This Is What Happens When We Worship Victims Instead Of Heroes | Douglas Murray - PT 2

Continuing the riveting conversation on "Impact Theory," Tom Bilyeu and Douglas Murray dive deeper into the current geopolitical landscape, examining the pervasive ideology of death cults and how it challenges democratic values. Drawing from Douglas’s compelling narrative on democracies and death cults, they meticulously scrutinize the rise of radical ideologies in the backdrop of global conflicts, with a particular focus on the recent events involving Israel and Hamas. They dissect the existential threats posed by death cults to all democratic societies, unraveling the intricacies of revolutionary mindsets and the failure of systems that succumb to self-loathing rather than self-critique. Douglas passionately argues for victory over totalitarian ideologies not just on the battlefield but in the realm of ideas. Join Tom and Douglas as they unpack the complex sociopolitical dynamics at play and explore the pressing need for clarity and courage amidst chaos. SHOWNOTES 09:06 Dangers of Revolutionary Mindsets 10:50 The Complex Dynamics of Israel and Hamas 13:30 Defining Death Cults and Their Global Impact 17:41 Strategic and Moral Differences in Conflicts 19:42 Anchoring Morality and the Battle of Ideas 23:21 Challenging Popular Misunderstandings in the West 30:47 The Role of Universities in Shaping Current Narratives 33:42 The Scapegoating Phenomenon in History FOLLOW DOUGLAS MURRAY: Twitter: https://twitter.com/DouglasKMurray Books: Available on Amazon and bookstores worldwide CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com https://www.vitalproteins.com/ and entering promo code IMPACT at check out Kettle & Fire: Get 20% off your first order at https://kettleandfire.com/impact with code IMPACT Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Thrive Market: ​​Go to https:thrivemarket.com/impact http://thrivemarket.com/impact for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! American Alternative Assets: If you're ready to explore gold as part of your investment strategy, call 1-888-615-8047 or go to https://TomGetsGold.com https://tomgetsgold.com/ Tech Unheard: Tune into Tech Unheard from Arm and NPM—wherever you get your podcasts. iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACTGO when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Mint Mobile: If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://mintmobile.com/impact. https://mintmobile.com/impact DISCLAIMER: Upfront payment of $45 for 3-month 5 gigabyte plan required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customer offer for first 3 months only, then full-price plan options available. Taxes & fees extra. See MINT MOBILE for details. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. I'm Tom Bilyeu, and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to my incredible conversation with the relentless truth seeker and bestselling author, Douglas Murray. We're tearing off the veil and getting to the truth about Israel, Hamas, and the future of the West. In part one, we laid out the raw facts of what happened on October 7th. But in part two, we get into the ideological fallout.

• 1:29Tom Bilyeu?

  How elite institutions are failing, why cowardice is masquerading as compassion, and what happens when the West loses its moral compass. Douglas does not hold back, and this half of the conversation may be even more incendiary than the first. Let's jump right back in.

• 1:45Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, by way of oversimplifying this ridiculously so, I do want to reveal my thinking on this, which is I, the closest thing that there is, I think, to solving this problem long term is you have to get everybody in the region to focus on making my child's life better in this life here on earth, better than mine, and that their kids have an opportunity to make their lives better than And their parents. Uh, and so when I look at this, again, knowing this is oversimplified, but believe that this is the thing that you can begin sort of pulling things apart. Until you don't have the revolutionary spirit and until people go, I want my kid's life to be good here on earth.

