1-2-25 *INTERVIEW* Author and Journalist Douglas Murray and His Experiences from Israel

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Douglas Murray is a writer, a journalist, a thinker, and
I think he's one of the most interesting writers and
journalists and thinkers working these days.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
And we're going to.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Talk about a lot of things with Douglas. You can
you can read his work at the Free Press, the
FP dot com, among other places. I've been paying subscriber
to the Free Press for quite a long time now
they just reached a million subscribers, and Douglas's fine work
is part of the reason why.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Thank you so much for you.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Know, getting up and joining us from whatever location you're
in today, and and you know, before we get going
on it, just say on the air what I said
off the air, thank you for being such a voice
of moral clarity at a time where we really need it.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Well, that's very kind you. It's a great pleasure to
be with you and with your listeners.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Let me start with something completely irrelevant. Do you ever
make New Year's resolutions? And if so, did you this year?
And if so, will you tell us what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm trying.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
It's now what the second of January, and so far
my aim to have an alcohol free January has held.
But that that doesn't sound that heroic.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Huh, that means.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
I've only managed what means I've only managed one day
without drink.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
So if I.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Managed today as well, I'll see if I can get
through the whole month.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Well, see that that means I better not invite you
to have a beer when you come to Denver next week,
because I want listeners to know. And this is This
is all on my blog at Roscominski dot com and
you can find a livenation.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Dot com as well.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
But Douglas is coming to the Paramount Theater in Denver
next Wednesday, right, so a week from a week from yesterday,
his first ever US tour with Live Nation, and he's
going to be talking in much more length and detail
about some things we're going to talk about a little
bit today, his experiences from Israel after October seventh. He's
got some video footage that he's going to be sharing

(01:58):
during that event at the Paramount, and I promise you
it will be one of the great memorable evenings for
you if you go see Douglas Murray next Wednesday. So
the link is up on my blog, or you can
go to livenation dot com and type in Douglas Murray
and you'll find it. So I'm Jewish, it's not that

(02:23):
difficult to find a Jew who's strongly supporting Israel after
what happened on October seventh. I mean, I.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Support it is reel strongly.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Before then, it's a little bit less common and maybe
a little bit less obvious why a non Jew would
be as strongly, aggressively, assertively, passionately supporting Israel against all
of this propaganda nonsense that's been going on. What made

(02:52):
that important to you? Well, it's several things.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
First is, as a simply as a human being brought
up well by my parents, I think, who taught me
to know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong,
and of the course, as a journalist and as a writer,
that's slightly more unusual, and it should be, but it's

(03:16):
also at the core of everything I do. On a
wider level, I'd say it's because I had the very
strong feeling immediately after October seventh, having covered wars in
many countries, including across and at least in the past,
I had the very strong impression that the atrocities of
that day were going to be covered over, that people

(03:38):
would try to move on from them and focus on
Israel's retaliation rather than you know, things like taking hundreds
of people hostage, including children, babies, women, old men, young men,
and much more. And I also believe, and it's one
of the things that I've written, I think passionately about

(04:01):
for many years now. I also do believe very strongly
that the people who wish to commit atrocities against Israel
are the same people who want to do the same
things in America, in Britain, in Europe, and indeed do
exactly those things. I've just written my column for Tomorrow's
New York Posts, and I say.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
There it's pretty amazing.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
But just think about the fact that in Times Square
yesterday on New Year's Day, hundreds of people gathered in
the center of Times Square chanting, among other things, for
into farda, chanting revolution into fada. There is only one solution,
revolution into Farda. What a stupid and wicked thing to chant.

