361. Louis Theroux On The Settlers, The Manosphere, & Tribalism

Summary

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Empire: World History – Episode 361

Louis Theroux on The Settlers, The Manosphere, & Tribalism
Aired: May 20, 2026
Hosts: William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Guest: Louis Theroux

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Episode Overview

In this compelling conversation, William Dalrymple and Anita Anand are joined by renowned documentarian Louis Theroux to discuss his recent works, most notably his 2025 BBC documentary The Settlers, which explores the West Bank’s settler movement, as well as his Netflix series on the Manosphere. Together, the trio unpacks how narratives of tribalism, extremism, and selective empathy shape both historical and contemporary conflicts. Theroux delves into the psychology driving his subjects, his methodologies as a filmmaker, and the uncomfortable resonances between fringe religious-nationalist movements and the rage-driven corners of the internet. The episode is a thought-provoking journey into power, denial, and what it means to see – or refuse to see – 'the other.'

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Revisiting The Settler Movement (01:39–04:18)

• Theroux’s return to the West Bank: After first tackling this subject in 2011’s Ultra Zionists, Theroux was drawn back by the apparent escalation post-October 7th, 2023.
• Motivation: "The settlers and the occupation of the West Bank speaks to several aspects... informed by a kind of religious, nationalist, tribalist mindset and supported by a kind of military judicial infrastructure." — Louis Theroux [02:48]
• On extremism’s normalization: Theroux describes witnessing extremism “played out live before your eyes in such a mainstream way” in the West Bank, compared to its more isolated manifestations in the U.S. [04:18]

The Encounter with Daniela Weiss (06:03–11:00)

• Cinematic highlight: The “godmother” of the settler movement, Daniela Weiss, pushes Louis in a symbolic moment about reactionary violence.
  • "I wish you would push me." — Daniela Weiss, recounted by Theroux [09:17]
• Her worldview: Indifferent to outside judgment, charismatic, and absolutely convinced of her cause—her vision extends even beyond the West Bank and Gaza.
• On her influence: "Daniela Weiss enjoys enormous influence... a charismatic... ability to galvanize... but it's dedicated to a very exclusionary vision." — Louis Theroux [06:37]
• Reaction to war crimes accusation: She dismisses it with laughter, only showing anger when criticized by fellow Jews: "She cares nothing for the judgment of the world, but within her fraternity... the idea of them passing judgment on her is deeply offensive..." — Louis Theroux [10:34]

Documentary Challenges & Critique (12:47–16:27)

• Media “landmines”: The subject’s volatility posed both broadcasting and audience challenges.
  • "It was invigilated and supervised scrupulously, almost infuriatingly so, every stage." — Louis Theroux [13:23]
• Balancing narratives: Theroux received critiques from both sides—Israeli and Palestinian—for perceived imbalance and focus on perpetrators.
  • "I work in a way... perpetrator focused. I try and interrogate those people who have the most power." — Louis Theroux [15:27]

Engaging with Denial and “Tribalism” (17:31–22:32)

• On speaking with people who deny violence despite evidence: “She is quite evidently willfully refusing to see the facts... It’s almost a terminological issue.” — Louis Theroux [17:51]
• Insights from social psychology: Reference to Max Weber and Nietzsche to frame how state power and mass irrationality enable such denial.
  • "Selective compassion isn't compassion, it is tribalism." — Louis Theroux [21:10]
• Human universal: The instinct to prioritize the in-group—to the point of neglecting or dehumanizing the “other”—is seen everywhere:
  • "Daniela Weiss is an extreme version of something that exists in all of us." — Louis Theroux [19:16]

Parallels to History’s Empires (22:32–27:23)

• Comparison to colonial mindsets: “Taught not to see” the suffering of the colonized, as with the British in India or Belgians in the Congo.
  • "Oppression tends to... happen[s] in different contexts, but one is a sense of victimization: 'If we take our foot off his neck, then his foot will be on our neck.'" — Louis Theroux [23:14]
• Structures of invisibility: Settlers often avoid seeing Palestinian life, just as colonial societies once did. Urban planning and road systems contribute to this blindness.

Documentary Style and The “Theroux Method” (27:23–41:31)

• Leaving silence: Dalrymple lauds Theroux for the revealing power of leaving “space” for his subjects.
  • “You give people enough rope.” — William Dalrymple
• Theroux on his legacy and approach: Admits never setting out to follow in his father Paul Theroux’s (travel writer) footsteps; prefers immersive, subject-focused documentary to classic travel writing. [35:48–39:07]
  • “In a culture based on shame, if you're shameless, it's a superpower.” — Louis Theroux [39:48]
• Comparing “protagonists”: Both Weiss and influencers like HS Tikki Toky share “shamelessness” and unembarrassability.
  • “She never cracked. There's not a scintilla of vulnerability that I ever saw in her.” — Louis Theroux [41:31]

The Manosphere, Online Rage & Tribal Conspiracies (28:43–34:38)

• Unexpected parallels: The manosphere’s misogynistic hustlers and West Bank settlers both construct “an enemy who isn’t quite human.”
  • "They're both identities that are constructed on the idea of an other, and a kind of venomous and dangerous cabal." — Louis Theroux [29:47]
• Antisemitism’s new forms: The manosphere blends misogyny with conspiratorial antisemitism.
  • “I just thought they hated women... but, you know, it turns out that they have this whole idea that there are puppet masters..." — William Dalrymple [31:03]
• Rage as business model: "It's very lucrative to be a dick on the Internet. It's almost become a job." — Louis Theroux [33:38]
• Performative vs. sincere hate: Some of the misogyny and antisemitism is for effect, yet often it channels real sentiments of marginalization or resentment.

