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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
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- [00:21]
Rory Stewart
You switch to Fuse you will now receive Trip plus membership free of charge.
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Alistair Campbell
That's where you can take advantage of things like at free listening, early access to Question Time episodes, pre sale, live show tickets and more. All you've got to do is go to getfuse.com politics use the referral code Politics when signing up.
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Rory Stewart
We will be providing many more offers for members which I think can be great, including interviews for members only and questions for members only, which I hope you'll enjoy. But the other advantage of signing up of course is that you can protect your energy bills by fixing your electricity rates for the next year with Fuse, which is going to be very relevant. With the price cap rising by 6.4%, Fuse's new fixed tariffs undercut the April price cap by over £100, with almost £150 of savings for a typical customer on the 18 month tariff. By fixing your electricity rate, you can lock in your price today and protect yourself from any rises over the next year.
- [01:16]
Alistair Campbell
So download it now. Use the referral code politics after signing up. Visit getfuse.com politics for the terms of conditions and to learn more.
- [01:27]
Unknown
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- [02:14]
Rory Stewart
ABC Sundays American Idol is all new. Give it your all.
- [02:19]
Unknown
Good luck coming out of the Golden Ticket. Let's hear it.
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Alistair Campbell
This is a man's world. I've never seen anything like it.
- [02:27]
Rory Stewart
And a new chapter begins.
- [02:29]
Unknown
You're going to Hollywood.
- [02:30]
Rory Stewart
Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American idol news Sundays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
- [02:49]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to the Restless Politics with me.
- [02:51]
Rory Stewart
Alistair Campbell and with me, Ro, Rory Stewart.
- [02:53]
Alistair Campbell
And Rory, I think partly because most of our media hasn't bothered with it, we should talk about the China, the National Congress that they've just had and China more generally, because I think there's been some fascinating stuff coming out of China. We want to talk about Russia, and I think you've got some things to say about the kind of Russia, Ukraine situation. But in the context of the sort of broader politics there, I think we should talk about Syria and the violence that's erupted in the coastal areas of Syria. And we have to talk just for a little bit of light relief about what the hell is going on inside reform. Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe, I don't suppose Rupert Lowe is a household name in most of the countries where we have listeners, but we'll try to educate them as to what's going on. So let's start with China. The reason why I wanted to talk about China is we're in this world where we all sort of tell each other the whole time there are really only two superpowers in the world, the United States and China. And the United States we cover and we discuss, as included every aspect of everything that's happening inside Donald Trump, Trump's White House. So when we talk to Michael Wolff on leaving this week, we're even talking about the woman, the name of the woman who sort of walks alongside him carrying his bags and, you know, knocking the dandruff off his suit and all that sort of stuff. And yet China has just had this, what they call the two sessions, which is the national Congress and also the big advisory body outside. And it's as if it didn't happen. I've actually been the last few days asking people if they aware of anything that's big that's been going on in China in the last few days, and nobody knows. And then the other game I'm playing is I won't do it on you, Rory, because it's too cruel. I say name the seven members of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee who are probably the seven most powerful people in China. Okay. Now, Xi Jinping, we all know him, but the rest of it, I guess most of our listeners won't know. So is that a consequence of us? Not is it a language thing? Is it the fact that Trump just literally does flood the Zone with shit. And we kind of, as Peter Hyman says, we go around poking in the turds and deciding which. How much to talk about this one before he drops the next one. Or is it that we maybe haven't fully caught up with just how important China is now in terms of our lives as much as their own?
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Rory Stewart
It's a lot of those things, isn't it? And you're completely right. I mean, let's. Let's start with how right you are.
- [05:09]
Alistair Campbell
Yes, why not? That's always a good place to start.
- [05:11]
Rory Stewart
Given that China is definitely the second largest economy in the world, and in some calculations, is already the largest economy in the world, and it's the only country in the world that remotely has the opportunity to balance the U.S. it's astonishing that we have so little reporting on it. One issue, of course, is that it's a much more centralized, authoritarian system, much more controlled Xi Jinping led system, and it's opaque. Even for very, very good foreign journalists. It's quite difficult getting into the depths of what's happening.
- [05:42]
Alistair Campbell
Mm.
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Rory Stewart
It's much more like the sort of criminology of the 1980s, where you're endlessly finding, you know, some small clue for something that's said in the People's Daily.
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Alistair Campbell
But that's why this two sessions event is so important, because the media are allowed to attend it.
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Rory Stewart
You're also absolutely right that often what's said in these big congresses and in Xi Jinping's main speeches turn out to be much closer to what's going to happen than you can believe. I mean, let's take one example of that to confirm your point. China laid out an industrial strategy 10 years ago. And what it said is, our industrial strategy is we're going to try to dominate effectively the world of renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles. We're going to shift towards more tech, we're going to focus on chips, we're going to do AI and we're going to do quantum computing. And 10 years later, broadly speaking, they've done that. There are still some challenges we can get into on chips and AI. There is a sense that it's a government that indicates where it's going and what it wants to do. Again, the Belt and Road Initiative wasn't a sort of secret plan, very, very formal plan that they laid out. So what did you take away, though, from your observations, the Congress, or what you could pick up from it?
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Alistair Campbell
The first thing is how hard it is if you're not there actually to find out what's going on. And I don't think that's just because of the China command and control, complete control of the media, etc. I think it is because a lot of Western media just doesn't find it interesting enough even bother to try to find out what's going on. The point you just made, I think is the right one. What is so interesting about it? If you do read those speeches and I'll come on to Wang Yi, the Foreign Minister, who did this amazing press conference with lots of different sort of things that he said that really were genuinely quite interesting. But there's one thing I read in one of the. I think it might have been a Chatham House analysis of something, but this was from an earlier Congress and it talked about this. Just listen to this. For Xi, the achievement of the China dream would be a two step process. From 2021 to 2035, China would seek to transform itself into a great modern socialist country through economic development. Then from 2035 to 2049, China would continue a path of national rejuvenation to become what Xi describes as a global leader in terms of comprehensive national strength and international influence. So here we are following the Trump presidency. The kind of time span is from tweet to tweet or from tantrum to tantrum. And here you have the Chinese Communist Party literally setting out a strategy that takes you to 2049. And as you say, although they've got economic problems, and Li Qiang, the Prime minister, when he set out the economic report, because they also do an economic report, you know, it's not like our budget, but it is an economic report where they set out military spending, future welfare spending and so forth, is that the way to understand how they work is to try to get inside this longer term mindset. And that's why I think we're missing a trick both in terms of understanding how they operate, instead of which, what you have is essentially the Americans just seeing them as this enemy and everything being in that context as opposed to, well, what are they actually trying to do and how do we fit into that?
