists we were talking about, they, they look at world history and they say that ages millennia ago, certainly before the time of Christ.

there was a single true religion. That's the tradition, capital T. That's what it is. And that over time this tradition, this religious truth was gradually forgotten, destroyed. That's why we started writing is because we started to forget it in their history telling. And the truths that were contained in it were splintered in all these different directions. And they can be found today in piecemeal fashion in certain religious practices, typically the mystical, versions of, let's say, Islam, sometimes Christianity, and in Christianity's case, it's

typically Catholicism and East Orthodox Christianity, sometimes Kabbalah and Judaism, but most often is Hinduism. Now, that means that some traditionalists, some traditionalists might convert to Christianity. They might endorse Christianity. And on the face of it, yes, they would appear to be a Christian like you, Glenn. But there's this backstory to it. Right. which is the belief that Christianity is just an imperfect pathway to something else, something pre-Christian, something larger than Christianity. Most often traditionalists believe that... It would be like the druids and things like that, right?

And is it almost a Gnosticism, a Gnostic approach that you're born knowing and then you lose it or, you know, there's only a few of us that really get it? That's an interesting way to put it. Okay. The truth is that, I mean, if they think that once there was a true authentic revelation to humanity, they also believe that today you can only get a scrap of it if you fully devote yourself to one religious path. But that doesn't mean that that religious path in some way has a monopoly on truth. It's just one of many.

But during your lifetime, you have no hope of, let's say, pursuing all of them to their fullest capacity. So that's why they would devote themselves to this. Now, there are other traditionalists who say Christianity should not be a part of this, say that it is the odd religion out, and actually that Christianity is what led to progress, progressivism, secularism, the Enlightenment, modernism. You're probably familiar with that. I would tend to agree with that, especially individualism. Can we go back to Hinduism for a second?

Have you read Hitler's monsters? Yes. the text 2017, right? We are brothers, because that is a very difficult, scholarly kind of book made for geeks like us.

And in that, he talks a lot about how Hinduism was something that they were pursuing, that they, that, you know, they,

they, they say they were Christian and they served. certainly weren't Hindu, but they had this mystical belief and it was driven by Hinduism. Is there connection there? And what is that about Hinduism that draws these people? Oh, certainly, certainly. So when we think about, you know, Nazism, we think about the veneration of the Aryan race,

which, of course, Hitler saw as this blonde-haired, blue-eyed master race of Germanic peoples. The term Aryan, you might not realize this, but that relates. to what is thought to be a tribe of North Indian people who eventually invaded India from the north. Yeah. And also other territories in that area, the word Iran also derives from Aryan. It means the land of the Aryans. And there is some historical truth to that part of the story where things get much more

complicated is when you try and connect as Hitler was doing Europe to that particular their history. Now, all of those, we speak about Indo-European languages, right? These are languages going from the Indian subcontinent all the way up to Iceland throughout world history. All of those languages do have a lot in common with each other. And that might suggest that there is some sort of history of all the people living in that area. But that's why we got that fact. That's why Hitler got to the Vikings, right? That blue-eyed, blonde hair kind of Viking look. And which also brought in all of the, you know, I'm trying to, Wagner kind of stuff. Right?

Yes. Yes. And does Dugan do the same thing? Is he saying that the Russians are that Aryan? Absolutely. Part of the Indo-European world? Absolutely. And think of it in these terms.

So they believed, and there's truth to this, that the pre-Christian religions that spread from India, through Iran, Zoroastrianism, paganism through Europe, that they were all part of the same, the same religious world, actually. They're all variations of the same thing. Christianity comes in, Islam comes in. For Europe, all those practices die off, but in India, they don't. In India, they live on as Hinduism. So there are a lot of people who look to Hinduism as being the last remnant of European pre-Christian paganism.

