Joe Rogan’s debate between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray has dominated online discourse for days, with supporters spinning for both sides as if it was a presidential election debate. Even President Trump himself seemingly picked a team, when he posted a glowing endorsement of Murray’s new book the very next day.
Almost as interesting as the main debate were some of the issues it raised about the way debate has transformed in the digital age. Do you need to travel to a specific country, or experience a war, to have valid opinions about what’s happening there? And should the podcasters who now wield more influence than any TV network be more judicious about who they platform? And who really won Murray vs Smith?
Joining Piers Morgan to debate all this is Professor John Spencer, executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, who took issue with a number of Dave’s points and felt he was “epically dismantled” by Murray. Plus Dave Smith himself, comedian and host of ‘Part of the Problem’ defends himself, before being delving into deeper discussion on war discourse with Harvard mathematician and podcaster Dr Eric Weinstein.
Outline:
00:00 – Introduction and monologue
02:50 – Smith on the reaction to his Rogan debate with Douglas Murray
08:40 – John Spencer on why Dave was ‘epically dismantled’ by Murray
15:45 – Is Israel intentionally killing civilians and children?
21:00 – Smith calls Murray a hypocrite
26:40 – Piers asks: When is a war morally just?
37:10 – Conspiracy theorists on Rogan being platformed
38:49 – Eric Weinstein on heterodox thinkers
48:57 – Weinstein’s verdict on the Smith vs Murray Rogan debate
50:30 – Where are we with the Gaza war?
Transcript
00:00:00
Dave Smith: I’m a free American. I can talk about what I like to.
00:00:02
Douglas Murray: You can talk about what you want-
00:00:02
Dave Smith: So I don’t… So what is the point here?
00:00:03
Douglas Murray: Abs- I’ve noticed you can. The point is what are you pushing? Why?
00:00:07
Dave Smith: What am I pushing?
00:00:08
Douglas Murray: Yes.
00:00:08
Dave Smith: Uh, liberty, free markets, peace, prosperity. I was surprised by how, uh, the debate itself went. It does feel like people are living in different realities. When you look at the aerial footage of Gaza, that does not describe every single strike Israel has launched.
00:00:25
Douglas Murray: Oh. When were you last there at all?
00:00:26
Dave Smith: I’ve never been.
00:00:27
Douglas Murray: You’ve never been?
00:00:29
Dave Smith: Well, am I, am I not allowed to talk about it now?
00:00:32
John Spencer: You just don’t know the information you need to know to make that judgment.
00:00:35
Dave Smith: If someone were to do that, you would call it intentional murder, right?
00:00:38
John Spencer: That’s not true.
00:00:39
Douglas Murray: You’re not raising questions, you’re not asking questions. You’re telling people something. I think there’s a whole bunch of guys doing that.
00:00:45
Joe Rogan: I think-
00:00:46
Douglas Murray: I think Dave is doing that. It’s a shape-shifting thing. Comedian or historian?
00:00:51
Eric Weinstein: In part, the problem is, is that we haven’t reconciled ourselves to the idea that we speak one way in front of the world, another way behind closed doors, and that this is actually natural and normal.
00:01:01
Joe Rogan: These things are always like Piers Morgan-y, which is fine, you know, where everyone’s screaming over each other.
00:01:07
Piers Morgan: Well, Joe Rogan’s debate between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray has dominated conversation for days now. Supporters have been spinning for both sides as if it was a presidential election debate. And some felt the president himself picked a team when he posted a glowing endorsement of Douglas’s new book the very next day. Almost as interesting as the main debate were some of the issues it raised about the way that debate has transformed in the digital age. First is so-called credentialism. Should someone with old-fashioned qualifications get more of a say than someone who does a lot of research, but ultimately has none? Do you need to travel to a specific country or experience a war to have valid opinions about what’s happening there? And should the podcasters who now wield more influence than any TV network be more judicious about who they platform, or is that kind of censorious, judgemental gatekeeping the very reason they got so popular in the first place? Finally, who won? Well, joining me to debate all this are two people with very different views on all of the above. One is John Spencer, executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, who took issue with a number of Dave Smith’s points and felt he was epically dismantled by Douglas Murray. And the other is Dave Smith himself, host of Part of the Problem, who’s a comedian, a libertarian commentator, and he felt, of course, that he remained epically intact.
00:02:28
Dave Smith: [laughs]
00:02:28
Piers Morgan: And we’ll be joined a little later by Eric Weinstein. So let me start. Uh, first of all, Dave Smith, are you surprised, Dave, about the reaction to your showdown with Douglas Murray? Uh, and do you believe you won?
00:02:43
Dave Smith: Um, I’m, I’m not surprised at all by the reaction. I was surprised by how, uh, the debate itself went. Um, so but, b- but a- as it was going that way, I knew exactly what the reaction was gonna be. I thought that was pretty, [laughs] pretty clear. Um, I think, uh, that, you know, I, I, I would say this. It… What I thought was kinda strange about it was, and I know probably both of you have… We could all think of examples like this. Like, there, there’s been many times where people were challenged to a debate and they refused to debate them. Um, uh, Hotez, Dr. Hotez with, uh, Bobby Kennedy comes to mind for me, but there’s lots of examples like this. And there’s… And, and sometimes that’s reasonable, and sometimes it’s not reasonable. Like, I think in the case of Hotez, he should have debated Bobby Kennedy. Um, but at the same time, I’ve, I’ve been challenged to debate flat Earthers and people with 150 followers, and I’m not particularly interested in doing that. So sometimes you’ll see people who go, uh, they’ll take the, the path of like, “Look, this person’s beneath me. Um, I’m not gonna debate this issue. I, I have no w- uh, interest in doing this.” And then sometimes people will agree to debate. I think, uh, Douglas Murray is the first person I’ve ever seen try to do both, and [laughs] it made for kind of a, an interesting spectacle. Um, d- if you’re asking me if I think I won, I mean, you can let… Other people can, can have their opinion on that. Obviously, I’m, I’m biased in saying that. I think that the overwhelming reaction that I’ve seen is much more that Douglas Murray lost than I won. I think I was there to debate Ukraine and Israel, and Douglas was there. He made it more of a, a, a bigger kind of watershed moment about the experts versus the podcasters, which was not what I thought we were gonna do. Um, but I think [laughs] in doing that, it’s hard to even say win or lose. You’re going into an environment where you couldn’t have worked harder to turn the entire audience against you. Obviously, by definition, the audience of the Joe Rogan Experience are on the side of the podcasters being allowed to talk about these issues. And a- as I said in the debate, I don’t think the expert class has a very good track record.
00:04:58
Piers Morgan: Yeah, I mean, I, I really enjoyed it. Uh, for what it’s worth, I’ve had you both on my show, of course, a lot, and I enjoy watching you, uh, go at each other. I’ve seen lots of praise for you, Dave, indisputably a lot. Uh, I’ve also seen, and we’ve just got a little summary of some of the, uh, lack of praise for you. “Dave Smith was eviscerated by Douglas Murray,” posted Henry Hobson. “This is what happens when bluster and shallow thinking go up against a considered intellect.” John Daly said, “Watching someone like Doug Mur- Douglas Murray absolutely crucify Dave Smith is a real treat.” And, uh, Con Tomlinson, “Dave Smith is ignorant. Douglas Murray crushed him.” And the only reason I read those three out is it shows me that on, uh, social media in particular, when these kind of events happen, and I call them events ’cause everybody watches them, when they do happen, there’s very little middle ground. There are very little people who pop up on social media and go, “You know what? On the one hand, I thought Dave made some good points. On the other, Douglas made some good points, and I really enjoyed the experience” [laughs] Which is probably what Joe Rogan thought. Um, but no, it, uh… We’re in a very tribal world, where before you guys even sat down together with Joe Rogan, they’d already decided you were gonna be disintegrated, dismantled, and crucified. And similarly, a lot of people who like you and don’t like Douglas Murray felt exactly the same way about what was gonna happen to him. What does that tell you about discourse today, and what do we do about that, if, uh, if anything?
