Douglas Murray: Racism, Marxism, and the War on the West

Lex Fridman (01:38.040)

This is the Lex Friedman podcast.

Douglas Murray (01:40.080)

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in the description.

Lex Fridman (01:43.520)

And now, dear friends, here's Douglas Murray.

Lex Fridman (01:48.000)

You recently wrote the book titled The War on the West,

Douglas Murray (01:52.120)

which in part says that the values, ideas,

Lex Fridman (01:54.560)

and history of Western civilization are under attack.

Lex Fridman (01:57.400)

So let's start with the basics.

Lex Fridman (01:59.680)

Historically and today, what are the ideas

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that represent Western civilization?

Lex Fridman (02:05.120)

The good, the bad, the ugly.

Douglas Murray (02:07.000)

I actually don't get stuck on definitions,

Lex Fridman (02:09.800)

precisely because, as you know, once you get stuck

Douglas Murray (02:11.800)

on definitions, there's a possibility

Lex Fridman (02:13.120)

you'll never get off them.

Douglas Murray (02:13.960)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (02:16.600)

I'd say a few things.

Douglas Murray (02:17.560)

Firstly, obviously the Western tradition

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is a specific tradition, a specific tradition

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of ideas, culture, well known to be, perhaps,

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easily defined by the combination of Athens

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and Jerusalem, the world of the Bible,

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and the world of ancient Greece and, indeed, Rome.

Douglas Murray (02:38.080)

Effectively, it creates European civilization,

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which itself spawns the rest of the Western civilizations,

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America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others.

Lex Fridman (02:48.640)

But these are the main countries

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that we still refer to as the West.

Lex Fridman (02:52.880)

So there's a specific tradition

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and all the things that come from it.

Lex Fridman (02:58.080)

My shorthand cheat on this answer is to say,

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you know when you're not in it.

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So if you've ever been to Beijing, Shanghai,

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you know you're not in the West.

Lex Fridman (03:10.540)

Somewhere else, you know you're not in the West.

Douglas Murray (03:12.820)

When you're in Tokyo, you're somewhere extraordinary,

Lex Fridman (03:15.400)

but you know you're not in the West.

Douglas Murray (03:18.400)

Obviously, there are, let's say, borderline questions,

Lex Fridman (03:22.660)

like is Russia in the West,

Douglas Murray (03:25.840)

which I sort of leave open as a question.

Lex Fridman (03:31.400)

Possibly.

Douglas Murray (03:32.240)

Well, if you were placed into Moscow blindfolded

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and you woke up and you couldn't hear the language,

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or maybe you didn't know what the language sounded like,

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would you guess you were in the West or not?

Douglas Murray (03:42.920)

I think I was somewhere near it.

Lex Fridman (03:44.600)

Getting closer.

Douglas Murray (03:47.160)

I mean, you know, it's also a question, doesn't it,

Lex Fridman (03:49.560)

whether it's European.

Lex Fridman (03:51.080)

And I think the answer to that is not really,

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although massively influenced by Europe,

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but, and times wanting to reach towards it,

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at times wanting to stay away,

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but a part of the West, possibly, yes.

Lex Fridman (04:07.420)

But anyway, it's a very specific tradition.

Douglas Murray (04:09.920)

It's one of a number of major traditions in the world,

Lex Fridman (04:13.920)

and because it's hard to define

Douglas Murray (04:16.920)

doesn't mean it doesn't exist, you know.

Lex Fridman (04:19.400)

Are there certain characteristics and qualities

Lex Fridman (04:21.160)

about the values and the ideas that define it?

Lex Fridman (04:23.960)

Is the type of rule, the type of governmental structure?

Douglas Murray (04:28.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (04:29.040)

I mean, the rule of law, property owning democracies,

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and much more, I mean, these are, of course,

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things that ended up being developed in America

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and then given back to much of the rest of the West.

Lex Fridman (04:42.960)

I'd say there are other,

Douglas Murray (04:46.400)

perhaps more controversial attributes

Lex Fridman (04:48.320)

I would give to the West.

Douglas Murray (04:49.300)

One is a ravenous interest in the rest of the world,

Lex Fridman (04:53.180)

which is not shared, of course, by every other culture.

Douglas Murray (04:57.100)

The late philosopher George Steiner

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who said he could never get out of his head

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the haunting fact that the boats

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only seemed to go out from Europe.

Douglas Murray (05:05.760)

You know, the explorers, the scholars, the linguists,

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the people who wanted to discover other civilizations,

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and indeed, even resurrect ancient civilizations

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and lost civilizations.

Douglas Murray (05:18.920)

These were scholars that were always coming from the West

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to discover this elsewhere.

Douglas Murray (05:22.000)

By contrast, you know, there were never boats

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coming from Egypt to help the Anglo Saxons

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discover the origins of their language and so on.

Lex Fridman (05:30.480)

So I think there is a sort of ravenous interest

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in the rest of the world,

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which can be said to be a Western.

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Attribute, although it, of course,

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also has, one should immediately preface it,

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some downsides and many criticisms

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that can be made of some of the consequences

Douglas Murray (05:43.320)

of that interest.

Lex Fridman (05:45.680)

Because, of course, it's not entirely lacking

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in self interest.

Lex Fridman (05:50.560)

So it's not just the scholars, it's also.

Douglas Murray (05:53.240)

The armies.

Lex Fridman (05:54.100)

The armies, and they're looking to gain access

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and control over resources elsewhere.

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To market.

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And hence the imperial imperative.

Lex Fridman (06:03.720)

Exactly.

Douglas Murray (06:04.560)

To conquer, to expand.

Lex Fridman (06:06.240)

Although that itself, of course, is a universal thing.

Douglas Murray (06:08.520)

I mean, no civilization, I think, that we know of

Lex Fridman (06:13.000)

doesn't try to gain ground from its neighbors where it can.

Douglas Murray (06:17.240)

The Western ability to go further faster

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certainly gave an advantage in that regard.

Douglas Murray (06:23.620)

Do some civilizations get a bit more excited

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by that kind of idea than others?

Douglas Murray (06:28.440)

Possible.

Lex Fridman (06:29.440)

It's possible.

Douglas Murray (06:30.280)

Because you could say it's the Western civilization

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because the technological innovation was more efficient

Douglas Murray (06:38.680)

at doing that kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (06:39.520)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (06:40.360)

But maybe it wanted it more, too.

Lex Fridman (06:41.880)

Well, the Ottomans wanted it an awful lot

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and did very terribly well for many centuries,

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and one shouldn't forget that, as did others.

Douglas Murray (06:53.560)

I'd also say, by the way, and again,

Lex Fridman (06:55.160)

it's a very broad one, but it's worth throwing out there.

Douglas Murray (06:57.200)

I think self criticism is an important attribute

Lex Fridman (07:02.200)

of the Western mind, one that, as you know,

Douglas Murray (07:05.680)

is not common everywhere.

Lex Fridman (07:07.840)

Not all societies allow even their most vociferous critics

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to become rich.

Lex Fridman (07:13.000)

So criticism is a negative sounding word.

Douglas Murray (07:15.980)

It could be self introspection, self analysis,

Lex Fridman (07:19.400)

self reflection.

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And it can be what you need.

Lex Fridman (07:23.960)

And in the Western system, I'd argue that one of the

Douglas Murray (07:26.760)

advantages of the system of representative governance

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is that where there are problems in the system,

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you can attempt to sort them out by peaceable means.

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We listen to arguments, most famously in America

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in the late 20th century, the civil rights movement

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achieved its aims by force of moral argument

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and dissuaded the rest of the country

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that it had been wrong.

Douglas Murray (07:51.920)

That's not common in every society by any means.

Lex Fridman (07:55.840)

So I think there are certain attributes of the Western mind

Douglas Murray (07:58.640)

that you could say are, they're not entirely unique,

Lex Fridman (08:03.280)

but they are not as commonplace elsewhere.

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What about the emergence in hierarchies of asymmetry

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of power, most visible, most drastic in the form of slavery,

Lex Fridman (08:16.560)

for example?

Lex Fridman (08:18.080)

Well, I mean, everyone in the world is slavery,

Lex Fridman (08:19.920)

so I don't regard it as being a Western,

Lex Fridman (08:22.160)

a unique Western sin.

Douglas Murray (08:25.080)

It's rather hard to think of a civilization in history

Lex Fridman (08:27.560)

that didn't have slavery of some kind.

Douglas Murray (08:29.360)

One of the oddities of the Western ignorance of our day

Lex Fridman (08:32.520)

is that people seem to imagine that our societies

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in the West were the only ones who ever engaged

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in any vices.

Douglas Murray (08:39.000)

Alas, this isn't true.

Lex Fridman (08:40.480)

It's a sort of Rousseauian mistake,

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or at least one that's blossomed since Rousseau,

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that everybody else in the world was born

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into sort of Edenic innocence,

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and only we in the West had this sort of evil in us

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that caused us to do bad things to other people.

Lex Fridman (08:55.880)

Slavery was engaged in by everyone in the ancient world,

Douglas Murray (08:58.280)

of course, and through most of the modern world as well.

Lex Fridman (09:01.760)

Of course, there are 40 million slaves in the world today,

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so it's clearly not something that the species as a whole

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has a problem with.

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And that's more slaves, of course,

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than there were in the 19th century.

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And I'd say, on top of that, that the interesting thing

Lex Fridman (09:17.840)

about the Western mind as regards to slavery

Douglas Murray (09:19.960)

is that we were the civilization that did away with it.

Lex Fridman (09:23.560)

And by the way, the founding fathers of America,

Douglas Murray (09:26.280)

who today are lambasted routinely

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for being acquiescent in the slave trade,

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engaging in it, owning slaves.

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People almost don't even bother now to recognize the facts

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that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington,

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all wanted to see this trade done away with,

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couldn't hold the country together at the origins

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if they'd have made such an effort.

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And believed and hoped that it would be something

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that would be dealt with after their time.

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So the founding ideas had within them the notion

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that we should, as a people, get rid of this.

Douglas Murray (10:05.880)

The opening lines of the Declaration of Independence

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set up the conditions under which slavery

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will be impossible.

Lex Fridman (10:14.600)

All men are created equal.

Douglas Murray (10:16.720)

Once you've put that, that's a time bomb

Lex Fridman (10:19.680)

under the whole concept of slavery.

Douglas Murray (10:22.660)

That's ticking away, okay.

Lex Fridman (10:24.840)

And sure enough, it detonated in the next century.

Douglas Murray (10:28.360)

If we just step back and look at the human species,

Lex Fridman (10:32.640)

what does slavery teach you about human nature?

Douglas Murray (10:36.360)

The fact that slavery has appeared

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as a function of society throughout human history.

Douglas Murray (10:44.360)

There are two possibilities.

Lex Fridman (10:47.420)

One is it's what people think they can do

Douglas Murray (10:51.520)

when God's not watching.

Lex Fridman (10:54.680)

Another is it's what they can do

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if they think that God allows it.

Lex Fridman (11:00.000)

Really, really well put.

Lex Fridman (11:02.080)

And the fact that they want to do this kind of subjugation,

Lex Fridman (11:09.280)

what does that mean?

Douglas Murray (11:10.880)

Well, I mean, it's pretty straightforward in a way.

Lex Fridman (11:14.480)

There are people who get to work for free.

Douglas Murray (11:17.080)

It's economic in nature in some sense.

Lex Fridman (11:19.360)

Yes, but in order to do it,

Douglas Murray (11:20.960)

I mean, almost always there are some examples

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in the ancient world where this wasn't the case,

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but almost always it had to be a subjugated people

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or people that are regarded as different.

Douglas Murray (11:30.560)

One of the things actually I've tried to sort of inject

Lex Fridman (11:32.800)

into the discussion through this book among other things

Douglas Murray (11:35.960)

is a recognition that there were very major questions

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still going on in the 18th and early 19th century

Douglas Murray (11:43.400)

that were unresolved, which were one of the reasons

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why slavery was not as morally repugnant

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to people then as it is to us now.

Lex Fridman (11:53.640)

And that's the question of polygenesis and monogenesis.

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At the time of Thomas Jefferson,

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the founding fathers were thinking and working.

Douglas Murray (12:03.040)

They didn't know because nobody knew

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whether the human races were related or not.

Douglas Murray (12:12.880)

There were arguments, the monogenesis argument

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that we were all indeed from the same racial stock.

Douglas Murray (12:20.460)

Polygenesis argument was that we weren't.

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Black Africans, Ethiopians,

Douglas Murray (12:26.040)

they're often referred to at the time

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because they provided some of the first slaves,

Douglas Murray (12:30.840)

were different from white Europeans,

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simply not related in any way.

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And that makes it easier, of course.

Lex Fridman (12:37.280)

That makes it easier to enslave people

Douglas Murray (12:38.860)

if you think they're not your brother.

Lex Fridman (12:41.200)

Am I my brother's keeper?

Douglas Murray (12:42.200)

No, he's not your brother, and it's a very,

Lex Fridman (12:51.440)

it was a very troubling argument in the 18th, 19th century,

Douglas Murray (12:54.440)

also because there was a biblical question.

Lex Fridman (12:56.200)

It threw up a theological question, which was,

Douglas Murray (12:59.680)

I mean, people were literally debating this at the time.

Lex Fridman (13:05.040)

Was there also a black Adam and Eve?

Douglas Murray (13:08.560)

Was there, as it were, an Indian Adam and Eve,

Lex Fridman (13:11.220)

a Native American Adam and Eve?

Douglas Murray (13:14.200)

This was a serious theological debate

Lex Fridman (13:17.120)

because they didn't know the answer.

Douglas Murray (13:19.260)

People say that Darwin solved this.

Lex Fridman (13:22.920)

It wasn't just Darwin, of course,

Lex Fridman (13:25.240)

but by the late 19th century,

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the argument that we were not all related

Douglas Murray (13:32.360)

as human beings had suffered so many blows

Lex Fridman (13:35.000)

that you had to really be very, very ignorant,

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deliberately, willfully ignorant to ignore it by then.

Lex Fridman (13:41.380)

So it no longer was, after Darwin, a theological question.

Douglas Murray (13:45.080)

It became a moral question.

Lex Fridman (13:46.800)

It was already a moral question, but it clarified,

Douglas Murray (13:49.160)

Darwin clarifies it definitely,

Lex Fridman (13:51.140)

and then you're in this, as I say, in this situation

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of you're not subjugating some other people.

Lex Fridman (13:55.880)

You're subjugating your own kin,

Lex Fridman (13:58.720)

and that becomes morally unsustainable.

Lex Fridman (14:03.400)

So given that slavery in America

Douglas Murray (14:07.840)

is part of its history,

Lex Fridman (14:14.160)

how do we incorporate into the calculus of policy today,

Lex Fridman (14:21.360)

social discourse, what we learn in school?

Lex Fridman (14:26.160)

We can look at slavery in America.

Douglas Murray (14:27.560)

We can look at maybe more recent things,

Lex Fridman (14:30.760)

like in Europe, the other atrocities, the Holocaust.

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How do we incorporate that in terms of

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how we create policy, how we treat each other,

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all those kinds of things?

Lex Fridman (14:43.120)

What is the calculus of integrating the atrocities,

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the injustices of the past into the way we are today?

Lex Fridman (14:51.600)

That's a very complex question,

Douglas Murray (14:52.980)

because it's a moral question at this point,

Lex Fridman (14:56.300)

and a moral question long after the fact.

Douglas Murray (15:01.520)

I say at one point in the War on the West

Lex Fridman (15:02.880)

that the argument, for instance, on reparations now

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that goes on, and it's not a fringe argument anymore.

Lex Fridman (15:09.000)

Some people say, oh, you're pulling up this fringe argument.

Douglas Murray (15:10.960)

It really isn't.

Lex Fridman (15:11.800)

I mean, every contender for the Democratic nomination

Douglas Murray (15:14.720)

for the presidency in 2020 was willing to talk

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about the possibility of reparations.

Douglas Murray (15:20.400)

Some very eager that this country, America,

Lex Fridman (15:24.160)

goes through that entirely self destructive exercise.

Douglas Murray (15:28.400)

I say that there's a lot of problems with this,

Lex Fridman (15:33.360)

but if I could refine it down to one thing, I'd say this.

Douglas Murray (15:36.680)

It's no longer about a wealth transfer

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from one group of people who did something wrong

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to another group of people who were wronged.

Lex Fridman (15:42.760)

It would have been that, could have been that

Douglas Murray (15:44.720)

200 years ago.

Lex Fridman (15:46.480)

Today, it's not even the descendants of people

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who did something wrong giving money to people

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who were the descendants of people who were wronged.

Douglas Murray (15:53.560)

It's a wealth transfer from people who look like people

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who did a wrong thing in the past to another group

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of people who resemble people who were wronged.

Lex Fridman (16:02.920)

That's impossible to do, and I'm completely clear

Douglas Murray (16:06.440)

about this.

Lex Fridman (16:07.600)

There is no way in which you could organize

Douglas Murray (16:11.400)

such a wealth transfer on moral or practical reasons.

Lex Fridman (16:17.160)

America is filled with people who have the same skin color

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as us, for instance, who have no connection

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to the slave trade and should not be made to pay money

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to people who have some connection.

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And then the country's also filled with ethnic minorities

Douglas Murray (16:34.200)

who have come after slavery who would not be due

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for any reimbursement, as it were.

Douglas Murray (16:42.760)

The problem with this is, though, is that there are,

Lex Fridman (16:46.520)

I'm perfectly open to the possibility

Douglas Murray (16:48.160)

that there are residual inequities

Lex Fridman (16:51.520)

that exist in American life

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and that the consequences of slavery

Lex Fridman (16:56.280)

could be one of the factors that result from this.

Douglas Murray (17:01.520)

The thing is, I don't think it's a single issue answer.

Lex Fridman (17:08.000)

I think it's a multidimensional issue,

Douglas Murray (17:10.400)

something like black underachievement in America.

Lex Fridman (17:12.560)

It's obviously a multidimensional issue.

Douglas Murray (17:16.000)

Much of the left and others wish to say it's not.

Lex Fridman (17:20.320)

It's only about racism.

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And they can't answer why Asians who've arrived

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more recently don't, for instance,

Douglas Murray (17:28.120)

get held down by white supremacy.

Lex Fridman (17:30.520)

But actually, I say white supremacy in quotes, obviously.

Lex Fridman (17:34.840)

But don't get held back by it, but actually flourish

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to the extent that Asian Americans

Douglas Murray (17:39.760)

have higher household earnings

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and higher household mean equity than,

Douglas Murray (17:47.720)

home equity and so on, than white Americans.

Lex Fridman (17:50.600)

So I don't think that on the merits the evidence is there

Douglas Murray (17:53.920)

that racism is the explanation for black,

Lex Fridman (17:56.760)

ongoing black underachievement in some sections

Douglas Murray (17:59.280)

of the black community in America.

Lex Fridman (18:01.280)

It's obviously a part of it.

Douglas Murray (18:03.000)

Could you say that even those things like fatherlessness

Lex Fridman (18:07.120)

and similar family breakdown issues

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are a longterm consequence of it?

Lex Fridman (18:16.520)

Possibly, but it's being often said

Douglas Murray (18:19.840)

it's being awfully generous to people's ability

Lex Fridman (18:23.040)

to make bad decisions.

Douglas Murray (18:24.880)

For instance, how many generations after the Holocaust

Lex Fridman (18:27.560)

would you allow people to claim that everything

Douglas Murray (18:30.600)

that went wrong in the Jewish community

Lex Fridman (18:33.040)

was as a result of the Holocaust?

Lex Fridman (18:35.440)

I mean, is there some kind of term limit on this?

Lex Fridman (18:39.120)

I would have thought so.

Lex Fridman (18:40.720)

And I think most people probably think that's over.

Lex Fridman (18:43.560)

I think the details matter there, but it's very difficult.

Douglas Murray (18:50.560)

You're in deep waters, yeah.

Lex Fridman (18:52.440)

Oh, I enjoy swimming out in the ocean,

Lex Fridman (18:54.360)

so although I'm terrified of what's lurking

Lex Fridman (18:58.440)

underneath in the darkness.

Douglas Murray (19:00.240)

You're right, you're right to be.

Lex Fridman (19:04.480)

Okay, it's really complicated calculus

Douglas Murray (19:07.400)

with the Holocaust and with slavery.

Lex Fridman (19:09.960)

So the argument in America is that there's deep

Douglas Murray (19:15.960)

institutional racism against African Americans

Lex Fridman (19:20.320)

that's rooted in slavery.

Lex Fridman (19:22.960)

And so however that calculus turns out,

Lex Fridman (19:28.080)

that calculation, it still persists in the culture,

Douglas Murray (19:31.400)

in the institutions, in the allocation of resources,

Lex Fridman (19:35.120)

in the way that we communicate, in subtle ways,

Douglas Murray (19:39.200)

in major ways, all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (19:41.880)

How is it possible to win or lose that argument

Douglas Murray (19:46.080)

of how much institutional racism there is

Lex Fridman (19:48.120)

that's rooted in slavery?

Lex Fridman (19:50.840)

Is it a winnable?

Lex Fridman (19:52.120)

It's an unquantifiable argument.

Lex Fridman (19:55.160)

And I'd like to apply some shortcuts

Lex Fridman (19:58.880)

to some of this, the following.

Douglas Murray (1:00:02.700)

who've got their timing like totally, totally wrong,

Lex Fridman (1:00:05.300)

or their estimation of the society they're in.

Douglas Murray (1:00:07.020)

You mean like most of society before in the 1930s,

Lex Fridman (1:00:12.020)

when Hitler was, I mean, so many people got Hitler wrong.

Douglas Murray (1:00:17.140)

Sure they did.

Lex Fridman (1:00:18.140)

And so.

Douglas Murray (1:00:18.980)

Most people.

Lex Fridman (1:00:19.820)

So maybe it was nice to have the alarmist thinking there.

Douglas Murray (1:00:23.660)

Well.

Lex Fridman (1:00:24.500)

Beware of the man with the mustache.

Douglas Murray (1:00:27.640)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:00:28.480)

If only it was that easy.

Douglas Murray (1:00:31.700)

Not always a bob facial hair.

Lex Fridman (1:00:33.340)

I always say that, I mean, what.

Douglas Murray (1:00:35.660)

Very often is.

Lex Fridman (1:00:36.580)

These two clean shaven chaps both say,

Douglas Murray (1:00:39.220)

one of the problems of everybody

Lex Fridman (1:00:40.220)

knowing a little bit about Nazism

Douglas Murray (1:00:42.660)

is that they think that they know where evil comes from

Lex Fridman (1:00:48.240)

and that it comes from like a German with a small mustache,

Douglas Murray (1:00:52.100)

getting people to goose step, for instance.

Lex Fridman (1:00:54.800)

And that's not correct.

Douglas Murray (1:00:57.220)

A much better understanding of it is,

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.600)

it can come from all number of directions

Lex Fridman (1:01:03.120)

and keep your antennae as good as you can.

Lex Fridman (1:01:06.260)

But once you end up in this society, which I would argue,

Douglas Murray (1:01:10.300)

certainly parts of America, where you're always in 1938,

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.040)

that's not healthy for a society either,

Douglas Murray (1:01:17.940)

where people are so primed and think they're so well trained

Lex Fridman (1:01:22.020)

because they spent a term in school

Douglas Murray (1:01:25.820)

learning about the Second World War and the Holocaust,

Lex Fridman (1:01:28.140)

think they're so well trained in Hitler spotting

Douglas Murray (1:01:31.780)

that they can do it all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:01:32.980)

Look at all these phrases we now have in our societies,

Douglas Murray (1:01:35.300)

like dog whistle.

Lex Fridman (1:01:37.300)

You know, as I always say,

Douglas Murray (1:01:38.140)

if you hear the whistle, you're the dog.

Lex Fridman (1:01:40.120)

But people say, that's a dog whistle,

Douglas Murray (1:01:43.340)

as if they're highly trained anti Nazis.

Lex Fridman (1:01:47.540)

I mean, you know, there should be some humility in it.

Douglas Murray (1:01:50.140)

We should be careful, we should be wary for sure.

Lex Fridman (1:01:54.300)

And we should also be slightly humble

Douglas Murray (1:01:57.220)

in our inability to spot everything.

Lex Fridman (1:02:01.560)

If not significantly humble, right, so if we can,

Douglas Murray (1:02:10.860)

there's something funny, if not dark,

Lex Fridman (1:02:15.400)

about the activity of Hitler spotting,

Douglas Murray (1:02:19.900)

if I just may take an aside.

Lex Fridman (1:02:21.480)

But so critical race theory, how much racism,

Lex Fridman (1:02:27.020)

what is racism?

Lex Fridman (1:02:28.700)

How much of it is in our world today?

Douglas Murray (1:02:31.200)

If we were thinking about this activity of Hitler spotting,

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.620)

and trying to steel man the case

Douglas Murray (1:02:39.620)

of if not critical race theory,

Lex Fridman (1:02:41.100)

but people who look for racism in our world,

Lex Fridman (1:02:45.740)

how much would you say?

Lex Fridman (1:02:48.100)

Well, it's a good thing to try to define.

Douglas Murray (1:02:50.100)

I would say that racism is the belief

Lex Fridman (1:02:54.880)

that other people are inferior to you.

Douglas Murray (1:02:57.860)

You could say, you could see a form of it

Lex Fridman (1:03:00.140)

where you thought people were superior to you.

Douglas Murray (1:03:02.460)

That could also happen, but more commonly,

Lex Fridman (1:03:04.620)

you see a group of people as being inferior to you

Douglas Murray (1:03:07.260)

simply by dint of the fact

Lex Fridman (1:03:08.580)

that they have a different racial background.

Lex Fridman (1:03:12.380)

And that's sort of the easiest way to define racism.

Lex Fridman (1:03:20.980)

As I say, I mean, there are types of racism,

Douglas Murray (1:03:23.380)

mainly antisemitism actually, perhaps it's the only one,

Lex Fridman (1:03:26.820)

which weirdly relies on a hatred of people

Douglas Murray (1:03:30.860)

who a certain type of person thinks are better than them.

Lex Fridman (1:03:35.740)

And that's a particular peculiarity,

Douglas Murray (1:03:37.900)

one of the peculiarities of antisemitism.

Lex Fridman (1:03:40.160)

Well, antisemitism somehow does both, right?

Douglas Murray (1:03:42.820)

Yes, one of the eternal fascinating things

Lex Fridman (1:03:46.340)

about antisemitism is it can do,

Douglas Murray (1:03:47.860)

it does everything at the same time.

Lex Fridman (1:03:50.820)

It's like a quantum racism.

Douglas Murray (1:03:52.860)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:03:53.700)

They're both superior and inferior.

Lex Fridman (1:03:54.940)

You know Vasily Grosman's Life and Fate?

Lex Fridman (1:03:59.980)

So in the middle of Life and Fate,

Douglas Murray (1:04:02.340)

which a Persian friend of mine always said

Lex Fridman (1:04:03.780)

was one of only two great novels of the 20th century,

Douglas Murray (1:04:06.020)

she was a very harsh literary critic.

Lex Fridman (1:04:07.980)

What was the other one?

Douglas Murray (1:04:09.020)

Oh, The Leopard, obviously.

Lex Fridman (1:04:10.880)

The Leopard?

Douglas Murray (1:04:11.720)

The Leopard by Giuseppe Dallan Pedusa, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:04:14.060)

Okay.

Douglas Murray (1:04:14.900)

She's definitely right on that one.

Lex Fridman (1:04:16.840)

Life and Fate is a...

Douglas Murray (1:04:17.680)

I'm learning so much today, yes.

Lex Fridman (1:04:19.520)

Life and Fate is an extraordinary book,

Douglas Murray (1:04:24.000)

mainly about, well, you know, Grosman was obviously

Lex Fridman (1:04:28.660)

Jewish himself, but he saw almost everything

Douglas Murray (1:04:34.300)

that he could have done in the Second World War.

Lex Fridman (1:04:36.220)

He saw Stalingrad, he was a journalist,

Lex Fridman (1:04:38.700)

and he wrote firsthand accounts of Stalingrad.

Lex Fridman (1:04:42.020)

He was also the first journalist into Treblinka,

Lex Fridman (1:04:45.940)

and his account, which you can read in one

Lex Fridman (1:04:47.380)

of the collections of his journalism,

Douglas Murray (1:04:49.300)

his account of walking into Treblinka

Lex Fridman (1:04:51.260)

is just one of the most devastating, haunting pieces

Douglas Murray (1:04:54.660)

of journalism or prose you can read.

Lex Fridman (1:04:56.700)

Anyhow, I mention him because Grosman,

Douglas Murray (1:04:58.800)

in the middle of Life and Fate,

Lex Fridman (1:05:00.260)

which is about a 900 page novel,

Douglas Murray (1:05:03.460)

in the middle of it, which is about the dark axis

Lex Fridman (1:05:06.160)

around Stalingrad, he, well, at one point,

Douglas Murray (1:05:12.580)

he amazingly sort of goes into the minds

Lex Fridman (1:05:14.300)

of Earth Hitler and Stalin, and he says,

Douglas Murray (1:05:17.420)

Stalin, in his study, feels his counterpart

Lex Fridman (1:05:22.180)

in Berlin, and he says he feels very close

Douglas Murray (1:05:24.300)

to him at this moment.

