Speaker 1: But you're still not hearing us.
Speaker 2: Now I'm hearing you because I plugged my I plugged
my headphones.
Speaker 3: Yet doctors, I've actually found historically that helps a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, I've done that several times.
Speaker 3: One of those little tech tricks that doctors don't want
you to know about.
Speaker 4: It ask not what your country can do for you,
as what you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Speaker 2: It's the Recorchet podcast with Charles Yukook and Stephen Hayward.
I'm James Lonnox and the day we talked to Ellen
Fantini about the European Conservative and yes there is more
than one, so let's ever selves a podcast.
Speaker 5: Any of this new information implicates former President Obama in
criminal behavior, we have referred and will continue to refer
all of these documents to the Department of Justice and
the FBI to investigate the criminal implications of this.
Speaker 1: Would an untalented man be able to compose the following
satirical witticism cook yourself.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody, It's the Ricochet of podcast with a very
satisfying number of seven hundred and fifty. You too can
join us at ricochet dot com. To be part of
the most stimulating conversation in community on the web. And
I know that's a big claim, bold claim, but Dear,
if we couldn't back it up, we wouldn't make it.
I'm James Lilacs and sunny, beautiful Clement, Minnie Apolis, where
I just walked the dog by the creek in the woods,
glorious day summer. And Stephen Hayward, I believe is in
California or Iceland, who knows. And Charles C. W. Cook
is probably in Florida, where I imagine it's torporous and
one can barely walk in the humidity without feeling as
if though you're jogging at the bottom of a pool. Gentlemen,
how are you?
Speaker 1: I am good, We're both good.
Speaker 6: I think I played.
Speaker 3: Two hours of tennis this morning in this weather, so
I hope you're impressed.
Speaker 2: I am impressed. My wife plays tennis as well. She's extraordinary.
What are you are you? A four, A five, A
four point five, a three point eight.
Speaker 3: Now, well, my wife's a really good tennis player. I
didn't have a ranking, but I am six foot three,
so I can still win most of the time because
I'm just stronger than that. She's the one with all
of the numbers and lines and all of this. I'm
just I'm just trying to make sure that I don't
sit in my chair all day and do nothing.
Speaker 2: That's my aim. Yes, I know, I'm the same way.
I am keen to sit in my chair all day
and do something. But now that I am retired, I
have to get out of the house. I have to
do things, and I'm enjoying it quite an awful lot
as a matter of fact. But then again, that gives
me time to bruise the web and the Twitter and
the X and all the rest of it and see
what's up and going. And it appears we have a kerfuffle.
We have a concretent that was once known as Russiagate
that is back in the headlines. Some people are saying,
this is nothing new, We've been over this before. It's ridiculous.
There's no trees in here, there's nothing that ties it
to well Bama, etcetera, etcetera. But as I understand that
there were documents that were under lock and key for
an awful long time that were finally prized out of
those who were holding them, and that they've been going
over them with the proverbial no, I'm sorry, not the axiomatic,
the cliched fine tooth comb, and things have been revealed.
What do you, gentlemen, take away from Director of National
Intelligence Tulsea Gabbert's presser on this particular situation.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I'll go first. I think if we
take it at face value, and of course we heard
Gabbart's presentation of it, it does look like we are
seeing some new things suggesting that a lot of the
senior intelligence people under the last weeks of Obama knew
that all of these claims were false or extremely weak
at best, and that Obama knew about it, and Obama
was up to his neck. And I guess I'll call
it a conspiracy. I try to avoid that because I've
run out of tinfoil, but involved in a conspiracy to
hobble cast out on the legitimacy of the election and
hobble President Trump's first term, which they had some success, right,
I think for the show.
Speaker 2: And I don't like to use the termspiracy. I think
satanic cabal is a little.
Speaker 1: Less right, right, Yes, well, I mean I think. And
then we also heard that the Russian intelligence, through their
hacking of Democratic Party emails or whatever, claim to have
known that Hillary Clinton was given to fits of rage
and was had serious psychological problems, was taking tranquilizers heavily,
and various other things that may or may not be true.
I mean, we all, I think when we heard that
I read that, what ran our minds back to that
September eleventh, twenty sixteen episode she had where she had
to be bundled up and carried to a van when
she was obviously having that. And you had various explanations
for hours of days after.
Speaker 2: She dragged like a legless sack of potatoes.
Speaker 1: Right, but they told her, well, she was dehydrated. It
was this, there was that, and and you know, we
never quite got a clear explanation of that. I do
think that if oh tobably type two diabetes is claimed
by this supposedly Russian intelligence and so I don't know.
I do remember reading on Twitter at the time, and
it's almost ten years ago now that oh, you know,
I'm a neurologist, and I can tell that she's got
Parkinson's disease and she's going to be dead in a year.
And you know, some of the typical claims are people
run away with themselves? And herry are almost ten years
later and Hillary's still with us, and so I don't
think we know the truth of all that, but it
is an intriguing little tidbit that emerged from all this.
Speaker 2: I'm less interested in that than the things that we
learned about the five supposed pieces of evidence that led
them to conclude that the Russia Gate was ongoing. And
it was like, well, this one is thinly sourced. We
can't exactly find where it comes from. It makes a
vague allusion to somebody with a first name starting with
TA started her last name is starting with T. It's
from somebody who was later revealed to be a triple
agent for Mongolia, and it's from eighteen fourteen. And they said, well,
I you know, it's got the ring of truth to it.
