 I'll get a mate 40 here So you're probably wondering like how is 40 different from from all the other right-wing pundits or the other right-wing live streamers and I'm gonna tell you I read more box, right? I read more box So I'm less I'm less prone to hysteria because I'm always reading box so When when COVID hit I went out and I read a book on the 1918 Spanish flu Okay, the book by Paul Barry the great influenza the story of the deadliest pandemic in history So I had some sort of historical context for what was happening to us Most everything that we think is unprecedented that is that is going on around us is completely unprecedented you just have to read right when you read you find out you're not alone All the all the thoughts that you had that you thought were just unique to you They're not unique to you you think the situation you're in is unique to you It's not that what's going on now is completely unparalleled in history and It's it's not true almost everything that we're going through now has happened in In the past and so we can better understand what's happening now by reading history By reading books. So John Berkshire made a great point. Like Luke never has any opinions except it would just repeat some some academic that he's just He's just read and there's something to that like I'm an intellectual jiggler I fall in love with you know every Every idea that comes along but I stay loyal to none of them But reading books and reading history is better than punditry For a guy doing a show giving his opinions. I don't really give that many opinions I just kind of share Something I've read or something that occurs to me when I put you know different things together so It's a little bit like the benefits of psychotherapy to me one of the biggest benefits of being in psychotherapy And I was in ten years of psychotherapy had about five different therapists and So during those years sometimes I'd have one to two sessions of psychotherapy a week and One of the big benefits is that I always realized that there were far more options than what I saw So I might have an acquaintance who was irritating me I felt like he was publicly humiliating me. And so I told my therapist. Okay, well, I need to do this or I need to do that My therapist said well, why do you need to do anything? and I'd have I Remember one therapist said I felt like in our early years when I worked together We're just you know primarily in crisis control She said I thought you're in danger of becoming a psychopath And so I'd come in in crisis. It's like I'm in survival mode. I would repeat that for years in therapy I mean I'm in survival mode and Took years and years to slowly wean me out of survival mode and to look at how things I'm saying and doing it putting me in a precarious situation and it's similar when you When you read history you get all these new options for understanding the present So there's a lot of right-wing punditry today that we live in unprecedented times because we have all these journalists calling for increasing censorship and Increasing repression well journalists have often done that in the past right, so We've got all this big tech collusion now what we've often had, you know, big business collusion in the past Adam Smith Makes the point in his 1776 classic the wealth of nations. I read that in 1988 that Businessmen seldom gather together except for the purpose of defrauding the public and Cancel culture we've always had cancel culture cancel cultures not know we've always had it It's always been there there have always been repercussions for the things that you say and do Even if the things you say and do are legal They're still repercussions for your job for your social status for your friends for your standing in the community Country is becoming one big company town So because I read books because I read books like the great influenza the story of the deadliest pandemic in history I'm not as prone to you know, hysterical Reactions to the news. So I've had, you know, the most milk toast reactions to COVID-19 Restrictions, I'm not for them. I'm not opposed to them. I simply realize I just Don't know very much and I understand the challenge of dealing with COVID And so I will, you know, gently offer some critiques of our responses to COVID that that makes sense to me And yes, I generally think lockdowns have been overdone That's that's my really humble Thought from from the little that I know, but at least I'm not prone to Crackpots like Ivor Cummins like people Instead of, you know, watching videos I get most of my information from books and so a lot of people I notice They just look for videos that support their Their point of view and then they just kind of get whipped up into more and more hysteria So this is Crackpot Ivor Cummins Who is telling people? Oh, 80% of the population is immune to COVID because they've had previous coronaviruses Well, if you've had previous coronaviruses Viruses that does not make you immune to this COVID-19 And he would he'd make videos saying well people who die from from COVID-19 It's only costing them one year of life and I'm not an authority here I'm not an expert but from from the studies I've read on average is thought that That that's from COVID-19 have cost people about 10 years of life It's cost us about one year an average life expectancy in the United States of America, but per death It it's cost us about 10 years so without being an expert here if I had to choose between those two options, you know What makes the most sense that people who've died of COVID it's only cost them one year of life People who've died of COVID it's