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The Monocle Daily
As oil prices pass $100 a barrel, the G7 holds off releasing emergency stockpiles
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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 9th March 2026 on Monaco Radio
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G7. Governments discuss how to keep oil prices down, or at least who to blame if they can't. Iran decides that maybe hereditary dynasties aren't such a bad idea after all. And how Ready is the world for government? By Gen Z. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now. FOREIGN. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Zoe Grunewald and Simon Brook will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll hear from the author Daniel Rachel about his new book, exploring the peculiar grip exerted by the iconography of fascism on the imaginations of rock musicians. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I'm joined today by Zoe Grunewald, Westminster editor at the lead, and by Simon Brook, journalist and communications consultant. Hello to you both.
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C
Hello.
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B
We will start with the G7, the finance ministers of which have held a virtual meeting to consider the ramifications of a surge in oil prices occasioned by whatever the United States and Israel presently believe themselves to be doing. In Iran, prices cleared US$100 per barrel earlier today for the first time since Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And though they have receded into double digits as the day has gone on, at least last time I looked, they are still up by nearly 50% on what they were this time last month. Zoe, first of all, there was not an agreement as There was in 2022 on the release of emergency reserves.
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Is that, well, I think there's an interesting subtle tension here, isn't there, that America, while domestically, politically, it isn't beneficial for Donald Trump to have higher energy prices at the pump for his voters, that America being a huge energy exporter will mean that its geopolitical incentives might not be as aligned with Europe. So I think you are going to get some tension here. I mean, clearly this is a conflict that European leaders feel pretty blindsided by, pretty frustrated by. But equally, I think all of them are very, very worried about what Donald Trump will do next. And I think that makes the response feeling far less choreographed, feeling far less collective, and much more like, yes, Europe want to protect its interests, they want to protect voters, but ultimately you don't want to evoke Donald Trump's ire. And the key to dealing with him is Kind of trying to guide him with lot of kind of flattery into the right position. But again, he could just change his mind. So it's complicated and I think it's going to be very frustrating to try and find unity on this.
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Do we detect an amount, Simon? And this, I guess, going off from what Zoe was just saying, we're still in the everybody trying to figure out what is actually going on stage because we have seen the oil price lurch really quite vertiginously upwards. And it's still, obviously, as I was saying, way up on where it was, but it has come in a bit and stock market markets seem at the risk of tempting fate to have calmed down somewhat.
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C
Yeah, it hit $115 a barrel at one point this morning. And yeah, there's a question of perhaps 300 million barrels of this emergency, these emergency stockpiles being released in a move coordinated by the International Energy Agency. That sounds like an awful lot, but it is around quarter, a third of the total barrels in reserve. The problem is, of course, because the world uses so much oil and gas and other products related to it, this will probably just account for about three days of global oil consumption. So it's not very much at all. It's already more than double the record previously held, you know, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine in April 2022. But the problem is that, as Zoe was saying, you know, there's so much that's unknown. How long will this confrontation go on for? The Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of all global oil reserves pass through, is going to be closed, at least for the foreseeable future. So there's also questions about who buys this oil. You know, China, India, South Korea are the main customers here, so they'll obviously be queuing up. And of course, it does come down to price.
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Zoe, you were talking there about the divergence between Europe and the United States on this. I think by and large it's fair to characterize the European response as unenthusiastic. But is there also a split emerging between the US And Israel? It's always difficult to know for whom or on whose behalf Senator Lindsey Graham is speaking. But he did say earlier today directing to Israel in public, be cautious about what targets you select. Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life. When this regime collapses, the oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor. Is it possible that the United States has not factored in the possibility that Israel doesn't want, really, Iran starting a new and better life. When this regime collapses, it would much rather have Iran being chaotic, dysfunctional, and fighting amongst itself.
