#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza

Douglas Murray is the author of On Democracies and Death Cults, The War on The West, and The Madness of Crowds. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep463-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/douglas-murray-2-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA – submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Douglas’s X: https://x.com/DouglasKMurray Douglas’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasmurray Douglas’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/douglaskmurray Douglas’s Website: https://douglasmurray.net On Democracies and Death Cults (book): https://amzn.to/4jahsxL The War on the West (book): https://amzn.to/38L7B36 SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Call of Duty: First-person shooter video game. Go to https://callofduty.com/warzone https://lexfridman.com/s/call_of_duty-ep463-sc Oracle: Cloud infrastructure. Go to https://oracle.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/oracle-ep463-sc LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/lmnt-ep463-sc AG1: All-in-one daily nutrition drink. Go to https://drinkag1.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/ag1-ep463-sc OUTLINE: (00:00) – Introduction (02:04) – Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections (09:31) – War in Ukraine (13:17) – Trump and Zelenskyy (27:47) – Putin (48:40) – Peace (58:31) – Zelenskyy (1:13:11) – Israel-Palestine (1:23:57) – Hamas (1:38:30) – Corruption (1:41:40) – Gaza (2:02:18) – Benjamin Netanyahu (2:19:29) – Hate (2:43:59) – Iran (2:54:48) – Interview advice (3:09:12) – War PODCAST LINKS: – Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr – Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 – RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ – Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 – Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips SOCIAL LINKS: – X: https://x.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://instagram.com/lexfridman – TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://facebook.com/lexfridman – Patreon: https://patreon.com/lexfridman – Telegram: https://t.me/lexfridman – Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Douglas Murray, author of The War in the West, The Madness of Crowds, and his new book on democracies and death cults. We talk about Russia and Ukraine and about Israel and Gaza. Douglas has very strong views on these topics, and he defends them brilliantly and fearlessly. As I always try to do for all topics, I will also talk to people who have different views from Douglas, including on the next episode of this podcast. We live in an era of online discourse where grifters, drama farmers, liars, bots, sycophants, and sociopaths roam the vast, beautiful dark land of the internet.

• 0:45Lex Fridman?

  It's hard to know who to trust. I believe no one is in possession of the entire truth, but some are more correct than others. Some are insightful, and some are delusional. The problem is it's hard to tell which is which unless you use your mind with intellectual humility and with rigor.

• 1:10Lex Fridman?

  I recommend you listen to many sources who disagree with each other and try to pick up wisdom from each. Also, I recommend you visit the places in question, as Douglas has, as I have, or at least talk face to face with people who have spent most of their lives living there, whether it's Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, or Russia. Let's try together to not be cogs in the machine of outrage and instead to reach toward reason and compassion.

• 1:42Lex Fridman?

  There is no Hitler, Stalin, or Mao on the world stage today. Plus, there are thousands of nuclear weapons ready to fire. Human civilization hangs in the balance. The 21st century is a new geopolitical puzzle all of us are tasked with solving. Let's not mess it up.

• 2:04Lex Fridman?

  And now, ladies and gentlemen, a quick few second mention of these sponsors. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Call of Duty for video game fun, Oracle for cloud computing, Element for electrolytes, and AG1 for multivitamin deliciousness. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you happen to be watching or listening to this on Spotify, I decided to start putting the same ad reads from me at the beginning as I do on Apple Podcasts and the RSS feed, since a lot of folks in the survey, alexfreeman.com/survey, said they actually like the random non sequitur things I talk about,

• 2:47Lex Fridman?

  to my great surprise. And they've also said that they're happy to just skip when they felt like it. Some folks are some timers, meaning they listen to these ads sometimes. Some folks are every timers. They listen to all the ads. I do try to make the ad reads interesting and personal, often related to stuff I'm reading or thinking about. But if you skip them, and I do make it easy to skip by providing the timestamps on the screen and in the description. So if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. Sign up and get their stuff. I enjoy it. Maybe you will too. Also, if you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to alexfreeman.com/contact.

• 3:32Lex Fridman?

  And now, on to the full ad reads. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty Warzone and the return of the iconic Verdansk map. I have a long history with Call of Duty. I've been a fan for a long time. I've been a fan of video games for a long, long time. And I'm actually looking forward to doing many, many podcasts with video game designers, with engineers. It just brings me so much joy. And there's technical, philosophical things to explore with video games. How do you create immersive worlds? It can be ultra-realistic or ultra-non-realistic and super fun or super dark or terrifying or exciting or hopeful or dreamlike.

• 4:17Lex Fridman?

  All of those worlds, the geniuses behind those worlds inspire me.

• 4:23Lex Fridman?

  I admire, I respect, I'm a big fan of the worlds that Call of Duty franchise has created, and the Verdonz map looks incredible. You can download Call of Duty Warzone for free and drop into the Verdonz map on April 3rd, rated M for mature. This episode is also brought to you by Oracle, a company providing a fully integrated stack of cloud applications and cloud platform services. I think compute is going to be one of the resources that are most prized in the 21st century. Whatever physical form, whatever cyber software form that compute takes, we do not know yet. Of course, there's

• 5:04Lex Fridman?

  folks like Oracle that are pioneering that, but it's very possible in a century, in two centuries, we're going to be surrounded by some orb where the computation is done, maybe in deep space that's orbiting Earth, something like this. Maybe because of the heat and the energy requirements, it's going to be impossible to host it on Earth without destroying Earth. Of course, Earth is such a priceless planet for us humans, but I actually believe, maybe not in our galaxy, but certainly in our vicinity, it's going to be very, very difficult to colonize other planets. Of course, humans are incredible at doing the difficult

• 5:48Lex Fridman?

  thing, but we should protect this Earth. Anyway, props to Oracle for constantly innovating and building in this space. Cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI. Offer is for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify at oracle.com/lex. That's oracle.com/lex. This episode is brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix that I'm drinking now, because after I say the words I'm saying to you right now, I'm going for a long, long run along the river. And I'm listening to an audiobook by James Holland. It's volume one of his trilogy called The War in the West. I believe it's

• 6:31Lex Fridman?

  focusing on 1939 to 1941. It's just an extremely well-written perspective on those years. So it's the Western Front. I think those years are really important to understand, the years leading up to 1939 and 39, 40, 41 themselves, because there's a lot of-

• 6:52Lex Fridman?

  Let's say geopolitical negotiations, meetings, carrots and sticks that could have been done. A lot of insights, a lot of mistakes avoided. It's such an important moment to understand. Probably the most destructive, the most terrifying, the most earth shattering war this world has ever seen. With the bigger than life personalities of Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, FDR. I think James Holland calls it the most dramatic set of events in human history. And anyway, element before, element after. It brings me joy. Watermelon salt is still and forever the flavor of choice for me. Get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drink element.com/lex.

• 7:37Lex Fridman?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. An all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. My daily companion. Again, after the run, I'm going to make an AG1, put in the freezer, then I'll go take a quick shower, come back, drink the AG1. It's going to be chill, refreshing. I'm going to reflect on the things I've read. Let my thoughts go to wherever they may go. And then get my lazy ass back to work deeply focused. A productive life is built on a foundation of rituals, habits. It's kind of incredible how fleeting life is. You know, the days go by, the months go by, the years go by. But when you look at the individual day,

• 8:22Lex Fridman?

  there's just a lot of time. And if you have the patience to believe in the long term effects of daily rituals and daily habits, you'd be surprised, I am constantly surprised. If I do a thing every day and I wake up two, three months after and just see how good I got at that thing. It's kind of incredible. And then you of course have to protect that habit. It gets harder and harder every year with all the fascinating stuff going on online. You just have to shut it all off and do the thing, do the habit every day. Anyway, they'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex.

• 9:05Lex Fridman?

  This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Douglas Murray.

• 9:31Lex Fridman?

  What have you understood about the war in Ukraine from your visits there? Just looking at the big picture of your understanding of the invasion of February 24th, 2022, and the war in the three years since?

• 9:43Douglas Murray?

  Well, I mean, several things. There's political angles which are forever changing. But on the human level, as you know, if you visit troops, frontline troops, you have that admiration for people defending their country, defending their homes, defending their families. I'm struck by the way in which that is to remove from the sort of political noise and the media noise and much more. It's very easy to get caught up in the to's and fro's of today's news. But that, to my mind, is that's the single thing that struck me most in my visits there,

• 10:26Douglas Murray?

  is just the people I've met who are fighting for a cause which, at that level, is unavoidable, undeniable.

• 10:38Lex Fridman?

  So the thing that struck you that's different from the media turmoil is just the reality of war?

• 10:45Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, of course. I mean, you know, people who...

• 10:50Douglas Murray?

  Have either lived under Russian occupation from invading armies and then come back out into the world, having been liberated as in late 2022. All the people now, or as most recently there in recent weeks, who were just getting on with their job as soldiers whilst the world was talking about them.

• 11:12Lex Fridman?

  When were you there in, early on in this escalated war of 22?

• 11:18Douglas Murray?

  Yes, first time was in, I was with the Ukrainian Armed Forces when they retook Kherson. And I was back in recent weeks and was there when the Trump-Zelenskyy blow up happened. In fact, I was with, I was in a Ukrainian dugout at the front lines when I was watching it.

• 11:38Lex Fridman?

  How's the morale? How's the way, the content of the conversations you've heard different on the, from the two visits, separated by, I guess, two years?

• 11:51Douglas Murray?

  At one level, I mean, nothing has changed much, you know, it's a sort of, it's not a total standoff because intermittently each side gains territory from the others, but it's, it's not, I mean, there've been no very significant military gains by either side in the interim period.

• 12:12Lex Fridman?

  I think my experience of the soldiers, the people of Ukraine, early on in the war, there's a intense optimism about the outcomes of the war. There's a sense that they're going to win. And the definition of what win means was like all the territory is going to be won back.

• 12:34Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, I certainly, on the front lines facing Crimea was, became quite familiar with people who thought that the Ukrainians in late 2022 would even be able to get Crimea back. And that struck me even at the time. And I said, I thought that that was an overreach.

• 12:50Lex Fridman?

  And now, I think.

• 12:56Lex Fridman?

  The people, the soldiers, at least in my experience when I visited a second time, are more exhausted. The morale, the dreams, the certainty of victory has, has maybe faded from the forefront of their minds.

• 13:14Douglas Murray?

  Well, three years of war will tire out anyone.

• 13:17Lex Fridman?

  What did you think of the blow up between Zelensky and Trump as you're sitting there in the dugout?

• 13:24Douglas Murray?

  Well, it is, it was a very disturbing place to watch it from, perhaps anywhere it would have been. Um, and I mean, obviously it was a meeting that shouldn't have happened. It was far too early.

• 13:38Lex Fridman?

  Why do you think so? There's not enough actual pathways to peace on the table?

• 13:43Douglas Murray?

  Well, I think the mineral deal, I mean, I love the fact that everyone's now an expert in eastern Ukrainian mineral deposits, but.

• 13:50Lex Fridman?

  I think, as I've learned, and we'll talk about Israel and Palestine, I'm learning that everybody's an expert on geopolitics and history of war on the internet.

• 13:58Douglas Murray?

  And now mineral deposits, obviously.

• 14:00Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 14:01Douglas Murray?

  The, I'm really speaking of the edge of my mineral deposit knowledge here. No, I mean, I, if what I could see, the deal that the American administration was trying to get the Ukrainian government to sign was sort of too early to, to forced, the Ukrainians weren't, were ready to sign a deal, but were obviously under intense pressure. And I think certainly Zelensky wasn't expecting to, actually wasn't expecting to go until pretty much the day before. Um, was obviously visibly tired and exhausted again, as you are after that amount of pressure for that long a time.

• 14:42Douglas Murray?

  And, um, no, I mean, the thing that struck me, and I said this in my column, the New York Post from there, that, uh, the thing that struck me was I said to some of the soldiers I was with, uh, you know, what do you make of this? And, um, you know, one of them just said to me, well, you know, we're advised not to get too closely the ins and outs of the politics of this, you know, and, um, but of course, everyone has Instagram or scrolls and among dog pictures and the, you know, the hot women or whatever is, um, you know, what happened in the Oval. And, uh, but what struck me was this same guy and saying. I've got a job to do.

• 15:24Lex Fridman?

  Right. And there's a clarity and a wisdom to that. But your job is is is bigger than that, right? It's to understand the politics as well. And what do you think about the politics of that moment? Because that was a real opportunity to come together and make progress on peace. Right. And it from by all accounts was not a successful step forward.

• 15:52Douglas Murray?

  I don't think by any account it was a successful step forward unless to some extent it was a play but from DC to say to Putin, look, we doffed off Zelensky and, you know, now give us something. That's the only remedial idea I have about what might have been behind it. But I think it was just one of those extremely, I mean, just awful political moments. Zelensky was obviously deeply irritated by the the the interpretation of the war that he was hearing from Washington.

• 16:35Douglas Murray?

  It was only a week after the Trump comments about Zelensky being a dictator.

• 16:42Douglas Murray?

  And people in the administration implying that Ukraine has started the war. And I think that's that must be for Zelensky, a pretty Alice in Wonderland situation to be in.

• 16:58Douglas Murray?

  And I had significant sympathy for him in finding it bewildering. Because it would be bewildering.

• 17:06Lex Fridman?

  I think the sad thing to me also on the mundane details of that meeting and just the unfortunate way that meetings happen. I think it's true that he was also exhausted.

• 17:17Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 17:17Lex Fridman?

  There was a dickhead of a reporter that was asked a question about outfit in a way that, listen, Zelensky, everybody has their strengths and weaknesses. He's an emotional being for better or for worse. And there's a dumb dickhead of a reporter.

• 17:35Douglas Murray?

  Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. He is.

• 17:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. The things you know. See, you're a real journalist.

• 17:43Douglas Murray?

  He's he's from one of the the new. I'm all for opening up the White House press pool and all that sort of thing. But it means that you get some people in who are sort of.

• 17:51Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, from a blog land, there's nothing wrong with that, but it means that you get somebody who will do something like that. The problem with that interaction, as I saw it, was that guy asked that, well, disrespectful question. And I think it was disrespectful. I'll very quickly say why. I mean, I think that, I think that when a man comes from the realm of war into the realm of peace, the people in the realm of peace should have some respect, or at least concession, that the other man has come from the realm of war. And that if you're sitting in a political environment where you talk about people being

• 18:33Douglas Murray?

  destroyed and decimated and defenestrated and much more, to a man who's, for whom none of that is metaphorical, I think that's extremely hard to, to accept. And I think that probably also at that moment, there was a sort of sense of, you know, Zelensky is being disrespected by being asked about what he's wearing. When, as everyone knows, you know, Churchill during World War Two used to wear his fatigues on foreign visit. And it's just that, just to remind people that you're coming from the realm of war.

• 19:16Douglas Murray?

  And I think that probably in that, in that moment, one of the things that would have been going through his head would be, but I mean, if, if, if this was Putin sitting here being assaulted by a journalist, you know, you'd, you'd hope your host stepped in and defended you. I mean, if, let me try this one out. I mean, if, if, if a journalist in the Oval Office, if Putin was sitting there, or a putative journalist said to Putin, you know, everyone knows you've had a lot of facial work done, and word is, you've used the same guy that Berlusconi used to use. Can you comment on, on that? You'd, you'd, you'd say, well, that's a kind of disrespectful question for journalists to ask, and it's

• 20:00Douglas Murray?

  a little bit off, off what needs to be gone over.

• 20:06Douglas Murray?

  And it's the same thing with Zelensky with the outfit. I think it was just petty and threw things off in a bad way.

• 20:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I know it's probably research because I think Zelensky was explaining this like three years ago, the beginning of the war, why he wears what he wears. And he's been consistent wearing the same.

• 20:23Douglas Murray?

  It's also, by the way, it's an example of the frivolity of a lot of the of the attempts to attempts to understand what's going on. I mean, my view is that is that since actually most people, in fact, everybody cannot be an expert on everything, one of the things that we always do is to seize on minor and really quite unimportant things. I mean, every site does it. Look at the way in which the American right for years talked about the Churchill bust leaving the White House Oval Office in the Obama years. I didn't want to hear another darn thing about the Churchill bust after eight years because it just it was in lieu of trying to understand and actually critique Obama's foreign policy.

• 21:08Douglas Murray?

  It was just an easy shorthand. I think it's the same. We're always tempted to that.

• 21:13Lex Fridman?

  But the thing is, I think you mentioned Putin. I think Putin would have been able to respond himself to that journalist effectively. And he would have done it in Russian.

• 21:26Douglas Murray?

  Oh, yeah, the languish thing.

• 21:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so I wanted to sort of lay out several just unfortunate things that happened in these situations. And I think it happens in all peace negotiations. And it's funny how history can turn in moments like this. I do think there's a dickhead reporter, combined with the fact that, you know, with all due respect, but Zelensky's English sometimes is not very good.

• 21:48Douglas Murray?

  Yes, and apart from anything else, if he had to agree to not done it in English, he would have bought himself the extra seconds in some of his replies that he needed.

• 21:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Yeah, and have the wit. The guy is funny, witty, intelligent. You know, he could do that in the native language of whether it's Ukrainian or Russian to be able to respond and get the interpreter. So all of that is really unfortunate because I think in those little moments, it's a dance and there's an opportunity there. You know, the Republicans, the right wing in the United States have a general kind of skepticism of Zelensky and but that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It can turn, it can change, it can evolve.

• 22:30Douglas Murray?

  It's very interesting why it has happened. Why do you think it's happened?

• 22:34Lex Fridman?

  Politics in the United States is so dumb that at the very beginning, it could just be reduced to, well, the left went Putin bad, Zelensky good, rah rah Ukrainian flags. Therefore, the right must go the opposite.

• 22:52Douglas Murray?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Lex Fridman?

  It sometimes is literally as dumb as that. Let's each pick a side and call the other dumb.

• 22:58Douglas Murray?

  I had a line I used recently with the necessity of people who live too long online to try to wade their way out of the memes. It is so like, isn't it? Because yes, I mean, I can understand the people who find it very irritating that so many people who would put BLM flags or pride flags or, you know, trans flags in their bio, then put Ukrainian flags in their bio despite almost certainly not knowing where Ukraine was. And if that happens, inevitable instinct of a lot of people who aren't really thinking is to say, that's really annoying. These people are really annoying. I'll sock it to them. But that's where you've got to try to rise above that and say, actually, funnily enough, the fate of a country doesn't depend on my tolerance for memes online today.

