0:10The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan saw the United States military straining to meet recruitment quotas, jettison past restrictions including felony convictions, membership in neo-Nazi groups, learning disabilities, psychiatric conditions, mental health concerns, or even racist tattoos. It has raised its minimum enlistment age from 35 to 42. The induction of right-wing extremists into the military has emboldened and empowered, not to mention trained, these extremists who ideal whose ideology of white supremacy and race war is embraced by the current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who has several symbols and words that
0:51identify right-wing extremist tattooed on his body. Hegseth is also at the same time forcing out tens of thousands of women, blacks, and transgender people from the military. These extremist groups have powerful allies in the Trump administration. The White House unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy that will now target narcoterrorists, Islamic terrorists, and what the Trump administration calls violent left-wing extremists.
1:22The far right is noticeably absent from its list, although a 2024 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that right-wing extremists had killed 112 people over the past decade compared to 13 people killed in left-wing attacks and 82 killed in jihadist attacks. At the same time, the Trump administration has targeted groups that monitor these extremist right-wing groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which investigates and documents hate crimes. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on federal fraud charges by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche for allegedly
2:02improperly raising millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups for inside information. The center was attacked by the Trump administration last year after the assassination of Charlie Kirk for characterizing Kirk's group Turning Point USA in a report titled The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024 as quote a case study of the hard right in 2024.
2:31Videos and images of the January 6 storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters such as those showing Air Force veteran Larry Brock Jr. inside the Senate chamber wearing a tactical vest and helmet and gripping plastic handcuffs as well as the arrests of several dozen American servicemen or veterans for their involvement in the incursion are a signal that the marriage between the right-wing extremists and the military has ominous consequences domestically. Matt Kennard investigates the infusion of the extreme right into the military and its consequences in his book Irregular Army. Matt is an investigative journalist and co-founder
3:15of Declassified UK, a news outlet covering British national security issues. He worked as a staff writer for the Financial Times. He is also the author of the racket which documents how the US rigs the global economy for the benefit of its elite.
3:32Matt, in the book you interview uh several of these neo-Nazi hard-right veterans. I and I just want to begin by asking you about one of the most fascinating points that I found in those interviews and that's their sense of betrayal, their sense of abandonment.
3:53>> Yeah, I mean they but but many of them who were sent off to Iraq and Afghanistan did not believe in the war on terror.
4:01That was one of the interesting takeaways from doing all these interviews because I I came into it thinking, well, this is a martial ideology that uh and it's a country full of brown people. So, if you send racist there, they want to go and kill people. But and many of and of course they they did kill people, but many of them said that the reason they signed up and went out to the Middle East was they wanted to get training courtesy of the US taxpayer um and bring that training back to the United States for what they call Rahowa, which is racial holy war, which is this idea that America will descend into a a
4:34civil war with all the races uh pitted against each other, which will end with the white supremacist regime in Washington. And they have there has [snorts] been cases many cases of veterans actually plotting and carrying out domestic attacks who were trained in in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, it was a a hugely um eye-opening experience. It's also interesting how open they were about uh their experiences because the other thing is you would think that they would want to keep it quiet. But the the story that they were telling was that they were not only welcomed, they were promoted because of their ideology
5:13while in Iraq particularly. Uh Forest Fogarty who is one of the neo-Nazis I interviewed, I went down to Tampa to go to interview him and ended up going to the zoo with him and his kids actually. But he was talking about how his commander would say to him, I like the fact you're a Nazi cuz and and he said that he sent him on the the hardest missions and liked the fact that he was sort of as a warrior.
5:35Now, obviously, that's him saying that.
