Is MAGA Falling Apart? - Michael Malice

14:14Michael Malice:Right. And it seems like Pavlavi is someone who's been kind of making a lot of noise and Trump's very obviously uncomfortable with him. kind of reinstating the son of the Shah. So to your point, no one has articulated an endgame, but it wasn't at all clear that he was just going to... I was on Roseanne Barr's show, right? And Roseanne Barr's like, yeah, in two days, we're going to be bombing Iran. I'm like, okay, crazy lady. And then two days later, we're bombing Iran. So maybe we should ask Roseanne Barr how this is going to end. But it's going to be interesting as well to see what the effect of the Iran war is on the right, because you have a lot of isolationists in America, particularly on the right, who did not want to be part of a war.

14:56Michael Malice:Correct. Can't blame them. Yeah, but you can't blame them. You can fully understand it. And if this war goes south, and not only that, it then has a spike on oil prices. Which has happened already. It's still happening already, but it continues to grow a spike on gas prices. That in turn affects the cost of living, food, whatever else. There will be a lot of people on the right going, we voted for Trump because he promised to keep us out of wars. not only did he get us involved in an unnecessary war where bodies have been flown home, on top of that, it's made my life worse. I didn't want any of this.

15:29This isn't what I voted for.

15:30Michael Malice:Do you know who this is really screwing over, right? JD. So JD Vance is trying to walk like two tightroves simultaneously, which is literally impossible. Or maybe not literally, but I don't think any of us could even do one because he has to... You haven't seen me, mate. That's true. That's a fair point taken. he is you know trying to be trump jr you know as kind of his heir to take over the nomination in in 2028 and at the same time he was clearly uncomfortable with this sort of thing he was being very explicit you know about it in years past as had trump in himself so i think it's very hard for jd to figure out a lane because on one hand he's close with tucker tucker's son works for him and tucker's obviously extremely against this and quite understandably so on the other hand Trump is, this is the best thing ever.

16:18Michael Malice:It's just done in a week. We just won. And he's just so sick of winning. So I don't know how he navigates this in terms of getting the nomination, because what can easily happen is he's trying to do what Hillary tried to do in 2008, where she was regarded as the presumptive nominee. Don't bother running. She's got in the bag. She's going to be the nominee. Let's worry about the general. If his numbers, if there's, the thing is, there's plenty of people in the Republican Party who are sociopaths and narcissists. So it's gonna be very easy for someone to run just for the sake of improving their platform, getting speaking fees, getting book deals.

16:53Michael Malice:They don't run for the intention to get the nomination, they just run to be like, okay, now everyone knows my name and I can parlay this in something bigger. This happened in British politics all the time. It's called a stalking horse. But if that stalking horse gets any sort of traction, then the gates will be wide open and there'll be room for somebody else to kind of come in and put their hat in the ring. So I don't think 2028 is a lock for J.D. as it looks two years out, because if you looked at 2014 for the Republican Party, no one is even mentioning Trump. That was not even an option.

17:23Francis Foster:Well, Vance is whether you agree with his politics or disagree. He's clearly very smart. And if you understand public communication and have been watching what he's been saying every time President Trump has gone into Iran, 12-day war, or now, it's very clever positioning for advance because he always says, you know, the president is the greatest president in the history of presidents. And, you know, I trust the president. The president knows what he's doing, which kind of puts him in a position to later say, well, look, I voiced my opposition internally. personally, but, you know, I'm a team guy, but privately, you know, I was not in favor of this.

18:02Francis Foster:I understand why you're shaking your head, because that is a difficult line to...

18:06Michael Malice:No, that's not why I'm shaking my head. I'm shaking my head because I think what you're saying is impossible. Because President Trump, in his second administration, the only thing he chose for was loyalty, right? And he's... I don't think there's anyone left, maybe Stephen Miller, I actually Googled it. I said, who from the first administration is around the second administration? There are three people. Every other bridge has been burned. The guy from Alabama, I forget it, Jeff Sessions. You had Bannon is gone. You had Bill or Bob Barrios, get their names confused. Omarosa. They all turned on each other, right?

18:38Michael Malice:So he is very hypersensitive to people speaking out against him. And if J.D. Vance starts trying to do this thing, oh, I supported Trump, but I'm a different person. I don't think Trump, with his ego, is just going to be like, say what you, throw me under the bus in order to get ahead. He's not going to keep his mouth shut. Can anyone imagine that scenario?

18:58Francis Foster:So your point is this isn't going to work? I don't know how.

19:02Michael Malice:I think J.D. Vance is extremely smart in all the ways that don't matter in politics. So Trump, I think J.D. thinks Trump is in many ways a buffoon, and in many ways he is from the perspective of Yale or Harvard, although he obviously went to an Ivy League himself. But when it comes to politics itself, Trump is extremely savvy. The fact that he took out, I think it was 14 Republican candidates 2016, that he took out Hillary Clinton, who's had the biggest juggernaut behind her in terms of culture of any candidate, certainly in my lifetime, maybe since FDR, that is no mean feat. The fact that you are, your approval ratings were in the toilet after January 6th, you're regarded as a complete pariah.

19:44Michael Malice:During the midterms, most of the candidates, or all of them, that you endorsed who were in kind of swing races, they all lost. To recapture the nomination and to recapture the presidency, this is something that's historically unprecedented and is a testament to, in many ways, this political acumen. He was the one who's like, let me go on the podcast circuit and put myself in front of that firing line for three hours at a time on Rogan. That was, and this guy's, again, no spring chicken. So I think JD thinks, like Elon did, I'm going to work with this guy. I'm going to use him to further my agenda.

20:19Michael Malice:But Trump is really, really crafty with stuff like that. And I think he's going to be very sensitive to any of these machinations. And he's doing it very publicly. He's playing Vance against Rubio. There's all these articles about like, go. Trump doesn't know which one to choose. And a lot of that's leaks.

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21:48Francis Foster:Go to wildalaskan.com slash trig for$35 off your first box of premium wild-caught seafood. That's wildalaskan.com slash trig for$35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskan Company for sponsoring this episode. The thing is with Trump as well is that he's a once-in-a-generation political figure. Yes, that's right. In the same way as Blair was, in that it's very rare for somebody to be able to unite

22:15Michael Malice:a party and a political faction. Yes. That is incredibly rare, because you're asking people to essentially put aside their differences and work together. That's hard. Yeah, and also there's this argument online that, like, who is MAGA, who isn't MAGA? MAGA is Trump. MAGA means that which Trump's like. It's not an ideological, you know, Aristotelian worldview. It's just basically a series of vague preferences, most of which I think are good ones. But it's not this kind of well-thought-out, coherent, you know, national review philosophy.

22:47Francis Foster:And you see that with the support for the war, because for all the chatter -

22:51Michael Malice:90 % I saw in one poll.

22:52Francis Foster:For all the chatter online, MAGA Republicans are just like, well, Trump said it's good, so it's good. I don't mean to satirize too much their position, but given the level of inconsistency between his stated policy positions before the election and what he's doing now, whether you like that or not, it's still quite remarkable to have that level of support.

