TRIGGERnometry - Triggernometry - Ep. 1 Gideon Rachman

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

Triggernometry - Ep. 1 Gideon Rachman by TRIGGERnometry Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gideon, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constance and Kissen. And this is the show for you. If you're bored of people arguing on the internet about subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be experts.

We ask the experts. We're here at the world famous Angel Comedy Club. And our amazing expert guest this week is Gideon Rachman, who's the chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, a renowned author and winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Journalism, Gideon, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. So Giddon, tell us a little bit about how you are, where you are, what's your background,

what's been your journey to this place? Well, in a way, quite conventional, but like a lot of things, you know, a bit of chance and a bit of luck chucked in. So, God, what is my background? Well, I was born in London, but my parents were South Africans. South African Jews, and their parents had been Lithuanian and Latvian, Latvian, so it's a kind of typical immigrant story. There was a whole bunch of Lithuanian and Latvian and Latvian Jews

who, I think, intended to go to America and gone on the wrong boat, ended up in South Africa. And ended up in South Africa, so, you know, okay. So they were there. And then for my good fortune, because you didn't particularly want to, even as a white person, grew up in apartheid South Africa, it's quite a screwed up place. my dad was an academic,

moved to Britain before I was born, so I was born here. And then, yeah, you know, I did the kind of conventional path to the BBC, I guess. PPP at Oxford? No, I didn't actually.

Not quite. I did history at Cambridge. But I was also, I was fortunate in the sense that, you know, I now see with my kids, a lot of scratching my heads, like, what should I do? Should I do this? Should I do that? And I was kind of, of, knew I wanted to be a journalist very early on. I don't quite know

why. Was it a respected profession back then? Yeah. Because right now, I didn't mean that as an insult but right now I get the sense that it's losing. Totally fair question. Yeah, no, because in a slightly creepy, I was a really sort of creepy eight-year-old. I was like a edit at the Times. You know, which was

like a, you know, a respectable thing to do then. I'd love it if your editors watching this. But so, yeah, so that then meant that I wasn't quite kind of focused about sort of getting the right things on my CV, editing the student paper, da-da-da-da-da. And then I got a job at the BBC World Service when I left, which was like the biggest fringe element of the BBC. I got rejected for the mainstream bit of the BBC, for ITN, for Reuters, etc. Eventually got the last thing.

And did that for a while. And actually that was good because it made, although it was the most obscure bit of the BBC, it was. concerned with international affairs and so that got me interested in not doing domestic politics but looking at the wider world and then for mixture sort of personal and professional reasons decided to leave the BBC and go freelance and go to Washington the the personal bit was my girlfriend then now wife was studying at Georgetown so I wanted to be with her and also I wanted to get to America and I wanted to be in print and then you know a couple of lucky breaks along the way so

the paper I went mainly to write for when bankrupt after 18 months was paper the Sunday correspondent and I kind of in the moment of desperation picked up the phone and just rang everybody I knew and said how I needed a job and as it turned out the guy doing that sort of deputy editor of the US section of the economists had gone that week and so the door opened at the right time and then I was at the economist for 15 years and that that was good because I had a couple of foreign foreign correspondent jobs particularly one in Asia which I had been very West-centric, both in the kind of history I studied, you know, Europe, America,

and then where I wanted to go, I wanted to go straight to the US. And then they said, will you be Bangkok correspondent on this? Okay. But I went, and it was a good time to go. It was early in the early 90s. And so the boom in Southeast Asia had happened, and the boom in China was

just beginning. And although Thailand's actually a few hours flight from China, it's a very powerful ethnic Chinese business community who were very tuned into what was going on. So I quite quickly got interested in this what was clearly kind of world-changing development. And it was the right time to get interested in it because it's something I then followed for like 20 years on. And your latest book is about Asia.

Yeah, so yeah, I wrote this book called Easternization, which is slightly unwieldy title. But the conceit is that, you know, we've had 500 years where the whole world is westernizing. And because of the shift in economic power to Asia, we're going to begin to easternize that the power of influence of Asia in the world, particularly of China, but not just China, India, countries of Southeast Asia is going to grow. It's going to start with economics, but it'll move into politics, culture, and so on, and already is happening. And how do you see the world? You're talking, that's a really fascinating term, easternizing, because we obviously use westernized a lot, but that's not a term that I've particularly

heard. But bearing in mind that China isn't a democracy, how do you think that's going to affect us in the West? I think it's going to affect us more than we've reckoned. You know, we thought, well, you know, we'll sell them some stuff and it's fine. And then we had two, I think, illusions, which, you know, obviously history's not written, so we can't be sure. But there was a period, particularly that early period of the 90s where I was talking about, where Western Conference was very high because the Berlin Wall had just fallen.

And we thought, okay, look, particularly if the Chinese embrace capitalism, their society will become much more diverse, individualism will rise up, and they'll have to become a democracy, or the whole thing will come crashing down, it'll just happen, and if they become a democracy, well, you know, problem over there will all get on. And I think both those jumps in the argument were mistaken. We were wrong to assume that they could, that capitalism would necessarily entail a liberalisation of the political system. We're still waiting, you know, 2018, and if anything, it's becoming more authoritarian. That's right. I was just about to mention that the, the Xi Jinping, he just basically sees power forever.

