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- [00:00]
Podcast Host / Advertiser
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- [01:23]
Jamie Weinstein
Welcome to Dispatch Podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is an old friend, Jamie Kirchik. He has written just about for everywhere from the New York Times to Tablet Magazine to Airmail. A long time writer on all sorts of issues, but especially of politics and foreign policy where he's gone overseas and covered war zones. And he is the author of several books. But the most relevant to what we discussed today is a book he wrote about a decade ago called the End of Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. He reported on and lived in Germany for a year. I believe that's why I have him on to discuss J.D. vance's speech in Munich. What we need to understand about the German elections. What is the AFD party that you have seen JD Vance and Elon Musk support and other questions of what is going on in Europe and what might be the costs of tearing down some of the infrastructure we built up since World War II and the alliances we have there? I think you're going to find this interesting and educational. I certainly did. So without further ado, I give you Mr. Jamie Kirchik. Jamie Kirchick, welcome to the Dispatch podcast.
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Jamie Kirchik
Thank you for having me.
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Jamie Weinstein
Well, I brought you on primarily because I saw the German elections were happening and what was surrounding who the administration was supporting and sending feelers out to. But I think I want to begin just at the top with J.D. vance's speech in Munich and just get your general thoughts on what you thought about what he said.
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Jamie Kirchik
So I thought his speech would have been a wonderful speech to give at a think tank conference or on a television debate show, if one were a commentator on politics. I largely agreed with the substance. I mean, I've written for years about the harshness of speech laws, hate speech laws, all sorts of speech laws and speech restrictions in Europe. I have a very long track record on that. I'm pretty much a free speech absolutist. But I do not think that the Munich Security Conference was the place for airing such disagreements. I mean, this is a security conference, right? And it was founded in the heat of the Cold War to basically rally the Western world, the free world together to contemplate and strategize about dealing with the Soviet Union and its allies and its puppet states. Um, and that's pretty much still the same purpose, right? I mean, the Soviet Union has collapsed, but we have a. A regime that is, you know, domestically more repressive, I think, than the Soviet Union was certainly by the 70s and the 80s that's, you know, territorially expansionist in a way that the Soviet Union wasn't. And so for the Vice President to say that the greatest threat to Europe is not Russia, not China, but from within, and then to describe that threat from within as not being, you know, far right political parties, but speech laws. Right? Speech laws that, however ill thought out and maybe misapplied that that's the real threat to Europe, I find just a profoundly wrong opinion. And then the other major problem I had with the speech was that he essentially endorsed the alternative for Germany, the AfD, as it's known in German, the far right party in that country, which is not just anti immigration, where I think that's a perfectly legitimate political opinion to have, they're pro Russian and they're also anti American and anti NATO. And so to see an American president say that the firewalls should come down across Europe, and that's a specific reference to the. Basically, you know, the decision by the mainstream political parties in European countries not to form coalitions with far right parties, for him to explicitly come out and call for those firewalls to come down in Germany to Me, I saw as a tacit endorsement of the AfD. So that that was a sort of unprecedented, you know, overt intervention in German politics that, you know, has not been seen in a long time. So again, I think J.D. vance was sort of acting like he was still, you know, a guy who would go on right wing podcasts and sort of riff on the world. And, you know, he's very good at that. And I often agree with him when he's doing that. Right. But that's not the role of the Vice President of the United States, particularly when he's traveling overseas talking to allies.
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Jamie Weinstein
I want to dig into what AfD believes and who they are, but we just had the German election a week ago, or less than a week ago at this point. What happened there? Can you explain just what the results were, what what we saw and what it means?
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Jamie Kirchik
So the results were not unexpected. The party with the largest vote share was the Christian Democratic Union and its sister party in Bavaria, the Christian social union, the CDU and the CSU, they came in with about 28, 29%. They had the most votes. Second place was, I think, those kind of disturbing element of this was the afd garnering 21% of the vote. And that is the highest that any far right party has earned in German elections since the end of World War II. The other big outcome was the Social Democratic Party, which is the oldest political party in Germany. One of the two, what used to be the two major parties, the Christian Democrats on the center right, the Social Democrats on the center left. The Social Democrats were the leading party in the government that just lost the election. They received about 15 and a half percent. And that was the worst result that that party has received in its entire 150 year, over 150 year history. So that was a profound shock. Again, not unexpected. And then coming in fourth, we saw the Green Party, which was also a part of this outgoing coalition. They only lost a couple of points. They went from about 14 to 11%. And I guess the other two big takeaways was that the Liberal Party and this is the economically liberal party in the European sense of the word, the Free Democrats were also a part of this coalition. They never really fit into this coalition. It was a center left coalition. The FDP is a center right party. They did not make it into Parliament. They did not get more than 5%. And there was another sort of breakaway splinter left before the breakaway.