• 2:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, I don't see a way out of this, but if you do solve that, now you at least have a North Star that forces you to ask, okay, what has done that around the world? Uh, and you end up, even if you want to go to just the Chinese system where it's still authoritarian, fine, but it's like, okay, we're gonna turn, um. The economic engine on and off as we see fit, but like we get that that's how you get people out of poverty. You give them this goal oriented mindset and, and now things begin to work. That feels like, again, recognizing it is oversimplified, but nonetheless is true. If they were running that algorithm, then you at least begin the very long, slow process. That has led the Western world over time to correct the wrongs.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Uh, I agree, and I think it's unlikely. Um, but yes, uh. Any system of thought that, any system of morality that.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Seeks the improvement of, and trying to keep away from any theological or political language, but seeks the improvement of the lot of the next generation. Um, would not indulge in what Hamas and others indulge in. Um, I, I, I think this is the same with, I, I, I think that is one of the reasons why you can identify totalitarian mindsets and death cult mindsets is they. They simply have. Demands which are so unreasonable in the, in the present, but are also highly undesirable in the long term. Um, they believe in our view or nothing. They believe in death or nothing.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And I say repeatedly, and I say in the blog, that, you know, and by the way, this is, I'm not the first person to say this, many other people, Golda Meir among them, have said this, but the moment at which there could be peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be the moment when the Palestinians realize that for their children to lead better lives, they should put their energies into creating a state for their children, rather than trying to kill the children of the state next door. If they had put their energies into building a state in Gaza, rather than trying to destroy the state next door, the history of the last nineteen years would be very different.

• 4:58Tom Bilyeu?

  When you debate people at that moment, what is their answer? Is it the open-air prison, apartheid? Where do they go? Because that seems so self-evident.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do. They do all those things. They throw lie after lie and misunderstanding upon misunderstanding. But, I mean, there are plenty of Palestinian Arabs and others who have identified exactly the same problem in their own society. But the, you know, the onus on Palestinian leaders to actually accept their Jewish neighbors, that's not where they feel they're, that's not where they go. I mean, Yasser Arafat, famously, terrorist though he was, I mean, he had the opportunity, again and again, Bill Clinton

• 5:52Speaker 01

  said this recently, again, had the opportunity at Camp David twenty-five years ago now, to get ninety-nine percent of what he had asked for all his life, and he walked away, not actually because he wanted that one extra percent, but because he knew that if he made an agreement, he was over. He'd be over. His own people would reject it. And...

• 6:21Speaker 01

  This is a very deep problem, and I think that it's one worth staring in the face. I'd love to see it solved. I'd love to see, I'd love to be able to dream the same dream that many of the people in the kibbutz, the communities in the south, and indeed the young people at the Nova Party dancing in the early hours of the morning. I'd love to be able to dream the same dream that they dreamed, that they always dreamed of, living in peace with their neighbors. Many of them worked, but they didn't get it.

• 6:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Given how much you're steered by moral clarity, when you look at this moment, what's the calculus that you run? Because at the end of the day, when you look back all through human history, you, the only way that you're going to get peace is if you win a decisive military victory. Now, that doesn't stop you from having insurgencies, that is for sure. But that's just how these things have been settled all throughout human history. You just break the will of the other side to fight. And when I look at what's going on in Israel-Gaza, I think a lot about America. And so, for people that don't know their own American history, and I'll give it to you in the world's tiniest

• 7:34Tom Bilyeu?

  nutshell, we run up on a country that already has people on it. We, through disease and warfare, knock out the first group, and then we get to basically Mexico, but it's in the form of California, etc. And President Polk is like, yep, I want that too, and has his run of four years and literally displaces them. And his own generals were like, this is a stain on America that will never be able to wash off. But hey, don't worry, people have very short-term memories. We've washed it off. And now we have a country, and the crazy thing is, when I say that, I'm like, ugh, like, that's so icky. And yet, if China

• 8:18Tom Bilyeu?

  rolled up on the California coast where I live, I would fight. So, I'm like, okay, and I would fight, and I would be screaming from the rooftops, decisive military victory. So, when I look at Israel, I'm familiar enough, obviously, people could drag me into the wheeze, and I'd be like, I don't know. But I'm familiar enough with the history to know that there's a very similar rollout that's like, hey, if we can get enough people here to this area for reasons that obviously make all the sense in the world post-World War II, like, we've got to go somewhere. They go and at first it's like, well, now we can be economically powerful. We can start being politically powerful. And you just get to the point where you've got enough people that you're the dominant culture at that point. And then from that, you end up building the state.

