Michael Malice (1:42)

Oh, very much so. Especially in Europe. It's even more kind of realigning than here in the States. I've been following European politics very closely, and it's very interesting how it plays out in different nations. Czech Republic just had this party called Motorists for Ourselves, and one of the guys is kind of accused of being this closet griper, and now he's in Cabinet, so they're the first ones to kind of break that barrier.

Francis (2:04)

Okay, but go back to the big picture. What did you say in your book and what did you predict in your book, I think.

Michael Malice (2:12)

Well, I think that is the big picture. The big picture is that, you know, the so called Conservative movement of, you know, recent decades has largely fallen away in polls. In the uk, for example, the tor. You both just looked down simultaneously. I don't know what the hell that was.

Francis (2:26)

The Tories we just looked at every time.

Michael Malice (2:29)

Yeah, the Tories in many polls are in fourth place. Something which has never happened before and is regarded as largely unthinkable. Although now labor is giving them run for their money and coming in fourth place. You have the Swedish Democrats in Sweden, Georgia, Georgina Meloni, he's the pm. In Italy, the party was considered the furthest right party as of five minutes ago. The National Rally came in first in terms of votes in the French legislative elections. Formerly the National Front, Marine Le Pen's organization. In Norway, the Liberal Party, which racked the Christian Democrats, are in first place in the polls. So wherever Spain, the party is called Vox, which is regarded as the so called far right party. And there's that cordon sanitaire. They're not going to work with them. They're in third and they're spiking really heavily in the polls at the expense of the main two parties and the U.S. you know, the premise of my book the New Right is the question was on the dust jacket, what do you know techno anarchists and Christian nationalists and race realists and other groups have in common. And I said nothing other than their opposition to.

Francis (3:35)

Well, they hate the left. Right.

Michael Malice (3:37)

Thanks for stepping on the punchline. Other than their opposition to progressivism. Okay, thanks for the spoiler. Yeah, so I was going to get there, Constantin. Don't worry.

Francis (3:46)

Forgive me.

Michael Malice (3:47)

No.

Francis (3:48)

So point being premature interjection.

Michael Malice (3:52)

Human beings define themselves by opposition. We see this in non political context because you have a party and there's adults and kids. The kids view themselves as kids as opposed to adults, but when the adults leave, it becomes boys and girls. So people, this is why negative attack ads are often more effective. It's much easier to be like I'm against Francis than I'm for Constantine. So with the heavy defeat of leftism in the 2024 Republican election, people are kind of a bit surprised that this Trumpian coalition has fallen apart. But you shouldn't really be surprised because what they're against, although they're making a bit of resurgence in recent days, has fallen away as a common enemy. And now, you know, they're kind of turning on each other. And I don't know where this goes, but I do know it'll be entertaining.

Francis (4:43)

And Israel seems to become like the focal point. I've tracked the same thing and I kind of thought that it would all start to break down for the exact reason that you describe. But Israel has served as a kind of single explanatory point in a lot of people's minds. And that seems, in a weird way, that's what the battle is about. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the one thing that I, you know, the narrative that, you know, President Trump is controlled by Israel just doesn't seem to me to stack with the personality type that he is. You know what I mean? Like the idea that he's being puppeteered by someone, like, of all the things you might say about him that are critical, the idea that, like, he can be used by other people seems quite unlikely.

Michael Malice (5:25)

Well, used and controlled are separate concepts. I don't like this puppeteer metaphor because I'm not going to absolve George W. Bush and Tony Blair and Dick Cheney of what they did. I don't think that they had to have much pressure in order to launch, you know, the Iraq war, which was, you know, obviously in retrospect, an enormous disaster. The other point is human beings, and let's get into this to some extent, human beings aren't truth seeking animals, they're narrative seeking animals. Right. So it's been a week now. As a record of the Iran war, I don't know where this is going or when the end goal is. I certainly feel solidarity, as I think most of your viewers do, all decent people do, with the Persian people and hope that everything works out well for them, although I'm not exactly confident that it will. But the point is, this isn't the Iraq War. It's like a weekend. Oh, it's the Iraq war. Well, the Iraq war was Vietnam, but when it started. But it didn't end the same way as the Vietnam War. So as for the Israel thing, I can steel man that argument pretty well because Trump campaigned on not getting us into war like Woodrow Wilson had. It's hard to make the case that the Iranian war is in America's interest. I don't think it's at all factual to say that Iran was an imminent threat to the US Or Israel, which I think a lot of people have been claiming this idea that Iran's minutes away from getting a nuke. If Saddam had had nukes, he'd still be in power. You know, if you look at Pakistan, they harbored Osama bin Laden and that country's name never comes out of President Trump's mouth. So I think also it's easy to have. Not easy, sorry. It's important for people to have. And this is something. I hate this kind of one factor. It's all the trans people or it's Israel or it's Trump. You get rid of this, everything goes away. In my view, and I think this is basic kind of liberty analysis. If Israel vanished today, if every Jewish person vanished today, I don't think the American war machine would pause for one minute. I remember not that long ago there was a big concern in some conservative circles that there are too many black people who are getting food stamps, right? And then the response was, oh, you know, the majority of people on food stamps are white. And then the people were like, oh, well, what do you call per capita? And then, you know, black people actually became majority. And then everyone stopped talking about it. My contention is if every black person in America got off food stamps or if they all vanished, the food stamp budget would not increase by $1. There is always a rationalization for a budget. It is never based on reality. And it's the job of every bureaucrat or general or secretary of whatever to maintain and grow his budget. And we even saw this explicitly not that long ago. The Pentagon asked for however many trillion and Congress gave them even more than they had asked for. So the point of anyone running an organization is to maintain its strength and control. And as long as you have a military, especially kind of an interventionist military like we have, they are going to find excuses to stick their nose where they don't belong.

Francis (8:22)

So you think the Iran war is the military industrial complex basically finding another target to make more money?

Michael Malice (8:28)

To some extent. To some extent. Obviously this is something that Israel wants. And Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump have an extremely close relationship. I don't think the puppeteering thing is true because he's a 79 year old guy from New York whose daughter converted to Judaism. Like, this is the textbook demographic for being a Zionist. But at the same time, it's very hard for me to understand his logic because he hasn't laid out an end goal. Like, what does the win condition look like? My biggest fear with Iran, and I haven't heard people say this, and I think about it all the time, because this has happened a bit with Afghanistan, is Trump is very explicitly telling the people, rise up, take over your country. And my fear is that they're going to do that. And he's going to be like, all right, good luck, Deuces. And leave and they'll all be slaughtered. We saw what happened in Afghanistan where all those people who worked with us of the US for all those years, they were left to the Taliban. And there was a reporter, I saw an interview asking a member of the Taliban, can you guarantee those people won't be killed and tortured? He's basically sorry. So part of me even wonders if that was part of the deal that they were handed over as part of the America's escape from the Taliban. So that is my biggest concern at the moment. Not to mention the more obvious concerns, which is, you know, international cataclysm and escalation. I think it's very odd that Iran was bombing all these Muslim majority countries in their region who otherwise would have been at least putting the pressure on Israel and the US to some extent. The, you know, the conflict between Saudi and Iran is obviously nothing revelatory for me to point out. It's curious that Putin seems to be helping Iran in the background to some extent, but China's basically kept their mouth shut. And that's an interesting one.

Francis (10:16)

Well, I actually made the very same point, I think, on dire SEO before the conflict started, because Steven Bartlett was asking me, you know, are you excited about the possibly the Iranian people are protesting? I was like, well, the purpose of encouraging people to rise up is that you are going to back them to the hilt. So that then, you know, it's like in Ukraine, it's like, go, go, go, Ukraine. But then you don't actually provide the support. Why were you encouraging them? Yeah, you should have been honest with them and said, we're not actually going to help you properly. Right.

Michael Malice (10:45)

And you saw this else happen in Venezuela when Chavez was in power. They would have protests and the people, I think, just stand there, machine gun everybody. So there's thousands of people already dead in Iran and this is what I foresee happening. And I'm very, very worried about it.

Constantine (11:01)

The worry is also as well, when it comes to strategy, when you look at the actual logistics of what's happening on the ground in Iran and you think to yourself, you have the IRGC, which is effectively an army. They number around 200,000. Not only are they an army who are military trained, they're also fanatical. How are you going to deal with that? How are you going to deal with the secret police? How are you going to deal with the supporters of the regime? All of these things you're looking at and going, do you actually have a plan for how to not only get rid of that, but also Install something else in its place.

