Speaker 1: Okay, uh yes, uh, thank you Germany.
Speaker 2: And I know it's the beginning of friends that you
Speaker 2: can't do it more often with more people, uh not
Speaker 2: the Republicity than all the rest. But they think it's
Speaker 2: it's a start. Somebody has to do to stop the
Speaker 2: force of a pioneers to start that help stop the
Speaker 2: activities of the eight run Institue in Germany.
Speaker 1: And thank you, thank you for coming, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. And uh uh the topic has,
Speaker 1: as we said, is is anti Semitism and anti capitalism.
Speaker 1: And I'll I'll leave plenty of time for for questions
Speaker 1: for everybody. Uh, but I wanna start with a quote,
Speaker 1: so I want you to tell me who you think
Speaker 1: said the following. What is the secular basis of Judaism
Speaker 1: practical need, self interest? What is the worldly religion of
Speaker 1: the jew huckstering? What is this worldly god money? What
Speaker 1: in itself was the basis of the Jewish religion practical
Speaker 1: need egoism? The god of practical need and self interest
Speaker 1: is money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in
Speaker 1: face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades
Speaker 1: all the gods of man and turns them into commodities.
Speaker 1: Money is the universal, self established value of all things.
Speaker 1: It has therefore robbed the whole world, both the world
Speaker 1: of men and nature of its specific value. Money is
Speaker 1: the estranged essence of man's work and man's existence, and
Speaker 1: this alien espence since dominates him and he worships it.
Speaker 1: The God of the Jews has become secularized and has
Speaker 1: become the god of the world. The Bill of exchange
Speaker 1: is the real god of the Jews. The chimerical nationality
Speaker 1: of the jew is the nationality of the merchant, of
Speaker 1: the man of money in general. Now, who do you
Speaker 1: think wrote that? Cormax? Cormax's first published essay was Under
Speaker 1: Jewish Question, published in eighteen forty three, and Cormas, who
Speaker 1: is a child his father converted from Judaism to Christianity,
Speaker 1: comes from a long line of a very well established
Speaker 1: German Jewish family. CarMax, in his first essay published essay
Speaker 1: basically links Jews with self interest. He links Jews with money,
Speaker 1: He links Jews with capitalism. The essay you can find
Speaker 1: it online. I think it's Marx dot org, and you
Speaker 1: can find all of Marxist stuff online. You can find
Speaker 1: the es online fascinating read, but it reads like an
Speaker 1: anti Semitic screed. He is constantly putting down Jews, and
Speaker 1: he says, part of the problem in the world is
Speaker 1: that Christians have become Jewish. And what does he mean
Speaker 1: by that? He manamsact, Christians now have become capitalists. Capitalism
Speaker 1: is the real evil. The Jews represent capitalism. Therefore we
Speaker 1: almost hate the Jews. This is eighteen forty three, and
Speaker 1: of course this is not the beginning of anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: Called Marx is leveraging on a long tradition going back
Speaker 1: really to the birth of is Christ or certainly to
Speaker 1: the establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. But Carl Marx is now taking it and
Speaker 1: spinning it in a slightly new, more expansive direction, and
Speaker 1: I think dominates the conversation on the left with regard
Speaker 1: to Jews to this day. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about kind of the origins of anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: particularly these origins of anta Semicism that are linked to
Speaker 1: economic aspects, to this connection with money and capitalism, and
Speaker 1: then I want to bring it to the modern day
Speaker 1: and to the campus demonstrations and what's happening in German cities,
Speaker 1: but really all of the world in terms of the
Speaker 1: anti Jewish sentiment that is out there, because I think
Speaker 1: it's they're very much connected and very much, very much linked.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons you who's associated with money in
Speaker 1: car Marx's mind, but I think in the European mind
Speaker 1: more broadly, certainly of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: is that for much of history, for much of Western history,
Speaker 1: Jews were the only ones who dealt on a regular
Speaker 1: basis and in a systematic way with banking, with money lending.
Speaker 1: Christians didn't do it, or if they did it, they
Speaker 1: hit it. I mean, there was plenty of Christian money
Speaker 1: lending going on, There was plenty of Christian banking, but
Speaker 1: they always disguised it and hid it, whereas Jews were
Speaker 1: out in the open doing it. And why is this.
Speaker 1: There's an interesting passage in the Old Testament where God
Speaker 1: tells the Jews you shall not I'm paraphrasing, you shall
Speaker 1: not charge interest interest payment on a loan from your brother.
Speaker 1: So no interest. You can loan people money, but you
Speaker 1: can can't expect interest. You can expect the money in return,
Speaker 1: but nothing more. Than that. And this goes back even
Speaker 1: to Aristotle, who did not believe you should be able
Speaker 1: to charge interest on a loan. You know, money was barren.
Speaker 1: You can't produce money for money, and therefore there's no
Speaker 1: rationale for gaining interest on a loan paid. Now, Jews
Speaker 1: interput in what God tells them as okay, my brother
Speaker 1: or other Jews. But we can charge interest from non Jews.
Speaker 1: We can charge interest with people not our brothers. Christianity
Speaker 1: comes around, and Christianity is a universalist religion. Christianity has
Speaker 1: the perspective, well, all humanity is our brother and therefore
Speaker 1: we can't charge interests from anybody. So interest on a
Speaker 1: loan the very basic transaction in finance, right, the very
Speaker 1: basic transaction in capital formation, in any kind of building
Speaker 1: of an enterprise, That basic transaction is banned by Christianity. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it's considered a mortal sin. Money lenders are considered people
Speaker 1: who go to hell. In Dante's Inferno, the money lenders
Speaker 1: in the seventh throng of Hell with a bag of
Speaker 1: money around the bag of gold, right, money around his neck,
Speaker 1: dragging him down into the fire to make sure he
Speaker 1: gets really bods. Well, if you remember if you've read,
Speaker 1: if you've read Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, one of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's great plays. The villain of the Merchant of Venice
Speaker 1: a Shylock who is a Jewish money lender. He lends
Speaker 1: money and charges interest. The hero, the good guy in
Speaker 1: the Merchant of Venice, is a Christian money lender who
Speaker 1: lends money and does not charge any interest. Planes about
Speaker 1: how greedy and awful and horrible Shylock is because he
Speaker 1: dares to charge interest. How dare you? This is completely
Speaker 1: unacceptable and it's a sign of your people, of the
Speaker 1: greed of your people. It's a very anti Semitic play,
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you read it, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: they cut out in the place some of the sections,
Speaker 1: But if you read the original, Shakespeare is clearly picking up.
Speaker 1: By the way, Shakespeare never met a Jew, because in
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's time, Jews were banned from England. They'd been kicked
Speaker 1: out of England for two hundred years. There were no
Speaker 1: Jews in England to some extent because of this phenomena
Speaker 1: of lending money. So think about think about the Christian
Speaker 1: So just one more thing, you know, if you think
Speaker 1: about the Medici banks, and you think about like Lake
Speaker 1: medieval Renaissance banking, and you think about Christians lending money.
Speaker 1: They don't charge interest. They come up with all kinds
Speaker 1: of loopholes to find ways to charge the equivalent of interest,
Speaker 1: but they call it something different. Just like who does
Speaker 1: that today? What banks in the world? I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys know, do exactly that today? They don't
Speaker 1: charge and they don't give interest. Islamic banks, Islamic banks.
Speaker 1: If you go to the Middle East, you don't get
Speaker 1: interest on your checking account or your saving accounts. You
Speaker 1: get dividends or you get some other thing, but you
Speaker 1: don't get interest because interest is banned in Islam, just
Speaker 1: like it was man in Christianity. It's just like this
Speaker 1: band among Jews, supposedly in Judaism. So the Medici banks
Speaker 1: functioned like an Islamic bank functions today, providing returns but
Speaker 1: never interested. Interest only became okay based on a Catholic
Speaker 1: church stop being a mortal sin in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, at about the same time
Speaker 1: during the nineteenth century, they separated out two concepts. Suddenly
Speaker 1: there was a concept of interest on the concept of usury.
Speaker 1: Interest being regularly charged interest that we all participate in.
Speaker 1: You know that the market determines, but is capped by
Speaker 1: something reasonable that the authorities think is okay. And usury
Speaker 1: being excessive interest, and usury is still banned in the
Speaker 1: United States. Many states in the US have usury laws.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have usury laws here in Europe.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if you do. Actually, one of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's proposals, which Bernie Sanders, if you know Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders is the left wing, far left wing senator, agree on,
Speaker 1: and they said they're going to work together is to
Speaker 1: cap interest rates on credit cards because the credit card
Speaker 1: interest rates are usurus right, They're too high, so they
Speaker 1: want to cap them. I think a ten percent or
Speaker 1: something like that. We can talk about why that's a really,
Speaker 1: really bad idea, but I think this group pretty much
Speaker 1: knows the answer to that. So during this period of
Speaker 1: almost two thousand years, Jews were the only legitimate, if
Speaker 1: you will, money lenders. According to their religion, it was
Speaker 1: okay for them to charge interest to the Christians. The
Speaker 1: Christians needed capital, They needed money to go to wars,
Speaker 1: to start businesses, to do a variety of different activities
Speaker 1: that we all engage in using credit, and they had
Speaker 1: to go to the Jew to get the money. So
Speaker 1: think about that relationship and how well that relationship developed.