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Rory Stewart
One of the themes we'll get to with Russia, but it's true of China too, is this thing that Owen Matthews, who's a Russian analyst, calls the kind of schrodinger cat problem, which is these places are described both on one hand as these sort of extraordinary powerful giants and simultaneously as these sort of very weak minnows. And the narrative sort of shifts between the two. But in China, of course, the narrative for the last couple of years, particularly since COVID has been that China's peaked and that particularly the collapse of the property sector, which was nearly a quarter of the Chinese economy. And you may have seen these incredible images of cities with footprints larger than London completely empty, property companies going bankrupt, a lot of people's assets tied up in mortgages that have gone underwater. So property tech again, Xi Jinping moved against people like Jack Ma and these amazing Chinese tech companies, Alibar, Tencents, et cetera. And that dampened the tech sector. And then he began locking up quite a lot of people in the finance sector. And it remains a more oppressive regime even than Russia in terms of its state control. So the story was if you combine that with the population of China dropping, and for the first time the population of China dropped by 10 million last year, people begin to say, well maybe China's bubbles burst. And this has been a story that we've heard really for 25 years. There was a very famous book written in 2001 which said China was over. It's a book by Gordon Chang where he said it can't really work. Authoritarian states, state owned enterprises. Here are a couple of things though to put in the other direction. So on the one hand, yes, there's big economic problems, there's a lot of youth unemployment, a lot of people at home, a lot of restaurants have shut if you go to Shanghai or Beijing. On the other hand, as you've just pointed out in this People's Congress, China is projecting growth rates of 4.5%, 5% double the amount that would be pretty good in the United States. Its real growth rate and its nominal growth rate is likely to be significantly higher than the U.S. maybe a third higher, maybe twice as high.
- [11:10]
Alistair Campbell
And defence spending, 7% right. Rise.
- [11:12]
Rory Stewart
And defense, 27% rise. So what's the other side of the story? And I guess the other side of the story are a couple of things. One is that some of the movements that China made against these tech giants maybe don't look so foolish now. You see the domination of people like Musk and Bezos in the United States. Why did they do it? Well, basically because these companies were becoming semi monopolies and not necessarily for good liberal reasons, but because the Chinese Communist Party didn't want to lose power. They did not want Jack Ma taking over all of E commerce and the entire banking system and basically bullying the Chinese government. So having sat on them, shut them down, moved them out of politics, there's now a little bit of move from the Chinese government to re embrace tech. And there have been some Pretty considerable successes. So deep seek this amazing AI model which is challenging chatgpt generating stuff cheaper, quicker, even if some of it is nicked, which is the allegation, is an example of that. It's also possible that their industrial strategy, although very wasteful, so they obviously it's very opaque. We don't know how much money they spent on it, how they subsidized it, but it's a pretty amazing economic model. So look at the electric vehicles. What they did is they began by spraying subsidies at nearly 2,000 companies. But there's an odd combination of kind of subsidies and then the law of the jungle takes over and then these 2,000 companies fought it out and two or three of them have emerged as incredible global electric vehicle leaders, producing vehicles that are third cheaper than American or European equivalents and just as good.
- [12:42]
Alistair Campbell
Just while briefly on the cars, I'm sure we all share the grief and the pain of Elon Musk as he watches the share price of Tesla plummet and discovers that maybe projecting yourself as a kind of hard right uber fan of Donald Trump isn't good for business. But we'll see. You said there about the law of the jungle. That was a phrase that actually appeared in this press conference, Wang Yi. And the only reason I know this, by the way, and here's another thing, National Public Radio, that's where I found this account, okay? That's the one that Trump and Musk want to shut down because it does really boring things like think there might be more than one side to a story. So anyway, just to go through some of the headlines, the headlines they put on it was that he talked about Trump's two tier hypocritical approach to China, on the one hand, tariffs, on the other hand, we want to have closer relations. And that was the sort of headline. But just to go through some of the things he said, he talked about American relations with America, which he said were bad and getting worse. Tariffs, really, really bad idea. But if they happen, we will fight back very, very hard. Fentanyl, why are we getting the blame for your problem? I sent you this quote, Roy, because I just thought it was. And I said to you, who do you think said this? And you would give me all sorts of different names. But the answer was Wang Yi, who said this. Imagine if every country prioritized itself above all else and placed blind faith in power and status. This world would regress to the law of the where smaller and weaker nations would bear the brunt of instability and the international order and rules based system would face severe disruption. I mean, you could imagine Reagan saying that. You could imagine most current European leaders saying that about Trump. So what this is about is they're sort of watching the instability and they're watching the sense of chaos. And as ever with the Chinese, they're thinking, how do we exploit this and how do we turn this to our advantage? And then he went on, he talked about China being an anchor of stability in an uncertain world. This is almost like they're saying you can't trust America for stability at the moment, so you've got to look to us. And I thought it was a really interesting Congress. The theme of the thing was confidence. And they do do economic presentations where they sugarcoat it to some extent, but they talked about some of the economic problems, the youth unemployment and the problem that they had. They actually talk about these, these huge job fairs where young people are trying to get work. I just feel that sometimes we underestimate. The reason why I find them so interesting is because, and I know it's a dictatorship, so it's easier for them, but they really do have a sense of long term strategy. And I think that's. Well, that's absolutely what's missing from America right now.
- [15:21]
Rory Stewart
Listen, let me just sort of quickly jump to the defense of some good journalists on China. So Tom Orlick, who's the Bloomberg chief economist.
- [15:30]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, listen, there are, I'm not criticizing journalists who are there. I think it's more the fact that the people in the where their headquarters are, they don't find it interesting enough.
- [15:39]
Rory Stewart
Another shout out to a friend of mine called Jeremy Page who's with the Economist, who is just the most incredible example of. He almost feels like an anachronism now because he's like a surviving example of a traditional journalism we're almost losing. So Jeremy speaks really good Chinese, he speaks good Russian, he speaks spent. And he's barely been back to the United Kingdom in 30 years. He's been just Russia, China, India and has went from the Times and is now one of these kind of absolutely classic examples. I praise Shashank Joshi sometimes from the Economist for his work on defense. But Jeremy really is in there and he's one of the guys that's pointed out that I do at least know some names. In the Chinese setup, there's a man called Liu Xiaoye who was the Chinese ambassador to France, a big wolf warrior who created lots of controversy, being derogatory about Baltic states, has been appointed as their super envoy for Europe. And it's quite interesting appointment Just happened a few weeks ago and he is really trying to do all this stuff of reaching out to Europe, saying Europe should have a say, Ukraine and Europe should be involved in the negotiations between.
