Back to my next guest, psychologist and geopolitical analyst Sam Vaknin.
And the headline that I've got to work with here is, if you refuse to listen to people's grievances and stigmatize them, they turn to Hamas, they turn to Hitler, and they turn to Trump.
To explain more about this, and this is in the light of the riots and some of the things that we've seen happening, Sam Vaknin, a professor of clinical psychology, and as I said before, a geopolitical analyst joins me now.
Sam, you know, and I hope that I continue to learn, and I certainly learned from you.
So I did a little bit of research of reminding myself of Germany, 1920s, 1930s, of course there's Wall Street crash in 1929. Germany had to repay all of that money. They couldn't. Things got worse and worse and worse.
You had a government that was either far right or sort of Marx or communist left, polarization of goodies and badies and what have you.
They needed a bad guy. I mean, people were going hungry, people were starving.
And I was reminded looking at what you said a friend of mine at school, her mother was German and she said she'd been part of the Hitler Youth. I started high school in 1969 and I was absolutely shocked. And she said they didn't know what it was then, you know, pre-war. They didn't have food, she said we didn't even know what it was then, you know, pre-war. They didn't have food. She said, we didn't even have shoes on our feet.
And they took all these children to a place from, I know, some city to Saxon House and where I've been. It's a really beautiful area. They fed us, they gave us food and what have you. And we listened to them. And their message was, under them, they'd get rid of these people who were taking their money. They would make the economy.
But I was reading through what they were saying and I was liking, hello, you still got politicians saying the same thing.
So just talk us through.
And I mean, no one was listening to the German people. And into that void came the Nazis.
Yes, good to see you again, Trisha.
In the Bible it says, there's nothing new under the sun. And I might add there's nothing new under the moon from personal experience.
But there's really nothing new.
Anti-immigration movements, for example, they're not new. Anti-Semitism is an anti-immigration movement. Because when the Jews were expelled from Judea by the Romans, they became immigrants in many countries.
So here we have anti-Semitism. Racism is an anti-immigration movement because people from Africa were forcibly moved to other countries. They became essentially immigrants. Refugees are immigrants.
So anti-immigration, the hatred of the other is nothing new. Nazism that you've mentioned in the 1920s and 1930s was the epitome and culmination of this, but it was nothing new.
I think what we are seeing today is actually new, and it is new because the motivating force is the discrepancy, the abyss between what we call the overt text and the hidden text, the covert text.
What is the overt text? The overt text in the West is multiculturalism, tolerance, pluralism. That is the overt text.
But what is the real text? What hides underneath? What is the unseemly underbelly of the overt text, the covert text?
It is haughty, arrogant elitism.
You know, Sam, just a...
And you've brought in something and, you know, I thought in this whole discussion, the one thing, especially in Britain, especially in Britain, that hasn't been talked about is a class divide. There is definitely a class divide in what was going on.
I'm about to mention it.
So haughty arrogant elitism, of course, has to do with classes. I'll come to it in a minute.
Another element of the hidden text, which is the only real text, by the way, the overt text is never real. Only the hidden text is real. We know it from Derrida and other scholars.
So another element is losses. Losses, losses of real losses and imagined losses of privilege, of hegemony, of exclusivity, of a way of life, of values, and ultimately of a sense of safety. People feel that they have lost all these.
Now who are these people that I'm talking about?
I call them the invisible class.
There is the elite class and the invisible class.
And the invisible class is comprised of the youth.
The youth in today's world is utterly hopeless, economically, spiritually, psychologically, the youth is in a disastrous state.
Men, men who are losing the battle against women. Women are far more educated, far more socially mobile, and so on so forth.
Working class whites, working class whites in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in many other countries, who are losing out to globalization and automation.
And finally the less educated, people with a high school diploma and so on, who are not competitive in the current workplace environment.
So these people are forgotten. They're ignored. They're overlooked. No one listens to them. No one talks to them. No one sees them. They're the invisible class.
There is no structure. There is no structure. There is no institution which caters explicitly and exclusively to the needs of the invisible class.
Until, though, I was going to say, and into that void and coming back to like the 1920s and the 1930s, that creates a ripe ground.
And it's interesting, again, going back to my history lesson, it was interesting to see that Hitler was backed by elite, the ones who had money. They thought, well, we'll let this guy speaking all this rubbish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll let him in. And then when he's in, we'll get rid of him and we'll have power back again.
It reminds me of the Republican Party and what's happening with Trump.