So it was throwing in the mix. Charles, are you,
first of all, are you still interested in this? Do
you think it matters? Do you think it is a
germane to today?
Speaker 6: Well, it depends what you mean.
Speaker 3: I think that it's a scandal, and the passage of
time doesn't change that. I thought it was a scandal
at the time, wasted two years of not just Trump's
first presidency, but my life, I do regret one thing
I regret.
Speaker 6: It's a quick digression.
Speaker 3: I went at that time on CNN relatively frequently, and
every time they would bring this up, I would think,
you know what, just say, doesn't this all sound like
a bunch of nonsense to you? And then I thought,
if I say that and I'm wrong, just on the
off chance that I'm wrong, I will for the rest
of my life be that guy who did that.
Speaker 6: So I didn't.
Speaker 3: I said, well, but I do think it's a scandal.
I think it's not so much that it doesn't interest me.
But I think the context within which Tulsy Gabbart had
said it is just wrong, in that there is not
going to be a prosecution of Barack Obama. Whatever might
or should happen to lower level intelligence operatives or Brennan.
Barack Obama is not going to be prosecuted for this,
in part thanks to a Supreme Court case called Trump
versus United States, which has rendered him immune. So I
don't like that she has told people that this is
going to happen, because it's not. But insofar as this
has been used as a vehicle to remind people that
this was a really bad incident in our history, and
that the light worker himself was involved in it. I'm
absolutely happy to revisit it.
Speaker 2: Especially since we're dealing with an administration that was caught
off Mike Hart Mike saying that after the election will
have more flexibility. I mean, I've never understood why that
wasn't up there in bost letters of body's consciousness, but
seems to have just pat after the election, I will
have to do one exactly more flexibility for you to
do what exactly. No, he's not going to be prosecuted
in the idea that somehow he's going to be frog
marched out and changed. But it was interesting that I
think the Trump administration somebody ginned up an ai image
of just that. And of course everybody you hair on fire,
I get it. It's you know, the norm is broken,
et cetera. But it does sort of force them to
talk about what that's in reference to. And there seems
to be a lot of the press doesn't know quite
what to do about this, because you know, it's it's
truth y as a man once said that he was,
you know, probably obviously propriate, et cetera. Et cetera. And
the particulars really don't matter to them, and they'll come
out and say things like, well, it's not as if
we said that Russia changed the election or hacked the election,
but that is exactly what you guys were saying. So
this will be red conned and flushed that that's that's
basically it. And and unfortunately the internet meme nothing ever happens,
I think will apply to this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think that there has been a punishment.
This has been my view for years that this is
an intrinsically political question because the president's not going to
be prosecuted for it, and there has been a punishment
for Barack Obama, which is that he lost his legacy
thanks to Trump winning in twenty sixteen, and now Trump
won again.
Speaker 2: And like the main legacy he's going to have, I believe,
is going to be an unfathomably ugly public library.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I actually just finish on this by saying, this
is the thing that I love about America. Obviously it's
not perfect and this doesn't always happen, but the thing
that depresses me in other countries and in my country
of birth is things go badly, bad decisions are made.
You get into these periods of torper and then the
public says okay.
Speaker 6: But in the US usually.
Speaker 3: The public doesn't like it and does something about it.
And we saw this with inflation, for example. We saw
those terrible moves that Biden made. The public punished Biden
for that, and yeah, the press will wreckon this and
they'll try to rewrite it in time. But Barack Obama
has paid a price for this, and so has the
Democratic Party. Even if the average person in the street
isn't up on it or thinking about it day to day,
they didn't actually get away with it. And I think
that's good.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, after our guests, I want to talk
to you, Charles, when you mentioned that the English British
reaction is different. There has been a change seemingly in
the atmosphere after the introduction of migrants into Epping and
the displacement of hotel people at Canary Wharf to house
and boat people, and there seems to be a bit
of a shift. Whether it results in anything, we'll discuss
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now we welcome Ellen Fantiney, deputy editor of the European Conservative.
And there's got to be at least three or four
of those there in continent, so she probably knows them
all intimately and can tell us, you know, their full story.
But welcome. I'm gonna throw this to Stephen because I
know he's got something query he wish used to put
you in.
Speaker 1: Well, right, I'll be high Ellen, great to see you.
You and your other half, Mario Fantini, or two of
my favorite Europeans, even though you're Americans. But Mario can
almost fake being a European with a name like Mario Fantini. Right, anyway,
I mean here's I mean, we have listeners here. No
one can see the magazine I've got. I've got them
stacked up here on my desk. And what I tell
people about it is so, first of all, I'll try
to describe it. It's printed on thick stock, it's perfect bound,
as we say in the magazine Trade, and it's got
lots of great art work in it. And so I say,
it's if you want to try think about a conceptually
A describe it as a cross between Chronicles magazine and
Architectural Digest.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well I'll just share one, you know, a typical
piece of art that's always very topical with James and Charles.
Here's what they call the magazine trade a double truck.
It's a two full page piece of artwork. And this
is a rawing of Trump's Southern Border Wall. Now you
really know it's a conservative magazine when they're highlighting artwork
in praise of Trump's a.