- [16:46]
Alistair Campbell
Oh, that was a big part of Wang Yi's press conference is Ukraine has to be involved, Europe has to be involved. We want peace, but not peace at any price. This is why it was so interesting. And when you think that, you know, there's Marco Rubio on his way to Saudi today and there's a BBC correspondent on the plane with him now, that's fine, that's exactly as it should be. But his opposite lumber in China saying some really, really interesting things, none of which I've seen pretty much anywhere in our media.
- [17:15]
Rory Stewart
The traditional story about China 20 years ago it was they're really good at sort of copying and imitating, but they'll never be able to build the components for an iPhone. Well, guess what? Now basically iPhones are built in China. So the surviving claim as of six months ago was yeah, well, they're very good at stuff, but there's three things they're never going to be able to do and those were supposed to be chips, commercial airliners and AI. Well, they've really jumped forward with AI chips. It's still true that they're struggling on some of the most advanced stuff, but they can do really good second third level chips, which is allowing them to fly much cheaper and pretty effective fifth generation fighter jets now. Yeah, there's still a question about whether they're going to be able to get into the building aeroplane space. And that's a really interesting space where in fact the real heroes which we don't talk about enough are Europe.
- [18:04]
Alistair Campbell
Absolutely.
- [18:05]
Rory Stewart
Because nobody would have bet on Airbus being able to take on Boeing. In fact, if Airbus had failed to take on Boeing, you could have provided a good story of, you know, Europe's taking, taking weekends off and spending too much time having summer holidays. And of course America won. And actually the truth is Airbus is now much more advanced than Boeing with a lot of its Systems. I mean, 737s are kind of 1960s and summit technology. So let's see if China can get there planes. But my guess is they will and that it's very, very short sighted to assume that they're not going to be able to get there with planes chips. And I think they're already demonstrating they can get there with AI.
- [18:38]
Alistair Campbell
The other area that Wang Yi and some of the other presentations looked at was this whole business of America scrapping international development and aid usaid. His quote was unacceptable self interest at the expense of others. Gaza. Trump's approach will make things worse, not better. It was a, I felt, a very clear attempt at repositioning. Now, we shouldn't overlook the fact that, you know, you've got, it's utterly repressive, no real freedom of speech. The Uyghurs are treated absolutely appallingly. But what I sensed in this, and, you know, I'd love to know what your guy, the economist, thinks, because he obviously knows millions more about this than I do, but am I reading too much into it? You might ask him. In saying that this felt like a sort of strategic repositioning, seeking to exploit what they are now perceiving as the potential for chaos. And of course, the other thing that is always at the back of their minds is Taiwan. I know you want to talk about, maybe this is a good link to Russia, because what he said about their relations with Russia, he said they are steadfast, a constant in an uncertain world, not a variable in geopolitical competition. In other words, they are very much saying they are, are aligned with Russia. They've had these military exercises this week with Russia and Iran. This is, I guess, just a plea to the serious media in the UK and Europe and America is I think we need to learn more about China. We need to see China other than through the prism of it's a dictatorship. And the other thing about Geronto, we talk a lot about American politics as a sort of gerontocracy. The only thing I hadn't realized about the Politburo, Xi Jinping accepted because he's an exception in so many different ways. You have to leave when you're 68. So they've got this constant sort of conveyor belt coming up, bringing up new, slightly younger people who become the rulers. Xi Jinping is out on a class of his own.
- [20:36]
Rory Stewart
Taiwan is very interesting. There's big problems within the Chinese military, huge corruption scandals. Their competence is being called into question. And, and there is a strong argument at the moment for Xi Jinping that he doesn't need to move against Taiwan now and that the smart money in China is on waiting for Trump to self destruct, that they can just sort of sit back, as it were, with the popcorn and watch the movie of the United States and Europe ripping themselves to pieces before they have to make any decisive moves or take any risk on Ukraine. There was a very interesting question from somebody last week on whether China could step in as the peace guarantor in Ukraine. But I think China, again, is very reluctant to do that. They haven't engaged in a military conflict since 1978. They don't have the full confidence yet in their foreign service and their military to do that kind of security guarantee. And then I think there's your final point, which is even as things collapse with the US Very, very difficult to trust China. I mean, the massive uptick, not just in espionage and funding for universities that we've talked about, but uptick in Chinese cyber attacks you've talked about. The size is tens of thousands of people now sitting in Chinese cyber attack facilities, something we discussed in a podcast earlier. And their alliance with Russia, I mean, that's probably the most important thing that we've sort of touched on today. Is your point that in this Congress, they're describing Russia as a stable, status quo power, when in fact, we in Europe would see it as an extremely destabilizing power, undercutting global norms and laws. So, I mean, I think in a way, China missed a chance by getting so strongly behind Russia, keeping the Russian economy going. In that way, they missed a strategic opportunity, which India missed as well, to align strongly with Europe. And they would have been in a much stronger position, both India and China, to say, okay, Trump's gone off in a crazy direction, will make a EU China or an EU India alliance if those countries had been firmer and clearer in allying with Europe against Russia.
- [22:42]
Alistair Campbell
But does that not mean that they actually would. It would suit their interests for America to stay locked into what's happening to Ukraine rather than force America, as some in America want them to, to choose between China and Russia. You can either see China as the enemy, or you can see Russia as the enemy, and you can stand by Ukraine, or no, you go towards the China's enemy. And I think there is this debate going on inside the American administration as to whether they should focus on Russia or China.
- [23:08]
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. And I think you're completely right that the basic way of describing US Foreign policy at the moment is there are the total isolationists, which is we want to stick to the Americas and we don't care what happens in the rest of the world. And then there are the people who are the prioritizers. We do care about the world, but what we care about is China, and we don't care about the rest of the world. But you're also totally right that China's money is all on just sitting back with the popcorn and watching the movie of America shooting itself in the foot, undermining its alliances. And they don't really need to get involved in any of these places because Trump's doing all their work for them.