Yeah, is that the right summation of it? Yeah, more or less. I mean, you will see, but he's certainly given himself the ability to do it. They've changed the Chinese constitution. And the Chinese, you know, although they never said that we will become democratic, they did say, or the kind of official line you would hear in Beijing is, well, we've solved the problem of succession that, you know, the problem with, obviously, the authoritarian countries keep running into is eventually you get a sort of Stalin or a Mao who just sits then and screws the

whole place up and it's a disaster. And they said, no, we have got a collective leadership now of the Communist Party and the leader will change every eight years and we've done it two times now. We had, you know, Deng stepped down and then you had Jungsimin for eight years and then he stepped down and then Hu Jintao for eight years. See, it works, you know? And then now you've got this new guy. I said, you know what, I might not step down. And so suddenly, and of course they're all having to pretend And it's fine, you know, we're with this. But in fact, a lot of Chinese liberals, and they exist, you know, are dismayed, really dismayed, because they sort of are very worried about the direction the country is going now.

But equally, and quite sinisterly for us, and it comes back to the question you ask, well, does this begin to affect us? One of the ways that Xi Jinping is consolidating power is by stoking up nationalism and saying, you know, China's strong against. we're standing up for ourselves, we're going to reclaim these territories we should have had, and they're not as dangerous or as aggressive as the Russians in their behavior,

I think partly because they're playing a longer game. I think one of the ways I read Russian behavior is they feel like a knife at their throat and that they've got to do anything, whatever. I mean, I don't agree with their assessment, but that's their sort of view. I think the Chinese feel on the rather differently that they're in the assessment.

ascendancy and they're not going to screw it up. So by frightening the West too much, they're just going to gradually build up a position of strength. Now, Trump's really disrupted that, but by the trade war he's declared because just as we assumed that China would

become democratic wrongly, they maybe not assumed, but certainly hoped and built their policy around the idea that the West would keep its markets open because, you know, whatever, that we either genuinely believed in globalization or that the mutual economic interests would persuade everyone to do that.

And now Trump's come in and said, you know what, I'm going to slap tariffs on steel and aluminium, I'm going to block you on intellectual property and so on, and how China responds to that is going to be a big, big story in the next five to ten years, because I think it's potentially kind of dangerous. I don't buy the idea that free trade guarantees peace, but it creates a intersection of interest, which makes it much less likely that countries will starts, you know, are going to war. If the Chinese feel actually now the Americans are trying to take down their economy in some way, they're much less, there's much less incentive for them to say,

go easy in the South China Sea, for example, which the Americans still regard as they're an American lake, as some American guy put it to me in the Pentagon. It's a wonderfully arrogant comment. But it's a curious thing because if you remember Kilkenomics last year, You remember Harold Malgram, who's the father of one of our future guests, Pippen Margram. He was talking about the fact that he felt that Obama was weak on the South China Sea. And what he was talking about is basically the Americans can see through the satellites exactly what's happening there. And the Chinese would incrementally step up their presence.

They would see that there was no response, even though they knew that the Americans had seen what was happening. And what we're now seeing is an emboldened China as a result of Obama's presence. Well, there's so many different. He's right to a degree, but I don't think Obama would have been correct to challenge them. But there's a different, there are different ways of looking at it. He's right, what he's right about is that the Chinese did it very cleverly because they moved incrementally. And each little step would not be enough to confront them on.

And I remember talking to an Obama guy who was following all this. And he was, you know, senior Asia advisor. who said to me, you know, how am I meant to, there was, at the time they were worrying about something called a second Thomas Scholl, which is something that the Philippines used to re-assert their claims. Anyway, it's a sunken ship, which they resupply as a way of saying, you know, this bit of water is Filipino.

And they were, the Americans were worried that the Chinese were going to sink the ship or something crazy like that. Anyway, this guy said to me, how am I meant to go and tell the president that he should risk a war with China? over a sunken battleship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean which is underwater half the time, he's not going to do it.

And he's right not to do it. So what the Chinese did was over time, advance, advance, advance, and each little step creates sort of facts in the water. But then I think there's a broader question of, well, you know, are the, you said, wonderfully arrogant comment, American Lake. Yeah, maybe the Americans should just say,

you know what? We have dominated the Pacific since 1945, but China's rising. It's not going to be like that. anymore and we should come to some sort of tacit agreement with them about or maybe even explicit agreement about spheres of influence and so on because otherwise the only other way to stop that is to eventually have a war with them and we're not up for that so I don't that's the debate that's got to be had really but what I

find quite fascinating about China is this like so for instance mum of those in Venezuela which is a communist country in inverted commas and China is a communist country but having been to China it's in many May is the most consumerist capitalist society that I've ever encountered in my life. I mean, could you explain that dichotomy a little bit for us as to how you can be both

communist and, you know, have a Gucci bag on you? Yeah, well, that's their genius. No, look, I would say they're communist only politically now in the sense that they, or even Leninist, that they believe in a one party state with a sort of

communist party structure, which is a very real thing, so that in universities, for example, the Communist Party operates, ambitious students will join the Communist Party organization, companies will have a Communist Party member on the board, you know, it's a thing. But it's a mechanism of political control rather than an economic system anymore. And I think that there are probably still vestiges of the sense that, well, we're doing it for the people. You hear that in, say, she's rhetoric about their greatest claim is how many people they've lifted out of poverty,

hundreds of millions, they will say, and I think the World Bank would agree. And so that's sort of communism by other means, communism by capitalist means, but trying to create more wealth. And so, you know, I don't think they're completely cynical, but I would say they're communist primarily in political terms. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right.