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Jamie Weinstein
This, this party that you refer to that didn't get in. Would they be the closest to what we would think of classically liberal conservatives in the U.S. is that what the.
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Jamie Kirchik
Yes. Economically liberal? Yes, very fiscally. They didn't get enough. They got about 4.3%, I believe. Okay. That's happened in the election before last. They also didn't get into parliament. But they were, you know, during the Cold War era you had the Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats, and then you had the Liberals. And they were basically the king makers. Right. So the government would usually be formed by the CDU and the Liberals or the SPD and the Liberals. And that was kind of how German politics worked. And the big sort of, you know, trend that we've seen in German politics since the end of World War II is that you've seen the decline of these folks, Partei and the People's parties, the SPD and the cdu, they have lost support. And we've seen this fragmentation in this emergence of other parties. Right. So the fdp, which had always been there since the end of the war, but also the greens in the 1980s, after the end of the Cold War, there was a party called D? Linka and still exists. They are the kind of post Communist party. They were the party that emerged from the East German Communists. They actually did surprisingly well. They got about eight and a half percent. And then there's this other interesting party that, that was founded by one of the leaders of the left of D? Linka. Her name is Sara Vagenkonnecht. She started her own party which kind of merged the far left and the far right. So kind of far left on economics, pro Russia, anti American, anti NATO, but kind of culturally conservative. Right. So anti migration. Right. So her party and the AfD are pretty much the same when it comes to migration. That was an interesting political faction that people were following. She got 4.97%, so just missed it getting into the, into the parliament. But the other big thing I have to mention is that if you look at how people voted in the former east and how they voted in the former west, completely different. Right? So the AfD is basically the most popular party now in the former East Germany. And D? Linka and the Saravagan connect parties, those are also popular party. So you still see in East Germany, unfortunately, you know, 35 years after the collapse of Communism, you still see the population there is voting for these anti system, you know, extreme fringe parties. And so despite all the money that's gone into, you know, the former east and all the efforts that have been made to try to integrate that region, it is still this kind of left behind region which we've come to know now over the past 10 years, these sort of economically depressed regions where a lot of the young people are leaving. People see no future for themselves. Right. And they end up voting for these, these, these populist parties. That's a very stark political division. Now in Germany.
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Jamie Weinstein
You mentioned, I think the, the party that got the most at 20% was the Christian Democratic Union led by Friedrich Mertz. I'm probably mispronouncing that.
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Jamie Kirchik
Merz, explain who he is.
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Jamie Weinstein
Explain what the party believes. I mean, you mentioned what we would consider the classical liberal party that didn't get enough. They do refer to this as a more conservative. What does that mean in the German context?
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Jamie Kirchik
So, I mean, the CDU can really be understood as kind of the natural party of government of Germany. You know, since, since the end of World War II, they have been, they have occupied the chancellery more than any other party, certainly more than the Social Democrats. You know, Conrad Adenauer was the first chancellor of, of post war Germany, of the Federal Republic. He ruled, I think, for 15, 14 or 15 years. Right. And then you had Cole, Chancellor Cole ruled from early 1980s to the late 1990s. You had these, these two kind of titans of post war German politics. That's the cdu. It's traditionally been, you know, you say center right, in our understanding. That would be there. They're certainly center right on social issues. They were always the most sort of pro American, pro defense party, the most anti Soviet party, anti Communist party in Germany. But on economics, they are more statist. Right? I mean, they are, they, they, they believe in what's called the, the social market economy. So they believe in free markets, they believe in private enterprise, but they also believe in a social welfare state, sort of, you know, high tax in high taxes to sustain it. Right. The party changed quite dramatically under Chancellor Merkel. She really moves the party to the left. I mean, to the center is where it ended up. But to do that, you have to move a center right party to the left. Right. And so, you know, most profoundly that was on the migration issue, right? Where in 2015, she famously said, you know, veer schaffen das we can do it. We can manage this. Over a million migrants from mostly the Muslim world. And at the time that was a popular policy. I think a lot of Germans felt proud. They felt that this was in some way atoning for their past. But it didn't take too long for that policy to become very, very unpopular. And that is what led to the AfD becoming the political force it is today. The AfD was founded in 2013 as a completely different party. It was founded by a group of euro of, of German libertarian economists who wanted to get Germany out of the eurozone. They didn't like the fact that Germany was having to pay for these bailouts of the southern of the Mediterranean countries like Greece, Italy, Spain and whatnot. So that's how the party started. And then it totally changed, totally transformed in 2015 when it became this kind of protest vehicle against the migration policies of Chancellor Merkel. You saw a lot of the rights, the right of the CDU felt that it could no longer recognize the party that it, that, that it once, that these people once, you know, belonged to those sorts of people came into the AfD. And that's when the AfD transformed. It became this kind of like focus, you know, nationalist, almost ethnically identitarian based party, which obviously in Germany is not a very nice thing. And that's when you saw this party becoming more attractive to, you know, Holocaust revisionists, historical revisionists, people who thought that Germany needed to kind of get over its past, that it was dwelling too much on its past, that it shouldn't feel guilt and all this stuff that, you know, the Holocaust memorial, the memory culture, quite admirable that Germany has, you know, needed to be gotten rid of because it was inhibiting Germany from becoming its full, you know, real national, patriotic self. And it became more of a pro Russian political party. Its position on Ukraine, on the Ukraine war has been essentially that of the Kremlin. We need to get rid of all sanctions on Russia and basically settle this war on Putin's terms.