And in every case, these people who come into, you said the invisible classes, but the people who end up saying, we know what we can do, we'll take it in charge. I'm thinking of your Nigel Farage's, or anyone like that, your Trump's, they're billionaires, they're multi-millionaires. They're not part of the invisible class, but they are the ones who offer salvation.
This has to do with the fact that they're terrified. They're in panic. They are able to read the cards and the ruins. You know, they've become billionaires because they're very good at spotting trends.
And they see the growing social unrest, they see the disintegration of the social fabric, they see the imminent threat of a revolution or a rebellion. There's a lot of defiance, a lot of aggression, a lot of violence.
And what they do, what they try to do, is create a pressure valve. Create, find a demagogue or find a political party who are willing to espouse the contents or to make the contents of the hidden text explicit.
And so they talk about the losses, they talk about the discrimination, and they talk about the, and so on so forth.
The grievances of the invisible class become a political platform.
And the elites believe that they can puppeteer, that they're puppet masters.
Yes.
They can, through this pressure valve, they can get rid of the risk of social unrest.
That is, of course, nonsense. Because history has proven repeatedly. Adolf Hitler is an excellent example. I think Donald Trump is another.
No comparison, by the way.
No, no, no, but in the way that they can come in, they can, as you say, and I love the way you put that, they can spot a trend after all they're businessmen.
So it's not about them even believing what they're saying. They will say what they need to say to increase their empire, to get their power.
And because people are so desperate, because you keep hearing people make the same excuses for maybe a Donald Trump like figure or Nighter Friday or what have you, this Tommy Robinson or whatever his name is the who's sunning himself and tweeting all sorts of misinformation.
The Elon Musk's who've got billions, the people behind Telegram, billions as well.
And people, even though you sort of think, can't you see you are kaching, kaching for them.
They'll say, oh, it's not Tommy Robinson's fault that he's lying there on a beach. It's not Trump's he's got millions and millions he's one of us when they couldn't they don't care about it but they've seen an opportunity.
It's a facade, the elites allow the invisible class to express and manifest its grievances.
They believe that talking about the grievances would make them go away.
Definitely would undermine or undercut the incipient social unrest.
And so, as I said, they regard it as a pressure valve to release steam, you know.
So that's the elites.
The Invisible Class believe that if they were to team up with movers and shakers and multi-billionaires and simple both, ultimately they will come to power and they will become, or they will regain dominance, hegemony, economic benefits, social benefits. They will impose their values on society.
And they don't mind if it's not done in a democratic way, because democracy has never worked for the invisible class.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Liberal democracy has failed.
So when if those you know movers and shakers and billionaires get power, either through democracy or saying the election was rigged or however they do it.
And, you know, do those, the unseen, the invisible, do they ever get to have their dreams realized?
All of these people, with all of these millions, he's one of us, even though he's got billions and lives in a golden tower or as a millionaire and everything. And if we hang on to his coattails, we too will be powerful.
Does it ever actually materialize?
Because it figures to be, once those people get in power and different situations, it could be in their very extreme with Hitler, it could be in, you know, a Trump or any of those, once they get into power, they don't need those invisible classes again.
It's our animal farm doesn't it start all over again?
Everyone holds the invisible class in contempt.
That's the truth. The elitist poison has permeated every social cell, university, higher education, business, everyone holds the invisible class in content.
At best, they're considered to be low-level, low-intensity consumers. That's the best case scenario.
So, of course, no one is going to pay attention to their grievances or gratify their hopes and dreams or meet their expectations of course not they're cast aside.
Even so, even if you're these people who offer salvation, I'm your voice, this is my party, it's a different party we're we're going to make things better for you.
Even if they do get into power, it's not going to change anything for those that.
And so they stay there until another Donald Trump or Nigel Farage or whoever comes along and then it happens all over again.
I regard the invisible class as the dynamo of politics. The invisible class creates a sufficient amount of unrest to change the regime basically.
Not to change a political party but to change the structure of the regime, basically. Not to change a political party, but to change the structure of the regime.
So it is the invisible cluster drives everything, but it is hijacked continuously by intellectuals, for example in the Russian Revolution, or by industrialists, for example, in Germany, Nazi Germany, or by rich billionaires, for example, in the United States today. Right. The agenda of the invisible class is always compromised by the fact that the invisible class doesn't have a sufficient number of intellectuals, doesn't have enough money, doesn't know to organize itself.
Social media has changed it to some extent, but not to a large extent.
Okay.
So let's take a break because I want to come back and talk more about this because what is interesting to me as well is on the other flip side, what we've seen happening here in the UK, when this whole previously silent lot of people start taking to the streets in an altogether different way of protesting, what's going on there? We'll be back with more with Sam Vaknan right after this break.