Speaker 1: Right that to go to somebody for money pay them
Speaker 1: interest something that they, as Christians believed was a mortal
Speaker 1: sin committed by this other person. They had to develop
Speaker 1: resentments and hatreds towards the Jew as acting money lender. Indeed,
Speaker 1: a number of times it's it's been well documented that
Speaker 1: a number of times the programs where whole Jewish communities
Speaker 1: were wiped out were basically wiped out because the prince
Speaker 1: owed a lot of money to the Jewish money lander.
Speaker 1: And one way to not have to pay your debts
Speaker 1: is to kill the banker. So if you wipe out
Speaker 1: the bankers, and you wipe out his books and they
Speaker 1: always conveniently get burnt, then you don't have to pay
Speaker 1: back the debts. In York, in England, there's a famous
Speaker 1: massacre of Jews which is basically oriented towards wiping out
Speaker 1: the debts of the local prince. But the same is
Speaker 1: true in continental Europe on several occasions. This is well documented.
Speaker 1: So during this entire period, there's this relationship that develops
Speaker 1: between Christians and Jews. That is already complicated, right, because
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church basically do you know why Catholics tolerate Jews?
Speaker 1: According to Augustine, so there were certain early Christian thinkers
Speaker 1: that said, should just wipe out the Jews. They're bad
Speaker 1: people because they witnessed Christ. They were there when Christ appeared,
Speaker 1: and they still don't accept it, so we just should
Speaker 1: kill them. And Augustine said, no, no, no, we shouldn't kill them.
Speaker 1: We should keep them alive for us to witness what
Speaker 1: happens when you don't accept Christ. That is, we need
Speaker 1: to keep them in misery. We need to keep them poor,
Speaker 1: we need to keep them suffering so that we as
Speaker 1: Christians could look and see, Yes, this is what happens
Speaker 1: to a people who don't accept Jesus Christ. It's testimony
Speaker 1: that reinforces our faith. This is, by the way, some
Speaker 1: of the origin of the ghetto. The ghetto is meant
Speaker 1: to concentrate all the Jews in one place so that
Speaker 1: the Christians could easily observe the horror of being a Jew,
Speaker 1: the horror of not accepting Jesus Christ as one's savior.
Speaker 1: So again, There are many causes of this kind of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, going back to the acceptance of Jesus or not,
Speaker 1: but there is a suddenly an economic one related to
Speaker 1: this idea of usury and related to the fact that
Speaker 1: the Jews become bankers, and banking is a can be
Speaker 1: a relatively profitable business, so Jews do at least the
Speaker 1: ones who go into the money lending do quite well,
Speaker 1: and as a culture we've always resented the people who
Speaker 1: do well. You know, there are various again teachings where
Speaker 1: the Christian or secular that tell us that success in
Speaker 1: business is motivated by self interest, which leads to greed,
Speaker 1: and self interest to greed are bad motivations. They evil
Speaker 1: in and of themselves, and therefore they should be rejected.
Speaker 1: So Jews the whole there's a whole building up of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism around this idea. The Jews are successful, they're
Speaker 1: getting rich. They also become the merchants, so because they're
Speaker 1: not a lot of own property, they become traders, so
Speaker 1: they become middlemen, and again middleman just like money lenders.
Speaker 1: What's the productive role of a banker? For hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: nobody could really answer that question, really until the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: economists didn't really have a good answer to what is
Speaker 1: the productive role of banking? What is the productive role
Speaker 1: of a middleman? He seems like he's just taking a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, he's just take adding profit, he's
Speaker 1: adding cost to the products. But again, a proper economic
Speaker 1: understanding of a merchant, of a middleman is something that
Speaker 1: again only develops with the Scholastics and of course leader
Speaker 1: Adam Smith and so on. But that's late. So there
Speaker 1: is a culture of resentment towards these people who trade
Speaker 1: in goods and then trade in even worse in money.
Speaker 1: And to logic extent, we in the model world have
Speaker 1: inherited that resent I mean, when was the last time
Speaker 1: an economic crisis happened that we did not blame on bankers.
Speaker 1: We blame every economic crisis on bankers before we even
Speaker 1: know what caused the crisis. We know it's the bankers,
Speaker 1: right to Wall Street. Wall Street causes everything. So what
Speaker 1: caused the the what caused the the Great recession in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. I remember in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: before anybody did any analysis, anybody could think about what
Speaker 1: actually happened and what was going on. Everybody knew it
Speaker 1: was Wall Street caused it was greed on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Greed on Wall Street caused the Great Financial Crisis in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. I was like to ask people
Speaker 1: who advocate for that view, if there was greed on
Speaker 1: was Stet in two thousand and one and two and three,
Speaker 1: why did greed and varsity just invent itself in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven and suddenly cause the crisis? As far
Speaker 1: as I know, if greed is the wanting of more,
Speaker 1: then there's always been greed on Wall Seet. The whole
Speaker 1: place functions on wanting more on greed. We could analyze
Speaker 1: the causes of the financial crisis. I've done that. There's
Speaker 1: an eight hour course online on YouTube for free that
Speaker 1: you could take if you're interested in my view and
Speaker 1: what caused the financial crisis? It wasn't Wall Street. And indeed,
Speaker 1: twenty years from now, I don't think any economist will
Speaker 1: believe it was Wall Street anymore than anybody an economist,
Speaker 1: really serious economists. I don't consider Paul Kogman one of those,
Speaker 1: but any serious economists I don't think believes that the
Speaker 1: Great Depression was caused by Wall Street. By the Stockman
Speaker 1: could collapse anymore. Right, there was a period in which
Speaker 1: they all thought that, and the instinctual response right after,
Speaker 1: when we were in the Great Depression was what regulate
Speaker 1: wall Street? Wall Street caused this. This is all bankers,
Speaker 1: This is all finance. There's something about finance that causes
Speaker 1: the particular mistrust that today we know that the causes
Speaker 1: of the Good Depression are much more complex than just
Speaker 1: blaming greed of the bankers, and the primary cause of
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, just like the primary cause of the
Speaker 1: Great Recession was monetary policy by the Federal Reserve and
Speaker 1: physical policy by the federal government. And because it's you know,
Speaker 1: relevant these days, tariffs played a big role in the
Speaker 1: Great Depression and Smooth Holly in the nineteen thirties. So
Speaker 1: our tendency is always to be in the bankers, and
Speaker 1: the bankers even to this day, tend to be Jews,
Speaker 1: and those are linked, those are linked in people psyche.
Speaker 1: So I'd say a resentment towards finance, or resentment to
Speaker 1: its success economically is directly tied to resentment of Jews,
Speaker 1: more broadly to anti Semitism. And of course, I think
Speaker 1: in modern times this has gained even a grada and
Speaker 1: this is what's going on on campuses in a sense
Speaker 1: of greater depth because now it has what they would
Speaker 1: consider some philosophical backing. So, you know, let's take a
Speaker 1: step back and think about what these kids are being
Speaker 1: taught at our universities. What it's the standard moral code
Speaker 1: that the culture accepts, that it's just acceptable in the
Speaker 1: entire culture that everybody, everybody kind of manifests. The common
Speaker 1: moral code is a mal code of what of altruism,
Speaker 1: of the idea that the individual's moral responsibility is to
Speaker 1: sacrifice for fill in the blank, right, the group, the god,
Speaker 1: the sack, the religion, something. But to be moral is
Speaker 1: to be self lessed, I mean, moral is to sacrifice
Speaker 1: for something outside of you. Altruism, other ism. Well, I
Speaker 1: think the postmodern left, the left that is teaching at
Speaker 1: our universities today, takes this idea very seriously. As I
Speaker 1: think this idea is travel through history and really being
Speaker 1: almost never challenged. You know, you can think of the
Speaker 1: number of philosophers challenging the idea that the mall purpose
Speaker 1: of life is to sacrifice for others. You can probably
Speaker 1: name two or three philosophers in entire history of the
Speaker 1: last two thousand years. Who challenges that idea. Well, the
Speaker 1: plus monitors take this very seriously and they say, okay,
Speaker 1: we should sacrifice for other people. Who should we sacrifice for? Well,
Speaker 1: it makes use the sacrifice people who need it. So
Speaker 1: need is the standard by which we should sacrifice. So
Speaker 1: if you the more you need it, the more we
Speaker 1: should sacrifice to you. And what you have today. Is
Speaker 1: a theory that has been coined in the United States.
Speaker 1: I think it's come to Europe. I think it's kind
Speaker 1: of filtered into Europe. It's called intersectionality. Intersectionality, and the
Speaker 1: idea here is that we should look at every individual
Speaker 1: and figure out, in a sense, how needy are they,
Speaker 1: and much of their neediness comes from the group that
Speaker 1: they belong to. So, if you're black in the United States,
Speaker 1: you're very needy because your ancestors were slaves. So and
Speaker 1: you're still and you're still poor, probably like most I
Speaker 1: don't know, I wouldn't say most, but you know, a
Speaker 1: significant percentage of the black population in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's a relatively poor and therefore deserving of our sacrifice.