(04:44):
But here's the thing. We know what into farda means.
We know what terrorism means. We know it in America
just as they know it in Israel. And these people
like the adults on US college campuses who say we
have to globalize the into farda done, guys, You've got
what you want. You've got what you wanted, among other things,
with fifteen dead bodies lying on the streets of New Orleans,

(05:08):
and these people, these morally reprehensible people, have the goal
to stand in the middle of New York calling for
exactly the terrorism that has just struck their fellow Americans
in New Orleans. And the bodies are not yet picked
up off the streets, and the wounded of not even
being counted in New Orleans, and these people are calling

(05:30):
for exactly such attacks everywhere. This is not just a
problem for Israel. It's a problem for America. It's a
problem for all of us.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
You've been paying attention to this kind of thing, as
have I for quite some time. And I went to
Columbia University, and I have it was a long time
ago now to hear that, Yeah, I think I'm probably
older than you. I don't know how old you are,
but I think I'm older than you are. And the
stuff that happened to Colombia and all these other places

(06:01):
just didn't surprise me. My dad went to Columbia also,
and I've been telling him for years, please stop giving
that place money. It is just a cesspool of not
just anti Semitism, but anti civilization, anti westernism, anti everything
that I think is good and true. Would it be
right for me to assume that you also are not
very surprised by this, which is not to say you're

(06:23):
not disappointed.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
Oh, I'm not surprised by it at all, but I
am horrified, as we all should be. One of the
great questions since October seventh is this Some people have
been able to identify the fact, the simple fact that
this was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
Some people have been able to identify that.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
The thing that people seem to find harder to identify,
and actually a great emeritus professor at Harvard with Wise
pointed this out a couple of months ago. The thing
that people find it really hard to identify seems to
be who are the Nazis today?

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Then who are the people who are killing the Jews?

Speaker 3 (07:05):
And then if they asked that question, there's a bigger
follow on question, which is, and why are the pro
Nazi people camping out in the middle of universities that
used to be great, like Columbia, like Harvard, like Yale.
Why is it that when survivors of the Nova Music Festival,
a dance festival that was so brutally attacked on the

(07:26):
morning of October the seventh, Why is it when the
survivors of that festival come to New York or la
or indeed, in some cases, the grieving parents of victims
come to a commemoration, ceremony, event, and exhibition in cities
in America, they are met with calls outside from mobs

(07:48):
on American streets, chanting support for the terrorists of Hamaz,
chanting support for Intifada, chanting.

Speaker 4 (07:56):
Support for terrorism.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
What has gone so wrong for us in the place
we live, in our countries, in our homes?

Speaker 4 (08:06):
What has gone so wrong that this is.

Speaker 5 (08:08):
Going on here today in the twenty first century. A
very few people seem to have even the desire to
ask that follow on question. I think there's a reason why,
which is that we wouldn't like what we found out.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
What's the shortest what's the shortest version of your answer
to that question?

Speaker 3 (08:28):
We have a certain number of people, not all, you
should never say all with a generation, but a certain
number of people particuli. Young people in America today have
been brought up with an utter, utter set of lies,
And they've also been brought up on a fatal form
of narcissism, so that they think that if they do

(08:50):
a hunger strike for twelve hours on an American college campus,
an American ally should change its domestic and foreign policy.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
And nobody says to them.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
No adults, as far as I can see, or not enough,
say who the hell do you think you are? Why
don't you learn something before you tell other people how
to sort out the world, let alone incorrect, let alone
the most complicated questions in the world. You know, go
and find some things you can actually point to on
a map correctly before you try to dictate to foreign
governments how they should act to defend their own people.

(09:25):
I think this fatal combination of ignorance and narcissism that
has gone unchecked, and it's gone unchecked for too long.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
We're talking with Douglas Murray.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
He's coming to Denver next Wednesday, and he's gonna be
at the Paramount Theater and you should absolutely go to this.
You can go to livenation dot com and search for
Douglas Murray, or you can go to my blog at
Roskiminski dot com. I've got the direct link where you
can go to buy tickets, and you absolutely should. So
how many times have you been in Israel since October

(09:56):
seventh happened?