cost them about 10 years of life. I would go with the latter So after you read that Paul Barry book the great influencer story about the 1918 Spanish flu No, mr. White male, you're not shadow band. I'm seeing your comments I don't know how anyone could think that you know this new respiratory onus COVID-19 The the most important thing that we do with regard to it is maintain individual freedoms Right, you read that book and you think ah, maybe a collective response with a restriction of freedom You know might be a better idea. Okay. I don't use these streams to propound Responses to COVID You know, I would discuss this response versus that response, but certainly does seem the collectivist societies Have been more effective Some of them anyway with regard to COVID-19. I'm talking about Japan Taiwan South Korea it's hard to judge how effective China's being because it's a authoritarian state that it's hard to get accurate information, but certainly collectivist societies like Japan South Korea and Taiwan Do you seem to have responded more effectively to COVID-19 than individualist societies like the United States England? so I'm also a Structuralist so much more of a structuralist than I think the other distant right streamers who see far more Significance in whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden is in the White House The structure of the United States the way power is arranged the structure of China is Far more important for international relations for example than the personalities of Donald Trump or Xi Jinping or Joe Biden Right where the Trump or Biden is in the White House is not going to make that much of a difference in our China policy And now we had all this hysteria about Hunter Biden's laptop and how the Biden family was the Biden crime family And they're all in hock to China But the structure of international relations are such that when you've got the dominant power United States and what may be a rising power China that United States is going to have to engage in balancing against China so make coalitions with Japan India South Korea Australia It'd be great if we could get over our Russia phobia and Right now Russia is much more in China's orbit than it is in ours But it's in our national self-interest to get Russia on side to to balance against a rising China So John Mishima thinks Biden might be more effective in Reacting to China because Biden is more likely to do things with our allies While Trump was much more unilateral But it's the structure of international relations. You got the dominant power rising power the dominant power If it sees that the rising power might possibly be on a trajectory to overcome it He's going to want to engage in offshore balancing where it forms coalitions With other countries to try to stymie the rise of this fast-rising power So structure over individual personality, right? The structure of reality the shifting nature of power the power of genetics So I see individual freedom as circumscribed by genetics context events So what is structuralism in sociology anthropology archaeology history linguistic linguistics and You could even say international relations as well structuralism is a theory of culture It says that the structure of culture the various elements of culture must be understood in their relation to a broader system This is also how I approach ethics I don't regard you know freedom as the is the number one I don't find it hard to believe that Biden is calling the shots so we get a lot of you know hysterical punditry that he's You know mentally disabled and But he you ran a very shrewd campaign very colorless You know kind of a cardboard cut-out campaign where anyone could just Ascribe anything to him because he realized if he simply kept it colorless and generic That he would have a good chance to win because of the widespread dislike of Donald Trump so He pulled no one thought that Biden was going to become the Democratic nominee So he beat the odds he beat beat a wide and deep field so Plenty as it doesn't matter even if Biden is not calling the shots It does not matter really matter that much who's calling the shots with regard to our China policy We are forced to take actions to stymie the rise of China because of structure and So with ethics as within structuralism you understand Things in the context of their relationship to other things. So I didn't see you know freedom or loyalty or Kindness or compassion Any one of these things is the preeminent in a moral virtue or depends on the context in which they're applied and how they relate to other moral virtues So the philosopher Simon Blackburn described structuralism the belief that that the phenomena of human life are not Intelligible except through their interrelations interrelations mean that you affect me. I affect you So we're we're engaged in interrelations right now. I'm reading the chat. I'm responding to your comments You're responding to my comments these relations constitute a structure All right, so we're engaged in a structure of YouTube live streaming Behind local variations in the surface phenomena. There are constant laws of abstract structure So there are laws for a life that works. There are laws for how power operates So I have a similar structural understanding of ethics the situation the context the structure Determines the moral absolute. It's not like Situational ethics are here absolute ethics are here. No, it's the situation that determines the absolute Just like you know for idiots, you know democracy and dictatorship are opposites No, they go hand in glove all of our democracies Entail considerable