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to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. So I guess what we'll start with is Trump is in power at the moment. Russia are behaving like a supervillain in a cheap airport novel and we have King Jong-un in charge of North Korea Is the world coming to the end or is this how it's always been?

It's definitely not how it's always been. I mean it feels like a very strange time. I mean, I guess for me, the defining period of my sort of adult life journalistic career was 1989, you know, fall of the Berlin Wall and so on. And that marked the end of a period that I'd grown up in the Cold War. And then really, I'd say from 89 to 2008, there was a sort of continuity. We felt like, you know, famously Fukuyama said there was the end of history, even if that's a bit of an overstatement. But that the Western ideas had triumphed.

The West was pretty stable. The rest of the world was kind of, you know, the number of democracies around the world was increasing. Generally, people thought globalization was a good, good thing. You know, obviously a bit of a generalization. But things felt pretty stable. And then I think you have the financial crisis. And I think that for me was one of the triggers for things to begin to go wrong. But when, you know, you mentioned Russia behaving like a supervillain, etc., etc., Kim Jong-un.

But for me, the really disturbing thing about the current period is not so much that there are rogue nations. There always have been. But what's going on inside the West? I mean, it would have been unimaginable really until very recently that somebody like Donald Trump could become president of the United States. mainly actually because of his personal style, which I think sends a very negative political message, but also he is reversing all sorts of kind of shibbolets of American foreign policy about free trade, whatever.

And then I think there's also a wider rot in the West. I mean, I think that the whole connection between Brexit and Trumps are complicated one, but there is some sort of connection in the sense of discontent that fired it. But equally, if you look in Europe, I mean, the politics of countries that seem relatively stable to quite recently Spain, Italy looking really dodgy. And in Eastern Europe, countries that we thought, okay, they've

joined the democratic camp, pretty solid now. Hungary is really, I think, slipping away from democracy, Poland arguably as well. And then finally, you've got this, I think, sense in the West, which maybe is sort of loosely connected to what's going on generally, that our period as the dominant block in the world, Europe and the U.S. is coming to a close. You've got the rise of a new power in China, which is now by some measures the largest economy in the world. You've got a much more assertive India. And in themselves, there didn't be threatening things, but China does, is not a democracy, is in a way a kind of wounded country which has a lot of, you know, wants to put behind what it calls itself the century of humiliation and feels that it was humiliated by the West.

So there's a shift of economic and political power as well, which I think in itself would be destabilizing. So yeah, it's a weird time. And you said you use the word dodgy when you were talking about some of those countries. Can you just go into detail what you mean by that? Dodgy, yeah. Well, okay, so what was I talking about, Hungary or Italy? I mean, I think in Hungary in particular, it's a while since I've been there. But, you know, one of the things you do as journalists,

and maybe it's not the best way of gauging, I think, but you go and talk to other journalists. And other journalists will tell you in Hungary, you know, people I've known for a few years that basically freedom of the press is closing down. I mean, that's not what the official line is, but it's the lived experience of people there. And you look at some of the messages that Orban is putting out. Now, I think that the war for the refugees was a pretty brutal measure, but there's some argument about whether Merkel's policy was sustainable in itself.

You know, you could argue that actually Western Europe is tacitly doing. of what Orban already did. So I don't think in itself that was, you know, reasonable people could differ on that. But if you look at the rhetoric that he's using in the campaign, it's pretty racist. And it's, you know, it's anti-Semitic, the whole thing about sort of this hidden power

which he attributes to George Soros manipulate, trying to destroy Hungary. It's real classic sort of central European authoritarianism. And Poland, I don't think, is as far down the line, although actually it's the one that's being prosecuted by the European Commission, not Hungary. but that's for internal European politics. But things are changing in Poland.

And there's also this kind of looming presence of Russia, which I think we thought of Russian interference, Constantine, as a bit of a joke until recently, but it's real. And it affected the American election. And I think it is, you know, the Russians are quite astute at picking off bits of the EU and including Hungary and maybe Greece a bit. And so, yeah, that contribute.

And also just generally a slightly menacing presence. And I think that sort of slightly contributes to the sense that things are beginning to fall apart, as well as Brexit, of course. Well, what do you make of the whole Russia thing? Because one of the interesting things for me that I've noticed is that since the Scripal affair, the poisoning in Salisbury, actually a lot of other stuff has started to come out. And the British government is now investigating 14 other poisonings and other unexplained deaths, Boris Beresowski and other people. What do you think has been happening and what do you think is going to happen with Russia going for? Well, look, I mean, I'm not doing the investigation, but obviously.

Obviously, you know, that was an example of good journalism, and BuzzFeed actually put together that list of 14 people, which had been sort of circulating. And then most people were not paying attention. And there was a sense that the Brits were kind of a bit reluctant to really go into it because what do you do? And, you know, do you really want a full-scale confrontation with Russia? And also there's financial interests at stake that we know about.

What are the financial interests? Well, I mean, Russians are big investors in London, in London property, flotations of Russian companies. You know, Oleg Deripaska, for example, just floated, you know, his company on the stock exchange.