Speaker 1: Makes them good. And then the intersectionality comes in is
Speaker 1: if you're black and gay or if you're black and
Speaker 1: trans even better. Right. That is, the more of a
Speaker 1: what's called the oppressed group you are, the more needy
Speaker 1: you are, the more we should sacrifice for you. The
Speaker 1: more elevated you become a kind of a molo hierarchy.
Speaker 1: And the hierarchy is really who should sacrifice to whom.
Speaker 1: Those who have should always sacrifice to those who haven't.
Speaker 1: But now it's not just about money, it's about every dimension.
Speaker 1: It's about cutting up the groups and figuring out what
Speaker 1: group you know has and what group hasn't, and sacrificing
Speaker 1: the haves to they have not, which again has a
Speaker 1: very very long tradition, sacrificing the haves that they have
Speaker 1: not from each according to his from each according to
Speaker 1: his ability, to each according to his need. Right, it's
Speaker 1: basically the same idea. If you divide human beings like this.
Speaker 1: If you take your group belonging and you figure out
Speaker 1: if your group is generally oppressed or not, and you
Speaker 1: place people in this hierarchy and this pyramid of neediness
Speaker 1: of oppression, what you find is so groups are particularly
Speaker 1: needy and therefore deserving of sacrifice, and they're the good guys, minorities,
Speaker 1: whether they're minorities of ethnic groups, or minorities that have
Speaker 1: to do with sexuality, or people who are poor, or
Speaker 1: any primarily any combination of those. And then you've got
Speaker 1: groups who are successful and doing well, and those groups
Speaker 1: must be sacrificed to the other groups, to each from
Speaker 1: each according to his ability, ability reflected on how well
Speaker 1: things are going for you, to each according to your need,
Speaker 1: depending on how And then, of course, if you believe
Speaker 1: in a kind of a zero sum world, there's much
Speaker 1: of what's being taught in our university does then if
Speaker 1: some people have a lot and other people have a
Speaker 1: little bit, then some people have a lot because of
Speaker 1: what because they've obviously taking it from other people. There's
Speaker 1: a wealth creation. So if it's your some world, if
Speaker 1: I have a lot, I must have taken it from
Speaker 1: somebody who doesn't have a lot. So again it fits
Speaker 1: into this higher chy of some groups are pressers exploiters,
Speaker 1: and other groups are oppressed and being exploited, and it's
Speaker 1: a group thing. Each individual is slotted into the particular
Speaker 1: groups that he belongs to, supposedly, and then we're supposed
Speaker 1: to give them all credit. I'm all blame based on
Speaker 1: where you fall on it. Now, think about Israel and
Speaker 1: the Palestinians. For example, where did the Palestinians. Where did
Speaker 1: the Palestinians fall on this pyramid of need? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: they're poor, they don't have a state, they're politically homeless.
Speaker 1: They seem to be suffering, and therefore they are the needy.
Speaker 1: They are the ones that should be sacrificed the wards,
Speaker 1: and therefore they must be virtuous. The meek shall inherit
Speaker 1: the earth. Right. And where do the Jews fall in
Speaker 1: this particular Israel? Well, they're relatively rich, incredibly successful, they're
Speaker 1: super strong. They must be the pressers, they must be
Speaker 1: the bad guys, and they must be sacrificed for the
Speaker 1: sake of the needy. And it's not just Israel and Palestinians,
Speaker 1: it's also Jews, because Jews in America are very successful.
Speaker 1: They've made a lot of money, many of them are bankers.
Speaker 1: Therefore they must be their presses, they must be the
Speaker 1: people who need to be sacrificed. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: the same old story. Now given this modern guise of intersectionality,
Speaker 1: postcolonial theory, identitarianism, all these fancy words that the modern
Speaker 1: left is created in order to explore these ideas and
Speaker 1: to apply this altruism, this morality of from Meach according
Speaker 1: to his ability due to coarding the needs in a
Speaker 1: modern context and kind of make it more scientific, we
Speaker 1: can now figure out exactly who should be sacrificed to
Speaker 1: whom and how much we should how much they should sacrifice.
Speaker 1: And then for the antagonism towards Jews in America, it
Speaker 1: is because they're successful, it's because they've done well, it's
Speaker 1: because they're strong. Antagonism towards Israel is exactly the same.
Speaker 1: You can see this with Israel in Europeans, in particular
Speaker 1: in a shift that happened in nineteen sixty seven. Before
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, Europe loved Israel. I mean, they really
Speaker 1: loved Israel. They supplied it with weapons and financially. You know,
Speaker 1: the United States had an arms embargo on Israel from
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight until nineteen sixty seven. The United States
Speaker 1: did not sell a single piece of weaponry. Jiseruel and
Speaker 1: Israel fought in nineteen sixty seven war. It folded with
Speaker 1: Meragi airplane, British tanks, German you know, weapons systems. Europeans
Speaker 1: loved Israel. Why because they were pathetic, poor suffering Jews
Speaker 1: who just survived the Holocaust, and now we're barely holding
Speaker 1: onto a country. And in nineteen sixty seven everything flipped
Speaker 1: because what happened. These poor, pathetic, miserable Jews were strong.
Speaker 1: They beat seven other Arab countries, and they won a war,
Speaker 1: very very quickly, and Europe flipped almost overnight, over seven nights,
Speaker 1: they flipped. France put an Armsimbogo in Israel immediately didn't
Speaker 1: sell weapons to Israel for years. Israel had bought some
Speaker 1: submarines from France and landed up having to steal them
Speaker 1: in order to get them. Germany, Britain nothing, and luckily
Speaker 1: for Israel, America stepped into the gap that was left behind.
Speaker 1: But now is almost perceived as strong. These Jews were successful,
Speaker 1: who was perceived as the good guys in the Middle
Speaker 1: East suddenly for the first time to Palestinians. Palestinian support
Speaker 1: in Europe was a creation of the nineteen sixty seven ward.
Speaker 1: It was a creation of the fact that Israel had
Speaker 1: proved to be strong, and therefore we don't like strong.
Speaker 1: Antisemitism is really a product of the economics of money lending.
Speaker 1: It's a product of certain Christian beliefs about the importance
Speaker 1: of Jesus and the role of the Jews play in Jesus.
Speaker 1: If you ever go, if if in Italy or I'm
Speaker 1: sure you can find them in museums here. You see
Speaker 1: some of the processions of Jesus carrying the cross to,
Speaker 1: you know, to where he's going to be crucified, or
Speaker 1: where he is crucified in And you look at the
Speaker 1: paintings closely, you can see how all the observers are portrayed,
Speaker 1: and they've all got, you know, these very explicit Jewish features,
Speaker 1: with nasty looks on their faces. Christianity is very anti
Speaker 1: Jewish for most of its history. Most of its history,
Speaker 1: they crustified Christ, not the Romans, right, and why not?
Speaker 1: The Romans became very politically incorrect to blame the Romans
Speaker 1: for crucifying Christ. Why was that because Christianity became the
Speaker 1: religion of Rome. So the Romans didn't want to blame themselves,
Speaker 1: so they had to find somebody else to blame. So
Speaker 1: it became put politically incorrect to blame the Romans. Even
Speaker 1: pious Pontus, whatever right, is given a free ride in
Speaker 1: the later interpretations of the story in order to put
Speaker 1: all the blames on the Jews. So you've got religious
Speaker 1: causes for anti Semitism, you have financial causes, and you've
Speaker 1: got the more funda the mental which I think drives
Speaker 1: the financial cause, which is altruism, which is the fact
Speaker 1: that we all are guided by a moral code that
Speaker 1: basically tells us that if you're successful, you must have
Speaker 1: been self interested. Mark says it right. The Jew is
Speaker 1: self interested, the Jew is egoistic. And egoism and self
Speaker 1: interest we are taught by our mothers, by our preachers,
Speaker 1: by our philosophers. Self interest is evil, self interest is bad,
Speaker 1: It's wrong. Anti Semitism is a direct product of the
Speaker 1: philosophy and the morality that we are taught. As long
Speaker 1: as Jews are successful, again, when they're miserable, when they're weak,
Speaker 1: we sympathize with them, and suddenly they're elevated up. The antidote, therefore,
Speaker 1: is ultimately the same antidote that leads us towards capitalism,
Speaker 1: because why do we have capitalism. One of the main
Speaker 1: reasons we had capitalism is because capitalism is the system
Speaker 1: of what, as Marx understood Marx's Marx had a deep
Speaker 1: understanding or capitalism was and what motivated capitalism and how
Speaker 1: it drove it, And then of course he hated it,
Speaker 1: but he had an understanding of it which most Marxists
Speaker 1: today do not. Right, Max understood the capitalism created wealth,
Speaker 1: the capitalism was really good for the workers, that it
Speaker 1: made them wealthier. He just thought that also created eight
Speaker 1: nation and ultimately it would be they would rebel against it.
