Well the global south is where I source
my hope these days not Europe not the
United States let me be frank on this i
take my hat off to the young people
particularly but not only young people
to young people to Jewish comrades who
went out on the street who demonstrated
for Palestine who were beaten up by
police who were arrested who were
harassed who lost their jobs many people
lost their jobs i have colleagues of
mine in Germany from our party Mar 25
there who lost their jobs i take my
heart hat off to them and I'm very
pleased that there is this push push
back but allow me to be also critical of
our own people myself included allow me
in this context to draw a comparison
between the protesters against the
Vietnam war in the 1960s and the
propestian protesters today in the
United States and in Europe back then in
1968 1969 1970 the antivietnam war
movement held this strong belief that if
Vietnam frees itself from imperialism
from the United States army occupation
that will be connected somehow to their
own project in the United States in
France in Germany in Britain to liberate
their own societies from oppression from
the capitalist yoke to put it in
old-fashioned leftwing terms there was
this hope that the anti-imperialist war
the anti-imperialist campaign goes hand
in hand with their own liberation today
that doesn't happen the great boys and
girls men and women who demonstrate in
the campuses of the United States at the
great risk to themselves as we have seen
especially under Trump have no hope in
their hearts or minds that America will
be liberated the same here in Europe the
good people who demonstrate in Berlin in
Munich I've been in many of those
demonstrations they are doing it for the
Palestinians this is fantastic this is
brilliant but you know what i lament the
fact that they do not connect the fight
to liberate Palestine with a fight to
liberate Munich with a fight to liberate
Brussels with a fight to liberate the
British working class from the yoke of
the people who are actually keeping them
down not leaving them behind but holding
them down and that works both ways the
fact that they don't hope anymore that
we can liberate Europe means that our
capacity to be helpful to the the cause
of Palestinian liberation is
circumscribed and vice versa however
when I see similar movements similar
protesters in South Africa in Namibia in
Malaysia the whole of the of Latin
America supporting the Palestinian cause
you can still see what used to be the
case in the 1960s and early '7s in
Europe and in the United States you can
still see that these young people are
connecting the Palestinian liberation
struggle with their own liberation
struggle and I think that creates the
feedback the positive feedback effect
between the local liberation struggle
and the Palestinian liberation struggle
which is good both for Palestine and for
the global south china is a remarkable
experiment in progress i've been there a
number of times and what I see makes me
very optimistic not fully optimistic but
compared to other places I think that it
is quite fascinating on the one hand you
are completely right you have
unacceptable limits on the on free
speech you have authoritarianism you
have people languishing in prison
because of their beliefs totally
unacceptable stuff but at the same time
if you go into any municipality in
Shanghai in Shenzhen in Wang Zoo in
Beijing you enter the municipality
building which I mean in these huge
cities the building is very large and on
the first floor there are all these
conference rooms and you see there
boisterous debates happening between
citizens citizens assemblies within
citizens assemblies so there is a
absolutely frenetic boisterous local
democracy happening in China which is
unheard of in Europe and they do write
legislation that governs their lives and
their municipal so at the level of the
municipality in the region there is a
lot more democracy in China today than
there is in Europe or in the United
States for the for that matter similarly
in the same sense you have housing which
is increasingly socialized after 20
years of privatization you have a big
tech sector which has been placed on a
leash by a government determined to
minimize the exorbitant powers of the
owners of applications and what I call
cloud capital you have let me give you
an example they did away with private
schooling and now you have a return of a
remarkable public schooling system there
are huge clashes i talk to people in
China and the diversity of opinion is
greater than it is in the United States
or in Europe so if you add to that the
fact that China while very large and
wanting to be influential is not an
imperialist power they have not started
a single war in the last 40 years unlike
the United States unlike the Europeans
and they really don't want to do that
which the Soviet Communist Party used to
want to do which is to determine who's
going to be the president of Afghanistan
and who is you know who's who should
lead Ethiopia the Chinese are really not
interested in being interventionist at
all in that sense their relationship
with the rest of the global south seems
to be very healthy one and a very
openminded one maybe sometimes too
open-minded in the sense that they would
not criticize dictatorial regimes
because they don't want to be at all
interventionist but what I see with
bricks pay and the various attempts to
create a monetary infrastructure that
will give an opportunity to the rest of
the global south to transact without
going through the Federal Reserve
without being under the thumb of the
United States imperialist forces and
institutions this is all a source of
encouragement and I think that the rest
of the global south can and should take
advantage of the facilities that the
Chinese are making available to them
what do you think drives this liberal
blind spot a mixture of stupidity and
nastiness because let's face it as you
said the genocide has been financed and
armed by Biden by the Democrats by the
German government by the French
government by the Italian government by
the European Union the liberal
establishment is primarily responsible
for the genocide of the Palestinians
have been for Yonks now they wax lyrical
about the two-state solution if you push
them about their complicity to the
genocide that is the liberals the
centrists they say "Yeah but we support
the state solution." Well this is simply
something they say in order to cover up