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Yeah, it's interesting. And there was, of course, the suggestion that it may. The original strike on Iran by the US and by Israel was actually very much led by Israel and the US Sort of jumped in behind them. And since speaking as many people have to the people around Donald Trump and Donald Trump himself, the motives for doing so, for striking, have often been different. So on the one hand, it could be regime change. On the other hand, it could be Iran was an immediate threat to Israel with its nuclear capabilities and its missile capabilities. There have been lots of different suggestions for why they had to. The US And Israel felt they had to take this preemptive strike. And I think what is quite clear about that is we know Israel has always felt very threatened by Iran in the region, has always wanted to see the Iranian regime fall for the U.S. there are lots of different motivations, and as we know, Donald Trump kind of has his ear bended by the person he's been in the room with most recently. So there always could have been potential for those motivations to converge at points and diverge. And I think what we are seeing now, especially with the ramping up of the action, the, you know, huge explosions that we've seen in Iran at the hands of Israel, I think there is going to be a concern now that actually now this has kicked off now we don't have a clear idea of how this ends. Can Israel and the US Stay focused on a common shared goal if they don't know what that goal is?
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And is there an added dimension problem here, Simon, in that if you are Iran, and we will come to the question of their new leadership shortly, their best hope from here may be to put pressure on Trump by tanking everybody's economy as much as they possibly can.
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C
Yeah, that is the kind of nihilistic weapon, if you like, in their weaponry. So that is certainly a possibility. And I think also for a lot of Iranians, their worldview is such that if that kind of thing happened, it would be no problem. The question is, of course, if other powers, if other parts of the world are really worried about the economic damage that's being done, what leverage do they have over Donald Trump? I think it's interesting that already seeing gas prices in the US increase, and obviously that's feeding into the affordability crisis, which Trump originally rejected and now he's having to address. So that could have an effect. But it's interesting that there aren't really any immediate players you can imagine who could put some pressure on him, sort of on either Iran or Donald Trump to do something about this, to scale it back for the sake of the world economy. And I do think it's interesting on this question of what aim of the American initiative is, Trump quite often makes a point or implies that this kind of ambiguity, this confusion, if you like, is part of his diplomatic play, that people don't know what he wants. But the danger here, I think, is that he really doesn't know what he wants and therefore he doesn't have an obvious off ramp and he can't immediately claim victory because somebody could say, but hang on a minute, the other thing he wanted was this. So we'll have to wait and see.
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There is always that fine line, just finally on this, Zoe, in politics, between constructive ambiguity and simply not having the least idea what you're doing.
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Yes, I think Donald Trump tends to veer towards the latter, to be honest. But, you know, there is absolutely that. It's a theory of international relations that we see play out in practice often, which is the madman theory. And that idea of actually, it is very, very helpful sometimes if your opponent cannot guess your next move because you come across as slightly unhinged or like you yourself, don't know. The problem is for Donald Trump is if the people around him start to believe that to be true. And voters as well, US voters did not want a war in the Middle East. They did not want to pay more at the petrol stations. So I think that is going to be where the danger and difficulty lies for Donald Trump. People, voters, his base might like his kookiness, but when does the kookiness fall into, actually, the way you're acting is withdrawing more money from our pockets, making our lives more unstable and less secure.
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Well, moving along to Iran and sticking with the theme of its as yet UN collapsed regime, the Islamic Republic has a new supreme leader. The caveat, as of this broadcast, feels grimly necessary. He is Mojtaba Khamenei, second son of his predecessor, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And when trying to calibrate Mojtada's appetite for compromise, it is probably worth acknowledging that Mojtada's mother, wife and possibly reports vary, a sister and a son died in the same U.S. israeli airstrikes that killed his father, Simon. I. I don't know the fellow, to be clear, and indeed not many people seem to know all that much about him. But it does strike me that if you already have somebody leading what is to a very large extent a cult with an ideological fascination for martyrdom, wiping out that much of his family is not likely to have improved his appetite for compromise.
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No. People can be a bit funny with you, can't they, when you've wiped out half your family, as you say. I don't know why. I think one of the things that. Oh, and of course also Israel has made it clear that they will wipe him out as well. Even before his election, his appointment was announced. They made it clear whoever the leader was would be taken out. We do know he's already a hardline conservative, probably more than his father. He spent some time in the Revolutionary Guard Corps and that helped him build connections with many of the senior leaders in the party. It's also apparently helped him to amass a huge property area, sorry, property empire of cities around the world, including here in London, we're told. I think one of the interesting things here that the Israelis and the US will be watching carefully is this kind. This idea of the father to son succession isn't popular amongst a lot of Iranians, certainly amongst the Shiite Muslim clerics, because it does mirror this hereditary monarchy that of course, they got rid of in 1979. So the point is, we got rid of the monarchy thing. What are the sort of hereditary element. Why are we bringing it back? But I think it'll be interesting to see what he can do in this very difficult situation and as you say, how his radicalism, his absolute commitment to the theocracy changes the dynamic over the next few weeks.