• 23:43Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, so I think the memes can be broken through in meetings like the one that happened between Zelensky and Trump. There can have been real camaraderie. I've seen the skill of that just recently, having researched deeply and interacted with Narendra Modi. Here's somebody who has the skill of, you know, for his country, for his situation, being able to somehow be friends with Putin and friends with Zelensky and friends with Trump and friends with Biden and friends with Obama.

• 24:18Douglas Murray?

  That's very skillful.

• 24:19Lex Fridman?

  And that while still being strong for his country and like fundamentally a nationalist figure who's like, you know, very not globalist, not.

• 24:35Lex Fridman?

  Anything but pro India, India first, nation first. In fact, nation first with a very specific idea what that nation represents.

• 24:45Douglas Murray?

  Sure.

• 24:45Lex Fridman?

  And that, you know, Zelensky could do all of those things.

• 24:48Douglas Murray?

  Hmm.

• 24:49Lex Fridman?

  But have the skill of navigating the Trump room. Because every single leader has their own peculiar quirks that need to be navigated.

• 24:59Douglas Murray?

  Yes, the obvious one, I mean, I don't make it sound like it was all Zelensky's fault. But I mean, the obvious one was at the beginning of the meeting to say yet again, as he has done for three years, thank you to America and the American people and American politicians across the aisle for your support for my country in its hour of need. We're deeply grateful. And because he for once forgot to say that.

• 25:20Lex Fridman?

  I think it's not that simple. I think there's a.

• 25:22Douglas Murray?

  It's not that simple, is one reason.

• 25:23Lex Fridman?

  I think saying thank you, he didn't need to say thank you. There is just.

• 25:26Douglas Murray?

  That was why Vance, that was what Vance leapt in on.

• 25:29Lex Fridman?

  He's just picking a thing to leap on. There's a whole energy. You have to acknowledge in your way of being that you have been very Biden buddy buddy with the left for the last four years. There's ways to fix that. Listen, these people are complicated narcissists, all of them, Biden, Trump. You have to navigate the complexity of that. And you basically have to say a kind word to Trump, which is like showing, there's many ways of doing that. But one of them is saying, feeding the ego by acknowledging that he is one of the world's greatest negotiators. Right? I'm glad we're able to come to the table and negotiate together.

• 26:15Lex Fridman?

  Because I believe you are the great negotiator mediator that can actually bring a successful resolution to.

• 26:22Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:22Lex Fridman?

  As opposed to have an energy of like, it should be obvious to everybody that Ukraine are the good guys and Russia is the bad guys. There's this whole energy of entitlement that he brought. He forgot that there's a new guy. You gotta like convince the new guy that this global mission that this nation is on, this war that is in many ways, the West versus.

• 26:50Lex Fridman?

  The East, that there's ideals, there's whole histories here, that this is a war worth winning. You have to convince them, right?

• 27:00Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, no, sure. And they obviously failed on that occasion. But as I say, it must be bewildering to have landed in a place where people were seriously talking about Ukraine starting the war.

• 27:13Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 27:13Douglas Murray?

  And Zelensky, not Putin being the dictator. I did the front page of the New York Post the day after the president's comments on that, saying that, the big picture of Putin, just saying, right, this is, this is a dictator. And, you know, I think that people can be live enough to be able to recognize that, you know, you can make criticisms of Zelensky or the Ukrainians, but it doesn't mean you have to fall full Putin. And again, unfortunately, a lot of people in our time don't have that capability.

• 27:47Lex Fridman?

  Can we go right into it? What is your strongest criticism of Putin?

• 27:52Douglas Murray?

  He's a dictator who's very bloody, as repressive as you can be of political opposition, internal opposition. He's kleptomaniac of his country's resources, has enriched himself as much as he could, as he has with the cronies around him. He's not just acted to destroy internal opposition in Russia, but has gone to other countries, including my own country of birth, and killed people on their, our soil, using, as it happens, weapons of mass

• 28:30Douglas Murray?

  destruction. The use of polonium in the center of London, not good. The use of incredibly dangerous nerve agents that could kill tens of thousands of people in a charming cathedral city like Salisbury, not good. If the sort of apologists of Putin say, well, he's just a sort of tough man who's looking after his house business, it's like, well, I don't think, even if you think he has the right to do that, that he should be doing it in third countries, deliberately using weapons that are meant to show that you could take out tens of thousands of British citizens. Yeah, I mean, that's just for starters.

• 29:10Lex Fridman?

  What do you make for, do you think he's actually popularly elected?

• 29:15Douglas Murray?

  No.

• 29:17Lex Fridman?

  Do you think the the results of the elections are fraudulent?

• 29:21Douglas Murray?

  Yes, I mean.

• 29:24Lex Fridman?

  You think it's possible that it's just that the opposition has been eliminated? And he's legitimately popularly elected?

• 29:31Douglas Murray?

  It definitely helps a chap if he's killed all of his opponents.

• 29:35Lex Fridman?

  Something by using the term chap in that context is just marvelous.

• 29:39Douglas Murray?

  But, you know, I know, I mean, but in a way, seriously, you you.

• 29:44Douglas Murray?

  If if if people are worried about. This is another of the sort of slightly Alice in Wonderland things recently about Zelensky. As people are saying, why, why hasn't he's a dictator because he hasn't held elections during a total war of self defense? And it's like, well.

• 30:00Douglas Murray?

  You know, if you're really, really passionate about free and fair elections in that neck of the woods. You'd at least notice that that Russian elections are not free and fair in any meaningful sense. But this doesn't mean that you have to say that therefore they should have Western style elections and and freedom that Russia is is ready to go and become a Western liberal democracy. It doesn't mean any of that at all. It's just at least note. That this is what Putin is.

• 30:29Lex Fridman?

  What do you think is the motivation for his invasion of Ukraine in 22?

• 30:34Douglas Murray?

  It's what he's said for years, which is the basically the reconstitution of the Soviet Union.

• 30:40Lex Fridman?

  Do you think there is a empire building components to that motivation?

• 30:45Douglas Murray?

  I would trust most my friends in Eastern Central Europe, who certainly do think that. There's a reason why the Baltic countries are the countries that are spending highest in percentage of GDP on defense. And it's because they're very worried. I don't think they're faking it. I don't think they're faking it for me or for anyone else. I think the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and others are genuinely worried for the first time in some decades.

• 31:17Lex Fridman?

  Do you think there's a possibility? That the war continues indefinitely. Even if there's a ceasefire and the peace reached, the war will resume.

• 31:28Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 31:28Lex Fridman?

  He will seek expansion even beyond Ukraine.

• 31:31Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 31:33Douglas Murray?

  And the most obvious thing is that if Trump manages to negotiate a ceasefire, it'll be a temporary pause. And whoever comes in as president after Trump, Putin will use the opportunity to advance again. Yes. Again, one of the things that I have heard from parts of the American right and others is that all he wants is Ukraine. That that's all he wants. And that he has no history or of rhetoric or actions that suggest anything else. And again, it's one of the reasons why it's useful traveling to places and seeing things with your own eyes, because I very much remember being in the country of Georgia after Putin tried to invade in 2008.

• 32:18Douglas Murray?

  So I just, again, people don't have to be the greatest supporters of the Ukrainian cause, just to recognize that, that it doesn't seem to be the case, that Ukraine is the only thing in Putin's vision.

• 32:34Lex Fridman?

  Do you see value and maybe depth and power to the realist perspective of all this? You know, somebody like John Mearsheimer's formulation of all this, that in these invasions of Georgia, of Ukraine, it's using military power to expand the sphere of influence in the region in a cold calculation of geopolitics?

• 32:59Douglas Murray?

  It's interesting. One of the fascinating things about the last few years is that there's been an act of sort of necromancy of certain figures who are totally, totally debunked in the area of Ukraine, Mearsheimer, and in the case of Israel, people like Finkelstein. And it's been interesting because these are people that one hadn't heard of for some years because they were not listened to, usually for good reason. But by the way, first of all, I'm very skeptical of the term realist in foreign policy because most people, to some extent, will say that they are a realist in foreign policy.

• 33:40Douglas Murray?

  Very few people are surrealists in foreign policy. Very few people are unrealists.

• 33:46Lex Fridman?

  I would like to meet them.

• 33:47Douglas Murray?

  A surrealist foreign policy analyst.

• 33:50Lex Fridman?

  We did mention Alice in Wonderland, so.

• 33:52Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, I mean, maybe we should introduce the term. But I mean, if you want to say, if you want to look gimlet out, eyed out across the world, you're a realist. I think the steel man of their argument would be Russia has or believes it has a sphere of influence and is regrettable, but there's very little we can do about that.

• 34:19Douglas Murray?

  That would be about the best version of that argument that you can make.

• 34:23Lex Fridman?

  Well, to expand on that steel man, isn't this how superpowers operate? In the dark, realist slash surrealist way, meaning the United States uses military power to have a sphere of influence over the whole globe, really. China appears to be willing to use military power to expand its sphere of influence.

• 34:48Douglas Murray?

  And political power, yeah, more importantly, in the case of China.

• 34:51Lex Fridman?

  Political power.

• 34:52Douglas Murray?

  Non kinetic warfare to take over areas, Hong Kong being the obvious one.

• 34:58Lex Fridman?

  Behind that, isn't there always a kinetic threat?

• 35:02Douglas Murray?

  Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, you disappear some booksellers and students who are protesting, of course. I just, but, but to go back to this, yeah, of course. Okay, countries believe they have or would like to have spheres of influence. I do think at some point that the so called realists on that have to try to decide how much leeway that allows you to give to a fairly rapacious regime.

• 35:31Douglas Murray?

  Uh, and it's not, I mean, it's, it's not the easiest calculation always to make. You have to work out whether or not, for instance, it is true that if, if Russia had, if Putin had managed to go all the way to Kiev in the first weeks of the war in twenty two, he would have gone straight on to other places. And, you know, maybe he would have done, maybe he would have taken his time, maybe he wouldn't have done. And this is a very fine calculation that changes every week, let alone every year. You know, my friends in Georgia, I thought, were wildly off the mark when they were believing that after two thousand and eight, they could get,

• 36:13Douglas Murray?

  for instance, either NATO membership or EU membership. And I thought, I thought that was completely unlikely. And I still think it's unlikely and almost certainly undesirable for Europe and for NATO, because you, you've got to be very careful as, and obviously, this is one of the issues with Ukraine and has been since the nineties is, you know, are you going to set up a tripwire to start World War Three? And that's not a small thing to consider.

• 36:37Lex Fridman?

  So what do you think the, uh, the peace deal might look like? And what, what does the path to peace look like in Ukraine in, in the coming weeks and months?

• 36:49Douglas Murray?

  I just thought it would be, uh, regrettably, the Ukrainian ceding some territory in the east. And then, um, making sure they rearm, uh, during whatever peace period comes afterwards.

• 37:07Lex Fridman?

  And probably all four territories of, uh, Donetsk, Luhansk, Supremacy, person.

• 37:15Douglas Murray?

  You couldn't lay any of that out because it has to be negotiated on. But I, I mean, I think that, and I think the ease with which non-Ukrainians are currently speaking about the Ukrainian ceding territory is, is concerning because these territories include hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens who do not want to live under Putin's rule, and people who have families in the rest of Ukraine and, and, and much more. And, um, uh, you know, I, I recently interviewed children who had managed to get out of the Russian occupied areas. And, um, it's, it's, it's brutal for the Ukrainian to be growing up in that.

• 38:00Douglas Murray?

  Territory. So I, when people say, well, obviously, you know, Donetsk has to be given to Putin, I think that that is not as easy a thing if you're in Ukraine as it is if you're sitting in New York, say. And by the way, I think that on the issue of, there is a school of thought that that is, that obviously President Trump, to some extent, was was floating in recent weeks, which is that if if a deal is done, a business deal, in relation to minerals or anything else, you get this great, you get a kind of buffer zone of American businesses and investment and therefore American business

• 38:40Douglas Murray?

  people in the region, which would effectively warn Putin not to invade. I don't follow that idea because not least, there were Americans in the regions that were invaded in twenty two and they left fast. And we know from Hong Kong and other places, just because there are international financial interests in the region does not mean that a dictatorship will not either militarily or covertly take over. I don't, I don't see American miners as being an effective buffer zone against Putin.

• 39:17Lex Fridman?

  By the way, what did you learn from talking to the children, Ukrainian children from those regions?

• 39:25Douglas Murray?

  Well, I mean, it's, it's heartbreaking because the only schooling is Russian schooling, obviously teaching the Russian language, Putin's view of history, and effectively indoctrination. And people can quibble with that term, but it's Putin-esque indoctrination schools. And any children or families that do not want that effectively have to hide and not go out. And there were, I spoke to children and parents who'd had school friends, for instance, the Russians set up in twenty two and twenty three, summer camps for the

• 40:07Douglas Murray?

  children of some of the areas that have been occupied. And the children went off to the camps and then they didn't come back. They were just stolen. I mean, it's thought that around twenty thousand Ukrainian children have been stolen in this fashion. That's not a small thing.

• 40:22Douglas Murray?

  It's not got very much attention, but um yes, I mean, children who would hide whenever the Russian troops came to the door. One teenage boy who described to me how when his mother was out, a woman came around to the house, knocked on the door and gave him his papers and said that he had to attend the next week to sign up for the Russian army. This is, I mean, this is, this is, this is not good. And that's obviously what life is like for thousands of people behind the Russian lines in Ukraine. I just, I just have it in mind when people say things like, you know, well, obviously these regions have to be handed over.

• 41:07Douglas Murray?

  It's not, it's, it's very, very hard if you're Ukrainian to concede to that.

• 41:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and even if they are, as part of the negotiation, to hand it over, I think it'll probably be generations or never that that could be accepted by Ukrainian people.

• 41:23Douglas Murray?

  Absolutely, and I would have thought never.

• 41:25Lex Fridman?

  What do we know about this kidnapping of children? The stories of the thousands of children that the Russian forces kidnapped?

• 41:34Douglas Murray?

  Um, some of them were in orphanages in eastern Ukraine, not all by any means, but some were. And it's a very complicated story, actually, because many children were taken from their families. Many, the Russians said, well, look at these Ukrainians, they don't even look after their children, therefore we will look after them. And I was, I was recently, when I was there, looking into this story, because it's, it's a very interesting question as to why it hasn't had more attention. You know, one thinks of, for instance, the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls some 12 years ago now in northern Nigeria, and the appalling abduction of 300 girls by Boko Haram completely gained the world's attention.

• 42:19Douglas Murray?

  And I was very interested into why the Ukrainian children who'd been taken by the Russians have not gained similar attention. There's a slight similarity with the war in Israel, which I'm sure we'll come on to. But I do think that one reason is that they were effectively hostages and the Ukrainians knew, this is, this is my estimation of the train on it, is that the Ukrainians knew that if they made a great deal about this, was it worth more than they did? That the children would effectively be the most effective bargaining chip.

• 42:55Douglas Murray?

  And I do think there's considerable truth in that because if you look at, for instance, the way in which pressure has been put on the Israeli government by the Israeli population about the kidnapped Israelis, you'll see that it's a pretty effective tactic for any de Tahrir regime or terrorist group to operate in a way that means that the population of the country you're attacking pressure their government to do something in terms of concession. It's a very effective tool. And I think that story was partly played down, not just outside of Ukraine, but also within Ukraine, partly for that reason.

• 43:38Lex Fridman?

  As a truth seeker, as a journalist, how do you operate in that world where, at least to me, it's obvious that there's just a flood of propaganda on both sides? Now, of course, when you go there and directly experience it and talk to people, but those people are still also swimming in the propaganda. So unless you witness stuff directly, sometimes it's hard to know. Like I speak to people on the Russian side, and they're clearly, first of all, hilariously enough, they almost always say that there's no propaganda in Russia.

• 44:13Douglas Murray?

  Course.

• 44:15Lex Fridman?

  Which makes me realize, I mean, you can be completely lied to, maybe I am in the United States as well, and just be unaware. Maybe Earth is run by aliens. Maybe the Earth is flat. So I don't know.

• 44:31Douglas Murray?

  Maybe you've taken mushrooms.

• 44:33Lex Fridman?

  I have before this. And I finally see the truth. And it's you that are deluded, Douglas. Okay, but back to our round earth discussion, round earth shields that we are. How do you know what is true?

• 44:48Douglas Murray?

  You can tell it when the bare facts become not true.

• 44:56Douglas Murray?

  Like you can tell it when somebody is willing to claim that everything caused the invasion of 2022, except for Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine.

• 45:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's a hilarious thing that happens. And I think you've actually speak about this, that people are generally just much more willing to criticize the democratically elected leader.

• 45:20Douglas Murray?

  Always, always.

• 45:21Lex Fridman?

  So the interesting thing that happens is these wise sages that do the narratives of like NATO started the war, right? Which there is some interesting geopolitical depth and truth to that, like that NATO expansion created a complicated geopolitical context, whatever.

• 45:38Douglas Murray?

  Sure.

• 45:39Lex Fridman?

  But they forget to say, like, other parts of that story.

• 45:43Douglas Murray?

  Well, yes, of course. I mean, and I mean, of course, to some extent, it's rather, you know, there's a very, the most irritating type of question asker at any event is the person who says, I was disappointed that in your 30 minute talk, you didn't address X. And I tend to say, well, looking forward to coming to your next talk where in 30 minutes, you'll cover everything that could possibly be covered. There's always stuff that's going to be left on the sides. There's always going to be stuff that's left unaddressed. There's always going to be other angles. There's always going to be somebody else who has this interesting perspective and you can't cover it. Nevertheless, if you cover everything other than the central things, then it's suspicious. Many years ago, I was at a debate

• 46:23Douglas Murray?

  in London, and there was a debate about the origins of World War II. And Pat Buchanan, talking of necromancy, was one of the speakers. And Andrew Roberts, historian, was one of the people on the other side. And at one point, you know, they got so completely stuck into issues of iron ore mining in Poland in the, you know, something like this. And the moderator, I remember, it was just, it was just a melee. And the moderator turns to Andrew Roberts and says, Andrew Roberts, why did World War II begin? And he says, World War II began

• 47:07Douglas Murray?

  because Hitler invaded Poland. And it was a magnificent moment because everything had been a mush. They were just so lost in all the intricate and clever and interesting things that you can talk about, about the origins of a war, that you forget.