Speaker 1: Marxist today won't even acknowledge that capitalism creates wealth. Marx did.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that Marx understood is that capitalism
Speaker 1: is the system of self interest. What motivates on us
Speaker 1: under capitalism, it's the pursuit of our own interests. Why
Speaker 1: do we go into the marketplace in capitalism? Right, why
Speaker 1: does the seller sell his goods. He sells his goods
Speaker 1: because he's trying to make a profit. And why do
Speaker 1: you go buy the goods from the seller? Because you
Speaker 1: want to make the world a better place. You want
Speaker 1: to help your fellow man. And I remember the first
Speaker 1: time I went to buy an iPhone, was was just
Speaker 1: heading into a session. It's like two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to make sure people had jobs, So
Speaker 1: I went to them all and bought an iPhone right,
Speaker 1: because that's why you go shopping. No, I mean you
Speaker 1: go shopping because you want to because it makes your
Speaker 1: life better, because you want to improve rationally or not,
Speaker 1: you want to improve your wellbeing. So capitalism is the
Speaker 1: place in which we pursue our self interest. But producer
Speaker 1: and consumer pursue their self interest, and we trade. We
Speaker 1: trade our mutual benefit, not to anybody's loss. Not that
Speaker 1: we don't sacrifice in capitalism. Nobody sacrifices anything in capitalism.
Speaker 1: We pursue self interest, we pursue profit, we pursue gain,
Speaker 1: we pursue betterment. And that's why capitalism is hated. It's
Speaker 1: not hated for any factual issue people have with capitalism.
Speaker 1: They you know, they have all these myths about capitalism
Speaker 1: that we've answered every single one of them, and you know,
Speaker 1: and it's not because it doesn't work economically. We've had
Speaker 1: great economists that have answered every question. The Marxists and
Speaker 1: the Kynesian and all these people have thrown at us,
Speaker 1: and we approove. Countries that tend to be more capitalists
Speaker 1: are richer, most successful, more prosperous company company. Countries that
Speaker 1: tend to be most socialists are poor. Reality is an outside.
Speaker 1: The economic theory is an outside. The only thing that's
Speaker 1: not an outside is moral theory. A morality says, if
Speaker 1: you pursue self interest, something's wrong. It's not good. Morality
Speaker 1: is about self sacrifice. Reality is about making yourself worse,
Speaker 1: not about making yourself better. And we have a clash
Speaker 1: between morality and capitalism, and Marx. Marx understood this. He
Speaker 1: of course took the side of conventional morality, on the
Speaker 1: side of sacrificing. He said, yes, capitalism is bad because
Speaker 1: it allows people to pursue their self interest. How evil
Speaker 1: is that? And we all buy it? That is, our
Speaker 1: culture buys it. And Jews are roped into that because
Speaker 1: they're associated with that success. They're associated with that capitalism
Speaker 1: and you know, really the only alternative to that. And
Speaker 1: I think the only way ultimately we're going to defend
Speaker 1: capitalism and ultimately get rid of anti Semitism, because I
Speaker 1: think again they're all tied together, is by accepting what
Speaker 1: call Mark says. Yes, capitalism is about self interest. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's even about greed. Yes it's about money. Money's good.
Speaker 1: Self interest is good, and greed if we understand it properly,
Speaker 1: it's good. There's nothing wrong with those things. Indeed, what
Speaker 1: we need is a morality to defend self interest. What
Speaker 1: we need is a morality that defends the pursuit of
Speaker 1: one's own life, the pursuit of one's own values, without sacrifice,
Speaker 1: without suffering, the pursuit of life. The only author is
Speaker 1: given such a defense is Iran. So Iran is the
Speaker 1: only philosopher in the last since Aristotle to actually develop
Speaker 1: a morality of self interest and therefore morality of capitalism,
Speaker 1: a morality of the trader, the morality of the kind
Speaker 1: of world that many of us strive to create politically.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I think is really
Speaker 1: missing from our augmentation and our efforts is the moral piece,
Speaker 1: which I think is the most important piece. It's the
Speaker 1: piece that allowed Marks to win because he's leveraging Christian morality,
Speaker 1: even if he's an atheist, he's leveraging two thousand years
Speaker 1: of Christian morality to achieve his goal, the idea of altruism,
Speaker 1: the idea of sacrifice. And what we need to do
Speaker 1: is if we're going to challenge Marks, if we're going
Speaker 1: to challenge the anti capitalists of all form left and right,
Speaker 1: what we need to do is challenge the morality that
Speaker 1: they hold and now just challenge it, but often an alternative.
Speaker 1: And there's a book there in German. I can't say
Speaker 1: it in German, but the selfishness, in other words, the
Speaker 1: virtue of self interest, the virtue of egoism, the virtue
Speaker 1: of making your life the standard of good, your life
Speaker 1: success as what morality should be about, the striving towards
Speaker 1: that success. To encourage those of you a German speakers
Speaker 1: to pick up a copy of any one of those books.
Speaker 1: But in particular related to what we're talking about now
Speaker 1: is the virtue of selfishness. So if we can defend
Speaker 1: capitalism effectively, that don't mean that we defend self interest effectively.
Speaker 1: It means that we defend individualism successfully and we reject
Speaker 1: the collectivism that is implied by Marks and by all
Speaker 1: anti Semites. Not only do then we get a capitalist world,
Speaker 1: but I think if we do that properly, we also
Speaker 1: eradicate anti Semitism forever and and get rid of it
Speaker 1: on our campuses, on our left wing, on our right wing,
Speaker 1: you know, in our culture. In totality. Thank you happy
Speaker 1: to take questions on anything, it doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: on this topic. A small group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all this.
Speaker 2: To me because that's like released increasing anti Submitic incidents
Speaker 2: all over the world.
Speaker 4: It's just really.
Speaker 3: Obtaining such a relevance in the recent years.
Speaker 2: This is amazing because it's an age old topic, as
Speaker 2: you were explaining.
Speaker 3: But I have a very specific question.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it change the narrative a little bit if you
Speaker 2: think that these successful Jews are most of the time
Speaker 2: Ashkenazi Jews?
Speaker 1: And did you.
Speaker 3: Ever think about why is the so that? I mean more,
Speaker 3: am I.
Speaker 2: On the wrong drag that like similar incidents happen in
Speaker 2: other countries, because let's say, miss Riot Jews are also
Speaker 2: very successful in this environment.
Speaker 3: But I don't know that so much.
Speaker 2: But for example, I don't believe that Ethiopian Jews were
Speaker 2: super successful.
Speaker 3: In Ethiopia back in the day. I don't know that.
Speaker 2: And if you follow my hypothesis at least for a
Speaker 2: minute or so, why is that? How do you explain
Speaker 2: this that Ashkaranasi are so very successful because Ashkenas means
Speaker 2: Germany And then like at least four figures or maybe
Speaker 2: three fingers of the hand are pointing back at us
Speaker 2: in Germany. There's a very man to talk about these
Speaker 2: these early times with the and all that. It's a
Speaker 2: very interesting, you know historian. That's that's why it's particularly
Speaker 2: interesting to me. It's a very interesting inter inter I
Speaker 2: don't know, international story, inter ethnic story with the Germans
Speaker 2: and these Jews, let's say, from the tenth to the
Speaker 2: to the fourteenth century.
Speaker 3: So, for example, is the internal memory of of this.
Speaker 1: Or the eternal psyche. I don't think this has to
Speaker 1: do anything with Ashkenazi versus Faudio or or. I think
Speaker 1: it has to do with whether you lived in the
Speaker 1: Christian world or not. So would make the unique was
Speaker 1: the Christian world? Then? Of course most of the Jews
Speaker 1: who lived in the Christian world we was Kenazi Jews,
Speaker 1: but not all of them. I mean Amsterdam. Most of
Speaker 1: the Jews in Amstem was faulty Jews. There were Jews
Speaker 1: who were expelled by the Inquisition from Portugal and Spain. Spinosa,
Speaker 1: the famous philosopher, was a Jew expelled from His family
Speaker 1: was expelled from Portugal and they ended up in Amstem
Speaker 1: as a very large Valdi community in Amstem. The same
Speaker 1: in England. A lot of the Jews in England, the
Speaker 1: Italian Jews are mostly Sphaldi Jews, they're mostly from Spain originally,
Speaker 1: so I think it's more about whether you lived under
Speaker 1: Islam or whether another Christianity. Christianity was particularly harsh against
Speaker 1: the Jews because again the Jews for theological reasons, the
Speaker 1: Jews were exposed to Jesus. He was one of them, right,
Speaker 1: and they turned their back on him, so therefore they
Speaker 1: were bad, and therefore Christianity was particularly harsh. And then
Speaker 1: the because of the particular history, right, Islam fades as
Speaker 1: an economic power, as a real economic significance in terms
Speaker 1: of growth and economic growth starting in the twelfth century
Speaker 1: as Europe is rising, and that rise is fueled by capital,
Speaker 1: and that capital requires money lending, and that money lending
Speaker 1: is created is provided by Jews, and they, you know,
Speaker 1: and they flourished as a consequence. But it's interesting, right
Speaker 1: because I didn't know this until recently, but you know,
Speaker 1: the problem of Jews in Germany starts a long time ago.
