Leopard Eats Douglas Murray's Face

surprise surprise.

I spent three hours listening to Douglas Murray’s debate with Dave Smith on Joe Rogan, so you don’t have to.

I sympathize with Murray’s hatred of “punching jelly,” meaning, every time you attack your opponent, he claims:

“Well I’m just like a dude so why are you like getting all serious bro? Just chill out and don’t challenge my baseless claims and speculations — I’m literally just asking questions and you’re killing the vibe right now.”

The most powerful pundit in America (Joe Rogan) claims to be “just a dude who interviews interesting people and doesn’t think about view count.”

Such a claim should be an insult to the intelligence of his audience, but his audience isn’t intelligent enough to be insulted. The guy who is spamming his podcasts with 10 unskippable ads on protein powder and VPN services doesn’t care about view count — give me a break!

If there’s any conspiracy going on here, it’s the one where we pretend that Joe Rogan is “just a guy” and isn’t a billionaire-owned mouthpiece for hire. Rogan’s “I’m just a guy” persona is just as fake as when Mark Zuckerberg was wearing the same t-shirt every day. When you see through the deception, it comes off as a disingenuous (and even creepy) means of disarming the populace’s distrust of the establishment.

When Dave Smith said that Murray sounded “anti-democratic, and kind of elitist,” I could imagine the collective narcissism of the audience being activated, shouting at the screen, “Yeah! Who does this Douglas Murray think he is, acting like he’s smarter than me just because he reads books and stuff?!”

On the other hand, Murray’s neo-conservatism is the very beast which originally provided the fertile ground for Joe Rogan’s “I’m just a guy asking questions” shtick in the first place. It is because of terrible establishment ideologies like neo-conservatism that we have populist reactionaries like Joe Rogan.

In spite of daily claims that I am “pretending to be a leftist,” I am a neo-liberal interventionist in the tradition of Zbigniew Brzezinski.¹ Douglas Murray is a neo-conservative. Today, we will be learning about the difference between those two traditions, not just in terms of their position on gay marriage, but in terms of foreign policy.

neo-conservatism as vicarious ethno-narcissism.

There are many things we could say about neo-cons:

• Israeli ultra-nationalists presenting as American patriots;

• antisemites presenting as philosemites;

• Jews presenting as Judeo-Christians;

• gay men presenting as straight, as in the case of Mr. Murray.²

Douglas Murray has a fetish for Jews, to the point that it makes me uncomfortable. Are you trying to have sex with me, Douglas?

The view of neocons on Jews can be summed up in this masterful work of theological philosophy by Dennis Prager:

No, Hanukkah did not make western civilization possible. Jews didn’t invent classical music, the Parthenon, farming, or monogamy. They weren’t the first group to ban human sacrifice (that was the Egyptians) or the eating of pork (also the Egyptians). They didn’t invent writing, the Olympics, democracy, monarchy, republicanism, rhetoric, science, grammar, logic, math, astronomy, Athenian or Roman legal codes,³ sculpture, painting, or the ability to question received tradition via Socratic philosophical inquiry (quite the opposite, actually).

It is ridiculous and embarrassing when black people claim that “Europeans stole civilization from the Africans!” It would be bizarre and incomprehensible if Asians claimed that “Europeans learned everything from Confucius and Genghis Khan!” But when Jews engage in this kind of ethno-narcissism, it is backed up by millions of vicariously chauvinistic but historically illiterate Christians who believe that western civilization is nothing without Jesus. Aristotle was a pedophile who worshipped wooden idols and sacrificed children to Moloch, or something.

Western civilization predates Judaism by several thousand years — either going back to the domestication of the horse and the invention of the chariot by Yamnaya and Kurgan peoples on the Eurasian steppe, or if you prefer the genealogy of Camille Paglia, it goes back to the Bust of Nefertiti. If we were to force Judaism and western civilization into a heritable phylogeny, then it would be western civilization that invented Judaism, instead of the other way around.⁴

This doesn’t mean that Judaism is irrelevant. Judaism is profoundly impactful, influential, and meaningful. Everyone should learn about Judaism, and develop respect for it. I don’t begrudge anyone for having a greater affinity for Israel than they have for Hamas — it’s an affinity that I share.

But to so single-mindedly obsess over Israel that one is willing to make common cause with Evangelical wackos, Putin-lovers, Ukraine-haters, vaccine denialists, neo-nazi conspiracy theorists, and MAGA Qanon freaks, all for the purpose of “owning the anti-Israel libs” — well, don’t be surprised if the leopard eats your face, Douglas.

Douglas gives me that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach… You know the one:

Douglas tries to make obvious and agreeable points:

• Experts are valuable.

• Most people are stupid, populism is retarded, and the opinions of podcasters are not equal to experts.