- [23:43]
Alistair Campbell
Let me just tell you what Donald Trump said in one of his 78 press conferences this week. He was asked whether these military drills between Russia and China and Iran are of concern. He says, no, not at all. Because we're stronger than all of them. We have more power than all of them. I rebuilt the military. That's not bad considering he's only been there a few weeks. Unfortunately, Biden did nothing with it. But we don't even want to talk about it. He just did. I think if you look at what's happening. Let's see what's happening with the Russia, Ukraine thing. I think in the near future you can have some pretty good results coming out of Saudi Arabia. So there we are. There's strategy at its finest. So Russia, you've been looking at Russia?
- [24:20]
Rory Stewart
Yes, absolutely. So I've been talking to Peter Pomerantsev, whose book Nothing's True, Everything's Possible you've praised in the podcast in the past.
- [24:27]
Alistair Campbell
I praise it every time I talk about Russia.
- [24:29]
Rory Stewart
Talking to Owen Matthews, who's another very long standing Russia analyst. Very interesting things happening as they try to struggle to work out what to do with this new world with Trump, or delight in it. Essentially what's happening is that as America seems neutral or even pro Russian, the target is shifting to Europe. One of the things that we will now see is a very, very coordinated hybrid social media campaign run by the Russian intelligence services to do all they can to divide Europe, talk up far right parties in Europe, create scandals in Europe, undermine Europe's commitment to defending Ukraine. It'll be an absolute barrage, not just of information warfare, but of personal attacks, trying to discredit journalists, discredit politicians, use Western politicians who Russia's close to to undermine them. And we do not begin to understand what's coming. And people, David Pomerantsev is saying that we need to begin to learn from the Swedes and the Finns some of this defense budget, this enormous defense budget that Stalma's announced needs to go into political warfare. In other words, information warfare.
- [25:40]
Alistair Campbell
It's not that enormous. I mean, 2.5 to 2.7 in long term. Three, when the Poles are already talking about 5% and even the Germans are sort of changing the rules on which their economies run in order to, to sort of boost defense spending. I, I think I told you. Did I tell you I went to this? I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this, but I went to this place, this place in Britain.
- [26:02]
Rory Stewart
Let's leave it as a place.
- [26:02]
Alistair Campbell
This place, right? And at this place there, these people who are there are engaged in countering some of this Russian stuff, particularly in the Baltics. Okay? And so I. And it was very, very impressive. But I said to them, so what have Russia got got? I said, is this like. Is this you? Is this it? And, yeah, this is pretty much it. Well, Russia got. They've got. And this area's got. They've got about a thousand of these. So, you know, we are up against. And of course, the other thing that they exploit are the. What you know, sometimes are called the useful idiots. You know, the reason why some of these information war warfare campaigns are successful is because the ventilation often comes from people who are on the receiving end. In other words, if Britain, or, let's say France or Germany, during the election when the AfD was getting boosted by Russia, it was boosted then by Musk. And then people who follow Musk and see Musk as a kind of American libertarian on the right, they don't even think that they might be helping Russia in what they're doing. So what I find most terrifying about what's going on, and I think we're doing well, not to be talking too much about Trump. Trump, because I think people are sick to death of him. But just one point about Trump in this context is that I think what most people are finding so difficult to handle at the moment is this sense that even if he is not a kind of fully fledged Russian operative, if he were, he's pretty much operating according to their playbook. That's pretty terrifying.
- [27:37]
Rory Stewart
There's nothing that he could do at the moment which wouldn't be exactly what they wanted. I was thinking about this, that if you wanted to design the most cunning KGB SVR campaign to discredit the American president, that short clip which he shared on Truth Social of Gaza with dancing girls and gold statues of Trump, would be the most perfect propaganda way of discrediting Trump. And he's sharing it himself. The other thing that's interesting is that, of course, it was Russia that in the 2000s, pioneered the idea of politics as a reality TV show. Broadly speaking, Russia's been through three transitions under Putin. The Putin that you first met when your friend Tony Blair was saying, I think this is someone we can do business with. So the late 90s, early 2000, Putin.
- [28:23]
Alistair Campbell
Now let me just correct you, that was Thatcher on Gorbachev. What Tony actually said, I think this Guy's going to be okay.
- [28:28]
Rory Stewart
That was what politely could be called the managed democracy phase. And that was a really interesting moment where from the late 19th into the early 2000s, they had this sort of carnival of very, very extreme parties. Statements played out on tv, played out in the newspapers, where basically Putin sailed through the middle with oligarchs funding lots of mini parties with more mad positions than him in order to undermine the Communists. And that was a reality TV moment. Then there was the shift to the kind of hybrid regime, and then finally the shift to these sort of of more totalitarian state that we see now. But it's still weird. I mean, it's not 1984. It's not that you can't say anything. If you're a Russian economist, you can go to academic conferences and you can say that we're too reliant on China strategically. There are these telegram channels where the different Russian security services fight each other. So the fsb, the svr, the GRU, and the presidential administration all have their own telegram channels. Channels. There are certain things they're not allowed to say, right. They're not allowed to attack fundamentally the war or attack fundamentally Putin, but they can generally have a go with each other. And you saw a bit of this with the Prigozhin attacking the Central Command. But what ultimately happened, and I guess this is where your Trump analogy becomes interesting, is that what began as spectacle, what began as sort of reality tv, what began as kind of of provocative nationalist talking points, finally people began believing their own rhetoric. The mask kind of stuck. And the big example of this was that when the first noises came at the end of 21, beginning of 22, particularly from the CIA, saying, We think that Putin is actually going to invade Ukraine, we can actually see mobile crematoriums moving up to the front line, almost every real Russian expert, including many, many people in Ukraine, said, it's not going to happen. He's always saying stuff like this, you know, he's always saying he's going to invade Ukraine. Don't worry, this is just part of the reality tv. This is part of the show. And then it turned out that in the end, he believed his own rhetoric and the tanks rolled.
- [30:39]
Alistair Campbell
In discussing all this with your people in Russia this week, Roy, what were they saying about the economic situation? Because what you were saying earlier in relation to China, you were essentially speaking about our kind of confirmation bias. We tell ourselves that the Chinese economy is not doing so well. We tell ourselves they're falling apart. And I was just reading a piece on the conversation this morning by a guy called Julian Cooper from the University of Birmingham. And he's suggesting, actually, the Russian economy is proving to be a lot more robust than we expected. The budget spending on the military, but also on big infrastructure products and transport links with China and so forth. And they're doing things like giving better maternity payments because they're absolutely petrified of the low birth rate at the moment.