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Jamie Weinstein
Well, let me, let me read what you, you wrote in the New York Times about it. And the reason, you know, I wanted to bring you on is before the election that we're talking about the AfD that, you know, I want to learn more and I think the audience learn more about the AfD is, you know, obviously the, the Munich speech. But also Elon Musk hosted a Twitter, I don't know, you'd call it Conversation X Conversation with the leader of the AfD was actively supporting the AfD. But you write in the New York, in the New York Times recently, a couple days ago, so extreme is the AfD that not even the French far right politician Marine Le Pen will associate with it.
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Jamie Kirchik
Last year, after an AfD leader said.
- [15:39]
Jamie Weinstein
The Nazi SS were not all criminals, a coalition of far right parties in the European Parliament, Le Pen's National Rally among them, expelled its German affiliate. So even other far right Parties in Europe, ones that, you know, for decades have been, you know, non grata in American political conservative circles other than maybe recently some CPAC connections there.
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Jamie Kirchik
It's interesting you say that because actually the leader of the French, one of the leaders of the National Rally Left, when Steve Bannon did his. Whatever that salute was.
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Jamie Weinstein
Yes, I want to get to, I want to get to this, this, this trend. But they're, they're even too right for Le Pen, Le Pen's movement in, in France. This, I mean, good, kind of dig deeper here. What are the issues that attract some people who might in the American right? What are some legitimate issues? Are there legitimate issues that attract some people on the American right to this party that they may not be aware of? Maybe some of the crazier elements of the party?
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Jamie Kirchik
Well, look, one of the things you need to understand about the AfD and I've, and I've encountered a lot of ignorance among American conservatives. Not, I'm not talking about maga, far right people. I'm talking about, you know, well educated center right people. The AfD is not like the vast majority of the other far right parties in Europe for one simple reason. Those parties have moderated over time. The AfD, as I just explained, has become more extreme over time. Right. So, you know, the French National Rally, which used to be the National Front, right, under Le Pen's father, Jean Rui Le Pen, is not nearly as extreme as it used to be. I mean, she did a very thorough job of like kicking anti Semites out of the party. It's still referred to as far right. And that's, you know, a subjective decision, but it is, it is just not subjectively the case that this party is as extreme as it once was. The same is the case with the Sweden Democrats, okay? That was a party that really did grow out of a neo Nazi movement. And it's now essentially a part of the ruling coalition in Sweden. It's not technically a part of the coalition, but the center right coalition in Sweden depends on its votes to get, you know, legislation passed. You look at the, what was, or what used to be known as the far right in Italy, you know, Giorgio Maloney, the prime minister of that country, comes from a party that has been characterized and definitely does, has its origins in the, you know, post World War II Mussolini movement, okay? But she is not nearly. Her party is not nearly as extreme as it used to be years ago. And if you look at the, her stance on Russia actually where that's where most of the far right in Europe agrees on is that they tend to be pro Russian, except the further east you go. And for obvious reasons, they're all anti Russian. But she's actually been very outspoken against Russia and very solid when it comes to sanctions and supporting Ukraine. So the AfD is not that. Right. The AfD has moved in the opposite direction. And I think what also makes it, what, what has made them unpalatable, frankly, to the other far right parties in Europe is that it's Germany. Right, okay. And when you have a far right party in Germany, it's different than having a far right party in France or even Italy, which was a member of the Axis powers. Right. Germany was the ruling political force in Europe in the 19, you know, 1933 to 1945. It invaded all of its neighbors, it subjugated people. And you know, that is too much for even far right political leaders in other countries to stomach. They're just not going to stomach a defense of the ss. Okay. They're not going to do that. Now, I will say now, in terms of, in terms of, you know, do they have a legitimate point? Absolutely. I blame Angela Merkel for the emergence and the rise of the AfD. If she had not moved the CDU so far to the left, then she would have been able to keep her right wing bloc within the cdu. And in fact, there was a famous quote from Franz Joseph Strauss, who was the leader of the CSU for many years, legendary leader. He used to say that it was, it was the responsibility of the Christian Democrats in Germany to basically be the, the kind of highway divider, basically to be the boundary. Right. Like, like no one, like no respectable political force will exist on the other side to the right of the Christian Democrats. That is our responsibility, right. To make