Speaker 1: You know, the first Crusade, first crusade around ten something,
Speaker 1: ten eighty, I can'try the exact days, but something around there.
Speaker 1: The first crusade is they're rallying to go and free
Speaker 1: Jerusalem from the Muslims, and what is the first thing
Speaker 1: they do. They start in northern Europe and they start
Speaker 1: marching down towards the Byzantine Empire, ultimately towards Jewist thing
Speaker 1: they do is they start killing Jews. So if you
Speaker 1: track the path that crusade takes through Europe, they're going
Speaker 1: from town to town to town and basically here in
Speaker 1: Germany enough far from what we are right now, and
Speaker 1: killing the local Jews as part of this crusade. The
Speaker 1: Pope doesn't like it. The Pope is but that's kind
Speaker 1: of how they get their motivation and their excitement are
Speaker 1: going and they have this happens what the folcusades, every
Speaker 1: single one of them, start in northern Germany by killing
Speaker 1: Jews and then traveling south and killing them along the way.
Speaker 1: So it it. You know, the the anti Semitism and
Speaker 1: the hatred of Jews is deeply interwound into the culture
Speaker 1: of the region. It's not far into this culture. And
Speaker 1: there's always people who you know, who say, you know,
Speaker 1: but they're creating economic activity. We want them here, you know,
Speaker 1: there's values there. And then there are the others who
Speaker 1: want to wipe them out. Were the Jews in Yemen successful,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But certainly the Jews in places like Iraq,
Speaker 1: were Baghdad were very successful. They were they were some
Speaker 1: of the wealthiest people in Iraq. The same is true
Speaker 1: in Northern Africa, in certain areas in Northern Africa. So
Speaker 1: they were always put Jews. They will put Jewish here
Speaker 1: in Europe as well. I mean, you know, Poland was
Speaker 1: full of little Jewish villages that weren't very successful, right,
Speaker 1: But what represented the Jew in so many people's eyes,
Speaker 1: called Marxist eyes, was that successful jew I mean the
Speaker 1: roth Childs. You know, we always say the roth Child's
Speaker 1: always represented kind of a certain mentality that represented Jewish
Speaker 1: mentality and a lot of the conspiracy theories that we
Speaker 1: still have today. Right, Jews control the world. Nobody ever
Speaker 1: tells me about this. I'm insulted, but you know, Jews
Speaker 1: control the world. It's always goes back to the roth
Speaker 1: Childs and the big Jewish bankers who at the time.
Speaker 1: So Jews are not successful in that sense, right, But
Speaker 1: the ten percent of what represented the ten percent is what,
Speaker 1: particularly in Germany, is what Carl Marx is thinking of.
Speaker 1: For those who he came late. I started off with
Speaker 1: a really anti smantic kind of squeed by Carl Marx
Speaker 1: about Jews, which is his first essay that he got published.
Speaker 1: It's called un the Jewish Question. You can find it online.
Speaker 1: It's a really good essay to read to get a
Speaker 1: real insight into cal Marx and how he thinks and
Speaker 1: what he hates about capitalism. What he fundamentally hates about
Speaker 1: capitalism is the same thing he hates about Jews is
Speaker 1: that it's self interested, it's egoistic, and he names it.
Speaker 1: He says, that's what it is. So you get a
Speaker 1: kind of the moral source of his hatred of both
Speaker 1: capitalism and of the Jewish people. Yeah, society, So when
Speaker 1: does society change the small code? I don't. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: take Argentina as has changed small goals. I know Argentina's
Speaker 1: no less Catholic today than before me Lay was elected.
Speaker 1: It didn't reject Catholicism, and to elect me Lay, it's
Speaker 1: gonna have to reject Catholicism in or to keep the capitalism.
Speaker 1: If you can be successful and if you can actually
Speaker 1: make the changes that are necessary, I think ultimately they're
Speaker 1: gonna have to reject the morality of Catholicism to keep it.
Speaker 1: But Dave for a while can say we just want
Speaker 1: him to you don't make us less poor, to change incentives,
Speaker 1: to cut gum and spending. You know, they abstract away
Speaker 1: from Oh no, this creates a system of self interest
Speaker 1: that I don't think anything existential can make it happen.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't close in the Enlightenment. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment is clearly a period in which we're putting
Speaker 1: to the side religion. We're making religion a personal issue.
Speaker 1: It's out of the public square, it's out of politics.
Speaker 1: It's not really that interesting philosophically. It's something if you
Speaker 1: want to believe at home, that's fine, right, And what
Speaker 1: is starting to be replaced with the thinkers of the
Speaker 1: alignment are starting to think about, is you know, this
Speaker 1: altruism stuff not quite right. There's something off here, but
Speaker 1: they don't know whatever place it was. If you read
Speaker 1: the not so much a Scottish Enlightenment, if you read
Speaker 1: the French Enlightenment, they're really struggling with the idea of
Speaker 1: how we want to defend a new morality, a morality
Speaker 1: more about the individual, because they're individualists politically and they
Speaker 1: want to be individualists morally, and they don't know how
Speaker 1: to do it, you know. De Dreux and so the
Speaker 1: others around him, they're writing books about this stuff, but
Speaker 1: they don't get it right. Thomas Jefferson and is struggling
Speaker 1: with this, and ultimately in a declaration of independence, in
Speaker 1: the American Declaration Independence, you have a right to your
Speaker 1: own life, and that's pretty self interested. And you have
Speaker 1: a right to the pursue happiness. Now that's a moral revolution.
Speaker 1: It's just not fully articulated yet. And all of that
Speaker 1: rests on the idea that the Enlightenment had that is
Speaker 1: later rejected, that each individual has the capacity to reason
Speaker 1: for himself, and before each individual has the capacity to
Speaker 1: discover truth. Each individual therefore has the ability to take
Speaker 1: care of himself, to live his life, to pursue his happiness,
Speaker 1: that his life has meaning for him because he has
Speaker 1: the capacity to think. Because if you take the view
Speaker 1: which Plato does, Plato takes the view, no, you all
Speaker 1: live in a cave. There are a few philosopher kings
Speaker 1: who know the truth, and you just see shadows on
Speaker 1: the wall. You'll never know the truth. You can't take
Speaker 1: care of yourself. You need philosopher kings. I mean Plato's benevolent.
Speaker 1: He wants you to have a good life, and he's
Speaker 1: saying you cannot have a good life if you rely
Speaker 1: on yourself because you're too ignorant. So you need the
Speaker 1: philosopher king to guide you in your life, which is
Speaker 1: the Republic. They tell you what to do. So if
Speaker 1: you have that mentality, you can't have a The Enlightenment
Speaker 1: rejects that. It's starting to really embrace this, and then
Speaker 1: it's its peak. It's immediately attacked by a variety of
Speaker 1: different collectivist philosophers who all reject individualism, reject reason, and
Speaker 1: reject ultimately self interest. And it takes irand to come
Speaker 1: and say to you, in a sense, comp I view
Speaker 1: I rand as completing what was begun in the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: She completes the defense of the individual, she completes the
Speaker 1: defense of reason, she completes the defense of self interest.
Speaker 1: So now, when do we start as a culture when
Speaker 1: we acknowledge those ideas, when we embrace those ideas, when
Speaker 1: we start rejecting the past, rejecting altruism, and embracing these ideas.
Speaker 1: And that won't happen because the president is elected. It
Speaker 1: won't happen because economically we're not doing well. It only
Speaker 1: happens through education. It happens because these are now the
Speaker 1: ideas in the air, These are the ideas that are
Speaker 1: conveyed by intellectuals to us. It takes a long time,
Speaker 1: Maorrol revolutions take a long time. It took you know,
Speaker 1: from you know, Jesus dying until Constantine, what three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years for that philosophy to dominate the Roman empires.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's the scope of how long it
Speaker 1: takes for these kind of intellectual maral revolutions to happen.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen in years or decades.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, when was the rejection?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the rejection was with Kant, with
Speaker 1: the mono or Kant, because cont tells us that in
Speaker 1: the end, reason is impotent to no reality. Right, So
Speaker 1: reason and reality, you'll never know what real reality is
Speaker 1: like you only know what is filtered through your mind.
Speaker 1: And if a real reality is always a mystery to you.
Speaker 1: And I think what he does is he undermines reason
Speaker 1: and he says, okay, so you know, how do we
Speaker 1: know things? For example, how do we know morality? What's
Speaker 1: right morally? Well, it's implanted in our brain, some our
Speaker 1: categoric imperatives. They're just there, the truths that we have
Speaker 1: intuitions about, or you know, it's just now in our mind.
Speaker 1: He never really tells us where the categoric tempetters live,
Speaker 1: but they're just then. We just know it. You can't
Speaker 1: prove them by reason, You can't look at reality because
Speaker 1: we don't know what's real. They're just there.
Speaker 6: And it turns out that the categorical imperatives at the
Speaker 6: end of the day are very similar to Christian morality.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think one of the big mistakes that
Speaker 1: we do in categorizing are philosophers is thinking of Kant
Speaker 1: as an Enlightenment philosophy. Kant is the anti Enlightenment, and
Speaker 1: he's the beginning. He is the rejection of the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: And he might have started out his career because one
Speaker 1: of his first essays is about what is Enlightenment? Right,
Speaker 1: you write about what is the Enlightenment? But I think
Speaker 1: he turns against the Enlightenment. And I don't think when
Speaker 1: we look at our philosophical tradition, we are right in categorizing.