• 9:02Tom Bilyeu?

  And honestly, man, when I look at the UK, I'm like, guess what? Playbook is being run on you guys. It's that playbook. You've got a bunch of Muslim people coming in. They're not assimilating. And on a long enough timeline, like that just seems, that's a question of demographics. Who's having more babies? Uh, and then what are they teaching their children? If they teach our children English values, great. If they don't, then whatever they teach them, if they become the dominant culture, then that's what that nation becomes. And so, man, I hate to have this super detached thing because these are human lives and I, I don't want to diminish any of that. But when I look at this, the, the thinking of, okay, we've got two issues. We've got real people are dying because bombs are going off, guns are being fired.

• 9:46Tom Bilyeu?

  And then we have the ideological battle of, but we also want to win international support. We don't want to end up getting isolated. That's going to matter. Um, so if you're advising Israel, how do you do that one, two step of, okay, there are going to be people that feel some kind of way about the formation of the state, always and forever, just as people feel some kind of way about the way that America started. Um, but you're here. So now that you're here, do they not need to pursue total military victory, full stop, period, end of story, regardless of what the international pressures are?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Um, not totally regardless, but, um, they need to do as any country does, what they, what is best in the security and safety of their own people. And always with that remembrance, I mean, you mentioned that people coming from Europe to Israel, but only one third of Israelis are of European ancestry and descent. Most are in total indigenous to the region. Um, it's always interesting to hear people talking about indigenous peoples. They, they don't talk about indigenous peoples in Britain, you notice by the way.

• 10:59Tom Bilyeu?

  After the break, we'll talk about Europe's rising antisemitism and why Douglas believes it's far worse than anyone wants to admit.

• 11:08Tom Bilyeu?

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• 11:52Tom Bilyeu?

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• 12:37Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:18Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump right back in. But even just to really make this difficult, and I hear you, and that we should come back to that, but to stare at the hardest parts of this, if Mexicans, and literally, I'm looking at Mexicans right now, if they came to California, not came to, they've been here forever from an ancestral standpoint, if they were like, okay, we are not interested in assimilation anymore, we want to bring our family over, we want to de-Americanize this, we want now California, Arizona, New Mexico, we want that to go back to a Mexican state, we feel way more kinship with Mexico, I would fight against that. And I would say, hey, if you're

• 14:00Tom Bilyeu?

  coming to America, you've got to assimilate. But I'm not blind to the fact that we just won. So we won a war, and now there's a trip that flips in my brain that says, hey, you've got something, you've built a country here, and now it's full steam ahead. And I'm married to a Cypriot whose family lost their land when Turkey invaded. I've actually marched in the streets of London, saying, you know, the Turkish troops need to get out of Cyprus. But the reality, my actual belief is like, it's done, move on. Like, to loop endlessly there makes no sense to me.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  I'm very glad you went on the demonstration. I feel very compassionate about the Cypriot cause, and I'm always startled by the fact that, the fact that NATO member state is still occupying half of an EU member state, that Turkey is still occupying Northern Cyprus, seems to me a great injustice. And although you are about the first person I've ever spoken to in America who has marched for that cause, it stands out because you do not see American students or any massive movement on American streets saying, nothing in the world will be sorted and righted until the Turks give up Northern Cyprus. There's