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The commander in chief can't even survive cutting himself shaving and the man that we weren't sure about has just survived a bullet. That's America, right? I mean, it's, no, no, it's responding. It was great. We've got to call out this champagne socialist, do you know what I mean? The thing is, what's happening in this country, do you know what I mean? You know, we've been infiltrated really and I'm sorry, but someone has to say this and properly say it, do you know what I mean? You know, we've been infiltrated really. And I'm sorry, but someone has to say this and proper say it, do you know what? But the thing is, though, if anyone speaks out against what's actually going on in the country, like, you know what I mean? How many times you think you said, do you know what, I know, I know, I know, I know, I've got... 20 for God's sake, man! What's the matter with you? We need to concentrate on that, you know what I mean? Ladies are, a monumental announcement, talk has just in a million. That's the worst sound of it. I mean, I've got to have a terrible day to sound of it. I've got to say your team are great back there. Not that was... Seriously now you're overdoing it. You've got to mark, you've got two minutes from Tor Drive. What you got to Mike. You've got two minutes from Tor Drive. What you got, pal? Hello? Brilliant. Don't we love a caller who's not actually there? This is Talk Drive. Across. Across the UK on DAB Plus, on YouTube, on your mobile, and on your side, this is talk. Welcome back and thank you for joining me. I'm with Sam Backnan, a psychologist and geopolitical analyst. Sam, before I get back to you, I want to read this message. Great show today, as always. I like many shows on talk. Oh, but yours are so classy with interviews that really make you reflect. Your interview with Sam Vaknin is superb, some very profound points. Says Rachel.
Rachel, thank you very much indeed. I'm glad because I do like to dig beneath the surface and get people thinking in different ways.
Our conversation just now, Sam, is brilliant. A couple of things I want to talk about.
The violence that many communities experience, especially Southport, where these poor little girls were killed.
But the subsequent violence, I thought it interesting that in at least one of the statements from the parents, they were horrified about it.
And then, you know, you can imagine a sleepy little village, some horrific murders take place. Everybody kind of knows everybody. Then all of this violence, mainly from people outside, comes in and they witness what to outsiders might seem as a shop or something else, but to a community, that's where you get your lollipops, that's where you get your milk, where they know Mrs. So and So and what have you.
The Imam came out of the local little mosque and gave food to some of the rioters. They ended up embracing and talking what have you.
But I want to talk about the trauma that seeing so much violence and there are many, many communities around the country, what effect that has on the local community?
And then for a final bit of it, I want to move on to something I was quite surprised by.
The number of people, in the end, who kind of just got out and very peacefully, you know, in 99.9% of the cases, stood out in the street and peacefully, you know, in 99.9% of the cases stood out in the street and what, you know, peace movements throughout the years.
So let's talk about the effect of seeing violence on a community.
How does it, I can only begin to imagine the place you grow up and that's this street and suddenly seeing these burning, you know, looting, screaming, a lot of aggression in the street. What does it do to a community?
It's very disorienting. It's nightmarish. It's surrealistic. It's dystopian.
It's like being caught in a sci-fi or a horror movie suddenly.
But this is not merely violence. This is exclusionary violence. It's violence that says there's an in-group and an out-group. There's we and there's you. There's the other and there's us.
So this is not merely violence, it's a message. It's what we call a signaling behavior. It contains a message.
You're no longer wanted here. Go away. You're alien, your foreigners. You will never fit in. You will never be part of us. We are the pure, unadulterated, original. You are merely copies, you know, faded copies, go away.
So this message is very unsettling.
I think it has five major impacts.
Number one, this kind of violence undermines norms, societal norms and societal mores. It is non-normative. It creates something called an anomaly, a society or an environment which has no norms of behavior.
In other words, you don't know any longer what's right and what's wrong.
Right, yeah, yeah.
But you shouldn't do.
Number two, it undermines the communal identity. It undermines the community's identity.
What is a community? A community is a narrative. It's a story. It's something we all believe in because it's shared.
So it's a narrative and this kind of violence undermines the narrative, destroys it, turns it apart, rends the social fabric apart.
Number three it has a major impact on what we call social cohesion.
Social cohesion includes consensus, a social consensus, and social solidarity.
And so we're faced with such violence, the consensus disintegrates and solidarity vanishes in most cases.
So there's a structural effect.
I was going to say as well, Sam, there's a structural effect.
Number four.
I was going to say as well, Sam, there's that.
All the normal things you did would suddenly become scary.