dictatorial powers. So throughout the industrialized world the bureaucracy for example is pretty much free from From the executive branch the legislative branch and the judicial branch It's pretty much a power to its own. You're generally speaking. You can't sue the bureaucracy and the executive and legislative branches Don't have that much power to affect the bureaucracy So If you just listen to certain Distant right personalities you might think that the Jewish establishment now in all times in all all places in Gentile countries always favors more refugee intake and Just not true. You look at the 2006 book Jewish tradition the challenge of Darwinism. It's by 1938 British officialdom had liberalized the admission of refugees Much the consternation of the Anglo Jewish establishment which advocated restrictive admission policies Okay, so the Anglo Jewish establishment meaning the Jewish establishment in England favored restrictive refugee intake and the Gentile powers that be Wanted expanded refugee intake So after you read good history punditry just seems so shallow I mean you're gaining I feel like I gain a better understanding of America in 2021 by reading Thucydides I'm going through his history the Peloponnesian Wars. I'm almost finished with it Edward Gibbon the decline of all of the Roman Empire and Nicola Machiavelli the prince you get much more from reading I get much more from reading these guys and watching Fox News and One of the things that you learn is that Who people are? Meaning either as individuals or as a collective people a nation is tremendously Determined by context. So even the most individualist of peoples such as the Anglo Saxons They their group identity can get triggered right so they become collectivist and in a crisis The people often demand sacrifice Demand the government crackdown harder They often demand more repression like president Trump probably made a political error in not asking Americans to make more sacrifices to combat COVID-19 Right people sometimes want to be hurt. They want to be ruled. They want to be governed It's not that the human heart always longs for freedom as George W. Bush put it and As as COVID-19 shows and you'd understand with reading of history your people Your nation and your state can change Dramatically without any vote or discussion taking place Circumstances change your people your nation your state can change So that it's it's completely unrecognizable and there was no discussion. There's no vote just happens Right, so laws aren't just you know laws on the books you have to pay attention to how a law is being enforced not everything gets voted on and discussed before it comes into reality and Detaining dissidents right you may have the sense that the Biden administration is arresting dissidents Gypsy crusader was arrested put into federal custody yesterday So detaining distance and putting them in prisons and concentration camps is quite normal in a time of crisis and the Capitol Hill riots Understood by many Americans is a time of crisis And sometimes it's the popular will of the people to imprison dissidents that will supersede that the judgment of the elites Right the elites don't always win in their battles with the people. So I so enjoyed reading a book by historian Alan Allport Came out in 2020 Britain at Bay the epic story of the Second World War 1938 1941 I so enjoyed reading this book that I boarded as an audible book and I just let it run all night and So I wake up listen to it go back to sleep, you know, it's still playing all night You can't fight city hall yet generally speaking you can't effectively fight city hall With the Trump haters have followed if you'd call for more restrictions they seem to oppose anything he endorsed That's a great question. I think it would have depend on how he would have done it So if he'd done it in concert with other elites, so generally speaking a group strategy will outcompete an individualist strategy so rather than Making strategy via tweets If he had coordinated responses to COVID-19 with other elites particularly elites who were more popular and respected Who had a more bipartisan standing such as a dr. Fauci perhaps? Then he would have had much more success. I think With his covert policy. It is not inevitable the covert became a partisan issue. For example in Australia Responses to COVID-19 are overwhelmingly not a partisan issue so Certain nations have coordinated their response certain democratic, you know industrialized nations have coordinated their covert responses Deliberately to avoid political partisanship So you can do it. It wasn't just the Democrats who turned the covert response into a partisan issue Donald Trump also played a big role in that So Trump never cared to expand his base like Trump was always just playing to his base he was highly partisan and He engendered a highly partisan response But it was not marked out by the will of heaven that America's covert 19 response would be breaking down on political lines and another thing that Strikes me is how Completely different people's self perceptions can be depending on circumstance I think people will use this argument and then if that argument doesn't work They'll use a completely different argument It is like there's no consistency To human nature in the rhetoric it employs. That's why it's so important to try to look at underlying reality rather than the rhetoric so there's this book called English saga published by Arthur Bryant in November 1940 and He describes England an island fortress England is fighting a war of redemption not only for Europe, but for her own soul Facing dangers