is making headlines this sunday hope you've done the i'm action or time. see and welcome back to going underground broadcasting around the world from the u. a. what do you think of when you hear the word? liberalism, do you think democracy, freedom and equality, or do you think neo conservatism and aggressive military interventions, jo, history and little professor, samuel moines, new book centers on how liberalism went from a defender of universal values and rationalism to hawkish coldwell mass monitor up to the soviet defeat of naziism and fascism in world war 2, author of new book liberalism against itself,

cold war intellectuals and the making of times. progressive samuel line joins me again from yale university in new haven. the thank you so much progressive are coming back on i going to do some named dropping at the top because, you know, call papa to my dad as i berlin, nominated for as jared oxford. but that, out of the way, tell me how violence in this world today. and who knows trump the war and you, green syria, iraq, afghanistan, that how, how violence and the world and reaction to it is led by ideas in your latest book. well, what i'm interested in, in, in this new book is how liberalism was transformed in and through the middle of the 20th century, i'm led to a kind of liberalism that takes the form of direct control. and sometimes i saw a journeyman to assess the raps to counteract threats. but sometimes liberals take

the rest far too seriously and overreact to them. i think they did in the cold war they did in the war on terror. i think they're doing so now. yeah, and i'll get on to the subject of the timing which seems to appear in the book quite a lot just when some sort of more, a gallop area and liberalism could have been born the defenses for it were at their weakest preparations in uh, in nature nations for a damning utopian ideas of a revolution they, they go back a long way, not just to the whole, of course, not just through the french revolution. and in this book, china is foreign minister famously saying a bulk of leave. it is too early to tell what impact the french revolution has on the world today. just tell me how far back this will goes in explaining the roots of arguably, donald trump and the world we live in today. as well,

many aspects of american history are rooted in it, some violent founding the dispossession of native peoples to clear a land in the history of enslavement of black people. and you know, many of his policies, you know, would have been familiar. i think to someone like andrew jackson, the early american president, but what i, i think we have to ask is why donald trump was elected. and there, i think we have to tell a story about history, sense of world war 2. and the way in which both parties of band and a lot of people are 1st i think, you know, kind of called more pastor that evolved into a neo liberal set of policies that brought devastation. and donald trump kind of saw on opportunity and read the benefits you know,

the american militarism did not take donald trump to discover. and the cold war made it a big fixture of international affairs. and yet americans didn't have the opportunity to end that confrontational posture when the cold war itself ended in 1989. and in that sense, i think we are seeing more of the same today with donald trump kind of version of it. or, you know, us, you know, so someone who we should understand said on to understand the continuity is and us history. yeah. trump support is watching. this will say, actually trump may in fact be a counter, a gainsville liberalism that you're describing this book because it's not the, it's not the trump who once more was complete when he was in the white house. it's of course, the liberals, the cold war liberals with did just

a quick side. but with, with it all the utopian ideas of a way that the way that the very different ideas of liberalism and violence that were believed che guevara now leading to saturate with it all those ideas go until and into violence. like joe biden's violence. and obama is violence. what, how did, how did to get exchange? well, you know, those, those more radical ideas never had all that much purchase and you know, american, the circles and the base west may be the kind of of the black times those clearly. but of the 1960 see, although i was gonna mention, i mean, it's only fair to say that liberals in, in a general sense because really there weren't any self described liberals and in my country until after world war one. but in the european history in the 19th century,

as well as latin american history, liberals could back revolution maybe too slowly and then they abandoned it too quickly. for example, in the revolutions of 1848. but the liberals couldn't even become socialists, like john stuart mill in britain's 19th century. but i think something big happens in the 1940s because the soviet union emerges from world war 2 as the victor over nazi as i'm, and as a nor mostly prestige. s a and it has a lot more power than it had had at the end of world war one, when it was, you know, treated to kinda consignment regime by the western powers. and in response to liberals, i think get afraid. and they are in particular afraid that the soviet union might be promising a credible future for humanity. and instead of saying