I mean, people who probably never thought of sending the kids down to the corner shop, you know, just normal everyday things suddenly become, you know, frightening.
Unsafe.
Yeah, unsafe.
Unsafe, that's the word.
Yeah.
That's what I mentioned.
Yeah.
That's what I mentioned before the break.
Yeah.
There's a dissipation of the sense of safety.
Yeah.
You no longer feel safe because you no longer know what's right, what's wrong. What are the norms? What's the narrative? Is there a consensus? Is there solidarity?
Your own neighbors suddenly appear to be alien, strange, it's a jungle kind of thing. It's each one on his own, you know.
The next thing, number four, is functionality.
Of course, such violence affects the functioning of the community. Stores and schools close down. The police centers.
I mean, so functionality and efficacy of the community is damaged.
And finally, as you said, a sense of safety. And it creates a flight or fight response.
People either avoid the situation altogether, barricade themselves at home with groceries for one month.
Yeah, yeah.
Or they go out to demonstrate against the violence.
So this is a flight or fight response.
And it has to do with the fact that the situation becomes less and less predictable as it drags on.
That is why early intervention and forceful intervention and visible ostentatious intervention is utterly crucial because the longer this goes on, the more irreversible the damages are.
And there are even situations where communities have never recovered.
Yes, never.
Yes.
And it's interesting you say that with Keir Starmer's, you know, the televising of the sentencing, the very visual, just this being seen to be done, very swift, you know, not a lot of time between somebody, and also the releasing of the body cam and what have you.
And it's interesting, and we talked about this before with the previous guests, that when they've televised or when they've reported, you know, on this very swift, very visual form of justice, that is it a message? I feel it's a message.
Where if you saw this huge mob, you know, from the villagers point of view, this frightening mass changing your community, you see them one by one, these big monsters bursting into tears in the dock, you know, crying for their mummies.
You find out they've got a string of convictions.
All of those things, it turns the mob into individuals.
It makes, I don't know, who were seen to be monsters, you can then say, oh, they're actually human.
It restores perspective and proportion, and it is a signal of zero tolerance.
And in such occurrences, such events, zero tolerance is the only form of tolerance allowed.
We should never tolerate violence, not even minimally.
The invisible class has justified grievances.
And it is to the discredit of the authorities, governments, NGOs, civil society, and the elites that they've been ignoring these grievances for so long, economic grievances, spiritual grievances, community grievances and so on, that is to their discredit that they've been ignoring it.
But violence should be utterly outlawed and avoided as a mode of communication.
There are other ways to communicate violence should never be one of them.
So zero tolerance, ostentatious punishment, grave severe, harsh punishment.
The exposure of the backgrounds of outside agitators and hijackers of the process and each hikers on the process and so on and so on and if necessary and a concerted effort to reconstruct the community.
Much too often in the wake of such episodes, the communities are left to fend off on their own and for their own.
They're just just left behind.
They say the news cycle has moved on.
And we're going to talk more about that. And what we've seen, you know, builders coming out and rebuilding walls and general public coming out to clean the streets and what have you. And I think that is fairly new as well. And Sam, you've touched upon new and different things that we're seeing.
We'll be back with more with Sam right after this break. The I'm not going to be the I'm going to be the The I'm going to be the I'm going to be I'm going to be the The I'm not going to be able to be. I'm not going to be. I'm going to be a lot of the The I'm not going to be the I'm going to be the The I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be.
The I'm going to be the I'm going to be I'm going to be I'm going to I'm going to Across the UK on DAB Plus, on YouTube, on your your mobile and on your side this is talk welcome back i'm with sam sam vachnan uh pha psychologist geopolitical analyst and we're having a real deep down look because all you get in the newspapers at the very best not all of them but you get the headlines and what have you um and i like looking at the different layers and making you think because the world isn't like star wars with goodies and badies it's it's's far more nuance than that, Sam. We talked about what witnessing such violence does to communities. One of the things that, especially, and I mentioned earlier in the program, many, many people, doctors, nurses, dentists, streetists street you know people who sell um you know have the corner store whoever i felt very scared and very unsafe because you and you hit upon it you uh people like myself people all of these people a friend of mine who's a very respected gp heart surgeon whatever we just think of ourselves as Brits. Here we are, we're just British. We don't think of ourselves as our colour until something or someone makes an issue of it. And suddenly you become very, and you hit upon it very well. Very unsure, the place where I grew up, you know, in 1957, I've, you know, all of these places. And suddenly you're being told by people who haven't spent half as long in the country, but because you're brown, even though you were born, even you paid your taxes, they even though your mother was asked to come desperately, you know, after the war as part of nurses, suddenly you're other and you're unsafe, because nobody's going to check with you, they're just going to see your colour and go for you. Or, in my husband's case, if he's Jewish, somebody's going to go for him purely because of something, we don't go around and, you know, we're just us and we're proud of being where we are and we love where we are and suddenly we are other. When people in their thousands came out into the street and 99.9% very peacefully said, you are welcome here. And you look at them and they're women and children. There's an elderly lady, I think Nans against fascism in the 90s or something like that. When you get an imam giving bread and food to a rioter and hugging them and talking with them, when you see all of that, it restores your faith in humanity. But you kind of ask, wow, where's that come from? Who are these people that they are brave enough? Because it's pretty scary and they thought, although those, you know, the people we've been talking about would be out there, who are they to get out of their comfortable living rooms? Most of them are white and say, no, we're not like that. I think that takes bravery.
