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you can support me there. And I just want to

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thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put

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out the amount of material that I do. I can

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do what I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred

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Years Together and everything else, the things that Thomas and

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I are doing together on condinal philosophy, it's all because

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of you. And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able

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to thank you enough. So thank you. The pekan Yonashow

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dot com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back

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to the Peaking Yona Show. Mike Maxwell from Imperium presses back.

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How you doing, Mike, I'm doing very well.

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Speaker 2: It's been a little while since we've talked, and I'm

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really looking forward to this one.

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Speaker 1: Well, it seems that we talk when you put a

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book out, personally put a.

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Speaker 2: Book that probably was the last time we talked, actually.

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Speaker 1: And so let's jump just jump right into this. You

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have a new book out, Tribal Future of the West.

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As soon as I as soon as I got the

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overall theme, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, this is

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definitely something I want to I want to talk to

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Mike about. So if you don't mind, I'm just gonna

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I'm just going to start because there was a bunch

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of there's a bunch of topics we can hit here,

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so let's start with this. Basically, it seems like the

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overriding theme is that Western sovereignty is understrain and it's evolving,

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that there's an evolving nature of it. So how did

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you start noticing this?

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Speaker 2: Well, the book has quite a long prehistory. Actually, one

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of our guys who's actually a co host of mine

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on hearth Fire Radio, which is a podcast network that

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we've built, he said to me. You know, this is

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sort of the culmination of a lot of what Imperia

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has been doing for a few years, putting out books

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like the the Guetano Mosca book about about the mafia,

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putting out the I mean, the Ancient City. That's when

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we put out ages ago, you know, Chris Bond's Nemesis,

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that's another old one. A lot of the stuff has

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sort of been moving in this direction, and I think

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what I've tried to do here anyway, what I've tried

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to do is put the pieces together. So it really

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started as a series of observations over course of years,

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little things, little cultural cracks that turned out to be

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the edges of much bigger pattern, I suppose. So the

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first one I've been blogging about on my substack for

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a long time called I call it the Archaic Revival.

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And for years I'd been seeing the return of like

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primitive and Gothic aesthetics, the reappearance of pre Axial age

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forms of thinking. So this is like before the era

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of the you know, the Buddha and Zoroaster and everything like,

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these very ancient tribal forms of thinking. The decline of abstraction, universalism,

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and even aesthetically too, like things like the rise of

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modernist aesthetics in the twentieth century. This is not something

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that's just started happening yesterday, right like Picasso to me

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looks very primitive, the Vorticists, and even to a degree,

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Surrealism looks very archaic and primitive to me.

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Speaker 3: So I've noticed.

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Speaker 2: I noticed that first, and then of course I came

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to grips with Karl Schmidt and his friend enemy distinction

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completely rejects this idea of liberal idea of a glo

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global village. He is kind of like a twentieth century

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thinker that describes a very ancient political reality, which is

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that politics is about who you stand with and who

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you stand against. And once you see this, I mean basically,

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what he's doing is he's giving us the analytical, analytical

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framework through which we can understand tribalism. Ultimately, another thing

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I started noticing and reading the Moscow book was a

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big eye opener for this, but I sort of noticed

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it a little bit earlier too, is that criminal organizations

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have been acting kind of like many states.

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Speaker 3: There was a sort of.

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Speaker 2: Aha moment for me realizing that these substate actors actually

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wielded what you might call sovereign functions, and my understanding

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of sovereignty comes out of absolutism. That would be a

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little bit of a digression for.

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Speaker 3: Now, but basically.

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Speaker 2: The idea is that the sovereign stands above the law.

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And I noticed that there were certain non state actors

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that basically do that.

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Speaker 3: They decide the exception with.

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Speaker 2: In their own little remit, their own little geographical area.

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And the tipping point for me for understanding this was

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a documentary about the Golden Dawn in Greece. There was

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a woman that was being interviewed, and this was during

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the Eurozone crisis, around twenty fifteen, and she said something

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that stuck with me. She said that during this Eurozone crisis,

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the police stopped responding because there was too much going on.

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And then she said, so we started calling the Golden Dawn,

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And that line kind of hit me. It appeared to

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me that even in a supposedly modern European democracy, sovereignty

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had actually evolved overnight, not to the state, not to

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an NGO, not to a technocratic bureaucracy, but to a

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local and straightforwardly tribal organization, you know. And then this

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was kind of the beginning of really the thesis crystallizing

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in my mind over a period of years that sovereign

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functions appear to be leaking downward and outward and just

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everywhere away from the center. The center, that is to say,

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the official power in society. The sovereign is losing capacity.

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And you see these archaic forms of order resurfacing, of

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which the dissident right is one in terms of its

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the revival identitarianism seems to me something very ancient coming back,

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and you get what can really only be described as

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tribal authority filling the vacuum. Now by this, I don't

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necessarily mean guys running around in loincloths with spears and

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things like that. But what I mean is a personalist,

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face to face loyalty to a set of people, or

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a loyalty to a concrete group, as opposed to loyalty

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to an idea, loyalty to an abstraction, including an abstraction

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of the nation. Now, the nation is somewhere between tribalism

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and liberalism, but we might get into this. It's sort

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of an unstable halfway house between one and the other.

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And now it seems like we are moving away from

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this globalized, abstract propositional identity politics towards a more straightforwardly

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tribal politics. So when I started talking about this, because

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I've been talking about retribalization for about two years now,

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people thought it was like kooky or larpie or overblown

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or whatever, and maybe Mike's just being metaphorical about tribes.

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But I really wasn't. And this view that I've come

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to is not based on like it's not a nostalgia

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for the ancient world. This is about hard analysis of

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long term trends of elite fragmentation, of the collapse of

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our shared realities, what I've called the epistemic divorce of

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just the physical and material capacity that has declined, and

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the rise of what I call in the book these

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para sovereigns, para sovereign actors.

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Speaker 3: There's a huge.

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Speaker 2: Like, what we're seeing today is essentially a perfect storm

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building to power and command and sovereignty and imperative away

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from the nation state. And I think that this is

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something that is going to come on astoundingly fast. A

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lot of people are going to be taken by surprise.

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And what I want is for people to see it

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before it happens. So that's really what this book is about.

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Speaker 1: What will you say to people who would point to

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civilizations that still exists that are somewhat cohesive, like China.

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Whenever tribalism is brought up or secession or city states,

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people always point, well, China is not falling apart over there,

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They're not splitting up. They will just with them being

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a jugger, not they will just roll over you and

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eat you.

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Speaker 3: Up right, Yes, And China.

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Speaker 2: Is what I would call a centripetal force, right, They're

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a force that is pushing things back to the center

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in the West because an external foe is a very

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very strong force to like muster people together. It's a

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big part of why states came into being in the

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first place at of feudalism. And China itself is obviously

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very cohesive.

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Speaker 3: It's on the rise.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, it's a good counterpoint here, like because at

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first glanced China kind of looks like the anti tribal

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future itself. It's this hyper centralized leviathan with a cohesive elite. Right,

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They've ironclad discipline in the CCP, a powerful surveillance state,

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they've got a deep industrial base, and many other things

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going for them now. I would point out first that

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China is strong today because it never really liberalized, right,

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like there was a sort of there were overtures made

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towards this in the nineteen eighties with Dungjoping, But much

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of what is eroding the West is the product of

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liberal individualism, and this forms a big portion of the

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analytical framework of the book. China does not have what

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we might call the epistemic divorce, this idea of no

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shared truth, like the collapse of grand narratives and the

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fragmentation of people into epistemic silos. They don't have that.

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They also don't have elite fragmentation. Their elite is very cohesive.

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They don't have mass migration, they don't have minoritarian politics,

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their national identity is quite strong. So it never really

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accepted the premises of liberalism, but rather it maintained a

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single elite narrative, a very high degree of censorship and

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a strong bureaucratic oversight, and a very very limited degree

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of pluralism. So this delays the devolutionary pressures that are

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hitting the West because they're going to hit the West first,

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but doesn't actually eliminate those pressures. China is facing its

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own centrifugal forces. These are the forces pushing outward and

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pushing things away from each other. China is still in

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its high centralization phase, maybe where the West was in

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the mid to early to mid twentieth century or something.

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But there are several factors I would say that would

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indicate future strain in China. China's social contract. You might say,

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I don't like that term, but in any case, that's

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maybe just a vestigial libertarianism thing for me. I just

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don't like the idea of the social contract. But anyway,

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everybody knows what I mean. Their social contract is based

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on prosperity. And in China today growth is starting to

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collapse and the middle class is under substantial strain. They've

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got a property bubble that kind of makes puts hours

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in the shade. It is absolutely like I was in China.