• 15:16Speaker 01

  nobody says that. But that's a real occupation. That's real colonialism that the Turkish government is doing right there. The thing with wars is that there is a misunderstanding in the modern age. A misunderstanding of one of many, but one of the most profound is that most wars finish with a sort of compromise around the table. And that's just historically not true. As I say in the book, most wars end because one side's won and one side has lost. There's an important follow-on point, which is the side that's won needs to know it's won. And the side that loses needs to know it's lost.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  The only way in which we destroyed Nazi fascism was that it happened on the battlefield and on the realm of ideas. These two were as one. It was destroyed on the battlefield and destroyed as an idea. Never goes away completely, but is pretty much chased out. Communism was not destroyed completely on the battlefield, but it wasn't completely destroyed in the realm of ideas, not as much as some of us would like. But it was almost completely destroyed.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  The Hamas death cult ideology must be destroyed, to my view, not only on the battlefield, but in the realm of ideas. It must be made clear that any Palestinian who wants any kind of future for their people must accept the Jewish people as well. That they will not be able to continue to... They will never thrive as a people so long as they want to annihilate their neighbour. And I really hope that after this last round of conflict, which I've often said is must not be the latest Gaza war, but the last Gaza war. Not the third Lebanon war, but the last Lebanon war.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  My hope is that this death cult, it can be destroyed on the battlefield and in the realm of ideas. But for that to happen, the Palestinian peoples and anyone who supports them and is on their side abroad must encourage them to realise that the annihilation of their neighbours is deadly for their neighbours and deadly for them.

• 17:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, there's no doubt. Now, going back to Cyprus, so I'm not sure if it came through in what I was saying. I marched in that, but I marched in that basically to show love to my in-laws. And to be honest, I didn't even understand. It was, I will say, I felt very good about it. But the reality is now, as I get older and I am trying to be morally consistent about how I think these things ought to go. I look at America, it took its land by force and I love this country and I'm proud to be an American and just accept that this is the way of the world.

• 18:22Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I look at Israel, same thing, and I go, hey, it's the way of the world. They were able to, even if you're just going to give them politically, they were able to politically come in and unify the land under their banner and then when attacked, they were able to win those wars. And so, right, they've got it. And so to be consistent with that, when I see Turkey's been there for 50 years, I'm like, kids, it's over. Like, if you're, either you gotta fight back, which should be obviously a horrible loss of life, and I would not advise it because we're 50 years later, things have settled, people have moved on. But to continue to loop on that, like, that doesn't make sense to me. That's exactly from where I'm at, and you can tell me I'm crazy. I totally hear you on the death cult thing. It gives it a totally different energy.

• 19:07Tom Bilyeu?

  And if the Turks had death cult energy, or the Greeks had death cult energy on Cyprus, that whole thing would be a different ballgame. But my takeaway is, you fight until you're not willing to fight. And then if you're saying, alright, we're done, we're out of this, that to spend the rest of your life, like, in this killing each other a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit here, a little bit there, like, there's, it's just no way to live, man. I can't wrap my head around that.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  It isn't a good way to live, but in the case of Israel, this is, it's 80 years since the reformation of the state, the re-establishment of the Jewish state and Jewish homeland. And if after 80 years, almost 80 years now, some people don't accept it in the West, in other parts of the West, and also in the region, that is to their great detriment, because there is, the state of Israel is not going anywhere.

• 20:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Agreed, and I think they should go ham. But my question directly to you is, I see Israel in the way that I see Turkey in Cyprus, not the way that I see Greece. Do you see Israel as Greece or Turkey equivalent?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say I see it as being either equivalent, for lots of reasons. First of all, Turkish expansionism is its own thing. Turkey and the Ottoman Empire has historically been very good at expanding way beyond its borders and wishing to build up an empire. It has been historically a very colonialist and expansionist power.

• 20:57Tom Bilyeu?

  And that's a red line for you, ethically.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't have to be. I'm broadly against it, yes, but I believe in nation-states, but I also believe that nation-states' borders can change, but as you say, you better be up for that if you're going to do it. Israel's borders are disputable in three arenas, have been disputed in three arenas principally, Gaza, the Golan, and Judea, Samaria. I see all of that as stuff that can be sorted out. The Golan's Israeli, Gaza is a mess,