Speaker 2: Southern border wall, practically a fold up Playboy fold out
for the.
Speaker 1: For the Maga Trade. And then I don't know, I mean,
so I don't want to go on too long, Ellen,
and praise your magazine because I want to ask you
how it started and a few things about it. But
for example, you one issue, two or three issues back
had several features recalling the glory days of the Habsburgs
and interviewing the latest heirs of the Habsburg dynasty. That's
a real conservative magazine, right, Or you know articles saying,
you know, we ought to give Franco a second look
and realize he's not the boogeyman that we've been told
for years. What latest issue has a couple of features actually,
like I think five features on the legacy of Jean
Marie Lapinn, who remains you know, a boogeyman for everybody
and enlightened opinion.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly right.
Speaker 1: So tell us a bit about I mean, I don't know,
give us your sort of thumbnail sketch of what you
guys are about out and not about I mean, I'd
like to say you don't have dense articles on marginal
tax rates. You're about culture and beauty and philosophy, and
you know some of the populist currents going on in Europe.
You guys are all over. But tell us how the
magazine got started and what you guys try to do
with it.
Speaker 5: Sure, So, yes, we've been in Europe for I know
Mario has been there for about twenty years. I've been
close to fifteen. And we used to joke when Mario
would say, I'm Mario Fantini from the European Conservative, and
they'd say, oh, so you're the Conservative, the European Conservative.
That's changed quite a lot, and we can talk a
little bit about that, but certainly the political landscape has changed.
So the magazine had its early beginnings as a newsletter
from the proceedings of the Vandenberg Meeting, and the Vandenberg
Meeting still meets to this day. I think it's been
seventeen or eighteen years. The Center for European Renewal brought
together intellectuals and thinkers to try to look at the
philosophical I would say, foundations of conservatism in Europe, what
is there to conserve, etc. So started as a newsletter
and then Mario, let's say, was discontent with his day
job and said, hey, do you mind if I try
to make this into a real magazine. They said, sure,
that's fine. He did that for many years. Then we
got some foundation help. Actually an American Foundation gave us
some money to start a small website. Meanwhile, we were
producing this magazine on our own and sending it out
as a PDF, or printing a few copies and handing
them out like samizdat, you know, at various conferences. But
the PDFs really started getting shared, I suppose went viral
a bit. People really loved these magazines, and eventually we
got a foundation funding to really properly professionalize to publish
the magazine Steve that you have in your hands, and
we also started a website, We started a news program,
we opened an office in Brussels. We have reporters all
around Europe doing daily news, commentary, analysis. But the baby
of the project, the Fantini baby, is definitely the magazine
and its aim is to I would say, understand what
is European conservatism, And I say that but also say
it's not a monolith. So really it's European conservatisms because
of course there are conservative or right wing traditions across
Europe that are really different from one another, and they
have histories that are very different. And of course even
today the European right is not a monolith. There are
issues that one country deals with that another country perhaps
has dodged for now and so on. So the magazine
attempts to, through beauty and art and culture and philosophy
and book reviews, tries to remind us, of course, what
we mean when we say we want to save the West.
What is the West? You can't simply talk about taxes
and financial policy if what you're trying to save is
our patrimony. So that's part of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I know the magazine. Well, first of all,
I should mention that whenever I'm going somewhere in Europe,
I will email Mario and say, who do you know
in Oslo, Dublin, or you know some small town in Spain.
And he always tells me five people that he knows
right and tells me all about them. And so you
guys seem to be in touch with everybody everywhere. And
I know that you've been on newsstands. I think you're
on the Smith Consortium of newstands, except when they kicked
you off temporarily because of some cartoon.
Speaker 5: Right, Yes, that was the best thing that happened to
our to our sales is when we got we got
sort of canceled by W. H. Smith, which is basically
the Barnes and Noble of the UK and a fairly
well known playwright went into a W. H. Smith and
let's say he and his husband are not the types
who would normally gravitate towards something called the European Conservative. Well,
they flipped through it and found a cartoon. The cartoon fantastic. Uh.
Mom asks a little boy wearing a backpack, what did
you learn at school today? And the little boy vomits
a rainbow? So, I mean, you know, not particularly so edgy.
But they complained to W. H. Smith said, how can
this rubbish be sold? You know? Meanwhile, I'd love to
know what was right next to it and behind it
that was probably actual rubbish. Wh Smith panicked told all
of its retailers to to yank that issue from the shelves.
We of course seize the opportunity because there's no such
thing as bad press, and people were very interested and
we got lots of new readers.
Speaker 2: To W. H.
Speaker 5: Smith's credit, they didn't ban us from their stores, and
they still stalk us, and in fact, they'd just been
sold to something with a similar name that's not wh Smith.
And they continue to stalk us, and we are stocked
across the United States of America in Barnes and Noble.
Interesting little factoid is that half of our readers kind
of across all platforms, so website, magazine sales and subscriptions,
our social media followers are in the US. And I
think it's because you kind of alluded to this. Americans
do want to know what's going on in Europe and
they want to understand what European conservatism is. They also
want help, I think, sometimes navigating the players. Who are
the good guys who are the bad guys? You know,
not that we have a list of like who the
bad guys are, but I think because there's such an
import export of bad ideas between Europe and America, a
lot of Americans want to know what's what's happening in
Europe and the European conservative does that.
