Tag: interview

Wallowing in Pseudo-Madness

The Wasp Factory vs One Bright Star to Guide Them

Phil Sandifer debated Vox Day about two very different works of fiction by two very different authors on June 11, 2015. Since the interview is no longer available the now-defunct original site, I’ve posted the archived version here.

Below is a transcript of my interview with Vox Day, which you can listen to over at Pex Lives. I’ve lightly edited it to remove infelicities of language on both Day’s part and my own. I’ve also added a couple of footnotes clarifying aspects of the discussion. I am sure that Day would offer several clarifications of his own. Thanks again to Kevin and James for hosting this, and to Max Braden for preparing the transcript.

Phil Sandifer: Hi, I’m Phil Sandifer and I’ve got with me today the man at the center of the whole Hugo Awards controversy, Vox Day. Hello, Vox.

Vox Day: Hey, Phil. How are you?

Sandifer: I’m doing all right. So, the idea behind this interview is that Vox and I mutually agreed upon two works, one that he thinks is a great story and that I think is terrible, and one vice versa. The first is going to be John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them, which is one of Vox’s Rabid Puppies, it’s up for a best novella Hugo this year, and the other is going to be the late great Iain Banks’s 1984 debut novel The Wasp Factory. We’re going to start with One Bright Star to Guide Them, by John C. Wright, who you’ve called a contender for the greatest living science fiction writer. The book’s promotional text describes it like so:

As children, long ago, Tommy Robertson and his three friends, Penny, Sally, and Richard, passed through a secret gate in a ruined garden and found themselves in an elfin land, where they aided a brave prince against the evil forces of the Winter King. Decades later, successful, stout, and settled in his ways, Tommy is long parted from his childhood friends, and their magical adventures are but a half-buried memory.

But on the very eve of his promotion to London, a silver key and a coal-black cat appear from the past, and Tommy finds himself summoned to serve as England’s champion against the invincible Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. The terror and wonder of Faerie has broken into the Green and Pleasant Land, and he alone has been given the eyes to see it, to gather his companions and their relics is his quest. But age and time have changed them too. Like Tommy, they are more worldly-wise, and more fearful. And evil things from childhood stories grow older and darker and more frightening with the passing of the years.

One Bright Star to Guide Them begins where other fairy tales end. Brilliant and bittersweet, the novella hearkens back to the greatest and best-loved classics of childhood fantasy. John C. Wright’s beautiful fairy tale is not a subversion of these classics, but a loving and nostalgic homage to them, and reminds the reader that although Ever After may not always be happy, the road of life goes ever on and evil must be defeated anew by each and every generation.”

Now, this is obviously the one of the two books that I think is awful, but I do want to say before we start, I really do love the premise. I really love the idea of going back to a sort of Narnia-esque children’s fiction world from the perspective of adulthood. There’s obviously a lot of stories in the “return to a children’s story in adulthood” style – I should point out for listeners who are coming to this through my work that the first two chapters are actually almost beat for beat the first two stories of Alan Moore’s Marvelman in terms of the plot – but I really can’t think of one in this sub-genre that’s played with Narnia in particular. There’s a very short story by Neil Gaiman called “The Problem of Susan,” but that’s about it. So I do want to admit up front, I do love the premise if nothing else. But you obviously love a lot more than just the premise here, so my first question is simple, Vox: why is this story great?

Day: Well, before I explain why I think it’s a great story, I think that it’s probably important for the purpose of full disclosure to point out that, number one, I was the editor who was responsible for publishing this story, and also I wrote that particular description that you just read.

Sandifer: Okay.

Day: So, it’s fair to point out that I am absolutely, utterly and completely biased in this regard, less because I have a pecuniary interest in the novella selling well – anyone who knows anything about publishing realizes that novellas are not the way that you make a lot of money in the publishing business – but I am very, very biased towards John Wright in particular as a writer, and One Bright Star to Guide Them is one of my three favorite things that he’s ever written. So I think very highly of him as a writer; the other writers that I think very highly of in the science fiction field are China Miéville and, until his most recent novel, Neal Stephenson.[1]

Now, what is particularly great about Wright, and something that a lot of people don’t necessarily realize, is that he’s not a writer who puts a lot of what I would call “craft” into it, by which I mean we’re not dealing with works that are written and re-written and re-written and re-written, for the most part. Now, in this particular case, he did write it as a short story, and then turned it into a novella later, but in general, what you see is what you get. It’s actually somewhat depressing to edit the man, because the stuff that he turns in just having dashed it off is much better than most of the stuff you see from other people.