a liberalism has been goods for humanity. western liberals say that they shouldn't promise the big things. that's what the soviets are doing, and duping every one else. and so, in a sense, the soviets lead the liberals to retreat in a certain sense and say, what we need to focus on is freedom in a dangerous world where it's here any lurks. and that, i think, does massively redefine liberalism, you know, relative to its past. and you just base the idea here promulgated by as a professor perry and as an in and use a of that this was the jewish diaspora escaping the holocaust and nazi germany that came to warn the utopian socialists and communists movements in western europe. that you mustn't wish for great societies because you end up in nazi jeremy,

that isn't the reason i don't think so. i mean, the cold war liberals weren't for dominant late jewish. there were some others like christian ones, like reinhold neighbor and my country. but the fact is there were a lot of socialist jews, and indeed, jews were central to the soviet project for much of the 20th century. and so a jewish background doesn't predetermine the choices of these cold war liberals and lots of ordinary jews who really did embrace the new deal and wanted to see a continue and expand use or central to the new left as well. and the 1960, so we need a different explanation. i and i focus in so far as these characters, i'm talking about word us on their zionism because it's very interesting that even as liberal revolution and sometimes socialist revolution, as

a lighting the post colonial world on fire, these cold war liberals don't, don't see a lot of promise and that kind of a mass of haitian and yet they do back the zionist cause and that means that they believe in revolution state founding the and the violence one push comes to shove and the name of emancipation. and so the question then is, you know, how they could kind of preserve those commitments for a jewish politics. and not saying that everyone around the world should be entitled to the same kind of activism requested became for the me, the least of people to support ballast. i would remember how to rent the phrase, the banality of evil. is it so not television screens, every of value in the book talk about her opposition to zionism and how she

explained that. as i do, i mean it is very interesting that while she's better known now as a critic of design, as i'm what she became, she had been a firm and zionist in the early years of her political activism in the 1930s up through the middle of the 19 forties and she actually attended the build more conference during world war 2, whereas zionist plans were laid out. and you know, she also supported arms self defense by jews against, you know, the british empire. and yeah. so, you know, she gives it up and the cold war liberals and never did a remains. you know, strong commit. strongly committed design is i'm really their entire lives. isaiah, berlin, as, as an excellent example, and of course there is a really cold war liberals. the most famous of whom i talked about in the book is

named jacob tom on. and the question is, how could they embrace the older form of liberalism, which was collected vista, national last and sometimes a revolutionary and violent for the case of jewish, you know, just kind of politics, but not thinking that liberalism needed to survive in the last form for every one around the world oppressed by oppressors and you know, looking for some kind of response and today their role writing in the new york times or pads and washington post to help open columns. you mentioned well in there, these key figures who are teaching many of them in the, in britain, you don't think they really had any sense of the global south. i mean, today we speak of the brakes countries of uh, the rising of a new world. they really didn't think the much, i mean,

i don't know whether you via towards the least i think that kind of racist, but they didn't really understand the developing world or i don't think so. i mean, if you think about it, the, the, the line times of these calls were liberals, coincides with the biggest of mass spec, tory events in human history, which is the de colonization of the world after centuries of empires. and yet, they generally say nothing about it. and if you look through berlin's correspondence and writings for any mention of, you know, the hot spots for british d calling as ation 8 and kenya. uh, you know, she never talks about them. uh and so that might mean he just missed the boat, but i think that was useful about on our ends career, although she was in the same kind of cold war liberal. and in fact, berlin hated her. and she,

when she did write about the colonization and she said it was going to be like another stage of the french revolution which feet, how does it cared about? poverty led people to embrace tyranny. and she also kind of doubted the non white peoples could have freedom. and so i wonder if that isn't this the same? is that true of these cold war liberals who just didn't talk about it? but still thought of the lamb tech, the atlantic countries, the anglo phone countries, especially as the places where freedom could seek refuge in a world of cold war. dear any progressive, samuel miley, now stop you. the more from jo universities, johnson, again professor of law and history. after this break the

people's theory in the environment, they grow up in something the growth in very dizzy places. and ribbon, very disease replaces other people living areas that have less infectious diseases . and when you grow up in an area of high attraction, since each individual strategically go to the collector, this are conservative. 10 the the welcome back to going underground. i'm still here with professor samuel bowing. yeah, we invest is john slick and professor of low in history and order of the book? liberalism against itself, cold war intellectuals and the making of odd times. sam. yeah, there was a bit of

