NewsReal: What's The Problem With Nationalism?

Sott.net
Sun, 29 Jul 2018 16:00 UTC

The election last week of Imran Khan as Pakistan's new prime minister is the latest political upset to rock 'the establishment' across many countries in recent years. Derided as a 'populist', Khan leads a new movement that is socially conservative, economically 'leftist', and ultimately nationalist.

From Mexico's AMLO to Malaysia's Mahathir, 'Trumps' are coming to power all over the world. Whatever their political background, the one thing they have in common is an essential patriotism that runs counter to the pro-Western, pro-Globalist 'open borders' regime that has ruled most countries since WW2.

This week on NewsReal, Joe & Niall discuss why the Western media routinely compares these diverse new political leaders with US president Donald Trump. Live audio broadcast from 12-1:30pm EST / 6-7:30pm CET.

Running Time: 01:28:31

Download: MP3

Here's the transcript of the show:

Niall: Hi and welcome to News Real with Joe and Niall.

Joe: I'm Joe.

Niall: And I'm Niall and welcome to your weekly antidote to fake news. Not a lot happened this week Joe, nothing major. So I figured we'd take the opportunity to discuss something. It's kind of a trend that's been going on for a while at a steady pace and it's happening all over the world. We know it best in the west as the election of Donald Trump in the US and in the UK, not the election of anyone yet but the Brexit referendum, the rise of nationalism.

Joe: I just clutch my pearls.

Niall: Indeed. Well the western media does that routinely. Obviously with those two issues we hear about it non-stop. But what's interesting is that globally there have been a string of elections in the last few years where the same pearl clutching has gone on in the western media reporting about those elections. The one that comes to mind happened this week in Pakistan, the election of Imran Khan. He's basically the populist nationalist candidate. He's been trying to run in Pakistan for decades. He's had a party for decades but he never really had any success until 2013 he had a good election result and it's now in the next election where he's been elected Prime Minister.

Let's have a look. Scottie, can you pull up the CNN headline announcing the election of Imran Khan. There we go. You see the question on their mind?

Joe: Imran Khan, Pakistan's Trump.

Niall: And he's not the only one. They've had headlines like that, the Economist with AMLO in Mexico and his election recently. "Oh, the next Trump! He's Mexico's answer to Trump!"

Joe: And their beef is that he's nationalist.

Niall: Their beef is that he's nationalist. So what? Aren't they all essentially nationalist? No, there's more to it than that. The story of Khan's rise to power is interesting. Here's a few details you probably don't know about Pakistan. He was elected with near majority. He has to form a minor coalition government but he pretty much won outright. He is going to be the next Prime Minister. He's well known. There's a similarity with Trump but this is only a superficial one. He's well known in Pakistan as a famous cricketer. So he was a sports star in the '80s and '90s and he was the captain of the Pakistani World Cup team that won the cricket sometime in the early '90s. So he's a star for different reasons.

Then he's a star for living the high life in London, in the United Kingdom where he marries an English aristocratic wife, Jemima Goldsmith. And then he gets into politics gradually and you would think someone like that would have a kind of pro-western bent and so on and so forth, but he's very much not. He's a conservative, or at least has grown into the role of a conservative Pakistani leader.

He formed a new party. This is a similarity with all of the election upsets in the last few years. He formed a new party that is not part of the status quo. It's Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, that's PTI which in English translates to The Justice Movement. It ran on an anti-corruption ticket. So many parties have done that in elections for decades but in this case it has had real results because the candidate of one of the two establishment parties that would have run was in prison. So his brother ran instead and he was tainted by the corruption scandal that actually put his brother in jail. Ironically it stemmed from leaks in the Panama Paper scandal in 2016. So that's inadvertently brought about a result that the western status quo would prefer not to see - a populist nationalist candidate.

It's amazing that these elections happened. There was a lot of violence. There has been in Pakistan for a long time. Leaders get assassinated there. In this case, just last week, four days before they went to the polls there was a massive explosion at a polling station that killed 35 people in Quetta. Guess who claimed responsibility? ISIS. Right there that's dodgy. There are lots of groups in Pakistan with either outright terrorist backgrounds or maybe can be considered either nationalist, i.e., they're fighting against Indian troops in disputed Kashmir region. There's a grey area whether some are outright terrorists and some aren't.

In this case, ISIS in Pakistan is ridiculous. If ISIS claims responsibility, it could be anyone. It could have come from anywhere. I'll just jump straight to it and I'll suggest that that's got to be a kind of externally influenced, to somehow affect the polls, somehow hurt Khan's rise. It didn't anyway because the turnout for this was astonishing for Pakistan. Fifty-five percent. You think it's hard to vote in the United States or something. Try doing that when there's a terror campaign going on. There were grenade attacks in addition to this suicide bombing. Fifty-five percent turnout is remarkable. Pakistan hasn't had that high a turnout since the 1970s when Bhutto's father ran.

It's clear in Pakistan's case in a way this is like the anti-deep state candidate. But on the other hand it's a bit different in Pakistan where it's a bit like Egypt where the military has had a strong influence. They have a very large military and they have to for some kind of order in a country of 200+ million people that have been fighting terrorism issues for decades. In this case they kind of signalled that they preferred Khan because they had up to 400,000 troops at polling stations throughout the country for the duration of the campaign. To give you an idea of how many that is, that's five or six times the number of troops they posted during the last campaign which was just as violent.

So that kind of signals that they wanted this election to happen because there was already a national groundswell of support for Imran Khan. They also, by tacit admission, suggest that Pakistan's deep state, it's military and generals prefer Khan to win.

Joe: Well the interesting thing about Pakistan I think is they've had historical low turnouts in polls and stuff because really since its creation in the early 1950s after it split from the British-controlled Indian empire into India and Pakistan...

Niall: Yeah, in '46.

Joe: Sorry, in '46. Pakistan has been mostly in its politics and certainly its security services and stuff, have been controlled by western interests and that's been known amongst a lot of the voting population of Pakistan, hence a reluctance or people not really seeing the point in going out or there being a lot of division among the voting population because "Well who are we going to vote for? All of these people can be traced back to having links to non-nationalists" in Pakistan - the governments and agencies.

Niall: They're civilian elite if you like. They're "deep state". I know I said it was the military. Just forget that for a second. It's essentially the anglophile remnants of what was left behind by the British empire. And Khan explicitly addressed the population in those terms, "Those English-speaking elites, aren't we all sick of them? Yes we are!" and they voted him in. But it's ironic that he himself is schooled in the UK. I think he went to university in England as well.

Joe: Right.

Niall: So he has gone through the same system. But he is of the elites.

Joe: But it's not necessarily where they come from. It's the extent to which they're willing to sell Pakistan's soul, let's say, and Pakistani nationalism to foreign interests.

Niall: Correct.

Joe: And most of the leaders since then have done that, if you look at the history of it. It's interesting that Benazir Bhutto was probably the last truly nationalist leader of Pakistan and she was murdered effectively by Al-Qaeda.

Niall: In quotes.

