The Ricochet Podcast - Weaving Together European Conservatism(s)

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

At 750 episodes, the Ricochet Podcast is ready to accept the responsibilities that come with joining the ranks of august institutions and fellow pillars of Western Civilization. To that end, our princely hosts, James, Charles, and Steven, convene with Ellen Fantini of The European Conservative for a digital roundtable on her magazine's unique efforts to restore the rites of the proud cultures on the other side of the Atlantic. Plus, the gents discuss the revisited Russiagate scandal, the Colbert affair, and Hunter Biden's...uh...transfixing effort to revive the family name.  Sound from this week's open: Tulsi Gabbard answers a question at Wednesday's White House press conference, and Stephen Colbert offers another of his "satirical witticisms."Check out Ricochet sponsors:Bank on Yourself: Get a FREE report with all the details at Bank on Yourself.com/ RICOCHETCozy Earth: Upgrade your summer. Go to cozyearth.com/RICOCHET for up to 40% off best-selling temperature-regulating sheets, apparel, and more.

You're still not hearing us. Now I'm hearing you because I plug my headphones in. I've actually found historically that helps a lot. Yeah, right. I've done that several times. One of those little tech tricks that doctors don't want you to know about. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

It's the Ricochet Podcast with Charles Kucetel, you cook and Stephen Hayward. I'm James Lannox. We take a talk to Ellen Fantini about the European conservative. And yes, there is more than one. So let's have ourselves a podcast. Any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior? We have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the criminal implications of this.

Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism? Go f*** yourself. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast with a very satisfying number of 750. Go f*** yourself. Clement Minneapolis where I just walked the dog by the creek in the woods. Glorious day, summer. And Stephen Hayward I believe is in California or Iceland, who knows, and Charles CW Cook is probably in Florida where I imagine it's torporous and that one can barely walk in the humidity without feeling as if though you're jogging at the bottom of a pool. Gentlemen, how are you? I am good. We're both good, I think. I played two hours of tennis this morning in this weather, so I hope you're impressed.

I am impressed. My wife plays tennis as well. She's extraordinary. What are you? Are you a 4, a 5, a 4.5, a 3.8? No, well, my wife's a really good tennis player. I don't have a ranking, but I am 6'3, so I can still win most of the time because I'm just stronger than her. But she's the one with all of the numbers and lines and all of this. I'm just trying to make sure that I don't sit in my chair all day and do nothing. That's my aim. Yes, I know. I'm the same way. I am keen to sit in my chair all day and do something. But now that I am retired, I have to get out of the house, I have to do things, and I'm enjoying it

quite an awful lot, as a matter of fact. But then again, that gives me time to peruse the web and the Twitter and the X and all the rest of it and see what's up and going. And it appears we have a kerfuffle. We have a compterton that was once known as Russiagate that is back in the headlines. Some people are saying, this is nothing new. We've been over this before it's ridiculous. There's no treason here There's nothing that ties it to Obama etc etc

But as I understand it there were documents that were under lock and key for an awful long time That were finally prized out of those who were holding them and that they've been going over them with the proverbial No, I'm sorry Not the axiomatic, the cliched fine-tooth comb, and things have been revealed. What do you gentlemen take away from Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard's presser on this particular situation?

Well, I guess I'll go first. I think if we take it at face value, and of course we heard Gabbard's presentation of it, it does look like we are seeing some new things suggesting that a lot of the senior intelligence people under the last weeks of Obama knew that all of these claims were false or extremely weak at best, and that Obama knew about it. And Obama was up to his neck in, I guess I'll call it a conspiracy. I try to avoid that because I've run out of tin foil. But involved in a conspiracy to cast out

on the legitimacy of the election and hobble President Trump's first term, of which they had some success, right? I think polls showed. And I too don't like to use the term conspiracy. I think satanic cabal is a little less loaded. Right, right, yes. Well, I mean, I think, and then we also heard that the Russian intelligence through their hacking of Democratic Party emails or whatever, claimed to have known

that Hillary Clinton was given to fits of rage and had serious psychological problems, was taking tranquilizers heavily, and various other things that may or may not be true. I mean, we all, I think when we heard that, read that, ran our minds back to that September 11th, 2016 episode she had, where she had to be bundled up and carried to a van when she was obviously having, anyway, had various explanations for hours and days afterwards. Bundled up, she was dragged like a legless sack of potatoes. Right, but they told her, well she was dehydrated, there was this, there was that, and we never quite got a clear explanation of that.