• Even when some experts get things wrong in one field (like healthcare policy), that doesn’t mean we should throw all institutional knowledge out the window and base our worldview on viral tweets, in between bong hits.

• Joe Rogan is either knowingly or unknowingly being boosted by malicious actors (Russia, China, Qatar) for nefarious means (undermining unipolar hegemonic globalism).⁵

• Right-wing hatred for Ukraine is a result of algorithmic spiraling and oppositional culture.

• There is a “right-wing rabbit hole” that leads you very quickly from things like vaccine skepticism to the idea that Churchill was the villain of WWII.

But despite the fact that these points should be obvious and agreeable, it is difficult for me to disentangle these truths from the ugliness of Douglas Murray’s ideology.

Murray could not combat Rogan or Smith because he was fighting on their terms — the terms of national-populist conservatism. When that’s your starting point, there can be no victory. You have to leave the plantation.

This is what neocons do. They fetishize the leopard, thinking it will bite all their Muslim enemies, and then get surprised when it eats their face.

Murray is encountering the same shock, regret, and buyer’s remorse that Kristol and Frum encountered when they discovered the fruit of their labor, the Blowback Candidate, Donald Trump. Unlike Kristol and Frum, however, Murray hasn’t yet built up the courage or cash to ditch the conservative grift and join the side of the sensible and the sane. He’s still going on about pronouns.

Going Back in History, a bit.

In 2003, David Frum wrote an article in National Review called Unpatriotic Conservatives. It is an extremely interesting article, from a historical perspective. But this isn’t because Frum is a good writer: the tone of the article is pathetically moralistic, arrogant, and whiny, like an over-confident schoolmarm. It’s a slog to get through.

It would be annoying if it was a lecture coming from a 3rd grade teacher. But the tone becomes insufferable when you know how many needless deaths were caused by Frum’s self-righteous lies.

Frum’s tactic is to nag and shame others into feeling bad for not towing the party line. But 22 years later, we know how the story ended. Frum was not a policy genius leading us into a bright new future of America unipolarity. He was leading America into one of the worst military disasters of all time — one in which we wasted trillions of dollars and granted Iran a new ally in the region.

Before Iraq, Syria wasn’t an ally of Iran. It was the Iraq War which drove Assad into the arms of Iran. Through Syria, Iran gained greater access to Hezbollah. This led to:

• 2003: The Iraq War (100k dead)

• 2006: The 2006 Lebanon War

• 2011: The Syrian Civil War (600k dead, 6 million refugees)

• 2014: The War Against ISIS (3.3 million displaced)

• The 2019 Economic Collapse of Lebanon, exacerbated by Trump’s Sanctions

• The 2024 Invasion of Lebanon (1.4 million refugees)

• October 7th, since the attack could have possibly been prevented if Israel’s attention were not focused on its border with Hezbollah.

When you look back on the madness of the whole thing, we might as well have just left Saddam and the Taliban alone, and just invaded Iran. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? To surround Iran with military bases as a launch-pad for a third invasion?

The paleo-cons that Frum describes are as follows:

You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn [Lew] Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos…

Kevin MacDonald of the California State University at Long Beach, does not quite belong to the paleoconservative club, although he does publish in The Occidental Quarterly. Yet MacDonald’s name and ideas do keep turning up in paleo conversation. On March 17, 2003, for example, VDare.com prominently posted on its homepage an anonymous letter celebrating MacDonald’s work…

Perhaps the most relentlessly solipsistic of the disgruntled paleos is Paul Gottfried…

In 2003, none of these people had any political pull whatsoever within the GOP. They were fringe. They weren’t going to be influencing George Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, or Ted Cruz. The only reason why men like Lew Rockwell, Pat Buchanan, Taki, Brimelow (of VDARE), Gottfried and MacDonald ever got their day in the sun as the grandfathers of the alt-right during the 2015 campaign of Donald Trump is because people like David Frum created such a disaster with the Iraq War and said that anyone who criticized the disaster was antisemitic, thus making them all into Cassandras and heroes. Without the neocons, there is no alt-right.

This, my friends, is how you create antisemites. You commit terrible atrocities, justified by cartoonish lies, and claim that to oppose atrocities is antisemitic. Eventually, a certain percentage of enraged dissidents say, “you can’t fire me, I quit,” and become antisemitic.