Speaker 4 (10:00):
So I've spent most of the last fourteen months there.
I've been with it.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Went as soon as I could after the seventh and
up to sixth for my home in New York, and
I have been in Israel most of the time since.
I've been in Lebanon a lot with the Israel Defense Forces.
I've been in Gaza a lot with the IDF, and
I've seen a lot and reported on a lot, and

(10:28):
I think had probably as much access as anyone has
been able to have since the beginning of the war
to chart the war in its totality. But as I say,
it's not just about the war in Israel that and
the surrounding countries at Hamas started. It's about the wider
civilizational things, and we're going to get onto that in

(10:49):
the second half of the event of the Promound.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
All right, one more on this, and then I want
to move to us kind of stuff a little bit. Obviously,
when you went to Israel right after October seventh, you
expected certain things, and you probably already knew quite a
few Israelis, and you already had a very clear sense
of right and wrong. So it wasn't like you got
to Israel and suddenly you realized, oh this was bad.

(11:14):
You already knew. But I'm curious how that experience has changed.
Not you could answer how it's changed how you think
about something, But my real question is how has it
changed you.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's a very hard question to answer because I've brought
up British. I don't really like talking about myself, so
I'll try to dodge or weave, as President Trump might say,
Now I'll tell you, I mean, I suppose in a
serious note. On a serious note, it's given me an
even greater sense of several things. One is something which

(11:51):
we are not good at tackling in the modern age,
which is the fact there is pure evil in the world.
There is evil, it manifests, and that there is no
other explanation for some of the atrocity that has occurred
than that that there are evil people, evil death cults
that teach hatred of people and are jubilant as Jamaz

(12:13):
have been jubilant as they carry out the most sickening,
imaginable crimes. The second thing, though, is that I've also
gained a much greater awareness of human courage. And I
mean that from not just people like the survivors I've
spoken with, or the the parents of hostages that I've

(12:37):
spent much time with, or indeed former hostages who've been
released I've spent much time with. I also think of
the remarkable young generation in Israel who stood up to
the challenge after the Seventh in the most remarkable way.
And I think it's something that we in America and

(12:58):
we in the West in general, can really learn from.
You know, we all carp and moan about the upcoming generation,
the next generation.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
And we always ask ourselves, and we always ask.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
As a nation.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
You know, we've produced the greatest generation in the past.
America has produced quite a number, actually, but you always
have this thing in the back of your mind. Would
we be able to do it again if the challenger arose?
And Israelis were asking that question before the seventh as well.
But here is the thing. They really did step up.

(13:34):
The younger generation really did step up. I'll tell some
of the stories in Denver in the coming days.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
But.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Unbelievable acts of heroism by young and old Israeli men
and women on the day, extraordinary heroism by the soldiers
who have had a remorseless year of war to destroy
him As and has Blah and.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
Get the hostages home.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
And many of these I now, since you almost asked earlier,
I'm now forty five. And they say sometimes that you know,
a sign of getting old is that policeman start to
look young. I can tell you a sign of really
a sign of really feeling old.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Is when you meet young women in the.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Field in Israel who look like teenagers but who are
doing their country and their people and the whole civilized
world proud. And it's just remarkable, and it's given me
so much hope. And occasionally in the field in the
last fourteen months, I've met soldiers and others who have

(14:42):
recognized me for my work and said, you know, you
give us great encouragement in telling the truth and getting
the story of what's actually happening out there. But I
always say the same thing to them, which is that
enormously moves from me when I hear that. But if
that is the case, I always say to them, I
just want them to know whatever encouragement, in whatever small
way I can give them, they've given me it a

(15:04):
thousandfold back by their actions and by seeing them in action,
seeing the way they have fought in really difficult circumstances.