I do think that if her, oh, it's totally type 2 diabetes is claimed by this supposedly Russian intelligence and so I don't know. I do remember reading on Twitter at the time, that's almost 10 years ago now, that oh, you know, I'm a neurologist and I can tell that she's got Parkinson's disease and she's gonna be dead in a year. And you know, some of the typical claims

are people run away with themselves. And here we are almost 10 years later and Hillary's still with us. And so I don't think we know the truth of all that, but it is intriguing little tidbit that emerged from all this. I'm less interested in that than the things that we learned about the five supposed pieces of evidence that led them to conclude that Russiagate was ongoing and it was like well this one is thinly sourced we can't exactly find where it comes from it

makes a vague allusion to somebody with a first name starting with T is started last name starting with T it a last name starting with T. It's from somebody who was later revealed to be a triple agent for Mongolia, and it's from 1814. And they said, well, it's got the ring of truth to it, so throw it in the mix. Charles, are you, first of all,

are you still interested in this? Do you think it matters? Do you think it matters? Do you think it is germane to today? Well, it depends what you mean. I think that it's a scandal and the passage of time doesn't change that. I thought it was a scandal at the time. Wasted two years of not just Trump's first presidency, but my life. I do regret one thing I regret is a quick digression. I went at

that time on CNN relatively frequently. And every time they would bring this up, I would think, you know what, just say, doesn't this all sound like a bunch of nonsense to you? And then I thought if I say that, and I'm wrong, just on the off chance that I'm wrong, I will for the rest of my life be that guy who did that. So I didn't. I said, well, but I do think it's a scandal. I think it's not so much that it doesn't interest me, but I think the context within which Tulsi Gabbard has set it is just wrong in that there is not going to be a prosecution of Barack Obama, or whatever might or should happen to lower level intelligence operatives or Brennan. Barack Obama is not going to be prosecuted for this in part, thanks to a Supreme Court case called

Trump versus United States, which has rendered him immune. So I don't like that she has told people that this is going to happen because it's not. But insofar as this has been used as a vehicle to remind people that this was a really bad incident in our history and that the light worker himself was involved in it, I'm absolutely happy to revisit it. Especially since we're dealing with an administration that was caught off mic, caught mic saying

that after the election we'll have more flexibility. I mean, I've never understood why that wasn't up there in boss letters, but his consciousness, but it seems to have just back. After the election, I will have to do one exactly, more flexibility to do what exactly. No, he's not going to be prosecuted. And the idea that somehow he's going to be frog marched out and change. But it was interesting that I think the Trump administration, somebody ginned up an AI image of just that. And of course, everybody, the

hair on fire, I get it. It's, you know, norms broken, etc. But it does sort of force them to talk about what that's in reference to. And there seems to be a lot of, the press doesn't know quite what to do about this because it's truthy, as a man once said, that he was probably obviously propute, etc. And the particulars really don't matter to them and they'll come out and say things like well it's not as if we said that Russia changed the election or hacked the election but that is exactly what you guys were saying so this will be retconned and flushed that that's

that's basically it and unfortunately the the internet meme nothing ever happens I think will apply to this yeah yeah Unfortunately, the internet meme, nothing ever happens, I think will apply to this. Yeah. But I think that there has been a punishment. This has been my view for years, that this is an intrinsically political question because the president's not going to be prosecuted for it. And there has been a punishment for Barack Obama, which is that he lost his legacy thanks to Trump winning in 2016 and now Trump won again. The main legacy he's going to have, I believe, is going to be an unfathomably ugly public library.

Yeah, if I could just finish on this by saying, this is the thing that I love about America. Obviously, it's not perfect. And this doesn't always happen. But the thing that depresses me in other countries and in my country of birth is things go badly, bad decisions are made, you get into these periods of torpor. And then the public says, of torpor. And then the public says, okay. But in the US, usually the public doesn't like it and does something about it. And we saw this with inflation, for example, we saw all those terrible moves that Biden made, the public punished Biden for that. And yeah, the press will wreck on this and they'll try to rewrite it in time. But Barack Obama has paid a price for this. And so, the press will retcon this and they'll try to rewrite it in time. But Barack Obama has paid a price for this and so has the Democratic Party.

Even if the average person in the street isn't up on it or thinking about it day to day, they didn't actually get away with it. And I think that's good. Well, you know, after our guest, I want to talk to you Charles when you mentioned that the English British reaction is different there has been a change seemingly in the atmosphere after the introduction of migrants into epping and the displacement of hotel people at Canary Wharf to house and boat people and there seems to be a bit of a shift whether it results in anything we'll discuss what after we talk to our guests and Whether it results in anything, we'll discuss after we talk to our guests. And the guests, they're not going to lie to you. They aren't.

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And we thank Bank On Yourself for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome Ellen Fantini, deputy editor of the European Conservatives. And there's got to be at least three or four of those there. So she probably knows them all intimately and can tell us, you know, their full story. But welcome. I mean, I throw this to Steven because I know he he's got some of the query he wishes to put you in. Well, right. I'll be, hi, Ellen. Great to see you. You and your other half, Mario

Fantini are two of my favorite Europeans, even though you're Americans. But Mario can almost fake being a European with a name like Mario Fantini. That's true. Right. Anyway, I mean, here's, I mean, we have listeners here. No one can see the magazine. I've got them stacked up here on my desk. And what I tell people about it is, so first of all, I'll probably describe it. It's printed on thick stock. It's perfect bound, as we say in the magazine trade. And it's got lots of great artwork in it. And so I say, if you want to try to think about it

conceptually, I describe it as a cross between Chronicles Magazine and Architectural Digest, right? Oh, I like that. Yeah, well I'll just share one typical piece of art that's always very topical with James and Charles. Here's what they call the magazine Traded Double Truck. It's a two-fold page piece of artwork, and this is a drawing of Trump's southern border wall.

