0:00

Peter. Michael. Have you ever heard

0:02

of a book called Clash of Civilizations? I've

0:05

heard of it. Clash of Civilizations. One

0:07

of my favorite video games. Excited

0:09

to have find out they made a book. Tell

0:27

me about your relation ship with this book. What do you know about

0:29

it? I actually do know a little bit about it. If

0:32

you were a professor of

0:34

international affairs, when the

0:36

Cold War ended. You were contractually

0:38

obligated to write an entire book explaining

0:40

why you think you should still be employed.

0:43

This is Samuel Huntington's. Attempts.

0:46

You never had to read it in school. There's a huge

0:48

difference between me being told I should read something

0:50

or have to read something and actually reading

0:52

it. So it's quite possible. The

0:54

the reason that I ask is that one of the first things

0:56

that I learned while I was researching this is

0:58

that class of civilizations is one

1:00

of the ten most assigned books

1:02

at US colleges. Wow. Among

1:05

top colleges, among like Ivy league colleges,

1:07

it's number four. It's just below

1:09

Plato, but it's above Aristotle

1:12

and democracy in America by Detroitville.

1:14

I'm upset and disappointed to hear

1:16

that Internet National Affairs and political

1:18

science academics are not

1:20

seriously pursuing truth and

1:23

are instead championing the hack

1:25

work of their

1:26

colleagues, mentors, and friends. This

1:28

is shocking.

1:29

So what do you what do you know about Huntington himself?

1:31

Now this is all from memory. So give me a little

1:33

rope here, but I believe that he

1:36

was a big time international affairs

1:38

academic, also a statesman. Mhmm.

1:41

One of those guys who, like, went

1:43

to Harvard or Yale back in like nineteen

1:45

eighteen. Yeah. And then that's

1:47

enough to just sort of be in government

1:50

or a near government for the rest of your

1:51

life. Yeah. He goes to the University of Chicago. He

1:54

gets his PhD from Harvard in nineteen

1:56

fifty one. And then there's a little tiny

1:58

interregnum period, but then he becomes a Harvard

2:01

professor and he stays there for fifty eight years.

2:03

He's sort of like a walking who's who

2:06

of every single intellectual movement

2:09

of the twentieth century. Like, he's friends

2:11

with Francis Fukuyama. He's friends with

2:13

chef Brysinski Henry Kissinger.

2:16

He founded foreign policy magazine.

2:18

He worked for LBJ. According

2:20

to one thing that I read, he is the most cited

2:23

political

2:23

scientist. In America for like

2:26

many, many years. That that makes sense to me.

2:28

And again, I'm someone

2:30

who didn't try very hard in school, and

2:32

I still remember his

2:33

name. So think that says a lot. The book

2:35

itself comes out in nineteen ninety

2:37

six. And the background

2:39

to the book is this period that we

2:42

touched on briefly with Fukushima and

2:44

the end of history, basically from, like,

2:46

the mid nineteen eighties until the early

2:48

two thousands.

2:49

Everybody was coming out with their, like,

2:52

what happens after the Cold War book?

2:54

Yeah. Like, I think it was just a very fertile

2:56

time for takes that we have all forgotten

2:58

about because most of these predictions did not come

3:00

true. Like, apparently, there was famous book

3:03

about how the post Cold War World

3:05

was going to be defined by, like,

3:07

America versus drug cartels, but,

3:09

like, organized crime. It's gonna be, like, the

3:11

next cold

3:12

war. Like, there was a lot of just weird cockamamie

3:15

shit bouncing around. The time. I

3:16

would have read that book, honestly. So

3:19

the book itself, first, it

3:21

started as a nineteen ninety two lecture at the

3:23

American Enterprise Institute, obviously,

3:26

And just like Fukuyama, it

3:28

began as an article with a question

3:30

mark. So it started as the

3:32

clash of civilizations And

3:34

then in nineteen ninety six, when he expands

3:36

into a book, it's the class of civilizations. So

3:39

are you are you aware, like, the core thesis

3:41

of the

3:41

book? I know a couple things about it. One is

3:43

I think that he was saying that

3:46

the future conflicts,

3:48

the next big conflicts will be between

3:50

cultures not nations. Mhmm.

3:53

The part of the book that's sort of discussed

3:55

the most is that he talks about Islam,

3:57

that, like, yes, The Western

3:59

values, v Islam, is

4:02

the next big thing.

4:03

Yes. Most of the book is him laying

4:05

out this idea that now that the Cold

4:07

War is over, we can finally reckon

4:10

with the rise of identities. Uh-huh.

4:12

He he explicitly describes like a much more

4:14

violent much more conflictual world

4:17

in the

4:17

future. Does he have a basis for

4:19

saying that we are diverging that,

4:22

like, our identities are in these

4:24

certain areas are getting

4:26

stronger? Or is it just sort of that he's

4:28

just like spitballing? This Peter,

4:30

thank you. I'm this transitions perfectly

4:32

into the quote that I was gonna send you. I'm

4:34

I'm sending you the first four paragraphs

4:37

of the first chapter. Alright. The

4:40

years after the Cold War witnessed the

4:42

beginnings of dramatic changes in people's identities

4:45

and the symbols of those identities. Global

4:47

politics began to be reconfigured

4:49

along cultural lines. On

4:51

April eighteenth nineteen ninety four, two

4:54

thousand people rallied and Sarajevo waving

4:56

the flags of Saudi Arabia and

4:58

Turkey. By flying those banners

5:01

instead of UN, NATO, or American

5:03

flags, These Sarajevans identified

5:05

themselves with their fellow Muslims and told the

5:07

world who were their real and not so

5:09

real friends. On October

5:12

sixteenth nineteen ninety four in

5:14

Los Angeles, seventy thousand

5:16

people marched beneath a sea of Mexican

5:18

flags Protesting Proposition 187A

5:21

referendum, which would deny many

5:23

state benefits to illegal immigrants and

5:26

their children. Why are they walking down

5:28

the street with a Mexican flag and demanding this country

5:30

give them a free education? Observeers asked,

5:33

they should be waving the American flag.

5:36

These flag displays ensured victory

5:38

for Proposition 187, which was

5:40

approved by fifty nine percent of California

5:43

voters. In the post

5:45

Cold War world, flags count

5:47

and so do other symbols of cultural identity,

5:49

including crosses, cresence, and

5:51

even head coverings because culture

5:54

counts. And cultural identity is

5:56

what is most meaningful to most

5:58

people.

5:59

Other than the sparkling

6:00

pros, what do you think? I mean, I would

6:02

love to do an entire podcast about that pros,

6:04

which really stuck with my brain in a way

6:06

I'm not accustomed to. So I'm

6:09

noticing some little

6:11

anecdotes being spun

6:13

into symbols

6:16

of world historical importance.

6:18

Mhmm. Another thing that jumps out to me

6:20

is what seems to be a pretty casual

6:23

xenophobia. What

6:24

the thing about how it's Mexican's fault that

6:26

California voters took their rights away -- Blaming

6:28

Mexicans -- -- for having their rights taken

6:30

away because they were protesting too mean

6:32

-- Not great. -- saying that Muslims

6:35

were announcing who they're real

6:37

and not so real friends were based

6:39

on whose flags they were waving seems

6:41

like a dramatic inference to make

6:43

know. You know, saying something like cultural

6:45

identity is what is most

6:47

meaningful to most people. That

6:49

feels like quantifiable statement

6:52

of some kind. And again, I do not see

6:54

it being quantified.

6:55

Yes. You touched on, like, one of the main

6:57

hallmarks of the book, which is that he

6:59

makes a series of sweeping statements,

7:02

and then he gives as evidence,

7:05

like, here's these two random things

7:07

that have nothing to do with each

7:09

other. Are you sure are you sure that

7:12

people not waving the UN flag

7:14

is not a super important development that

7:16

we should be digging

7:17

into. I usually usually you go

7:19

to a protest and there's UN flags. Everyone's

7:21

waving. This

7:24

is like a little example of the way that

7:26

he uses evidence in this book.

7:29

But to try to take his argument,

7:31

seriously. Mhmm. So his claim

7:33

is that the fault lines of conflict

7:36

are going to be quote unquote civilizations. So

7:38

if this is your argument, obviously, the

7:41

first thing you have to do is like define a civilization.