Lex Fridman (1:05:26.420)

Wow, around Stalingrad, like leading up to the back.

Douglas Murray (1:05:29.700)

After Stalingrad, when the Germans are lost,

Lex Fridman (1:05:32.100)

he says he feels the closeness of Hitler.

Lex Fridman (1:05:35.300)

But Grosman, in the middle of Life and Fate,

Lex Fridman (1:05:37.460)

slap bang at the worst hours of the 20th century,

Douglas Murray (1:05:41.740)

suddenly dedicates a chapter to anti semitism,

Lex Fridman (1:05:45.680)

and I've seen anti semitism as something

Douglas Murray (1:05:48.900)

I've always been very interested in,

Lex Fridman (1:05:51.460)

because I've always had an instinctive utter revulsion

Douglas Murray (1:05:54.780)

of it, and also partly because of having seen bits of it

Lex Fridman (1:06:01.940)

in the Middle East and elsewhere,

Lex Fridman (1:06:02.820)

but I mention this because Grosman,

Lex Fridman (1:06:05.340)

in the middle of Life and Fate, takes time out

Lex Fridman (1:06:08.140)

and does this like three page explanation,

Lex Fridman (1:06:10.620)

three page description of anti semitism,

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.900)

and it's extraordinary.

Lex Fridman (1:06:14.260)

I mean, the only thing I can think of

Douglas Murray (1:06:16.060)

that's equally good is Gregor von Retzori,

Lex Fridman (1:06:24.260)

who wrote a luridly titled, but brilliant set of novellas

Douglas Murray (1:06:28.860)

called The Confessions of an Anti Semite,

Lex Fridman (1:06:31.460)

and about pre First World War anti semitism

Douglas Murray (1:06:35.420)

in Eastern and Central Europe.

Lex Fridman (1:06:36.740)

Anyway, Grosman says, in the middle of Life and Fate,

Douglas Murray (1:06:40.900)

that one of the extraordinary things about anti semitism

Lex Fridman (1:06:44.820)

is that it does everything at the same time,

Douglas Murray (1:06:47.260)

that the Jews get condemned in one place for being rich

Lex Fridman (1:06:50.140)

and in another for being poor,

Douglas Murray (1:06:52.340)

condemned in one place for assimilating

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.820)

and another for not assimilating,

Douglas Murray (1:06:58.540)

for assimilating too much and assimilating too little,

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.820)

for being too successful for not being successful enough.

Lex Fridman (1:07:05.500)

So I think it's the only racism that includes within it,

Lex Fridman (1:07:10.980)

a detestation, for the real anti semit,

Douglas Murray (1:07:14.500)

a detestation of people that the person may perceive

Lex Fridman (1:07:17.580)

to be better than them, correctly or otherwise.

Douglas Murray (1:07:21.300)

By the way, I'm embarrassed to say I have not read

Lex Fridman (1:07:24.740)

this one of two greatest novels

Douglas Murray (1:07:26.620)

of the 20th century, Life and Fate, Zhizny Sidba.

Lex Fridman (1:07:29.540)

And just to read off of Wikipedia,

Douglas Murray (1:07:31.180)

we see that Grosman, a Ukrainian Jew,

Lex Fridman (1:07:32.860)

became a correspondent for the Soviet military paper,

Douglas Murray (1:07:35.700)

Krasnaya Zvezda, having volunteered

Lex Fridman (1:07:38.300)

and been rejected from military service,

Douglas Murray (1:07:40.700)

he spent a thousand days in the front lines,

Lex Fridman (1:07:43.140)

roughly three of the four years of the conflict

Douglas Murray (1:07:45.540)

between the Germans and the Soviets,

Lex Fridman (1:07:48.060)

and the main themes covered in,

Douglas Murray (1:07:51.860)

how's it go, Life and Fate, I keep thinking Zhizny Sidba,

Lex Fridman (1:07:55.340)

is a theme on Jewish identity and the Holocaust,

Douglas Murray (1:07:58.500)

Grosman's idea of humanity and the human goodness,

Lex Fridman (1:08:01.180)

Stalin's distortion of reality and values,

Lex Fridman (1:08:04.460)

and science, life goes on, and reality of war.

Lex Fridman (1:08:07.980)

It's interesting, I need to definitely, definitely read it.

Douglas Murray (1:08:10.780)

I think you'll really get a lot from it.

Lex Fridman (1:08:13.260)

One of the other things, sorry, I'm raffling it,

Lex Fridman (1:08:14.660)

but one of the other things he does

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.860)

is that he has this extraordinary ability

Douglas Murray (1:08:17.860)

to talk about the absolute highest levels of the conflict

Lex Fridman (1:08:22.820)

and then zoom in, it's rather like the camera work

Douglas Murray (1:08:24.860)

they use in things like Lord of the Rings,

Lex Fridman (1:08:26.700)

where he zooms down and gets one person

Douglas Murray (1:08:30.300)

in the midst of all this, and you get on that.

Lex Fridman (1:08:32.900)

Or puts you in the study, too.

Lex Fridman (1:08:34.180)

So I personally have read and reread

Lex Fridman (1:08:36.820)

the William Shires, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,

Douglas Murray (1:08:39.460)

who's another journalist who was there,

Lex Fridman (1:08:44.080)

but he does not do, interestingly enough,

Douglas Murray (1:08:46.580)

given such a large novel, kind of the definitive work,

Lex Fridman (1:08:50.660)

the definitive original work that goes

Douglas Murray (1:08:52.720)

to source materials on Hitler,

Lex Fridman (1:08:54.940)

he doesn't touch anti semitism really.

Douglas Murray (1:09:00.020)

So.

Lex Fridman (1:09:01.260)

Big thing to miss out.

Douglas Murray (1:09:02.480)

Well, he just says it very calmly and objectively

Lex Fridman (1:09:06.900)

as he does for most of the work,

Douglas Murray (1:09:08.280)

that this was the fact of life.

Lex Fridman (1:09:12.260)

There's a lot of cruelty throughout,

Lex Fridman (1:09:13.820)

but he doesn't get to.

Lex Fridman (1:09:15.220)

Well, one of the things is, of course,

Douglas Murray (1:09:16.820)

they lost the war because of anti semitism.

Lex Fridman (1:09:19.780)

I mean, that's one kind of important way to view it.

Douglas Murray (1:09:22.500)

It's how Andrew Roberts, another historian, said it,

Lex Fridman (1:09:24.420)

is that in the end, the Nazis lost the war

Douglas Murray (1:09:26.700)

because they were Nazis.

Lex Fridman (1:09:29.540)

It sounds almost too neat, but it's worth remembering

Douglas Murray (1:09:32.460)

that at the end of the war,

Lex Fridman (1:09:35.660)

when the Germans need to be transporting troops

Lex Fridman (1:09:38.740)

and they need to be transporting very basic supplies,

Lex Fridman (1:09:42.620)

Eichmann makes sure he gets the trains

Douglas Murray (1:09:45.140)

to transport the Jews right up to the end.

Lex Fridman (1:09:49.180)

Well, that's certainly a dark possibility.

Douglas Murray (1:09:52.500)

Anyhow, but to go back to racism in general.

Lex Fridman (1:09:55.860)

Racism in general, apart from anti semitism,

Douglas Murray (1:09:58.020)

relies on the perception that another group of people,

Lex Fridman (1:10:04.260)

a racial group, other than your own, are inferior to you.

Douglas Murray (1:10:07.940)

That's what I'd say is the easiest shorthand of racism.

Lex Fridman (1:10:11.220)

And of course, it's one of the stupidest things

Douglas Murray (1:10:15.340)

that our species is capable of.

Lex Fridman (1:10:17.860)

I mean, one of the stupidest,

Douglas Murray (1:10:19.660)

that you can look at a person and guess them

Lex Fridman (1:10:24.580)

in their entirety, in fact, because of their skin color.

Douglas Murray (1:10:28.140)

I mean, it's like, what a stupid idea that is,

Lex Fridman (1:10:31.820)

as well as being an evil one.

Lex Fridman (1:10:32.860)

But I would say that one of the,

Lex Fridman (1:10:39.020)

I think it's a dangerous thing in our era

Douglas Murray (1:10:41.140)

that there are bits of it coming back.

Lex Fridman (1:10:43.060)

That's why I say we do need sort of,

Douglas Murray (1:10:46.220)

we need our antennae working.

Lex Fridman (1:10:48.540)

We just don't need them to be overactive

Douglas Murray (1:10:50.460)

or underactive, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:10:53.260)

Now, the book is War in the West,

Lex Fridman (1:10:55.460)

but speaking of racism, racism towards different groups

Lex Fridman (1:11:00.260)

based on their skin color,

Douglas Murray (1:11:01.460)

you've said that there's a war on white people in the US.

Lex Fridman (1:11:05.340)

Would you say that's the case?

Douglas Murray (1:11:06.660)

Would you say that there is significant

Lex Fridman (1:11:11.060)

racism towards white people in the United States?

Douglas Murray (1:11:13.420)

I'd say that white people in the United States

Lex Fridman (1:11:15.500)

are the only people who are told

Douglas Murray (1:11:16.540)

that they have hereditary sin.

Lex Fridman (1:11:20.180)

And that's a big one, just to start with.

Douglas Murray (1:11:22.340)

Based strictly on the color of their skin.

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.660)

Based on their skin color.

Douglas Murray (1:11:25.620)

I mean, I would find it so repugnant if,

Lex Fridman (1:11:29.420)

and I hope everybody would join me in feeling this,

Douglas Murray (1:11:31.660)

I would feel it so repugnant

Lex Fridman (1:11:33.660)

if there were any school of thought in America today

Douglas Murray (1:11:36.140)

that had any grasp on the public attention

Lex Fridman (1:11:41.140)

that said that black people were born into evil

Douglas Murray (1:11:43.900)

because of something their ancestors had done.

Lex Fridman (1:11:46.340)

Like they had the mark of Cain upon them.

Douglas Murray (1:11:49.660)

I mean, I think it would be such a vicious way

Lex Fridman (1:11:54.260)

to try to demoralize a group of people

Lex Fridman (1:11:59.260)

and to tell them that the things they would be able

Lex Fridman (1:12:02.700)

to achieve in their lives are much lessened

Douglas Murray (1:12:04.860)

because they should spend significant portions

Lex Fridman (1:12:07.780)

of their lives trying to do something

Douglas Murray (1:12:09.700)

that they didn't do.

Lex Fridman (1:12:11.300)

Is there a difference?

Lex Fridman (1:12:14.020)

And the obvious point left unsaid,

Lex Fridman (1:12:17.220)

but let's say it, nobody in the public square says that.

Douglas Murray (1:12:23.420)

I mean, they're the maniacs at the far fringes,

Lex Fridman (1:12:25.620)

but nobody in the mainstream would dare to say that,

Douglas Murray (1:12:29.900)

or I think even think that about any group of people

Lex Fridman (1:12:32.420)

other than white people.

Lex Fridman (1:12:34.140)

And does this mean that white people are more likely

Lex Fridman (1:12:37.940)

or does this mean that white people are more disadvantaged

Lex Fridman (1:12:41.220)

than black people?

Lex Fridman (1:12:42.180)

No, and again, let's not make this a competition,

Lex Fridman (1:12:44.980)

but let's not get into, I just desperately urge people

Lex Fridman (1:12:48.700)

not to get into the idea of hereditary sin

Douglas Murray (1:12:51.380)

according to racial background.

Lex Fridman (1:12:53.980)

Is there something to be said about the feature aspect,

Douglas Murray (1:12:57.220)

sort of play devil's advocate,

Lex Fridman (1:12:59.140)

about the asymmetry of sort of accusations

Lex Fridman (1:13:04.820)

towards the majority?

Lex Fridman (1:13:06.340)

So because white, so it's easier to attack a majority.

Douglas Murray (1:13:09.260)

It is much easier, but is there something to be said

Lex Fridman (1:13:11.300)

about that being a useful function of society

Douglas Murray (1:13:14.060)

that you always attack, that the minority has

Lex Fridman (1:13:19.260)

disproportionate power to attack the majority

Lex Fridman (1:13:22.100)

so that you can always keep the majority in check?

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.860)

Well, it's a dangerous game to play, isn't it?

Douglas Murray (1:13:28.220)

I think.

Lex Fridman (1:13:29.060)

It's a very dangerous game to play.

Douglas Murray (1:13:30.500)

That's a good summary of entirety of human civilization.

Lex Fridman (1:13:33.340)

Oh yeah, everything is dangerous.

Lex Fridman (1:13:35.820)

But it's a very dangerous game to play that.

Lex Fridman (1:13:37.780)

I wrote about this a bit in the Madness of Crowds

Douglas Murray (1:13:39.700)

when I was saying like gay rights people,

Lex Fridman (1:13:43.060)

the ones that still exist,

Douglas Murray (1:13:44.380)

the ones who don't have homes to go to,

Lex Fridman (1:13:47.300)

who want to beat up on straight people in a way,

Douglas Murray (1:13:51.580)

or want to make straight people feel like they're

Lex Fridman (1:13:54.940)

kind of unremarkable, uncool, you know, boring straights.

Lex Fridman (1:14:00.780)

So boring.

Lex Fridman (1:14:02.380)

So not like the magical pixie fairy dust gays.

Douglas Murray (1:14:07.980)

That's a bad idea to push that one.

Lex Fridman (1:14:10.820)

That's a bad idea.

Lex Fridman (1:14:11.740)

And some gays push that.

Lex Fridman (1:14:15.420)

Highly unwise, given the fact that about

Douglas Murray (1:14:19.100)

two to 3% of the population are actually gay,

Lex Fridman (1:14:21.060)

although now there's like an additional 20%

Douglas Murray (1:14:23.740)

who think they're like two spirit or something

Lex Fridman (1:14:25.900)

and all that bullshit, but they're just attention seekers.

Lex Fridman (1:14:30.900)

So let's not spend too much time on that.

Lex Fridman (1:14:34.140)

But equally, as I said in the Madness of Crowds,

Douglas Murray (1:14:37.300)

with the feminist movement,

Lex Fridman (1:14:40.580)

very unwise for half of the species

Douglas Murray (1:14:43.420)

to say that the other half of the species isn't needed.

Lex Fridman (1:14:47.220)

And there were always third and fourth wave feminists

Douglas Murray (1:14:49.900)

willing to make that nuts argument.

Lex Fridman (1:14:53.740)

Not first wave feminists.

Douglas Murray (1:14:54.860)

You didn't hear it in first wave feminists.

Lex Fridman (1:14:56.020)

You didn't hear it.

Douglas Murray (1:14:56.860)

Suffragette tended not to say we like the vote

Lex Fridman (1:15:00.300)

and men are scum.

Douglas Murray (1:15:03.540)

It would have been hard to have won everyone

Lex Fridman (1:15:05.180)

over to their side.

Douglas Murray (1:15:06.540)

Not least the men they needed to win over to their side.

Lex Fridman (1:15:09.180)

But you do get third and fourth wave feminists

Lex Fridman (1:15:10.860)

who say like, do we need men?

Lex Fridman (1:15:14.020)

Or men are all X.

Douglas Murray (1:15:15.460)

Again, it's a bad idea.

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.340)

It's a bad idea tactically.

Lex Fridman (1:15:19.740)

What if men, Richard Wrangham, somebody from Harvard,

Lex Fridman (1:15:25.700)

describes that men are the originators of violence,

Douglas Murray (1:15:29.620)

physical violence in society.

Lex Fridman (1:15:31.660)

And he argues that actually the world would be better off.

Douglas Murray (1:15:35.540)

No, just a very cold calculus.

Lex Fridman (1:15:38.660)

If you get rid of men,

Douglas Murray (1:15:40.180)

there will be a lot less violence in society is his claim.

Lex Fridman (1:15:44.300)

But who says you need to get rid of violence in society?

Lex Fridman (1:15:47.580)

But shouldn't that at least be a discussion?

Lex Fridman (1:15:50.460)

The pros and cons.

Douglas Murray (1:15:51.660)

Have a debate, a panel discussion,

Lex Fridman (1:15:54.140)

violence, pros and cons.

Douglas Murray (1:15:55.620)

Well, that's the sort of thing, if I can say so,

Lex Fridman (1:15:57.540)

that some weak ass academic decides to do

Douglas Murray (1:15:59.980)

because he thinks that his area of Boston

Lex Fridman (1:16:02.580)

would be nicer or whatever.

Douglas Murray (1:16:06.380)

He might decide it's useful

Lex Fridman (1:16:07.780)

if he was living in Kiev today to have violent men.

Douglas Murray (1:16:13.820)

I mean, it might, if New York was invaded right now,

Lex Fridman (1:16:17.980)

I'd need some violent men around here.

Lex Fridman (1:16:22.020)

But it wouldn't be invaded if there's no violent men.

Lex Fridman (1:16:25.740)

Well, there's also, at least there's some level of threat

Douglas Murray (1:16:32.020)

that you ought to exude that puts people off.

Lex Fridman (1:16:35.660)

If I was in, you know, I'm very glad

Douglas Murray (1:16:39.580)

that the men and women of Ukraine are capable of

Lex Fridman (1:16:42.540)

and more than capable of fighting for their country

Lex Fridman (1:16:47.620)

and for their neighbors and their families and much more.

Lex Fridman (1:16:49.860)

But it's better that there was violence ready to unleash

Douglas Murray (1:16:54.860)

when violence was unleashed upon them

Lex Fridman (1:16:57.100)

than that the whole society had been told

Douglas Murray (1:16:59.020)

that they should identify as non binary.

Lex Fridman (1:17:03.220)

But at least it's a conversation to have.

Douglas Murray (1:17:05.460)

Isn't there aspect to the sort of the feminist movement

Lex Fridman (1:17:12.100)

that is correct in challenging the...

Douglas Murray (1:17:17.060)

Some forms of violence, domestic violence, for instance.

Lex Fridman (1:17:20.200)

Although women are capable of that as well.

Douglas Murray (1:17:23.060)

I'm learning about this.

Lex Fridman (1:17:24.380)

We're all learning about this at the moment.

Douglas Murray (1:17:26.820)

I can't help but watch the entirety of it go down

Lex Fridman (1:17:29.220)

in this beautiful mess that is human relations.

Douglas Murray (1:17:31.460)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:17:32.300)

But just to finish up that thought,

Douglas Murray (1:17:33.660)

it's very unwise for women to war against men

Lex Fridman (1:17:39.260)

as it would be for men to war against women.

Douglas Murray (1:17:41.220)

It's highly, highly unwise to war on a majority population.

Lex Fridman (1:17:45.300)

And in America, Britain and other Western countries,

Douglas Murray (1:17:47.740)

white people are still a majority.

Lex Fridman (1:17:49.780)

And so why would you tell the majority of their evil

Lex Fridman (1:17:52.900)

by dint of their skin color?

Lex Fridman (1:17:55.140)

And think that that would be a good way

Douglas Murray (1:17:56.700)

to keep them in check.

Lex Fridman (1:17:59.060)

I mean, I'm not guilty of anything because of my skin color.

Douglas Murray (1:18:02.060)

I'm not guilty of anything.

Lex Fridman (1:18:03.300)

My ancestors didn't do anything wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:18:05.820)

And even if they had,

Lex Fridman (1:18:06.700)

why would I be held responsible for it?

Lex Fridman (1:18:09.980)

So to go back to Nietzsche,

Lex Fridman (1:18:13.100)

is there some aspect to where,

Douglas Murray (1:18:14.780)

if we try to explain the forces at play here,

Lex Fridman (1:18:18.300)

is it the will to power playing itself out

Douglas Murray (1:18:22.500)

from individual human nature

Lex Fridman (1:18:23.980)

and from group behavior nature?

Douglas Murray (1:18:27.780)

Is there some elements to this

Lex Fridman (1:18:30.020)

which is the game we play as human beings

Douglas Murray (1:18:32.740)

is always when we have less power,

Lex Fridman (1:18:34.780)

we try to find ways to gain more power.

Douglas Murray (1:18:36.900)

That's certainly one.

Lex Fridman (1:18:39.260)

The desire to grab is,

Douglas Murray (1:18:42.740)

let me see if I can find a quote for you on that.

Lex Fridman (1:18:45.780)

The desire to grab that which we think we're owed

Lex Fridman (1:18:49.860)

and to do it often in the guise of justice.

Lex Fridman (1:18:56.780)

I mean, justice is one of the great terms of our age

Lex Fridman (1:19:00.700)

and one of the great bogus terms of our age.

Lex Fridman (1:19:03.740)

People forever talk about their search for justice.

Douglas Murray (1:19:06.140)

It's amazing how violent they can often be

Lex Fridman (1:19:08.300)

in their search for justice

Lex Fridman (1:19:09.580)

and how many rules they're willing to break

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.860)

so long as they can say they're after justice

Lex Fridman (1:19:14.180)

and how many norms they can trample

Lex Fridman (1:19:16.220)

so long as they can say it's in the name of justice.

Douglas Murray (1:19:18.500)

You can burn down buildings in the name of justice.

Lex Fridman (1:19:21.420)

Well, the majority groups throughout history,

Douglas Murray (1:19:23.700)

including those with white skin color

Lex Fridman (1:19:25.620)

have done the same in the name of justice.

Douglas Murray (1:19:28.260)

We come up with all kinds of sexy terms

Lex Fridman (1:19:31.100)

in our propaganda machines

Douglas Murray (1:19:32.420)

to sell whatever atrocities we'd like to commit.

Lex Fridman (1:19:36.580)

One of the quotes from Nietzsche that I liked

Lex Fridman (1:19:40.100)

and I quoted in this book.

Lex Fridman (1:19:41.180)

Careful, I'm judging you harshly.

Douglas Murray (1:19:43.060)

Yeah, of course.

Lex Fridman (1:19:43.900)

Nietzsche says that one of the dangers of men of resentment

Douglas Murray (1:19:49.740)

is they'll achieve their ultimate form of revenge,

Lex Fridman (1:19:52.980)

which is to turn happy people

Douglas Murray (1:19:54.660)

into unhappy people like themselves,

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.380)

to shove their misery in the faces of the happy

Lex Fridman (1:19:59.780)

so that in due course the happy,

Lex Fridman (1:20:01.380)

and this is quoting Nietzsche,

Douglas Murray (1:20:02.660)

start to be ashamed of their happiness

Lex Fridman (1:20:05.300)

and perhaps say to one another,

Douglas Murray (1:20:06.780)

it's a disgrace to be happy.

Lex Fridman (1:20:08.900)

There is too much misery.

Douglas Murray (1:20:11.060)

This is something to be averted.

Lex Fridman (1:20:12.220)

The sick, says Nietzsche, must not make the healthy sick too

Douglas Murray (1:20:15.980)

or make the healthy confuse themselves with the sick.

Lex Fridman (1:20:20.060)

Well, I think that again, there's a lot of that going on.

Lex Fridman (1:20:24.100)

How could I be happy when there is unhappiness in the world?

Lex Fridman (1:20:27.060)

Why should I not join the ranks of the unhappy?

Douglas Murray (1:20:31.100)

I think Dostoevsky has a book about that as well.

Lex Fridman (1:20:34.140)

Sure.

Douglas Murray (1:20:34.980)

Knows From Underground.

Lex Fridman (1:20:36.300)

Okay.

Douglas Murray (1:20:39.340)

This has been very Russian, Russian focus.

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.580)

I'm very pleased with another times,

Lex Fridman (1:20:43.500)

but Dostoevsky and Grossman and others have come in.

Lex Fridman (1:20:46.340)

I wasn't doing this as a sort of.

Douglas Murray (1:20:49.020)

Yeah, well, it's always good to plug the greats

Lex Fridman (1:20:53.980)

and get to know they're still relevant.

Lex Fridman (1:20:57.060)

Do you speak Russian by the way at all?

Lex Fridman (1:20:59.780)

Which I did.

Douglas Murray (1:21:00.820)

I'm told it's a 10 year language basically

Lex Fridman (1:21:02.980)

to learn from scratch as my friends who have done it.

Douglas Murray (1:21:06.060)

Well, there's the language and then there's the personality

Lex Fridman (1:21:09.580)

behind the language and the personality.

Douglas Murray (1:21:11.300)

I feel like you already have.

Lex Fridman (1:21:12.940)

So you just need to know the surface details.

Douglas Murray (1:21:15.100)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:21:18.420)

In fact, the silence to be silent in the Russian language

Douglas Murray (1:21:22.780)

is something that's already important.

Lex Fridman (1:21:24.780)

Oh, I should, if we had a moment,

Douglas Murray (1:21:25.940)

I'd tell you my story about Stalin's birthplace.

Lex Fridman (1:21:28.140)

Should I tell you that?

Douglas Murray (1:21:28.980)

No.

Lex Fridman (1:21:29.820)

I once went to Gori where Stalin was born.

Lex Fridman (1:21:33.060)

Have you been?

Lex Fridman (1:21:33.900)

No, no.

Douglas Murray (1:21:34.740)

I was there just after the Georgia war.

Lex Fridman (1:21:36.660)

And I went to the nomads land in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Lex Fridman (1:21:42.660)

And I said, I really got to go to Gori also here

Lex Fridman (1:21:47.300)

because the shell had landed in Gori rather weirdly

Douglas Murray (1:21:49.420)

from the Russian side and Gori is where Stalin was born.

Lex Fridman (1:21:53.300)

And of course, Gori is in Georgia.

Lex Fridman (1:21:55.580)

And when we had the museum of Stalin's birthplace,

Lex Fridman (1:21:59.420)

they'd been trying to change for some years

Douglas Murray (1:22:01.620)

because it had been unadulteratedly pro Stalin for years.

Lex Fridman (1:22:06.660)

And the Georgian authorities,

Douglas Murray (1:22:07.740)

this is in Saakashvili's time,

Lex Fridman (1:22:11.780)

were trying to make it into a museum of Stalinism.

Lex Fridman (1:22:15.620)

And it was really tough.

Lex Fridman (1:22:17.420)

The only place I've seen which is similar

Douglas Murray (1:22:19.020)

is the house in Mexico City where Trotsky was killed.

Lex Fridman (1:22:23.140)

That also is that they're not quite sure to do.

Douglas Murray (1:22:25.660)

They don't want to say he's a bad guy

Lex Fridman (1:22:27.940)

because they think that people won't come anyhow.

Douglas Murray (1:22:30.940)

Stalin's house in Gori had changed

Lex Fridman (1:22:32.420)

from the museum of Stalin to the museum of Stalinism.

Douglas Murray (1:22:34.180)

There was this large Georgian woman with a pink pencil

Lex Fridman (1:22:37.180)

who just had clearly been doing the tour for 50 years

Lex Fridman (1:22:40.740)

and just pointed all the facts.

Lex Fridman (1:22:41.940)

She did that classic thing.

Douglas Murray (1:22:43.020)

I've also saw it once in North Korea

Lex Fridman (1:22:44.820)

where they sort of that sort of communist thing

Douglas Murray (1:22:47.780)

where they say, here is, this is 147 feet high

Lex Fridman (1:22:51.540)

by 13 feet deep.

Douglas Murray (1:22:52.860)

They give you lots of facts.

Lex Fridman (1:22:53.900)

I don't care.

Lex Fridman (1:22:55.020)

What does it matter?

Lex Fridman (1:22:56.580)

They always give you facts.

Douglas Murray (1:22:58.780)

This is Stalin's suitcase.

Lex Fridman (1:23:00.180)

It is 13 inches wide by, you know, this isn't.

Douglas Murray (1:23:04.620)

Anyhow, and this woman did all of this

Lex Fridman (1:23:06.740)

and it was all just wildly pro, not pro Stalin,

Douglas Murray (1:23:09.540)

just explaining Stalin's life.

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.660)

It was just a great local boy done good.

Douglas Murray (1:23:13.780)

They didn't mention the fact he killed

Lex Fridman (1:23:14.980)

more Georgians per capita than anyone else.

Douglas Murray (1:23:17.180)

Local boy done good.

Lex Fridman (1:23:18.780)

And we get to the end and before being taken to the gift shop

Douglas Murray (1:23:23.260)

where they sell red wine with Stalin's face on it

Lex Fridman (1:23:25.700)

and among other things, and a lighter with Stalin on it,

Douglas Murray (1:23:32.100)

they took you to a little room under the stairs

Lex Fridman (1:23:35.260)

and they said, this is a replica of interrogation cell

Douglas Murray (1:23:38.940)

to show, represent horror of what happened in Stalin time.

Lex Fridman (1:23:44.420)

Now, gift shop.

Douglas Murray (1:23:45.740)

As I said, there's no, no kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:23:48.540)

And I took the woman aside at the end.

Douglas Murray (1:23:50.740)

I discovered she'd said this to other journalists

Lex Fridman (1:23:52.500)

and visited before.

Douglas Murray (1:23:53.740)

I took her aside and said,

Lex Fridman (1:23:54.900)

what do you think about communist Stalin?

Lex Fridman (1:23:57.820)

And she said, let's say she'd obviously done this

Lex Fridman (1:24:01.060)

during communist times.