Now, you really know it's a conservative magazine when they're highlighting artwork in praise of Trump's southern border wall. Practically a fold-out, a Playboy fold-out for the... For the MAGA trade, and then, I don't know, I mean, so I don't wanna go on too long, Ellen, and praise your magazine, because I wanna ask you how it started

and a few things about it. But for example, one issue, two or three issues back had several features recalling the glory days of the Habsburgs and interviewing the latest heirs of the Habsburg dynasty. That's a real conservative magazine, right? Or articles saying, you know, we ought to give Franco a second look and realize he's not the boogeyman

that we've been told for years. What latest issue has a couple of features, actually, I think five features on the legacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who remains a you know, boogeyman for everybody and enlightened opinion. Yes, exactly. Right, so tell us a bit about, I mean I know give us your sort of thumbnail sketch of what you guys are about and not about. I mean I like to say you don't have dense articles on marginal tax rates. You're about culture and beauty and philosophy and, you know, some of the the populist currents going on in Europe. You guys are all over. But tell us how the magazine got started and what you guys try to do with it.

Sure. So yes, we've been in Europe for, I don't know, Mario's been there for about 20 years, I've been close to 15, and we used to joke when Mario would say, I'm Mario Fantini from the European Conservative, and they'd say, oh, so you're the Conservative, you're the European Conservative. That's changed quite a lot, and we can talk a little bit about that, but certainly the political landscape has changed. So the magazine had its early beginnings as a newsletter from the proceedings of the Vandenberg meeting. And the Vandenberg meeting still meets to this day. I think it's been, you know, 17 or 18 years. The Center for European Renewal brought together intellectuals and thinkers to try to look at the philosophical, I would say, foundations of conservatism in Europe. What is there to conserve, etc. So it started as a newsletter and then Mario,

let's say, was discontent with his day job and said, hey, do you mind if I try to make this into a real magazine? They said, sure, that's fine. He did that for many years. Then we got some foundation help. Actually, an American foundation gave us some money to start a small website. Meanwhile, we were producing this magazine on our own and sending it out as a PDF, or printing a few copies and handing them out like samizdat, you know, at various conferences. But the PDFs really started getting shared, I suppose went viral a bit. People really loved these magazines and eventually we got foundation funding to really properly professionalize, to publish the magazine, Steve, that you have in your hands. And we also started a website we started a news program we opened an office in Brussels we have reporters all

around Europe doing daily news commentary analysis but the baby of the project the Fantini baby is definitely the magazine and its aim is to, I would say, understand what is European conservatism, and I say that but also say it's not a monolith, so really it's European conservatisms, because of course there are conservative or right-wing traditions across Europe that are really different from one another and they have histories that are very different. And of course, even today, the European right is not a monolith. There are issues that one country deals with that another country perhaps has dodged for now and so on.

So the magazine attempts to, through beauty and art and culture and philosophy and book reviews, tries to remind us, of course, what we mean when we say we want to save the West. What is the West? You can't simply talk about taxes and financial policy if what you're trying to save is our patrimony. So that's part of it. Yeah. Yeah, so I know the magazine. Well, first of all, I should mention that whenever I'm going somewhere in Europe I will email Mario and say who do you know in Oslo or Dublin or you know some small town in Spain? And he always tells me five people that he knows Right and and tells me all about them

And so you guys seem to be in touch with everybody everywhere and I know that you've been on newsstands I think you're on is it the Smith consortium of newsstands Except when they kick you off temporarily because of some cartoon, right? Yes. That was the best thing that happened to our to our sales is when we got sort of cancelled by W.H. Smith, which is basically the Barnes and Noble of the UK. And a fairly well-known playwright went into W.H. Smith, and let's say he and his husband are not the types who would

normally gravitate towards something called the European Conservative. Well they flipped through it and found a cartoon. The cartoon fantastic. Mom asks a little boy wearing a backpack what did you learn at school today and the little boy vomits a rainbow. So I mean you know not particularly so edgy but they complained to WH Smith said how can this rubbish be sold you know meanwhile I'd love to know what was right next to it and behind it that was probably actual rubbish. WH Smith panicked told all of its retailers to yank that issue from the shelves. We, of course, seized the opportunity because there's no such thing as bad press and people were very interested and we got lots of new

readers. To WH Smith's credit, they didn't ban us from their stores and they still stalk us and in fact they've just been sold to something with a similar name that's not WH Smith and they continue to stock us and we are stocked across the United States of America in Barnes and Noble. Interesting little factoid is that half of our readers kind of across all platforms, so website, magazine sales, and subscriptions, our social media followers are in the US. And I think it's because, you kind of alluded to this, Americans do want to know what's going on in Europe and they want to understand what European conservatism is.