Now, in the case of One Bright Star, like you said, the premise is fantastic. The idea that you’re beginning with these children who have been through this wonderful, incredible, fantastic experience, and then suddenly visiting, catching up with them thirty-some years later, is original in itself.

Sandifer: Right, I mean, there is, as I said, a large sub-genre of this. It’s hardly the only story, I think even from last year – I know a lot of people have compared it to Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which came out around the same time. [2]

Day: Sure, but there’s… You know, I’ve read The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it’s good, but what’s different about One Bright Star to Guide Them is that it is much more clearly written as an homage, not just to Narnia, but there’s actually elements of a great deal of other children’s fantasies that are much beloved.

Sandifer: Right, there’s a line that very closely hues to Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising that I noticed, for instance.

Day: Right. There’s also a fair amount of The Chronicles of Prydain. A lot of the fictional events that are referred to are much more out of Prydain than out of either The Dark is Rising or Narnia. And then there’s also a couple other ones, references to less well-known works. There’s certainly a call-out to George McDonald in there, the original fantasy writer, and so there’s a fair amount of depth there for those of us who were into that type of literature.

Sandifer: I think one of the reasons, though, people go for Narnia in particular – because, I mean, if you look at the reviews on Amazon, Narnia does seem to be the one that everyone goes to first when talking about the sort of influences on this, and I’m going to hazard a guess, no small part of that is because both Narnia and this are pretty explicitly Christian allegories. Do you think that’s a fair statement to say about this book?

Day: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that that’s both part of why One Bright Star to Guide Them generates such powerful reactions in people who love it and in the much smaller number of people who dislike it, because I think in many cases, people’s reactions are being colored by their own personal feelings about Christianity, both for better and for worse.

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Continue reading “Wallowing in Pseudo-Madness”

The Inversion of Democracy

It is very, very important to read this interview of Mike Benz by Tucker Carlson in its entirety. It makes it very clear why countries like France and Germany are passing insane laws to attempt to control their citizenries and how the entire techno-fascist infrastructure was rapidly transformed from a revolutionary tool being utilized to expand the neo-liberal world order – or, as they like to call it, “democracy” – to a reactionary tool being used to prevent the neo-liberal world order from collapsing.

Read the whole thing at Robert Malone’s Substack. Absolutely read the whole thing.

Google began as a DARPA grant by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were Stanford PhDs, and they got their funding as part of a joint CIA NSA program to chart how “birds of a feather flock together online” through search engine aggregation. And then one year later they launched Google and then became a military contractor. Quickly thereafter, they got Google Maps by purchasing a CIA satellite software essentially, and the ability to use free speech on the internet as a way to circumvent state control over media over in places like Central Asia and all around the world, was seen as a way to be able to do what used to be done out of CIA station houses or out of embassies or consulates in a way that was totally turbocharged. And all of the internet free speech technology was initially created by our national security state – VPNs, virtual private networks to hide your IP address, tour the dark web, to be able to buy and sell goods anonymously, end-to-end encrypted chats.

All of these things were created initially as DARPA projects or as joint CIA NSA projects to be able to help intelligence backed groups, to overthrow governments that were causing a problem to the Clinton administration or the Bush administration or the Obama administration. And this plan worked magically from about 1991 until about 2014 when there began to be an about face on internet freedom and its utility.

Now, the high watermark of the sort of internet free speech moment was the Arab Spring in 2011, 2012 when you had this one by one – all of the adversary governments of the Obama Administration: Egypt, Tunisia, all began to be toppled in Facebook revolutions and Twitter revolutions. And you had the State Department working very closely with the social media companies to be able to keep social media online during those periods. There was a famous phone call from Google’s Jared Cohen to Twitter to not do their scheduled maintenance so that the preferred opposition group in Iran would be able to use Twitter to win that election.