So Russian money has become important. You know, there's a lot of, you know, there's a whole sort of penumbra of law firms, PR firms, merchant banks, etc. Who will have, you know, for whom the Russians are quite important clients or have been. Well, this is what I was going to ask you because my impression is from the figures

that I've seen, actually, as a country. Britain doesn't do a huge amount of trouble. trade with Russia, from what I understand. No. But what you were talking about is there kind of what you might call vested interest within the establishment. Is that the breakdown? Is that why we're not perhaps being as strong on Russia as we might be otherwise? Look, I mean, I don't know how, the short answers I don't know. I mean, I don't know quite how these decisions are made or so on, but it's certainly the case that Russian banks and financiers were capable because they were, you know,

individually had big deals and money attached to them, capable of making influential friends in the West, who wouldn't necessarily want a fight with them. I mean, famously, Oleg Deripaska had this party, you know, on the yacht where Mandelson turned up and George Osborne showed up. And, you know, Deripasca always has this big party in Davos as well, and everyone shows up, you know. So they're quite good at kind of becoming part of the scene.

Shmoosing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And schmoozing with money attached. And the money seems clean because it's like it's an above-the-board contract will apply you to float the company or whatever. You know, give us PR advice. And so for that reason,

there certainly would end into people's minds. Well, do we necessarily want to put this at risk? It's quite interesting talking about Russia and going into detail about it. How worried you think the Americans are by Russia and what they're currently doing at the moment? to which Americans. I mean, the interesting thing is that because America is so partisan divided down the middle,

that there's half the country, the Democrats, the Hillary Clinton fans, who are convinced that the Russians interfered in the election, and the Republicans really don't want to believe it for their own reasons. And within that, I mean, that's, and that's, interestingly a kind of reversal of the Cold War where traditionally the Democrats as the center-left party wouldn't have been as hawkish on Russia and the Republicans would have been the people banging the table on Russia and now that's changed but within that there are all sorts of interesting kind of breakdowns I mean I think the FBI who are quite kind of professional and you

know as as kind of white men the leadership of the FBI FBI what you would say their demographic profile would be there'd be quite likely to be Republicans or a voted Trump but they they are pursuing this. And I mean, I had an interesting conversation, was it about 15 months ago, with somebody that kind of ex-spook in America

who was, A, hated Trump. But B, was very exultant that Robert Mueller had been put in charge of this because he said, you know, this guy is very, very tough, very professional, home leave, no stone unturned, and it's really bad news for Trump

that this guy is on his tail. And so, I think, I think that although there's all this hyper-partisanship within that, there is a kind of hardcore of kind of professional securocrats who are genuinely offended by what they see, they think this all happening. And you're convinced that Russia was involved in the American election? Yeah. I mean, to what end we don't know and to what level we don't know.

I mean, you know... I mean, they weren't trying to help Hillary Clinton. No. I think that much is always. Although, actually, interestingly, they were also agitated. They were trying to call social disarray generally, so that if you look at what's already come out, you know, the early indictments by Mueller,

they were, for example, trying to stage Black Lives Matter demonstrations because they just wanted a sense of social disarray and social conflict. Within that, clearly they were pro-Trump. Now, what level, you know, how much we don't know, how effective we don't know, and that probably is an unanswerable question. because you don't know why people voted or what little thing it was.

But, you know, I was, I remember I was at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in July of 2016, and it was a chaotic beginning because the emails of the then head of the Democratic Party, Debbie Wassamund Schultz, I think, had just been released like two days before, and she'd been slagging off Bernie Sanders

in internal emails. And this caused outrage amongst the Sander supporters. So the first day of the convention was chaos because every time a Clinton person took to the stage, they were booed, shorts had just had to resign. And I remember doing, you know, much as you're interviewing me now, interviewing a mate of mine who'd worked in the Obama administration.

And there was already some indications that had been a Russian hack. And we did this interview, and I look back at it. And we were, in a way, it's curiously innocent. We were just saying, gosh, you know, if this was really the Russians, that's really quite something, isn't it? Little did we know. You know, it was just the beginning. And then there was this other leak of the pedestrian emails,

which again came out at an actually crucial time, just when Trump was being pursued over the sex stuff, like within hours, the pedestrian emails were dumped. And so, yeah, you know, potentially it was well done, you know, in a technical sense. And I think it's pretty clear that Mueller thinks it was from the Russians via, but then, you know, the connections become really fascinating. One of the interesting things for me is I can feel my. becoming conspiracy theorist.

I used to laugh at conspiracy theory. It's all rubbish, whatever. Partly because my mates were in power. I think conspiracy theories happen, or you become a conspiracy theorist, when you feel powerless and when you think, God, you know, how did that happen? That shouldn't have happened.

You know, this is outrageous. They all know each other. And sort of my group, very, very broadly termed, was sort of in power. You know, people I knew, or who'd been a university with me, kind of felt familiar. Shared my discourse to use, whatever, they were, and now these kind of maniacs are in power of Trump.

You know, what's going on? And so, since you're on the outs, you suddenly thinking, oh my God, you know, X knows Y and Y knows Z. And maybe I'm making all sorts of dodgy, you know, false connections. But I mean, to give you an example, I did this, I did a lunch with the FT,

which is a kind of like set piece interview, with a mate of Trump's. And that the attraction for me was that we did it in Mar-a-Lago, you know, in Trump's club. And then, you know, this guy, Italian guy comes over and, oh, you know, he's the Northern League's organiser in the US, and he's also Trump's neighbour. And then, you know, we get talking to another guy who's just come back from seeing Orban in Hungary, and you think, oh, my God, you know, dot, dot, dot.