The Future: Can This Be Reversed? (44:16–46:23)

• Is the settler movement irreversible? Theroux is pessimistic:
  • “I think it's hard to see the likelihood of a shift in the balance. It seems only to be going in one direction...”
  • "Other authoritarian and ethno-nationalist regimes are looking at what's happening in the West Bank admiringly... There's a sympathetic international constituency in the West for what is happening..." — Louis Theroux [44:49]
  • “It is a dispiriting outlook.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On documentary philosophy:
  "I try and interrogate those people who have the most power... this is the one I wanted to make." [15:27, Theroux]
• On tribalism and human nature:
  "Selective compassion isn't compassion, it is tribalism." [21:10, Theroux]
• On settler worldview:
  "She is only thinking about how to advance the cause of Jewish nationalism... to think about other people not at all seems sociopathic." [19:16, Theroux]
• On modern rage:
  "It's very lucrative to be a dick on the Internet." [33:38, Theroux]
• On the bleak future:
  "It seems only to be going in one direction and... I think they see Islam generally as a threat... so there’s a sympathetic international constituency... it is a dispiriting outlook." [44:49, Theroux]
• The "Theroux Method":
  "You must be aware of this... being slightly, very polite, slightly bewildered, asking the obvious questions again and again and really giving the subject enough rope." [39:13, Dalrymple]

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Timestamps & Segment Highlights

• 01:39–04:18: Theroux on returning to the West Bank; parallels with American extremism.
• 06:03–11:00: The confrontation with Daniela Weiss; psychology and influence.
• 12:47–16:27: Navigating BBC scrutiny and audience reactions.
• 17:31–22:32: Dealing with denial, tribal psychology, and selective compassion.
• 22:32–27:23: Drawing connections to classic imperial systems and structural invisibility.
• 27:23–41:31: Documentary style, Theroux’s family, and exposing extremists.
• 28:43–34:38: Parallels between the manosphere and settlers; performative hate; online outrage.
• 44:16–46:23: The grim future of the settler movement and the wider international context.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a raw and honest discussion of the complexity of tribal identities and the psychology behind extremism, both offline and online. Louis Theroux’s insights—drawn from decades of probing uncomfortable truths—present a sobering picture of selective empathy and the power (and danger) of charismatic leaders. The conversation bridges the gap between the histories of empire and current struggles for identity, giving listeners pause to consider how history repeats in new guises—and how hard it is to challenge entrenched narratives.

For more:

• The Settlers is available on BBC iPlayer
• Inside the Manosphere is on Netflix

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Transcript

[Anita Anand]

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, Sign up to empire [e-mail]. this episode is brought to you by Attio, the AICRM. The larger an empire becomes, the the harder it is to know what's happening across it. Modern organizations face the same sort of problem and ATTIO helps solve it. ATTIO is an AICRM designed for how teams really operate. Sync your email and calendar and you're up and running in minutes. From there, ATIO brings your conversations and contacts together in one place so your team can see what is happening in real time. Ask ATIO goes a step further. Simply ask questions about your pipeline, which deals are moving fastest, where the momentum is building, or what needs attention next and get a clear answer in moments. With attio, you can focus on the real work of building your empire from day one onwards. Try Attio for free at attio.com/empire.

[William Dalrymple]

Hello and welcome to Empire with me,

[Anita Anand]

Anita Anand and me William Durumle.

[William Dalrymple]

Very recently, as our part of our series on the Arab Israeli conflict, we talked about military occupation of the west bank after the 1967 war and how it marked the beginning of the settler movement.

[Anita Anand]

And I think certain, certainly the most impactful piece of media that has shone a light on this in the last couple of years. Certainly the most important thing and the most watched thing on the BBC about this was Louis Theroux 2025 documentary the Settlers, which actually was not his first foray into this territory. He had earlier done a 2011 documentary about the same movement called the Ultra Zionist. And today we're very lucky to be joined by Louis to discuss his work on this topic. Welcome Louis. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

[Louis Theroux]

My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, I mean, we're thrilled to have you because, you know, in a way you've had two bites at this particular piece of fruit. Tell us why. You know, it was important to go back because 2011 was ultra Zionist and that was a film where the protagonist of your second film sort of makes a brief appearance and then cameo. You had Setlis. Yeah, she's almost a cameo in that.

[Louis Theroux]

So to dial back, I mean, I'm very self conscious about not being an expert on this specific subject. I'm a generalist and I do all kinds of documentaries on forms of human, what I call Weirdness, it's not a very exact term, but ways in which we as people act in ways that are sort of self sabotaging, that are informed by some kind of tribalism or bigotry sometimes or criminal action or impulses coming from the most basic parts of our brain. And in a way, the settlers and the occupation of the west bank speaks to several aspects of that, which is informed by a kind of religious, nationalist, tribalist mindset and supported by a kind of military judicial infrastructure backed up by the army, the idf. So I've done cult stories in America, I've done stories about racism and nationalism in America, I've done crime stories in America. And this is all three unfolding in this area of the west, this relatively small area of the West Bank. So that was what took me there in 2011. And it was extraordinary just to say it was in the kind of the broad buffet of the things that I do. It was extraordinary to see extremism sort of played out live before your eyes in such a mainstream way. It's hard to put it more exactly than that.

[Anita Anand]

I know exactly what you mean, though.