Speaker 1: Well, one one more question for me and I'll turn
you over to Charlie and James. I mean, one of
the things I like about it is exposes me to
a lot of European writers I've never heard of before.
I mean, a few I'm familiar with, and some have
come to really treasure. And so I'll just mention one
for one particular thing he does for you regularly, and
it's Sebastian Morello, who I think what lives in some
state up on the isle of Sky, I think. But
he in addition to features, he writes a must read
column in every issue about whiskey, which of course is
something I'm fond of. But anyway, I don't have a question.
I just want to say that it must be fun
to have the stable of people all over the place.
Who are you know? So it's so different from most
American publications, I'll put.
Speaker 2: It that way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean that's thank you for noticing that.
I mean, one of our missions is to bring to
English writers who don't write in English. Of course, Sebastian
writes in English, but we always say, why is it
that the next great thinker has to be an Anglophone?
In other words, they're really interesting people writing in Portuguese
and in Spanish and in German. And if English language
is the barrier to entry, well then we tear down
that barrier. We translate their work, and we think that
that's really important because while of course, as an American
I do think that there is some superiority to some
of the Anglophone world's ways of viewing things. It's certainly
not the only way, and I think we can learn
a lot from continental European thinking and thinkers.
Speaker 3: Hi, Charles Cook, I wonder is it a challenge dealing
with Europe which is a very big place with lots
of different countries in it and different traditions leave aside, languages.
Britain is different in France, which is different than Italy,
which is different than Germany. How do you coalesce all
of that or do you treat them as discrete entities
under the European banner?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean, I suppose we treat these countries and
even let's say the threads of conservatism within these countries
as as separate in the sense that there is no monolith.
And I think although more and more, every country in Europe,
and even countries who used to be in Europe, suffer
from a lot of the same problems. I mean, it's
quite easy these days to say the word migration and
you have a chorus. Now, how countries or right wing
leaders or thinkers approach these topics may be different, but
the similarity of the problems is certainly is certainly obvious.
But yeah, so to answer your question. I think that's
the beauty of Europe rather than the EU, which likes
to treat discrete, sovereign European countries as one big blob
or block. So, yes, we love Europe, We're not so
crazy about the EU.
Speaker 3: My second question is you mentioned that a good number
of your readers are in the US, and in a
sense you are translating for them. What is the biggest
misconception Americans have. I asked this because I increasingly meet
people on the right in the United States who seem
genuinely to believe that, say, Britain is now a Muslim country.
There are problems with Muslim immigration into Britain, especially around
free speech.
Speaker 6: We've seen the issues with the gangs in the North.
Speaker 3: I'm certainly not downplaying it, but as somebody who's Froming,
then it goes back there relatively often. Yes, London is
more Muslim than it was twenty years ago, but if
you go almost anywhere else, certainly where I'm from in
rural England, that's not the issue. Is it that or
is it something else? What is the biggest thing? People
don't know will get wrong?
Speaker 5: So what are the biggest things that Americans tend to
get wrong about Europe. I would think that a lot
of Americans don't understand the patriotism that Europeans feel. And
perhaps it's because I'm not sure any country, except maybe
maybe my father's country of Denmark, very few countries do
patriotism with flags the way that Americans do and call
themselves patriots. I mean, it's remarkable in fact that this
new both political European political party and grouping in the
European Parliament, the Patriots for Europe Right. Saying the word
patriots is unusual and fairly new, and I think a
lot of Americans don't understand and that Europeans love their countries.
They love their countries the way that Americans love their countries,
and so I think part of what we can do
is help to show why and examples of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the people love their country, but they're not
so sure that their leaders do. Now, just to tell
you where I'm coming from here, I recently spend four
days in a verbo in the Adriatic in Italy, so
I'm an expert on Italian politics. So that's where I'm
coming from. And I go to England at least once
a year, and I am keenly interested and concerned about
the country and its future. But when you say that
the people are patriotic, I believe that. I mean, you
talk to a Britain about their scepter dial but they
don't feel as if the leadership does. They feel that
the leadership is constantly apologizing for the country, apologizing for Europe,
apologizing for the entirety of Western civilization with its dreadful
history of colonialism. And they feel, to varying degrees that
there's an intentional program to dilute the national identity with
people from other places because A it's humane. B we
owe it to them, and see, you get a better
society the more diverse it is. And they feel as
if they are actually being worked against by their leadership.
That's what I get from an awful lot of people
on Twitter in various countries. Is that true. I'm sure
it's true to varying degrees in Europe. But which countries
feel that the least and which countries feel that the more.
In other words, which countries say, yes, we are patriotic
and our leaders are patriotic, in which country says we
are We desperately love le France. But the Macron is
a producer of our of.