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Speaker 3: I did a.

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Speaker 2: What do you call it, like a layover in Guangzhou

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a couple of years ago, and for various reasons, the

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flight was delayed, so we had to we had to

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go get a hotel in the in the city, and

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this is like, you know, this is not Beijing, This

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is like, you know, not many people that speak English

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in the city. Right, It's like it's a gigantic megalopolis,

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but it's a very Chinese place. And I noticed, you know,

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they gave us a one, like a twenty four hour

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visa to leave the airport because they're a serious country

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and you have to follow the rules.

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Speaker 3: So they gave us a.

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Speaker 2: Twenty four hour visa and we went did a little

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bit of exploring around this city, and I noticed that

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there was just an absolutely colossal, colossal amount of building.

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This was about now that I think about, it was, yeah,

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about three years ago.

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Speaker 1: Something like that.

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Speaker 2: And there is just it's the property bubble there is

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absolutely astounding and they and economic factors or economic indicators

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are showing that there's a slow down happening. And just

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like our property bubble, it depends upon perpetual asset inflation

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and things. There is just their economy doesn't add up.

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Speaker 3: Basically. You know, they're.

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Speaker 2: Doing amazing things, and I have great respect for what

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the Chinese are doing, but it is not a healthy economy,

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nor is ours of course. Now, also, China has amographic problem.

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It's a somewhat of a different problem than the West has,

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but their birth rates are catastrophically low, and because of

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the one child policy, China is aging faster than any

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society has in history.

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Speaker 3: It has a huge, huge, you know.

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Speaker 2: Like you look at that population curve, it's got a

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huge top heavy curve at the very top, and it's

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got this China actually, I believe their population is now

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shrinking and they have an elderly population, which you know,

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this feeds into the economic problems because they have lower productivity,

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they have higher welfare costs, and they have younger cohorts

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that are restless and overburdened. And so this is a

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potent centrifugal force. And the other thing about China is

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that they are quite regional. The coastal China is effectively

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its own world, right, It's not that different from the West.

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I mean, it's different in many ways, but it's you know,

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it's still it's rich, it's globalized, it's connected, it's yeah,

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it's not dev os Man, but they have their own

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sort of version of that. Whereas inland China is poorer,

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it's very much more rural and more tribal. Effectively, there

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are two Chinas economically and culturally, so this creates a

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kind of social cleavage. Which is going to be very

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hard for them to paper over. And also they have

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ethnic cleavages as well. Within China, this huge country with

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billions of people, there are powerful ethnic nations.

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Speaker 3: They have the Hui, they have.

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Speaker 2: The Tibetans, they have the Uigers, and these people have

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never fully assimilated. And these are latentable identities that are

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really only held in place under coercive pressure. And China

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also has a problem that I call elite overproduction. It's

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not my term, it comes from Peter Turchin. And this

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means that China, and this is a problem with the

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in the West too, is producing much much more, many

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more educated aspirants than elite positions. And this is a

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civilizational warning sign. It's almost a predictor of fragmentation, of

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elite fragmentation, and that means societal fragmentation. So this centralization

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today that they're undergoing may actually mask does mask quite

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a few forces that will later yield fragmentation. And even

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at its most centralized, China still has built in tribal elements.

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There are clan networks there, there are regional patronage systems.

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Wealth structures are concentrated still in families very much they

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have their own, you know, local criminal syndicates, some of

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which govern in tandem with the central state, right, and

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they still have like informal governance at the village level,

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especially obviously in the rural inlands. So they do have

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tribal substrates that are kind of sitting underneath the surface

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of this what looks like a very modern state and

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China's authoritarian strength. The thing about authoritarianism is that it

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doesn't fragment slowly what we're seeing in the West, which

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is a kind of authoritarian but it's a very soft authoritarianism.

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Hard authoritarianism tends to splinter very suddenly when the strong

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center breaks. When that happens, and actually I go into

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this about ancient China in the book, you get the

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reassertion of power by regional bosses. These factional alliances will

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harden very quickly into sovereign actors. Ethnic minorities will begin

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to push for autonomy. You'll get criminal underworld elements that

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flourish and then become actual governors in their own right.

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This happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and

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this has happened repeatedly in Chinese history. This is not

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something that is hypothetical. Happened with the end of the

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Han dynasty, the end of the Tang dynasty, the collapse

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of the yuang Yuan, and the warlord era. Even in

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the twentieth century after the Qing dynasty fell, and even

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after that, even after the imperial period, with the fall

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of the nationalists on the mainland, right with Mao himself,

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that was an instance of a kind of tribalism. So

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China's political cycle has always oscillated between this imperial center

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and warlordism. And so anyway, I'm kind of going on

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for a long time here, But in the big picture,

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China looks like a very anti fragmentation power. But and

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it may actually, as I say, act as a centripetal force,

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pushing went Western states to unify out of fear of

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their rise. In the medium term, China is facing a

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lot of the same pressures that we are in the West,

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demographic collapse and elite overproduction and things like that. But

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it will face these same pressures later and perhaps more

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violently in the long term. I don't think China is

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at all exempt from this cycle of sovereign devolution. If anything,

306
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it embodies this classic imperial pattern maybe better as well

307
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or better than any other society. So it's under the

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surface you get these deep structural vulnerabilities, and I think

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it's only looking at it in the short term where

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it looks strong.

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Speaker 1: That was a good diversion though. I think that helps

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a lot when you can look at something that's different

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from the West and see that it's suffering the same issues.

314
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So I wanted to move on to institutional decay in

315
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the West, and one of the things that you brought

316
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up was it just bureaucracies are inefficient and technocracy has limitations.

317
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I think the bureaucracy is pretty clear to people. But

318
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when you say technocratic limitations, that seem to butt up

319
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:07,480
against the people who are screaming about Palanteer and Peter

320
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Thiel and a panopticon, which may be something that they

321
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try to go towards. But are you saying that you

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you doubt whether they're they're going to even have that

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ability at this point?

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Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I definitely do. Now.

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Speaker 2: In framing this thesis, I I've tried to be very

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very careful because the title and the general scope and

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thesis of the book can very easily sound alarmist, and

328
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that is absolutely not what I it's not what I want, right.

329
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But and so as a result of that, what I've

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tried to do is I've tried to consider there's a

331
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whole chapter on, you know, on counter arguments, and there's

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a separate chapter on like centralizing forces. So you know,

333
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maybe we should talk a little bit about technocratic governance

334
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and what it is actually and why it works and

335
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also and then I think will be in a position

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to understand why it will actually fail.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 3: So the man in the.

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Speaker 2: Street tends to think that the West is run by politicians,

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but in reality it's handled by technocrats.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: This is something that James Burnham explained gosh, like eighty

343
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years ago now or something like that. Right, this is

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the Weberian administrative state that's run by regulators and scientists

345
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and financial experts and bankers and things like that. Right,

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it's the whole idea that no matter who's elected, you

347
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still have this machinery that keeps society running.

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Speaker 3: And for decades it did actually keep things running. Right.

349
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Speaker 2: But in the long arc of history, technocracy is a

350
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temporary phase. It was really powerful in the twentieth century, right,

351
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because you had these huge bureaucracies institutions were fairly stable,

352
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At least in our backyard, they were fairly stable. You

353
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had like expert based governance and things like that, And

354
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technocracy's strength came from like, technocracy is something the Jordan

355
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Peterson's and Stephen Pinker's and.

356
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Speaker 3: Those folks of the world.

357
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Speaker 2: They think of technocracy as like the ideal form of

358
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governance or just like what good governance looks like, because

359
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of course you will listen to the experts. Of course

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we want to have the smartest guys in the room

361
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running the show. But technocracy is actually it's really a luxury.

362
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It's actually something that we can afford. And you need

363
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a lot in place to make technocracy work.

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Speaker 3: You need to have high trust.

365
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Speaker 2: You need to have a society of very, very high trust,

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so that people believe in the experts, so that when

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Anthony Fauci says something, people listen instead of viewing him

368
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as an enemy or a mouthpiece for their political opponents

369
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or for their ethnic opponents or.

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Speaker 3: Something like that.

371
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Speaker 2: Right, So you need that high trust is very important.