[Louis Theroux]

Aspects of sort of a kind of conspiracy minded or gun obsessed American extremism you would see in the hills of Idaho or Montana or, you know, I mean, all over, but in kind of isolated locales, but generally not backed up by the army or by law enforcement. And here it felt like it was part of day to day life. In the years that followed, I moved on to other stories. You know, I made three trips in that, 20 in that for that 2011 film. Post October 7th. I'd been reading that the situation was even worse. I mean, it never kind of, it was never too remote from my thinking. Like whenever I thought back about story, I'm always thinking about revisiting, but for this one in particular because it was, as I say, so extreme. It felt like this. Well, there's a form of apartheid taking place in the west bank and. And to see that, you know, not in history books, but in plain sight in the here and now. So having read about it in the New York Times, the New Yorker and a couple of Other Places post October 7th and hearing that it was more, if anything worse that the displacement was going on at a higher rate, that the level of de facto ethnic cleansing was taking place more intensively, I thought it was, it would be worth going back.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean, it's, it is such a powerful piece of television for if you're one of the maybe three people who hasn't seen this already, go and watch it just give you a taste of this. I mean, there is, there is a moment in your Settlers documentary which to me really stands out and it's a, it's that moment when a 79 year old woman shoves you in the chest hard.

[Anita Anand]

And not just any 79 year old woman, we should say we're talking about

[William Dalrymple]

the godmother of the Israeli settler movement. And when I said, you know, she played this cameo role in your first and then she came back, we're talking about a woman called Daniela Weiss who has the ear of Netanyahu's office. That comes across beautifully in your documentary. Tell me, what makes you think she said yes to you? Because you have a reputation now, basically, people don't come out very well after you scrutinize them. Them, you know, you ask them to face what it is they're saying and doing. Why did she say yes?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, I sometimes think that people, when they watch my films, see what conforms to the, to their way of thinking. So that, in other words, if I do a story about something like the Westboro Baptist Church in the Midwest, you know, a religious hate group, kind of a cult, you know, you or I might watch that and think these people are deeply destructive. They watch that film and think, yeah, I think we did a pretty good job of getting our message across and the idiot journalist doesn't get it right. So I think Daniela Weiss would see that film, you know, the Settlers or indeed the ultra Zionists, and think, yeah, it's what I expect from a kind of brainwashed BBC journalist. And that's fine. She will speak to almost anyone. Like, I think even if Al Jazeera asked for an interview, she'd probably be inclined to grant one. She's so uninterested in the reactions of people outside of her way of thinking that she couldn't care less. In fact, I think it's really striking. You know, she's this rather, I should say, paint a picture for those people haven't seen it. She's also rather a charismatic, as many people on the extremes are like, and certainly in leadership positions. Her level of, you know, for her age, of her ability to galvanize and kind of win over the cohorts of the people who are inclined to sympathize is extraordinary. Alas, it's dedicated to this very exclusionary vision of a greater Israel that takes over not just the west bank and Gaza as we see in the film, but in fact, I think she'd like parts of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and so on. But she'll speak to anyone. And I think, um, in fact, when she pushes me, it's almost, I want to say this hesitantly. She pushes me, I should say, as a way of illustrating, when I ask her, you know, is she not troubled by the actions of settler extremists, these people who, who are on video going about torching, intimidating, attacking, shooting Palestinians? I say, like, you've seen this, like this is going on all the time. And she says, well, that's only ever a reaction. And, and you're only seeing half the story that's in reaction to something probably much more horrific that's taking place. And for example, if I push you and she pushes me, you're going to push me back. And then surprise, surprise, like, I choose not to push her back.

[William Dalrymple]

You stand there and she sort of, again, do watch this, because I will never do this justice, but she sort of just looks at you for a while and it's in the silences that, you know, we as the audience can get to feel all the feels and think all the things. But she does say, right at the end, she goes, I wish you would have pushed me.

[Louis Theroux]

I wish you would push me. But the other revealing thing, because there's a second. I met her three, on three occasions on that trip, and the, the first interview is at her house. And I, I, I mentioned to her that moving civilian populations into an area that's under military occupation is considered a, a war crime, as I understand.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I mean, you're very brave. You go straight out and put it to her.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, thank you. I don't know how brave, brave it was. Given she's an older lady, I think I could take her. If we rumbled, I think I could have taken her. But, and she laughs. Her reaction is, she laughs and says, so you are sitting. So you are involved in the war criminal or something like that. And I said, well, I'm interviewing you. But in other words, she finds it funny. So negligible, so trivial that it's actually amusing. The only time you see her lose her composure, because even the push, I would argue, is playful, is intended playfully. But when I say that, actually by the Israeli establishment itself, that even by figures from the security establishment, they view her activities as dangerous and terroristic like that. She's been described by Ronan Barr, who I think was the head of Shinbat.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, she got quite shirty about that,

[Louis Theroux]

she, as a terrorist. Then she gets really angry and I think it speaks to that thing which you were referring to, the idea that she cares nothing for the judgment of the world, but within her fraternity, of the religious Jewish community, the idea of them pushing back, the idea of them passing judgment on her is deeply offensive because they're, in her eyes, traitors to their own cause.

[Anita Anand]

Louis, before you do one of these things and you go to. I mean, you've got some pretty extreme folk, not just weird folk, but some pretty extreme folk over the course of your career. Does your heart sink when you're sort of about to enter a settlement, or do you sort of salivate at the prospect of copy that sliver of ice in the heart of the journalist that you need?