23:12Michael Malice:And I can also steal man that case because I think Trump, for many of these people, is the first time in their lives they feel seen by a politician. They feel this guy understands me, this guy speaks for me. You can say positive things about the Bushes if you like. It's very hard to make the case that George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush is kind of this like, you're not going to see them at McDonald's, right? And Trump eats McDonald's ironically, but also not ironically. He actually likes it. And I think that speaks, and being a New Yorker, like a real New Yorker, I think that speaks to a certain level of character on this story.

23:47Francis Foster:And what do you make of the idea that, you know, Venezuela, Iran, now Iran too, this is all part of a big 5D chess strategy. And, you know, the rabbit will be pulled out of the hat and the magic of this anti-Russia, anti-China thing will be revealed in all its glory down the road.

24:08Michael Malice:Well, I play 7D chess if you follow me.

24:14Michael Malice:Let's talk Venezuela. Because this is your... Bienvenido. I've been to Venezuela as a kid twice. I have enormous sympathy and appreciation for that country. It is such a case study of how something which is just this jewel of South America and amazing people. If you ever meet any Venezuelans, God bless you, They're just, with one exception, they're smart, highly educated, great people. That's the British party. Yeah. And what was amazing about what happened with Maduro, when I saw that photo of Maduro with the blindfolds and handcuffs, I thought it was AI. Because I'm like, wait, this is really it?

24:56Michael Malice:But we basically teleported in. They used the United States to teleport in, grabbed the leader, teleported out. It's like, okay, bye. and the Democrats were like, what do we do? Like, you can't say, oh, you went in there and killed everybody. You can't say it's in chaos because it was in chaos before the regime's... I don't even understand really the point. Now, there's several conspiracy theories, and I don't use the term derisively, one of which is they told Maduro, do you want to go get arrested and go on a nice vacation or do you want to get shot? And he's like, vacation, please. The deeper argument is that he's going to reveal something about the voting machines in 2020 because Venezuela is somehow involved.

25:35Michael Malice:The third situation is, okay, we got your guys, so the number two person is now going to have to play ball. But I was discussing, you know, in Rogan a couple weeks ago, we just kind of stopped talking about it. And this is something that's never happened before. We just go in and snatch a leader and vanish. And I mean, of course, my hopes are for the Venezuelan people, but I don't know where this is going. And I don't know where anyone else knows where it's going. Well, I don't think most people know where this is going. And Venezuelan people are very hopeful, but that comes more from a sense of desperation than anything else.

26:06That's right. Because we've been under a totalitarian leadership for 26 years. I think what they want to do is effectively Venezuela is a de facto colony of the United States now. So we're going to see the oil companies come back. We're going to see the oil infrastructure be repaired. Oil is going to start pumping. and what we're going to have is a leadership which is going to hold Venezuela, make sure it doesn't crumble, but also going to be answerable to the gringos. And I think if you asked a lot of Venezuelans after not only Chavez or Maduro, but then Chavez, but also our own disastrous flirtations with democracy, which have been, simply haven't worked, let's be honest about it.

26:48They almost prefer that option.

26:50Michael Malice:Oh yeah, you can't blame them. But here's the other one, Cuba. Like, as we speak, Cuba's about to run out of water. There's this enormous blockade. Marco Rubio is, you know, can I say this on a nightly basis, rubbing one out to the idea of a free Cuba. You can't blame him. Cubans are amazing based people. Cuba was like the Las Vegas of the Caribbean in the 1950s until, you know, it all went to hell. And I think a transition from Cuba to a free country would not be that difficult. And I think the people are hungry for it. and their standard of living is so low and needlessly low, obviously, it's just a function of the government.

27:26Michael Malice:I mean, they're very entrepreneurial. They very quickly reestablish themselves as the crown jewel of the Caribbean that they were. But who knows where that's going to go also.

27:34Francis Foster:But come back with me to this 4D chess idea, which is some people have argued that the reason the Trump administration is doing this is in part Monroe Doctrine, which is don't fuck around in our backyard, China, Russia, which they were in Venezuela, right? And then the Iran thing is about, look, I think you're, based on my understanding, I mean, I obviously don't have access to the secret information, but, you know, we talked to a lot of people about it. Iran didn't have a functioning nuclear weapon or a program, but they were enriching uranium to levels which are not remotely necessary for civilian use.

28:11Francis Foster:And, you know, there's some debate about, because I don't think we in the West really are capable of processing intellectually because it's not an intellectual thing. Are they these jihadi extremists who are waiting for the end of the world for their messiah to come back, which they will happily bring about using nuclear weapons? Or are they more interested in having the threat of nuclear weapons so that they can dominate the region, which is a much more rational, logical thing.

28:38Michael Malice:Or the third one, which is, if they have nuclear weapons, they know they're not going to be attacked, like Pakistan. Right.

28:43Francis Foster:Right. Yeah. So those options are on the table. And the Trump administration is like, well, you can't have nuclear weapons. We can't have more nuclear proliferation. Not least because, and I'm sure North Korea, which we're going to come to eventually, is different, right? North Korea doesn't have proxies all over the place. It's not attacking other countries. It's not shooting missiles into South Korea every three days, et cetera, right? And so the 4-D chess explanation is, well, Trump is basically trying to rearrange the world to the benefit of the United States. And that is why he's doing this.

29:17Michael Malice:I would disagree slightly. I don't know that he is doing it to the benefit of the United States. I think Trump knows he's got four years. And I think Trump's like, I've got a big stick and I'm going to use it. and I'm going to do what I can in the White House in the time I've left to kind of make the world, in his perspective, this sort of Pax Americana.

29:38Francis Foster:Well, that's what I'm saying. That's literally what I mean, right? He's using the time he has and the I don't have to give a shit anymore attitude that he has to try and remake the world in what he perceives America's best interest to be.

29:52Michael Malice:Sure, yes. And I think that's also one of the reasons why North Korea was basically his first issue in the first term because it's kind of the lowest hanging fruit in terms of it's going to take theoretically not that much effort and you can have maximum increase of freedom. So that does seem to be the case that, you know, he, the extreme, the fact that we are sitting here having a conversation about the U.S. getting Greenland, I think at a certain point it's very difficult to have a mental model for what is going through his head.

30:25Francis Foster:Sure. But I think the explanation I gave seems to me to be the most logical. But the problem is with that, and I think it's the one you identified as earlier, is I have no idea how that is compatible with regime change in Iran. If he just went in and destroyed more nuclear facilities, I'd be like, well, that makes perfect sense. If he went in and destroyed the drone factories, which Iran uses to produce drones to send to Russia to use in Ukraine, it makes sense. if he bombs Iran so they can't supply oil to China anymore. Makes sense to me. But regime change? Like that, I mean, like the idea, like you're going to kill the Ayatollah and the sun is going to be more moderate after that.

31:07Francis Foster:Well, you kill the sun. Okay, like, are you just going to keep going?

31:10Michael Malice:This is what doesn't make sense to me because, you know, when people who are anarchists like myself advocate for like political violence, it's like, you know, if you kill a senator, there's going to be another senator. It's not like you kill the office. Oh, now we're down to 99 senators, all right, lock and load. So if you kill the Ayatollah, it's not like, all right, it's not chess. It's not 2D chess where you take the king. It's like, I win, checkmate. The other point is if he's saying they want complete unconditional surrender, how are you going to have anyone surrender if you keep killing the leaders?