00:06:29
Dave Smith: Well, uh, for the record, I will say, I mean, and I, I try to not live my life in, uh, on internet comments, but for this one I just could not help myself. Um, but if you, uh, uh, if you look at the YouTube comments or the, um, Spotify comments, I mean, it’s overwhelmingly hostile toward, uh, uh, Douglas. It seems to me that there’s, um, yeah, every account on Twitter with, uh, an Israeli flag and a Hebrew name in their bio certainly [laughs] seemed to think that I got my ass kicked. Um, what, I think what’s even more fascinating is that there’d be specific moments that, that d- people draw 180, uh, degree opposite conclusions from. Like, the one that I saw going super viral is him, you know, asking me, uh, if I’ve ever been to Israel and then kind of putting on a performance about how shocked he is that I haven’t been there. And it was interesting to me how different people could look at the exact same moment, and one group of people could say, “Oh, this was Dave getting destroyed,” and the other group of people could say, “I mean, like objectively this is a non-argument. This doesn’t win you any points in a debate.” Like, I, I obviously fall into the second group there, but it sur- it certainly does show you, um, how dug in certain people are, of course, which I think is to be expected in this most of contentious issues. Uh, but yeah, it was, it… I, I don’t know exactly what to take from that, but much like in the last five years particularly, it does feel like people are living in different realities. And even if you were to ask people-
00:08:06
Piers Morgan: Huh
00:08:06
Dave Smith: … to tell the story of COVID, I mean, like, what just happened over the last five years with this global pandemic, it’s amazing how much people could have completely diametrically opposed understandings of the reality we just lived through. Now, I’m not being a relativist here. I, I think one of those sides is wrong and the other one is right, but that is where we are.
00:08:29
Piers Morgan: Funnily enough, I would say the COVID debate i, is a lot more nuanced in reality than the two extremities take it, for what it’s worth. But let’s bring in John Spencer, ’cause he certainly was not in the Dave Smith one camp. Uh, you tweeted, “Dave Smith and Douglas Murray debated who qualifies as an expert and who should be making declarative statements about certain wars. That question answers itself.” And that’s been construed, uh, John, to mean that you believe that, uh, Dave Smith was not the expert in the room. Um, explain why, why you felt that Dave Smith lost this debate.
00:09:05
John Spencer: Sure. I, I, I wouldn’t say it had anything to do with Douglas. I would have to say it was the statements that Dave Smith made during the podcast, which highlight… A- and I won’t get into the credentialism as Dave’s quoting four-star generals or who’s an expert and who’s not. I do research. I think Dave tells jokes for a living. I had problems with the statements that were made, and then how do you come to that conclusion, which really does get to the podcaster world versus other individuals on how did you come to that opinion or that declarative statement, like Israel’s intentionally killing civilians. I mean, there’s like 10 different ways you can do research. You can do comparative, case study, and I think this is what Douglas was saying. If you haven’t been there, then how are you getting to your conclusion? You do ethnographic, you can go there and do interviews in Gaza like both Douglas and I have done with soldiers. What’s going on? How are you doing it? You can do even historical archival data research. That’s not what it appears that Dave does, and it seems to be more of a historical revisionism. Take a bas- piece of data that you got and then tell a really convincing narrative on how you got to your conclusion. But as somebody who has students, I mean, correlation is not causation is that famous phrase. When that story is actually just a lot of correlation and inferences, how did you get to your conclusion? How do you do that research? Forget the expertise and the credentialism. You’re making a statement like it’s true, and I know Dave’s anti-war and that’s great, but you can’t be anti-factual. And Dave, without Douglas, just made a bunch of not true statements.
00:10:43
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00:11:54
Dave Smith: So, so care to share one?
00:11:55
Piers Morgan: … completely factually ina- inaccurate.
00:11:59
John Spencer: Absolutely. So, I mean, I think the overwhelming, which is what me and Dave were talking over X, is that Israel is intentionally killing civilians, especially children. That’s not a factual statement at all because it doesn’t even include the base information. So it’s almost like, you know, you just don’t know the information you need to know to make that judgment. And, you know, let’s forget comparing it to a domestic … situation like Dave continues to do on Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, others. Like, if somebody killed my kids and I, and I know where he’s at, and I go to that apartment building and I kill everybody in it, that’s murder, and that’s what Israel is doing. And that’s not true. Even you, Piers, have commented about Israel striking something and saying, “Look, look at the number of civilians. That’s not acceptable.” That’s not how war works. That’s not even how you would a- assess that situation, ’cause it completely rules out what the law of war says about proportionality, about assessing what is the target, who is that individual, what’s his value, concrete value? And then, which a lot of people leave out, is what precautions did Israel take, like we just saw recently, of calling everybody in the building saying, “Look, the terrorist is using this building for a military purpose. You, you must leave. You must get out of this area,” or all the other steps, these civilian harm mitigation measures. So that one’s a really huge one, but there are other ones, like when Dave said that there are more children to have died in this war than any modern war. That’s just… Of course, Douglas called that out, but there is a whole list of them, from the blockade, from the occupation. Like, all of these things were just counterfactual and not a logic that leads to a conclusion, but he’s really convincing and, and, and that’s what I have a problem with.
00:13:47
Piers Morgan: All right, Dave, your response.
00:13:49
Dave Smith: Sure. Well, okay, I mean, I, I, I do think that, like, you, you go- you do a lot of this, as Douglas did, a lot of this poisoning of the well stuff and saying, “You tell jokes, and I do research.” And you could say this isn’t credentialism all you want to, but it’s really a lot before you start taking on an actual argument, in fact. It wasn’t till the follow-up question that you pointed anything out. So to the analogy that I’m making, and you, you know, y- as you were quoting, uh, uh, me on Twitter the other day, uh, it’s not, I’m not saying that I don’t, I’m not familiar, although I’m not claiming to have your level of expertise with international humanitarian law, or you can assert that war works a different way. I’m talking about something much more fundamental. What I’m saying is that Douglas is making the claim, and many others are, uh, that Israel’s killing of civilians is unintentional. And I’m talking about a very basic philosophical concept of morality, of intentionality, and that it in- by what we, what people mean when they say intentional, that if this was done domestically, we would consider it intentional. The point is that war… Y- yes, look, there’s been the Geneva Convention. There’s international humanitarian law. These are- it goes back to the mid-19th century, was codified into law after World War II. I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s a step in the right direction, but this is all a politician or a group of politicians declaring a word, and the fact that there are lines drawn on a map does not in any way magically transform morality or the basic philosophical concept of intent. And even in your example there, if I were to give out pamphlets, give out a warning, tell everybody, “I’d really like you to leave,” and then they didn’t and I blew up a building, we would consider that intentional murder. Now, my point, I, I think a lot of times people object to almost what the implications of this way of looking at the world might be. But forget all of that for a second. I’m just talking about how human beings think about these things, and when you talk about an intentional killing… Now, by the way, I should also stipulate that it’s not as if that’s the case in every single one of these strikes that Israel’s taken, and we’ve gotten all types of evidence about this. And there’s quite a number of cases, hundreds of cases, where they’re waiting for terrorists to go back into a residential building and then attacking the building. Suspected terrorists, I should say. But regardless, none of this is even really the point. The point is that on a very basic human level, there… And I, I would also think this is completely incompatible with Christianity, although I’m not trying to lecture anybody about that. But there is no micro and macro morality. There is no micro and macro intentionality. These are human concepts, and if you are dropping a bomb, and you know that there are women and children on the receiving end of that bomb, then that was done intentionally. And I think this is the reality of war, and I think if we’re gonna have a conversation about this, we should deal with it in reality.
