Multipolarity

The bears are coming. As Japan posts the biggest one day stock market losses since Black Monday, we’re asking whether this dip is a passing blip – or the big ka-blam? Meanwhile, Argentina’s reserves include almost two million ounces of gold, valued at $4.5 billion. But lately, there’s a question that’s on everybody’s lips: where is it? The gold seems to have been transferred out of the country. But why, no one can say. Is this some sublime economic master-stroke from the wacky professor Milei? Or just the equivalent of a desperate gambler taking his wife’s gold rings up to the pawn shop? Finally, in a subscriber-only super-section, we’ll be covering the British race riots. The events of the past few days have shaken the British establishment to its core. With no clear narrative, and an increasingly balkanised society, the country’s leaders now seem clueless and visibly scared, as they face down the fruits of eighty years of immigration policy failure.For our Patrons, we’ll be taking the long view - tracing the history of British immigration; then extending into the far future - looking at the demographic realities of the UK from here on out. And, of course, we’ll be hashing through the story of the day. What can an already wobbling Starmer regime do in the face of the tectonic forces being unleashed? Be warned, this one’s a black pill so big it might be a black suppository. But to listen, you’ll need to be signed up to our Patreon. Just go to Patreon.com, search Multipolarity, and pay 5 dollars, pounds or euros a month. You can cancel any time. *** Be excellent to each other, and -Get us on Twitter. https://www.x.com/multipolarpodOn Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity Or on our Substack. https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

8 Aug 202448min

Last weekend, Viktor Orbán travelled to the town of Băile Tușnad, deep in the Transylvanian mountains of Romania, to attend a 'music and ideas' festival. He was on the bill. Amongst the ethnically-Hungarian diaspora who live in the region, Orbán is a regular visitor. In fact, the Tusványos festival was started by Fidesz back when the party was effectively four people. That was in the early-90s. Today, it has swelled to accommodate over 10 000 people. The place is billed as an 'open university', with talks by a range of academics, thinkers and politicians. Traditionally, Orbán gives his own 'series of lectures' , just like many of others speakers. The difference is that Orbán speaks from the main stage, in front of a crowd of a few thousand. In recent years, these speeches have become philosophical key notes to understanding the Hungarian perspective. In previous years, his talks have made world headlines, including the one where he said he regarded Hungary as an 'illiberal democracy' (though this was partly mis-translation). Rarely does a world leader get as philosophical as Orbán does in these talks. He lays out a deep vision of the future as he sees it for the upcoming year, one that connects history, economics, and metaphysics. This year's speech was among the deepest - and the spiciest -ever. Not only did it catch the headlines, with its barbs against Poland, and naming US intelligence as the saboteurs of the Nordstream pipeline, it could even justifiably be called 'historic'. Orbán talked openly of Hungary's coming pivot to China, of the decay of the Western soul, and of the shape of the peace that must come beyond the Russo-Ukraine War. Gladden Pappin is the President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. A prominent academic and leading light in the post-liberal movement, Pappin is perhaps one of the hidden architects of Hungary's dynamic foreign policy. This week, The Lads ask him about the deeper meaning of Orbán's Big Talk. ***Be excellent to each other, and -Get us on Twitter. https://www.x.com/multipolarityOn Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/multipolarity Or on our Substack. https://substack.com/@multipolaritypod

1 Aug 20241h 8min

At 4.32pm on the 18th of August the so-called State Committee on the State of Emergency cut the lines of communication to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbacev's dacha - these included telephone communications and the nuclear command and control system.Eight minutes later Lieutenant General Yuri Plekhanov, Head of the 9th Chief Directorate of the KGB, let the group into the dacha where they demanded that Gorbachev either declare a state of emergency in the Soviet Union or resign.The previous month twelve Soviet public figures, mostly artists but also some politicians and military officials, signed a letter entitled 'A Word to the People' in the anti-perestroika newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya. The letter was drafted by the writer Alexander Prokhanov. "An enormous, unforeseen calamity has taken place," it told readers, "Motherland, our land, a great power, given to us to ward with the nature, glorious ancestors, it is perishing, breaking apart, falling into darkness and nonbeing."On July 10th 2024, the actor, director and film producer George Clooney published an essay in The New York Times entitled 'I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee'. "The one battle [Biden] cannot win is the fight against time," Clooney wrote, "None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."Where Prokhanov's letter was infused with Soviet patriotism, Clooney's was shot through with party loyalty. Prokhanov pleaded with Soviet leaders to save the Soviet Union; Clooney pleaded with Biden to save the Democratic Party. Yet the functional outcome was the same: a coup - of sorts.Less than two weeks later, on the 21st of July, President Biden issued a letter stating that he would not run for president again in 2024. Everyone knew that Biden had written this against his own will. Some accepted that he had simply caved under pressure, others whispered of a backroom deal or even threats.Gorbachev survived his coup attempt, although afterwards he faded into the background as the new President of Russia Boris Yeltsin came to the fore. The coup attempt definitively sped up the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, precisely the opposite of what the plotters had intended.Likewise, the coup against Biden will likely speed up the collapse of the Democratic Party in the United States. The leaders of this party told the American people that Biden was capable of doing his job but now, after the coup, they have tacitly admitted that he is not. This is an obvious breach of trust - and one that voters will be unlikely to forgive.But what does it matter? The collapse of a political party is nothing compared to the collapse of a great power like the Soviet Union. Another political party, perhaps. But just as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was until 1991 the party of the state, so too is the Democratic Party of today.The Democratic Party in 2024 is the skeleton of the American ruling elite. Without it, this elite collapses into a gelatinous heap. Can the American state function without its party? Can the current world system survive if the American state starts to falter? These are questions that will be answered in the following 18 months - they are questions that are now being asked across America and the world in response to this very American coup.*** Be excellent to each other, and -Get us on Twitter. <a...