[Louis Theroux]

I don't think I'd be doing the job I did if my heart sank every time I was going to meet someone with views that I found objectionable. Maybe what does it say about me? But I'm not sure, but I do. There's a part of having a front seat, a front row seat to the extremes of the human experience that I genuinely enjoy. And I know that sounds. There wasn't as awful as, you know, what's happening in the west bank is extraordinarily awful. Like, before doing this call, I was thinking about how do I convey what it's like? And I was thinking about the activities of ICE in America and the fact that last year two people in Minnesota, I think in Minneapolis, were shot dead by ice, the Immigration Enforcement Agency. And I was thinking like, but what's happening in the west bank is like that day in, day out, on a much bigger scale.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

All through the year being done by a military force that isn't even from that place. You know, imagine a military force coming in and shooting people in the streets for alleged infractions. And so the outrage should be commensurate with the awfulness of how that. Of how that looks. But having said that, when I was there, there wasn't a day when I woke up when I didn't think what a. What a strange and dark privilege it is to be able to document that and to be able to be on a story that feels worthy of the world's attention.

[Anita Anand]

And it is, it is. I mean, there's lots of reasons to be anxious, but doing that sort of movie a. Obviously it is potentially quite violent and difficult. And you did, you know, have lots of people with guns and there are stones thrown at cars in the west bank. And, you know, there's a lot goes on there. And particularly at the moment, it's a rough time, but also it's the hottest of all potatoes to get through a broadcasting system. It's the hottest of all potatoes in terms of audiences. People feel very, very strongly about this. Were you anxious that you were going to tread on landmines?

[Louis Theroux]

The short version is yes. I give credit to the BBC for allowing me to make the film. And it was invigilated and supervised scrupulously, almost infuriatingly so, every stage. But not just in terms of doing justice, like absolutely being scrupulously correct about how Israeli military actions or settler activities are discussed, but also doing kind of correctly. There's this sort of gravitational pull towards an Israeli narrative because for whatever reason, I think allies of Israel's actions have done an amazing job of making their presence felt and making sure that any sort of overstepping, overstatement, woolly phraseology gets policed. Right. I feel as I that's healthy. Would that it were the case on all sides. But similarly, we have to interrogate that we're doing the same level of care to represent Palestinian reality. It's truthfully, I got critiqued from both like in terms of like some people who watched it who were sort of sympathetic to the Israeli kind of way of looking at things were like, oh, well, it's one sided. You haven't really shown how this, you know, these people are extreme, just crazy. No one, no one takes them seriously. Which by the way is not the case. You know, Daniela Weiss enjoys enormous influence. But similarly on the other side, some people like, well, it's 15 or 20 minutes before you meet a Palestinian person, right. And it's a farmer speaking in Arabic. And then I quickly move on to talk to an Israeli peace activist and across the board I'm giving, you could argue a megaphone to the, to the settlers. And so I think some people felt, well, you've kind of erased, you sort of erased the Palestinian place.

[Anita Anand]

Someone complained you didn't tell the Nakba story, didn't they?

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, there was a guy who I met in a village who's like, you didn't really discuss how we've already been displaced. He told me a story on camera about how he'd ended up in this village in the west bank near Hebron, but prior to that he'd been in what's now Israel and displaced from that, I believe. And so there's a sort of ongoing compounding of refugee status and he was understandably upset and realistically. And I've been at screenings where people have made similar complaints. And I just have to say I work in a way when I make films that tends to be perpetrator focused. I try and Interrogate the. Those people who have the most power, like, and the ones who have the most power. And this actually speaks to the idea that, oh, it's one sided in a sense. You could argue it is because I'm looking at the people who are in control of the tanks and who are actually benefiting from the occupation to interrogate their choices and other films could be made, but this is the one that I wanted to make.

[William Dalrymple]

So. So I mean, I'm really interested in that sort of journalistic vibe that comes from you because, you know, in a way every journalist and, you know, we three have all done this job, you want to get to the truth. But when you have somebody who is saying black is white, white is black. I'll give you the thing that I'm thinking about. You know, you go with Daniela Weiss and you're on this hill above the Palestinian town of Beta and you're asking her about settler violence. And she said, there is no such thing. And then you point out the footage that you've got in the film of an armed settler shooting a Palestinian protester at point blank range. By the way, he only, he gets his gun confiscated, but he's not imprisoned and an Israeli soldier is standing by and, and she says, well, you know, she kind of like doesn't accept that, that settler violence. Now, if you can't get to somebody by showing them to their face, something that we can all see, what does that do to, you know, your sense of fairness or journalism?

[Louis Theroux]

You know, it's not an unfamiliar role for me to be talking to someone who's obstinately refusing to see the facts in the way that she does. She, I think I mentioned, I did a story about a cult in the Midwest in which one of the leaders was this woman called Shirley Phelps Roper. She had a similar energy.

[William Dalrymple]

Amazing.

[Louis Theroux]

The Westboro Baptist Church. Yeah, so she had a similar energy. And I feel as though it would have been a problem in the film if, if as a, as a viewer you hadn't already seen video from, from some, you know, filmed of settler violence, but because you have, then the viewer is able to draw their own conclusion as to how credible Daniela is, you know, and she is quite evidently willfully refusing to see the facts. And it's almost a terminological issue. Like, you know, it was Max Weber who said that the state is the institution that has the monopoly of legitimate violence in a given area. You could argue she's speaking in a Weberian sense. She's saying any violence that's inflicted by Settlers in the west bank is. Is a kind of law enforcement activity that is part of their monopolistic right to control and occupy the region that God gave them.

[William Dalrymple]

You've talked about the very strong leadership, but I really want to know whether in all of your travels and talking to the people who follow these people, whether you see a commonality in tribalism, if we can put it that way, is there something in the human condition that means people switch off their own questioning and follow people who say, black is white and white is black?