00:16:46
Piers Morgan: Yeah, and, and also, John-
00:16:47
John Spencer: So, yeah
00:16:47
Piers Morgan: … I’ll get you to respond to that. But I mean, it just seems to me, having, having done so many debates about this since October the 7th, they… I’ve never disputed that Israel had a right to defend itself, in fact, a duty to defend itself and its people from any further attacks of that magnitude, given how horrific it was. So let me just s- restate that again. But it, there’s a kind of unique battlefield in Gaza, I would argue, and maybe you would argue differently, that you’ve got two million people, uh, 50% of whom are under 18, and that the enemy are all living in civilian areas amongst the civilians. So you have a kind of, uh, horrific battleground, if you like, to attack if you’re Israel, in the sense that you can only kill, constantly kill a lot of civilians, including children, if you go after the enemy in those civilian areas, and that’s exactly what’s happened. And I, I can’t think of a similar war, and maybe you can. You’ve got, y- you’re more experienced at this, I, I, I accept, than I am. But can you think of another scenario where the proportion of children that is in the attack zone has been at 50% or higher, and therefore we’re seeing so many children being killed?
00:18:06
John Spencer: So one… Look, yeah, that’s the case study or comparative model that you could do the research on. How does this compare to anything else? And it doesn’t, right? The 20 years of preparing Gaza for war, the 400 miles of tunnels, the human sacrifice strategy, because both sides actually have legal obligations. And when Hamas says, “I need the death of my women and children-” That’s not right. So the, you know, the data about what is the population, so one, I don’t wanna be, you know, heartless about it, and every death of a child is terrible. But you’re evaluating anybody who’s below the 18 as a child, as in you know that Hamas has basically charged… I joined the military at 17. Am I a child? And Hamas deploys, the average age of a Hamas recruit right now is 16 and a half. We’ve seen them put weapons in hands of very young children. You have combatant and you have non-combatant. Is there any comparable status to the demographic of Gaza? No. Is there any comparison to where another country, Egypt, refuses to let even those that want out, out from the combat areas, and Israel, who took weeks to evacuate the civilians from the areas they’re going into? So absolutely you’re… There are so many to tear. But back to Dave’s comment, which it stands on itself explaining what he doesn’t know about war or the laws of war, about them being codified and when they went into effect, or this is a simple question of morality that, you know, war should be no killing of civilians. That should be it. You two militaries should go-
00:19:37
Piers Morgan: That’s right
00:19:37
John Spencer: … find your place to fight and just have it out. That’s not the history of war from the creation literally of city-states going out and everything.
00:19:46
Piers Morgan: Again, I think you’re missing-
00:19:47
John Spencer: You wanna get into the frameworks-
00:19:47
Piers Morgan: I think you’re missing my points
00:19:48
John Spencer: … to judge, no, no, the frameworks-
00:19:50
Piers Morgan: I, I-
00:19:50
John Spencer: … to judge war, we as societies, all the societies of war, the Geneva Conventions is a one example, have decided here are the boundaries of brutality of war, like we don’t bomb-
00:20:03
Piers Morgan: Mm
00:20:03
John Spencer: … innocent civilians. And you cannot say, I don’t care what your Haaretz articles say, you’re not gonna show me that Israel has targeted civilians intentionally killing civilians when I can show you measures that Israel has taken that no military in the history of war have taken to get civilians out of harm’s way so they can target that terrorist. You once said on a podcast, if the terrorist is holding a baby and shooting at you, then of course you can kill the terrorist, and unfortunately what they’re doing is wrong. But then I understand that when we have cases of Hamas doing that, holding children so nobody will shoot at them, or going underneath a hospital, a school, a mosque, doing what we call lawfare. You have to have an understanding of the evolutions of the law of war, how it is adjudicated. When you say evidence, I mean evidence, not TikTok videos. I mean actual evidence of what did the person dropping, the commander know, what did he do to prevent it, what time did he do it, what type of munition did he use. His, Dave’s statement stand on as his own of showing that he doesn’t know the foundations of war, even he, if it’s what you call a just war or just execution of the war. You’re just not communicating that you know enough to make a statement like that. I’m just philosophically talking about killing civilians is wrong. That’s what the law of war says. It says don’t target civilians.
00:21:26
Piers Morgan: Yeah.
00:21:26
John Spencer: What Hamas did on October 7th. It doesn’t say zero civilians will die in a war. There’s a precaution law of war. There is the feasible things you do to prevent the lo- the civilian death. But you can’t say Israel hasn’t done that. And I’m saying, based on my research, not an appeal to expertise, going there, interviewing IDF soldiers, commanders, Netanyahu himself, I’m saying Israel is not targeting or intentionally trying to kill civilians. They’re doing the opposite more than anybody else. [whooshing sound]
00:21:58
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00:23:35
Dave Smith: Okay.
00:23:35
Piers Morgan: Okay.
00:23:35
Dave Smith: Again, this is-
00:23:36
Piers Morgan: I mean, Dave, that, that, that last point, that, that last point John made, and obviously respond to everything he said, but the last point about he’s been there. You know, one of Douglas Murray’s attack lines with you was that unlike him, who regularly goes to Israel, he regularly goes to Ukraine, you don’t go to these places that you then opine on. Um, you know, personally, I don’t think you need to go to the sun to know it’s hot. Uh, but, you know, a lot of people agree with Douglas Murray and say, yeah, you know, a- actually he’s right. If you don’t actually go, how can you really know what you’re talking about? And John’s kind of inferring that as well. What do you say to that?
00:24:14
John Spencer: No, Piers, I’m not. I’m not inferring that you have to go there.
00:24:17
Piers Morgan: Oh, okay.
00:24:17
John Spencer: I’m saying what research methodology are you using? If you’re not doing the interviews of people involved in the actions, if you’re not collecting data in a certain way, which you can get from going there, you can do ethnographic research by interviewing the people involved in the execution. I’m not saying that straw man of, well, Dave’s not been there so he can’t talk. If Dave did research, then absolutely. If Dave didn’t have giant logical holes in what he’s saying, like about the blockade or about the bombing or things like this, then you don’t have to go there. There are many ways to do research. I’m saying Dave doesn’t do that
00:24:52
Dave Smith: Okay, so I’ll, I’ll say-
00:24:53
Piers Morgan: Okay, go
00:24:54
Dave Smith: … there’s, it’s, uh, both, I, I feel like both in this debate and in the debate with Douglas Murray, it almost kind of feels like, um, like the analogy I’d use is like, uh, like if two fighters agreed to fight. You know, two guys in the UFC, they agree to, to fight. And so they show up under the lights, and you get into the cage, and I put my hands up, and then the other guy puts his hands down and starts telling me what a better fighter he is than me. And you’re like, “Okay, well then [laughs] let’s do it.”