So free speech was an instrument of statecraft from the national security state to begin with. All of that architecture, all the NGOs, the relationships between the tech companies and the national security state had been long established for freedom. In 2014, after the coup in Ukraine, there was an unexpected counter coup where Crimea and the Donbas broke away and they broke away with essentially a military backstop that NATO was highly unprepared for at the time. They had one last Hail Mary chance, which was the Crimea annexation vote in 2014. And when the hearts and minds of the people of Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation, that was the last straw for the concept of free speech on the internet in the eyes of NATO – as they saw it. The fundamental nature of war changed at that moment. And NATO at that point declared something that they first called the Gerasimov Doctrine, which was named after this Russian military, a general who they claimed made a speech that the fundamental nature of war has changed.

The Gerasimov Doctrine is the idea that you don’t need to win military skirmishes to take over central and eastern Europe. All you need to do is control the media and the social media ecosystem because that’s what controls elections. And if you simply get the right administration into power, they control the military. So it’s infinitely cheaper than conducting a military war to simply conduct an organized political influence operation over social media and legacy media. An industry had been created that spanned the Pentagon, the British Ministry of Defense and Brussels into a organized political warfare outfit, essentially infrastructure that was created initially stationed in Germany and in Central and eastern Europe to create psychological buffer zones, basically to create the ability to have the military work with the social media companies to censor Russian propaganda and then to censor domestic, right-wing populist groups in Europe who were rising in political power at the time because of the migrant crisis.

So you had the systematic targeting by our state department, by our intelligence community, by the Pentagon of groups like Germany’s AFD, the alternative for Deutsche Land there and for groups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Now, when Brexit happened in 2016, that was this crisis moment where suddenly they didn’t have to worry just about central and eastern Europe anymore. It was coming westward, this idea of Russian control over hearts and minds. And so Brexit was June, 2016. The very next month at the Warsaw Conference, NATO formally amended its charter to expressly commit to hybrid warfare as this new NATO capacity. So they went from basically 70 years of tanks to this explicit capacity building for censoring tweets if they were deemed to be Russian proxies. And again, it’s not just Russian propaganda this, these were now Brexit groups or groups like Mateo Salvini in Italy or in Greece or in Germany or in Spain with the Vox Party.

And now at the time NATO was publishing white papers saying that the biggest threat NATO faces is not actually a military invasion from Russia. It’s losing domestic elections across Europe to all these right-wing populace groups who, because they were mostly working class movements, were campaigning on cheap Russian energy at a time when the US was pressuring this energy diversification policy. And so they made the argument after Brexit, now the entire rules-based international order would collapse unless the military took control over media because Brexit would give rise to Frexit in France with marine Lapin just Brexit in Spain with a Vox party to Italy exit in Italy, to Grexit in Germany, to Grexit in Greece, the EU would come apart, so NATO would be killed without a single bullet being fired. And then not only that, now that NATO’s gone, now there’s no enforcement arm for the International Monetary fund, the IMF or the World Bank. So now the financial stakeholders who depend on the battering ram of the national security state would basically be helpless against governments around the world. So from their perspective, if the military did not begin to censor the internet, all of the democratic institutions and infrastructure that gave rise to the modern world after World War II would collapse.

This is why Owen and Stefan were deplatformed. This is why, after nearly twenty years of no one caring, this blog was suddenly kicked off Blogger without even any pretense at a cause. Clown World knows it is collapsing, and now it is actively destroying democracy (the will of the people) in order to save “democracy” (the neo-liberal word order). The Covid lockdowns were always useless – however much we introverts enjoyed them – except in that they bought Clown World more time to try to strengthen its infrastructure and institutions against their inevitable collapse.

This isn’t the end of democracy. It’s the inversion of democracy. Putin knows this. Tucker Carlson knows this. Xi Xinping knows this.

And now all of us do too.

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Why Tucker Went to Moscow

Russia Today suggests a logical explanation for the belated interview:

A few years ago, Russia was accused of interfering in American political processes. Now the opposite has happened. US domestic politics is dragging the Russian factor – represented by President Vladimir Putin – into its own electoral process.