The way to avoid this is:

1. Stop committing atrocities justified by cartoonish lies;

2. If you insist on committing atrocities justified by cartoonish lies, don’t use the term “antisemitic” as the go-to insult for your opponents. Certainly do not dig up obscure antisemites from out of the gutter and make them famous by scapegoating them as scarecrows and threatening anyone who opposes you with guilt by association with these previously unknown antisemites.⁶

In 2003, Frum was technically correct to critique paleo-conservatism. Paleo-conservatism is, in fact, isolationist and antisemitic. No, we shouldn’t ban sodomy, deny the Holocaust, send the blacks back to Africa, or make Catholicism the state religion. But the fact that Frum so publicly critiqued paleo-conservatism, at a time when it was totally irrelevant, was the best gift he could have ever given it. By critiquing the paleo-conservatives for their opposition to an atrocity, he made them into martyrs for their only correct opinion — that the Iraq War was bad.

The correct position in 2003 was to oppose both paleo-conservatism as well as neo-conservatism. That is, to consistently oppose atrocities, both foreign and domestic.

I say this as an interventionist and a liberal imperialist. In the wise words of Brzezinski:

[2005]:⁷ the Iraq operation has gravely undermined American global credibility. It has even more seriously compromised us morally… [Bush] misled the American people by demagoguery. At the worst, he lied.”⁸

Brzezinski compared the Republican Party in 2003 to Bolsheviks, who were “utterly determined, ruthless, riding the edge and taking huge risks.” In other words, evil retards.

Unlike many cowards in the Democratic Party, who went along with the neo-con party line, Brzezinski opposed the Iraq War from the very start.

But Frum wouldn’t address Brzezinski.⁹

He was only interested in taking pot shots at no-name antisemites, making them famous, and setting the stage for the alt-right.

what could have been.

Libertarian isolationists blame Brzezinski for “blowback,” because apparently, his support for al-Qaeda led to 9/11.

First of all, that’s completely false. Brzezinski supported the Taliban, and the Taliban didn’t do 9/11. Secondly, Brzezinski supported a peace process in Palestine,¹⁰ and it was the conflict in the Holy Land (not Afghanistan) which motivated Osama bin Laden.¹¹

According to Brzezinski, the Iraq War undermined the two-state solution, because it destroyed the reputation of America in the eyes of the Arabs and the American ability to act as a neutral negotiator. Much to the joy of David Frum!

Dave Smith is correct to point out that Likud has a sick symbiotic relationship with Hamas and antisemites — they feed off hatred to prevent reconciliation. That’s how you keep the flame of nationalism alive: with the charred corpses of Jewish and Palestinian children.

If Brzezinski was in charge, we would have made a better attempt at a two-state solution. The Iraq War either wouldn’t have happened, or would have been over much more quickly as there would have been no attempt at democratic nation building. The likelihood of Donald Trump becoming president would be significantly diminished, since there would be no Bush, and therefore no Obama — both of whom were crucial for the rise of Trump. The China-Russia alliance would have been identified as a potential threat early on.¹² NATO would be stronger. There wouldn’t be any tariffs between Europe and America. We wouldn’t be violently torturing Germans at the border.

Brzezinski understood that America’s influence would wane over time. But he was still an interventionist who believed that America’s influence should be prolonged. If you have a good thing, cherish it and protect it, even if you know it won’t last forever. Bush and the neocons squandered it.¹³

conclusion.

Douglas Murray isn’t as smart as his British accent makes him sound. He is extremely good at quoting books by obscure Czech historians, and he would win any high school debate club competition easily. Ironically, while he praises experts (who I agree are better than Joe Rogan), he is not an expert in foreign policy, despite that being the focus of his life. Maybe he should take his own advice, shut up, and and read Brzezinski.

Being hired by tabloid magazines run by right-wing billionaires to jet-set around the world and ogle at various fringe imperial conflicts up close and personal is apparently not a cure for narcissistic, stubborn, shallowness.

If I had to compare and contrast my two least favorite gay conservatives,¹⁴ I can at least praise Dave Rubin for never having supported the Iraq War. Anyone who did so needs to sit shiva and deeply reexamine their preconceived notions.

I am not a paleocon because isolationism is a toxic ideology based on a perverted fantasy of a country that never existed. America was never an “anglo-catholic” nation or an ethno-state. It never adhered to Dave Smith’s libertarian “respect for the universal right of ethnic self-determination; live and let live.” It was an imperial frontier which continuously expanded at the genocidal expense of native Americans until the establishment of the state of California in 1850. It already set its sights on controlling South America as early as 1823 with the declaration of the Monroe Doctrine. It tolerated the race-based slavery of blacks until 1865.

After 1866, its capitalist class invited in millions more Catholics and Jews in preparation for global expansion, which began with the Spanish-American War of 1898. Catholics and Jews (not WASPs) formed a plurality of Al Smith’s 1928 campaign and FDR’s governing coalition in 1932.

FDR began the process of dismantling racial limits on immigration and segregation in 1943, and Eisenhower demanded the end of race-based nationalism in 1954. The supremacy of the WASP elite was formally abolished with the 1960 election of JFK, and the doors were slammed shut on racial exclusion with the Civil Rights Act and Hart-Cellar Act of 1965.