Douglas Murray (1:24:03.460)

She said, it's not my place to judge, that sort of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:24:09.100)

Which is an interesting comment in itself.

Douglas Murray (1:24:10.780)

I said, yeah, but he killed more Georgians than anyone

Lex Fridman (1:24:12.980)

and all that sort of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:24:15.180)

And she said, it's not my place to judge

Lex Fridman (1:24:16.980)

or to give my views and that sort of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:24:19.020)

And eventually I said, well, what do you feel about it?

Lex Fridman (1:24:22.340)

And she said, it was like a hurricane, it happened.

Douglas Murray (1:24:29.700)

That's interesting because if I may mention Clubhouse

Lex Fridman (1:24:32.860)

once again, I got a chance to talk to a few people

Douglas Murray (1:24:35.900)

from Mongolia, there's a woman from Mongolia

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.100)

and they talked about the fact

Douglas Murray (1:24:40.660)

that they deeply admire Stalin, love.

Lex Fridman (1:24:43.500)

She sounded, if I may, hopefully that's not crossing line.

Douglas Murray (1:24:46.940)

I think I'm representing her correctly in saying

Lex Fridman (1:24:50.180)

she admired him almost like, loved him.

Douglas Murray (1:24:55.060)

Like the way people love like Jesus, like a holy figure.

Lex Fridman (1:25:00.100)

Well, isn't that still the case in large parts of Russia?

Douglas Murray (1:25:02.820)

I mean, Stalin keeps on winning

Lex Fridman (1:25:04.580)

greatest Russian of all time.

Lex Fridman (1:25:07.500)

And that's perhaps, maybe there's a dip,

Lex Fridman (1:25:10.300)

but if we were to think about the long arc of history,

Douglas Murray (1:25:12.940)

perhaps that's going to go up and up and up and up.

Lex Fridman (1:25:16.220)

There's something about human memory

Douglas Murray (1:25:18.540)

that it just, you forget the details

Lex Fridman (1:25:20.740)

of the atrocities of the past and remember that.

Douglas Murray (1:25:22.820)

I mean, think of the number of people we talk about

Lex Fridman (1:25:25.060)

as historical heroes, Napoleon.

Douglas Murray (1:25:27.580)

I mean, British people don't talk about Napoleon as a hero,

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.420)

but the French, now you're, now you're on tricky ground.

Lex Fridman (1:25:38.140)

But no, but like the French, normally my Napoleon

Lex Fridman (1:25:42.100)

and there had many Admiral Aswit who was also

Douglas Murray (1:25:44.740)

an unbelievable brute and killed many people unnecessarily.

Lex Fridman (1:25:49.340)

And there are lots of figures from history

Douglas Murray (1:25:51.740)

that we sort of cover that over with.

Lex Fridman (1:25:56.740)

Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:25:58.540)

Can we mention Churchill briefly?

Lex Fridman (1:26:00.300)

Because he is one of the, you can make a case for him

Douglas Murray (1:26:06.140)

being one of the great representers

Lex Fridman (1:26:08.700)

or great figures historically of Western civilization.

Lex Fridman (1:26:12.260)

And then there's a lot of people from, not a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:26:16.820)

I know, I have like three friends

Lex Fridman (1:26:18.460)

and one of them happens to be from London.

Lex Fridman (1:26:21.260)

And they say that he's not a good person.

Lex Fridman (1:26:26.620)

Why?

Lex Fridman (1:26:27.460)

So listen, this friend, we did not discuss.

Douglas Murray (1:26:30.420)

I just, this is an opinion poll of the three friends,

Lex Fridman (1:26:33.180)

but I do know that there's quite a bit, you know.

Douglas Murray (1:26:35.340)

There's a backlash going on at the moment.

Lex Fridman (1:26:37.180)

At the moment and in general, there's a spirit

Douglas Murray (1:26:39.220)

like reflecting on the darker sides

Lex Fridman (1:26:42.300)

of some of these historical figures,

Douglas Murray (1:26:43.660)

like challenging history through,

Lex Fridman (1:26:46.660)

it's not just critical race theory.

Douglas Murray (1:26:48.340)

It's challenging history through,

Lex Fridman (1:26:52.020)

well, are the people we think of as heroes,

Lex Fridman (1:26:57.940)

what are their flaws?

Lex Fridman (1:26:59.340)

And are they in fact villains that are convenient,

Douglas Murray (1:27:02.980)

sort of, we're there at the right time

Lex Fridman (1:27:10.180)

to accidentally do the right thing.

Lex Fridman (1:27:12.020)

Accidentally?

Lex Fridman (1:27:15.220)

I hope this isn't the representative fair summation

Douglas Murray (1:27:19.460)

of your friend in London's views.

Lex Fridman (1:27:21.260)

No, she's going to be quite mad at this,

Lex Fridman (1:27:23.660)

but I didn't say the name, so it could be any friend.

Lex Fridman (1:27:26.180)

It could be, it's like a girlfriend in Canada.

Douglas Murray (1:27:28.740)

Well, see, I.

Lex Fridman (1:27:30.580)

You've given that away.

Douglas Murray (1:27:31.700)

Well, that's, of course I would not.

Lex Fridman (1:27:34.860)

I made that up completely.

Douglas Murray (1:27:36.140)

It's all, just like my girlfriend in Canada,

Lex Fridman (1:27:39.660)

she's completely a figment of my imagination.

Douglas Murray (1:27:41.780)

Nevertheless, Winston Churchill is somebody,

Lex Fridman (1:27:46.300)

I mean, just looking at reading

Douglas Murray (1:27:48.140)

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Lex Fridman (1:27:49.340)

is an incredible figure that to me,

Lex Fridman (1:27:55.180)

so much of World War II is marked,

Lex Fridman (1:27:58.340)

leading up to the war is marked

Douglas Murray (1:27:59.980)

by stunning amounts of cowardice by political leaders,

Lex Fridman (1:28:03.740)

and it's fascinating to watch here

Douglas Murray (1:28:07.380)

this person clearly with a drinking and a smoking problem.

Lex Fridman (1:28:11.420)

Was he?

Douglas Murray (1:28:12.260)

I didn't understand why that's a negative.

Lex Fridman (1:28:13.980)

No, I didn't say, you see.

Douglas Murray (1:28:15.700)

Yeah, you throw it in as if it is.

Lex Fridman (1:28:17.860)

No, well, it's called humor.

Douglas Murray (1:28:19.700)

I'll explain it to you one day what that means,

Lex Fridman (1:28:21.460)

but he stood.

Douglas Murray (1:28:22.900)

Explain dry humor.

Lex Fridman (1:28:23.940)

He stood up, he stood up to what we now see as evil

Douglas Murray (1:28:31.980)

when at the time it was not so obvious to see.

Lex Fridman (1:28:36.900)

You know, so that's just a fascinating figure

Douglas Murray (1:28:39.820)

of Western civilization.

Lex Fridman (1:28:40.780)

I'd love to get your comments.

Douglas Murray (1:28:42.220)

The real criticisms, I mean, smoking and drinking.

Lex Fridman (1:28:45.380)

The real criticisms of Churchill are quite easy to sum up,

Lex Fridman (1:28:49.180)

and I do so in the War on the West, actually.

Lex Fridman (1:28:50.860)

I say these are the things that they now use against him.

Douglas Murray (1:28:54.060)

Didn't do enough to avert the Bengal famine in 1943,

Lex Fridman (1:28:56.860)

for instance.

Douglas Murray (1:28:57.700)

That's been shot down by numerous historians,

Lex Fridman (1:28:59.580)

including Indian historians.

Douglas Murray (1:29:01.660)

In the middle of the war, in the middle of a world war,

Lex Fridman (1:29:04.140)

Churchill did what he could

Douglas Murray (1:29:05.260)

to get grain supplies diverted from Australia to Bengal.

Lex Fridman (1:29:12.380)

The famine was appalling.

Douglas Murray (1:29:13.820)

It was caused by a typhoon.

Lex Fridman (1:29:15.020)

It was not caused by Winston Churchill,

Lex Fridman (1:29:17.700)

and the idea that some, basically,

Lex Fridman (1:29:22.060)

Indian nationalist historians have pumped out

Douglas Murray (1:29:24.260)

in recent years, and just anti Churchill figures,

Lex Fridman (1:29:28.140)

that he actually wanted Indians to die

Douglas Murray (1:29:31.140)

is just total calumny.

Lex Fridman (1:29:34.380)

And when people claim, some people claim that,

Douglas Murray (1:29:36.260)

I mean, there was a few very ignorant scholars,

Lex Fridman (1:29:39.220)

nevertheless with some credentials,

Douglas Murray (1:29:41.820)

who claim that Churchill wanted the Indian population

Lex Fridman (1:29:45.020)

to basically be genocided.

Lex Fridman (1:29:47.260)

And it's complete nonsense,

Lex Fridman (1:29:48.500)

not least by the fact that during the period

Douglas Murray (1:29:51.220)

which in question Indian population boomed.

Lex Fridman (1:29:56.140)

So that's one of the main ones.

Douglas Murray (1:29:59.660)

Another one is that he had some views

Lex Fridman (1:30:02.100)

that we now had regarded as racist.

Douglas Murray (1:30:03.420)

He definitely regarded races

Lex Fridman (1:30:04.660)

as being of different characters,

Lex Fridman (1:30:07.740)

and that there were superior races,

Lex Fridman (1:30:10.260)

and the, as it were, the white European

Douglas Murray (1:30:13.380)

was a superior culture.

Lex Fridman (1:30:19.420)

He was born in Victorian England,

Lex Fridman (1:30:21.780)

so he had some Victorian attitudes.

Lex Fridman (1:30:26.060)

These are things in the negative side of the ledger,

Lex Fridman (1:30:28.140)

and as with all history,

Lex Fridman (1:30:29.700)

you should have a negative

Lex Fridman (1:30:30.540)

and a positive side of the ledger.

Lex Fridman (1:30:31.900)

Positive side of the ledger includes

Douglas Murray (1:30:33.220)

he almost certainly did more than any one human being

Lex Fridman (1:30:35.260)

to save the world from Nazism.

Lex Fridman (1:30:37.260)

So that should count as something.

Lex Fridman (1:30:39.460)

And one of the reasons I talk about Churchill

Douglas Murray (1:30:41.220)

in this regard is to stress that if you get,

Lex Fridman (1:30:46.100)

I'm not trying to stop anyone doing history at all.

Douglas Murray (1:30:49.580)

I don't think that the revisionism of recent years

Lex Fridman (1:30:51.700)

about Churchill or the founding fathers of America

Douglas Murray (1:30:53.940)

or anyone else is anything I want to stop.

Lex Fridman (1:30:56.940)

I find it interesting,

Douglas Murray (1:30:58.220)

find it interesting not least

Lex Fridman (1:30:59.180)

because it's so sloppy on occasions,

Lex Fridman (1:31:00.500)

but I find it interesting and it's important.

Lex Fridman (1:31:02.220)

And we should be able to see people in the round.

Lex Fridman (1:31:04.700)

But that includes recognizing

Lex Fridman (1:31:08.340)

the positive side of the ledger.

Lex Fridman (1:31:10.500)

And if you can't recognize that side,

Lex Fridman (1:31:13.700)

you're doing something else.

Douglas Murray (1:31:15.740)

You're doing something else.

Lex Fridman (1:31:16.940)

It's not history.

Douglas Murray (1:31:18.580)

It's some form of politicking of a very particular kind.

Lex Fridman (1:31:23.380)

And I think it's the same thing with the founding fathers.

Douglas Murray (1:31:26.060)

There are some people, for instance,

Lex Fridman (1:31:27.220)

certainly since the 90s who have pushed

Douglas Murray (1:31:29.660)

the Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson story

Lex Fridman (1:31:32.820)

to show that Thomas Jefferson was some kind of brute.

Douglas Murray (1:31:35.540)

As a result, we see Jefferson's statue

Lex Fridman (1:31:39.740)

being removed from the council chamber

Douglas Murray (1:31:41.180)

of the city we're sitting in last November

Lex Fridman (1:31:43.380)

by council members who said that Thomas Jefferson

Douglas Murray (1:31:45.660)

no longer represents our values.

Lex Fridman (1:31:47.660)

If you can't recognize greatness of Thomas Jefferson

Lex Fridman (1:31:51.460)

and that he had flaws,

Lex Fridman (1:31:54.180)

I mean, that's not a grownup debate.

Lex Fridman (1:31:58.580)

And weigh them and weigh them in the context of the time.

Lex Fridman (1:32:01.380)

But let me sort of throw a curveball at you then.

Lex Fridman (1:32:05.900)

What about recognizing the positive

Lex Fridman (1:32:08.460)

and the negative of a fellow with nice facial hair

Lex Fridman (1:32:11.060)

called Karl Marx?

Lex Fridman (1:32:13.060)

Sure, sure.

Douglas Murray (1:32:14.420)

I mean, I have a section in The War in the West,

Lex Fridman (1:32:17.900)

as you know, where I go for Karl Marx with some glee.

Lex Fridman (1:32:22.420)

So he seems to have gotten some popularity

Lex Fridman (1:32:26.380)

in the West recently.

Douglas Murray (1:32:29.100)

Not just recently, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:32:30.660)

I mean, he's had a resurgence recently.

Douglas Murray (1:32:32.700)

Yes, resurgence.

Lex Fridman (1:32:33.820)

Well, that's because whenever things are seen to go wrong,

Douglas Murray (1:32:36.940)

people reach for other options.

Lex Fridman (1:32:40.980)

And when, for instance, it's very hard

Douglas Murray (1:32:42.420)

for people to accumulate capital,

Lex Fridman (1:32:43.700)

it's not obvious that they're gonna become capitalists.

Lex Fridman (1:32:46.660)

And so one thing that happens is people say,

Lex Fridman (1:32:49.100)

let's look at the Marxism thing again,

Douglas Murray (1:32:50.660)

see if that's a viable goer.

Lex Fridman (1:32:52.820)

And my argument would simply be,

Douglas Murray (1:32:55.620)

point me to one place that's worked.

Lex Fridman (1:32:58.380)

Well, the argument from the Marxists

Douglas Murray (1:33:01.500)

or the Marxian economists is that

Lex Fridman (1:33:05.020)

we've only really tried it once, the Soviets tried it,

Lex Fridman (1:33:08.540)

and then there's a few people

Lex Fridman (1:33:10.420)

that kind of tried the Soviet thing.

Lex Fridman (1:33:12.340)

Huber tried it?

Lex Fridman (1:33:13.740)

Well, they basically, it's an offshoot of the Soviet, yes.

Douglas Murray (1:33:18.980)

They've tried it.

Lex Fridman (1:33:19.820)

They tried it in Venezuela.

Douglas Murray (1:33:22.180)

Yes, yes, yes.

Lex Fridman (1:33:23.380)

So let's just quickly say,

Lex Fridman (1:33:25.720)

how did all these experiments go?

Lex Fridman (1:33:28.820)

Well, they failed in fascinating ways.

Douglas Murray (1:33:31.180)

They did, but they failed.

Lex Fridman (1:33:32.660)

Yes, they failed.

Douglas Murray (1:33:33.500)

We should stress, so grossly failed.

Lex Fridman (1:33:36.860)

So grossly failed that they threw millions

Lex Fridman (1:33:39.380)

and millions of people into completely thwarted lives

Lex Fridman (1:33:43.960)

that were much shorter than they should have been.

Douglas Murray (1:33:47.260)

Yeah, so the lesson to learn there,

Lex Fridman (1:33:50.660)

that you can learn several lessons.

Douglas Murray (1:33:52.280)

One is that anything that smells like Marxism

Lex Fridman (1:33:56.180)

is going to lead to a lot of problems.

Douglas Murray (1:33:59.900)

Now, another lesson could be,

Lex Fridman (1:34:02.140)

well, what is the fundamental idea that Marx had?

Douglas Murray (1:34:05.940)

He was criticizing capitalism and the flaws of capitalism.

Lex Fridman (1:34:10.420)

So is it possible to do better than capitalism?

Lex Fridman (1:34:13.420)

And that's, if you take that spirit, you start to wonder.

Lex Fridman (1:34:16.740)

That might actually become relevant in, I don't know,

Douglas Murray (1:34:19.220)

20, 30, 50 years when the machines start doing

Lex Fridman (1:34:24.700)

more and more of the labor, all those kinds of things.

Douglas Murray (1:34:26.620)

You start to ask questions.

Lex Fridman (1:34:27.660)

You finally might get to Marx's dream

Douglas Murray (1:34:29.900)

of what the average day would look like.

Lex Fridman (1:34:31.820)

Yes.

Douglas Murray (1:34:33.860)

Well, there's gonna be an awful lot

Lex Fridman (1:34:35.020)

of literary criticism then.

Douglas Murray (1:34:38.260)

If you remember, that's what Marx said

Lex Fridman (1:34:39.740)

that we would be doing in the evenings,

Douglas Murray (1:34:41.260)

the laborer in the evening.

Lex Fridman (1:34:42.580)

Well, he didn't know Twitter was a thing, or Netflix.

Lex Fridman (1:34:45.340)

So he would change.

Lex Fridman (1:34:47.740)

Are there things we could learn from Marx plausibly, possibly?

Douglas Murray (1:34:51.740)

I can't think of anything myself offhand.

Lex Fridman (1:34:53.840)

But to have a critique of capitalism

Douglas Murray (1:34:56.780)

isn't by any means a bad thing in this society.

Lex Fridman (1:34:58.940)

I'd rather that it was a critique of capitalism

Douglas Murray (1:35:00.780)

that showed how you improve capitalism,

Lex Fridman (1:35:02.820)

a critique of the free market that showed

Lex Fridman (1:35:04.580)

how people could get better access to the free market,

Lex Fridman (1:35:07.380)

how you could ensure, for instance,

Douglas Murray (1:35:08.700)

that young people get onto the property ladder,

Lex Fridman (1:35:10.740)

things like that.

Douglas Murray (1:35:11.940)

Those are constructive things.

Lex Fridman (1:35:13.180)

The people who say we must have Marxism,

Douglas Murray (1:35:15.260)

I mean, don't know what the hell they're talking about,

Lex Fridman (1:35:17.340)

because that never leads to any of those things.

Douglas Murray (1:35:19.900)

Haven't led in the past.

Lex Fridman (1:35:22.020)

It's never led in the past.

Lex Fridman (1:35:23.020)

And at some point, you've got to try to work out

Lex Fridman (1:35:25.940)

how many attempts you make at this damn philosophy

Douglas Murray (1:35:30.300)

before you realize that every attempt always

Lex Fridman (1:35:32.540)

leads to the same thing.

Douglas Murray (1:35:34.220)

I would say we could pretend that fascism has never

Lex Fridman (1:35:36.740)

been properly tried and that it was unfortunate what happened

Douglas Murray (1:35:41.940)

in Nazi Germany, but that wasn't real fascism.

Lex Fridman (1:35:45.820)

And Mussolini's fascism didn't go all that well,

Lex Fridman (1:35:49.540)

but it was a bit better.

Lex Fridman (1:35:51.300)

And maybe we could try a bit more Franco fascism.

Douglas Murray (1:35:54.580)

Nobody would have any time for this crap, nor should they.

Lex Fridman (1:35:58.660)

The people who try that are reviled, and quite rightly.

Lex Fridman (1:36:02.120)

So why do we tolerate it with the Marxism thing?

Lex Fridman (1:36:04.660)

And it's a great mystery to me,

Douglas Murray (1:36:06.780)

the way that people do tolerate it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:08.740)

Always, always in this stupid way of saying,

Douglas Murray (1:36:11.860)

we haven't done it yet.

Lex Fridman (1:36:13.900)

And if you keep trying the same recipe,

Lex Fridman (1:36:16.220)

and every time it comes out as shit,

Lex Fridman (1:36:19.140)

it's that the recipe is shit.

Douglas Murray (1:36:21.260)

Well, sort of, I'm trying to practice here

Lex Fridman (1:36:23.420)

by playing devil's advocate,

Douglas Murray (1:36:24.460)

practice the same idea that you mentioned,

Lex Fridman (1:36:26.460)

which is, when you say the word Marxism,

Douglas Murray (1:36:29.340)

should you throw out everything,

Lex Fridman (1:36:30.700)

or should you ask a question, is there good ideas here?

Lex Fridman (1:36:34.500)

And the same, it's the good,

Lex Fridman (1:36:36.460)

it's weighing the good and the bad,

Lex Fridman (1:36:37.780)

and being able to do so calmly and thoughtfully.

Lex Fridman (1:36:40.660)

Sure.

Douglas Murray (1:36:41.820)

You know the famous George Orwell comment

Lex Fridman (1:36:45.580)

on the style, in an argument with a Stalinist?

Lex Fridman (1:36:48.780)

Do you know this?

Lex Fridman (1:36:49.620)

That's one of my favorite quotes.

Douglas Murray (1:36:51.380)

George Orwell, in the early 40s,

Lex Fridman (1:36:52.820)

gets into an argument with a Stalinist.

Douglas Murray (1:36:55.900)

He's also a Marxist.

Lex Fridman (1:36:58.620)

And this is after the show trials, 37.

Douglas Murray (1:37:04.020)

This is when it's very clear

Lex Fridman (1:37:06.500)

what Marxism in the Russian form is.

Lex Fridman (1:37:10.980)

And this, Orwell is in the discussion with this Marxist,

Lex Fridman (1:37:15.260)

and it goes on and on,

Lex Fridman (1:37:16.580)

and eventually Orwell says,

Lex Fridman (1:37:18.980)

well, you know, what about the show trials,

Lex Fridman (1:37:20.580)

and what about what's happened in the Ukraine,

Lex Fridman (1:37:23.060)

and the famines, and much more,

Lex Fridman (1:37:26.540)

and the purges, and the purges, and the purges,

Lex Fridman (1:37:29.140)

and eventually the Stalinist says to Orwell

Lex Fridman (1:37:33.060)

what Orwell knows he's going to say all along,

Lex Fridman (1:37:35.460)

which is, he says,

Douglas Murray (1:37:36.300)

you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

Lex Fridman (1:37:40.180)

And Orwell says, where's the omelet?

Douglas Murray (1:37:46.060)

Oh, yeah, that's a good, that's a really good,

Lex Fridman (1:37:49.580)

because that's a...

Lex Fridman (1:37:50.420)

Look at this by this stage, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:37:52.540)

How many...

Lex Fridman (1:37:53.380)

Where's my damn omelet?

Lex Fridman (1:37:54.580)

How many just messy, big, bloody, eggy piles

Lex Fridman (1:38:00.060)

have the Marxists created by now in country after country?

Lex Fridman (1:38:04.660)

Yeah.

Douglas Murray (1:38:05.500)

Always next time they're going to produce the great omelet,

Lex Fridman (1:38:08.780)

but they never have, and they never will,

Douglas Murray (1:38:11.460)

because the whole thing is rotten from the start.

Lex Fridman (1:38:14.620)

But let me just also say one thing about,

Douglas Murray (1:38:17.500)

because of course Marx isn't as nice as he sounds,

Lex Fridman (1:38:20.700)

and that's one of the things that I try

Douglas Murray (1:38:22.860)

to highlight in the book is,

Lex Fridman (1:38:24.180)

if we're going to do this reductive thing

Douglas Murray (1:38:25.940)

of people in history and saying,

Lex Fridman (1:38:26.940)

well, they had views that were of their time,

Lex Fridman (1:38:29.500)

and we must therefore condemn them for them,

Lex Fridman (1:38:32.020)

say, fine, let's do the same thing with Marx.

Lex Fridman (1:38:34.180)

And there were things I quote in this book

Lex Fridman (1:38:35.740)

from Marx's letters, not least letters to Engels,

Lex Fridman (1:38:38.420)

and indeed in his published writings,

Lex Fridman (1:38:40.740)

in pieces he was writing for the American press

Douglas Murray (1:38:44.060)

in the 1850s,

Lex Fridman (1:38:47.220)

the way he has horrible views on slavery

Lex Fridman (1:38:49.940)

and colonialism and much more.

Lex Fridman (1:38:53.860)

But the main thing is, I mean,

Douglas Murray (1:38:54.780)

the horrible things he says about black people

Lex Fridman (1:38:57.660)

and the constant use of the N word.

Douglas Murray (1:38:59.460)

In fact, when I was doing the audio book

Lex Fridman (1:39:00.780)

for the war in the West, I had to decide,

Lex Fridman (1:39:03.380)

will I read out the quotes from Marx or not?

Lex Fridman (1:39:05.740)

If I had read them out, I'd have been canceled

Douglas Murray (1:39:08.900)

because people would have just said,

Lex Fridman (1:39:11.260)

you've been using the N word so much in this passage.

Lex Fridman (1:39:14.460)

And I slightly thought of doing it

Lex Fridman (1:39:17.660)

so that I could say I was only quoting Marx

Douglas Murray (1:39:20.620)

to try to hit the point home.

Lex Fridman (1:39:22.420)

In the end, of course, I was sensible and decided not to,

Lex Fridman (1:39:24.260)

but Marx's letters are disgusting on these terms.

Lex Fridman (1:39:27.540)

Since I highlighted this in this book

Lex Fridman (1:39:29.380)

and some of the media picked it up

Lex Fridman (1:39:32.900)

and have popularized this thing

Douglas Murray (1:39:35.780)

I'm trying to put into the system,

Lex Fridman (1:39:37.340)

which is if you're gonna accuse Churchill of racism,

Douglas Murray (1:39:39.420)

if you're gonna accuse Jefferson of racism,

Lex Fridman (1:39:41.580)

Washington of racism, and so on, what about Marx?

Douglas Murray (1:39:44.220)

The two things that Marxists have said since this came out

Lex Fridman (1:39:46.660)

has been, first of all, why are you saying this about Marx?

Douglas Murray (1:39:49.380)

He was a man of his time, like everyone else.

Lex Fridman (1:39:54.260)

And the second thing they say is,

Douglas Murray (1:39:55.660)

we don't go to Marx for his horrible abhorrent views on race.

Lex Fridman (1:39:58.860)

So talking about mixed race people as gorillas and so on.

Douglas Murray (1:40:02.900)

We don't go to him for that.

Lex Fridman (1:40:04.300)

We go to him for his economic theories.

Douglas Murray (1:40:06.580)

I say, okay, well, we don't go to Thomas Jefferson

Lex Fridman (1:40:10.180)

for his views on slaves.

Douglas Murray (1:40:11.980)

We don't go to Churchill for the precise language

Lex Fridman (1:40:18.820)

he used that points in the 1910s about Indians.

Douglas Murray (1:40:21.420)

Or his health advice.

Lex Fridman (1:40:22.820)

Or his health advice.

Douglas Murray (1:40:24.620)

Actually, I do get him for that.

Lex Fridman (1:40:26.980)

That explains so much.

Lex Fridman (1:40:28.620)

But let's have some standards on this.

Lex Fridman (1:40:31.780)

And that's why I'm very suspicious of the fact

Douglas Murray (1:40:34.340)

that the people don't do this with Marx

Lex Fridman (1:40:36.100)

because I think what they're trying,

Lex Fridman (1:40:37.140)

what some people are trying to do,

Lex Fridman (1:40:38.380)

and this may sound conspiratorial,

Lex Fridman (1:40:40.060)

but I really don't think it is.

Lex Fridman (1:40:41.500)

I think that some people are deliberately trying

Douglas Murray (1:40:43.540)

to completely clear the cultural landscape of our past

Lex Fridman (1:40:47.220)

in order to say there's nothing good.

Douglas Murray (1:40:49.660)

Nothing you can hold on to.

Lex Fridman (1:40:51.100)

No one you should revere.

Douglas Murray (1:40:52.340)

You've got no heroes.

Lex Fridman (1:40:53.820)

The whole thing comes down.

Lex Fridman (1:40:55.180)

Who's left standing?

Lex Fridman (1:40:56.220)

Oh, we've also got this idea from the 20th century

Douglas Murray (1:40:58.460)

still about Marxism.

Lex Fridman (1:41:00.500)

Well, the 19th and 20th centuries.

Lex Fridman (1:41:02.540)

And no, no.

Lex Fridman (1:41:05.340)

You will not have the entire landscape deracinated.

Lex Fridman (1:41:09.740)

And then the worst ideas tried again.

Lex Fridman (1:41:13.060)

So basically destroy all of history

Lex Fridman (1:41:15.100)

and the lessons learned from history

Lex Fridman (1:41:16.580)

and then start from scratch.

Lex Fridman (1:41:17.860)

And then it's completely any idea can work

Lex Fridman (1:41:20.740)

and then you could just take whatever.

Douglas Murray (1:41:22.340)

Well, and the thing is there are always some people

Lex Fridman (1:41:24.380)

with pre preferred ideas.

Lex Fridman (1:41:25.940)

And I mentioned this also with the postcolonialists.