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You also need a very complex society because just by

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the very nature of technocracy, you need specialists. Essentially, that's

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what it is. It's the rule by specialist. So you

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need a modern economy, you need very large and well

376
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maintained infrastructures and things like that. You also need prosperity.

377
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This is really important.

378
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Speaker 3: You know.

379
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Speaker 2: Prosperity is like you know, when technocracy delivers prosperity, this

380
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,440
you know, feeds into high trust, right like when when

381
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things are good, people will trust the experts and trust

382
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:26,759
the science, and they'll get vaccinated and they will you know,

383
00:27:27,039 --> 00:27:29,799
they'll be happy with very large and expensive public works

384
00:27:29,839 --> 00:27:31,240
projects and things like that.

385
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 3: I guess what else do you need here?

386
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:39,039
Speaker 2: You need fundamentally, you need a coherent elite. You need

387
00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:45,119
a managerial class that all speaks the same language. So like,

388
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,920
technocracy is kind of like this, the centripetal heart really

389
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,400
of the modern state. It binds society together through competence

390
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:57,440
and predictability and this continuity no matter who comes in,

391
00:27:57,640 --> 00:28:00,880
even if it's an evil Trump, you know that the

392
00:28:01,279 --> 00:28:05,839
deep state is going to keep things rolling. Now, there

393
00:28:05,839 --> 00:28:10,000
are some problems. The main problem is that we have

394
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:15,400
declining competence, and this is being driven by factors that

395
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,480
it's not just that we've made bad decisions. It's not

396
00:28:18,759 --> 00:28:22,599
just that we have put the wrong people in positions

397
00:28:22,599 --> 00:28:26,559
of power. There are systemic pressures that are pushing down

398
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,799
competence over time. This is something that doctor ed Dutton

399
00:28:30,839 --> 00:28:34,519
talks about in his books, which is the decline of intelligence.

400
00:28:35,079 --> 00:28:40,119
We are now on average fifteen IQ points less intelligent

401
00:28:40,519 --> 00:28:43,759
than we were in the Victorian age. That's like the

402
00:28:43,799 --> 00:28:47,759
difference between well, a technocratic elite and a school teacher

403
00:28:48,319 --> 00:28:52,160
or something like that, you know what I mean. So,

404
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:55,759
and this is according to him, and I actually agree

405
00:28:55,799 --> 00:29:02,000
with this, driven by the relaxation of Darwinian pressures. So

406
00:29:02,079 --> 00:29:05,000
basically we've just like, it's too easy for us, there's

407
00:29:05,799 --> 00:29:09,079
no competition and all of that, right, So we are

408
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:16,240
objectively getting less intelligent, whatever the cause is. And not

409
00:29:16,279 --> 00:29:19,920
only that, but the bureaucracy is now drowning in its

410
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:25,279
own proceduralism. It's too big, it's too rigid, it moves

411
00:29:25,599 --> 00:29:29,559
too slowly, and it is now basically unable to deliver

412
00:29:29,759 --> 00:29:36,759
basic results. And this corrodes its moral authority. So you know,

413
00:29:36,799 --> 00:29:41,480
we have this declining legitimacy that is coming in and

414
00:29:42,039 --> 00:29:45,799
because as their performance worsens, the trust that I mentioned

415
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:50,720
upfront declines, and people are no longer just willing to

416
00:29:50,799 --> 00:29:55,480
accept what Anthony Fauci says, right, because well, we can

417
00:29:55,519 --> 00:30:00,599
see what happened in twenty twenty whatever, so that was

418
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:05,119
all about It was not about public health. So this

419
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:11,400
citizens no longer accepting what the technocratic elite, the managerial

420
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:16,359
elite says, brings in this epistemic divorce thing, and the

421
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:20,519
question comes up, who's like, whose data are we looking at?

422
00:30:20,559 --> 00:30:23,160
What experts do you we mean when you say trust

423
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:29,279
the science, which science, right, because quite obviously there are

424
00:30:29,279 --> 00:30:35,799
certain their entire branches of science which are now effectively fiction, right,

425
00:30:36,039 --> 00:30:40,559
like things like you know, sociology and well, genomics is

426
00:30:40,599 --> 00:30:46,079
still pretty hard science, but even it is, well it's

427
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:50,000
too dangerous, you know what I mean? Like whose models

428
00:30:50,039 --> 00:30:53,599
are we falling following? And this has led to the

429
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:56,759
replication crisis, which I think it's very interesting. It was

430
00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:59,079
a huge story about two or three years ago, but

431
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:00,720
nobody's talking about it anymore.

432
00:31:01,079 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 3: But that's not.

433
00:31:01,599 --> 00:31:04,759
Speaker 2: Because it's been solved. It's just because of the very

434
00:31:04,839 --> 00:31:09,440
nature of academia itself, which is essentially there. They fetishize novelty,

435
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:13,279
They want the newest, and like anything that is overturning,

436
00:31:13,559 --> 00:31:18,960
like established norms, gets funding and whatever is like, you know,

437
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:26,079
proving what we've known forever is ignored. So anyway, the

438
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:28,960
competence is declined the legit and as a result, the

439
00:31:29,079 --> 00:31:33,799
legitimacy has declined, and the decline of legitimacy moves into

440
00:31:33,839 --> 00:31:40,039
this epistemic fragmentation. And meanwhile, the bureaucracy as it has matured,

441
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:45,079
has become too complex. There's too many agencies. They all

442
00:31:45,119 --> 00:31:48,480
have like overlapping mandates, and they compete with each other,

443
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,440
and they're all careerists and they have the wrong incentives,

444
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:56,799
and this is driving internal factionalism within the elite. These

445
00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:02,720
bureaucracies have become totally sclerotic. They have competing priorities, and

446
00:32:03,119 --> 00:32:08,400
when these agencies, like the bureaucratic agencies, when they pursue

447
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:13,359
these competing agendas, this is when the center dissolves. You know,

448
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:18,440
Like our guys tend to look favorably or at least

449
00:32:18,839 --> 00:32:25,319
less unfavorably upon the third Reich, you know. But they

450
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:29,599
also they had this idea at the time where what

451
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:33,200
you would basically do is set a number of different

452
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:37,039
agencies to try to achieve the same goal and sort

453
00:32:37,079 --> 00:32:40,200
of let them fight it out and may the best

454
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,359
man Win. It was a kind of application of Darwinism

455
00:32:43,599 --> 00:32:47,640
to bureaucracy, and that didn't turn out very well because

456
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:51,759
you need to coordinate. So this is driving these you know,

457
00:32:53,039 --> 00:32:58,680
overlapping competing priorities are driving elite fragmentation. And once elites fracture,

458
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:02,720
the bureaucracy becomes this battlefield. It no longer is about governing.

459
00:33:02,799 --> 00:33:10,079
It's about maintaining and protecting sinecures and even AI itself,

460
00:33:10,599 --> 00:33:13,799
which is supposed to be this panacea, like AI is

461
00:33:13,839 --> 00:33:17,039
supposed to solve all of our problems. It doesn't actually

462
00:33:17,079 --> 00:33:21,400
do that with this managerial priesthood. And so anyway, they

463
00:33:21,559 --> 00:33:27,200
have basically lost the public mandate and they cannot outcompete

464
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:31,599
these para sovereigns, these smaller, more agile para sovereigns that

465
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:35,160
govern on the ground because they're slow and they're rule bound.

466
00:33:36,119 --> 00:33:40,039
These para sovereigns are more agile and adaptive and they

467
00:33:40,079 --> 00:33:44,680
can improvise and things like that. The bureaucracy has no legitimacy.

468
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:49,559
It can't really operate very well in this mosaic environment

469
00:33:49,839 --> 00:33:55,599
of different factions, different peoples, different folks, different para sovereigns,

470
00:33:56,240 --> 00:34:01,200
and it will never survive an elite civil war, and

471
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:05,319
it also cannot survive a collapse of material capacity or

472
00:34:05,519 --> 00:34:08,760
like essentially us becoming less wealthy over time. But that's

473
00:34:08,800 --> 00:34:12,639
a whole other tangent. So anyway to wrap this up,

474
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:17,320
there's a number of converging factors that will overcome technocracy.

475
00:34:17,719 --> 00:34:23,840
As these para sovereigns become local providers in their neighborhood,

476
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:29,719
identity will become primary again, and elites will turn against

477
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,960
each other. This is already happening. The administrative state is

478
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:39,320
losing its capacity and as a result, its legitimacy is evaporating.