• 47:25Douglas Murray?

  To mention the thing that's most important. And certainly, my experience as a journalist and writer is that one of the reasons why you need to go and see things with your own eyes is because people are certain to tell you that what you've seen with your own eyes didn't happen or hasn't happened. And it helps to steel you.

• 47:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Douglas Murray?

  For that moment.

• 47:51Lex Fridman?

  It's a gradual thing that happens where the obvious thing starts being taken for granted and people stop saying it because it's like the boring thing to say at a party. And then all of a sudden, over time, you just almost start questioning whether, you know, like the obvious thing is even true. I don't know what that, how that happens in human psychology, but it does.

• 48:13Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, I think, I think it does. I've observed it in a lot of different places, which is the important thing is the only thing you do forget. Everything else is what you remember. And some of us are, for some reason, wired in a way where we, we don't, we try not to forget the important thing.

• 48:27Lex Fridman?

  Remember the obvious thing, yeah.

• 48:28Douglas Murray?

  Yes. And as you say, and I'm not wanting to be the boring guy at the party who reiterates what is true.

• 48:35Douglas Murray?

  Because what a douchebag you'd be if you were that guy.

• 48:37Lex Fridman?

  Nobody likes Captain Obvious at a party. Okay, is it possible that Donald Trump is a mediator, a successful negotiator that brings a stable peace to Ukraine?

• 48:51Douglas Murray?

  It's possible. We'll have to see. I think it's just too early and complicated to tell. That he wants to bring a peace seems to me to be obvious. He's stated it a lot of times.

• 49:05Douglas Murray?

  Whether he can, we're just gonna have to see. It's extremely hard to see some of the parameters of the peace still. And I would suggest that the most, one, not the, the most difficult, but one of the most difficult is that there is no peace guarantee on paper that the Ukrainians can possibly believe. I just, it doesn't matter because we've, we, we in the West, we, some of the countries in the West have said it before that we'd secure their.

• 49:36Douglas Murray?

  Their peace, and we haven't. And so what other than NATO membership, which is not possible in my view, what other than NATO membership would reassure the Ukrainians that they are going to have their borders secured and the peace of Ukraine secured? I can't see.

• 49:55Lex Fridman?

  I think there's not going to be ever a guarantee that you can trust. I think the way you have a guarantee, implicit guarantees by having military and economic partnerships with as many partners as possible. So you have partnerships with the Middle East, you have partnerships with India, perhaps even with China, with the United States, with many nations in Europe.

• 50:20Douglas Murray?

  All of which still suggests that if there's enough financial interests in Ukraine, they would prevent another Russian invasion.

• 50:31Lex Fridman?

  There would be financial pressure, yeah. There would be, you know, Russia needs to be friends with somebody, either China or the West. I think a world that's flourishing would have Russia trading and being friends with the West and the East.

• 50:53Douglas Murray?

  Talk would be ideal. It would be ideal if the regime in Moscow wanted it, but that's that not. I mean, again, you get into the thing of, you know, people accuse of Russophobia, but I mean, I do believe that after the fall of the wall, Russia was ill-treated by the West, not treated with the, some of the courtesy that it required. I do think that. And at the same time, that doesn't justify the actions of Russia in the last 20 years.

• 51:31Lex Fridman?

  Right, but let's descend from the surrealist to the realist. It's very possible for Russia to be on the verge of military invasion of these nations and that being wrong. While also not doing it because they're afraid to hurt the partnerships with the West and with China.

• 51:52Douglas Murray?

  It's possible, but the alliance they formed with this rogue alliance with China to a considerable extent, North Korea, not useful, and Iran is something they seem to find bearable. It's not a very, it's not a very good alliance in most people's analysis, but it's an alliance.

• 52:16Lex Fridman?

  It's bearable, but I don't think, maybe you disagree with this, I don't think the Russian people or even Putin wants to be isolated from the West. I think it wants to be friends with the West and with the East and with everybody. He just also wants Ukraine, right? And there's, how does the Rolling Stones song go?

• 52:40Douglas Murray?

  Which one?

• 52:43Lex Fridman?

  Not the satisfaction one.

• 52:45Douglas Murray?

  Sympathy with the devil?

• 52:47Lex Fridman?

  That's the one. You got me on that one. No, like there, there's interests, whether it's expanding the sphere of influence, that's one thing on the table, but that can be put aside if you want to maintain the partnerships with these nations. And if Ukraine has strong economic partnerships with those nations, then that prevents Russia from invading.

• 53:10Douglas Murray?

  I think the premise is one that I've seen before. There was a famous, what was his name? Norman Angell. He wrote this book, which was a fantastic bestseller in his day, where he believed that Europe would be in a period of endless Kantian peace because the prospect of European powers going to war was so economically unviable.

• 53:37Douglas Murray?

  The book was reissued after World War One, and I never got the second edition. But I assume it was significantly rewritten.

• 53:46Lex Fridman?

  That's a very cynical take that just because the book is wrong.

• 53:49Douglas Murray?

  I'm not saying just the book is wrong. I'm saying that the idea that

• 53:54Douglas Murray?

  that cooperation on an economic and other levels is any

• 54:02Douglas Murray?

  significant preventative device to madness breaking out is not something I see. Could deter some people.

• 54:11Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 54:12Douglas Murray?

  It could deter some very, very rational, economically driven actors. But it fails to take into account all of the other things that motivate people to go to war and to invade and to go mad.

• 54:24Lex Fridman?

  OK, well, I would argue that in the 21st century, one of the reasons we have much fewer wars is because of the much more. So there's few tools here on the geopolitical stage. One of them is that you were just much more interconnected economically, globally interconnected. And that is always a present pressure on the world to keep peace. There's a lot of money to be made from peace. There's also a lot of money to be made from war. There's a lot of interest, attention. And I'm just presenting one of the tools that a leader should be using. The alternative is what? Military force? That is an interesting one, sometimes a useful one.

• 55:09Lex Fridman?

  But unfortunately, it has its downsides also. And after three years of war and the hundreds of thousands dead, you have to start wondering, what are the options on the table?

• 55:21Douglas Murray?

  I agree. I'm obviously for economic cooperation. But my only caveat is not to think that that is something which is of ultimate interest or even at the top of the list of interests of despots, tyrants, extremists who want something else.

• 55:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 55:50Lex Fridman?

  But can you read the mind of Vladimir Putin?

• 55:53Douglas Murray?

  No.

• 55:55Lex Fridman?

  A lot of the ideas I hear about peace is Putin bad. Victory must be achieved, NATO membership required.

• 56:07Douglas Murray?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Lex Fridman?

  There's this kind of like, but what's the, what's the, you have to come to the table to, to end the killing is one. And to have different ideas of how to have a non-zero chance of peace. So that, you know, the options are, it seems to me, the only option, not the only option, but the likeliest option is a lot of strong economic partnerships. There's of course other radical options. There's a, there's Russia joining NATO or something like this, or there's giving, you know, doing flirting with World War III essentially, giving nukes to Ukraine or something like this.

• 56:51Lex Fridman?

  There's like crazy stuff or a totally new military alliance with France and, and Britain and Germany and European nations and Ukraine, or some weird network of military power that threatens Russia in some way, or maybe some big breakthrough partnership between India, China and Ukraine, something like this, just some really out there ideas. And I think that's how the world, that's how the world finds a balance and realigns itself in interesting ways.

• 57:26Douglas Murray?

  No, it could be. I, I, I hope your, I hope your idea is right. I think it's about the, what's the most peaceful way for this to be resolved. My only caveat, as I say, is, and also never forget to factor in that people want different things in this world. And some people don't dream as you dream.

• 57:55Lex Fridman?

  I think we'll talk about this in your new book, Death Cults. That one is an easier one for me to understand to the story that you're describing. I am more hesitant to assign psychopathy to leaders of major nations.

• 58:13Douglas Murray?

  Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not by any means urging you to regard Vladimir Putin as a millenarian madman who cannot be in any way understood.

• 58:23Lex Fridman?

  I think he could be negotiated and reasoned with.

• 58:28Douglas Murray?

  From your lips to God's ears.

• 58:32Lex Fridman?

  Can you still mean the case for and then against Zelensky as the right leader for Ukraine at this moment? Is he the right person to take it to the point of peace?

• 58:41Douglas Murray?

  We'll see. If he can, then of course he is. You know, he deserves enormous respect for galvanizing his people, for being elected in the first place, for galvanizing his nation at a time of incredible peril, for playing the international game of getting support for his country well.

• 59:06Douglas Murray?

  And sometimes the person who does that, not there are many people like that, can be the person who also brings about a peace deal and sometimes not.

• 59:13Lex Fridman?

  I think there's a degree to which he may have seen too much suffering of the people, the land he loves, to be able to sit down at a table with a world leader who

• 59:28Lex Fridman?

  did the destruction and to be able to

• 59:30Douglas Murray?

  That is very hard.

• 59:31Lex Fridman?

  compromise on anything.

• 59:34Douglas Murray?

  That's, that's possible. Again, it puts the onus on him, though. It sort of slightly presupposes that Putin doesn't have the same human instinct on that. It is extremely hard. I've noticed this in a lot of conflicts. It's extremely hard, the way in which outsiders come in and others who haven't seen what you've seen or gone through what you've gone through and say, you know, it's time to get around the negotiating table and just, you know, you think you didn't see what I saw, you didn't go through what I went through. Who are you to tell me? Comes back to that thing of the visitor from the land of war and the visitor from the land of peace.

• 1:00:16Douglas Murray?

  The visitor from the land of peace can easily talk about getting around negotiating tables, but the visitor from the land of war has seen other things. And it's very hard for somebody who hasn't seen it to tell the person who has that they should act differently.

• 1:00:38Lex Fridman?

  And the sad thing about humanity is both the person from the land of peace and the person from the land of war are right.

• 1:00:48Douglas Murray?

  Yes, that's a struggle. That's definitely a struggle. It's like asking somebody to forgive. I've seen that at a lot of ends of conflicts. People say, you know, the important thing is that we forgive and move on. And then the other person says, you know, your child didn't die of shrapnel wounds.

• 1:01:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, this is, you know, I got a lot of heat for an interview I did with Zelensky. By the way, people privately, the people that message me is all love and support, even the people that disagree, Ukrainian soldiers, people online are ruthless. They're misrepresenting me, they're lying.

• 1:01:27Douglas Murray?

  People online are ruthless and misrepresenting and lying?

• 1:01:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Douglas Murray?

  Good God, Lex, you've discovered a new phenomenon.

• 1:01:34Lex Fridman?

  I'm a real radical intellectual.

• 1:01:37Douglas Murray?

  Nothing misses your eye.

• 1:01:41Lex Fridman?

  I see the truth and I'm unafraid to point it out. No, there's a degree, this idea that you need to compromise with the person, with the leader of a nation you're at war with, and in so doing, to some degree, are forgiving their actions. Because the actual feeling you have is you want it to be fair. And the definition of fair, when you've seen that much suffering, is for him and everybody around him, and maybe even all of the people on the other side to just die. Because you've seen towards suffering.

• 1:02:23Lex Fridman?

  But the the other side of that is, yes, there's children that have died. But you go coming to the negotiation table.

• 1:02:32Douglas Murray?

  Other children from dying. Yes, of course.

• 1:02:34Lex Fridman?

  And so like, there is just, you had this kind of way of speaking about it, embodying that perspective, that it's naive to say to come to the negotiation table. And it is for a person from the land of war. But the very smart, intelligent and not naive person from the land of peace, that is often right in some deep sense about the long arc of history. For them, it does, it is the right thing to come to the negotiation table to end the more killing.

• 1:03:04Douglas Murray?

  The one thing I would add to that, though, is, you know, don't forget that it it also depends on whether or not there's a clear shot of winning.

• 1:03:13Lex Fridman?

  Sure.

• 1:03:14Douglas Murray?

  If there's a clear shot of winning, and that's of the the most important, the most important thing in wars is not uh final negotiations or anything. It's simply winning and losing. And if you have a clear shot of winning and you can take it and you're near it,

• 1:03:32Douglas Murray?

  then having somebody else come in and saying,

• 1:03:36Douglas Murray?

  why not stop just before victory is is is very hard. That's one of the complexities, one of the many, many complexities of the conflict we're talking about.

• 1:03:44Lex Fridman?

  You know what's the the other big complexity of that? Because the clear shot of winning is like a a man walking through the desert seeing water. It could be during war, it really is an illusion. So here's what happens. The really complicated aspect of negotiation is in order to negotiate peace from a place of strength.

• 1:04:08Lex Fridman?

  You have to have victory in sight.

• 1:04:11Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 1:04:12Lex Fridman?

  And so the temptation from that position is to not negotiate, is to keep pushing forward to achieve victory. And this, I would say, hindsight is 2020, but this is the failure in 22 and two occasions to achieve, to negotiate a ceasefire and peace. One in the spring, because there was a, Ukraine was in a real big, I would say, position of strength, having fended off the Russian forces around Kiev. That's one. And then, as you mentioned, in the fall of 22 with, with Kherson and Kharkiv, had a lot of military success. They were in a place of strength.

• 1:04:57Lex Fridman?

  And from that place, they've decided to keep going because victory was in sight. But that was also an opportunity to make peace.

• 1:05:05Douglas Murray?

  It's perfectly possible. Yes.

• 1:05:07Lex Fridman?

  That's the hard thing.

• 1:05:08Douglas Murray?

  It's very hard. It's all hard. But I'm just, again, it's, victory can be won in wars and is often won in wars. And you're right, they can also grind on because nobody has the capability to make a breakthrough.

• 1:05:26Douglas Murray?

  It's a case, I mean, the wisdom about civil wars tends to be that they sort of burn out after about 10 years or so

• 1:05:36Douglas Murray?

  for similar reasons.

• 1:05:37Lex Fridman?

  When you're in the war, can you actually know that a victory can be won?

• 1:05:42Douglas Murray?

  It's a very good question. And you mean troops on the battlefield or military leaders or political leaders?

• 1:05:49Lex Fridman?

  Military and political leaders. It just feels like, like I said, man in the desert seeing water. I think there's a sense that victory is so close. There are times, there's times in a war when you feel like victory is close.

• 1:06:04Douglas Murray?

  No, you're right.

• 1:06:05Lex Fridman?

  And then it just slips away.

• 1:06:07Douglas Murray?

  Yes, it's an interesting insight. It's like the way in which there's a, there's a force in nature, which is that if you amass an army,

• 1:06:19Douglas Murray?

  amassing it will pull you in to using it.

• 1:06:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Douglas Murray?

  Extremely hard to amass an army somewhere and then say, let's go back.

• 1:06:30Douglas Murray?

  Yes, you're right. No, it's one of many, many interesting aspects to warfare.

• 1:06:35Lex Fridman?

  I think the sad thing about successful wars, at least in the modern day, is it takes a great military leader, which I would argue that Zelensky really unified Ukraine in this fight in the beginning of the war. You have to be that. And like you said, after you amassed the army and had military success, to be able to step back and make peace. That those two just don't often go hand in hand. Because again, as a wartime leader, especially one who has seen the suffering firsthand,

• 1:07:15Lex Fridman?

  walking away is tough, especially also combined with that, just the realities of war where there is probably corruption, that there is things, you know, once the war ends, there has to be investigations. Because the war wasn't won, you might not turn out to be, when history looks at it, the good guy. And a leader doesn't want to, a leader always wants to be the good guy. So there's just all psychological complexities that are, and you look at this whole picture.

• 1:07:49Lex Fridman?

  In the basic sense, if you want Ukraine to flourish, if you want humanity to flourish, you just ask the question, okay, so what is the thing I would like to see?

• 1:08:02Douglas Murray?

  There's so many historical analogies you can give, but just surely not rewarding Putin's actions in any way would be a good way to deter him and other dictators from trying to grab land.

• 1:08:25Douglas Murray?

  In the future.

• 1:08:27Lex Fridman?

  So, yeah, and but this is nuanced because like you, it's very probably good to be the boring person at the party that says dictatorships are bad. Democracies are good. Many of the ideals of the West.

• 1:08:42Douglas Murray?

  Democracies are better.

• 1:08:43Lex Fridman?

  Better, yes.

• 1:08:44Douglas Murray?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Lex Fridman?

  That sounds like Animal Farm, but yes, two legs better. But yes, democracy is better. And invading countries is bad.

• 1:08:56Lex Fridman?

  But World War III is bad, too. So after you say something is bad, what's the next step? Because military intervention in a lot of these conflicts.

• 1:09:08Douglas Murray?

  It'll be about deterrence.

• 1:09:09Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but what's what's effective deterrence?

• 1:09:12Douglas Murray?

  That we're going to have to keep going over for a long time to come.

• 1:09:16Lex Fridman?

  My question is, how can we achieve peace in April? In May, right? Not like the adults at the table all seem to tell me, well, it's a process. It's complicated. You know, there is, it just feels like this is a thing that might go into the next winter. And they're still maybe initial ceasefire and the ceasefire is broken and there's more people dying.

• 1:09:43Douglas Murray?

  Sure.

• 1:09:43Lex Fridman?

  And it's that mess.

• 1:09:47Lex Fridman?

  It seems like civility and politeness ignores the fact that people are dying every single day.

• 1:09:52Douglas Murray?

  I mean, of course, like we were all, almost everybody, not everybody, but almost everyone would like the killing to stop immediately. Of course.

• 1:09:59Lex Fridman?

  No, like I think that is the boring thing at the party. Yes, but they don't say it often enough, not off. There has to be a frustration. There has to be a frustration. I don't understand why Putin, Zelensky and Trump can't just meet in a room together without signing anything.

• 1:10:17Lex Fridman?

  Leaders meeting and discussing and like the human connection. There's so many layers of diplomats. It's the problem I have with the managerial class. I don't, they schedule meetings really well.

• 1:10:27Douglas Murray?

  Sure.

• 1:10:28Lex Fridman?

  They don't get shit done. And I would love it if people got shit done. So the soldiers get shit done. They have, they're fighting the reality of the war. And then the leaders have the capacity to get shit done on the, on the scale of nations and geopolitics. But like this diplomatic meetings and.