Michael Malice (11:36)

Right. And it seems like Pavlovi is someone who's been kind of making a lot of noise and Trump's very obviously uncomfortable with him.

Francis (11:43)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (11:43)

Kind of reinstating the style. So to your point, no one has articulated an endgame, but it wasn't at all clear that he was just going to. I was on Roseanne Barr's show, right? And Roseanne Barr is like, yeah, in two days we're going to be bombing Iran. I'm like, okay, crazy lady. And then two days later, we're bombing Iran. So maybe we should ask Roseanne Barr how this is going to end.

Constantine (12:05)

But it's going to be interesting as well to see what the effect of the Iran war is on the right. Because you have a lot of isolationists in America, particularly on the right, who did not want to be part of a war.

Michael Malice (12:18)

Correct. Can't blame them.

Constantine (12:19)

Yeah, but you can't blame them. You can fully understand it. And if this war goes south, and not only that, it then has a spike on oil prices, which happened already. Yeah, it's happening already. But it continues to grow. A spike on gas prices that in turn affects the cost of living, food, whatever else, there will be a lot of people on the right going, we voted for Trump. Cause he promised to keep us out of wars. Not only did he get us involved in an unnecessary war where bodies are being flown home on top of that, it's made my life worse. I didn't want any of this. This isn't what I voted for.

Michael Malice (12:53)

Do you know who this is really screwing over? Right, J.D. so J.D. vance is trying to walk like two tightropes simultaneously, which is literally impossible. Or maybe not literally, but I don't think any of us could even do one because he has to.

Constantine (13:08)

You haven't seen me, mate.

Michael Malice (13:09)

That's true. I said that's fair. Point taken. He is, you know, trying to be Trump Jr. You know, as kind of his heir to take over the nomination in 2028. And at the same time, he was clearly uncomfortable with this sort of thing. He was being very explicit, you know, about it in years past, as had Trump in himself. So I think it's going to be very hard for JD to figure out a lane because on one hand, he's close with Tucker. Tucker's son works for him. And Tucker's obviously extremely against this and quite understandably so. On the other hand, Trump is. This is the best thing ever. It's just done in a week. We just won. And he just gets so sick of winning. So I don't know how he navigates this in terms of getting the nomination, because what can easily happen is he's trying to do what Hillary tried to do in 2008, where she was regarded as the presumptive nominee. Don't bother running. She's gotten the bag. She's going to be the nominee. Let's worry about the general. If his numbers. If there's. The thing is there's plenty of people in the Republican Party who are sociopaths and narcissists. So it's going to be very easy for someone to run just for the sake of improving their platform. Getting speaking fees, getting book deals. They don't run for the intention to get the nomination. They just run to be like, okay, now everyone knows my name and I can parlay this in something bigger. This happened in British politics all the time. It's called the stalking horse. But if that stalking horse gets any sort of traction, then the gates will be wide open and there'll be room for somebody else to kind of come in and, and, you know, put their hat in the ring. So I don't think 2028 is a lock for JD as it looks two years out. Because if you looked at 2014 for the Republican Party, no one is even mentioning Trump. That was not even an option.

Francis (14:45)

Well, Vance is. Whether you agree with his politics or disagree, he's clearly very smart. And if you, if you understand public communication and have been watching what he's been saying every time President Trump has gone into Iran, 12 day war or now, it's very clever positioning for advance because he always says the president, I tr. You know, the president is the greatest president in the history of presidents. And I, you know, I trust the president. The president knows what he's doing, which kind of puts him in a position to later say, well, look, I voiced my opposition internally, but you know, I'm a team guy. But privately, you know, I, I was, I was not in favor of this. That I understand why you're shaking your head. Cuz that is a difficult line to.

Michael Malice (15:28)

No, that's not why I'm shaking my head. I'm shaking my head because I think what you're saying is impossible because President Trump in his second administration, the only thing he chose for was loyalty. Right? And he's. If I don't think there's anyone left, maybe Stephen Miller. I actually googled it. I said, who from the first administration is around the second administration? There are three people. Every other bridge has been burned. The guy From Alabama. I forget Jeff Sessions, you had. Bannon is gone. You had Bill or Bob Barry. Always get their names confused. Omarosa. They all turned on each other. Right. So he is very hypersensitive to people speaking out against him. And if JD Vance starts trying to do this thing, oh, I supported Trump, but I'm a different person. I don't think Trump, with his ego, is just gonna be like, say what? You throw me under the bus in order to get ahead. He's not gonna keep his mouth shut.

Constantine (16:18)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (16:18)

Can anyone imagine this area?

Francis (16:20)

So your point is? This isn't gonna work.

Michael Malice (16:22)

I don't. I don't know how. I think JD Vance is extremely smart.

Francis (16:26)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (16:27)

In all the ways that don't matter in politics. So Trump. I think JD Thinks Trump is in many ways a buffoon. And in many ways, he is from the perspective of Yale or Harvard, although he obviously went to an Ivy League himself. But when it comes to politics itself, Trump is extremely savvy. The fact that he took out, I think it was 14 Republican candidates, 2016, that he took out Hillary Clinton, who had the biggest juggernaut behind her in terms of culture of any candidate, certainly in my lifetime, maybe since fdr. That is no mean feat. The fact that your approval ratings were in the toilet after January 6th, you're regarded as a complete pariah during the midterms. Most of the candidates, or all of them that you endorsed, who were in kind of swing races, they all lost to recapture the nomination and to recapture the presidency. This is something that's historically unprecedented and is a testament to, in many ways, to his political acumen. He was the one who's like, let me go on the podcast circuit and put myself in front of that firing line for three hours at a time on Rogan. That was. And this guy's, again, no spring chicken. So I think JD Thinks like Elon did. I'm going to work with this guy. I'm going to use him to further my agenda. But Trump is really, really crafty with stuff like that, and I think he's going to be very sensitive to any of these machinations, and he's doing it very publicly. He's playing Vance against Rubio. There's all these articles about, like, oh, Trump doesn't know which one to choose. And a lot of that's leaks.

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Constantine (19:26)

The thing is with Trump as well is that he's a once in a generation political figure.

Michael Malice (19:32)

Yes.

Constantine (19:32)

In the same way as Blair was in that it's very rare for somebody to be able to unite a party.

Michael Malice (19:38)

Right.

Constantine (19:39)

And a political faction.

Michael Malice (19:40)

Yes.

Constantine (19:41)

That is incredibly rare because you're asking people to essentially put aside their differences and work together. That's hard.

Francis (19:47)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (19:48)

And also there's this argument online that like, who is maga? Who is a maga? MAGA is Trump. MAGA means that which Trump's like, it's not a ideological, you know, Aristotelian worldview. It's just basically a series of vague preferences, most of which I think are good ones. But it's not this kind of well thought out, coherent, you know, national review philosophy.

Francis (20:09)

And you see that with the support for the war because for all the

Michael Malice (20:13)

90% I saw in one poll, for

Francis (20:14)

all the chatter online, MAGA Republicans are just like, well, Trump said it's good, so it's good. I don't mean to satirize too much their position, but. But given the level of inconsistency between his stated policy positions before the election and what he's doing now, whether you like that or not, it's still quite remarkable to have that level of support.

Michael Malice (20:34)

And I can also steel man that case Because I think Trump, for many of these people is the first time in their lives they feel seen by a politician. They feel, this guy understands me, this guy speaks for me. You can say positive things about the Bushes if you like. It's very hard to make the case that George H.W. bush or George W. Bush is kind of this like, you're not going to see them at McDonald's, right? And Trump eats McDonald's ironically, but also not ironically. He actually likes it. And I think that speaks. And being a New Yorker, like a real New Yorker, I think that speaks to a certain level of character on this story.

Francis (21:09)

And what do you make of the idea that, you know, Venezuela, Iran, now a run to this is all part of a big 5D chess strategy. And, you know, the, the rabbit will be pulled out of the hat and the magic of this anti Russia, anti China thing will be revealed in all its glory down.

Michael Malice (21:31)

Well, I play 70 chess, if you follow me. Let's talk Venezuela because this is your bienvenido. Some I've been to Venezuela. I have enormous sympathy and appreciation for that country. It is, it's such a case study of how something which is just this jewel of South America and amazing people. If you ever meet any Venezuelans, God bless you. They're just with one exception. They're smart, highly educated, great people.

Francis (22:06)

It's a bridge.