479
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:44,000
And so I really don't think that technocracy is going

480
00:34:44,079 --> 00:34:46,239
to fix the problem.

481
00:34:46,639 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: Well, let's stay on paras sovereigns. How do you see

482
00:34:53,599 --> 00:34:59,360
this tribalism that's growing. How do you see technology helping

483
00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:02,719
them and protect themselves? Because you know, like I mentioned,

484
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:09,480
if you have a small a smaller state is more vulnerable.

485
00:35:09,599 --> 00:35:12,920
I mean you could argue Switzerland in places like that,

486
00:35:13,079 --> 00:35:19,000
who are just friendly with everybody, and yeah, they they

487
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:23,320
have some businesses that other countries don't house, But how

488
00:35:23,599 --> 00:35:28,519
would you see them protecting themselves? And because I think

489
00:35:28,559 --> 00:35:32,199
that is the way the way you get people to

490
00:35:32,360 --> 00:35:36,760
embrace your your vision and your leadership is you have

491
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:38,119
to be able to feed them and you have to

492
00:35:38,119 --> 00:35:41,679
be able to protect them. So how do you see

493
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:42,880
that working out in the future.

494
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 2: Right, So, in terms of protection, what we're talking about

495
00:35:48,039 --> 00:35:51,639
fundamentally is one of the most important sovereign functions, and

496
00:35:51,679 --> 00:35:57,079
that is monopoly of force, right, or perhaps slightly more dramatically,

497
00:35:57,360 --> 00:36:01,480
we could say the ability to wage war. One of

498
00:36:01,519 --> 00:36:05,239
the important elements here I think to understand is how

499
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:09,599
war has changed over time. And this is a whole

500
00:36:09,639 --> 00:36:11,719
chapter in the book because it is so important. I mean,

501
00:36:11,719 --> 00:36:16,519
this is basically how we monopolized force, and the twenty

502
00:36:16,559 --> 00:36:19,119
first century is very different than how we monopolized it

503
00:36:19,199 --> 00:36:26,440
in the seventeenth century or whatever. So just very quickly

504
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:29,920
to kind of sprint through this idea of the generations

505
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:39,079
of warfare. Security experts recognize five generations, and obviously the

506
00:36:39,119 --> 00:36:43,599
first generation came first. This was in the you know,

507
00:36:43,639 --> 00:36:46,880
the sixteen hundreds and lasted until about the Napoleonic era.

508
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,559
The Napoleonic Wars were really the high point of this

509
00:36:51,119 --> 00:36:55,599
form of sovereignty, which is lion and column where you

510
00:36:55,639 --> 00:36:59,920
get this rigid battlefield geometry you get, you know, men

511
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:07,280
lining up in these massive formations, and this kind of

512
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:11,360
warfare required a very large state. So this was one

513
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:16,960
of the material factors that began the centralization process, the

514
00:37:17,039 --> 00:37:21,639
move from feudal baronies and things like that to nation states,

515
00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:28,400
because only nation states can mobilize and coordinate force at

516
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:33,239
a scale that was required to win these battles. Now

517
00:37:33,280 --> 00:37:36,599
this changed a little bit, but it kind of changed.

518
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,039
It changes some interesting ways. Right about World War One,

519
00:37:42,119 --> 00:37:44,440
which is when we get the second generation of warfare,

520
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:53,679
which is trench warfare or artillery warfare the name of

521
00:37:53,719 --> 00:37:56,639
the game for first generation. So again going back to

522
00:37:56,679 --> 00:38:01,559
this Napoleonic era, was maneuver you could maneuver, the more

523
00:38:01,599 --> 00:38:05,920
you could win. All of a sudden, when this new

524
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:11,599
style of warfare comes in, this like heavily mechanized style

525
00:38:11,599 --> 00:38:15,199
of warfare in World War One, it's no longer about maneuver.

526
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:19,599
In fact, maneuvering becomes very difficult, and that's exactly part

527
00:38:19,599 --> 00:38:23,280
of the problem. It becomes about attrition all of a sudden.

528
00:38:23,679 --> 00:38:26,679
Now the war is about grinding people down instead of

529
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:31,199
outflanking them. And it's also and this is kind of

530
00:38:31,199 --> 00:38:34,239
the decisive thing about the second generation, it's about having

531
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:38,800
an industrial base. The only way that you can fit

532
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:43,679
out these armies and supply them with what they need

533
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:49,360
is by having industrial capacity. So this drove further centralization

534
00:38:51,360 --> 00:38:53,679
because of course, you know you need to not only

535
00:38:53,679 --> 00:38:55,480
do you need a nation state, but you need an

536
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:59,400
industrial nation. So that's the second generation of warfare. The

537
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:04,639
third generation comes in late World War Two and this

538
00:39:04,719 --> 00:39:09,320
is blitzkrieg warfare, and so very interestingly again we go

539
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:12,480
back to maneuver as being decisive, just like it was

540
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:17,599
in the first generation. This is still very mechanized, but

541
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:21,840
now is about speed and outflanking the enemy and gaining

542
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:26,159
the initiative and everything like that. And of course it

543
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:30,360
technologically it requires a yet larger state, so it's even

544
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:35,000
more centralizing in some ways. But also a change starts

545
00:39:35,039 --> 00:39:39,239
to happen in warfare here because it is more improvisational.

546
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:42,559
The command structure now has to be a bit more flexible.

547
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 3: Now you have to.

548
00:39:43,679 --> 00:39:50,119
Speaker 2: Basically give more decisive power to the maybe not at

549
00:39:50,119 --> 00:39:53,800
the level of the general, but at a much lower level,

550
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:56,400
like you know, commanding on the ground people that are

551
00:39:56,760 --> 00:40:02,719
actually just giving direct orders to lower level units. So

552
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:08,280
the monopoly of organized violence is starting to loosen a

553
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:11,360
little bit, and it loosens very very much in the

554
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:16,119
next generation, which is the fourth, and that is guerrilla warfare.

555
00:40:16,559 --> 00:40:16,760
Speaker 3: Right.

556
00:40:16,840 --> 00:40:19,760
Speaker 2: The paradigm here is Vietnam. Of course everybody thinks of

557
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:21,480
that when they think of guerrilla warfare.

558
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:24,159
Speaker 3: But this is where.

559
00:40:26,199 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 2: I mean, for the first three generations, the central state

560
00:40:29,559 --> 00:40:33,960
was favored asymmetrically. Now it starts to go in the

561
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:38,360
other direction and favor these smaller non state actors. Because,

562
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:43,760
of course, in guerrilla warfare, you don't really actually know

563
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:47,119
who the enemy is. I mean, the enemy could be

564
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,159
that civilian that's just standing over there with an ied,

565
00:40:51,199 --> 00:40:57,159
So the battlefield becomes more abstracted. It could be anywhere.

566
00:40:57,639 --> 00:41:03,079
It's in the cities. And what's more, in gorilla warfare,

567
00:41:03,519 --> 00:41:07,599
now legitimacy becomes really really decisive. Part of the reason

568
00:41:07,639 --> 00:41:10,480
why the US was unable to win in Vietnam is

569
00:41:10,519 --> 00:41:13,280
that people just were sick of it. People just said,

570
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,559
you know, what are we even doing here? And this

571
00:41:16,960 --> 00:41:21,559
sapped the will to fight and it was a big,

572
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:25,920
big problem. So legitimacy becomes much more important than it

573
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:31,679
has been before, and para sovereigns, these smaller scale forces

574
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,119
thrive because they don't need tanks or air forces, and

575
00:41:35,159 --> 00:41:38,599
in fact, having a tank doesn't actually help you at

576
00:41:38,639 --> 00:41:42,960
all against a gorilla insurgency because you don't know who

577
00:41:43,039 --> 00:41:46,679
you don't know who people are, or they're agile, and

578
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:51,320
they can disable these things very like you know, the material,

579
00:41:51,599 --> 00:41:56,199
very easily. Tanks don't work that well in urban terrain, right,

580
00:41:57,119 --> 00:42:02,599
So things are starting to change again. It's very interesting

581
00:42:02,639 --> 00:42:08,280
we go back to attrition as the main strategy of

582
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,159
how you win war. You don't need to win, you

583
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:13,920
just need to not lose, right, which is very easy

584
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:22,199
for these decentralized groups. So the centralization actually becomes a

585
00:42:22,199 --> 00:42:26,440
bit of a vulnerability here with fourth generation warfare, and

586
00:42:26,519 --> 00:42:30,519
even so with law fare and bureaucracy, because these things

587
00:42:30,559 --> 00:42:32,519
are slow and they they are a bit of a

588
00:42:32,559 --> 00:42:37,599
drag on states and being able to act. Now, the

589
00:42:38,320 --> 00:42:47,519
fifth generation warfare is something even more decentralized, more abstracted

590
00:42:47,559 --> 00:42:51,719
away from the battlefield, because this is informational warfare. This

591
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:58,199
is warfare as economic warfare, This is warfare as misinformation

592
00:42:58,679 --> 00:43:06,639
and sapping the opponent's will to fight and polluting his

593
00:43:07,079 --> 00:43:13,760
informational environment with subversive propaganda and things like that, and

594
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:16,719
this is really the way that warfare is kind of

595
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:22,840
waged today. It's you know, very very different now, so

596
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:25,679
it's kind of evolved in a way that actually asymmetrically

597
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:29,840
favors small guy and even anonymized actors.