and therefore, especially if you're, let's say, one of these figures we're talking about, Alexander Dugan, or a traditionalist, you see Hinduism as being virtuous and maybe even better than the other religions because it is older and because it hasn't been tarnished. That makes it closer to that eternal ancient truth that they're trying to get to then the other practices. That's one of the reasons why Hinduism is... elevated. So when he uses, because he talks a lot about the Eastern Orthodox Church reestablishing itself, and that is purely like Hitler using Christianity as a vehicle to help him destroy,

there's no love here for the Eastern Orthodox Church, right? Or is there? I don't think that, I think the way to put it is that there's no partiality for Christianity. I think you're entirely right in saying that the Eastern Orthodox Church for him serves the function of being a banner for nationalism. Correct. Yeah, something everybody can unite on. Every Russian can unite on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when we get to America, that's why Christianity is important again. It's not that this is a Christian movement. In fact, it's the opposite of a Christian movement. It's that it's a banner that they can use to unite people on because those,

people who are Christian will hear words about tradition and they're like, yeah, I'm with that. Right. Right. Okay. Right. But the thing in these terms, though, I mean, Christianity, the principle that Christ's salvation was available to all people throughout the world in all times. And this is what is behind the evangelistic impetus to a lot of modern Christianity.

That is a sort of anti-nationalistic doctrine. That is a way of looking at global society that says that the boundaries we put around ourselves are actually a problem and actually stopping a divine message from getting through. So it's the opposite of using Christianity as the banner of a tribe, let's say. That is only a message for some people. That was part of the revolutionary element in Christianity. Was this universal element. So by treating Christianity in this way, you really are violating. a principle of it. And that's, again, another reason why a lot of traditionists do not

identify with Christianity. They are an anti-Christian right in most cases. All right. Now let's talk about, yes, we got two other people to go through, and one of them is extraordinarily important in America. But let me just touch base one on one more thing. He's kind of the co-f, I can't say founder, but the co-leader in some ways within the world, he's really made the push into Europe. And some of these really spooky European right organizations are really gaining traction with his help, his fundraising and his connections. Am I wrong on that?

We're talking about Alexander Dugan, absolutely. So nationalist parties in Europe have really had a decision of kind of what are their geopolitics going to be? Correct. Are they pro-European Union? Are they pro-United States? Are they pro-Russia? Dugan has been a force pushing, especially in Austria, Italy, Hungary, and France to make sure that this ascendant, politically powerful movement, from the right in Europe will be pro-Russian.

And in a lot of instances, he's been successful in that. I could mention Greece as well. Oh, yeah. In saying that, okay, as these political forces are imagining a new role in the world for their respective nations, how are they going to relate to Russia? And he's been there to say, well, if you are social conservatives, Putin is your guy. Right. In fact, I think he's the guy that was behind.

I think it was Notre Dame one year couldn't afford the Christmas tree, which is traditional. And I think either he funded it or Putin funded it. You know, basically Russia is your leader. Your leader, especially when it comes to your spiritual leader. When it comes to spiritual matters and cultural conservatism, we're the ones who are behind you. Yeah. Not necessarily leader. Defender probably is better.

They're your spiritual defender because we believe in those traditional values. Absolutely. And Glenn, when you talk about this cultural conservatism and Christianity being a sort of facade, it's especially clear when you look at Putin's past because he did not care about this at all at the beginning of the 2000s. Correct. No. He had no ideology when he began, you know, really solidifying his power. Cultural conservatism came later. as he began to imagine a geopolitical role and a message for himself, aside from just Russian might.

So let me just stop one more place with him, Brexit. I know he was involved in Brexit, but I don't think that the average person in England had any idea what he stood for. He was just against the European Union. He's for destruction of everything. And he helped, if I'm not mistaken, fund and advise some of the Brexit pieces. Is that true or not? I don't know that much about Dugan doing that personally. He certainly was supporting it and he was using his media outlets to support Brexit.