Michael Malice (22:08)

And what was amazing about what happened with Maduro, when I woke, when I saw that photo of Maduro with the blindfolds and handcuffs, I thought it was AI because I'm like, wait, this is really it. But we basically teleported in. They used United States, teleported in, grabbed the leader, teleported out. It's like, okay, bye. And the Democrats were like, what do we do? Like, you can't say, oh, you went in there and killed everybody. You can't say it's in chaos because it was in chaos before the regimes. I don't even understand really the point now. There's several conspiracy theories, and I don't use the term derisively, one of which is they told Maduro, do you want to go get arrested and go on a nice vacation or do you want to get shot? And he's like, vacation, please. The deeper argument is that he's going to reveal something about the voting machines in 2020 because Venezuela is somehow involved. The third situation is, okay, we got your guy. So the number two person is now going to have to play ball. I but I was discussing, you know, in Rogan couple of weeks ago, we just kind of stopped talking about it. And this is something that's never happened before. We just go in and snatch a leader and vanish. And, I mean, of course, my hopes are for the Venezuelan people, but I don't know where this is going, and nowhere anyone else knows where it's going.

Constantine (23:21)

Well, I don't think most people know where this is going. Venezuelan people are very hopeful, but that comes more from a sense of desperation than anything else. That's right, because we've been under a totalitarian leadership for 26 years. I think what they want to do is effectively Venezuela is a de facto colony of the United States now. So we're gonna see the oil companies come back, we're gonna see the oil infrastructure be repaired. Oil's going to start pumping, and what we're going to have is a leadership which is gonna hold Venezuela, make sure it doesn't crumble, but also going to be answerable to the gringos. And I think if you ask a lot of Venezuelans after not only Chavez, Maduro, but then Chavez, of course, but also our own disastrous flirtations with democracy, which have been simply haven't worked, let's be honest about it, they almost prefer that option.

Michael Malice (24:12)

Oh, yeah, you can't blame them. But here's the other one. Cuba. Like, as we speak, Cuba's about to run out of water. There's this enormous blockade. Marco Rubio is, you know, can I say this on a nightly basis, rubbing one out to the idea of a free Cuba. You can't blame him.

Constantine (24:27)

No.

Michael Malice (24:28)

Cubans are amazing based people. Cuba was like the Las Vegas of the Caribbean in the 1950s until, you know, it all went to hell. And I think a transition from Cuba to a free country would not be that difficult. And I think the people are hungry for it. And their standard of living is so low and horrific and needless. Obviously dysfunction the government. I mean, they're very entrepreneurial. They very quickly re establish themselves as the crown jewel of the Caribbean that they were. But who knows where that's going to go also.

Francis (24:57)

But come back, Come back with me to this 4D chess, which is. Some people have argued that the reason the Trump administration is doing this is part Monroe Doctrine, which is don't fuck around in our backyard. China, Russia, which they were in Venezuela. Right, sure. And then the Iran thing is about. Look, I think you're based on my understanding, I mean, obviously don't have access to the secret information, but, you know, we talk to a lot of people about it. Iran didn't have a functioning nuclear weapon or A program, but they were enriching uranium to levels which are not remotely necessary for civilian use. And, you know, there's some debate about. Because I don't think we in the west really are capable of processing intellectually, because it's not an intellectual thing. Are they these jihadi extremists who are waiting for the end of the world, for the. For their messiah to come back, which they will happily bring about using nuclear weapons, or are they more interested in having the threat of nuclear weapons so that they can dominate the region, which is a much more rational, logical thing,

Michael Malice (26:00)

or the third one, which is if they have nuclear weapons, they know they're not going to be attacked, like Pakistan.

Francis (26:04)

Right?

Constantine (26:05)

Yeah.

Francis (26:05)

Right, yeah. So those options are on the table. And the Trump administration is like, well, you can't have nuclear weapons. We can't have more nuclear proliferation, not least because. And I'm sure North Korea, which we're going to come to eventually, is different. Right. North Korea doesn't have proxies all over the place, is not attacking other countries, it's not shooting missiles into South Korea every three days, etc. Right. And so the 4D chess explanation is, well, Trump is basically trying to rearrange the world to the benefit of the United States, and that is why he's doing this.

Michael Malice (26:39)

I don't. I would disagree slightly. I don't know that he is doing it to the benefit of the United States. I think Trump knows he's got four years, and I think Trump's like, I've got a big stick and I'm gonna use it and I'm gonna do what I can in the White House in the time I've left to kind of make the world, in his perspective, the sort of Pax Americana.

Francis (27:00)

Well, that's what I'm saying. This is literally what I mean. Right. He's using the time he has and the I don't have to give a shit anymore attitude that he has to try and remake the world in the best interest of. In what he perceives America's best interest, to be sure.

Michael Malice (27:15)

Yes. And I think that's also one of the reasons why North Korea was basically his first issue in the first term, because it's kind of the lowest hanging fruit in terms of. It's going to take, theoretically, not that much effort. You could have maximum increase of freedom. So that does seem to be the case that, you know, he. The extreme. The fact that we are sitting here having a conversation about the US Getting Greenland, I think at a certain point, it's Very difficult to have a mental model for what is going through his head.

Francis (27:48)

Sure. But I think the explanation I gave seems to me to be the most logical. But the problem is with that, and I think it's the one you identified as earlier, is I have no idea how that is compatible with regime change in Iran. If he just went in and destroyed more nuclear facilities, I believe that makes perfect sense. If he went in and destroyed the drone factories which Iran uses to produce drones to send to Russia to use in Ukraine, makes sense. If he bombs Iran so they can't supply oil to China anymore, makes sense to me. But regime change like that, I mean, like the idea, like, you're going to kill the Ayatollah and the sun is going to be more moderate after that, where you kill the sun. Okay. Like, are you just going to keep going?

Michael Malice (28:32)

This is what doesn't make sense to me. Because, you know, and people who are anarchists like myself advocate for, like, political violence. It's like, you know, if you kill a senator, there's going to be another senator. It's not like you kill the office. Oh, now we're down to 99 senators. All right, lock and load. So if you kill the Ayatollah, it's now, like, all right, it's not chess. It's not 2D chess where you take the king. It's like, I win. Checkmate. The other point is, if he's saying they want complete unconditional surrender, how are you gonna have anyone surrender if you keep killing the leaders? Who is gonna be the one who's doing the surrendering? I think. I think it's hard. First of all, I don't doubt that someone in the White House sat him down and had some sort of plan, if not him, they gamed this out, but I don't. I feel like the underpants gnomes from south park, you know, step one, you steal the underpants. Step two, step three, profit. And it's like, what's step two? Right. So I don't know what their win, like I said earlier, what their win condition is going to look like. I think it's going to be almost impossible to. If you start killing and bombing. This isn't Japan. This idea of unconditional surrender. The thing that happens with these countries, as Gaddafi found out, is when they let down their guard, the people at top are personally murdered. And if you had a free Iran or Persia or whatever, I don't think all these people at the top are just going to go to Club Med, if that still exists. They're going to face prison sentences. So there's every incentive for them to dig their heels in. Obviously, the Saudis are a big problem for them as well. And many other Arab countries in the area are not particularly happy with Iran. So I don't see how this, as we said earlier, every day it seems like he's ready to be like, all right, mission. He said, I think mission accomplished, which was that infamous banner that George W. Bush stood in front of, you know, during his administration. I mean, it's very plausible. He's just gonna be like, all right, just, we bombed them, now we're gonna go home. It's like, okay, what did that accomplish?

Constantine (30:33)

Absolutely. And then you factor in the ideolog, the ideology, which is a radical version of Islamism.

Michael Malice (30:39)

Sure.

Constantine (30:40)

So you go, how are you going to de. Radicalize a huge swathe of the population? Because all if you kill them, then surely you're going to radicalize their family, their friends, other members of the population.

Michael Malice (30:53)

Right. If you, if someone, God forbid, came to the US and took a foreign entity and took out the president, Americans would rally very heavily behind whoever the vice president was. We saw this in After 9, 11, I think George W. Bush had 98 or 91% approval rating. Everyone's like, right. You know, the kind of rally behind the flag. So the same thing certainly is happening with Iran where if the in surround the buildings were shaking, it sounded like the doors of hell had been open. I saw someone, a citizen there, you know, gave that quote. You're not going to be like, I'm in favor of the guys who are bombing us through oblivion.