Speaker 1: We should categorize him as the end of the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: as the beginning of the attack on the Enlightenment. And
Speaker 1: if you go from him to Hegel, right, who now
Speaker 1: rejects reason completely, and it's it's and he rejects the
Speaker 1: individual completely, and it's a state, the state that is
Speaker 1: the center of our being, and it's oneness and it's God,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, a completely non reason based philosophy.
Speaker 1: And then you go, you know, kn't Hegel chopinaw Marx
Speaker 1: and it's a string of German And you can make
Speaker 1: a parallel with French philosophers who are rejecting the Enlightenment completely,
Speaker 1: And it's the anti Enlightenment movement ultimately wins the intellectual
Speaker 1: high ground. And you will find intellectuals at our university
Speaker 1: is defending the Enlightenment. I mean Stephen Pinker, right, But
Speaker 1: there's almost nobody the Enlightenment is finished. They reject it completely.
Speaker 1: They're post modernists. They don't believe in truth, they don't
Speaker 1: believe in reason, they don't believe in the individual. Everything
Speaker 1: is about collective identity, and everything is about you know,
Speaker 1: some form of intuitionists, you know, some form of implied
Speaker 1: you know, knowledge that we have inside that just needs
Speaker 1: to reveal itself. Feels and Jordan Peterson, I mean, all
Speaker 1: of them. They complete rejection of the Enlightenment, right and left.
Speaker 1: And it's the Enlightenment that gave birth to capitalism. It's
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment to give birth to liberalism in a positive
Speaker 1: sense of liberalism. It's the Enlightenment that gave birth to individualism.
Speaker 1: And if we don't resurrect that with a better foundation,
Speaker 1: with ancestor CONT's challenges, then we lose. And I think
Speaker 1: we're losing. And what you're seeing on campuses is it
Speaker 1: happens to be anti Jewish and anti Israel, but could
Speaker 1: be anti anybody successful. Right. You could see the beginnings
Speaker 1: of this with Occupy Wall Street in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: It's the same people. It's the same mentality. Why did
Speaker 1: they hate Wall Street because Wall Street was successful? Wall
Speaker 1: Street represented, you know, the people who needed to be sacrificed.
Speaker 1: But yes, I mean philosophically, I think cont is the end. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is an excellent book. It's called The Ominous Parallels.
Speaker 1: And what Atlanta Peacock does in this book is he
Speaker 1: compared the rise of Nazism in Germany. So he looks
Speaker 1: at the whole history and he's you know, he he's
Speaker 1: a student of Ivie Rance, so I mean he's the
Speaker 1: student of iron Man, and so he takes ideas seriously,
Speaker 1: his idea of shape history. So he tracks from the
Speaker 1: Enlightenment through Kant, through the different philosophers in Germany and
Speaker 1: the impact on the culture, and he shows that it's
Speaker 1: that intellectual tradition that leads to the Nazis. And he says, well,
Speaker 1: that intellectual tradition is playing out in America. It's the
Speaker 1: same intellectual tradition. We haven't given up on those philosophers,
Speaker 1: and we've modernized them, but it's the same ideas. And
Speaker 1: he says, you've got this arminent parallel that what happening
Speaker 1: is in America parallels what happened in Germany leading up
Speaker 1: to the Nazis. And so he wrote this and it
Speaker 1: was probably something in eighty two, but if you read
Speaker 1: it today, it's like even more. It seems even more
Speaker 1: real than it was back then in terms of the
Speaker 1: state of American culture.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: Targeted interest, so it wasn't just Abrahamic religions. As I said,
Speaker 1: Aristotle had a very negative view of usury and Aristotles
Speaker 1: is good, and so many different things it's terrible on this,
Speaker 1: and he's terrible generally on the value of trade. But
Speaker 1: he understands, for example, if I lend you seeds, then
Speaker 1: I should get more than just my seeds back because
Speaker 1: you use those seeds to get more trees, right, use
Speaker 1: those seeds to get more seeds. Seeds generate seeds. So
Speaker 1: it's okay to pay me interest when it comes to seeds.
Speaker 1: But he says, if I give you money, money doesn't multiply,
Speaker 1: the money doesn't grow. You don't get more money for money. Right.
Speaker 1: He can't see trade and how it exactly works, right,
Speaker 1: and so he says so he literally says money is
Speaker 1: barren and therefore charging usury or charging interest is wrong.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Scholastics and christian you read Aristotle,
Speaker 1: and they struggle with this because at some point in
Speaker 1: European economy, particularly in the seventeenth century, it becomes obvious
Speaker 1: that no money does produce money, right, because wealth does increase.
Speaker 1: It's not a zoo some game, uh. And then they
Speaker 1: have to they have to struggle with the fact that
Speaker 1: Astota might be wrong about something, which is you know, again,
Speaker 1: the mentality of religion is that if it's written in
Speaker 1: an ancient book. It is true period, you can't question it.
Speaker 1: And they treated Aristota that way. Aristotle was religion. They
Speaker 1: used to say, if your evidence, if the scientific experiment
Speaker 1: shows something the country Aristotle, then the scientific experiment as well.
Speaker 1: And this is some of the basis of which they
Speaker 1: criticized a Galileo. So it's an animosity that comes from
Speaker 1: I think, if you want to if you want an
Speaker 1: innocent perspective of it, it comes to a place of ignorance.
Speaker 1: They just didn't understand how economics work. We don't have
Speaker 1: that excuse, right, And I mean again, the first, the
Speaker 1: first real understanding of interest and how it works, and
Speaker 1: how money works, and how capital creates more capital is
Speaker 1: really in the eighteenth century. People like to go it
Speaker 1: was a French economist of the Enlightenment, of course, Adam Smith,
Speaker 1: but many others during this period and some of the
Speaker 1: Scholastics had some understanding of this. But it's relatively a
Speaker 1: modern concept. It's relatively modern understanding. So the embihemical religions
Speaker 1: were just reflecting the state of knowledge at the time.
Speaker 1: And the real question is why did Jews think they
Speaker 1: had this exemption from charging from non Jews and you know,
Speaker 1: they intuitively or in some way they saw that there
Speaker 1: was profits to be made here. They found a way
Speaker 1: around the biblical commandment. People are pretty good about that
Speaker 1: difference between anti Semitism and anti Zionism. I mean, there
Speaker 1: suddenly can be I don't think they're the same thing necessarily.
Speaker 1: I can imagine being anti Zionist right, right, and anti
Speaker 1: Zionism is about a statement about Jews, you know, not,
Speaker 1: you know, should have a nation, not just a religion.
Speaker 1: It's a nation now, and this nation should have a state,
Speaker 1: right with boundaries and an actual state. And then add
Speaker 1: to that that that state should be in a particular
Speaker 1: place where it is today now. Any one of those
Speaker 1: statements could be challenged, right, you know, I don't in
Speaker 1: myself a Zionist. I'm kind of a Zionist almost by
Speaker 1: I'm a Zionist by it would be a good word
Speaker 1: for this. Like in an ideal world, in my view,
Speaker 1: there would be no Israel because Jews would just assimilated
Speaker 1: into other countries and they'd live. The individual rights would
Speaker 1: be protected, we'd have wonderful capitalism. I mean, the boundaries
Speaker 1: between state would be not that important. In an ideal world,
Speaker 1: there'd be a few. There'd be states, but not that many,
Speaker 1: and the boundaries wouldn't matter that much. We'd have free
Speaker 1: movement of capital, free motive labor, free movement of goods,
Speaker 1: and you know, we wouldn't have an obsession about identity
Speaker 1: as in Nay, we'd go where the business was best,
Speaker 1: or where the weather was best, or where we wanted
Speaker 1: to live, right, I mean, that's the vision I have
Speaker 1: for you know, five hundred years from now, when we
Speaker 1: win the battle and so you know as well has
Speaker 1: open borders, and it doesn't, it doesn't become meaningful. I
Speaker 1: believe Zionism is an assess city only, is an act
Speaker 1: of self defense and an irrational world. In a world
Speaker 1: where there's anti semitism, Jews have no option but to
Speaker 1: define themselves and establish their own state and defend that state.
Speaker 1: But that's because the world sucks, not because the world's good.
Speaker 1: If the world is good, it would they would need that.
Speaker 1: But they do need it, right, So so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a Zignist by default in that sense, not by not.
Speaker 1: I'm not excited about being a Zignist because it's not
Speaker 1: part of my ideal world. My ideal world doesn't include it.