00:25:20
Piers Morgan: [laughs]
00:25:20
Dave Smith: Like, I don’t know, let’s have the conversation. Like, instead of all this time-
00:25:24
Piers Morgan: Give me a fact
00:25:24
Dave Smith: … just telling me that you’re an expert-
00:25:25
Piers Morgan: Give me a fact that you think is a fact
00:25:26
Dave Smith: … hold on, hold on. Wait, wait one second. Let me finish my point since you, you had some time to talk there. Um, the, the, look, all of this stuff about, like whether you have to be there… By the way, they should, the, it’s going viral online, but there’s this great, uh, clip of Douglas Murray taking apart the lived experience argument from the left and making all these points about how, uh, people who were never in the Holocaust have written much more beautifully and accurate about the Holocaust than people who actually went through it themselves. Um, if you wanna say that you gained some, if you wanna say you have expertise or you wanna say going there gives you some more expertise, then sure. I mean, I, I wouldn’t argue that. No one’s arguing that you can’t learn about a place from going there. But again, this is the fighter putting his hands down and going, “I’ve trained so much harder than you. I’m such a better boxer than you. You could never hang with me.” It’s like, okay, so let’s get it going. Anyway, um, i- in terms of, by the way, I, uh, there is absolutely no chance, and I haven’t, uh, examined Douglas Murray’s passport, but there’s no chance that he’s not a hypocrite on this issue. I guarantee he has not been to all of the places that he’s commented on. Uh, I don’t know. He’s made, he’s had, he’s commented on every foreign country and what’s going on geopolitically for 20 years. I’m sure he hasn’t visited all of those places. Back, back to the point, ’cause it seems like in these things we do everything except actually debate the issue. You missed my entire point. Once you’re appealing to the law or appealing to how warfare actually works, you’re missing the entire point that I was making. My point is that this is not how the law works and this is not how war actually works. I’m making a much more basic human point, a fundamental point. Look, Piers, the other day, okay, this is, um… And by the way, if you don’t wanna believe this story, it’s fine. It’s just one first-hand account from Gaza. But whether it’s true or not, and there’s no reason to suspect it’s not true, but whether it’s true or not, there’s just been hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of examples like this. But so there was a woman, uh, a building collapsed. She says as she’s walking down the building she can hear the little kids, not 16-year-old members of Hamas, you’re talking four and five-year-olds screaming for their mothers while they’re buried underneath the rubble, screaming for help from their mommy. And you know what, Piers? No help is coming ’cause there’s no bulldozers in Gaza. Nobody’s coming to get those kids out. This is the reality of war, and this is what I’m trying, this is the main point that I was trying to make w- to Douglas Murray, which he kept running away from. If you’re going to say that our goal here is to degrade Hamas, Murray conceded you probably can’t eliminate them, but he feels like you can degrade them. If you’re going to degrade Hamas and the cost of it is those little children dying under rubble, screaming for their mother as their bones are crushed and no one’s coming to help them, then fine. But at least say that you find that price acceptable, and then we could have a real conversation about why people are gonna view you as a monster and why the other side will never stop fighting and will always be against you. Because I could tell you for sure if that was my kids, and I know, Piers, if those were your kids as well, you wouldn’t wanna hear anything about how, “Well, we’ve codified in international law that this is the norm of the way wars are allowed to be fought versus not allowed to be fought.” I’m making a very human point that this is the reality of war. And you can say under international humanitarian law it’s not considered intentional. It- we would consider this an intentional act in any other area. That’s the point. It’s a very basic human point, that if anyone were to do this domestically and then tried to use the defense of like, “No, but I dropped a leaflet. No, I didn’t really wanna kill them, I just wanted to kill the b-,” we’d go, “I don’t care. You blew up a building knowing there were kids in there.” That’s the essence of this whole thing, and there’s no amount, like, th- there’s no amount of expertise that can really get, get you away from this basic fundamental moral logic.
00:29:19
Piers Morgan: All right, but Dave-
00:29:21
Dave Smith: Piers, he’s not making-
00:29:21
Piers Morgan: Okay, but Dave, let me ask you an, an, a difficult-
00:29:23
Dave Smith: … an argument towards fact. He’s making an argument towards-
00:29:23
Piers Morgan: No, but let me, I, hang on, hang on, John. Hang on, John. Hang on, John. Hang on, John. I will, I will come to you. I just wanted to ask you, like, let’s go back to the end of World War II-
00:29:31
Dave Smith: Mm-hmm
00:29:32
Piers Morgan: … and the, the dropping of two atomic bombs in, in Japan, which obviously caused huge loss of life. And I, I imagine by your, uh, criteria, that was a deliberate targeting of civilians. The argument-
00:29:47
Dave Smith: By any criteria, sure
00:29:47
Piers Morgan: … in favor of doing it was that it brought, it, uh, yeah, it brought an end to World War II, uh, and potentially saved millions more lives f- from being taken. In other words, there, there’s your moral argument right there, is that you do this to stop this. You take this-
00:30:06
Dave Smith: Exactly
00:30:06
Piers Morgan: … number of lives to stop many more lives being killed. I mean, do you, when you look at that, for example, what’s your-
00:30:14
Dave Smith: Yes
00:30:14
Piers Morgan: … view of that moral debate?
00:30:16
Dave Smith: So, okay, well first of all, just on the specifics, and we have talked about this before, but I tend to agree with five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower that it was unnecessary and wrong for us to drop the nuclear weapons. But regardless of that, even if, even if, uh, five-star general Eisenhower is wrong about that and the other generals who supported it were right, um, this is exactly the point, Piers, is that when you start to think about war for what it actually is, what- The overwhelming onus becomes clear, and the onus is on you to demonstrate that we absolutely have to do this, that the standard for war when you’re talking about intentionally killing innocent civilians, the standard ought to be, the burden should always be on you to demonstrate that we absolutely have to do this. I know this is horrible, I know what the result of this is, but that we have to do this because so much more human suffering would come from us not doing this. And this is, to me, the essence of the point of why I talk about war in this way, is that when you… Because if you don’t think about it this way, it ends up being very easy to find other justifications. You know, um, justifications like, “Hamas must go.” You know, “Hamas must go.” It’s like, whoa, hold on. Wait a second. I think… I, I kind of think Hamas must go. I kind of think the Likud party must go. I definitely think Kim Jong Un must go. I kind of think Vladimir Putin must go. But that’s not the standard for whether or not we’re justified to just start slaughtering innocent people in the hope of achieving that end. What the standard ought to be is simply, do you absolutely have to do this or there will be more human suffering? That should be the standard. And in the case of Israel-Gaza, I think that entirely changes the scope of things, because look, as all of us know, right, Gaza was, before October 7th, the most surveilled area in the world. Israel is the fortress of the world. It was a monumental failure of both policy and security for October 7th to have happened in the first place. And it’s just not the case that there’s gonna be October 7th after October 7th if Israel just stops now and leaves Gaza in the rubble mess that it is. And so that’s exactly… Like, I’m not object- I get your point, uh, your point, Piers, because you’re almost going, “Wait, but if we follow this logic, then when could we ever fight a war?” And essentially, my point is that-
00:32:38
Piers Morgan: Right
00:32:38
Dave Smith: … yeah, the onus should be on anybody who wants to fight a war ever. The onus should be on them to demonstrate that it is absolutely necessary and that there’s nothing else we could do in this situation.
00:32:51
Piers Morgan: Okay. John, your response.