Lex Fridman (1:41:27.940)

The postcolonialists were really interesting

Douglas Murray (1:41:30.660)

because when the European powers were moving

Lex Fridman (1:41:33.300)

from Africa and the Far East,

Douglas Murray (1:41:35.700)

postcolonial movements had one obvious move

Lex Fridman (1:41:38.740)

they could have done, which was to say,

Douglas Murray (1:41:41.340)

since the European powers have left,

Lex Fridman (1:41:43.260)

we will return to a pre colonial life,

Douglas Murray (1:41:46.420)

which in some of their places would have been returning

Lex Fridman (1:41:48.300)

to slave markets and slave ownership

Lex Fridman (1:41:50.620)

and slave selling and much more.

Lex Fridman (1:41:52.500)

But put that aside for a second.

Douglas Murray (1:41:54.300)

They could have said we have an indigenous culture

Lex Fridman (1:41:56.300)

which we will return to.

Douglas Murray (1:41:58.100)

Almost uniformly in the postcolonial era,

Lex Fridman (1:42:01.100)

you had figures like France Fanon,

Douglas Murray (1:42:04.100)

you had European intellectuals like Sartre,

Lex Fridman (1:42:06.580)

who said the Western powers are retreating

Douglas Murray (1:42:09.780)

from these countries and therefore we should institute

Lex Fridman (1:42:12.140)

in these countries what but Western Marxism.

Douglas Murray (1:42:17.060)

Well, it's not obvious to me that like the bad ideas

Lex Fridman (1:42:20.020)

will be the ones that emerge,

Lex Fridman (1:42:21.300)

but it's more likely the bad ideas would emerge

Lex Fridman (1:42:23.660)

in this kind of context when you erase history,

Douglas Murray (1:42:26.540)

when you erase tradition.

Lex Fridman (1:42:27.380)

When you erase history and you leave some ideas

Douglas Murray (1:42:30.300)

deliberately uninterrogated.

Lex Fridman (1:42:33.500)

I mean, as I say, find me one in a hundred

Douglas Murray (1:42:37.980)

American students who've heard of

Lex Fridman (1:42:42.500)

any of the communist despots of the 20th century.

Douglas Murray (1:42:47.260)

I mean, name recognition in,

Lex Fridman (1:42:49.500)

there was a poll done a few years ago in the UK

Lex Fridman (1:42:52.260)

and like name recognition among children,

Lex Fridman (1:42:56.380)

school children for Stalin, let alone Mao.

Douglas Murray (1:43:01.380)

I mean, Mao who kills more people than anyone,

Lex Fridman (1:43:05.780)

65 million Chinese, perhaps.

Lex Fridman (1:43:09.500)

How many students in America know what Mao was,

Lex Fridman (1:43:13.100)

who he was, where he was, nothing.

Douglas Murray (1:43:16.460)

Or the atrocities committed.

Lex Fridman (1:43:17.900)

Where the atrocities were committed.

Lex Fridman (1:43:19.340)

And I worry about that because it means

Lex Fridman (1:43:21.700)

that we might have learned one of the two lessons

Douglas Murray (1:43:24.580)

of the 20th century.

Lex Fridman (1:43:26.100)

We think we've learned one of the two lessons

Douglas Murray (1:43:29.420)

of the 20th century.

Lex Fridman (1:43:30.300)

We actually haven't learned that lesson.

Douglas Murray (1:43:32.060)

We've learned a little bit of it.

Lex Fridman (1:43:33.820)

And we've not learned the other one at all.

Douglas Murray (1:43:35.780)

Because that's why we still have people

Lex Fridman (1:43:37.660)

in American politics and elsewhere

Douglas Murray (1:43:39.340)

actually talking about collectivization and things.

Lex Fridman (1:43:42.740)

As if there's no problem with that.

Lex Fridman (1:43:44.740)

And as if it's perfectly obvious.

Lex Fridman (1:43:46.580)

And they could run it and they'd know

Douglas Murray (1:43:48.100)

exactly where to stop.

Lex Fridman (1:43:49.540)

What are the two lessons of the 20th century?

Douglas Murray (1:43:51.420)

Fascism and communism.

Lex Fridman (1:43:55.260)

Yeah.

Douglas Murray (1:43:56.420)

I mean, I'm not exactly sure what exactly the lessons are.

Lex Fridman (1:44:00.900)

No, it's not clear.

Douglas Murray (1:44:02.020)

If the lessons were very clear,

Lex Fridman (1:44:03.540)

we'd be better at it.

Douglas Murray (1:44:04.900)

Well, one is your book broadly applied

Lex Fridman (1:44:08.260)

of madness of crowds.

Douglas Murray (1:44:10.580)

That's one lesson.

Lex Fridman (1:44:11.860)

Well, how so?

Douglas Murray (1:44:14.060)

Meaning like large crowds can display herd like behavior.

Lex Fridman (1:44:19.300)

Yes, be very suspicious of crowds.

Douglas Murray (1:44:21.260)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:44:22.100)

In general, I mean, you apply it in different,

Douglas Murray (1:44:24.100)

more to modern application.

Lex Fridman (1:44:25.740)

Yeah.

Douglas Murray (1:44:26.580)

In a sense, but that's rooted in history,

Lex Fridman (1:44:29.580)

that crowds can, when humans get together,

Douglas Murray (1:44:32.420)

they can do some quite radically silly things.

Lex Fridman (1:44:35.500)

Elias Kaneti is very good on that, crowds and power.

Lex Fridman (1:44:40.460)

And Eric Hoffer, who is a sort of self taught, amazing,

Lex Fridman (1:44:45.660)

not to say autodidactic writer,

Douglas Murray (1:44:47.900)

the true believer and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:44:49.220)

He was extremely good on that.

Lex Fridman (1:44:51.420)

But the reason I mentioned the two things,

Lex Fridman (1:44:52.740)

no, I mean, we should have realized

Douglas Murray (1:44:53.860)

the two nightmares of the 20th century fascism and communism,

Lex Fridman (1:44:57.540)

that we should know how they came about.

Lex Fridman (1:45:00.020)

And we're interested in learning

Lex Fridman (1:45:01.220)

how one of them came about, fascism.

Lex Fridman (1:45:03.180)

And we know some of the lessons,

Lex Fridman (1:45:04.780)

like don't treat other people as less than you

Douglas Murray (1:45:08.340)

because of their race.

Lex Fridman (1:45:10.180)

That's one lesson.

Lex Fridman (1:45:12.140)

But we've done some good at learning that.

Lex Fridman (1:45:17.500)

But the second one, not to do communism again,

Douglas Murray (1:45:20.580)

not to do socialism, I think we're way away from knowing

Lex Fridman (1:45:26.540)

because we don't know how it happened.

Lex Fridman (1:45:29.500)

And the little temptations are still there always.

Lex Fridman (1:45:32.620)

Look at people saying,

Douglas Murray (1:45:33.460)

I'm gonna expropriate your property.

Lex Fridman (1:45:39.020)

If people do things they don't like,

Douglas Murray (1:45:40.500)

they will get, we can't wait to take your property.

Lex Fridman (1:45:42.940)

Well, there's a sense, there's an appealing sense.

Douglas Murray (1:45:45.780)

Okay, every ideology has an appealing narrative behind it

Lex Fridman (1:45:50.900)

that sells the ideology.

Lex Fridman (1:45:52.500)

So for socialism, for communism is that there's a,

Lex Fridman (1:45:57.140)

it seems unfair that the working class

Douglas Murray (1:45:59.740)

does all of this work and gets only a fraction of the output.

Lex Fridman (1:46:05.060)

It just seems unfair.

Lex Fridman (1:46:07.020)

So you wanna make it.

Lex Fridman (1:46:07.860)

If they do get a fraction of the output, yes.

Douglas Murray (1:46:10.140)

Yes, and so it seems to be more fair

Lex Fridman (1:46:14.900)

if we increase that.

Douglas Murray (1:46:16.260)

If the workers own all of the value of their output

Lex Fridman (1:46:21.500)

and things that are more fair seems to be a good thing.

Douglas Murray (1:46:26.780)

I'd say, well, yeah, I mean, fairness is,

Lex Fridman (1:46:29.900)

I like fairness as a term.

Douglas Murray (1:46:32.460)

No, I much prefer fairness

Lex Fridman (1:46:33.820)

because it's a much easier thing to try to work out.

Douglas Murray (1:46:36.860)

It's quite amorphous itself as a concept,

Lex Fridman (1:46:38.660)

but everyone can recognize it.

Lex Fridman (1:46:40.820)

So for instance, should the boss of the company

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.100)

earn a million times that of the lowest paid employee?

Douglas Murray (1:46:51.300)

Doesn't seem fair.

Lex Fridman (1:46:53.700)

Should they earn maybe five or 10 times

Lex Fridman (1:46:57.820)

the salary of the lowest employee?

Lex Fridman (1:47:00.620)

Yeah, possibly, that could be fair.

Douglas Murray (1:47:03.380)

There are certain sort of multiples

Lex Fridman (1:47:05.060)

which are within the bounds of reasonableness.

Douglas Murray (1:47:12.540)

I think actually that's the much bigger problem

Lex Fridman (1:47:17.260)

in capitalism at the moment as I see it

Douglas Murray (1:47:19.220)

is the not untrue perception

Lex Fridman (1:47:22.900)

that a tiny number of people accrue a lot of the benefits

Lex Fridman (1:47:27.900)

and that the bit in the middle

Lex Fridman (1:47:34.620)

has become increasingly squeezed

Lex Fridman (1:47:37.140)

and is at danger always of falling

Lex Fridman (1:47:38.940)

all the way down to the bottom.

Douglas Murray (1:47:40.300)

I mean, I think in the snakes and ladders

Lex Fridman (1:47:41.780)

of American capitalism, for instance,

Douglas Murray (1:47:43.460)

it's a correct perception to say

Lex Fridman (1:47:46.580)

that the snakes go down awfully far.

Douglas Murray (1:47:51.700)

If you tread on the snake,

Lex Fridman (1:47:53.980)

you can plummet an awfully long way in America.

Lex Fridman (1:47:56.700)

And the deal in the game was that the ladders took you high

Lex Fridman (1:48:02.500)

and there's a perception, and again,

Douglas Murray (1:48:03.980)

it's not entirely wrong that the ladder system

Lex Fridman (1:48:07.220)

on the board is kind of broken.

Lex Fridman (1:48:10.460)

So what you're saying is you're a Marxist.

Lex Fridman (1:48:13.460)

I'm not saying I'm a Marxist.

Douglas Murray (1:48:15.460)

You heard that here first in the out of context blog post

Lex Fridman (1:48:20.460)

you're going to write about this.

Douglas Murray (1:48:21.460)

I get to that, I get back to this point.

Lex Fridman (1:48:22.820)

The way to critique capitalism,

Douglas Murray (1:48:24.740)

if it's gone bad, is to get better capitalists.

Lex Fridman (1:48:28.100)

Free markets where they're not fair should be made fair.

Douglas Murray (1:48:31.300)

Never decide that the answer is the thing

Lex Fridman (1:48:35.060)

that has never produced any human flourishing, i.e. Marxism.

Lex Fridman (1:48:39.580)

So as you describe in The Madness of Crowds

Lex Fridman (1:48:41.900)

the herd like behavior of humans that gets us into trouble,

Douglas Murray (1:48:47.900)

you as an individual thinker and others listening to this,

Lex Fridman (1:48:51.900)

how can you, because all of us are mids crowds,

Douglas Murray (1:48:54.980)

we're influenced by the society that's around us,

Lex Fridman (1:48:57.820)

by the people that's around us.

Lex Fridman (1:48:59.140)

How can we think independently?

Lex Fridman (1:49:01.740)

How can we, if you're in the Soviet Union

Douglas Murray (1:49:09.580)

at the beginning of the 20th century,

Lex Fridman (1:49:12.420)

if you're in, I don't know, Nazi Germany

Douglas Murray (1:49:16.940)

at the end of the 30s or the 40s,

Lex Fridman (1:49:18.980)

how can you think independently?

Douglas Murray (1:49:20.660)

Given, first of all, that it's hard to think independently,

Lex Fridman (1:49:26.860)

just intellectually speaking,

Lex Fridman (1:49:28.540)

but also that it just becomes more and more dangerous.

Lex Fridman (1:49:33.700)

So the incentive to think independently

Douglas Murray (1:49:36.780)

under the uncertainty that's usually involved with thinking

Lex Fridman (1:49:40.180)

is, I mean, it's a silly thing to say,

Lex Fridman (1:49:42.860)

but on Twitter there is a cost to be paid

Lex Fridman (1:49:44.660)

for going against the crowd on any silly thing.

Lex Fridman (1:49:49.580)

We can even talk about, what is it?

Lex Fridman (1:49:52.860)

Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.

Douglas Murray (1:49:55.620)

There's a crowd that believes that that was unjustified.

Lex Fridman (1:49:59.060)

I forget what the crowd decided.

Lex Fridman (1:50:00.980)

But I don't.

Lex Fridman (1:50:01.820)

Crowd split on that one.

Douglas Murray (1:50:02.700)

It's safe to have one opinion either way.

Lex Fridman (1:50:04.620)

Okay, it is, right.

Lex Fridman (1:50:05.580)

But there is, you put it very nicely,

Lex Fridman (1:50:07.900)

that there's clearly a calculus here

Lex Fridman (1:50:10.260)

and that you can measure, on Twitter in particular,

Lex Fridman (1:50:12.620)

you can measure kind of the crowd,

Douglas Murray (1:50:14.380)

a sense of where the crowd lays.

Lex Fridman (1:50:16.100)

Michael Jackson.

Douglas Murray (1:50:17.060)

Mm hmm.

Lex Fridman (1:50:19.300)

Well, oh boy.

Douglas Murray (1:50:22.420)

I don't want to, this is not a legal discussion.

Lex Fridman (1:50:26.060)

I don't have my lawyer present.

Douglas Murray (1:50:27.980)

I don't even have a lawyer.

Lex Fridman (1:50:29.060)

The man in question is dead.

Lex Fridman (1:50:30.500)

But I think most people who are not just diehard fans

Lex Fridman (1:50:33.860)

would concede that Michael Jackson

Douglas Murray (1:50:35.020)

had a strange relationship with children

Lex Fridman (1:50:37.020)

and was almost certainly a pedophile.

Lex Fridman (1:50:42.060)

Is that, was that, did the crowd agree on that?

Lex Fridman (1:50:45.180)

No, the crowd hasn't agreed because he's too famous

Lex Fridman (1:50:47.020)

and we all love Thriller.

Lex Fridman (1:50:48.460)

Yeah, we do.

Lex Fridman (1:50:49.540)

So you said people who are not fans, I just don't.

Lex Fridman (1:50:52.460)

No, I'm a fan of Michael Jackson,

Lex Fridman (1:50:53.900)

but I think he was almost certainly a pedophile.

Lex Fridman (1:50:56.620)

And, but nobody wants to give up dancing to bad at weddings.

Lex Fridman (1:51:01.500)

So they just kind of added in.

Lex Fridman (1:51:04.300)

It's fine.

Douglas Murray (1:51:05.860)

Seriously, it's a genius.

Lex Fridman (1:51:07.340)

Your law does not apply to Bill Cosby.

Douglas Murray (1:51:12.020)

Well, he wasn't, he was, of course,

Lex Fridman (1:51:14.340)

one of the most famous people in America.

Lex Fridman (1:51:16.660)

But maybe he wasn't regarded as talented.

Lex Fridman (1:51:19.580)

Oh, oh wow, there's depth to this calculation.

Douglas Murray (1:51:22.780)

There's a genius opt out in all cultures.

Lex Fridman (1:51:26.140)

There's a genius opt out in all cultures.

Douglas Murray (1:51:27.540)

Look at Lord Byron.

Lex Fridman (1:51:28.580)

Lord Byron shagged his sister.

Douglas Murray (1:51:31.340)

Doesn't affect his reputation.

Lex Fridman (1:51:32.820)

In fact, if anything, it kind of adds to it.

Lex Fridman (1:51:34.900)

But then again, this kind of war against the West,

Lex Fridman (1:51:38.380)

genius is actually makes you more likely,

Douglas Murray (1:51:41.700)

or no, to get canceled.

Lex Fridman (1:51:43.780)

So if you look at the genius of Thomas Jefferson, or...

Douglas Murray (1:51:47.740)

Well, yes, because if you haven't done anything remarkable,

Lex Fridman (1:51:50.020)

nobody will come looking for you passively, yeah.

Douglas Murray (1:51:53.020)

Oh, so genius can get you in trouble eventually.

Lex Fridman (1:51:56.020)

Sidle through life with nobody noticing.

Douglas Murray (1:51:58.060)

Be totally harmless and then die

Lex Fridman (1:52:00.540)

and hope you haven't used any carbon.

Lex Fridman (1:52:05.700)

But you were asking about how to survive

Lex Fridman (1:52:08.980)

the era of social media, as it were, and the crowds.

Lex Fridman (1:52:13.180)

And there's a very simple answer to that.

Lex Fridman (1:52:15.500)

Don't overrate the significance of the unreal world.

Douglas Murray (1:52:22.180)

Oh, come on, but this is still human psychology.

Lex Fridman (1:52:25.260)

Because you want to fit in.

Douglas Murray (1:52:26.180)

There's a, you want to...

Lex Fridman (1:52:27.420)

Why?

Douglas Murray (1:52:28.860)

Because you like people, and you're just as a...

Lex Fridman (1:52:31.860)

Why not just like a small number of people

Lex Fridman (1:52:33.460)

and ignore the rest?

Lex Fridman (1:52:34.700)

Yeah, that's...

Douglas Murray (1:52:36.060)

That's what I do.

Lex Fridman (1:52:37.300)

Well, I mean, I actually like most people,

Lex Fridman (1:52:39.620)

and that isn't a general thing.

Lex Fridman (1:52:40.700)

I don't have detestation for most people at all.

Douglas Murray (1:52:44.420)

Most people I kind of enjoy speaking with and being with.

Lex Fridman (1:52:48.460)

But in terms of storing your sense of self worth

Douglas Murray (1:52:52.500)

in absolute strangers, big mistake.

Lex Fridman (1:52:54.900)

Yeah, well, me, that's...

Douglas Murray (1:52:56.940)

Listen, let's turn into a therapy session.

Lex Fridman (1:52:58.980)

Because for me, and I think I represent

Douglas Murray (1:53:01.140)

some number of population, is I'm pretty self critical.

Lex Fridman (1:53:03.900)

I'm looking for myself in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:53:06.020)

And there is a depth of connection

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.020)

with people on the internet.

Douglas Murray (1:53:10.780)

I mean, I have some...

Lex Fridman (1:53:11.620)

I think there's a shallowness of it.

Douglas Murray (1:53:13.300)

It's shallow connection.

Lex Fridman (1:53:14.660)

Interesting, I...

Douglas Murray (1:53:15.900)

Put it this way.

Lex Fridman (1:53:16.740)

If you became very ill tomorrow, would any of them help?

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.060)

On the internet?

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.900)

No, no.

Douglas Murray (1:53:22.740)

Good, that's a good test.

Lex Fridman (1:53:24.140)

Yeah, that's a good test.

Lex Fridman (1:53:25.100)

But then at the end of the day, yeah, you're right.

Lex Fridman (1:53:27.820)

Your very close friends would help, family would help.

Douglas Murray (1:53:30.020)

Yeah, and perhaps that's the only thing...

Lex Fridman (1:53:32.900)

You can't store significant amounts of trust,

Douglas Murray (1:53:39.220)

or faith, or belief, or self worth

Lex Fridman (1:53:43.180)

in places which will not return it to you.

Douglas Murray (1:53:46.780)

Okay, so let's talk about the more extreme case,

Lex Fridman (1:53:49.220)

the harsher case.

Douglas Murray (1:53:50.060)

When you talk about the things you talk about

Lex Fridman (1:53:53.340)

in the war on the West and madness of crowds,

Douglas Murray (1:53:57.940)

I mean, you're getting a lot of blowback, I'm sure.

Lex Fridman (1:54:03.820)

As for the listener, you just shrugged lightly.

Douglas Murray (1:54:07.300)

It was a zen like look on your face.

Lex Fridman (1:54:10.460)

So you don't...

Douglas Murray (1:54:12.180)

All you need is Sam Harris to say

Lex Fridman (1:54:14.820)

that you're brilliant and you're happy.

Douglas Murray (1:54:16.860)

No, no, I love Sam.

Lex Fridman (1:54:20.340)

Yeah.

Douglas Murray (1:54:21.780)

Deeply pleased when he flatters me, but I mean,

Lex Fridman (1:54:24.060)

and he's nice about me, but no, I don't just rely on Sam.

Lex Fridman (1:54:27.780)

No, I mean, why would I mind?

Lex Fridman (1:54:32.460)

I mean, maybe it's self selecting.

Douglas Murray (1:54:34.180)

If I didn't have the view I had about that,

Lex Fridman (1:54:37.980)

or whatever armory it is that I have on that,

Douglas Murray (1:54:40.780)

I wouldn't do what I did, maybe.

Lex Fridman (1:54:43.420)

I mean, have you been to some dark places psychologically

Lex Fridman (1:54:45.900)

because of the challenging ideas you explore?

Lex Fridman (1:54:48.980)

So like significant self doubt, just kind of...

Douglas Murray (1:54:52.180)

I can't say I've been unaffected by everything in my life.

Lex Fridman (1:54:55.500)

By any means, that would make me an automaton of some kind.

Douglas Murray (1:55:01.100)

There's definitely times I've got things wrong

Lex Fridman (1:55:02.980)

and regretted that.

Douglas Murray (1:55:05.500)

There's times I've...

Lex Fridman (1:55:10.260)

There was a period around the time I wrote my book,

Douglas Murray (1:55:13.700)

The Strange Death of Europe,

Lex Fridman (1:55:15.580)

which was a very, very dark time.

Lex Fridman (1:55:21.220)

And it wasn't because I was having a dark time in my life,

Lex Fridman (1:55:25.180)

but because of the book I was writing.

Douglas Murray (1:55:27.340)

Oh, because of the places you had to go

Lex Fridman (1:55:30.180)

in order to write that book.

Douglas Murray (1:55:32.220)

And, well, I was contemplating the end of a civilization.

Lex Fridman (1:55:35.540)

So occasionally now I have maybe slightly too pat

Douglas Murray (1:55:40.420)

at this stage, but sometimes readers come up to me

Lex Fridman (1:55:43.580)

in the street or whatever and say,

Douglas Murray (1:55:44.820)

you know, I love The Strange Death of Europe.

Lex Fridman (1:55:47.780)

And will say, you know, very depressing book to read,

Douglas Murray (1:55:50.700)

however, I would say, well, you should have tried

Lex Fridman (1:55:53.020)

writing it.

Lex Fridman (1:55:53.860)

But it was because, I mean, it has chunks of it,

Lex Fridman (1:56:01.460)

which I'm very proud of in particular

Douglas Murray (1:56:02.820)

about the death of religion, the death of God,

Lex Fridman (1:56:06.980)

the loss of meaning and the void.

Lex Fridman (1:56:11.740)

And that's difficult stuff to write about

Lex Fridman (1:56:14.940)

and to grapple with.

Lex Fridman (1:56:17.020)

And there is a sort of, I haven't reread that book

Lex Fridman (1:56:20.660)

since it came out,

Lex Fridman (1:56:21.740)

but I think there are passages in it

Lex Fridman (1:56:25.340)

which reveal what I was thinking very clearly

Douglas Murray (1:56:28.260)

in the poetry of it, as it were, as well as the detail.

Lex Fridman (1:56:34.860)

But, yeah, I can't say, I'm used to saying

Lex Fridman (1:56:43.340)

what I think and what I see.

Lex Fridman (1:56:46.180)

And if there's any pushback I've got from that,

Douglas Murray (1:56:49.380)

I'm completely consoled that I'm saying what I see

Lex Fridman (1:56:51.740)

with my own eyes.

Douglas Murray (1:56:54.740)

That's your source of strength,

Lex Fridman (1:56:56.100)

is that you're always seeking the truth as best you see it.

Douglas Murray (1:56:59.540)

Well, I can't agree to go along with a lie

Lex Fridman (1:57:03.180)

if I've seen something with my own eyes.

Lex Fridman (1:57:06.840)

Do you ever, so speaking of Sam Harris,

Lex Fridman (1:57:10.540)

and I mentioned to you offline, a lot of people,

Douglas Murray (1:57:13.340)

I talk to a lot of smart people in my private life

Lex Fridman (1:57:16.100)

on this podcast, and a lot of them will reference you

Douglas Murray (1:57:18.980)

as their example of a very smart person.

Lex Fridman (1:57:23.300)

So given that compliment, do you ever worry

Douglas Murray (1:57:29.260)

that your sort of ego grows to a level

Lex Fridman (1:57:33.700)

where what you think is the truth is no longer the truth?

Lex Fridman (1:57:38.100)

Is this kind of, it blinds you?

Lex Fridman (1:57:44.420)

And also, on top of that,

Douglas Murray (1:57:46.620)

the fact that you stand against the crowd often,

Lex Fridman (1:57:50.620)

that there's part of it that appeals to you,

Douglas Murray (1:57:52.540)

that you like to point out the emperor has no clothes.

Lex Fridman (1:57:56.380)

I get a certain thrill from the friction.

Douglas Murray (1:57:58.540)

Yeah, that sometimes both your ego

Lex Fridman (1:58:02.700)

and the thrill of friction will get you

Douglas Murray (1:58:06.100)

to deviate from the truth and instead,

Lex Fridman (1:58:08.840)

just look for the friction.

Douglas Murray (1:58:10.500)

Could do, could do for sure.

Lex Fridman (1:58:13.940)

I try to keep alive to that.

Douglas Murray (1:58:16.100)

I mean, early in my career, I realized that, for instance,

Lex Fridman (1:58:20.380)

I didn't want to make enemies unnecessarily,

Douglas Murray (1:58:25.060)

any more than strictly necessary,

Lex Fridman (1:58:26.420)

because there was a very large number

Douglas Murray (1:58:27.980)

of already necessary enemies.

Lex Fridman (1:58:30.220)

And I remember once, I won't go into the details,

Lex Fridman (1:58:31.860)

but I already had one sort of thing I'd done that week,

Lex Fridman (1:58:35.500)

and then another thing came out,

Lex Fridman (1:58:36.540)

and I just thought, I can't, I can't do that.

Lex Fridman (1:58:39.380)

And I remember thinking, don't be the sort of person

Douglas Murray (1:58:42.340)

who's forever creating storms,

Lex Fridman (1:58:46.220)

and I tried to make sure I wasn't.

Lex Fridman (1:58:47.980)

And I think I've pretty much stuck to that.

Lex Fridman (1:58:51.100)

But to answer your question,

Douglas Murray (1:58:54.420)

well, the first thing is I'm as confident as I can be

Lex Fridman (1:58:58.660)

that I wouldn't fall into the trap you described.

Douglas Murray (1:59:01.500)

Two reasons.

Lex Fridman (1:59:03.860)

I mean, one is that I don't think of myself

Douglas Murray (1:59:05.500)

as a wildly intelligent person,

Lex Fridman (1:59:09.100)

partly because I'm very, very aware

Douglas Murray (1:59:11.380)

of the things I know nothing about.

Lex Fridman (1:59:13.980)

I mean, for instance, I have almost no knowledge

Douglas Murray (1:59:17.380)

of the details of finance or economic theory.

Lex Fridman (1:59:26.340)

I mean, the real details.

Douglas Murray (1:59:28.140)

I don't mean the big picture of the kind

Lex Fridman (1:59:29.740)

that we were just discussing earlier,

Lex Fridman (1:59:30.860)

but I have, if you put the periodic table in front of me,

Lex Fridman (1:59:35.860)

the periodic table in front of me,

Douglas Murray (1:59:39.420)

I would struggle to do more than a handful.

Lex Fridman (1:59:47.740)

I am very conscious of huge gaps in my knowledge.

Lex Fridman (1:59:53.940)

And where I have gaps or chasms,

Lex Fridman (1:59:57.020)

I tend to find that I have a disproportionate admiration

Douglas Murray (1:59:59.300)

for the people who know that stuff.

Lex Fridman (20:01.920)

Are, for instance, all, let's take the EVV1

Douglas Murray (20:06.640)

that's most often cited.

Lex Fridman (20:09.080)

If a white person is walking down a street in America

Lex Fridman (20:12.000)

and they see a group of young black men

Lex Fridman (20:13.800)

coming towards them and it's late at night

Lex Fridman (20:15.520)

and they cross the road, is it because of slavery?

Lex Fridman (20:20.320)

Is it because of institutional racism?

Douglas Murray (20:23.400)

No, it's because they've made a calculus

Lex Fridman (20:26.080)

based not entirely on unfounded beliefs

Douglas Murray (20:34.080)

that given crime rates, it's possible

Lex Fridman (20:38.320)

that this group of people might be a group of people

Douglas Murray (20:41.560)

they don't want to meet late at night.

Lex Fridman (20:43.640)

That's an ugly fact, but as crime statistics

Douglas Murray (20:48.640)

in American cities after American cities bear out,

Lex Fridman (20:52.360)

it's not an entirely unreasonable one.

Douglas Murray (20:55.120)

It's not reasonable every time, obviously, obviously.

Lex Fridman (20:59.360)

But is it attributable to slavery?

Douglas Murray (21:02.920)

That's a stretch.