And, you know, you wonder whether, oh, should I sort of, like, come on, so what, they know each other, lots of liberals know each other, or think, actually, there's something quite weird going on here and I don't quite know where I am on that. Well, a curious thing, sorry Francis, before you jump in, when you're talking about how the people that you knew were in power, kind of broadly your circle, without making this personal, what I was kind of thinking is,

well, isn't that why Brexit and Trump happened? People were kind of going, there's a small elite who are controlling everything, or managing everything or in power, and we need to change that. Do you think that was what caused it? Look, lots of things caused it, but

I mean, yeah, I think the thing about elites is that they tend to think they've got there because they deserve to be there. And I suddenly feel that about myself. But, no, I mean, what do I mean? What's the group?

Okay, so to give you an odd example. Like, the only, I mean, I like to say, you know, Clinton's frightfully well, I don't. But there was, the only time I've ever sat in a room with Hillary Clinton for an extended period, was oddly enough, it's a complicated story, but I ended up watching the Women's World Cup final with her

in her hotel room in Greece. And with a bunch of, like, her entourage. And, you know, people who were traveling with her. She was on her trip. She watches soccer? She does. Well, I think she had to watch it because A was American, B, it was women.

And her daughter was in the crowd. So, you know, the only time she got interested was when the camera would pan over to Chelsea. and she'll go, ah, and then, you know, actually, I think she was desperate to get on with some work, but, you know, she was kind of tied to what... Tell me you didn't explain the offside rule to her. I think I did want to say,

God, this football's not bad, which is really not the thing. But, no, but when it went into extra time, they then had to watch that, apparently, it was all a bit of a ball. But anyway, to... Keep sidetracking, you're sorry, and keep going to... Yeah, so, no, so, you know, just chatting to the people there.

Like, I was struck, I mean, actually quite a good thing for Britain. How many of them had been... educated in Britain or spent time there or Oxford graduates or whatever. So it's this kind of Harvard, Oxford, you know, chuck in a bit of Goldman Sachs or whatever, you know, this group. And I don't see it as particularly sinister, but I can see if you're sort of outside, you might think, oh, I don't like that. I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, Trump essentially marketed himself as being a man of the people.

Whereas when he started his company, he got a million dollar loan. Sure, from his dad. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, do you think that we're going to look back on Trump as being a profoundly negative thing for American politics? Or is it slightly more complex than that? Well, I mean, you know, I'm biased. So I think, yeah, I think it's really bad. But what I do think is, you know, it's kind of weird because, you know, a lot of all have done history at school or university.

I think, you know, if we're all still, if humanity's still around in 200 years time, people will be writing essays on what the hell happened. did Donald Trump win the presidency, what did it mean? And just as they write essays about Jefferson or the American Civil War, it's a huge event, what's just happened. And it's very early to try and assess it. But I was struck, you know, on a recent trip to America, and I did, you know, my tour of establishment mates.

So I did Washington, New York, Harvard, and speaking to a kind of cross-section of people. And they were very divided. I mean, they were none of them were Trump fans. There was a group of sort of super optimists about America who said, you know, it's not good, but he'll lose American establishment. Institutions are very powerful. This country's very grounded. It's fine.

Not fine, but it'll, we'll get through it. And then there's another group who say, oh, my God, we're kind of tipping all the way into fascism. And, you know, American democracy is in serious, serious trouble. And this could end in, you know, civil conflict or, you know, an erosion of America's democratic institutions, which we won't come back from. And then there's obviously those are the two polls. But there's that second group,

the real alarmists, are not sort of idiots. They're professors here and there or people involved in politics. And then within that, there's a whole spectrum of opinion. And I don't know which... Look, I suspect that Trump isn't one sense in admiration, and then you'll get more normal presidents after that, but that he's done lasting damage to the discourse of the way Americans interact with each other,

the way they think about their institutions. And that's where I think that the whole Russian thing comes back. I mean, because I think that part of what Russia's narrative is, is that, you know, there's this clear-cut distinction that they like to make in the West between democratic countries with the rule of law and undemocratic countries which are kind of, you know, a jungle. That's wrong. everybody's at it all institutions are rotten

and you're no better than us and that's their kind of argument and to the extent that Americans start buying that and saying actually you know what the FBI is rotten yeah we do have a deep state yeah you can't believe anything you hear on the news that's really corrosive and I think

we're slightly better off in Britain but only slightly because obviously Brexit has been incredibly divisive but I think by and large the BBC is still broadly respected there are some institutions that most of the country think, okay, they're impartial, we kind of trust them.

So I think America's further down the road to that really corrosive sense, which means in the end that you don't have a society. If you don't have a common version of truth, a common version of institutions that you can say, okay, we'll allow those to arbitrate and we'll all accept it. You're in trouble.

It's very interesting that you're talking about America in this way. And then you were talking a few minutes ago about China being in the ascendant Do you think the fact that people voted for Trump is actually a reflection of the fact that America are no longer the world's greatest superpower? It's sort of a crisis of confidence. To some extent. I mean, I think, yeah, you know, that Trump is one of the first president's successful candidates I can know.