7:43

Uh-huh. The definition that he gives is

7:46

it's the biggest we that

7:48

every person has. So

7:51

you are from New York So

7:53

you have, like, some sort of New York identity.

7:56

You probably have some, like, New York

7:58

State identity. You feel

8:00

sort of more tied to people that live in Buffalo

8:02

than who in Albuquerque, probably. You

8:05

probably have some, like, East Coast pride.

8:08

Like, West Coasters are weird Mary Anne Williams

8:10

and People

8:10

and, like, they're more down to Earth tell it like it

8:13

is guy. Like, there's probably some sort of identity in

8:15

there. Right? Yeah.

8:15

I'm an Eric Adams guy. Yeah. I

8:18

say that about you all the time. And then

8:20

zooming at one more level, you probably like American

8:22

shit. Mhmm. You could also say at the at the sort of

8:24

most zoomed out level, you also probably

8:26

consider yourself a a citizen of, like,

8:28

the west. Like, whatever that means. Right? Like,

8:31

the the the war in Ukraine is

8:33

probably more likely to, like, hit you in

8:35

the fields than, like, the bombing

8:37

in Yemen or something. Sure. That's really

8:39

what he means by civilizations that

8:41

like everybody has all of these overlapping identities.

8:44

And basically, when you take them up to their highest

8:46

level of abstraction, that's

8:48

where you find like a a small number

8:51

of civilizations globally that

8:53

essentially everybody falls under one of these

8:55

categories. Okay. Okay.

8:58

You don't sound

8:58

convinced. Well, I mean, that's one of

9:00

those things that is not objectionable.

9:04

In, like, the general sense. Yeah.

9:06

But also too abstract to

9:08

build, like, a really coherent thesis

9:10

around. It's one of those things where it's, like, Yeah.

9:13

You know, that probably exists as a

9:15

concept.

9:16

Yeah. And all contained probably, don't

9:18

know, seven twelve identities.

9:21

Right. Those identities can be activated

9:23

when certain things happen in the world or, you

9:25

know, tell us to support certain

9:27

political candidates for whatever

9:28

reason, etcetera, fact that those things exist,

9:30

I think it's actually fairly unobjectionable. This

9:33

is the problem that all these grand historical narrative

9:35

attempts have in common.

9:38

Right? They're they're just trying to split these,

9:40

like, probably real, but

9:42

still complex overlapping people

9:45

and things into, like, clean

9:48

and distinct categories.

9:50

Right. And it's not something you

9:52

can readily do. Right. And he's also

9:54

making it, like, the most important

9:57

driver and the most important

9:59

explanation

10:00

for, like, all world conflicts. So

10:04

Okay. I'm gonna send you actual

10:07

map, the actual civilizations.

10:09

Oh, wow. There's some real outliers here.

10:11

Okay?

10:11

Okay. Mhmm. So This is

10:13

the world divided by

10:16

color color coded into what I

10:18

believe are civilizations. You

10:20

have Western which is

10:22

Western Europe, U. S. And Canada.

10:25

You have Latin American,

10:27

which is almost everything below that.

10:30

Mhmm. You have Islamic, which

10:32

is just a broad paintbrush

10:35

across North Africa and the Middle East. Mhmm.

10:37

And then have, like, East Asia,

10:39

divvied up into a bunch of different cultures,

10:42

scenic, Buddhist, Hindu,

10:46

And then in the sort

10:49

of Russian sphere, the former

10:51

Soviet Union is labeled

10:53

Orthodox. And finally,

10:57

you have Japan, which is its

10:59

own simple

10:59

session. This

11:01

is where I lost my fucking mind. Oh,

11:04

like that. That's so fucking funny. China

11:07

and Japan are just their own civilizations. He's

11:09

like, I'm not gonna try to figure this one out. I have

11:11

no evidence for this. I I imagine

11:13

his thought process is something like well,

11:15

like, you can't put Japan with

11:17

China. Right? Because, like, these are very distinct

11:19

cultures.

11:20

They were at war. He's like, okay. So we're gonna carve off

11:22

Japan. But then in the Chinese

11:24

civilization, which he calls

11:25

Schenic, he throws in North

11:27

Korea. Oh, yeah.

11:29

And it looks like Vietnam too.

11:31

As soon as he carves off Japan, I'm like,

11:33

you should carve off all the countries. The

11:35

the, like, giant Latin American lump.

11:37

AND THEN THE, LIKE THE FACT THAT THE FACT

11:40

THAT WEST AFRICAN COUNTRIES AND

11:42

IRAN ARE IN THE SAME CIVILIZATION,

11:44

ACCORDING TO THIS, JUST COULDN'T NO RESTAVENCES.

11:47

You gotta be fucking kidding me with

11:48

this. This is another thing that I also don't

11:50

think gets enough attention is the fact that

11:52

a lot of these civilizations are described

11:54

in different ways. So, like, There's like Buddhist

11:57

Hindu Orthodox. Right? Those

11:59

are religious distinctions.

12:01

Right. But then he's got Africa, which is

12:03

a geographic distinction. Uh-huh. And then

12:05

he's got the west.

12:06

Right. There there's a big critique of him that talks about

12:08

his conception of the west, that most of the things

12:11

that he talks about as defining the west. Like, rule

12:13

of law and free rights and all this kind

12:15

of stuff, that's a lot of countries. The

12:17

things that he says are unique about

12:19

the west. A huge number

12:21

of other countries should then fall into the west,

12:23

like South Korea should absolutely be in

12:25

the west by that definition. Right. One of

12:27

the other things that I noticed while I was, like,

12:29

you know, zooming in on various parts of this is that

12:32

there's there's fourteen different countries

12:34

where he's split them in the middle.

12:37

And he said that, like, like Sudan

12:39

is part Islamic and part African.

12:42

Uh-huh. But, like, if what he's trying to

12:44

explain is foreign policy.

12:47

Like, when countries act on the world

12:49

stage, you can't just say that one country is

12:51

two. Because then by that definition,

12:53

then like most countries would be

12:55

two or three or four or five depending on, like,

12:57

various immigrant groups that they

12:59

have, histories. Right. As as soon as you

13:01

start shopping up the identities in

13:03

any given country, Right. All of a sudden,

13:05

you have to concede that that identities don't

13:07

really map on to borders -- Right. -- perfectly and

13:09

perhaps you should be using another framework

13:11

entirely.

13:12

Right. And then, like, every country is

13:14

a bunch of squabbling interest groups.

13:16

Yeah. It should be fairly intuitive that

13:19

that's a stupid way to do this. Yes. He

13:22

doesn't say this in the book, but I think As

13:24

a result of getting all of these critiques

13:26

of the original article, he comes up with

13:29

bunch of sub groups of civilizations

13:31

-- Mhmm. -- in each civilization. There

13:34

are member states, core

13:36

states, loan countries,

13:39

cleft countries, and torn countries.

13:42

The core

13:42

countries is like really self explanatory.

13:44

It's like the main country. So, like, China

13:46

is the main country of the Scenic Civilization.

13:49

Uh-huh. He's then got this thing of the

13:51

cleft country. So something like Ukraine

13:54

is a cleft country like it's halfway in

13:56

between the west and the

13:58

Orthodox civilization. Mhmm.

14:00

A torn country is like

14:02

something like Turkey. It it has

14:04

one foot in Islamic world but

14:07

then there there are large political movements

14:09

trying to transform it into

14:11

something that is more Western. Mhmm. And then

14:13

there's lone countries where

14:15

he says, like, Haiti is a lone country

14:18

where, like, Africa doesn't really want it

14:20

and South America doesn't really want it either. Like,

14:22

it doesn't fit easily into either one of those

14:25

categories. And, like, it's its own thing. Okay.

14:27

There's, of course, inter civilizational conflicts.

14:30

Right? Like, civilizations fighting with each other, but there's

14:32

also intra civilizational conflict.

14:34

Where countries are fighting

14:36

over, like, who is going to be the core country?