Constantine (31:28)

And it's also, you look at, they were talking about arming the Kurds, right? So then you, My mind went back to Iraq when essentially Iraq collapsed. And you, you look at Iran and you go, well, this could be a civil war, couldn't it? Because the Kurds want their own nation. That has been clear for a long time.

Francis (31:45)

Right.

Constantine (31:46)

They, and if you arm them, they are going to want to take it by force, and that's further going to destabilize the country, which is on the brink as we speak.

Michael Malice (31:53)

And America also has a history of arming people and then trying to fight them. It's just really this guy. We laugh, but it's just like, you know, we're shaking hands with the Taliban one day, the next day we're invading Afghanistan. So it's arming again, arming the Kurds. Like we're, we are. There's this fear in the States right now that Iran is activating all these sleeper cells. Supposedly that's what we're doing there. Like if we're arming the Kurds and saying rise up, that's we're calling out our sleeper cells.

Francis (32:20)

And are you worried about that, Michael? Because I've seen some news stories. I mean, the idea that Iran is going to shoot drones and California, I mean, obviously.

Michael Malice (32:28)

Let's hope so. My God. I mean, someone could just save us.

Constantine (32:33)

I mean, imagine if they.

Michael Malice (32:35)

How would, you know? They might set the whole, the whole city on fire. It'd be terrible.

Francis (32:40)

Yeah, but it just seems implausible to me. Right. It seems like a bunch of bullshit. But, you know, individual people doing crazy shit and killing people doesn't seem that difficult at all in a country with millions of guns and whatever. Right. Are you. Do you think there's a real worry now in America that that could happen?

Michael Malice (32:59)

I'm going to give an answer that sounds like a joke, but it's not. We're at the point now where there's so many daily mass shootings that the only difference would be that they speak Farsi instead of, you know, being trans.

Francis (33:13)

Right.

Michael Malice (33:14)

So I don't think that that's a big concern. I think if they were going to be smart, they would all have it all done on one day, like a day of terror that would really shake America and that would really move the needle in one direction or another. I don't think a move. Needle in a direction that they would want.

Francis (33:30)

Right.

Michael Malice (33:31)

But so I don't.

Francis (33:32)

If that happens, you would get. Well, we were talking about this last night, actually because obviously there's a very strong anti war sentiment and there will be lots of people who say Trump did this.

Michael Malice (33:41)

Yeah. Correctly.

Francis (33:42)

But, but I think there will also be lots of people who say America has been attacked.

Michael Malice (33:46)

Right. So it's. But that's a dangerous card to play on their part. And I also think then you're going to have some, A lot of solidarity from Europe who's had to deal with this sort of terrorism. And a lot of them are going to, you know, maybe their spines will get a little stiff and maybe not circuit, but maybe Germany or certainly France.

Francis (34:02)

Well, we obviously hope that doesn't happen.

Constantine (34:05)

Do you think part of the problem is that we in the west simply don't understand other mindsets, but particularly other ideologies?

Michael Malice (34:12)

Oh, yeah. I mean, my God, it is. Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question because one of the things I've been focusing on recently, one of the things I'm Trying to defeat is this idea of universalism, and we're taught this in school since we're very young, that everyone is basically the same under our skin. Now, in certain contexts, it's absolutely true. Everyone feels pain, everyone loves their family. You know, everyone mourns when someone passes away. But in this, I think all of us are in the same kind of tier in terms of intellect, meaning I don't think there's anything I believe that I would not be able to explain to the two of you or vice versa. Maybe there'd be some follow up questions, but be able to understand each other. I also think if the three of us sat with a nuclear physicist and he tried to understand, explain nuclear physics to us, it'd be just gibberish. At a certain point, be like, okay, I could, maybe I can follow these analogies, but I'm really not understanding it in the same way you're understanding it. But that also applies to people who are dumber. So if you look at sitcoms, people think dumber. People just have fewer facts or they're slower to understand things. That's not the case. Unintelligent people think process data in ways that are completely different from other people. And this is something that's very deleterious to democracy and you see it all. One of the great things about social media is a people who, in times past, great examples. Lawrence Tribe, who's like a dean at Harvard Law, in times past, they would be on a pedestal. This guy's at Harvard Law. He must be amazing. You look at his feed and this old lesbian is tweeting like your grandma on Facebook. It's an embarrassment. The same time when unintelligent people express themselves, you realize, holy crap, this person's Cathy Newman. And if you sit down and explain to them, they still don't pick up what you're saying. And they just regard nouns and verbs as basically a soup and connect things in ways that are complete gibberish to other people. So one of the other things that happens is people cannot understand things outside their framework. So everyone is. Farage is the Trump of England, and in the Philippines, he's the Trump of the Philippines and the Trump of Brazil. Bolsonaro. And this one's, maybe they're roughly analogous in that they're like a populist loudmouth. But these are not all the same phenomenon. And if you ask any American about some other country, they would say, who are the Republicans and who are the Democrats? Well, it doesn't always parse out that way. In fact, In America, Jeb and Trump are not the same phenomenon. They're both, you know, Republicans. And Bernie Sanders, all those independent or let's say AOC and Hillary Clinton. They're also not the same phenomenon. The wealth Democrats. So human beings, broadly speaking, not only have no empathy, which is an ability to see things from other points of view, they're violently opposed to it. I always say that people don't run a true false filter, they run an us them filter. You see it every time on social media. If you say something, oh, you sound like a Democrat and the implication is, therefore you're wrong, it's deranged. But that is how unintelligent people process information.

Constantine (37:07)

And it's such a good point. And then you put in an ideology as extreme as Islamism, and we in the west simply can't get our heads around it because we value life.

Michael Malice (37:17)

What is that? I hate that word. What do you mean by extreme?

Francis (37:22)

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Constantine (38:25)

What do I mean by extreme? A version of Islam that wants to establish a global Islamic caliphate that doesn't want there to be sovereign nations and it will kill, maim and destroy as many people countries in order to achieve its aims.

Michael Malice (38:40)

But if you think you're here serving Allah and you think that that's the correct course of affairs, wouldn't that be the correct thing to do?

Francis (38:50)

Within that framework? Yes. But the rest of us can look at that and say if you want to kill millions of people in the Name of ally. You're extreme. Right.

Michael Malice (38:57)

But I, I would just say you're principled.

Francis (39:01)

Sure. But those two things don't have to go against each other. You can be principled and extreme because the principles you adhere to are extreme. But I don't lead to extreme consequences.

Michael Malice (39:10)

Sure, but I don't. There's this negative connotation to the word extreme that I'm not comfortable with.

Francis (39:17)

Well, the extremism. I mean, Gandhi was also very principled, but I, and, and in some ways quite extreme too. But I guess the violent nature of what Islamists do in reality seems quite extreme to those of us who are not part of that framework.

Michael Malice (39:33)

But I think your. What happens is when you have that mindset, you end up with Rotterdam and you end up with where the UK is right now, which mindset, this fear of extremism and this idea that we're going to vote ourselves free.

Francis (39:48)

I don't follow how those two things are connected. Sure.

Michael Malice (39:50)

Because if you have this, if you have this idea that violence in the service of your ideology is something that's really kind of off the table and something only people who are really out there would do when violence might otherwise be necessary. It's not regarded as part of, of the, of the offering window.

Francis (40:09)

Well, the violence is. I mean, violence is the state. Right. This, the state, which I know you're not a fan of, but the state is controlled, organized and legislated violence. And I think the counter argument, well, otherwise you get Rotherham is. I don't. I wouldn't advocate for the response to Rotherham being a mirror image of what Islamists are doing. I would say that's where the state has to do its job.

Michael Malice (40:34)

Well, that's where you and I differ. I think that's exactly the crux of the point.

Francis (40:37)

Right. And my argument would be there's, we have a police force for a reason and we have laws for a reason.

Michael Malice (40:41)

The police force is there to protect the perpetrators around him.

Francis (40:45)

Well, they were in, in that instance, but they don't have to be.

Michael Malice (40:49)

I don't know what that means.

Francis (40:50)

If they just. Well, because their job, as officially stated, is to enforce the law. What these people did was against the

Michael Malice (40:56)

law, but as officially stated is a nonsense term. It doesn't mean anything. It's like if I tell you I've got a car and it flies officially, and it doesn't fly, who cares?

Francis (41:04)

No, I hear you. But the police do do their job in most instances of enforcing the law.

Michael Malice (41:09)

Right. So let's worry about the times when they Don't.

Francis (41:11)

Yeah, yeah. And what. And, but, but that wasn't a police issue. What that was is. Hold on, Michael. What. What that was is a failure to enforce the law because they were prioritizing other concerns.