In his mind, a weakened European Union means a weakened United States in Europe. And thereby also opportunities for Russia to push outward. as you're mentioning also this is an example of destroying and disintegrating some some political entity and that that appeals to to do and no doubt and also um i think people and because i can watch i can watch england and relate to it without being emotional you know and so it's a better place to really understand it because in some ways we feel the same way but that's not us um and what people were feeling feeling the if you were a traditional Englishman, you were losing your heritage. They were now

starting to say that you can't even fly the British flag and, you know, Great Britain isn't so special and maybe they have some problems in the past and we should erase that and we should be more of this global community. And you were seeing all of these influences coming from outside of your country. You found them damaging and your politicians were lying to you. That is the American situation. And that's what a traditionalist needs to be able to march in and say, we're with you and we can help you, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And add to everything that you just said, there's, there's also the question of sovereignty. There's the fact that, you know, British, English fishermen and Fisherwood were not able to control their own destiny and changes to. fishing laws would take place that, you know, in halls of power that were so remote and so inaccessible, that, yes, of course, I think it's very easy to understand feeling disgruntled and feeling resentful of that political entity.

The question is always, what is going to fill the void when it is destroyed and what interests are going to be served by each action? That makes this complicated. It makes this something other than a black and white situation. Okay, so now before we come to America, there's a second leader of this. Tell me about him. So his name is Olavo de Carvalho. And he's most often just described as Olavo, his first name. He is a Brazilian.

He lives in the United States. He's lived in the United States since 2005. And if Dugan is hard to characterize, if I can't really decide whether to call him a philosopher or a political operative, that's even more so the case with this figure, Olavo. He's recognized today as being most often, quote unquote, the guru of Jaya Bolsonaro. who's the president in Brazil. He rises to power in Brazil after a major political power vacuum and a lot of resentment against the progressive left administration and establishment in the country's government. But Olavo is, he's a media figure, he's an educator, he's a philosopher.

He does not have any official position in the Bolsonaro government, although he does have Acolytes who, let's say currently the current foreign minister is a former student of his, past ministers of education have come straight out of his sphere of influence. So nothing formal, and yet you will not find a Brazilian political observer who does not consider him extremely powerful. Now, he is known to most of the Brazilian public as a sort of Catholic zealot and as a conservative Christian voice. Not all of them know that he is also in the past an astrologer, spent most of his time working in astrology. And it appears in the 1980s that he converted to Islam

and still today some of his sons are still affiliated with Islam. The story behind that, how you could be both, let's say, a convert to Islam and a Catholic zealot. And an astrologist. And an astrologist, yes. Rests with this history and traditionalism. He was initiated into one of the most closed and, let's say, direct ideological and, let's say, religious schools tying to the original traditional traditionalists. He was initiated into the religious school, the Islamic school, the Tarik of Fritio Shun. who was a follower of a man named René Gunon, who started traditionalism essentially.

And throughout most of his career, he has been interested in studying esoteric, occultist, alternative spirituality, New Age sort of stuff in addition to traditionalism. And relatively late came to conservatism and then, let's say, populism and the right. Earlier in his life, he was a communist. So this is a highly eccentric figure produced a lot of texts, has a lot of followers, difficult to characterize, but undoubtedly powerful as well. Why is he here in the United States? We don't really know.

That's a great question. If you ask him, he would say that the political situation in Brazil just got to be too tiresome and he had to leave because the leftists were just running amok essentially. what is strange is that now he's in so much favor he i mean there are literally squares of people holding you know placards with his name on it shouting that olava was right and and the president jaya bilsenardo gave him a medal he still will not go back to brazil so so i think some shrewd observers are suspecting that there are there are some major legal issues that would come into play where he to go back into the into the country now here's where it becomes

personal for a lot of conservatives. And it is one of the reasons why I was adamant against Donald Trump at the beginning. And it didn't have anything to do with Donald Trump. It had everything to do with who he was surrounded by. And I am not convinced at all that Donald Trump, it knows or understands nor cares about any of this stuff. Would you agree with that or not? Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely. I don't think he would get through a page of this. Yeah, I don't think he would. But he is advised or has been advised by the main anchor here in America, who I find to be an extraordinarily disturbing man, Steve Bannon. He's the, he's the, he's. He's the third in this unholy trinity.