They also want help, I think, sometimes navigating the players who are the good guys, who are the bad guys. Not that we have a list of who the bad guys are, but I think because there's such an import-export of bad ideas between Europe and America, a lot of Americans want to know what's happening in Europe and the European conservative does that. Well one more question for me and I'll turn you over to Charlie and James. I mean one of the things I like about it is it exposes me to a lot of European writers I've never heard of before. I mean a few I'm familiar with. And some I've come to really treasure.

And so I'll just mention one for one particular thing he does for you regularly. And it's Sebastian Morello, who I think, what, lives in some estate up on the Isle of Skye, I think. But he, in addition to features, he writes a must-read column in every issue about whiskey, which of course is something I'm fond of. But anyway, I just, I don't have a question. I just want to say that it must be fun to have the stable

of people all over the place who are, you know, so it's so different from most American publications, I'll put it that way. Yeah, well, I mean, that's, thank you for noticing that. I mean, one of one of our our missions is to bring to English writers who don't write in English, of course, Sebastian writes in English, but we always say why is it that the next great thinker has to be an Anglophone? In other words, there are really interesting people writing in Portuguese and in Spanish and in German, and if English language is the barrier to entry, well, then we tear down

that barrier, we translate their work. And we think that that's really important because while, of course, as an American, I do think that there is some superiority to some of the Anglophone world's ways of viewing things, it's certainly not the only way, and I think we can learn a lot from continental European thinking and thinkers. Hi there, Charles Cook here. I wonder, is it a challenge dealing with Europe, which is a very big place with lots of different countries in it and different traditions? Leave aside languages. Britain is different than France, which is different than Italy, which is different than Germany. How do you coalesce all of that, or do you treat them as discrete entities under the European banner?

Yeah, I mean, I suppose we treat these countries and even, let's say, the threads of conservatism within these countries as separate in the sense that there is no monolith. And I think although more and more every country in Europe and even countries who used to be in Europe suffer from a lot of the same problems. I mean it's quite easy these days to say the word migration and you have a chorus. Now how countries or right wing leaders or thinkers approach these topics may be different but these topics may be different but the similarity of the problems is certainly is certainly obvious. But yeah, so to answer your question, I think that's the beauty of Europe rather than the EU which likes to treat discrete sovereign

European countries as one big blob or block. So yes, we love Europe. We're not so crazy about the EU. My second question is you mentioned that a good number of your readers are in the US and in a sense you are translating for them. What is the biggest misconception Americans have? I ask this because I increasingly meet people on the right in the United States who seem genuinely to believe that, say, Britain is now a Muslim country.

And there are problems with Muslim immigration into Britain, especially around free speech. We've seen the issues with the gangs in the north. I'm certainly not downplaying it, but as somebody who's from England and goes back there relatively often, yes, London is more Muslim than it was 20 years ago. But if you go almost anywhere else, certainly where I'm from in rural England, that's not the issue. Is it that or is it something else? What is the biggest thing people don't know or get wrong? So what are the biggest things that Americans tend to get wrong about Europe? I would think that a lot of Americans don't understand the patriotism that Europeans feel. And perhaps and perhaps it's because I'm not sure any country except maybe Maybe my father's country of Denmark

Very few countries do patriotism With flags the way that Americans do and and call themselves patriots I mean, it's remarkable in fact that this new I mean, it's remarkable, in fact, that this new both European political party and grouping in the European Parliament, the Patriots for Europe, right, saying the word Patriots is unusual and fairly new. And I think a lot of Americans don't understand that Europeans love their countries. They love their countries the way that Americans love their countries. They love their countries the way that Americans love their countries. And so I think part of what we can do is help to

show why. And examples of that. Yeah. Well the people love their country but they're not so sure that their leaders do. Now just to tell you where I'm coming from here, I recently spent four days in a Verbo in the Adriatic in Italy so I'm an expert on Italian politics. So that's where I'm coming from here, I recently spent four days in a Verbo in the Adriatic in Italy, so I'm an expert on Italian politics. So that's where I'm coming from. And I go to England at least once a year and I am keenly interested and concerned about the country and its future. But when you say that the people are patriotic, I believe that.

I mean, I talked to a Briton about their septuadile, but they don't feel as if the leadership does. They feel that the leadership is constantly apologizing for the country, apologizing for Europe, apologizing for the entirety of Western civilization with its dreadful history of colonialism. And they feel, to varying degrees, that there's an intentional program to dilute the national identity with people from other places because A, it's humane, B, we owe it to them, and C, you get a better society the more diverse it is. And they feel as if they are actually being worked against by their leadership.