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It is also unclear, Zoe, the degree to which he is actually in charge and directing events, big or small, because it does rather look like the Iranian regime is now following a preordained plan under which command and control was diffused and scattered and made more difficult to cut by striking at one person. But that notwithstanding, there does seem to be an element of symbolism about this. Of all the people, the people in charge could have chosen and said, this is the next Supreme Leader. That is a statement of defiance, isn't it?
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It does seem to be. And you know, I think it's absolutely true that becoming this kind of dynastic handover may not be popular with many of the Iranian people, but the point is really, what can they do about it? You know, the Supreme Leader controls the armed forces, the judiciary, the media, the Revolutionary Guard, as you say. We have every reason to believe he may well be even more extreme, even more hardline than his father. And of course this is a regime absolutely fighting for its survival now. Pointed at Israel, pointed at the us pointed at the West. You know, it feels like this is going to be much more fraught, much more dangerous, much more radical than it was before. And the US and Israel may well have hoped that a decapitation of the leadership would result in something that could only be better than what came before. Well, it seems like actually the reverse is true. And if only someone had thought about that before they struck the country.
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Weirdly, President Trump actually did in one of those strange scripted riffs he sometimes goes off on. He said last week, yeah, I suppose we could just end up with someone in charge who's just as bad. That's a thing that could happen. Well, possibly something he should have considered a week or so previously. Simon, if we look at this from the new Supreme Leader's perspective and not necessarily with any actual sympathy for his position, what actual options does he have? By which I guess I'm asking that if he decided. What I need right now is counsel from a western facing political consultant and somehow like they type in a few Coke, you know, few keywords and your website comes up if you get the call. Granted that this is unlikely and obviously to be clear, you shouldn't take it, but if you were to get the
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properties around the world, could give me
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one, their money's as good as anyone else's, etc. But what actual advice would you give him at this point?
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It's so difficult, isn't it? Because as we were saying earlier, it's very difficult to understand the motivations of the, of your, of his opponents. If you understand what your opponent, the other side, if you understand what they want, then at least you can begin to sort of offer them something along those lines or something. But this isn't clear at all. And I think part of the problem is that he's marched people up to the top of the hill, hasn't he? He and his father and you know, the leadership in Iran has made it clear that they will do everything they can to protect the current regime. They've lashed out at other their neighbors around the Gulf as well. So they've made an awful lot of enem Russia that could have helped them in the past. Obviously it's helped them a bit with drones, but it's not really in a position to give them great help. China is standing back. So what am I saying? I'm saying basically as a political consultant, you don't have a lot of cards to play. I think what I probably would do is I'd engage in the kind of diplomatic obfuscation, confusion or whatever that Trump is doing, I'd carry on with doing what's happening at the moment. And then the one card he does have probably is that as a non elected politician, he doesn't have to look behind his shoulder at the electorate like even Donald Trump does. So he does have more freedom there and then perhaps that will give him some sort of leverage further down the line.
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So basically the line, is your stuffed invoice attached?
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Yeah, absolutely. Good luck, mate.
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Zoe, just finally on this one, Donald Trump has insisted that in fact he should be able to choose the next leader of Iran. And I think we can probably assume that all the Apprentice adjacent jokes have been done on this one. But if that's not what the new Supreme Leader wants, and let's assume it isn't, are we past the point at which he could, if he was so minded, pitch, I guess the Venezuela options, like, all right, okay, let's just call it off. I'll try not to be such a jerk. You've got the guy you wanted. I will have conversations with American oil executives. We can do business.