Journalist Tucker Carlson is a strongly ideological man who represents a certain political camp. He brought to Moscow a profound spirit of internal American confrontation.

Carlson was probably personally curious to hear a lot of previously unknown things about our circumstances, but the goal wasn’t to learn or broaden horizons. The Putin interview was a challenge to the establishment in his home country.

The aim was to break through the conventional narrative – supported by the mainstream media – so that an alternative can fill the breach.

Tucker wasn’t finally permitted to go and do the interview with the President of Russia. He was sent by one of the saner factions of Clown World to try to extricate its empire from the suicidal path on which it has been set by the lunatic neocon faction.

The question is whether this saner faction, which still wants to preserve Clown World and its evil clown empire, is merely trying to avoid simultaneous war with Russia and China or if it still playing Cold War games and trying to make nice with Russia while gearing up for direct conflict with China.

We should able to determine that if Tucker follows up his interview with Putin by one with Xi or not.

All that being said, I very much doubt the “divide and conquer” strategy on which the clowns have relied for centuries will work. Both the Russian and Chinese presidents are not only very smart, but very well aware of the strategy and its consequences for their nations.

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Tucker-Putin Interview: Complete Transcript

This is an autotranslation of the Russian transcript provided by the Kremlin.

INTERVIEW TO TUCKER CARLSON
Vladimir Putin answered questions from Tucker Carlson – journalist, founder of the Tucker Carlson Network video platform.

TUCKER CARLSON: Mr. President, thank you very much.

On February 24th, 2022, you turned to your country and nation when the conflict in Ukraine began. You said you were acting because you came to the conclusion that with the help of NATO, the United States can start a sudden attack, attack on your country. For Americans are like paranoia. Why do you think America could deliver an unexpected blow in Russia? How did you come to this conclusion?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: It’s not that America was about to deliver an unexpected blow in Russia, I never said. Do we have talk shows or do we have a serious conversation?

TUCKER CARLSON: This is a beautiful quote. Thanks. We have a serious conversation.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: You have a historical basic education, how I understand, huh?

TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Then I will let – just 30 seconds or one minute – give a little historical help. Do you mind?

TUCKER CARLSON: Please of course.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: See where our relations with Ukraine began, from where did she take it, Ukraine?

The Russian state began to gather as centralized, it is considered a year the creation of the Russian state – 862, when Novgorodians – there is such a city of Novgorod in the north-west of the country – invited Prince Rurik from Scandinavia to the prince, from the Varangians. 862 year old. In 1862 Russia celebrated its 1000th anniversary statehood, and in Novgorod there is a monument dedicated 1000th anniversary of the country.

In 882, the successor of Rurik, Prince Oleg, who performed, in fact, the functions of the regent in the young son Rurika, and Rurik died by this time, came to Kiev. He removed two brothers from power, who, apparently, were once members of the Ryurik squad, and thus Russia began to develop with two centers: in Kiev and in Novgorod.

Next, a very significant date in the history of Russia, – 988. This is the Baptism of Russia when Prince Vladimir, this is the great-grandson of Rurik, baptized Russia and received Orthodoxy – Eastern Christianity. Since that time the beginning the centralized Russian state is being strengthened. Why? Common territory, single economic relations, one language and after the baptism of Russia – one faith and power prince. Central Russian begins to take shape state.

But for various reasons after the introduction succession – also in ancient times, Middle Ages – Yaroslav the Wise, a little later, after he passed away, the succession was difficult, not transmitted directly from father to elder son, and from the prince who passed away, his brother, then sons on different lines. All this led to the fragmentation of Russia – of a single state, which began to take shape as one. Nothing this is not special, the same thing happened in Europe. But the fragmented Russian state has become easy prey to that the empire that Genghis Khan once created. His successors, Khan Batiy, came to Russia, plundered almost all cities ruined them. South the part where Kiev was, by the way, some other cities, they simply lost their independence, and the northern cities retained part of their sovereignty.They paid tribute to Horde, but part of sovereignty saved. And then with the center in Moscow, the beginning a single Russian state is taking shape.