Speaker 5: Our heritage, right right. So yes, I think I think
the average person in any European country, with few exceptions,
and I'll say what those exceptions are, agrees with the
premise that they love their country and their leaders are
actively trying to destroy that country.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: It's sort of the European equivalent of the NPR ification
of patriotism, which is that it's you know, it's mocked,
it's you know, kind of ignorant. And so I mean
that that that sort of elite disdain for a basic
love of one's country is alive and well in Europe,
of course, you know, they're European. Europeans in various countries
keep on electing people who don't love their countries. I mean,
I think I think that's a fair statement. And when
I say don't love their countries, of course that shorthand
for progressive or socialist or in some places communist policies
that actively destroy the countries. So I mean, you know,
do I think Emanuel Maccron loves France. I have no idea,
but he sure doesn't act like it. So yeah, So
I mean, I think I'll give you an example I
live in Austria, and when in twenty sixteen it was
looking like Donald Trump was going to do pretty well,
a lot of my Austrian friends said, how is this possible?
And I said, all right, look at an electoral map
of Austria, and you see those green and red spots
in the university towns and in the capitol. Okay, those
are progressives or communists or socialists, and the entire rest
of the country is voting for the Freedom Party pretty
much the same is you know, that's just like America.
So you have the coastal elites let's call them, even
if they don't have coasts in Europe. And so those
are the voters who keep on voting in governments and
leaders that don't have the country's best interests in mind
are the ones who mock the patriots and so on.
So I would say most of Europe, at least European
leadership fits in that category. And then you have places
like Hungary. I think Poland's coming back to some sanity.
You see AfD is surging in Germany and Germany is
of course we could have a half hour conversation about Germany,
but I mean Germans, especially young people especially young people,
are saying it cannot be a crime to say that
I'm proud of being German, like it just can't. And
they're expressing frustration with the idea that there is no
end in sight to a prohibition on being proud of
being German.
Speaker 1: So Ellen, let me follow up on that if I can.
It seems to me I think this isn't an exaggeration
or over simplification. That the one of the unifying issues
there as it has been here and now, including Japan
and their elections here in the last few days, which
I'll mention in a minute, is the concern about migration,
the erosion of national identity elites who are governing against
the country. I don't know if you follow this. I
don't follow Japanese politics, but I couldn't help but notice
some articles saying, huh, there's a new populist party in
Japan that serves and Lay's election. It's strength coming from
especially from young men frustrated about their lack of opportunities
in a stagnant economy and controversies over migration, which Japan
has very little but has some. And then I look
back at Germany and one of the problems it seems
to me, and this is sort of my political science
geek coming out, is you have these parliamentary systems with
multi party elections, and so in Germany right now AfD
is leading in the polls on a hypothetical election, and
the other parties literally won't speak to the AfD members
of the Bundestag, as I understand it, and they've completely
frozen them out of office. And what Mertz, he barely
got the job because what he only got twenty three
twenty four percent of the total vote that was cast.
My point is, if you had a binary system or
first past the post system like we have in America
or in Britain, I think that the populist voice would
be stronger, the elites would have had to change, or
you have actually had a populous government. And instead all
those systems are conspiring to elect someone for who seventy
five percent of the voters wanted somebody else, and eventually
that's got to lead to some kind of bad outcome,
it seems to me for the establishment, which means maybe
a good outcome for us, but seems to me the
suppression of legitimate voices and the marginalization of legitimate claims
to be included in a government. It's just storing up
all kinds of problems for the elite. And I see
a Trump like storm coming to Europe. Does that make
sense to you?
Speaker 5: It absolutely makes sense to me. I mean, certainly the
American style law fair that we saw against Trump is
alive and well in Europe. I mean, if you look
at Marine le penn and rossamblamant Nationale or the National
Rally in France. Not only was she convicted and sentenced
to what I think anyone would say is a completely
bogus charge, but then they they forbid her from running
for political office for five years and that prohibition cannot
be stayed pending appeal, which is just crazy. And then
you have the normalization of the cordon sanitaire. Right, this
this firewall against in France, against the RN in Germany,
obviously against the AfD and Mertz. You know, I mean,
he virtue signaled to the right, he started talking a
little bit tough on migration. He's completely failed there. And
I don't think anybody can be considered center right if
they endorse a firewall against the second most popular party
in the country. In Italy, you have law fair against
Matteo Salvini, the Deputy Prime Minister. This is ongoing and
you're absolutely right that if the voters weren't disenfranchised in
all of these countries, I think the political landscape would
look very, very different.
Speaker 2: I hate to interrupt, but actually interrupting the guest is
on my checklist. I got a checklist for my day.
I'm retired and that means that I got to keep
myself busy. Checklist comes in handy. I'm not even nine
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something you said at the beginning of the interview. You
mentioned three people. You said that you'd interviewed, the last
remaining Habsburg. Is that correct?
Speaker 5: Yes, Well, so there was an interview I think with
carlvon Hobsburg.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right right. I follow him on Twitter where he
fends off predictable japes about his gin physiognomy, and he
seems a very civilized and interesting person. A lot of
people have a certain sort of nostalgia for the os
the waning days of the Austrian Hungarian Empire and the
stuff on this week area of Vienna and the twilight
of that civilian I get that. I get that. I do.
It's an interesting thing to do. But you also said
that you have an article about another look at Franco
and the penn And while I can't comment on either
article without having read them, I want to know what
is exactly what's is it worth the candle to take
these figures about whom the ideas are pretty well baked
and say we need to take another look for these
reasons or does that not run the risk of just
immediately tarring everybody who calls themselves a European conservative with
wanting to go back to discredited ideas, or people that
you know may have had a good idea here and there,
but are not somebody necessarily we want to gather into
our arms and say what can we learn from you?