598
00:43:30,519 --> 00:43:31,840
Speaker 3: This is the reason.

599
00:43:31,559 --> 00:43:37,599
Speaker 2: Why the security state is so worried about misinformation, because

600
00:43:37,599 --> 00:43:44,159
misinformation is a is actually a threat to state security

601
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:51,039
because misinformation can cause cascading effects in the economy and

602
00:43:51,079 --> 00:43:54,000
things like that, you know what I mean. And you know,

603
00:43:54,599 --> 00:43:58,480
also when people don't believe the same things when you

604
00:43:58,519 --> 00:44:02,320
get the rise of like AI people take for example,

605
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:08,480
those horrific revelations about Trump and the Epstein files that

606
00:44:08,519 --> 00:44:11,719
we've all heard about, terrible stuff. All that's going to

607
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:13,880
happen is that his base is just going to say, oh,

608
00:44:13,880 --> 00:44:14,400
that's fake.

609
00:44:14,519 --> 00:44:15,079
Speaker 3: They lied.

610
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:17,280
Speaker 2: And even if there was like video that came out

611
00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:19,719
about like what he was supposedly up to, they're just

612
00:44:19,760 --> 00:44:21,360
going to say, oh, well, that's a deep fake.

613
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:24,760
Speaker 3: So it's like.

614
00:44:25,119 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 2: Impossible for the central authority to make itself decisive essentially

615
00:44:34,199 --> 00:44:37,679
to force people to believe what it needs them to believe.

616
00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:42,760
It's impossible for them to gain control over narratives and

617
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:44,800
things like that. And this is because of the way

618
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,239
that warfare has changed. Warfare is now more abstract than

619
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:52,880
it ever has been. Of course, it still requires force,

620
00:44:53,159 --> 00:44:57,719
it still requires violence, It still requires men with boots

621
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:01,360
on the ground wielding guns and things like that.

622
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:05,599
Speaker 3: But even that is even that in.

623
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:11,559
Speaker 2: Terms of like these guerrilla insurgencies, that is, the central

624
00:45:11,599 --> 00:45:15,880
state no longer really has this decisive power like it

625
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:24,599
once did. So I mean the like, just the fact

626
00:45:24,599 --> 00:45:27,880
that the state has like military power and reserve doesn't

627
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:34,639
actually necessarily make it. It doesn't necessarily make it the one

628
00:45:34,639 --> 00:45:38,320
that's going to be able to exert sovereign authority because

629
00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:42,119
that now the way that you monopolize violence has changed.

630
00:45:42,519 --> 00:45:44,840
So you're going to see the rise and you are

631
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:48,079
already seeing the rise of these paras sovereign threats. These

632
00:45:48,239 --> 00:45:51,679
you could imagine something like criminal sovereigns. We just saw

633
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:58,840
this week in Mexico, an explosion of violence over corruption

634
00:45:59,239 --> 00:46:03,119
relating to the car tells because the cartels are a

635
00:46:03,119 --> 00:46:06,119
para sovereign and the Mexican government can't really do anything

636
00:46:06,159 --> 00:46:10,199
about it, and people are sick of it, and so

637
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:15,239
the legitimacy of the state is collapsing. This you know,

638
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:19,800
the problem ostensibly is over corruption, but really what the

639
00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:23,360
problem is is over the retreat of the state. People

640
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:26,639
feel like the state has abandoned them to these cartels.

641
00:46:27,639 --> 00:46:31,000
So that's one pair of sovereign that can straightforwardly go

642
00:46:31,079 --> 00:46:33,239
toe to toe with the state. There was actually an

643
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:41,360
instance a few years ago where the son of cartel

644
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:46,440
warlord l Chopo was. The state tried to arrest him,

645
00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:51,159
and the cartels basically said no, you're not doing that,

646
00:46:51,679 --> 00:46:56,679
and they essentially sprang him, not from jail, but they

647
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:00,719
were able to push back and prevent him from being arrested,

648
00:47:02,039 --> 00:47:05,920
which is quite a striking turn of events. I mean,

649
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:09,199
could you imagine something like that in the nineteen fifties

650
00:47:09,679 --> 00:47:12,480
in America? I certainly couldn't. Now, of course, Mexico is

651
00:47:12,519 --> 00:47:16,599
not America, but all the same structural factors are converging,

652
00:47:17,039 --> 00:47:22,719
so criminal sovereigns are going to increasingly take bites out

653
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:28,480
of the state's sovereign capacity. You've got ethnic enclaves, religious enclaves,

654
00:47:28,679 --> 00:47:32,360
takes something like what's it called Dearborn Michigan or whatever.

655
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:37,960
What would it take to remove those people and to

656
00:47:38,039 --> 00:47:40,760
turn that back into what it looked like ethnically in

657
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:46,039
the nineteen sixties, it would take a degree of force

658
00:47:46,119 --> 00:47:50,159
that I just don't think is possible today. So those

659
00:47:50,159 --> 00:47:56,280
people are effectively able to know, they're able to rule

660
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:59,360
and decide the exception in their own little area. And

661
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:03,719
then got like smaller things like militias or volunteer battalions

662
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:06,679
or armed factions and things like that. And we haven't

663
00:48:06,679 --> 00:48:11,039
even really talked about things like you know, cyber criminal syndicates,

664
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:19,760
which themselves cost the state billions of dollars annually, hybrid sovereigns,

665
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:24,679
like alliances between political and criminal elements with like you know,

666
00:48:25,360 --> 00:48:29,400
communal elements and things like that. I just you know,

667
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:35,440
the idea of centralization or the nation state, the Westphalian

668
00:48:35,519 --> 00:48:39,039
nation state coming back, that's a real that's a real

669
00:48:39,079 --> 00:48:41,679
bear market in my opinion.

670
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:46,440
Speaker 1: I guess the question would be is how do you

671
00:48:46,679 --> 00:48:52,719
break people of nationalism, the idea of nationalism with populism

672
00:48:52,880 --> 00:48:57,320
comes nationalism and populism has swept and I think populism

673
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:01,760
is just a a bridge to you're talking about a

674
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,039
more tribal future. But what do you do do you

675
00:49:05,119 --> 00:49:09,119
make do you describe nationalism as something smaller, remind them

676
00:49:09,119 --> 00:49:12,480
it has a nation as it's people. It's not really

677
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:19,679
a structure. What has to happen this? Do we need

678
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:26,679
a serious crisis in order to help people to understand

679
00:49:26,719 --> 00:49:29,719
that a nation of three hundred and fifty to four

680
00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:34,880
hundred million people is insanely and you're an insane person

681
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:38,960
if you think it's possible, even right now or especially

682
00:49:39,039 --> 00:49:39,679
in the future.

683
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:44,119
Speaker 2: Well, this is something that goes outside of the scope

684
00:49:44,159 --> 00:49:46,960
of the book, because the book is essentially a map

685
00:49:47,360 --> 00:49:50,599
for as it says in the title, for the future, right,

686
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:56,159
it's a descriptive work. It's doesn't give prescriptions.

687
00:49:56,159 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 3: Here's what we should do.

688
00:49:57,960 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 2: But that's a good question, that's a fair question.

689
00:50:02,599 --> 00:50:04,199
Speaker 3: And so I mean.