5:38I can't I can't say that it's true, but that was an experience I got from many of the neo-Nazi veterans I talked to that they were welcomed and and and treated in a in a in a in a way that was like, well, it's good to have you in here, boys. So, uh it's uh it's a hugely hugely uh worrying uh uh uh thing for the for every American because you have to remember that there's 2 million veterans of the war on terror in the United States now. And that includes thousands of these neo-Nazi white supremacists, tens of thousands of gang members, which is another group which were enfranchised by the war on terror. Um and they're not
6:16coming home to become priests. They're coming home to either uh uh see out their ideological uh uh uh convictions in the form of a racial holy war or in the case of gangs to to uh uh to uh use their resources to and and their training to kill other members of other gangs to help their the drug trafficking uh regime. And the thing is this this is hard to This this is all bubbled under the surface. So, it's not often that it comes out to the fore. Of course, it does at certain points like in 1995 with Timothy McVeigh with the Oklahoma City bombing. That was a major major uh uh ins- uh attack that
6:57was uh completely changed America in many ways, but he was a veteran of the first Gulf War. But there hasn't been a a attack by one of these uh veterans um of that scale. But on a lower level, if you look at local news reports from local American newspapers, there's criminal activity happening all the time involving the veteran community, uh neo-Nazis, white supremacists who served, gang members, criminals who uh got in through what was called the moral waiver program where they allowed uh uh felons and people guilty of serious misdemeanors who previously wouldn't have got in to to serve.
7:34So, it's it's it's it's a major issue in the in the United States, but you wouldn't know it if you read the media.
7:38The other important point, and I'll end here, is we kind of are aware of what's happening in the United States because they're because of the media the media covers it on the local level and law enforcement you can't get away with killing people and and and plotting terrorist attacks in the United States, but what were they doing in Iraq and Afghanistan?
7:59Uh we don't know a lot of the stuff that they were doing because it nearly every atrocity that was committed [snorts] in Iraq and Afghanistan by the US military was denied and covered up until it got to the point that the US military couldn't do it and that's the ethos. I mean, I remember in the book we referenced actually an article you wrote with Leila Ala Arian about the the conduct of the US troops and about how carefree they were with just shooting civilians and shooting anyone on site. And there was one case just just specifically to to to link this policy with atrocities that were carried
8:33out. There was a famous or infamous massacre in 2006 called the Mahmudiyah massacre where a group of American soldiers went to a house south of Baghdad separated a 14-year-old girl from her family >> [snorts] >> and then killed the dad and the sisters went into the other room and they all raped raped her and then killed her and then burned the whole house down. Now, this was a a crime that was covered that they the soldiers said this was the work of insurgents which is why they burned the house down. That was a a lie that was accepted by the US military for a while until there was a soldier that
9:08had a crisis of conscience who revealed what had actually happened. And who was the leader of that massacre? A guy called Steven D. Green and he'd got into the US military during the war on terror through through the moral waiver program. He had convictions for stuff that would previously have not allowed him to serve. So, that's just a taste of of what impact this had on the occupied population. So, you've got it's a two-front problem Uh and also we as you mentioned in your intro, this is now So, a lot of the research I was doing on these soldiers that were getting in with swastikas and SS bolts
9:47and other things, uh the we've now got a situation where it's institutionalized. You mentioned Pete Hegseth. This is a guy that has Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his chest is a which is neo-crusader imagery. He's got the word kafir tattooed on his arm in Arabic which is just a statement to say that I he sees is Islam as a threat and civilization >> is a kaf is a kafir. Kafir is the word for infidel.
10:16>> Well, yeah. Maybe I mispronounced it.
10:18Yes, kafir.
10:20It's the Arabic term.
10:21>> It's It's the It's the Arabic word for infidel.
10:23>> So, he's he's proudly saying I'm a infidel and and then you see how he talks about his about the attack on Iran in crusader terms, you know. So, it's like that we've come full circle that these people that we were trying to expose uh what was happening during the war on terror and the US military were trying to keep it quiet is now becoming institutionalized and a head guy uh is um is one of these soldiers at or veterans cuz obviously Hegseth served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interestingly as well, it's been reported that in 2021 he was not allowed to even serve at the inauguration of Joe Biden because one of
11:00his uh fellow soldiers uh flagged the extremist tattoos he's got. So, when you're talking about the most powerful military in history of the world and it's run by this extremist who as you said is now uh basically advertising the fact that there's complete impunity for neo-Nazis, white supremacists. It's hugely worrying for the world and the American population because these people do do not serve the Constitution of the United States. They're not in it for any other reason than to get training to to start their own war back home in the United States and and H.R. McMaster said in his confirmation
11:39hearing actually we're not going to focus on extremist activities now because this is a political witch hunt by liberals.