14:38

Mhmm. Basically, he he's done the

14:40

sort of the responsible scholar thing

14:43

where he's acknowledged all of

14:45

these caveats. Right? He said they're like, yeah,

14:47

you know. Right. Civilizations can change over

14:49

time and, like, they have blurry borders and

14:51

There's all these subgroups within them and, like,

14:53

not every conflict is between

14:55

civilizations. Yeah. I'm I'm obviously, I'm oversimplifying

14:58

an unreal amount to point where anything

15:00

I say from here on in is completely

15:02

useless. Exactly. But let's let's plow

15:04

forward. So you're like three hundred pages into

15:06

this book and you're like, What is the point of this

15:08

book then? If if China goes

15:10

to war with Iran, it's like, oh,

15:12

it's like the Scenic Civilization versus the Muslim

15:15

Civilization. Oh, he's right. But

15:17

then if China goes to war with Vietnam, a

15:19

neighboring country, it's like, oh, it's an interim

15:21

civilizational fight. What is an

15:23

event on the world

15:25

stage? That this wouldn't explain.

15:27

Right. So he he puts out an essay that's basically

15:29

like, oh, they're these different civilizations. And then a bunch

15:32

of people are like, well, what about, like, interest

15:34

civilizational conflicts. And so he's like, oh,

15:36

good point. I'll just put a chapter on that

15:38

in my book. Right. So, like, every possible

15:40

caveat has an avenue. Yes. Your

15:42

thesis is is again so abstract

15:45

and so riddled with caveats that

15:47

it just doesn't fucking mean anything. Right.

15:50

Why not drill down to the to

15:52

the individual level at this

15:54

point. Right? Fuck it. This is another thing is

15:56

that, like, by the time he's come up with these categories

15:58

of, like, cleft country, loan country, core country.

16:00

It's like, well, then you were just back to countries. Right.

16:02

The the civilizational framework is supposed to

16:04

be an alternative to talking

16:07

about countries acting in their national interest.

16:09

Right? Like, paraguay does stuff because of, like,

16:11

specific things happening in paraguay.

16:14

And then this guy comes along and he's like, no. No.

16:16

No. No. No. Paraguay does things because

16:18

it's Latin America. Right. But then he breaks

16:20

up Latin America into all

16:22

of these subgroups where it's like

16:24

actually paraguay is a cleft country. It's like,

16:27

yeah, that's what I said in the first place. Paraguay

16:29

is doing paraguay

16:30

stuff. It should be sort of transparently obvious

16:33

to anyone just glancing at this. That someone

16:35

who's like writing a four hundred page book

16:37

and just going like region by region

16:39

country by country and giving descriptions of

16:41

them is not an expert in any given

16:44

thing that he talks about. Oh, yeah. Instead, they're

16:46

just sort of like crafting a language

16:49

that allows them to talk about this stuff as

16:51

if they are experts. Right? Right. Oh, you're

16:53

talking about Ukraine. That's a cleft country.

16:56

Right. It's like talking points for different

16:58

countries when you're

16:59

at, like, the big international affairs

17:01

meeting in Washington DC. Exactly.

17:03

Another thing that I I came across in

17:05

one of the critiques of him that I

17:07

think is actually really insightful. It's also

17:09

that he points out, I think, correctly,

17:12

that all of us have all of these overlapping identities.

17:15

Right? But the core of

17:17

his thesis is that the

17:19

identity at the highest level of

17:21

abstraction is the strongest.

17:24

If you wanna understand Africans, like their

17:26

African identity, is much more

17:28

powerful to them than like any sub

17:30

identities. But when you think

17:32

about actual world conflicts and the

17:34

way that, like, most of world history has happened,

17:37

it's exactly the opposite. Right. If it comes

17:39

down to, like, one of my more proximate identities and

17:41

and it's, like, super

17:42

abstract, highest order identity,

17:45

I'm going to pick approximate identity every

17:47

time. Am

17:47

I overthinking this or isn't the highest

17:49

order identity ages like being a citizen

17:51

of the Earth? He has like a he has like a sentence

17:54

on that. He says it's like civilizations are the highest

17:56

order of identification before

17:58

human being.

17:59

Okay. mean,

18:00

but that's also a good point because, like, if we're

18:02

talking about the highest order of abstraction, the

18:04

highest order of abstraction is human

18:06

being -- Right. -- even though Syria is

18:08

not necessarily in, quote, unquote, the west.

18:10

And, like, maybe I have closer ties

18:12

mentally to Ukraine than to Syria,

18:15

It's not that, like, all of sudden, like, my

18:17

my allegiance to the Ukraine is really, really

18:19

strong, and then my allegiance to

18:21

Syria is non existent. Right. I mean, there's

18:24

something in in this thesis that

18:26

is actually a question

18:28

of psychology. In what circumstances

18:31

is a given identity sort of triggered

18:33

and prioritized in a person's mind.

18:35

Right? There's research on this. Mhmm. And

18:38

it's a little bit weird to talk about it

18:40

as a completely abstract thing. It's

18:42

clearly more complicated than that, and

18:44

not just that, but, like, you're gonna need

18:46

data. You know, you're gonna need data if

18:48

you wanna make these claims. But Peter, some

18:51

Mexicans were marching with a flag.

18:54

Didn't you read the paragraph about the Mexicans? Sorry.

18:56

I forgot about all the data I've been given already.

18:59

So the next Like, after

19:01

he defines all of these civilizations,

19:03

he then gets into like his vision of

19:05

the future. Okay. So First of

19:07

all, the west is like fading. Okay.

19:10

Even though the cold war is over and

19:12

we won all these other

19:14

countries have developed He specifically talks

19:16

about indigenization where

19:18

basically all of these countries after they've

19:20

thrown off the shackles of colonialism are

19:22

like getting a lot more confident. China is

19:25

becoming this like big economic powerhouse.

19:27

And there's African countries that are like taking

19:29

on a more African identity and forming trade

19:32

relationships within themselves. Right?

19:34

I think this is true. Right? That, like, post colonialism,

19:37

a lot of countries started to

19:38

have, like, national pride in a way that

19:41

was, like, literally illegal in a lot of places

19:43

before that. Right? There's there's a weird

19:45

dynamic in a in that I saw in

19:47

Fukiama's book to these guys

19:49

came up during an era where

19:52

international affairs from the United States

19:54

perspective was just bullying everyone.

19:57

Yes. And then we're sort of entering

19:59

this period where that's a little bit harder

20:01

to do. Smaller countries

20:03

are accruing political and

20:06

economic our these

20:08

guys, the Huntington's of the world, are, like,

20:10

gazing out upon all of us and thinking, like,

20:12

yeah, this is fucking annoying. Right? Like,

20:14

yeah. This why can't

20:17

I wanna do you know, I I want the US to

20:19

be able to do whatever it wants. That's how we've been

20:21

feeling about our our shit. And now

20:23

we can't. And it's fucking annoying, and no one's

20:25

saying thank

20:26

you. I wanna do the bad stuff. And yet, here you

20:28

are telling me it's bad. Right. This

20:31

is the part of the book. Where he completely

20:33

abandons his civilizational

20:36

framework. Mhmm. So he does

20:38

all of his groundwork talk about, like, the Latin

20:40

American civilization, the the Buddhist civilization,

20:43

and then he never talks about them again because

20:45

he says that, you know, once he's established all these

20:47

civilizations, he says the real threat

20:50

comes from two

20:50

places. Asia and

20:52

the Middle East. What about cartels?

20:55

He's leaving Cartels on the table. Come on.

20:58

A lot of the book actually focuses on, like, the

21:00

threat from Asia. Mhmm. It's just like

21:02

the the sort of general fears about,

21:04

like, Japan, buying up a bunch of

21:06

American companies, like, being better at business than

21:08

us. Uh-huh. He he keeps saying that, like,

21:10

you know, Asia is gonna want to impose

21:13

Asian values, which he always puts in quote

21:15

marks. But then he never actually says like what

21:17

those values are or like why they're

21:19

bad. Right. And

21:20

of course, the second part of that is that Islamic

21:22

societies are becoming more fundamentalist. Sure.

21:25

Muslim countries are getting more

21:27

Muslims and, like, their Super Matadas

21:30

and, like, you basically can't reason with

21:32

these people because they're bewitched by

21:34

their, like, ancient religion. After

21:36

everything we've done for them. No.

21:41

He also okay. One of my favorite things

21:43

about reading these old books that have

21:45

like become cultural touchstones

21:47

is how much random shit in them has

21:49

been completely memory hold. So

21:52

he has a whole section about

21:54

the the greatest threat to the

21:56

world is a confusions Islamic

21:59

alliance. Uh-huh. That the real threat

22:01

isn't just the Asians and the Muslims

22:04

separately. It's that the Asians and the

22:06

Muslims are going to team up against

22:08

us. So

22:10

his his solo. This whole theory is just like, well,

22:13

they're both mad at us. Yeah. So maybe

22:15

maybe they'll team

22:16

up. And then he asked him, like, this is one

22:18

of the places where he does actually use statistics. He

22:20

has stats on, like, China selling

22:22

arms to Pakistan or something,

22:24

and then, like, actual regional

22:26

experts will be, like, dude,

22:29

China's arms sales to the Middle East account

22:31

for about one percent of their

22:33

arms and America accounts for thirty

22:35

three percent of their

22:36

arms. Yeah. I was gonna say good news. If

22:38

you think that selling arms to someone

22:40

makes them your ally -- Right. -- then

22:42

we have nothing but friends all over the

22:44

world. He also has a thing with, like, one of of

22:46

the reasons we can't trust, like, middle

22:48

eastern countries because, like, Islamic countries

22:51

are, like, more prone to violence than

22:53

non Muslim countries. Right? He's like, if

22:55

you look at the statistics, Muslim

22:57

countries have higher military spending

23:00

for their populations.

23:03

And, like, are you really we're really gonna

23:06

do this?

23:07

Oh, shit. From

23:08

America, you're writing this in America. Okay.

23:10

I mean, look, not only is America's

23:12

military spending unreal

23:15

large, but, like, yeah,

23:17

we've turned to the Middle East into

23:20

a proxy war zone

23:22

for eighty years. So, like, yeah, some of those

23:24

countries are are arming

23:26

up pretty

23:27

reasonably. We're only gonna invade two of countries

23:29

in the next, like, ten years. So come on.

23:31

Everybody relax. So

23:34

this is his vision. Right? This is this is basically

23:36

his core case. So, like, this is what next fifty

23:38

years of the world is gonna look like this. Islamic

23:40

confusion, uppity, Asian

23:42

people, and Muslims. Right? So,

23:45

of course, the question that one asks

23:47

is like, well, what is his evidence for this

23:49

thesis? Right? Because one

23:52

of the interesting things about the book,

23:54

this is another place where he caveats himself

23:56

into oblivion. He's

23:58

making this bold prediction about the next

24:00

fifty years. Right? But he says that

24:03

anything that happened during the Cold

24:05

War doesn't really count

24:07

because it's not really evidence for his thesis

24:09

or evidence against his thesis because it

24:11

was, like, under the rubric of the cold war.

24:14

Okay. He also says that anything

24:16

that happened before the cold war Also,

24:19

doesn't really matter for his thesis because it was

24:21

before the rise of identity politics, and

24:23

it was before the rise of globalization. Countries

24:26

weren't as connected back then, there wasn't as

24:28

much travel, there wasn't as much migration.

24:30

When you think of something like World War one,

24:33

you can't really put that in the civilizational paradigm

24:35

because like there were all these other things going

24:37

on at the time that

24:38

were, like, specific to that period in history.

24:41

So his rubric for understanding

24:43

entire world does not apply if

24:45

you go back five years because there are other

24:47

variables that his rubric does not account

24:50

for.

24:50

Exactly. As I'm reading this,

24:52

I'm like crossing off periods of history

24:54

in my head. Right? Because he's

24:56

writing the book in nineteen ninety six.

24:58

Anything before nineteen eighty nine doesn't

25:00

count. So, basically, all that leaves

25:02

him with, is fucking nineteen eighty

25:04

nine until nineteen ninety

25:06

five, essentially. Right? Right.

25:07

Basically, the only options. For

25:10

things that can support his thesis and he

25:12

spends like two chapters talking about this

25:14

is the Gulf War in nineteen ninety

25:16

one. Uh-huh. And the Balkan War of nineteen

25:19

ninety three, but, like, kind of, throughout the nineties. Right.

25:21

So I'm gonna send you another brick of

25:23

text about the

25:24

Gulf War. Okay.

25:25

This is his case for why

25:28

the Gulf War means that he is

25:30

correct. Here we go. The go forward

25:32

thus began as a war between Iraq and Kuwait

25:35

then became a war between Iraq and the West

25:37

then one between Islam and the West

25:39

and eventually came to be viewed by many non westerners

25:42

as a war of east versus west.

25:44

Millions of Muslims from Morocco

25:46

to China rallied behind Saddam Hussein

25:49

and acclaimed him a Muslim hero.

25:52

Seventy five percent of India's one

25:54

hundred million Muslims blamed the United

25:57

States for the war and Indonesia's a

25:59

hundred and seventy one million Muslims were almost

26:01

universally against US military

26:03

action in the gulf. Audacity.

26:06

No. Arab intellectuals lined

26:09

up in similar fashion and formulated

26:11

intricate rationales. For

26:13

overlooking Saddam's brutality and announcing

26:16

Western intervention. King

26:18

Hussein of Jordan argued, quote, this

26:20

is a war against all Arabs

26:23

and all Muslims and not against

26:25

Iraq alone. Facts. Dropping

26:27

knowledge, knowledge. I I love that

26:31

The the amount of people worldwide

26:33

who opposed American intervention is

26:36

like them taking sides for Islam

26:38

like, civilization or something? Is that that's what

26:40

that's supposed to be? Like -- Yeah. -- this is, like, very

26:42

interesting in part because if you

26:44

view the goal for as I do and I think

26:46

many people do, as sort of like

26:48

a part of a chain of events

26:51

that ended up with the complete destruction of

26:53

Iraq, like the rise of ISIS, the war

26:55

in Syria, etcetera. Then the

26:57

idea that, like, opposing

26:59

it is something irrational

27:02

or something that you would only do if you

27:04

were sort of like too tied to

27:07

your Muslim identity. Right. I mean,

27:09

just insanely wrong. Insanely

27:12

fucking wrong. Yes. So reductive.

27:14

Okay. Alright. I'll let you go.

27:16

I know I'm coiled up waiting. Waiting

27:18

to book this.

27:19

Go ahead. Go ahead.

27:21

So, okay, one of the best articles

27:23

I read, really, really, really good article is

27:26

called the Clash of Civilizations, an Islamicist

27:28

critique by a guy named Roy Matter

27:31

Day, and he has this great section

27:33

on the Gulf War where

27:35

he points out that, like, it's true

27:38

that Saddam Hussein was like, trying

27:41

to do the, like, we're all Muslims here,

27:43

guys. Yeah. But then as soon

27:45

as he invaded Kuwait, the Arab

27:47

League voted to side with the United

27:49

States. Yes. Egypt, Syria, Pakistan,

27:51

Morocco, and Bangladesh all sent troops.

27:54

Turkey closed a pipeline to

27:56

fuck with Iraq Yeah. No. There was there

27:58

was a, like, this is in sort of, like,

28:00

Islamic American relations. The Gulf War

28:03

is an important symbolic turning

28:05

point because it showed

28:07

how many Middle Eastern

28:10

actors had aligned their interests with

28:12

the United States. Right to the point where they

28:14

felt obligated to participate actively

28:16

in the war effort.

28:17

Exactly. And so it's

28:19

actually true that, like, Saddam was pretty popular

28:22

throughout the Muslim world before the Rock

28:24

War, but then all of the gulf states,

28:26

seventy percent of the population opposed

28:29

Saddam invading Kuwait because they thought it went

28:31

against Islamic law. Egypt and

28:33

Morocco, both were anti Saddam,

28:36

the only country where the majority

28:38

of the population, like thought it was cool

28:40

for Saddam to invade Koit was Jordan.

28:43

And Jordan had,

28:43

like, some specific stuff going on because there were all these rumors

28:46

that Israel was going to invade Jordan at the time.