• 1:10:48Douglas Murray?

  No, I agree a lot. I share your frustration about it. At the same time, I think.

• 1:10:54Douglas Murray?

  I share your frustration because I've seen it all, a lot of it, you know, in my own eyes. I mean, there was a battalion out there the other week and they were hit just after I left their base. And you wouldn't believe what a thermobaric bomb can do to the human body. And I share your frustration with that. At the same time, one of the things that happens if you are rushing is that you do, and I've seen this elsewhere, you will put pressure on the people you can pressurize, and you will not put enough pressure on the

• 1:11:33Douglas Murray?

  people you can't pressurize. And that is one of the worrying things that could happen with this. Simply, you can put, America can put extraordinary diplomatic, financial, intelligence, military pressure on Ukraine. And it can put significant pressure on Putin, but it's much easier to pressure Zelensky. And that's one of the many things that makes it harder, is that the temptation to rush for peace, accepting that peace is the most desirable thing, and accepting the horrors of war, which, you know, we can linger on,

• 1:12:16Douglas Murray?

  but you, accepting all that, if somebody says, we've got to get peace today, and the three of them around a table, the most likely thing is that it'll be, that it'll be the person who you can pressure most easily, who will be the person that you pressure, and as a result, have an outcome which, yes, might stop the killing as soon as possible, but might also set up a situation which rewards the aggressor and effectively punishes the victim. And that's an extremely ugly and common thing to happen.

• 1:12:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And that's the other boring thing to say. The boring truth that the easy shortcut here is, is to punish Ukraine. And you just have to not do it.

• 1:13:02Douglas Murray?

  Let's keep being the boring people of the party.

• 1:13:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Well, nobody's gonna invite us. All right. Let's go from one complicated conflict to perhaps an even more complicated one. Israel and Palestine.

• 1:13:28Lex Fridman?

  Can you take me through what happened on October 7th? As you understand it and as you outline at the beginning of the book?

• 1:13:37Douglas Murray?

  Well, the book on democracies and death cults is a mixture of firsthand reporting and observation, interviews and a wider reflection, not just on the war that's been going on since the 7th of October, but the war's been going on a lot longer. And also, I suppose, on the, what for me is one of the overwhelming questions, which I'm sure we'll get to, which is the reaction in the rest of the world. Obviously, on the 7th itself, it was a brigade-sized attack on Israel from Gaza. Hamas broke through the security fence and attacked all the softest targets they could.

• 1:14:21Douglas Murray?

  They swiftly overwhelmed things like the observation base in Nahal Az. They ran through the communities in the south, very peaceful, peacenice, effectively, communities of the kibbutzim, as they're called, the communities, and murdered and raped and burned and kidnapped. And of course, they, from their point of view, had the great good fortune of also coming across hundreds of young people dancing in the early hours of the morning at a dance party and rampaged through that with RPGs and Kalashnikovs and grenades and hammers

• 1:15:02Douglas Murray?

  and more and got within, well, 20 kilometers into Israel.

• 1:15:10Douglas Murray?

  Places like Ofakim and Sterot, important towns, and carried out their massacres there as well. We now know that the plan was Hezbollah did the same thing from the north. Hezbollah joined in the war within 24 hours by starting firing rockets again in very large numbers into northern Israel from southern Lebanon. But the plan was that they would do the same thing from the north and carry out similar massacres there and effectively be able to meet in the middle and garrote Israel from the centre. The interesting reason why, I think it'll be found out in the future, but why they didn't coordinate better was Hamas didn't trust any line of communication to Hezbollah

• 1:15:54Douglas Murray?

  to let them know exactly when they were going to do it that wouldn't be intercepted. The Iranian revolutionary government in Tehran, which obviously funds Hamas and Hezbollah and trains and arms, knew of the plan. It was a very successful attempt to annihilate the state, but they didn't get close to that. But they got worryingly closer than people might have thought they were capable of. I think from the Israeli side, it was obviously one of the most, if not the most catastrophic intelligence and military failures since the foundation of the state. And I think there are several reasons why. One is a perception problem.

• 1:16:37Douglas Murray?

  What a lot of military commanders and others described to me as the conception. The conception that had prevailed in Israel for some years and security military establishment was that Hamas were content with being corrupt and governing Gaza and lining their pockets and living in Qatar and becoming billionaires, but that like many other terrorist groups and cults, that they would end up becoming just corrupt and.

• 1:17:15Douglas Murray?

  Not losing their ideology, but the ideology becomes secondary. That's the first thing was there was just a massive error of the conception in Israel. And then, then the multiple manifold security and military failures of the day and leading up to the day.

• 1:17:36Douglas Murray?

  And there will be, there already have been quite a lot of people held to account for that. And there doubtless will be in the future as well. The, the single thing I heard, which I heard most and which was most distressing in a way, was the number of people who described to me, you know, who survived the massacres in the south, who said that, you know, they'd said to their children, don't worry, the army will be here in minutes. And they weren't, you know, in many places, it was many hours till the army got there.

• 1:18:14Douglas Murray?

  And there are reasons for that. There are some reasons that will be military failings, leadership failings. Other things were very, I discovered were very human failings. I don't want to overstress the failure of the army because actually certain units and things got down very fast. There was a unit, Duftevan, who got down to the junction, you know, by within about an hour, 90 minutes of the massacres starting and joined in the fight. And then there were self-starters, who I write about in the book, extraordinary people who just, like broke orders and just realized the magnitude of what was happening and said, we need it in the south.

• 1:18:57Douglas Murray?

  Go and fought very hard for hours, days in some cases. But the complexities on the ground were unbelievable. I mean, as, as usually happens in warfare. But what they call the fog of war is a very real thing. You, you, you know what it's, you can see it in hindsight, but you can't see when you're in it. And one of the things that made it very complicated was, for instance, Hamas coming in,

• 1:19:28Douglas Murray?

  taking uniforms off dead Israelis, wearing them, coming in with Israeli style apparatus on them.

• 1:19:40Douglas Murray?

  There's a Muslim doctor I quote in the book I interviewed who describes how he was going to his, he's an Israeli Muslim Arab and he was going to, he's a doctor, he was going to his shift at the hospital at six thirty in the morning. The rockets start coming in because the rockets started first and then the the full invasion. And he described to me how, um, you know, he's one of the members of this group, Hatz, the United Hatzalah, which is a first responders group. And um, they sort of, you know, they get an alert and it tells them that, you know, a car has crashed nearby and they they they put on their, uh, you know, first aid kit and so on and go, and he got one of those alerts at one of the junctions and uh,

• 1:20:23Douglas Murray?

  realized there was a car, that something had happened and there were some dead bodies and he he stops and he uh, sees these men dressed as soldiers. Uh, and they start and he's wearing his Hatzalah gear and they start firing at him. And he just thinks, what the hell, what the hell is going on? And uh, they turned out to be Hamas dressed as Israeli soldiers. They uh, used him as a human shield to try to protect from any air assault and uh, in the end, they shot him and left him and he survived. He's a very, very brave man. Um, so there was a lot of confusion like that.

• 1:21:03Douglas Murray?

  There's a girl whose father I interviewed, she was at the Nova party and uh, I met him at one of the reunions of the party and the weeks after and the reunions of the survivors and the family and so on. And he described how in the last moments of his daughter's life, she phoned him on her phone, like a lot of people, you know, he reassured her the army would get there and so on and uh, her boyfriend was shot in the head and was lying on her lap and she was obviously panicked and they'd managed to get into a car and escape the party, but they went to a, a a community where they thought they'd be safe in the south of Israel and

• 1:21:43Douglas Murray?

  they were told to stay where they were by somebody who she said was a policeman and he wasn't a policeman, he was Hamas dressed as police and uh, she died, she was shot and and killed as well. And um, so there was a lot of confusion like that.

• 1:22:01Douglas Murray?

  It's hopefully, you know, the world will find out exactly what went wrong. Israel will find out exactly what went wrong that led to this catastrophe. But I mean, it was a complete catastrophe.

• 1:22:16Lex Fridman?

  Do you have a sense of how such an intelligence failure could have happened? So there's a bit of a temptation to go into conspiracy land because it's such a giant intelligence failure. It seems that there is some manipulation on the inside for political reasons or for...

• 1:22:34Douglas Murray?

  You don't need to go into conspiracy land. I mean, I think there are people who say that there were parts of the intelligence network and so on that were trying, that were withholding the information. I don't know. Again, people will find out.

• 1:22:49Douglas Murray?

  There's an awful lot of politics inside Israel and it's hard to know that at this stage. I think that most people are sort of still Israeli and not Israeli, including people who are anti-Israel, who just believe that, you know, Israeli military and particularly intelligence dominance is so, so strong that there must have been some kind of conspiracy. Otherwise, how could this have happened? I don't think you need to go into that. I think that, I mean, for instance, some of the young women at the observation base have, are on the record, they've said, I spoke to myself and they, who said that they

• 1:23:30Douglas Murray?

  had been warning in the weeks running up to the seventh, that they were seeing maneuvers and training by the border, which suggested that Hamas was, was going to do something like this. And, and they say that they were ignored. Though you speak to some of the more senior commanders about that and they say the thing is that this stuff was happening all the time. So it's very hard, it's very hard to know at the moment.

• 1:23:58Lex Fridman?

  Can you talk through your understanding of who and what Hamas is? Its history and the governing ideology of this group?

• 1:24:08Douglas Murray?

  Well, Hamas, in a way, quite easy to understand because they they say what their ambitions are, they say what their beliefs are. They've said it from their governing charter onwards. And you also have the advantage with Hamas that they, as it were, in trying to understand them is that they they tend to do what they say and act on what they believe. The primary aim of Hamas is to destroy the state of Israel and then see. They're not an unusual group, sadly. The the bit of it that is hard for some people to understand, I think, is that is that they really do mean what they say and that they really do mean what they say they want to do.

• 1:24:52Douglas Murray?

  And I give a number of examples in the book of this, but I mean, the most

• 1:24:58Douglas Murray?

  obvious is the case of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, who is generally regarded as having orchestrated and and arranged the 7th October. He, we know a fair amount about him because he was in prison in Israel in the 2000s for murdering Palestinians in Gaza. And he was released in the prison swap for the he was one of the more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners inside Israel, who was released in his in a swap for Gilad Shalit, the abducted Israeli soldier. And Yahya Sinwar, in prison in Israel,

• 1:25:43Douglas Murray?

  talked to, among others, a dentist who ended up saving his life.

• 1:25:49Douglas Murray?

  Because Yahya Sinwar had a brain tumor and this dentist identified this and actually sent him to the hospital and the Israelis famously removed the tumor and saved Sinwar's life. But this dentist used to speak to him in prison not very regularly and has related, not least to the New York Times, his conversations with Sinwar. And Sinwar said in one of those conversations, he said, you know, he said, at the moment, you, Israel, are strong. But one day you'll be weak and then I'll come. And that's what he did.

• 1:26:32Lex Fridman?

  Is it a hatred of Israel?

• 1:26:36Lex Fridman?

  Or is it a hatred of Jews? Is it on the level of nations or the level of religion?

• 1:26:42Douglas Murray?

  Both. It's both. I mean, it originates from a religious mindset, but it's, of course, political as well. I mean, the Hamas Charter, of course, some people sort of think the Hamas Charter is of no significance. And I often notice this sleight of hand that people do, again, it goes back to what we were saying earlier, forget everything other than the most important, basic things. But the Hamas Charter, among other things, quotes the Hadith, that, you know, the end times will not come until all of the rocks and the trees shout out, oh, Muslim, there's a Jew behind me, come and kill him. And that

• 1:27:23Douglas Murray?

  is, so Hamas is both, obviously, anti-Israeli, obviously, and anti-Jewish, obviously. It's, it's, and by the way, I mean, one of the many painful stories I tell in the book is of- The fact that so many of the people in the communities that they attacked, it's not as if there'd be a right community to attack and a wrong community to attack, but that many of the communities they attacked were communities which deeply, deeply dreamed of the idea of living in peace with their Palestinian neighbours. There's a woman who, whose name has become relatively famous since, certainly is famous

• 1:28:06Douglas Murray?

  inside Israel, Vivin Silver, who was a peace activist who spent every weekend driving Gazan children from the border to, if they had very rare medical needs that could not be seen attention to within inside Gaza, would drive them to Israeli hospitals, and she spent every weekend doing that. Worked for all of the sort of left-wing peace-nic organisations in Israel, and for a while after the seventh, her neighbours and others thought that she had been taken captive into Gaza, and that she, there was a hostage poster for her, and there were appeals by the various peace-nic organisations for Hamas to hand her over, but it turned out she'd been burned

• 1:28:48Douglas Murray?

  alive in her home, and this wasn't discovered for quite a long time because there was so little DNA left of her, that it was very hard to identify the remains as being hers. So, there were, there were a lot of, just a lot of people in the Gaza envelope, as it's, it's called in Israel, in the area around Gaza, who, who would have been the people who, you know, wanted to live peacefully with the Gazans someday, and those, there's a certain, among the many, it's not an irony, but just among the sort of pains of the day is that, is that so, so overwhelmingly, these, these are the people that Hamas brought hell to.

• 1:29:35Lex Fridman?

  The response to October 7th by Israel. Can you steal me on the case that Israel went too far?

• 1:29:41Douglas Murray?

  Well, the case that that started from very early on that that critics of Israel had was the the claim that, I mean, I think I first heard it on about the 8th of October before Israel had done anything in response, was the claim that Israel must act proportionately in response. And I I have a critique of this that I've often expressed, which is that there is such a thing as proportionality in warfare.

• 1:30:11Douglas Murray?

  And at the same time, Israel is always accused of acting disproportionately. And the proportionality that the rest, much of the rest of the world seems to think Israel should express in warfare is to is to have an equal, an equal level of suffering or killing on both sides. I don't think there's any law of war that says that, you know, if you kill 1,200 people and you kidnap another 250, that, as it were, the other side's allowed to do the same back. But that's what a lot of people think. And then when they see the death toll escalating on the Gazan side, they say Israel has acted disproportionately

• 1:30:54Douglas Murray?

  and has overreacted. That one is is is tricky because, you know, it's it's my belief that, I mean, again, this is a basic thing, but it has to be stated that 9 million citizens of Israel, if you extrapolate that out to what the 7th of October would have meant in American terms, you'd be talking about a day on which, if if the attack had happened in America, where 44,000 Americans were killed in one day and 10,000 American citizens taken hostage.

• 1:31:30Douglas Murray?

  Nobody can tell me that if such an atrocity occurred, that America would not do whatever it needed to destroy the groups that had done that and to retrieve the hostages who'd been taken.

• 1:31:46Lex Fridman?

  So just on that point, I agree with you 100%. America would do, would hit hard back. And I think a lot of Americans would feel justified in that. But it's also possible that

• 1:31:59Lex Fridman?

  the military industrial complex and the politicians would do something like the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which means extend far beyond hitting back and actually do a thing that's destructive to everybody, including America financially and the flourishing of America and the flourishing of humanity broadly and the region and the stability and the war on terrorism.

• 1:32:24Lex Fridman?

  If that's a real thing, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan did not maybe succeed in defeating terrorism or even making progress. It probably made more terrorists than not. So there's a justified feeling of hitting back and going after somebody like Bin Laden in the case of 9/11. And then there's just the actual implementation. And it seems like the implementation can sometimes

• 1:32:54Lex Fridman?

  unintended or unintended have consequences that are bordering on war crimes, if not downright war crimes. Now, this, this is a general statement. And now we'll look at Israel where things are small land. Everything is very compact. There's a lot of complexities that are well studied that we've talked about extensively.

• 1:33:19Douglas Murray?

  Well, the two stated aims of the Israelis after the seventh were to get the hostages back and to destroy Hamas. And many people said that you could do one, but not both. And I actually think they've gone a long way to doing both. By no means everything, there are still hostages as we're speaking, held in Gaza, including a young American. And Hamas is not completely destroyed. It's very, very significantly degraded, but it's not completely destroyed. But those are the two aims.

• 1:33:56Douglas Murray?

  I believe that, I mean, I've seen as much of the war as any outside observer.

• 1:34:06Douglas Murray?

  I don't know, there might be some exceptions maybe, but. And so I think I can say with considerable certainty what the Israelis have and haven't done.

• 1:34:17Douglas Murray?

  The, the, there were various operations at the beginning, various plans, which didn't happen, like storming straight in and getting, for instance, as many hostages as possible out of the Shifa complex, which is called a hospital, but also at the very least the Hamas command headquarters. And there was a, there was a plan to maybe go and do that fast, but it was, it was avoided because of the number of deaths on all sides that would be likely to happen. The Israelis did actually hold back at the beginning. There was a, a period of making sure that when they went into Gaza, they didn't do so in any way blind.

• 1:35:02Douglas Murray?

  Gaza is a very built up area and population wise is, is, is densely populated. Something, by the way, which the people who, who claim frivolously that Israel have been committing genocide never take account of, which is the fact that the Gazan population has boomed since the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, it's almost doubled.

• 1:35:25Douglas Murray?

  But yes, it's a densely populated area and it's an incredibly difficult place for the train of war because of one thing in particular, which is that Hamas, goes back a bit to our conversation earlier, but this is a much more extreme example. I mean, Hamas really don't play by the rules. In fact, they, they use the rules of war, the laws of war completely to their own advantage. You know, it has to be reiterated, you are not meant to.

• 1:35:55Douglas Murray?

  Disguise your army as civilians. You're not meant to use places of care like hospitals as bases for your military operations. You're not meant to use schools and places of worship as operating centers of war.

• 1:36:18Douglas Murray?

  And Hamas does all of these things and has always done so. And it does so with the very obvious reason that for them, the whole thing is a two for one offer. You, you, you get to operate everywhere. And if the Israelis operate anywhere, you claim that this is a war crime because how could they attack this group of civilians? These people who are dressed as civilians, these people merely fighting from a mosque and so on. And that's why, that's why everybody who's been to Gaza, who's seen the fighting knows

• 1:36:59Douglas Murray?

  the same thing, which is this is just incredibly difficult, difficult warfare of a kind that, American troops have seen in the last 20 years in Fallujah and elsewhere. Kurdish militia, the Peshmerga, saw when they were fighting as our frontline troops in the war against ISIS, similar house to house, but by no means with the same entrenched bases. You know, again, it can't be stressed enough that Hamas has used the years since he is ready to withdraw from 2005 to build this vast underground tunnel network. And again, it's obvious, but it has to be remembered.