11:49Which is a green light to say sign up.
11:51There's you're welcome in the US military now alongside obviously he said we don't we're not going to deal with these stupid rules of engagement again which is a advert to say to his soldiers you can come commit war crimes with impunity. So but but the point of the book I think and is to show how the war on terror led to Trump. Trump is is presented by the Democrats and so-called moderate Republicans as this massive outlier but actually the conditions for Trump were all created during the war on terror. So that the complete evisceration of the US military and its regulations is one part of that. The
12:32what what was called the Imperial Presidency which was put in place by Dick Cheney when he concentrated so much power in the executive. These are all things that were in place and have been taken advantage of by Trump. And Trump said Trump look at what Trump's doing now like from the UK sometimes I look at the US and I it's easy to forget that the US even has a legislative branch because if you look at the attack on Venezuela, Iran it's not even talked about that it should be voted on. You barely hear about the legislative branch and that is a product of the the war on terror as well. Plus all the repressive powers that were
13:08enshrined by the Patriot Act and and and plenty of other legislations. So it it's a it's a story that I think that people don't talk about enough. Trump is not connected to the war on terror. There's also of course the historical precedent for fascism uh, taking off after a major war. Uh, so fascism really began in the early 20th century post the First World War in Italy. And Mussolini took advantage of a massive reservoir of disaffected and disillusioned soldiers. And a lot of his, um, foot soldiers were were those troops.
13:44And Italy won the First World War, but they didn't make territorial gains, or at least the the gains that their soldiers thought that their sacrifices should have engendered.
13:53Um, and he took massive advantage of that. Same with Hitler later on. Hitler, uh, a veteran of the First Gulf of First World War, and used, in what is very well known now, about the the punitive action of the Treaty of Versailles, the humiliation of Germany, and all these this reservoir of troops who were disaffected with the First Gulf of First, uh, World War to to really, uh, uh, uh, become the foot soldiers of the rise of Nazism. And I do think there is a parallel with Trump, because Trump is is using so many so much of the ideology and so many of so many so much of the personnel of the war on terror,
14:32the disaffected, uh, troops to to to say, I mean, if you look at his pitch for when he was first elected, uh, and he still does it. He says, "We're not going to do nation building.
14:42We're not going to waste all this money abroad on wars." Of course, it was all rubbish, and we know that. But, he used that that that, um, that pitch to to to to to get into power. And of course, if you the war on terror was a bipartisan disaster and bipartisan crime. The Democrats were as guilty as the Republicans. They carried on all the Bush policies, plus they supported all the Bush policies when he was in the White House. Um, so that creates the conditions for a demagogue, an outsider, to say, "Well, look, Washington's, uh, are corrupt and and bunk, and I'm going to come in and and sort it all out,
15:18drain the swamp," as he said. So, it's a it think that we really need to understand the current moment in in America from the point of view of the war on terror and what it did to American society and a very very clear window into that is the US military because the US military is probably the most important institution in America, you know, half the congressional budget goes on it.
15:40Um according to some estimates 1.4 trillion a year. Um it uh it's it's it's wanted by all sides of all political sides and if you have this kind of degradation of the fighting force, what impact does that that that is impossible for that not to percolate out percolate out into wider society and it has and uh it's it's it's extremely extremely worrying for for for Americans.
16:08>> Talk about that disaffection. Give us a kind of you've spent a lot of time with these people, a psychological profile of these extremists.
16:18>> Well, they I mean, it's not just the extremists, by the way. Like a major part of this story and mix this toxic mix that has developed and developed during the war on terror was because of post-traumatic stress disorder, right? Which is uh many many US soldiers and and veterans have.
16:42Uh and they were saying up to 30% and actually in the book I I contrasted that with other places like the UK uh and the UK military and for some reason which I don't really understand the US military has much much higher rates of PTSD than than any other comparable military. I think it's like 30% according to some estimates in the UK it was like four or five.
17:03Um and they're not treated. So, it you have this weird psychological cognitive dissonance for these soldiers because they read the media, they look at their politicians and they always talk about how wonderful these people are defending our freedom, they're the best of America and blah blah blah. So, they're they're wanted as heroes and they come back and they're not and they're treated like dirt effectively.