Joe: So it's interesting now that you have ISIS, the new incarnation of Al-Qaeda, who are carrying out bombing attacks on the election day. So all of that suggests that there's certain western influences, let's say, who aren't interested in any kind of nationalism rising up or taking hold in Pakistan because nationalism automatically means the reestablishment of sovereignty and if there are foreign powers who have their foothold in a country, then a nationalist prime minister or leader or whatever who wants to re-establish some kind of sovereignty would end up coming into conflict with those people.

It's easy for western powers to foresee the direction that a certain leader is going to take. Put it this way: I wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of an attack on Khan himself in the not-too-distant future and that he me may even be killed. This speaks to the topic of the show today which is the fact that nationalism is a dirty word, has been a dirty word in the west for...

Niall: Seventy years.

Joe: Since the Second World War. According to a lot of people, nationalism is just one step away, or the preceding step let's say, to Nazism.

Niall: Right.

Joe: And totalitarianism, dictatorship, all that kind of stuff, which is complete nonsense. Historically it's complete nonsense. It's only the last 70 years that that's the truth or reality, when it's not really true at all. But of course getting back to that point that I was making, we live under an American empire. We have lived under an American empire, a western-dominated global order and that order has established itself under conditions of globalization which is the exact opposite of nationalism and populism. It's about opening the entire world up to the strongest and the most cunning or the smartest influences to get access to the world. It's making the world one big country in a certain sense. It's just a planet and everywhere is open. So nationalism is a bad thing because nationalism is, as we know, associated with protecting your borders, economic isolationism, protectionism, that kind of thing. It's just not the way the world has been and the modern world has established itself over the past 70 or 80 years since the Second World War. That's not what it's built on.

So there's a real push-back against that. Of course there's a positive cultural aspect to that as well which is that we're all one race. There's only one race. We're all one people. We're all humans and the whole world is my home, type of thing. So that feeds into the primary aspect of globalization which is economic, which is giving major corporations access to as much of the world as possible. But to facilitate that, you've got to get the people onside. You've got to encourage people to be happy with that idea and you do that by encouraging this idea of one world, one people, one race, open all the borders, free flow of people all around the world, everybody's my brother, everybody's my sister, that kind of thing, which obviously facilitates globalization, right?

Niall: Mm-hm.

Joe: That kind of globalization has only been possible in the context of the world order that we've had since post-Second World War which has been dominated by the west and primarily by the USA. So that kind of a globalized world really only works when you have a world's greatest super power that dictates terms to everybody or protects everybody. Kind of like a mafia boss.

So it works only in that context and then in that context globalization is effectively the world being opened up for these major powers in the west, particularly the USA. But then as the world changes as it has done quite dramatically over the past 15 or 20 years, that global order under the control of one major super power is no longer tenable or possible when you have other countries coming up to parity level in terms of economic power or military power or just political diplomatic power, their presence in the world. So you have China, Russia and other countries coming online who can compete with and even threaten the hegemony of the US and that's when that idea of globalization falls apart because you're going to have reconfigure globalization. It's not just the world open for one country or one section of the world, rather these other parts of the world that were previously being exploited now demand a fair shake. So globalization as it has been conceived or implemented over the last 70 years is falling apart now.

But people who are exponents of it, American exceptionalists and that kind of thing have doubled down on the need to maintain globalization, maintain the liberal world order as led by America and they obviously look very unfavourably on populism and nationalism and demonize it. It's a challenge to America. And that's the strange thing about it. We just showed a headline from CNN, leftist news, anti-Trump, hates nationalism and stuff, but they're not promoting a better world. CNN and the likes of CNN on the left effectively are the ones who will stand on the necks, figuratively through their propaganda and through their media outlets, of any country that attempts to take a more prominent place or establish itself as its own country and through that gain more rights and a better share of the pie for its citizens.

That's effectively what nationalism in Pakistan would do. A lot Pakistanis live in poverty and are quite poor.

Niall: Very poor.

Joe: And these countries are trying to raise themselves up and the best way they can raise themselves up, because they are poorer as a result of this globalization of the world, the antidote to that is for them to eke out a little bit of sovereignty and nationalism for themselves and to stand on their own and demand to be treated with a bit more respect and not be the exploitable country that they have been.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: But it's strange to see that CNN on the left, supposedly the bleeding heart lefties type thing, are the ones who are actually trying to stop that from happening because they get to present this as "Well this is Trumpism. This is Nazism. This is populism. This is nationalism. It's all bad." Because what? "Because Hitler." The whole thing is just so ridiculous. This is the weird thing. CNN and the likes of them in the US and in the west in particular, are by far more imperialistic, authoritarian, militaristic and exceptionalist in terms of America, than anybody on the right is.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: Nationalism by definition, if you want to call Trump a nationalist although he's not only a nationalist, but that by definition is a pulling the horns in type of thing, pulling America away, at least in theory, from the world. And America hasn't done an awful lot of good for the rest of the world in terms of the people that have suffered as a result of American expansionism and American imperialism.

We talked about this before; Trump talking about doing away with NATO. He's made references. Whether or not it's possible or whether or not it'll happen is a different story. But he has talked openly about whether or not NATO is even useful anymore and whether America should continue to fund NATO. And of course NATO would collapse or fall apart if America pulled out of it. What is NATO responsible for? The only positive thing you can say about NATO is that it has just served as a supposed protective mechanism but what when it has actually acted in recent years, what has it done? It has destroyed countries and killed thousands of people.

Niall: With direct consequences for the place it's trying to protect - Europe, the wave of immigrants.

Joe: Right. So why would leftist organization complain about Trump talking about taking NATO apart when it's obviously very much in line with the leftist anti-war, anti-imperialism approach? But they can't see past Trump. Because Trump wants it, it's evil. And of course NATO should be disbanded because NATO, in case anybody has forgotten, NATO was created as a direct response to Soviet Russia and communism and the Cold War. That doesn't exist anymore. So NATO by definition has served its purpose. It's raison d'être does not exist. It doesn't have one anymore so it makes absolute sense for NATO to go bye-bye because a new world is beginning right now.

People forget that, their history. For people who are still alive who grew up during the Cold War, that's all changed now. You need to let go! And not only is the Cold War finished, American hegemony is effectively finished. I know it might be hard, but for all the American exceptionalists, you can begin the process of stopping thinking about America as the world's only superpower and the greatest nation in the world and the greatest democracy on earth and the world's policeman. You can just stop doing that now because if you don't you're simply delaying the inevitable and you're running against the wind as Bob Seger wrote. It's a bad idea. Things are changing and I know it's difficult to adjust to it, but first recognize the fact that things have changed and are changing dramatically and you need to get with the new wave.

Niall: I think what's driving America as exceptional isn't patriotism on the part of the US, the so-called western deep state. In a country like Pakistan they benefit. Ironically they're actually being the conservatives in this day and age because they want to maintain the status quo. They don't want these changes being brought up by those "far right conservative nationalists". The status quo is that hot money from Wall Street and London has to be allowed unimpeded to flow into Pakistan, profit quickly and get the hell out of there before the fire erupts as it naturally will from the clash of industry, from war breaking out, from a string of terrorist attacks. It's a game of chicken where it's an ever-increasing race to get the money in, invest but only to pull it out. 'It's hot and we need access'. That's why the southeast Asian and the wider Asian financial crisis happened in the late '90s and why those countries responded in kind to kind of tamp down and clamp down on the ability of this hot money to flow in and out.