He had a very pessimistic narrative. I mean, so that, you know, having now being fairly ancient 54, I've seen a few presidential elections. And generally, the winning candidate is the optimist. So Reagan is mourning in America. Bill Clinton's the boy from Hope Arkansas you know and Obama is that

you know we can change with a change we're seeking there's no red and blue America and everyone goes yeah yeah yeah you know they will go for that and he has Trump saying you know the country is being destroyed it's carnage he says in his inaugural speech

and this is our last chance to rescue ourselves it's incredibly dark vision and that used to be like very un-American And the fact that as small, as France put it, a large minority of Americans voted for it, because, of course, he didn't win, you know, the popular vote, but enough to win is quite disturbing. But actually, I think that that's not just a side point about or liberal sort of kind of complaining that he didn't win. I mean, I think it's one of the signs of trouble in America is that we've now had two presidents in 16 years elected without winning the popular vote.

because George Dobby Bush got beaten by Al Gore, which is a sign of the level of gerrymandering in America as well, which is also a problem. So, Gideon, we touched on earlier on in the interview about anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism and you saying it was on the rise. Do you think that it's going to rear its ugly head in a major fashion as it's done before,

or do you think it's going to be something that's always there in the background, more or less? Look, I think it's one of the... Wait, sorry, did you say it was on the rise? Well, I think I mentioned it in Hungary, but I wouldn't actually disagree with it. You think it's on the rise in this country? I don't know about that, but I think it's, what's happened is that it's become a political issue in the West. I don't know whether, you know, if you took a poll of what people's sentiments, you could say there were more or less anti-Semitic.

But what has happened is that one of the weird things, and I'm Jewish, is that it was quite nice. I was kind of a fortunate generation of Jews for whom, like, it wasn't an issue, a political issue. people weren't on either side of the barricades on this. And there was a sense that, well, we got past it in the 1930s and the lessons have been learned, and that was it. And now, you know, suddenly, whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute in Britain, as you know, it's at the heart of an argument about what's going on

inside the Labour Party. But, you know, people in the UK have been understandably very focused on that. But if you pull back a bit, there are similar arguments taking place in France. The week that Corbyn was being dragged over the cause of this, There was a march of thousands of people in Paris because of a murder of a Holocaust survivor

who President Macron said, very bluntly, was murdered because she was Jewish. She was killed by a couple of young Muslim neighbors. And then, of course, you have this Orban election where it was kind of explicitly anti-Semitic rhetoric. And then a slightly odd debate in America about, is Trump anti-Semitic? Now, my feel about that is, well, if he's anti-Semitic,

why did his daughter convert to Orthodox Judaism? It's not like a standard anti-Semitic move. You bring it down from the inside. But it is the case that Trump, via Bannon, got a lot of support from the outright. And on that fringe, the fringe of the far right, sure, that's anti-Semitism. I mean, one way of looking at it, you know,

in quite simple terms, is that I don't think anti-Semitism already exists in the political center, but it has existed on the fringe the far left, the far right. And as politics becomes, you know, the extremes come into the center, as they've done with Trump,

and, you know, some would argue with the Labour Party, they bring in maybe some tropes that were not used in other more centrist forms of politics. I'm curious about the article that you were recently about anti-Semitism. And actually, the interesting thing for me particularly was less than anti-Semitism, but more

what you said about identity politics and the context of it. And throughout this, of you and other things that I've read, I always get the sense that you are kind of you're a liberal. Yeah. Is that broad? I'd say so,

well, you know, with occasional reactionary instincts repressed. Whenever you read, some of it displeases you are being in it. Exactly. That shouldn't be allowed. Oh, we're all like that.

Absolutely. And so I was surprised to read something I agree with entirely, which is what you said about identity politics, which is you said it's a threat and you said it's a liberal. Can you elaborate on that and why you think that is? Yeah. And actually, interestingly, as well,

how does that fit within the elite circles within which you operate? Sure. Well, I mean, I think that, so why is identity politics illiberal? Because, I mean, I think that liberalism is essentially an individualist creed and says that people should be treated as individuals in the sense that they all have the same rights. We don't say, well, you're part of this group, so you're in a subgroup. If we're citizens of the UK or France or whatever, we have the same rights under the law. But also I think there's a sense that we are all, to some extent, should be free to choose our own identity.

You know, you see it now in sexual politics a lot, that people can say that they have fluid identities. But even, you know, I was talking mainly in a political context, that I kind of, I've always felt uncomfortable with the idea that people say, oh you're Jewish so therefore you'll think this about Israel you'll think this about that you don't know what I think actually and I'm not I am Jewish I'm also lots of other things you know I'm British I'm you know I have a certain sort of education I've a certain class background I have a personality you know all sorts of different all sorts of different things and so I don't want to be almost like your whole individual person yeah exactly but and I think the thing about identity politics is it says well the key thing about this person

or whatever, it's that they're a member of the Muslim community or the Jewish community or the LGBT community or whatever. And this community, we know, has this set of views and this is their spokesman. And, you know, that's how we're going to do politics. And I think that, A, I just don't like that way of thought. I also think that it gets potentially dangerous because I think when you start saying the X group, the Y group,

you encourage people to think in communal terms and therefore to look down on the art group or to fear the out group and say, well, the only people I really trust are members of my group. You know, the other group we're going to have to negotiate with or defeat or something. And that's really dangerous. It's fascinating you said that you were talking about, and it's also fascinating you bring up Israel. Going back to anti-Semitism, do you think that Israel's current policies emboldens anti-Semites and sort of gives it a justification?