greater than any in her history. She's fallen back on the rock of her national character. I mean, this is Almost identical to rhetoric used by it by right-wing pundits Okay, so, you know the people is in peril and It's a conception that you know the English should just shy modest gentle souls with a sense of justice and an invincible love of The decent and that which is legal and a temperamental inability to know so grudge, right? So a lot of right-wing pundits have these delusional conceptions about you know, the American people Collectively their only defect is their parochial lack of interest in events beyond their limited island horizons and their tendency to overlook dangers from overseas for too long This wanting peace nothing but peace in the interwar years The British people assumed in their insular hopeful way that everyone else felt the same They ignored the distant rise of fascism as something which was no concern of their own They were easygoing. They were preoccupied With peaceful hopes and they stumbled unhappily from appeasement to war in 1939 And they wasted the eight months of the phony war. So that's between September of 1939 and May of 1940 when the Germans invaded France They wasted the phony war and it was not until the Germans struck with their full force and since sent France reeling that the British worked the magnitude of their task Only to the enduring character of her people made manifest on the Dunkirk beaches and the skies above the Channel and the Kentish Veldt could Britain look for deliverance So he get a rhetoric of national vulnerability and so often People will argue for their vulnerability Politicians will argue for their nation's vulnerability and then the next day they're arguing from the propaganda of their strength so After the defeat at Dunkirk these British intellectuals were arguing for British vulnerability But price that defeat in France. They were arguing that the Britain was a mighty empire It's a mighty commercial empire commanded the world's greatest concentration of people resources and wealth that the British is The Brits advantages in population territory and industrial production were just overwhelmed the Third Reich This war would expose the fatal weaknesses of the Nazi structure and the immense staying power of democracy That's the final guarantee of Allied triumph. Well, guess what? Whether a nation is democratic or authoritarian Makes no difference to how much power it can wield in the world and how effective it can be on the International stage and whether it wins a war or not You don't win wars or lose wars on the basis of how moral you are and whether or not your system is democratic All right, there are advantages to a democratic system and disadvantages. There are advantages to authoritarian system and Disadvantages no one political system is marked out by the will of heaven to to always triumph So prior to Dunkirk the British Propaganda was that we were In a powerhouse Britannia a mighty empire and suddenly the rhetoric just shifts to oh, we're plucky little lingam England We're just an island fortress. We're we're tiny, but we're lion-hearted. We were alone, but we're undaunted We're defiant even in defeat Physical strength that's failed on the continent, but now history landscaping national character will be mobilized in defense of the homeland Rifles and bullets might be in short supply, but there are lots of court-trial munitions to draw upon right We may not have hard power, but we have soft power All our paths proclaims our future Shakespeare's voice and Nelson's hand Milton's faith and words was trust in this our chosen and chainless land Baris witness come the world against a England shall stand and The Ministry of Information in Great Britain in 1940 Snowwellian title rights propaganda ministry released a film Britain at Bay And it stated nearly a thousand years these hills and fields and farm sets of Britain have been free from foreign invasion and The film shows Archaedian rhythms and images of pastoral home counties Accompanied by a soothing narrative of Delfty innocence the British were as easy-going and good-natured as any folk in the world Asking for nothing belonging to others all they wanted was to be left alone to do what we like with their own Noel Coward the playwright He was on a propaganda tour of Australia 1940 and he told his audience that the threat of a German landing was only a shocking thought for those of us who forget that England is thrive thrived on invasion and In no Noel Coward's perspective It was almost as though Hitler had fallen into a cunning trap By conquering France as swiftly as he had now the British with a sigh of relief Had been unshackled from their useless continental partners. They were free to fight the kind of battle They'd fought so often and so well they could now engage the Nazis on the historical ground of their own choosing So the British had all this rhetoric about how they were alone, but you know plucky and defiant But they also had an enormous empire So Britain at Bay a fortress an island fortress of a thousand years Also was nominally in charge of the world's greatest empire, but In the national imagination the the empire didn't really count for much It just had only a subordinate role to play in that year's emotional drama So we get into these national emotional dramas that are wildly disconnected from reality So we may want a national drama It is all about you know, how strong we are and then suddenly the next day the national drama is about how weak we are So when the Luftwaffe's of bombers were just 20 miles away you know just Five minutes