That's basically American or western imperialism today and that's what they want to be able to keep unimpeded. So when someone like Khan comes in and says "I want to build up Pakistan's industry. I'm going to strengthen our relationship with China", which obviously involves the Chinese/Pakistan economic corridor, like you say, it's already in the process of happening anyway. It's inevitable. So he is just a political lightning rod for a process that's already underway.

Joe: A manifestation of something that's already in process, yeah.

Niall: And the same with all these other guys everywhere. They're just the political getting in sync with the underlying economic change. On social issues, he's going to be socially conservative. At least he's done that "I'm a religious Pakistani with social values, traditional values," but on the economic issues he's talking about a modern Islamic welfare state for all, building up Pakistan's industry with the help of China. For the last 10 years he has been at the front of anti-war protests, directly criticizing the United States, both in Pakistan with Obama's drone warfare and in neighbouring Afghanistan. He's saying "This is not working where we fund the Taliban or groups counter to the Taliban. It's a complete mess of groups against groups." He is adamant that he is coming in now and he is going to solve the Kashmir issue.

Kashmir is basically like the bleeding wound of both Pakistan and India. He's a nationalist but he's not coming in with the usual rhetoric which is to be anti-India in Pakistan. That used to get you elected. People are electing a nationalist because they recognize a sane, fatherly, actually sincere person who will really help the country in a national way by sitting down and talking with India and actually solving the goddamn bleeding wound!

Joe: God forbid! Imagine! But of course that's how you rule an empire as well. You want as much tension and conflict as possible between the countries that the empire rules over because it's divide and conquer, to keep people at each other throats and then they're dependent on you effectively. There's going to be push-back against that.

We and everybody has a hard time defining who these deep state types are in the US. We talk about them being the intelligence agencies and some high-level members of the intelligence agencies, long-serving bureaucrats, people in think tanks who have been there for a long time and also actual serving politicians, every often Congressmen who have been there for a long time and senators who have been there for a long time. There's no names. You can't identify people. You could identify people I suppose in the intelligence agencies, like John Brennan and Clapper. But they're also public faces. There are people behind the scenes who are never on TV, intelligence agencies as well.

But ultimately those are the people who want to maintain American hegemony and the way the world has been since the Second World War with America on top. Some people might say it's over-simplified but there's not many people who can go into the details too much and think too long or to hard about it so it is a good and a true explanation of why the whole anti-Russian sentiment has happened and why there's conflict with China from the US as well, but particularly with Russia and why there have been wars in the Middle East and the attack on Syria and why the US intel agencies, the US government effectively, under Obama in particular, and under Bush were funding and training Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations; to keep sowing discord, to keep countries that are subjects of empire destabilized and weak and therefore reliant on them for help.

Niall: Yes.

Joe: The problem is the media today. Trump comes along and Trump makes noises, talks about wanting to change all of that, not every explicitly but he talks about wanting to change it in one way or another or in different ways and the media freaks out. There really is no anti-war or anti-imperialism sentiment across the board in America, especially not in the media and by anybody who pays attention to the media. Even amongst the ordinary Americans, the vast majority of people who would say they're anti-war and anti-imperialism don't understand how the world actually works, how American imperialism has worked. They don't go deep enough down the rabbit hole to understand how they actually keep the whole thing burning over, keep it ticking over, keep the fighting happening so that they can maintain empire.

Also the Americans who can't go there can't see that, are stuck themselves at a personal emotional level with their beliefs that have been engendered or inculcated into them from childhood; their belief in America as this wonderful, great country, this exceptional country, and that it really should be a shining city on a hill that sheds its light around the world. A number has been done on Americans, a mind-"F" basically.

Niall: Indeed.

Joe: And they're screwed. They can't go there.

Niall: They have one key marker though that does appeal to a lot of the population and we can't say how many. It goes in contradiction to what you just said. The one marker they have for 'this isn't good, we should really be scaling it down' is that body bags come home every time they either have outright war of invention like in Iraq, frankly an invasion, or the humanitarian mission in Libya, etc. etc. and the body bags start coming home and they start to go "You know what?" When they have serious direct consequences; not just the body bags but the troops that return and the mental state they're in and the murder rates and the homeless rates of veterans, they do get a real time feedback taste. It's far weaker than it ought to be given their splendid isolation over there between the two oceans, but they do have some feedback and I think they do pick up on that and that feeds into wanting to not do that anymore, to some extent.

Joe: Yeah, but they're caught in a certain sense. They can't get over the idea of America, like said, as the exceptional nation that has to lead the world and has to be an example to the rest of the world. It's sold to them in a manipulative, duplicitous kind of way as well. People are being manipulated by the media in particular. It's a horrible mess where the left is supposedly where the anti-war, anti-imperialist left is actually the one that's encouraging people to maintain American hegemony and therefore American imperialism and by necessity American warmongering and stoking up conflicts around the world. It's an appeal to emotion basically.

Niall: Another tidbit about Khan is that he promised not to move into the presidential palace. He'll instead live in his apartment in Islamabad and instead he would turn it into an educational institution. That's the kind of thing that's going over very well. He's a self-made man and he's very rich. It reminded me of Gaddafi though, living in his tent. He lived in large buildings as well and promising never to house his parents until every other person in Libya had a roof over their heads. Khan actually also looks a bit like Gaddafi.

So the Pakistani military apparently likes him. But the key point here is that the western press doesn't like him. Whether it's articulated in the minds of the New York Times or CNN, when they're writing either those articles or those headlines, we get an idea of who they don't like and therefore it tells a lot about, not necessarily the exact people who make up the deep state, but it tell us about the dogma that informs it. The further candidate X in country Y gets away from that dogma, they instinctively go "We don't like him". It's reading that, that can tell you an awful lot about what's going on.

There's another article I want to pull up here. Scottie, can you get it? It's a New York Times article. This is about their piece on Khan last week. I don't know if people can see that. It's a bit small.

Joe: Nuclear-armed Islamic republic gets unpredictable new leader.

Niall: Unpredictable. Unpredictable of course is exactly what they think of Trump, partly because he is unpredictable, but he's unpredictable in what he says but he's actually quite consistent with what he's doing compared to what he said he would do when he was running. But unpredictable is obviously a similarity with Trump. But that term 'unpredictable' tells us a bit more. It's like 'we've had Pakistan predictable for 70 years. We like the status quo. We don't want you changing it'. You know what I mean?

Joe: Right.

Niall: And therefore he's getting away from the dogma and yes, 'he's going to end up doing things that we don't like'.