• 1:37:45Douglas Murray?

  When is, and I quote one of Hamas leaders in the book saying this in an interview, when they build their tunnels, they do so in order that their tunnels are used by them, Hamas, to store their weaponry, to secure their fighters and to hold hostages. They do not build their underground tunnel networks for the safety of Gazan civilians avoiding aerial bombardment.

• 1:38:13Douglas Murray?

  You know, the every difference in the world seems to me to exist between a country which does build bomb shelters for its citizens and a government which builds bomb shelters for its bombs.

• 1:38:31Lex Fridman?

  Can you discuss the flow of money here? So how does Hamas, how does Hamas, the leadership, use the money? So you started to talk about the tunnels, but how much corruption is there? Can you just lay it all out? Because I think that's an important part of the picture here.

• 1:38:49Douglas Murray?

  It's totally corrupt. Every Hamas leader who's now dead, died a billionaire.

• 1:39:00Lex Fridman?

  With a B.

• 1:39:01Douglas Murray?

  With a B. To say that they used Gaza's resources or the resources that came into Gaza for their own ends is to just vastly understate matters.

• 1:39:19Douglas Murray?

  Hamas used everything that came in to build the infrastructure of terror that allowed them to do the seventh and everything since.

• 1:39:31Douglas Murray?

  They militarized the whole of Gaza. They, by the estimations of troops I've been with there, they, every second to third house had weaponry stashed there. Bombs, RPGs, Kalashnikovs, rockets, tunnel entrances.

• 1:39:52Douglas Murray?

  The network that they just embedded all these years was total. They, they, you know, one of the many, many tragedies of this is that whatever you're reading of the rights and wrongs of the Israeli withdrawal in 2005.

• 1:40:13Douglas Murray?

  It was an opportunity for the Gaza to become something else. It could have become a thriving state-led. It could have been a thriving Palestinian state. It's just that Hamas, like the PLO before them, decided that they wanted to destroy Israel more than they wanted to create a Palestinian state. And that is to the great, great detriment of the Palestinians of Gaza, to put it at its mildest.

• 1:40:44Lex Fridman?

  So just to outline here, leadership of Hamas are stealing the money that gets sent by Qatar by everybody. So they're putting in their pocket and then the-

• 1:40:53Douglas Murray?

  By the American taxpayer and by the European taxpayer as well, yeah.

• 1:40:56Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:56Douglas Murray?

  Well, yeah, but I mean, it's not just about stealing the money. It's about using the money and the infrastructure to annihilate your neighbor. I mean, that's-

• 1:41:05Lex Fridman?

  Those two things, but the corruption is a signal from an economic perspective, but it's also a signal of deep moral corruption because they're screwing over the Palestinian people.

• 1:41:20Douglas Murray?

  Yes, a cynicism, certainly, yeah.

• 1:41:22Lex Fridman?

  Okay, and then with the money they do spend on the Palestinian cause, they're not doing that to build up Gaza. They're doing it to strengthen the militaristic capabilities-

• 1:41:36Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 1:41:38Lex Fridman?

  -of the terrorist organization of Hamas. You have, maybe you can correct me on this, have said that the people of Gaza have some significant responsibility for the actions of Hamas-

• 1:41:56Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 1:41:56Lex Fridman?

  Because they've elected them.

• 1:41:57Douglas Murray?

  They elected them. The what-ifs are endless, but very unwise of the George W. Bush administration to push for elections in Gaza after 05. But Hamas were elected and they then, 2007, killed the other Palestinian faction that was their main challenger, Fatah. Killed them, threw them off rooftops, dragged their bodies behind motorbikes through the Gaza. And from that point, they had total control. And, you know, this is difficult because you-

• 1:42:35Douglas Murray?

  You can get into the realm of being accused of advocating or in any way justifying collective punishment. If you talk about this, but it should be borne in mind that.

• 1:42:48Douglas Murray?

  You know, Hamas had effectively eighteen years to run the Gaza. And that's, that's the time that it takes from the birth of a child to the end of their formal education.

• 1:43:04Douglas Murray?

  And in eighteen years, they could have presided over and produced. A generation of young Gazans who were productive.

• 1:43:18Douglas Murray?

  Productive for their people, for their society, for their neighbors, for the rest of the world, and they didn't. They spent eighteen years indoctrinating the children of Gaza into a death cult and into. A genocidal hatred, which obviously is, was most dangerous to the Israelis. But it was obviously disastrous for the people of Gaza. And, you know, there is, um, there's just, if you speak to soldiers who were there in twenty fourteen when Hamas started a war again.

• 1:43:59Douglas Murray?

  One of a set of rounds of war since two thousand and five. If you speak to the soldiers who were there in twenty fourteen going house to house and who were also involved in the war since two thousand and three. They all say the same thing, which is the marked radicalization of the Gazan population. The marked increase in just, I mean, the most, I mean, it's so banal in a way to even cite it, you know, like.

• 1:44:27Douglas Murray?

  The numbers of copies of Mein Kampf in Arabic in an average Gazan household, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. There are so many what ifs and other paths that Hamas could have taken, but that was the one they took. They decided to take the path of using their time in power to build up their infrastructure, radicalize the population, and encourage them to believe that they could destroy the state of Israel.

• 1:44:55Douglas Murray?

  And then on October the 7th, they gave it their best shot. And by the way, there is no organized collective punishment of the citizens of Gaza. Collective punishment would just be dropping bombs with no purpose across civilian areas, carpet bombing, this sort of thing. This is simply not what the IAF and IDF have done since the 7th.

• 1:45:19Douglas Murray?

  They have been fighting a house-to-house war against this terrorist group. They do do aerial strikes. Gaza is very, very badly beaten up. The buildings, I mean, the infrastructure that existed,

• 1:45:38Douglas Murray?

  it's, there aren't many buildings standing.

• 1:45:43Douglas Murray?

  But this is not the result of just wild and imprecise bombing by the Israelis. It's been extremely concerted. It's extremely difficult. But when people say, well, this must be collective punishment, I think that the people who say that simultaneously, that's not true. And also, you know, there is not a hostage who's come out, who Donald Trump made this, President Trump made this point recently. There is not a hostage who's come out who I've spoken with, who found any Gazan Palestinian,

• 1:46:29Douglas Murray?

  who expressed even the slightest human kindness to them.

• 1:46:34Douglas Murray?

  If you if you look at the footage from the seventh, the Hamas recorded themselves of them taking young Jewish women into Gaza and so on, you will notice that the trucks and the motorbikes and so on are not stopped by horrified Gazan civilians saying, why have you got this this Israeli girl who you've whose tendons you've cut and why are you bringing her here? It's all celebration. It's all celebration. And it's the same with those a couple of cases of hostages who managed to escape from the civilian houses they were being held in, who were immediately returned by the citizens they met.

• 1:47:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the celebration, I do wonder what percent of the the population they represent, but there's something really dark. There's several ways to explain the celebration. It could be that there's a deep indoctrination where you do legitimately hate Jews. And there also could be a place of just deep desperation. And it's it's a kind of relief that you have to convince yourself that you're on the side of fighting for freedom. In order to justify to yourself that this is the right way to fight out of desperation out of extremely harsh conditions.

• 1:48:02Lex Fridman?

  Because the way we're kind of speaking about this with the celebration, it's very easy to project a kind of evil on the populace that I just am very hesitant to project, especially on the general populace.

• 1:48:16Douglas Murray?

  You don't have to project it on to them. You can just listen to their own words. Well, I'm sure you've heard the one of many audio recordings you hear from the morning, but I'm sure you've heard the audio recording of the young man who ends up in one of the communities in the south of Israel and calls home, calls back home. Have you heard that?

• 1:48:38Lex Fridman?

  Yes, I've heard it.

• 1:48:39Douglas Murray?

  I quoted in the first chapter of the book. He he calls back home and he says to his father who picks up, it's on WhatsApp, I think he's he's on the phone, he's saying, turn on to WhatsApp because I can show you. He says, I've killed ten Jews with my own hands. So, father, your son has killed ten Jews. And his father is is saying, where are you? Where are you? I want to show you, Dad. I want to show you. I've killed Jews with my own hands. Your son. Put mother on the phone. Mother comes on the phone. The brother comes on the phone.

• 1:49:15Douglas Murray?

  This is um. One of many, many. Stories from the day.

• 1:49:24Douglas Murray?

  That suggest.

• 1:49:27Douglas Murray?

  Something which I would say is not just indoctrination, but yes, evil.

• 1:49:32Lex Fridman?

  First of all, those phone calls are somehow uniquely horrific. But I've also heard recordings of phone calls made by Ukrainian soldiers. To their parents and Russian soldiers to their parents. And they have not as intense and not as horrific, but they have a similar nature to them.

• 1:49:55Lex Fridman?

  Which. There is an aspect of war where you. Dehumanize the other side, right?

• 1:50:03Douglas Murray?

  Sure.

• 1:50:03Lex Fridman?

  In order to fight that war. So we have to remember. That that element is going to be there in a time of war, in a time of desperation.

• 1:50:13Douglas Murray?

  It it would be a strange. Type of um. A simple sort of, I don't know, pride in war.

• 1:50:23Douglas Murray?

  To go into an eighty year old woman's house and. Kill her on her floor. And then film her dead body and her body in its final moments. And send it round to all of that woman's friends on her phone on her Instagram account.

• 1:50:46Douglas Murray?

  It's it's you may have heard different things from me, but I mean, I I would be surprised. If there were even the most vociferous of Russian soldiers. Phoning back home to Moscow and saying, Mom, you won't believe my luck. I managed to rape and kill this eighty year old woman.

• 1:51:06Douglas Murray?

  It's. That's. That's quite unusual, even in warfare.

• 1:51:12Douglas Murray?

  And and that's one of the things about Hamas and what I describe as the death cult types, which makes them different from other people.

• 1:51:24Lex Fridman?

  But that's the channeling of evil and hatred and anger in the human spirit. But that doesn't make that person evil.

• 1:51:33Douglas Murray?

  No, I disagree.

• 1:51:35Lex Fridman?

  You commit that once.

• 1:51:36Douglas Murray?

  I think that there is such a force as evil in the world, and I think it it can descend and it can be used. And it's very hard to find a non theological way to talk about this, but of everything I've seen, there are actions that people like Hamas committed on the seventh that cannot be described as anything other than evil. The things that happened at the Nova Party were especially appalling. I mean, it was all appalling, but it was especially appalling because, first of all, it's a sort of party which people like you and I, or at least you and I when we were younger, might have been at.

• 1:52:17Douglas Murray?

  And so everyone knows, you know, the the world of a dance party and all night, you know, raving the desert to commune with nature and the universe and to take some psychedelics and to, you know, expand your consciousness and your love and all of that sort of thing. The the fact that people doing that

• 1:52:42Douglas Murray?

  at six thirty in the morning then encountered people coming in to the party on trucks and military vehicles and just massacring them and raping them. And I mean, I I give examples of the firsthand accounts of people who survived, but I mean, it's beyond belief of almost anything else I've covered in war. And it's because it seems so.

• 1:53:14Douglas Murray?

  I mean, an army facing another army is one thing.

• 1:53:21Douglas Murray?

  A terrorist group in civilian clothing facing an army is another thing.

• 1:53:27Douglas Murray?

  A terrorist group facing a group of young people at a dance unarmed.

• 1:53:36Douglas Murray?

  And doing what they did is is is pretty hard to comprehend unless you use the lexicon of evil somewhere.

• 1:53:48Lex Fridman?

  So that stated, can you empathize with the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza? With the destruction that resulted as a response?

• 1:53:59Douglas Murray?

  Yes, what has happened in response is terrible, terrible for the citizens of Gaza. I was there in on the first time, a couple of days early and into the the ground invasion. When the citizens of Gaza were coming south, I was in the middle of the strip and the the humanitarian corridor had been set up to try to stop the hostages being taken south deeper into Gaza and to try to stop Hamas leadership from making it south. It actually, it didn't really work because they just, they'd already got a lot of the hostages south.

• 1:54:41Douglas Murray?

  It was an attempt to keep Hamas there and fight them in the north, so as not to be dragged all the way in, in the end, dragged all the way in anyway. But, yes, I mean, watching the the citizens of Gaza moving through the humanitarian corridor and, you know, and everyone was being checked for for bombs, suicide vests, checked for, you know, particularly young men of military age.

• 1:55:07Douglas Murray?

  And, you know, I mean, you look at this tide of human misery and you think this is terrible. But this is a terrible thing that had been brought upon them by the people who had been misgoverning the place that they lived in. And

• 1:55:25Douglas Murray?

  Of course, on a human level, you feel terrible that these people are going through this. At the same time, human empathy for them can coexist beside an unspeakable anger that they had come to this point because of the fact that they had elected a terror group to run their territory. And one of the things, obviously, is that, you know, a lot of people like to say, and it's true, of course, that, you know, this didn't all start on October the 7th, absolutely true. This particular round, this particularly intense round of war started on October the 7th, without doubt. Hamas did not have

• 1:56:09Douglas Murray?

  to attack on October the 7th. It wasn't like they were forced to liberate themselves or something, as some of the defenders of Hamas claim. But the conflict, of course, goes back a lot earlier. But you will have to always keep on contending with this fact that there is one central issue to the paradigm of that conflict, what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict, and now has become, interestingly, rebranded the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there is one absolutely essential issue to this, which cannot be forgotten,

• 1:56:50Douglas Murray?

  which is, do the Palestinians want a state, or do they want to destroy the Jewish state? And if they want to destroy the Jewish state, as they've tried many times, it's a disaster for them. It's a total disaster for them. If they want to create their own state, they've already had several very good shots at it, one of which is Gaza post 2005.

• 1:57:21Douglas Murray?

  But they've never shown in their leadership the desire to live with a Jewish state. And that's a catastrophe for the Palestinians.

• 1:57:34Lex Fridman?

  Can you still imagine the case of the lived experience of Palestinians and pro Palestinian voices that describe the Gaza situation as a occupation, the West Bank too, and in the case of Gaza, open air prison?

• 1:57:49Douglas Murray?

  The, to take them in order, there's nothing about Gaza that was an open air prison. They had the ability to trade, they had the ability to move in and out in increasing numbers. Egypt wasn't so keen on allowing Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt, still isn't. But at the time of the seventh, there was actually an interesting, that one of the things the international community was pushing for was for more Palestinians to be coming into Israel every day through the Eretz crossing and others to work in Israel, because they can make a better living in Israel than they can in Gaza. And this, the, as it were, normalization route was slowly being attempted, was being

• 1:58:33Douglas Murray?

  pushed on Israel by the international community a little bit too fast for Israel's comfort, but it happened. That completely came to an end, and that that dream is done, gone, since the 7th of October.

• 1:58:47Lex Fridman?

  Can you clarify the dream, the normalization of relations?

• 1:58:49Douglas Murray?

  The normalization dream.

• 1:58:50Lex Fridman?

  Between Gaza and Israel?

• 1:58:52Douglas Murray?

  Gone. There will be.

• 1:58:55Lex Fridman?

  Really?

• 1:58:55Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, no normalization. No, not after that. And one of the reasons is the number of people, again, who I've spoken with, who employed Palestinians, worked with Palestinians, worked alongside Palestinians, encouraged more Palestinians to be coming from Gaza in order to work in Israel, and these were their brothers and sisters and so on and so forth. One of the reasons why the massacres of the seventh were so successful in the Kibbutz Sim, the communities in the south, was because of the number of the terrorists who came in with detailed house-to-house maps of those communities.

• 1:59:31Douglas Murray?

  I spoke with with one man who his community, they had a security officer chief. And Hamas came in, they knew to go and kill him and his family first, and then which families. It was just, I've seen the maps myself, they were, they came in with incredibly

• 1:59:52Douglas Murray?

  accurate information about these communities. How did they have them? Because it was given to them by the by the brothers, by the workers, by the people of Gaza who were coming in and out. So there is nobody that will trust that ever again.

• 2:00:06Lex Fridman?

  There's a lot of Palestinians that have lived and flourished inside Israel.

• 2:00:13Lex Fridman?

  What are they saying? What are they feeling? And what are the Israelis feeling about them? Is there still camaraderie to some degree? Or is it completely destroyed?

• 2:00:24Douglas Murray?

  My observation at the beginning was that everyone was extremely wary.

• 2:00:30Douglas Murray?

  I mean, you know, if if you've worked beside somebody and then found out that they sold out your family, you will never trust again. And that, particularly in a small country like Israel, the word of that happening goes out very fast.

• 2:00:47Douglas Murray?

  The very beginning, there was intense, intense fear about that, including of the, you know, 20% or so of the population who are Arab Israelis.

• 2:00:59Douglas Murray?

  I actually think one of the few sort of positive news stories of the period is that that population within Israel has by and large held, it's not, there hasn't been an intifada.

• 2:01:17Douglas Murray?

  One of the reasons why there hasn't been more activity, terrorist activity in the West Bank and Judea and Samaria is because the Israelis have been very careful, along with the Palestinian Authority, to some extent cooperating to keep that down. But, you know, there wasn't a war on, a full war on three fronts, for instance, which was at risk of happening. So I think that the sort of coexistence within Israel has pretty much held. There are some terrible examples, far too regular, but not as regular as it could happen of Muslim Arab Israelis carrying out acts of terror in, as it were, sympathy with Hamas.

• 2:02:01Douglas Murray?

  I was in the middle of one such attack myself late last year. And in a town called Hadira. And those things have happened, but they, it's not that that particular catastrophe has not occurred.

• 2:02:18Lex Fridman?

  Can we talk about Benjamin Netanyahu? For a lot of people who spoke of evil, they refer to him as evil. On the spectrum between good and evil, as a leader, where does Netanyahu fall?

• 2:02:32Douglas Murray?

  Well, he's certainly not evil. Interesting if people looking at this conflict were to be reluctant to use the word evil of Hamas and eager to use it of the Israeli prime minister, it would be sort of telling, I would say.

• 2:02:46Lex Fridman?