a flashing light as you were speaking there. i don't know whether that was the utopian in, in some of the way of what it's a, it's easy interesting though, that the enlightenment, as we were talking about. and again, i want to remind everybody is that what we see on a new screens today is often being interpreted by people who are schooled in this tradition. that may seem abstract in some kind of way, but is clearly there. what do you say that, um, would you say it's not the fault? so i'll give you the if he's a people from the academy, the military industrial complex chose them because it suited them the interest in making money out of weapons and whatever. it wasn't so much the guys i believed and called papa said, look, we want to stop and go in till pro and whatever it is around the developing world. stopping revolutions here in the of course, uh, you know, no one should. that should be too much importance. to intellectuals and publicists,

but they have a certain importance because they do tell lots of people what to believe. and if, wherever, just see push back against, you know, the powers of the world, the only, you know, hope is going to come from people who are convinced that there should be an alternative. and so my, my primary, you know, trouble with these cold war liberals is that they, they, in a sense, rationalize what the cold war west is doing without even defending that the cold war west is also building welfare states at the very time they're writing about freedom from the state, the cold war, western states are raising taxation to unprecedented levels precisely on rich people. at the very time that berlin says freedom,

kansas and freedom from interference by the state. uh and so the damage i think was done in the way people think about, you know, right and wrong and what they should hold for from politics. and that doesn't mean that they, that they, they change the world on their own. but it does mean they, they left us kind of speech less when neo liberalism came and kind of struck the state back further and spread very course of economic policies around the world through the international, my monetary funding, the world bank because all that mattered was freedom from the state for individual initiative. so that's my case and i do agree with you that one needs a bigger picture to understand, you know, the workings of power and wealth in our world. i know we have to be brief here,

but how did they then perform the trick of destroying the enlightenment as a, as a great thing? how did they do? i mean some, i'd say that good. then it's going to be pretty difficult to achieve what you are recommending that i mean kaylee and the developing. well the alignment is still seen as a great thing even by religious figures. as regards the secular enlightenment in latin america, asia, africa, the alignment is a big deal in right. aging to correct us. how did they, how did they do that trick given that they have poetry, odd little j, all of is on this. i like i and in fairness, i mean the enlightenment has had some, you know, a revival s and the west. and sometimes the wars by the united states can now be defended. as you know, spreading the enlightenment to the dark rounds where, you know, religion. uh, you know, as pervasive, but in the 1940s it was crucial that the soviet union was saying that it started

for the enlightened reasons, science, progress, and the cold war liberals kind of gave up any investment. and those things are worried that saying you are for the enlightenment and reason would lead you to side with the soviets. and so my, my basic argument is that called more liberals prevented or presented a more tragic view, sometimes in openly religious line. or they appeal to kind of secular surrogates for religions idea of original sin. like sigmund freud so idea that human beings are born aggressive. and the reason why i called for liberals thought of human beings as sinful or violent as because they wanted people to conclude that we couldn't hold for very much. we were fundamentally not people who could be reformed by our societies. and our states, which, you know, really had the bus at bay. and so the, the, the,

the bands and men of the enlightenment that i talk about in the book as well, was a way for called more liberals to, in a sense, depressed us. and to keep us from asking more of our lives in our governments. yeah. but what have you are in an argument say with robot mcnamira was sitting here and they said look at this time the, we're talking about the switch. one of the 3 governments in the world said they were communist. i mean, that's barely 50 years of tacoma, x is death. we had no choice. had to twist the idea of liberalism to make it this way. otherwise boxes them would have gone right of. i don't know. i mean, how do you compete with the utopian a set by offering another utopia? and honestly, instead of offering something credible to the world liberals declared war on the world. so actually they in practice weren't quite utopian in

a way that it just in the wrong way in a violent way. and it is somewhat argued they still are, i mean, the regime change in iraq or libya. how can that not reflect that kind of optimism? it's just in the wrong tool, violence, military intervention. and maybe the correct response to the soviet union would have been to say, liberalism can provide the very goods that the soviets are promising, not just in the atlantic, but across the world. and it stands for reason and progress, but the liberals gave up on those may be because they were anxious that they weren't sure that the soviet union hadn't stolen a march on them. and so they, in a sense, defined the liberalism as providing the lesser things, at least it would keep you free from tyranny. even if you're