Michael Malice (41:23)

Right.

Francis (41:23)

Which they were effectively encouraged to do by the society in which they lived, which is you place social cohesion.

Michael Malice (41:30)

They weren't by their overlords to do what they did. They did this unilaterally.

Francis (41:36)

From the evidence that we've seen, a lot of it was quite low level sensitivity about social cohesion. Right, Right. So a person at a fairly low level was worried about investigating something because it would mean that they'd be called racist. Right, right. It wasn't necessary. It wasn't. As far as we know, the people at the top going, don't investigate this.

Michael Malice (41:59)

I don't think that's statistically possible. There's just these few outliers because it was so pervasive.

Francis (42:04)

I didn't say there were outlier think. On the contrary, it was a pervasive culture. Right. But what I'm saying is I'm not certain. In fact, I'm quite confident based on what we've, we've talked to lots of people about this who know. Right. That this was not a top down. This is what you're supposed to do. I'm not supposed to do. It was actually something that happened because there was a pervasive culture at the lower levels of social workers, of police officers and others who just thought a. The sensitivity is about what would it mean for community cohesion and all this other bullshit. And also, you know, we had Maggie Oliver, who was a police whistleblower who blew the whistle on this stuff, who just said because of the social background, that a lot of the victims there was just like, oh, they don't matter. Right. Which. Which also unfortunately does happen. Sure. I don't think, my point is, I don't think it's necessarily the dynamic you're presenting, which is either you tolerate this or you engage in extremism or the use of violence in an unorganized way on your own side.

Michael Malice (43:06)

Well, it could be organized. It's not the unorganized. But my point is that's what I mean.

Francis (43:08)

That's what the state is for,

Michael Malice (43:11)

ostensibly. But in this case, the state is not for that. None of these people who are accomplices, state agents or accomplices in these atrocities had any consequences as far as I know. Certainly not the kind of consequence I would like to see them have happened. And what any organization, if it faces no pushback. It will continue in perpetuity to try to maintain and increase its power. So until there are. And one of the great things that Trump did when he came into office is people faced consequences for the first time for the crap that they tried to pull. So unless they. Until and unless there are none. Of all of the governors in New York, in America, during COVID who sent in diseased people into nursing homes killing elderly people, they all got reelected. They had no consequences for the murders that they. They committed. Keir Starmer was a barrister defending some of these people, if I'm not mistaken. So until and unless. Or he had some involvement legally with.

Francis (44:07)

He was a director of Public Prosecution. Yeah. But, you know, as you can imagine, I'm not a big fan of Keir Starmer. He wasn't personally defending these people and. Or doing it out of choice. You know, criminals are entitled to legal representation.

Michael Malice (44:21)

Sure. But he also made it a point in early 2025 to try to put a kibosh.

Francis (44:27)

Yes, yeah. And it's despicable. And they will, if they. If they fail electorally, and if. Unless we get a red green alliance at the next election, they will be punished for it.

Constantine (44:37)

Yeah.

Francis (44:38)

I don't think we'll go to prison, though. But, you know, that's not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a totally fair point, but we started this. Everything you're saying is perfectly legitimate. But we started this with your quibble over France's use of the term extremism.

Michael Malice (44:52)

Right.

Francis (44:52)

And I think the point he's trying to make is, I mean, in America, this is easier for you guys to relate to because you have some of your own religious people who are kind of on that end of things.

Michael Malice (45:01)

But not because we have our guns.

Francis (45:03)

Yeah, true. But I think for the Western mind, broadly speaking, it has become quite difficult to relate empathetically, as you were talking about earlier, to people who are willing to blow themselves up among a bunch of innocent girls at an Ariana Grande Grande concert.

Michael Malice (45:22)

Can we talk about that for a second? That concert?

Constantine (45:24)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (45:24)

Because that was one of the greatest moments in my opinion of British history. Do you know what Queen Elizabeth did after the concert? Did we talk about this?

Constantine (45:32)

No.

Michael Malice (45:32)

This is going to sound like a troll and I want everyone who's watching this to assume I'm lying and look up the footage for themselves. After that Ariana Grande concert, when people were blown to smithereens and many others were injured, Queen Elizabeth, God rest her soul, went to the hospital and visited many of the victims and they Were very honored to see Queen Elizabeth. She had a beautiful hat on. And as she went from bed to bed, she's like, oh, so did you enjoy the. Did you enjoy the concert? Well, you know, other than seeing my friend's head blown off, you know, that encore was really something. Your majesty. So it was really a crazy moment in British history.

Francis (46:05)

So just come back to the.

Michael Malice (46:06)

No reaction.

Francis (46:07)

Okay, well, sorry. I'm like, I want to get to the end of the argument. So the point being that we struggle to understand the mindset of somebody who's willing to do that because we and are. We would never do that.

Michael Malice (46:24)

Maybe. Okay, I can explain that. Okay, here we go.

Francis (46:26)

Unless you. Unless you would.

Michael Malice (46:27)

I can understand it very easily, and I can explain it to you very easily. And I cover this in my book, the White Pill and the Anarchist handbook. In the 1800s, when Nobel invented dynamite, this was the first time for people who believed in workers revolution that they felt that they had a sense of equality. And there was an essay in Emma Goldman's magazine, Mother Earth, talking about how the ruling class has navies, armies, police, military. The workers have dynamite. And the point being they. The ruling class can come at us with everything they have. Now we can blow them to smithereens. And there was someone named Johan Most, who, from Germany, moved to the States. He published a pamphlet which basically taught people how to make bombs. And this was a big kind of crucial moment in terms of free speech. Are you going to allow this pamphlet to become publicized? In the late 1800s, there was a meeting in the Haymarket Square in Chicago. Someone we still don't know to this day, threw a bomb. Several people, anarchists, were put on trial, some of whom weren't even there. And one of the defendants, Louis Ling, who was on the COVID of the Anarchist Handbook, his lawyer said, not in so many words, my client couldn't have thrown the bomb because he was at home making bombs. So several of them hanged, they were posthumously pardoned. There's a memorial to them in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago. Point being, when people, especially young men, feel a sense of desperation, when they feel that they have no hope of achieving anything, that there's no upward mobility for them and they have an opportunity to make their name, and same reason people join the military. A lot of people join the military for positive reasons, thinking, okay, I'm gonna fight for my country, I'm gonna do what's right, and it might cost me something, but at least I'll go out heroically instead of pushing pencils behind some Desk. So the idea is, look, yeah, I might martyr myself, but I'm doing it in the hope that of pursuing the goal of something greater than myself in terms of my principles.

Francis (48:40)

But what about killing civilians?

Michael Malice (48:43)

Same thing happens in the military.

Francis (48:44)

Right.

Michael Malice (48:44)

You bomb people, you're going to be bombing civilians.

Francis (48:46)

Not deliberately, sure.

Michael Malice (48:47)

But in this, I think their argument is you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. And it's easier in their argument. This is not me. Their argument is if it's easier to kill a few civilians and get someone to bend the knee than to have full blown war.

Francis (49:04)

Which they would lose.

Michael Malice (49:06)

Which they would lose.

Constantine (49:06)

Right, yeah.

Michael Malice (49:07)

And it worked in Spain during the Iraq war. Spain was part of the Iraq war. They bombed, I think, a train station or something. There was an election, the leftists came in and Spain pulled their troops right out. So it worked in that regard.

Constantine (49:20)

But it's also the way the Islamists target, for instance, the Ariana Grande concert where it's little girls.

Michael Malice (49:27)

Sure.

Constantine (49:28)

And we've seen with the bombing of the school in Iran, the girls school that has become a national scandal in the way that it simply wouldn't in an Islamist country.

Michael Malice (49:39)

Sure. I obviously think there is few things more important than killing children, especially deliberately. I mean, this is as bad as it gets. But I'm just trying to explain kind of their thought process.

Francis (49:53)

But that's not what we're arguing. As you discussed earlier, the three of us are capable of having an intellectual disagreement and a conversation which we still understand each other. Francis, point, I think is that as a general, as a society, the average person in our society struggles to understand the mindset of an Islamist because you could not get a bunch of Americans to strap bombs to themselves and go and blow up a children's concert.

Michael Malice (50:19)

Sure. But I think. Right. But I think the point also is this is a. Their argument is it's a way to break down a country because at a certain point, if enough people's kids are killed, you just give up and you're like, you know what? Fine. Well, we're put on the hijab. It's a lot easier that way. I think most people would rather go where they feel safe and where the power is than any kind of, you know, ideology, one way or another.