00:32:54
John Spencer: Piers. Yeah, Piers, two, two UFC fighters enter a ring and they, one punches the other in the nose and Dave says, “How dare he punches him in the nose in this fight?” That’s the analogy. He’s not making an appeal to facts, how the law of war works, how war works, whether it’s the theory underneath the war or the actual framework to understand it. He doesn’t like theory, like just war theory, things like that, but the framework that is there. Now, he just said that there has to… one side has to show that there’s a military necessity, he doesn’t know these words, but that’s what he’s talking about, to actually-
00:33:27
Dave Smith: Ugh
00:33:28
John Spencer: … enter the war. Hamas invaded Israel on October 7th and committed-
00:33:33
Dave Smith: You’re… I’ve never heard military necessity before
00:33:35
John Spencer: … horrific crimes.
00:33:35
Dave Smith: You blew my mind with your expertise.
00:33:37
John Spencer: Right, I know.
00:33:38
Dave Smith: [laughs]
00:33:38
John Spencer: It’s like you need… I, I, I’ll give you War 101 offline. That’s fine. Hamas invaded Israel on October 7th. Israel invoked Article 51-
00:33:48
Dave Smith: Mm
00:33:48
John Spencer: … a de- self-defense war in accordance with the United Nations, again, more frameworks that people need to know, and said, “Hamas will be destroyed, removed from political power, and the hostages return.” Now, Dave has said that’s not necessary and that all Israel needs to do is put more men on the wall. That’s what Dave said his solution, because he also doesn’t study military theory on how do you win a war. He intermixes counterinsurgency theory with a war against removing a regime from power m- just feeding their military.
00:34:21
Dave Smith: That’s not-
00:34:21
John Spencer: This is what Dave-
00:34:23
Dave Smith: That’s not what I was doing
00:34:23
John Spencer: … isn’t making factual… I, I… You said that. It was exact words on Lex Fridman.
00:34:28
Dave Smith: N-
00:34:28
John Spencer: He’s not making an appeal to facts. I’m debating.
00:34:30
Dave Smith: Right.
00:34:30
John Spencer: He’s making an appeal to emotion and morals, not what the law-
00:34:36
Dave Smith: Morals
00:34:36
John Spencer: … the framework of understanding war.
00:34:37
Dave Smith: I’m, I’m making an appeal to logic and morals. Yes.
00:34:39
John Spencer: Hamas started a war on October 7th. Hamas is going to lose a war, and it’s going to never be in power again, is never… And Hamas is the one that says they want to do October 7th. But, but Dave says, “Just put the wall up. They won’t be able to do it on October 7th ever again,” right? You have this blockade, although there was 100 tunnels going from Egypt to Gaza to build this military that Hamas built, and he’ll say that Netanyahu sent ’em money. He’s not making an appeal to facts. This is what we have a problem with Dave Smith. He makes an appeal to emotion and does historical revisionism, and he tells these narratives that aren’t true.
00:35:15
Dave Smith: Piers, it’s so-
00:35:16
John Spencer: So his argument-
00:35:16
Dave Smith: Can I just tell you, Piers-
00:35:17
John Spencer: … fails.
00:35:19
Dave Smith: What… Okay.
00:35:19
John Spencer: He’s anti-war, and he also anti-fact.
00:35:20
Dave Smith: What’s so funny about this, Piers… Okay, what’s so funny about this, Piers, is that after all of this, once again, all of this, “I’m an expert. You don’t know this. I’m an expert.”
00:35:30
John Spencer: I do know this.
00:35:30
Dave Smith: “You haven’t studied Military 101.” Then after all of that, the substance of what we’re left with is-
00:35:36
John Spencer: Right, so I will teach you one.
00:35:36
Dave Smith: Right, right, right. Okay. Got it. The, after all of that, the substance that we’re left with is Hamas started the war on October 7th. Yes, the most basic point that every pro-Israel person has made on this show forever. That’s what you’ve got here.
00:35:52
John Spencer: It’s a fact. It’s a fact.
00:35:52
Dave Smith: O- okay.
00:35:52
John Spencer: I got a fact.
00:35:53
Dave Smith: It’s not a fact.
00:35:53
John Spencer: Now you want to debate the fact from-
00:35:54
Dave Smith: It’s not a fact
00:35:55
John Spencer: … how Israel could achieve that goal.
00:35:57
Dave Smith: By the way, you also don’t even know what an appeal… It’s not an appeal to emotion, by the way. That’s not the c- that’s not what it is, although you do seem to be flirting with an appeal to authority.
00:36:06
John Spencer: Piers, look, they’re children, right?
00:36:08
Dave Smith: It’s not-
00:36:08
John Spencer: You can’t tell-
00:36:08
Dave Smith: No. It’s an appeal to morality. For me to describe the actual human impact of what this policy is resulting in is not an appeal to emotion. I mean, like bas- it’s an appeal to morality and it’s an appeal to logic. An appeal to logic. Look, you can’t answer me this very simple question, okay? Here’s the very simple question, okay? If what… Which you, you’d have to admit, look, let’s take the worst example. Fi- just… Not, not your example where there’s a Hamas rocket firing at Israel.
00:36:36
John Spencer: No hypotheticals. Give me Gaza. Give me Gaza. Don’t give me a hypothetical.
00:36:38
Dave Smith: Right.
00:36:38
John Spencer: And the morals of the law.
00:36:41
Dave Smith: I’m giving-
00:36:41
John Spencer: Give me an actual question-
00:36:41
Dave Smith: I was about to
00:36:42
John Spencer: … on the law.
00:36:42
Dave Smith: If… You interrupted me. I was on my way to. Let’s say Israel targets an area where there are … two combatants and two civilians. It’s your one-to-one ratio, okay? And they decide that’s acceptable by the international laws of war, whatever. By the way, in your appeal to the international, uh, laws, you didn’t mention the ICC warrant for Netanyahu, which they don’t seem to be respecting that much. But anyway-
00:37:04
John Spencer: How about your-
00:37:04
Dave Smith: … let’s, uh, let’s, but, but we’re still, you can still appeal to this framework even though they never have to live up to it. But let’s just say, okay, the exact same action happened domestically. If someone were to do that, you would call it intentional murder, right? How does the concept of intentionality change because a politician uttered the word war, they declared it, and it’s taking place in a foreign country? Without appealing to authority or appealing to law or appealing to what war normally is, can you as a human being explain to me how the concept of intentional changes magically ’cause a politician uttered the phrase war?
00:37:44
John Spencer: Well, the thing about the politician, it’s the framework. So yes, I can give you, and this is, literally you’re, you’re, you’re explaining in the question how you don’t know how the framework of a war works. And the w- the entire history of it-
00:37:57
Dave Smith: So teach me. Stop telling me I don’t know. Stop telling me I don’t know and demonstrate it.
00:38:01
John Spencer: No, I’m asking a question.
00:38:01
Dave Smith: Teach me something.
00:38:01
John Spencer: I didn’t say you don’t know. Your question, I’ll teach you something. Your domestic law has a complete societal agreement on what those laws will be adjudicated and how they’ll be determined-
00:38:12
Dave Smith: No, it doesn’t
00:38:12
John Spencer: … how a criminal deterrence. Absolutely, American law determines-
00:38:16
Dave Smith: Lots of people don’t agree to the law
00:38:19
John Spencer: If you kill somebody, then you’ll be convicted of a crime based on a jury and a judge, all this. Then you wanna apply that on war, but then disregard what the laws of war, the things that all nations have agreed to on this is how we account for intentionality. I-
00:38:35
Dave Smith: You can’t do it without making an appeal to the law. You can’t do it. You can’t explain it to me logically.
