Last Friday’s stream was a lively one. Robert Wright, author, journalist, and proprietor of Nonzero News, joined me, along with University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer. I wanted to get some informed voices on the show to discuss the embattled status of the so-called rules-based international order, and Bob and John are some of the sharpest independent voices I know of.
These livestreams will now be available only to full subscribers, both as they happen and later in video and podcast form. We’ll release shorter segments to the public later, but if you want the whole shebang, become a full subscriber today. The Glenn Show is almost entirely audience supported. We need your help in order to keep delivering the show week after week, along with all the other content we post here. So to those of you who are already full supporters: thank you for all you do. And if you’re not yet a supporter, please consider becoming one.
I start off the stream talking to my writer and editor Mark Sussman about my new column in UnHerd, which focuses on Elon Musk’s recent social media warnings against impending race war in the US and his advocacy for white solidarity. I see Musk’s alarming X posts as the prime example of a move toward identity politics on the political right and a deeply misguided importation of South African postcolonial thinking into the American context. Here’s a brief excerpt from the piece:
As I see it, the imagery Musk deploys draws on two sources: conspiratorial narratives about demographic “replacement”, and his own reading of civilisational failures in post-apartheid South Africa. In one widely circulated episode, Musk endorsed a post claiming that if white men were to become a demographic minority, they would face slaughter, and that only white solidarity could ensure survival. The meaning was unmistakable. This was not a critique of identity politics; it was a remarkably disquieting embrace of it.
Not long ago, open calls for white solidarity from a figure of Musk’s stature would have been politically radioactive. Today, they are met with a mix of alarm, rationalisation, and — in some quarters — approval. That shift itself is the real story. Musk did not invent white identity politics. But he legitimises them. His importance lies less in the sincerity of his beliefs than in his role as a permission-granting figure. When ideas migrate from fringe spaces into elite discourse, they change character. Errors that might remain contained at the margins become dangerous when voiced by powerful actors. Such is the case here.
Read the rest here.
Bob Wright enters the conversation to discuss Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s repudiation of the international rules-based order, and Trump’s global strategy. Carney called out an obvious but seldom officially acknowledged truth: powerful nations follow, flout, or enforce UN conventions as it suits their interests. But as Bob points out, Carney is himself guilty of the very hypocrisy that he critiques, insofar as he’s implicitly defended Israel’s recent bombing of Iran, which violated the UN charter.
Now, Bob is an advocate for international law, while John Mearsheimer has a more ambivalent attitude toward the role of international institutions, rules, and law. Even so, he aligns himself with Bob in arguing that Trump’s indifference toward seemingly any form of international governance and norms is not a good thing.
It’s been especially bad for Palestinians in Gaza. The three of us spend time discussing how growing international and domestic rebukes of Israel’s handling of the war are being met with attempts to crack down on critical speech and opinion. It seems to me that heavy-handed attempts to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel risks creating a backlash that could empower truly antisemitic interests. We need to keep valid critiques of Israel’s policies distinct from insidious questions about the legitimacy of the Jewish people, despite the insistence by both some ardent Zionists and some virulent antisemites that they are one and the same.
After Bob departs, I ask John to weigh in on Trump’s moves in Greenland and Venezuela. In the latter case, John says it’s old-fashioned imperialism, a throwback to a prior era of international relations. There was once an argument that, despite his bombast, Trump was a dove at heart. That’s now been thoroughly discredited. If his strategy in Venezuela is successful, I do wonder if we’ll witness the beginning of an era where the US openly embraces its imperial tendencies rather than downplaying them.