That's what I get from an awful lot of people on Twitter and various countries. Is that true? Wait, I'm sure it's true to varying degrees in Europe, but which countries feel that the least and which countries feel that the more? In other words, which countries say, yes we are patriotic and our leaders are patriotic, and which country says we are, we desperately love la France but Macron is a traducer of our heritage? Right, right. So yes, I think the average person in any European country, with few exceptions, and I'll say what those exceptions are, agrees with the premise that they love their country and their leaders

are actively trying to destroy that country. You know, it's sort of the European equivalent of the NPR-ification of patriotism, which is that it's, you know, it's mocked, it's, you know, kind of ignorant, and so, I mean, that sort of elite disdain for a basic love of one's country is alive and well in Europe. Of course, you know, there are European, Europeans in various countries keep on electing people who don't love their countries. I mean, I think, I think that's a fair statement. And when I say don't love their countries, of course that shorthand for progressive or

socialist or in some places communist policies that actively destroy the countries. So I mean you know do I think Emmanuel Macron loves France? I have no idea but he sure doesn't act like it. So yeah so I mean I think I'll give you an example. I live in Austria and When in 2016 it was looking like Donald Trump was was going to do pretty well a lot of my Austrian friends said how is this possible and I said, all right Look at an electoral map of Austria And you see those green and red spots in the in the university towns and in the capital

Okay, those are progressives or communists or socialists and the entire rest of the country is voting for the Freedom Party pretty much. The same is, you know, that's just like America. So you have the coastal elites, let's call them, even if they don't have coasts, in Europe. And so those are the voters who keep on voting in governments and leaders that don't have the country's best interests in mind are the ones who mock the Patriots and so on so I would say most of Of Europe at least European leadership fits in that category and then you have places like Hungary I think Poland's coming back to

some sanity. You see AFD is surging in Germany and Germany is of course, we could have a half hour conversation about Germany, but I mean, Germans, especially young people, especially young people are saying it cannot be a crime to say that I'm proud of being German. Like it just can't and they're expressing frustration with the idea that there is no end in sight to a prohibition on being proud of being German. Yeah, so Ellen let me follow up on that if I can. It seems to me, I think this isn't an exaggeration or oversimplification that one of the unifying issues there

as it has been here and now including Japan and their elections here in the last few days, which I'll mention in a minute, is the concern about migration, the erosion of national identity, elites who are governing against the country. I don't know if you follow this. I don't follow Japanese politics,

but I couldn't help but notice some articles saying, huh, there's a new populist party in Japan that surged in the latest election, its strength coming from, especially from young men, frustrated about their lack of opportunities and a stagnant economy and controversies over migration, which Japan has very little but has some. And then I look back at Germany, and one of the problems it seems to me, and this is sort of my political science geek coming out, is you have these parliamentary systems with multi-party elections. And so in Germany right now, AFD is leading in the polls on a hypothetical election, and the other parties literally won't speak to

the AFD members of the Bundestag, as I I understand it and they've completely frozen them out of office. And what Mertz, he barely got the job because what, he only got 23, 24% of the total vote that was cast. My point is, if you had a binary system or first past the post system like we have in America or in Britain, I think that the populist voice would be stronger, the elites would have had to change, or you would have actually had a populist government. And instead, all those systems are conspiring

to elect someone for whom 75% of the voters wanted somebody else. And eventually that's gotta lead to some kind of bad outcome, it seems to me, for the establishment, which means maybe a good outcome for us, but seems to me the suppression of legitimate voices and the marginalization of legitimate claims to be included in a government is just storing up all kinds of problems for the elite. And I see, you know, a Trump-like storm coming to Europe. Does that make

sense to you? It absolutely makes sense to me. I mean certainly the American-style lawfare that we saw against Trump is alive and well in Europe. I mean if you look at Marine Le Pen and Rassemblement Nationale or the national rally in France, not only was she convicted and sentenced to what I think anyone would say is a completely bogus charge, but then they forbid her from running for political office for five years. And that prohibition cannot be stayed pending appeal. Which is just crazy and then you have the normalization of the cordon sanitaire, right,

this firewall against in France, against the RN, in Germany obviously against the AFD, and Merz, you know, I mean he virtue signaled to the right, he started talking a little bit tough on migration, he's completely failed there, and I don't think anybody can be considered center-right if they endorse a firewall against the second most popular party in the country. In Italy you have lawfare against Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister. This is ongoing and

you're absolutely right that if the voters weren't disenfranchised in all these countries, I think the political landscape would look very, very different. I hate to interrupt, but actually interrupting the guest is on my checklist. I got a checklist for my day. I'm retired and that means that I got to keep myself busy. Checklist comes in handy. I'm not even nine to five anymore. I'm nine to nine. Getting through all of this stuff, though, if you're still employed, you got a lot of stuff going on in your life, getting through it all can be hard,

but today's sponsors want you to have time to prioritize. Getting through, Christ, what's the matter with me today? Three, two, one. Hey, I hate to interrupt here, but I'm going to. As a matter of fact, I've got on my list of things to do and I just checked it off. You probably have a checklist too, especially if you work nine to five.