Lex Fridman (21:04.040)

If you're in a city like Chicago

Douglas Murray (21:07.920)

where the homicide rates shot up in the last two years,

Lex Fridman (21:13.080)

albeit again, as always has to be remembered,

Douglas Murray (21:16.160)

mainly black on black gun violence and knife violence.

Lex Fridman (21:21.400)

Nevertheless, if you're in a city like Chicago

Lex Fridman (21:23.920)

and you make that calculus I've just suggested,

Lex Fridman (21:26.640)

the cliched one, the street late at night,

Douglas Murray (21:31.080)

there are other factors other than that.

Lex Fridman (21:33.280)

Factors other than a memory of slavery that kick in.

Lex Fridman (21:39.920)

And I'm afraid it's something which people

Lex Fridman (21:42.840)

don't want to particularly acknowledge in America

Douglas Murray (21:44.560)

for obvious reasons, because it's the ugliest

Lex Fridman (21:45.960)

damn debate in the world.

Lex Fridman (21:47.680)

But I was actually just writing in my column

Lex Fridman (21:49.720)

in New York Post today about a very interesting case

Douglas Murray (21:53.360)

that's sort of similar, which is the question

Lex Fridman (21:56.200)

of obesity in the US.

Douglas Murray (21:58.680)

As you know, America's the most overweight country

Lex Fridman (22:02.040)

in the world.

Douglas Murray (22:03.640)

America has, I think, 40% of the population is obese

Lex Fridman (22:08.760)

in medical ways, and the nearest next country

Douglas Murray (22:11.320)

is a long way down, that's New Zealand,

Lex Fridman (22:13.080)

at 30% of the population.

Lex Fridman (22:14.440)

So America's a long way ahead.

Lex Fridman (22:16.240)

Why during the coronavirus era when we know

Douglas Murray (22:18.880)

that obesity is the one clearest factor

Lex Fridman (22:23.480)

that's likely to lead to your hospitalization

Lex Fridman (22:25.080)

if you also get the virus?

Lex Fridman (22:26.720)

Why did almost no public health information

Lex Fridman (22:29.080)

in America focus on obesity?

Lex Fridman (22:31.120)

80% of the people who ended up hospitalized

Douglas Murray (22:33.440)

in America with coronavirus were obese.

Lex Fridman (22:38.000)

We locked the schools when there was no evidence

Douglas Murray (22:41.120)

that the coronavirus was deadly for children.

Lex Fridman (22:43.680)

We all wore cloth masks when there was

Douglas Murray (22:45.800)

a very little evidence that this was much use

Lex Fridman (22:49.240)

in stopping the spread of the virus.

Douglas Murray (22:52.200)

We had massive evidence about obesity being a problem,

Lex Fridman (22:55.160)

and we never addressed it.

Lex Fridman (22:56.440)

Why?

Lex Fridman (22:57.280)

Is it just because we worried about fat people?

Douglas Murray (22:58.960)

No, it's actually because about fat shaming, as it were.

Lex Fridman (23:01.800)

No, it's also because to a great extent

Douglas Murray (23:03.520)

it's a racial issue in America as well.

Lex Fridman (23:05.520)

And actually I quoted this new publication

Douglas Murray (23:07.640)

from the University of Chicago, as it happens,

Lex Fridman (23:10.200)

which makes that claim explicit, says,

Douglas Murray (23:12.080)

the reasons why people have views that are negative

Lex Fridman (23:15.440)

about obesity is because of racism and slavery.

Douglas Murray (23:18.600)

This is what everything is drawn back to in America.

Lex Fridman (23:21.200)

Anything you want to stop, you say it's because of racism,

Douglas Murray (23:24.480)

it's because of slavery.

Lex Fridman (23:25.760)

How about it's actually because you mind

Douglas Murray (23:31.080)

the hospitals getting clogged up,

Lex Fridman (23:32.480)

you mind people dying,

Douglas Murray (23:34.280)

you mind ethnic minorities disproportionately dying,

Lex Fridman (23:37.880)

and you'd like to say something about it.

Douglas Murray (23:39.200)

Once again, as in everything in America,

Lex Fridman (23:41.000)

it's cut off by some poorly educated academic

Douglas Murray (23:46.320)

saying it's about slavery.

Lex Fridman (23:48.640)

So we're really not, I mean, this requires

Douglas Murray (23:51.520)

a kind of form of brain surgery to perform it on a society,

Lex Fridman (23:54.320)

probably one that's not possible without killing the patient.

Lex Fridman (23:57.320)

And it's being done by people who are wearing mittens.

Lex Fridman (24:04.880)

So I'm sure that there's a few folks listening to this

Douglas Murray (24:09.600)

that are rolling their eyes and saying,

Lex Fridman (24:12.200)

here we go again, two white guys talking about

Douglas Murray (24:16.960)

the lack of institutional racism in America.

Lex Fridman (24:20.820)

First of all, what would you like to tell them?

Lex Fridman (24:27.760)

So our African American friends who are looking at this,

Lex Fridman (24:31.980)

and I've gotten the chance to talk to a bunch of them

Douglas Murray (24:34.500)

on Clubhouse recently.

Lex Fridman (24:35.820)

Clubhouse is this social app.

Lex Fridman (24:37.220)

And I really enjoy it.

Lex Fridman (24:38.700)

It's an absolute zoo of an app as far as I can see it.

Douglas Murray (24:41.220)

I personally love it because you get to talk to,

Lex Fridman (24:44.540)

as somebody who's an introvert and doesn't socialize much,

Douglas Murray (24:48.020)

I enjoy talking to people from all walks of life.

Lex Fridman (24:52.100)

So it gave me a chance to first of all practice

Douglas Murray (24:55.020)

Russian and Ukrainian, so I get the chance to do that.

Lex Fridman (24:58.320)

Then you get a chance to talk about Israel and Palestine

Douglas Murray (25:00.580)

with people who are from that part of the world.

Lex Fridman (25:04.980)

And you get to hear raw emotion of people from the ground

Douglas Murray (25:10.180)

where they start screaming, they start crying,

Lex Fridman (25:14.040)

they start being calm and collected and thoughtful.

Lex Fridman (25:16.940)

And this is as if you walked into a bar

Lex Fridman (25:20.460)

with custom picked regular folks, in quotes, regular folks.

Douglas Murray (25:24.940)

Just people that have, quote unquote, lived experiences.

Lex Fridman (25:29.180)

Real pain, real hope, real emotions, biases,

Lex Fridman (25:34.020)

and you get to listen to them go at it.

Lex Fridman (25:36.100)

With no, because it's an audio app,

Douglas Murray (25:39.700)

you're not allowed to start getting

Lex Fridman (25:41.460)

into a physical fist fight.

Lex Fridman (25:43.580)

So even though it really sounds like people want it.

Lex Fridman (25:46.260)

It sounds like it's happening, yeah.

Douglas Murray (25:47.580)

Yeah, and so you get to really listen to that feeling.

Lex Fridman (25:50.180)

And for example, it allows a white guy like me

Douglas Murray (25:53.500)

from another part of the world,

Lex Fridman (25:55.380)

coming from the former Soviet Union,

Douglas Murray (25:58.320)

to go into a room with a few hundred African Americans

Lex Fridman (26:03.500)

screaming about Joe Rogan using the N word.

Lex Fridman (26:07.720)

And I get to really listen.

Lex Fridman (26:09.100)

There's very different perspectives on that

Douglas Murray (26:11.420)

in the African American community,

Lex Fridman (26:13.180)

and it's fascinating to listen.

Lex Fridman (26:14.620)

So I don't get access to that by excellent books

Lex Fridman (26:19.000)

and articles written and so on.

Douglas Murray (26:20.420)

You get that real raw emotion.

Lex Fridman (26:22.300)

And I'm just saying, there's a few of those folks

Douglas Murray (26:24.460)

listening to this with that real raw emotion.

Lex Fridman (26:27.700)

And one argument they say is you, Douglas Murray,

Lex Fridman (26:32.940)

and you, Lex Freeman, don't have the right

Lex Fridman (26:36.180)

to talk about race and racism in America.

Douglas Murray (26:38.780)

It is our struggle.

Lex Fridman (26:40.580)

You are from a privileged class of people

Douglas Murray (26:42.540)

that don't know what it's like to be a black man

Lex Fridman (26:48.140)

or woman in America walking down the street.

Lex Fridman (26:51.140)

Can you steel man that case?

Lex Fridman (26:54.500)

First of all, fuck that.

Douglas Murray (26:56.740)

That's not, I think we need to define steel, steel manning.

Lex Fridman (27:01.120)

Okay, I know what steel manning is.

Douglas Murray (27:04.940)

I really resent that form of argumentation.

Lex Fridman (27:07.340)

Sure.

Douglas Murray (27:08.180)

I really resent it.

Lex Fridman (27:09.300)

I have the right to talk about whatever the hell I want,

Lex Fridman (27:11.800)

and no one's gonna stop me or try to intimidate me

Lex Fridman (27:14.700)

or tell me that I can't simply because of my skin color.

Lex Fridman (27:18.100)

And I think that if I said to somebody else

Lex Fridman (27:20.140)

the other way around, it would be equally reprehensible.

Douglas Murray (27:23.340)

If I said, shut up, you have no right

Lex Fridman (27:25.540)

to criticize anything that Douglas Murray says

Douglas Murray (27:27.420)

because you've not got my skin color.

Lex Fridman (27:29.940)

Okay, it's not an exact comparison, but seriously,

Lex Fridman (27:33.140)

is that a reasonable form of argument?

Lex Fridman (27:36.360)

You haven't been through everything

Douglas Murray (27:37.500)

I've been through in my life, therefore you can't comment.

Lex Fridman (27:39.900)

No, in that case, nobody can talk about anything.

Douglas Murray (27:43.640)

We might as well pack up, go home, and isolate ourselves.

Lex Fridman (27:47.260)

Strong words, but can you try to steel man the case,

Douglas Murray (27:49.980)

not in this particular situation,

Lex Fridman (27:51.320)

but there's people that have lived through something

Douglas Murray (27:57.200)

that can comment in a very specific way,

Lex Fridman (27:59.100)

like for example, Holocaust survivors.

Douglas Murray (28:00.860)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (28:03.180)

There is a sense in which, maybe a basic sense of civility

Douglas Murray (28:07.660)

when a Holocaust survivor is speaking about

Lex Fridman (28:10.140)

their experience of the Holocaust,

Douglas Murray (28:12.240)

then an intellectual from a very different part of the world

Lex Fridman (28:17.220)

is simply writing about nuanced geopolitics of World War II

Douglas Murray (28:23.040)

just should not interrupt the Holocaust survivor.

Lex Fridman (28:26.780)

We physically interrupt them

Douglas Murray (28:27.940)

if they're telling their stories.

Lex Fridman (28:28.780)

No, with words, with logic and reason

Douglas Murray (28:32.060)

that the experience of the Holocaust survivor

Lex Fridman (28:34.340)

somehow fundamentally has a deeper understanding

Douglas Murray (28:38.220)

of the humanity and the injustice of the.

Lex Fridman (28:42.220)

First of all, again, we're in even deeper waters now,

Lex Fridman (28:45.100)

but in terms of wanting to listen to another person

Lex Fridman (28:48.460)

who has experienced something, yes, yes.

Lex Fridman (28:52.700)

But not endlessly, not endlessly.

Lex Fridman (28:56.540)

I mean, there are some people who've written about,

Douglas Murray (28:58.340)

I mean, there are people who've written about the Holocaust

Lex Fridman (29:00.060)

who didn't experience the Holocaust

Lex Fridman (29:02.300)

and have written about it better than people who did.

Lex Fridman (29:05.900)

It's not this idea that the lived experience

Douglas Murray (29:09.840)

to use this terrible modern jargon

Lex Fridman (29:12.260)

as if there's another type.

Douglas Murray (29:14.060)

This idea that the lived experience

Lex Fridman (29:16.340)

has to triumph over everything else is not always correct.

Douglas Murray (29:20.680)

It can be correct in some circumstances.

Lex Fridman (29:23.720)

If you are sitting in a room with a Holocaust survivor

Lex Fridman (29:26.260)

and somebody who'd never heard about the Holocaust

Lex Fridman (29:28.620)

and wanted to kind of shoot out their views on it, yeah,

Douglas Murray (29:32.620)

one of those people should be heard more than the other,

Lex Fridman (29:34.740)

obviously, obviously.

Douglas Murray (29:37.260)

If there's somebody who's experienced racism firsthand

Lex Fridman (29:40.060)

and there's somebody else who has never experienced it,

Douglas Murray (29:42.980)

then obviously you'd want to hear from the person

Lex Fridman (29:45.340)

who has experienced it firsthand,

Douglas Murray (29:47.540)

if that is the discussion underway.

Lex Fridman (29:51.980)

I don't think that it's the case

Douglas Murray (29:53.900)

that that is endlessly the case.

Lex Fridman (29:55.980)

I'm also highly reluctant to concede

Douglas Murray (29:59.660)

that there are groups of people

Lex Fridman (2:00:01.500)

Like I'm wildly impressed by people who understand money,

Douglas Murray (2:00:04.540)

really understand it, because I think,

Lex Fridman (2:00:06.060)

how the hell do you do that?

Lex Fridman (2:00:09.860)

And the same thing with biologists, medics,

Lex Fridman (2:00:14.780)

stuff I just know very little about.

Lex Fridman (2:00:17.580)

And that's a source of humility for you, just knowing that.

Lex Fridman (2:00:19.580)

Yes, I mean, I think, well, I can get on that stuff,

Lex Fridman (2:00:21.620)

but I mean, Jesus, if you got me on the general knowledge.

Lex Fridman (2:00:25.300)

I would say that thing, some years ago,

Douglas Murray (2:00:26.780)

there's a thing in the UK called University Challenge.

Lex Fridman (2:00:29.580)

And I was asked some years ago on to,

Douglas Murray (2:00:34.660)

there's a sort of psych celebrity,

Lex Fridman (2:00:36.180)

one of former students of the universities or colleges

Douglas Murray (2:00:40.100)

asked to go back for the Christmas special.

Lex Fridman (2:00:42.420)

And I was asked to be one of the people from my old college

Douglas Murray (2:00:45.780)

to go back and compete in the sort of celebrity alumni one.

Lex Fridman (2:00:49.180)

And the only thing I actually wanted to do,

Douglas Murray (2:00:50.500)

it was go discover the Louis Theroux

Lex Fridman (2:00:52.020)

had been to my college before my time.

Lex Fridman (2:00:53.580)

And he was on, he'd agreed to be on the team.

Lex Fridman (2:00:55.780)

And I thought, well, I'd love to meet Louis Theroux,

Douglas Murray (2:00:57.700)

that'd be great fun.

Lex Fridman (2:00:58.980)

And anyhow, and I said, well, I really don't want to do it.

Lex Fridman (2:01:01.900)

And they said, come on, you'd be great.

Lex Fridman (2:01:03.220)

I said, I wouldn't, I'd show myself up

Douglas Murray (2:01:05.020)

to be a total asshole and ignoramus.

Lex Fridman (2:01:07.380)

And as it was, I sat down my flat

Lex Fridman (2:01:10.780)

and I watched some past episodes of University Challenge.

Lex Fridman (2:01:14.940)

I realized I'd have just sat mute for the whole half hour.

Douglas Murray (2:01:20.540)

I just couldn't, the first question was about physics.

Lex Fridman (2:01:23.220)

And the second one was about, as it was,

Douglas Murray (2:01:25.980)

I watched the one and I could answer the first two

Lex Fridman (2:01:29.180)

or three questions of the one that actually went out

Douglas Murray (2:01:32.180)

because they made it a bit simpler.

Lex Fridman (2:01:35.340)

But I mean, I'm terribly conscious of the,

Lex Fridman (2:01:37.820)

and I said to the producers, I said, I can't go on

Lex Fridman (2:01:39.980)

because I mean, I just couldn't answer the questions.

Douglas Murray (2:01:42.060)

These unbelievably smart students seem to be able to answer

Lex Fridman (2:01:44.660)

on a whole range of things.

Lex Fridman (2:01:46.060)

So I'm perfectly aware of my limitations and...

Lex Fridman (2:01:51.340)

You contemplate your limitations.

Douglas Murray (2:01:53.540)

Yeah, and they're forever before me, you know.

Lex Fridman (2:01:56.300)

They're not hard to find in every day.

Lex Fridman (2:01:58.860)

And then on top of that, I suppose, it's,

Lex Fridman (2:02:03.060)

in a way, you know that line from Rudyard Kipling's

Lex Fridman (2:02:08.460)

alternately brilliant and slightly nauseating poem, If?

Lex Fridman (2:02:13.780)

There's a line.

Lex Fridman (2:02:14.980)

You just enjoy a good poem, can you?

Lex Fridman (2:02:16.940)

Well, no, it's not, I can enjoy a great poem.

Lex Fridman (2:02:21.220)

But I mean, a good poem.

Lex Fridman (2:02:23.180)

This is, you know, slightly off.

Douglas Murray (2:02:25.380)

But, well, it's up to you.

Lex Fridman (2:02:26.940)

This goes to your criticism of Dostoevsky.

Douglas Murray (2:02:29.500)

Take Douglas's criticism with a grain of salt, so.

Lex Fridman (2:02:34.700)

Maybe I've read it too many memorial services and things.

Lex Fridman (2:02:37.700)

But that line is a good piece of advice.

Lex Fridman (2:02:41.860)

If you can learn to meet triumph and disaster

Lex Fridman (2:02:44.220)

and greet these two imposters just the same.

Lex Fridman (2:02:48.420)

That's a good line.

Douglas Murray (2:02:49.740)

It's a good line.

Lex Fridman (2:02:50.740)

It's skipping off an amazing turn of line.

Lex Fridman (2:02:53.260)

But I do think that it's a very sensible thing

Lex Fridman (2:02:56.100)

to try to greet triumph and disaster

Lex Fridman (2:03:00.660)

and regard them as imposters and greet them just the same.

Lex Fridman (2:03:03.860)

And actually, anyone who knows me knows that I never,

Douglas Murray (2:03:08.740)

partly it's because I have a sort of belief in the old gods

Lex Fridman (2:03:12.700)

and that the moment that I thought

Douglas Murray (2:03:14.260)

that I was at the moment of triumph,

Lex Fridman (2:03:16.380)

the fates would hitch up their skirts

Lex Fridman (2:03:18.140)

and run at me at a million miles an hour.

Lex Fridman (2:03:20.780)

But it's also because, anyone who knows me knows

Douglas Murray (2:03:26.100)

I never have a moment when I say,

Lex Fridman (2:03:30.820)

that's just great.

Douglas Murray (2:03:32.460)

I feel totally fulfilled and victorious.

Lex Fridman (2:03:37.340)

I mean, it happened to me recently

Douglas Murray (2:03:39.140)

when the war in the West went straight to number one

Lex Fridman (2:03:41.580)

in the bestseller list.

Lex Fridman (2:03:43.340)

How long did that last in terms of your self satisfaction?

Lex Fridman (2:03:46.140)

Didn't happen.

Lex Fridman (2:03:47.820)

Not even for a brief moment?

Lex Fridman (2:03:49.100)

No.

Douglas Murray (2:03:51.540)

When I first saw that it was selling,

Lex Fridman (2:03:54.020)

I had that moment of elation.

Douglas Murray (2:03:55.440)

I thought, good, I've done it, it's out.

Lex Fridman (2:03:59.540)

And I did have a moment of elation then, definitely.

Lex Fridman (2:04:03.180)

But it doesn't last, partly because I tell myself

Lex Fridman (2:04:05.180)

it mustn't last.

Douglas Murray (2:04:07.100)

Because as you said, fate hitches up its skirt.

Lex Fridman (2:04:12.180)

Is that skirts?

Douglas Murray (2:04:14.180)

I don't, this, you brits with your poetry,

Lex Fridman (2:04:17.940)

even when it's nauseating.

Douglas Murray (2:04:20.500)

As of 2022, this year, what's your final analysis

Lex Fridman (2:04:24.540)

of the political leadership and the human mind

Lex Fridman (2:04:27.880)

and the human being of Donald Trump?

Lex Fridman (2:04:32.520)

I sort of avoided this for years.

Douglas Murray (2:04:34.540)

Just talking about Trump.

Lex Fridman (2:04:35.980)

Tried to avoid talking about Trump for years.

Douglas Murray (2:04:37.660)

Same reason I tried to avoid writing about Brexit.

Lex Fridman (2:04:39.700)

Do you think that Trump, just sorry on a small tangent,

Lex Fridman (2:04:41.820)

do you think that Trump's story is over

Lex Fridman (2:04:45.740)

or are we just done with volume one?

Douglas Murray (2:04:47.700)

I have no idea.

Lex Fridman (2:04:48.540)

The people I know who know him say that he's running.

Lex Fridman (2:04:53.020)

And I think that in general, Republicans have to,

Lex Fridman (2:04:59.080)

do have a choice in front of them.

Douglas Murray (2:05:02.740)

A one friend put it to me recently, said,

Lex Fridman (2:05:06.000)

you've got to go in with your toughest fighter.

Lex Fridman (2:05:08.420)

And I understand that instinct and I also think

Lex Fridman (2:05:16.580)

it's a very dangerous instinct

Douglas Murray (2:05:18.580)

because what if your toughest fighter

Lex Fridman (2:05:20.420)

is also your biggest liability?

Douglas Murray (2:05:23.700)

What's the best way to get out the Democrat vote

Lex Fridman (2:05:25.460)

in 2024 than to have Donald Trump running?

Lex Fridman (2:05:28.060)

And the people that are doing the war in the West,

Lex Fridman (2:05:30.220)

they're pretty tough fighters.

Douglas Murray (2:05:32.780)

They are.

Lex Fridman (2:05:33.860)

And I'm cautious about this because I know every way

Douglas Murray (2:05:37.580)

I tread it's dangerous, but let me just be frank.

Lex Fridman (2:05:41.100)

Tread gracefully.

Douglas Murray (2:05:42.500)

I'll tread as gracefully as I can.

Lex Fridman (2:05:44.340)

My Wellington boots, my galoshes.

Douglas Murray (2:05:49.620)

Here's the thing, I think everybody knows what Trump is.

Lex Fridman (2:05:54.640)

I think we all knew for years.

Lex Fridman (2:05:56.900)

And I feel sorry for the conservatives who had to pretend

Lex Fridman (2:05:59.300)

that he was something he wasn't.

Douglas Murray (2:06:02.780)

I felt sorry for the ones who had to pretend

Lex Fridman (2:06:07.540)

that for instance he was some devout Christian

Douglas Murray (2:06:09.820)

or a man of faith or a man of great integrity

Lex Fridman (2:06:13.860)

or all of these sorts of things.

Douglas Murray (2:06:16.420)

Because in the public eye for years,

Lex Fridman (2:06:18.540)

it'd be obvious that wasn't the case.

Lex Fridman (2:06:20.900)

But he has something extraordinary.

Lex Fridman (2:06:26.260)

One thing is a method of communication

Douglas Murray (2:06:28.820)

that you've just got to say was unbelievable.

Lex Fridman (2:06:32.580)

In one fundamental way that you can't look away

Douglas Murray (2:06:35.240)

for some reason.

Lex Fridman (2:06:36.080)

Can't look away.

Douglas Murray (2:06:36.980)

I mean, I mean watching him clear everyone out of the way

Lex Fridman (2:06:42.460)

in 2016 was thrilling

Douglas Murray (2:06:45.100)

because those people needed clearing away.

Lex Fridman (2:06:47.980)

You know, I mean, it's just horrifying.

Lex Fridman (2:06:49.540)

What America is going to give us another Bush?

Lex Fridman (2:06:53.100)

What's so great about this family?

Douglas Murray (2:06:57.060)

America is going to give us another Clinton.

Lex Fridman (2:06:58.460)

We're going to get to choose any Clinton on the Bush.

Douglas Murray (2:07:01.340)

Mark Stein said, whatever, we'll just wait for the day

Lex Fridman (2:07:03.460)

the Clintons and the Bushes into marry

Lex Fridman (2:07:05.060)

and then we can really have a monarchy again.

Lex Fridman (2:07:08.700)

So I was very pleased to see him clear them away.

Douglas Murray (2:07:12.160)

I was very pleased to see him sort of raise

Lex Fridman (2:07:16.980)

some of the issues that needed raising.

Douglas Murray (2:07:18.740)

I thought it was a sort of breath of fresh air

Lex Fridman (2:07:21.100)

and I wished it wasn't him doing it.

Lex Fridman (2:07:24.740)

And then there was a question of him governing

Lex Fridman (2:07:26.640)

and it was just perfectly clear

Douglas Murray (2:07:27.680)

he didn't know how to govern.

Lex Fridman (2:07:30.360)

What he did have, however, what he does have

Douglas Murray (2:07:32.820)

is an incredible ability to fight.

Lex Fridman (2:07:35.140)

And some of the forces he was arraigned against

Douglas Murray (2:07:37.100)

were arraigned against him.

Lex Fridman (2:07:38.280)

My gosh, they would have taken down anyone else.

Douglas Murray (2:07:41.580)

I mean, they'd have probably done some similar BS

Lex Fridman (2:07:46.780)

against Ted Cruz if he, you know, or Marco Rubio.

Douglas Murray (2:07:51.140)

You know, they'd have said, some people admitted,

Lex Fridman (2:07:54.420)

they'd have accused all these people of racism

Lex Fridman (2:07:56.320)

and misogyny and everything else as well,

Lex Fridman (2:07:57.780)

just like they did Mitt Romney,

Douglas Murray (2:07:58.820)

just like they did John McCain.

Lex Fridman (2:08:01.220)

But Trump was the one ugly enough

Lex Fridman (2:08:03.540)

and bruisey enough to fight.

Lex Fridman (2:08:06.540)

And also a willingness or a lack of willingness

Douglas Murray (2:08:12.540)

to play sort of the civil game of politics.

Lex Fridman (2:08:18.020)

You know, at a party when politeness gets you in trouble.

Douglas Murray (2:08:23.780)

You show up and everybody's polite

Lex Fridman (2:08:25.460)

and you just out of momentum want to be being polite

Lex Fridman (2:08:28.220)

and all of a sudden you're on an island

Lex Fridman (2:08:30.060)

with Jeffrey Epstein and it gets you

Douglas Murray (2:08:33.100)

into a huge amount of trouble.

Lex Fridman (2:08:34.460)

But so Trump has these sort of extraordinary qualities,

Lex Fridman (2:08:37.140)

but I just, you know, look, he screwed up

Lex Fridman (2:08:41.060)

during his time in office because he didn't achieve

Douglas Murray (2:08:43.380)

as much as he should have done.

Lex Fridman (2:08:44.940)

And you could say that about every president,

Lex Fridman (2:08:46.300)

but I refuse to acknowledge that two years

Lex Fridman (2:08:47.980)

when he had both houses in the beginning,

Douglas Murray (2:08:50.100)

he just didn't know what levers to pull.

Lex Fridman (2:08:52.300)

You know, I mean, he was sitting in the office

Douglas Murray (2:08:54.500)

behind the Oval Office tweeting, watching the news.

Lex Fridman (2:08:58.180)

I'm sorry, that's not a president.

Lex Fridman (2:09:00.260)

And he couldn't fill and didn't fill positions

Lex Fridman (2:09:03.900)

because people knew, I mean,

Douglas Murray (2:09:05.660)

people who were very loyal to him,

Lex Fridman (2:09:08.020)

he would just, you know, he'd get them to do something loyal

Lex Fridman (2:09:10.780)

and then destroy them.

Lex Fridman (2:09:12.380)

And I think, and then we get onto the thing about,

Lex Fridman (2:09:15.740)

and here we get onto the, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:09:17.380)

what of course is very, very fractious terrain,

Douglas Murray (2:09:19.780)

but, you know, I covered the 2020 election

Lex Fridman (2:09:22.460)

and I was traveling all around the states

Lex Fridman (2:09:24.420)

and I went to Trump rally and all sorts of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:09:27.940)

And I, I mean, I was in DC on election night

Lex Fridman (2:09:31.700)

and it got very ugly at one point

Lex Fridman (2:09:35.940)

in so called Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Douglas Murray (2:09:38.660)

When it looked like Trump might win,

Lex Fridman (2:09:40.020)

when Florida came in and got really,

Douglas Murray (2:09:41.980)

I could feel the air were very, very heated

Lex Fridman (2:09:44.380)

and like some Antifa people started getting into black lock

Lex Fridman (2:09:48.140)

and this sort of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:09:48.980)

And I thought this town is gonna burn, you know,

Douglas Murray (2:09:51.540)

if Trump wins.

Lex Fridman (2:09:53.380)

And in the aftermath of the vote,

Douglas Murray (2:09:55.500)

I was willing to hang around in Washington for a bit

Lex Fridman (2:09:57.260)

and then I saw what it was gonna drag on.

Lex Fridman (2:09:59.620)

And I saw some of his people and others and people told me

Lex Fridman (2:10:02.180)

they had great evidence of vote rigging

Lex Fridman (2:10:03.700)

and all this sort of thing.