[Louis Theroux]

I think that Daniela Weiss is an extreme version of something that exists in all of us. And, you know, one of the. You know, I try not to be overly invested in how well I've done, you know, in a film. But genuinely, like, when I watch that encounter with Daniela Weiss, there's a moment where I say, like, she's talking about, look, there's. I know there's Beta over there. She says, pointing to the Palestinian, she says, I don't think about Beta. I think about here is a settlement, and here is a settlement, and here is a settlement. So she would say, like, she has no animus against Palestinian people. She just doesn't think about them. Like, she is only thinking about how to advance the cause of Jewish nationalism in the region. And I say to her, to think about your own people first is understandable, but to think about other people not at all. Seems sociopathic. So the reason I say I, like, I'm quite. I'm sort of pleased that. Because it's kind of pious to say, like, oh, I don't distinguish between my own children and children halfway around the world. Right. That's clearly not the case. But that's also the beginnings of tribalism, isn't it?

[William Dalrymple]

Well, that's. Sure, but. And that, I mean, that is also the Westboro Baptist Church. You know, it's. It's us in the church. We're the ones that matter. And, you know, everyone outside is potentially an enemy.

[Louis Theroux]

And.

[William Dalrymple]

And actually, we don't care. We don't think about them. You know, we will do what we do because we care about our family. Does that depress you about the human spirit that so many people are willing to switch off the part of themselves that thinks, you know what? This person who is standing either surveying a smoldering village or in, is protesting at a funeral of a dead serviceman that they're willing to switch that off and follow, what have you learned about the human condition that that can happen?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, I sometimes pretentiously quote Nietzsche and say, as One does as one does, especially if you're a perennial kind of existentialist student, you know, plonker. But, you know, he said one of his things is madness in individuals is rare, but in periods of time, nations and religions, it's the norm, so that we are all capable of being indoctrinated in forms of irrationality. So is it depressing? Yes. Especially in light of so much of it is informed by an infrastructure of Jewish persecution. You know, the idea of, like, we've suffered across the centuries as Jewish people and that, therefore, the extrapolation from that is like, how could we ever be accused of, of hurting others, of. Of displacing or, or inflicting genocide on. On others. But I think, you know, what is the conclusion? It's just that it requires this sort of endless attempt to police your own impulses. You know, I think I would sometimes say, like, selective compassion isn't compassion, it is tribalism. Right. So it's about trying to throw, throw, throw your arms around a wider community. But, you know, it all sounds a bit namby pamby when you put it like that. And it's easier said than done.

[Anita Anand]

Louis, on this podcast, we spend a lot of time looking at the kind of mechanics of empire. How young Scotsmen get sent out to the East India company in the 18th century to rule over a million people, how Belgians were taught not to see Congolese suffering even though they were cutting the hands and the feet off these people. Did you feel that you understood how that sort of thing could happen when you're in the west bank with someone like Daniela Weiss, who can just take the water and the land of people that really have very little, and they're taking more and more and they're driving them out, and they're really not thinking about what happens to these people other than they've got to go, this is our land. These guys don't belong here. They've just got to go.

[Louis Theroux]

There's a couple of dimensions to that. I think oppression tends to. Obviously it happens in different contexts, but one is a sense of victimization. We take our foot off his neck, then his foot will be on our neck. And that's very much the thinking among parts of the settler community.

[Anita Anand]

We'll get a jihadi state here. That sort of stuff.

[Louis Theroux]

Well, not wholly without merit. Like, there's so much anger, understandable anger and resentment, but. And you hear a lot, well, look how many Muslim nations there are. They'll say, and we want one Jewish nation. And now they're trying to take that away from us. I also think, you know, never underestimate people's ability to just go along with whatever's happening, Right. You know, Milgram's famous experiments on authority where he found that people were willing to inflict electric shocks on strangers if someone above them was saying, don't worry, I'm in charge. And you have to do this. You know, you have to remember, in the west bank there's, there's several constituencies, apart from the sort of the 3 million Palestinians who lived there and have lived there for generations. You have 700,000 settlers thereabout of whom most of them would consider themselves non ideological. They're living in relatively suburban style homes in settlements that are not ostensibly like stockades. Like, they would look maybe like a suburban community in the Midwest somewhere or in the west, in Phoenix, Arizona. And they're just looking for cheap housing. And people tune out. They tune out what they don't see.

[Anita Anand]

It's half the price of stuff. In Tel Aviv, young couples go there,

[Louis Theroux]

