Niall Ferguson: Are we the Soviets now?

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers meets Niall Ferguson.

With public calls to remove the sitting US President, a UK election set to unseat its government and the rightward swing in Europe, it’s all change on the Western front. Best-selling historian Sir Niall Ferguson joins UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers for a wide-lens tour of populism and its discontents.

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[NarrowShouldersOpenMind]

Regarding DEI, my wife is a liberal animator. Her pitch was accepted by a children’s TV show, and they have since shaken and demoralized her with their DEI committee’s endless “notes” about how she should tweak her characters and what they do. It is literally 98% their own creation now, not her original pitch. The original pitch was abstract robots made of toys and now it’s a black girl with smooth, boring textures everywhere. “Can you adjust the skin tone? Can you make the girl cuter and happier? She can’t have an asymmetrical face. Can you make her hair more… realistic?” Btw the DEI people are plain rude by any professional standard, waiting til the last minute and completely disregarding whatever she has produced. To your thesis, these experiences change how she sees society as a whole. Hardly a death of despair situation but it is demoralizing. The resulting short is bland as hell, psychologically inauthentic, and something that cannot affect kids positively, beyond DEI’s own terms of success.

[gavinfoley]

I live in Eupore. Young and old are outraged by massive uncontrolled migration and the associated corruption and crime we are subjected to. Niall is deliberately obtuse on this point. I can't imagine why.

[cskj]

I don't agree that immigration is the only answer to maintain society...

[jonison]

A weird mix of high education, sophistry and heartlessness. This is a good insight into how we are being led, and in the wrong direction.

[NZAnimeManga]

Question: why are western countries so reluctant to enact pro-natal policies?

[harrybartok]

Britain lost its empire and destroyed its economy fighting both world wars. In 1916 the empire's GDP was greater than that of the US. Was the war worth it? The US played it smart, it waited until Hitler declared war before joining up. Why was Hitler mainly Britain's problem? It had never previously shown any interest in Central European politics. Czechoslovakia consisted of 5 ethnicities that did not get along. The Germans in the Sudetenland were enthusiastic Nazis. The Slovaks fought on the German side in WW2. The Poles and Hungarians also invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 and claimed territory. Churchill even condemned Polish aggression. A lot of nonsense has been written about appeasement by the British. Speaking as an American, we don't want to end up like the British Empire, broke and exhausted over a dispute we don't understand. I have visited Ukraine. It is not worth the life of a single American soldier, to paraphrase Bismarck.

[dobcsek]

His views on immigration are vastly simplified. People wouldn’t mind the immigration if immigrants were actually working and would pay their fair share of tax. Let’s not even mention the rising crime rates.

[yaoypl]

Niall Ferguson contradicts himself. On the one hand, he worries that the United States's decline began to look like the late Soviet Union. On the other hand, he insists on waging Cold War II to maintain US supremacy, the United States must fight on all fronts with Russia, Iran, and China. Escalate to de-escalate? No appeasement? But how? The US's interventional foreign policies have produced nothing but endless wars and debacle after debacle. The reality is that the US is a dying empire and can't afford to do whatever it wants anymore. With its $34 trillion national debt, if the US doesn't focus on fixing its own problems and improving its own people's lives, the US Empire will implode like the Soviet Union.

[geoded]

Niall, how are tent cities of African men in Paris contributing to the economy? The half of Muslim women in the UK who are unemployed?

We know the migrant demographics that contribute economically and the ones that don't. Stop importing millions of dependents who resent us, it's not hard or complex.

[iankclark]

Odd. Niall sounds way more 'establishment' than I've ever heard from him before. Is it the knighthood? This is an unpleasant surprise.

[FiveLiver]

I get the feeling that Niall is walking the line between insight and not being cancelled. It's largely pointless listening to him nowadays.

[tobystewart]

"European countries are aging, and so require immigration."

This is where Ferguson shows his colours. He notes that Europe is not having children. Young people are not having families. He describes this as "aging", rather than totalitarian abuse. He says the solution is immigration, rather than reform of the totalitarian abuse of young people.

Young people are being told they will never own a home. They must pay high taxes on low wages. Energy and food bills will keep them in working poverty for their entire lives, and they cannot have a family.

Ferguson calls this "aging", and says the solution is immigration.

Adam Smith never endorsed a system where the totalitarian planning of economies led to the destruction of the family unit, and the end of all personal freedom. He never endorsed usury becoming feudal tyranny. He never said we should sacrifice our children for the shareholders of banks.

Ferguson is living in a dream. He has enough money to sleep easily, and so he sleeps, and dreams of fanciful things.

[EzekielBrockmann]

Don't confuse We the People with the WEF.
We are not perfect, but certainly not _evil._

[januarysson]

As an American I take note of how willing Niall Ferguson is to volunteer the US to fight on every front of the new cold war the policies he supports have caused. Also, how willing he is to expend Ukrainian lives while we just ship arms to a war it can’t possibly win.

[balto]

Lost me at 45:08 on «you have to escalate to deescalate»... War is peace.

[toby_fred]

@46:00 "it's a bargain...they do the fighting...they do the dying" 💀💀💀

An offensive realist's wet dream

I don't think I could ever say those words out loud without feeling humiliated

[jdg]

The idea that we need immigration "for the economy" is such a laughable lie, as is shown by the way immigration policy is formulated. For example we allow low wage unskilled immigrants to bring dependents who contribute nothing to the economy and actually drain public servants. Similarly the fact that we allow low wage immigrants at all, since anyone who earns below about £40k in the UK is a net drain on the economy and lowers our GDP per capita, making us a poorer country. How is any of that "helping the economy"? In fact it just helps big business by lowering the wages they have to pay, (privatizing the profits) while the public have to pay the taxes to fund the government services that low wage immigrants need to get by. (socializing the costs).

If immigration was actually "for the economy" we would only allow permanent immigrants who would be net contributors to the public finances, we would allow them to bring no dependents, and any low wage immigration would be only via temporary work visas to fill skills shortages, with no access to public services and taxes paid to finance the services they receive purely by virtue of being in the country. The fact that it isn't done that way show that "it's for the economy" is a lie.

[privaatsak]

"The war is a bargain" - how terribly cold and disconnected a neocon Niall is!

[markcreemore]

Niall, sadly, has aligned himself wholly with the Victoria Nuland neocon faction.

[patrickh]

Niall needs to get this through his head: We don't want a rounding error that allows us the "bargain" of sacrificing all the men in Ukraine. We want a rounding error on behalf of our own border.