- [31:17]
Rory Stewart
Two stories. So, on the negative side, demography's against them. Their population. Population's shrinking, it's aging. There are real problems with inflation. Big, big problems with inflation. And a lot of the chat in Russia that you pick up is not political, it's economic unhappiness with the way that inflation's going and the way that interest rates are much too high. And you can see stories of people not pulling supplies to the front. And there's a lot of distortion towards the military economy and towards the border with China, but many other parts, parts of the country being neglected. On the other hand, you're absolutely right that the Russian economy has not been crippled. And that's partly because although we stopped taking Russian gas in Europe at huge cost to our own economies, Russian oil still flows everywhere, including in Europe. China and India in particular have been big, big buyers and kept that economy afloat. The defence spending, and it's difficult to know what percentage of GDP they put in. As, you know, some estimates are. If you look at the whole thing, it may be as much as 40% of their economy directly and indirectly connected to defence is providing a stimulus. And our sanctions package has never been precise enough. Too much of it, unfortunately, has been quite symbolic. Again, we're not serious. And this may all become irrelevant because Trump may be about to lift sanctions and welcome Putin into the world and get his economy off the ground again. But if we were really serious about sanctions, you would have a unit thinking morning, noon and night about targeting a dozen tiny bits in the system. Ghost ship transfers through uae, Indian oil buying a new company popping up here. And that's not the way that we've been doing it. One of the figures we're missing here desperately is Alex Navalny, whose widow we interviewed on leading, because he was somebody who really understood the regime. He was the target of unbelievable, relentless abuse. And that's where you really see the kind of abuse that went against Hillary Clinton during her campaign, which all the abuse against Soros. But Navalny in Russia experienced it like the power of a million. You know, he was accused of being a kind of MI6 stooge. And also a Kremlin stooge. He was accused of being a Nazi and also a communist. But he knew how to fight back. And he did it by combining Panorama investigations to corruption with brilliant social media campaigns that kind of hit them where it hurt and really knew where the regime was in pain, which is why in the end they had to murder.
- [33:37]
Alistair Campbell
They didn't have to worry, they chose to murder him.
- [33:39]
Rory Stewart
Why they felt they needed to murder him.
- [33:40]
Alistair Campbell
You mentioned the, the oil there and the ships and the other thing, which again, there's so much awful stuff coming out of Trump's mouth and administration at the moment. But the other thing, that was just unthinkable even a few years ago, Canada, through the G7, trying to bring together fresh action against these Russians, the shadow fleet, these ships that are sort of training around the world, helping people break sanctions, shipping oil around, around the place. And America vetoed it. And we're back to the point, well, who does that help? That helps Russia, doesn't help America. It certainly doesn't help the G7. So, you know, we are at that place. And this is why I think Merz, in the statements that he's making, Macron, Tusk, Keir Starmer, who I think rightly is still trying to hang on to the idea that we can keep the Americans on board, but they're all of them preparing for the possibility that this isn't just sort of Michael Wolff saying, you know, Trump's, this is just the latest episode in his reality TV show, that this is actually real and it's incredibly dangerous.
- [34:40]
Rory Stewart
As we step up, as Europe steps up, we have got to be ready for the Russian assault from every direction in information warfare, propaganda, social media. What's going to happen on Twitter, what's going to happen Facebook. Europe is going to have to somehow be ready and have the units to fight back, because it's going to be horrible as they tied a tear into our democracies, support pro Russian far right groups and do all kinds of stuff. So. So this is just the beginning.
- [35:05]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, on that happy note, take a break. This episode is brought to you by one of our favorite sponsors, long term partners of the rest is politics. That's NordVPN and we're guilty.
- [35:22]
Rory Stewart
Sometimes, assuming the Internet is safe by default, we browse the same sites, we use the same passwords, nothing normally goes wrong and it's very easy to let your guard down. But hackers, as I'm sure many listeners have found out, are always looking for ways to get into your system and they're trying to steal your money or they're trying to steal your data. And Internet service providers are happy to sell your browsing data to companies and marketeers.
- [35:44]
Alistair Campbell
And that's where NordVPN comes in. It's your go to solution for secure Internet access. What it does is it creates a virtual private network. That's the VPN bit which you use to connect to the Internet. Just download their app and switch it on and it works in the background.
- [35:59]
Rory Stewart
It's got military grade encryption so you can browse with confidence, knowing your personal information is safe from prying eyes. Our listeners get an exclusive deal@nordvpn.com restispolitics and one subscription covers 10 of your devices.
- [36:13]
Alistair Campbell
So that's NordVPN.com restispolitics completely risk free with their 30 day money back guarantee. And you can find the link in the episode description.
- [36:22]
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- [37:19]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart and me.
- [37:23]
Alistair Campbell
As to Campbell and Rory, you keep promising that we're going to do more and more content for our members. And this week I had the absolute pleasure on the back of Mark Carney's astonishing almost 90% of the vote in the Liberal Party leadership. I spent an hour talking to Carolyn Fairbairn who was the ex head of the CBI here but also knows she's got she part lives in Canada. She's married to a Canadian, knows Canada really well, but also a wonderful guy that you and I spoke to last year, a strategist and pollster, Bruce Anderson. So we had them on together. It was a really, really enjoyable chat and interesting. The best moment for me was when Bruce said that he's moving in relation to whether Mark Carney can actually win the general election. And remember that they were 25 points behind Pierre Polievre, the populist conservative, not long ago. He says he's moving from could to will. The Marc Cardi will with the legend that we'll see. But it is an incredible story. And so if you want to become a member and listen to some of this extra content that Rory and I are putting out, then go to the.
- [38:25]
Rory Stewart
Restispolitics.Com and one really interesting thing for members, which is exclusive to members, is we've done an interview with the Danish prime minister. So that's a full interview with the head of state. This is Meta Fredriksen.
- [38:36]
Alistair Campbell
Oh, Rory. Rory. Constitutionally offensive. She's not the head of state, she's the head of government. They're a monarchy. Come on, Rory, you're a monarchy. You should know that.
- [38:45]
Rory Stewart
Very good, very good. Thank you, Alastair. I stand corrected. Mette Fredriksen, who is the Danish Prime Minister and therefore the head of government and a really interesting controversial figure, came from a very left wing background, started as an anti apartheid environmental activist and has moved very much right in many ways. She's a very strong anti immigration voice in Denmark, but she's also been an incredibly strong voice for Ukraine against Russia and for sorting out Denmark's defense spending, treading a very difficult line with Donald Trump. And all of that played out in our interview with Mette Fredriksen. Again available for members.