31:42Michael Malice:Who is going to be the one who is doing the surrendering? I think it's hard. first of all, I don't doubt that someone in the White House sat him down and had some sort of plan. If not him, they game this out. But I don't, I feel like the underpants gnome from South Park. You know, step one, you steal the underpants. Step two, step three, profit. What's step two, right? So I don't know what their win, like I said earlier, what their win condition is going to look like. I think it's going to be almost impossible to, if you start killing and bombing, this isn't Japan. This idea of unconditional surrender, the thing that happens with these countries, as Qaddafi found out, is when they let down their guard, the people atop are personally murdered.

32:30Michael Malice:And if you had a free Iran or Persia or whatever, I don't think all these people atop are just going to go to Club Med if that still exists. They're going to face prison sentences. So there's every incentive for them to dig their heels in. Obviously, the Saudis are a big problem for them as well, and many other Arab countries in the area are not particularly happy with Iran. So I don't see how this... As we said earlier, every day it seems like he's ready to be like, all right, mission... He said, I think, mission accomplished, which was that infamous banner that George W. Bush stood in front of during his administration.

33:05Michael Malice:I mean, it's very plausible. He's just going to be like, all right, we bombed them, now we're going to go home. It's like, okay, what did that accomplish? Absolutely. And then you factor in the ideology, which is a radical version of Islamism. Sure. So you go, how are you going to de-radicalize a huge swathe of the population? Because if you kill them, then surely you're going to radicalize their family, their friends, other members of the population. Right. If someone, God forbid, came to the U.S. and took a foreign entity and took out the president, Americans would rally very heavily behind whoever the vice president was.

33:43Michael Malice:We saw this in, after 9-11, I think George W. Bush had 98 or 91 % approval rating. Everyone's like, right, you know, the kind of rally behind the flag. So the same thing certainly is happening with Iran, where if in Tehran the buildings were shaking, it sounded like the doors of hell had been open. I saw someone, a citizen there, gave that quote. You're not going to be like, I'm in favor of the guys who are bombing us to oblivion. And it's also, you look at, they were talking about arming the Kurds. So then my mind went back to Iraq when essentially Iraq collapsed. And you look at Iran and you go, well, this could be a civil war, couldn't it?

34:19Because the Kurds want their own nation. That has been clear for a long time. And if you arm them, they're going to want to take it by force. And that's further going to destabilize the country, which is on the brink as we speak.

34:31Michael Malice:And America also has a history of arming people and then trying to fight them. It's just really this kind of... We laugh, but it's just like, you know, we're shaking hands with the Taliban one day, the next day we're invading Afghanistan. So it's the army, again, arming the Kurds. Like we're, we are, there's this fear in the States right now that Iran is activating all these sleeper cells, supposedly. That's what we're doing there. Like if we're arming the Kurds and saying, rise up, that's, we're calling out our sleeper cells.

34:58Francis Foster:And are you worried about that, Michael? Because I've seen some news stories. I mean, the idea that Iran is going to shoot drones in California, I mean, obviously.

35:05Michael Malice:Let's hope so. My God. I mean, someone could just save us. I mean, imagine if they had gotten you sick. How would you know? They might set the whole city on fire, right? It'd be terrible.

35:18Francis Foster:Yeah. But it just seems implausible to me, right? It seems like a bunch of bullshit. But, you know, individual people doing crazy shit and killing people doesn't seem that difficult at all in a country with millions of guns and whatever, right? Do you think there's a real worry now in America that that could happen?

35:38Michael Malice:I'm going to give an answer that sounds like a joke, but it's not. We're at the point now where there's so many daily mass shootings that the only difference would be that they speak Farsi instead of being trans. So I don't think that that's a big concern. I think if they were going to be smart, they would have it all done on one day, like a day of terror. That would really shake America, and that would really move the needle in one direction or another. I don't think it would need a little in a direction that they would want.

36:08Francis Foster:Right. But so I don't... Because if that happened, you would get... We were talking about this last night, actually, because obviously there's a very strong anti-war sentiment and there will be lots of people who say Trump did this. Yeah, correctly. But I think there'll also be lots of people who say America's been attacked.

36:24Michael Malice:Right. So it's... But that's a dangerous card to play on their part. And I also think then you're going to have a lot of solidarity from Europe who's had to deal with this sort of terrorism. and a lot of them are going to, you know, maybe their spines will get a little stiff and maybe not Sir Kier, but maybe Germany or certainly France. Well, we obviously hope that doesn't happen. Do you think part of the problem is that we in the West simply don't understand other mindsets, but particularly other ideologies? Oh, yeah. I mean, my God, it is. Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question, because one of the things I've been focusing on recently, one of the things I'm trying to defeat is this idea of universalism.

37:03Michael Malice:and we're taught this in school since we're very young that everyone is basically the same under our skin. Now in certain contexts it's absolutely true. Everyone feels pain everyone loves their family, you know, everyone mourns when someone passes away but I think all of us are in the same kind of tier in terms of intellect meaning I don't think there's anything I believe that I would not be able to explain to the two of you or vice versa. Maybe there'd be some follow-up questions but we'd be able to understand each other. I also think if the three of us sat with a nuclear physicist and he tried to understand explain nuclear physics to us, it'd be just gibberish.

37:34Michael Malice:At a certain point, be like, okay, maybe I can follow these analogies, but I'm really not understanding it in the same way you're understanding it. But that also applies to people who are dumber. So if you look at sitcoms, people think dumber people just have fewer facts or they're slower to understand things. That's not the case. Unintelligent people think, process data in ways that are completely different from other people. And this is something that's very deleterious to democracy. And you see it all over. One of the great things about social media is A, people who in times past, great example is Lawrence Tribe, who's like a dean at Harvard Law.

38:10Michael Malice:In times past, they would be on a pedestal. This guy's at Harvard Law. He must be amazing. You look at his feed, and this old lesbian is tweeting like your grandma on Facebook. It's an embarrassment. The same time when unintelligent people express themselves, you realize, holy crap, this person's Kathy Newman. And if you sit down and explain to them, they still don't pick up what you're saying. and they just regard nouns and verbs as basically a soup and connect things in ways that are complete gibberish to other people. So one of the other things that happens is people cannot understand things outside their framework.

38:44Michael Malice:So everyone is, Farage is the Trump of England, and in the Philippines, he's the Trump of the Philippines, and the Trump of Brazil, Bolsonaro, and this one's the... Maybe they're roughly analogous in that they're like a populist loudmouth, But these are not all the same phenomenon. And if you ask any American about some other country, they would say, who are the Republicans and who are the Democrats? Well, it doesn't always parse out that way. In fact, in America, Jeb and Trump are not the same phenomenon. They're both Republicans. And Bernie Sanders, although he's independent, or let's say AOC and Hillary Clinton, they're also not the same phenomenon, although they're both Democrats.

39:20Michael Malice:So human beings, broadly speaking, not only have no empathy, which is an ability to see things from other points of view, they're violently opposed to it. I always say that people don't run a true-false filter. They run an us-them filter. You see it every time on social media. If you say something, oh, you sound like a Democrat. And the implication is, therefore, you're wrong. It's deranged, but that is how unintelligent people process information. And it's such a good point. And then you put in an ideology as extreme as Islamism. And we in the West simply can't get our heads around it because we value life.