28:48

Yeah. You know, I mean, first of all,

28:50

Mike, you're not accounting for the fact that a lot

28:52

of those countries you just described are torn

28:55

countries. And some of them are also

28:57

flapped countries. The

28:59

sort of, like, attempts to paint

29:01

that part of the world as monolithic are

29:04

never ending on the part of, like,

29:06

the American elite. And

29:09

to see it come from someone in this position

29:11

who's, like, at least holding himself out as an

29:13

expert on the international affairs,

29:16

generally, it really sort of drives

29:18

home. This comes down from

29:20

like the highest levels of academia and

29:22

government the idea that like

29:25

Muslims are one thing. They

29:27

exist over there and they are they are sort of

29:29

representing a singular set

29:31

of

29:31

interests. One of the things that I think all of

29:33

his thudding pros

29:35

can distract you from? Is it like

29:37

if you zoom out, this is one of the

29:39

only pieces of evidence for his

29:41

thesis Right? We're gonna have more clashes of civilizations.

29:44

It is a case in which a Muslim

29:47

country invaded another Muslim

29:49

country Uh-huh. And America intervened

29:52

on behalf of the Muslim country.

29:54

Right. Right? And like some Muslim

29:56

countries supported it and some didn't.

29:59

That doesn't speak to a

30:02

existential crisis in

30:04

which the West and Muslims are

30:07

going to be at war for the next fifty

30:08

years. Yeah. I mean, ironically,

30:11

he probably would have had a stronger case

30:13

in this section if he had waited

30:16

a few years. Right. And you get to

30:18

build in the nine eleven narrative Yeah.

30:20

Yeah. I don't know if that's where you're going next, but I'm sort

30:22

of curious how that factors

30:24

in in your mind or or if

30:26

he wrote any follow-up or if anyone

30:29

else, like, analyzed it in light of post nine

30:31

eleven developments, shall

30:33

we say? Well, one thing that actually bugs about

30:35

this is because, of course, I mean, I only heard of this

30:37

book after nine eleven. I think most of the population

30:39

-- Mhmm. -- it really became canonical for the population

30:42

after nine eleven because it was supposed to be, like, oh,

30:44

well, we're, you know, this explains what's going

30:46

on. Right? Right. He barely mentions

30:48

terrorism in the book. I don't know. It's not actually

30:50

the case that, like, nine eleven proves him he

30:52

doesn't really mention the possibility

30:55

of a terror attack in America.

30:57

Uh-huh. His core thesis is that little territorial

30:59

skirmishes. Things like Iraq versus Kuwait,

31:01

which ultimately on the world stage

31:03

don't have to become a huge deal.

31:06

What's gonna happen with these things is states

31:08

are going to step into them on, like, various

31:11

teams and these conflicts are gonna

31:13

escalate. Right. He

31:14

doesn't really mention non state actors.

31:16

He also doesn't mention oil in this book. He

31:18

doesn't mention,

31:19

like, other things that, like, would

31:21

cause conflict among them.

31:23

Incredible to talk at length about the Gulf

31:25

War and not mention oil. That's the thing

31:27

he doesn't. Like, most conflicts

31:29

between countries are between neighboring countries

31:32

over some resource. Right? You want

31:34

you want more land minerals in

31:36

the ground. Like, that's most of world history. That's

31:38

what the conflicts have been between neighboring states.

31:41

Uh-huh. And that's basically what fucking

31:43

the Gulf War was. Right. Saddam did it because

31:45

Kuwait, like, he owed Kuwait money and

31:48

he didn't wanna pay them back and like Kuwait

31:50

was dumping a bunch of oil onto world markets

31:52

and keeping prices low and Saddam was mad because it

31:54

was, like, cutting into his profits. It's like

31:56

petty dictator stuff. Yeah. And

31:58

and we got involved because we

32:00

are looking to spread freedom and democracy all

32:02

across the globe.

32:03

America, the good guys, yet in. That's

32:05

what that that's the thing is, like, this

32:07

fight is actually, like, fairly typical.

32:10

Yeah. And he's trying to, like, whip it up into

32:12

this meringue of, like, it's something complete different.

32:15

And, like, the best way to understand

32:17

the Gulf War is to see it as like a fight

32:19

between civilizations. And it's like, you look into

32:21

the specifics and it's like, No, man. The best

32:23

way to understand it is just like the the dynamics

32:25

of these specific

32:26

states. You know, there's there's something interesting about the fact

32:28

that he doesn't mention terrorism because If

32:30

you start with this idea that

32:33

in the post Cold War era, we're gonna

32:35

see slightly more atomized identities. You

32:38

would think that you would lead that would lead to

32:40

the idea that non state actors

32:42

are going to play a significant role.

32:45

But because he's such a fucking basic

32:47

bitch state department hack, even

32:50

when he's sort of saying, oh, the Islamic

32:52

and Western worlds are gonna be in conflict.

32:54

He totally misses

32:57

on what the nature of that

32:59

conflict is going to be. But then okay.

33:01

It gets much worse with his second example.

33:03

Right? Because the only other, like, thing

33:06

that can support his thesis

33:08

that happens in the early nineties is the Balkans.

33:10

Yeah. This actually supports his thesis

33:12

slightly better in that it serves

33:15

who are orthodox and Bosnians who

33:17

are Muslims. And it is actually

33:19

true that like a lot of Muslim countries kind of

33:21

intervened on behalf of the Bosnians and

33:23

kind of went with teen Bosnia. Yeah. And

33:25

then Serbia was pretty substantially backed

33:27

by Russia -- Mhmm. -- you know, this Balkan conflict

33:30

doesn't necessarily need to be a global conflict.

33:32

But all of a sudden, it becomes one. Yeah. So

33:35

I'm gonna send you this is his

33:37

explanation

33:39

for like why the Balkan war

33:41

broke out. Okay. Probably

33:44

the single most important factor leading to

33:46

the conflict was the demographic shift that

33:48

took place in Kosovo. Kosovo

33:50

was an autonomous province within Serbia.

33:52

In nineteen sixty one, its population was

33:55

two thirds Albanian Muslim and

33:57

one quarter Orthodox Serb.

33:59

The Albanian birth rate, however, was

34:01

the highest in Europe. And Kosovo became

34:03

the most densely populated area of Yugoslavia.

34:07

Facing those numbers, Serbs emigrated

34:09

from Kosovo in pursuit of economic opportunities

34:12

in Belgrade and elsewhere. As

34:14

a result, in nineteen ninety one, Kosovo

34:16

was ninety percent Muslim and ten

34:18

percent Serb. According to Serbs,

34:21

discrimination, persecution, and violence

34:23

against Serbs subsequently intensified. Numerous

34:26

violent incidents took place, which included

34:28

property damage, loss of jobs, harassment,

34:30

rapes, fights, and killings. As

34:33

a result, the Serbs claimed that the threat to

34:35

them was of Jenna sidal proportions and that

34:37

they could no longer tolerate it.

34:39

So this entire sequence

34:41

could have been written by Slobodan Milosophy. Why

34:44

are there all these tensions in the Balkans

34:46

in the early nineteen

34:47

nineties? Huntington's actual

34:49

explanation is that Muslims were having

34:52

too many babies. I mean, I I thought

34:54

that I was sort of perhaps misunderstanding

34:57

the point being made here. But this

34:59

quote at the end, saying that the Serbs

35:01

claimed that the threat to them was of genocidal

35:04

proportions.

35:05

That is itself being used to

35:07

defend genocidal impulse. Am I

35:09

am I wrong? This this this is the

35:12

rhetoric that starts to appear before

35:14

ethnic cleansing.

35:16

Right. If we don't do it to them, they're

35:18

going to do it to us.

35:19

Yeah. And so he says exactly the same thing

35:21

about Bosnans. He he's describing, like,

35:23

the the Muslim birth rates in Bosnian.

35:26

Like Bosnians having too many babies. Any actually

35:28

says, this is a real quote. He says, ethnic

35:31

expansion by one group led

35:33

to ethnic cleansing by the other.

35:35

He literally quotes a Serbian

35:38

fucking soldier saying we have to

35:40

do this to them or else they're gonna come to our villages

35:42

and like do it to us because there's too many of them. Jesus

35:44

Christ. He has this whole section called Islam's

35:47

bloody borders, where he talks

35:49

about if you if you basically draw a circle

35:51

around the Muslim world, everywhere

35:53

along that circle, everywhere the Muslim world

35:56

intersects with other civilizations,

35:59

you find conflicts. Mhmm. He's using

36:01

the term conflict vary deliberately.