South part of the Russian lands, including Kiev, began gradually reach for another « magnet » – to the center that was developing in Europe. It was the Grand Lithuanian Principality. He was even called Lithuanian-Russian, because the Russians made up significant part of this state. They spoke ancient Russian, were Orthodox. But then the union of – the union of the Great princes of the Lithuanian and Polish kingdom. After for several years another union was signed already in the spiritual realm, and part Orthodox priests obeyed power Pope. So these lands were part of the Polish-Lithuanian state.

But the Poles for decades engaged in the impoverishment of this part of the population: they introduced their language there, began to introduce the idea that these are not entirely Russian, that, since they live near the edge, they are Ukrainians. Initially, the word « Ukrainian » meant that man lives on the outskirts of the state, « near the edge », or is engaged in border service, in fact. It didn’t mean some special ethnic group.

So here the Poles polished in every possible way and in principle treated this part of the Russian lands quite harshly, if not cruelly. All this led to, that this part of the Russian lands began to fight for their rights. And they wrote letters to Warsaw, demanding compliance with their rights so that people, including Kiev, are sent here…

TUCKER CARLSON: When it was, in what years?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: It was in the 13th century. I will now say what happened next, and I will name the dates so that there was no confusion.

And in 1654, a little earlier, even – people who controlled power in this part Russian lands, appealed to Warsaw, I repeat, demanding that sent people of Russian origin and Orthodox faith. And when Warsaw is basically nothing did not answer and almost rejected these requirements, they began to turn to Moscow so that Moscow would take them to itself. You didn’t think that I came up with something, I will give you these documents…

TUCKER CARLSON: I do not think that you are making up something, no.

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Continue reading “Tucker-Putin Interview: Complete Transcript”

A Tale of Four Presidents

There is no mystery as to why the global satanists were desperate to prevent a public interview with the President of Russia being presented to Western audiences, or why they are throwing the full weight of their pet media into trying to discredit the interview, the interviewee, and the interviewer in a futile attempt to mitigate its inevitable effects.

Because anyone who listens to more than five minutes of it will immediately conclude that not only has Ukraine been defeated, but that the USA, NATO, and its so-called allies are absolutely and utterly doomed.

THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA: The West is afraid of a strong China more than it fears a strong Russia because Russia has 150 million people and China has 1.5 billion population and its economy is growing by leaps and bounds or five percent a year. It used to be even more, but that’s enough for China. As Bismarck once put it, “potentials are the most important.” China’s potential is enormous. It is the biggest economy in the world today in terms of purchasing power parity and the size of the economy. It has already overtaken the United States quite a long time ago and it is growing at a rapid clip.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is some movement, and I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, let me be choose my words—there’s some movement. There’s been a response from the, uh, there’s been a response from the opposition, but um… I think as you know initially, the president of Mexico, El-Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate.

Just for the record, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is the President of Egypt. The President of Mexico is Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

When the strongest argument for Clown World’s continued survival is that its enemies are correct and its demi-global order of representative democracy is a corrupt facade designed to conceal the real rulers of its satanic empire, it is pretty clear that the Rastas are right and Babylon gwan fall.

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Tucker’s Putin Interview

I’m not at all interested in why Tucker Carlson is interviewing Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader is, after all, one of the most influential men on the planet and one of the few people whose opinion actually matters. I’m more interested in learning why Tucker is interviewing Putin NOW.

My guess is that after decades of demonization, and two years of relentless pro-Zelensky propaganda, Clown World has deemed it necessary to put a human face on the Russian leader in order to permit public acceptance of a negotiated surrender that the Ukrainian and NATO leaders are now desperately seeking prior to the next big Russian offensive that will reconfigure the situation on the ground.

Russia has claimed that its terms remain the same as they were at the start of the Special Military Operation, so it will be interesting to see how Putin portrays Russian aims in the interview.