Steve Bannon, just to give some insight, we've been talking about Alexander Dugan quite a bit here in this program. In November 2018, after he left the White House, Steve Bannon met Alexander Dugan in Rome. They spent an entire day together. The purpose of the meeting from Bannon's side was to push a geopolitical agenda. but the the reason that the two of them got together in the first place was because they both identified with traditionalism in different ways they both shared this this way of thinking how did so that is how did ban and where is that coming traditionalism where is that coming up in america how does he trip into this it's it's complicated and contradictory of course because for most most of the history of traditionalism and for most traditional lists, the United States itself is an abomination. It is a state created in modernity and with the values of the enlightenment.

That's part of our DNA in their mind. So how you could combine that with traditionalism is a real question and it took a lot of work. But for Bannon, he has been interested in this world, this alternative spirituality world for quite some time. tend to read his biography and see a lot of gimmicks. Let's say, you know, Ben Shapiro, for example, you know, is a strong critic of Bannon and sees, you know, just kind of one gimmick after the next with him. That can be true in certain respects, but he has been interested in this ideological world since well before he got involved in politics. That kind of begins during his college years when he is interested in Buddhism and transcendental meditation, stuff like that.

a lot of people were into that, of course, in the United States. But as he moves into the 80s and the 90s, he's not only reading these authors and authors close to them, he's also starting to associate with other people who do as well, starting to participate in communities. One thing I document in my book is that in the early 90s, he was meeting with a group of alternative spiritualists in California who were all followers of a mystic named Gerjeefe, who maybe known to some of your, some of your viewers who's kind of adjacent, not really a traditionalist, but in the same world. And throughout that time, he learns about traditionalism. He starts

reading deeply into it. I was very impressed actually by the breadth of his knowledge. Of course, I spent about two years interviewing Bannon about this. And when we get into the 2010s, then we know that he's also reading Alexander Dugan, familiar with him. Dugan, admiring his books, not just a reader, but an admirer of Dugan's writing. And that all ends up being the prelude to this meeting and this attempt to collaborate. So this is, first of all, you're an ethnomusicologist by trade. That's what you do, right? Yes.

Which I don't even know what that is. You study music like jazz and track it to or what is. You could do that. Ethnomusicology is the common is the study of music and culture. So you could say that I'm an anthropologist. What I typically say to people is that I'm a scholar of politics. I study politics and culture. And in contrast with my political scientists, colleagues,

I think that the most important political developments do not take place in a ballot box. They're not registered on opinion polls. They take place in culture. And so music is something that I've looked at in the past, but when music is not involved, I'm happy to depart from it as well. That's interesting. I'd love to talk to you about just that. I mean, I'm fascinated by Martin Luther King when he said,

no movement is a real movement unless it has a soundtrack. Absolutely. And he's exactly right. Yeah. So if that's your gig and you're not interested in things really, your depth of knowledge is enormous. how did you get interested in in this with Steve Bannon and how did you get so many interviews and get him to say the things that he said on record not shyly that that last question Glenn I can tell you right right now I do not know the answer to I I

Bannon likes attention I think that he likes attention from from academics and I know how to be persistent That's part of part of the backstory here is I made myself in a nuisance and showed up at his house. When I got the slightest hint of receptiveness. So that helps, but I don't know why he divulges as much as he did to me, to be completely honest. The fact that he was meeting with Alexander Dugan, why he told me that I have in the slightest clue. But to the first part of your question, I've been studying these movements. in these ideologies for about a decade. And I knew about traditionalism from Europe.

I knew that it was kind of this strange wing of, let's say, the right-wing populist nationalist cause. Right. That was really sweeping right. European right. Has changed politics over there forever. I mean, it was a major historical transformation these past, these past decades.