it so that German voters don't feel that they're compelled to vote for some party to our right. Okay? And Angela Merkel failed in that task. She is the major reason why there is an AFD today. And I should also add the party has done a 180 on immigration since she left. I mean, Friedrich Mehrz, who we've talked about, who was her political rival in the early 2000s. She beat him out for the party leadership in the, in the early 2000s. He left politics, he went into business, he made a boatload of money. But once, once her era was done, he came back, he took over the party and he has totally turned the ship on the migration issue. Now, if you're asked. So that's why I would say, you know, people like Elon Musk or J.D. vance or other American conservatives who think that the migration policies of the Merkel era were wrong. I think they're either, you know, ill informed, they don't know what's happened in German politics since he's left. And they don't know that the CDU has moved, you know, back. It's become more right on that issue. Or they're actually, you know, they actively support the AFD for other reasons. Right. They, they agree with it for more than just the immigration issue. They like the fact that it is, you know, distorting the World War II history or they like the fact that it wants, you know, peace, quote, unquote with the rest.
- [21:21]
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- [22:25]
Jamie Kirchik
Hi, I'm here to pick up my son, Milo. There's no Milo here who picked up.
- [22:29]
Jamie Weinstein
My son from school. Streaming only on Peacock.
- [22:35]
Jamie Kirchik
I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection. You don't understand. It was just the five of us.
- [22:40]
Jamie Weinstein
So this was all planned.
- [22:42]
Jamie Kirchik
What are you gonna do?
- [22:43]
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I will do whatever it takes to.
- [22:45]
Jamie Kirchik
Get my son back. I honestly didn't see this coming.
- [22:47]
Jamie Weinstein
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Jamie Kirchik
Liftoff.
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- [23:26]
Jamie Weinstein
But the way they frame it, Jamie, right, is at least Elon Musk, the way he tries to frame it is, oh, this is not as right wing or radical as people portray. Look at the leader of the party who is not only has a, is a lesbian who has a girlfriend, but she is, I think Sri Lanka. The, the. Her girlfriend. Sri Lankan, I think on. I listened to part of the chat he did when he had it with her. The, I mean, she wasn't enthusiastically pro Israel, but he's trying to get her to show that she's pro Israel. Maybe because she doesn't want, you know, I guess there's different reasons you could be pro Israel. Maybe you don't you want the Jews to move there. What, what, what do you make of that framing? Is it, is it the party generally? Is it elements of the party is that they won't purge the radical elements? Are there more moderate elements of the party? This explain the dynamic that.
- [24:12]
Jamie Kirchik
So look, the left does itself no favors when it accuses the AfD of being fascist or Nazi because they're not. And there are strict as, as J.D. vance said himself, you know, there are strict stringent speech laws in Germany that had been in effect for 80 years that criminalized denial of the Holocaust. They criminalized the display of Nazi insignia, they criminalized speech, you know, various phrases you cannot say in Germany without getting criminally punished. And in fact, one of the leaders, the most radical leader of the AfD, a man named Bjorn Haka, he has been criminally convicted for using expressions like, you know, alice for Deutschland, or that's, that's, you know, all for Germany, that's banned. You can't say that. And in sort of a kind of insidious instance, now you've had the leader, you've had AFD rallies where they cheer Alice for Deutschland, you know, Alice Videl. So they're kind of like knowingly using Nazi rhetoric. Okay. In a way that's like technically legal, but they are kind of, you know, doffing their hat at that. Yes. There are people who are more. Well, look, most of the moderates, like the people who founded the party, most of them left when they saw what the party was turning into. They left. You know, there's one gentleman who was the, one of the three people who founded it, who said infamously a couple years ago that the Third Reich was merely a speck of bird shit in the one in the glorious 1000 year history of the Reich, okay? So, you know, that's the kind of guy who now is involved in leading this political party. I, I would make a distinction between these leaders of the party and the voters. I'm not saying that, you know, 20% of the German electorate shares these particular views. I think most of them are voting for reasons that we talked about earlier. Right. This left behind feeling particularly. That's why they're stronger in the East. Right. Or, you know, legitimately held views against mass immigration. I think that's the main thrust for the, for the support of this party. But yes, it's leaders, you know, they have, they have not. Look, there have been attempts to kick out Mr. Huka from the party and they have failed. Okay, so that gives you a sign of where the party is, where its party leaders are. Right. They may not say things as outlandish as the, as the two examples I've given, but they're content to be in a party with someone who does say those things.