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You said that you'd interviewed the last remaining Habsburgs, is that correct? Yes, well so there was an interview I think with Carl von Hapsburg, yeah. Right, right. I follow him on Twitter where he fends off predictable japs about his chin physiognomy and he seems a very civilized and interesting person. A lot of people have a certain sort of nostalgia for the waning days of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Stefan Zwig area of Vienna and the twilight of that civil... I get that, I get that, I do. It's an interesting thing to do. But you also said that you have an

article about another look at Franco and Le Pen. And while I can't comment on either article without having read them, I want to know what is exactly, is it worth the candle to take these figures about whom the ideas are pretty well baked and say we need to take another look for these reasons or does that not run the risk of just immediately tarring everybody who calls themselves a European conservative with wanting to go back to discredited ideas or people that may have had a good idea here and there but are not somebody necessarily we want to gather into our arms and say, what can we learn from you? Is it not best to perhaps...

What's the point of that, I guess? I mean, I know it doesn't keep you from writing about new people on the horizon, but I'm just curious the impetus behind those editorial decisions. Sure. Well, I think that it's part of our exploration of the legacies that have made up what is modern Europe. And I think one could look at someone's legacy and explain it or analyze it or criticize it. Certainly the 20 pages that we've devoted to the legacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen, it's not a 20 page tribute, but rather are the criticisms fair? What else do we know about him? And frankly, could the French

right exist the way it does now without what he did then. I mean his predictions on globalization, migration, this homogenization of Europe, those were prescient warnings even if what he said about other things were in bad taste or worse There are certainly arguments That it's worth looking at his legacy, especially because Literally no English language publication took a look at his legacy except, you know sort of a passing Obituary so I think it's worth looking at these things. If I can jump in briefly, there is a man I've seen at Ellen, and I'll send it to you.

Christopher Caldwell has a long piece on the pen in the latest Claremont Review of Books that tracks very closely with your treatment of him. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, and I mean it's also, you know, we joke that we're open to everyone from, you know, sort of traditionalists, anarchists, you know, sort of conservative anarchists, monarchists. the American monarchist Charles Coulombe, a Californian, writing about the monarchy. I mean, we think that these are all interesting and we think that our readers are smart enough to figure out if it's interesting to them. So I appreciate the question, but I also think this is the fabric. It's weird and uncomfortable sometimes, but there's a lot there that people can learn from. You mentioned that Lepan warning about the homogenization of Europe, and that's something that people seem to go along with, shrug their shoulders, you know, the center right, the social democrats, they were okay with EU having a certain amount of control

and influence over their lives because they got open borders where they could pass without having to get a visa stamp. They didn't have to bother to change their perfectly good money into that strange useless script that the other nations had. I mean you had this settled notion of Europe that a certain class of people enjoyed. But now they're finding it changed in ways, I think, that are affront to them. And so I wonder if the EU would not be facing the pressures it had today if it simply hadn't decided to embark upon this demographic altering project that they seem to be doing if they just stopped at Regulating the size of bubbles in Swiss cheese that they'd be fine

Well Yeah, I mean I think I think that's true. I mean, I think I think plenty of people Would say that being an economic or trading block or regulating, you know, sort of like oil and gas, all that was good. I think there are some countries who are very happy about the euro, others that are not at all happy with the euro. I think the Schengen Treaty that opened the borders, I think a lot of people as you said said oh well that'll make it so convenient but they never thought about for example what happened this week which is that Pedro Sanchez in Spain has

basically said I think I'm just going to normalize the status of like a million illegal migrants and just, you know, give them residence permits and work visas and so they would in fact just be able to do whatever anyone else with illegal status in Europe could do. So that means borderless crossings. That means going wherever they want to go. And I'm not sure that the people who thought Schengen was a good idea, because they don't want to have to get visa stamps, had this in mind. And certainly, I think that there are a lot of people who are really regretting it now. Are you optimistic about Europe? I ask because it seems

possible to me and I understand this is provocative that Europe will just not fix itself. 20 years ago, the size of the European economy and the American economy was the same. And now the American economy is twice as big as the European economy. I don't know as much as you obviously about continental Europe. I know France pretty well, Italy increasingly so. I know a lot about Britain. I'm from there. And at the moment, Britain is just not fixing itself. Britain is not making the decisions that it needs to. And it seems possible to me, I hope it doesn't happen, it seems possible that Europe will just decline. Are you hopeful or do you worry about that too?

Well, you know, it's funny, whenever Mario and I get asked this question, Mario gets called Dr. Doom because he would, I think, say the same thing about Europe. So I guess I'm supposed to be the ray of sunshine. But I'm with you, Charles, in the sense that I'm not seeing them do it, right? So I'm seeing a lot of people try. And I'm seeing these sort of populist movements, populist nationalists, whatever word that is, I think they really want to try. But boy, the march through the money has gone into initiatives that were actively

work against European growth. I mean Europe can't defend itself, Europe doesn't make anything or manufacture anything So although I am the ray of sunshine Apparently as between myself and my husband I am I am worried but I do think that the that the That there is there are some sparks and I think I think people are pretty well fed fed up I just worry that their Fed upness is going to get ugly. Yeah, that's the big thing. You repress until you get a blowback that you don't like. In Sweden, I forget the term for it in the Nordic countries, it's unpronounceable to me, in which there is a series of intellectual guardrails, accepted opinion, must travel between these guardrails.