  Can we just actually linger on that point? There is a point you've made multiple times, which is we're more eager to criticize and maybe even overexaggerate the criticism of democratically elected leaders.

• 2:03:02Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 2:03:03Lex Fridman?

  It's a dark, weird, other quality of discourse at parties, aforementioned parties.

• 2:03:11Douglas Murray?

  Isn't it also, I mean, not to be flippant for a moment, it's a little bit like, who do you show your worst sides to? The people you love. You, is like, you know, my intense irritability is something that tends to be felt most by people who are closest to me because I, if I express it to absolutely everybody I met at the party or a social setting, it would be, it would be hard. I mean, there's a tendency to lean heavily on the people who are closest to you, the people who.

• 2:03:47Douglas Murray?

  Will put up with it. Um, and something similar happens in international politics. You you pressure the people who will listen. I mean, it's it's one of the, I mean, one of the things you hear a lot in the last years. You know, people sort of ignoramuses and the governments in places like Britain, you know, will say we need to put more pressure on the Israelis to do X. And you go, well, you know, in part, that's because they will listen. If you go, we need to put more pressure on the Ayatollahs in Iran to persuade them that Hamas are really bad and they shouldn't be doing this. Right, what the hell do you think they're going to do?

• 2:04:31Douglas Murray?

  They're going to listen to you, they think you give a damn? You're talking totally different worlds, not just a different language, it's a different world. And by the way, that happens in Israel, I mentioned it earlier, but it happens in Israel. When the hostage families forum came about, I spent a lot of time there, a lot, got to know a lot of the families and they're remarkable. But one of the things you did notice from them as well was that a lot of them, they protest outside Netanyahu's house, they crack some horns and make sure he doesn't can never sleep, they will, you know, put up great big posters by his house of him with bloodied hands and and so on.

• 2:05:12Douglas Murray?

  And I have, you know, I think as much sympathy as you can for these families, the plight of knowing that your child is sitting in a tunnel in Gaza for a year, a day, an hour is intolerable. But there's a reason why the families protested Netanyahu, and that's because Sinwar didn't care. That wouldn't work if you said.

• 2:05:46Douglas Murray?

  You you know, understand my plight. I'm a Jewish mother and my daughter is thing. You think Sinwar, the heads of Hamas care? You think the leaders in Qatar who host them care? The Qatari Emir's mother, when Sinwar was killed, praised Sinwar. It it you couldn't talk that language to these people, but you can talk that language to the elected premier minister of Israel. Because that, first of all, he's somebody who might listened to your pressure, could be pressured. And secondly, is simply the only person you can pressure. There's no one else. Hamas doesn't care. Hezbollah doesn't care. Iranian Revolutionary Government doesn't care.

• 2:06:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, we so let's just sort of say once again, the the obvious thing that while it is possible to discuss Hamas soldiers as freedom fighters, I'm not one of the folks that can take that perspective. It's a tough one to take.

• 2:06:48Douglas Murray?

  I don't see how you can call them freedom fighters.

• 2:06:50Lex Fridman?

  So this goes to the man from the land of peace and the man from the land of war. There is a lived experience of what it means to grow up in Gaza. And if you fully load that into your brain in a in a real way, not in not using the words of good and evil, but in a in a very deep human sense, from that place, from that place of desperation, from your home and your family's destroyed, doesn't matter why, doesn't matter if there's evil all around you that caused it, doesn't matter, the the facts are the facts. And from that place, somebody who's fighting for you can feel like a freedom fighter.

• 2:07:33Lex Fridman?

  I think it should be called out that, yes, it can feel that way from the lived experience. But Hamas is very clearly, since we're talking about Netanyahu, Hamas is evil.

• 2:07:47Lex Fridman?

  Okay, now, you can still, in that context, discuss the degree to which Netanyahu is the right leader for this moment, and whether he goes too far, whether he's too politically selfish in the decisions he makes, whether he's too much a warmonger, whether he's utilizing the war for his own political gains, and is not caring about the death of civilians in Gaza, for example, but more caring about his own political maintaining power. That's a perspective that I could steal, man. That's a perspective worth discussing, and that's

• 2:08:30Lex Fridman?

  a perspective many in Israel hold when they criticize Netanyahu. He's increasingly less and less popular.

• 2:08:36Douglas Murray?

  That's wrong. I put in polls last month when he was in Washington, and it showed him an all-time high.

• 2:08:40Lex Fridman?

  You know.

• 2:08:41Douglas Murray?

  But you were saying.

• 2:08:41Lex Fridman?

  I make my own poll, and according to my poll, I'm the greatest, I'm the nicest and the coolest person in the world. A hundred percent of people agree.

• 2:08:52Douglas Murray?

  So I didn't mean to laugh that much.

• 2:08:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. You laughed a little too much.

• 2:08:57Douglas Murray?

  Too long.

• 2:08:57Lex Fridman?

  It's more than the joke, yeah.

• 2:08:58Douglas Murray?

  But you were saying, I mean, the.

• 2:09:00Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Okay, let's steal man the criticism of Netanyahu. Can you, and then steal man the case for him, that he's the right leader, actually, for this moment.

• 2:09:09Douglas Murray?

  Well, the most devastating thing that anyone could come up against Netanyahu is that the seventh happened on his watch. After the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Golda Meir, who is a very distinguished prime minister of Israel, and a remarkable woman, but she effectively took the political hit for the Yom Kippur invasion by Israel's Arab neighbors happening on her watch. And I would have thought that most critics, fair-minded critics of Netanyahu, inside Israel and without, would always hold that against him.

• 2:09:51Douglas Murray?

  The, I suppose that the, one of the criticisms you hear a lot as well is this thing of Israel being divided in the year before the seventh because of the judicial reforms. I think there's a strong case for judicial reforms in Israel, but it's a sort of niche Israeli governance issue, which we don't have to get into. The point is, is that Netanyahu and his government were pushing these reforms through judicial reforms. And it was very divisive. And on the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities, every weekend there were protests. And the police were tired because they'd spent week after week

• 2:10:35Douglas Murray?

  on overtime policing these protests, which often turned raucous, not to say violent, but sometimes violent. And you could say, well, if you see that something is dividing your country this much, mightn't you stop? There is a claim by some people that one of the things that prompted the seventh was that Hamas and its backers in Qatar and Iran saw the division in Israeli society, saw the Israeli population, you know, a significant chunk of it every week on the streets, shutting down highways, shutting down services and so on, and thought, good, now's the time. In other words, what I quoted Sinwar as saying earlier when he was in, in prison in Israel, was, you know, this

• 2:11:19Douglas Murray?

  thing, one day you'll be weak and then I'll strike. Maybe that is one of the things that Sinwar thought. Israel was very weak. It had been divided and therefore the time to strike. There's an argument against that, which is that the seventh was in preparation and being planned before the judicial reform process in Israel began. So you can look at it several ways. But you could use that. You could say, look, this is, you know, if you, your, your, your nation was divided, don't push through anymore on that. There's, there's lots of things like that. You could say that, that Netanyahu was one of the people responsible for the conception. You could, there were critics of his, including critics

• 2:12:02Douglas Murray?

  who were in the war cabinet, who thought that he was too focused on, on Hamas and not focused enough on Hezbollah. Other people think he was too focused on Hezbollah and not enough on Hamas.

• 2:12:15Douglas Murray?

  So there's them and many other criticisms that people make of him. I would say I've interviewed, I think, every political leader in Israel from right to left, pretty much. And I have to say, I don't think there's any of them that wouldn't have responded similarly to the 7th of October, to the way he has.

• 2:12:37Lex Fridman?

  Can we, okay, so that's inside Israel. Outside of Israel, you know, despite what he said, he is one of the most hated people in the world, just the raw quantity, not relative. He's loved by a lot of people, but there's a lot of people that, you know, there's a lot of psychological effects that might explain that.

• 2:12:57Douglas Murray?

  I mean, it's sort of strange to, if there is a widespread global loathing of the prime minister of a country of eight, nine million people.

• 2:13:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that might mean something more than hatred of the military actions and the policies of the one person, yeah.

• 2:13:15Douglas Murray?

  I mean, you know, there's, there's an awful lot of people to hate in the world. There's a lot of wars in the world. It's, it's always of interest to me, and obviously it's one of the things I go into on democracies and death cause is this question of why is this so galvanizing for so many people? And I think that is a very, very interesting question, like, why? By the way, let me do a quick addendum to that. You can notice something else at that when people talk about the Republican failures in foreign policy in the last 30 years or so. It's very interesting. There's a certain type of person who will immediately mention Paul Wolfowitz.

• 2:13:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:00Douglas Murray?

  And they will say, well, you know, Wolfowitz, you mean deputy under secretary of defense under George W. Bush? I think he guided everything.

• 2:14:15Douglas Murray?

  Why would that be, other than the fact that his name, as Mark Stein once said, starts with a nasty animal and ends Jewish?

• 2:14:26Douglas Murray?

  I mean, so I do, and I do, so I do think that the, there are very deep things at play.

• 2:14:35Lex Fridman?

  It's a good line.

• 2:14:35Douglas Murray?

  You know, the, the, the, there are very deep things at play. Netanyahu, irrespective of anything he does, for a lot of people, is a kind of devil. And you have to say, well, why is that? Now, of course, some people will say, well, that's because he, uh, his terrible hawkishness and his actions and so on and so forth.

• 2:14:57Douglas Murray?

  The case for Netanyahu is that he sees it as his historic purpose to defend the only homeland of the Jewish people. And that that's his life's mission. And on that basis, I think he's been by any measure a historic leader. He has warned the world about the threat from the mullahs in Tehran. He warned about Iranian revolutionary expansionism across the region, across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen.

• 2:15:36Douglas Murray?

  And after the seventh, he has held together a very, very difficult set of challenges to keep international pressure at a tolerable level to do all sorts of things. But most importantly, to oversee the two war aims that he set out at the beginning. I thought, let me just express this way, I thought, like a lot of people, when I heard about the hostages, my immediate instinct was they're all dead. They're all going to be dead. We'll never see them again.

• 2:16:16Douglas Murray?

  And that was the attitude of a lot of Israelis. But although there are still hostages being held, and as I've always said, the war could end tomorrow if they were handed back.

• 2:16:28Douglas Murray?

  Or at least the beginning of the end of the war could begin tomorrow if they were handed back. But nevertheless, because of the actions of not just Netanyahu, but the Israeli government.

• 2:16:42Douglas Murray?

  Um. Most of the hostages have been returned, did not expect this to happen. And Hamas has not been completely destroyed, but it has been very, very significantly degraded. And you end up in the definition of what a total destruction of Hamas would look like. But they are not anywhere near the capability they were in November of 2023. Their leadership has almost all been killed. Uh, the second tier of leadership, almost all gone.

• 2:17:24Douglas Murray?

  And um, this is a just response to what Hamas did.

• 2:17:33Douglas Murray?

  The moment, Netanyahu's reputation in Israel was at a low early on because of what had happened. But, and there's no doubt, and as I, I say in the final chapter of the book, I mean, there's General Slim had this phrase, uh, you know, from defeat into victory. Israel isn't at victory yet in this conflict. But uh, when in September last year, there were a set of operational successes so extraordinary that, I mean, it was just like, every day's news was. There was one day I remember when after the, um, after Assad regime fell, when um, the Israeli air force took out the entirety of the Syrian air force

• 2:18:18Douglas Murray?

  uh, in a day, because they didn't want it falling into the hands of the new jihadist administration in Syria. It was story number four on the BBC news website.

• 2:18:28Douglas Murray?

  Um, the leadership of Hezbollah, gone, gone. The, the, the second and third tiers of Hezbollah,

• 2:18:40Douglas Murray?

  gone or wounded. Iran's Rolls Royce destroyed. Um, these are very, very significant military achievements. And.

• 2:18:56Douglas Murray?

  Are in my mind, a just response to the attempts by Hezbollah, Hamas and other Iranian proxies to destroy the Jewish state. Would another Israeli leader have been able to hold firm as Netanyahu has? I don't know, but I do know that any of them would have done something similar or would have tried to do something similar because there's no country on earth, no democracy on earth, which could possibly not respond to such an atrocity.

• 2:19:28Lex Fridman?

  To the point, the underlying point you made of why do so many people want to call him evil? And so the implication is it's not just a hatred of Israel, there's an ocean of hatred for the Jews.

• 2:19:47Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 2:19:48Lex Fridman?

  Why is there so much hatred for Jews in the world?

• 2:19:53Douglas Murray?

  I would say there's one reason in particular. It's a stupid and gullible person's easy answer. Why is, why do certain things happen in the world? What is, what is our explanation of chance or unfairness or any number of things? Easiest, easiest, stupidest person's explanation is there's a small group of people doing it.

• 2:20:23Lex Fridman?

  Let's not say stupidest because there's something in the human mind that craves a nice, clean theory of everything, right? That explains all the problems. It's not just stupidest.

• 2:20:32Douglas Murray?

  Okay, let me rewrite. Lowest grade.

• 2:20:35Lex Fridman?

  Right, because I have that, I have that desire too, to simplify everything like.

• 2:20:40Douglas Murray?

  Be a bit anti-Semitic, what?

• 2:20:41Lex Fridman?

  We've all.

• 2:20:46Lex Fridman?

  We've all been invited to Semitic here and there, just get a few vodkas. I mean, no. To find, I mean, maybe as a mathematician, I mean, they say to find a simple explanation for everything.

• 2:20:56Douglas Murray?

  Right.

• 2:20:56Lex Fridman?

  That actually, that's nice for every.

• 2:20:58Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, yeah, no.

• 2:20:59Lex Fridman?

  Historians do this.

• 2:21:00Douglas Murray?

  Absolutely. I agree.

• 2:21:02Lex Fridman?

  Analyzing why the Roman Empire collapsed. It's so nice to have one, especially if it's a counterintuitive explanation. It's one of the favorite go-tos, right? Is an explanation for all the problems in the world.

• 2:21:14Douglas Murray?

  It's the lowest resolution analysis imaginable.

• 2:21:17Lex Fridman?

  Why is there traffic? Why did my wife leave me? Why did my wife cheating on me? Why did I lose my job? Why did I not get the job? Because so even on the personal level.

• 2:21:27Douglas Murray?

  Oh, especially on the personal level. Why did I not get everything? Somebody must have held me back.

• 2:21:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And it's just that hatred of Jews has been such a popular go-to throughout history. You just always return back to the hits, I guess. And I, what is it special about the Jews as a group that people love to hate? Is it just because it's a small number of people?

• 2:21:49Douglas Murray?

  I think several things.

• 2:21:50Lex Fridman?

  Successful.

• 2:21:51Douglas Murray?

  One is small and

• 2:21:54Douglas Murray?

  without by any means saying this is a general rule, but disproportionately highly accomplished in certain fields at certain times.

• 2:22:06Douglas Murray?

  Prominent is the word I would use. Prominent, slightly beyond their numbers in certain places. It's not a full explanation. I mean, you know, all sorts of historical reasons why Jews were involved in banking. But then there are lots of historical reasons why the Scottish people, my own, were involved in banking. And to this day, you don't find many people who blame all international finance problems on the Scots.

• 2:22:34Douglas Murray?

  So there are just like easy grooves for people to fall into, it seems to me.

• 2:22:39Lex Fridman?

  We should also mention, you know, banking for some reason. Money is a thing that people go to. But Jews have been disproportionately successful in the sciences and engineering, mathematics.

• 2:22:50Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 2:22:51Lex Fridman?

  And the arts and so on.

• 2:22:52Douglas Murray?

  A sensible person would try to work out why that is and see what is replicable. A, um, uh, I don't want to use the word stupid again now, a different type of person. I'm triggered already. A different type of person would look at that and say, that must mean they took something from me. And that's, you know, the, the most zero sum game there is. I, it's an endlessly fascinating subject because it seems to me that antisemitism is almost certainly a sort of ineradicable temptation of the human spirit at its ugliest and cheapest.

• 2:23:34Douglas Murray?

  But, but it, because it's back in our day, it bears some analysis again. And I would say two things about it. One is, as I and others have said many times in the past, one of the fascinating things about antisemitism is it, it, it, it can cover everything at once. So the Jews get hated for being rich and for being poor, both for being the Rothschilds and for being Eastern European Jews escaping the pogroms. They can be hated for being religious

• 2:24:15Douglas Murray?

  and for being anti-religious and producing Marxism, for instance, hated for religiosity and secularism. They can be hated for, most recently, not having a state and therefore being rootless cosmopolitans, and also hated for having a state. And that makes it something very unusual, actually, in the history of human bigotry and, you know, bias and ugliness. But the real thing is, one of my great heroes, Vasily Grossman, says at the center of life and fate, almost everything that is worth saying about antisemitism, this Grossman's

• 2:25:00Douglas Murray?

  genius. That he could say in three to four pages what most people couldn't say in an entire life, even after a life of study. But there's this passage in Life and Fate that I quote in my book, which is, it just bowled me over when I read it some years ago. When he says, you know, the interesting thing about antisemitism, he says, you can meet it everywhere, in the, in the academy of sciences and in the games that children play in the yard. But Grossman's great insight is, he says, everywhere it tells you, not about the Jews, but about the person making the claim. And the most important gift he gives in his analysis is when he says, describes it as

• 2:25:45Douglas Murray?

  a mirror to the person who is making the claims. Culminating in this phrase I've been trying to make popular, which is, he says, he says, "Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I'll tell you what you're guilty of." It's a searingly brilliant insight. The Iranian revolutionary government accuses Israel of being a colonial power. The Iranian revolutionary government has been colonizing the Middle East throughout our lifetimes.

• 2:26:23Douglas Murray?

  The Turkish government accuses the Jewish state of being guilty of occupation. Do you know northern Cyprus? The Turks have been occupying half of Cyprus since the 1970s. Cyprus is an EU member state and Turkey is in NATO. So you can do this on and on. The people who accuse the Jewish state, like the people who accuse Jews of something, almost without fail, is the thing they're guilty of. Look at the supporters of Hamas and Hamas.

• 2:27:08Douglas Murray?

  One of the things they say is that Israel is guilty of indiscriminate killing.

• 2:27:18Douglas Murray?