- [26:37]
Jamie Weinstein
Immigration, as I think you just pinpointed, might be the main reason for the rise of AfD and their success at this point. Now that the CDU has changed its stance at immigration, what is the difference between, is there a major difference still between the AFD and the leading. I guess, right. The center party?
- [26:58]
Jamie Kirchik
Yeah, there isn't much of one. And in fact, a couple weeks ago, Friedrich Merz, he was putting forward a non binding resolution that would call for some very stringent immigration controls. And he had to rely on the votes of the AfD because the other parties, the Social Democrats, the Greens, Die Linka, they would not vote for it. So we had to rely on the AfD votes. And so this was condemned, okay, internationally, certainly in Germany, but also internationally as merits. And the CDU have done the unthinkable. They are tearing down the firewall between the Democratic parties in the anti democratic AfD. And I found that to be rather hyperbolic because as Mertz said, you know, we shouldn't let a good policy, we shouldn't, you know, inhibit ourselves from supporting a policy. That's right. Just because the AFD also happens to support it. My understanding of the firewall and his understanding of firewall is that you don't form an actual governing coalition with the AfD. And he has repeatedly said that that will not happen. That there are, besides, you know, there are, there are multiple issues that are too important. Not just, you know, their supposed racism or far right. No, their views on NATO. Okay, they're anti NATO. And that's like a no. That is a no deal. You can't do that in the cdu. That is A core conviction of the CDU is to support the transatlantic alliance. You know, Donald Trump and J.D. vance are not making that easy right now for our allies in Germany. Okay. With all their talk about wanting to abandon NATO. Okay. We're actually betraying the people who we should be supporting in Germany. And people like J.D. vance, you know, they call themselves conservative. Well, it's not helping the conservatives in Germany when you're boosting the AfD, which has, as its explicit goal is to eliminate the cdu. They're very open about that. They want to overtake the CDU. They want the CDU to go away. They want to cannibalize the CDU. And the AfD wants to become the leading center right party in Germany. So that's another major reason why the CDU can't form a coalition, because they're very open about wanting to destroy the cdu. So, yes, I think that the CDU has basically eliminated the difference on the migration issue. But it's hard, right, because the CDU lost a lot of trust under Merkel. It was a CDU chancellor who opened up the doors. And so it's going to take more, I think, than just words for the CDU to be able to convince many of the people who used to vote for it that they can be trusted again on migration. And that'll be a mate that I think will be one of the major issues of this next government is they really have to prove in the way that Trump has, right. In just a couple of weeks, you really have to prove that you are controlling the borders and you're controlling migration. And if they are able to do that, then I do predict that they will win back some of those voters and you'll see the support of the AFD decline.
- [29:50]
Jamie Weinstein
Why do you think Elon Musk and JD Vance have taken this position that they are want to come out and vocally support the AfD, especially in the case of Musk.
- [29:59]
Jamie Kirchik
I mean, the charitable explanation is that they're too online, like literally too online, and they see nothing but videos of like terrorist attacks in Germany and they're following these influencers. In fact, there's one, there was a story in the New York Times a week ago or two about, you know, how Musk is like constantly retweeting this, like, far right influencer in Germany who's an AfD supporter and like, that's their news source. And if you're listening to like Tucker Carlson and these popular right wing podcasts and these kind of fringe voices in Europe who have massive Twitter followings. You would get the sense that the CDU is like a completely left wing Communist party that wants to just destroy Germany and the AfD is the only party that can fix things. And so I. That's the charitable explanation for it. You know, the less charitable explanation for it is they really do want to see a massive political realignment in Europe. They want to see these right wing nationalist parties basically cannibalize and subsume the mainstream center. Right, whether that's the CDU in Germany or the Tories in Britain.
- [31:02]
Jamie Weinstein
Right.
- [31:03]
Jamie Kirchik
We've seen, you know, Elon Musk has supported the Reform Party, Nigel Farage's party in Britain. Okay. So he's done this in other countries. And I think that's, you know, with, with, with Musk. I think that's clearly what he wants to do. You know, Vance hasn't shown that same. And the Trump administration more broadly has not shown that same sort of, you know, impulse to support anti system parties in, across the European continent. So I think there's a difference between Musk and the US Administration that can obviously be blurred sometimes because Musk is technically a part of, of that administration, but he also does these other kind of freelance extracurricular activities. So I don't think that their goals are necessarily the same here.