Traditionalism, you would see these figures show up at seminars, at rallies, at, you know, political festivals and things like that, they were not the movers and the shakers. They were the oddballs at the edge of the gathering. And that's partly why when I heard that Bannon read some traditionalist authors, and that's all we really knew, let's say, 2017, 2018. There are few journalists who learned a little bit about this. That was enough to catch my attention,

because I didn't think anyone with political power, anyone who had kind of succeeded at climbing up, climbing through the halls of power in the way someone like Bannon had, they would ever, ever even know about this stuff. I guarantee if- Let alone embrace it. That's a whole other stage. I guarantee if you went around Washington prior to Bannon's arrival, asked senators, congressmen, if they ever knew of any of these authors, they would have no clue. I think they still. If I said traditionalism, they'd start talking about something else. I have to tell you, honestly, I think I've had in 10 years one guest who, you know, they're, you know, very smart, politically, globally.

I'll say Alexander Dugan. And I think I've had one person say, oh, yeah, that's that guy. They all dismiss him if they know him. And most don't even know what this is. And it's so toxic. This is, I mean, it's, it's striking because his primary cause and the way, if he has had influence, it has been influence in stoking the Kremlin on into additional conflicts with the West and with the United States. So, you know, Dugan has served as a mouthpiece for the war cause in Georgia, said that Russia needed to intervene in Georgia. your listeners might remember that, that particular conflict, because to do so was actually

to fight against the United States. In Ukraine, he did the same thing, demanded and started, you know, drumming up support in Russia for military intervention into Ukraine and worked in Syria as well to make sure that a coalition between Syria, Russia, and even Turkey in a complicated way would maintain itself so that the United States would stay out of it. So this is an actor who is principally opposed to a lot of U.S. geopolitics. So I share your reaction over the fact that not more U.S. politicians know about him. Yeah.

When we look now at Bannon, I'll never forget 2015, 2016, you have Alexander Duggan on his YouTube. channel just raving about Donald Trump. He is our man. And I think if you're an idiot, you think, oh, see, the Russians are behind him. Is that a banon influence? Was that a chaos call? Why was he for Donald Trump? When you talk about chaos, that's my principal interpretation of this. We can all think what we will about Donald Trump. One thing we could probably agree on is that he was a fundamental break with the status quo in U.S. politics. Right. Whether you like it or you don't like it.

Right. And when you have something like that, when you have an establishment exploded, all these different interests can start to fill that void. And you can have a widely divergent range of thinkers and actors who see an opportunity for themselves. all that is magnified if you have someone like dougan who simply likes the chaos it's not necessarily that he wants to see the void created by trump filled with someone who he likes it is simply the fact that the void has been created that itself is the goal for a lot of these thinkers and what is the goal so that excites them what is the goal of steve bannon then because if you're really a traditionalist you don't want the united states you're looking for

a great end of all of this and a restart of something else. Steve Bannon meeting with Dugan, as an American also doesn't make sense. He calls us the land of the sea or the people of the sea, which Dugan does, which is anybody in the NATO alliance. He wants the people of the sea to be destroyed. Yes.

What is Bannon's end game here? What did he see? you. When he in interviews talks about the disassembly of the administrative state, think about that as the tip of the iceberg. Think about that as the public-facing explanation for an agenda that might appeal, again, let's say to libertarians who think that the federal government has exceeded its limits and needs to be rolled back. In Bannon's case, though, there are multiple layers behind this. There is the belief. in his case that if if the administrative state is pulled apart, if that takes place, something will come back up to fill its void that is going to be essentially almost a pre-enlightenment version of the United States, something that predates the U.S. Constitution, something that predates.

Ben, can you give me the high point of pre-enlightment anything on the process? planet. Pre-enlight, that was called the dark ages. What is so attractive about the pre-enlightment world? For these thinkers, it would be the primacy of spirituality, let's say. It would be the disinclination toward globalization, the notion that the world could be, let's say, spiritual, collectivist, anti-individuization. and also bounded, that you would not see expansion of goods, trade, people's, governments,

that everything would be kept in its place, and that you would not have free radicals, individuals just moving up and down the social ladder and across borders in any which way. So when I'm describing that sort of ideal, again, bits and pieces of that, I imagine might resonate with an American conservative and bits and pieces of it might not. Small government does. Small government, right? Not destroying the government. No.