00:38:42
John Spencer: You just said the l- the bo- the body of laws have accounted for how do you get o- over that intentionality thing. If, if you use the same thing, which is the, when somebody says there’s a war crime, or when you say Israel has intentionally targeted a civilian because, look, there’s a one, I ne- one, if you have to go to the statistical thing, we have issues unless you’re doing a comparative analysis. But if there’s one combatant and one civilian, you don’t know that, okay, what is that combatant? Is he a commander? Is he the commander? Is he a, a regular soldier? That accounts for what is the excessive collateral damage, and that’s where intentionality gets into it. But oh, by the way, what have you done to prevent it? In the domestic situation, you’d send the police to go get that criminal and then try them. In war, if you’re a member of the other military in which I’m at war against, I don’t have to have an excuse. I can kill you on sight.
00:39:40
Dave Smith: Yeah, no, I know. Again, I, you, you just didn’t answer what I asked.
00:39:41
Piers Morgan: Okay, very quickly, before I, I let you… Hang on, hang on, hang on, Dave. Hang on, Dave.
00:39:44
Dave Smith: But yes, there are logistical differences.
00:39:46
Piers Morgan: Hang, hang on, hang on, Dave. Hang on, Dave.
00:39:48
John Spencer: They’re different frameworks.
00:39:49
Piers Morgan: Dave’s gonna stay with me, uh, when Eric Weinstein… H- hang on, guys. Hang on. John, we’re gonna let you go, John. Before we let you go, I want to ask you just one thing that also came out of the, um, of the debate with Douglas and, and Dave, which was this issue of whether people who have what most people believe to be bad faith, deliberate conspiracy theory nonsense views. For example, Darryl Cooper saying Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War, whether people like Darryl Cooper should be platformed on gigantic podcasts like Joe Rogan or not, particularly if they’re not gonna be really vigorously challenged on what is something that to me is such an obviously untrue and offensive premise. What’s your quick v- view of that?
00:40:38
John Spencer: I think that we should not platform historical revisionists who go back in time and find a fact and then tell it in a certain way to spin the narrative of what we should know about events. If you wanna look at Darryl Cooper, look at the list of deleted tweets from Darryl Co- Darryl Cooper. I’m a, I’m against intellectually, again, no expertise involved. Anybody can research whatever they want, and if they come out with a new finding, that’s great, using evidence, using data, using a research methodology. But no, you don’t get to be a historical revisionist like Dave.
00:41:15
Dave Smith: Uh, actually I do.
00:41:16
Piers Morgan: Okay. John Spencer, thank you very much indeed. Well, well, Dave, Dave, I’m gonna let you respond, but with Eric, so I’m gonna say goodbye to John.
00:41:21
Dave Smith: Sure.
00:41:22
Piers Morgan: John, thank you. It was a riveting debate between you two. I really appreciate it. Uh, well, joining us now with some final thoughts on the debate, a man who can claim to be friends with Joe Rogan, with Dave Smith, and with Douglas Murray, and I would like to think now with me, Harvard mathematician and founder of the Intellectual Dark Web, Dr. Eric Weinstein, who’s just returned from his own research trip to Israel. Uh, and Dave is staying with us. So Eric, great to see you. Um, just on that point, Eric, about platforming people, uh, it seems to me Darryl Cooper is one of those characters out there at the moment who are promoting a, something they know to be untrue. It’s a bit like Alex Jones when he went after the Sandy Hook families and said it was all a, a hoax. Th- they’re promoting something that is deliberately untrue, but can be commercially very lucrative to them. Should those people who are making good money from perpetrating, in my estimation, obvious lies, um, should they be given platforms?
00:42:26
Eric Weinstein: It, it’s, that loads the question a bit. Look, everybody’s doing something different online. I mean, somebody could say you’re making good money from holding conflicts and shouting mass, uh, matches that, um, play into the inguinal desire for combat, you know? And in a certain sense, we’re all making money doing something, hopefully. Uh, the problem is what is anyone’s intention? And o- one of the problems of knowing Darryl Cooper is that the shitposting Darryl Cooper and the thoughtful Darryl Cooper are not always the same person easily reconciled. Um, many people talk about having sort of, yeah, this is the way I am online, this is the way I am In a different place. And, you know, the odd thing about that is, is that this mirrors a tradition in academics that is not much discussed, which is the esoteric exoteric tradition in which, um, typically a scholar behaves one way in the seminar room and another way when, uh, his or her words, um, might influence policy. And so, um, even if you’re a, a… In the heterodox movement, I mean, I’m sure that Donald Trump is keeping his own counsel about what he intends to do with tariffs. He’s doing an esoteric exoteric routine. And so in part, the problem is, is that we haven’t reconciled ourselves to the idea that we speak one way in front of the world, another way behind closed doors, and that this is actually natural and normal. And as a result, um, you know, w- what we’re doing is we’re hauling out different people. We, we see that Fauci and Collins are, you know, behaving one way behind the scenes, a different way in Congress. Daryl is the same way. Uh, I, I no doubt have my own version of esoteric exoteric, and we’re just not comfortable with it. And so in a certain sense, we’re all waking up on the same day to the reality that this is a no- natural, normal part of scholarship, governance, civics, and personal life.
00:44:20
Piers Morgan: Yeah, I mean, Dave, it’s an interesting one because I… Like, I had Dan Balzeryon on, who was spewing repulsive anti-Semitic crap to me for about half an hour before I finally ended it, but he has a big following, and they’ve been sort of going down, slightly down that road, and I felt it was right to challenge him. And then there was a big debate afterwards about whether I should give- given him the oxygen of being able to repeat this stuff on a big platform like Uncensored. Um, y- I would say it was slightly different to what I think… ‘Cause I think he, he may genuinely believe what he was saying, and it may be that Daryl Cooper does too. I don’t know him. Um, in Alex Jones’s case, I mean, Elon Musk canceled an interview with me ’cause he saw a clip of me criticizing him for reversing his decision about whether allowing Alex Jones onto X, for example. His original position was he shouldn’t be on X because-
00:45:10
Eric Weinstein: Right
00:45:11
Piers Morgan: … he was dancing on the graves of children deliberately, and was deliberately lying to make hundreds of millions of dollars out of making the grief of those poor families immeasurably worse. And I felt it was wrong to give someone like that a platform again on X. Now, it’s an arguable point, but I, I guess my question for you would be, you’re a libertarian, um, you clearly think Daryl Cooper should, should be platformed. I, I heard that strongly w- when you were talking to Douglas. But is there anyone who shouldn’t be platformed? I mean, where is that line for a libertarian?