Speaker 4 (15:14):
And never with.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Never with evil intent in their heart, but only with
a desire to protect their people. And it's been a
remarkable thing to see. So, yes, that's one of the
things about war, and it's certainly for me. One of
the things about the last fourteen months is that you
see human nature at its very worst, but you also

(15:38):
see it at its very greatest.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
And it's a privilege to witness that.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
We're talking with Douglas Murray. You can find his writing
at The Free Press, the FP dot com. He writes
for the New York Post. He writes for other places
as well. One more question for you at Douglas, you wrote,
so you write a column called Things worth Remembering over
at the Free Press, and just before the election you
wrote some stuff about Reagan.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
And I don't know if my audio is up here,
but we'll try.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
We'll preserve for our children this the last best hope
of men on earth, or will sentence them to take
the last step into a thousand years of darkness?

Speaker 1 (16:24):
You invoked that going into the election, and I understand why,
but I'd like you to take that same quote and
tell me what it means to you today post election,
whether it's in the context of American politics or anything else.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Well, I mean, anyone interested in speech making has to
go back to Reagan. In this series, I've done a
lot of American greats Lincoln, JFK. Teddy, Roosevelt, tr and
all sorts of people, and some less famous, but Reagan

(17:00):
really is somebody who can always go back to. And
that speech is remarkable because, among other things, of course,
he was so right. It's something I think that is
more baked into the American mindset than perhaps any other
Western mindset at the moment. But it's simply that realization
that the people of Israel have really realized again for

(17:22):
the last year, which is that it really is the
case that civilization and everything you love is only ever
one generation away from being lost, and that it is
only there not because it exists like water for fish,
but because.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
Extraordinary men and women fought.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
For it, and that memory of that, the realization that
America in particular is man's last best hope on this
earth for retaining the freedoms that so many people, so
many people take for granted. I don't, but so many
people do. The last best hope of defending them is now,

(18:05):
as it has been for many, many years, the United
States of America an extraordinary human project. Perhaps, as a
great historian Paul Johnson once wrote, perhaps the greatest human
story is the story of the United States of America
and how it came about and how it has thrived.

(18:27):
And there are so many lessons that we need to
take from American history as well at the moment to
remind ourselves of the heights of human greatness and of
human achievement, and to aim for them. And that's the
real thing is there is a great culture of resentment
in the West at the moment. The students that we

(18:48):
talked about earlier, they are absolutely washed over with them
with resentments. But there is also a way to counter resentment,
which is, as I said in my last book, in
the War in the West, mind people, particularly young people,
of the necessity of gratitude, to remember that although no
society is perfect, no society ever could be.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
No utopia ever has or could exist.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Nevertheless, you have to get in balance, you have to
get into proper perspective the things that your society has
given you for.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
Which you should feel grateful.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
And the great thing about gratitude is it doesn't cost anything.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
It comes free.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
And just as resentment can come to the billionaire or
the pauper.

Speaker 4 (19:33):
So gratitude and gratitude.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
For what we have and enjoy in America is something
that can be owned, felt, lived in by people of
any background who want to see the American experiment continue
and succeed for centuries more to come.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Douglas Murray is, first of all, what an incredible first
guest of the year for me. I've been wanting to
talk to Douglas for a long time.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
This is my first opportunity.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Now you know why I've wanted to talk to him,
And if that whent your appetite for more, Remember, Douglas
is going to be in Denver at the Paramount Theater
next Wednesday, Okay six days from now, next Wednesday, on
January eighth. You can go to livenation dot com and
just type in Douglas Murray and you'll find it.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
Or if you go to my website.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
At Rosskominski dot com and go in today's blog. Note,
I've got the links there directly, so you can go
buy tickets. Douglas, I'm gonna do my best to get
there and hopefully meet you in person.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
But not try to get you to drink a beer.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Well, I'd love to see you in person, and if
I do hold out a full eight days, I will
have a non alcoholic bear with you.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Thank you so much for not just for your time,
but for you know, being that moral clarity that we
so need these these days.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
I'm really grateful.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Thank you, and thank you to all your listeners, and
look forward to seeing you likewise