39:54What is that? I hate that word.

39:57Michael Malice:What do you mean by extreme?

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41:18Michael Malice:But if you think you're here serving Allah, and you think that that's the correct course of affairs, wouldn't that be the correct thing to do?

41:28Francis Foster:Within that framework, yes. But the rest of us can look at that and say, if you want to kill millions of people in the name of Allah, you're extreme, right? But I would just say you're principled. Sure. But those two things don't have to go against each other. You can be principled and extreme because the principles you adhere to are extreme. But I don't know. Or lead to extreme consequences.

41:48Michael Malice:Sure. Sure, but there's this negative connotation to the word extreme that I'm not comfortable with.

41:54Francis Foster:Well, the extremism, I mean, Gandhi was also very principled, and in some ways quite extreme, too. But I guess the violent nature of what Islamists do in reality seems quite extreme to those of us who are not part of that framework.

42:11Michael Malice:But I think what happens is when you have that mindset, you end up with Radarim, and you end up with where the UK is right now.

42:19Francis Foster:Which mindset?

42:20Michael Malice:This fear of extremism and this idea that we're going to vote ourselves free.

42:25Francis Foster:I don't follow how those two things are connected.

42:28Michael Malice:Sure, because if you have this idea that violence in the service of your ideology is something that's really kind of off the table and something only people who are really out there would do, when violence might otherwise be necessary, it's not regarded as part of the Overton window.

42:47Francis Foster:Well, the violence is, I mean, violence is the state, right? The state, which I know you're not a fan of, but the state is controlled, organized, and legislated violence. And I think the counter argument, well, otherwise you get Rotherham is, I don't, I wouldn't advocate for the response to Rotherham being a mirror image of what Islamists are doing. I would say that's where the state has to do its fucking job.

43:12Michael Malice:Well, that's where you and I differ, I think. That's exactly the crux of the point.

43:15Francis Foster:Right. And my argument would be there's, we have a police force for a reason and we have laws for a reason. Yeah.

43:19Michael Malice:The police force is there to protect the perpetrators of Rodham.

43:22Francis Foster:Well, they were in that instance, but they don't have to be. I don't know what that means. If they just, well, because their job as officially stated is to enforce the law. What these people did was against the law.

43:34Michael Malice:But as officially stated is a nonsense term. It doesn't mean anything. It's like, if I tell you I've got a car and it flies officially and it doesn't fly, who cares.

43:41Francis Foster:No, I hear you, but the police do do their job in most instances of enforcing the law. Right.

43:47Michael Malice:So let's worry about the times when they don't.

43:49Francis Foster:Yeah. Yeah. And what, but that wasn't a police issue. What that was is, hold on, Michael. What that was is a failure to enforce the law because they were prioritizing other concerns, which they were effectively encouraged to do by the society in which they lived, which is you place social cohesion.

44:08Michael Malice:They weren't encouraged by their overlords to do what they did? They did this unilaterally?

44:13Francis Foster:From the evidence that we've seen, a lot of it was quite low-level sensitivity about social cohesion, right? So a person at a fairly low level was worried about investigating something because it would mean that they'd be called racist. Right. Right. It wasn't necessarily, it wasn't as far as we know, the people at the top going, don't investigate this.

44:36Michael Malice:I don't think that's statistically possible. there's just these few outliers because it was so pervasive. I didn't say there were outliers.

44:43Francis Foster:I think on the contrary, it was a pervasive culture. But what I'm saying is I'm not certain. In fact, I'm quite confident based on what we've talked to lots of people about this who know, right? That this was not a top-down, this is what you're supposed to do or not supposed to do. It was actually something that happened because there was a pervasive culture at the lower levels of social workers, of police officers and others who just thought, A, the sensitivities about what would it mean for community cohesion and all this other bullshit. And also, you know, we had Maggie Oliver, who was a police whistleblower who blew the whistle on this stuff, who just said because of the social background of a lot of the victims, there was just like, oh, they don't matter.

45:26Francis Foster:Right. Which also, unfortunately, does happen. Sure. So I don't think, my point is, I don't think it's necessarily the dynamic you're presenting, which is either you tolerate this or you engage in extremism or the use of violence in an unorganized way on your own side.

45:43Michael Malice:Well, it could be organized. It's not the unorganized. But my point is... But that's what I mean.

45:46Francis Foster:That's what the state is for.

45:49Michael Malice:Ostensibly. But in this case, the state is not for that. None of these people who are accomplices, state agents or accomplices in these atrocities had any consequences, as far as I know. Certainly not the kind of consequence I would like to see them have happen. And what any organization, if it faces no pushback, it will continue in perpetuity to try to maintain and increase its power. So until there are... And one of the great things that Trump did when he came into office is people face consequences for the first time for the crap that they tried to pull. So unless they... Until and unless there are...

46:22Michael Malice:None of... All of the governors in America during COVID who sent in diseased people into nursing homes, killing elderly people, they all got re-elected. They had no consequences for the murders that they committed. Keir Starmer was a barrister defending some of these people, if I'm not mistaken. So until and unless, or he had some involvement legally with... He was a director of public prosecution.

46:47Francis Foster:Yeah, but, you know, as you can imagine, I'm not a big fan of Keir Starmer. He wasn't personally defending these people and or doing it out of choice. You know, criminals are entitled to legal representation.

46:59Michael Malice:Sure, but he also made it a point in early 2025 to try to put a kibosh on further investigation.

47:06Francis Foster:Yeah, and it's despicable. And they will, if they fail electorally, and unless we get a red-green alliance at the next election, they will be punished for it.

47:15Michael Malice:Yeah.

47:16Francis Foster:I don't think Keir Starmer will go to prison, though. But, you know.

47:19Michael Malice:That's not... Yeah.

47:20Francis Foster:No, it's a totally fair point. But we started this... Everything you're saying is perfectly legitimate, But we started this with your quibble over France's use of the term extremism. And I think the point he's trying to make is, I mean, in America, this is easier for you guys to relate to because you have some of your own religious people who are kind of on that end of things.

47:39Michael Malice:Also because we have our guns.

47:40Francis Foster:Yeah, true. But I think for the Western mind, broadly speaking, it has become quite difficult to relate empathetically, as you were talking about earlier, to people who are willing to blow themselves up among a bunch of innocent girls at an Ariana Grande concert.

48:00Michael Malice:Can we talk about that for a second, that concert? Yeah. Because that was one of the greatest moments, in my opinion, in British history. Do you know what Queen Elizabeth did after the concert? Did we talk about this? No. This is going to sound like a troll and I want everyone who's watching this to assume I'm lying and look up the footage for themselves. After that Ariana Grande concert where people were blown to smithereens and many of us were injured, Queen Elizabeth, God rest her soul, went to the hospital and visited many of the victims and they were very honored to see Queen Elizabeth. She had a beautiful hat on and as she went from bed to bed, she's like, oh, so did you enjoy the concert?

48:33Michael Malice:Well, you know, other than seeing my friend's head blown off, you know, that encore was really something. your majesty. So it was really a crazy moment in British history.