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Annual Interview 2023

These massive annual interviews with the Russian president are going to be important historical documents one day. While Vladimir Putin may not be either the smartest or the most powerful world leader – that is almost certainly Xi Xinping – he has been astonishingly successful despite arguably facing the greatest degree of difficulty of any nation that was not already under military occupation by a conqueror. Two days ago, he gave the 2023 edition:

Yekaterina Berezovskaya: Mr President, last week you announced your decision to run for president. In this regard, what goals do you consider the most important, at home and abroad?

Vladimir Putin: I have spoken about this many times, but it would not hurt to say it once again. For a country like Russia, existence, mere existence, is impossible without sovereignty. Without sovereignty, Russia would cease to exist, at least in the form it exists today and has existed for a thousand years.

Therefore, our main objective is to strengthen sovereignty. But it is a broad concept. For example, strengthening sovereignty on the international stage involves enhancing our defence capability and security on the external contour. It also includes strengthening social sovereignty, which means providing safeguards for the rights and freedoms of our citizens, as well as developing our political and parliamentary systems. And lastly, it includes economic security and sovereignty, as well as technological sovereignty.

I think that right now, to answer your question, there is no need to be specific about all these vectors and avenues, but I am certain that people in this audience and across the country understand perfectly well that Russia would not survive without this. Just like any other country, Russia must assert its financial, economic, and technological sovereignty in order to have a future.

Pavel Zarubin: Since we are discussing the economy, the fact that the Russian economy has not crumbled under pressure from its so-called former partners surprised many people around the world. However, these former partners have been openly seeking to finish their job by exerting even more pressure, as we have been hearing in their public statements.

How strong and resilient is the Russian economy? What is its margin of safety?

Vladimir Putin: Big enough so that we not just feel confident but also progress.

This margin of safety, as we have said on numerous occasions, but let me say it again, rests on several components.

The first and most important element is the high level of unity in Russian society.

The second element is the stability of our financial and economic system. As it turned out, and this came as a big surprise to our so-called partners and, frankly, many of us, over the previous decades Russia has accumulated a sufficient margin of safety and stability in finance and the economy.

And the third element is, of course, the growing capability of our security component, that is, the army and security agencies.

Results of the Year with Vladimir Putin, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA, 14 December 2023

Notice that Putin stresses “the high level of unity in Russian society” as the primary element in Russia’s economic power, which underlies both its military power and its national sovereignty. This is in complete and direct contradiction to the Clown World claim that “diversity is our strength” and that free trade and the free movement of people is the source of wealth, economic growth, and economic power.

It’s not an accident that both China and Russia have rejected Clown World’s economics and are prospering as a result, despite the relentless doomsaying about their economies by Clown World economists. But Clown World economists will still be babbling nonsensically about the way immigration grows the economy in GDP terms as the White House is burned down by rioting Africans and Westminster is converted into a mosque.

The whole thing is very long, but it is absolutely required reading for anyone who wants to have even a glimmer of understanding about the coming events of 2024.

Kommersant newspaper: Mr President, you said that the world will never be the same again. What would you say to Vladimir Putin from 2000 if you had the chance? What advice would you give? What would you warn him against? Do you have any regrets?

Vladimir Putin: What would I say? I would say: you are on the right track, comrades. What would I warn him against? Against naivety and excessive trust in our so-called partners. As for tips and advice, I would say this: We must have faith in the great Russian people and nation. This faith provides a pathway to reviving, shaping and developing Russia.

I will analyze this on a Darkstream before the end of the year.

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Interview with John Julius Norwich

This is an automated transcription of an interview with the late English popular historian, John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, CVO, recorded in 2011.

VOX DAY: I’m delighted to be able to tell you today that my guest is one of my favourite historians, John Julius Norwich. He’s the author of more than 20 books including A History of Venice, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall, Shakespeare’s Kings, as well as his recently published memoirs entitled Trying to Please. Lord Norwich, welcome to the podcast. Western culture has always been obsessed with the Western Roman Empire, and paid relatively little attention to the Eastern Roman Empire, so to what do you attribute this general lack of attention or interest in the Byzantines versus the ancient Greeks and Romans?