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I mean, you know, quite a lot of things are possible in international politics and the pace, as we have been discovering and the pace at which terrible mad things happen seems to increase rapidly. But I think Iran is different from Venezuela for many reasons, but not least the long history of conflict there. Iran has been waiting almost for this moment. It had a contingency plan in place. It had already separated and diffused, as you alluded to, the powers of the Supreme Leader, to make sure that the regime would not fall. The idea that this could all be wrapped up up with a few weeks of negotiations, especially with Donald Trump holding the cards, I think is fanciful. I think the real point of pressure for Donald Trump will be how this affects him domestically and whether he is able to actually pull back from that. You know, there's the midterms, there's voters, there's maga, who, you know, really were very anti intervention. If he starts feeling that political pressure, will he change as we've already been seeing him soften the ground over the last few days of actually what would Donald Trump be happy with? Okay, it was total regime change then, it was total surrender. Now maybe total surrender means something else,
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you know, well, from the war not on Europe's doorstep yet to the one which is and indeed has been for so long that Europeans may have started forgetting about it, the Venice Biennale has become the latest event and or institution to lapse into an equivocal view of a pointless and unnecessary war of aggression which has killed hundreds of thousands of people. The Biennales organisers have decided to allow Russia to participate in this year's event after indicating in 2022 and 2024 that Russia would be unwelcome. Ukraine's government has unsurprisingly expressed its displeasure, so more interestingly has Italy's Simon. This does follow hot on the heels of the admission of Russian and Belarusian athletes to the Paralympics also taking place in Italy. Why is this, why is it suddenly okay now to deal with Russia if it wasn't four years ago?
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It certainly isn't, I think is the short answer. And I think this is an absolute gift, of course, in terms of diplo relations, in terms of public relations for Putin. And I think this plays into, you know, there's been a lot of talk about a war of attrition and whether Ukraine or Russia can hold out longer. And I think that's not just about men going through the meat grinder or drones and weapons. It's also about, it's about perceptions and things. And I think this idea that people are getting a little bit tired of the war, I think this is what Putin knew would happen. And the fact as you say that the Russians have been admitted to the Paralympics and then now to the Biennale, it's just this is playing into his part of his strategy entirely. I mean, I feel sorry for the athletes and the artists who wouldn't be allowed to take part. It's awful for them, I mean, awful living in Putin's Russia anyway, but really sad that they can't be part of this community. But at the end of the day we've got to stand firm. And I think this is such a annoying, well, more than annoying, it makes me really angry. And I just think as I say, we've got to it clear that this is not acceptable and Russia should not be admitted to anything. I mean, in a way it reminds me as well of last summer, Donald Trump suggesting that Russia be readmitted to the G7. So Biennale, Paralympics, slippery slope to the G7. We're back. And you know, all the things actually ironically that Ukraine warned us about and
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is there a single Zoe imaginable actually pure hearted, good reason for inviting Russia once again to participate in events like this is that idea that if not necessarily that sport and art should have nothing to do with politics, because obviously they do, but that at some level they can work around or above politics that disallows people to engage with each other in a sort of harmless and human fashion.
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I think there's an argument insofar if you suggest that which we know is true. Putin and many dictators who distance themselves from the west thrive in this idea that they're fundamentally different, that their values are different. You know, that is the propaganda Uganda machine. They feed their people, if, you know, the other side of that sort of put out a welcoming hand and say, actually, we have more in common. You know, it sounds very Kumbaya, but, you know, you can kind of understand that argument, as you were saying, of actually there's more that unites us then divides us. And part of fighting the aggression and propaganda of Putin is to make that case clear. But, you know, this event is not simply art. You know, artist showcase, as you say. They have a state presence there. They have their own Russian pavilion, as you say. It's, you know, art and music are very rarely apolitical anyway. But I think, particularly in the case of this, it would be far more than just Russian individual artists heading there. It would be something much bigger. And we know how Russia operates. We know that they like to do deals and they like to bend people's ears and there's money. And it just feels to me like a disaster waiting to happen, to be honest, to have that presence there. Not. And that is not accounting for all the great points made earlier about what it says about our support of Ukraine, what it says about that war of attrition, what it says about how we are prepared to stand up for our values in the face of that aggression and the people who wish to destroy them. So, you know, you can make the argument that we could kind of be the bigger person here, but I think in this case, it falls flat.
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Is there anything, Simon, to the double standard hypocrisy argument, which is one very frequently made by Russia? And the argument would be along the lines of, okay, so we can't come to the Venice Biennale. Shouldn't you be throwing Israel out of the Eurovision Song Contest? Or why should Iran be going to the World Cup?