Constantine (50:42)

Yeah, it's a good point. And I think one of the things that we come to now is talking about, you know, authoritarianism.

Francis (50:48)

Sure.

Constantine (50:48)

And I.

Michael Malice (50:49)

There's the segue.

Constantine (50:50)

That is a segue. And when we're going to talk about career. But it's also, I don't think Americans really understand what it's like to live under a totalitarian regime. Oh yeah, and we see this all the time. Like, I walk past buildings in Austin and I see things like, this is a fascist state, you know, fascist police, you know, authoritarian regime. And you just think to yourself, you literally do not understand the meaning of the word. Or maybe I don't. I don't know anymore.

Michael Malice (51:19)

I can't speak for whether you.

Francis (51:20)

That was very postmodern at the end.

Michael Malice (51:21)

There.

Francis (51:23)

Maybe there is no truth, but here's my truth.

Michael Malice (51:26)

The very premise of my book, the White Pill. It starts with Ayn Rand testifying in front of the House American Activities Committee post World War II. And she's talking to a congressman. She was the only witness who had lived under what became the Soviet Union. And he's like, the way you talk about Soviet Russia, he's like, don't people have picnics and visit their mothers in law? And she goes, it is almost impossible to convey to a free people what it's like to live under a totalitarian dictatorship. I can give you a lot of details. Sure, they visit their mothers in law, they have picnics. But you understand it's impossible for you to wrap your head around it. And in a way, it's good that you can't even conceive what it's like. Try to imagine what it's like to live in constant terror from morning till night. And at night you're waiting for the door, for the doorbell to bring or someone to knock at your door. To live in a country when human life means nothing, less than nothing, and you know it. You cannot wrap their heads around it. Because one of the things in a even largely free country is you can get away from the politics. Like people complain that there's too much woke in movies or music. There are infinite choices if you want to read a non woke book, even anti woke book, anti non woke music, every form of media you like. But when you are in a totalitarian country, total it is everywhere. And the other thing that Americans cannot wrap their heads around, although they saw it during COVID the first creep, is what it's like having to wonder what happens if Francis betrays me or Constantine betrays me. Am I safe telling him this, this, this? Until I was like in my 30s and I don't know how this got in my head because my parents never sat me down whenever I said something to someone, I ran a scan to be like, all right, if this person turns on me, is it safe for them to know this later. I stopped doing that and it kind of backfired on me. But that's fine. Point being, it's a mindset. That. And also knowing that everything in public life is dishonest. You had this system of public lies, private truths. You go outside, you put on your pin, you smile and nodded, and when you're behind closed doors, you know, you kind of whisper. But the expression North Korea is, you know, the walls have ears kind of thing. So it's. We cannot wrap our heads around it.

Francis (53:43)

Well, we're starting to, in a way, because.

Michael Malice (53:45)

Yeah, well.

Francis (53:47)

Well, not just that, but I think also what's happened is increasing. I mean, you see it with the Epstein files, right. Because there's obviously terrible wrongdoing within that. But then there's like, a guy who sent an email that had nothing to do. But, like, every single email you ever sent can now be used against you if something then later turns out. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Michael Malice (54:06)

Yeah, but hold on. You're r. Also, you know, not to put in writing. Come on this. I don't tell you this. Am I wrong?

Francis (54:11)

I'm just saying if someone, the average person, if someone was to hack their phone.

Michael Malice (54:17)

Yeah.

Francis (54:17)

They would not have a job on

Michael Malice (54:18)

Monday, I don't know.

Francis (54:21)

Hack their phone and publish it on the Internet. The jokes you make with your friends, the stuff you say in confidence to your wife, like, all of this stuff.

Michael Malice (54:27)

Maybe I'm being pedantic. I don't think the average person is very controversial, so I don't know that's true. But there are certain things that they would be embarrassed about. So, you know. Certainly.

Francis (54:35)

Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying.

Allie Jackson (54:37)

Sure.

Michael Malice (54:38)

I don't know if they'd be fired. I don't think everyone's dropping n bombs privately. Maybe it's different for yourself.

Francis (54:44)

Your employees join our WhatsApp group.

Constantine (54:47)

But one of the things when we talk about authoritarian regimes, which I find very interesting, and I'm really interested to hear your opinion on this, is we can't understand them, particularly dictators, so we frame them as crazy.

Michael Malice (55:00)

Oh, God. Yes. So, right. So the prem. Right. The reason I wrote my book, Dear Reader, was because it was driving. I'm sorry I didn't cut you off.

Constantine (55:06)

No, no, no, no, no.

Michael Malice (55:07)

It was driving me crazy.

Francis (55:08)

He's written a lot of books.

Michael Malice (55:09)

Yes, yes.

Francis (55:11)

He's a writer.

Michael Malice (55:14)

It drove me crazy how people regarded North Korea as this sort of carnival. And I was like, they've outlasted everybody else, except for Cuba, there's a reason they're still there. This isn't an accident, given the pressures that they're facing. And the story in Dear Reader is a step by step description from Kim Jong Il's perspective of how North Korea went from a Japanese colony Pre World War II to this totalitarian dictatorship that they are today. This didn't happen overnight, and this didn't happen by accident. It was like a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, as more and more elements of freedom were taken away from the North Korean people. And here we are now.

Constantine (55:56)

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Francis (56:25)

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Francis (57:24)

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Constantine (57:46)

That's shopify.co.uk/trigger.

Francis (57:52)

Can you tell us the story of North Korea? Like assuming that people listening by the way, including myself, literally no fuck all about North Korea and its history. Can you just give us first before we delve into the details, the big picture of it. How did North Korea even came to come to exist, and what was the process?

Michael Malice (58:09)

So do you want it to. Their perspective of the truth?

Francis (58:12)

Aha. Well, why don't you give us the truth first?

Michael Malice (58:15)

Okay.

Francis (58:15)

And then we'll. And I think telling their perspective will then be actually very informative.

Constantine (58:19)

That's very offensive. Their truth.

Francis (58:21)

Yeah, Tell us their truth.

Michael Malice (58:23)

All right. The indigenous truth, the Western truth, which is not really very controversial or in dispute, is Korea was a nation for, you know, many centuries. Japan conquered it and colonized it. The Japanese tried to exterminate Koreanness in the sense that they were trying to diminish, use the language, encouraging Korean people to take Japanese names. The propaganda is like, Japan's the big brother, Korea's the little brother. And I don't need to tell British people, when you're the colony, it's not always so great for you. I mean, yes, they build railroads and infrastructure, but at the same time, it's. It's heavily exploitative. Come world. And the. Here's the thing, the Japanese, it's kind of fascinating that people understand the depravity of the Nazi regime, but we don't really talk about how bad the Japanese were before World War II.

Francis (59:15)

We've talked about that on the show. It's crazy, man. They were.

Michael Malice (59:19)

They experimented on people. They called them logs. You know, the. What was done to women and sex slaves. Yeah. This is just.

Francis (59:27)

And they were really. The horror of the Nazi war, not extermination effort, was. It was very German. It was all. It's organized and. Whereas these guys just basically stabbed millions of people to death with bayonets and shovels.

Michael Malice (59:42)

Yeah, it was really. And it's funny because when you go to North Korea, which I can't right now because it's no longer legal. But they hate the Americans. But they hate the Japanese. Like, they think the Americans are their enemy American government. And, you know, they think every American is a spy. But the level of hatred for the Japanese is just. Just. It's something almost supernatural. And understandably so.

Francis (60:05)

The outbreak of World War II there. They're a Japanese colony.

Michael Malice (60:08)

Yeah, I got you. Yeah, yeah.

Francis (60:09)

So just trying to help you.

Michael Malice (60:11)

I know how to leave a narrative. After the defeat of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were basically trying to divide up, you know, Germany and Japan, specialties, former colonies. So we got the Philippines. I forget who they get. And then it's like, what are we gonna do with Korea? So basically, they sat down and Drew a line just north of Seoul because we wanted Seoul. And the premise was, Soviet Union is gonna demilitarize the north half, the US Is gonna demilitarize the south half, and we'll worry about what's gonna happen later after that.

Francis (60:43)

Can I have a guess? They militarized both halves and then had a war.