for their complicity in the genocide
because they are arming the man who has
spent his whole life that is Netanyahu
destroying any possibility of a
two-state solution and while arming him
to destroy the possibility of a
two-state solution the liberal centers
in the United States and the European
Union have been proclaiming the
two-state solution and I hope this is
not taken out of context i prefer Trump
because Trump says "Okay now what is the
logic of arming Netanyahu that he's
going to kill every Palestinian there is
or expel them the ones who who have
survived and have haven't died of bullet
wounds or drone attacks or starvation or
thirst so what happens then we have a
big empty land in Gaza okay I'm going to
take it over and I'm going to build my
Trump land there and I am going to
celebrate this with my friend Netanyahu
it is he is far more honest and
logically coherent than all these
supposedly nice sweet centrists who've
been talking about a two-state solution
but have been complicit in the total
annihilation of any chance of a
two-state solution the Americans use
their trade deficit the American ruling
class not the people of America who
suffer just as much as the rest of the
world from this transformation of the
United States into a deficit country the
American trade deficit which Trump talks
about now as something that he needs to
shrink but nevertheless the American
trade deficit by growing it operated
like a huge vacuum cleaner that was
sucking into the United States the net
exports of Germany of Japan of Southeast
Asia and later of China and who was
paying for this deficit well the
capitalists from these countries France
Germany Japan China Korea and so on they
sent their dollars that they were making
from the United States market because of
the US trade trade deficit they were
making they were sending it back to the
United States to finance the American
state the American army American finance
and American real estate so between the
1970s and 2008 that was the model of
American hijgemony that was a
globalization what people refer to as
globalization that's what it was it was
the American ruling class turning itself
into a reeer class using the trade
deficit to keep the rest of the world's
capitalists going while the rest of the
world's capital is sending their loot
back to New York on the back of this
tsunami of money that was going back to
New Europe the Wall Street bankers built
up these humongous derivatives the those
toxic financial products that Warren
Buffett once described as weapons of
mass financial destruction and those
exploded 2008 and the whole thing nearly
died american capitalism and global
capital was saved by two forces or two
institutions if you want china that
upped the ante that increased production
and invested massively to prop up the
global system and by the Federal Reserve
the central banks Bank of America and
all the other European central banks and
central bank of Japan minted $35
trillion in order to save capital but
you know when you combine this huge flow
of money printed money with austerity
for the majority of people in America in
Europe this combination of austerity and
huge quantities of money it operates
like cortisone the cancer patient it
makes you feel the patient feels more
aityy reasonably well but the cancer is
doing its nasty business underneath the
skin and after 15 years of this since
2008 uh with Obama and the Democrats
totally betraying the people that
entrusted them voted them in essentially
that was the reason why Trumpism was
created therefore this stagnating
capitalism after 2008 aided and abetted
by arrive the rise of a new form of
capital in big tech which I call cloud
capital capital that lives in the cloud
the proverbial crowd it's not in the
cloud it's on earth and it's in the
oceans you know optic fiber cables iPads
mobile phones cell towers algorithms AI
bots and all that all this has spelled
the end of what we knew as capitalism
this is what I said in my last book we
have a new system in my estimation I
call it technofudalism a stage after
capitalism it's far worse than
capitalism even and it is a system which
produces political fragmentation it has
fewer capacities to replicate itself
than even capitalism had and therefore
and this was my long-winded answer to
your very succinct question it creates
this sensation that the West is finished
but you know it's like a a wounded
dragon the more wounded it is the more
it trashes around about and the more
dangerous it is for the people living
within the west and primarily the people
of the global south trump has a team
around him he's a frontman so there's
Scott Bessant the Treasury Secretary
similarly to John Connelly who was the
Treasury Secretary of Nixon he's got
Steven Miran behind him he's got a
number of people who know exactly what
they're doing and if you read what
they're saying for them tariffs are just
a tool they're a means to an end they're
not the essence of it uh as far as they
are concerned and I think that Trump
also thinks that way the intention is to
bring them down at some point the
project of the Trump team the purpose
and the intention of the Trump shock
which as I said is an attempt to revive
the Nixon shock of 50 years ago they are
very clear on what they want to do they
want to devalue the dollar while
maintaining the dollar's dominance now
that sounds like a contradiction but it
is not because Nixon did that nixon
devalued the dollar massively in 1971
after the 15th of August 1971 massive
devaluation of the dollar but through
devaluing it he created the
circumstances for the dollar to become
more hegemonic and more dominant as the
world's currency than ever now the Trump
team fearful they worry that the dollar
may lose its hijge and what they want to
do is they want to bring its value down
in relation to its exchange rate visa v
pound the yen the one the euro and so on
they want to bring it down by around 30%
while at the same time forcing those
foreigners who have lots of dollars
whether they are central banks or
privateeers to sell their dollars but
not to buy the one the Chinese currency
not to buy the yen the Japanese currency
not to buy the euro to maintain their
hijgemony so is this plan going to work
I don't know who knows if this was a
conversation we're having 1971 would we
be able to predict whether the Nixon
shock would work no way no one can make
these predictions but to dismiss the