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH: I think largely that… I mean, I didn’t. I had the sort of ordinary interest in the Greeks and Romans, because that’s what you have. If you go to school in England, you know, you go to public school education, you learn a lot about the Greeks and the Romans. But the interesting thing in England is that you never, never get any education at all about the Eastern Roman Empire, about Byzantium. It’s a conspiracy of silence, and it has been for the last 200 years. And I fell in love with the Byzantine Empire really, largely because of my friend, Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died last week, who was the greatest archeologist and a scholar of it, and who I went on a cruise around Eastern Mediterranean with. And also when, in 1955, when I joined the Foreign Service, My first post was Belgrade, in Serbia, or Yugoslavia as it was in those days, and I was just sort of swept up in the whole. That seemed to me the sort of the whole mystery and the magic of the Orthodox Church and the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium and all that. I suppose I’ve been swept up in it ever since.

VD: To what do you attribute the fact that it was a mystery to you? I mean, it’s certainly a mystery to Americans, we don’t spend any time learning about it either. Why is there such ignorance of it?

JJN: Why is there a conspiracy of silence? Precisely. I wish I knew. I went through what I’m sure would have been considered a very good English public school education at Eton. And I hardly knew what Byzantium was. I’m not sure that I knew whether it was Christian or Muslim. I’m not sure whether I don’t think I knew anything about it at all. And because nobody ever mentioned it all throughout my schooling. And I think I was not alone in this. I mean, people just didn’t. It was never taken seriously by English educationists.

VD: Constantine’s decision to move his capital from Rome to Byzantium was one of the more monumental decisions in history.

JJN: Yes, it tends to distract the reader, as if Obama had suddenly decided to move the US Capitol from Washington, DC to Mexico City.

VD: What was behind Constantine’s decision to establish a new capital? And why did the eastern half of the Empire survive so much longer than the Western one did?

JJN: Well, the capital had really, to all intents and purposes already left Rome. I mean, what happened already in this, in the second century? The second century AD, the whole focus of political and cultural activity, is moving to the east, is moving east from Rome, to the eastern Mediterranean. I mean, if you read the Acts of the Apostles, or if, if you read any of that stuff, I mean, it is it is in Asia Minor on the eastern Mediterranean, that everything is happening. Rome has become a backwater, it’s too far away. By this time. The Empire’s principal enemy is Persia, Rome to Persia. I mean, it’s, I don’t know, three or four months probably travel. And it was no it was absolutely necessary to move the capitol to where all the action was. Diocletian did it first. I mean, he, he decided to divide the imprint of the empire into four. And each one had a what he called a Tetrarch. But all four of them were in the east. None of them are in Rome, even then. So when Constantine decided in 332, to move to move the Capitol, it wasn’t a terribly new or revolutionary idea at all. I mean, he was really doing what had already happened. He was just choosing a new a new place. You know, I mean, Nicomedia. Antioquia was three or four other places, which had been tried out and they were very successful. So he just found this new place. which was superbly in a superb defensive position, and said, right, this is it, this is going to be in future capital. Apart from that we’re exactly the same Empire we’ve always been, where we’re Romans whether our empire is the empire of Adios, Nero and Hadrian and Trajan and all that lot. There’s no change, except that we’ve moved to a new capital.

VD: Why did the eastern half of the Empire survive so much longer than the Western one did?

JJN: Well, I mean, it’s survived. Very, very surprisingly, it remained. Except for 50 years in the 13th century, it remained undefeated, I mean, the Roman Empire continued under the new capital in Constantinople, and got incredibly powerful and is by far the richest, by far the most powerful state in the in the civilised world. Until two terrible things happen. One was the the surge of checks, the first wave of tax arrived, and defeated the Byzantine army. This was intense. And more or less flooded all over the whole of Asia Minor, which was where Byzantium got most of its food, and nearly all its manpower. And, and then, and then, that was the that was the first great disaster from which from which you’ve never recovered. And the second great disaster, of course, was the Fourth Crusade when the the Christian armies, who should have done everything they could to protect and defend and strengthen this last great outpost of Christianity in the east, turned against it and destroyed it, and left it a poor, pale shred of what it had been before, to the point where, although it lasted another 250 years, God knows how it did it. It really had completely lost its importance.

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