17:25They're not given the treatment they need. They're sent back into combat because the other thing when they couldn't recruit enough troops, it wasn't just getting rid of regulations. They also lengthened tours and and and shortened the time between tours and you can't do that. The reason they have that system and the the lengths they had was cuz you can't do that without breaking soldiers' brains. So, many many soldiers were broken by that and then they'd give them prescription drugs to try and keep them on a on a level where they could keep fighting. Um so, there's huge amounts of disaffection.
17:57So, and soldiers are saying, "Well, if I've done all this, if I'm being wanted as a hero, why am I treated like dirt?
18:02Why am I homeless? Why can't I get treatment for the PTSD?" Uh and uh uh and and again, so many of them turned towards Trump because the rhetoric was sweet.
18:14He said, "We're not going to we're we're not going to the corrupt um Washington consensus hasn't looked after our troops and blah blah blah blah blah." So, uh again, the the failure of Trump the Trump administration to do anything for them, in fact, he's probably been worse is has uh uh as added to it all. Um and I I think we're going to see this play out in America over the next decades because this is not as I I mentioned Timothy McVeigh, obviously he was a he was a veteran of the first Gulf War.
18:47That took 5 years, but you're talking about way way more soldiers with his kind of ideology that served and and and actually the FBI has stopped a bunch of different um uh attacks that were planned by a neo-Nazi veterans and active duty actually.
19:08Uh and it's all it takes is one of those investigations or one of those plots to not get found out and then you're talking about dozens or hundreds of Americans dead. So, this is something we're going to see play out and they don't want to talk about it. It's massive cover-up has been happening all the way through. So, for the book I talked to So, the the media barely covered it because it contradicted the fairy tale narrative of the war on terror because you can't really say that you're taking democracy and freedom to somewhere if you're sending neo-Nazis to do it. But, the other point is the institutions
19:37themselves were trying to cover it up.
19:39So, whistleblowers was the only way we kind of got information about this and I interviewed a whistleblower called Jeffrey Stein, who's who signed up to serve and served in Iraq and he had and at the these pictures are in the book. He took photos of all the gang graffiti that was up.
19:56Serb 13, Crips, Bloods all around all over the blast walls around Baghdad and other cities in Iraq.
20:03And his his his treatment by the the the US military is actually salutary. It's like he was effectively uh persecuted and his life was ruined and he eventually had to leave the US military.
20:17Um and that's because they wanted to cover it up. He wasn't He His information wasn't used because they didn't they didn't want to solve the problem because they couldn't they couldn't slow down.
20:27Um so, uh it it is a massive cover-up that is is going to get exposed eventually, but um And [clears throat] the other point is again, this is just to talk about why it's not doesn't reach the mainstream is so many of the our discourse is basically by is a partisan discourse, right? So, if this book had presented this as a wholly a Bush administration phenomenon and nothing to do with Obama, then it the then the sort of Democrat aligned media would have got behind it and and and it would have given them a a nice ideological tool to to beat their enemies. But, that it wasn't like that. Obama carried on
21:06all the same policies.
21:07He carried on all of the uh the not enforcing the regulations and stuff like that. So, this is something that is that the whole of Washington is is responsible for.
21:19>> Can you describe what that ideology is of these neo-Nazis? So, they're you know, lay out for us their vision of the race war and uh what they see happening in the United States.
21:33>> Yeah, so there's different element the white supremacist movement is has many uh different groups and elements. Uh and I'll just say before I carry on that this was a a trend that happened after the Vietnam War as well. You saw a massive rise in paramilitary activity and white supremacist activity after the Vietnam War for the reasons I outlined earlier, you know, these disaffected troops came back from a um a war that they'd sacrificed a lot for and and were treated awfully and they was the lost the war. So, um but that So, there's many different elements running from the Ku Klux Klan who claim
22:08to prefer democratic methods to neo-Nazi groups who uh want to a not a neo-Nazi regime in Washington to what lone wolf uh um uh potential terrorists actually that that operate across the United States. And I actually interviewed a couple of self-described lone wolf >> [snorts] >> um individual white supremacist individuals. One who's now in prison because he was planning an attack. Um and yeah, it's it's a it's basically about um trying to overthrow the government. And how do we do that? How do we accept it's called accelerationism, you know, you you you you um you you you commit an attack, you create
22:54a crisis, and in that crisis you can you can cleave off the white population and say, "Well, we need to uh overthrow the whole government. We're not protected. The government wants to kill us. You know, that there's a very paranoid culture that the the central government wants to kill everyone and keep them suppressed.
