Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza | Lex Fridman Podcast #463

They end up chanting in front of him, "Viva la muerte." Long live death. They have their counterparts today. They are the people who s- who taunt Americans, Westerners, Israelis and others with lines like, "We love death more than you love life."

The following is a conversation with Douglas Murray, author of The War on the West, The Madness of Crowds, and his new book, On Democracies and Death Cults. We talk about Russia and Ukraine, and about Israel and Gaza. Douglas has very strong views on these topics and he defends them brilliantly and fearlessly. As I always try to do for all topics, I will also talk to people who have different views from Douglas, including on the next episode of this podcast. We live in an era of online discourse where grifters, drama farmers, liars, bots, sycophants and sociopaths roam the vast, beautiful, dark land of the internet. It's hard to know who to trust. I believe no one is in possession of the entire truth, but some are more correct than others, some are insightful and some are delusional. The problem is it's hard to tell which is which unless you use your mind with intellectual humility and with rigor. I recommend you listen to many sources who disagree with each other and try to pick up wisdom from each. Also, I recommend you visit the places in question, as Douglas has, as I have. Or at least talk face-to-face with people who have spent most of their lives living there, whether it's Israel, Palestine, Ukraine or Russia. Let's try together to not be cogs in the machine of outrage, and instead to reach towards reason and compassion. There is no Hitler, Stalin or Mao on the world stage today, plus there are thousands of nuclear weapons ready to fire. Human civilization hangs in the balance. The 21st century is a new geopolitical puzzle all of us are tasked with solving. Let's not mess it up. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Douglas Murray. What have you understood about the war in Ukraine from, uh, your visits there? Just looking at the big picture of your understanding of the invasion of February 24th, 2022 and the war in the three years since?

Well, I mean, several things. There's, uh, uh, political angles which are forever changing, but on the human level, as, as you know if you visit troops, frontline troops, you have that admiration for people defending their country, defending their homes, defending their families. I'm struck by the way in which that is at a remove from the sort of political noise and the media noise and - and much more. Um, it's very easy to get caught up in the twos and fros of today's news, but, uh, that, to my mind, is - is that's the single thing that struck me most in my visits there, uh, is just, um, the - the people I've met who - who are fighting for a cause which, at that level, is unavoidable, undeniable.