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It is difficult and, yeah, we have to make these value judgments. But I think, really, in the case of Russia and Ukraine, it's so blatant, it's so wrong and it's so dangerous that I think this is one situation where, as I say, that there's no question of sort of a, you know, moral equivalence or being a little bit soft and gentle around the edges. No, I think you've absolutely, absolutely, absolutely got to stand up for this. And I think there was an argument previously that if you allow rogue nations, if you like, if you allow other countries into the west, then you can influence them in some way. But, you know, and you could say that perhaps Angela Merkel took that approach when she extended a hand to Putin. Well, you know, look what happened there. I think the problem is that only works if you can influence the voters directly in some way and then they can change the government in that case. Well, there could be an argument, but they can't do that in this situation. And there's only one person, as I say, who benefits from that, and that is Vladimir Putin or the dictator of any other country which is admitted into, you know, sporting and artistic international events.
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Well, to Nepal now, where despite at least one pretty clear warning from recent history about the hazards of electing popular entertainers to high office, its new prime minister will be. That being Balendra Shah, a locally popular 35 year old rapper who has led his Rashtriya Swatantra party to an absolutely thumping election victory. It was the first election held since the previous Nepalese government imploded amid largely youth led protests to which the previous Nepalese government responded with violence, killing dozens. Shah, more popular, popularly known as Balon, is also an engineer by education, but has held elected office before. From 2022 to 2026, he was the mayor of Kathmandu. Zoe, this is being obviously held as a, or held up as not quite a triumph for Gen Z as such, because I think he's a little bit old to be characterized as such at 35.
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He is because he's older than me and I'm not quite Gen Z. I'm just on the cusp of millennial.
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Nevertheless, you, you are by some distance the closest to such a definition sitting around at this table. What should we expect, do you think, of Gen Z once it starts to run governments, which is a terrifying thought, are they going to be noticeably different? I'm sitting here saying I don't actually feel like we in Gen X got a fair crack at this, but nonetheless, is it going to be something noticeably different or will they just turn into middle aged people? Like middle aged people tend to.
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I mean, any group, you can, you can generalize and you can act like they're a homogenous block with homogenous interests. Right. So we have to be careful about doing that. But I think the thing that does define Gen Z is this is a group that grew up online. You know, they are as literate in the technology, in the digital technology, technological world, as they are in the real world. And I think that has shaped some of these high profile politicians who are younger now. So whether it's Balin or whether it's somebody like Zoran Mamdani, who I believe is 34 years old, he, you know, absolutely in, in when he was running for New York mayor, grasped the power of social media, producing these fun videos where he was kind of authentic and he was savvy and they just, you know, they read like tick tock videos and they, and they re injected an energy into politics, not just driving support amongst younger voters, but I think for older voters as well who are also increasingly online. You know, that that is not just something that young people do. Everybody now uses Facebook, Instagram, X, whatever it. People are becoming more and more used to that way of communicating. And I think this just happens to be a generation that knows it inside out and back to front because that's how they grew up in it. So I think, I think you see that kind of that renewed energy, it feels a bit different. But of course there are specific issues facing this voter group as well. You know, they acutely feel the cost of living. They are acutely aware of intergenerational unfairness, whether that's housing crisis. There's always, I think there's an understanding of corruption as well, especially in Nepal, that it was a major issue at this election. But there is of course a difference between campaigning and governing. And I think we've yet to see really whether that success in campaigning can translate over to governing. Zora Mamdani has promised a lot of big ideas that were very popular with the electorate. But it's going to take a lot, for example, for the mayor of New York to actually push through those reforms. And I think we'll see the same here. You know, this is being, you know, the leader of Nepal is not an easy task, not least having to manage relations between China and India.
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B
Well, indeed. I mean there is also, and I think going to what Zoe was saying, Simon, the global connectivity of this generation. Just thinking back to when I was approximately the age that a Gen Z person would be now, I don't even know how I would have begun to discover anything at all about the lives of a given Nepalese person. Like I would not have known how they lived or had any idea of what music they were listening to. Whereas now everybody can find out, absolutely everybody, everything about everybody else. I remain unpersuaded that this is actually doing us any good. But nonetheless, do we suspect, hope that some sort of more global consciousness may come up with this generation of politicians.