Michael Malice (60:47)

Well, it didn't have to end that way, but point being, the Korean. North Koreans still to this day are very salty because they're like, we weren't antagonists in the war. The only two countries that got split was Germany and us. We didn't have anything to do with it. We were the property of Japan. Like, why are you splitting us in half? So Stalin installs the Great leader Kim Il Sung in the North. We install the Americans. Excuse me, install our own strongman, Syngman Rhee, in the South. Both of them eventually declare themselves the legitimate government. The great leader Kim Il Sung launches the Korean War. It goes back and forth over a few years. The US Joins with the south, with the forces of the UN Because Russia and some others boycotting it. So we got that resolution through Stalin and Mao. Give back up to the North Koreans. And in many ways. Not in many ways, in every way, the Korean people pay the price because you have these two rocks coming, and they're in the middle, and it was bombed to oblivion. The only things left were chimneys. You could just see these landscapes. It was just complete desolation. At one point, I think the North Koreans, like 90% or 95% of the peninsula, they almost won, and it went to a stalemate, and they're still technically at war. I know one of the things President Trump was hoping for is to have this kind of armistice signed into an official treaty. And in North Korea, they use lowercase n and lowercase s for north and south because they say Korea is one. That's their big slogan. And the south is not a different country. It's a region under American occupation. Now they had this big monument of these two women holding the Korea over a highway and symbolizing Korean reunification. They recently destroyed that monument. So their hope, which of decades that the Korean people would one day be reunified has now kind of fallen away. If you want to cry, I would encourage everyone watching this to go on YouTube and watch Korean reunification videos, because these are families who were separated for decades because you can't communicate with foreigners in the north, seeing each other. And they're allowed one day, and then they have to separate again. Never to talk to. You're not going to watch this and not cry because it's just the most heartbreaking thing imaginable. So that's the fact, the history, the North Korean argument, history is this. Korea was the first country on earth. Korean was the first language spoken on earth. Korea was and remains the only genetically pure people on earth. So every other country intermarried or were invaded, whatever. Koreans are the only pure country. I'm going to use a slur, excuse me. They always, when in their language or in their literature, they always say wicked Jap devils or American imperialists. They never say Japanese. It's always used derogatorily. So the wicked Jap devils come in, conquer Korea, you know, devastated. The people want to rise up. They don't know how to do so until. Because the masses need a leader. So the great leader Kim Il Sung emerges at a very young age, rallies the people. They're trying to get him and his guerrilla forces. There's something called the arduous march where they're fighting their way through snow and all these situations. Finally, pretty much single handedly, the great leader Kim Il Sung drives the Japanese. The wicked Jap devils from Korea reclaims it according to their literature. And there's a book with this title, the US Imperialist Started the Korean War. That's literally the title, one of their books, We Invade Them. The great leader Kim Il Sung had a so called strategic retreat during the Korean War and eventually he kicked us out of the north and now they're still occupying their brethren in the South. So that's kind of their version of how the two Koreas came about.

Constantine (64:43)

Now that is fascinating. And can I say.

Michael Malice (64:46)

Well, there's one more. It's been said that when refugees learn that the great leader Kim Il Sung started the Korean War, it would be akin to one of us learning that we bombed the Japanese at Pearl harbor because it is the entire basis of their history. So when you learn it's the opposite, like your brain doesn't even know what to do.

Constantine (65:05)

And look, you come from originally from communist countries, both of you. I have mum from a communist country. There's different flavors of communism. You've got the og we've got the IAI flavor.

Michael Malice (65:21)

That's racist.

Constantine (65:22)

I know, but it's enjoyable, so no one cares.

Michael Malice (65:24)

There's those N bombs again.

Constantine (65:27)

What type of communism are they practicing in North Korea? Is it very similar to the Soviet style or is it their own thing?

Michael Malice (65:34)

So I will this. I'm. I don't know how to say this without sound like I'm making a joke, but they no longer identify as communist. So according to North Korea, there's something called the juchi idea, which is Kim Il Sung's great revelation, which is man is the master of everything and creates everything, right? And what this means is it's an ideology just for Korea and for Koreans. And it's this idea of total nationalism and this total sense of we're going to create everything originally and we're not going to have to take things from other nations, especially ideas. So, for example, they have like an Arc de Triomphe in the middle of Pyongyang, which is where the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung was sworn to office. And there's, I think, the same number of bricks as every day he was alive. The number of bricks is something significant. And even though it looks exactly the one in Paris, it's actually based on a Korean medieval like fortress. And they have this big obelisk which just looks the tower of the juju idea, which looks just like the Washington Monument. No, no, no, no, no. It's not based on that. It's based on some Korean thing. So their insistence is everything has to be from Korea by Koreans and for Koreans, so they don't acknowledge, especially decreasingly, anything to other countries. So in the Soviet Union, they have the hammer and sickle on their flag. It's the symbol of the workers and the farmers. They added a writing brush for the intellectuals. So it's completely different. It has nothing to do with the hammer and sickle. It's just hammer and sickle riding brush. So they increasingly downplay what role other people, other nations had to have. They'll mention Mao a little bit, helping in the Korean War. They'll mention Stalin a little bit. But the argument is they did it pretty much themselves. And they take pride, understandably, in that this small nation is taking on Japan and America and basically forcing us to our knees.

Francis (67:28)

And their perspective and the regime is effectively a hereditary monarchy at this point.

Michael Malice (67:33)

So what I learned from the North Korean literature, which I found extremely interesting, is they acknowledge foreign criticism and they reply to it. So when Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, the dear Leader, the son of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, was announced as the next leader. This was, of course, in communist circles, the second World, enormously controversial because we're against kings, everyone's equal. And their argument is, no, no, no, no, no, you idiots. He wasn't picked because he's the son. He was picked because he understands Kim Il Sung and the juchi idea better than anyone else. And all of the propaganda post that was Meant to kind of buttress this idea. And if you read their newspapers, it's interchange. Like when I was in the plane, they gave me a newspaper from two weeks ago. It doesn't matter because news is all the same. Because it's not necessarily that the leaders are gods. It's the idea that everyone in the country is a major screw up. So you'll have some factory, a glass factory. And when you read the propaganda, no one's named except for the leader. So say like Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il went to this glass factory and there was a problem with the machine and everyone's standing around and didn't know what to do. And then the dear leader saw that there's this dirt trapped in this crack and he popped it out and then all the circuitry was working again. Everyone starts clapping and it's like, okay, great, and then tomorrow we're going to go to the box factory. So the idea is only he's basically competent and but for the leader, everything's going to go to hell. And that also applies militarily because the argument is, just as the US imperialists invaded us during the Korean War, we are biding our time to re invade. We have bases in South Korea and but for now, Kim Jong Un, they will be here tomorrow and they will kill you all. And this national trauma of the 1950s is still very much a part of their culture. And you can't blame them. I mean, the blitz is obviously a part of British culture and that was nothing compared to what the Korean people had to experience.

Constantine (69:32)

So what is life like for the average Korean?

Michael Malice (69:35)

North Korean?

Constantine (69:35)

You mean North Korean? Absolutely. Well, they did Korean, as the north would say.

Michael Malice (69:42)

So they did something. The thing that's beautiful about these totalitarian regimes is, is their language because everything is portrayed in great terms, right? So in North Korea they did something called the Understanding People Project. It had several iterations. That was one of them. Sounds great. I want to understand people. You guys want to understand people. What they did, they did this repeatedly. They interviewed every single person in North Korea and they figured out what was your family background. Were you part of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung's team of guerrillas? Were you a priest or a capitalist land owner? And they went up to your second cousin based on this, you were assigned a sangban score. Sangban is their caste system. And there's three broadcasts, favored, hostile and wavering. And there's subcast, I think is like 50 or 30. I don't even remember this. I mean there is, it's like a Credit score, the social credit score that China's trying to do. You're not told you're sungbun, but you could figure it out because your teacher will treat you a certain way. This determines every aspect of your life, including whether you can even step. You can't travel internally without permission. You can't even. I've met refugees who had low sangban, and they're like, you've been to Pyongyang? Is it amazing? I'm like, no. Like, don't you realize? It's not amazing, but to even step foot in Pyongyang, you have to have high sangban. If you're going to be a guide. Like, you know, when I went on my tour, your sangban has to be through the roof. You have to be very reputable if you're. The thing is, in the 90s, when the famine hit, those cities, towns which had a poor sangban, were the last ones to get food, and they were the first ones to start. So it was explicitly genocidal in terms of using food distribution to maintain the regime and to kind of get rid of the people who you don't like. And Kim Jong Il explicitly said, having too many people makes socialism difficult.