Lex Fridman (2:10:05.220)

And I'm afraid I'm one of those people

Douglas Murray (2:10:07.380)

who doesn't believe that the evidence that they presented

Lex Fridman (2:10:11.060)

is good enough to justify the claim

Douglas Murray (2:10:12.580)

that he won the election.

Lex Fridman (2:10:14.740)

And I, and people say, have you seen 2000 mules

Lex Fridman (2:10:18.540)

and have you seen, look, the evidence isn't there,

Lex Fridman (2:10:22.220)

that the election was won by Donald Trump.

Lex Fridman (2:10:24.820)

And I think that what he did on January the 6th

Lex Fridman (2:10:28.860)

was unbelievably dangerous.

Douglas Murray (2:10:32.300)

And, you know, here it is possible for us to hold two ideas

Lex Fridman (2:10:35.900)

in our head at the same time.

Douglas Murray (2:10:37.340)

January the 6th was not nothing,

Lex Fridman (2:10:40.340)

nor was it an insurrection and attempt to stage a coup.

Lex Fridman (2:10:44.380)

And there's a vanishing number of people in the US.

Lex Fridman (2:10:49.380)

It was Eric Weinstein who said that the,

Douglas Murray (2:10:51.820)

it's like, this is the roof that you have to walk along.

Lex Fridman (2:10:56.820)

And like the sides are very steep

Douglas Murray (2:11:00.580)

if you fall off either side.

Lex Fridman (2:11:02.900)

Is there some sense, given the forces

Douglas Murray (2:11:06.740)

that are waging war in the West,

Lex Fridman (2:11:08.980)

you said this feeling, perhaps because of Antifa

Douglas Murray (2:11:13.300)

or something else, that this town is gonna burn

Lex Fridman (2:11:16.220)

and maybe a continued feeling that this town

Douglas Murray (2:11:18.340)

is going to burn with the January 6th events.

Lex Fridman (2:11:22.420)

Are you worried about the future of the United States

Lex Fridman (2:11:27.540)

in the coming years because of the feeling of escalation?

Lex Fridman (2:11:33.220)

Is that just a war of Twitter?

Lex Fridman (2:11:36.460)

Or is there a real brewing of something?

Lex Fridman (2:11:40.740)

Oh, it's real.

Lex Fridman (2:11:41.980)

And how, well, let me then respond to that.

Lex Fridman (2:11:45.060)

How, what is the hopeful?

Douglas Murray (2:11:47.060)

If you 10 years from now look back at the United States

Lex Fridman (2:11:54.540)

and say we turned it around, what would be the reason?

Lex Fridman (2:11:58.780)

What would be the ways, the mechanisms that we do so?

Lex Fridman (2:12:01.100)

Tell you, since I wrote this book,

Douglas Murray (2:12:04.380)

there are two things in particular

Lex Fridman (2:12:05.980)

that I've been really pleased that a specific type

Douglas Murray (2:12:10.180)

of specialist has approached me on

Lex Fridman (2:12:12.280)

to say that things I've written about

Douglas Murray (2:12:14.420)

actually have more application than I realized.

Lex Fridman (2:12:17.220)

One is the gratitude issue.

Douglas Murray (2:12:19.820)

A number of people have approached me

Lex Fridman (2:12:21.220)

who have gone through AA, Alcoholics Anonymous.

Lex Fridman (2:12:25.980)

They sometimes say, have you ever been to AA?

Lex Fridman (2:12:27.740)

And that's a bit of a personal question.

Lex Fridman (2:12:34.100)

But they say, but the reason they ask it is because they say,

Lex Fridman (2:12:36.580)

well, because if you go to drug rehabilitation

Douglas Murray (2:12:38.620)

or Alcoholics Anonymous, Norm Macdonald said,

Lex Fridman (2:12:43.620)

it doesn't sound very anonymous.

Douglas Murray (2:12:45.020)

You stand up in a room, you say your name

Lex Fridman (2:12:46.380)

and you tell everyone the worst things you've ever done.

Douglas Murray (2:12:48.820)

Sounds the opposite of anonymous.

Lex Fridman (2:12:50.260)

Anyhow, but they say, look,

Douglas Murray (2:12:52.700)

because if you go to these things,

Lex Fridman (2:12:54.500)

apparently you're asked to, as part of your recovery,

Douglas Murray (2:12:58.580)

say what you're grateful for,

Lex Fridman (2:13:00.420)

like list what you're grateful for.

Douglas Murray (2:13:02.020)

I didn't know that by the way, until the book was out.

Lex Fridman (2:13:05.140)

And so that turned out to have more application

Douglas Murray (2:13:07.180)

than I knew.

Lex Fridman (2:13:08.180)

The other thing though, is that I say

Douglas Murray (2:13:09.620)

that it's absolutely crucial in America

Lex Fridman (2:13:11.980)

that we try to find things that we agree on.

Lex Fridman (2:13:14.260)

And a couple of times since the book came out,

Lex Fridman (2:13:16.420)

I've been approached by people who are marriage counselors.

Lex Fridman (2:13:20.220)

But we've also said, have you ever been

Lex Fridman (2:13:21.740)

through marriage counseling?

Lex Fridman (2:13:22.580)

And again, that's a very personal question.

Lex Fridman (2:13:25.020)

Stop asking me personal questions.

Lex Fridman (2:13:27.660)

No, but they said, and I said, well, why?

Lex Fridman (2:13:30.660)

Because this is one of the things that we do

Douglas Murray (2:13:35.220)

in couples therapy, is try to find things you agree on.

Lex Fridman (2:13:39.860)

And I think this is very important in America.

Lex Fridman (2:13:45.460)

And it's made much harder by the fact,

Lex Fridman (2:13:47.860)

and I've said this many times,

Lex Fridman (2:13:48.700)

but forgive me if I'm repeating myself,

Lex Fridman (2:13:50.500)

but it's made much harder by the fact

Douglas Murray (2:13:53.340)

that having different opinions is very last century.

Lex Fridman (2:13:57.460)

Now we all have different facts,

Douglas Murray (2:13:59.100)

or at least the two sides have different facts.

Lex Fridman (2:14:02.220)

One half of the country roughly,

Douglas Murray (2:14:05.140)

or let's say 40%, 30%, whatever you want to put it,

Lex Fridman (2:14:07.940)

with a tired minority in the middle.

Douglas Murray (2:14:11.300)

One segment of the country believes

Lex Fridman (2:14:13.420)

that Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election

Lex Fridman (2:14:15.980)

and that the Russians interfered

Lex Fridman (2:14:17.100)

and got Donald Trump into power.

Douglas Murray (2:14:19.500)

Another half of the country believes

Lex Fridman (2:14:20.940)

that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

Douglas Murray (2:14:23.060)

If you can't agree on who wins elections,

Lex Fridman (2:14:24.620)

it's very hard to see what you agree on as a country.

Douglas Murray (2:14:27.620)

That's one of the reasons I mind the war

Lex Fridman (2:14:29.380)

on American history and Western history,

Douglas Murray (2:14:31.380)

is one of the things you have to agree on

Lex Fridman (2:14:33.620)

is at least some attitude towards your past.

Douglas Murray (2:14:36.060)

You don't have to agree on everything.

Lex Fridman (2:14:37.740)

But the public square has to have public heroes

Douglas Murray (2:14:40.460)

who are agreed to be heroes to some extent,

Lex Fridman (2:14:43.260)

warts and all.

Douglas Murray (2:14:45.380)

If you don't have that,

Lex Fridman (2:14:47.100)

if actually you think for instance,

Douglas Murray (2:14:48.780)

half the country thinks the founding fathers

Lex Fridman (2:14:50.580)

were pretty good,

Douglas Murray (2:14:52.060)

the other half thinks they were absolutely rotten,

Lex Fridman (2:14:54.500)

racist and so on.

Douglas Murray (2:14:55.780)

If half the country basically thinks

Lex Fridman (2:14:57.500)

it would have been better if Columbus

Douglas Murray (2:14:58.900)

had taken a different turn, never found America,

Lex Fridman (2:15:01.700)

gone back home and said, I don't know, nothing out there,

Douglas Murray (2:15:05.220)

that would have been better.

Lex Fridman (2:15:06.380)

And the other half's pretty glad in the end

Douglas Murray (2:15:08.660)

that we've got America.

Lex Fridman (2:15:13.900)

You've got to agree on something.

Lex Fridman (2:15:16.540)

And I just see in America,

Lex Fridman (2:15:18.500)

I do think we've got to try to find things to agree on,

Douglas Murray (2:15:20.500)

like a reasonable attitude towards the past.

Lex Fridman (2:15:23.060)

That's why that matters.

Lex Fridman (2:15:24.700)

And again, I stress, I'm not trying to say

Lex Fridman (2:15:27.460)

that everything in the American past was good.

Douglas Murray (2:15:29.420)

God knows that wouldn't stand up to a second of scrutiny

Lex Fridman (2:15:31.980)

or self scrutiny.

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.260)

But nor was it all bad.

Lex Fridman (2:15:35.100)

This wasn't a country formed in sin

Lex Fridman (2:15:38.740)

and in an eradicable sin.

Lex Fridman (2:15:40.700)

It wasn't founded in 1619

Douglas Murray (2:15:42.900)

in order to make the country wicked

Lex Fridman (2:15:45.820)

and incapable of escaping that wickedness.

Douglas Murray (2:15:49.100)

These are things that will matter enormously

Lex Fridman (2:15:51.460)

in the years ahead,

Douglas Murray (2:15:52.740)

because if you can't agree on anything,

Lex Fridman (2:15:55.780)

including who your heroes are,

Douglas Murray (2:15:59.580)

the whole thing is just one massive division

Lex Fridman (2:16:02.020)

and we'll see what I think we're already seeing,

Douglas Murray (2:16:04.100)

which is people basically going to states

Lex Fridman (2:16:06.300)

where it's more like the life they want to live.

Lex Fridman (2:16:09.020)

And some people say to me, well, that's okay.

Lex Fridman (2:16:11.460)

And the genius of the founding is that it allows for that.

Douglas Murray (2:16:16.340)

That's possible, but it's also,

Lex Fridman (2:16:18.620)

it eradicates part of what has been American public life,

Douglas Murray (2:16:22.700)

which is the ability to look at each other

Lex Fridman (2:16:24.460)

and discuss face to face.

Lex Fridman (2:16:26.860)

And I see things like this bomb placed under America

Lex Fridman (2:16:30.060)

the other week with the Supreme Court League,

Douglas Murray (2:16:31.980)

the draft league as being just a further example of that.

Lex Fridman (2:16:37.220)

I'm very, very worried about it in America.

Lex Fridman (2:16:39.220)

And because if America screws up everything,

Lex Fridman (2:16:43.220)

everything else in the world goes.

Douglas Murray (2:16:45.700)

Yeah, there's the degree to which America is still

Lex Fridman (2:16:48.020)

the beacon of these ideas on which the country was founded

Lex Fridman (2:16:53.860)

and has been able to live out in better and better forms,

Lex Fridman (2:16:58.860)

sort of live out the actual ideals of the founding principles

Douglas Murray (2:17:02.580)

versus like.

Lex Fridman (2:17:03.420)

And with the desire to improve.

Douglas Murray (2:17:05.380)

Yeah, constantly.

Lex Fridman (2:17:06.220)

An imperfect union.

Douglas Murray (2:17:08.300)

Yeah, well, as I generally have hope that people want

Lex Fridman (2:17:12.180)

to sort of, in terms of gratitude,

Douglas Murray (2:17:14.780)

people are aware of how good it feels to be grateful.

Lex Fridman (2:17:20.780)

It's a better life psychologically.

Douglas Murray (2:17:22.460)

The resentment is a thing that destroys you from within.

Lex Fridman (2:17:25.860)

So I just feel that people will long for that

Lex Fridman (2:17:30.540)

and will find that.

Lex Fridman (2:17:31.380)

And that's the American way.

Douglas Murray (2:17:33.580)

Some of the division that we reveal now has to do

Lex Fridman (2:17:36.660)

with new technologies like social media.

Douglas Murray (2:17:38.860)

That kind of is a small kind of deviation

Lex Fridman (2:17:43.220)

from the path we're on because it's a new,

Douglas Murray (2:17:45.340)

we've got a new toy, just like nuclear weapons.

Lex Fridman (2:17:47.860)

Yeah, which are relatively new.

Lex Fridman (2:17:50.900)

But we need to find reasonable attitudes

Lex Fridman (2:17:53.700)

towards these things.

Lex Fridman (2:17:54.540)

And that's why I say it matters how you and my feedback

Lex Fridman (2:17:58.180)

on social media, because we're all going through it

Douglas Murray (2:18:01.340)

to some extent.

Lex Fridman (2:18:02.180)

Yeah, we're learning.

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.020)

And we're learning.

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.860)

And we've got to learn how to do this without going mad.

Douglas Murray (2:18:08.500)

I say this, it was my minimalist call to friends

Lex Fridman (2:18:12.380)

in this era was the main job is not to go insane.

Douglas Murray (2:18:16.820)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:18:17.660)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:18:20.500)

And yeah, like walk towards sanity.

Lex Fridman (2:18:22.780)

Because I'm sure there's a Hunter S. Thompson quote

Douglas Murray (2:18:26.900)

in there, like insanity on the weekends

Lex Fridman (2:18:29.140)

can be at least fun.

Douglas Murray (2:18:30.460)

Okay, do you have advice for young people

Lex Fridman (2:18:35.580)

that just put down their TikTok and are listening

Douglas Murray (2:18:38.700)

to this podcast in high school and college

Lex Fridman (2:18:41.540)

about how to have a career, how to have a life

Lex Fridman (2:18:43.940)

they can be proud of?

Lex Fridman (2:18:47.220)

It's a very broad question.

Lex Fridman (2:18:48.180)

But of course, I mean, I can give specific advice

Lex Fridman (2:18:52.100)

to people who want to be writers and so on,

Lex Fridman (2:18:53.380)

but that's a bit niche, maybe.

Lex Fridman (2:18:56.060)

Well, writers will be very interesting,

Douglas Murray (2:18:57.740)

sorry to interrupt.

Lex Fridman (2:18:58.740)

Also how to put your ideas down on paper

Lex Fridman (2:19:00.820)

and think through the ideas, develop them

Lex Fridman (2:19:03.100)

and have the guts to go to a large audience,

Douglas Murray (2:19:07.100)

especially when the ideas are sort of controversial

Lex Fridman (2:19:09.620)

or dangerous or difficult.

Douglas Murray (2:19:10.940)

Well, the main thing to do is to read.

Lex Fridman (2:19:13.340)

When I was a schoolboy, I'd ever have a book in my pocket,

Douglas Murray (2:19:17.820)

the side pocket of my jacket, only side pocket,

Lex Fridman (2:19:20.380)

and would read.

Lex Fridman (2:19:21.540)

And that wasn't just because I was swatish in some way,

Lex Fridman (2:19:26.900)

but because I discovered probably at some point

Douglas Murray (2:19:30.740)

in my early teens, I discovered something.

Lex Fridman (2:19:32.740)

I wrote about this once.

Douglas Murray (2:19:34.660)

I discovered that books were dangerous,

Lex Fridman (2:19:39.580)

which was a thrilling discovery.

Douglas Murray (2:19:44.500)

I discovered that they could contain anything.

Lex Fridman (2:19:47.860)

And also people didn't know what you were reading.

Douglas Murray (2:19:50.380)

I remember I get far too young an age,

Lex Fridman (2:19:52.660)

I read The Doors of Perception of Aldous Huxley,

Lex Fridman (2:19:56.820)

and I didn't make head or tail of it probably,

Lex Fridman (2:20:01.900)

but I knew that it was about something really interesting

Lex Fridman (2:20:04.380)

and dangerous.

Lex Fridman (2:20:06.660)

And I thought constantly when I read poetry

Douglas Murray (2:20:10.660)

or read history, I think I was just constantly thrilled

Lex Fridman (2:20:16.300)

and wanted to know more.

Lex Fridman (2:20:18.820)

And if you wanna become a writer, you have to be a reader.

Lex Fridman (2:20:26.340)

You have to read the best stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:20:29.660)

And obviously people disagree or agree on what that is,

Lex Fridman (2:20:33.540)

and you'll find the people that really impress you.

Lex Fridman (2:20:37.460)

But I know that I just came across certain writers

Lex Fridman (2:20:39.620)

who just knocked me off my feet.

Lex Fridman (2:20:42.220)

And when you find those people, read everything

Lex Fridman (2:20:50.380)

and cling on to them and find other people like that,

Douglas Murray (2:20:53.580)

find other writers like that, people that are connected

Lex Fridman (2:20:56.980)

by history or scholarship or circles or whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.620)

For you, was it fiction or nonfiction?

Lex Fridman (2:21:03.940)

Is there a particular books that you just remember

Lex Fridman (2:21:06.380)

or just give you pause?

Lex Fridman (2:21:07.940)

Well, I remember that the first book

Douglas Murray (2:21:09.340)

that absolutely threw me was the Lord of the Flies

Lex Fridman (2:21:13.180)

of William Golding, which used to be a signed text

Lex Fridman (2:21:15.380)

and everyone's a bit snotty about because it's so popular.

Lex Fridman (2:21:19.820)

But I was thrown because I think it was the first adult book

Douglas Murray (2:21:22.780)

I read in that I had been used to the world

Lex Fridman (2:21:26.380)

of children's literature of everything ends up fine

Douglas Murray (2:21:29.780)

in the end, the lost all get found.

Lex Fridman (2:21:34.180)

And this was the first book I read where that's not the case

Douglas Murray (2:21:37.780)

the world turns out differently.

Lex Fridman (2:21:39.580)

And I remember for days afterwards,

Douglas Murray (2:21:42.500)

I was just in a state of shock.

Lex Fridman (2:21:46.020)

I couldn't believe what I'd just discovered

Lex Fridman (2:21:51.380)

and partly because I sort of intuited it must be true.

Lex Fridman (2:21:55.380)

And of course, that is not to say that the Lord of the Flies

Douglas Murray (2:21:57.340)

lots of scholarship on what children do in this situation

Lex Fridman (2:22:01.020)

of being on the island when they do congregate and anyhow.

Lex Fridman (2:22:04.540)

But yes, that was a sort of introduction to the adult world

Lex Fridman (2:22:07.020)

and it was shocking and thrilling and I wanted more of it.

Douglas Murray (2:22:14.540)

It was dangerous.

Lex Fridman (2:22:15.580)

And it was dangerous.

Lex Fridman (2:22:16.420)

And then of course, when I became interested in sex,

Lex Fridman (2:22:19.540)

let alone when I realized I was gay,

Douglas Murray (2:22:21.340)

I realized books were a very, very good way to learn

Lex Fridman (2:22:23.700)

about what I was.

Lex Fridman (2:22:25.660)

And that was even more dangerous in a way.

Lex Fridman (2:22:28.540)

And I thought, I mean, nobody knows what I know.

Lex Fridman (2:22:33.340)

You discovered sex, that was an invention in books?

Lex Fridman (2:22:36.420)

What do you mean?

Douglas Murray (2:22:37.260)

No, what I mean is, nobody, no, no, no, no.

Lex Fridman (2:22:39.420)

What I mean is that one of the things that gay people have

Douglas Murray (2:22:41.660)

when they're growing up is that

Lex Fridman (2:22:43.540)

you have this terribly big secret

Lex Fridman (2:22:45.380)

and you don't think the world will ever know,

Lex Fridman (2:22:47.100)

you hope the world will never know.

Lex Fridman (2:22:49.460)

And it's been called by one psychologist,

Lex Fridman (2:22:54.020)

the little boy with a big secret.

Lex Fridman (2:22:56.180)

And so if you discover that other people

Lex Fridman (2:22:59.900)

have the same secret, there's a sort of,

Douglas Murray (2:23:03.220)

thank God for that.

Lex Fridman (2:23:04.460)

But I mean, that's just a version

Douglas Murray (2:23:07.420)

of what everybody gets in reading in a way,

Lex Fridman (2:23:09.380)

which is the thrill of discovery

Douglas Murray (2:23:11.020)

that somebody else thought something you thought

Lex Fridman (2:23:14.180)

only you'd thought.

Douglas Murray (2:23:15.340)

I mean, one of the greatest thrills in all of literature

Lex Fridman (2:23:18.820)

is when a voice comes from across the centuries

Lex Fridman (2:23:21.420)

and seems to leave a handprint, you know.

Lex Fridman (2:23:24.700)

And makes you feel a little bit less alone

Douglas Murray (2:23:26.740)

because somebody else feels,

Lex Fridman (2:23:28.500)

sees the world the same way, is the same way.

Douglas Murray (2:23:31.020)

That's what C.S. Lewis is said to have said,

Lex Fridman (2:23:34.380)

we read to know we're not alone.

Lex Fridman (2:23:37.740)

But we don't only read to know we're not alone,

Lex Fridman (2:23:39.300)

we read to become other people.

Douglas Murray (2:23:42.740)

I mean, I think I saw in books

Lex Fridman (2:23:44.300)

a version of the life I wanted to live

Lex Fridman (2:23:45.980)

and then I decided to live it.

Lex Fridman (2:23:48.180)

And I'm fortunate enough to have done so.

Douglas Murray (2:23:52.780)

I wanted to live in the world of ideas

Lex Fridman (2:23:54.580)

and books and debate.

Douglas Murray (2:23:58.340)

I wanted to live in the debates of my time, you know.

Lex Fridman (2:24:01.620)

And I remember when, like a lot of people,

Douglas Murray (2:24:04.460)

I read Auden when I was young.

Lex Fridman (2:24:06.420)

And, you know, certain lines obviously stuck with me.

Lex Fridman (2:24:09.740)

But that poem of his which everybody, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:24:12.980)

knows and which he hated, September the 1st, 1939,

Douglas Murray (2:24:17.780)

I remember certain lines in that just like whacked me.

Lex Fridman (2:24:22.340)

What's that one, you know, sitting on a dive

Lex Fridman (2:24:24.060)

and for a second or three, degraded and alone,

Lex Fridman (2:24:28.660)

at the end of a low, dishonest decade.

Douglas Murray (2:24:31.340)

Of course, there's a problem with that line,

Lex Fridman (2:24:32.700)

which is you kind of want to be living

Douglas Murray (2:24:34.220)

at the end of a low, dishonest decade as well.

Lex Fridman (2:24:36.540)

It sounds sort of cool in a way.

Douglas Murray (2:24:38.620)

You know, you're the only person who sees it.

Lex Fridman (2:24:41.260)

But, so yeah, anyhow, that's the diversion.

Lex Fridman (2:24:43.500)

But the point is, if you want to be a writer,

Lex Fridman (2:24:45.340)

you've got to be a reader.

Lex Fridman (2:24:47.540)

And apart from anything else,

Lex Fridman (2:24:48.460)

you discover the lilt of language

Lex Fridman (2:24:50.900)

and the things you can do.

Lex Fridman (2:24:53.380)

And I've read people who, and I still do,

Lex Fridman (2:24:56.220)

I think, my God, I didn't know, how did you do that?

Lex Fridman (2:25:00.100)

In fact, books for me now, and articles and other things,

Douglas Murray (2:25:03.060)

fall into two categories.

Lex Fridman (2:25:04.180)

One is, I know how you did that.

Lex Fridman (2:25:07.060)

And the other is, I don't know how you did that.

Lex Fridman (2:25:10.260)

And the best feeling as a writer

Douglas Murray (2:25:13.260)

is when you do the second one.

Lex Fridman (2:25:16.700)

And it happens occasionally in my writing life.

Douglas Murray (2:25:19.460)

Will you almost like return to something you've written

Lex Fridman (2:25:21.540)

or like right after you write it?

Douglas Murray (2:25:22.540)

No, the moment you write it.

Lex Fridman (2:25:23.940)

You wonder, how did I do that?

Douglas Murray (2:25:25.580)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:25:26.660)

That's the most, I've never said that before.

Douglas Murray (2:25:29.380)

That's the happiest thing in writing.

Lex Fridman (2:25:32.500)

Very occasionally, it sounds,

Lex Fridman (2:25:33.860)

but I've occasionally finished something.

Lex Fridman (2:25:37.540)

Funny enough, it happened some years ago

Douglas Murray (2:25:38.900)

in a long piece I wrote about the artist, Basquiat.

Lex Fridman (2:25:44.540)

I finished the piece and I gasped.

Douglas Murray (2:25:47.940)

I didn't know, because that's also a thing with writing,

Lex Fridman (2:25:50.940)

is you, it's not, sometimes people say you need to write

Douglas Murray (2:25:55.380)

in order to know what you think.

Lex Fridman (2:25:56.300)

That's not quite true.

Douglas Murray (2:25:58.180)

Sometimes that's a very bad piece of advice

Lex Fridman (2:26:00.500)

for some writers who don't know what they think

Lex Fridman (2:26:03.420)

and it's not gonna become clearer

Lex Fridman (2:26:04.740)

if they just start typing.

Lex Fridman (2:26:09.000)

But sometimes it is true that you,

Lex Fridman (2:26:12.780)

there's a thought that's just waiting there

Lex Fridman (2:26:15.660)

and a clarity that comes across

Lex Fridman (2:26:17.660)

and suddenly the sentence emerges in your brain.

Lex Fridman (2:26:20.660)

And by the time you typed it, you just go, yes.

Lex Fridman (2:26:25.540)

That's the greatest feeling as a writer.

Douglas Murray (2:26:27.220)

Almost like it came from somewhere else.

Lex Fridman (2:26:29.780)

That's what Bakunin says about what's the moment.

Douglas Murray (2:26:34.900)

It's Tom Stoppard's favorite quote

Lex Fridman (2:26:36.540)

about Bakunin saying what happens in the moment

Douglas Murray (2:26:38.780)

where the writer's pen, when he pauses,

Lex Fridman (2:26:42.100)

where does he go in that moment?

Douglas Murray (2:26:45.220)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:26:46.620)

That's so interesting.

Douglas Murray (2:26:49.860)

Because I think the answer to that question

Lex Fridman (2:26:52.400)

will help us explain consciousness

Lex Fridman (2:26:54.460)

and all those other weird things about the human mind.

Lex Fridman (2:26:58.180)

So that was advice for writers.

Douglas Murray (2:26:59.660)

I didn't really give any advice for people in general.

Lex Fridman (2:27:02.880)

Is that, oh, you wanna give health advice?

Douglas Murray (2:27:05.240)

No.

Lex Fridman (2:27:06.080)

To your channel, Churchill?

Douglas Murray (2:27:07.540)

No, I don't wanna give health advice.

Lex Fridman (2:27:09.140)

Clearly.

Douglas Murray (2:27:10.260)

Because you implied that Churchill

Lex Fridman (2:27:12.100)

was one of your early guides in that aspect.

Lex Fridman (2:27:15.240)

So when you discovered your sexuality,

Lex Fridman (2:27:17.780)

let me ask about love.

Douglas Murray (2:27:19.280)

Far too personal of a question to ask a Brit.

Lex Fridman (2:27:25.320)

But what was that like?

Lex Fridman (2:27:28.160)

And broadly speaking, what's the role of love

Lex Fridman (2:27:31.720)

in the human condition?

Douglas Murray (2:27:35.100)

Sex and love.

Lex Fridman (2:27:37.040)

And for you personally, discovering that you were

Lex Fridman (2:27:40.880)

and maybe telling the world that you were gay.

Lex Fridman (2:27:44.960)

I'm very perilously personal.

Douglas Murray (2:27:48.040)

I do actually have a sort of rule

Lex Fridman (2:27:49.400)

that I don't talk about in my personal life.

Douglas Murray (2:27:51.400)

Rules are meant to be broken.

Lex Fridman (2:27:52.720)

Okay, well I'll break it a little bit.

Douglas Murray (2:27:57.200)

One of the ways in which growing up

Lex Fridman (2:27:58.800)

and realizing you're gay differs from growing up

Lex Fridman (2:28:00.400)

and being straight is that it's almost inevitable

Lex Fridman (2:28:05.240)

that your first passions will be unrequited.

Douglas Murray (2:28:10.560)

Oh wow, I never thought about that, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:28:13.520)

Now that's not to say, there's plenty of unrequited love

Douglas Murray (2:28:17.320)

among young men for young women,

Lex Fridman (2:28:19.160)

young women for young men, plenty of that.

Lex Fridman (2:28:21.760)

But it's almost inevitable if you're gay

Lex Fridman (2:28:23.520)

that your first passions will be totally unrequited.

Douglas Murray (2:28:30.040)

Because the odds are that the person in question

Lex Fridman (2:28:33.120)

will not be gay.

Lex Fridman (2:28:33.960)

So the experience of love is mostly heartbreak.

Lex Fridman (2:28:37.520)

It's heartbreak and disappointment.

Douglas Murray (2:28:40.480)

Heartbreak can be beautiful too, it's formative.

Lex Fridman (2:28:43.240)

Well again, it comes back to the thing

Douglas Murray (2:28:45.360)

if you're a writer or something,

Lex Fridman (2:28:46.600)

that you can always do something with it.

Douglas Murray (2:28:48.880)

That's why all writers are sort of not to be trusted.

Lex Fridman (2:28:53.880)

I didn't trust you the moment you walked in here.