Well, a complicated question, but I think, Yes and no is the answer to that. I mean, I think that there are, there's a lot of legitimate disquiet, both with the actions of Israel, and actually interestingly with the idea of the Jewish state, which I'll come back to in a second. But the actions of Israel, I mean, obviously, if you see kind of bombardment of Gaza or something,

all of our kind of liberalists say, oh my God, this is horrific. You know, they're kind of citizens, you know, individuals, children being killed. It's outrageous. people get upset about that. The only reason I sometimes feel uneasy about it is that I think that, you know, if, say, Israel was doing now what the Russian and Syrian Air Force has been doing

in Eastern Ghout or, you know, did in Aleppo or whatever, London would be in flames. There would be huge demonstrations. People feel very, very strongly about it when it's the Israelis, and if it's the Saudis or the Syrians, you don't even notice. And you sort of think, well, you know, there's a kind of odd double standard here.

And whether that's anti-Semitism or just that people think, in some ways, I think it's partly because they sort of feel that Israel's part of us. I mean, some of it's anti-Semitism. Some of it might be, well, this is a kind of white nation that we're allied with. I don't know.

But there's something odd going on. Then the whole question of, you know, it's a slightly into maybe an intellectualized way of it, but one of the things that you hear in this whole anti-Semitism debate is people saying, oh well, you know, it's fine to criticize Israel. It's not okay to question the existence of a Jewish state. And that's the line.

Now, I know what they're getting at, but in a funny way, intellectually, I think it should be okay to question the existence of a Jewish state because it's a state defined by ethnicity rather than individuality, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe that's not okay. And I certainly, you know, I have Israeli relatives who believe that the ultimate solution

is not a two-state solution, but a one-state solution in which you have Jews and Palestinians as co-citizens in this country. And a lot of Zionists would say that is anti-Israeli because it eventually dissolves Israel's identities of Jewish state. Therefore it's racist. I don't think it's racist.

But I do think personally that it's naive and it could have pretty dangerous consequences because I don't think the two communities are likely to live together in peace, so I support a Jewish state for largely pragmatic reasons. I think it's the best way if you can do it alongside

a Palestinian state. finding some kind of modus for Vendai. But I don't think as an intellectual construct that it's racist even to question the existence of Israel, I do think, however, you know, it gets complicated because some people who do that are anti-Semitic and aren't doing it from a kind of intellectual basis. You know, are we comfortable with the idea of an ethnically based state?

You know, there's something about Israel itself that gets to them. And do you think Trump putting, saying that Jerusalem is now the capital, is inflammatory? or do you think that was the right thing to do? No, I think it's inflammatory, obviously, and it's intended to inflame. Bannon, who was the guy who was behind it, and amusingly is often accused of anti-Semitism

because of the people he mixed with was very, very keen for the Israeli capital to be acknowledged as Jerusalem. That's been a sort of totemic thing for the far right in America or the hard right. And I think, yeah, it's pointless because there's enough grief in that

part of the world without stirring it up further. It's a symbolic gesture which will just upset people. So I think it's correct to say that that's a step that has to wait for the ultimate peace settlement which may never arrive, but it's nonetheless

it's sort of giving Israel the reward for the two-state solution before the two-state solution happens, so I don't think it's a good idea. I'm curious to come back to the identity politics a bit because I think one of the interesting things, I recently found out I have some Jewish I could have told you that. Thanks very much.

So you literally send off a little DNA sample. Two weeks later, your Jewish. Your IQ goes up about 10 points. It's great. So I'm curious about it because from an identity politics standpoint, Jews actually don't fit the narrative of identity politics very well. Because the idea of identity politics is we're all oppressed at different levels. And Jews, I mean, historically probably the most oppressed ethnic group ever.

And yet they're largely very successful. You're a good example of someone like that, right? Tend to be very intelligent, well-educated, successful financially, right? So that doesn't seem to fit the narrative. And I don't ever hear about anti-Semitism as being part of the things that we need to fight within the identity politics. Well, you're beginning to hear it, aren't you? I mean, you know, in Britain, for example, it's suddenly become an issue.

But, I mean, yeah, maybe that's a sign of the kind of sort of. slightly disturbed political times that we've entered, that this kind of thing is popping up again. you mentioned that the far left have, and obviously there's this, at the moment, people are talking about whether Labor are anti-Semitic, whether Corbyn is anti-Semitic. How are the far left an anti-Semitic? Okay, well, look, I mean, I think first of all,

just from a theoretical level, the thing I argued in the article is that I think the far left are, some of them anyway, drawn to identity politics, you know, that they think in terms of, like, the X community, the Y community. And I think, as I said, that's a fact, a slightly dangerous way of thinking,

because then you can say, well, there's this, and then there's this other group, the Jews and we can either be like pro them or anti them or whatever but they but they're this group you know that we and I prefer actually to say you know there are individuals some of whom are Jewish but I wouldn't lump them together as a group but how is the left anti-in other in more practical terms look there's been traditionally an anti-capitalist element that's going back to the 19th century and some of the times that gets mixed up with anti-Semitism you

can see it actually on the right weird it's funny both the far right have a have a Jewish capitalist they hate who's George Soros and the far left have a Jewish capitalist they hate who's the the Rockefellers you know going all the way back but this idea of finance and the sort of network of kind of international network that's all kind of connected are you part of that no I'm not but I it's funny I did yeah I did once go to a conference where there are a bunch of

fairly powerful people and they're all sitting weirdly in alphabetical order and I was talking to a French academic who said I hope there's no photograph coming out of this because I am between Rockefeller and Rumsfeld but anyway so what was it?