flying time from Dover How much consolation was there that New Zealand 11,500 miles away was standing by the motherland and The existence of the British Empire also raised embarrassing questions About why this easygoing people who just wanted to be left alone Has somehow managed to conquer one-fifth of the world's land surface So the historical myth-making of 1940 Marginalized Britannia overseas Now despite all the propaganda about British steadfastness the the crisis of May to June 1940 It was a moment of high anxiety in government circles about whether the people would really stand fast if the Germans landed So the conventional wisdom is that the Nazi conquest of the West to this point was a military disaster for the West But it also looked like a disaster for democracy Democracy had been tested and it had failed to an authoritarian regime Netherlands collapsed in less than a week, Belgium in less than three weeks, France in a month The German advance had been preceded by panic as millions of refugees had taken to the roads Hampering the Allied efforts to confront the enemy Hitler's totalitarianism had triumphed So sometimes a collectivist totalitarian authoritarian strategy simply works more effectively in the real world than democracy and human rights Now in the circumstances a great deal of hysteria in Britain in 1940 about a fifth column Now there's absolutely no evidence that there was a substantial fifth column in Britain But there was a national hysteria about the fifth column So national hysteria has rose up and then they can also very quickly disappear, which they did in 1941 So Winston Churchill on the 14th of July 1940 spoke of traitors in our midst agents of a fifth column Who might aid enemy forces and act as saboteurs behind the lines So the newspapers were all filled with stories of enemy paratroopers dressed in fake uniforms and costumes especially nuns habits and Pro-Nazi French Dutch and Belgian civilian sniping at Allied troops and assisting the invaders No evidence for any of this So in this time of crisis Britain's leaders realized hey democracy cannot be trusted They had to essentially abandon civil rights the rights of habeas corpus, which means that you can't be held without legal charges being brought before you so Britain develops the new emergency powers act you might think it's unprecedented. We lost all these rights under COVID-19 Well, pretty much any time you're in an emergency you're going to lose a massive number of rights So the government in Britain in 1940 had unlimited authority to regulate people property and capital without the need for Parliamentary scrutiny without the need for judicial oversight. So the new Minister of Labor says this This legislation essentially made him a fewer with powers to order anybody anywhere There's a treachery act pass that made it a capital offense To assist the enemy's military operations or to hamper Britain's own So essentially the emergency powers act suspended the very essence of the British constitution British common laws had been built up over a thousand years So ancient liberties are placed in pawn for victory. That's what happened with America's COVID-19 fight Our ancient liberties were placed in a pawn shop For the sake of victory It became unlawful to influence public opinion in a way likely to be prejudicial to the war effort To take part in a strike to withhold information about an invention or a patent if the state demanded it to hold an unauthorized procession to put out flags to operate a car radio or to put icing on a cake because it was a wicked wasting of sugar and If people did not abide by these restrictions, they could be put in to prison or concentration camps. This was in England Whatever happened to the rights of Englishmen. Well, in an emergency, they just just disappear and How did the British people respond to this draconian legislation? They thought it didn't go far enough So ordinary Britons were in much greater danger in the summer of 1940 than they had been during the phony war And what do you think that did to morale? Well morale was all the better for it The country asked for and was given the self-sacrificing gestures of everyday life Which the totalitarian governments have enforced on their people for years. So here you have a democracy and people want sacrifice people want draconian legislation People many people did not want freedom during the COVID crisis. They wanted draconian restrictions women in particular have loved COVID because it gives them drama and One area of life where women tend to be better informed than men is on matters of health So they got to take charge and boss people around The drama of air attack and possible invasion Had given the lives of the Brits a psychological intensity Every man his own Achilles every woman her own Hippolyta wartime sacrifices and restrictions did not irritate as much as they inspired Reading about the Dunkirk evacuation from her home housewife Nella last felt I forgot that I was a middle-aged woman who often got tired and had backache Story made me feel part of something that was undying and never old somehow I felt everything to be worthwhile and I felt glad I was of the same race as the rescuers and the rescued people have a need for drama feeling of importance and Often they respond quite positively when they're asked to sacrifice Even the very colors of summer seemed heightened the sky blower the clouds whiter the darkness darker and the manufactured Privences of the British version of Broadway, which is West End Theatre had to struggle to compete with this new melodramatic reality That what was happening