Douglas Murray (2:28:56.120)

No, I mean, it's a famous problem with writers

Lex Fridman (2:29:02.920)

because you always think, well I could use that.

Douglas Murray (2:29:06.160)

It's a dangerous thing and all writers should be aware.

Lex Fridman (2:29:08.200)

It's almost like a drug, right?

Douglas Murray (2:29:10.240)

No, it's not like a drug.

Lex Fridman (2:29:11.680)

It's the fear that all things,

Douglas Murray (2:29:15.120)

even the greatest suffering could be material.

Lex Fridman (2:29:19.680)

What's the danger in that exactly?

Douglas Murray (2:29:22.360)

That seeing the material in the human experience,

Lex Fridman (2:29:25.200)

you don't experience it fully?

Douglas Murray (2:29:26.960)

You don't experience it fully and you might be using it.

Lex Fridman (2:29:30.760)

I had a friend who wrote a poem about a friend

Douglas Murray (2:29:33.320)

who died in a motorcycle accident in Sydney in the 60s.

Lex Fridman (2:29:36.480)

And he said he knew at the moment

Douglas Murray (2:29:38.120)

he was told about his friend's death.

Lex Fridman (2:29:39.240)

A tiny bit of him thought I could use this for a poem.

Lex Fridman (2:29:42.200)

And he did and the poem was wonderful.

Lex Fridman (2:29:43.500)

But there's always that slight guilt for writers

Lex Fridman (2:29:45.680)

of am I going to use that?

Lex Fridman (2:29:48.280)

Anyhow, that's a diversion.

Douglas Murray (2:29:50.000)

Life is full of guilty pleasures

Lex Fridman (2:29:51.560)

and I think that's one of them.

Douglas Murray (2:29:52.640)

Because if you feel that guilt,

Lex Fridman (2:29:54.640)

really what you're doing is you're capturing that moment

Lex Fridman (2:29:58.000)

and you're going to impact the lives of many, many people

Lex Fridman (2:30:01.400)

by writing about that moment

Douglas Murray (2:30:02.760)

because it's going to stimulate something

Lex Fridman (2:30:04.740)

that resonates with those people

Douglas Murray (2:30:06.440)

because they had similar kinds of memories

Lex Fridman (2:30:08.100)

about a loss and a passion towards somebody

Douglas Murray (2:30:10.760)

that they had to lose.

Lex Fridman (2:30:11.840)

So yes, but there's a good sign, perhaps.

Douglas Murray (2:30:15.520)

More obvious perhaps problem is reporting from war zones

Lex Fridman (2:30:19.760)

or bad places and wanting to find bad stories

Douglas Murray (2:30:23.840)

because it's useful.

Lex Fridman (2:30:24.920)

And there is a definite guilt you get

Douglas Murray (2:30:27.060)

from that sort of thing.

Lex Fridman (2:30:28.200)

Like the worse the situation, the more useful.

Douglas Murray (2:30:30.960)

Anyhow, no, so that's sort of the only difference

Lex Fridman (2:30:35.040)

that happens from growing up being gay.

Lex Fridman (2:30:36.480)

And it means that most, certainly in my generation,

Lex Fridman (2:30:39.780)

most gay men came to sexual or romantic maturity later.

Lex Fridman (2:30:46.120)

And there's lots of explanations of that

Lex Fridman (2:30:49.160)

maybe being one of the reasons for perceived

Douglas Murray (2:30:52.640)

or otherwise promiscuity among gay men,

Lex Fridman (2:30:55.220)

which is, I think, more easily persuaded

Douglas Murray (2:30:57.040)

by the fact that gay men behave like men would

Lex Fridman (2:31:00.280)

if women were men.

Douglas Murray (2:31:04.240)

That's one explanation,

Lex Fridman (2:31:06.040)

but it's both a feature and a bug

Douglas Murray (2:31:08.560)

that you come to sexual flourishing later in life.

Lex Fridman (2:31:12.760)

That could be seen as a, in the trajectory of human life,

Douglas Murray (2:31:16.760)

that could be a positive or a negative.

Lex Fridman (2:31:18.980)

But what's, broadly speaking, is the role of love

Lex Fridman (2:31:21.940)

in the human condition, Douglas?

Lex Fridman (2:31:25.800)

Well, it's the nearest thing we have to finding the point.

Lex Fridman (2:31:30.040)

What is the point?

Lex Fridman (2:31:31.120)

What's the meaning of life?

Douglas Murray (2:31:32.360)

Let's go there.

Lex Fridman (2:31:33.400)

So what's the meaning is a hard one, of course.

Douglas Murray (2:31:36.040)

Where is the meaning is slightly easier.

Lex Fridman (2:31:40.620)

And I'd say that everyone can find that.

Douglas Murray (2:31:43.720)

You gravitate towards the places you find meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:31:47.040)

Now, there's a conservative answer to this,

Douglas Murray (2:31:48.520)

which is quite useful,

Lex Fridman (2:31:49.520)

and it's certainly more useful than any others,

Douglas Murray (2:31:51.580)

because the conservative answer is find meaning

Lex Fridman (2:31:53.520)

where people have found it before,

Douglas Murray (2:31:56.280)

which is a very, very good answer.

Lex Fridman (2:31:59.160)

If your ancestors have found meaning in a place of worship

Douglas Murray (2:32:02.720)

or a particular canon of work, go there,

Lex Fridman (2:32:08.640)

because it's been proven by time

Douglas Murray (2:32:11.680)

to be able to give you the goods.

Lex Fridman (2:32:16.200)

Much more sensible than saying,

Douglas Murray (2:32:18.000)

hey, I don't know, discover new ways of meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:32:24.520)

But love is,

Douglas Murray (2:32:26.340)

love is probably the nearest thing we can have

Lex Fridman (2:32:33.460)

to the divine on Earth.

Lex Fridman (2:32:36.860)

And of course, the problem of what exactly,

Lex Fridman (2:32:40.300)

what type of love we mean is an issue.

Douglas Murray (2:32:43.740)

Well, that goes to the fact

Lex Fridman (2:32:44.740)

that you don't like definitions anyway.

Douglas Murray (2:32:47.900)

I do like definitions.

Lex Fridman (2:32:48.780)

I just think they need to be pinned down.

Lex Fridman (2:32:51.220)

But let's not go there at the moment,

Lex Fridman (2:32:55.020)

because it's, yeah.

Douglas Murray (2:32:57.620)

That's not pinned down love at the moment.

Lex Fridman (2:32:59.340)

Well, no, because as you know,

Douglas Murray (2:33:01.620)

I mean, because of the different varieties of love

Lex Fridman (2:33:03.380)

and the fact that we have one word for it in our culture

Lex Fridman (2:33:05.180)

and that it means an awful lot of things

Lex Fridman (2:33:06.780)

and we don't delineate it well.

Lex Fridman (2:33:09.240)

But let's say human love

Lex Fridman (2:33:12.940)

with the greatest fulfillment in sexual,

Douglas Murray (2:33:18.020)

fulfillment in sexual love with another person

Lex Fridman (2:33:21.340)

is probably the greatest intimation you can have

Douglas Murray (2:33:26.340)

of what might otherwise only be superseded by divine love.

Lex Fridman (2:33:35.020)

And it's the sense that all young lovers have,

Douglas Murray (2:33:40.420)

which is that they've just walked through the low door

Lex Fridman (2:33:44.180)

in the garden and found themselves in bliss.

Lex Fridman (2:33:47.280)

And that this is,

Lex Fridman (2:33:48.620)

there's a beautiful, beautiful poem of,

Lex Fridman (2:33:55.020)

can I read it to you?

Lex Fridman (2:33:56.140)

Yes, please.

Douglas Murray (2:33:57.820)

I'll try to find it.

Lex Fridman (2:33:58.660)

There's a beautiful poem of Philip Larkins,

Douglas Murray (2:34:01.980)

which slightly says what I'm,

Lex Fridman (2:34:06.700)

I'm trying not to duck your question

Douglas Murray (2:34:08.540)

by referring to other people, but.

Lex Fridman (2:34:10.900)

Maybe that's the best way to answer the question.

Douglas Murray (2:34:13.240)

Could be.

Lex Fridman (2:34:14.080)

Is to read a poem.

Lex Fridman (2:34:16.740)

So there's a poem by Philip Larkin called High Windows,

Lex Fridman (2:34:21.860)

which is remarkable because he came to sexual,

Douglas Murray (2:34:30.620)

he was straight, he had a rather unhappy sex life,

Lex Fridman (2:34:33.820)

but he came to sexual affection in the 40s and 50s

Lex Fridman (2:34:38.820)

and all the hell that that involved.

Lex Fridman (2:34:41.300)

And he took what I,

Douglas Murray (2:34:46.300)

I regard as being a really remarkable and important view

Lex Fridman (2:34:49.140)

on the sexual revolution in the 60s,

Douglas Murray (2:34:51.260)

which is that most people of his generation,

Lex Fridman (2:34:52.700)

most older people resented the young.

Douglas Murray (2:34:57.280)

They resented the freedom they had,

Lex Fridman (2:34:58.820)

and actually they pretended the freedom was terrible

Lex Fridman (2:35:00.660)

and it was always getting likely to.

Lex Fridman (2:35:02.220)

And Philip Larkin, rather surprisingly,

Douglas Murray (2:35:03.740)

he was a very conservative person, took a different view.

Lex Fridman (2:35:06.180)

And he says it in his poem,

Lex Fridman (2:35:07.620)

and the opening of the poem is he says,

Lex Fridman (2:35:09.980)

when I see a couple of kids and guess he's fucking her

Lex Fridman (2:35:13.700)

and she's taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,

Lex Fridman (2:35:16.980)

I know this is paradise.

Douglas Murray (2:35:19.160)

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives,

Lex Fridman (2:35:22.540)

bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Douglas Murray (2:35:25.180)

like an outdated combine harvester,

Lex Fridman (2:35:28.020)

and everyone young going down the long slide

Douglas Murray (2:35:31.780)

to happiness endlessly.

Lex Fridman (2:35:34.500)

I wonder if anyone looked at me 40 years back and thought,

Douglas Murray (2:35:38.940)

that'll be the life, no God anymore,

Lex Fridman (2:35:41.260)

or sweating in the dark about hell and that,

Douglas Murray (2:35:44.180)

or having to hide what you think of the priest.

Lex Fridman (2:35:46.860)

He and his lot will all go down the long slide

Douglas Murray (2:35:49.980)

like free bloody birds.

Lex Fridman (2:35:52.820)

And immediately, rather than words,

Douglas Murray (2:35:55.860)

comes the thought of high windows,

Lex Fridman (2:35:58.820)

the some comprehending glass,

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.220)

and beyond it the deep blue air

Lex Fridman (2:36:03.820)

that shows nothing and is nowhere and is endless.

Douglas Murray (2:36:08.820)

The divine, he found it.

Lex Fridman (2:36:12.780)

He found it in seeing a couple of young kids

Lex Fridman (2:36:16.860)

and knowing that one of them was wearing a diaphragm.

Lex Fridman (2:36:20.180)

Do you see what I mean?

Douglas Murray (2:36:21.620)

First of all, it's very counterintuitive,

Lex Fridman (2:36:22.860)

but secondly, this is the point that sex

Douglas Murray (2:36:25.220)

had been so tied up with misery.

Lex Fridman (2:36:29.380)

I mean, people don't remember this now

Douglas Murray (2:36:30.820)

when they talk about the past.

Lex Fridman (2:36:32.980)

I mean, there's one of my favorite books,

Douglas Murray (2:36:34.460)

Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday,

Lex Fridman (2:36:36.620)

you know, descriptions of what it was like

Douglas Murray (2:36:39.100)

trying to have sex in pre First World War Vienna.

Lex Fridman (2:36:42.100)

You know, all the men ended up

Douglas Murray (2:36:43.540)

going to female prostitutes.

Lex Fridman (2:36:45.780)

You know, so many of them got syphilis,

Lex Fridman (2:36:48.020)

and this was their first experience of sex.

Lex Fridman (2:36:49.700)

It was so goddamn awful,

Lex Fridman (2:36:51.380)

and they were stuck with it all their lives.

Lex Fridman (2:36:53.340)

And so there's lots of stuff that's gone better

Douglas Murray (2:36:56.860)

in our last century, and that's one of them.

Lex Fridman (2:36:59.460)

But you ask about love.

Douglas Murray (2:37:00.320)

Yes, I do think that love is basically

Lex Fridman (2:37:02.540)

the thing that gives us the best glimpse of the divine.

Lex Fridman (2:37:08.100)

And by the way, sex, liberating sex,

Lex Fridman (2:37:12.200)

doesn't buy you love either.

Douglas Murray (2:37:15.520)

No, I mean, it throws in an entirely,

Lex Fridman (2:37:19.920)

it threw in another set of problems.

Douglas Murray (2:37:24.140)

If there's any meaning on top of all of that

Lex Fridman (2:37:27.160)

is we like to find problems and solve that

Douglas Murray (2:37:31.220)

as a human species, and sometimes we even create problems.

Lex Fridman (2:37:37.980)

Douglas, thank you for highlighting

Douglas Murray (2:37:39.700)

all the problems of human civilization

Lex Fridman (2:37:41.900)

and giving us a glimmer of hope for the future.

Douglas Murray (2:37:44.260)

This is an incredible conversation.

Lex Fridman (2:37:46.580)

Thank you for talking today.

Douglas Murray (2:37:47.500)

It's a huge honor, thank you.

Lex Fridman (2:37:48.900)

It was very kind of you to say that, thank you.

Douglas Murray (2:37:51.460)

Thanks for listening to this conversation

Lex Fridman (2:37:52.860)

with Douglas Murray.

Douglas Murray (2:37:54.100)

To support this podcast,

Lex Fridman (2:37:55.380)

please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (2:37:57.940)

And now, let me leave you with some words

Lex Fridman (2:37:59.900)

from Douglas Murray himself.

Douglas Murray (2:38:02.500)

Disagreement is not oppression.

Lex Fridman (2:38:05.460)

Argument is not assault.

Douglas Murray (2:38:08.020)

Words, even provocative and repugnant ones,

Lex Fridman (2:38:12.140)

are not violence.

Douglas Murray (2:38:14.060)

The answer to speech we do not like is more speech.

Lex Fridman (2:38:19.060)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Douglas Murray (30:00.940)

who by dint of their skin color or anything else

Lex Fridman (30:05.220)

get to dominate the microphone.

Douglas Murray (30:07.100)

Now, of course, we're literally both speaking

Lex Fridman (30:08.340)

to microphones at the moment, so there's an irony to this,

Lex Fridman (30:10.660)

but let's skate over the irony.

Lex Fridman (30:13.980)

What I mean is people saying,

Douglas Murray (30:15.620)

you don't have the right to speak,

Lex Fridman (30:17.620)

I have the right to take the microphone from you

Lex Fridman (30:19.700)

and speak because I know best.

Lex Fridman (30:22.180)

Fine, if you know best, we'll argue it out

Lex Fridman (30:26.340)

and someone will win, long or short term.

Lex Fridman (30:30.460)

But the almost aggressive tone

Douglas Murray (30:36.100)

in which this is now leveled, I don't like the sound of,

Lex Fridman (30:40.380)

nobody's experience is completely understandable

Douglas Murray (30:43.660)

by another human being, nobody's.

Lex Fridman (30:46.580)

And what many people are asking us to do at the moment,

Douglas Murray (30:49.300)

us collectively is, to fall for that thing,

Lex Fridman (30:52.500)

I think it was Camille Foster who said it first,

Lex Fridman (30:54.780)

but I've adopted in recent years,

Lex Fridman (30:57.260)

is to say you must spend an inordinate amount of your life

Douglas Murray (31:00.540)

trying to understand me personally,

Lex Fridman (31:03.420)

my lived experience, everything about me.

Douglas Murray (31:06.340)

You should dedicate your life to trying to do that.

Lex Fridman (31:10.540)

Simultaneously, you'll never understand me.

Douglas Murray (31:15.060)

This is not an attractive invitation.

Lex Fridman (31:17.180)

This is an unwinnable game.

Lex Fridman (31:20.860)

So if somebody has a legitimate

Lex Fridman (31:26.580)

and important point to make, they should make it

Lex Fridman (31:29.580)

and they'll win through whatever their character is

Lex Fridman (31:31.220)

or whatever their race.

Lex Fridman (31:32.060)

And by the way, there are plenty of white people

Lex Fridman (31:33.780)

who experience racism as well.

Douglas Murray (31:35.620)

There are plenty of white people who do and have done,

Lex Fridman (31:38.980)

and increasingly so, which is one of the things

Douglas Murray (31:40.980)

I write about in the War on the West.

Lex Fridman (31:42.740)

I mean, I would argue that today in America,

Douglas Murray (31:45.740)

the only group who are actually allowed

Lex Fridman (31:47.340)

to be consistently, vilely racist against the white people.

Douglas Murray (31:52.020)

If you say disgusting things about black people

Lex Fridman (31:54.660)

in America in 2022, you will be over.

Douglas Murray (31:58.500)

You will be over.

Lex Fridman (31:59.980)

If you decide to talk about people's white tears,

Douglas Murray (32:02.980)

their white female tears, their white guilt,

Lex Fridman (32:05.980)

their white privilege, their white rage,

Lex Fridman (32:08.580)

and all these other pseudo pathologizing terms,

Lex Fridman (32:11.980)

you'll be just fine.

Douglas Murray (32:12.900)

You can be the chairman of the Joint Committee

Lex Fridman (32:14.260)

of the Staff, you can lecture at Yale University,

Douglas Murray (32:16.980)

absolutely fine, and the white people have to suck that up

Lex Fridman (32:20.500)

as if that's fine because there was racism

Douglas Murray (32:23.300)

in another direction in the past.

Lex Fridman (32:24.620)

So white people can have racism as well.

Douglas Murray (32:27.180)

Does that mean that I think that I have a right

Lex Fridman (32:28.940)

or other white people have a right to dominate the discourse

Douglas Murray (32:31.340)

by talking about their feelings of having been victims

Lex Fridman (32:34.780)

of racism?

Lex Fridman (32:35.780)

No, not particularly, because what does that get us?

Lex Fridman (32:38.060)

It gets us into an endless cycle of competitive victimhood.

Douglas Murray (32:41.860)

Am I saying that white people who've experienced violence

Lex Fridman (32:44.860)

have experienced historically anything like the violence

Douglas Murray (32:48.100)

that was perpetrated against black people

Lex Fridman (32:49.780)

in America historically?

Douglas Murray (32:51.180)

Obviously not.

Lex Fridman (32:52.540)

But what kind of competition do we want to enter here?

Lex Fridman (32:58.780)

And this is very, very important terrain now in America,

Lex Fridman (33:03.300)

because there's one other thing I have to throw in there,

Lex Fridman (33:05.220)

which is how do you work out the sincerity of the claim?

Lex Fridman (33:09.220)

How do you work out the sincerity of the claim being made?

Douglas Murray (33:12.540)

At one point in this latest book,

Lex Fridman (33:14.980)

I referred to a very useful bit in Nietzsche

Douglas Murray (33:19.060)

on the genealogy of morals,

Lex Fridman (33:21.660)

where, as you know, Nietzsche always has to be treated

Douglas Murray (33:24.380)

carefully, you know, when people say,

Lex Fridman (33:26.340)

I love Nietzsche, you have to say, which bits?

Lex Fridman (33:29.460)

So what exactly do you love about him?

Lex Fridman (33:34.820)

But,

Lex Fridman (33:35.660)

and a lot can be learned from the answer.

Lex Fridman (33:38.660)

But there are moments in Genealogy of Morals

Douglas Murray (33:40.980)

that were very useful for this book.

Lex Fridman (33:42.980)

One of them was the moment when Nietzsche uses a phrase

Douglas Murray (33:45.900)

that I've now stolen from myself, appropriated,

Lex Fridman (33:48.260)

you might say,

Douglas Murray (33:50.540)

where he refers to people who tear at wounds

Lex Fridman (33:55.540)

long since closed and then cry about the pain they feel.

Lex Fridman (33:59.540)

And Nietzsche says,

Lex Fridman (34:01.020)

I've never felt so much pain in my life

Douglas Murray (34:03.900)

as the pain they feel.

Lex Fridman (34:08.140)

Now, how do you know,

Lex Fridman (34:10.900)

how do you know whether the pain is real?

Lex Fridman (34:14.500)

How do you know?

Douglas Murray (34:15.940)

I'm not saying you can never know, but it's hard.

Lex Fridman (34:20.780)

So when somebody says,

Douglas Murray (34:22.180)

I feel that my life hasn't gone that well

Lex Fridman (34:24.180)

and it's because of something that was done

Douglas Murray (34:25.700)

to my ancestors 200 years ago,

Lex Fridman (34:28.300)

maybe they do feel that.

Douglas Murray (34:30.380)

Maybe they're right to feel that.

Lex Fridman (34:32.660)

Maybe they're using it up.

Douglas Murray (34:34.580)

Maybe they're using it as their reason for failure in life.

Lex Fridman (34:37.980)

Maybe they're using it as their reason to not even try.

Douglas Murray (34:41.500)

Maybe they're using it as their reason

Lex Fridman (34:42.780)

to smoke weed all day.

Douglas Murray (34:45.620)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (34:46.900)

And who does know?

Lex Fridman (34:47.740)

How can you work that out?

Lex Fridman (34:49.620)

And that's why I come back to this thing of,

Douglas Murray (34:51.420)

who are we to constantly judge in this society

Lex Fridman (34:55.180)

other people who we don't know

Lex Fridman (34:57.620)

and attribute motives to them based on racial

Lex Fridman (35:01.620)

characteristics?

Lex Fridman (35:03.860)

And as you write in this part,

Lex Fridman (35:07.140)

I like your cultural appropriation of Nietzsche

Lex Fridman (35:11.900)

and at the same time, canceling Nietzsche

Lex Fridman (35:16.260)

in the same set of sentences.

Lex Fridman (35:17.820)

But you write in this part about evil.

Lex Fridman (35:20.500)

No, I didn't cancel Nietzsche.

Douglas Murray (35:22.580)

Well.

Lex Fridman (35:23.420)

Can't cancel Nietzsche, I was saying treat him carefully.

Douglas Murray (35:27.100)

Treat him carefully, fair enough.

Lex Fridman (35:29.660)

But you can judge a man's character

Douglas Murray (35:31.820)

by which parts of Nietzsche he quotes.

Lex Fridman (35:35.060)

That's fair enough, I think.

Douglas Murray (35:36.540)

I think when you meet people who do man and Superman

Lex Fridman (35:38.540)

a bit too much, you're in.

Douglas Murray (35:42.140)

Now you're pulling in even deeper water

Lex Fridman (35:45.300)

referencing Hitler here.

Douglas Murray (35:47.100)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (35:48.460)

So you write in this part of the book about evil.

Lex Fridman (35:53.220)

Quote, what is it that drives evil?

Lex Fridman (35:57.260)

Many things without doubt,

Lex Fridman (35:58.500)

but one of them is identified by several

Lex Fridman (36:00.580)

of the great philosophers is resentment.

Douglas Murray (36:04.420)

That sentiment is one of the greatest drivers

Lex Fridman (36:06.580)

for people who want to destroy.

Douglas Murray (36:09.420)

Colon, blaming someone else for having something

Lex Fridman (36:12.180)

you believe you deserve more.

Lex Fridman (36:14.180)

And you're saying this kind of resentment,

Lex Fridman (36:17.500)

we don't know as it surfaces whether it's genuine

Douglas Murray (36:21.180)

or if it's used to sort of play games of power

Lex Fridman (36:25.740)

to evil ends, can you speak to this?

Douglas Murray (36:32.460)

Because it's such a fascinating idea

Lex Fridman (36:34.740)

that one of the biggest drivers of evil

Douglas Murray (36:37.980)

in the world is resentment.

Lex Fridman (36:41.420)

Because if you look at, boy,

Douglas Murray (36:43.940)

if you look at human history, if you look at Hitler,

Lex Fridman (36:47.300)

so much of the propaganda, so much of the narrative

Douglas Murray (36:49.700)

was about resentment.

Lex Fridman (36:52.100)

So is that surface or is it level

Lex Fridman (36:54.020)

or is that deep, the resentment that drives evil?

Lex Fridman (36:56.180)

It can be any of the above.

Douglas Murray (36:58.180)

Let's first of all preface it, everybody has resentment.

Lex Fridman (37:01.580)

I use the term resentment which is sort of very similar

Douglas Murray (37:06.140)

to resentment, let's stick with resentment.

Lex Fridman (37:09.540)

So we don't sound too pretentious.

Douglas Murray (37:17.460)

Let me give you a quick example of somebody

Lex Fridman (37:18.780)

in our own day who has a form of resentment,

Douglas Murray (37:21.780)

Vladimir Putin.

Lex Fridman (37:22.660)

Did you see Navalny's documentary, Putin's Palace?

Douglas Murray (37:26.420)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (37:27.260)

Yeah.

Douglas Murray (37:28.100)

You remember the stuff about Putin

Lex Fridman (37:29.780)

as a young KGB officer in Germany?

Douglas Murray (37:32.780)

Remember the stuff about Putin and his first wife's

Lex Fridman (37:34.740)

resentment of one of his KGB colleagues

Douglas Murray (37:37.020)

who had an apartment that was a few meters bigger

Lex Fridman (37:40.100)

than the Putin's apartment?

Douglas Murray (37:42.900)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (37:43.740)

It's very interesting.

Lex Fridman (37:44.820)

And by the way, I'm not saying that, you know,

Lex Fridman (37:47.220)

Vladimir Putin became the man he has become

Lex Fridman (37:48.820)

and invaded Ukraine because he didn't have an apartment

Lex Fridman (37:50.820)

he liked in Berlin or Munich or wherever he was.

Douglas Murray (37:53.420)

There's distinct possibility.

Lex Fridman (37:55.180)

My point is that resentment is a factor in all human lives

Lex Fridman (38:02.220)

and we all feel it in our lives

Lex Fridman (38:05.140)

and it's something that has to be struggled against.

Douglas Murray (38:09.380)

Resentment is, in political terms, can be a deadly,

Lex Fridman (38:13.020)

I mean, it's an incredibly deep thing to draw upon.

Douglas Murray (38:16.860)

I mean, you mentioned Hitler.

Lex Fridman (38:18.060)

Obviously one of the things that Hitler

Douglas Murray (38:20.060)

played on was resentment, obviously.

Lex Fridman (38:24.540)

Almost every revolutionary does.

Douglas Murray (38:27.060)

I mean, the French revolutionaries did as well.

Lex Fridman (38:28.980)

And not without cause.

Douglas Murray (38:31.620)

It's a good reason to feel that Versailles

Lex Fridman (38:33.900)

was not listening to Paris in the 1780s

Lex Fridman (38:38.020)

and feel resentment for Marie Antoinette

Lex Fridman (38:41.700)

in her palace within the palace,

Douglas Murray (38:44.220)

ignoring the bread shortages in Paris.

Lex Fridman (38:47.380)

So resentment is a very, it's a very understandable thing

Lex Fridman (38:51.380)

and sometimes it's justifiable

Lex Fridman (38:53.180)

and it's also deadly to the person as it is to the society.

Douglas Murray (38:57.300)

It's an incredibly deep, deep sentiment.

Lex Fridman (38:59.980)

Somebody else has got something that you should have.

Lex Fridman (39:04.460)

And the problem about it is that it has the potential

Lex Fridman (39:07.540)

to be endless.

Douglas Murray (39:09.460)

You can do it your whole life.

Lex Fridman (39:11.460)

And one of the ways I've sort of found myself

Douglas Murray (39:14.540)

explaining this to people is to say,

Lex Fridman (39:15.860)

it's also important to recognize that resentment

Douglas Murray (39:18.180)

is something that can cross absolutely every boundary.

Lex Fridman (39:22.060)

So for instance, it crosses all racial boundaries, obviously,

Lex Fridman (39:26.420)

and how it goes without saying.

Lex Fridman (39:28.180)

More interesting is it crosses all class boundaries

Lex Fridman (39:30.660)

and socioeconomic boundaries.

Lex Fridman (39:33.380)

And if I was to sort of simplify this thought,

Douglas Murray (39:36.060)

I would say, I guess that you and I

Lex Fridman (39:39.500)

and everybody watching knows or has known something

Douglas Murray (39:44.500)

or has known somebody in their lives

Lex Fridman (39:47.820)

who has almost nothing in worldly terms

Lex Fridman (39:53.540)

and is a generous person, a kindly person,

Lex Fridman (39:57.020)

a giving person, a happy person even, a cheerful person.

Lex Fridman (40:03.300)

And I think we probably have also,

Lex Fridman (40:06.460)

or many of us will have met people

Douglas Murray (40:07.900)

who seem to have everything

Lex Fridman (40:09.300)

and who are filled with resentment, filled with resentment.

Douglas Murray (40:13.300)

Somebody else has held them back from something.

Lex Fridman (40:14.940)

Their sister once did something,

Douglas Murray (40:16.580)

she got this and I should have got that.

Lex Fridman (40:19.860)

And on and on and on.

Douglas Murray (40:22.020)

It's a human trait.