Speaker 1: So I think it doesn't have to be that. Anti
Speaker 1: Zionism doesn't have to be anti Semitism. But in the
Speaker 1: world in which we live, it usually is, and it
Speaker 1: mostly is. It's a it's a way to disguise a
Speaker 1: form of anti Semitism. Israeld just represents what it means
Speaker 1: to be Jewish. It represents the success and the prosperity
Speaker 1: that people associate with Jews. It represents the oppression that
Speaker 1: is represented by Jews. And it's not an accident that campus,
Speaker 1: at least in the US, the demonstrations very quickly go
Speaker 1: from attacking Israel to attacking Jewish students on campus. Right
Speaker 1: whether the Jewish students are pro Israel or not, they
Speaker 1: they turn on the Jewish students because in their minds
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. So I think mostly in the
Speaker 1: world in which we live today, anti Zionism is anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: But it but it doesn't have to be. I can
Speaker 1: imagine intellectual arguments where where you could be an anti
Speaker 1: Zionist and not an anti Semitis.
Speaker 3: So it seems that Israel and.
Speaker 1: Are I mean, I think this is a continuation of
Speaker 1: of Israel's failure to win uh that has hood Israel
Speaker 1: for the last last I don't know, fifty years. It
Speaker 1: keeps kicking the can down the road. It refuses to
Speaker 1: actually give the death blow. And they were very close
Speaker 1: with Chrisbella. You know, it's a matter of weeks, maybe
Speaker 1: amount of months, and they could basically destroy the entire
Speaker 1: organization and actually freed the Lebanese people from the scrounge
Speaker 1: that is Chris Balah in their lives. And you know,
Speaker 1: they're cutting a deal prematurely. This is way too soon.
Speaker 1: They should have gone all the way, destroyed Krisbala and
Speaker 1: then then gone for peace with Lebanon. Not a cease fire,
Speaker 1: but let's have a real peace agreement with the Lebanese,
Speaker 1: with the Lebanese government. And I think the Lebanese government
Speaker 1: would be interested in doing that if not for their
Speaker 1: fear that Chrisbella is going to come back and kill them.
Speaker 1: So it's just a sign of weakness. But I'm being
Speaker 1: very critical of this government from the beginning from well
Speaker 1: from the beginning, really from the beginning way back, but
Speaker 1: certainly since October seventh, I think they've exhibited weakness repeatedly,
Speaker 1: and uh and they continue to do so. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: had a question. M. Yeah, well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, we can talk about what freedom means.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're no longer free, but you're suddenly
Speaker 1: You're suddenly in a in a in a bad situation,
Speaker 1: and it's easy at that point to blame the guy
Speaker 1: that you've borrowed the money from and make it about
Speaker 1: his fault. And he should have never charged you interest
Speaker 1: to begin with, And why did he even give you
Speaker 1: the loan. He should have never given you the loan.
Speaker 1: He puts you in this situation, and it's a very
Speaker 1: easy to deflect your own personal responsibility onto somebody else,
Speaker 1: and as a consequence developed hatred towards that person and
Speaker 1: everybody who does that profession. And I think we do
Speaker 1: that in modern society, and I think we certainly did
Speaker 1: that in ancient societies. Yes, I mean. The solution to
Speaker 1: that is to take personal responsibility. You know. It's to
Speaker 1: say I screwed up. I took a loan when I shouldn't.
Speaker 1: The interest rate, maybe it was too high, but I
Speaker 1: took it on It's my fault, and I need its
Speaker 1: man up right and take personal responsibility for this. I
Speaker 1: screwed up. I'm sorry. I'll pay back what I can.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll pay back in the future. But this
Speaker 1: is this is what it is. And I screwed up.
Speaker 1: But instead, because people don't have the self esteem to
Speaker 1: take personal responsibility, they deflect and they and they make
Speaker 1: it the responsibility of the person who made them the loan.
Speaker 1: But making you the loan, it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a transaction. It's a win win. It should be at
Speaker 1: least you go into it with the expectation of win win.
Speaker 1: And and look, you know, I've taken on lots of
Speaker 1: loans in my life. I love loans. I like taking
Speaker 1: on debt. You know, you know, you just have to.
Speaker 1: You just have to make sure you pay back. But
Speaker 1: it gives you options that you just don't have. I
Speaker 1: couldn't have I couldn't buy the house that I have
Speaker 1: right now if not for a mortgage. Right So I
Speaker 1: thank my bank every day for giving me that mortgage.
Speaker 1: And it couldn't be in a situation, you know, in
Speaker 1: a year where I can't pay the mortgage, I'll see
Speaker 1: to sell the place of far for bankruptcy. But that's me,
Speaker 1: that's not the bank. The bank. I'm thankful for the
Speaker 1: bank for making it possible for me to live in
Speaker 1: at home that I couldn't otherwise afford. And you know
Speaker 1: you can buy a nice car with that. You can
Speaker 1: you can start a business with that. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many businesses have started with that and be successful?
Speaker 7: Be you're gonna score up with that.
Speaker 1: But when it doesn't work out, it was still a
Speaker 1: win win because when win win win is the anticipation.
Speaker 1: It's expectation. Sometimes things don't work the way it is.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you buy a product, you pay a hundred dollars something,
Speaker 1: and you get it and you play themround with it
Speaker 1: a living and say, ah, you know it's not it
Speaker 1: wasn't worth one hundred dollars. I shouldn't have spent one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. And if you're honest about out that, you say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I made a mistake. You don't blame the guy who's
Speaker 1: older to you unless he lied to you or deceived
Speaker 1: you or committed fraud. Right, But it's your responsibility. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you buy stuff that you regrant, so it's not win win,
Speaker 1: but you into the transaction with expectation and the need
Speaker 1: for win win. There's nothing different about that except that
Speaker 1: it has maybe bigger consequences in your life, but those
Speaker 1: are consequences you make. You create those consequences.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
Speaker 1: I think the frustration of not being able to pay
Speaker 1: back sometimes your loan led to some of this hatred. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the only cause of antisemitism, but
Speaker 1: I do think that that follows from this frustration. But
Speaker 1: even if you do pay it back, I borrowed one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, but then I do the calculation and I've
Speaker 1: actually paid back one five hundred dollars, but I only
Speaker 1: got a thousand dollars. So they do that kind of math,
Speaker 1: particularly in an era where they don't quite understand, you know,
Speaker 1: why interest is being charged. They resent the person. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, you made a profit off of me, so
Speaker 1: you know. So, yes, it's it's the hatred because I
Speaker 1: can't pay you back, and now why did I take
Speaker 1: the loan? And it's your fault that I took the loan,
Speaker 1: and I resent you for that. It's the fact that
Speaker 1: you're making a profit off of me. We see that
Speaker 1: not just with you know, not just with finance. You
Speaker 1: see that with I don't know any company that announces
Speaker 1: record profits. People resent it like I. When I hear
Speaker 1: a company made record profit, I'm going, yes, it means
Speaker 1: they created a lot of value. This is fantastic. Right,
Speaker 1: most people go, they make a lot of profits. They
Speaker 1: exploited me, they took advantage of me. Right. So it's
Speaker 1: that orientation what causes people to hate. And if all
Speaker 1: these companies, all these banks, all a one ethnic group,
Speaker 1: a one religious group, then it's particularly if that religous
Speaker 1: group now has to wear different clothes and they clearly
Speaker 1: identified and they're supposed to live over there, it's easy
Speaker 1: then to project hatred onto that particular group.
Speaker 9: Yeahs, yeah, it's prevented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no it's not because y y, you know yy.
Speaker 1: Who's to say to you what you're preventing is bad behavior?
Speaker 1: Who's to say that in every context you're preventing bad behavior?
Speaker 1: And why is it any of your business to prevent
Speaker 1: me from engaging in bad behavior? Son of your business?
Speaker 1: So I I The fundamental difference between laws and regulations
Speaker 1: is laws are there to protect individual rights. Laws are
Speaker 1: written to protect your freedom, to protect you from other
Speaker 1: people's fraud, to protect you from uh, other people punching
Speaker 1: you and you know, doing doing physical harm, to you.
Speaker 1: Regulations are limits on your freedom. They're saying you cannot
Speaker 1: do X, and you know, they come up with good
Speaker 1: reasons why you cannot do as, because it's dangerous, because
Speaker 1: it might harm other people. But the reality is that
Speaker 1: the government has no The government should never get involved
Speaker 1: until harm is actually done.
Speaker 7: It's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But look, in a completely fee society, you'd still have
Speaker 1: signposts on the roads. Nobody would stop from having signposts.
Speaker 1: This signposts would be private and the roads would be private.
Speaker 1: But that's not regulations, right. Regulations are a company saying
Speaker 1: I don't know, we don't think it's right to you know,
Speaker 1: to use themselves because the risks involved. Okay, tell me
Speaker 1: what the risks are. Let me choose. Why can't I
Speaker 1: choose how much risk to take or how much risks
Speaker 1: not to take. So regulations are supposed to limit your freedoms,
Speaker 1: limit what you can do. Now, there are certain risks
Speaker 1: that you engage in to other people that the state
Speaker 1: can say no, that risk now is so great that
Speaker 1: it constitutes a violation of somebody else's rights. But then
Speaker 1: they have to prove that. They have to show that right.