Joe: Right. 'That we don't like' and it's got nothing to do with the will of the average American, let's say or the average anti-war, anti-imperialist, just the average decent American of which there are many. It's got nothing to do with their will which would be that every country should have the right to develop as they see fit as long as they're not going to bother anybody and the people should have the right to attempt to prosper and governments should have the right to do what's in the best interests of their people. There's no reason to think that Khan wouldn't do everything he says. So yes, that's what his interest is, that's what his mandate is and yet the New York Times puts up this headline that every so subtly tarnishes him by saying "unpredictable". Why would you say it's unpredictable? Why would you even call it unpredictable?! "He's unpredictable!" For the average American reading that headline, and then you put in 'nuclear armed', 'unpredictable/nuclear armed'. Is that a positive headline for the average reader who just reads the headline? 'Unpredictable/nukes'

And that's the New York Times. The New York Times is lefty as well. They're all lefty. They're all anti-war supposedly. They're not obviously but that's the way they present themselves and people read the New York Times who are otherwise ordinary, decent people, but they'll come away from reading that headline with thinking "Oh, it's a bit dodgy in Pakistan". And if the government comes along or if something happens in Pakistan where it goes down the tubes or Imran gets shot or something like that or some kind of conflict rises up there or the US has to take a more belligerent approach to it, then people will have it in their head already as a result of the New York Times and other outlets that yeah, it was a bit unpredictable and they had nukes as well, didn't they?

People don't just distrust the media enough. They say they do but they don't actively distrust it as they're reading the friggin' headlines. But that takes a lot of work as well. It's a lot of work for someone to look at every headline and deconstruct it and figure it out. But you can take it as a given, as a general rule, that when any US media outlet is talking about other countries, especially countries that are not part of "the west", when there's a negative headline, you can pretty much assume that that negative headline is designed to manipulate you for reasons that are not in the interests of the ordinary people in the country that they're talking about. You can assume that because they're coming from the position of the propagandists. The New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, all the rest, are propagandists for empire. They've been born and brought up, hooked up to exceptionalism and imperialism for America and America's the greatest country in the world and that's all they're ever going to give.

That's quite apart from the vested interests that the owners of these big media outlets actually have in terms of their own corporate investments around the world and their own corporate interests and their connections with government that are all tied to America remaining top dog. They have a vested interest. So the idea that America has a free press is absolute nonsense, like we mentioned previously. It's complete and utter nonsense.

There's a little video we may as well play now. His name's Stankey. . John Stankey. He's the new boss of AT&T which recently bought Time Warner which owns CNN. So he's basically the new boss at CNN. This is just a little thing he said where he was just interviewed by the talking heads on CNN after the merger of the two were approved. There's just one little thing that he said that stuck out. We'll play it.

CNN: So why was it worth it given how hard it was, what it is about us, writ large, that was so attractive to AT&T?

Stankey: Well first of all it's an incredibly talented company across a lot of different media domains and we felt it was really important we have scale and capability to work on content from a variety of different segments. So just like sitting here, news is very unique from what you might get in scripted long form but both are very important in terms of how individuals want to consume content. For us over time, the days of being able to get people just to buy connectivity from you are coming to a close because connectivity's becoming very ubiquitous and very similar and you're going to have to find ways to differentiate your business over time. There's no better way to do it than with emotional content that customers attach to.

Joe: Pause there. "No better way to do it than focusing on emotional content that customers are attached to."

Niall: Not about facts.

Joe: No. Emotional content. You heard it from the horse's mouth. He's the new CEO of the top dog and the parent company of CNN that he's on there talking about how he's going to support CNN and that kind of stuff and he says there's no better way for CNN and all of the companies associated with it to prosper than focus on emotional content that people attach to.

Niall: In other words, to manipulate people. Hit the emotions again and again.

Joe: But the thing is he can say that and it doesn't sound bad. At least he doesn't think it sounds bad and the people on CNN didn't think that was a problem right there. "Emotional content that people attach to". That's like you just said, almost by definition the idea of emotional content is completely separate or in opposition to facts.

Niall: And journalism.

Joe: And journalism and telling people the truth about things rather than what they want to hear because you're not going to tell emotional people emotional content that they don't want to hear. Most of the time you're going to tell them stuff that they want to hear, that you think they want to hear. But of course it also means telling them some bad things in terms of bad things happening around the world. You traumatize them a little bit, show them some disaster zones and all that kind of stuff. But emotional content, yeah, you appeal to people's emotions.

It's one step from an admission of there being vested interests there because you have to decide what emotional content is or what emotional content you want to go with. Is your emotional content going to be to make people say nice things about Trump or is it going to be to say bad things about Trump? Well then that comes as another decision to be made; what is your political affiliation? But what's your agenda? Do you have an agenda in terms of pushing a particular type of emotional content that will get people to feel or think a certain way?

Niall: And there's other emotions involved here too. Terrorizing and hystericizing people, which they love doing.

Joe: Yeah. And then of course baldy guy, I don't know what his name is. He's ubiquitous on CNN, baldy guy then asks him a question. It's obviously with the kind of question he asks him because that's all CNN obsesses about.

Baldy: You said to me the other day CNN has a special social responsibility compared to TNT or TBS or the cartoon network and I think what I hear from staffers here, they wonder what happens when CNN's Jim Acosta the other day is told by the campaign manager of the Trump campaign "You should have your credentials revoked," what happens in that environment when it's not Time Warner, it's Warner media?

Joe: So his main question is "What are we going to do about Trump?" Talking to the boss he said "You said that CNN has a special social responsibility, so on that point, what are we going to do about Trump?"

Niall: Yeah, "What's our corporate responsibility policy?"

Joe: No, not just what tack we take on Trump but "What are we going to do about Trump? It's obviously a foregone conclusion that we've got to do something about Trump but how would you help us dealing with this Trump business?" And of course the Stankey man said just gives some non-answer. "Well it's very important to do stuff in a certain way." A non-answer basically. But obviously they have an agenda. People at his level, CEO of the parent company, the top guy. He's got an agenda. That's the whole question. Does it come down to one individual? Is it his agenda that dictates what happens on CNN? Obviously there's other people associated. There's actually a CEO of CNN.

Niall: There are boards.

Joe: Board and all that kind of stuff but there's all those people, or is it something else? Is there people in the deep state, let's say, the intel agencies? But it's all quite complicated. We talked about this previously on other shows, about how reporters on CNN or the Washington Post or the New York Times or whatever, rely heavily, never more so, rely on intelligence agencies in western countries for their stories. Not all stories, but some stories, especially political stories. How many times have you seen a CIA source or an FBI source or just a source close to the investigation told CNN that this is what's going down. And that becomes the story.

If you read a lot of stories on what's going on, what's really happening in politics, which serves a particular agenda, is validated or credited to some unnamed person. A lot of times they don't even say it came from the intelligence agency. They simply say that it's close to the investigation. That could be Santa Claus. But it's more than likely somebody in politics or in intelligence agencies who are drip feeding information and it's taken as gold. It's like "Listen, I'm your source and I know this has happened." "Why?" "Well here's my credentials. I work in the CIA. I work in the FBI. I know what's going on and I can't tell you how I know what's going on. I can't give you any evidence for it, but take it from me, this is what's happening." And they can so easily get information into the mass media in that way and it becomes a friggin' headline! If you look at a headline and you ask "Well how do they know this?" and you find it's "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Unnamed source close to the investigation said so." That's the only evidence they have for putting out major headlines that inform public opinion and can turn people's heads one way or another.

Niall: That's assuming they even actually got it from an actual source.

Joe: Some of them may not.

Niall: They just write it down! There are a lot of situations where it's a White House leak and they're like "Really? Someone leaked data about that?" Or it's someone who just claims it and they made up a version of what happened. I've noticed where actually a few days later, "That thing that we said was leaked, it didn't happen." They want it to beat Trump's White House to the first impression from a meeting with whoever, a foreign dignitary or someone in the US. So they leak that first impression. "Well we're only getting it from a source and we can't confirm it". That's because someone in the CNN or the NYT just made it up.

Joe: It's quite possible. That's the level of...

Niall: So it's not even a real leak, it's a fake leak.

Joe: That's the level of lies and misinformation and disinformation. It's packaged up. They've gotten so good at it now that they package up their lies in a nice truthy-appearing box and feed it to you and you swallow it. It's like cyanide coated in sugar. It's bad for you. But again, people are stuck because they don't have the time, energy or inclination to really try and figure all that out. And it is a web. It's a very complicated web and there are very few people, if anybody, who can really figure it all out. But you can get a general read on it.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: You can give a general overview. "This seems to be what's happening and this theory is plausible because it fits. It maps to the way things are going in the world where things are effectively getting worse for the average person." But people are being held in this bubble where they're protected from that by the media control. They're told all the wrong things by the media that don't inform them, don't allow them to take stock of a situation and make life decisions based on accurate information. And that can be ultimately deadly if things don't pan out as everybody would like them to. If things take a pretty serious turn for the worst, people will not be prepared. Certainly in America people should be prepared for some kind of a downgrading of America as the global hegemony, but they're not. They're not being encouraged to think that way at all. And they can't. I suppose they've been brought up that way and it's too far gone. You can't undo that kind of belief system when it's standing up in first or second grade in school and reciting the pledge of allegiance and stuff. That's a pernicious level of indoctrination that you're not going to undo in a 40 or 50 year old person except to the extent the person might be able to do it themselves or have the qualities to see how that's not good.

Niall: Well love of the country in itself may not be the pernicious thing. What's pernicious is that something else was layered over it in all of these decades whereby, as we saw and discussed last week, when people freaked out over Trump meeting Putin and called it the treason summit and put it down to the clarifying choice of who do you believe, the evil Russian President or the patriot intelligence community, i.e., the deep state? The specific mind job is that that intense patriotism, reciting the anthem every morning, has been used to get people to understand and accept that there is a permanent government, a deep state and the tenets of its dogma rule and anyone who transgresses it is a traitor, including the President! The President can be up for treason if he transgresses the tenets of the dogma.

Just to kind of confirm what we discussed this week - we missed it at the time. I think it was out on the day before - a Washington Post editorial. I'm not going to have Scottie pull it up because it's behind a paywall. I don't know if we'll be able to see it. But people should check it out if they can see it. It's a Washington Post editorial so it's an op ed. It's written by one of the in-house editors, Eugene Robertson entitled God Bless the Deep State.

His opening paragraph is poo-pooing this supposed deep state and it's in quotes. But the rest of the article is basically a litany of Trump's crimes, his transgressions against precisely said deep state. And he concludes it by saying "In this emergency, the national crisis that the United States is in, the loyal and honourable deep state has a higher duty. It's called patriotism." And deep state here isn't in scare quotes as if to poo-poo the conspiracy. He poo-pooed it at the beginning of his article but then he actually just said "Yeah, it's real and god bless it. Thank god because without it we would just have Trump and we'd be screwed." And he finishes by saying "The honourable deep state has a higher duty. It's called patriotism." Again, the confluence of that hand on the heart, intense nationalism and jingoisms that Americans have been stuffed with all these decades is directly conflated with the higher duty to your patriotism to your secret government, to your secret masters, or the tenets that they hold sacred.

Joe: Patriotism. It says the honourable deep state has a duty to a higher goal.

Niall: It's a higher duty, patriotism. Trump doesn't have it. Trump's being treasonous and he's against the country. He's an anti-patriot. But the deep state, thank god for its existence.

Joe: They're patriotic.

Niall: Is patriotic and it saves us from a traitor like Trump.

Joe: Right. Are these deep staters supposedly working in the interests of the American people? Of course they're not! At least 50% of voters anyway, didn't vote for them. They voted for Trump.

Niall: In their reality creation, whatever shenanigans they pulled during the 2016 election, they're convinced that Hillary won the popular vote even though she couldn't get 50 people to turn up at her rallies.

Joe: Who's convinced?

Niall: It's a truism now that Hillary won the popular vote by several million.

Joe: But people in the know, know that that's not the case. They're liars.

Niall: It's non-stop reported as fact.

Joe: They lie with every breath they take. Any leadership in any country regardless of whether it's covert or overt, has a responsibility to preparing the people of that country to face reality in the most graceful and productive and positive way possible, to help people to confront reality and deal with reality and deal with the future and changing times in the world. But what the deep state in the US or whatever you want to call it, are doing exactly the opposite of that. Trump is the one who's actually trying to prepare America and the American people for a changing world. Like we said earlier in this show there is a major global shift underway in terms of the balance of power in the world and America even now is not top dog anymore and is not going to be. It's certainly not going to be top dog.

That's a big adjustment for America to make and most importantly for the American people because it's going to affect them most particularly because it'll have economic implications and all that kind of stuff. But those people are denying that is happening and trying their best to prevent the change from happening and to convince the American people to support them in preventing a change from happening. It's like there's a tidal wave coming. You can see it on the horizon and some people are saying "Yeah, tidal wave might be getting a bit closer" and your government's saying "No, no. Don't be so stupid. That's actually Russian propaganda. That's a Russian manipulation. It's actually a hologram. It's not a tidal wave. Russia's out to get us. We are here and we will stay here and that tidal wave doesn't even exist actually and anybody who says it does is fake news. It's nonsense. It's lies and propaganda."

That's highly, highly irresponsible. That tidal wave is a sea change, like we've been saying, in the global power balance and Americans need to prepare themselves for it and if they are kept in this tractor beam almost, where they're held in stasis, where they're not doing anything about it, when they're not recognizing it or seeing it coming, then the hammer's going to fall pretty hard on them when it does happen because they're going to be completely unprepared.

Niall: Or to follow your analogy, the sheer weight of that water is going to wash them away. It's a good analogy. Americans want it too. They elected Trump, right? They're probably going to be a red wave in the upcoming elections for Congress. Contrary to the so-called blue wave. But they're really hamstrung by being closest, if you like, ideologically or geographically to this reality creation, this bubble of how the world actually works. But in other countries with the distance of both geography and ideology it seems to be easier for them to elect a leader of a party and thus a counterbalance that's in sync with the changing world. In eastern Europe it's been able to happen in Poland, in the Czech Republic, in Hungary of course with Viktor Orbán.

In western Europe it's having a hard time translating into reality because there have been populist nationalist leaders but they haven't been elected yet or they're on the verge of it. Germany again is on the brink. Merkel just about got through. But in countries like Pakistan it's able to happen. It's still remarkable for their own context, but still it could actually happen.

Joe: Populism and nationalism is popular among many people, any coherent or cohesive group of people who have lived in a geographic area for quite a long period of time, the idea of nationalism is just the same as community spirit. It's identity politics. It's just an extension, for example, of the people who live in your house then the people who live in your community then the people who live in the bigger town, who live in the bigger city. You're from that city so you identify with being from that city and expand that out. It has limits. Saying global is too much obviously.

But it's also constrained and has been constrained throughout history by ethnicity as well and religion. There's nothing wrong with that, for people to identify with people who share their same cultural values. They're an extension of that to skin colour in a certain sense. It doesn't mean that people of other skin colours can't actually incorporate into that but it doesn't mean that that skin colour is insignificant depending on the country and that it's something evil or bad. That sense of community and community values and similar cultural values is just something that makes people feel more content, live a more meaningful life or feel more comfortable, part of an identity, part of something. It gives them a sense of stability and belonging. And that's where nationalism comes from in the average person.

But that absolutely has been demonized because Hitler.

Niall: Because Hitler. I'm glad you brought this up because one of the key tenets of the dogma is precisely the Hitler issue and specifically the ethnicity issue. In the dogma nationalism is bad because it encourages, feeds, leads to, grows into, an ethnic ingroup, my tribe-based view of the world and that leads to war and decimation of one ethnicity against another. Well there's another interesting case study from this year also that took place. In another Muslim majority country, in Malaysia, another post-colonial British mess, I think it was in May they had elections and for the first time ever a party other than the established one left behind was also voted into power and it was led by someone who had previously been in government, Mahathir Mohamad. He's 92 years old but he's basically come out of retirement to lead a first successful election of someone who wasn't the established ruling UNNO party.

Malaysia is an interesting case because its population today is just under 70% Malay and there's a large Chinese minority, almost a quarter of the population and the smaller 7% are of Indian extraction. The ruling party was founded also in 1946 to keep Malaysia as a Malay dominated, ethnic based country. It's actually built into their constitution and there are special privileges for native Malays. So for 59 years they've won all the elections until this one, for a party that specifically did not run on that, it ran on a nationalist platform. But here nationalist was not ethnic based. It was what's best for the country. It was also an anti-corruption drive which is also bearing fruit. The previous Prime Minister's in prison or is awaiting trial. I'm not sure.

It's nationalist but it's not the tenet of the fear of nationalism. It's going against the trend they said would happen, that there would be an ethnic-based nationalism and genocide of one ethnicity against another. They actually bucked the trend they had previously been in which was voting based on ethnicity, to vote on what's best for the country as a whole. In Pakistan's case there was widespread support for strengthening of ties with China because in that situation Pakistan's caught between Afghanistan, India and China. Chinese investment is good in Pakistan. In Malaysia they're upset with Chinese investment because it's been producing at least some bad fruit. A lot of the corruption comes from a lot of hot money that comes in from Chinese investment.

So Mahathir ran on not on an anti-Chinese platform but at least on revising some of the deals because the development has been unequal and unbalanced for a lot of poor Malays. So yes, there was a nationalist overthrow of a regime for almost seven decades. But ironically it goes against the very claim they have that nationalism is bad that people are basing on their in-tribe ethnicity basis that can only lead to negative problems. And again, he's an older guy. Like Imran Khan he's an older guy. He's a bit different because he's been a Prime Minister before. He oversaw Malaysia's transformation in the '90s, its modernization, its industrialization basically.

Joe: You know he's a 911 conspiracy theorist as well.

Niall: Right.

Joe: He had war crimes tribunals about the Iraq war in Malaysia. He set them up and had the hearings and he believes that 911 was a false flag attack.

Niall: And at least publicly he's pro-Palestinian anti-Israel. The thing is Malaysia's a country that specifically states in their passports that Malay citizens are not allowed into Israel.

Joe: Yeah.

Niall: But again, he's 92. He's another older, experienced man and experienced specifically in this case in politics and he's kind of a father of the nation figure and he's an economic nationalist.

Joe: Everybody wants to break free of the chains of empire, let's say, and they can do that now. During a certain period of time it served the countries that were developing well enough. They got investment from the US and US companies were set up, but now as the world has progressed, the technology has progressed and the global economy is improving in countries, globalized infrastructure which the US oversaw to maintain their imperialism has actually worked against them in the sense that it has empowered these nations to stand on their own two feet and to break away from those chains of empire, they're going to have to engage in a certain amount of economic nationalism.

And the problem is that in order to sell economic nationalism, you generally have to talk about cultural nationalism or nationalism in general. There is going to be national sentiment that encourages economic nationals. You can't say "We the Malays need to stand up for our economic rights against those Americans" without engendering a little bit of animosity and also an attempt to be more cohesive, a nationalistic or patriotic feeling amongst the people. "Yeah, Malaysia for Malaysians" or something along those lines.

And it's not necessarily a problem. The whole 'nationalism is bad' thing just comes from, like we were talking about, Hitler and the Second World War and the fact that nationalism caused WWII and the death of 65 million people, blah, blah, blah. But it's not the same. You can't just take it from them and supplant it today and anybody who talks about nationalism or populism today is automatically going to turn into Hitler or be a Nazi. It's absolutely ridiculous. That's an idiotic level of thinking that goes on. It just blows my mind.

Niall: We have another recent election in Mexico. So here, another key tenet of the nationalism leads to evil and all these nationalist leaders is a dark turn for the world. Here's another key tenet, that they are far right. 'Far right nationalist leaders are everywhere'. Mexico. Scottie, can you pull up the Economist cover story and title of their article. I think it was a month before he was actually voted in. It's astonishing because they had already identified that this guy was going to be a problem for them.

I've already mentioned it earlier in the show. It's worth reading because how can they condense a complex political situation in a country just to this? Here we go.

Joe: AMLO.

Niall: AMLO. That's the acronym for his long Mexican name. "Mexico's answer to Donald Trump". The guy is a lefty! And I don't mean lefty like ultra-liberal, New York cosmopolitan hitched to the leftie. I mean workers' rights, trade union. He's similar to Jeremy Corbyn in that he's been a politician for good, long decades. He's run before. He thought it was stolen from him in 2016, the Presidential campaign for Mexico. He's been the mayor of Mexico City. People there feel positive about him. And finally at age - again, I think he's pushing 70-something - he finally gets elected. The key point there is he's left beyond the left of the establishment.

Joe: Hang on a minute. The left are...

Niall: And he's a nationalist. He's Mexico's Trump.

Joe: So the lefty media are accusing him of being like Trump and he's a lefty. So you have leftist media accusing a leftist of being like Trump which kind of makes sense. The leftist media accusing a leftist Mexican President of being like Trump because he's talking about workers' rights, which is a leftist thing, a leftist agenda. Part of Trump's Presidency and part of his campaign certainly and since then has been defined by his interest in workers' rights in America. So Trump is a leftist as well then. So what does that make CNN? A bunch of right-wing deep staters.

Niall: You have to look at the specific details. One of Trump's key things when he ran was a trillion dollar infrastructure investment plan. That's FDR stuff right there. That's left!

Joe: And also bringing back jobs and looking after the blue collar workers, the little people. That's the proletariat! That's raise up the proletariat! That's communism!

Niall: What all of these guys have in common is that they're socially conservative but they're old left when it comes to the economy, to the well-being of all.

Joe: Social conservatism.

Niall: Trump more than anyone else knows he wants to get rich and what it takes to get rich and what the best kind of environment is for him to get rich. And something else. He's not just sending his money abroad and getting best returns by hedge funds. He actually wanted to build a company where there would be real Americans working in it and if they're too sick to come to work, what good is it? So he sees it in very pragmatic terms but he ends up inadvertently being a classic marriage of the left when it comes to the economy and the right when it comes to social values. And that is the thinking of what makes a nationalist leader in the healthiest sense of the term. And that's why all these guys are like kryptonite to the global establishment. So this is a snippet from the Economist special. It was a cover story in April or May.

"What is about to happen?" They were sure he was going to be elected because he was leading in the polls. "What is about to happen in Mexico is similar to the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the vote of Great Britain to leave the European Union and the term of Italy towards populism." In their mind it's crystal clear. Can they articulate it further? I didn't get much from the Economist article. I doubt they can really. You'd probably have to sit down and get them to write a book or a treatise on it. I think it's really something system one. It's instinctive first and then they write this. It's all similar. They can't really articulate why it is.

Joe: Yeah. They don't know. They're idiots. They're mind programmed, like we were saying earlier in the show. These people are acting out a belief system that they have no real awareness of and have no real understanding of the implications of, it's application, let's say. They're just going with what feels good to them which is a lower level consciousness program that's running.

Niall: Yeah.

Joe: And they've been fed it and they've been made that way. There's no consciousness brought to bear on it to decide whether or not this is right, whether or not what they strongly feel or strongly believe is actually appropriate or the right thing to do. There's no sense of responsibility in that respect, for doing the right thing. It's just 'go with what makes me feel good'. What makes you feel good is very often things that have been programmed into you by other people. So you're basically an automaton and you're dangerous for that reason.

Niall: The Economist is nominally a British publication that is read in western capitals the world over but it wasn't unique. The Washington Post before AMLO was elected ran this op ed, the title of which is The Future President of Mexico is Very Similar to Trump. "If Mexicans elect López Obrador they will be, like the voters who supported Trump, exploiting the status quo without a reliable sense of what will replace it. The result is likely to be a bigger problem on both sides of the border."

They don't know why but it's not good. It's going to be bad. It's insane. And again, AMLO has the same characteristics as Mahathir in Malaysia, as Khan in Pakistan. He's 65, consistently old school leftist. He's finally in power. He'd been a politician the whole time but he's never actually been President of course until now. So again, he's another experienced father of the nation type figure and another nationalist.

For me, all of this brings me to the UK, Jeremy Corbyn. I tried to make this argument with some Corbynistas when they were rabidly protesting Trump and his visit in London a couple of weeks ago. I was saying, "Guys, you realize that Corbyn is your Trump?" "What?! No!! Never! He's not a Nazi. He says nice things. He wants to make the world a better place. He doesn't want to destroy it all!" The usual litany of stuff.

So they're taken superficially but they don't realize that their deeper attraction to Jeremy Corbyn is that he is, again, a father of the nation type figure. In his case, also a very experienced politician but sidelined because the whole system had gone so radically this way in all these decades. Jeremy Corbyn stayed right where he is. He's been consistent the whole time. He's just stood there, out on the fringes of politics, leading some protests, meeting some world leaders or other figures internationally who are terrorists and you never meet with them. He's been consistent. And then the people are ready to sync up with that at the right time. Cometh the hour, cometh the man kind of thing, the reverse of the saying.

But I think Corbyn articulated it. He of course will hate what I'm saying. He would distance himself from Trump. But this week he put out, in part of his speech, a detailed economic plan for the UK. It's basically MAGA. It's "Build it in Britain". It's "Bring home all the capital we've been sending all over the world, hot cash from London to make high profits for a few who don't actually live here and don't even pay their taxes here, who have no real ties to the nation". He's going to try the same thing and draw that capital back and rebuild industry and build in Britain, basically 'made in the UK'. They'll actually start making stuff again instead of just sending weapons abroad and hot money that destroys other countries.

It's a classic old school left, national industry, at least some government control of key industrial sectors. It's precisely what the far right knew Hitler did, Vladimir Putin did to Russia in the last couple of decades. It's not total control by the state as they've obviously had their experience with Soviet ideology and they're not doing that again, but they did wrest back control of certain sectors. Corbyn now wants to do the same thing. He is, in short, another fatherly figure of the nation and an economic nationalist. He's a Donald Trump.

Joe: Speaking of the UK, Corbyn has a lot of leeway to say that kind of stuff now because of the complete shambles that is going on in the ruling conservative party over Brexit. They've basically done nothing for the past three years except Brexit. The country obviously runs itself without this bunch of idiotic politicians picking their noses and messing things up. But that's what they've had to busy themselves with over the past two or three years since Brexit. Nothing else has been going on except "What are we going to do with Brexit? How are we going to deal with Brexit? How are the negotiations going? Are they going anywhere? Oh I don't know. I don't think they are. Is it going to be a hard Brexit? Is it going to be a soft Brexit? Is anything going to happen at all? Nobody knows but it takes a lot of our time and gets a lot of people's' faces on TV."

But we've predicted or more particularly, I predicted not from the get-go but from the start almost...

Niall: We need some applause here.

Joe: Sssshhhh. From the start almost that it wasn't going to happen and it was obvious it was not going to happen. There's no way the UK can actually extricate itself from the European Union. It's been there for 50 years at least.

Niall: They're in too deep.

Joe: They're way in too deep. Their entire economy is just so intertwined with the European economies and the EU economy in general that it's suicide. It's just such a bad idea. I've been waiting over the past six months or a year or so, for some campaign to get going to start the process of a second referendum because that seemed to me to be the only way that they could get out of the Brexit quagmire, what caused it in the first place which was having a referendum and then the vote being that yes, the majority of people want to leave the EU and now they have to. But leading up to a second referendum, I've been watching and waiting because leading up to it, you would have to have a process of scaring the public into agreeing to another referendum or getting enough political capital to announce another referendum and then be sure to have scared the people enough that they would vote no this time, that we want to stay within the EU.

The shambles that's been going on with the tory government and the whole shit show that has been the Brexit negotiations that has made May a complete idiot along with her entire government and the resignation of some high profile members over Brexit is getting to the point where this is obviously a disaster. If you were really going to push that message home that 'we need another referendum' and see what happens, you would scare people, increase the fear factor about what will happen if there is - which is increasingly likely or that's the way their making it happen - is increasingly likely there's going to be a hard Brexit, i.e., the UK will leave with no deal whatsoever and just be cut adrift and screwed led by the Independent UK newspaper.

Niall: I have an example of one of the articles they put out this week. I notice on two successive days they had two themes on this with multiple articles.

Joe: "Final Say. More than 350,000 people back the independence campaign for a vote on government Brexit deal." Okay, so they're going for a vote on the deal as if to say "This isn't going to happen. This is a bad idea. We don't want the government to actually negotiate Brexit at all anymore." Put up the other article there Scottie, the RT one. This is the kind of scaremongering I was talking about. "God help us! The British army on standby in case of no deal Brexit supply issues." This is the stories coming out. Scroll down a little bit. It actually says "Ministers planning Brexit told the media" - this is a key point here that stuck out for me. This isn't the lefty organization that would be anti-tories on this anti-Brexit. This is actually Theresa May's conservative government ministers, supposedly pro-Brexit on song with the government's agenda of pushing Brexit through, telling the media that the army is on standby to deliver key supplies like food, fuel and medicines in the eventuality of a no-deal scenario.

Niall: Right.

Joe: So May herself, out of one side of her mouth she's saying "No, we're going to fulfil the will of the British people. We're going to have Brexit. We're going to get the best deal possible and it's a done deal and under no circumstances will there be another referendum. We're doing Brexit and that's it!" Out of one side of her mouth. Out of the other side of her mouth, via her ministers, she's trying to scare people with these kind of stories, scare them into wanting a second referendum, wanting to undercut her position.

Niall: And that's why she closed parliament early this year and they all went on summer holidays.

Joe: It's a disaster.

Niall: Because there's nothing to negotiate as far as they're concerned. They're going to bring about a situation where people will clamour for it.

Joe: Right.

Niall: Absolutely.

Joe: They're citing statistics and all that kind of stuff as well. This is how long it's been. I didn't realize it was this long, but since the Brexit referendum happened there are something like 1.6 million teenagers have come of voting age and that they are in a demographic or of a political persuasion that is anti-Brexit. And that number of new voters who are anti-Brexit is more than the margin of victory that the supporters of Brexit got. So if we have a referendum today according to the Independent, a majority of voters in the UK would say no to overturn the decision. So they're really pushing hard on it.

Niall: Yeah. But they still might need to rig the referendum in some way. Well call me a conspiracy theorist, but...

Joe: You're a conspiracy theorist!

Niall: The timing of the announcement to hold a referendum - no, it happened first I think. I looked into this before. I was wondering if it came after Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. I think the Brexit referendum was announced beforehand but only by several months. Then Corbyn was elected. But I think everything that's happened since then, the delaying and so on, the talking out of one side of the mouth and then doing this in the background, I think it's done, especially since Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, with one eye only on the foreign aspect, the UK and the EU - are we in or not - and the other eye on Jeremy Corbyn and/or someone like him who will come out and effectively change the regime into a popular nationalist-run government like all these other countries are seeing all over the world because that is the death knell. His thing where Britain will re-industrialize, do you understand the enemies he will have?

This is kind of a side note but I wonder if Trump's whole trade wars, if you look into the details and what he would actually like to do it's basically trying to draw back American capital. It's not really about having a war with country X and country Y. It's a roundabout war. It's a cover story for an effort to get American capital back from those cheap labour countries and producing again in the United States.

In Corbyn's case he has articulated it clearly. He's not hiding behind something. He says "I want that capital back". That'll make it even harder to do I suspect because if you're straight-on engaging these hedge funds in London, the deep state has a big branch of its hydra in London of course.

Joe: Here's one thing I wanted to say before we call it quits here. Something that really annoys me and is indicative of probably most of the world's problems, all of the social problems in the west today is people's proclivity to think only in black and white terms or to only be able to think in black and white terms. I've come across on Facebook and social media and on websites and on our own website in the comments section, of people showing a complete inability to think in nuanced terms and realize that things are not black and white and to assume or be able to understand that there are people who don't think that way, people who aren't into picking a side, who aren't automatically on the left or the right, however it's defined today.

It seems to be fairly well defined between left and right, right? You've got the nationalists, the right-wingers, the Nazis. Then you've got the lefties, the multiculturalists, that kind of thing, broadly speaking. People are active anyway. I'm sure there's a great silent majority out there who don't say anything about this and haven't really made up their own minds. But the people who are actually active all seem to be either of one stripe or another. At least that's what's presented to people. People are in one camp or the other.

For otherwise intelligent people it's amazing for me to see that they're unable to conceive of the idea that people like us, for example, would exist where we're not pro Trump and we're not pro multiculturalism. We're not pro this or pro that. We're not diehard, inscribed in stone for this and against that or vice versa, that basically we take every situation on its merits and we're interested in the truth of a situation, the truth being associated with what is good and what is bad for society in general or what can be assumed is a good direction or a bad direction based on historical lessons and based on understanding of human beings and how they operate, psychologically and all that kind of stuff, that in any given situation you might say something positive about Trump or right-wing movements in essence or say that there are some positive aspects to it. And then in another situation you would say there are some positive aspects about left-wing movements.

But as soon as you open your mouth, even if you're commenting on one situation and you happen to take a more leftist or more rightist approach on any one specific situation, as soon as someone hears you saying that then you're condemned as a Nazi or a libtard. Obviously people would have to follow you and see what you're saying. The people I'm talking about are people who follow you and follow me or are looking at what I'm saying but they still don't seem to be able to understand that I'm not right wing or left wing. That's a stupid designation to make. "In any given situation, what's your stance on this? What's your opinion? Are you left or right on this?" But that's like reducing it to a ridiculously simplistic level that is totally irrelevant to the nuanced and complex nature of the topic that you're discussing.

So why are people so idiotic and stupid that they can't conceive of that idea that any half intelligent person would have to come at a situation and judge it based on its merits with the result being that you may sound a bit like a right-winger or you may sound a bit like a left-winger but you're friggin' neither? What's wrong with people?! Because they want to pigeonhole you because it's simple, right? It's easier. They want to put you in a box and it's done. "Now I know who you are."

Niall: Because they grew up with bad parents and I don't mean their actual flesh and blood parents who did the best they could under the circumstances. I mean bad parents in the sense of government regimes. The government would have them think in black and white in perpetuity forever and never actually think through a situation. It's divide and conquer isn't it? It's classical "Where do you stand on this? Are you one or the other?" And it's easier to raise a mob that way. It's easier to push through legislation that way. It's easier to start civil wars if you wanted to, like Syria, that way.

It comes down to bad parenting. The parent themselves - I'm thinking here of the self-appointed wise men of say Washington or Paris or London or wherever they are, it's either because they themselves see the world in those black and white terms or worse, more pernicious, the want them to.

Joe: they want people to see it in those terms.

Niall: Like their head there of the new head of CNN articulated and said we want emotional based things that people are attached to, i.e., we're going to keep you attached by keeping you manipulated, by giving you black and white, over-simplified versions by events that are not reflective of...

Niall: By reporting a story about a dog that was rescued from a car and having resistance. They've been doing that. They just have anti-Trump slogans scrolling across the bottom of the screen while they're reporting about the heat wave in Minnesota or something. That's bad parenting.

Joe: It's worse than that. It's consciously evil parenting and those people need to pay and I hope someday they will, somehow. But if not, well we'll just struggle on and we'll try and keep things as sane as possible in the meantime. We'll do our best to do that. So I think we'll leave it there for this week. Thanks for watching. If you're watching the video version and you liked it please subscribe. I think you have to push some other buttons. I'm not quite up on that.

Scottie: Notifications button.

Joe: Click the notifications button as well.

Scottie: Click the bell.

Joe: Click the bell. There you go. You've got to click the bell these days, like Pavlov's dog. Until next time, thanks for listening, thanks for watching and we'll see you again. Bye.

Niall: See y'all. Bye-bye.