690
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:09,559
Speaker 2: Nationalism, So we have to understand kind of like where

691
00:50:09,639 --> 00:50:13,760
nationalism has gone and where it's gone wrong. It was

692
00:50:13,840 --> 00:50:17,519
the great centralizing force of the modern era from the

693
00:50:17,559 --> 00:50:22,679
eighteenth to the twentieth century. It fused millions of strangers

694
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:29,960
into these unified, continent spanning nations. It replaced what we

695
00:50:30,039 --> 00:50:33,920
had before, which were these local loyalties, and it replaced

696
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:38,800
those with a single national community, really in some ways,

697
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,079
an imagined community. I know nationalists won't really like that,

698
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:46,440
because you know, they are fighting back. And here's the thing.

699
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:47,119
Speaker 3: I'm not.

700
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:53,679
Speaker 2: A nationalist. I'm a post nationalist, but I'm not anti

701
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:57,679
nationalist because I think that the vision of nationalism is good.

702
00:50:58,000 --> 00:50:58,440
Speaker 3: I think that.

703
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:02,760
Speaker 2: I mean, we published, we publish works by Martin Selner,

704
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:07,880
we published books, works by other nationalists. It's a noble

705
00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:13,440
and good thing. But nationalism only works when society shares

706
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:17,599
the same narrative world right. Once you get this loss

707
00:51:17,639 --> 00:51:22,400
of shared truth, once elites begin fragmenting, once demographics become

708
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:30,000
too heterogeneous, then the central narrative no longer holds. So

709
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:36,559
what As mass nationalism declines, As the era of large,

710
00:51:36,639 --> 00:51:44,000
unified national cultures declines, the nation state loses its integrative power,

711
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:50,360
and people fragment into essentially what you might call micro nationalisms.

712
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:55,119
People become more regional in their nationalism. Now they might

713
00:51:55,159 --> 00:51:58,639
think of them themselves not as British but as Scottish,

714
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:02,559
or not as a but as Texan, or not as

715
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:08,519
Spanish but Catalonian. So that might be they might break

716
00:52:08,559 --> 00:52:10,400
into these regional nationalisms.

717
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:15,079
Speaker 1: Well, Spain is Spain has had that for centuries. That's

718
00:52:15,159 --> 00:52:17,119
one of their problems.

719
00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:22,159
Speaker 2: But it may it may formalize. Right, they tried, They

720
00:52:22,199 --> 00:52:26,599
tried to formalize. They had those Catalonian they had the referendum, right,

721
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:33,360
So so people may see themselves more as like regionally nationalists,

722
00:52:33,679 --> 00:52:36,760
or they may see themselves as ethnically nationalists, like in

723
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:43,360
a more Balkan style micro nation environment, they might become

724
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:51,159
more ideologically nationalists. But I think that that's actually way waning. Essentially,

725
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:54,320
what's going to happen and what has been happening, is

726
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:59,079
that nationalism is shrinking into what we had Imperium called focushness.

727
00:52:59,599 --> 00:52:59,800
Speaker 3: Right.

728
00:53:00,519 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 2: This is the This is essentially the preferencing of more

729
00:53:10,119 --> 00:53:15,199
on the ground identities, the more fundamental pre political identities,

730
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,760
over the less fundamental. So focusedness is the preference for

731
00:53:19,199 --> 00:53:22,599
your family over your clan. It's the preference for your

732
00:53:22,639 --> 00:53:25,840
clan over your tribe, and the preference for your tribe

733
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:28,880
over your nation. And it's also the preference of your

734
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:36,199
nation over humanity. So focusedness is essentially a more ontologically

735
00:53:36,719 --> 00:53:41,719
fundamental kind of nationalism. It's like the precursor to nationalism.

736
00:53:42,039 --> 00:53:42,239
Speaker 1: Right.

737
00:53:44,760 --> 00:53:48,760
Speaker 2: It's about this deep sense of belonging to a particular people.

738
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:53,119
And this is not just ethnic, it's also to the land,

739
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:59,920
to the stories, to the customs and to your ancestors ultimately,

740
00:54:00,079 --> 00:54:03,519
So it is also ethnic. It's a way of being,

741
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:09,119
and it's a way of orienting yourself and organizing yourself

742
00:54:09,199 --> 00:54:14,480
into this long intergenerational chain that inherits things like ways

743
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:25,639
of speaking, symbols, seasonal rituals, communal memories, and ancestral reverence

744
00:54:26,119 --> 00:54:32,599
and things like that. This is the most personalist, situational, embodied,

745
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:38,440
and non abstracted ideology imaginable, and in fact, it's hard

746
00:54:38,480 --> 00:54:41,079
to even think of it as an ideology. It's as

747
00:54:41,159 --> 00:54:44,559
much an ideology as like loving your own mother over

748
00:54:44,639 --> 00:54:49,000
some other person's mother is an ideology. It's really just natural.

749
00:54:49,199 --> 00:54:50,480
It's just nature, you.

750
00:54:50,440 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 3: Know what I mean. So this is what's This is

751
00:54:55,039 --> 00:54:55,559
the future.

752
00:54:55,920 --> 00:55:00,320
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the tribal future because there are

753
00:55:00,400 --> 00:55:03,440
structural determinants that are moving us in this direction. People

754
00:55:03,519 --> 00:55:07,920
want to belong to communities. They want to have continuity

755
00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:11,039
with the past. They want to keep their stories and

756
00:55:11,119 --> 00:55:13,360
pass their stories down to their children. They want to

757
00:55:13,360 --> 00:55:18,400
have a connection with their ancestors. They want rootedness ultimately

758
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:20,559
is what they want. They want to be rooted to

759
00:55:20,639 --> 00:55:27,159
a place, rooted to a folk, and as abstraction like

760
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:31,199
the abstraction of the nation, but also conceptual abstraction collapses,

761
00:55:32,599 --> 00:55:40,159
people turn inward to this more focush layer. So when

762
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:44,039
as states fail, you're going to see the rise of

763
00:55:44,519 --> 00:55:51,719
this patchwork mosaic of folkhoods and people are returning to

764
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:58,199
these smaller, older, and really more human units of identity.

765
00:56:00,079 --> 00:56:03,480
So I think, like for us, like you know, as

766
00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:06,119
we see the writing on the wall, as we see

767
00:56:06,199 --> 00:56:09,599
the way the direction that the wind is blowing, it's

768
00:56:09,679 --> 00:56:16,599
really imperative for us to purposefully and you know, just

769
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:22,039
just to turn in this direction before others do. Because

770
00:56:22,559 --> 00:56:30,159
it is really those small scale, agile factions with extremely

771
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:35,159
high solidarity and in group identity and preference that are

772
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:38,280
going to be the most anti fragile in what I'm

773
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:40,960
calling the tribal future. So I think we just basically

774
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:44,039
need to become more focush and because the ones who

775
00:56:44,079 --> 00:56:47,679
do will be the ones to survive. These focish tribal

776
00:56:48,599 --> 00:56:53,000
units are kind of like the hardy pioneer species after

777
00:56:53,039 --> 00:56:56,639
a forest fire that sprout early and become the beginnings

778
00:56:56,719 --> 00:57:00,400
of these like great oaks that will eventually grow up

779
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:04,119
into nations. Because it is a cyclical, it is a

780
00:57:04,159 --> 00:57:05,639
cyclical model.

781
00:57:05,639 --> 00:57:06,760
Speaker 3: It's a cyclical vision.

782
00:57:08,239 --> 00:57:11,599
Speaker 2: So the people who embrace that first, I think, are

783
00:57:11,599 --> 00:57:13,119
going to do the best in the.

784
00:57:13,199 --> 00:57:20,320
Speaker 1: End, well to something practical while we still have what

785
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:23,760
would be you know, term like hybrid sovereignty where formal

786
00:57:23,800 --> 00:57:27,800
states still exist but people are breaking off into into

787
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:31,880
their tribes. What do you think is the best way

788
00:57:31,960 --> 00:57:38,000
to avoid you know, that existing monopoly on violence coming

789
00:57:38,039 --> 00:57:44,079
down upon you to crush you.

790
00:57:44,199 --> 00:57:47,280
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, how how can you avoid the

791
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:52,320
eye of of suron. That's a tough one because kind

792
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:59,679
of really the more consistent you are in doing these things,

793
00:58:00,199 --> 00:58:03,360
the more it's going to turn its eye toward you,

794
00:58:03,400 --> 00:58:09,360
because of course, the imperial center sees what direction things

795
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:14,360
are going. I believe that what I'm saying here is

796
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:18,880
known and in fact from what I understand, you know,

797
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:21,760
listening to some of the interviews with David Betts. Actually

798
00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:24,239
just I devote a chapter in the book to David Betts,

799
00:58:25,239 --> 00:58:28,440
who is a security analysts on a lot of podcasts

800
00:58:28,519 --> 00:58:31,159
this year, to say some of the some very similar

801
00:58:31,159 --> 00:58:35,599
things to what I've been saying for years. They're aware,

802
00:58:36,039 --> 00:58:40,599
the security state is aware that this tribal future is coming,

803
00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:43,960
and they obviously don't like it, they would like to

804
00:58:44,039 --> 00:58:46,519
avoid it, but there's really very little that they can

805
00:58:46,559 --> 00:58:50,840
do because things are moving at the structural level against them.