23:16And so so that's basically it. I mean and there's no I mean when I when when I was talking to the neo-Nazis, I mean that is what they are.
23:26They they subscribe to Hitler's ideology which is that the Jews run the world.
23:32They subscribe to something called ZOG which is Zionist Occupied Government.
23:36>> [snorts] >> Which is that the Jews run the whole government.
23:40They they [clears throat] believe I mean that they have equal animosity to black people. So when I was interviewing Forrest Fogarty, the the veteran in this bar in Tampa, he was he was sitting across from me and we were having a beer and he was uh in his wife beater vest just fulminating about Jews and black people and and it was quite hairy cuz I looked like his friends. So I was just and he was he was talking about how often he gets into fights. So I was just like, okay, well, let's just tone it down a little bit and tell him or bring the volume down. But they are they're they're they're completely
24:13unashamed. And it's quite interesting because you don't you know that the cleverer fascists cover up the the more extreme parts of their ideology or present themselves as a bit more palatable to the mainstream whereas these guys don't. They see themselves as street fighters and this He was a member of a gang called the Hammerskin Nation which according to the ADL is the most violent skinhead group in the United States.
24:38And again, he was saying that he he had fellow members who were serving in the US military. So and this is why I'm saying so it's linked to the US military, right? So if you have an accelerationist agenda where you want to overthrow the US government, but you need to create the conditions for a race race war and you do that through terrorist attacks.
24:57You need, uh, you need training. You need to be able to fight that that that that that that war that presages the bigger war. Um, so, it makes total sense that they would see the US military as a as a good place to go. And that is why regulations are in place uh, or have been in place. And that is why it's such a uh uh uh uh a criminal thing that the US government and the the Bush administration and the following Obama administration made it uh made it so easy for them to serve. And uh you're you're going to see it play out, as I say. And uh so, I mean, these people want a I mean we talk about the Holocaust and they they they they
25:42they think it was a good thing. And that that's what needs to do. We need concentration camps in the United States. That kind of thing is is the most extreme you can get, really.
25:52>> Does Hegseth, do you think this describes Hegseth's worldview?
25:58>> I don't know privately, uh, it could do. I mean, publicly, as I said, he's one of these people that's cleverer with how he presents his, uh, ideology. I believe he he believes in a in end times. I mean, he's a Christian nationalist, isn't he? He believes in that whole end times Armageddon idea that there'll be a conflagration of uh, huge proportions in the Middle East and then he'll be raptured up to heaven and Christians will be raptured up to heaven with Jesus Christ or Jesus Christ will come down.
26:26So, I believe that. And I believe that is a driver of a one maybe the main driver of policy. And you just have to listen to him to to believe that. And and obviously, that's linked to uh, um, uh, racism.
26:39Um, and like you say, there's he's actually, according to some analysts, I mean, he's he's purged the Pentagon. And he hasn't explicitly said he's purging black people, but it's by coincidence been mainly black people that have been purged from the Pentagon.
26:55So, there's I believe that yeah, he's a subscriber to this and and and he is literally one of the soldiers that I was talking to during during the height of the war on terror that we were trying to raise the alarm about and he's now in control of the whole thing. So, it's super super scary and it's inter- I mean >> [snorts] >> he's obviously got other history as well. He he he was accused of rape, wasn't he? And he um paid off the the accuser.