There is no point in history where the American elite could be characterized as “traditional” or “quaint” like some tribal aristocracy of Tibet or the aldermen of a village in Finland. To the extent that there has ever been anything “backward looking” or isolating about the American experience, it has only emerged after 1980 in the hollowed-out post-industrial wasteland of anachronistic coal mines, where the least mobile and least capable left-behind mole-people commiserate about “the old days.”

America isn’t about reconstructing the 7th century Orthodox liturgy in purified Anglish and living in a Hobbit hole. America is about exporting the Minecraft movie to 193 countries and genetically engineering dire wolves.

This is the face of a real American: “We should not fear 'editing' embryos to enhance human intelligence, says leading geneticist George Church”

I’ve been very critical of Elon Musk ever since he became a Republican, but these are my two favorite things he’s ever said:

And this:

“Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.”

Unfortunately, in the 2024 election, Elon helped elect the guy who wants to cut off America from Europe, politically, militarily, and economically. I hope that these tariffs are a wake up call for Elon and he begins to seek out new allies in the Democratic Party who share a more progressive neo-liberal vision of humanity’s future, but I’m not counting on it.

When you go “all in” on a colossal mistake, it’s hard to admit you were wrong and change course. Sunk cost, and all that. I’m sure Douglas Murray feels the same way. I will try to have some empathy for those who change their minds, because it’s not easy. Let’s learn from their mistakes and keep pushing for a world that is more open and free.

1. What irks me is the claim that I am “pretending.” You can disagree with me that Jimmy Carter was a leftist, or that Brzezinski was a leftist; you can call them right-wing and try to justify that view on the grounds of substance. That’s a semantic or ideological disagreement, which is fine and civil. You can call Trump left-wing if you want — I won’t be offended, even if I think your definition is irrelevant and silly. You can call me irrelevant and silly — compared to Douglas Murray, I am both! But to claim that I am lying about my views is really quite uncouth, and hurts on a deep personal level, because the only thing I have besides this $200 computer from Best Buy is my pride, which comes from my pathological attempt to be intellectual honesty. Without that, I have nothing. If I wanted to lie about my ideology, I would just become a national populist conspiracy theorist and rake in Rogan bucks, because that’s what the algorithm rewards.

2. Douglas is an “openly gay conservative,” which is disrespectful to both gays and conservatives. I don’t respect non-flamboyant gay men. If you got it, flaunt it. Otherwise, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, sista.

3. The Hebrew Bible doesn’t actually provide a legal framework. Within Judaism, the framework of law is provided by the Talmud, which was developed in parallel with Christianity. Laws are not in themselves a legal framework. This is probably too complicated to explain in a footnote, but basically, giving someone 10 commandments (or even 613 mitzvot) is not the same as procedurally explaining how courts work as a process. Athens and Rome had courts with bylaws and senatorial procedures which formed the basis of Catholic canon. The papacy was based on the curia, not the Sanhedrin. Christians who denounce the Talmud and believe you “only need the Bible” are mentally deranged.

4. It would be most reasonable to simply say that Judaism and western civilization are like two overlapping cultures which interact with each other over time. I am simply illustrating the intellectual bankruptcy of the neocon claim that “western civilization was founded by Judaism.”

5. I call this coalition the “neo-isolationist movement.” It shares many parallels with the historical populism of Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh, both of whom hated Anglo-Saxons for different reasons. Coughlin was a Catholic socialist, while Lindbergh was a Germanophile who believed Germany should have won WWI.

6. The SPLC has a similar tactic of making unknown racists and antisemites more popular by publishing “hit pieces” on them. It is a fundraising tactic to scare and shake down old Jewish retirees, to get them to cut them a check in their Will. But it doesn’t help to “deradicalize” anyone.

7. Against the Neocons, interview with Brzezinski, by Michael Tomasky. February 21, 2005.

8. Brzezinski is a clear and forthright solution to the many lies told by neocons (it’s a good war!) and paleo-cons (it’s the Jews!). Chomsky would have you believe that it was a war for oil.

9. If you can find any article by Frum directly addressing Brzezinski and his arguments, you get a comped subscription on me. The man would only address lunatics; he avoided debating statesmen.

10. Read more here: (2002).

11. Brzezinski, unlike the alt-right, was not antisemitic.

12. My big disagreement is his reluctance in 2014 to bring Ukraine into NATO, although he did support arming Ukraine, and he was quite elderly at the time, 86, and died 3 years later.

13. Here’s another interview from 2002 which explains why nothing new is happening under the sun.

14. Milo was always entertaining. Does Caitlyn Jenner count as gay (lesbian)? Peter Thiel?