#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza

**Lex Fridman** (0:00)
The following is a conversation with Douglas Murray, author of The War on The West, The Madness of Crowds, and his new book on democracies and death cults. We talk about Russia and Ukraine, and about Israel and Gaza. Douglas has very strong views on these topics, and he defends them brilliantly and fearlessly. As I always try to do for all topics, I will also talk to people who have different views from Douglas, including on the next episode of this podcast. We live in an era of online discourse where grifters, drama farmers, liars, bots, sycophants and sociopaths roam the vast beautiful dark land of the Internet. It's hard to know who to trust. I believe no one is in possession of the entire truth. But some are more correct than others. Some are insightful, and some are delusional. The problem is it's hard to tell which is which unless you use your mind with intellectual humility and with rigor. I recommend you listen to many sources who disagree with each other and try to pick up wisdom from each. Also, I recommend you visit the places in question as Douglas has, as I have, or at least talk face-to-face with people who have spent most of their lives living there, whether it's Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, or Russia. Let's try together to not be cogs in the machine of outrage, and instead to reach toward reason and compassion. There is no Hitler, Stalin, or Mao on the world stage today. Plus, there are thousands of nuclear weapons ready to fire. Human civilization hangs in the balance. The 21st century is a new geopolitical puzzle all of us are tasked with solving. Let's not mess it up. And now, ladies and gentlemen, a quick few second mention of these sponsors. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got Call of Duty for Video Game Fun, Oracle for Cloud Computing, Element for Electrolytes and AG1 for Multi-Bitamin Deliciousness. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you happen to be watching or listening to this on Spotify, I decided to start putting the same ad reads from me at the beginning as I do on Apple Podcasts and the RSS feed. Since a lot of folks in the survey, Lex fridman.com/survey, said they actually like the random non-secular things I talk about, to my great surprise. And they've also said that they're happy to just skip when they felt like it. Some folks are some timers, meaning they listen to these ads sometimes. Some folks are every timers. They listen to all the ads. I do try to make the ad reads interesting and personal, often related to stuff I'm reading or thinking about. But if you skip them, and I do make it easy to skip by providing the timestamps on the screen and in the description. So if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. Sign up and get their stuff. I enjoy it. Maybe you will too. Also, if you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfridman.com/contact. And now, on to the full ad reads. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty Warzone and the return of the iconic Vordansk map. I have a long history with Call of Duty. I've been a fan for a long time. I've been a fan of video games for a long, long time. And I'm actually looking forward to doing many, many podcasts with video game designers, with engineers. It just brings me so much joy. And there's technical, philosophical things to explore with video games. How do you create immersive worlds that can be ultra realistic or ultra non-realistic and super fun or super dark or terrifying or exciting or hopeful or dreamlike? All of those worlds, the geniuses behind those worlds inspire me. I admire, I respect, I'm a big fan of the worlds the Call of Duty franchise has created. And the Verdant's map looks incredible. You can download Call of Duty Warzone for free and drop into the Verdant's map on April 3rd, rated M for Mature. This episode is also brought to you by Oracle, a company providing a fully integrated stack of cloud applications and cloud platform services. I think compute is going to be one of the resources that are most prized in the 21st century. Whatever physical form, whatever cyber software form that compute takes, we do not know yet. Of course, there's folks like Oracle that are pioneering that. But it's very possible in a century, in two centuries, we're going to be surrounded by some orb where the computation is done, maybe in deep space that's orbiting Earth, something like this. Maybe because of the heat and the energy requirements, it's going to be impossible to host it on Earth without destroying Earth. Of course, Earth is such a priceless planet for us humans, but I actually believe, maybe not in our galaxy, but certainly in our vicinity, it's going to be very, very difficult to colonize other planets. Of course, humans are incredible at doing the difficult thing, but we should protect this Earth. Anyway, props to Oracle for constantly innovating and building in the space. Cut your cloud bill in half when you switch to OCI. Offer is for new US customers with a minimum financial commitment. See if you qualify at oracle.com/lex. That's oracle.com/lex. This episode is brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix that I'm drinking now, because after I say the words I'm saying to you right now, I'm going for a long, long run along the river. I'm listening to an audiobook by James Holland. It's volume one of his trilogy called The War on the West. I believe it's focusing on 1939 to 1941 It's just an extremely well written perspective on those years. So it's the Western front. I think those years are really important to understand. The years leading up to 1939 and 39, 40, 41 themselves. Because there's a lot of, let's say geopolitical negotiations, meetings, carrots and sticks that could have been done. A lot of insights, a lot of mistakes avoided. It's such an important moment to understand. Probably the most destructive, the most terrifying, the most earth-shattering war this world has ever seen. With the bigger than life personalities of Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, FDR. I think James Holland calls it the most dramatic set of events in human history. Anyway, element before, element after, it brings me joy. Watermelon salt is still and forever the flavor of choice for me. Get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Let's try it at www.drinklmnt.com/lex. This episode is brought to you by AG1, an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. My daily companion. Again, after the run, I'm going to make an AG1 put in the freezer, then I'll go take a quick shower, come back, drink the AG1. It's going to be chill, refreshing. I'm going to reflect on the things I've read, let my thoughts go to wherever they may go. And then get my lazy ass back to work. Deeply focused. A productive life is built on a foundation of rituals, habits. It's kind of incredible how fleeting life is. You know, the days go by, the months go by, the years go by. But when you look at the individual day, there's just a lot of time. And if you have the patience to believe in the long-term effects of daily rituals and daily habits, you'd be surprised. I am constantly surprised. If I do a thing every day and I wake up two, three months after and just see how good I got at that thing, it's kind of incredible. And then you of course have to protect that habit. It gets harder and harder every year with all the fascinating stuff going on online. You just have to shut it all off and do the thing, do the habit every day. Anyway, they'll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex.