Douglas Murray: Racism, Marxism, and the War on the West | Lex Fridman Podcast #296

Douglas Murray 0:00 I think that some people are deliberately trying to completely clear the cultural landscape of our past in order to say there's nothing good, nothing you can hold onto, no one you should revere. You've got no heroes. The whole thing comes down. Who's left standing? Oh, we've also got this idea from the 20th century still about Marxism. And, and no, no. You, you, you, you w- I will not have the entire landscape deracinated and then the worst ideas tried again.

Lex Fridman 0:31 The following is a conversation with Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, and his most recent book, The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason. He's a brilliant, fearless, and often controversial thinker who points out and pushes back against what he sees as the madness of our modern world. I should note that the use of the word Marxism and the West in this conversation refers primarily to cultural Marxism and the cultural values of Western civilization respectively. This is in contrast to my previous conversation with Richard Wolff, where we focused on Marxism as primarily a critique of capitalism, and thus looking at it through the lens of economics and not culture. Nevertheless, these two episodes stand opposite of each other with very different perspectives on how we build a flourishing civilization together. I leave it to you, the listener, to think and to decide which is the better way. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Douglas Murray.

Lex Fridman 1:48 You recently wrote the book titled The War on the West, which in part says that the values, ideas, and history of Western civilization are under attack. So, let's start with the basics. Historically and today, what are the ideas that represent Western civilization, the good, the bad, the ugly?

Douglas Murray 2:07 I actually don't get stuck on, um, definitions, precisely 'cause as you know, once you get stuck on definitions there's a possibility you'll never get off them.

Lex Fridman 2:13 Yes. (laughs)

Douglas Murray 2:16 Um, I'd say a few things. Firstly, uh, obviously the Western tradition is a specific tradition, a specific tradition of ideas, culture, well known to be perhaps easily defined by the combination of Athens and Jerusalem, the, the world of the Bible, and the world of ancient Greece and, and indeed Rome. Uh, effectively creates West, uh, creates European civilization, which itself spawns the rest of the Western civilizations: America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. Uh, but these are the main countries that we still refer to as, as the West. Um, so there's a specific tradition and all of the things that come from it. Uh, my shorthand cheat on this answer is to say, um, you know when you're not in it.

Lex Fridman 3:03 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 3:05 So if you've ever been to Beijing, Shanghai, it's like you know you're not in the West. You're somewhere else, but you know you're not in the West. When you're in Tokyo, you're somewhere extraordinary, but you know you're not in the West. Uh, obviously there are, um, let's say borderline questions, like is Russia in the West? Um, which I sort of leave open as a, as a question. Um, uh, possibly.

Lex Fridman 3:32 Well, if you were placed into Moscow blindfolded and you woke up and you couldn't hear the language or maybe you didn't know what the language sounded like, would you-

Douglas Murray 3:40 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 3:40 ... would you guess you were in the West?

Douglas Murray 3:42 Uh-

Lex Fridman 3:42 Or not?

Douglas Murray 3:43 I think I was somewhere near it. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 3:45 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 3:45 Getting closer. I mean, you know, is, is, is... Or Tolstoy asks the question, doesn't he, whether it's European. And I think the answer to that is not really, although massively influenced by Europe, but, um, and times wanting to reach towards it, at times wanting to stay away. But, um, but a, a part of the West, possibly. Yes. Um, but anyway, I, it's, it's a very specific tradition. It's, it's, it's one of a number of major traditions in the world. And, um, because it's hard to define doesn't mean it doesn't exist, you know?

Lex Fridman 4:19 Are there certain characteristics and qualities about the values and the ideas that define it? Is, is, uh, the type of rule, the type of governmental structure, uh-

Douglas Murray 4:28 Yes. I mean, the rule of law, uh, property owning democracies, um, and much more. I mean, these are of course things that were, ended up being developed in America and, uh, then given back to much of the rest of the West. Um, I say there are other, um, perhaps more controversial attributes I would, I would give to the West. One is a ravenous interest in the rest of the world, which is not shared, of course, by every other culture. Um, uh, the late, uh, philosopher George Steiner, who said he could never get out of his head the haunting fact that the boats only seemed to go out from Europe. You know, they, they didn't... The explorers, the, the, the, the, the scholars, the, the linguists, the, the people who wanted to discover other civilizations and indeed even resurrect ancient civilizations and lost civilizations, these were scholars that were always coming from the West to discover this elsewhere. By contrast, you know, there were never boats coming from Egypt to help the Anglo-Saxons discover the origins of their language and, and so on. So I think there is a sort of ravenous interest in the rest of the world, which can be said to be a Western attribute, although it of course also has a bunch of immediately preface it, some downsides and many criticisms that could be made to some of the consequences of that interest. Um, because of course it's not entirely l- lacking in self-interest.

Lex Fridman 5:50 So it's not just the scholars, it's also...

Douglas Murray 5:53 The armies.

Lex Fridman 5:54 The armies. And they're looking to gain access and control over resources elsewhere.

Douglas Murray 5:59 To markets.

Lex Fridman 6:00 And hence the imperial imperative-

Douglas Murray 6:03 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 6:04 ... to conquer-

Douglas Murray 6:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 6:05 ... to expand.

Douglas Murray 6:06 Although that itself, of course, is a universal thing. I mean, no, uh, w-... no, um, civilization, I think, that we know of doesn't try to gain ground from its neighbors where it can. The Western ability to go further faster, um, certainly gave an advantage in that regard.

Lex Fridman 6:23 Do some civilizations get a bit more excited by that kind of idea than others?

Douglas Murray 6:28 Possible. It's possible.

Lex Fridman 6:30 'Cause it, you could say it's the Western civilization, because of the tech- technological innovation was more, um, efficient-

Douglas Murray 6:38 Yes.

Lex Fridman 6:38 ... at doing that kind of thing.

Douglas Murray 6:39 Absolutely. Although, I mean-

Lex Fridman 6:40 Or maybe it wanted it more too.

Douglas Murray 6:42 Well, the, the, the Ottomans wanted it an awful lot and did very terribly well for many centuries.

Lex Fridman 6:47 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 6:48 One shouldn't forget that.

Lex Fridman 6:49 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 6:49 Um, as did others. Um, I, I'd also say by the way that, and again, it's a, it is a very broad one, but it's worth throwing out there, I think self-criticism, um, is an important attribute of the Western mind. Uh, one that, as you know, is not common everywhere. Not all societies allow even their most vociferous critics to become rich.

Lex Fridman 7:13 So, you know, criticism is a negative sounding word. It could be self-introspection, self-analysis, self-reflection.

Douglas Murray 7:20 And it can be what you need. Uh, you know, and, uh, in the Western system, I'd argue that one of the advantages of the system of representative governance is that where there are problems in the system, you can, um, attempt to sort them out by peaceable means. Um, we listen to arguments. I mean, most famously in America in the late 20th century, the Civil Rights Movement achieved its aims by force of moral argument and persuaded the rest of the country that it had been wrong. Um, that's not common in every society by any means. So I think there are certain attributes to the Western mind that you could say are, um, they're not entirely unique, but they are not as commonplace elsewhere.

Lex Fridman 8:06 What about the emergence and hierarchies of asymmetry of power? Most visible, most drastic in the form of slavery, for example.

Douglas Murray 8:18 Well, I mean, everyone in the world did slavery, so, I mean, I don't regard it as being a Western, a unique Western sin. Um, it's rather hard to think of a civilization in history that didn't have slavery of some kind. One of the oddities of the Western ignorance of our day is that people seem to imagine that our societies in the West were the only ones who have engaged in any vices. Alas, this isn't true. It's a sort of Rousseauian mistake, or at least one that's blossomed since Rousseau, that everybody else in the world was born into sort of Edenic innocence, and only we in the West had this sort of evil in us that caused us to do bad things to other people. Slavery was engaged in by everyone in the ancient world, of course, and, and through most of the modern world as well. Of course, there are 40 million slaves in the world today. So it's, it's clearly not something that the species as a whole has a problem with. Um, that's more slaves, of course, than there were in the 19th century. Um, and I'd say on top of that, that, you know, the interesting thing about the Western mind as regards to slavery is that we were the civilization that did away with it. And, and by the way, the, the founding fathers of America who today are lambasted routinely for being acquiescent in the slave trade, um, engaging in it, owning slaves. Um, there's not, people almost don't even bother now to recognize the fact that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington all wanted to see this trade done away with. Couldn't hold the country together at the origins if they'd have made such an effort and believed and hoped that it would be something that would be dealt with after their time.

Lex Fridman 9:58 So the founding ideas had within them the notion that we should, as a people, get rid of this.

Douglas Murray 10:05 The opening lines of the Declaration of Independence set up the conditions under which slavery will be impossible.

Lex Fridman 10:14 "All men are created equal."

Douglas Murray 10:16 Once you, once you've put that, that's like a, that's a time bomb under the-

Lex Fridman 10:20 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 10:20 ... under the whole concept of slavery.

Lex Fridman 10:22 (laughs) That's ticking away. Okay.

Douglas Murray 10:24 And sure enough, it detonated in the next century.

Lex Fridman 10:28 If we just step back and look at our, the human species, what does slavery teach you about human nature? The fact that slavery, um, has appeared as a function of society throughout human history.

Douglas Murray 10:44 There are two possibilities. Um, one is, it's what people think they can do when God's not watching. Another is, it's what they can do if they think that God allows it.

Lex Fridman 11:00 Really, really well put. And, um, the fact that they want to do this kind of subjugation-

Douglas Murray 11:08 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 11:08 ... what does that mean?

Douglas Murray 11:10 Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's pretty straightforward in a way. Um, there are people who get to work for free.

Lex Fridman 11:17 It's economic in nature in some, in some sense.

Douglas Murray 11:19 Yes. But in order to do it, I mean, almost always there are the diff- there are some examples in the ancient world where this wasn't the case, but almost always it had to be a subjugated people or people regarded as different. One of the things actually I've tried to sort of inject into the discussion through this book among other things is, is a recognition that there were, there were very major questions still going on in the 18th and early 19th century, the one resolved, which were one of the reasons why slavery was not as morally repugnant to people then as it was to us now, as it is to us now. And that's the question of polygenesis and monogenesis. Um, at the time of Thomas Jefferson, the founding fathers were, were, were thinking and working. They didn't know because nobody knew whether the human races were related or not. Um-The, there was, there were arguments that, uh, the monogenesis argument, that, that we were all indeed from the same racial stock. Apologenesis argument was that we weren't, you know, Black Africans, Ethiopians, they're often referred to at the time, um, because they provided some of the first slaves, um, were different from white Europeans. Simply not related in any way and that makes it easier, of course. That makes it easier to enslave people if you think they're not your brother. Uh, am I my brother's keeper? No, he's not your brother. Uh, and the, there's, it's, it's, it's a very... It was a very troubling argument in the, in the 18th to 19th century also because there was a biblical question. It threw up, it threw up a theological question which was, I mean, (laughs) people were literally debating this at the time, um, was there also a Black Adam and Eve? Was there as it were an Indian Adam and Eve, a Native American Adam and Eve? I, I mean, this was a serious theological debate because they didn't know the answer and it, I mean, people say that Darwin, um, solved this, and it wasn't just Darwin, of course. But by the late 19th century, the argument that we were not all related as human beings had suffered so many blows that you had to really be very, very ignorant, deliberately, willfully ignorant to, to ignore it by then.

Lex Fridman 13:41 So it no longer was, after Darwin, a theological question, it became a moral question.

Douglas Murray 13:46 It was already a moral question but it clarified it. Darwin clarifies it, definitely, and then you're in this, as I say, you're in this situation of you're not subjugating some other people, you're subjugating your own kin and, and that becomes morally unsustainable.

Lex Fridman 14:03 So

Lex Fridman 14:05 given that slavery in America is part, is part of its history, how do we incorporate into the calculus of, um, policy today, social discourse, what we learn in school? We can look at slavery in America, we can look at maybe more recent things like, uh, in Europe, the, other atrocities, the Holocaust. How do we incorporate that in terms of how we create policy, how we treat each other, all those kinds of things? Um, what is the calculus of integrating the atrocities, the injustices of the past into the way we are today?

Douglas Murray 14:51 That's a very complex question because it's a, it's a moral question at this point and a moral question long after the fact. Um, I say at one point in The War on the West that the argument, for instance, on reparations now that goes on and, and is not a, not a fringe argument anymore. Some people say, "Oh, you're pulling up this fringe argument." It really isn't. I mean, every contender for the Democratic nomination for the, uh, the presidency in 2020 was willing to talk about the possibility of reparation. Some very eager that this country, America goes through that entirely self-destructive exercise. Um, I say that there's a, there's a lot of problems with this but if I can refine it down to one thing, I'd say this, um, it's no longer about a wealth transfer from one group of people who did something wrong to another group of people who were wronged. It would've been, it would've been that, could've been that 200 years ago. Today, it's not even the descendants of people who did something wrong giving money to people who were the descendants of people who were wronged. It's a wealth transfer from people who look like people who did a wrong thing in the past to another group of people who resemble people who were wronged. That's impossible to do and I'm completely clear about this. You, you, there is no way in which you could organize such a, a wealth transfer, uh, on moral or practical reasons. America was filled with people who are, um, have the same skin color as us, for instance, who have no connection to the slave trade and should not be made to pay money to people who have some connection. And then the country is also filled with ethnic minorities who have come after slavery who would not be, um, due for any reimbursement as it were. The problem, the problem with this is though is that there are, I'm perfectly open to the possibility that there are, um, residual inequities that exist in American life and that s- and that the consequences of slavery could be one of the factors that resulted from this. The thing is I don't think it's, it's a, um, I don't think it's a single issue answer. I think it's a multidimensional issue, something like Black underachievement in America is obviously a multidimensional issue. Um, much of the left and others wish to say it's not, it's only about racism and they can't answer why Asians who've arrived more recently don't, for instance, get held down by white supremacy but actually I say white supremacy in quotes obviously.

Lex Fridman 17:34 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 17:34 Uh, but don't get held d- back by it, but actually flourish to the extent that Asian Americans, uh, have a higher h- household earnings and higher h- household mean, um, uh, uh, equity than home equity and so on than, than white Americans. Uh, so I don't think that on the merits, the evidence is there that, you know, racism is the explanation for Black, ongoing Black underachievement in some segments of the Black community in America. Um, it's obviously a part of it. Could you say that even those things like fatherlessness and, um, uh, similar family breakdown issues are a long-term consequence of it?It, possibly, but it's, it's being awfully generous to people's ability to make bad decisions. For instance, how many generations after the Holocaust would you allow people to claim that everything that went wrong in the Jewish community was as a result of the Holocaust? I mean, is there m- is there some kind of term limit on this? I would've thought so, and I think most people probably think that's over.

Lex Fridman 18:43 I think the details matter there. The f- and ... Um, but it's very diff-

Douglas Murray 18:51 We're in deep waters here.

Lex Fridman 18:52 Oh, I enjoy swimming out in the ocean, so ...

Douglas Murray 18:55 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 18:55 Although I'm terrified of what's lurking underneath in the darkness.

Douglas Murray 19:00 You're right.

Lex Fridman 19:00 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 19:01 You're right to be.

Lex Fridman 19:03 (laughs) Um, okay. It's really complicated calculus w- with the Holocaust and with slavery.

Lex Fridman 19:10 So the argument in America is that there, there's deep institutional racism against African Americans that's rooted in slavery.

Douglas Murray 19:22 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 19:23 And so however that calculus turns out, that calculation, it still persists, in the culture, in the institutions, in the allocation of resources, in the way that we communicate in the, in the s- in subtle ways, in major ways, all that kind of stuff. Um, how is it possible to win or lose that argument of how much institutional racism there is that's rooted in, in slavery? Is it a winnable...

Douglas Murray 19:51 It's, it's, it's an unquantifiable argument. Um, and I'd, I'd, I'd... I like to apply some shortcuts to some of this, the, the, the following. After instance, all, um... Let's take the, the, the one that's most often cited. If a, if a white person is walking down a street in America and they see a group of young Black men coming towards them and it's late at night and they cross the road, is it because of slavery? Is it because of institutional racism? No. It's because they've made a calculus based not entirely on, um, unfounded beliefs that given crime rates, it's possible that this group of people might be a group of people they don't want to meet late at night. That's, uh, an ugly fact, but as crime statistics in American cities after American cities bear out, um, it's not an entirely unreasonable one. It's not reasonable every time, obviously. Obviously. But is it attributable to slavery? Uh, that's a stretch. Um, if you're in a city like Chicago where the homicide rates shot up in the last two years, albeit again as, as always has to be remembered, mainly Black on Black, uh, gun violence and knife violence. Nevertheless, if you're in a city like Chicago and you make that calculus I've just suggested, the, the, the, the cliched one, the street late at night, there are other factors other than a memory of slavery that kick in. Um, and I'm afraid it's, uh, it's something which people don't want to particularly acknowledge in America for obvious reasons, because it's the ugliest damn debate in the world. But I was actually just writing in the wa- in my column in New York Post today about a, a very interesting ca- case that's sort of similar, which is the ug- the, um, question of obesity in the US. As you know, um, America's the most overweight country in the world. America has, I think, um, 40% of the population is obese in medical ways, and the nearest next country is a long way down, that's New Zealand at 30% of the population. So America's a long way ahead. Why during the coronavirus era, when we know that obesity is the one clearest factor that's likely to lead to your hospitalization if you also get the virus, why did almost no public health information in America focus on obesity? 80% of the people who ended up hospitalized in America fr- with coronavirus were obese. W- we locked the schools when there was no evidence that the coronavirus was deadly for children. We all wore cloth masks when there was, uh, very little evidence that this was much use in stopping the spread of the virus. We had massive evidence about obesity being a problem, and we never addressed it. Why? Is it just because we worried about fat people? No, it's actually because, about fat shaming as it were, no, it's also because to a great extent it's a racial issue in America as well, and actually I quoted this, uh, new publication from the Univer- University of Chicago as it happens, which makes that claim explicit. It says the reasons why people are, um, have views that are negative about obesity is because of racism and slavery. This is what everything is drawn back to in America. Anything you want to stop, you say it's because of racism, it's because of slavery. How about it's actually because you mind the hospitals getting clogged up, you mind people dying, you mind ethnic minorities disproportionately dying, and you'd like to say something about it. Once again, as in everything in America, it's cut off by some poorly educated academic saying it's about slavery. So we're really not... I mean, th- this requires a kind of form of brain surgery to perform it on a society, probably one that's not possible without killing the patient, and it's being done by people who are wearing, like, mittens.

Lex Fridman 24:05 So I'm sure that there's, uh, a few folks listening to this that are rolling their eyes and saying, "Here we go again. Two white guys talking about the lack of, uh, institutional racism in America."First of all, what's your... (laughs) What would you like to tell them? So, uh, our African American friends who are looking at this, and I've gotten a chance to talk to a bunch of them on Clubhouse recently. Clubhouse is the social app.

Douglas Murray 24:37 Yeah, yeah, I know.

Lex Fridman 24:37 And I really enjoy it.

Douglas Murray 24:38 It's, it's an absolute zoo of an app, as far as I can see, it's

Narrator 24:41 You like it? Hmm.

Lex Fridman 24:41 I personally love it because you get to talk to... As somebody who's an introvert and doesn't socialize much, I enjoy talking to people from all walks of life. So it got, it gave me a chance to, first of all, practice Russian and Ukrainian.

Douglas Murray 24:56 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 24:56 So I get the chance to do that. Then you get a chance to talk about Israel and Palestine with people who are, uh, from that part of the world.

Douglas Murray 25:04 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 25:05 And you get to hear raw emotion of people from the ground where they start screaming, they start crying, they start being calm and collected and thoughtful and the, uh... This is as if you walked into a bar with custom-picked regular folks, in quotes, regular folks, just people that have, quote unquote, lived experiences, real pain, real hope, real emotions, biases and you get to listen to them go at it with no... Uh, because it's a audio app, you're not allowed to start getting into a physical fistfight.

Douglas Murray 25:43 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 25:43 So even though it really sounds like people want to-

Douglas Murray 25:46 Sounds like it's, sounds like it's happening, yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 25:47 (laughs) Yeah. And so you get to really listen to that feeling and, for example, it allows a white guy like me from another part of the world, coming from, uh, the former Soviet Union, to go into a room with a few hundred, uh, African Americans screaming about-

Douglas Murray 26:05 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 26:05 ... Joe Rogan using the N-word.

Douglas Murray 26:07 Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:07 And I get to really listen. There's very different perspectives on that in the African American community.

Douglas Murray 26:13 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 26:13 And it's fascinating to listen.

Douglas Murray 26:14 Sure.

Lex Fridman 26:14 So I don't get a, access to that by sort of excellent books and articles written and so on.

Douglas Murray 26:20 Sure.

Lex Fridman 26:20 You get that real raw emotion.

Lex Fridman 26:22 And I'm just saying, there's a few of those folks listening to this-

Douglas Murray 26:25 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 26:25 ... with that real raw emotion.

Douglas Murray 26:27 Sure.

Lex Fridman 26:27 And they, one argument they say is, "You, Douglas Murray, and you, Lex Fridman, don't have the right to talk about race and racism in America. It is our struggle. You are from a privileged class of people that don't, don't know what it's like to be a Black man or woman in America walking down the street." Can you steel man that case? (laughs)

Douglas Murray 26:54 First of all, fuck that.

Lex Fridman 26:56 (laughs) Okay. That's not, that's... I think we need to define steel, (laughs) steel manning.

Douglas Murray 27:01 Okay.

Lex Fridman 27:01 (laughing) But can you at least try?

Douglas Murray 27:02 I know what steel manning is.

Lex Fridman 27:04 Okay. (laughs)

Douglas Murray 27:05 Um, I really resent that form of argumentation.

Lex Fridman 27:07 Sure.

Douglas Murray 27:07 I really resent it. I have the right to talk about whatever the hell I want and no one's gonna stop me or try to intimidate me-

Lex Fridman 27:14 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 27:14 ... or tell me that I can't simply because of my skin color. And I think that if I said to somebody else the other way around, it would be equally reprehensible. If I said, "Shut up, you have no right to criticize anything that Douglas Murray says because you've not got my skin color," okay, it's not an exact comparison, but seriously, is that a, is that a reasonable form of argument? "Uh, you haven't been through everything I've been through in my life, therefore you can't comment." No. In that case, nobody can talk about anything. We might as well pack up, go home, and isolate ourselves.

Lex Fridman 27:47 Strong words, but can you try to steel man the case? Not in this particular situation, but there's people that have lived through something that can comment in a very specific way.

Douglas Murray 27:59 Yes.

Lex Fridman 27:59 Like, for example, Holocaust survivors.

Douglas Murray 28:00 Yes.

Lex Fridman 28:03 There is a sense in which, maybe a basic sense of civility when a Holocaust survivor speaking about their experience of the Holocaust-

Douglas Murray 28:11 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 28:12 ... than, um, an intellectual from a very different part of the world that's simply writing about, uh, nuanced geopolitics of World War II, just should not interrupt the Holocaust survivor. But-

Douglas Murray 28:26 Well, you'd physically interrupt them if they're telling you their story.

Lex Fridman 28:29 No, with words, with logic and reason, that the experience of the Holocaust survivor somehow fundamentally has a deeper understanding of the humanity and the injustice of the...

Douglas Murray 28:41 Well, first of all, I'm, uh... And again, we're in even deeper waters now, but in terms of wanting to listen to another person who has experienced something, yes. Yes. But not endlessly. Not endlessly. I mean, there are some people who've written about the... I mean, there are people who've written about the Holocaust who didn't experience the Holocaust and have written about it better than people who did. It's, it's not... This, this, this idea that the lived experience, to use this terrible modern jargon as if there's another type, this, this, this idea that the lived experience has to triumph over everything else is, is not always correct. It can be correct in some circumstances. If you were sitting in a room with a Holocaust survivor and somebody who'd never heard about the Holocaust and wanted to kind of, you know, shoot out their views on it, yeah, one of those people should be heard more than the other, obviously. Obviously. If there's somebody who's experienced racism firsthand and there's somebody else who has never experienced it, then obviously you'd want to hear from the person who has experienced it firsthand, if that is the discussion underway. I, I don't think that it's the case that that is endlessly the case. I'm also highly reluctant to concede that there are groups of people who, by dint of their skin color or anything else, get to dominate the microphone. Now, of course, we're literally both speaking into microphones at the moment, so there's an irony to this. But let's skate over the irony. What I mean is people saying, "You don't have the right to speak. I have the right to take the microphone from you and speak because I know best." Fine. If you know best, we'll argue it out and someone will win, long or short term.... but the, the, um, the, the almost aggressive tone in which this is now leveled, I don't like the sound of. Nobody's experience is completely understandable by another human being. Nobody's. And what many people are asking us to do at the moment, us collectively, is to fall for that thing, I think it was Camille Foster who said it first, but I've, um, adopted in recent years, is to say, "You must spend an inordinate amount of your life trying to understand me personally, my lived experience, everything about me. You should dedicate your life to trying to do that. Simultaneously, you'll never understand me." This is not an attractive invitation. This is- this is- this is a- an unwinnable game. So if somebody... If somebody has a legitimate, um, and i- an important point to make, they should make it and they will win through whatever their character is, whatever their race. And by the way, there are plenty of white people who experience racism as well. There are plenty of white people who do, and have done, and increasingly so, which is one of the things I write about in The War on the West. I mean, I- I would argue that today in America, the only group you are actually allowed to be consistently, vilely racist against are white people. If you say disgusting things about Black people in America in 2022, you will be over. You will be over. If you decide to talk about people's white tears, their white female tears, their white guilt, their white privilege, their white rage, and all these other pseudo-pathologizing terms, you'll be just fine. You could be the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. You could lecture at Yale University absolutely fine, and the white people have to suck that up as if that's fine because there was racism in another direction in the past. So white people can have racism as well. Does that mean that I think that I have a right or other white people have a right to dominate the discourse by talking about their feelings of having been the victim- victims of racism? No, not particularly, because what does that get us? It gets us into a endless cycle of competitive victimhood. Am I saying that white people who've experienced violence have experienced historically anything like the violence that was perpetrated against Black people in America historically? Obviously not. But, you know, what kind of competition do we want to enter here? And this is very, very important terrain now in America because there's one other thing I have to throw in there which is, how do you work out the sincerity of the claim? How do you work out the sincerity of the claim being made? At one point, uh, in my bo- in this latest book, I refer to a very useful bit in, um, in Nietzsche and The Genealogy of Morals, where, as you know, Nietzsche always has to be treated carefully. You know, when people say, um, "I love Nietzsche," you have to say, "Which bits?"

Lex Fridman 33:33 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 33:34 What exactly do you love about him? But, um, he...

Lex Fridman 33:41 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 33:41 Uh, a lot- and a lot can be learned from the answer. Uh, but th- there are moments in Genealogy of Morals that were very useful for this book. One of them was the moment when Nietzsche, uh, uses a phrase that I've now stolen for myself, appropriated you might say, um, where, um, where he refers to people who, who tear at wounds long since closed and then cry about the pain they feel. Now, how do you know? How do you know whether the pain is real? How do you know? I'm not saying you can never know, but it's hard. So when somebody says, "I feel that my life hasn't gone that well and it's because of something that was done to my ancestors 200 years ago," maybe they do feel that. Maybe they're right to feel that. Maybe they're making it up. Maybe they're using it as their reason for failure in life. Maybe they're u- using it as a reason to not even try. Maybe they're using it as a reason to smoke weed all day. I don't know. Uh, and who does know? How can you work that out? And that's why I come back to this thing of, who are we to constantly judge in this society other people who we don't know and attribute motives to them based on h- on racial or other characteristics?

Lex Fridman 35:03 And as you write in this part... (laughs) I- I like your, uh, uh, approp- cultural appropriation of Nietzsche, uh, and at the same time canceling, uh, Nietzsche, um, in the same set of sentences.

Douglas Murray 35:18 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 35:18 But you write in this part about evil.

Douglas Murray 35:20 No, I didn't cancel Nietzsche.

Lex Fridman 35:22 Well-

Douglas Murray 35:22 You can't cancel Nietzsche. I- I was saying-

Lex Fridman 35:25 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 35:25 I was saying treat him carefully.

Lex Fridman 35:27 Treat him carefully. Fair enough. (laughs) But we can judge a man's character by which parts of Nietzsche he, um, he quotes.

Douglas Murray 35:35 Hmm. That's fair enough, I think. I think when you meet people who do Man and Superman a bit too much or, uh... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 35:41 Uh, now, now you're pull- pulling in, uh, even deeper water referencing Hitler here.

Lex Fridman 35:47 Okay. So you write in this part of the book about evil, um, quote, "What is it that drives evil? Many things without doubt, but one of them is identified by several of the great philosophers is resentment."

Douglas Murray 36:03 Yes.

Lex Fridman 36:04 "That sentiment is one of the greatest drivers for people who want to destroy:" colon, "blaming someone else for having something you believe you deserve more." And you're saying this kind of resentment, we don't know as it surfaces whether it's genuine or if it's, uh, used to sort of play games of power to evil ends.

Douglas Murray 36:28 Mm.

Lex Fridman 36:29 Um, can you speak to this? To this- this... 'Cause it's such a fascinating idea that one of the biggest drivers of evil in the world...... is resentment. Mm. Because if you look at... Boy, if you look at human history, if you look at Hitler, uh, so much of the propaganda, so much of the narrative was about resentment. Mm. So is that surface or is it level or is that deep, the resentment

Douglas Murray 36:55 It can be-

Lex Fridman 36:56 ... that Jeremy's ... -it can be any of the above. Let's first of all preface it, everybody has resentment. Um, I- Resentment.

Douglas Murray 37:02 ... I use the term r- re- ressentiment which is, is thought very similar to resentment, but let's stick with resentment so that we don't sound too pretentious.

Lex Fridman 37:12 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 37:12 Um, the...

Lex Fridman 37:16 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 37:17 Let me give you a quick example of somebody in our own day who, who has res- who has a form of resentment, Vladimir Putin. Did you see, um, Navalny's documentary, Putin's Palace?

Lex Fridman 37:27 Yes.

Douglas Murray 37:27 Yeah. You remember the stuff about, uh, Putin as a young KGB officer in Germany? Remember the stuff about Putin, his first wife's resentment of one of his KGB colleagues who had a- an apartment that was a few meters bigger than the- Putin's apartment?

Lex Fridman 37:43 (laughs) Yeah.

Douglas Murray 37:44 It's very interesting. And I... Uh, by the way, I'm not saying that, you know, Vladimir Putin became the man he has become and invaded Ukraine because he didn't have an apartment he liked in Ber- in Berlin or Munich, wherever he was.

Lex Fridman 37:54 But it's a distinct possibility.

Douglas Murray 37:56 My, my point is, is... (laughs) My point is, is that, is that resentment is, is a factor in all human lives and we all feel it in, um, in our lives and it's, it's something that has to be struggled against. Resentment is, in political terms, can be a deadly... I mean, it's an incredibly deep thing to draw upon. And you mentioned Hitler, obviously one of the things that Hitler played on was resentment, obviously. Uh, l- almost every revolution he does, I mean, the French Revolutionaries did as well. And, and were not without cause. Uh, there's a good reason to feel that Versailles was not listening to Paris in the 1780s and feel resentment for, um, Marie Antoinette in her palace within the palace, ignoring the bread shortages in Paris. Um, so resentment is, is a very... It's a very understandable thing, and sometimes it's justifiable, and it's also deadly to the person as it is to the society. Um, it's an incredibly deep, deep sentiment. Somebody else has, um, got something that you should have. And the, the problem about it is that it, it's, it has the potential to be endless. Um, you can do it your whole life. And one of the ways I've, I've, I've sort of ex- sort of found myself explaining this to people is to say it's also important to recognize that resentment is something that can cross absolutely every boundary. So, for instance, it crosses all racial boundaries, obviously, it goes without saying. More interesting is it crosses all class boundaries and socioeconomic boundaries. And if I was to sort of simplify this thought, I would say, I guess that you and I, and everybody watching, knows or has known somebody in their lives who has almost nothing in worldly terms and is a generous person, a kindly person, uh, a giving person, um, a happy person even, a cheerful person. And I think we probably have also, or many of us would've met people who seem to have everything and who are filled with resentment, filled with resentment. Somebody else has held them back from something, their sister once did something that s- they, she, she shouldn't... She got this and I should've got that, and, and on and on and on. It's a human trait. And one, one of the things that suggests to me is that we therefore have a choice in our lives about this, that this is something which we can do something about. Not limitlessly, but for instance, I mean, there are very good reasons that some people in their lives might feel resentment. Let's say you're involved in a car crash and a friend fell asleep at the wheel, and that's why you are spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair, there's a pertinent example of this in American politics at the moment. Um, you would be justified in feeling resentment. And at some point you have to make a decision, which is, am I going to be that person or a different person?

Lex Fridman 41:08 But even in that case, you're saying at the individual level and at societal level, it's destructive to the mind. Even when you're, quote unquote, "justified," it still-

Douglas Murray 41:16 It rots you. It rots you, because the best you can do is to eke out your days unfulfilled.

Lex Fridman 41:27 So the antidote, as you describe, is gratitude?

Douglas Murray 41:30 Yes.

Lex Fridman 41:31 Gratitude is the antidote to evil, in a sense.

Douglas Murray 41:35 So it's-

Lex Fridman 41:35 Gratitude at the individual level and at the societal level.

Douglas Murray 41:38 Gratitude is certainly the answer to resentment. I, um, I quote in The War on the West is, is this... But when I read it, uh, first time a few years ago, I was absolutely floored by, um, The Brothers Karamazov. Uh, not everything in it, by the way, and I won't get into it, but I had, I have some very big structural criticisms of the novel.

Lex Fridman 41:59 Now, now you're just sweet talking to me because I'm a Dostoevsky fan-

Douglas Murray 42:03 Okay. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:03 ... but I appreciate this.

Douglas Murray 42:04 Oh, uh, okay.

Lex Fridman 42:06 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 42:06 Well, we could get into what I see as being the structural flaws in The Brothers Karamazov. But anyway, um-

Lex Fridman 42:10 Now I'm, I'm offended and triggered at all those other things.

Douglas Murray 42:12 Yeah, no, I mean, this is-

Lex Fridman 42:14 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 42:16 ... (laughs) it's like coming out of Macbeth and saying, "I didn't think it was much good."

Lex Fridman 42:19 Yeah, there's structural flaws. (laughs)

Douglas Murray 42:20 Yeah, I, I thought the ending stank and-

Lex Fridman 42:23 Yeah. (laughs)

Douglas Murray 42:23 ... the middle wasn't very good. No, um, when I read that, th- that, that novel, I w- I was floored by a couple of things. One is, one is of course the moment where we realize the devil appears. The moment that Ivan says to his brother, "You s- you know he visits me." And you realize that he's talking about the devil, the whole novel goes into this.... totally different space, and you realize th- it's even more than you've already realized the novel's about. And then, when the conversation occurs between Ivan and the devil, remember dr- I think he says he describes him as dressed as a French, Fren- dressed in the French style of the, uh, early part of the 19th century. Very strange that the devil would be dressed like that. But sort of...

Lex Fridman 43:09 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 43:10 Um, and, and, and if you remember that, that he, and he's sort of cross-legged and rather urbane figure. But, but the devil mentions in passing to Ivan that, um, he says, "I don't know why w- uh, gratitude is not a, uh, an instinct that's been given to me." And, um-

Lex Fridman 43:31 Yeah, you're not allowed. This is not... Uh, given the role of being the devil, this is not one of the things that-

Douglas Murray 43:37 Just not one of the things. And, and you think... And, and of course, only a genius of Dostoevsky's sca- stature could... I mean, a lesser genius would've made a whole novel out of that insight. Uh, only Dostoevsky can just throw it away 'cause there's such an abundance of riches that he still has to get through, uh, structural problems aside.

Lex Fridman 43:55 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 43:55 But the (laughs) but the, but the, uh-

Lex Fridman 43:58 The passive-aggressive na- the, the microaggression in this conversation-

Douglas Murray 44:03 Of course, yeah.

Lex Fridman 44:03 ... is palpable. (laughs)

Douglas Murray 44:05 (laughs) A little knife fight going.

Lex Fridman 44:08 Yeah, yeah.

Douglas Murray 44:08 No, but, but the reason I mention it is because, of course, when I saw this, I, I thought, I thought, this, this is such a brilliant insight by Dostoevsky because why, why would th- why would gratitude not be a sentiment that the devil was capable of? And the answer is, of course, that if the devil was capable of gratitude, he wouldn't be the devil. He'd be somebody else. He has to be incapable of gratitude.

Lex Fridman 44:31 Do you think for Dostoevsky that was as strong of as, an insight as, as it is for you? 'Cause I think that's a really powerful idea, that with gratitude, you, you, you don't get the resentment that rots you from the core.

Douglas Murray 44:46 Yes, I think it was one of the just endless things that he saw in us. And, and the way I put it is that, I mean, I also think of it in t- think of it in terms of the, the era of deconstruction, which is one of the things I'd like us to call the era that's now ending. The era of deconstruction was the era that started, let's say, from the '60s onwards and was originally an academic game that then spilled out into the wider culture, which was let's take everything apart. Let's pull it all apart. Um, there are lots of problems with it. One is it's quite boring. Uh, you don't get an awful lot from it. Uh, you also have the problem of what children find when they try to do this with bicycles, which is they can take it apart quite easily, but they can't put it back together. Um, and the era of, of taking things apart as a game is one we've lived through, and it's been highly destructive. But you can do it for quite a long time. "I'm going to look at this society, and I'm going to take it apart by showing systemic problems. I'm going to..." At the end of that, what have you got? What have you done? What have you achieved? We need to interrogate this. Okay, interrogate, by all means, ask questions. But interrogate, there's a deliberate hostility to this. I'm going to interrogate this thing and take it apart. And again, at the end of it, what have you got? Whether you're interrogating a text or a piece of music or an idea or a society, fine. Question, endlessly question, yes. Interrogate assumes it's all, um, a criminal in a cell, and it's guilty, and therefore it must be taken apart. And that's what we've been doing for decades in the West. And that's resentment. That's one byproduct of resentment. You can't build the thing, but you know how to take it apart.

Lex Fridman 46:51 Is a little bit of resentment good? So you have, you know, that, uh, I love Tom Waits, and he has a song-

Douglas Murray 46:58 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 46:58 ... where, uh, a little drop of po- "I like my Tom with a little drop of poison." Is it good to do that a lit- is it good to have a little bit of poison in your drink?

Douglas Murray 47:08 Depends what the poison is, and it depends if you know not to have another drink.

Lex Fridman 47:13 (laughs) Well-

Douglas Murray 47:13 It might be the case that you find out, as some alcoholics do, that one was too many and 10 is not enough.

Lex Fridman 47:20 Hmm. So y- there's a natural, in this case, this kind of deconstruction is a slippery slope. It becomes an addiction. It becomes a drug, and you just can't stop. You can't-

Douglas Murray 47:31 Well, you'd have to, you'd have to wean yourself off it and try to start creating again.

Lex Fridman 47:35 Okay.

Douglas Murray 47:35 You'd have to start trying to put things together again. Um, something I think might be in the throes of starting, as it happens.

Lex Fridman 47:47 Well, speaking of taking things apart and not putting them together again,

Lex Fridman 47:53 the idea of critical race theory.

Douglas Murray 47:55 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 47:57 Um, can you, to me, explain? So I'm an engineer and have not been actually paying attention much, unfortunately, to th- th- these things. I-

Douglas Murray 48:07 None of the people in your field were until it comes along and smacks you in the face.

Lex Fridman 48:11 I, you know, I, I have had that line of thinking and, you know, from MIT, I, I said, "Well, surely, whatever you folks are busy about yelling at each other for is, is a thing at Harvard and Yale."

Douglas Murray 48:25 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:26 "It's not going to

Narrator 48:27 ... hit me."

Douglas Murray 48:27 Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, people in the STEM subjects thought, "It's not coming for us. It can't come to us."

Lex Fridman 48:32 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 48:32 And bang.

Lex Fridman 48:33 Well, it's co- you know, it hasn't quite been a bang. I'm not sure.

Douglas Murray 48:36 Engineering is, is more safe than others-

Lex Fridman 48:39 Yeah.Uh, so not, so let's draw a line now between engineering and science.

Douglas Murray 48:44 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 48:45 So, uh, (laughs) the, I think engineering is, uh, um, uh, sitting in a, in a castle in the tallest tower with, with my pinky out, drinking my martini, saying, "Surely, uh, the, the peasants below with their biology and their humanities-"

Douglas Murray 49:00 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 49:00 "...will, will figure it all out." No, I'm just kidding. There's no, there's no pinky out. I drink vodka.

Douglas Murray 49:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 49:06 And, and I hang with the peasants. Okay. Where is this, this metaphor has gone too far. Uh, can you explain, (laughs) uh, to this engineer what critical race theory is? Is it uh, uh, a, a term that's definable? Is there tradition? Is there a history? What is good about it? What is bad about it?

Douglas Murray 49:23 It is a tr- it is a tradition, it is a history, it's a school of thought. It started in the law, uh, roughly in the 1970s in some of the American academy. Uh, it spilled out, it always aimed to be an activist philosophy. People deny that now, but as I cite in War on the West, I mean, the foundational texts say as much. This isn't, this is an activist, uh, um, academic study. We're not just looking at, at the law. We seek to change the law. And it's spilled out into all of the other disciplines. I think there's a reason for that, by the way, which is, it happened at the time that the humanities and others in America were increasingly weak and didn't know what to do, and they needed more games to play or new games to play.

Lex Fridman 50:07 The psychologists got bored.

Douglas Murray 50:09 Yeah. I mean, the, well, they needed tenure and they needed, they needed something to do. And I mean, it's, it's not an original observation. Plenty of people have made this, but I mean, I mean, Neil Ferguson said this some time ago, for instance, that in the last 50 years in American academia, certainly in humanities departments, when some- when somebody dies out who's a great scholar in something, they're just not replaced by somebody of equal stature. They're replaced by somebody who does theory or critical race theory. They're replaced by somebody who does the modern games. Somebody dies out who's a great historian of, say, I don't know, it's the one that's on my mind, um, Russian history or Russian literature, and they're not replaced by a similar, um, scholar.

Lex Fridman 50:53 His, uh, in his observation and, and in yours, is this a, is this a recent development?

Douglas Murray 50:57 It's happened the last few decades for sure. And it sped up.

Lex Fridman 51:01 Did, is it 'cause we've gotten to the bottom of some of the biggest questions of history?

Douglas Murray 51:05 No. It's, uh, because we're willing to forget the big questions.

Lex Fridman 51:09 'Cause it's more fun to, big questions aren't as fun?

Douglas Murray 51:12 Well, no. Partly it's, uh, partly it's, no, I should stress that partly it's an, it's, this is in the weeds, but partly it's, it's a result of the hyper-specialization in academia.

Lex Fridman 51:19 Sure.

Douglas Murray 51:20 Um, you know, if you, if you said you'd like to write your dissertation on Hobbes.

Lex Fridman 51:28 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 51:29 Uh, if you wanted to, if you the se- something central to Kant's thought or, or Hegel or something, I mean, that's not popular.

Lex Fridman 51:41 Mm-hmm.

Douglas Murray 51:42 That, what's popular is to take somebody way down the line from that because there's a feeling that that's all been done.

Lex Fridman 51:48 Mm-hmm.

Douglas Murray 51:50 So you take something way, way, way down the line from that that's much less important, and then you sort of play with that. And I think most people, anyone who's watching who's been in a philosophy department or anything like this in recent years will know that tendency. By the way, there's a very practical consequence with this. I saw this at the end of my friend Roger Scruton's life when he, um, he would occasionally, he, he didn't get tenure at universities, but he would occasionally be flown in even by his enemies to teach courses in various universities in basics of philosophy because there was no one in the department able to do it. Like, he would, he would, he would go in and teach for a semester, you know, Hegel and Kant and Schopenhauer and others because there was no one to do it, because they were all playing with the things way, way, way down the road from this.

Lex Fridman 52:40 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 52:40 So that had already happened and people were searching for new games to play, and the critical race theory stuff forced its way in partly when the way that all of this that's now known as anti-racism does, which is in, in a sort of bullying tone of saying, "If you don't follow this." The same way that all the things that are called studies, uh, I think everything called studies in the humanities should be shut down.

Lex Fridman 53:06 Because of the activist element.

Douglas Murray 53:08 It's an act- they're all activists. Gay studies and queer studies. Um, uh, nothing good has ever come from it. Nothing good.

Lex Fridman 53:17 To push back, is it, is it obvious that activism is a sign of a flaw in a discipline? So is, isn't it-

Douglas Murray 53:26 It's a sign of the death of the discipline. It's a sign the discipline is over.

Lex Fridman 53:29 But isn't it a good goal to have for discipline to enact change, positive change on the world? Or is that-

Douglas Murray 53:37 No. No.

Lex Fridman 53:37 ...too, is that, that's for politicians to do with the findings of, of s- of science not-

Douglas Murray 53:43 I, I mean, why create an ideology-

Lex Fridman 53:46 ...not the scientists themselves?

Douglas Murray 53:46 ...and then set out to find disciplines that are weakly put together to try to back up your political ideology?

Lex Fridman 53:53 So ideology should not be part of-

Douglas Murray 53:56 Uh, um-

Lex Fridman 53:56 ...of, uh, of science or of-

Douglas Murray 53:59 No. I mean-

Lex Fridman 53:59 ...the humanities?

Douglas Murray 54:00 ...why would you... I mean, uh, I mean, anyone could do it. You could decide to go in and be wildly right wing about something and only do things that prove your right wing ideas. Be fantastically anti-academic, fantastically anti-science, fant- I mean, it, it's an absurd way to, to mix up activism and, and, and, and academia. And it's absolutely rife, and critical race theory is one of the ones that completely polluted the academy.

Lex Fridman 54:31 Yeah, and there's been, uh, dark moments throughout history, both for, during World War II with both communism and, um, Nazism, fascism that int- uh, um, infiltrated science.... and thereby corrupted it.

Douglas Murray 54:46 Yes. I mean, for instance, also, let's face it, that, that this, in science, as in everything else, there are dark, difficult things. It's much better we know about them, face up to them, and try to find a way socially to deal with them than that you leave them in the hands of some activist who wants to do stuff with them.

Lex Fridman 55:05 S- some of my best friends are activists, so... And I'm just kidding. Okay.

Douglas Murray 55:08 Yeah. None of my best friends are activists.

Lex Fridman 55:11 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 55:11 That's how it should be.

Lex Fridman 55:12 (laughs) Well, I was kidding because I don't have any friends. But, okay, uh... (laughs) Now, I'm, I'm-

Douglas Murray 55:18 I'm sure that's not true.

Lex Fridman 55:19 ... I'm trying to get, gain some, um, pity points. Okay. Uh, so to return-

Douglas Murray 55:24 You have your Clubhouse friends-

Lex Fridman 55:26 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 55:26 (laughs) ... screaming away like deranged maniacs. No, I'm anti-Clubhouse, by the way, because I, uh, the only time I heard it was that Brett Weinstein one when he did that. I don't know if you heard that.

Lex Fridman 55:37 Oh, yeah.

Douglas Murray 55:37 Early in Clubhouse. I was invited to Clubhouse by various people who said, "Oh, this is a really great, civilized way to hang out and talk with inter- interesting people." And I, I downloaded the app and I, I got on, and I... Uh, because Brett Weinstein said, um, you know, doing this conversation, and I listened and it was the maddest damn discussion I've ever heard.

Lex Fridman 55:54 Was it something about biology? Something about... Was it C- was it-

Douglas Murray 55:57 Some-

Lex Fridman 55:57 ... during COVID times? All that kind of stuff.

Douglas Murray 55:58 Y- at some point, Brett said, "I'm an, um, I'm an evolutionary biologist."

Lex Fridman 56:05 Mm-hmm.

Douglas Murray 56:06 And somebody else started saying, "You're a eugenicsist." And he said, "No, I'm an evolu- evolutionary biologist." And somebody was like, "That's the same thing!" And it just went on like that, and Brett desperately tried to explain that's not the same thing as being a eugenicsist, and he lost the Clubhouse room. They thought that was the same thing. He'd come... It all, it horribly reminded me of a time some years ago when a British newspaper ran a sort of, um... Realizing that the only thing you can unite people on in sexual ethics is revulsion against pedophilia, ran an anti-pedo campaign, and, uh, shortly after, um, uh, pediatricians' offices were torched in the North of England by a mob who hadn't read the whole sign.

Lex Fridman 56:49 Yeah. Well, to me, um, like I said, a little bit of poison is good for the town, so...

Douglas Murray 56:55 Anyhow, sorry, I inter- interrupted you with flattering you with our people in Clubhouse

Narrator 56:58 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 56:58 I have many, I have, I have, uh, multiples of friends, yes. Um, (laughs) I g-

Douglas Murray 57:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 57:06 What do... We didn't get to some of the ideas of, uh, critical race theory. What-

Douglas Murray 57:09 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 57:10 ... what exactly, uh, is it? I'm actually, in part, asking this question quite genuinely.

Douglas Murray 57:14 Yeah. It's, it's an attempt just to look at everything, among other things, through the lens of race and to add race into things where it may not be as a way of adding... I'm, I'm, I'm trying to give the most generous estimation. To add race in as a conversation in a place where it may not have been in the conversation, um, to-

Lex Fridman 57:37 And that means history, too? The history-

Douglas Murray 57:39 Oh, sure.

Lex Fridman 57:39 ... of racism?

Douglas Murray 57:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, all history, and to look at it through these particular lenses. Um, uh, I mean, there's a certain... Like all these things, there's a certain logic in it. Like, like with feminist studies or something, I mean, is, is there a utility in looking back through undoubtedly male-dominated histories and asking where the, the more silent female voice was? Yes. Very interesting. Not endlessly interesting, and can't be put exactly on the same par as, but it has a utility. Um...

Lex Fridman 58:16 It's that endlessly... Sorry to interrupt. That endlessly part that seems to get us into trouble

Narrator 58:20 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 58:20 Yes, absolu-

Lex Fridman 58:21 a lot here.

Douglas Murray 58:21 Well, because of this thing of, where do you stop? And that's, that's, that's always a... I, I looked at, talked about this in my last book, The Manners of Crowds. It's one of the big conundrums in activist movements, and particularly in activist academia. Where would you stop? It's not clear because you've got a job in it. You've got a pension in it. You've got... Your only esteem in society is in keeping this gig going. Wh- I, I mean, is, is there any likelihood... Have you ev- there's the old academic joke, isn't it? That, you know, the end of every conference, the only thing everyone agrees on is that we must have another conference like this one.

Lex Fridman 59:05 (laughs) Yeah.

Douglas Murray 59:05 It's the one thing they always agree on.

Lex Fridman 59:07 Uh, th-

Douglas Murray 59:07 "This conference was so great, we must have another one."

Lex Fridman 59:09 Well, that, that's a criticism you could apply to a lot of disciplines. Uh-

Douglas Murray 59:12 Of course.

Lex Fridman 59:12 ... civil engineering, bridge building. It's, at a certain point, do we need any more bridges? Can we just fly everywhere? (laughs) You know?

Douglas Murray 59:22 (laughs) Well-

Lex Fridman 59:22 So...

Douglas Murray 59:22 ... at the very least, you need to keep the bridges up.

Lex Fridman 59:26 Sure. And they, they would, uh-

Douglas Murray 59:27 And-

Lex Fridman 59:27 Critical race theory folks would probably make the same argument. At the very least, we need to keep the racism out.

Douglas Murray 59:34 Uh, that, yes.

Lex Fridman 59:34 We have to make sure we don't descend into, uh, the racism-

Douglas Murray 59:37 It assumes-

Lex Fridman 59:38 ... abyss.

Douglas Murray 59:38 ... all the time that we are living on the cusp of the return of the KKK.

Lex Fridman 59:42 Right.

Douglas Murray 59:42 Which is totally wrong. I mean, it's a massive-

Lex Fridman 59:45 Well, you say, you say that now until the KKK armies march in. We don't always-

Douglas Murray 59:50 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:50 We can't always predict the future.

Douglas Murray 59:52 We can't always predict the future. And you, you can always say should be careful, but y- y- you've also got to be careful of people who've got their timing like totally, totally wrong, or their estimation of the society they're in totally, totally wrong.

Lex Fridman 1:00:07 You mean like most of society before, in the 1930s? When Hitler was... I mean, so many people got Hitler wrong.

Douglas Murray 1:00:17 Sure they did.

Lex Fridman 1:00:18 And so-

Douglas Murray 1:00:18 Most people.

Lex Fridman 1:00:19 So mi- maybe it was nice to have the alarmists' thinking there.

Douglas Murray 1:00:23 Well-

Lex Fridman 1:00:24 Beware of the man with a mustache

Narrator 1:00:27 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:00:28 If only it was that easy. Um...

Lex Fridman 1:00:31 It's not always about facial hair. Although-

Douglas Murray 1:00:33 I mean, I always say that, I mean, one, one... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:00:34 (laughs) It very often is, seemingly so.

Douglas Murray 1:00:36 These two clean shaven chaps both say... One of the problems with everybody knowing a little bit about Nazism is that they...... think that they know where evil comes from and that it comes from, like, a German with a small mustache getting people to goose step, for instance. And that's not correct. A, a much better understanding of it is it can come from all number of directions and keep your antennae as good as you can. But once you end up in this society, which I would argue certainly parts of America is, where you're always in 1938, that's not healthy for a society either. Where, where people are so primed and think they're so well-trained because they spent a term in school learning about the Second World War and the Holocaust, think they're so well-trained in Hitler spotting that they can do it all the time. Look at all these phrases we now have in our societies like dog whistle. You know, as I always say, if you hear the whistle, you're the dog. But people say, you know, "Th- that's a dog whistle" as if they're highly-trained anti-Nazis. I mean, you know, there should be some humility. And th- we should, we should be careful. We should be wary, for sure. And we should also be slightly humble in our inability to, to spot everything.

Lex Fridman 1:02:01 If not significantly humble, right. So if we can... (laughs) Um, there's something, um, funny, if not dark, about the, the activity of Hitler spotting.

Douglas Murray 1:02:19 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:02:19 If I just may take an aside. But, uh, so critical race theory.

Douglas Murray 1:02:24 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:02:24 How much racism...

Lex Fridman 1:02:27 What is racism? How much of it is in our world today? If we were thinking about this activity of Hitler spotting, how, um... and trying to steel-man the case of, if not critical race theory, but people who, who look for racism in our world.

Douglas Murray 1:02:45 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:02:46 How much would you say?

Douglas Murray 1:02:48 Well, let's, it's a good thing to try to define. I'd say that r- racism is the, the belief that other people are inferior to you. You could say, you could see a form of it where you thought people were superior to you. That could also happen. But more commonly, it's you see a group of b- people as being inferior to you simply by dint of the fact that they have a different racial background. And, um, that's sort of the easiest way to define racism. Uh, as I say, I mean, there are types of racism. I mean, main- mainly antisemitism actually, perhaps it's the only one, which weirdly relies on, on a hatred of people who a certain type of person thinks, thinks are better than them. And that's a particular peculiarity, one of the peculiarities of antisemitism.

Lex Fridman 1:03:40 Well, antisemitism somehow does both, right?

Douglas Murray 1:03:42 Yes. Well, o- one of the eternal fascinating things about antisemitism is it can do, it does everything at the same time.

Lex Fridman 1:03:50 (laughs) It's like a quantum racism.

Douglas Murray 1:03:52 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:03:53 You're both superior and inferior.

Douglas Murray 1:03:55 You know that, do, do you know, um, Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate?

Lex Fridman 1:03:58 Mm-hmm.

Douglas Murray 1:04:00 So in the middle of Life and Fate, um, which a Persian friend of mine always said was one of only two great novels of the 20th century. She was very harsh, a literary critic.

Lex Fridman 1:04:08 (laughs) What was the other one?

Douglas Murray 1:04:09 Oh, The Leopard, obviously.

Lex Fridman 1:04:10 The Leopard?

Douglas Murray 1:04:11 The Leopard, version Giuseppe di Lampedusa. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:04:14 Okay.

Douglas Murray 1:04:14 And she definitely right on that one.

Lex Fridman 1:04:16 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 1:04:16 Life and Fate is a, is a, is a-

Lex Fridman 1:04:18 I'm learning so much today. Yes, Leopard fate.

Douglas Murray 1:04:19 Life and Fate is a, is a, um, is an extraordinary book, mainly about... We know Grossman was a, um, uh, obviously Jewish himself, but he, uh, he, he saw, uh, almost everything, uh, whether he could have done in the second world war is he saw Stalingrad. He was a journalist and he, he wrote first-hand accounts of Stalingrad. He, he was also the first journalist into, into Treblinka. And his account, which you can read in one of the collections of his journalism, his account of walking into Treblinka is just one of the most devastating, haunting pieces of journalism or prose you can read. Anyhow, I mention him because Grossman at the begi- at the, in the middle of Life and Fate, which is about a 900-page novel, um, in the middle of it, which is about the dark axis around Stalingrad, uh, he... Where at one point, he amazingly sort of goes into the minds of both Hitler and Stalin. And he says, he says, "Stalin in his study feels his counterpart in Berlin." He says he feels very close to him at this moment.

Lex Fridman 1:05:26 Wow. Around Stalingrad, like leading up to the fact-

Douglas Murray 1:05:29 After Stalingrad when the Germans have lost, he says he feels the closeness of Hitler. But Grossman, in the middle of Life and Fate, slap bang at the worst hours of the 20th century, suddenly dedicates a chapter to antisemitism. And I've seen... Antisemitism is something I've always been very interested in, uh, because I've always had an instinctive utter revulsion of it. And, um, also partly because of having seen bits of it in the Middle East and elsewhere. But, uh, I mention this because Grossman in the middle of Life and Fate has, takes time out and does this like three-page explanation or three-page description of antisemitism. And it's extraordinary. I mean, it's, it's... The only thing I can think of that's equally good is, um, uh, Gregor von Retzori, who wrote alluredly titled but brilliant set of novellas called The Confessions of an Anti-Semite about pre-w- pre-First World War antisemitism in Eastern and Central Europe. Anyway, Grossman says in the middle of Life and Fate that one of the extraordinary things about antisemitism is that it does everything at the same time, that the Jews get condemned in one place for being rich and in another for being poor.... condemned in one place for assimilating and another for not assimilating, uh, for assimilating too much and assimilating too little, for being too successful, for not being successful enough. So it's, I think it's the only racism that includes within it a detestation, for the real anti-Semite, a detestation of people that the person may perceive to be better than them, correctly or otherwise.

Lex Fridman 1:07:21 By the way, um, I'm embarrassed to say I have not read this one of two greatest novels of the 20th century, Life and Fate, Zhizni i sud'ba. And just to read off of Wikipedia, "Vassily Grossman, a Ukrainian Jew, became a correspondent for the Soviet military paper, Krasnaya Zvezda. Having volunteered and been rejected from military service, he spent a thousand days in the front lines, roughly three of the four years of the conflict between the Germans and the Soviets." And the main themes covered in, uh, how does it go? Life and Fate. I keep thinking Zhizni i sud'ba. Is a theme on Jewish identity in the Holocaust, Grossman's idea of humanity and the human goodness, Stalin's distortion of reality and values-

Douglas Murray 1:08:03 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:08:04 ... and, uh, science, life goes on, and reality of war. It's interesting. I need to definitely, definitely read it.

Douglas Murray 1:08:09 You need to read it. It, you'll, I think you'll really get a lot from it. It, one of the other things... Sorry, ? ... but one of the other things he does is that he, he has this extraordinary ability to, to talk about the, the h- the, the absolute highest levels of the conflict and then zoom in. It's rather like the camera work they use in things like Lord of the Rings, w- where he, he zooms down and gets one person in the midst of all this and you get, you, you get on that.

Lex Fridman 1:08:32 Or puts you in the study too. So I-

Douglas Murray 1:08:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:08:34 ... I personally have read and re-read the, uh, William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Douglas Murray 1:08:39 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:08:39 Who's another journalist who was there.

Douglas Murray 1:08:42 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:08:43 Uh, but he does not do... In- interestingly enough, given s- such a large novel, kind of, the definitive work on Hi- the definitive original work that goes to source materials on, on Hitler, he doesn't, uh, touch a- anti-Semitism really.

Douglas Murray 1:09:00 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:09:00 (laughs) So-

Douglas Murray 1:09:01 Big thing to miss out.

Lex Fridman 1:09:02 Well, he just says it very calmly and objectively, as he does for most of the work, that this was the fact of l- life. There's a lot of cruelty throughout, but he doesn't get to...

Douglas Murray 1:09:15 Well, one of the things is, of course, they lost the war because of anti-Semitism. You know what I mean? That's o- one kind of important way to, to view it is how Andrew Roberts, another historian said, is, is that, you know, in the end, the Nazis lost the war because they were Nazis.

Lex Fridman 1:09:29 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:09:29 It sounds almost too neat, but it's, it's, it's worth remembering that, you know, at the end of the war, when the Germans need to be transporting troops and they need to be transporting very basic supplies, Eichmann makes sure he gets the trains to transport the Jews right up to the end.

Lex Fridman 1:09:49 Well, that's, that's certainly a dark-

Douglas Murray 1:09:50 That's-

Lex Fridman 1:09:51 ... dark possibility.

Douglas Murray 1:09:52 You know?

Lex Fridman 1:09:53 But that-

Douglas Murray 1:09:53 Anyhow, but, but to get back to racism in general-

Lex Fridman 1:09:55 Yes.

Douglas Murray 1:09:55 Racism in general, apart from anti-Semitism, relies on the, the, um, perception that a- another group of people, a racial group, other than your own are inferior to you. That, that's what I'd say is the ea- easiest shorthand of racism. And, of course, it's one of the stupidest things that our species is capable of. I mean, one of the stupidest. That you can look at a person and guess them in their entirety, in fact, because of their skin color. I mean, it's like what a stupid idea that is, as well as being an evil one. But the, the, the, I would say that one of the... I think it's a dangerous thing in our era, that there are bits of it coming back. That's why I say we do need, sort of, we need our antennae working. We just don't need them to be overactive or underactive, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:10:53 Now, the book is War on the West, but speaking of racism, racism towards different groups based on their skin color, you've said that there's a war on white people-

Douglas Murray 1:11:03 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:11:05 ... in the US. Would you say that's the case? Would you say that there's significant, um, racism towards white people in the United States?

Douglas Murray 1:11:13 I'd say that, that white people in the United States are the only people who are told that they have hereditary sin. That's a big one, just to start with.

Lex Fridman 1:11:22 Based strictly on color of the skin?

Douglas Murray 1:11:23 Based on their skin color. I mean, I would find it so repugnant if, and I hope everybody would join me in feeling this, I would feel so repugnant if there were any school of thought in America today that had any, um, grasp on the public attention, that said that Black people were born into evil because of something their ancestors had done. Like, they had the mark of Cain upon them. I mean, I think it would be such a vicious way to try to demoralize a group of people and tell them that the, the, the things they would be able to achieve in their lives are much lessened because they should spend significant portions of their lives trying to atone for something they didn't do.

Lex Fridman 1:12:13 Is there a difference-

Douglas Murray 1:12:16 And, and, and, by the way-

Lex Fridman 1:12:17 Yes.

Douglas Murray 1:12:17 ... following up on the point, the obvious point left unsaid, but let's say it, nobody in the public square says that. I mean, there, there are maniacs at the far fringes, but nobody in the mainstream would dare to say that, or I think even think that, about any group of people other than white people. And does this mean that white people are more disadvantaged than Black people? No. And again, let's not make this a competition. But let's not get into, I just desperately urge people not to get into the idea of hereditary sin according to racial background.

Lex Fridman 1:12:54 Is there something to be said about the feature aspect, to sort of play devil's advocate, about the asymmetry of, um, sort of accusations towards the majority? So-

Douglas Murray 1:13:06 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:13:06 ... because what-

Douglas Murray 1:13:07 Of course.

Lex Fridman 1:13:07 So the-

Douglas Murray 1:13:07 It's much easier to attack a majority.

Lex Fridman 1:13:09 It is much easier, but is there something to be said about that being a useful function of society, that you always attack y- um, that the minority has disproportionate power to attack the majority, so that you can always keep the majority in check?

Douglas Murray 1:13:24 Well, it's a dangerous game to play, isn't it?

Lex Fridman 1:13:28 I think, I think- (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:13:29 It's a very dangerous game to play.

Lex Fridman 1:13:30 I think, I think that's a good summary of entirety of human civilization. (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:13:33 Well, yeah, everything's dangerous. Um, but it's a very dangerous game to play, that. Uh, uh, I wrote about this a bit in The Madness of Crowds, when I was saying, like, gay rights people, the ones that still exist, the ones who don't have homes to go to, uh, who want to beat up on straight people, in a way, or want to make straight people feel like they're kinda unremarkable, uncool, you know, boring straights, so boring, so not, not like the magical pixie fairy dust gays... Um, that's a bad idea, to push that one. That's a bad idea. And some gays push that. Highly unwise, given the fact that about th- 2% to 3% of the population are actually gay, although now, there's, like, an additional 20% who think they're, like, two-spirit or something, and, and all that bullshit. But they're just attention-seekers, so let's not spend too much time on that. But equally, as I've said, I said in The Madness of Crowds, is that with, with, uh, the feminist movement, very unwise for half of the species to say that the other half of the species isn't needed. (laughs) And there were always third and fourth-wave feminists willing to make that nuts argument. Uh, not first-wave feminists. You didn't hear it in first-wave feminists and you didn't hear it... Suffragettes tended not to say, "We'd like the vote and men are scum." Th- it would have been hard to have won everyone over to their side, not in the least the men they needed to win over to their side. But you do get third and fourth-wave feminists who say, like, you know, "Do we need men?" Or "Men are all X." And again, it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea tactically.

Lex Fridman 1:15:19 What if men... Richard Wrangham, somebody from Harvard, uh, describes that men are the originators of violence, physical violence in society.

Douglas Murray 1:15:31 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:15:31 And he argues that actually the world would be better off... Not just a very cold calculus.

Douglas Murray 1:15:38 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:15:38 If you get rid of men-

Douglas Murray 1:15:40 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:15:40 ... there would be a lot less violence in society, is his claim.

Douglas Murray 1:15:44 But who says you need to get rid of violence in society?

Lex Fridman 1:15:47 Well, that's... But shouldn't that at least be a discussion?

Douglas Murray 1:15:50 I'm very happy to have the discussion.

Lex Fridman 1:15:50 The pros and cons, have a debate on, on, a panel discussion, "Violence: Pros and Cons."

Douglas Murray 1:15:55 Well, that's the sort of thing, if I can say so, that some, like, weak-ass academic decides to do because he thinks that his area of Boston would be nicer or whatever. Um, he might decide it's useful if he was living in Kiev today, to have violent men. I mean, it might, if, if, um, if New York was invaded right now, I'd need some violent men around here.

Lex Fridman 1:16:20 Hmm.

Douglas Murray 1:16:21 I, I, I wouldn't-

Lex Fridman 1:16:22 But it wouldn't be invaded if there was no violent men-

Douglas Murray 1:16:25 Well, there's-

Lex Fridman 1:16:26 ... as the ar- goes the argument.

Douglas Murray 1:16:27 There's, there's also, uh, at least there's some level of threat that you ought to exude that puts people off. If I was in... You know, I'm very glad that the, that the men and women of Ukraine are capable of, and more than capable of, fighting for their country and for their neighbors and for their families and much more. But, like, it's better that, that there was violence ready to unleash when violence was unleashed upon them, than that the whole society had been told that they should identify as non-binary.

Lex Fridman 1:17:03 But at least it's a, it's a conversation to have. Isn't there, uh, th- isn't there aspect to the, sort of the feminist movement that is correct, uh, in-

Douglas Murray 1:17:14 No.

Lex Fridman 1:17:15 ... in challenging the... Hmm.

Douglas Murray 1:17:17 Some forms of violence, domestic violence, for instance. Although, women are capable of that as well.

Lex Fridman 1:17:23 Uh, I'm learning about this

Narrator 1:17:24 ... as we speak.

Douglas Murray 1:17:24 We're all learning about this at the moment. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:17:26 (laughs) I can't help but watch the entirety of it go down in this beautiful mess that is human relations. Okay.

Douglas Murray 1:17:32 But just to finish that, that thought, I mean, it's, it's very unwise for women to war against men, as it would be for men to war against women. It's highly, highly unwise to war on a majority population. And in America, Britain, and other Western countries, white people are still a majority. And so why would you tell the majority that they're evil by dint of their skin color and think that that would be a good way to keep them in check? I mean, I'm not guilty of anything because of my skin color. I'm not guilty of anything. Uh, my ancestors didn't do anything wrong. And even if they had, why would I be held responsible for it?

Lex Fridman 1:18:10 So, uh, to go back to Nietzsche-

Douglas Murray 1:18:12 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:18:13 ... is there some aspect to where if we tr- try to explain the forces at play here, is it the will to power playing itself out from individual human nature and from group behavior nature? Uh, is, is there some elements to this which is the game we play as human beings, is always when we have less power, we try to find ways to gain more power?

Douglas Murray 1:18:37 That's certainly one. Um, the desire to, to grab is... Let me see if I can find a quote for you on that. The desire to grab that which we think we're owed, and to do it often in the guise of, um, um, justice, I mean-... justice is one of the great terms of our age, and one of the be- great bogus terms of our age. People forever talk about their search for justice, and it's amazing how violent they can often be in their search for justice, and how many rules they're willing to break so long as they can say that they're after justice, and how many norms they can trample so long as they can say it's in the name of justice. You can burn down buildings in the name of justice.

Lex Fridman 1:19:21 Well, the, the majority of groups throughout history, including those with white skin color, have done the same in the name of justice. We-

Douglas Murray 1:19:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:28 ... we come up with all kinds of-

Douglas Murray 1:19:30 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:19:30 ... sexy terms in our propaganda machines to sell whatever atrocities we'd like to commit.

Douglas Murray 1:19:36 One of the th- one of the quotes of, uh, from Nietzsche that I liked, and I quoted in this-

Lex Fridman 1:19:41 Careful, I'm judging you harshly.

Douglas Murray 1:19:43 Yeah, of course.

Lex Fridman 1:19:45 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:19:45 Um, uh, i- uh, Nietzsche says that one of the dangers of men of resentment is they'll achieve their ultimate form of revenge, which is to turn happy people into unhappy people like themselves, to shove their misery in the faces of the happy so that in due course, the happy... And this is quoting Nietzsche, "Start to be ashamed of their happiness, and perhaps say to one another, 'It's a disgrace to be happy, there is too much misery.' This is something to be averted, for the sick," says Nietzsche, "must not make the healthy sick too, or make the healthy confuse themselves with the sick." Well, I think there, again, there's a lot of that going on. How could I be happy when there is unhappiness in the world? Why should I not join the ranks of the unhappy?

Lex Fridman 1:20:31 I think, uh, Dostoevsky has a book about that as well.

Douglas Murray 1:20:34 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:20:34 Notes from Underground. Um, okay. (sighs)

Douglas Murray 1:20:39 This has been very Russian, ve- Russian-focused. I'm very pleased with the number-

Lex Fridman 1:20:43 It's-

Douglas Murray 1:20:43 ... of times both Dostoevsky and Grossman...

Lex Fridman 1:20:44 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:20:44 ... and others have come in. This is very... I wasn't ag- doing this as a sort of, um...

Lex Fridman 1:20:49 Yeah. Well, it's always good to plug the greats. Um (inhales) and good to know they're still relevant. Do you speak Russian, by the way, at all?

Douglas Murray 1:20:59 Wish I did. I'm told it's a 10-year language, basically, to learn from scratch.

Lex Fridman 1:21:04 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 1:21:04 As my friends who have done it.

Lex Fridman 1:21:06 Well, there's the language and then there's the personality behind the language. And the personality, I feel like you already have. So you just need to know the surface details. (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:21:17 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:21:17 Okay. Uh, in fact, this silence, to be silent in the Russian language is something that's already

Lex Fridman 1:21:24 important.

Douglas Murray 1:21:24 Oh, I should... If we had a moment, I'd tell you my story about Stalin's birthplace. Should I tell you that?

Lex Fridman 1:21:28 No.

Douglas Murray 1:21:29 I once went to Gori, where Stalin was born. Have you been?

Lex Fridman 1:21:33 No, no.

Douglas Murray 1:21:34 It's funny. I, I was there just after the Georgia war. And I went, went to the no man's land in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. And, uh, I said, uh, "I really gotta go to Gori or so," because a shell had landed in Gori rather weirdly from the Russian side, and Gori is where Stalin was born. And, uh, of course Gori is in Georgia. And, uh, um, anyhow, the, the museum of Stalin's birthplace, they've been trying to change for some years, because it had been (laughs) unadulteratedly pro-Stalin for years. And the Georgian authorities, this is in, uh, um, uh, Saakashvili's time, were trying to make it into a museum of Stalinism. And it was really tough. Uh, the only place I've seen which is similar is the house in Mexico City where Trotsky was killed.

Lex Fridman 1:22:22 Hmm.

Douglas Murray 1:22:22 Uh, that also is like, they're not quite sure what to do. They, they don't want to say he's a bad guy, because they think that people won't come anyhow. Um, Stalin's house in Gori had changed from the Museum of Stalin to the Museum of Stalinism. And there was this r- large Georgian woman with a pink pencil who just had clearly been doing the tour for like 50 years. And just pointed to all the facts. And she did that classic thing, I've also sort- saw it once in North Korea where they, that sort of s- that sort of communist thing where they say, "Here is... This is 147 feet high by 13 feet deep." And they give you lots of facts. You go, "I don't care."

Lex Fridman 1:22:54 (laughs) Yeah.

Douglas Murray 1:22:55 What does it matter?

Lex Fridman 1:22:56 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 1:22:56 Um, they always give you facts.

Lex Fridman 1:22:57 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 1:22:58 This is Stalin's suitcase, it is, uh, 13, uh, inches wide by... you know, this, that. Anyhow, and, uh, this woman did all of this, and it was all just wildly pro... Well, not pro Stalin, she just explained Stalin's life. It was just, you know, great local boy done good. Uh, they didn't mention the fact he killed more Georgians per capita than anyone else.

Lex Fridman 1:23:17 (laughs) Local boy done good.

Douglas Murray 1:23:18 And we get, get to the end, and before, uh, being taken to the gift shop where they sell red wine with Stalin's face on it, and among other things, uh, and a lighter w- with Stalin on it, uh, they, uh, they took you to a little room under the stairs and they said, "This is a replica of interrogation cell to show, uh, uh, represent horror of what happened in Stalin time. Uh, now gift shop." As I... (laughs) there's no, no kind of... And I, and I took the woman aside at the, at the end. I discovered she'd said this to other journalists and, you know, visited before. I took her aside and I said, I said, "Well, what do you think about Comrade Stalin?" And she said, um... As I say, she'd obviously done this during communist times or... She said, "It's l- uh, it's not my, not my place to judge," you know, that sort of thing.

Lex Fridman 1:24:08 Hmm.

Douglas Murray 1:24:09 Which is an interesting comment in itself. And I said, "Yeah, but he killed more Georgians than anyone," and, you know, and, and all that sort of thing. And she kept saying, "It's not my place to judge or to give my views," and that sort of thing. And eventually I said, "But what do you feel about it?" And she said, um, "It was like a hurricane. It happened."

Lex Fridman 1:24:28 Hmm. That's interesting, because, uh, if I may mention Clubhouse once again, I'd gotten the chance to talk to a few people from Mongolia.

Douglas Murray 1:24:36 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:24:37 There's a woman from Mongolia. And they talked about the fact that they r- deeply admire Stalin.

Douglas Murray 1:24:42 Hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:24:42 They love... She, she sounded, if I may, hopefully that's not crossing the line, I think I'm representing her correctly in saying sh- she admired him almost like, um, like loved him. Like the pe-

Douglas Murray 1:24:55 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:24:55 ... the way people love like a, a, um, like a, a, like Jesus, like a-

Douglas Murray 1:24:59 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:24:59 ... a holy figure.

Douglas Murray 1:25:00 Well, isn't that st- still the case in large parts of Russia?

Lex Fridman 1:25:02 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 1:25:02 I mean, he keeps on, Stalin keeps on winning greatest Russian of all time.

Lex Fridman 1:25:07 ... and, and that perhaps maybe there's a dip. But if we were to think about the long arc of history, perhaps that's going to go up, and up, and up, and up, as-

Douglas Murray 1:25:16 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:25:16 ... there's something about human memory that it just, you forget the details of the atrocities of the past and remember the-

Douglas Murray 1:25:23 I mean, think of the number of people we talk about as historical heroes. Napoleon.

Lex Fridman 1:25:27 Yeah.

Douglas Murray 1:25:27 I mean, British people don't talk about Napoleon as a hero. But the French-

Lex Fridman 1:25:33 Churchill.

Douglas Murray 1:25:33 Yeah. Now, now, now you're-

Lex Fridman 1:25:34 You didn't think that Dostoevsky... Now I get to-

Douglas Murray 1:25:37 Now you're on tricky ground. But no, but like the, the French are enormously admired. Napoleon, and they had many he was also an unbelievable brute and, um, killed many people unnecessarily. And, um, there are lots of figures from history that we sort of cover that over with.

Lex Fridman 1:25:55 (sighs) Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:25:58 Can we mention Churchill briefly?

Douglas Murray 1:26:00 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:26:00 Because, uh, he is one of the, um... You can make a case for him being one of the great representers or great figures historically of Western civilization.

Douglas Murray 1:26:11 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:26:12 And then there's a lot of people, uh, from... Not a lot. (laughs) I know I have like three friends, and one of, (laughs) one of them happens to be from London, and they, they say that he's a, a, um, not a good person.

Douglas Murray 1:26:26 Why?

Lex Fridman 1:26:27 So listen, this friend, we, we do not discuss... I just, this is an opinion poll of the three friends. But I do know that there's quite a bit, you know-

Douglas Murray 1:26:35 There's a backlash going on at the moment.

Lex Fridman 1:26:37 At the moment and in general, there's a spirit like reflecting on, on the darker sides of some of these historical figures, like challenging history through... It's, it's not just critical race theory. It's, it's challenging history through well, are the people we think of as heroes, what are their flaws? And are they in fact-

Douglas Murray 1:27:00 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:27:00 ... villains that are convenient, um, sort of, uh, were there at the right time to accidentally do the right thing?

Douglas Murray 1:27:12 Accidentally?

Lex Fridman 1:27:14 (laughs)

Douglas Murray 1:27:14 Well, I hope this isn't the representative, fair estimation of your friend in London's views.

Lex Fridman 1:27:21 No. She's going to be quite mad at this. But I didn't say the name, so it could be any friend. It