Is it not best too? Perhaps? I mean, what's the
point of that? I guess as I mean, I know
it doesn't keep you from writing about new people on
the horizon, but I'm just curious the impetus behind those
editorial decisions.
Speaker 5: Sure well, I think I think that it's part of
our exploration of the legacies that have made up what
is modern Europe. And I think one could look at
someone's legacy and explain it, or analyze it, or criticize it. Certainly,
the twenty pages that we've devoted to the legacy of
Jean Marie le Penn it's not a twenty page tribute,
but rather are the criticisms fair? What else do we
know about him? And frankly, could the French rite exist
the way it does now without what he did then?
I mean his his predictions on globalization, migration, this homogenization
of Europe. Those were prescient warnings, even if even if
what he said about other things were in bad taste
or worse. There are certainly arguments that it's worth looking
at his legacy, especially because literally no English language publication
and UH took a look at his legacy, except you know,
sort of a passing uh obituary. So I think it's.
Speaker 1: So if I can jump in briefly, there is you
may have seen it, Ellen, I'll send it to you.
Christopher Caldwell has a long yes piece on Lapan in
the latest Clairemont Review books. The tracks very closely with
with your treatment of him.
Speaker 5: Sorry to interrupt, Yeah, And I mean it's also you know,
we we we joke that that we're we're open to
everyone from uh, you know, sort of traditionalists, anarchists, you know,
sort of conservative anarchists, monarchists. I mean, we have the
American monarchist Charles Colombe, a Californian, uh, writing about the monarchy.
I mean we we think that these are all interesting,
and we think that our readers are smart enough to
figure out if it's interesting to them. So, you know,
I appreciate the question, but I also think this is
the sort of the fabric. It's weird and uncomfortable sometimes,
but but there's a lot there that people can learn from.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that it will been warning about the homogenization
of Europe, and that's that's something that's that people seem
to go along with shrug their shoulders, you know, the
center right, the social Democrats, they were okay with you
EU having a certain amount of control and influence over
their lives because they got open borders where they could
pass without having to get a visa stand they didn't
have to bother to change their perfectly good money into
that strange useless script that the other nations had. I mean,
you had this settled notion of Europe that a certain
class of people enjoyed, but now they're finding it changed
in ways. I think that's that that that that are
a front to them, And so I wonder if there
was it, if the EU would not be facing the
pressures it had today, if it's simply hadn't decided to
embark upon this read this demographic altering project that they
seem to be doing. If they just stopped at regulating
the size of bubbles in Swiss cheese, that they'd be fine.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean I think I think that's true.
I mean I think I think plenty of people would
say that being an economic or trading block, or regulating
you know, sort of like oil and gas, all that
was good. I think there there are some countries who
are very happy about the Euro others that are not
at all happy with the Euro. I think the Shengen,
the Shengin treaty that opened the borders. I think a
lot of people, as you said, said oh well, that'll
make it so convenient, but they never thought about, for example,
what happened this week, which is that Pedro Sanchez in
Spain has based said, I think I'm just going to
normalize the status of like a million illegal migrants and
just you know, give them residents, permits and work visas,
and so they would in fact just be able to
do whatever anyone else with illegal status in Europe could do.
So that means borderless crossings, that means going wherever they
want to go. And I'm not sure that the people
who thought Schengen was a good idea because they don't
want to have to get visa stamps had this in mind,
and certainly I think that there are a lot of
people who are really regretting it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Are you optimistic about Europe? I ask because it seems
possible to me, and I understand this is provocative that
Europe will just not fix itself. Twenty years ago, the
size of the European economy and the American economy it
was the same, and now the American economy is twice
as big as the European economy. I don't know as
much as you obviously about continental Europe. I know France
pretty well, Italy increasingly, so I know a lot about Britain.
I'm from there, and at the moment Britain is just
not fixing itself. Britain is not making the decisions that
it needs to, and it seems possible to me. I
hope it doesn't happen. It seems possible that Europe will
just decline.
Speaker 6: Are you hopeful? Do you worry about that too?
Speaker 5: Well? You know, it's funny whenever Mario and I get
asked this question. You know, Mario gets called doctor Doom
because he would, I think, say the same thing about Europe.
So I guess I'm supposed to be the ray of sunshine.
But I'm with you, Charles in the sense that I'm
not seeing them do it right. So I'm seeing a
lot of people try, and I'm seeing uh, you know,
these sort of populist movements, populist nationalists, uh, whatever word
that is. I think that they they really want to try.
But boy, the march through the institutions, uh well, and
truly succeeded in Europe, and and all of the power
and the money has gone into initiatives that were actively
work against European growth. I mean, Europe can't defend itself.
Euro does Europe doesn't make anything or manufacture anything. So
although I am the ray of sunshine apparently as between
myself and my husband, I am. I am worried, but
I do think that the that the that there is
there are some sparks, and I think I think people
are are pretty well fed fed up. I just worry
that their fed upness is going to get ugly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the big thing. You repress until you
get a blowback that you don't like. In Sweden, there
I forget that. The term for it in the Nordic
countries is unpronounceable to me, in which there is a
series of intellectual guard rails. Accepted opinion must travel between
these guardrails, and anything outside of that is regarded as
not something that a decent civilized person would say. And
one of those, I think is the idea that that
Swedish identity is somehow all encompassing and protein, which it isn't.