- [31:45]
Jamie Weinstein
Another country that Vance mentioned in the speech was Romania. And I have to admit, I try to think of myself as pretty educated on what's going on in the world. After the third child, I think I dropped Romania as an issue I was covering very closely. I see peripherally on Twitter sometimes people mentioned elections and canceled elections. What is, what is, what was he referring to? And did he have a point?
- [32:09]
Jamie Kirchik
Last year there was an election and there was a upstart kind of populist right candidate who was, you know, you know, pro Russia and anti Ukraine. And, you know, Romania is a member of NATO. Okay. It is a former member of the Warsaw Pact. Right. So it was part of the Soviet sphere of influence. And so this was very frightening to a lot of people. He won a plurality of the votes. Right. There was going to be a runoff election, but the election was canceled due to accusations of Russian interference. And it was unclear what that interference consisted of at the time. I think at the time it was only seen as Internet interference in the same way that the Russians, quote, unquote, intervened in our election. Right. They were like promoting fake news and propaganda on websites and in Twitter and social media networks. However, two days ago, the Romanian authorities have now brought charges against this candidate, alleging that he has actually been receiving cash money from Russia to support his campaign. And those are two totally different, you know, charges. Okay? Like, if. If it had been proven that Donald Trump was receiving cash from the Russian government, like, that would have been a much more serious accusation than what it, you know, what it ended. That would have been collusion. Right. That Mueller was looking for and never found. If that's the case with what's happening now in Romania, and the details are, you know, unclear. It's just two days ago that this indictment was alleged. If that's what happened in Romania, that's a very serious allegation. Right. And in that case, then there should be criminal charges brought against this guy. He probably should be banned from. From running for president. However, you know, that was only discovered two days ago at the time when it. When it was just these kind of vague allegations of Russian interference. I think there was a better case to be made that Vance made, that this was not. That this was sort of shady behavior on the part of the. Of the Romanian government and its Supreme Court, that it was sidelining or stigmatizing a candidate who had, you know, views.
- [34:11]
Jamie Weinstein
That they didn't like sticking with Romania.
- [34:14]
Jamie Kirchik
You might have. You might have dried that. I, I might have given you all my Romania knowledge at this point. So we'll see if it happens.
- [34:20]
Jamie Weinstein
But I think the one thing I can pull out of that you might, Might have a thought on is today as we speak, I believe the Tate Brothers just landed in the United States, and it was reported that maybe Rick Renell engineered the release of them from Romania to come here. What do you make of the US Using its power to really get people like that? I mean, does that make sense to be a pr. A priority of US Policy? If that proves to be the case that the US Helped get the Tate brothers released?
- [34:48]
Jamie Kirchik
It does seem to me like a strange use of our power abroad. If I understand it, these men were accused of sex trafficking. This was happening in a country where, you know, we're an ally, they're a democracy, they have a, you know, a justice system that we recognize as being, you know, just. It's not Zimbabwe or something. It does seem like a strange use of our diplomatic influence. And. But again, I'm not really up to date, up to speed on. On all Tate Brothers news.
- [35:22]
Jamie Weinstein
You mentioned in the beginning that had J.D. vance given that speech at a think tank, especially on the issues of speech, you would agree with it. And certainly some of the examples he gave of speech in Europe were extremely troubling, and it kind of ties to. I had former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on recently, and I pressed him on what Elon Musk kind of brought into, I think, more wider understanding of these rape gangs in the uk. I was actually shocked. I. I went to grad school in London. I don't remember reading these stories of the. The. How significant this was. Were you shocked by the revelations of what came out about. About the rape gangs and how widespread it might have been?
- [36:04]
Jamie Kirchik
Well, no. And. And the reason you wouldn't have read about them when you were at grad school is because all this happened, all this was revealed after you graduated from grad school, I'm assuming, was in the late 2000s. This story. No, I wrote about it in the Rotherham scandal. I wrote about it in my first book, which came out in 2017. I really don't think that there was much new about this story. It was known 10 years ago. People were writing about it. People were outraged about it at the time. I don't really understand what new developments there have been other than Elon Musk, for whatever reason, acting like a babe in the woods on Twitter, saying, well, I've never heard of this before, and therefore it's suddenly news. I mean, did Boris have a different.
- [36:49]
Jamie Weinstein
Well, Boris seemed to be surprised how deep, you know, how widespread it was and that he claimed it could still be going on. And to me, the shocking thing is that it was hard to clear the numbers here.