48:42Francis Foster:So just come back to the point. No reaction. Okay. Sorry. I'm like, I want to get to the end of the argument. So the point being that we struggled to understand the mindset of somebody who's willing to do that because we would never do that.

49:01Michael Malice:Maybe. Okay. I can explain that. Okay. Here we go. Unless you would. I can understand it very easily, and I can explain it to you very easily. And I cover this in my book, The White Pill and The Anarchist Handbook. In the 1800s, when Nobel invented dynamite, this was the first time for people who believed in workers' revolution that they felt that they had a sense of equality. And there was an essay in Emma Goldman's magazine, Mother Earth, talking about how the ruling class has navies, armies, police, military, the workers have dynamite. And the point being, they can, they, the ruling class could come at us with everything they have.

49:41Michael Malice:Now we can blow them to smithereens. And there was someone named Johann Most, who from Germany moved to the States. He published a pamphlet, which basically taught people how to make bombs. And this was a big kind of crucial moment in terms of free speech. Are you going to allow this pamphlet to become publicized? In the late 1800s, there was a meeting in the Haymarket Square in Chicago. Someone we still don't know to this day threw a bomb. Several people, anarchists, were put on trial, some of whom weren't even there. And one of the defendants, Louis Ling, who was on the cover of the anarchist handbook, his lawyer said, not in so many words, my client couldn't have thrown the bomb because he was at home making bombs.

50:26Michael Malice:So several of them hanged. They were posthumously pardoned. There's a memorial to them in Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago. Point being, when people, especially young men, feel a sense of desperation, when they feel that they have no hope of achieving anything, that there's no upward mobility for them, and they have an opportunity to make their name and to... And same reason people join the military. A lot of people join the military, you know, for positive reasons, thinking, okay, I'm going to fight for my country, I'm going to do what's right, and it might cost me something, but at least I'll go out heroically instead of pushing pencils behind some desk.

51:07Michael Malice:So the idea is, look, yeah, I might martyr myself, but I'm doing it in the hope of pursuing the goal of something greater than myself in terms of my principles.

51:18Francis Foster:But what about killing civilians?

51:20Michael Malice:Same thing happens in the military, right? You bomb people, you're going to be bombing civilians.

51:24Francis Foster:Not deliberately.

51:25Michael Malice:Sure, but I think their argument is you can't make an envelope without breaking a few eggs. and it's easier in their argument, this is not me, their argument is, if it's easier to kill a few civilians and get someone to bend the knee than to have full-blown war.

51:42Francis Foster:Which they would lose.

51:43Michael Malice:Which they would lose, right. And it worked. In Spain, during the Iraq war, Spain was part of the Iraq war, they bombed, I think, a train station or something, there was an election, the leftists came in and Spain pulled their troops right out. So it worked in that regard. But it's also the way the Islamist target for instance, the Ariana Grande concert where it's little girls. And we've seen with the bombing of the school in Iran, the girls' school, that has become a national scandal in the way that it simply wouldn't in an Islamist country. Sure. I obviously think there's few things more important than killing children, especially deliberately.

52:24Michael Malice:I mean, this is as bad as it gets, but I'm just trying to explain kind of their thought process.

52:31Francis Foster:But that's not what we're arguing. As you discussed earlier, the three of us are capable of having an intellectual disagreement and a conversation which we still understand each other. France's point, I think, is that as a general, as a society, the average person in our society struggles to understand the mindset of an Islamist because you could not get a bunch of Americans to strap bombs to themselves and go and blow up a children's concert.

52:56Michael Malice:Sure. But I think the point also is their argument is it's a way to break down a country because at a certain point, if enough people's kids are killed, you just give up and you're like, you know what? Fine, we'll put on the hijab. It's a lot easier that way. I think most people would rather go where they feel safe and where the power is than any kind of ideology one way or another. Yeah, it's a good point. And I think one of the things that we come to now is talking about authoritarianism. Sure. Oh, there's the segue. Good point. That is the segue. And we're going to talk about Korea. But it's also, I don't think Americans really understand what it's like to live under a totalitarian regime.

53:38Oh, yeah. And we see this all the time. I walk past buildings in Austin and I see things like, this is a fascist state, you know, fascist police, you know, authoritarian regime. And you just think to yourself, you literally do not understand the meaning of the word. Or maybe I don't. I don't know anymore.

53:56Michael Malice:Well, I can't speak for whether you're... That was very postmodern at the end there. Maybe there is no truth, but here's my truth. The very premise of my book, The White Pill, it starts with Ayn Rand testifying in front of the House of American Activities Committee. post-World War II. And, you know, she's talking to a congressman. She was the only witness who had lived under what became the Soviet Union. And he's like, you know, the way you talk about Soviet Russia, he's like, you know, don't people have picnics and visit their mothers-in-law? And she goes, it is almost impossible to convey to a free people what it's like to live under a totalitarian dictatorship.

54:36Michael Malice:I can give you a lot of details. Sure, they visit their mothers-in-law, they have picnics, but you understand it's impossible for you to wrap your head around it and in a way it's good that you can't even conceive what it's like try to imagine what it's like to live in constant air from morning till night and at night you're waiting for the door for the doorbell to bring or someone to knock at your door to live in a country where human life means nothing less than nothing and you know it you cannot wrap their heads around it uh because one of the things in a even largely free country is you can get away from the politics like people complain that there's too much woke in movies or music.

55:13Michael Malice:There are infinite choices. If you want to read a non-woke book, even anti-woke book, non-woke music, every form of media you like. But when you are in a totalitarian country total, it is everywhere. And the other thing that Americans cannot wrap their heads around, although they saw it during COVID, the first creep, is what it's like having to wonder what happens if Francis betrays me or Constantine betrays me. am I safe telling him this, this, this until I was like in my 30s and I don't know how this got in my head because my parents never sat me down. Whenever I said something to someone, I ran a scan to be like, all right, if this person turns on me, is it safe for them to know this?

55:52Michael Malice:Later, I stopped doing that and it kind of backfired on me, but that's fine. Point being, it's a mindset that, and also knowing that everything in public life is dishonest. You have this system of public lies, private truths. You go outside, you put on your pin, you smile and nod. And when you're behind closed doors, you know, you kind of whisper, but the expression North Korea is, you know, the walls have ears kind of thing. So it's, we cannot wrap our heads around it.

56:21Francis Foster:Well, we're starting to in a way because like, well, not just that, but I think also what's happened is increasing. I mean, you see it with the Epstein files, right? Because there's obviously terrible wrongdoing within that. But then there's like a guy who sent an email that that had nothing to do with it. But like every single email you ever sent can now be used against you if something then later turns out.

56:42Michael Malice:Do you see what I'm getting at? Yeah, but hold on. You're Russian also. You know not to put it in writing. Come on. I don't have to tell you this. Am I wrong?

56:48Francis Foster:I'm just saying, if someone, the average person, if someone was to hack their phone, they would not have a job on Monday. I don't know. Hack their phone and publish it on the internet. The jokes you make with your friends, the stuff you say in confidence to your wife, like all of this stuff.

57:05Michael Malice:Maybe I'm being pedantic. I don't think the average person is very controversial. So I don't know if that's true, but there are certain things that they would be embarrassed about, you know, certainly. Yeah.