Lex Fridman (40:23.660)

And one of the things that suggests to me

Douglas Murray (40:26.780)

is that we therefore have a choice in our lives about this.

Lex Fridman (40:29.340)

And this is something which we can do something about,

Douglas Murray (40:32.020)

not limitlessly, but for instance,

Lex Fridman (40:35.900)

I mean, there are very good reasons

Douglas Murray (40:37.700)

that some people in their lives might feel resentment.

Lex Fridman (40:41.060)

Let's say you're involved in a car crash

Lex Fridman (40:44.020)

and a friend fell asleep at the wheel

Lex Fridman (40:46.500)

and that's why you are spending the rest of your life

Douglas Murray (40:48.700)

in a wheelchair.

Lex Fridman (40:50.100)

It's a pertinent example of this

Douglas Murray (40:51.420)

in American politics at the moment.

Lex Fridman (40:55.500)

You would be justified in feeling resentment.

Lex Fridman (40:58.980)

And at some point you have to make a decision,

Lex Fridman (41:01.020)

which is, am I going to be that person or a different person?

Lex Fridman (41:08.020)

But even in that case, you're saying at the individual level

Lex Fridman (41:10.500)

and at the societal level is destructive to the mind,

Douglas Murray (41:13.180)

even when you're, quote unquote, justified.

Lex Fridman (41:15.500)

It rots you.

Douglas Murray (41:16.820)

It rots you because the best you can do

Lex Fridman (41:21.340)

is to eke out your days unfulfilled.

Lex Fridman (41:26.540)

So the antidote, as you describe, is gratitude.

Lex Fridman (41:29.460)

Yes.

Douglas Murray (41:31.100)

Gratitude is the antidote to evil in a sense.

Lex Fridman (41:35.660)

Gratitude is the individual level and the societal level.

Douglas Murray (41:38.340)

Gratitude is certainly the answer to resentment.

Lex Fridman (41:41.700)

I quote in The War on the West,

Douglas Murray (41:44.700)

when I read it the first time a few years ago,

Lex Fridman (41:46.940)

I was absolutely floored by the brothers Karamazov.

Douglas Murray (41:52.420)

Not everything in it, by the way,

Lex Fridman (41:53.460)

and I won't get into it,

Lex Fridman (41:54.500)

but I have some very big structural criticisms

Lex Fridman (41:58.060)

of the novel.

Douglas Murray (41:59.620)

Now you're just sweet talking to me

Lex Fridman (42:01.500)

because I'm a Dostoevsky fan, but I appreciate this.

Douglas Murray (42:04.860)

Oh, okay.

Lex Fridman (42:06.220)

Well, we could get into what I see

Douglas Murray (42:07.660)

as being the structural flaws in the brothers Karamazov,

Lex Fridman (42:09.500)

but anyway.

Douglas Murray (42:10.340)

Now I'm offended and triggered.

Lex Fridman (42:12.220)

Yeah, no, I mean, this is something coming out of Macbeth

Lex Fridman (42:17.020)

and saying, I didn't think it was much good.

Lex Fridman (42:19.060)

Yeah, there's structural flaws.

Douglas Murray (42:20.740)

Yeah, I thought the ending stank

Lex Fridman (42:23.060)

and the middle wasn't very good.

Douglas Murray (42:24.620)

No, when I read that novel,

Lex Fridman (42:28.100)

I was floored by a couple of things.

Douglas Murray (42:30.020)

One is, of course, at the moment

Lex Fridman (42:32.100)

where we realize the devil appears.

Douglas Murray (42:34.860)

The moment that Ivan says to his brother,

Lex Fridman (42:37.380)

you know he visits me,

Lex Fridman (42:39.340)

and you realize that he's talking about the devil,

Lex Fridman (42:41.900)

the whole novel goes into this totally different space.

Douglas Murray (42:47.580)

Anyway, it's even more

Lex Fridman (42:49.060)

than you've already realized the novel's about.

Lex Fridman (42:51.660)

And then when the conversation occurs between Ivan

Lex Fridman (42:54.540)

and the devil, I think he describes him

Douglas Murray (42:57.860)

as dressed in the French style

Lex Fridman (43:02.860)

of the early part of the 90th century.

Douglas Murray (43:06.060)

Very strange that the devil would be dressed like that,

Lex Fridman (43:07.700)

but sort of.

Lex Fridman (43:10.820)

And if you remember that he's sort of cross legged

Lex Fridman (43:13.620)

and rather a vain figure,

Lex Fridman (43:16.100)

but the devil mentions in passing to Ivan

Lex Fridman (43:19.580)

that he says, I don't know why,

Douglas Murray (43:22.300)

gratitude is not an instinct that's been given to me.

Lex Fridman (43:30.980)

Yeah, you're not allowed.

Douglas Murray (43:32.180)

This is not, given the role of being the devil,

Lex Fridman (43:35.860)

this is not one of the things.

Douglas Murray (43:37.260)

Just not one of the things.

Lex Fridman (43:38.100)

And you think, and of course,

Douglas Murray (43:39.260)

only a genius of Dostoevsky's stature could,

Lex Fridman (43:42.060)

I mean, a lesser genius would have made a whole novel

Douglas Murray (43:45.100)

out of that insight.

Lex Fridman (43:47.060)

Only Dostoevsky can just throw it away

Douglas Murray (43:49.300)

because there's such an abundance of riches

Lex Fridman (43:51.420)

that he still has to get through,

Douglas Murray (43:53.500)

the structural problems aside.

Lex Fridman (43:55.300)

But the, but the, but the.

Douglas Murray (43:58.820)

The passive aggressive, the microaggression

Lex Fridman (44:02.140)

in this conversation is palpable.

Douglas Murray (44:04.420)

A little knife fight.

Lex Fridman (44:07.700)

No, but the reason I mention this is because of course,

Douglas Murray (44:09.940)

when I saw this, this is such a brilliant insight

Lex Fridman (44:13.460)

by Dostoevsky because why would gratitude

Lex Fridman (44:16.940)

not be a sentiment that the devil was capable of?

Lex Fridman (44:19.900)

The answer is of course that if the devil

Douglas Murray (44:22.820)

was capable of gratitude, he wouldn't be the devil.

Lex Fridman (44:25.980)

He'd be somebody else.

Douglas Murray (44:28.740)

He has to be incapable of gratitude.

Lex Fridman (44:31.460)

Do you think for Dostoevsky that was as strong of an insight

Lex Fridman (44:35.460)

as it is for you?

Lex Fridman (44:36.700)

Because I think that's a really powerful idea

Douglas Murray (44:39.460)

that with gratitude, you don't get the resentment

Lex Fridman (44:43.860)

that rots you from the core.

Douglas Murray (44:46.100)

Yes, I think it was one of the just endless things

Lex Fridman (44:48.900)

that he saw in us.

Lex Fridman (44:50.820)

And the way I put it is that, I mean,

Lex Fridman (44:54.020)

I also think of it in terms of the era of deconstruction,

Douglas Murray (44:57.940)

which is one of the things I'd like us to call

Lex Fridman (44:59.500)

the era that's now ending.

Douglas Murray (45:02.420)

The era of deconstruction was the era that started,

Lex Fridman (45:05.940)

let's say from the 60s onwards,

Lex Fridman (45:08.380)

and was originally an academic game

Lex Fridman (45:11.740)

that then spilled out into the wider culture,

Douglas Murray (45:13.740)

which was let's take everything apart.

Lex Fridman (45:16.980)

Let's pull it all apart.

Douglas Murray (45:19.540)

There are lots of problems with it.

Lex Fridman (45:20.900)

One is it's quite boring.

Douglas Murray (45:23.100)

You don't get an awful lot from it.

Lex Fridman (45:27.860)

You also have the problem of what children find

Douglas Murray (45:30.780)

when they try to do this with bicycles,

Lex Fridman (45:32.540)

which is they can take it apart quite easily,

Lex Fridman (45:34.420)

but they can't put it back together.

Lex Fridman (45:38.100)

And the era of taking things apart as a game

Douglas Murray (45:45.220)

is one we've lived through,

Lex Fridman (45:46.220)

and it's been highly destructive,

Lex Fridman (45:48.180)

but you can do it for quite a long time.

Lex Fridman (45:51.540)

I'm going to look at this society,

Lex Fridman (45:53.100)

and I'm going to take it apart by showing systemic problems.

Lex Fridman (45:56.620)

I'm going to, at the end of that, what have you got?

Lex Fridman (46:00.380)

What have you done?

Lex Fridman (46:01.220)

What have you achieved?

Douglas Murray (46:03.140)

We need to interrogate this.

Lex Fridman (46:05.460)

Okay, interrogate.

Douglas Murray (46:06.500)

By all means, ask questions,

Lex Fridman (46:07.420)

but interrogate as a deliberate hostility to this.

Douglas Murray (46:11.140)

I'm going to interrogate this thing and take it apart.

Lex Fridman (46:13.340)

And again, at the end of it, what have you got?

Douglas Murray (46:17.020)

Whether you're interrogating a text or a piece of music

Lex Fridman (46:21.180)

or an idea or a society, fine.

Douglas Murray (46:24.540)

Question, endlessly question.

Lex Fridman (46:26.300)

Yes, interrogate assumes it's all a criminal in a cell

Lex Fridman (46:33.540)

and it's guilty, and therefore it must be taken apart.

Lex Fridman (46:37.660)

And that's what we've been doing for decades in the West.

Lex Fridman (46:41.180)

And that's resentment.

Lex Fridman (46:43.780)

That's one byproduct of resentment.

Douglas Murray (46:46.180)

You can't build the thing, but you know how to take it apart.

Lex Fridman (46:50.980)

Is a little bit of resentment good?

Lex Fridman (46:53.500)

So you have that, I love Tom Waits,

Lex Fridman (46:56.940)

and he has a song where a little drop of,

Douglas Murray (47:00.220)

I like my Tom with a little drop of poison.

Lex Fridman (47:03.020)

Is it good to do that?

Lex Fridman (47:05.060)

Is it good to have a little bit of poison in your drink?

Lex Fridman (47:08.300)

Depends what the poison is,

Lex Fridman (47:09.620)

and it depends if you know not to have another drink.

Lex Fridman (47:13.700)

It might be the case, you find out, as some alcoholics do,

Douglas Murray (47:16.140)

that one was too many and 10 is not enough.

Lex Fridman (47:21.140)

So there's a natural, in this case,

Douglas Murray (47:25.020)

this kind of deconstruction is a slippery slope.

Lex Fridman (47:27.820)

It becomes an addiction, it becomes a drug,

Lex Fridman (47:29.820)

and you just can't stop.

Lex Fridman (47:31.100)

Well, you'd have to wean yourself off it

Lex Fridman (47:32.900)

and try to start creating again.

Lex Fridman (47:34.620)

You'd have to start trying to put things together again.

Douglas Murray (47:40.420)

Something I think might be in the throes of starting

Lex Fridman (47:45.180)

as it happens.

Douglas Murray (47:46.900)

Well, speaking of taking things apart

Lex Fridman (47:51.340)

and not putting them together again,

Douglas Murray (47:53.460)

the idea of critical race theory.

Lex Fridman (47:58.180)

Can you, to me, explain, so I'm an engineer

Lex Fridman (48:02.220)

and have not been actually paying attention much,

Lex Fridman (48:05.060)

unfortunately, to these things.

Douglas Murray (48:07.460)

None of the people in your field were

Lex Fridman (48:08.780)

until it comes along and smacks you in the face.

Douglas Murray (48:11.180)

I've had that line of thinking from MIT.

Lex Fridman (48:17.620)

I said, well, surely whatever you folks are busy about

Douglas Murray (48:22.060)

yelling at each other for is a thing at Harvard and Yale.

Lex Fridman (48:26.100)

It's not going to.

Douglas Murray (48:26.980)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Lex Fridman (48:28.820)

People in the STEM subjects thought it's not coming for us.

Douglas Murray (48:31.420)

It can't come to us and bang.

Lex Fridman (48:33.700)

Well, it hasn't quite been a bang.

Douglas Murray (48:36.660)

I'm not sure.

Lex Fridman (48:37.500)

Engineering is more safe than others.

Douglas Murray (48:39.580)

Yeah, so let's draw a line now

Lex Fridman (48:43.000)

between engineering and science.

Lex Fridman (48:45.380)

So I think engineering is,

Lex Fridman (48:48.220)

I'm sitting in a castle in the tallest tower

Douglas Murray (48:51.940)

with my pinky out drinking my martini saying, surely.

Lex Fridman (48:56.140)

The peasants below with their biology and their humanities

Douglas Murray (49:00.620)

will figure it all out.

Lex Fridman (49:02.400)

No, I'm just kidding.

Douglas Murray (49:03.240)

There's no pinky out.

Lex Fridman (49:04.400)

I drink vodka and I hang with the peasants.

Lex Fridman (49:07.420)

Okay, where is this?

Lex Fridman (49:08.260)

This metaphor has gone too far.

Lex Fridman (49:11.620)

Can you explain to this engineer

Lex Fridman (49:14.460)

what critical race theory is?

Lex Fridman (49:16.420)

Is it a term that's definable?

Lex Fridman (49:19.460)

Is there a tradition?

Lex Fridman (49:20.780)

Is there a history?

Lex Fridman (49:21.620)

What is good about it, what is bad about it?

Douglas Murray (49:24.260)

It is a tradition.

Lex Fridman (49:25.100)

It is a history.

Douglas Murray (49:25.940)

It's a school of thought.

Lex Fridman (49:26.760)

It started in the law roughly in the 1970s

Douglas Murray (49:30.220)

in some of the American academy.

Lex Fridman (49:32.740)

It spilled out.

Douglas Murray (49:33.740)

It always aimed to be an activist philosophy.

Lex Fridman (49:36.780)

People deny that now,

Lex Fridman (49:38.080)

but as I cite in The War in the West,

Lex Fridman (49:40.420)

the foundational texts say as much.

Douglas Murray (49:43.100)

This is an activist academic study.

Lex Fridman (49:48.280)

We're not just looking at the law.

Douglas Murray (49:50.660)

We seek to change the law.

Lex Fridman (49:53.620)

And it's built out into all of the other disciplines.

Douglas Murray (49:56.260)

I think there's a reason for that, by the way,

Lex Fridman (49:57.660)

which is it happened at the time

Douglas Murray (49:58.820)

that the humanities and others in America

Lex Fridman (50:00.500)

were increasingly weak and didn't know what to do,

Lex Fridman (50:03.660)

and they needed more games to play or new games to play.

Lex Fridman (50:07.820)

The psychologists got bored.

Douglas Murray (50:09.420)

Yeah, I mean, well, they needed tenure.

Lex Fridman (50:12.780)

They needed something to do.

Lex Fridman (50:14.620)

And I mean, it's not an original observation.

Lex Fridman (50:16.900)

Plenty of people have made this,

Lex Fridman (50:17.780)

but I mean, Neil Ferguson said it some time ago,

Lex Fridman (50:19.740)

for instance, that in the last 50 years

Douglas Murray (50:23.420)

in American academia, certainly in humanities departments,

Lex Fridman (50:26.420)

when somebody dies out who's a great scholar in something,

Douglas Murray (50:29.980)

that's just not replaced by somebody of equal stature.

Lex Fridman (50:33.340)

They're replaced by somebody who does theory

Douglas Murray (50:36.100)

or critical race theory.

Lex Fridman (50:38.100)

They're replaced by somebody who does the modern games.

Douglas Murray (50:41.580)

Somebody dies out who's a great historian of, say,

Lex Fridman (50:44.500)

I don't know, it's the one that's on my mind,

Douglas Murray (50:46.960)

Russian history or Russian literature,

Lex Fridman (50:48.740)

and they're not replaced by a similar scholar.

Lex Fridman (50:53.180)

In his observation and in yours, is this a recent development?

Lex Fridman (50:57.660)

It's happened in the last few decades, for sure.

Lex Fridman (50:59.940)

And it's sped up.

Lex Fridman (51:01.500)

Is it because we've gotten to the bottom

Lex Fridman (51:02.940)

of some of the biggest questions of history?

Lex Fridman (51:04.960)

No, it's because we're willing to forget the big questions.

Lex Fridman (51:09.300)

Because it's more fun to, big questions aren't as fun?

Lex Fridman (51:12.180)

No, partly it's, no, I should stress that partly isn't,

Douglas Murray (51:15.460)

this is in the weeds, but partly it's a result

Lex Fridman (51:17.620)

of the hyper specialization in academia.

Douglas Murray (51:19.940)

You know, if you said you'd like to write

Lex Fridman (51:24.780)

your dissertation on Hobbes,

Douglas Murray (51:31.460)

if you wanted to say something central

Lex Fridman (51:36.660)

to Kant's thought or Hegel's, I mean, that's not popular.

Douglas Murray (51:42.780)

What's popular is to take somebody way down the line

Lex Fridman (51:45.920)

from that, because there's a feeling

Douglas Murray (51:47.320)

that that's all been done.

Lex Fridman (51:49.960)

So you take something way, way, way down the line

Douglas Murray (51:52.420)

from that that's much less important,

Lex Fridman (51:54.220)

and then you sort of play with that.

Lex Fridman (51:57.180)

And I think most people, anyone who's watching

Lex Fridman (51:58.920)

who's been in a philosophy department

Douglas Murray (52:00.980)

or anything else in recent years will know that tendency.

Lex Fridman (52:04.340)

By the way, there's a very practical consequence of this.

Douglas Murray (52:06.900)

I saw this at the end of my friend Roger Scruton's life

Lex Fridman (52:09.020)

when he would occasionally, he didn't get tenure

Douglas Murray (52:12.420)

at universities, but he would occasionally be flown in

Lex Fridman (52:15.660)

even by his enemies to teach courses

Douglas Murray (52:18.220)

in various universities in basics of philosophy,

Lex Fridman (52:20.980)

because there was no one in the department able to do it.

Douglas Murray (52:24.380)

Like he would go in and teach for a semester,

Lex Fridman (52:29.500)

you know, Hegel and Kant and Schopenhauer and others,

Douglas Murray (52:34.020)

because there was no one to do it,

Lex Fridman (52:36.120)

because they were all playing with the things

Douglas Murray (52:38.100)

way, way, way down the road from this.

Lex Fridman (52:40.620)

So that had already happened,

Lex Fridman (52:42.940)

and people were searching for new games to play,

Lex Fridman (52:45.240)

and the critical race theory stuff forced its way in,

Douglas Murray (52:50.060)

partly in the way that all of this

Lex Fridman (52:52.540)

that's now known as anti racism does,

Douglas Murray (52:54.520)

which is in a sort of bullying tone

Lex Fridman (52:56.760)

of saying if you don't follow this.

Douglas Murray (52:58.180)

It's the same way that all the things

Lex Fridman (52:59.900)

that are called studies,

Douglas Murray (53:01.460)

I think everything called studies in the humanities

Lex Fridman (53:04.360)

should be shut down.

Douglas Murray (53:06.920)

Because of the activist element.

Lex Fridman (53:09.420)

They're all activists, gay studies and queer studies,

Lex Fridman (53:12.760)

and nothing good has ever come from it.

Lex Fridman (53:16.360)

Nothing good.

Douglas Murray (53:17.400)

To push back, is it obvious that activism

Lex Fridman (53:21.400)

is a sign of a flaw in a discipline?

Lex Fridman (53:24.720)

So isn't it?

Lex Fridman (53:26.040)

It's a sign of the death of the discipline.

Douglas Murray (53:27.840)

It's a sign the discipline's over.

Lex Fridman (53:29.800)

But isn't it a good goal to have for discipline

Lex Fridman (53:33.000)

to enact change, positive change in the world?

Lex Fridman (53:36.460)

Or is that for politicians to do with the findings

Lex Fridman (53:41.240)

of science, not the scientists themselves?

Lex Fridman (53:44.240)

Why create an ideology and then set out

Douglas Murray (53:47.040)

to find disciplines that are weakly put together

Lex Fridman (53:49.960)

to try to back up your political ideology?

Lex Fridman (53:53.560)

So ideology should not be part of science or of humanities.

Lex Fridman (54:00.400)

Why would you, I mean, anyone could do it.

Douglas Murray (54:05.640)

You could decide to go in and be wildly right wing

Lex Fridman (54:09.520)

about something and only do things

Douglas Murray (54:11.320)

that prove your right wing ideas.

Lex Fridman (54:13.720)

Be fantastically antiacademic,

Douglas Murray (54:16.280)

fantastically anti science.

Lex Fridman (54:18.400)

It's an absurd way to mix up activism and academia.

Lex Fridman (54:25.560)

And it's absolutely rife.

Lex Fridman (54:26.960)

And Critical Race Theory is one of the ones

Douglas Murray (54:28.760)

that completely polluted the academy.

Lex Fridman (54:31.680)

Yeah, and there's been dark moments throughout history,

Douglas Murray (54:34.360)

both during World War II with both communism

Lex Fridman (54:38.040)

and Nazism, fascism that infiltrated science

Lex Fridman (54:44.400)

and then corrupted it.

Lex Fridman (54:45.920)

Yes, I mean, for instance, also,

Douglas Murray (54:47.840)

let's face it, in science, as in everything else,

Lex Fridman (54:50.560)

there are dark, difficult things.

Douglas Murray (54:53.720)

It's much better we know about them, face up to them

Lex Fridman (54:55.840)

and try to find a way socially to deal with them

Douglas Murray (54:59.240)

than that you leave them in the hands of some activist

Lex Fridman (55:02.640)

who wants to do stuff with them.

Douglas Murray (55:04.960)

Some of my best friends are activists.

Lex Fridman (55:07.720)

I'm just kidding, okay.

Douglas Murray (55:09.080)

None of my best friends are activists.

Lex Fridman (55:11.240)

That's how it should be.

Douglas Murray (55:13.960)

Well, I was kidding because I don't have any friends,

Lex Fridman (55:15.880)

but okay.

Douglas Murray (55:18.120)

No, I'm trying to gain some pity points.

Lex Fridman (55:22.960)

Okay, so to return.

Douglas Murray (55:24.520)

You have your clubhouse friends.

Lex Fridman (55:27.040)

Screaming away like deranged maniacs.

Douglas Murray (55:31.280)

Now, I'm anti clubhouse, by the way,

Lex Fridman (55:32.400)

because the only time I heard it was at Brett Weinstein one

Douglas Murray (55:34.720)

when he did that.

Lex Fridman (55:36.360)

I don't know if you heard that, early in clubhouse.

Douglas Murray (55:38.280)

I was invited to clubhouse by various people.

Lex Fridman (55:39.960)

He was like, oh, this is a really great civilized way

Douglas Murray (55:41.520)

to hang out and talk with interesting people.

Lex Fridman (55:43.600)

And I downloaded the app and I got on one,

Douglas Murray (55:46.520)

because Brett Weinstein said,

Lex Fridman (55:48.480)

I'm doing this conversation and I listened

Lex Fridman (55:50.120)

and it was the maddest damn discussion I've ever heard.

Lex Fridman (55:54.160)

Was it something about biology?

Lex Fridman (55:55.600)

Something about, was it during COVID times?

Lex Fridman (55:58.960)

At some point, Brett said,

Douglas Murray (56:01.200)

I'm an evolutionary biologist.

Lex Fridman (56:06.200)

And somebody else started saying, you're a eugenicist.

Lex Fridman (56:09.760)

And he said, no, I'm an evolutionary biologist.

Lex Fridman (56:12.440)

And somebody said, that's the same thing.

Lex Fridman (56:14.920)

And it just went on like that.

Lex Fridman (56:16.520)

And Brett desperately tried to explain,

Douglas Murray (56:19.000)

that's not the same thing as being a eugenicist.

Lex Fridman (56:21.600)

And he lost the clubhouse room.

Douglas Murray (56:24.040)

They thought that was the same thing.

Lex Fridman (56:25.720)

He'd come, it horribly reminded me of a time some years ago

Douglas Murray (56:29.120)

when a British newspaper ran a sort of realizing

Lex Fridman (56:32.680)

that the only thing you can unite people on

Douglas Murray (56:34.240)

in sexual ethics is revulsion against pedophilia,

Lex Fridman (56:37.640)

ran an anti pedo campaign.

Lex Fridman (56:40.000)

And shortly after pediatricians offices

Lex Fridman (56:43.720)

were torched in North of England

Douglas Murray (56:46.000)

by a mob who hadn't read the whole sign.

Lex Fridman (56:48.880)

Yeah, well, to me, like I said,

Douglas Murray (56:53.020)

a little bit of poison is good for the town, so.

Lex Fridman (56:55.420)

Anyhow, sorry, I interrupted you

Douglas Murray (56:56.840)

with flattering you with their people on clubhouse.

Lex Fridman (56:58.760)

I have many, I have multiples of friends, yes.

Douglas Murray (57:04.320)

Okay, we didn't get to some of the ideas

Lex Fridman (57:08.080)

of critical race theory.

Lex Fridman (57:09.480)

What exactly is it?

Lex Fridman (57:11.940)

I'm actually in part asking this question quite genuinely.

Douglas Murray (57:14.480)

Yeah, it's an attempt to look at everything

Lex Fridman (57:17.580)

among other things through the lens of race

Lex Fridman (57:20.220)

and to add race into things where it may not be

Lex Fridman (57:24.360)

as a way of adding,

Douglas Murray (57:26.220)

I'm trying to give the most generous estimation,

Lex Fridman (57:30.040)

to add race in as a conversation

Douglas Murray (57:31.880)

in a place where it may not have been in the conversation.

Lex Fridman (57:36.960)

And that means history too?

Douglas Murray (57:38.600)

The history of racism.

Lex Fridman (57:40.440)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, all history.

Lex Fridman (57:43.320)

And to look at it through these particular lenses.

Lex Fridman (57:48.240)

I mean, there's a certain, like all these things,

Douglas Murray (57:50.800)

there's a certain logic in it.

Lex Fridman (57:51.880)

Like with feminist studies or something,

Douglas Murray (57:54.960)

I mean, is there a utility in looking back

Lex Fridman (57:57.280)

through undoubtedly male dominated histories

Lex Fridman (57:59.880)

and asking where the more silent female voice was?

Lex Fridman (58:03.640)

Yes, very interesting.

Douglas Murray (58:06.100)

Not endlessly interesting.

Lex Fridman (58:08.440)

And can't be put exactly on the same par as,

Lex Fridman (58:12.800)

but it has a utility.

Lex Fridman (58:16.660)

It's that endlessly, sorry to interrupt,

Douglas Murray (58:18.480)

that endlessly part that seems to get us

Lex Fridman (58:20.240)

into trouble a lot here.

Lex Fridman (58:21.600)

Well, because of this thing of where do you stop?

Lex Fridman (58:24.300)

And that's always, I talked about this in my last book

Douglas Murray (58:30.920)

in the manners of crowds.

Lex Fridman (58:32.120)

It's one of the big conundrums in activist movements

Lex Fridman (58:35.560)

and particularly in activist academia.

Lex Fridman (58:38.520)

Where would you stop?

Douglas Murray (58:39.360)

It's not clear because you've got a job in it.

Lex Fridman (58:42.080)

You've got a pension in it.

Douglas Murray (58:44.000)

You've got, your only esteem in society

Lex Fridman (58:48.480)

is in keeping this gig going.

Lex Fridman (58:50.300)

I mean, is there any likelihood?

Lex Fridman (58:55.660)

Have you ever, there's the old academic joke, isn't it?

Douglas Murray (58:58.780)

The end of every conference, the only thing everyone

Lex Fridman (59:00.900)

agrees on is that we must have another conference

Douglas Murray (59:02.740)

like this one.

Lex Fridman (59:05.220)

It's the one thing they always agree on.

Douglas Murray (59:07.300)

This conference is so great, we must have another one.

Lex Fridman (59:09.780)

Well, that's a criticism you could apply

Douglas Murray (59:11.300)

to a lot of disciplines.

Lex Fridman (59:12.460)

Of course.

Douglas Murray (59:13.300)

Civil engineering, bridge building.

Lex Fridman (59:15.460)

At a certain point, do we need any more bridges?

Lex Fridman (59:19.060)

Can we just fly everywhere?

Lex Fridman (59:22.340)

So.

Douglas Murray (59:23.180)

At the very least, you need to keep the bridges up.

Lex Fridman (59:26.100)

Sure, and they would, critical race theory folks

Douglas Murray (59:28.820)

would probably make the same argument.

Lex Fridman (59:30.940)

At the very least, we need to keep the racism out.

Douglas Murray (59:35.100)

We have to make sure we don't descend into the racism.

Lex Fridman (59:37.700)

It assumes all the time that we are living

Douglas Murray (59:39.820)

on the cusp of the return of the KKK.

Lex Fridman (59:42.320)

Right.

Douglas Murray (59:43.160)

Which is totally wrong.

Lex Fridman (59:44.580)

I mean, it's a massive.

Douglas Murray (59:45.540)

You say that now, until the KKK armies march in.

Lex Fridman (59:49.940)

We don't always, we can't always predict the future.

Douglas Murray (59:52.500)

We can't always predict the future,

Lex Fridman (59:53.820)

and you can always say you should be careful,

Lex Fridman (59:58.460)

but you've also gotta be careful of people