36:03

So he talks about, like, the Chechen

36:05

Muslims. He talks about the fucking

36:07

wagers in China. And then

36:09

he has this kind of conclusion that's

36:11

like, well, Wherever you find Muslims,

36:14

you find

36:15

conflict.

36:15

Yeah. That's one way to put it. Right. It's like,

36:17

well, yeah, there conflicts

36:20

in the sense that, like, Muslims are very

36:22

obviously facing

36:23

discrimination. Like, you could easily look around

36:25

the world in the late eighteen hundreds and be like, everywhere

36:27

you find Jews.

36:28

Right. Just find the Jews

36:29

about whether Jews are like really bad for the

36:31

population. don't know. We're sort of building

36:34

towards almost this like self fulfilling

36:36

prophecy. Right here you have this deeply

36:38

influential person saying the next

36:40

big conflict is between the US

36:43

or western interests and the Islamic world.

36:45

It's hard to know how much of that conflict

36:48

is shaped by the fact that influential

36:50

people define the conflict

36:53

as us versus

36:54

Islam. This this has been written up in like

36:56

many an academic paper. It's like

36:58

once you start believing this shit,

37:00

you're going to act like it. And once you start

37:02

acting like the Muslim

37:04

world is like this monolith, you're gonna

37:07

act like it's a threat. Right. This is actually

37:09

why I'm I really object

37:11

to this book still being on so many syllabi

37:14

because the average American

37:16

undergrad right, is not going to

37:18

know enough about the Gulf War or

37:20

the

37:20

Balk

37:20

war to know how fucking egregious these

37:23

things are. I I didn't quite realize we'd

37:25

get into, like, genocide victim

37:27

blaming in this in

37:29

this book. I didn't I didn't think that it got

37:31

that dark. Right. A lot of like the basic

37:33

thesis is just sort of obviously

37:36

wrong. Like, it doesn't account for various

37:38

geopolitical alliances that that

37:40

sort of, like, contradict this cultural framing.

37:43

Right? Like, the US

37:45

has what is now a long

37:47

standing alliance with Saudi

37:49

Arabia, despite the fact that

37:51

it's a hardliner Islamic state.

37:53

Right. The whole West v Islam

37:55

framing, it feels like it's just this convenient

37:57

thing to convey to the public

38:00

because, like, oh, we're actually

38:02

constantly maneuvering to find geopolitical

38:04

leverage and don't really have any

38:06

particular set of ideals or

38:08

beliefs. Other than our own power.

38:10

Right. That's not like a mission statement that you that people

38:12

are gonna love.

38:13

Right. If

38:13

you put it out there. My other favorite thing about

38:15

using this as an example. Again, This

38:17

is a conflict between Muslims and

38:19

Orthodox people in which America

38:22

intervened on behalf of the Muslims.

38:24

Right. America teamed up with

38:27

parts of the Muslim world to help

38:29

out the Bosnian's due to the specific

38:31

circumstances going on in the

38:33

Western Bob again. Right? Like, it it

38:35

makes no sense to see this as civilizational terms,

38:37

and it especially doesn't make sense to see

38:39

it in civilizational terms. In which America

38:42

sided with a different civilization. But

38:44

there aren't any Western versus

38:46

the rest dynamics going on

38:48

here. If you're thesis, starts

38:50

hitting this point where it's just caveat

38:53

after caveat after caveat,

38:56

then maybe the thesis sucks. It's

38:58

so wild to see these theorists

39:01

rise to prominence on

39:03

the backs of oversimplification. Right?

39:06

Of just like turning every

39:08

complex situation

39:11

into a little sound bite. What's

39:13

also amazing to me is that he oftentimes

39:15

does actually admit the weaknesses

39:17

of his arguments, but, like, he

39:20

just hand waved them away. So in in

39:22

this section, he says, like, yes,

39:24

a year, like America intervened on behalf

39:27

of the Muslims, but America

39:29

did not send ground troops.

39:31

Mhmm. It's like Well,

39:34

why is that the why is that the important distinction?

39:36

Right. There's a an idea in the law called

39:39

distinctions without a difference. Right. Right. Right. When

39:41

someone is trying to create differentiate between

39:43

two things. They start grabbing on to any distinction

39:45

they can even if they're not meaningful distinctions.

39:48

That's what he's doing

39:48

here. Yes. Yes. We intervened on behalf of the Muslims.

39:51

But, like, we didn't, like, super duper intervene.

39:53

It's, like, right. But, like, your

39:56

theory predicts that we would not intervene.

39:58

Yeah. And yet we did

40:00

so. And, you know, we we did put

40:02

boots on the ground in Kuwait. However,

40:04

we did not conduct a full scale invasion of Iraq.

40:07

So some sections. There's

40:09

always a line. There's always a pretend line

40:11

you can draw. So okay. So then

40:13

alright. Last section, the last,

40:15

like, two chapters of the book

40:18

are where he gets into, like, what he really wants

40:20

to say, and it's straight up like great

40:22

replacement. Like, it it reads like a fucking mass

40:24

shooter manifesto. Hell yeah. So

40:26

from this, completely unconvincing

40:30

world system of civilizations, which

40:33

he then completely abandons, and he's like,

40:35

Asia and Muslims, then he abandons

40:37

the Asia part, and then he's like, Muslims are bad.

40:39

Right? And then it's like, what what

40:41

do we do about this? Like, how do we prevent this,

40:44

like, coming wave of conflict? Right?

40:46

And he basically

40:48

lands on like we need to preserve

40:50

the values of the west.

40:52

Oh. So

40:52

I'm gonna send you another. I'm gonna

40:55

send you another Like, a little clip

40:57

from this. Oh. This is a lot of

40:59

words when you only need fourteen. Okay. Rejection

41:05

of the American equate means the end of

41:07

the United States of America as we have

41:09

known it. It also means effectively the

41:11

end of Western civilization. If

41:13

the United States is de westernized, the

41:16

west is reduced to Europe and a few

41:18

lightly populated overseas, European

41:21

settler countries. This is not just

41:23

a problem of economics and demography. Far

41:25

more significant are the problems of moral

41:28

decline, cultural suicide,

41:30

and political disunity in the west.

41:32

Often pointed to manifestations of moral decline

41:34

include, one, increases

41:37

in anti social behavior such as crime,

41:39

drug use, and violence generally. Two,

41:42

family decay, including increased

41:44

rates of divorce, the legitimacy, teenage

41:47

pregnancy, and single parent families.

41:50

Three, at least in the United States,

41:52

a decline in social capital that

41:54

is membership involuntary associations

41:57

and the interpersonal trust associated with

41:59

such membership. Four, general

42:01

weakening of the work ethic and

42:03

rise of a cult of personal indulgence.

42:06

Five, decreasing commitment

42:09

to learning and intellectual activity

42:11

manifested in the United States

42:13

in lower levels of scholastic achievement.

42:16

Boom. How do we how do we preserve the

42:18

west? Just a bunch of deranged conservative

42:21

boilerplate.

42:22

Yeah. This is this is Pat Buchanan

42:25

shit. Right? This is just -- Yes. -- your

42:27

conservative

42:29

reactionary pearl

42:31

clutching.

42:31

Morel declined. Morel morel

42:33

declined. And Well, how do you measure

42:35

a moral decline? Well, let

42:37

me just point to several things, some of

42:39

which exist, some of which don't all

42:42

together. You know, you have increases

42:45

in antisocial behaviors such as

42:47

crime, drug use, and violence generally,

42:49

all of which were plummeting at

42:51

the time he wrote this and continued plumbing -- Right.