I mean, in America, the great thing what I love
about America is that anybody can come here from wherever
and they can become an American, and that even includes.
Speaker 4: Charles, because we have a civic identity that is born
in an idea embodied in a constitution, and that does
not depend on blood and soil, and all the rest
of it. That anybody can become an American, but it
is absurd to think that anybody can become a sweet.
Speaker 2: I can't go to France and become a Frenchman, never could,
never would. Don't even have the interest in knowing enough
about whine to be able to claim any sort of
frenchness to me. I could move to England, I really could.
There's a place that I would live, but I know
in my heart that I would never be an Englishman.
So it is absurd, however, to be able to you
can't say these ideas in modern Europe because it goes
against the whole transnational idea, which then suppresses nationalism, which
then you think, as I always looking at history, erupts
and erupts poorly. But I'm with Charles, I don't see
it erupting. I just see more and more slump shouldered,
sullen reaction to this as the country, just as the
countries have a slow, slow, long decline. I don't want
that spark but to erupt. But I want something to happen,
but I don't think it will.
Speaker 5: You know, this is interesting, this question of identity, and
let's say, on the British very online. Right, There's been
a whole discussion about being English and in Ireland same thing.
Somebody I read a tweet just today that observed that.
Speaker 2: I know what you're going to say. I wrote the tweet,
go ahead, right.
Speaker 5: So an Irish person will say to an American who says,
you know, I'm Irish, you're not Irish. But somebody can
arrive twenty minutes ago from Somalia and they're definitely Irish, right,
and you know so? And then there was the whole question.
I mean, this is this is the question, you know,
when you do a what now defunct twenty three and
meters genetic test, At what point is somebody going to
have a genetic test that says they're American? Right, Because
it's a civic it's a civic identity as well as
you know, sort of being American of whatever. Fill in
ethnic identity roots where Swedes are Swedes. But there is
a heavy, heavy, heavy push everywhere in Europe to say
that citizenship is national identity, and there's a big push
against it, and I think that's right.
Speaker 2: Ellen Fantini, who is the deputy editor of the European Conservative,
go down to Barnes and Noble, buy several copies, and
you know, you know, with the heft and waight of
Stephen described with a nice stock and the rest of it,
you can probably use it for some good bicep curls
as well. I look forward to looking at the next edition,
and Ellen, we hope to have you and or Mario
back in the future to discuss exactly what's changed in Europe.
If anything does, and if nothing has, you can tell
us why. Ellen Fantini, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: The news cycle move so fast that nobody cares about
Stephen Colbert, but it turns out that a lot of
people care about Stephen Colbert before then. Now he's going
away someday. Here's your hat. You know, it's going to
take him like eight months to get to the foyer
and leave. But he's new, and he's revitalized, and he's refreshed,
and he's all resistance. F you Trump people are saying
that he was canned for political reasons the same week
that South Park just came out and made the hilarious
humiliation because that's what they do. It's a momb on Biden.
You guys think that Colbert was axed because he was
just too resistancy or because maybe he was losing a
lot of money in his average age of his viewers
of sixty eight.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's the latter, but I wish it was
the former. I would love for it. David Allison, who's
the owner of sky Dance that's buying Paramount, I would
love for him to come out and say, actually, we're
hitting rid of him because he's too political and he's unfunny.
I mean, South Park at least is funny, right, I
mean those guys are geniuses, and Colbert became a crashing
bore and kill the ratings and it's losing tons of money.
I do think we saw the future though, of late
night left wing talk shows. It's going to be Colbert
joining forces with Hunter Biden on MSNBC to see who
can out.
Speaker 2: F bomb the other, and Charlie you'll be watching, of course,
you're being a big Hunter Biden fan. I think you
saw his the entirety of his forty seven hour interview
that you.
Speaker 6: Say, I did watch the whole thing.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 3: I love you look, it was engaging. That doesn't mean
that he's not crazy. It doesn't mean that the guy
who interviewed him isn't an idiot, but it was engaging.
He asked open questions and then let Hunter Biden speak,
and I found it fascinating.
Speaker 1: Well, it is that fascinating in the same way we
slow down look at car wrecks. So that's the way
I thought of it.
Speaker 3: Sure, on Collbat, it just seems very unlikely to me
that CBS said we had better get rid of Colbert
to please Trump and give one and a half billion
dollars to South Right in the same move. But the
problem there was that the show that he inherited is
not supposed to be what he made it. You know,
it's like ice cream is great, right, but it doesn't
make a very good hammer, And these two things they're
not the same. And so many of the criticisms from
the left have said, ah, so you don't think that
they should be able to criticize the president. No, that's
not my view. I think he should be able to
criticize the president. But he is in charge of the
late show. That's not that. And yeah, but it comes up. Sure,
but it became this party political broadcast. Of course it
was canceled. Of course, no one wanted to watch it.
Of course, its audience numbers went from eleven million to two.