27:22Um he there's there's there was a report in the New Yorker that he was leading chance of kill all Muslims at one point in his career. So, the evidence is there. Uh and I don't understand how Ameri- the American media, the political culture, the Washington is not more alarmed by this because i- i- if you if you have someone like that at the top it just goes all through the institution and it's quite hard to bring it back after that. And I I don't know I don't know if Trump subscribes to this stuff, but he's he's obviously Hegseth for him is a >> [snorts] >> is a play to the base, I guess, because
28:08he's got these Christian Evangelical base that probably think Hegseth is great. Um but the other thing about Hegseth is again, he was another one. He made all these speeches about we're going to stop nation building and we're going to stop going over abroad and and and fighting futile wars and they've I mean and then he in in power, he's been extolling how great he said we're going to we're going to go everywhere. We've got a dynamic military that has got the gloves off and we're going to destroy anyone that puts a a finger of resistance up to us. And then of course the special forces Delta Force was sent
28:46into Venezuela to kidnap the president.
28:48So, he it's hard to know if he believes anything or he's just gets pushed around by the various forces within Trump administration. I don't know. But, he's an extremely dangerous character who is if he's not a full-blown neo-Nazi, he's definitely close to it. And um I think that like I mean we the seriousness of it is is hard to overstate. The seriousness of it is hard to overstate because as I say, when when you when you've got a military of this power and this global reach, you know, the carrier battle groups, you've got 800 bases around the world, you've got uh bombing all these different places
29:30without any congressional oversight.
29:33How does that end? How does it end? The only good thing for the world is that they're massively incompetent. Like, Hexit is genuinely quite stupid. I wouldn't trust him to make me a sandwich. But, he And so, they they they don't do what they do very well. So, he they sent in the the special forces to get Maduro.
29:52Uh but, the government in Venezuela is still in place. Iran has been a complete disaster, maybe the biggest foreign policy disaster for generations. Um they don't know what they're doing. They just know how to smash things up. And they don't have any uh strate- strategy.
30:08So, that is a a benefit. And I do think it's a sign of the And you I know you've written a lot about this, but it's a it's a sign of the acceleration of the American empire. Because it's in its decadent phase where it's got no uh it's got no strategy, it's got no it's just hubristic and has knows it has power. And its military power just dwarfs everyone else, and they they're going to use it, but they haven't got a strategy for how to use it. They haven't got a strategy for how to win.
30:36Uh and in fact, that's a that's a problem that goes back a a way for the US military.
30:42Uh maybe till 1945. Have they won a war since 1945? I'm not sure. Where and that is a bit different to the British who obviously were the previous superpower.
30:51Uh we were savage uh in many, many places in the world, but we we kind of became experts at counterinsurgency and counter uh uh uh and putting down liberation movements. And we could we could stabilize societies and and and we were kind of had decades uh centuries to kind of uh uh hone those skills. But the Americans don't seem to uh be able to do it. They can't stabilize. They can't uh uh action uh missions. I mean, the other problem for the Americans and Hegseth and Trump is is quite hard to even know what the Iran war what the stated purpose is.
31:31That that it changed every week. One week was about regime change, then it's about oil, or then it's about opening up the Strait of Hormuz. I don't I don't think many people understand what even that was. Maybe the Trump administration doesn't itself. But um but it is it's it's hugely worrying. And again, this evangelical uh Christian sort of uh Armageddon idea is very linked to and taken advantage of by uh Israel because they uh although it it means all rapture would mean Jewish people would would would die uh if they don't convert to Christianity, they they use they use that Christian evangelical base because
32:08the the the massive conflict creation is in their interest and they're they're presenting it uh as uh Iran is this uh uh holy war uh to the Trump administration and and it feeds into all these people. I mean, it came out in the New York Times recently that Netanyahu came to Washington before the Iraq uh sorry, the Iran attack and did a PowerPoint presentation to Trump's uh the Trump uh senior Trump administration officials and basically just said, "We have to do we have to do that and Trump was like, "Okay, let's do it. I'm behind it." So, it is I think it is the link with between evangelical Christians and Zionism
32:49and the kind of Messianic parts of both of those things are are clear.
32:56And Hegseth is he's a just an ardent Zionist.
33:01So, yeah, he's a he's a he's a nightmare. He's a He's He's He's someone who could really blow up the whole world.
33:10>> And yet you see a schism within the MAGA movement. People Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, kind of open admirer of Hitler.
33:21Uh does this is this the spawning of an even more extremist movement within the body politic?
33:32>> I think it is and I think it's happening everywhere.
33:35It's a natural progression though. If you have a corrupting corrupted rotting center which you have in the United States which is Democrats and Republicans, people search for movements and parties outside of that, right?
33:51>> [clears throat] >> And the left seem to be nowhere organizationally.
33:56So, so the right capitalize.
33:59In the in the case of the UK it's Reform. In the case of Trump in the case of America it's Trump.
34:04But they their their policies are not going to solve any of the problems they came to. It's all about It's all about Mexicans or Muslims in the case of Reform in the UK it's all about stopping the small boats that are coming across the channel.
34:20None of those Even if they did all that stuff, it wouldn't change anything because you've got to take on the embedded interests in those countries which is corporations and the 1%. So, when they get into power and nothing gets better even though they've been promised that it's all to do with this and also in the case of the UK it was Brexit, you know, there was a whole thing that it was all about if we can take back control from the EU we'll be fine. None of that happened. So, what do you What do What do people who are who are suffering, who are dislocated, who don't know don't really understand where power lies
34:51cuz they're they're fed all the propaganda from the media? Where do you go at that point? You have to go more extreme. Uh because then you're saying, "Well, they're not doing it the way it should be done."
35:01Um and and here we have someone called Tommy Robinson who's more extreme than Nigel Farage and when Nigel Farage, who's probably going to be the next Prime Minister, comes in and it doesn't get better even though he's stopping immigrant complete immigration, uh making refugees live like uh on the street, whatever it is, he's going to do all these horrible policies, they're going to then go to someone like Tommy Robinson and and in the case of Donald Trump it's the same thing. He has uh completely betrayed his his vote his vote base. Um and next next up is and he's also done uh it is true what the lot of the
35:38criticism about him uh just doing the bidding of Israel is true.
35:43Uh so, that the actual genuine anti-Semitic right can take advantage of the fact that that Donald Trump has done so much of his foreign policy in the Middle East at least is being done at the behest of of Netanyahu and it's it's huge huge worrying. I think it's I mentioned the link the similar culture political culture we have now to the time of Mussolini and Hitler.
36:08I I do think I don't think it is um um over the top to say to to to compare our current epoch with the 1930s. Like we're at the beginning of it and it might not end with concentration camps and uh gas chambers, but mus- it could end up with it could end with a more Mussolini style uh fascism which is not that different to Trump. I mean all the Make America Great is again is is a is phraseology from fascist Italy.
36:41The the the complete rhetorical disregard for free press for the Constitution for Congress. It's all it's all veering one way and as I say it's going to get more extreme and then and then obviously I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but obviously the Reichstag fire happened in 1933 right and that was this is in Nazi Germany and and that was used by Hitler to pass the enabling laws which allowed him basically to dismantle democracy. It does feel like if there is a major attack in the United States that the further there was and we saw this at it with Charlie Kirk and what was and the
37:27rhetoric that came out from Stephen Miller and people who said we're going to actually just destroy the people of darkness he called them.
37:36A big actual terrorist attack on could I think that that everything's in place for him to to to really just completely dismantle American democracy and then there's also the question of what happens at the end of his term like does he leave? I can't like he barely left last well he didn't leave willingly last time but I don't know I think that so many of the norms so many of the assumptions that we believed about America and the protections and the Constitution and the balance of power and checks and balances it's all up in the air and has actually been proven to be air that they didn't plan that they didn't plan that the
38:18founding fathers didn't plan for someone like Trump um as you say and you mentioned in the question in in the question uh we could be getting someone worse or like even more extreme than Trump and that is I'm talking about the sort of extreme neo-Nazi uh type person.
38:38>> I want to ask you about ICE, the creation of ICE.
38:42They draw from these disenfranchised [clears throat] veterans often as well as uh far-right wing groups like the Proud Boys. How do they play into the equation?
38:55>> Well, yeah, as you mentioned they they often have huge uh high percentage of veterans.