you get a house. A lot of them are from abroad. They might have come in and found out that they've come in from maybe Russia or America and they're getting cheap housing and various benefits that have been incentivized. And there's this extraordinary extent to which the Palestinian experience is made to be invisible. You know, the architecture and the infrastructure of the place is explicitly designed to make the Palestinian world invisible, much as prisons are here. Like, I drove down to Wandsworth at the weekend and we drove past Wandsworth Prison. I was like, it's amazing how there's trees planted so that you can see ones with common on one side, but you can't actually see the prison. And a similar thing happens in the west bank where behind walls and kind of these sort of blast walls and then a series of checkpoints, there'll be a Palestinian city that might have, you know, four or five hundred thousand people in it that you would never, if you were a settler driving on a settler road, you would never know about. So it's hard to feel compassion for something that you never see. And then within the concentric ring of that, you have armies following orders who have this slightly guilty way about them when you interact with them sometimes, not always, but there's sometimes there's a bit like, unfortunately, yes, you know, we have to stop you. And they're just, as it were, like the Scottish guy, you know, sent out to Burma following orders. And then you have the engine room, which is the fanatical ideological settler who is often not from Abroad, like he might be a homegrown Israeli. And they are following the will of God as they see it, and completely committed to the vision of recovering the land. You know, when I talked to Ari Abramovic, he was from Texas originally, but his whole thing was like, if people just understood, like, this is going to create peace for everyone, like every nation. Like, his idea was like, and they'll talk. They don't talk about recovering the Temple Mount, but that's always slightly in the background, this sort of messianic idea that. And then we're going to. Then if we can just build the temple on the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, then I don't quite know the theology of it, but the idea is, and then there'll be peace on Earth for millions of years. So they see themselves as idealists.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean, I've been sort of looking at your work over many years and I think what you do is really interesting. And I think space that you give people to speak. And also the fact that you leave the spaces in, to me is utterly fascinating. And if you work as I do, I work for the BBC, but I work in. In news. And you don't have room for the spaces. It seems to me that you've been studying the same question for around 30 years now, which is how ordinary people end up sort of holding either extreme or fringe beliefs, whatever, and then acting on them. And I wanted to bring in the thing that's, you know, blown up for you this year, inside the Manosphere on Netflix. And just again, I mean, if you are one of the two people who hasn't seen this, now, this is all about sort of men selling courses and lifestyle. It's a particular brand of swaggering misogyny. And they target teenage boys largely. Now, on the surface, you couldn't get something that's more different from the settlers. It's a film about, you know, land and military occupation. But watch them back to back, as I have. And it's all about the construction of an enemy who isn't quite human. He's, you know, not human, but, you know, communities of men who've decided that those people are outside our tribe and empathy, they don't deserve it. I mean, am I overreaching or is that. Is that something that you feel?

[Louis Theroux]

Well, that's a really good point because when you started speaking, I was like, these worlds are so different. One is primarily financial. Like those influences online are mainly money motivated. Their outrage is often almost a kind of a confected, almost a shop window To. To what's behind, which is an attempt to sell a kind of dodgy financial product, an app or an online course or something. Whereas the settlers, the ones I was meeting, they, you know, they live almost in an impoverished way, some of them. Like one of the characters I met was called Malkiel, and he's a horse wrangler living in a tent, in a caravan.

[Anita Anand]

It's like a gypsy encampment, wasn't it? It was.

[Louis Theroux]

He's like a gypsy. Yeah. Looking like. A lot of them look like cowboys. They have this sort of frontier almost ragged. They have guns on their hips and cowboy hats. It's not a grift. Like, they're not doing. They're not in it for the money.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[Louis Theroux]

You know, Daniela Weiss herself lives abstemiously. But. But I think you. You identify something. Correct. Which is that.

[William Dalrymple]

Oh, phew. Because I thought you agreed with me. And then with demolishing.

[Louis Theroux]

No, no, no. But I think the part is. The part that's correct is, yes, they're both. They're identities that are constructed on the idea of an other, and a kind of venomous and. And dangerous cabal, if you like, and a sense that there's these evildoers who. Who attempted to outflank them and that they, in turn have to match the end of the perceived level of threat of the enemy by being just as dangerous or more dangerous. So I think that that's very true. And oddly, in the manosphere, it's a kind of conspiracy that they cast as having a Jewish. They put a sort of Jewish lens. They put a Jewish character on what they perceive as what they call a matrix, this sort of international cabal of. Of powerful financiers and thought leaders who are attempting to keep the population subjugated. And among the settlers, they see the Palestinian other, but Palestinian other that's being supported by the west, by European loans and kind of sort of, I suppose, globalist kind of enemy.

[William Dalrymple]

The anti Semitism thing came as a surprise because, you know, I just thought they hated women. I thought they hated me. But, you know, it turns out that they have this. This whole idea that this is a, you know, there are puppet masters who are working all of this, and anybody who opposes them is sort of being funded by or brainwashed by this cabal, as you've just described, is a Satanic cabal. Yeah, yeah, satanic, you know, pointing to pictures, saying, look, there, you see, there's a sign that there's Satan. But what. What interested me is when you sort of push them they say, and you, you make it very clear that it sounds preposterous. In fact, with the satanic thing you say. Are you, are you, are you serious? Are you really saying Satan is running the world? They'll back off it sometimes. I mean, not the Satan guy, but a lot of the time they will back down and come back. Does that mean that the manosphere, are you saying, is artificial? Completely. Where? Because I really feel they hate women. I don't think that's artificial.

[Louis Theroux]

I don't think it's all artificial, but some of it is performative. And I do think to some extent these modes are not binary. Like we all go in and out of different registers, right, and perform ourselves in ways that aren't consistent. I think that, I think there's a time, you know, I think there's times when they say things for effect, like HS Tikki Toky, real name Harrison Sullivan, an Essex influencer and fitness guy who we follow. There's a moment where he goes around, we see, we see footage of him going, fuck the Jews again and again, chanting it and, and truthfully, I don't think there's much thought behind it. Like, I don't think he's really particularly troubled by the idea of Jewish people. I think he just knows that it's outrageous and it will be picked up. I think they. But at the same time, I think he is genuinely sexist, like in the old fashioned sense. I think he's someone who thinks that women are basically just a way for him to get his sexual needs met. And at the same time he deplores the idea of women being promiscuous. So it's a com. It's complicated like that. There's part. The Internet is very lucrative, you know, if you. I sometimes say, like, it's very lucrative to be a dick on the Internet. It's almost become a job, like, to actually, like go online and be a plonker. And at the same time, it doesn't come from nowhere. They know it resonates with people. Not partly because it's funny to some and partly because they're connecting with the idea of feeling disempowered and that there needs to be a reset and that men aren't getting taken seriously enough.