a free society was radically on equal. and, you know, didn't provide the same kinds of opportunities. you might be all you deserved when it comes to the opposition to these values. clearly this cold will liberalism effected the left and we had all sorts of permutations of postmodernism. i googled the ends of new marxism. do you see that religion? i mean, i know we started off talking about trump and i think you mistook what i meant. i meant trump is a reaction. the hog simply do the, is not the result of it. that actually won't give strength to any kind of opposition. the only weapons that the dispose of those trying to oppose it all our religion and we see the rise of religion, of course, in the middle east. of course, amongst a catholicism in liberation, theology still going in latin america. of course, the christian right in the united states, they have a religious resurgence in russia. the. the big is the way to oppose this

brutal coldwell liberalism that is being responsive counseling, wounding, and naming tens of millions of people is, is a faith in god. i think that's very insightful and you know, you're getting something that i, i don't think we've really understood about the last 100 years, which is that how being opposed to kind of secular alternatives to the broken promises of liberals. the liberals then kind of were shocked to find people turning to religion instead, you know, as, as, as what was left and obviously from the uranium revolution on a new kind of religion, which many people have thought obsolete has returned. but if you liked it, it was the liberals to own fault that they didn't provide a kind of credible secularism. instead they, you know,

spread imperial rule and continued to do so. and i, i agree with you that it's a sad result of the set of choices that people can deal to whatever is laughter, religion, or whatever, as what, what might get them out of this imperial world apart from rubbish, novels, rubbish, poetry. do you think the only thing we have then uh uh, from this period. if indeed it's ending i don't know is, and it seems a lot because the cold war, liberalism is destroyed. so many buildings is all architecture. i think that's about all it will be left. i was more the list architecture. i'm, i'm, i'm with you, you know, i would say it's early days to write the obituary and cold war liberalism as,

as you know, they ukraine more has given cold war the girls a new face and their program, the ship brack, us or rack in general on the war on terror, a lot, a lot of americans to reject american. the lower monitoring and trump selection was part of that. but the ukraine more makes it look again to the way the cold war liberals wanted it to look at the west against the east to freedom against here in a liberal ration against empire. and so you weren't, you know, in the year of the congress, 2nd coming or as a, you know, 18th coming of cold war liberalism. and when it will die is anyone's guess. i'm just finally then, do you think the rising power is in the multi polar world will be kind to, to nature relations with this cold war? liberalism is as a stop being as powerful than they were to them is a vast,

any question. i mean, american decline is going to take a while, and it's been fascinating in the year of the ukraine war. how little the global south has been willing to sign up to the reactivation of cold war pastors coming out of the north atlantic. and you've seen that repeatedly, notably, and that kind of, you know, conformity to the sanctions regime the, the west attempt to after the invasion. but it says it's many decades as not centuries before. so there's, there's really, we've reached that question of how, with the tables turn to the newly powerful in the global south treat the newly we can the global norris. i think we're seeing the barest, you know, getting cooling of what that will be like. but we're just not near enough yet to make any guesses. although some of these cultural leaders managed to switch

pretty quickly off to the failures of the united states even well at the loan in vietnam. but in iraq, afghanistan, syria, libya, so they can presumably switch quite quickly and say thank you for the last the war and ukraine was, we put in millions of dollars of us public money, but hey, on to something else. i think that's right. but, you know, you might, i might push back and say, even so, despite all the errors, cold war liberals, how have made and the push back they've gone, they find pretty easy opportunities to reclaim their authority, at least in global northern politics. and so the, you know, the, the global south has complained about, uh, you know, empire and the post imperial world for decades. most notably in the 19 seventy's

after the oil shock, when it seemed like the global south was going to ascend to much greater power. then it had never had and, and yet we, we, we do have the basic hierarchy and power and wealth between the north and south. it seems. and during, for the time being, uh and it's it, it, it will, that will change, i think, slowly, not quickly for business. everyone. thank you. and that's it for the show. remember, we're bringing your brand new episodes every saturday on monday, but until then give me does 5 or less social media? if it's not sensitive in your country and had to our channel going underground cl number, they'll come to us new and old episodes of going underground see very soon the as

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