Constantine (71:31)

And let's touch on the famine, because when I was reading about it, it was horrific, and I couldn't believe that it happened as comparatively recently as the 1990s.

Michael Malice (71:40)

So the UN kid. Because the thing is, for people watching this need to understand, famine is only an issue for political reasons. There is enough food produced worldwide, I think, to feed everyone three or four times over. The only reason people go hungry. I was talking years ago to someone who's. My friend was dating a communist girl, and she said, as many Americans starve as people in North Korea. And I'm like, all right, let's look it up. And it turned out the only Americans who had starved were people who had been like captives. Someone kidnapped you and killed you. It's not a thing. The UN went to North Korea to distribute food, and they would take them to Village one on Monday and everything's fine. They took them to Village 2 on Tuesday. They went back to Village 1 on Wednesday. And the people. He's like, we were here before. No, you weren't. They weren't allowed to have Korean speakers on the staff. And Kim Jong Il said, if you have these foreigners giving them food, they're not going to need us. So this was a conscious decision on the part of the regime to allow the people to starve to maintain their hold on power. Eventually, The UN gave up and went home. So this was a. I think 10% of the population starved, sewage broke down, polio came back. And do you know what they called it? The arduous march. The same thing that the great leader Kim Il Sung had to do when he was escaping the wicked Jap devils in the pre World War II days. Now we as a nation calling on that narrative, are walking our own arduous march. We got to stay the course and we're going to see things through till the end.

Francis (73:07)

And is North Korea now, from a kind of Western and global perspective, now effectively a contained issue? So it's terrible for the people who live there, but it's not a country, unlike Iran or the Soviet Union, that's going to try and project its power externally and mess things up in terms of.

Michael Malice (73:23)

Yeah, North Korea's biggest excursions internationally were with South Korea. You know, they blew up a South Korean airliner because South Korea got the Olympics and Kim Jong Il was salty about it. I talk about that in do Reader as well. But they're size like, they're, they're a small country. The idea of expansion is where they're going to go. Their peninsula. They don't have this huge navy to go elsewhere. China, of course, and them have a contentious but, you know, strong relationship in many regards. So, yeah, they're not. The juchi idea is for Koreans only. And they say this explicitly, you can't export it to China. And although the conceit is that all these countries around the world are, you know, very interested in Kim Il Sung's teachings and their books are translated and, oh, we all care about him so much. But the point is, this is just for Korea and so it's not like

Francis (74:13)

Iran and did they pursue nuclear weapons? So the regime change would be impossible.

Michael Malice (74:17)

Right. So Kim Jong Il explicitly said, we are going to make North Korea like a hedgehog, because a hedgehog is a small animals with spines on its back pointing every direction. And that could take on the American wolf and the Russian bear and the Chinese dragon. And he's right.

Francis (74:35)

And what's the extent of the nuclear arsenal?

Michael Malice (74:38)

We don't know exactly, but it's not minor and they're expanding on it. But. And here's the thing you don't need Seoul is I remember during Trump's first term where Trump named John Bolton as National Security advisor and John Bolton had written an editorial in the Wall Street Journal saying basically, like, if we want to strike North Korea, I don't think we even need to tell Seoul or we need the approval. It's like Seoul is just across the dmz. That's where the border was drawn between the two Koreas. They can hit Seoul, with population of several million, easily and quickly. So it is a very dangerous game to be provocative with North Korea. At the same time, as you saw in Romania, as you saw in Libya, if that North Korean regime falls down, those people on top are going to personally be hanged. And they understand this very well. When Ceausescu was shot in Romania on Christmas Day, Kim Jong Il took that footage, played it every day for the party cadres, and said, if we go down, this is what's going to happen to all of us. And he's not wrong.

Francis (75:39)

And one of the interesting stats about the Ceausescu demise is that two days before, there was an opinion poll in Romania which said that he had 93% approval rating. How? I mean, are the people of North Korea basically oppressed slaves, or is there actual real support for the regime?

Michael Malice (75:57)

It's a mix. I spoke to someone who is fairly. I can't. Whatever. They know what they're talking about. I don't want to out them.

Francis (76:05)

The CIA, Mossad, obviously, his point is

Michael Malice (76:11)

that the people, the top, and especially in the cities, know it's all bullshit. Like, they know that Kim Jong Un is not the greatest thing since sliced bread. They know it's nonsense. But there's an enormous incentive for them to stay the course and do what they can to try to keep the machine running. Something I want people to appreciate is. And this often is a problem when you talk about Asian countries. These aren't robots. These are human beings. And I said this for over a decade now. What surprised me the most is how great of a sense of humor the North Koreans had. They are fun people. And that is, in a sense, makes it more tragic, the way I ingratiated myself to the North Korean people. My guide is I took every racist joke I knew and made the punchline Japanese. So how do you keep a Japanese man from drowning? Take your foot off his neck. What do you call a thousand Japanese at the bottom of the ocean? A good start. My guide was in tears for a week. I was the funniest person in North Korea. So. And. And they. What I did when I'm. When I went there is I got in everyone's face and waved as obnoxious American because I knew they would give me a real reaction because they're not going to have those improv skills. And you see grandmothers with their grandkids and you wave at the grandkid and the grandma smiles. She's proud of her grandkid. And you see the teenage boys in their Adidas tracksuits and they're all surly chewing gum and looking you over. And you see the girls laughing and giggling. And you see, we went to the maternity hospital and in the lobby there's a military guy holding his baby. And you give him a thumbs up and he's proud, you know, so the humanity is pervasive there and shockingly normal, which makes it that much more tragic. They also do have a much greater sense of community than we have in the West. There really is this sense of. And I think this happens in poor neighborhoods here too. Like, I don't have a lot. You don't have a lot. Like, okay, I'll do your dishes, you do this for me. They, they do have this sense of community, I guess you have to. But that is a positive.

Constantine (78:15)

And one of the most interesting figures at the moment in the politics is Kim Jong Un, of course. So let's talk about him a little bit.

Michael Malice (78:24)

Because one more thing. The sense of community is so strong. This is going to sound like a joke when there's like a fire. People line up to donate their skin for skin grafts.

Constantine (78:40)

That's commitment.

Michael Malice (78:40)

That's commitment. I mean, you laugh, but it's like that says something.

Constantine (78:44)

Yeah, of course. So, very briefly, Kim Jong Un, madman, as people often say. Or is he a brilliant strategist or something in between?

Michael Malice (78:54)

I, I can't think of one reason why you would call him a madman. I've. I hear that word all the time. I can't think of one thing that you would say about him that makes him crazy.

Constantine (79:05)

Executed his uncle, his half brother.

Francis (79:07)

Why is that crazy? I mean, every monarch in history did that.

Constantine (79:10)

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Malice (79:11)

I mean, we obviously know King Charles killed Queen Elizabeth and he wasn't going to with Camilla's behest. I mean, that's. I mean, tell me you're not Charles Pilled, right? Let's go. No, but I mean, that's not crazy at all.

Constantine (79:22)

Yeah.

Michael Malice (79:23)

What else?

Constantine (79:25)

Threatening. Threatening to bomb South Korea. No, I know, it's just.

Michael Malice (79:30)

Let's talk about the threatening, because that's a good one. So North Korea does this cycle and the west falls for it every time. So they'll, oh, my God, you did this. And this. It's such a provocation. It's unforgivable. But if you give us some grain, you know, we'll look the other way. So they give them food and it's like, oh, thank you. And then they try to. They try to be the dove and like, oh, let's meet. Let's have a conference. Oh, blah, blah, blah. And then five minutes later, oh, I can't believe how you talk to me. I'm going to build more nukes. They just do it over and over, and it's a cycle at this point.

Francis (80:00)

All right, Michael, it's been great having you back. Our time is up.

Michael Malice (80:03)

That was. Holy crap. That was sudden.

Francis (80:05)

Okay, our time is up. It was over. We're going to go to Substack where our audience are going to ask you their questions. But before we do, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

Michael Malice (80:15)

My graphic novel, unwanted book.com. i've been working on it for 25 years. It's the story of a band from the 80s, a bunch of freaks who shot for the stars and didn't quite land there. And I'm very excited, thanks to Eric July, to see it come to fruition.

Francis (80:28)

Awesome. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Michael is going to answer your questions.

Constantine (80:34)

Can you please explain what about Islam appeals to the left? Are the left just useful idiots in the red green alliance? And why don't they learn from history.

Michael Malice (80:54)

Foreign

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