[William Dalrymple]

We're going to take a break in a moment, but just before we take the break, do you not find you're not a very depressed man? Because if it is that easy to monetize rage, why are we going on? Louis? What's the point of any of this? If it's that simple.

[Louis Theroux]

Right. Well, as a program maker, having sort of lived through this disruption of the media landscape, that part of it I find quite depressing. Like the fact that all of the big channels, the Legacy channel, BBC, channel Forward, itv, are struggling. Right. That I do find depressing. As a student of the human condition who has a kind of pyromaniacal pleasure in observing the degeneracy of how we are as people, like something I think I might have got from my dad, I do actually quite enjoy sort of luxuriating in the awfulness of what we are.

[William Dalrymple]

Okay, well, look, let's take a break and come back after the break. Actually, I think Will, he's very keen to talk to you about your dad. Welcome back. So just before the break, we had the tantalizing dangle of Louis Theroux's dad. Also a favorite topic of Willie Dalrymple over here. You were jumping up and down in your seat going, oh, he's dad. I know his dad.

[Anita Anand]

Well, no, it's, I don't know. I just know his dad. I grew up worshiping his dad. I will embarrass Louis by saying this, but for my generation that started doing travel writing in the early 80s, the Great Railway Bazaar was our bible. And he'd sold something like 1.5 million copies. And it showed that we could just go off on trains or go wandering around Turkey and write a book. It was too good to be true. But are you updating what he did is your version of, you've obviously got a camera rather than writing books and you're not jumping on trains so much as sort, you know, driving around and talking to people. But do you feel that there's, there's a great commonality? Have you talked this over with them?

[Louis Theroux]

No, I haven't. And first of all, it's a high, it's high praise. Like, it's very high praise. My dad is a, as you know, a serious literature someone who, who's brilliantly gifted novelist and travel writer with an international reputation. More than 50 books to his name. Garland did My Other Life is, is

[Anita Anand]

one of my favorite novels. I love that book.

[Louis Theroux]

And I think the novels perhaps deserve more attention than they're given. The travel writing is very well read and well regarded. I grew up reading his novels first.

[Anita Anand]

There's a version of you in My Other Life. He comes to the school gates. You said you're going to go and see your kids at the school gates.

[Louis Theroux]

Oh, geez. Yeah. I think that was my brother. Yeah, I think that was probably My brother. I've got an older brother, but there's versions of himself in various of his books, although he's got lots of, you know, he doesn't exclusively write versions of his. Some people just write versions of their own life. He doesn't do that, but there are a few that do. And. And he's. He's typically got one son. So I always think it's not a conflation. It's mainly my brother. But I don't. I never sort of set out to. I. You know, like, the short version is. I always thought, oh, I'm supposed to be a writer. Like, that was the family law, the family thing.

[Anita Anand]

You've got uncles that do it too.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, the family thing. Basically, you leave university and then you write a travel book or a note. Like that was the aristocracy of letters, was a thing in our household. That was what it was, the highest calling. I think. I think I probably still believe that, like anything like TV or film is kind of poor cousin in terms of the arts. I got into TV slightly by displaced from, like, the pressure of feeling, oh, I can never write a book as good as my dad's. So I thought, I'll write for television and I'll write something. Like sitcoms were big. This was the early 90s. And then I struggled to get hired on a sitcom. And then I got hired by Michael Moore for his series TV Nation and began presenting segments. So there was never. There was never think, oh, I'm going to do the great Railway Bazaar. But as a travelogue. I don't even like travelogues on TV that much. Like, as a genre, you could.

[Anita Anand]

You could do without Portillo. Can you?

[Louis Theroux]

I haven't watched much Portillo. I mean, I do. I like Michael Palin, but my go to has always been classical documentary, especially immersive documentary, where you are absolutely. You have a kind of continuity of character through the film that the. That maybe there's a reporter like Alan Wicker was something of an influence for those who can remember. That idea of someone who's immersed in an experience, who's the. Who's sort of the straight man in the comic sense in a world gone mad, navigating through and especially where he. They get out of their depth in some way and they're exposed to the extremes of the human condition. So I never. I struggle with that authorial and I'm talking way too much, but this is. This is going to quite a deep place, that authorial voice of the travel writer, like. And then I went here and I. And I. And I went to see the Spanish Steps, and a man did a. Vomited on my shoe. And I went back to the hotel and I always thought. I don't really. I'm not. You know, I think I'm more. I'd like to see. I'd like to sort of see someone immersed in their lives somehow.

[Anita Anand]

You prefer I want Temple Mountain. Someone shot me with an Uzi, basically.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah.

[William Dalrymple]

But one thing, Louis, I mean, you know, you. There is now the same this thing that's called the Thoreau Method. You must be aware of this, you know, sort of being slightly. Very polite, slightly bewildered, asking the obvious questions again and again and really giving the subject enough rope. And I wonder if some of them. I mean, we talked about two people here, H.S. tikky Toky and Daniela Weiss. And I wonder if there are any parallels between them in that, you know, they are unembarrassable. They are. You know, there's. Is there. Is there anything else that sort of links them together in your mind?

[Louis Theroux]

First of all, thank you for the Thoreau Method. I didn't know what it was. It sounds a bit like a massage technique, right? Or musicians use it, you know, to improve their posture when they're playing their instrument. The Roo technique. It's controversial.