- [37:01]
Jamie Kirchik
It's.
- [37:02]
Jamie Weinstein
How, you know, is it tens of thousands?
- [37:04]
Jamie Kirchik
That's. No, I think those numbers are just. I think that those numbers are massively inflated. Massively inflated. Maybe not as inflated as the number of dead civilians in Gaza, but still pretty inflated.
- [37:17]
Jamie Weinstein
What are your thoughts? The other person that. That Elon brought into the public sphere, someone who I just kind of dismissed because he was dismissible, was Tommy Robinson. That seems like the person that Elon would want to be Prime Minister. Is he as radical as people say, or is he.
- [37:33]
Jamie Kirchik
Yes, he's a total thug and a. In a street, you know, violent street violence he engages in. He's kind of like a, you know, like one of these, like, soccer hooligan types that Britain has had to deal with over the years. Racist and just not a respectable person who's, again, like, is there a reason that people like him thrive? And yes. Like, have there been problems with integration of Muslim immigrants to Britain? Absolutely. I have a whole chapter, multiple chapters in my book about these problems. Okay. Like, this is not something that. And I think the. The left is, of course, in many ways responsible for the rise of people like Tommy Robinson, right, Because they stigmatize any view to their right as being fascist. Okay? And so what does that do? It makes it so that the only people who are. Who will talk about these very real problems are the far right. Okay? So he's not a good character. He's. He's. He's, you know, haram, okay? He's traf. He should not be encouraged by Elon Musk. And I think, again, I think it shows either just a, like a very serious lack of knowledge on Elon Musk's part that there are like, more moderate, sensible voices addressing these issues who are on the center right or on the right in Britain. But he just goes. He just goes to the furthest end and finds the most inflammatory voice, right, Whether it's the AFD or Tommy Robinson. And he. And he promotes those voices. And it's, you know, it's kind of. It's childish and very simplistic. And I think, you know, as, as. As intelligent, obviously, as this guy is Elon Musk. And I, I'm in awe of many of the things that he's created. Do not get me wrong, he does seem to have the maturity level of an adolescent. And this is kind of. This is like political adolescence. You know, it's like, I see a problem and the only solution is to take a sledgehammer and pound on it really hard. And that's kind of what he's doing across the continent.
- [39:36]
Jamie Weinstein
You raise kind of an interesting point, and it seems like an interesting moment. You mentioned you've been writing about a lot of these issues for many years and often seen as, you know, criticizing Europe and on. On the right side of, you know, the. The American right on this. Douglas Murray gave an interview in the Wall Street Journal in the last couple days echoing a lot of the points that you made about AFD and some of the radicals, even too far right for where he would support. And he too has been at the forefront writing about these issues. Is it strange in this kind of MAGA moment that you and Douglas to some extent, who have been writing about these issues and have been raising the alarm about some of the things that have going on in Europe now, now find yourself having to course correct the administration who's gone even farther than you? I mean, you and Douglas are almost saying, hold back here. That's a little bit too extreme of where you're going on course correcting Europe?
- [40:34]
Jamie Kirchik
Well, I can't speak for Douglas, whom I absolutely respect, but yeah, I mean, obviously every political commentator wants to say, if only you would listen to me. But I really do think that's the case here. I do think that had the political establishment in Europe not been so censorious, and again, I'm coming out here in favor of what JD Vance has said about speech regulations. Had the German establishment, had the establishments in most of these countries not been so censorious in stigmatizing. And basically what they did was they sacralized migration. They treated immigration into their countries. And the American left has done this too. They've treated immigration as almost like a constitutional right up there with freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, all those things that we hold sacrosanct. And they have depoliticized the issue, right? They made it so that if you opposed migration or wanted less of it, you were a fascist. Like you were not a member in good standing of like the community of the good. And that was just wrong, okay? Immigration, migration into a country is a right. Sorry, it's a, it's a privilege. It's not a right, okay? And it's, it's to be decided upon by the people who are citizens of that community. And they have every right to make their own policy towards migration. The number of people they want every year, maybe they don't want any people, the types of people, whether it's highly educated or unskilled, what countries, you know, they want people to come from, what cultures they want people to come from. All of those questions are in my mind, legitimate questions. And the problem is that the political establishment said that they were not legitimate issues to be debated. And I want to say, you know, there's one country in Europe that has gotten this right, and it's Denmark. And there's actually an excellent piece in the Times this week in the Times magazine by David Leonhardt, where he went to Denmark. And there is a center left, there's a social democratic government in that country that has immigration policies that would offend most of the enlightened liberal opinion in the world, okay? They have very strict migration policies, which by the way, are the same migration policies that the center right governments have implemented. They have a political consensus in Denmark that they are going to have limited migration, that it's going to be largely skilled migration and they're going to do a very serious effort at integrating migrants. And that there are some controversial policies when it comes to those integration policies. It has to do with, you know, not concentrating foreign born people all in one, you know, all in single neighborhoods where they become ghettoized, okay? And this is very Controversial. But you know what? Denmark has a far right party that has about 8% of the vote. Okay. And it's like the smallest far right party in terms of percentage throughout Europe. Okay. And the reason for that is because they've gotten a handle on migration. And, you know, I've been writing about this and Douglas has been writing about this about Denmark for the past, you know, more than the past 10 years. Like 15 years. I have. I had an article, you can look it up, called In Defense of Denmark. It was published, I think in 2015, 10 years ago. So I'm glad that, you know, the New York Times is coming around to this, like a decade after, you know, I have, you know, I was writing about this, but, you know, better late than never. But that to me is a real example of how to get it right. Is. Is Denmark.