  Hamas? Hello? What were you doing on the 7th? You see, there are these crazy guys online who claim, repeatedly claim that for some reason, Israeli soldiers will rape Palestinians when they meet them, whether in a prison or on the battlefield, or in a hospital. It just erupts occasionally. These people go around and say, oh, my God, the IDF are rapists. Excuse me? You're the ones who spent the years after 2016 saying, believe all women. Then from the 7th of October said, believe all women, except for Jewish women

• 2:28:02Douglas Murray?

  who say they've been raped or seen their friends raped. And then you say, aha, the Jews are rapists. You've been carrying water for rapists and then go and accuse the Jews of rape. I mean, it just works. Every way you do it, it works. I do think the thing of psychological projection in the case of Israel is wild. I mean, it is wild. By the way, there's an interesting thing on this that I tried to get into in the book, which is this thing of why did so much of the world respond the way it did? I mean, we're sitting in New York. There was not one protest against Hamas in New York after the 7th of October. The believe all women crowd didn't come out

• 2:28:48Douglas Murray?

  against Hamas's rapes. The Black Lives Matter movement did not turn their attention to the killing of Israeli children or anything. Nobody did it. Nobody did it. The one thing that did happen very prominently was that people came out to attack the people who'd been attacked. And as I say in the opening of the book, and I saw that myself down the road from here in Times Square on October the 8th, October the frigging 8th. The protests are in Times Square against Israel justifying the attacks that were still going on. And this is something that deserves deep self-examination on behalf of people in the West who've seen this movement

• 2:29:32Douglas Murray?

  overwhelm parts of our society. I mean, degraded parts, but parts, bits of the universities and so on. And I think there's an explanation for it, by the way, which again goes back to that issue of projection. When you and I last talked on camera, we were talking about my last book, The War on the West. And I remember saying to you there that one of the things I was talking about in that book was the deeply, deeply, wildly biased, unfair and inaccurate estimation of the Western past whereby, you know, America's original sin had to be identified and the original sin is slavery. So, America has an original sin.

• 2:30:14Douglas Murray?

  Does Ghana have an original sin? No one knows. No one really would think it polite to point one out. And, you know, you go on and on with these, these things that I identified in The War on the West, these, these, these sins of the West. And they have in recent years been reduced to the claim that countries like the one we're sitting in are guilty of what? Colonialism, settler colonialism, white supremacy, slavery, genocide, and a couple of others you can throw in probably. One of the things I remember saying to you

• 2:30:56Douglas Murray?

  when we spoke about that was that one of the deep problems of setting up that system of thought, pseudo thought, non thought, would be thought, is that there's nothing you can do about it. Even if it was true, there's nothing you can do about it. If it turned out that your ancestors in the 18th century once owned a slave, what are you going to do? There's no mechanism to forgive or be forgiven because you didn't do it and there's no one alive who could accept the apology. And I remember setting it up there in The

• 2:31:33Douglas Murray?

  War on the West, I set up like this, this very, very risky, dangerous, unforgivable, unforgiving thing that had been set up about our societies. But I would say that since October the 7th, there has been an answer for a certain type of person, which is?

• 2:31:59Douglas Murray?

  I am from a society where I have been told I am guilty of settler colonialism, white supremacy, genocide, ethnic cleansing and more. I've been told all of these things. I have been put in an un-get-outable of situation of moral burden that can never be relieved because I can't ask anyone's forgiveness and nobody can forgive me. But ah, here's a country which I can accuse of all of these things in the here and now.

• 2:32:39Douglas Murray?

  Load my energies, my guilts, my burdens onto, and what's more, I might be able to end it and by doing so would relieve myself. And in other words, to slight, to, I quote, I tweak Grossman with the people in America and elsewhere who've fallen into this trap. I tweak him by saying, "On this occasion, tell me what you accuse the Jews of and I'll tell you what you've been told you're guilty of."

• 2:33:17Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's an interesting kind of projection. Just to observe some of the sociological phenomena here on top of all this, it does seem that hatred of Jews gets a lot of engagement online. Is this, so I watch it like a curiosity, like I'm an alien observing Earth. Is this dangerous to you or is it just a bunch of trolls and grifters? You know, let's say cosplaying as Nazis. It's just

• 2:33:49Douglas Murray?

  Could be both.

• 2:33:50Lex Fridman?

  Fun to trigger the libs?

• 2:33:53Douglas Murray?

  It could be all of those things. I think it is and a lot more.

• 2:33:58Douglas Murray?

  I mean, taboos, you know, taboos can be fun to break, I suppose. And I suppose there are some people online.

• 2:34:08Douglas Murray?

  Who have grown up knowing that, you know, since the Holocaust antisemitism was taboo. And they've run out of, it goes back to what we were saying earlier a bit, you know, the, they sort of run out of, they've got bored of that. You know, Holocaust, schmolicourse, they'd say, you know, I've heard enough about that.

• 2:34:32Douglas Murray?

  And maybe those people have gone off in a funny direction as a result, but I don't think that's the main. I think that's like a detail compared to the real thing. The real thing is that antisemitism is back and there is a certain type of person who's loving it.

• 2:34:49Lex Fridman?

  Isn't really back. So I watch.

• 2:34:50Douglas Murray?

  Well, it never goes away. It's just that, it's just that it's, it's, it's, it's since the seventh, I think that it's had a great resurgence. And this isn't to say, and I just assume, and that doesn't mean that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic. No, it doesn't. But as I have often said, if you don't ever express any interest in the murder of Muslims in Syria, not any interest in genocide in Sudan, killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen. But on the eighth of October, you're on the street with a placard attacking Israel. I'm sorry, you're an antisemite for sure. You may not know you are, but that's what's motivating you.

• 2:35:33Lex Fridman?

  It gets a lot of engagement.

• 2:35:34Douglas Murray?

  It does. It does.

• 2:35:36Lex Fridman?

  I watch it.

• 2:35:36Douglas Murray?

  But I mean, it's one of several things you can always see get huge engagement. I mean, it's like, if you, if you say that there's like a massive pedophile ring run by prominent politicians, it might be total horseshit. Likely to be total horseshit, but it'll also get a hell of a lot of engagement.

• 2:35:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but that's still, so the pedophile ring, like Epstein Island, that kind of stuff.

• 2:35:59Douglas Murray?

  All of which is very interesting.

• 2:36:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And it's like, great. All right, cool. Let's, let's get behind that conspiracy.

• 2:36:08Lex Fridman?

  But the Jews thing, the hatred of Jews is still, that's the greatest hits still.

• 2:36:14Douglas Murray?

  It is. And I mean, you see it with, I mean, some of the people who've made minor celebrities of themselves with a sort of made up version of history, with a smattering of this and a little bit of that, and then the just asking questions and, you know, I'm not saying, but and all, there are certain, you know, rhetorical sites of hand that have, have helped this along. But as I said earlier, it's just the lowest grade explanation of a certain type of mind looking for a pattern and looking for meaning. And I mean, I can give you just one quick example of why that, in the case of Israel, is so extraordinary, is the number of otherwise

• 2:36:58Douglas Murray?

  semi-intelligent people who will tell you that the problem is simply that the Israelis need to give the Palestinians another state.

• 2:37:12Douglas Murray?

  And that if they do, it will solve the problems of the region and the wider world.

• 2:37:21Douglas Murray?

  And irrespective of the fact that Palestinians are being given several states,

• 2:37:27Douglas Murray?

  the expla- the claim that this particular land dispute would unlock every other injustice in the world should be seen on its face to be preposterous. There is no reason why if the Palestinians got another state, either in Gaza or in parts of Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, there is no reason why we should expect the economy of Yemen to boom.

• 2:38:01Douglas Murray?

  It would not inevitably lead to the mullahs in Tehran giving equal rights to women or anything else. It would solve. The most likely thing is you simply have another failed Arab state run by a sort of proxy of Tehran. That's the best case scenario. And by the way, even lifelong defenders of the Palestinian cause like Salman Rushdie, he said recently, he said, I've always been a supporter of the Palestinian people and their cause, but it is an unavoidable fact that if another state was given to the Palestinians, it would simply be at best another front for the Iranian regime in Iran, at best.

• 2:38:44Douglas Murray?

  So why the passion about, why the unbelievable wild passion about this? Why the, and I say, some of it can be, should be argued out and so on, and some of it can be explained, but there's definitely a realm of it, a layer of it, which is simply at that level of this excites something within me. This excites something within me.

• 2:39:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's some, there's something compelling to people about hating Jews.

• 2:39:15Douglas Murray?

  Look at the prominence of, or semi-prominent people who are willing to play around with the idea that nine 11 was an inside job and somehow it's done by the Israelis. I mean, or the Jews. I mean, I mean, look at the, like, this, this shit is going around.

• 2:39:31Lex Fridman?

  I have to admit, you know, I'm, there's a part of my brain that's pulled towards conspiracies. There's something compelling and fun about a simple explanation for things, what's really going on behind the scenes. Because the real world, when you don't look into conspiracies, first of all, it's complicated. And second of all, it's kind of boring. It's a bunch of incompetent people.

• 2:39:52Douglas Murray?

  Usually opening up Pandora's boxes they don't understand.

• 2:39:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's pushing buffoons. And I've been, I've walked around and hung around with a lot of powerful and rich people. And like, the thing I learned is they're just human beings. There's not, I've yet to be in a room where exceptionally brilliant psychopaths are plotting.

• 2:40:19Douglas Murray?

  You never got that invite?

• 2:40:20Lex Fridman?

  No. In fact, like, a lot of people in the positions of power, they're just not, I mean, I'm just continuously disappointed that they're not ultra, I love competence. The places where I've seen competence, inklings of it, is in low level, like soldiers, like low level, what do you call that? People that do stuff with their hands. So builders of different kinds, like engineering, like craftsmen, like I've seen.

• 2:40:46Douglas Murray?

  Yes, because you've got, because you've got a very specific task that could be highly complicated.

• 2:40:51Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 2:40:51Douglas Murray?

  But you get to apply yourself to and to solve.

• 2:40:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, over years, you've mastered it, it's passed across generations and so on. But like statescraft and like that, that kind of stuff.

• 2:41:03Douglas Murray?

  Well, it's because there's so many variables. I mean, this is, this is one of the, when you were trying to lure me on to prognostications on Ukraine, I was saying, I just, I've seen enough to know that I just don't know, because I know the amount of things that can change all the time. I, I was, some years ago, I was talking to a, a, a former public servant in the UK when, um,

• 2:41:26Douglas Murray?

  Boris Johnson was Prime Minister and Covid started. And I mentioned to this friend, I said, well, you know, it's, it's pretty bad luck for Boris that, you know, he came in to do one thing, which was Brexit. And then there's a global pandemic from Wuhan, you know, and he's got to like mug up on that and then gets it really wrong. But anyway, and I was really struck by the fact this man, a man of great insight, who happened to disagree politically, but said to me, but Douglas is always like this.

• 2:42:00Douglas Murray?

  And he said, you know, I mean, look at Tony Blair, came into power in 997, wanting to reform education in the UK, ends up trying to remake the Middle East. And I do, I mean, as I say, one of the reasons why I am scornful of conspiracy theorists and most conspiracy theories, not to say that there aren't some that do actually turn out to be, you know, to have something in them, that happens. A lot of things are called conspiracy theories that turn out to be true. Lab leak. But, but in general, the suspicion and the scorn I have for people who fall into this is, as I say, it's a very low grade, low resolution look at the world by people who

• 2:42:45Douglas Murray?

  clearly have never seen the wildness of actions in the world and the way that they reverberate. And the number of events, I mean, I once spoke some years ago to a politician who literally said to me, I won't name the country, but said to me, can you help us out with, with just how to cope on the, with the data and understand the day to day struggle we're having with the cycle? And I said, what are you talking about? And they said, our experience in government is that every day, something comes up which we have to firefight.

• 2:43:29Douglas Murray?

  And that's what we do that day. And then the next day, something else comes up, which we have to firefight. And we, we're not getting our policies done. And I, and I just thought, for me, that rings an awful lot truer than that that country gets the odd phone call from a member of a Jewish family.

• 2:43:53Douglas Murray?

  Telling them, I just, you know, it's like, come on.

• 2:43:58Douglas Murray?

  So that, you know, that's.

• 2:43:59Lex Fridman?

  I do, before I forget, want to ask you about Iran. What role do they play in this conflict? Such a.

• 2:44:07Lex Fridman?

  It's fascinating how it seems like Iran is fingerprints everywhere in the Middle East.

• 2:44:17Lex Fridman?

  And it's also fascinating that, you know, I have a lot of friends, my best friend is Iranian. It's fascinating that the Islamic Revolution in Iran took the country from the leadership perspective backwards in such a drastic way and that they're still in power. That confuses me because I know, now it's possible I don't know the people of Iran. Sorry to make the obvious statement, but I just have a lot of friends in Iran and a lot of them, everybody I know there opposes the regime and they're brilliant.

• 2:44:52Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 2:44:52Lex Fridman?

  Educated, thoughtful, worldly people. And it confuses me that there's this, this is one of the, I would say, one of the greatest nations on earth.

• 2:45:05Douglas Murray?

  Certainly one of the great cultures of earth.

• 2:45:07Lex Fridman?

  Cultures, the peoples of Iran.

• 2:45:09Douglas Murray?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:10Lex Fridman?

  And then you look at that and then you look at the leadership. When they're behind most of the terror groups.

• 2:45:17Douglas Murray?

  In the region, certainly, yeah.

• 2:45:19Lex Fridman?

  Can you just speak to that and how is it still the same regime since 1979?

• 2:45:26Douglas Murray?

  I know, as you know, I start on democracy and death cults with the flight taking the Ayatollah Khomeini, Khomeini from Paris to Tehran.

• 2:45:35Lex Fridman?

  The flight that you say you wish never happened.

• 2:45:38Douglas Murray?

  I think it's one of the two worst journeys of the 20th century.

• 2:45:42Lex Fridman?

  What's the other one?

• 2:45:43Douglas Murray?

  Was it Lenin's train getting to Petrograd?

• 2:45:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:49Lex Fridman?

  It's about the transportation.

• 2:45:51Douglas Murray?

  Yes, I know. I'm really a transport guy. No, I,

• 2:45:55Douglas Murray?

  wait till my book of 10 best journeys.

• 2:45:59Lex Fridman?

  Across the world.

• 2:46:00Douglas Murray?

  No, just as the train to the Finland station. Brought the basilisk of Bolshevism into Russia. So the flight coming from Paris, bringing the Ayatollah Khomeini to Tehran, brought the basilisk of Khomeiniism, the most radical form of Shiite Islam, to Tehran and to Iran. And it's one of the great tragedies of the modern era, what happened there. Like you, actually, I have a lot of Persian friends and I had the great good fortune early in my life to have a very close late friend who had grown up in pre-revolutionary

• 2:46:42Douglas Murray?

  Iran, was very fond of the Shah and so on. Her father had been an Ayatollah before the overthrow of the Shah. But, and you know, everyone had criticisms of him. But when you saw what came after him, it just, it was among other things, what I learned from her and other friends from that region was that, I suppose, two things. One is, of course, is that it's a sort of central conservative insight, you know, things can always be worse. They can always be worse. Never say this is rock bottom, because, yeah, you know, like, you might have a Shah with

• 2:47:24Douglas Murray?

  hundreds or even thousands of political prisoners in cells, but you could always have Ayatollah Khomeini butchering them all. And including the people who helped him get to power, like the communists and the trade unionists who, who simply were fighting against the Shah and then were very useful for the Ayatollah until he didn't need them anymore. But the other thing I learned from that particular friend and, and others was that was this, this thing that... And again, it's very hard for the Western mindset, very hard for the American mindset in particular, that there is such a thing as fanaticism, real fanaticism and real ideological

• 2:48:05Douglas Murray?

  and real religious fanaticism, and the thing that I describe leads to the death cult mindset. That fanaticism is something which is very easy for the West to forget because we haven't seen it in a while. You know, we get very distant echoes of it in our own societies, really. And we're highly attuned to hear them, which is good in some ways. But Homaniism not only vastly set back the Persian people, the Iranian nation, but has managed to keep

• 2:48:42Douglas Murray?

  it in subjugation since 1979. And your question of why gets to one of the really, the biggest questions really, that, that has to be, the answer to which has to be understood, which is, it's what Solzhenitsyn says at one point in Gulag Archipelago, in that passage where he describes, "When we heard the footsteps on the staircase, and the knock was on our neighbor's door, and we knew our neighbor was being taken away, why did we not stop

• 2:49:18Douglas Murray?

  them?" And in the case of the revolutionary government in Iran, you know, it's the same answer as whether it's Hamas governing Gaza with the people, whoever the people in Gaza are who would have liked to have seen them overthrown. You know, people don't realize that despite the rhetoric and everything else, everything changes if the other guy might kill you. And that, you know, when the Green Revolution in 2009 started in Iran...

• 2:50:03Douglas Murray?

  Why was it put down? Why didn't it work? Why, like you, the my, the sort of Iranians who I really hope one day get their country back? Why did all these smart young students and others, why after they came out, why was it put down? It was put down because the Basij militia will shoot you in the head and they'll take you to a prison, as they did with the Iranian students, and they'll rape you with bottles and kill you. And even a little bit of that goes an awfully long way to tell the rest of society not to do

• 2:50:40Douglas Murray?

  it again. You know, we know it happens like that from films, but too few people understand that regimes like that in Tehran operate like that on a grand scale, on the biggest of scales and with the ultimate of brutality. And that's how they stay in power. And one other thing on that, by the way, which is, I was, I was reminded of this the other day, but you know, thinking about this sort of, you know, what I've just described as a sort of a problem in democracies is that we just, you know, we like to think everyone thinks like us and, you know, we'd like everyone to sort of be like us. And we, we believe

• 2:51:22Douglas Murray?

  fictions that we're taught in films like, you know, everyone basically wants the same things as us. And you go, you haven't stepped outside the walls of the city, if you think that. But the second thing is this thing of the death cults of why, why we sort of sing, singly fail to understand that this is possible. And hominism is both very specific and also very strongly linked to totalitarian and radical and extremist death cult movements that are not that far in our past.

• 2:52:02Douglas Murray?

