#463 – Douglas Murray: Putin, Zelenskyy, Trump, Israel, Netanyahu, Hamas & Gaza
Episode publishedPodcast: Lex Fridman PodcastLex Fridman Podcast
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The following is a conversation with Douglas Murray, author of The War in 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, dar
Well, I mean, several things. There's, political angles which are forever changing. But on the human level, as as you know, if you visit troops, frontline troops, you have that admiration for people defending their country, defending their homes, defending their families. Struck by the way in which that is at a remove from the sort of political noise and the media noise and and much more. It's very easy to get caught up in the tos and fros of today's news. But, that to my mind is is that's the single thing that struck me most in my visits there, is just, the the people I've met who who are fig
level is unavoidable, undeniable. So the thing that struck you that's different from the the media turmoil is just the reality of war. Yeah.
Of course. I mean, you know, people who have either lived under Russian occupation from invading armies and then come back out into the world having been liberated as in late twenty twenty two. All the people now, organized most recently there in recent weeks, who were just getting on with their job as soldiers, whilst the world was talking about them.
When were you there? In early on in this escalated war of twenty two? Yes.
First time was in I was with the the Ukrainian Armed Forces when they retook Kherson. And I was back in recent weeks and was there when the Trump Zelensky blow up happened. In fact, I was with, I was in a Ukrainian dugout at the front lines when I was watching it.
How's the morale? How's the way the content of the conversations you've heard different on the from the two visits separated by, I guess, two years?
One level, I mean, nothing has changed much. You know, it's a sort of it it's not a a total standoff because intermittently each side gains territory from the others, but it's it's not I mean, there'd been no very significant military gains by either side in the interim period.
I think, my experience of the the soldiers, the people of Ukraine early on in the war, there's a intense optimism about the outcomes of the war. There's a sense that Right. Going to win. Yeah. And the definition of what win means was, like, all the territory is going to be one back.
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