25 Juli 20241h 8min

You were only supposed to blow his bloody head off...As Donald Trump is saved by God Almighty, we’re indisputably living in the lucky timeline. But while the country might have dodged civil war, American politics has been changed utterly by the events of Saturday. And still not for the better. Meanwhile, Trump’s VP pick is lukewarm on Britain, and positively tepid on Project Ukraine. He’s being sold as a successor. Someone who can bring real intellectual heft to the MAGA project. But isn’t the intellectual wing of a populist party rather like the library in a whorehouse?Finally, Private Equity was once sold as the honest, hard work, real-projects end of the financial services sector. Take a company. Make it better. So why are they suddenly robbing Peter to pay Paul? And what happens when Peter’s cash runs out?

18 Juli 202453min

Viktor Orban has been taking secret flights. Dodging the CIA’s aviation monitoring to jet into Moscow. The Hungarian honcho is now fashioning himself as a shuttle diplomat in the Russo-Ukranian War, just as his country takes the rotating Presidency of the EU Council. What was the goal of this clandestine trip? And did he still get the air miles? Meanwhile, in the French parliamentary elections, Emmanuel Macron’s calculation was effectively like the old puzzle about a man who has to get a fox, a chicken and a bag of grain from one side of a river to another. Today, he’s like a man stood on the far bank of a river watching a fox murder a chicken as it swallows all the grain. Whoops. Finally, in Britain the maths was easy. An epochal nuking for the Tories has brought Labour to power on a one-word slogan of Change. But with the coffers bare, is the change Starmer’s looking for spare? *** Be excellent to each other, and -Get us on Twitter. On Patreon. On Youtube. Or on our Substack.

11 Juli 202455min

In the halls of modern government the info-wizard is king. Media consultants, political strategists, whatever title they assume they always promise the same thing: magic worked through information control; spells cast by incantation.In the first week of March 2022, only a few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a slew of articles came out in Western publications announcing the advent of the anti-Russian infowar.To say that this infowar was launched with much fanfare would be an understatement - within days of the Russo-Ukraine war beginning various Western publications were already suggesting that victory was on the horizon.The effect was eerie, with multiple outlets running the exact same headline. "Ukraine is winning the information war against Russia", proclaimed different writers at CNBC, Slate, and The Financial Times.No doubt this proclamation of victory was itself part of the infowar that the various authors purported to analyse - a self-licking ice cream cone if there ever was one.Yet as time went on it became clear that the anti-Russian infowar was not targeted at the Russian people, much less the Russian military - rather it was targeted at a Western domestic audience.The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once declared that The Gulf War Did Not Take Place - it was merely broadcast as a sort of simulation on television screens across the world. If only Baudrillard had lived to see the anti-Russian infowar launched in early-2022.Partisan politics in the United States had long been drowned in a bathtub of propaganda by the time the anti-Russian infowar came along.As the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal raged in 1998, the American public asked themselves whether the President did or did not have sexual relations with that woman. The question was a factual one: did he or didn't he. Today such a reference to reality seems quaint.The factuality of various political attacks barely matters anymore as everything is treated as being part of some partisan "narrative" or "talking point".And so, when some people raised the possibility that President Joe Biden might be completely incapable of doing his job due to severe cognitive impairment, the factuality of this claim was never really addressed - it was simply dismissed as an obvious partisan attack, a "right-wing talking point".Last week we saw reality climb back in through the window: the President tried to debate his opponent on television and the world saw that America is being led by a man who is clearly not in command of his faculties.In this week's episode of Multipolarity, we are joined by Malcolm Kyeyune to discuss the saturation of the information space with propaganda of various forms.Are these really the savvy tricks that consultants and strategists claim them to be? Or are they a symptom of a political system experiencing deep decline - a system that can no longer deal with reality and finds itself instead retreating into fantasy?*** Be excellent to each other, and -Get us on Twitter. On Patreon. On Youtube. Or on our Substack.

4 Juli 20241h 11min

This week, it’s a double header of audio essays on Europe’s elite power-plays. One From Andrew Collingwood - on the Atlanticists and the Autonomists taking their battle for supremacy into the new EU administration. And another from Philip Pilkington setting out how a new kind of Trussification may be coming for the states within the ECB… Is Le Pen mightier than La Banque? ***It’s premium week, so if you’re not already a subscriber, head over to Patreon where for five pounds, Euros or dollars a month, you can get access to this, and all our previous premium episodes. Cancel any time.

27 Juni 20246min

As Vladimir Putin meets Kim Jong Un, big trade plans are afoot. Much to the chagrin of Western leaders. Seems like we’re about to answer an important question: what happens when the collective set of people you’ve sanctioned gets so large that they can all successfully trade with each other? Which invites yet another question - did no one think of this? Javier Milei decided he would rip the band aid off Argentine inflation. Now, finally, beneath that band aid, we can see… a gaping wound. Inflation is coming down - but in this case, what comes down must go up. We’ll be explaining why The Crazy One’s apparent success in containing the money supply is about to lead to another run on the peso.Finally, last week, the EU was assailed by a wave of populists. It all felt suitably dramatic. A blow against the blob. But have you ever punched a blob before? As the permanent Brussels mandarin class regroups, it's time for the Empire Strikes Back. *** Be excellent to each other, and -Get us on Twitter. On Patreon. On Youtube. Or on our Substack.

20 Juni 202454min