And we also might think differently about the role of religion in public life. But most often, most often these thinkers want to see something akin to a theocracy. I haven't heard Bannon say things like that, but if you talk to Alexander Dugan about, well, who's the ideal state? Where do we have the ideal nation of the world today? Iran is the answer. Because there you see in his mind. The reason why is because at the pinnacle of power in Iran is not a wealthy class. It's not a military elite.

It's certainly not some proletariat workers' alliance. It is the priests, right? the priest cast, the mullahs, a prioritization of religion over everything inside the state. So when you look at the U.S. and you ask me, well, what does Bannon Hope comes in place of the state that would be destroyed? I don't think it's a libertarian version of simply new decentralization. I don't know that it is Iran. He's never said anything like that to me. Bannon, when you get to details, things get complicated. He's not, he's not stupid. But it is in that direction. It is, it is a vision of the United States that is not as attached to the principles of the Enlightenment as

it is for virtually all other conservatives. And the Constitution? And the Constitution, which is itself an Enlightenment era document, which is universalist, which in his mind paves the way for globalization, which is individualist, which paves the way for a lack of solidarity within the nation state. So replacing those values in his mind, it would be something more, let's say, less American, less inherently enlightenment, liberal and modern. So people would say to me, I've heard this. I can't tell you how many people in the press I have called and said, look, we disagree on everything. But when you're thinking about the religious, writer, you're thinking about a spooky right, this is what you're talking about. And Alexander

Dugan, if I'm not mistaken, his translator is either the wife or the girlfriend of Richard Spencer, the Nazi here in America. So they're, they're really tied into things. They either get a glazed overlook or they'll say, what does he matter? And I'll say, well, because Bannon is, is part of this and nobody and they'll say the same thing every time he's he's no big deal he has no influence

and this is the complicated thing because they can get away with saying that right it's very hard to quantify Bannon's influence as well I don't think that someone sitting on the National Security Council should be relativized I don't think that that position should be relativized into

non-existence right if you have a seat on the National Security Council you you have power and influence. If you are the manager of Trump's 2016 campaign, you have influence. But when we look at Bannon, we can not only talk about certain, let's say, secretary or leadership or administrative assignments that he helped make in the early days of the Trump administration, we would look not only to some of the immigration policies that he pursued. and I know that probably a lot of our viewers and myself might have different thoughts about that.

But I think that the key thing with Bannon was also his ability, A, to narrativize the Trump movement. By that, I mean, to explain and try and give meaning to what was going on to say it wasn't just a good storyteller of important stuff. Yeah. He's a Hollywood guy. He's a Hollywood guy. And if, again, if you should never overlook the power of telling a good story. And the way that adds meaning to these movements. But he is also a sort of networker, a backroom personality and influencer.

It's ironic because he seems to relish the limelight so much at the same time. But he brings people together. He works on different projects. He networks. He's global. And what do we see? He is global. he worked on the Brexit campaign.

Right? Yeah. Not so much Dugan, but Bannon did. And he worked on the, he worked in several other European countries organizing these right wing parties, which are not the Tea Party. It's just not the same thing. They're absolutely not the Tea Party. This is, it's, they are anti-libertarian. Right.

So that and more and more increasingly, they're explicit. about that fact. So also bringing in in Brazil, Bannon's chief efforts in Brazil were not only connecting with Olavadikarval, who I spoke to you about earlier, but also trying to stoke the branch of government that was aligned with his particular values in relating to traditionalism. So all of those things are going on. Some of his projects are catastrophic failures. Some of them, are sort of, you know, goofy mishaps, but occasionally they're not. And we have to look at the meeting with Dugan in particular. And this does not mean that, you know, Russia Gate was true or anything, but it's certainly a test to Bannon's vision to bring the United States and Russia

together not on the basis, not on the basis of shared economic or political values, but on the basis in his mind of a deeper religious, ethno-religious identity, probably not so much ethno, but deeper religious identity. I will tell you, when they first started saying stuff about Russia, right after he was elected, during when he was elected, I think I might have said it, you know, when he was first named to the Trump election, I was like, I don't, Russia, everything, everything Russia is. is now tainted. And honestly, I thought we would find Bannon in the Russia stuff.

