John Gray On Trump's New World Disorder

John is a political philosopher. He retired from academia in 2007 as Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and he’s now a regular contributor and lead reviewer at the New Statesman. He’s the author of two dozen books, and the most recent is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism, which we discussed on the Dishcast last year (after first having him on the pod in 2023).

An auto-transcript is available above (just click “Transcript” while logged into Substack). For two clips of the episode — on what the Founders would think of the 250th, and sizing up the next prime minister of the UK — head to our YouTube page.

Other topics: the deadly heatwave in Europe and its lack of AC; the Putin-esque corruption of Trump; the Joker-esque nature of US politics; civic exhaustion; our broken trust with the rest of the world; losing the Iran War; the stranglehold of Hormuz; fears over the Strait of Malacca; the JCPOA; Fukuyama; edge-lording and DOGE; the embarrassment of Trump’s 250; his plunge in the polls; the socialist wins in NYC; DEI collectivism; Vance’s Catholicism; Rubio’s future; Tucker 2028; the collapse of free speech in higher ed; Keir’s departure; Andy Burnham’s rise; his neo-Blairite populism; Farage and Reform; Restore Britain; Kemi Badenoch; Scott Wiener hounded by transqueers; masks used by ICE and activists; the surge of antisemitism on the left and right; the Le Pen and Bardella factions; AfD; the EU becoming more right-wing; mass migration and Boris; the Swedish crackdown; Islamism; Meloni becoming a centrist; Putin and Ukraine; the drone revolution and Taiwan; the hope of Ossoff; and the World Cup.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Stephen Grosz on the struggles of love, David Thomson on cinema in American history and culture, John O’Sullivan on conservatism, Robby George on natural law, and Megan McArdle on pretty much anything. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

From a fan of last week’s pod with Bob Wright on AI and evolution:

Yep, these AI systems are designed to tacitly reinforce presumptions and, even worse, AI’s own undeclared presumptions are imprinted on and packaged as something entirely originating from the prompter. Users are then carefully fooled in a factual way that they know something with expertise. Result: everyone and their mamas are subject-matter experts on EVERYTHING. Good Lord help us.

Another also found the foreign-affairs pod we did with Bob a few years ago:

Thank you for the very interesting conversation with Robert Wright. You mentioned in passing that the Versailles Treaty and the (supposedly) excessive reparations that it imposed on Germany were one of the root causes of WW2. That idea, initially put forward by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, has become the received wisdom, at least in English-speaking countries. It is, though, utterly wrong.

Many people do not realize that war reparations were nothing new. France, in fact, had paid sizable reparations to Germany for the previous bout of fighting: the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, much of the heavy fighting during WW1 had taken place in Belgium (a country Germany planned to annex) and in the north of France, which were two of the most prosperous industrialized regions in the world. Most of their heavy industry had been destroyed, and when the Germans finally retreated, they sabotaged everything they could not take with them and flooded the mines.

Reparations were a vital necessity for France and Belgium — both to ensure a decent standard of living to their populations and to have the resources to defend themselves in the future. Germany, on the other hand, was unscathed on the Western Front, since it had surrendered before the war could move to its own territory.

From the very beginning, the Germans did everything they could to avoid making those payments, and they printed as many Reichsmarks as they could until the currency had lost all its value. The aim of their monetary policy was to thwart reparations and boost their exports. Hyperinflation is thus something Germany did to itself to hurt its WW1 adversaries.

Britain, and to a lesser extent the US, considered Belgian and French insistence on repayment a nuisance, as they were both anxious to put the war behind them and not terribly inconvenienced by the loss of French and Belgian industrial competition with their own products. They refused to enforce the treaty of Versailles and opposed the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr. The end of that occupation, under heavy British pressure, allowed Hitler to rebuild his army — which led directly to WW2.

In other words, appeasement started long before the Anschluss and the Sudeten Crisis. The meaning of Versailles is actually the opposite of what common wisdom has made of it.

A paid subscriber writes:

I feel the pain of your reader who canceled his subscription because he has information overload. For whatever it’s worth, I want you to know how much I appreciate that you *only​* publish once a week. I really appreciate Slow Boring, but Yglesias is a fucking machine writing every weekday — sometimes multiple times a day! It’s waaaay too much on top of everything else I try to consume. I also appreciate when you take a few weeks off at the end of the summer; it’s a nice break for me too as a reader. Keep up the great work!

Next up, a “20-year reader of the Dish and proud subscriber”:

I was (initially) disappointed to hear on your podcast that you’ve lost some paid subscribers from the peak. Your success financially since you went independent — as someone who has always spoken your mind and not hesitated to go against the tide — has given me great hope about the future. But then I realized that perhaps you wouldn’t be fulfilling that purpose if you didn’t occasionally piss of some of your listeners, so I am no longer disappointed. Good on you!

The one thing I was wondering: which topic was it that drove away some people? Was it your stance on Israel?

I was born in Iran, I’m Jewish (by heritage if not by faith), and I’m a proud American Citizen (I also teach at Columbia, god help me). As you could imagine, I am conflicted eight ways to Sunday on this topic of Israel. And I routinely feel the pull of my various tribes.

I share all of that just to say I really appreciate your nuanced view on the current war, Netanyahu, and the war in Gaza. More than once you have made me uncomfortable with your writing and podcasts on this topic, forcing me to revaluate. Few people have both the ability to appreciate the precarious position the Jewish state has always been in, respect its need to exist, but also called out the failures, excesses, and immoral policies.

All of which is to say, I am grateful. I wish there were more people out there with your balances views. Perhaps someday there will be.

Well that just made my day. The majority of cancellations are due to overload, exhaustion with politics, or too much to read. And we get that. But yes, many cancellations were over my criticism of Israel’s war tactics and torture. I understand how deeply people feel about this. But I am furthest from an antisemite, I want Israel to flourish in a two-state set-up, and am anguished by the disastrous war which is now a negotiated defeat.

On last week’s column, a reader writes:

I simply want to thank you for your uplifting and smile-inducing ode to the American World Cup moment we’re enjoying. It’s good to be reminded of who we were, can sometimes be, and perhaps will become again as a people and nation. It’s the slice of American pie that I love and truly hanker for.

Not for the first time, Bill was on the same page as the Dish last Friday:

Another writes, “I’m getting old and forgetful, but I believe your World Cup piece was your most outstanding piece to date (since the W era), and I forwarded it to many friends.” Another looks to the Scots and orange cones:

You wrote, “for reasons I still don’t quite grasp, the Scots’ main extracurricular activity was finding bright-orange traffic cones and putting them on their heads.” You may be over-inundated with responses on this point, but just in case: Glaswegians have a long and proud tradition of ensuring that the statue of the Duke of Wellington is always adorned with a cone. The statue’s Wikipedia page has a section detailing the tradition and the city’s various unpopular bids to curb it.

You live and learn. Another reader just had an epic roadtrip across the US:

Two weeks ago I started a conversation with four young Germans while I was hiking at Bryce Canyon National Park. They said friends had told them not to come to the US for their roadtrip because the US is dangerous and hostile to foreigners. I told them to not confuse the American people with Trumpolini (he’s a clown like Mussolini) — that isn’t us! Your piece covers that perfectly.