57:14Francis Foster:Well, that's what I'm saying. Sure.

57:16Michael Malice:I just don't know if they'd be fired. I don't think everyone's dropping N-bombs privately.

57:19Francis Foster:Maybe it's different with your employees.

57:20Michael Malice:Speak for yourself, mate. Maybe it's different with your employees. Join our WhatsApp group. But one of the things when we talk about authoritarian regimes, which I find very interesting, and I'm really interested to hear your opinion on this, is we can't understand them, particularly dictators. So we framed them as crazy. Oh, yes. So, right. So the reason I wrote my book, Dear Reader, was because it was driving... I'm sorry, I didn't want to cut you off. No, no, no, no, no. It was driving me crazy.

57:46Francis Foster:He's written a lot of books.

57:47Michael Malice:Yes. Yes. He's a writer. It drove me crazy how people regarded North Korea as this sort of carnival. And I was like, they've outlasted everybody else except for Cuba. There's a reason they're still there. This isn't an accident, given the pressures that they're facing. And the story in Dear Reader is a step-by-step description from Kim Jong-il's perspective of how North Korea went from a Japanese colony pre-World War II to this totalitarian dictatorship that they are today. This didn't happen overnight, and this didn't happen by accident. It was like a jigsaw puzzle piece by piece as more and more elements of freedom were taken away from the North Korean people, and here we are now.

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1:00:02Francis Foster:As you grow, Shopify grows with you. Handle more orders, expand into new markets, and manage everything from one simple dashboard. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your£1 a month trial and start selling today at shopify.co.uk slash trigger. Go to shopify.co.uk slash trigger. That's shopify.co.uk slash trigger. Can you tell us the story of North Korea? Like, assuming that people listening, by the way, including myself, literally know fuck all about North Korea and its history. Can you just give us first, before we delve into the details, the big picture of it? How did North Korea even come to exist?

1:00:45Francis Foster:And what was the process for that?

1:00:47Michael Malice:So do you want to, their perspective or the truth?

1:00:50Francis Foster:Ah, well, why don't you give us the truth first? Okay. And I think telling their perspective will then be actually very informative. That's very offensive. Their truth. Yeah. Tell us their truth. All right.

1:01:01Michael Malice:The indigenous truth. The Western truth, which is not really very controversial or in dispute, is Korea was a nation for many centuries. Japan conquered it and colonized it. The Japanese tried to exterminate Korean-ness in the sense that they were trying to diminish use of the language. encouraging Korean people to take Japanese names. The propaganda is like, Japan's the big brother, Korea's the little brother. And I don't need to tell British people, when you're the colony, it's not always so great for you. I mean, yes, they build railroads and infrastructure, but at the same time, it's heavily exploitative.

1:01:41Michael Malice:Come world... And here's the thing. It's kind of fascinating that people understand the depravity of the Nazi regime, but we don't really talk about how bad the Japanese were before World War II.

1:01:53Francis Foster:Yeah, we've talked about that on the show. It's crazy, man. They were evil.

1:01:56Michael Malice:They experimented on people. They called them logs. You know, what was done to women. Sex slaves. Yeah, all that.

1:02:04Francis Foster:This is just... And they were really... The horror of the Nazi war, not extermination effort, it was very German. It was organized, and it was... These guys just basically stabbed millions of people to death with bayonets and shovels.

1:02:20Michael Malice:Yeah, it was really... And it's funny, because when you go to North Korea, which I can't right now because it's no longer legal, but they hate the Americans, but they hate the Japanese. Like they think, you know, the Americans are their enemy. They're American government. And, you know, they think every American is a spy. But the level of hatred for the Japanese is just, it's something almost supernatural and understandable.

1:02:43Francis Foster:So at that break of World War II, they're a Japanese colony, right? Yeah, I got you.

1:02:46Michael Malice:Yeah, yeah. Just trying to help you along. I know how to weave a narrative. After the defeat of World War II, the US and the Soviet Union were basically trying to divide up, you know, Germany and Japan especially's former colonies. So we got the Philippines. I forget who they get. And then it's like, what are we going to do with Korea? So basically, they sat down and drew a line just north of Seoul because we wanted Seoul. And the premise was Soviet Union is going to demilitarize the north half. The US is going to demilitarize the south half. And we'll worry about what's going to happen later after that.

1:03:21Francis Foster:Can I have a guess? They militarized both halves and then had a war.

1:03:24Michael Malice:Well, it didn't have to end that way. But point being, the North Koreans still, to this day, are very salty because they're like, we weren't antagonists in the war. The only two countries that got split was Germany and us. We didn't have anything to do with it. We were the property of Japan. Like, why are you splitting us in half? So Stalin installs the great leader Kim Il-sung in the north. We install, the Americans, excuse me, install our own strongman, Sigmund Rhee, in the South. Both of them eventually declare themselves the legitimate government. The great leader Kim Il-sung launches the Korean War.

1:04:02Michael Malice:It goes back and forth, you know, over a few years. The U.S. joins with the South, with the forces of the U.N., because Russia and some others boycotting it, so we got that resolution through. Stalin and Mao give back up to the North Koreans. and in many ways, not many ways, in every way, the Korean people paid the price because you have these two rocks coming and they're in the middle and it was bombed to oblivion. The only things left were chimneys. You could just see these landscapes. It was just complete desolation. At one point, I think the North Koreans like 90 % or 95 % of the peninsula, they almost won.

1:04:36Michael Malice:And it went to stalemate. And they're still technically at war. I know one of the things President Trump was hoping for is to have this kind of armistice signed into like an official treaty. And in North Korea, they use lowercase n and lowercase s for North and South because they say Korea is one. That's their big slogan. And the South is not a different country. It's a region under American occupation. Now, they had this big monument of these two women holding Korea over a highway and symbolizing Korean reunification. They recently destroyed that monument. So their hope, which of decades, that the Korean people would one day be reunified has now kind of fallen away.

1:05:20Michael Malice:If you want to cry, I would encourage everyone watching this to go on YouTube and watch Korean reunification videos because these are families who were separated for decades because you can't communicate with foreigners in the North seeing each other, you know, and they're allowed one day and then they have to separate again, never to talk to... You're not going to watch this and not cry because it's just the most heartbreaking thing imaginable. So that's the fact, the history. The North Korean argument of history is this. Korea was the first country on earth. Korean was the first language spoken on earth.

1:05:57Michael Malice:Korea was and remains the only genetically pure people on earth. So every other country intermarried or were invaded, whatever, Koreans are the only pure country. I'm going to use a slur, excuse me. They always, in their language, or in their literature, they always say wicked Jap devils or American imperialists. They never say Japanese. It's always used derogatorily. So the wicked Jap devils come in, conquer Korea, you know, devastate it. The people want to rise up. They don't know how to do so because the masses need a leader. So the great leader Kim Il-sung emerges at a very young age, rallies the people.