• 21:43Speaker 01

  West Bank, negotiate. And again, we'll see. But I do think that something which everybody has to realize about the region is that, first of all, it is the place, it is the one place that is a Jewish homeland. Muslims have many different homelands. Christians have many different homelands. The Jews have one homeland. They're in it. And as Golda Meir famously said to Joe Biden, they have a secret weapon, which is they have nowhere else to go.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  And the people who sometimes fantasize about Israel's enemies winning a victory over Israel should realize that, should recognize that. I think it's just, it's a very strange thing. I'm glad you brought up Cyprus. It's a very strange thing, the world to fixate the amount that it does on this one particular territorial dispute, which is a real territorial dispute, but it's telling that it's the one that gets the world's attention. The Western Sahara question does not, Cyprus does not. There are many territorial disputes around the

• 23:06Speaker 01

  world. It is a very interesting one, this one. And one of the reasons I think it is so important is because I think that the anti-Israel people have chosen their target well. They have realized correctly that the Jewish state, Judaism, foundational to Judeo-Christian tradition, which is obviously, whether you like it or not, foundational to the foundation of the West. They realize that if they take out Israel, they can take out something very fundamental to the West. I think they are right, but I simply don't want them to succeed.

• 23:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you think of then the Israel conflict as a flag bearer for the Western world? And it's like, hey, you've got this in our region, and so we're treating this like a splinter? Because literally, until that sentence came out of your mouth, I would have said, certainly for my own sake, that this is about Jews and has nothing to do with Jews as representative of the West. Just because when I look back in history, I remember one of my earliest awakenings to patterns of history was my sister, who was obsessed with Russian history, was telling me about pogroms. And I'm like, why always the Jews? Like, I don't understand. So, and

• 24:30Tom Bilyeu?

  you confront that in your book. So I suppose my question is two parts. One, is what's going on in Israel from an international perspective them as harbinger of the West irrespective of being Jews? Or is what's going on over there, Jews just represent something, man, that for a long time has wound people up?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  I think it's both. I think since the West is based, as everyone knows, on Athens and Jerusalem, you would not want to take out the legacy of Jerusalem any more than you'd want to take out the legacy of Athens. And but either would be devastating to the Western tradition. And at the same time, Judaism, the Jewish people are their own thing. And they, as you say, throughout history have come in for disproportionate amount of hatred. And as I say in the book, there are very, very clear reasons for that.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And I think, among other things, that the human desire to find a scapegoat, which Rene Girard, among others, wrote about so eloquently, it's absolutely hardwired into us. The Jews are almost perfect as a scapegoat for absolutely anyone. They could be a scapegoat for the Christian world, and they can be a scapegoat for the Islamic world. They can be a scapegoat for the rich and for the poor, for the for people of left and right politically. I go into the reasons for that. But I believe that the moments when societies become filled with this sort of noxious thing

• 26:18Speaker 01

  of antisemitism is a thing when you can tell the society itself is starting to go rotten.

• 26:25Tom Bilyeu?

  And they're looking for someone to blame?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Looking for. It is, as I say, it's a mirror for the failings of anyone who indulges in it. As I quote Vasily Grossman, "Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, and I'll tell you what you're guilty of." You might be amused, of course, to know that that works for governments as well as for individuals. The Turkish government calling the Israelis occupiers is one that particularly amuses me, because all it does is tell us about the Turkish government.

• 26:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it's, uh, the whole idea of projection is very, very interesting.

• 27:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Why this moment? What's going on right now that is resurfacing an unbelievable amount of antisemitism?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  It is, as I say, a demonstration of a failure in society and failings that are going on. I believe that the antisemitism we've seen the last 18 months, uh, it's not, isn't to say, I should stress, I always stress, it isn't the case that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic, but treating Jews by double standards is. And I believe that much of what we've seen, not all of it, but much of what we've seen is antisemitic in its origins and its nature.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  I think it tells us that our society is a febrile, more febrile than we might wish them to be. And that when, as again, as Grossman said, when systems in your own society go wrong, you search for other things to do.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  It's not just the scapegoat thing, but it's, it's, it's, it's startling historically to look at the way in which antisemitism is. I mean, for instance, and we see it in America today. Jews can be hated for being rich and for being poor, for being religious and for being secular. But most interestingly, they can be hated for being absorbed and integrated into a society and for not being absorbed and integrated into a society. And that is a, that is a sign of, as I say, you can, antisemitism tells us, it holds up a mirror to the person who feels it.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  It holds up a mirror to the failings of the personal social structure that feels it. And it only tells us about them. It tells us never anything about the Jews.