806
00:58:51,119 --> 00:58:54,679
So if you stick your head up too far, then

807
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:57,760
you're going to get batted down, right. And I think

808
00:58:57,800 --> 00:59:02,519
that there are some very well meaning guys and very

809
00:59:02,559 --> 00:59:05,679
noble men in our midst who are copying it right

810
00:59:05,719 --> 00:59:09,639
now because they're essentially coming out to you know, they're

811
00:59:09,639 --> 00:59:14,800
basically coming out with it. They're being that, they're being

812
00:59:14,800 --> 00:59:18,960
the angle, the eternal Anglo that believes that open debate

813
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:24,519
and saying things plainly will is the way to go.

814
00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:27,239
But I'm afraid that I think that we have to

815
00:59:27,239 --> 00:59:32,519
be a little bit more closed about it, right. But anyway,

816
00:59:32,719 --> 00:59:38,079
building what so as for like avoiding trouble, I think

817
00:59:38,119 --> 00:59:40,360
you just have to be sensible. You have to be

818
00:59:41,039 --> 00:59:46,440
not terribly public about doing these things and building intentional communities.

819
00:59:47,239 --> 00:59:49,280
But that's ultimately what you have to do is build

820
00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:54,760
those intentional communities, to establish kindreds in your local area,

821
00:59:55,480 --> 01:00:03,400
to to really just truly try to be try to

822
01:00:03,719 --> 01:00:07,159
like just get to know your neighbors. And ultimately, I

823
01:00:07,239 --> 01:00:10,719
mean this is part of why I myself am a pagan.

824
01:00:11,239 --> 01:00:14,840
Not only do I believe in the myths and the

825
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:18,719
you know, the Not only do I accept the commands

826
01:00:18,719 --> 01:00:21,920
that come out of it, but also I think it

827
01:00:22,039 --> 01:00:30,760
has a practical use because establishing these kindreds is ultimately

828
01:00:30,800 --> 01:00:34,039
going to allow us to, like as our children grow

829
01:00:34,239 --> 01:00:37,800
and intermarry with each other. This is what new folkhoods

830
01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:40,039
are built out of. I think we're going to go

831
01:00:40,119 --> 01:00:44,719
into a period of time that is not technologically but

832
01:00:44,800 --> 01:00:51,679
perhaps socially analogous to the migration period after the Fall

833
01:00:51,719 --> 01:00:54,800
of Rome, where all of a sudden you got all

834
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:59,119
these new peoples that came into being. But what normal

835
01:00:59,159 --> 01:01:03,360
people can do to survive in this future is to

836
01:01:03,599 --> 01:01:09,079
basically strengthen their immediate circle of kin and friends and neighbors.

837
01:01:10,519 --> 01:01:15,719
Because in a devolutionary world that I see on the horizon,

838
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:20,679
the most important resources trust, local networks are going to

839
01:01:20,719 --> 01:01:28,639
matter more than distant affiliations. So normal people must invest

840
01:01:28,679 --> 01:01:33,559
in family relationships. You've got to get to know your neighbors.

841
01:01:34,800 --> 01:01:37,920
You've got to build those reciprocal friendships that can then

842
01:01:38,000 --> 01:01:43,880
grow into these intermarriages later on, like intergenerationally. So you've

843
01:01:43,920 --> 01:01:46,239
got to take part in local community groups. I think

844
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:51,079
what everybody who isn't contaminated with a public profile. Should

845
01:01:51,119 --> 01:01:55,960
be doing is essentially infiltrating local governance at the local level.

846
01:01:56,199 --> 01:01:58,599
I think people should be trying to run for mayor

847
01:01:59,159 --> 01:02:03,400
getting into your low counsel, these sort of things, and

848
01:02:03,679 --> 01:02:07,199
cultivate those mutual help networks with everybody that you can,

849
01:02:07,400 --> 01:02:13,199
because an intact social circle will outperform any institution in

850
01:02:13,239 --> 01:02:13,960
a crisis.

851
01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:14,480
Speaker 1: Right.

852
01:02:16,239 --> 01:02:16,920
Speaker 3: Another thing that.

853
01:02:16,880 --> 01:02:21,599
Speaker 2: You need to do is to develop practical competency. And

854
01:02:21,639 --> 01:02:27,199
this is something that you know, I myself having you know,

855
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:32,039
learned Latin or done all these like esoteric like weird things.

856
01:02:32,760 --> 01:02:35,400
Maybe this is kind of I should be taking more

857
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:36,719
of my own advice here, but I.

858
01:02:36,719 --> 01:02:38,719
Speaker 3: Think you really you need to do that.

859
01:02:39,079 --> 01:02:41,760
Speaker 2: You don't need to become a prepper, but you have

860
01:02:41,960 --> 01:02:45,840
absolutely need to take a basic first Aid COY course. Sorry,

861
01:02:45,880 --> 01:02:50,239
you need to take a basic first aid course, which

862
01:02:50,280 --> 01:02:51,920
is something that I've done as a parent. I think

863
01:02:51,920 --> 01:02:56,000
everyone should do that. You need to become financially literate,

864
01:02:56,760 --> 01:02:59,119
You need to learn how to save, You need to

865
01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:03,000
obviously become solvent. You need to maybe maybe you need

866
01:03:03,000 --> 01:03:07,480
to downgrade your living standards, and maybe you need to,

867
01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:10,840
like you know, if you are not financially solvent. You

868
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:14,000
need to get that happening. You need to learn how.

869
01:03:14,079 --> 01:03:17,000
You need to learn some basic home maintenance. You should

870
01:03:17,119 --> 01:03:19,719
learn how to garden. You should learn how to grow

871
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:28,239
some food. You should develop some basic self protection skills.

872
01:03:28,679 --> 01:03:33,719
You should learn how to fight and wieldforce, and become

873
01:03:33,760 --> 01:03:38,840
situationally aware as well, which is just as important. You

874
01:03:38,880 --> 01:03:40,960
should maybe log off the internet a little bit more

875
01:03:41,039 --> 01:03:44,760
often and learn how to network face to face and

876
01:03:45,199 --> 01:03:47,079
shake hands and look people in the eye and get

877
01:03:47,079 --> 01:03:50,480
them to trust you, because then you'll be able to

878
01:03:50,599 --> 01:03:56,679
organize men. And organizing men are very very This is

879
01:03:57,039 --> 01:04:02,480
essentially the main skill, right, because that is the best

880
01:04:02,760 --> 01:04:06,199
resource there was. There's a really wonderful anecdote of a

881
01:04:08,400 --> 01:04:12,159
a clan chieftain in like you know, early modern Scotland,

882
01:04:12,199 --> 01:04:14,480
I believe it was, that went to visit a noble

883
01:04:14,639 --> 01:04:17,719
or something like that, and here he is like walks

884
01:04:17,760 --> 01:04:22,239
into the nobles you know estate, looks around and sees

885
01:04:22,239 --> 01:04:27,000
all this wonderful you know, glassware and everything that's you know,

886
01:04:27,039 --> 01:04:30,440
all these big beautiful acouterments and things like that. And

887
01:04:30,639 --> 01:04:32,840
he looks around and he says, I've got much nicer

888
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:37,519
candle holders than you at my place, and you know

889
01:04:37,920 --> 01:04:41,480
they exchange words. And then the noble came to visit

890
01:04:41,559 --> 01:04:44,800
him at one point, and he said, would you like

891
01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:48,000
to see my candle holders? And you know, he snapped

892
01:04:48,039 --> 01:04:51,400
his fingers and out came his retinue of fifty guys

893
01:04:51,480 --> 01:04:56,159
each holding candles. Right, that is the most important resource.

894
01:04:56,440 --> 01:04:59,719
Men are the most important resource. So you need to

895
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:03,920
learn how to organize people, how to command respect, how

896
01:05:04,000 --> 01:05:07,719
to give orders, and very importantly, how to take orders.