1:06:36Michael Malice:They're trying to get him and his guerrilla forces. There's something called the Arduous March, where they're fighting in their way through snow and all these situations. Finally, pretty much single-handedly, the great leader Kim Il-sung drives the Japanese, the wicked Jap devils from Korea, reclaims it according to their literature. There's a book with this title, The U.S. Imperialist Star of the Korean War. That's literally the title of one of their books. We Invade Them. the great leader Kim Il-sung had a so-called strategic retreat during the Korean War and eventually he kicked us out of the north and now they're still occupying their brethren in the south.

1:07:16Michael Malice:So that's kind of their version of how the two Koreas came about. Now that is fascinating. Could I say, well there's one more point. No, go, go, go. It's been said that when refugees learn that the great leader Kim Il-sung started the Korean War it would be akin to one of us learning that we bombed the Japanese at Pearl Harbor because it is the entire basis of their history. So when you learn it's the opposite, like your brain doesn't even know what to do. And look, you come from, originally from communist countries. Both of you, I have mom from a communist country. There's different flavors of communism.

1:07:52You've got the OG, we've got the aye-aye-aye flavor. The aye-aye-aye.

1:07:56Francis Foster:The on-mio, the communismo, aye. That's racist. I know, but it's enjoyable. so no one cares.

1:08:02Michael Malice:There's those N-bombs again. What type of communism are they practicing in North Korea? Is it very similar to the Soviet style or is it their own thing? So I will, I don't know how to say this without sounding like I'm making a joke, but they no longer identify as communist. So according to North Korea, there's something called the Juche Idea, which is Kim Il-sung's great revelation, which is man is the master of everything and creates everything, right? And what this means is, It's an ideology just for Korea and for Koreans. And it's this idea of total nationalism and this total sense of we're going to create everything originally and we're not going to have to take things from other nations, especially ideas.

1:08:48Michael Malice:So, for example, they have like an Arc de Triomphe in the middle of Pyongyang, which is where the great leader Kim Il-sung was sworn to office. and there's, I think, the same number of bricks as every day he was alive. The number of bricks is something significant. And even though it looks exactly the one in Paris, it's actually based on a Korean medieval fortress. And they have this big obelisk, which just looks, the Tower of the Jujuy idea, which looks just like the Washington Monument. No, no, no, no, no. It's not based on that. It's based on some Korean thing. So their insistence is everything has to be from Korea, by Koreans, and for Koreans.

1:09:23Michael Malice:So they don't acknowledge, especially decreasingly, anything to other countries. So in the Soviet Union, they have the hammer and sickle on their flag. It's the symbol of the workers and the farmers. They added a writing brush for the intellectuals. So it's completely different. It has nothing to do with the hammer and sickle. It's just hammer and sickle writing brush. So they increasingly downplay what role other people, other nations had to have. They'll mention Mao a little bit, helping in the Korean War. They'll mention Stalin a little bit. But the argument is they did it pretty much themselves.

1:09:57Michael Malice:And they take pride, understandably, in that this small nation is taking on, you know, Japan and America and basically forcing us to our knees in their perspective.

1:10:07Francis Foster:And the regime is effectively a hereditary monarchy at this point?

1:10:11Michael Malice:So this, what I learned from the North Korean literature, which I found extremely interesting, is they acknowledge foreign criticism and they reply to it. So when Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-il, the dear leader, the son of the great leader Kim Il-sung, was announced as the next leader. This was, of course, in communist circles, the second world, enormously controversial because we're against kings, everyone's equal. And their argument is, no, no, no, no, no, you idiots. He wasn't picked because he's the son. He was picked because he understands Kim Il-sung and the Jushie idea better than anyone else.

1:10:47Michael Malice:And all of the propaganda post that was meant to kind of buttress this idea. And if you read their newspapers, it's interchangeably, like when I was in the plane, they gave me a newspaper two weeks ago. It doesn't matter because news is all the same because it's not necessarily that the leaders are gods. It's the idea that everyone in the country is a major screw up. So you'll have some factory, a glass factory. And when you read the propaganda, no one's named except for the leader. So say like, dear leader Kim Jong-il went to this glass factory, and there was a problem with the machine, and everyone's standing around and didn't know what to do.

1:11:23Michael Malice:And then the dealer saw that there's this dirt trapped in this crack, and he popped it out, and then all the circuitry was working again, everyone starts clapping, and it's like, okay, great, and then tomorrow we're going to go to the box factory. So the idea is only he's basically competent, and but for the leader, everything's going to go to hell, and that also applies militarily. Because the argument is, just as the U.S. imperialists invaded us during the Korean War. We are biding our time to reinvade. We have bases in South Korea. And but for now, Kim Jong-un, they will be here tomorrow and they will kill you all.

1:11:57Michael Malice:And this national trauma of the 1950s is still very much a part of their culture. And you can't blame them. I mean, the Blitz is obviously a part of British culture. And that was nothing compared to what the Korean people had to experience. So what is life like for the average Korean? North Korean, you mean? North Korean, absolutely. Well, they did something... All Korean, as the North would say. So, they did something... The thing that's beautiful about these totalitarian regimes is their language. Because everything is portrayed in great terms, right? So, in North Korea, they did something called the Understanding People Project.

1:12:34Michael Malice:It had several iterations. That was one of them. Sounds great. I want to understand people. You guys want to understand people. What they did, they did this repeatedly. they interviewed every single person in North Korea. And they figured out what was your family background. Were you part of the great leader Kim Il-sung's team of guerrillas? Were you a priest or a capitalist landowner? And they went up to your second cousin. Based on this, you were assigned a Songban score. Songban is their caste system. And there's three broadcasts, favored, hostile, and wavering. And there's subcasts, I think it's like 50 or 30.

1:13:10Michael Malice:I don't even remember this. I mean, it's like a credit. The social credit score that China's trying to do. You're not told you're sengban, but you can figure it out because your teacher will treat you a certain way. This determines every aspect of your life, including whether you can even step... You can't travel internally without permission. You can't even... I've met refugees who had low sengban, and they're like, you've been to Pyongyang? Is it amazing? I'm like, no. Don't you realize it's not amazing? But to even step foot in Pyongyang, you have to have high sengban. If you're going to be a guide, like when I went on my tour, your songbun has to be through the roof.

1:13:43Michael Malice:You have to be very reputable. The thing is, in the 90s, when the famine hit, those cities, towns, which had a poor songbun, were the last ones to get food. And they were the first ones to starve. So it was explicitly genocidal in terms of using food distribution to maintain the regime and to kind of get rid of the people who you don't like. And Kim Jong-il explicitly said, having too many people makes socialism difficult. And let's touch on the famine, because when I was reading about it, it was horrific. And I couldn't believe that it happened as comparatively recently as the 1990s. So the UN came, because the thing is for people watching this need to understand, famine is only an issue for political reasons.

1:14:24Michael Malice:There is enough food produced worldwide, I think, to feed everyone three or four times over. The only reason people go hungry, I was talking years ago to someone who's, my friend was dating a communist girl, and she said, as many Americans starve as people in North Korea. and I'm like all right let's look it up and it turned out the only Americans who had starved were like people who had been like captives you know like someone kidnapped you and killed you it's not a thing um the UN went to North Korea to feed distribute food and they would take them to village one on Monday and everything's fine they took them to village two on Tuesday they went back to village one on Wednesday and the people he's like we're here before no you weren't they weren't allowed to have Korean speakers on the staff.