- [39:22]
Alistair Campbell
Just on that, Rory, today we should tell listeners this is the general election in Greenland. Now, that is not normally something that would get any global attention, but I suspect that because of Trump's threat against Greenland, it will get exactly that. So that's led later today. Right, let's talk about Syria.
- [39:39]
Rory Stewart
So just a sort of quick update on this because this is if you want an example of where the modern world of social media and fake news and mad stories and personal attacks take off, you cannot find a better example than Syria. The amount of confusion around what's actually been happening in Syria is unbelievable. So as far as anyone can piece it together, and people are beginning to try to put it together now, so we're recording on Tuesday, last Thursday, there were attacks from the Alawite community against the new government. And the Alawites matter because Assad's regime was at its core very dominated by Alawites. He came from an Alawite family. It's a. The Alawites are a traditionally persecuted fringe Muslim religion which was not always recognized by orthodox Muslims as being Muslim at all, because it has various secret esoteric rituals and were treated as second class citizens under the Ottoman Empire. Over the last 50 years, since the Assad regime has been in place, they have been considered by the regime as their core loyalists. So they staffed the intelligence services, the senior ranks, the military. A lot of the brutality and torture over the last 15 years has been conducted by these people. And this regime, of course, collapsed, collapsed a few weeks ago as this very surprising sweep to victory of Ahmed Al Shara, who we interviewed together in Damascus, former Al Qaeda commander in Syria, took the country and the regime collapsed. At which point these senior members of the regime, the Alawites, retreated mostly back to their own traditional community places in Latakia and in the mountains along the coast. And there was a big question, and the big question is very, very similar to denazification or debarthification in Iraq, which is the questions that we actually asked him at the time, which is, what do you do? Let's say somebody was a general in Bashar Al Assad's forces, let's say he was running torture cells, let's say he was called to the intelligence merchant service. Do you make them sign up for an amnesty, pay them a salary, bring them back into the modern forces? In which case a lot of your own supporters say, you have got to be kidding, these people have got to be brought to justice, they have blood on their hands. Or do you say these people cannot be brought in, can't be trusted, leave them on the margins. In which case you have heavily armed former regime elements starting an insurgency. And fast forward. Basically the story was that on Thursday there were attacks against government forces, some people say up to 40 coordinated attacks against army barracks and hospitals. The government responded. But as the government responded, other people got involved. Freelancers, militias, combinations of people coming down from Idlib, individual Syrians coming in on motorbikes. Some people connected the Syrian national army in Turkey and they conducted horrifying attacks against Alawite villages in which at least hundreds, maybe as many as a thousand people were killed, including civilians, including in some cases women and children. So we have a situation where suddenly the whole regime, which has been in a very sensitive position. You know, as we said when we did our interview, the odds are against Ahmad Al Shara because he's having to deal with the Alamites in the former regime. He's having to deal with Kurds, he's having to deal with isis, he's having to deal with Israel, he's having to deal with Turkey. All this stuff seemed as Though it was coming completely unbuckled just at the moment. He was trying to get sanctions lifted. And of course, the social media campaign has been, we always told you so. This man is an extreme Al Qaeda terrorist and he has instructed his Takfiri jihadists to massacre minority communities. And in particular, there was a huge emphasis from people like Marco Rubio on the killing of Christians, although there's very little evidence that hundreds of Christians were killed. In fact, the Syrian observatories yesterday was suggesting that the number of Christians killed may have been three.
- [43:56]
Alistair Campbell
What you're essentially saying is that something truly terrible has taken place and that some of government forces who are loyal to the current administration have been involved in some of that. But then actually the overall picture is much, much more complicated. Is that your kind of basic point?
- [44:20]
Rory Stewart
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's facing. Ahmed Al Shar is facing two problems. He's facing the problem with what to do with the Alawite community and the former regime elements, but he's also facing the problem of what does he do with his own people and his own allies. So he ran Al Qaeda Syria and then he created hts, which brought in other groups. But there is all these other armed factions and he's trying to bring them into the army. And one of his big challenges, there are tens of thousands of armed Kurdish fighters that he's trying to incorporate into the military. Now, ultimately, this is all his fault in the sense that he is the head of state. Right. He should be controlling these people. But when we were interviewing him, we were saying, how are you going to be able to balance your vision of Syria, which he says is of a moderate, multi ethnic or multi sectarian Syria, against the fact that you have these very extreme supporters who were pushing for another vision? Can you control them? How do you navigate all those things? And I think that's what's coming apart. And at the bottom of it is money. Because. Because if he had money and he doesn't have money because of US sanctions, but if he had money, he would have the money to pay the salaries of the Alawites. So the former regime elements might be less liable to go into rebellion. He could pay his own people, he could get oil going, he could get civil service salaries going. He could deal with the fact there is serious poverty and economic crisis now unfolding in Syria and he can't do any of that, despite the fact the Qataris have offered to pay the cash for salaries. The Turks have offered to bring in barges for electricity, the Saudis have offered to bring in oil, but none of them can do it. The Qataris, the Saudis, nor the Turks. Because of American secondary sanctions. Trump is stopping this.
- [46:04]
Alistair Campbell
And also he said, if I'll go into some detail through this interview that Al Sharah did yesterday, because it's an interesting example of sort of leadership communication, if you want to put it like that, but one of the points I was going to make, but I'll make it now because it speaks directly to what you just said. He essentially says that they've had pretty much no contact from the Americans since they've. Since the fall of Assad and since he's been there. It's a very interesting thing. So when we interviewed him, as you recall, he was, you know, quite nervous and quite diffident at times. Sometimes he had to sort of slightly struggle to hear. And as. But as we said afterwards, saying a lot of the right things because he was trying to speak to, you know, beyond Syria to a Western audience. And that's. He's done something similar on the back of this. So he's done an interview with Reuters, which is apparently the first interview that he's done with one of the big global news agencies. And the headline, New Syrian Leader says Killings of Alawites Threaten Unity and Vows justice. Now, that is. That is again saying the right thing. Okay. And he goes on to say the. The mass killings of members of ousted Assad's monetary state were a threat to his mission to unite the country. He promised to punish those responsible, including his own allies if necessary. Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course. We fought to defend the oppressed. We won't accept that any blood be shed unjustly or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us. Now, of course, the risk with that from his perspective, is it plays into these narrative that this is all about revenge attacks upon the alibites. And as you were saying, that may be partly what's involved, but it's not, it's not the whole, the whole story, but just, just on what you saw when we were there. What do you make of that as a response to what's going on? You call in Reuters, you do it in an interview, you try and land a very clear message that you want to be for the whole country, not just for your own supporters. Is that enough or should he be doing more?