on the stage of history was so tremendous that most thinking people found it difficult to take their eyes off the real thing So you had like a million and a half members of the home guard in England and many of them were armed and completely Bumbling that guns and live ammunition. They got guest lecturers like General Ironside He told them to shoot first and ask questions later He just added shooting people like firing to a car when the driver doesn't hear their demands to halt because he's got a noisy exhaust pipe On a single night June 4 four motorists in four different locations across the country were killed by you know trigger happy members of the home guard So Britain's home guard proved far more of a threat to life and limb in the United Kingdom than Hitler's parachute troops and So almost overnight Britain turned into a completely different kind of nation without a public discussion and without a vote So America turned into a completely different nation in 2020 due to COVID Things happen in your nation your people your stake and turn completely in an whole new direction without any vote or any discussion So in a sense of crisis There will often be a complete lack of discussion lack of opposition United nation Feels no hesitation or misgiving about giving up its personal freedoms in a time of emergency The these temporary surrenders of liberties is made with a glad heart and a confident spirit So the very British right to grumble out loud Was was denied became a criminal offense to say anything negative about the war You couldn't spread any rumors. You couldn't gossip about the war effort So there was a tradesman who was jailed for 30 days for saying Hitler will be here in a month and a Bristol septu-juanarian got a weak imprisonment for claiming that the swastika would soon fly over the parliament Was it was the public concerned about the mass incarceration without trial of British citizens? So the cessation of the right to habeas corpus the right to To be brought up before a magistrate and hear the charges against you to make sure they're lawful No, all sorts of Brits were just imprisoned without trial without habeas corpus so so Oswald Mosley leader of the British Union of fascists, so He was doing fine. He made careful never to advocate anything treasonous He thought he was playing within the rules of the game But when when the situation shifts the rules the game don't matter nearly so much they may not matter at all He's in prison Because I'm secretary of Britain could detain indefinitely anyone of hostile origin or associations It's like what's going on in America today if you've got you know suspect Associations you can be fired and have your life turned upside down So there was Admiral Barry Donville former director of naval intelligence Harry St John Philby father of KGB spy Kim Philby Conservative MP archer board Ramsey one of the leaders of the anti-war group the Reich Club They were all imprisoned without trial even without any charges two weeks earlier he'd complained in the Commons the the British Parliament about the Jew-ridden press This was justice of a blunt sort, but it was popular so the pundits of history do it pass as Ricardo so how did the news media in England respond to these draconian restrictions of human freedom and the suspension of habeas corpus. They thought it was great Dealing mirror exalted precautions that should have been taken years ago and now being applied to the British Union of fascists, so the British Union of fascists always existed on the margins of respectable politics But once you had a war Sir Oswald Mosley and the British Union of fascists. They were now regarded as the internal enemy and Public approval for these restrictions on rights was nearly universal At least we've conquered one enemy in our midst so things can happen and suddenly your political Ideology turns you into the enemy and there will be widespread support for putting you in a concentration camp Now tiny number of people said ah, it's troubling to imprison people just because they have unpopular views rather than committing a crime But overwhelmingly people didn't care. They were glad It was this one former fascist who wrote in his diary our great democratic sham is exposed for what is worth Our pro-Jewish pro-communist government knows the game is up And this is their last mean vicious desperate act of revenge before the Germans come here and kick the skunks out Assuming they haven't scuttled to America before that happens poor Oswald Mosley has to pay the price of real patriotism I'm downright ashamed to be an Englishman today So there are 26,000 quote-unquote enemy aliens of German and Italian citizenship who arrested between May and June of 1940 and The majority were refugees from the Third Reich most many of them were Jewish and The government didn't want to put them in prison, but the public will became hysterical about aliens so There are these lurid hysterical stories about a fifth column operating in Holland and France And that's why these nations had fallen to the Nazis about the infidelity of domestic servants Longstanding middle-class obsession was given particular emphasis Even the poultry is kitchen made of German origins could be a menace They might be superficially charming and devoted but such people represent a real and grave menace For when the signal is given there will be satellites of the monster all over Britain Who'll at once embark on widespread sabotage and attacks on civilians and the military indiscriminately now There's actually very little evidence for substantial fifth column in in Britain in 1940 but in this