1:15:07Michael Malice:And Kim Jong-il said, if you have these foreigners giving them food, they're not going to need us. So this was a conscious decision on the part of the regime to allow the people to starve, to maintain their hold on power. Eventually, the UN gave up and went home. So this was a, I think 10 % of the population starved, sewage broke down, polio came back. And do you know what they called it? The arduous march. the same thing that the great leader Kim Il-sung had to do when he was escaping the wicked Jap devils in the pre-World War II days. Now we as a nation calling on that narrative are walking our own arduous march.

1:15:42Michael Malice:We got to stay the course and we're going to see things through till the end.

1:15:45Francis Foster:And is North Korea now from a kind of Western and global perspective now effectively a contained issue? So it's terrible for the people who live there, but it's not a country unlike Iran or the Soviet Union that's going to try and project its power externally and mess things up in terms of

1:16:00Michael Malice:Yeah, North Korea's biggest excursions internationally were with South Korea. You know, they blew up a South Korean airliner because South Korea got the Olympics and Kim Jong-il was salty about it. I talk about that in Dear Reader as well. But they're a small country. Their idea of expansion is where they're going to go. Their peninsula, they don't have this huge navy to go elsewhere. China, of course, and them have a contentious but, you know, a strong relationship in many regards. And so, yeah, they're not... The Juche idea is for Koreans only. And they say this explicitly. You can't export it to China.

1:16:36Michael Malice:And although the conceit is that all these countries around the world are very interested in Kim Il-sung's teachings and their books are translated. Oh, we all care about him so much. But the point is, this is just for Korea. And it's not like Iran.

1:16:51Francis Foster:And did they pursue nuclear weapons so that regime change would be impossible? Right.

1:16:55Michael Malice:So Kim Jong-il explicitly said, we are going to make North Korea like a hedgehog because a hedgehog is a small animal with spines on its back pointing every direction. And that could take on the American wolf and the Russian bear and the Chinese dragon.

1:17:11Francis Foster:And he's right. And what's the extent of the nuclear arsenal?

1:17:15Michael Malice:We don't know exactly, but it's not minor. And they're expanding on it. And here's the thing, you don't need... Seoul is... I remember during Trump's first term where Trump named John Bolton as National Security Advisor. And John Bolton had written an editorial in the Wall Street Journal saying basically, like, if we want to strike North Korea, I don't think we even need to tell Seoul or we need the approval. It's like, Seoul is just across the DMZ. That's where the border was drawn between the two Koreas. They can hit Seoul with a population of several million easily and quickly. So it is a very dangerous game to be provocative with North Korea.

1:17:55Michael Malice:At the same time, as you saw in Romania, as you saw in Libya, if that North Korean regime falls down, those people at the top are going to personally be hanged. And they understand this very well. When Ceausescu was shot in Romania on Christmas Day, Kim Jong-il took that footage, played it every day for the party cadres, and said, if we go down, this is what's going to happen to all of us. And he's not wrong.

1:18:17Francis Foster:And one of the interesting stats about the Ceausescu demise is that two days before there was an opinion poll in Romania, which said that he had 93 % approval rating. How, I mean, are the people of North Korea basically oppressed slaves or is there actual real support for the regime?

1:18:35Michael Malice:It's a mix. I spoke to someone who is fairly, I can't, whatever, they know what they're talking about. I don't want to out them.

1:18:43Francis Foster:The CIA.

1:18:44Michael Malice:Mossad. obviously his point is that the people at the top and especially in the cities know it's all bullshit like they know that Kim Jong-un is not the greatest thing since sliced bread they know it's nonsense but there's an enormous incentive for them to stay the course and do what they can to try to keep the machine running something I want people to appreciate is and this often is a problem when we talk about Asian countries these aren't robots these are human beings And I said this for over a decade now, what surprised me the most is how great of a sense of humor the North Koreans had. They are fun people.

1:19:24Michael Malice:And that is, in a sense, makes it more tragic. The way I ingratiated myself to the North Korean people, my guide, is I took every racist joke I knew and made the punchline Japanese. So how do you keep a Japanese man from drowning? Take your foot off his neck. What do you call a thousand Japanese at the bottom of the ocean? A good start. My guide was in tears. And for a week, I was the funniest person in North Korea. So, and they, what I did when I went there is I got in everyone's face and waved as a obnoxious American because I knew they would give me a real reaction because they're not going to have those improv skills.

1:20:01Michael Malice:And you see grandmothers with their grandkids and you wave at the grandkid and the grandma smiles. She's proud of her grandkid. And you see the teenage boys in their Adidas track suits and they're all surly, chewing gum and looking you over. And you see the girls laughing and giggling and you see we went to the maternity hospital and in the lobby, there's a military guy holding his baby and you give him a thumbs up and he's proud, you know? So the humanity is pervasive there and shockingly normal, which makes it that much more tragic. They also do have a much greater sense of community than we have in the West.

1:20:37Michael Malice:There really is this sense of, and I think this happens in poor neighborhoods here too. Like I don't have a lot. you don't have a lot like okay i'll do your dishes you do this for me they they do have this sense of community i guess you have to but it that is a positive and and one of the most interesting figures at the moment in the politics is kim jong-un oh so let's so let's talk about him a little bit because one more thing the the sense of community is so strong This is going to sound like a joke When there's like a fire People line up to donate their skin For skin grafts That's commitment I mean you laugh But it's like that says something Yeah of course So very briefly Kim Jong Un Madman as people often say Or is he a brilliant strategist Or something in between I can't think of one reason why you would call him a madman.

1:21:36Michael Malice:I hear that word all the time. I can't think of one thing that you would say about him that makes him crazy. Executed his uncle, his half-brother.

1:21:45Francis Foster:Why is that crazy? I mean, every monarch in history did that. Yeah.

1:21:48Michael Malice:Yeah. I mean, we obviously know King Charles killed Queen Elizabeth if he wasn't going to get away with Camilla's behest. I mean, that's... I mean, tell me you're not Charles-pilled, right? No, but I mean, that's not crazy at all. Yeah. What else? threatening threatening to bomb South Korea let's talk about the threatening so North Korea does this cycle and the West falls for it every time oh my god you did this and this it's such a provocation it's unforgivable but if you give us some grain we'll look the other way so they give them food and it's like oh thank you and they try to be the dove oh let's meet, let's have a conference and so blah, blah, blah.

1:22:31Michael Malice:And then five minutes later, oh, I can't believe how you talk to me. I'm going to build more noobs. They just do it over and over. And it's a cycle at this point.

1:22:38Francis Foster:All right, Michael, it's been great having you back. Our time is up. That was, holy crap, that was sudden, okay. Our time is up. It was over. We're going to go to Substack where our audience are going to ask you their questions. But before we do, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be?

1:22:52Michael Malice:My graphic novel, UnwantedBook.com. I've been working on it for 25 years. It's the story of a band from the 80s, a bunch of freaks to shop for the stars and didn't quite land there. And I'm very excited, thanks to Eric July, to see it come to fruition. Awesome.

1:23:06Francis Foster:Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Michael is going to answer your questions. Can you please explain what about Islam appeals to the left? Are the left just used for the idiots in the red-green alliance? And why don't they learn from history?

1:23:30We'll be right back.