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C
It's interesting, isn't it? Because one of the things social media, and even way back when it first started the Internet did, as you say, was allowed us to have greater knowledge of what else was happening in the world than we've ever had before. So there could be learning points. I think the problem is there are huge differences in terms of culture and electoral systems and even to some extent, sort of issues as well. So I think that's, it'll be interesting, but I don't think that's going to be a huge change. I think the bigger change is that obviously this age group is very used to consuming social media, creating social media posts. But the problem, and the politicians I work with are fascinated but terrified by social media because it's. Even for the younger ones, it's so different to what they do. And the problem is, you know, in a short TikTok video or an Instagram post, it's, you can create a nice image, you can talk about one issue, you can put together a sound bite if you want, but it's very difficult really to discuss any kind of nuanced issues and one side against the other and, you know, admitting that this is a problem and therefore this is the challenge and things. So I think this is interesting. But as you say, Zoe, the real, as they say, you've got the poetry of campaigning and then the prose of government. So whether he can deliver or not, however brilliant his social media campaigning skill, skills might be, that will be the real question.
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B
Well, just a final thought on that, Zoe. Do we have to resign ourselves to the fact that previously celebrity people, that's a. You know what I'm trying to say, people who arrive in politics with an already established profile, are they going to have an unfair advantage because they will be used to media, they will be used to mass communication. I do feel like we're being a bit unfair in picking on Balin as an example of this because though the fact of his rapping has got all the international press. Yeah. He has been mayor of a capital city, which is actually a proper job.
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A
Yeah, absolutely. And when you were saying all that, I just thought of Donald Trump. Right, well, exactly. Who had exactly that career and that style.
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B
That said, so did Volodymyr Zelensky.
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A
Well, precisely. So the more we think about it. Yes, we know that's true. And politics is. So much of it is being able to get your message out to a receptive audience. And obviously that helps if you already have media training and an audience to Talk to. And social media only, I think, enhances that. But I think what is interesting about social media, and we talk, talk a lot of negatively, quite a lot about social media, and I think for good reason. But social media's original purpose was to democratize things and to actually make people's messaging more equal and more accessible. Anyone can post a video on TikTok, anyone can post a video on Instagram, Anyone could tweet something out into the world if they still want to use Elon Musk's platform for some reason. But, you know, it's supposed to be a way of people being able to communicate freely. And so you could also argue that actually in this day and age when we have Internet, we're more connected. Maybe that should. Should. I don't know if it will, but maybe it should. And it could give people who might previously have not had that platform a chance to express themselves.
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B
Zoe Grindelwald and Simon Brook, thank you both for joining us. And sticking with the subject of the overlap between politics and popular music, the rebellious, taboo, taunting nature of rock and roll has regrettably frequently tempted its practitioners towards embracing iconography that should really only be regarded from the far end of a barge pole. There are a few punk rockers in late middle age now who are hopefully somewhat embarrass the emblems and phraseology they might have flaunted as young upstarts with a song in their heart and glue in their hair. A new book by Daniel Rachel, this Ain't Rock and Roll Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich considers the enduring fascination of fascism in this context. I spoke to Daniel at Midori House earlier and began by asking why generations of musicians have been somehow unable to leave this stuff alone.
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D
It's the theatrical spectrum of Riefensteil's filming of the Nuremberg rallies and Albert Speer's incredible eye for architecture and the theatre. And I think that a multitude of musicians have watched that footage and looked on in awe at the banners, the great hundred foot golden eagle, the lines of ranks of Nazis, as I say, the theatrical spectrum and seen the similarity between that and a rock concert. And yeah, I think that's a great stimulus for many.
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B
So this is the Nuremberg rally is the genesis of stadium rock theory.
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D
I don't know if there's a theory about it, but it's pretty. But rock stars from Brian Ferry to Mick Jagger Kiss, they've all referenced that as a major influence and why they're fascinated with that period and why they've allowed it to become part of their own show.
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B
But as the book makes clear, though, it's. It's not just about the aesthetics or. Or what might have been gleaned about lighting and staging from watching Triumph of the Will. A lot of musicians have serially embraced the iconography, the swastika in particular, in a way that would be, you would hope, unimaginable. Now, whether they were doing it for shock value or for dress up or just because they thought it was funny, it is remarkable reading the book, when you're reminded of just how much of this there has been and how constant it was.