But the Russia stuff turned out not to be true as they were saying it. Trump wasn't involved in it and nothing. But Bannon was involved in Russia in an entirely different way. And at a deeper level, right, he was talking about, and his vision was a union between Russia and the United States against China, the basis of which would be something other than what we were used to seeing in geopolitics, not economics, not political values, but a deeper tribalistic union between our peoples in his mind. It's important to pay attention to this.

Two spiritual leaders in a way. Yes, yes. Dugan was not interested because in his mind there's the fact that if the United States, States is a Christian nation, that in and of itself does not mean anything special to him. He has no, in his, in his worldview, he has no more allegiance to the Christian West than he does to Islamic Iran. Right. In fact, he has more interest in Iran because Islam and religion is more deeply embedded in the state

in his mind. But you have, that's what Bannon was trying to do. Right. And you have Putin understanding, no love for Christianity, but understanding. if I'm a spiritual defender, if I'm a defender of all the things these, he's almost Constantine, if you will, where I don't care what you decide, just come together because we'll be a great army. Absolutely.

Absolutely. This is about giving character and meaning to what is otherwise a fairly crude play for political power in Russia on Putin's part. For Dugan and the people pushing for a more, let's say, a more ostensibly Christian Russia, it has actual ideological content and meaning to it. It's about pushing, using religion to push against the United States. All right. Bannon is probably looking maybe at some prison time.

You know, it's things are not going well for him, et cetera, et cetera. Tell me, tell the, the viewer, the listener who is like, oh, that's a fascinating story and I believe maybe those things might be true, but it's not going to make an impact here. Tell people what to look for where it is, you know, how to stay away from it, how to spot it. I would, to begin with, I'm not sure that Bannon is going away. He's in the legal fight right now following his pardon from President Trump. Things are very much up in the air as to whether or not he might still be implicated in a legal battle surrounding this border wall. But what we see around Bannon and around this particular movement, traditionalism,

is a complete disregard for the status quo and for the establishment. And that might sound good at face value, but I would certainly encourage your listeners to ask always, okay, if we destroy this, what comes next? Who does it? What fills the void? It's never, it's always the same thing. I've been saying it since 2007.

I agree with hope and change, but change to what? I agree with making America great again, but how? You have to know the slogans and the things that you connect on are not enough. You have to know, please define that for me, right? Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. What comes next? Because it's very easy, A, it's very easy to destroy something.

I mean, this is a common critique of the right against the left, that, you know, we are completely convinced of your ability to tear down something, not convinced at all your ability to build something up in its place. Those same, that same line of questioning could be posed to this wing of the right as well. Destruction to what end? define the movements, define the categories. So that's one thing to say. Another thing to bring out in this is that traditionalism, the appeal of this way of thinking,

we might consider it spooky, it might be dangerous. It can also be true that it responds to actual problems in society. And I see something there. I'm willing to, me, even though this is not my political home per se, I can still acknowledge, I think, that there is a problem if society does not have any commentary on spirituality. And if there is no emphasis on collective spiritual life, that doesn't mean it needs to be part of the state. But it is a problem that we have always known with classical liberalism and enlightenment values, is that it's great at social mobility, it's great for freedom.

It's not always great for community. It's going to be weak on those points. It's going to be weak on spiritual community. So there might be reason and cause to think about strengthening collective spiritual life in our societies. However, that would take place so that there is not this gaping want in need that can be filled by an actor who you don't get to choose. By someone who can come in and address the need for reasons that could be entirely mysterious to you. I can't thank you enough for a writing this book and spending the time. I would love to have you on again.

It's a pleasure, one. I just, I don't know anybody else who has done the work. And I'm grateful because it's really important. Thank you. I'm grateful to you for your interest in it. Thank you. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered. by other people.