atmosphere of hysteria that didn't matter Sunday Express Warned its readers May 19 about a fifth column plan to paralyze Britain upon receiving word from Hitler To seize power stations broadcast stations sabotage railways telephone exchanges spread false information create panic So spy fever brought on by Blitzkrieg nurse Explains much of this hysteria The British press was agitating for the government to get tough with enemy aliens So just like the British the American press right now is agitating with the government to you know get tough with white nationalists and You know the the America first Nick Fuentes crowd So frustration with the lack of progress in the war with Germany You know provoked you know hysteria about enemy aliens in our midst 30,000 German emigres in their midst who are largely people who are kicked out of Germany enemies of Hitler now rounded up and It's interesting the government Was quite reluctant to do this was generally opposed, but the popular will was such that the government the elites sent essentially bent to the to the public will So we had an onset of mass internment So now when the British look back on on World War two they remember oh we had the kinder transport We saved all these you know Jewish children but Through the 1930s 19 up to 1940 generally speaking United Kingdom did not want to take in refugees So there was widespread Hostility for understandable reasons people did not want competition for jobs So refugees were regarded as interlopers dealers of jobs benefits grounders People don't like strangers Even if the strangers are facing death, you know in there a particular land generally speaking People in a free land are not going to want to take them in because they don't want competition for their jobs They don't want people to go on public welfare The Daily Mail warned against misguided sentimentalism about the plight of refugees in the Third Reich Could lead to the floodgates and we would be inundated the trade unions were opposed to taking in refugees because it would reduce wages The true loyalties of aliens in Britain were said to be to their home nations Oh, it was funny in February of 1939 the king of England was disturbed that all these German Jews were illegally entering Palestine and The Foreign Secretary in response asked the British ambassador in Berlin to urge Hitler's government to prevent the unauthorized emigration of Jews So Hitler's government actually wanted to assist Jews emigrating to Palestine But the British government wanted Hitler's government to stop allowing the emigration of Jews to Palestine Kenya's British governor was willing to accept the right type of Jew But he thought that their presence on a large scale would be an undesirable feature in his colony so Neville Chamberlain's party fixer suggestive ball Ran this anti-Jewish magazine called truth and it complained that London was crawling with foreign undesirables How the refugees were pouring into Great Britain and each presents such a well-fed well-dressed and cheerful not to say arrogant appearance and Chamberlain told told his sisters told his sister that I don't really care for the Jews Nobody likes a stranger Popular anti-Semitism in Britain always widespread but hitherto impolite to be expressed too loudly in public He'd been given a new respectability by the press's obsession with the fifth column Became quite the dumb thing to speak your dislike of Jews out loud Then when Italy declared war on June 10th 1940 that generated enormous popular anger against Italians in Britain so Italian-owned restaurants cafes ice cream parlours Was smashed and looted Much of this though was economic envy masquerading as patriotism Rival merchants wanted to to get rid of the competition They wanted to see their their rivals interned, but they wanted to express it in patriotic terms Now Britain's experiment with mass indiscriminate the suspension of habeas corpus was largely over by late 1941 Compares quite well with the US government's treatment of Japanese Americans which began after Pearl Harbor US interned five times as many people for far longer But the United States tore the Japanese Americans on the West Coast that they could either move inland or they could be interned There was not like they had no choice of Being interned or not they could simply move inland The but the mass internment of enemy aliens in Britain in 1940 was not a policy that the home office embarked on because it felt It was necessary or fair but because it being pressed into it by a confederacy of outraged special interests MI5 the spy agency the press the trade unions They were all pandering the fashionable prejudice and obsession with spies and traders and fifth columns biggest mistake the United States made was not interning communists during Cold War says Riccardo so there was a Professor of Modern Languages Henry Price who'd come to Britain from Germany in 1939 as a teenager He tried to enlist in the British Army. He was turned down he was eventually released from custody in December 1940 and When he was released the police gave him a form to fill out which asked him if he'd ever been in prison He wrote well. Yes from November to December of 1938. I was in Buchenwald on the charge of being a Jew between July and December of 1940 I was in a British prison on the charge of being a German So in Germany he was looked at as a Jew, but in Britain he was looked at as a German Now on the other hand the the British elites thought that the British people would collapse under pressure of air raids But that didn't happen. There was no breakdown in morale Okay, talk to you guys later