00:45:42
Dave Smith: Well, I mean, I… The libertarian position would be that, um, it’s up to the people who own the platforms to decide who they want to platform and don’t, and our only red line would be that the government should never be in the business of deciding any of this. Can I say, though, um, yes-
00:45:57
Piers Morgan: Mm
00:45:57
Dave Smith: … I love Daryl Cooper. He’s a, a friend of mine, and I think his work is, um, phenomenal. I am really beginning to resent the fact that every show I go on [laughs] I get asked about Daryl Cooper, who somehow-
00:46:10
Piers Morgan: [laughs]
00:46:11
Dave Smith: … a- I’m, I’m working as hard as I can to generate outrage and controversy. I’ve, I’ve been on Rogan, like, 15 times more than him, and still when I’m on, all anyone wants to talk about is Daryl Cooper. And by… Like, look, I think-
00:46:24
Piers Morgan: [laughs]
00:46:24
Dave Smith: … this in and of itself just says something that’s so fascinating. I mean, the guy had one almost throwaway line on the Tucker Carlson show where, by the way, he caveated it in the beginning and the end, said, “I just say this to get a rise out of my buddy. I’m kinda ribbing him. Also, I’m being hyperbolic. And when I say Churchill’s the villain, I don’t mean that he committed the most atrocities or was the worst person.” And it’s like, my God, this sentence, the, the reaction alone to it almost proves the point that… Which ultimately is what Daryl Cooper was making, which is that World War II has become essentially our religion. It i- Like, the… Down to the fact that if somebody were to say they’re a devil worshiper, you wouldn’t even bring them on your show, Piers, ’cause it’s not that interesting. No one’s even gonna wanna watch that. It’s not-
00:47:14
Piers Morgan: No, but I, but hang on, Dave
00:47:16
Dave Smith: … who cares? Nobody a devil.
00:47:16
Piers Morgan: But Dave.
00:47:16
Dave Smith: But if you’re… Wait, but-
00:47:17
Piers Morgan: Yeah, but Dave, I would say, look-
00:47:18
Dave Smith: If you’re, if you’re a Nazi-
00:47:20
Piers Morgan: No, I admire your defense
00:47:21
Dave Smith: … then you’re being, if you say-
00:47:24
Piers Morgan: I admire your defense, but let’s be clear. If someone is going to say that Churchill’s the chief villain of World War II, they deserve all that’s coming their way because Churchill-
00:47:33
Dave Smith: Again, he didn’t-
00:47:33
Piers Morgan: … tried to defend the world-
00:47:34
Dave Smith: Well, he didn’t even really say that
00:47:35
Piers Morgan: … from a-
00:47:36
Dave Smith: Okay. Okay, fine, fine, fine
00:47:36
Piers Morgan: … from a genocidal-
00:47:38
Dave Smith: Yes
00:47:38
Piers Morgan: … maniac called Adolf Hitler.
00:47:40
Eric Weinstein: I mean-
00:47:40
Piers Morgan: I don’t think there’s any debate to be had
00:47:41
Dave Smith: … okay, we will not-
00:47:42
Piers Morgan: So you, you… When you do that, you’re doing-
00:47:43
Dave Smith: We will not challenge the religion of World War II
00:47:43
Piers Morgan: … you are deliberately putting yourself in the fire.
00:47:47
Eric Weinstein: If, if… if I may—
00:47:48
Piers Morgan: Anyway, let’s move on.
00:47:49
Dave Smith: Yeah, fair, fair enough.
00:47:50
Piers Morgan: Let, let-
00:47:50
Dave Smith: Fair enough. And maybe he could’ve been more precise in that comment, but to your-
00:47:54
Piers Morgan: Yeah
00:47:54
Dave Smith: … to your, uh, like, larger question, there’s-
00:47:57
Piers Morgan: Mm.
00:47:58
Dave Smith: Look, I mean, all of this stuff is somewhat debatable and somewhat arbitrary. I tend to err on the side of I think you were right to have Dan, uh, on your show, and I think that it’s like-
00:48:09
Piers Morgan: Mm
00:48:09
Dave Smith: … look, this is… If you think this stuff is bubbling up on the internet and it’s very concerning to you-
00:48:15
Piers Morgan: Yeah
00:48:15
Dave Smith: … okay, well, like, look, we had a massive experiment between 2016, and then really culminating in 2020, and then kind of died down after Elon Musk bought Twitter. We had a massive experiment in internet ce- censorship and deplatforming. Where did that get us? I mean, I think it’s much healthier-
00:48:33
Piers Morgan: No, I agree
00:48:33
Dave Smith: … to air these grievances out and, and give pushback-
00:48:36
Piers Morgan: Mm
00:48:36
Dave Smith: … where warranted. And I just, I, I think, I, I tend to, to lean in that direction, but I will-
00:48:43
Eric Weinstein: If I may
00:48:43
Dave Smith: … I will have the humility to admit I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe that’s not the, the-
00:48:48
Piers Morgan: Yeah
00:48:48
Dave Smith: … best way to go. I, I tend to be on the side of a free exchange of ideas.
00:48:54
Piers Morgan: Eric?
00:48:54
Eric Weinstein: So the, the concern that I have is w- w- There’s no real solution if we s- try to solve this problem in terms of platforming, free speech, who’s an expert, who isn’t, what’s the credential? We’re not even being genuine, in my opinion, about what it is that we’re talking about. Let’s give a simple example. I can essentially guarantee you that six million people on the nose, uh, of Jewish faith were not killed during the Hol- Holocaust. I don’t know what the number was, but the odds that it would have all of those round zeros and come in exactly where it does is negligible. Every time I hear somebody make that point, I worry, right? Because the idea is it’s like somebody picking at the asbestos who isn’t looking like a, a registered asbestos removal company. Uh, there’s a way in which World War II settled in a particular way, which is thank God we didn’t appease infinitely. We had a, an absolute monster on our hands. Uh, there were extermination camps. Genocide matters as a word. Um, we sat with Stalin despite our obvious diff- differences, uh, because sometimes you have to do… There’s a certain sort of story about it that’s kind of directionally true, if imperfect, because it’s too clean, it’s too clear, et cetera, et cetera. What you see now is this mania for, “Hey, I found out all of these interesting facts. Did you know about the Rosenstrasse Pro- Protest?” “What was that?” “Oh, uh, where women married to half-Jewish men got their men back by protesting in Rosenstrasse, showing that the, uh, Nazis could be made to relent.” “No, I didn’t know that.” You know? So now you’re in a situation in which each kind of fact, whether it’s the McCollum Memo or the Rosenstrasse Protest, is an opportunity to pick at the asbestos. And partially, what… It’s not really a religion, and I talked to Dave about this this morning privately. There’s a French philosopher, I think his name is Renan, whose great quote is, “A nation is a gr- group of people who have agreed to forget something in common.” Unfortunately, we have a very simplistic notion at the moment that because we’ve been lied to by these elites, and boy, is that clear over the last [laughs] several years, we are now deciding that we are gonna pick at everything that might be a fiction, everything that might not be exactly true. And by the way, we have a new problem with X, which was formerly Twitter, which is that you cannot walk a foot, uh, in it without, you know, being covered in antisemitic leeches if your last name sounds like mine. And Dave, I have understood the same thing has been happening to you. We are not finding the formula for a good life. It’s not coming about by censorship, it’s not coming about by false, uh, expertise, and it’s not coming about by an anonymous free-for-all where everybody’s, uh, you know, sharing everything at an equal level, and we have no ability to discern what’s going on, and it’s not being settled through debate or combat, Dave, and I, I agree with you on it.
00:51:47
Piers Morgan: And Eric, what did you make of the debate with Dave and Douglas?
00:51:52
Eric Weinstein: I don’t think it was a debate. I don’t think that’s what happened. My guess, and, you know, again, I haven’t talked to Joe about this, and if I had talked to Joe about it, I couldn’t say, because I don’t transmit private conversations. But if I had to make a guess, Douglas was trying to do something normal, which is that as an author, he was calling on a friend to say, “Hey, I have a new book, and I’d like to be talking about it to generate some interest.” And my guess is that because the book involved Israel, and because Joe was open at the beginning of this program in saying that he found barbarism in Israel’s actions, my guess is that Joe is probably very comfortable with Douglas and very uncomfortable with the book. And my belief is, is that he called in Dave because Dave, uh, whether he’s an expert or not, I will say he has a tremendous number of facts that go against the Israeli narrative, and that whether or not he’s considered to be, you know, a self-credentialed scholar, I haven’t really looked at Dave’s work enough to know, I would say that what Joe was doing was to say, “I wanna make sure that Douglas is balanced, because I, Joe, believe that barbarism is being defended, and I’m not comfortable with that.” But because we don’t have the backstory to it, um, we don’t really realize what happened in the first opening moments of the exchange, which was very, very strange.