- [48:07]
Rory Stewart
Well, it's definitely a good thing. He's also rung one of the Alawite mothers, mothers among the victims, to apologise personally. He set up a formal Investigation commission to go in and look at what's happening. But, boy, is he in a difficult situation partly because of his neighbors. So Iran used to was, you know, was what propped up Bashar al Assad's regime with Hezbollah. Obviously, Hezbollah was destroyed by Israel and the. The attacks in Lebanon and that collapsed the regime. And as Iran retreated, all the oil that Iran used to provide has stopped flowing. Iran now has a direct interest in undermining the Syrian regime and causing chaos there. Israel appears to have concluded that its interests are best served by a failed state in Syria and seem to be doing all they can to undermine and destroy Ahmad Al Shara's regime because they consider him to be an Al Qaeda terrorist. They consider that he hasn't changed, and they think he'll eventually be a threat to Israel. So you've seen Israel conducting continual bombardments against military positions in Syria, So much so that I can hardly believe they have any targets left to hit. They've also seized bits of Syrian territory. They've announced that they will take the Druze into their occupied bits of territory. They're positioning themselves as champions of minorities, which is a very odd position for Israel to take, given their other positions in the Middle East. But they're saying they're now speaking up for Alawites, speaking up for Druze, speaking up for Christians. And they are absolutely leading the campaign in Washington to say on no account can sanctions be lifted. They want Ahmad Al Shara's government bankrupt without any cash collapsing, and they want to fragment that country.
- [49:54]
Alistair Campbell
And it was really interesting, the fact that we did an interview. This goes back to your point about how the way social media operates, the way polarization has happened. So, for example, the Telegraph yesterday did their picture to illustrate the 14, 1300 deaths, whatever it is, was a picture of you and me with Al Sharrat. It was one of the best pieces of guilt by association I've ever seen in my life. And we've been. We've been receiving both. I've passed on some of them to you. I haven't passed on them all because we've just been inundated. But people who are sending us accounts of massacre videos of some of the killings that are taking place. And some of it is from people and organizations you sort of feel like you can trust because you know their reputation. But others of it, it reads clearly, it reads well, but you don't 100% know. And then on the other side, we had this. I forwarded you a message I got from Netanyahu's office. Essentially saying, pointing out that the Foreign Minister of Israel had said this all underlines why your interview with Al Shara was very ill judged and very badly timed. As though somehow that was a sort of dot painting the picture towards what's going on now. I still defend the interview on the grounds that if somebody goes from being a terrorist to finding himself now as the recognized leader of Syria, then it is to my mind a bit crazy not to want to talk to people like that. And that doesn't just go for being for us doing a podcast even more, it goes for people who are running the big governments of the world.
- [51:35]
Rory Stewart
It's extraordinary. Above all, we would be perfectly willing to interview Steve Bannon, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, anybody else who wants to come on our show. The fact that we interview somebody, that's our job as forms of journalists, which is to give voice and let people hear from other people. But I think we provided a very, very fair, balanced summary on his Al Qaeda links, on his past. There was nothing naive about it. And most of the stuff that's happening on social media is really, really interesting because what you can see, and again, look, this is not about being self centered about the attacks on us, although it's been pretty amazing. Thousands of attacks on us accusing us of supporting Al Qaeda against massacring Christians and this and the other. But look at where those attacks are coming from. They're coming, some of them from UAE based accounts and the Emirates is very, very angry that they feel that they've been left out. They tried to back Bashar Al Assad at the end and feel very unbalanced about what's happening. Attacks from, from Russia obviously, because Russia was a back of Bashi attacks from Iran obviously, but increasing attacks from people close to Israel who are using this as a way of saying, well, you criticize what's happening in Gaza, but why are you not criticizing these attacks against Christians and minorities? And then of course the right in Europe and Britain, that's why the Telegraph will pick it up. And Musk, you know, Musk has again been spreading incredible fake news. He has been spreading this idea that, you know, the idea that hundreds of Christians have been massacred in deliberate attempts by tech theories which as far as anyone can see simply isn't true. But Musk just promotes this through his thing. And I talked in some detail somebody that we've name checked before on the show who does some really impressive work on this called Amil Khan and Emil Khan, maps these social media networks and their strategies and he has this idea about seeders and spreaders. So the seeders is somebody like Elon Musk that puts the story out and then the spreaders are real accounts and then an enormous amount of bots and unauthentic accounts who retweet and put forward these things. He's done it in real detail on things like Sudan, where he's shown the incredible difference between the way that Egyptians do social media campaigns, chains and the way that UAE and Russia supporting the other side, does it. Their use of AI content, their use of video, which is incredibly popular, their so called citizens, journalists who turn up on the ground and film things, the way that software is used to identify how to propagate it. And this just connects back, I guess, to what we were saying before the break. We need to brace for what's about to happen in Europe. And the Russians have got used to it over 10, 15 years. Hillary Clinton has got used to this. George Soros has got used to coordinated attacks which have come at him from Russia first, but then increasingly from Israel, Hungary, et cetera. But you and I are just beginning to touch the edge of this. In some ways it's quite flattering. It implies that they want to discredit and destroy us, but what's happening is basically beta testing. So. So they want to find what is the right attack line. So with you it might be Iraq war. David Kelly, with me it will be MI6 officer running a corrupt NGO. Why don't you say anything about Pakistani grooming gangs? And now onto warmonger in Ukraine supporting Al Qaeda and killing Christians in the Middle East. But this is them navigating their way around increasingly multinationally with very, very interesting use of bots and quite cheap. The Iranians are supposed to spend only about $12 million a year destabilizing Iraq in this fashion. And I don't think we're beginning to be ready for it.