Speaker 2: If that McMahon had come out every night and started
making speeches in favor of George McGovern, I think that
would have been seen as inappropriate for the tonight show
and what it was attempting to do. But you know,
the Left sizes every single aspect of the culture and
then and then and then accuses the Right of doing
the exact same thing. We would be content, perfectly content
to keep the culture and the politics a little bit separa,
although they'll say the personal is the political, and everything
cultural is inherently just a tiresome group of people. And
speaking of which, when you mentioned before, Charles, there's a template,
you know, the the nineteen thirty Germany template in which
everything is put and the getting rid of Colbert is
another step of the fashions regime silencing all dissent. I
saw somebody the other day yesterday, reacting to the executive
order that said, you know what, you can't nod out
from drugs on the sidewalk and die. We're just not
going to do that anymore. Cities, states, municipalities, you got
to get these people off the street and put them
in a treatment And the reaction to this from one
left wing Twitter person was, this is eugenics, straight up.
That's serious, that this is out of the Nazi playbook,
rounding up the undesirables and putting them into camps. It
is better, apparently, in the name of harm reduction somehow,
to have no go streets in cities where people are
dying unless you jab them with some narcan or just
doing a fenifold for a couple of hours until their
desperate lives are reduced to finding the next tack. That
that's somehow preferable to what a lot of us have
been saying is necessary in the first place, forced institutionalization
to give these people an opportunity to live without the drug.
And I'm saying, you can give them endless opportunities, but
the start is getting them off the streets. And I
think it's partially. They won't admit this, but it's partially
because it deprives them of two things. One the people
who are in the homeless industrial complex, who make an
awful lot of money. I think you know San Francisco,
Los Angeles, how many hundreds of agencies do they have
dealing with these things? Are afraid of the money going away,
but also b it deprives the rhetoricicians of their favorite
examples to use against capitalism and private housing and all
the rest of it. I mean, if the streets were
suddenly clear, there weren't a lot of drug addicts out anymore,
and these people were somewhere off there, the arguments against
capitalism and housing would not be as compelling as they
want them to be. Or am I being cynical now?
Speaker 1: I think? I mean my guess is knowing how much
we've spent here in California on homelessness only to see
it grow. Of course there may be a connection there, right.
The more money there isn't it, the more of it
you're going to get. So it's something like twenty five
thirty billion dollars that state and local government have spent
in California and homelessness. You would have thought they could
have built some homes with that kind of money. Very
very few. In any case, let's not be clever about this.
When you put homeless with drug problems and psychological problems
in hotels and cheap housing, they tend to trash the
place because there is no adult supervision. It's got to
be cheaper. It's not a matter of money, essentially, but
it's got to be cheaper to put somebody in some
kind of institution. I forget the numbers now, but they
go something like this, that we had something like five
hundred thousand people institutionalized in the nineteen fifties when the
population was, you know, about half of what it is now,
and today it's something like fifty thousand. I don't quote
those numbers precisely any listeners, but it's that magnitude of
change of our deinstitutionalization, which we did start in the
late fifties. And it is sad, but that's a much
better approach to the problem. And now we can probably
find better institutions than we did back in those days
when many of them were pretty dismal places.
Speaker 2: Right worldA Rovera, if I recall it, correctly made his
bones at the very early age by discussing the bedlam
like conditions in these places, Bedlam being, of course, the
term that comes from an institution in Great Britain. So
we'll let Charles have the last word.
Speaker 3: I just love the response that you mentioned eugenics. This
is because this is the problem with our moment. This
is something that I've increasingly noticed that people can't level
a criticism without adding a bit on the end that
just makes them sound completely crazy. So you meet some
law professor from Berkeley or something, and they'll say.
Speaker 6: Tie, wow, wow, I'm very, very worried.
Speaker 3: I mean, under the nineteen forty eight administer to procedure
at Donald Trump was supposed to submit this for review
through three or four different channels and put it in triplica.
Speaker 6: But he hasn't done that.
Speaker 3: He's skipped forward to section three. And that's why fourteen
thousand people will die. And you're like, what, sorry, I
was with you until what right. I was totally interested
in your argument until you went there.
Speaker 6: And it's like, so, I mean, I'm with you guys
on the homeless thing.
Speaker 3: But even if you don't like this executive order, how
do they get from Well, I don't like this moderate
change in federal policy affected by the executive branch.
Speaker 6: Within the statute are eugenics.
Speaker 2: It is it is delightful. Well, it's all been delightful,
the whole thing. It's been delightful to be sponsored by
bank On yourself and by Cozy Earth, and we thank them,
and of course you can avail yourself with the products
to make your life better today and in the foreseeable future.
It would make us happy if you gave a five
star review on Apple Podcasts. But you know that, you
know how much it would go out in my day,
and yet you haven't done it yet. And don't think
I haven't noticed. Oh I'm not mad. I'm not mad.
I'm just And also, I would like to tell you
if it isn't obvious that ricochet dot com is the
enterprise in the edifice behind this weekly podcast. And if
we've got seven hundred and fifty under our belt, well
there's so many, many more, a whole feed of podcasts
to which you can listen to, including My Diner, which
has nothing to do with politics and stuff that has
to do with Well, you just have to go and see,
won't you. A lot of names you'll recognize and a
lot of new people that you'll love to meet. It's
been fun, Stephen Charles, have a great week, and we'll
see everybody in the comments. Said Ricochet four point zero.
Bye bye,