Anything outside of that is regarded as not something that a decent civilized person would say. And one of those I think is the idea that that Swedish identity is somehow all-encompassing and protean, which it isn't. I mean in America the great thing what I love about America is that anybody can come here from wherever and they can become an American and that even includes Charles. Because we have a civic identity that is born in an idea embodied in a Constitution and not it does not depend on blood and soil and all the rest of it. That anybody can become an American. But it is absurd to think that anybody can become a Swede. I

can't go to France and become a Frenchman. Never could, never would. Don't even have the interest in knowing enough about wine to be able to claim any sort of Frenchness to me. I could move to England. I really could. There's a place that I would live, but I know in my heart that I would never be an Englishman. So it is absurd, however, to be able to... You can't say these ideas in modern Europe because it goes against the whole transnational idea, which then suppresses nationalism, which then, you think, as always, looking at history, erupts.

And it erupts poorly. But I'm with Charles. I don't see it erupting. I just see more and more slump-shouldered, sullen reaction to this as the countries have a slow, slow, long decline. I don't want that spark but To erupt and but I want something to happen. I don't think it will you know this is interesting this question of identity and

Let's say in the on the British very online, right there's been a whole discussion about being English and in Ireland same thing somebody I read a tweet just today that observed that I know I know what you're going to say I know the tweets go ahead right so an Irish person will say to an American who says, you know, I'm Irish You're not Irish, but somebody can arrive 20 minutes ago from Somalia and they're definitely Irish, right? And you know, so and then there was the whole question. I mean this is this is the question You know when you do a what now defunct 23 and me

genetic test, at what point is somebody going to have a genetic test that says they're American, right? Because it's a civic identity as well as you know, sort of being American of whatever, fill in ethnic identity roots, where Swedes are Swedes. But there is a heavy, heavy, heavy push everywhere in Europe to say that citizenship is national identity. And there's a big push against it, and I think that's right. Ellen Fantini, who was the deputy editor of the European Conservative, go down to Barnes and Noble, buy several copies and you

know, you know, with a heft and weight as Stephen described with a nice stock and the rest of it, you can probably use it for some good bicep curls as well. I look forward to looking at the next edition and Ellen, we hope to have you and or Mario back in the future to discuss exactly what's changed in Europe, if anything does. And if nothing has, you can tell us why. Ellen Fantini, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. The news cycle moves so fast that nobody cares about Stephen Colbert.

But it turns out that a lot of people didn't care about Stephen Colbert before. Then now he's going away. Someday. Here's your hat. You know, it's going to take him like eight months to get to the foyer and leave. But he's new and he's revitalized and he's refreshed and he's all resistance. F you Trump. People are saying that he was canned for political reasons. The same week that South Park just came out and made the hilarious humiliation because that's what they do unless it's a bomb on Biden. You guys think that Colbert was axed because he was just too

resistancy or because maybe he was losing a lot of money in his average age of his viewers of 68? I'm sure it's the latter but I wish it was the former. I would love for, is it David Ellison who's the owner of Skydance that's buying Paramount, I would love for, is it David Ellison, who's the owner of Sky Dance that's buying Paramount? I would love for him to come out and say, actually we're getting rid of him because he's too political and he's unfunny. I mean, South Park at least is funny, right? I mean, those guys are geniuses. And Colbert became a crashing bore and killed the ratings and is losing tons of money. I do think we saw the future though of late night left-wing talk shows. It's gonna be Colbert joining forces with Hunter Biden

on MSNBC to see who can out F-bomb the other. And Charlie, you'll be watching, of course, you being a big Hunter Biden fan. I think you saw his, the entirety of his 47 hour interview that he sat down. I did watch the whole thing. I did. And look thing. I did. Look, it was engaging.

That doesn't mean that he's not crazy. It doesn't mean that the guy who interviewed him isn't an idiot, but it was engaging. He asked open questions and then let Hunter Biden speak. And I found it fascinating. Well, it's fascinating in the same way that we slow down to look at car wrecks. That's the way I thought of it. Sure. On Colbert, it just seems very unlikely to me that CBS said we had better get rid of

Colbert to please Trump and give one and a half billion dollars to South Park in the same move. But the problem there was that the show that he inherited is not supposed to be what he made it. You know, it's like ice cream is great, right? But it doesn't make a very good hammer. And these two things, they're not the same. And so many of the criticisms from the left have said, ah, so you don't think that they should be able to criticize the president?

No, that's not my view. I think he should be able to criticize the president. But he is in charge of the Late Show. That's not that. And yeah, if it comes up, sure. But it became this party political broadcast. Of course it was canceled. Of course no one wanted to watch it.