- [55:28]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I had an exchange yesterday with Carol Cadwalader, who, the journalist who exposed a lot of the kind of Russian activity in relation to Brexit and got a lot of grief from all the kind of reform and right wing media people for her troubles. And I, I did a tweet saying I've always thought that the kind of Trump is a Russian asset was a bit for the conspiracy theorists. But it's hard now not to think that maybe there might be something in it. And basically Carol, who I like and respect a lot, and she replied kind of, where have you been? You know, this is what, this is essentially what we've been saying and this is what Brexit was about. Now, now you know it is true. We have never ever. Because the lack of will within the. The last government. We've never got to the bottom. And literally as I'm sitting above a phone, I was just sort of looking for the. For Carol Street. I couldn't find it. But what did pop up was somebody saying. Somebody called Spaceology. Not sure why Alistair had so many doubts about Russian interference. This is. It's a picture of Lord Lebedeff. So, you know, we, we. You where. You're right. And this goes back to this place that I told you about that I'm not allowed to talk about. We are pretty. I think we're a long way behind the game compared to what our traditional enemies are doing. And it becomes so much harder because our traditional ally, the United States of America, now looks like it's more of an ally of their tradition and our traditional enemy than it is of. Of Europe. Europe, which is pretty terrifying. Pretty terrifying.
- [57:00]
Rory Stewart
Well, final shout out. For real seriousness, don't please look at Twitter and believe weird videos being shared on Facebook. Two people I'd like to make a real call out for who I think are extraordinary. Darien Khalifa, who works for the amazing International Crisis Group, does the most beautiful, sensitive, thoughtful reporting and knows the region really, really well. And it's particularly interested on Turkey and what will happen in Syria. If Syria doesn't manage to balance its relationships with the region, will it end up with Turkey getting involved in fights with the Kurds and seizing bits of territory? Secondly, Charles Lister, who has done amazing work on covering the whole story from the beginning and really understanding the roots of. Of Ahmed Al Shara and where they're going. So, yep, shout out to the two of them.
- [57:53]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you believe Elon Musk when he says that Ukraine tried to take down Twitter yesterday?
- [58:00]
Rory Stewart
I would say less than zero.
- [58:02]
Alistair Campbell
Less than zero.
- [58:02]
Rory Stewart
Okay, less than zero. But one of the things that you'll be aware of is that Elon Musk has talked openly about the fact that he regularly uses ketamine, Special K, this kind of horse tranquilizer that people used to use to party. He uses it because he thinks that it helps manage his depression. But one of my relatives had to have a serious operation on their hand and they were put under ketamine in the United States. And so I sat there in the hospital and watched them emerge from ketamine. It is unbelievable what it does to your brain, the things they were saying as they emerged from this ketamine high, the dreams they were having, the fantasies they were having. And I don't know what quantity of this stuff Musk is using, but I was slightly concerned about the idea that he's on his social media accounts if he's on ketamine. Well, so I think we've in danger of running over and I think let's just finish with two kind of really obvious banal things. First is a huge shout out to these very serious analysts who you are doing the detailed work and will keep pointing you towards them. And I think the second thing is what an unpredictable world this is. I mean, you and I talked about the risks in Syria and we could see that there were risks from the Alawites and risks from ISIS and risks from its own factions and risks from the Kurds, but guessing which one of those was going to blow up first. And I think the story of the Kurds since Syria still needs to be played through. Anyway, thank you very much indeed.
- [59:38]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, and listen, we said at the top we're going to talk about reform and Farage and Rupert Low, we got loads of questions about that last week. Why don't we start with that in question time tomorrow? Because I think we're already into time added on for injuries.
- [59:51]
Rory Stewart
Very good, looking forward to it tomorrow.
- [59:52]
Alistair Campbell
See it a bit.
- [59:53]
Rory Stewart
Bye bye. Bye.
- [59:58]
Unknown
Hi there, I'm Al Murray, co host of we have ways of making you talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goal Hanging.
- [60:05]
And I'm James Holland, best selling World War II historian. And together we tell the best stories from the war. This time we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the west, the Battle of the Bulge.
- [60:19]
And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way around, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and devoted from reality.
- [60:32]
Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the gis on the front line. Full of gumption and grit, the bold should be remembered as a great victory for the usa.
- [60:46]
And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search we have ways wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Yeah.
- [60:58]
Anyway, so who is Overstock Van Fuhrer?
- [61:01]
Joachim Piper, but I see his jaunty hat and I just think skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than that.
- [61:12]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, be that is May. He's 29 years old and he's got, he's got a very interesting career really because he comes from a, you know, a pretty right wing family, let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early, early stage. He's very. International socialism. He's also been Himmler's agitator.
- [61:28]
Yeah.
- [61:28]
He took a little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with, with the 1st Waffen SS Panzer Division.
- [61:34]
Yeah.
- [61:34]
Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant, then went off and commanded troops in, in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean, it's not many people that age are an Obersturm Banfuhrer, which is sort of Colonel.
- [61:47]
Yes.
- [61:47]
Alistair Campbell
I.
- [61:48]
Unknown
You see, what must it have been like if you're in. If, if Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you. You as an officer, do you think? Well, he only got that job because of, because of his connections. For Piper, it must have been always. He's always having to prove himself, surely, because he's, he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen ss. He's dolloped in having come from head office, as it were. It must be a peculiar position to be in. Right. He's got lots to prove. Right, that's what I'm saying.
- [62:15]
Yeah. And he's, he's, he's from a sort of middle class background as well.
- [62:19]
Yeah.
- [62:19]
But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never, never really recovers and actually has d. Died in. Of TB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horst who's also joined the SS&TOTEN cop Verbanda and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941. Right. Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring, fearless, you know, obviously courageous, you know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire. The destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisan. Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, second class, first Class, Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross. Did very well at Kursk briefly in Northern Italy, actually, then in Ukraine, then in Normandy. He suffers a nervous breakdown.
- [63:15]
Yeah.
- [63:15]
And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August, and he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Looted. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panzer Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd.
- [63:30]
I mean, but isn't that interesting, though, because if you're a lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalized, you don't get time off. How you could interpret this is. This is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? Is Hitler's adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern Front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they. Where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point, and they're losing, you know, and. Because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized. If he has a nervous breakdown, he isn't told like an ordinary German soldier. There's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate. Go back to work.
- [64:07]
Yes. And it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue.
- [64:09]
Well, yes, of course, but.
- [64:10]
But you know what SS soldier said of him? Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done.
- [64:17]
Yeah.
- [64:17]
You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of slightly manic energy, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a. He's a driver, you know, all those things.
- [64:32]
He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the furor he's imbued with. He knows what's expected of him. Extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of. He's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he, as a. As an SS officer.
- [64:46]
Yeah.
- [64:47]
Which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.