[William Dalrymple]

No, yours is a method. It's. Alexander's got the technique. You've got the method, I've got the through method.

[Louis Theroux]

I apologize for having propagated a journalistic method. I do think that there's parallels. I mean, just purely technically and structurally, they occupy the exact same place in their respective programs that you see them both three times. And the climactic moment of both films involves a showdown, as it were, where I basically present my case and say, here's why I have a problem with what you're doing. Having gathered my. My data, having done my research and due diligence, I'm presenting my case against you. She pushes me. He pushes me virtually in the sense of. Of. He actually films. He. Instead of push me, he does something much smarter, which is he films me, live streams me, and then crowdsources questions that will embarrass me and then put. Clips them and goes viral with me looking stupid. That's the. The first observation. What do they have in. In. In. In common, objectively, as people? It's. It's just as you. Yeah, it's, I think, a quality of. Of shamelessness, you know, a quality of, you know, in a culture based on shame, if you're shameless, it's a superpower. If you have no. If you're unembarrassable, if there's nothing, if you have complete conviction. And I think actually on that metric, Daniela has. Has the advantage over hs. Like, I saw HS uncomfortable. There were times when he seemed worried by things that I did.

[Anita Anand]

He was terrified that he was going to get. Get hung up.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah. He did this thing which we use throughout the film, which is do monologues to his followers on social media. Anytime I left, any time I left, which is great. He gave it a sort of Shakespearean grammar where he was doing soliloquies between scenes, you know, the beginning and end of scenes. Like, was ever wench in this woman wood? You know, he's going like, I think Forough might be trying to cook me. I'm not too sure. You know, it's like Iago, isn't it? Yeah, but I think so. He had that uncertainty and she. She never cracked. There's. There's not a scintilla of vulnerability that I ever saw in her. I'm sure it's there, but I never saw it.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean, some people will object to the comparison. And the reason they both came to my mind, I think, is because they're both the most recent protagonists of your most recent films.

[Louis Theroux]

Who do you think would object to the comparison?

[William Dalrymple]

Well, I suppose some people say, look, one has a. One has an ideological belief. I'm saying people who sort of follow, you know, some. One has an ideological belief and the other one has a six pack and makes money. You know, which one is which?

[Louis Theroux]

Daniela Weiss doesn't have a six pack.

[William Dalrymple]

No. Okay, all right, very funny, very funny. Final question, because we are. We are running out of time. Who is the person you really want to get? Who's proving hard to get because we might be able to help you, you know, 90 million downloads. I know it's nothing to you, but, you know, they might be listening. Who do you want to get?

[Louis Theroux]

There's so many people, I don't know where to start. I find the world of AI bafflingly intriguing. So I think someone like Peter Thiel, who runs Palantir, he would be fascinating.

[Anita Anand]

I was giving a lecture in LA last year and he was giving another one upstairs on the Antichrist, the same building. But sadly his security was a bit tight.

[Louis Theroux]

Yeah, there's a religious dimension there, but. But also this sort of sense in which he. He seems to envision a world in which we. We transcend the human form. And by we, I think I just mean a few. A handful of billionaire tech bros will upload their consciousnesses to, to sort of data farms and be roaming around the, the kind of the digital ether like gods. But if I can't get him, I've been trying to get Demis Hassabis who's the most brilliant gifted AI expert developer programmer in the uk and he's up in North London. So. And he seems rather benign figure, so I'd love to talk to him. And then on a more prosaic note, the comedian Peter K. That's going to be a.

[William Dalrymple]

That's going to be lovely. No one's going to push anyone.

[Louis Theroux]

There we go. That'd be more, that seems more achievable.

[William Dalrymple]

No one's going to push. Shove anybody in that one. Yeah, it's going to be quite a letdown to people who expect a certain benefit of brutality.

[Anita Anand]

Louis to return to our settlers, my final question, the settlers in 20 years time, where do you see that? Do you see any conceivable reverse button on what they're doing? Because it felt my biggest anxiety watching it was that it's now so strong and so irreversible, they are so full of conviction, so well organized and the Palestinians are so much on the run that another nakba seems more probable than not. Would you agree? Or what do you think?

[Louis Theroux]

I think it's hard to see the likelihood of a shift in the balance. It seems only to be going in one direction and more than that, and I've said this before, I think think others around the world are looking at how other authoritarian and ethno nationalist regimes are looking at what's happening in the West Bank. Admiringly, you know, figures like Milei in Argentina, maybe Bardella in France, this sort of underground, international underground or I mean underground, but it's a sort of, there's this community of kind of in the vanguard of, of, of Trump as well, who sort of. And I think, you know, to the broader point, I think they see Islam generally as a threat. I think that's where, that's how they would try and explain what they were doing. They would say like, well, we're just trying to protect ourselves. And so there's a sympathetic international constituency in the west for what is happening in the West Bank. And in the end, you know, disappointingly, even the regimes in the Middle east, from what I see, don't seem massively invested in the preservation of a kind of rule of law and basic civil rights. And those agencies that are, are attempting to police what's happening, like the ICJ or the UN are just increasingly being Marginalized. Marginalized and sort of there's an effort to but to discredit them. So it is a dispiriting outlook.

[William Dalrymple]

Listen, it's been so great talking to you. I know we have to let you go because you've got a school run. And that, as we all know, is the most important thing. Thank you so much for being with us, Louis. Documentary the settlers is on BBC iPlayer inside the manosphere. You can find that on Netflix. And till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Anand.

[Anita Anand]

Goodbye from me, William Durimple.

[Louis Theroux]

Thank you so much.

[Anita Anand]

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