I mean, people like myself have got no choice. If we encounter a mob like that, they're going to beat us up and maybe ask questions later. These people have a choice.
And yet women, children, elderly ladies in their 80s, people who fought in the war, people who experience, or parents who experience the Holocaust, people from all sorts of life come out and as far as they know could be risking their safety, but to stand in their thousands and say, no, no more.
How does that come about?
A vision of the future.
If you leave these violent demonstrators to their own devices, they're going to shape the country.
They're going to shape the country in their own image.
The same goes for the United States.
Yes.
If you leave the Trump base to shape the United States, it's going to look like Trump.
Do you want the United States to look like Trump? Do you want the United Kingdom to look like these rioters?
And then I think this is far more frighteningthan confronting the rioters and confronting the Trump base or confronting anyone for that matter.
I think it is this vision of a dystopian, terrifying, surrealistic future that is driving these people to preserve the present and to avoid this transition via means of violence to avoid this transition to a future that is inhuman in many ways and that is terrorizing.
I was going to say, so what makes somebody decide, or what makes people decide to peacefully demonstrate that it doesn't have to be that way?
Depends how invested you are in your community, in your country, in your nation, the more you're invested, then the more likely you are to protest and to establish a wall, a firewall between you and the future that these violent people are driving at.
Same applies not only to violent protestations, same applies to demagogues, some applies to authoritarian figures, some applies to anyone who is driving the community or the community at large, the nation, country, nation state, any collective, anyone who's driving a collective towards a vision of suppression and ugliness and, you know, oppression and...
Chaos!
They should be opposed. They should be opposed.
They should be opposed.
Now, there's one thing I think that we tend to a bit overlook, not totally, but, or at least not look at it rightly.
These events constitute a trauma. This is a trauma.
And the communities and the country at large, not only the community, because we tend to limit our attention, focus our intention on those who are directly involved and directly affected.
That is wrong. The entire country is traumatized. This is a national trauma.
And so we need to use, we need to apply techniques borrowed from trauma therapy. And we need to apply them to individuals who have been directly impacted by the violence. And we need to apply them to the communities, so on a community level, like a community level trauma therapy, and we need to apply it on the national level.
That's a good point.
Now, solidarity, these marches, you know, solidarity is a good start, but it's only a start, and it doesn't tackle the core after effects of the trauma. The trauma is there, make no mistake about it, it has to be tackled.
And I think the fact that we don't mobilize psychologists, we don't have a psychologist mobilization force, so to speak, an army of psychology, at the ready, at the ready, is a deficiency.
Because modern life throws at us traumas much more frequently than before.
This is comparable, comparable maybe to the 20s and 30s, 1920s, 1930s.
And we need to be equipped because people get traumatized and then they never recover.
Even if they appear to have recovered, they actually did not recover. And this reverberates and then gets multiplied and we need to put a stop to it on each and every level. National, community, individual, family, individual.
I couldn't agree more.
And I couldn't agree with you more.
And that's why I cheered the King's message in, you know, recognizing and speaking to and congratulating.
I think to be your bravery or your, you know, communities coming together together those people who build the walls who hand out the bread who do all of those things being recognized and congratulated I think is a first step.
Just one of many steps.
Sam, as usual, brilliant, brilliant talking with you.
And as I keep saying on my show, I'm very, very lucky to have guests like yourself from whom I learn and who I listen and I can see from the messages as well.
Rachel, who sent a message in, thank you.
I thank you.
I'm so pleased and I'm very fortunate that I can bring you voices that make you think.
Outside the usual, rah, rah, rah.
You know what, I'm about mind, body and soul.
In a moment, we're going to change.