Sorry, it's terrible. No, but it's look and I think the other thing is that obviously the the far left have taken up Israel as a cause and as we were just saying that there are ways of doing that that are sort of completely legitimate

I was going to say kosher, I shouldn't say? And then there are ways of doing that that then slide into sort of crazy conspiracy theories about all the Jews were born to leave the Twin Towers on 9-11 and that kind of stuff. For example, one of the people that Corbyn unwisely entertained at the House of Commons is somebody who believes that, you know, has put out that theory.

So do you think Corbyn is an anti-Semite? I don't know. I've never met the guy. I mean, I think probably not. But, you know, also it's a funny thing. You know, what's in people's hearts? It's hard to tell. You know, I was talking to a sort of Jewish friend of mine who said,

look, the guy says he's not an anti-Semite. Can we just, like, take his word for it? You know, if he goes around saying, drive the Jews out, then we sort of know. But if he's not doing that, then fine. You don't have to sort of divine his sentiments. So I would be inclined to say he's unwise into the company. He has kept the company of people who peddle pretty nasty stuff.

But he's not said it himself. All right, we've done enough on the Jews. Yeah. Smoothly done. I can say that. I'm Jewish now. I can say anything I want. And now you'll be rich and successful.

Yes. Highly unlikely, despite my Jewishness. curious thing for me is we always like to ask at the end of the show what I guess think is the number one issue that everybody should be talking about that no one is talking about It's an unanswerable question

I mean I think we've unfortunately they're all the number one issues are the kind of obvious ones for me but that's because I've got to look I'm lucky in the sense that I write about all the things that are really interesting I think you know Brexit and Trump I mean sometimes you think

I can't face like wading back into that particular sort of sensible but But, no, I mean, I write about the stuff that I think is interesting. And it's been difficult for me to actually break out of the Trump, Brexit, Trump, Brexit thing, partly because one of the weird things about modern journalism is you know exactly how many people read each article. So you know what readers are interested in, and they're interested in Trump and Brexit, our readers anyway. And so I did a sort of duty column where I went to Tunisia, which is an interesting country.

It's like the last democracy in the Middle East that's. surviving the Arab Spring and I thought okay I'm going to write this column it's important nobody will read it I was totally right like nobody's no reward for talking about these interesting well here's another question then let me ask you this you're one of the first journalist that is coming on our show and we really appreciate you coming on thank you very much tell us what is at its best what is journalism supposed to be what is it about look it's hard to answer that question without sounding absurdly pompous but Look, I think it's about something that we used to sort of take for granted,

but it's now increasingly under-challenged. It's just like trying to establish the truth is quite important. And I think that the whole Russian thing is quite an interesting challenge to the truth. Because we think, you know, suddenly I mentioned I joined the BBC, and people associate the BBC with objectivity. You know, this guy says this and this guy says that, and you report both sides. Fair enough.

What's wrong with that? I think the Russians have played that rather cleverly. So they say, like I would say, this microphone's black. And they would say, no, no, the microphone is actually white. And you should report that I say it's white. And also that it's possibly yellow and green. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, it's black.

Look, we can all see it's black. They said, no, no, no. Two sides to every story. Yeah. To question more, you know. So you throw up so many kind of crazy theories that you can kind of drown the truth. You can cover the truth.

And so we're having to rethink like, well, what is it about actually reporting correctly and sticking up for the truth? Is it just saying, well, the Russians say this and the Brits say that and make your own mind? But is that even possible, Gideon, because we've talked throughout this interview about your own views on the world? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm, of course, I'm paradoxically in the opinion of journalism thing. And that I had to learn in a funny way because I started coming from a conventional journalistic background where you kind of kept your own views out. correctly and then suddenly I was on the op-head pages and they actually had to tell me at a

point you tap me on the shoulder and say look you know your analysis is all very interesting but you meant to have an opinion you know can you say something and I had sort of and it's not and some people that's very natural to you know kind of you know your peers morgans etc who were just mouthy and loved to tell and it didn't come very naturally to me and in a way still doesn't but I had to kind of teach myself to to say something and even if I didn't I never say anything I don't believe but I will some sometimes put it more strongly than I would if we were just chatting in the pub. You know, you make an argument.

And I think that's part, for me, that's part of the role. And I don't particularly, well, obviously prefer people to say that's brilliant. I totally agree. But I realize that part of the game is, or part of the role, is to put an opinion out there. And then people can say, well, I read that. I disagree, but it sort of makes them frame their own view. It sort of contributes to the part of debate. and that's part of the kind of odd bit of journalism that I'm in.

Well, that's exactly what we're trying to do here is bringing people with different opinions who can put it in an elaborate way for a long time and actually have a chance to explain what they think. So thank you very much for coming in. It's been an absolute pleasure, and we look forward to putting this out. And before we finish, is there anything that you would like to promote, Gideon, would you like to your Twitter handle, for instance, or is it a book?

There are enough lunatics following me on Twitter. No, yeah, people want to buy my books called, Easternization, so it's been out of a couple of years. And you also wrote a book about zero sum politics as well, did you know in 2013? Yeah, so look, I... You don't agree with it anymore? No, I do. I mean, it's sort of that was the one I wrote just

after the financial crisis, saying that, you know, there's going to be trouble politically, and I think that was broadly right, actually. And if people want to follow you on Twitter or Instagram, Constantine, where would they look for you? At Constantine, I've got lots of Russian bots following me. Yeah. And I'm at Failing Human on Twitter

and Instagram, and also, if the Russian bots are tracking you. I just want to say I disagree with everything constant. And we have no personal relationship of any sort. Thank you, Vladimir.