• 29:03Tom Bilyeu?

  You want to hear what Douglas says next? It's a brutal takedown of what he calls the new morality, infecting college campuses and global diplomacy.

• 29:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it. I had a conversation with a guy that does a Jewish podcast. And we were talking about that. And my hypothesis is really simple.

• 29:29Tom Bilyeu?

  One, you have a, and the only sort of stick in the spokes is that I had never thought about how they have been historically in Europe persecuted for being poor. But my thinking was always, okay, you have a really powerful strategy, which is that you help each other. And that's, that's unreasonably useful. When I think about what makes a nation work, you all work together against the rest of the world. What makes a family work? You all come together against everybody else. What makes a team work? Same thing. And so they have a tradition of really helping each other. But it's extremely hard to convert to their faith. It's not impossible, but it's very hard. So there's this sense of you're being kept out of a club.

• 30:14Tom Bilyeu?

  And a club that historically has been very successful. So they can come into an area

• 30:20Tom Bilyeu?

  fleeing the previous pogrom, have to rebuild from scratch, are able to do it. I was talking to Jordan Peterson at one point, and I was like, what do you think it is? And he was like, well, they

• 30:33Tom Bilyeu?

  almost certainly have a standard deviation above the norm IQ. And he's like, look, that's controversial. But if you have an insular group that for better or worse, is a standard deviation ahead of the average from an intelligence perspective. And they're really good at helping each other. So now you drop them in and basically anywhere they go, they're going to be successful. And if you just understand economies, you know, you want to put yourself at the heartbeat of that. There's a reason Alexander Hamilton, who was not a Jew, understood, I want to be Secretary of Treasury. Like, that's where I want to be. I'm essentially going to invent this country on the back of controlling how money works. And even saying that phrase, controlling how money works, sounds evil.

• 31:18Tom Bilyeu?

  But read Hamilton, you'll be like, oh damn, like, thank you. I owe you a debt of gratitude. This is unbelievable. I live in this incredible society because you had these insights into how to balance it. Like, they didn't even have the word velocity of money. But he intuitively understood the need to address that. Oh, my God. Anyway, brilliant. So they find themselves at the heartbeat of a thing that people really care about. So I look at that and I'm like, yeah, if your society is beginning to degrade, things are not going well, but you can see a group that sort of keeps you out. And they're doing well, almost regardless of where we're at in society. It is like this perfect storm, married with what you've been talking about, about the death cult mentality that can through

• 32:03Tom Bilyeu?

  time for totally different reasons, just absolutely take over the operating system of the human mind. Uh, truly fascinating.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  My own people, the Scots, were also big bankers back in the day. And it was for reasons that the historian Neil Ferguson has written about, Scots and Jews were very similar in their organization and money. And one of the explanations for it has nothing to do with genetics or IQ. It's to do with high trust. It's to do with high trust. But you could be, if you're a Scottish banker or Jewish banker, you were in a community where if you, if you were to cheat somebody, it's not just you're cheating them out and they could legally get you. You're going to

• 32:54Speaker 01

  damage your own reputation in the community of trust, and that's not worth it. Anyway, however, fortunately, from my point of view, the Scottish people are not currently being held responsible for all of the woes of the world.

• 33:11Tom Bilyeu?

  That is a nice switch.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:15Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, going to put a bow on the book part of this conversation, you end on an optimistic note. What do you want people to take away from what was really, this really feels like the most honest word from my N of one experience. It was confrontational. Reading your book was confrontational. I realized how much I had pushed some of those early ideas of what was going on to the back of my mind, and I didn't want to think about them. And just carrying those through and hearing the stories one after another, it, it really was like, oh, I'm being asked to look at evil and to ask the question.