897
01:05:09,719 --> 01:05:13,760
What else can you do if you can try to

898
01:05:14,880 --> 01:05:21,360
not rely upon a single point of failure. So, as

899
01:05:21,400 --> 01:05:24,880
I said, be financially solvent, get yourself out of debt

900
01:05:25,280 --> 01:05:27,559
as quickly as you can. That's going to be harder

901
01:05:28,159 --> 01:05:29,760
than for most people. It's going to be hard for

902
01:05:29,800 --> 01:05:32,960
most people because most likely, like if you're lucky, you've

903
01:05:33,000 --> 01:05:39,480
got a mortgage, and some people not even. But try

904
01:05:39,519 --> 01:05:41,519
to get out of debt if you can, or as

905
01:05:41,599 --> 01:05:44,519
much as you can, try to diversify your income streams,

906
01:05:44,920 --> 01:05:48,880
try to get some side hustles going. That's essentially what

907
01:05:48,920 --> 01:05:51,119
I did with Imperium Press, and now it's my job.

908
01:05:53,599 --> 01:05:55,920
Try to get some savings if you can, at least

909
01:05:56,000 --> 01:06:01,719
keep small emergency reserves of cash, of funds of food

910
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:07,360
and things like that. Having redundancy for the essential items

911
01:06:07,440 --> 01:06:12,599
is really good medical stuff, food, communications, things like that.

912
01:06:13,079 --> 01:06:17,519
You don't have to be a survivalist and I don't

913
01:06:17,519 --> 01:06:20,599
have a problem with guys who are you just need

914
01:06:20,639 --> 01:06:23,280
to be somebody who has options, you know what I mean?

915
01:06:24,480 --> 01:06:28,360
So and yeah, just like, try to embed yourself in

916
01:06:28,400 --> 01:06:32,679
a local community. Try to join local associations, join a

917
01:06:32,719 --> 01:06:35,719
religious community, whatever that happens to be. I mean, if

918
01:06:35,719 --> 01:06:40,880
you're a Christian, join a church, start going to church,

919
01:06:41,559 --> 01:06:44,400
Start going to their events, start participating, start getting to

920
01:06:44,440 --> 01:06:51,280
know people, attend the local events. Support your neighborhood institutions

921
01:06:52,000 --> 01:06:54,559
or build them, or at least just introduce yourself to

922
01:06:54,559 --> 01:06:58,559
your neighbors, you know what I mean. And volunteer volunteering

923
01:06:58,639 --> 01:06:59,679
like you know, I mean.

924
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:02,239
Speaker 1: Friend of mine, let me let me answer ject. A

925
01:07:02,239 --> 01:07:04,400
friend of mine said. One of the easiest ways to

926
01:07:04,480 --> 01:07:07,599
do it is if you live in an area that

927
01:07:07,679 --> 01:07:13,480
has a historical preservation society, volunteering with them, especially if

928
01:07:13,480 --> 01:07:16,679
you're young. They're probably all going to be over sixty.

929
01:07:17,000 --> 01:07:18,840
They're going to be excited for you to be there,

930
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:20,440
and they'll have plenty for you to do.

931
01:07:21,800 --> 01:07:27,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, and perhaps, in fact, more likely than not, these

932
01:07:27,320 --> 01:07:30,119
are going to be guys who are connected, who have resources,

933
01:07:30,519 --> 01:07:31,599
who are.

934
01:07:31,519 --> 01:07:34,519
Speaker 3: Somebody, you know what I mean. So that's really good.

935
01:07:34,639 --> 01:07:41,719
Speaker 2: Volunteer at places like that in meaningful ways, and be careful,

936
01:07:41,880 --> 01:07:49,719
be very careful about being publicly labeled in like digital

937
01:07:49,719 --> 01:07:50,800
tribal extremism.

938
01:07:50,880 --> 01:07:51,480
Speaker 3: I know that this.

939
01:07:52,480 --> 01:07:56,079
Speaker 2: I don't regard myself as an extremist at all. In fact,

940
01:07:56,159 --> 01:08:01,320
I think what Imperium Press is doing is historically the center.

941
01:08:02,119 --> 01:08:07,480
We are historically normal, and it is the managerial class

942
01:08:07,519 --> 01:08:11,239
that are the extremists. But if you are not already

943
01:08:11,440 --> 01:08:17,920
participating in the conversation publicly, then don't make yourself into

944
01:08:17,960 --> 01:08:23,680
a public target. But if you are, you know, if

945
01:08:23,760 --> 01:08:28,960
you if you are a brave person, if you are charismatic,

946
01:08:29,399 --> 01:08:33,079
and you can you don't have to be Brad Pitt.

947
01:08:33,119 --> 01:08:36,560
But if you can, like dress yourself, look nice, present, well,

948
01:08:38,039 --> 01:08:40,960
we need you, we need you to join us here

949
01:08:41,119 --> 01:08:45,600
as you know, as as media personalities on our side

950
01:08:45,600 --> 01:08:50,039
of the fence. But some people, in fact, most people

951
01:08:50,079 --> 01:08:53,199
should probably not be doing that. Most people should not

952
01:08:53,399 --> 01:08:56,800
be binding their identity to to those like to these

953
01:08:56,880 --> 01:08:59,359
kind of networks at least not publicly. You should be

954
01:08:59,399 --> 01:09:01,439
listening to what we have to say because we almost

955
01:09:01,520 --> 01:09:07,119
uniquely know the score, unlike you know anywhere in the mainstream.

956
01:09:07,199 --> 01:09:12,079
Essentially right, So, yeah, do all those things. Do all

957
01:09:12,079 --> 01:09:17,039
those things. Strengthen your immediate circle, develop your practical abilities,

958
01:09:17,840 --> 01:09:23,840
reduce your vulnerability to institutional failure. Get into your local

959
01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:27,960
community and invest in the next generation. Have children, and

960
01:09:28,039 --> 01:09:32,680
have many of them, and have them early, and teach

961
01:09:32,720 --> 01:09:36,039
them to be resilient and emotionally stable. And teach them

962
01:09:36,039 --> 01:09:39,520
who they are, where they come from. Teach them who

963
01:09:39,560 --> 01:09:44,960
their ancestors are, what their heritage is, Have rituals, tell stories.

964
01:09:45,560 --> 01:09:50,079
Don't give them too much access to screens. Build these

965
01:09:50,079 --> 01:09:53,760
institutions close to home, and stay mobile and be adaptive

966
01:09:53,880 --> 01:09:58,640
and flexible. And you know, being tribal doesn't mean being violent.

967
01:09:58,800 --> 01:10:01,880
It doesn't mean, you know, getting a bunch of tattoos

968
01:10:01,920 --> 01:10:04,720
and going out and you know, training as a militia

969
01:10:04,720 --> 01:10:09,359
in the woods. Although tattoos are awesome, But in any case,

970
01:10:09,880 --> 01:10:12,199
you don't have to form yourself into a war band

971
01:10:12,279 --> 01:10:16,039
roaming the street. You just have to identify at the

972
01:10:16,079 --> 01:10:21,600
more local level, establish tighter communities, and you know, established

973
01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:26,199
personal ties over bureaucratic ones, so hopefully some of that

974
01:10:26,359 --> 01:10:28,119
advice is useful.

975
01:10:29,199 --> 01:10:33,119
Speaker 1: That's awesome. That's probably where we should end it. Remind

976
01:10:33,119 --> 01:10:36,039
everybody about Imperium Press and where they can find the book.

977
01:10:36,960 --> 01:10:39,479
Speaker 2: Yes, well, thank you very much, Pete. I really appreciate

978
01:10:39,479 --> 01:10:42,039
you having me on here. You guys can find the

979
01:10:42,039 --> 01:10:46,880
book at imperiimpress dot org. And if you like podcasts,

980
01:10:47,079 --> 01:10:51,680
check out my check out my podcast platform heartfire radio

981
01:10:51,760 --> 01:10:55,560
dot com. I also have a podcast, Culture Dads. That's

982
01:10:55,600 --> 01:10:59,800
culturewe a k culturedads dot com. Those are all my links,

983
01:11:00,239 --> 01:11:02,760
and once again, i'd just like to say a heartfelt

984
01:11:02,760 --> 01:11:04,840
thanks Pete. It's been awesome talking to you, and I

985
01:11:04,880 --> 01:11:06,319
hope guys get something out of the book.

986
01:11:07,159 --> 01:11:09,520
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. Mike, thank you. Take care,