42:53

--

42:53

for decades. Right. Decline in

42:55

social capital. That's so abstract that not

42:58

even gonna fucking bother. The beginning of

43:00

work ethic is just this is just an old guy

43:02

fuck a fucking old guy complaint. That

43:04

old guys have been saying forever. It's like The

43:06

lazy kids don't

43:08

work like we used to I knew Huntington

43:11

was, like, a a conservative. Right? But I

43:13

didn't think that he was just sort of, like, your

43:16

base grandpa

43:18

Facebook level conservative. I feel

43:20

like an underrated critique of this

43:22

book is that its conclusions do

43:24

not follow from its premises at

43:27

all. Yeah. So basically his diagnosis of

43:29

the world is that we're all splitting into

43:31

these civilizations along cultural

43:34

lines. But then his prescription

43:37

is to emphasize what makes

43:39

us different and in his mind

43:41

what makes us better than the

43:43

other civilizations. Right? He

43:45

talks in his passage about being

43:47

de westernized.

43:49

And he's essentially saying, like, oh, we need to, like,

43:51

re westernize But, like,

43:53

why? Right.

43:56

It's the the future of the world is

43:58

identity politics. So

44:00

we need to pick hours and

44:03

I choose white. Right.

44:05

And, like, if you think about, you know,

44:07

the European example where

44:09

for hundreds of years, People

44:11

in France and Germany would have said

44:14

we're a totally different civilization from

44:16

them. Right? And they're like constantly at war with

44:18

each other constantly skirmishing over like various

44:20

resources and territory, etcetera. And

44:23

then what you have in like a fairly

44:25

short period over the last fifty

44:27

years You have all of this economic

44:30

integration, free movement -- Mhmm. --

44:32

exchange programs where they're studying in

44:34

each other's country and they're learning each other's

44:36

language. And now, for basically

44:38

anybody under fifty years old.

44:40

The idea of France and Germany going

44:42

to war with each other, is this like

44:44

comical, like sci fi notion.

44:47

It makes no sense. Well, looking back, it's

44:49

like, oh, what what seemed to be

44:51

a civilizational conflict Turns

44:53

out to be ultimately pretty

44:54

superficial.

44:55

Yeah. And rather than include any historical context,

44:58

or any, like, mature conflict

45:00

management strategies he's

45:03

basically looking around the world

45:05

and he's like the problem today is

45:07

that everyone thinks that their own culture

45:09

is superior and they're willing to go to

45:11

war for

45:12

it. But it turns out that our

45:14

culture is superior. We need

45:16

to demonstrate that. That's what's interesting about

45:18

this is a lot of these complaints are

45:22

symptoms of a

45:25

liberalizing culture. Right.

45:27

Right? Things like divorce rates. If

45:29

you're Samuel Huntington, and

45:31

that's your concern, then perhaps

45:34

check out divorce rates in the Muslim world

45:36

Right. The bottom line is that

45:39

a lot of the complaints about,

45:41

like, the Islamic world our

45:44

complaints about these particularly conservative

45:46

elements of the Islamic world

45:48

--

45:48

Right. -- and to see conservatives make them

45:51

on one hand and then also make

45:53

the case for the rise of those

45:55

conservative elements

45:56

in their own society, it's

45:58

transparent. I would think that

46:00

someone like Huntington would

46:02

be very slightly above that, but I suppose

46:04

not. And that's what I get for giving a a Harvard

46:06

guy credit. This this is like one of the

46:09

bullets in my notes. He says

46:11

very explicitly throughout the book that, like, one

46:13

of the reasons you can tell that, like,

46:15

Muslims are less civilized. Mhmm. One

46:17

of the pieces of evidence gives for that is he's like, look

46:19

at the way that they treat women and minorities.

46:22

Right. Like, he wouldn't wanna be a Christian minority

46:25

in a Muslim state. Right guys?

46:28

But then we get to this chapter, and it's

46:30

like, what if our immigrants are like

46:32

uniquely bad? Right. So shouldn't you

46:34

be admiring them or cracking down on their minorities?

46:36

Like, maybe their minorities are like gonna destroy

46:38

their civilization

46:39

too. This is exactly this is like

46:41

Islamicist rhetoric. Right.

46:43

Why? What happened to that complaint about Mexicans?

46:45

Who were too angry at

46:47

us -- Yeah. --

46:48

for our anti immigration laws. Also,

46:50

do you wanna know what he's about Mexicans? He

46:53

doesn't do. But I was wondering, I was like, is he gonna a hundred

46:55

of this?

46:56

Sure. He says, while Muslims pose

46:58

the immediate problem to Europe, he's talking about Muslim

47:00

immigrants, Mexicans pose the

47:02

problem for the United States. The

47:05

central issue will remain the degree to which

47:07

Hispanics are assimilated into American

47:09

society as previous immigrant groups

47:11

have been. Second and third generation

47:13

Hispanics face a wide array of incentives

47:15

and pressures to do so. Mexican

47:17

immigration, on the other hand, differs in

47:19

potentially important ways from

47:22

other immigrations. This

47:24

is my favorite fucking argument. When it's

47:26

like in one breath, you admit

47:28

You're like, well, every previous immigrant group

47:31

has eventually, like, within one generation

47:33

assimilated into American society. But

47:35

these new immigrant Right.

47:38

They're not gonna assimilate. It's like, well, this is the

47:40

same thing they said about Italians -- Right. -- Russians,

47:43

Poles, And then he has this whole

47:45

fucking thing of, like,

47:47

Mexicans can't assimilate because

47:50

other immigrants crossed an ocean

47:52

to get to America but Mexicans

47:55

crossed the land.

47:56

Europeans were coming west. Right.

47:59

Mexicans are go going north. They

48:01

are they are not going against

48:03

the wind. Yep. I love this cross like, they did

48:05

they cross that ocean thing. You have

48:07

Guatemalans fleeing

48:09

a civil war around the time that

48:11

this is being written walking

48:14

all the way up through Mexico

48:16

into the United

48:17

States. And his position is like,

48:19

well, that's too easy. They

48:20

haven't experienced hardship. You know? I

48:22

can't

48:22

get the fuck out. So he ends the

48:24

book. This is the closing

48:26

paragraph. He says the underlying

48:29

problem for the west is not Islamic fundamentalism.

48:32

It is Islam, a different civilization whose

48:34

people are convinced of the superiority of

48:37

their culture and obsessed with

48:39

the inferiority of their

48:40

power. Well, I'm I'm glad that

48:43

we are not from a culture that is convinced

48:45

of its own superiority.

48:47

Could you imagine what that would be like? I know.

48:49

People who are anxious about losing their

48:51

relative position in society and who

48:53

think their culture is

48:54

best. No. Don't

48:57

see anybody like that around. We're

49:00

only a couple books

49:02

in. On this podcast. When it

49:04

comes to these types

49:05

of, like, weird theory

49:07

of everything books --

49:08

Yeah. Yeah. -- one day we will have a a comprehensive

49:11

theory of of these dudes.

49:13

Right. There's something so unique going on

49:15

in their brain where

49:18

they believe that they are capable of,

49:20

like, capturing these complex

49:22

phenomena, boiling them down

49:24

to something simple, and then throwing

49:27

them out in like a quick A book that frankly

49:29

should

49:29

be. A a lengthy essay at

49:31

most. Yeah.

49:32

A magazine article. Right.

49:33

haven't quite figured it out yet, but

49:35

I fucking will. I I swear.

49:37

Well, I I mean, this this kind of leads

49:39

us into the the epilogue of the episode

49:42

about the book's legacy and kind of debunking. Yeah.

49:44

One of the essays about the

49:46

book and about Huntington specifically that I

49:48

found really interested thing was

49:50

by Edward Zaeed. And what he pointed

49:53

out is that most Americans don't

49:55

know very much about different countries.

49:57

Mhmm. The population to understand

49:59

world events relies on narratives. We

50:02

we need sort of a story to

50:04

slot world events into. And

50:07

oftentimes those narratives are supplied

50:09

by elites. And the

50:11

the Cold War was in some way

50:14

a narrative that was constructed by

50:16

people like Samuel Huntington. And

50:18

Zaeed has, like, speeches by

50:20

Huntington in the seventies and eighties, where

50:22

he just openly talks about he's, like, well,

50:25

to do the things that we wanted to do

50:27

with American military power, we

50:29

had to cast every single thing that

50:31

happened on the world stage as like part

50:33

of the Cold War. That was partly a

50:35

social construction. Like, it was partly real too,

50:38

but it was a very deliberate effort

50:40

to create that kind of

50:42

narrative

50:43

people. And that's why this is like

50:45

so disconcerting because he's

50:48

almost framing it like a prediction. But

50:51

what it is, is like a fucking bat

50:54

signal to American

50:55

elites. Yep. Here's what here's what think

50:58

should be next. Edward Seid says, It's

51:00

a brief and crudely articulated manual

51:03

in the art of maintaining a wartime

51:05

status in the minds of Americans. Mhmm. That's

51:07

partly what he's doing here. I don't think Huntington

51:10

I think he believed this stuff, frankly. Yeah.