• 33:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Does evil exist? If it does exist, can we come up with a universal definition? And then if we all agree, even if we can't agree there's a universal definition, if we do agree that evil exists and that almost biblical dialogue is the right way to understand what's going on, how do we get on the other side?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  People will have to read the book to see what I think about that, obviously. And I don't sum everything up, but I do believe, and have believed even more since my reporting and coverage of the last 18 months, I do believe that a force exists in the world, can descend in the world, which you can only really use the theological term of evil to describe. I don't believe that they're just simply people who are misunderstood. And of course, that's sometimes the case. I don't believe it's just people who had bad childhoods. Lots of people have bad childhoods.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  I think there are forces in the world you should be able to use the dated but necessary language of evil about. It's unconquerable as a force in the world, but I suppose that, I mean, you know, one of the ways in which people have always understood this problem is to recognize that it is something that runs through the center of every human heart.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Everyone must fight their own battle with internally as well as externally. When it comes to what I really want people to take away from this, it is quite a lot of things. Not just a better understanding of the areas I'm writing about, the people I'm writing about, the problems I'm writing about, but I think of a problem which I think America in particular must address.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  I discussed that issue of the greatest generation and the way in which everybody who came after the generation of the 1940s weighs themselves against that generation. And we almost always presume that we will not rise to the task if, in your example, California were to be invaded or... America would be invaded, or it sounds preposterous to say that, of course, because it's not something that's ever likely to happen by sea. Europe is in a different position now, particularly Eastern Europe. The further east you go in Europe, the more people are fearing that some kind of kinetic land war is possible.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Nevertheless, one of the things that I've taken away from my last eighteen months of war has been that the time of trial can come about, and some people unexpectedly rise to the moment. And they do so for lots of reasons. One is events, but another is that they are well cultured, well instructed. You know, they don't have to be well educated. They have to be well created, good human beings who orient themselves in a particular direction.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  And I say toward the end of the book that when I've been with the young men and women who older Israelis thought had gone weak and were just wanting to party in Tel Aviv and be on Instagram and TikTok, when this young generation stared real evil in the face and realized it had to defend its people, they have not only stepped up, they've been extraordinary. And I think constantly of their counterparts in America and Britain and elsewhere, and they've been to a great extent, we had talked about this a bit earlier, they've been indoctrinated into a culture of victimhood, where the greatest victim wins, where to be oppressed is almost

• 37:54Speaker 01

  the greatest good. And I believe, I've always believed that this is a very bad idea. I said this in The Strange Death of Europe, it was an undercurrent in the war on the West and in the madness of crowds. But I believe that there's an answer to this problem, and it is literally to decide whether you want to orientate your society and yourself towards courage, or whether you want to orientate it and yourself toward victimhood.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And in my last book, In the War on the West, I talked about the perils of the victimhood mentality. And in this book, what I finish on is the admirable nature of courage, of true human courage. And I hope that people take from the book,

• 38:47Speaker 01

  remorselessly, you describe it as being imparts,

• 38:51Speaker 01

  a courageous and optimistic ending.

• 38:56Tom Bilyeu?

  It's one of the most engaging books you've written, and I'm pretty sure I've read all the books that you've put out.

• 39:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it is, it's unflinching in something that I resonate with, which is making me look at the truth of the human condition. All I care about is accurately mapping what this life is really like, so that I can navigate it well for myself. Any larger structure that I'm a part of, that I can do my little bit to nudge it in a direction that makes sense. Yeah, it is a message that I think this generation needs very badly. Now, this is where my lens maybe becomes a little bit more paranoid than the average person. I look at the world and I, I really believe what I said in the intro, that this is a period of renegotiation, the likes of which no one alive has seen before. I mean, this is really, really, everything is up in the air. From what is morality, people can't decide on that.