  I mean, you know, there's a moment in when Oriana Filacci interviewed Adalot Homeni in 1979, one of the very few Western journalists to do so. She says to him, these people in the street, this movement, this revolution you've begun, it's guided by hate. It's hate. It's all hate. And Homeni says, no, no, it's love. It's love. And and it's actually a scene that that appears in The Satanic Verses of Rushdie, where that exact same thing happens. But I was thinking about this recently because I was thinking, but how can you explain to a Western mindset that that's

• 2:52:47Douglas Murray?

  that's something that's going on? There are people directed by this hate that calls itself love, this, this. And I was reminded of a book I haven't read since I was probably a teenager or something. It made a great impression on me then. Did you ever read The Tragic Sense of Life? Miguel de Unamuno, a great Spanish existentialist philosopher who died in the 30s. Unamuno had an encounter with students at the university in the 30s when he realized, I mean, this is the early period of the Francoists, De Rivera and all those people. Unamuno is at this meeting and the chant goes up

• 2:53:28Douglas Murray?

  from the eager students who have fallen into this sort of Phalangist

• 2:53:36Douglas Murray?

  Francoist ideology already. They end up chanting in front of him as he's trying to defend the principles by which he has lived his life. They end up chanting in front of him, viva la muerte. Long live death.

• 2:53:53Douglas Murray?

  Long live death. And he tries to explain them, this is, this is a necrophilic chant.

• 2:54:02Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:02Douglas Murray?

  But those young men in free Francoise Spain shouting, long live death. They have their counterparts today. They are the people who taunt Americans, Westerners, Israelis and others with lines like, we love death more than you love life.

• 2:54:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's the line you return to. That's a really difficult line to load in. Because if you base your whole existence on that notion, then, well, you're a danger to the world. That's a good foundation for committing evil. I have to ask because you mentioned that interview. You had a good interview with Benjamin Netanyahu after October 7th. And I've been very fortunate to get the opportunity to interview a few world leaders. It looks like I'll interview Vladimir Putin and others.

• 2:55:07Lex Fridman?

  Want to have a general question about how do you interview people like this? Maybe to put your historian hat on of like, how do you approach the interview of world leaders such that you can gain a deeper understanding? In the hope that that adds to the compassion in the world. So I have a deep sense that understanding people you might hate helps in the long arc of history add compassion to the world. But even just to add understanding is difficult in those kinds of contexts. And

• 2:55:48Lex Fridman?

  You know, maybe it's more useful to think about from a historian perspective of how you need to interview somebody like Hitler or Stalin or Churchill FDR during World War II.

• 2:56:04Lex Fridman?

  It's not, you know, I think about this a lot, especially if it's, you know, two, three, four, five hour conversation.

• 2:56:12Douglas Murray?

  Well, there's a lot of weight on you when you do those conversations.

• 2:56:17Lex Fridman?

  From where? So like where, who's watching? Is it historians 20 years from then?

• 2:56:23Douglas Murray?

  Who knows? I mean, the whole data might be wiped. I

• 2:56:29Douglas Murray?

  I suspect there's a weight on you because every major world leader you interview, and you've done some amazing ones, but I mean, you presumably, you have a set of people saying, you've got to ask him about this. You can't not address this. And that's a very challenging one because of course, although in an interview with a politician should not be supine,

• 2:56:58Douglas Murray?

  nor can it be endlessly interrogative because you're not the prosecutor and they don't have to be the guilty party answering to you. And I've noticed the number of people who interview people, world leaders and others, who go in with a set of sort of those things and they, and at some point, the other party can just, I don't need this. And people criticizing you, you don't realize that. You just can't do that.

• 2:57:27Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I suppose why journalists behave the way they do, although I have increasingly less and less respect for the journalists. The average journalist, I have more and more respect for the great journalists as my respect for the average journalist decreases. Because a lot of the journalists seem to be signaling to their own in group. But there is a lot of pressure on people in that situation to ask the, what I would say is the dumb question. Why is it the dumb question? The adversarial question that the world leader, the person is ready for. They've answered that question and.

• 2:58:12Lex Fridman?

  What you're trying to do is, I guess, one, to signal that you've asked the question to push them.

• 2:58:18Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 2:58:19Lex Fridman?

  Two, you're trying to like, just create drama. Because really, what people that ask you to ask that question, they want you to embarrass that person. They hate them and they want you to like, make them piss their pants or something. Or just start crying and run out.

• 2:58:36Douglas Murray?

  Walk out.

• 2:58:37Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Walk out in a way that it's embarrassing for them. They could be like, look at that pathetic person.

• 2:58:44Lex Fridman?

  And that reveals to me, nothing. Except maybe the weakness of the interviewee that they can't stand up to a tough question.

• 2:58:55Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 2:58:56Lex Fridman?

  But mostly, like, I'm starting, I have to do a lot of thinking because you get attacked a lot. If you ask questions from a place of curiosity that actually have a chance to reveal who the person is.

• 2:59:10Douglas Murray?

  There's a very interesting mind that Robin Day, who was quite a distinguished interviewer back, a very distinguished interviewer back in the day, said about Jeremy Paxman, who was a very interrogative interviewer in the UK. Robin Day, who was quite good at being rude to politicians, but carefully, said, the problem with the new approach, as he saw it from the 90s of political interviewing was, he said, if you think the person you're speaking to is a liar, you should get them to reveal that they're a liar. Don't just call them a liar.

• 2:59:38Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:59:39Douglas Murray?

  And I think that is, again, it's something that a lot of people sitting on the other side of the screen don't realize, is that it may satisfy them that you call a person a liar to their face, but it doesn't do anything. And it actually reveals nothing. If somebody is a liar and they reveal themselves to be a liar, then that's, that's something else. But yes, I mean, I can, I, I hear you. You're, you're, obviously you have a lot of different voices telling you what to do.

• 3:00:14Douglas Murray?

  It's also difficult because one of the things that I don't think anyone really understands is that, is that in the end, it's just you.

• 3:00:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:21Douglas Murray?

  I'm sure that you have this about Putin. Like, people say, I know exactly how you can, you know, they could give endless advice. At the end, it's you sitting down, talking to him. It's, it's like, everybody knows how to behave on the presidential debate stage, but only a few people have done it.

• 3:00:41Lex Fridman?

  In person is actually pretty difficult, as I mean.

• 3:00:44Douglas Murray?

  It's very difficult because you've got all this weird behind the scenes stuff as well. You've got all of the games that people play.

• 3:00:50Lex Fridman?

  I mean, yeah, with, you know, I interviewed Zelensky. You know, I'm pretty fearless in general, and he was a very human and fascinating human. But there is soldiers with guns standing all around.

• 3:01:03Douglas Murray?

  And you didn't have anyone? You, no one was packing on your side?

• 3:01:06Lex Fridman?

  I had one friend, a security person, who was also Ukrainian, so you never know. He could turn a.

• 3:01:13Douglas Murray?

  He would infiltrate it.

• 3:01:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:01:15Douglas Murray?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:15Lex Fridman?

  No, I mean, that doesn't have any effect. And by the way, I should mention that because it's hilarious to me, but

• 3:01:23Lex Fridman?

  process wise, no, with Narendra Modi and with anyone, they don't. They said it was scripted and all this kind of stuff. I would never do anything scripted. They don't get to have a say in anything I ask, they have complete freedom. Sometimes you'll have people on the team, very politely, nudge like, hey, can you? And I'll very politely say, thank you, you know, like, smile. But that doesn't mean I have to fucking do it. I could do whatever the hell I want. The com, this actually, by the way, with world leaders, it doesn't happen. It happens more with CEOs. Because they have like usually PR and comms people, they'll just be like, very politely, hey, you know that.

• 3:02:07Lex Fridman?

  Thing.

• 3:02:07Douglas Murray?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 3:02:08Lex Fridman?

  About, about, you know, when they, the sexual assault harassment charges they've had.

• 3:02:13Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, isn't that a need to bring?

• 3:02:14Lex Fridman?

  Could we just, there's no reason to really linger on that.

• 3:02:17Douglas Murray?

  You don't have to do that. Yeah. One of my favorite things anyone's ever said in a, or I, it's only ever happened, I know a couple of cases of this happening in private. Some friends, some, a friend of mine once years ago was debating against the, this is before the war, the civil war in Syria, was debating something to do with the Middle East and one of the people on the other side was the then Syrian ambassador in London. The then Syrian ambassador in London says something about the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. And my friend stands up and starts talking about Assad senior's massacre of the Palestinians in Hammer, where they killed like 10,000 Palestinians in a day.

• 3:02:56Douglas Murray?

  And my friend starts talking about the Hammer massacre by Assad senior. And the, the big fat Syrian ambassador like stands up to respond and he says, that is, that is none of your business.

• 3:03:11Douglas Murray?

  And my friend was like, oh, I thought we were going to get it in denial.

• 3:03:14Lex Fridman?

  Let me just ask you one more thing about Netanyahu. Cause I also have the opportunity to do a three hour interview with him at this stage. And I've been, if I'm just being honest, very hesitant to do it. And I just don't know

• 3:03:35Lex Fridman?

  how a conversation there could help add compassion to the world. And that particular topic, no matter how well you do it, you do take on a very large number of people that will just make it their daily activity to hate you and to write about it and to post about it and to accuse you of things. In some sense, I don't want to lose the part of me that's, that's vulnerable to the world.

• 3:04:05Douglas Murray?

  People have very little understanding of things if they're willing to say that because you're sitting down and talking with somebody, you are ergo platforming them, advancing their cause, being used, being a show or whatever like that, you might be actually just finding some things out, which I think is something you do expertly. And another thing your critics wouldn't realize is that, you know, life is long and, you know, hopefully, God willing, both around for a long time, and therefore you don't blow everything up at the request of some twat online.

• 3:04:43Lex Fridman?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:04:44Douglas Murray?

  But I do think that a superpower of a kind is to identify the people whose opinion you care for and worry about their opinion and no one else's really. And you just keep your own guiding light. That's what's always done it for me is that I've always said I just don't really, I wouldn't care if I was the only person with my opinion and billions of people disagreed. I mean, I might be curious if the whole planet disagreed with me, but it doesn't fundamentally. That's not why. I'll send you Churchill's great speech on the death of Chamberlain. I mean it. He says a bit, he says one of the most wise and brilliant things. I was thinking about it slightly earlier when you were talking about Zelensky, but

• 3:05:28Douglas Murray?

  he goes, because one of Churchill's greatnesses was his magnanimity. And when his great political opponent, Chamberlain, died in 1940 and Churchill had just taken over as prime minister, he could have used the opportunity, and we might even say that some politicians in our day won't be able to resist the opportunity. He could have used the opportunity to say, you see, I was right. And Chamberlain didn't know what the hell he was doing and he'd led us into this mess and you should have all listened to me. Because that would have been a good time.

• 3:06:05Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:05Douglas Murray?

  It would have been a good time to say that that would have been one for the win, as they say. But Churchill doesn't do that in his great eulogy for Chamberlain. He talks about how hard it is for mankind to operate in the world and how you can do it successfully. He very movingly says, he doesn't even mention the name of Hitler. He says, what were Neville Chamberlain's flaws? He says, desiring of human peace, to be seeking peace. And he says, and he, his, the curse that he had was he was led astray by a very wicked man. And that, but then he has this great passage where he, Churchill says, beautiful resonant

• 3:06:46Douglas Murray?

  passage about how, he says, it's not given to men happily for them, for otherwise life would prove intolerable to foresee or to predict to any great extent the unfolding course of events. And he says, in for one phase, men seem to have been right and in another they're proved wrong. And then there's a, and there's a different scale of values emerges. And he said, he says, what is the worth of all this? He says, the only guide to a man is his conscience. The only shield to his memory is the rectitude and the sincerity of his actions. And in effect, he's, he says, it doesn't matter what happens.

• 3:07:25Douglas Murray?

  If you have this, he finishes, he says, with, however the fates may play, that if you have this shield to guard you, he says, you march always in the ranks of honor. All that can guide a man is, is that. If you lose sight of it, and some people do, and maybe everyone does at some point, then it's a challenge. And then you get buffeted by the toos and froes of the waves of popular opinion. But, and that's dangerous. But if you keep sight and hold on to what you believe, a million, billion foes don't

• 3:08:10Douglas Murray?

  matter.

• 3:08:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that is the path. We were talking offline about the great biography of Churchill.

• 3:08:17Lex Fridman?

  Churchill himself made mistakes and admitted the mistakes and was, we can even say was proud of the mistakes. I mean.

• 3:08:24Douglas Murray?

  Learned from them.

• 3:08:25Lex Fridman?

  Learned from them. That's all the best you could do. The worst you could probably do is being afraid of making mistakes.

• 3:08:32Douglas Murray?

  That's what T R. Fam said about them in the man in the arena speech.

• 3:08:36Lex Fridman?

  T R. Yeah. The old T R. Those two have made quite a few mistakes, but are in the end, some of the greatest humans ever created.

• 3:08:52Lex Fridman?

  Norm MacDonald Churchill.

• 3:08:55Douglas Murray?

  Did we do Norm? I think we did before coming on air.

• 3:08:59Lex Fridman?

  Oh, before coming on air. Yeah. Well, he's always and everywhere in the, in the air around us. One of the, one of the great comedians. Um, all right. What gives you hope about this whole thing we have going on?

• 3:09:16Lex Fridman?

  Human civilization. You've been covering some of the darker aspects, the madness of crowds, the madness of geopolitics, the madness of wars. Sometimes when the sun shines through the clouds and, and there's a smile on Douglas Murray's face, what's the source of the smile? The, the warmth?

• 3:09:37Douglas Murray?

  Endless numbers of things.

• 3:09:40Douglas Murray?

  Endless numbers of things. I mean, I get, I get enormous encouragement from smart young people. Actually, that's one of the, that's just the best thing ever.

• 3:09:53Douglas Murray?

  I was in Kiev the other week and I was asked to speak to students at the university and irrespective of the rather, you know, tricky situation that they are in, it's just great to, as you know, to speak to room full of students about things and then hang around after us and just answer all the questions you can and hear from them about their lives and what they want to do and remembering what you were like at their age and how. Goofy you were and how much you were gonna get wrong and how much, you know, you had to learn and how much you were gonna enjoy it and and seeing the

• 3:10:38Douglas Murray?

  the opportunities they have in front of them if if things go right and and just smart young people giving enormous encouragement all the time. It's that's the best thing. I mean, it's just.

• 3:10:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there are. You can see endless possibility in their eyes and there's they're not like burdened by let's say the cynicism that builds up.

• 3:11:01Douglas Murray?

  Even the cynicism, though, I mean, you can resist that. I mean, I've got quite a deep wellspring of it. But I mean, you can't only fall into that because there's so much else it doesn't cover. It'd be like spending your life being ironic, you know?

• 3:11:23Lex Fridman?

  So that said, you have seen a lot of war, especially recently and directly. Now, Ukraine, Israel.

• 3:11:33Lex Fridman?

  Has that changed you?

• 3:11:37Lex Fridman?

  Has that dimmed some of that warmth and light?

• 3:11:43Douglas Murray?

  That's a very difficult question to answer.

• 3:11:47Douglas Murray?

  I don't know. Diffs day to day.

• 3:11:51Lex Fridman?

  So sometimes there's a heaviness there because of the things you've seen.

• 3:11:55Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, I at times, at times.

• 3:11:57Lex Fridman?

  You regret some going as much as you have to the front lines?

• 3:12:03Douglas Murray?

  No, no.

• 3:12:07Douglas Murray?

  One of the reasons why war is for writer kind of the ultimate subject is because you see life weirdly at its ultimate.

• 3:12:23Douglas Murray?

  Very, very strange, strange thing, but you know, it just it is the truth. Death, when it's in front of you, is something which gives a terrible clarity to everything. And it you see how people will love and even sometimes laugh more, how they'll

• 3:12:57Douglas Murray?

  There's an essay by Montaigne that's always on my mind called Why We Weep and Laugh at the Same Time.

• 3:13:04Douglas Murray?

  Uh, everything's just more and um.

• 3:13:10Douglas Murray?

  And people, the real thing is that people, you see the very, very best of people and the very worst. And they're beside each other.

• 3:13:18Lex Fridman?

  There's some, uh, so I've gotten a bunch of chances to interact with soldiers on the front line in Ukraine. And there is some level of like, all the bullshit niceties or whatever it is of, of civilian life is all stripped away. It just seems more honest somehow.

• 3:13:36Douglas Murray?

  Yes, absolutely. I, I've absolutely. Well, I mean, I couldn't agree more. And then there's the wild clarity about things, not because of enemies or anything like that, but because of the, of. Yeah, I joked, I think I mentioned, I joked about this with some Ukrainian soldiers in 22 because they wanted a cigarette. And, uh, and, and we, and we stepped outside, I accompanied them outside because they weren't allowed to smoke indoors. In this hotel, which there are rockets falling.

• 3:14:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:14:13Douglas Murray?

  And I said to them, isn't it strange that fear of secondhand smoke?

• 3:14:20Douglas Murray?

  Has superseded this, but it, I, I don't know.

• 3:14:26Lex Fridman?

  It's seeing the humor in that.

• 3:14:30Lex Fridman?

  When you're on the front line, when you're fighting in a war, the humor of that is somehow just perfectly delicious. You could just laugh all day about that. And the absurdity of life is just.

• 3:14:40Douglas Murray?

  Yes.

• 3:14:40Lex Fridman?

  Right there.

• 3:14:41Douglas Murray?

  That's right.

• 3:14:42Lex Fridman?

  So honest and it's so beautiful. And that's why a lot of soldiers are traumatized. They're destroyed by war, but they also miss it.

• 3:14:49Douglas Murray?

  That's right. That's right. Absolutely. Oh, my God. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 3:14:53Lex Fridman?

  There's an intimacy to the whole thing.

• 3:14:54Douglas Murray?

  Absolutely. Well, that's right. I mean, in Evante's, you know, I never felt more alive, you know.

• 3:15:01Douglas Murray?

  Yeah, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't do anything different.

• 3:15:06Lex Fridman?

  Well, I hope, just like Churchill, you keep fighting the good fight and not listening to anybody. And I'll try to learn to do the same. Douglas, I'm a huge fan. Thank you for doing this.

• 3:15:19Douglas Murray?

  Been a great pleasure. Right back at you.

• 3:15:22Lex Fridman?

  Thank you. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Douglas Murray. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Bertrand Russell. "The problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.