51:12

But I think that the the reason elites

51:14

latched onto it. Right? Because as we've said, there

51:16

are a billion these books were published. Right?

51:18

The the fact that this book became so canonical

51:21

is like more interesting than the book itself.

51:23

And people latched onto this as like, oh,

51:25

it's the next justification for

51:27

us to keep our military this big.

51:29

There really is this, like, conservative thing

51:32

where they need to seek out conflict. Right.

51:34

I think it was Corey Robin and the reactionary

51:36

mind wrote a a bunch about this In

51:38

the nineteen nineties, when things were

51:40

like relatively peaceful, there

51:42

was like an industry by the end

51:44

of the decade on the right of just sort

51:47

of like, think pieces about how we

51:49

needed a fight. Not even saying like,

51:51

oh, I think the Islamic world is is next

51:53

or anything like that

51:54

necessarily. But just saying that,

51:56

like, in general, we

51:58

need a fight. One of the reasons I really

52:00

like this Edward Zaeed essay. I mean, he

52:02

wrote couple of them, but like his his overall argument

52:05

is that it has a very large

52:07

Gunderson at the end of Fargo thing.

52:10

He talks about how the central

52:12

tragedy of class of civilizations is

52:15

that it was written at this time when,

52:17

yes, there was a power cum. And he has this

52:19

like very moving section where he talks about like,

52:21

you know, humanity was facing

52:23

at that time a lot of common challenges.

52:26

Like, yes, there are civilizations and

52:29

they do have differences, but there's

52:31

no inherent reason why

52:33

those differences have to lead to conflict. Right.

52:35

You could have looked for something that

52:38

like, hey, we can all collaborate on

52:40

building a better world together. We, you know,

52:42

we have this war time nuclear

52:44

bombs hanging over us curtain

52:46

that has just been lifted, and instead

52:49

of trying to build that world or

52:51

even like entertain the idea

52:53

It's like who are we fighting next?

52:56

It's just kind of ugly. And I like

52:58

that he pointed that out that it's like it's not

53:00

just the the factual

53:02

errors in Huntington's book.

53:05

It's also just like, why do this?

53:08

Like, why are you like

53:09

this? Yeah. And why not like How

53:11

could you not be if you're like an international

53:14

affairs guy? A little bit inspired

53:17

by the concept that like the next era

53:19

might not be defined. By like

53:22

the threat of violence coming from somewhere

53:24

else and the need for us to match

53:26

it with with force of our own. Right.

53:28

You know, the Soviet Union falls and rather

53:30

than looking around for who to punch next,

53:33

you could be saying, wow. Like, maybe

53:36

I could put my guard down for a bit. Right. Wouldn't

53:38

that have been a beautiful sentiment to see

53:40

coming from some of our elites at the

53:41

time? Right. Perhaps. Like, little marshal plan, like, a

53:43

global marshal plan of, like, let's let's look

53:45

at who can help. Like, Let's

53:47

let's think about what things we can work together

53:50

on. Right? Anti antibacterial resistance

53:52

or something. Like, find find

53:54

something fun to do together you

53:55

know. And, you know, there's something to be said for the fact

53:57

that these, you know, the the two

54:00

books that we've read that are essentially about this

54:02

same topic in some form or another. Come

54:04

from Fukushima and Huntington who are

54:06

both deeply connected with

54:10

the state department. Right. It says

54:12

something about how our leads

54:14

think. They come from this cold war

54:16

era. Right? And that's where

54:18

they've succeeded. In a world

54:20

where the US is forceably

54:23

is very invested in forcibly bullying

54:26

smaller nations and and

54:28

asserting itself globally at all times.

54:31

If you were like an international affairs

54:34

expert in nineteen ninety, that's

54:36

all you know. Right. You're not an expert in

54:38

peace. You're not an expert

54:40

in, like, prosperity.

54:42

You're an expert in fighting. I mean,

54:45

that kind of speaks to the last thing I wanna

54:47

talk about, which is like where the book is now. Mhmm.

54:49

Paul Musgrave, who's political scientist has

54:51

written a bunch of essays about, like, the weird

54:54

zombie longevity of

54:56

this book. Right. It's like it it's assigned

54:58

an introductory class he

55:01

he acknowledges the fact that, like, a lot of

55:03

professors who assigned this book would also talk about

55:05

critiques of it and they're not necessarily endorsing

55:07

it and, like, That's kind of what college is for.

55:09

Right? Is to, like, talk about paradigms that

55:11

are no longer relevant. But also, this

55:13

book is assigned more than Aristotle. Do

55:17

we need this book in

55:19

every introductory class.

55:22

Right? It's it's been totally debunked.

55:24

Like, every every time you have a book like this

55:26

in a

55:27

classroom, it's like, there are books that

55:29

are correct. That you're not assigning.

55:31

Yeah. Like, there's a slot on a syllabus that

55:34

you're wasting on a wrong book

55:36

that, you know, he emphasizes that, like,

55:38

no scholars take this seriously. And,

55:41

Samuel Huntington, his next book was

55:44

called, who are we, the challenges

55:46

to America's national identity, and

55:48

he published an excerpt of it in foreign

55:50

policy in two thousand four that was headlined

55:53

the Hispanic challenge. Oh,

55:55

boy. He became a total fucking crank

55:58

later in his life. We know this. And,

56:00

like, we're all supposed to pretend that

56:03

he wrote this book based on

56:04

his, like, academic analysis of world

56:07

affairs. And not as, like, ugly grandpa

56:09

xenophobia. There's only one circumstance

56:11

we should be teaching this book and it's as

56:14

essentially proof that there's no such thing

56:16

as an international affairs expert. Right.

56:18

Don't, you know, don't be like Samuel Huntington. This

56:20

was an embarrassing time for all of us. Let's move

56:22

on to to the real

56:23

shit. So I wanna end with this quote from Paul Musgrave.

56:26

He says, the longevity of Huntington's

56:28

thesis becomes more explicable when we

56:30

treat it not a scholarship aimed at skeptics

56:33

but as a sermon to the faithful. The

56:35

creed that Huntington and his audience share

56:37

holds that civilizations exist as unchanging

56:39

cultural organisms that the rise

56:41

of other regions threatens western civilization

56:44

and that a successful western response requires

56:46

purity at home and separation from the

56:48

rest. These are not factual assertions.

56:51

They are unfalsifiable axioms. Trying

56:53

to fact check Huntington's more specific claims

56:55

is useful, but shouldn't lead us to miss the

56:57

larger point of his project. Huntington's

57:00

myriad bigotry's are not deviations

57:02

from a generally sound approach. Rather,

57:04

they sit at the heart of the book's appeal.

57:06

Huntington's civilizational paradigm complements

57:08

his nativism, his hostility to social

57:11

change, and his profound lack of interest

57:13

in economics and politics. As long

57:15

as a constituency that subscribes to its

57:17

axioms can be found, clash dialogic

57:20

will

57:20

survive. No matter how cost or dangerous

57:22

its prescriptions may be. Wow. Fucking

57:24

owned. Oh, I do think it's

57:27

notable that this

57:29

is in many ways a normative

57:31

text Right? It's prescriptive. It

57:34

it is -- Yeah. -- not simply that

57:36

he is trying to say, hey, this

57:38

is what I think is happening in the world. He

57:40

is writing a prescription for

57:42

a more reactionary

57:45

and isolated United States.

57:48

great one that's, you know, more defensive,

57:50

more aggressive towards

57:52

specific cultures -- Right. -- that's

57:54

not just him saying, here's the world

57:56

as I see

57:57

it. It's here's the world as I want it to be.

57:59

You

57:59

sound like somebody in the midst of a dire

58:01

moral decline, Peter. Terrible.