- [34:01]
D
It is a shock because it's a history that goes from Thomas Steele and the Beatles through to the present day with Kanye West. And if we want to go deeper into that, then there's always been a disparity between why Britain fought the Second World War against Germany and why Germany were fighting a war. And it's very evident if you read Mein Kampf, that Adolf Hitler was fighting an ideological war, one that was to create space for the Aryan race of his definition and therefore required the annihilation of the European Jewish population. And the swastika was taken by him and used as a symbol of anti Semitism, the Hacken crooks. And that use of the symbol in rock music ever since tends to shy away from what it symbolically means, but we can't shy away from it because ultimately it's the path from the persecution of the Jews and many other races and people to the Holocaust, which was
- [35:15]
B
known at least a little bit at the time, that people who you would have hoped might know better started flaunting it. And there's a couple of questions. I wanted to break this down in two different generations because first of all, there's the. There's the children of World War II who took up the swastika or Nazi iconography, either mockingly or joshingly. You write about John Lennon sort of responding to the mass adulation of the Beatles by doing sieg Heil salutes at them. You write also about Keith Richards, I think, turning up at someone's wedding wearing an SS uniform. And in his particular case, it seems even more extraordinary given his father went ashore on D Day. So the question is, with the post war generation, why were they not revolte by any suggestion of Nazi Germany? Why did they think it was even funny?
- [36:05]
D
I think they probably were revolted. And I don't know if it's meant to be funny or humorous. The one thing I didn't do was make any assumption whatsoever about why any person would use the language or the imagery of Nazi Germany. And I just took it at face value because ultimately that's all anybody can ever do, because it doesn't come with any disclaimers or analysis. And that extends therefore, from the fan to. To the music industry at large. And that lack of accountability and analysis is what's incredible, really, I found when I look back into this. So for many of these people, we don't know the reason. And for every artist that was doing it as, I don't know, part of their growing up in the war, as you say in parenthood, there's those that used it for more sinister reasons as early as Brian Jones dressing up in an SS uniform and, you know, crushing a doll under his foot with Anita Pallenberg at his feet, and with no sense of humor whatsoever or irony. It's just disturbing. And there's a definite attraction to the beauty of the SS uniform and runs along all of rock and roll history. Now, that was written in to the design of the Unifor by Carl de beach in 1929, 1930, and then famously distributed and manufactured by Hugo Boss. And the idea, the very idea of the uniform was to impress, to strike fear, to attract a country that needed a totalitarian state. It's written into the design and you can see why. I mean, Lemmy says, you know, if it had been an Israeli uniform that was the most attractive, he would have worn that. You know, at the same time time, he. He lists all the wonderful achievements of Adolf Hitler, finishing off his long list by saying he promised to kill all the Jews. He did kill all the Jews. That was in his own memoir.
- [38:10]
B
As the book makes clear, there is yards more where this came from that the New Romantics, New Wave also embraced it. You, you do get into the controversy over the namings of bands like Joy Division, New Order, Spandau Ballet. But does there become a point at which it. It did become taboo, at which collectively popular culture decided, we should probably stop doing this?
- [38:33]
D
It hasn't stopped. And so therefore the simple answer is no. I mean, at certain points it's challenged. But the most recent example is the swastika display at the Roundhouse by Primal Scream integrated into a Star of David. And it causes a furore for a few days and then seemingly diminishes it. Likewise in the States, when Kanye west advertised in the middle of The Super Bowl, 750 million people watching, and the advert takes you to his website, one item was for sale, a white T shirt with a black swast sticker on it. And yet his last two albums sold over a million copies. People care and don't care. And it goes on. And that's why it goes on is the greater question. And all I can say is that rock and roll has to firstly accept its shortfalls, its shortcomings. Fans like me have to say we're culpable. I happily sang along to Belson, Was a Gas and bought Sex Pixels records. And I'm not for one minute advoc the burning of records. We know where burnings lead to, but we have to accept that we do have this history. And we know with racism determined by the color of somebody's skin since, particularly since the death of George Floyd, and we know with misogyny and the MeToo movement, that rock and roll has faced up to its shortcomings in those areas. When it comes to Nazism and by extension, antisemitism, rock and rock and roll is still turning a blind eye.
- [40:08]
B
That was Daniel Rachel speaking to me earlier. This ain't rock and roll. Pop music, the Swastika and the Third Reich is available now. That is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Zoe Grunewald and Simon Brook. Today's show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Anneliese Maynard. Our sound engineer was Steph Chungu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening, Sam.