39:01Um and it it's uh the same culture. It's ICE are given impunity in the same way, you know, we've seen them murdering people and getting away with it and again it comes from the top. Uh people like Stephen Miller said, "We're not We're not going to do anything about these people." So, that they're signaling to um these institutions and the people within them you can carry out impunity and you can kill people, Americans, uh with impunity. So, it's a similar dynamic uh that has Look, this idea has long reigned in American foreign policy and way back to Korea and and Vietnam. You know, Vietnam, there was that book by Nick
39:42Turse called Kill Kill Everything That Moves and if you read that book, you just understand that My Lai the massacre there was was the rigor. It was happening every every week, maybe not every day, but every week there were massacres of that scale. Um but it hasn't come back that that kind of impunity hasn't on a large scale come back to the policing of of the American population. Obviously, you had people killed at Kent State and places, but it's it's been patchy. Whereas now it seems like there's a there's a there's forces of being uh [snorts] created that have the the martial uh ideology and the same
40:17impunity that can act against Americans, uh which is again a sign another massive alarm bell about fascism. Because if you look at Nazi Germany and Mussolini Mussolini's Italy, so much of we we know about the Holocaust and the attacks on Jews, but so but what we don't understand what we don't remember as well is how those ideologies were predicated on the destruction of the left.
40:48And that is how how they that was the main goal.
40:53Mussolini's violence and his followers violence was directed on left-wing newspapers, unions. They just went in and and beat up people and and shut shut down newspapers. And I think that you're seeing that. You're seeing a politicized police force which is sees its enemy as the left. And you saw that even with the defense of the people that were murdered by ICE.
41:18The right was saying, "Well, look, these are scums, sort of down-and-outs, bleeding hearts. They don't Basically othering them to the point where making it permissible that Americans can be killed for their political ideology if they're on the left, of course. So it's again it has parallels, but yeah, so there's it's it's again incipient fascism. Again, it's linked to Israel as well, because the attacks on free speech and it's if you look at what's happened to there was that footage of that that that green card holder. I think she was a Turkish student or maybe she was on a student visa, but who was manhandled off the street by
42:02undercover ICE officers for writing an article in a student newspaper which was which I then read, which was quite mild in itself. And I I thought this is a massive alarm bell that that I I again I I kind of had a double take and think is did this actually happen? But then it becomes normalized.
42:19And then again that was that was done at at the behest of Israel or >> [snorts] >> the the different organizations that work for Israel and America. They've got lists of people. So if if you can so easily dismantle >> [snorts] >> uh what we what we assume we have as freedoms, then it's not going to be harder to go the next level and say well we don't want to um uh we don't mind if people are killed or we don't mind if there's not a new elections or we don't we don't recognize those elections. I think that we're on a slippery slope. And things have been normalized now that we wouldn't have even believed could be normalized a long
42:52time ago. Um so yeah uh but but but it's part of a whole I think fascistic uh uh administration uh but not all of it uh not all of that base is fascistic, but the the the upper echelons people like Stephen Miller.
43:11Um yeah, they they see this as their uh as their time to to to destroy the left.
43:17And I don't know and then the Democrats who are meant to be this the left or represent the left are nowhere. They're part of the same congealed blob in Washington that uh that represents the establishment. So it's very very it's scary. It's scary.
43:34And again just to mention it's happening in the UK, too.
43:37I was there's a sort of reform other sort of Trumpian uh far-right party to the right of the Conservative Party.
43:45They're now leading all the polls. They just won the election 2 days ago, the local elections, in a huge way. And Nigel Farage is meant to be uh is is odds-on to be the next Prime Minister.
43:57Now one of their candidates for for for mayor in in the UK, he was literally calling for me to be arrested for my reporting on Gaza for um for months and it eventually got into some alternative media and he stopped saying it but he's if if they get into power people like him are going to be in in government and it's what happens to people like me what happens to other journalists who are already being arrested under and and raided under a Labour government so it's a global trend and a global phenomenon which is sees its which is based its heart is in Washington and Trump and Trump has is the lodestar as well as Netanyahu but
44:43Trump is yeah from Bolsonaro to reform here to my Milei it's it's a very very scary thing but so as I say it's it's important to understand I think if we're going to try and combat it and come up strategies we have to understand the base and understanding the base is impossible to do without in the United States particularly without understanding the war on terror and what it did to millions of Americans served in it and where those people are going now and what their concerns are and what the political forces that are taking advantage of their concerns are >> Great thank you Matt and I want to thank
45:22Diego and Max who produced the show you can find me at Chrishedges.substack.com
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