- [43:59]
Jamie Weinstein
Let me close with this question. I've been reading your writings for years. I've known you for a while. Your critiques of Europe to me always came with some sadness that you believe in a strong Europe and a strong America west in Europe alliance. You believe in the systems that America and the west created after World War II and the importance of those. So it was always about reform to try to buttress those. I wonder, do you see a risk, as some believe this administration might try to do, to pulling at the threads of that system of undermining NATO, of undermining some of the defense infrastructure and the allies that we've had Since World War II by treating people that we once considered close allies as kind of a financial bargain system. What happens? What, what is the risk of pulling at the threads of the system that was built up the, in the Allied infrastructure since World war. World War II?
- [44:58]
Jamie Kirchik
Yeah, well, look, I always considered the definition of a small c Conservative to be someone who has reverence and respect for institutions that have stood the test of time, that doesn't want to just rip things up and start anew. And that was what the communists wanted to do. Right. And conservatives always had a respect for institutions and traditions. And they've supported, and they've supported reform, but it has to be incremental reform, not radical reform. Right. So I look at the transatlantic alliance and I see one of the, the most in. In NATO. Okay. And. And the relationship between America and Europe, which began in the ashes of World War II. I see that as being the greatest military alliance in human history. Human history. And the greatest political alliance in human history. You have the world's oldest democracy and its greatest democracy in alliance with the other Liberal democratic nations of the world where those ideas of democracy and liberalism came from, Right? And that has ensured over the past 80 years, the greatest period of and flourishing of human liberty and prosperity in human history. Okay. The past 80 years, look at economic growth, life expectancy, all the things that we as human beings take into account. Right? And things that conservatives especially take into account, have been protected and have gotten better underneath this greater kind of security and political architecture that American and European leaders in their great wisdom after World War II, of both parties. You had Arthur Vandenberg in the Senate, Republican, Harry Truman the Democrat. And this was sustained by leaders of both political parties on the right and left for decades. And I see that as being a very fundamental relationship. And I see post war Europe, frankly, as being the greatest example of American foreign policy ever. Right. We took this continent that had destroyed itself, that where the Holocaust happened, where the Soviet Union was encroaching and ruling half the continent. And what did we do? We, through the Marshall Plan and through our. Our position of defending Europe through decades in the Cold War and seeing that through the successful end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we saw a Europe whole and free. And that, to me, is the greatest gift that America has given the world. And I, as a. I guess maybe I'm a small C. Conservative, I'm a liberal conservative. I don't see the point in, like, tearing that apart. Sorry. I don't see the good in wrecking that. Okay. I absolutely agree with the president that European countries, our allies, need to spend more on their defense. They absolutely do. And American presidents have been saying that for decades. And I give President Trump credit, actually, in the first administration, he, through his threats and his bullying, he did get the majority of our NATO allies to spend more on their defense, and I give him credit for that. But now in the second administration, I can't go along with what he's doing where he's blaming Ukraine for starting the invasion of their own country. Where he is, has nothing but praise for the mass murderer in the Kremlin who is solely responsible for this war where he's constantly attacking our allies. I do not understand it. And I cannot as. And I can understand how conservatives can support this. This is. This is a very unconservative, radical thing to be doing, to be trying to destroy transatlantic alliance between the United States and its European allies. I think it is a. It is a. It could be a disaster the likes of which we can't even imagine right now.
- [48:34]
Jamie Weinstein
Jamie Kirchen, thank you for joining the Dispatch podcast.
- [48:36]
Jamie Kirchik
Thank you for having me. It.