• 39:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Who's the good guy, who's the bad guy? People can't decide on that. How should war be played out? People don't agree on that. It's just, there's a lot of things, all the way down to, ought America let China simply quietly pass it economically and not ruffle feathers, avoid Thucydides' trap by accepting second place? Or do we fight back? So, man, there's going to be a lot happening right now. But there was this incredible meme that was such a gut punch to me that your book is very much the antidote to, which is, the meme was, oh, so you want to bring manufacturing back to the US? And it shows these morbidly obese people moving really slowly, non-dexterously on these sewing machines. And you just see a bunch of people doing that. Clearly, they don't know what they're doing.

• 40:33Tom Bilyeu?

  They're like fumbling with. You know, like screwdrivers and stuff. And then it's like, make America great again. And I was like, oh, man, that is a little too real. Uh, in terms of we've just lost that. The like fighter spirit, the people that came and were. And I'm gonna say the words that people are gonna hate. The people that came here and literally conquered a completely wild land. And that sense of like adventure, of danger, of not being able to guarantee survival. But you had a shot that nobody was going to be able to stop you. You were going to be able to build what you could build. And if you were willing to fight for it, you could have it.

• 41:15Tom Bilyeu?

  And I felt that coursing through the veins of America. Until about maybe 10 years ago. And then it just, you could feel it like flagging. And you're like, wait a second, what's going on? Like you get such a different vibe from kids. So anyway, hearing your book, talking about this young generation as. Basically, the punchline being every generation will realize what they're capable of when they're called.

• 41:43Tom Bilyeu?

  And I certainly hope nobody's ever called. I don't want that for people. I am certainly not pro war, pro violence. I don't want to see it. Pro readiness, pro love of whatever team you're on. I don't expect everyone to be on team America. I want them to be on their own team. But that like energy of innovation of trying to like really do the extraordinary. It's just, I don't feel in the gas tank right now.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  We have been through a period of what I've described in my previous books as being deliberate innovation. Innovation, that is deliberate exhausting.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  We've been put through a period in the West of deliberate exhausting of our energies. To the most fundamental level. We've been having to spend years talking about the most fundamental thing that we knew as a species. Boy or girl, man or woman. We pretended this was an impossible conundrum and that nobody could say. This is deliberately de-energizing. I would like to think that America is better than that. And that this country, our society can be re-energized. But for that to happen, a lot of crap's gonna have to be pushed out of the way. And a lot of people are gonna have to get going now with the thing they should do with their lives.

• 43:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, and we're gonna see if there's something that can be put out into the culture that's going to spark that. Certainly Donald Trump is the attempt at voting someone in that captures that energy. Do you think that populist figures like him and others around the world are going to light that spark? Or are they a wrecking ball that's just gonna make a mess of things?

• 43:30Speaker 01

  I'm sitting awfully close to him currently in DC. We'll see. We'll see.

• 43:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, this is, uh, this is certainly a moment. Douglas, I can't thank you enough for your time, man. I cannot thank you enough for the books you write, for the wars that you cover, um, and for your dogged tenacity. Now, I did promise a friend that I would ask a point blank question of you, and that friend, I'll let him remain nameless, says, what is your favorite thing about Michael Malice?

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Um, I just, if you gave me all day, I couldn't think of a single thing. Nothing comes to mind. He's a man without any qualities or attributes. It's very sad for him and it's very sad. Many friends.

• 44:22Tom Bilyeu?

  It's tough to watch. All right, I'll pass it on. Brother, thank you, man. Uh, hopefully this is the first of many, and I wish you the best on the rest of your book tour. And, uh, yeah, please let the people know where they can find you.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Yes, uh, you can find me on X, Douglas Kamara. You can find me, uh, my books all available at every place where books can still be bought. Uh, Barnes and Noble in the US, Waterston's in the UK, and of course, Amazon, everywhere.

• 44:49Tom Bilyeu?

  I love it. Awesome. Guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics,

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