Trump team as a bunch of neanderals
which is what the liberal establishment
is doing both in the United States and
in Europe if you look read the Financial
Times the Wall Street Journal they
dismiss them as a bunch of idiots this
is a major error it's the same error
they made in 1971 against Nixon so if
you ask me will it work I don't think it
will work but we should take very
seriously what their intention is and we
should differentiate between the means
and the ends the tariffs are not the
ends they are the means he's putting
them up Yeah as a bargaining chip in
order to convince different countries to
do different things he doesn't want the
rest of us to do the same thing he wants
each one of us to do a different thing
so when it comes to the Japanese for
instance the Japanese have $1.2 trillion
in savings he wants them to sell them
and he wants them to buy very longdated
low interest rate American debt he wants
them to buy crypto especially Tether or
some stable coin which is linked to the
United States dollar because if they do
that they are selling dollars the dollar
goes down but what they're doing is they
are putting the money into a US dollar
denominated asset which then is covered
by buying you know tether buys
30-year-old 30-year loan dated US
treasuries so they have a plan right who
doesn't have a plan europe the United
Kingdom they are you know politicians
that are running around like decapitated
chickens not knowing what's going on the
only people who have a plan are the
Chinese and some other countries like
South Korea and Vietnam who are far more
in tune what is happening i consider
Trump to be a clear and present danger
for civilization but I am a gasast when
I see liberals in particular liberals
liberal opponents of Trump uh dismiss
him as a buffoon who doesn't know what
what he's doing this is a very dangerous
uh form of complacency ukraine is
ultimate proof of the dictim that it is
very dangerous to be America's enemy but
it is even more dangerous to be
America's friend the Americans uh used
Ukraine in order to keep Europe down in
order to essentially enable Putin to
terrorize rightly or wrongly in the
minds of Europeans the Europeans so much
as to accept military canism and the
shift of scarce national income to
completely useless armaments purchases
and of course to essentially take over
Ukraine you can see now with Trump's
deal with uh Zilinski Ukraine has become
a colony of the United States and it has
lost bits and pieces of it to large one
20% of it to Putin's Russia on the
question of what I call technofidalism
which I think is crucial we have a new
form of capital and this form of capital
it differs from every other form of
capital that we had you see every form
of capital that we developed since time
in memorial has been a produced means of
production something we produced like a
fishing rod in order to produce
something else catching fish you know or
a steam engine you produce it in order
to produce textiles or an industrial
robot you produce it in order to make
cars that's what capital always was a
produced means of production but what
lives inside the screen when I'm talking
to you what is connected to the to the
cloud to the algorithms um the AI bots
and so on these are produced means but
not of production they produce means of
behavioral modification what these
things do is modify our behavior and
anyone who owns this what I call cloud
capital has direct power over us and
that is an exorbitant power a power that
Henry Ford never had Rupert Murdoch
never had no dictator ever had and what
it does it it it replaces markets with
these uh digital fiftodoms or cloud
fiftodoms like Amazon like Uber like
Airbnb which are not markets they look
like markets and they replace profits
with rents because let's face it Jeff
Bezos doesn't care what you purchase as
long as you purchase through Amazon and
he charges 40% for everything you buy on
Amazon he doesn't produce any of that
stuff and that money comes out of the
secular flow of income it is highly
destabilizing for the macroeconomy and
also there are only two great locations
for this cloud capital it is the United
States and China that explains to a very
large extent the new cold war between
the United States and China and finally
climate change it's not climate change
anymore it's climate disaster it's a
climate catastrophe look I don't want to
darken your days or nights whatever time
it is that you're listening or watching
this but I fear that we have missed the
boat as a species that we are probably
past the point of no no return and even
if we're not there yet Trump is uh along
with the liberal establishment remember
Biden subsidizing the fossil fuel
industry as if there was no tomorrow
they are the west in particular is
pushing humanity very fast towards that
point of no return now I despair at the
thought especially for the global south
because you know the powers that be will
find ways of extending the lifespan of
their families for another 100 years or
so they're occupying the higher plains
they have ways of mitigating the results
of climate catastrophe and through their
cloud capital they poison our
conversation so we can't even organize
ourselves in order to end this vandalism
on the planet because that's what
Twitter does that's what Instagram does
these algorithms are primed to extract
more rents from us by making us angry so
that we engage with these apps these
algorithms more and the way that these
apps understand this is essential to
their existence as AI bots the way that
they can maximize the rents the cloud
rents of their owners is by poisoning
our discussion making it possible for us
to have a discussion about a sensible
discussion about the climate emergency
oh you know that all these forces are
working together against the common
interests of humanity now we need to
understand that before we do anything
about even if we are past the point of
no return we should struggle we should
fight we should organize we should stop
them because in the end we'll all die
anyway so we might as well have some fun
confronting the powers that be
confronting cloud capital confronting
the Trumpists confronting the liberal
establishment that created the Trumpists
and of course confronting the Israeli
apartheite state which today is
stigmatizing each and every one of us
with a genocide that they're
implementing in Gaza and in the West
Bank and in East Jerusalem