Of course its audience numbers went from 11 million to two. If Ed McMahon had come out every night and started making speeches in favor of George McGovern, I think that would have been seen as inappropriate for the Tonight Show and what it was attempting to do. But you know the left politicizes every single aspect of the culture and then accuses the right of doing the exact same thing. We would be content, perfectly content, to keep the culture and the politics a little bit separate. Although they'll say the personal is the political and everything cultural is inherently just a tiresome group of people.

And speaking of which, when you mentioned before, Charles, there's a template, the 1930 Germany template in which everything is put and the getting rid of Colbert is another step of the fascist regime silencing all dissent. I saw somebody the other day yesterday reacting to the executive order that said, you know what? You can't Nod out from drugs on the sidewalk and die. We're just not going to do that anymore. Cities, states, municipalities, you got to get these people off the street and put them in a treatment. And the reaction to this from one left-wing Twitter person

was, this is eugenics straight up. They're dead serious. This is out of the Nazi playbook. Rounding up the undesirables and putting them into camps. It is better, apparently, in the name of harm reduction, somehow, to have no-go streets in cities where people are dying, unless you jab them with some Narcan, or just doing a Fenty Fold for a couple of hours until their desperate lives are reduced to finding the next hit. That that's somehow preferable to what a lot of hours until their desperate lives are reduced to finding the next hit. That's somehow preferable to what a lot of us have been saying is necessary in the first place. Forced institutionalization to give these people an opportunity to live without

the drug. And I'm not saying you can give them endless opportunities, but the start is getting them off the streets. And I think it's partially, they won't admit this, but it's partially because it deprives them of two things. One, the people who are in the homeless industrial complex who make an awful lot of money, I think San Francisco, Los Angeles, how many hundreds of agencies do they have dealing with these things,

are afraid of the money going away. But also B, it deprives the rhetoricians of their favorite examples to use against capitalism and private housing and all the rest of it. I mean, if the streets were suddenly clean and there weren't a lot of drug addicts out anymore and these people were somewhere off there, the arguments against capitalism and housing would not be as compelling as they want them to be. Or am I being cynical? No, I think that I mean my guess is knowing how much we've spent here in California on homelessness only to see it grow.

Of course, there may be a connection there, right? The more money there is in it, the more of it you're gonna get. So it's something like 25-30 billion dollars that state and local government have spent in California on homelessness. You would have thought they could have built some homes with that kind of money. Very, very, very few. In any case, let's not be clever about this. When you put homeless with drug problems and psychological problems in hotels and cheap housing,

they tend to trash the place because there is no adult supervision. It's got to be cheaper. It's not a matter of money, essentially, but it's gotta be cheaper to put somebody in some kind of institution. I forget the numbers now, but they go something like this, that we had something like 500,000 people institutionalized in the 1950s when the population was, you know, about half of what it is now, and today it's something like 50,000. I don't quote those numbers precisely any listeners, but it's that magnitude of

change of our de-institutionalization which we did start in the late 50s. And it is sad, but that's a much better approach to the problem. And now we can probably fund better institutions than we did back in those days when many of them were pretty dismal places. Right. Geraldo Rivera, if I recall correctly, made his bones at a very early age by discussing the bedlam-like conditions in these places. Yeah. Bedlam being, of course, the term that comes from an institution in Great Britain. So we'll let Charles have the last word. I just love the response that you mentioned. Eugenics! This is the problem with our moment. This is something that I've increasingly noticed that people can't level

a criticism without adding a bit on the end that just makes them sound completely crazy. You meet some law professor from Berkeley or something and they'll say to you, wow, wow, I'm very, very worried. I mean, under the 1948 Administrative Procedure Act, Donald Trump was supposed to submit this for review through three or four different channels and put it in triplica, but he hasn't done that. He skipped forward to Section 3, and that's why 14,000 people will die. And you're like, sorry, I was with you until what? Right. I was totally interested in your argument until you went there.

And it's like, so, I mean, I'm with you guys on the homeless thing. But even if you don't like this executive order, how do they get from? Well, I don't like this moderate change in federal policy affected by the executive branch within the statute of eugenics. I know. It is delightful. Well, it's all been delightful. The whole thing. It's been delightful to be sponsored by Bank On Yourself and by Cozy Earth, and we thank them, of course.

And you can avail yourself of the products to make your life better today and in the foreseeable future. It would make us happy if you gave a five-star review on Apple podcasts, but you know that. You know how much it would gladden my day, and yet you haven't done it yet, and don't think I haven't noticed. Oh, I'm not mad, I'm not mad, I'm'm just... and also I would like to tell you if it isn't

obvious that Ricochet.com is the enterprise and the edifice behind this weekly podcast and if we've got 750 under our belt well there's so many many more a whole feed of podcasts to which you can listen to including my diner which has nothing to do with politics and and stuff that has to do with, well you'll just have to go and see, won't you? A lot of names you'll recognize and a lot of new people that you'll love to meet. It's been fun. Stephen, Charles, have a great week, and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet4.0.

Bye bye.