Speaker 1: The crane is about to fall down, it hasn't fallen
Speaker 1: and hit anybody, but it's about to fall down. You
Speaker 1: can imagine the police coming and say no, no, you
Speaker 1: got to straighten that crane. That's a risk to the
Speaker 1: people walking underneath. But you have to be able to
Speaker 1: show at least real potential for harm, not a theoretical
Speaker 1: Maybe if I don't behave myself something bad will happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the risk has to be imminent and real, not
Speaker 1: theoretical and hypothetical. And maybe if the crane is standing
Speaker 1: like this, then there should be no rules apply to it,
Speaker 1: not hurting, not risking anybody.
Speaker 3: In Germany, market jobs eventually capital of the country and.
Speaker 1: Bad jobs that read uh uh or yeah uh?
Speaker 3: What would be the best answer to.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything about that argument is wrong, so uh
Speaker 1: I y. You know, if you had real free markets
Speaker 1: in in labor markets, then it's true jobs would change
Speaker 1: over time. Uh, but what free markets, what free markets
Speaker 1: encourage is an increase in productivity, a constant increasing productivity,
Speaker 1: and that increasing productivity might not be reflected in doing
Speaker 1: the same job as you were doing before. So for example,
Speaker 1: m nobody's gonna actually make cause anymore. No human being
Speaker 1: is going to be involved in making automobiles anymore. You
Speaker 1: can you Germans can imagine that folks are gonna BMW
Speaker 1: and Mercedes, Benz and Porsche, you're gonna make cause now
Speaker 1: robots are gonna make all cause that's a reality. You
Speaker 1: can pretend that's not the case. And Germany is very
Speaker 1: good at pretending right now that that's not the case.
Speaker 1: And as a consequence, right you're gonna keep all these
Speaker 1: employees making cars, and you're gonna wake up, or you've
Speaker 1: already woken up in a reality where China is making
Speaker 1: cause much cheaper, much better, just as effective, with almost
Speaker 1: no human intervention, at a fraction of the cost, and
Speaker 1: you're basically wiped out. So you're actually going to be
Speaker 1: in a worse situation because you're ignoring reality. So allowing
Speaker 1: for flexible, for flexible you know, job market allows workers
Speaker 1: to constantly shift to where you're gonna maximize production, maximum productivity.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean maximize building cars. It probably is the
Speaker 1: case the Germany should not be producing cars, certainly not
Speaker 1: given the climate you know, electric car nonsense that's going on.
Speaker 1: It probably is the case that you do not have
Speaker 1: a competitive advantage of building casts. The longer you wait
Speaker 1: the longer it'll take for the market to figure out
Speaker 1: what you are good at and where those workers can
Speaker 1: be most productive. So you know, you can ignore reality,
Speaker 1: but reality won't ignow you. Shielding an economy is just
Speaker 1: a form of gnowing reality. So what is Germany really
Speaker 1: good at? I don't know, but you better figure out.
Speaker 1: And the only way to figure it out is to
Speaker 1: liberate the economy and let jobs go to where they're
Speaker 1: most needed. And it's again, it's not going to be
Speaker 1: in building cars. So you know, again, I think all
Speaker 1: these political parties are just just selling you. Let's ignore
Speaker 1: reality and keep ignoring reality for whatever, because tariffs are
Speaker 1: not gonna protect you. None of these things will protect you.
Speaker 1: They never have in all of human history. The only
Speaker 1: thing that will protect the German economies in economy, it's
Speaker 1: more freedom. The United States should not be producing cars.
Speaker 1: Maybe SUVs, but other than SUVs, the GM Forward and
Speaker 1: Chrisis should not be making a single automobile. You're not
Speaker 1: good at it. They're two expensive, they're not very good.
Speaker 1: Nobody really wants to buy an American car, right, and
Speaker 1: they're subsidized. At the end of the day, Yeah, Chrysler
Speaker 1: was bailed out, GM was bailed out Ford. They're all
Speaker 1: being bailed out by the government because they they're not sustainable.
Speaker 1: You know, one day all the cars that we drive
Speaker 1: will be built in Africa, if things go well for
Speaker 1: Africa and fast, all the cause we buy will be
Speaker 1: built for Africa. And it's the same thing. You can
Speaker 1: go look in history, right, how many people today produce
Speaker 1: our food? Very few, and yet we have abundance of food.
Speaker 1: And yet just one hundred and fifty years ago, almost
Speaker 1: all of us were farmers. But we had enough freedom
Speaker 1: and enough flexibility to move from the farm to the
Speaker 1: city and to engage in other work and division of labor,
Speaker 1: and we found better ways to use our resources and
Speaker 1: we're richer for us. So it's that same principle. There's
Speaker 1: no difference manufacturing farming. You wanna allow for flexible labors
Speaker 1: so that you can find the things that you were
Speaker 1: best suited to doing. You won't find them. If you
Speaker 1: protect labor, you'll you'll just become a dinosaur'll you'll protect
Speaker 1: something that's dying. You have become a dinosaur. I mean
Speaker 1: that's the problem with Germany. It's become a dinosaur for
Speaker 1: economically because you won't allow for that flexibility. You insist
Speaker 1: on exports, you insist not to investment services. What are services?
Speaker 1: Everybody hates service jobs. What are service jobs? What's that
Speaker 1: the less scalable? Now, service jobs are much more scalable. Okay,
Speaker 1: nurses nurses is a service job. We need a lot
Speaker 1: of nurses because we're an aging we're an aging population.
Speaker 1: We need lots of nurses. You're right, it's not scalable.
Speaker 1: But let's think of other Uh, you know, neither is
Speaker 1: a is a guy who does this all day on
Speaker 1: the assembly line. That's not scalable. What's scalable about this? Nothing? Right?
Speaker 1: So you know, at least the nurse actually provides value
Speaker 1: to another human being. But think about other service jobs.
Speaker 1: They have flipping burgers as a service job. What a
Speaker 1: software writing? What's AI? Is open AI? A service company
Speaker 1: or manufacturing company? It's a service company. Almost all of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, all of Silicon Value today, all of Apple
Speaker 1: is a service company. It outsources production. What does it do?
Speaker 1: It designs, it plans, it provides services. That's all it does.
Speaker 1: That service is that scalable, massively scalable, a million times
Speaker 1: more scalable than a manufacturing job. You can write code
Speaker 1: that will impact every human being on the planet just
Speaker 1: a few lines. So, uh, once I understand what service
Speaker 1: jobs really are, it's not flipping burgers. It is also
Speaker 1: flipping burgers. It's also being a nurse. But it's also
Speaker 1: writing code. And that's the future. The future is writing code.
Speaker 1: The future is not you know, assembling cause, because we're
Speaker 1: going to write code to allow robots to assemble the cause. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish, I hope, uh I. I I'm not very
Speaker 1: hopeful in terms of what the Trump administration will do
Speaker 1: vias of Iran or what Israel will do. You know,
Speaker 1: as sad as it is to say, I'm really really
Speaker 1: hoping Iran attacks Israel soon so that the Israelis will
Speaker 1: actually go out and finish the job. Again, Israel does
Speaker 1: these half assed jobs and doesn't finish them, and the
Speaker 1: Middle East really needs Israel to finish the job. And uh,
Speaker 1: I think Iran is ready for regime change. I think
Speaker 1: the Uranian people want regime change. I think the Uranian
Speaker 1: people are willing to go out into the streets and
Speaker 1: bring about regime change. They just need the military aspect
Speaker 1: of the regime to be weakened. Enough so that they
Speaker 1: can have the confidence that they can be victorious, because
Speaker 1: the reality is that nobody in the in the army
Speaker 1: or in the revolutionary Guard has joined the kind of
Speaker 1: opposition in Iran, right, so Israel needs Hopefully, if Israel
Speaker 1: was aggressive enough, it would diminish the power of the
Speaker 1: military enough so that the people would have the courage
Speaker 1: to rise up and overthrow the regime. But that is
Speaker 1: the best thing that could happen to them, at least,
Speaker 1: is for Iran to go away. I mean, for this
Speaker 1: regime to go away. And it's with this close, and
Speaker 1: I really think we're this close, and Israel won't pull
Speaker 1: the trigger, and the Biden administration won't pull the trigger,
Speaker 1: and I suspect that Trump won't. I mean, Trump is already,
Speaker 1: if to believe the rumors and who knows if there's
Speaker 1: are true, is already negotiating in the background to kind
Speaker 1: of deal with Iran, which will be a tough deal,
Speaker 1: but it won't be the kind of deal that we
Speaker 1: would It won't be the kind of action we would
Speaker 1: want or to replace the regime. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: I'm a you know, I I'm I'm hugely inspired by
Speaker 1: the people of you on I you know, the Goals
Speaker 1: revolution uh two years ago and and last year it
Speaker 1: was just unbelievably inspiring. And to see the world basically
Speaker 1: not care and ignore it and and continue to treat
Speaker 1: the regime in Iran as if it's a legitimate government
Speaker 1: to give them I don't know. Human Rights Commission at
Speaker 1: the U, N you know, the chair of the Human
Speaker 1: Rights Commission at the UN is just disgusting and despicable.
Speaker 1: But that's the world in which we live. It's it's sad.
Speaker 1: Are the questions?
Speaker 4: So thank you or any in situation.
Speaker 3: Fooled? Last three marks h