00:53:12
Piers Morgan: And you’ve just come back from Israel, Eric. I mean, what, where do you think we are with this war? And in terms of the moral debate that I had between Dave and, and John Spencer earlier about whether civilians are being deliberately targeted, um, what, what do you feel about that part of the debate about the war?
00:53:32
Eric Weinstein: Um, first of all, war is war. And whatever Israel, that is the government’s intention, I can assure you that when you put that many, uh, kids with, uh, guns into, uh, their first shooting war, um, bad stuff is going to happen at some level. We always talk about, you know, what is the normal amount of friendly fire accidents? Nobody wants it. I- is there any civilian that’s being targeted? I have no doubt that in every, uh, war, somebody, uh, with, with a gun does the wrong thing or, or who targets, uh, improperly because they’re pissed off. I don’t know. That’s not my issue. What I can tell you is the war is completely not portrayed accurately. And I just went back to a clip that I recorded with Konstantin Kisin on October 14th, uh, so seven days after and before Israel went into Gaza, and what I said was, “This is Monkhausen by proxy. Sinwar is the mother. He’s desperately trying to get his women and children killed.” This is not human shields, by the way. This is an innovation that I would call not human shields, but subterranean crosshair strategy, where you put your military, uh, tunnels underneath mosques, orphanages, schools, et cetera. Because the, the key in hybrid warfare is video, and video is much more powerful than the kinetic war. So Israel’s winning the kinetic war, losing the hybrid war. Sinwar is still controlling it from his grave. And the, the only tell of this is that you still hold hostages in Gaza, uh, Hamas does. And you’re getting people to give a victory chant from the river to the sea celebrating a genocide that has yet to happen. Uh, the whole purpose is to keep the world supplied with video because none of us have the stomach, I can hear that Dave doesn’t, I don’t either, for watching war video. Um, because in part Western Europe and North America has been at peace since 1945. We just, we’ve lost the ability to watch war.
00:55:44
Piers Morgan: A- a- and Dave, I mean, it’s interesting, though, because I, I was talking to my kids about this. You know, they’re from 31 to 13, but I s- you know, when I was young, y- you couldn’t follow war in the way that you can now through a phone with seeing every single thing that’s happening in gruesome, uncensored detail, uh, beamed straight to your face. You know, in, in, when I was in my teens, the Falklands War happened, for example, when the UK went to war with Argentina over this small, uh, island, the Falkland Islands, and i- my memory was i- a very sanitized coverage. I mean, you saw, you know, quite long distance footage of bombs going off and stuff. What you didn’t see was what I see on my phone all day long, which is people’s heads being blown off and horrific, terrible imagery, which I think is partly responsible for why so many young people are getting their brains fried by their phones, by the way. This constant horrific dopamine that’s coming their way. Um, but also we just would… It was very sanitized, the coverage that you could see from newspapers, from the very few television news, uh, programs and so on. We were really protected from the harsh reality of war in a way that is not applicable right now. We see it all, and I, I think that Israel can have all the arguments that it wants, and I, I have a lot of sympathy with many of them, but what they’ve lost without any doubt to me at all is they’ve lost the PR war through video coverage from the, the battlefield. You know, that’s what’s horrified people the most.
00:57:19
Dave Smith: Yeah, I mean, I th- I just think that’s exactly right, Piers. And I mean, I, I have the sa- the sa- I have, I have a fairly early memory of, uh, George H.W. Bush announcing the invasion of Ukraine in the Persian Gulf War when I was, like, a little kid, like, seven or eight or something like that. But even in, even when, uh, George W. Bush invaded Iraq, um, I, the, the images that we would see would be, like, these aerial views of a projectile going in and kind of an explosion in the distance. And okay, that’s a lot easier to root for than seeing the image of a baby with his arm blown off on this t- which, I mean, my God, all day long on Twitter I see that. And I do… You know, I, like, I agree with Eric. I do see a lot of, like, uh, um, Jew hatred on Twitter. It’s just hard for me to make that kind of at the top of my hierarchy of outrages when I’m also watching babies being blown apart, uh, every day on my Twitter. And I agree with your assessment, Piers. I don’t think it’s very, very good for the soul. Um, but you know what’s interesting as you say this is that I really think it gets to the point that I was trying to make in the first half of this program, which is that what’s happening here is that people are being brought closer and closer to the reality of war. And you know, I, I do feel-
00:58:32
Piers Morgan: Mm-hmm
00:58:32
Dave Smith: … like at the, uh, for the first half of this show, it’s almost like I was debating, like, an Aztec high priest about child sacrifice, and I’m sitting here and saying, “Hey, this is murdering a chil- a child,” and he’s sitting and saying, “You don’t even understand the doctrine. You don’t even understand-
00:58:46
Piers Morgan: Well-
00:58:46
Dave Smith: … what it is that we’re doing here.” And it’s like, no, look, the reality is in effect this is what’s happening. And I do think, I think Eric’s right also. We’re just, u- u- we… Part of this has to do with the fact that we’re wealthier than, than previous generations. We have a different understanding of, of morality. But it is just not the case. Also, I think it’s part of the fact that in the West we have less children. Uh, we have less children and we value the lives of our children that we have more. Um, all of these things play a role, but again, the essential point, which I’ve said several times on the show to you, Piers, here is, right, is that this is the whole game. Asymmetrical warfare, the action is always in the reaction. Right? You could watch B- uh, um, Osama Bin Laden’s son had a great article. If, if you wanna Google it, you c- it’s, uh, Osama Bin Laden: Dead and Loving It. And he wrote it, like, two years after Osama Bin Laden died, and he was just talking about how, like, this is, in my father’s wildest dreams he couldn’t have imagined you would invade-
00:59:43
Piers Morgan: Mm
00:59:43
Dave Smith: … Afghanistan and invade Iraq and overthrow Gaddafi and take all of these other steps. The whole point of 9/11 wasn’t to destroy America by bringing down our towers. It was to lure us into a war where we could, he could bankrupt the United States of America, just as our CIA had trained him to do with the Soviets. And so the whole game here from Hamas was to get Israel to do exactly what Israel’s doing now and turn the entire world against them. And from that perspe-
01:00:11
Eric Weinstein: Mm.
01:00:11
Dave Smith: Uh, obviously it’s a sick, it’s a sick, disgusting game to play, but from that perspective they’ve been incredibly successful.
01:00:21
Piers Morgan: I mean, Eric-
01:00:22
Dave Smith: So this, uh-
01:00:22
Piers Morgan: … anyone who’s watched the 45-minute film that, that Israel, uh, authorities produced of all the gruesome lowlights of what happened on October the 7th will feel the same sickening sense of utter revulsion that I felt when I watched it as I have done to the scenes I’ve seen from Gaza. You know, the, it was utterly horrific what happened on that day. And so I completely understand why so many Israelis and Jewish people around the world have felt so, uh, utterly determined to get rid of Hamas at all costs. I totally get all this. But, but in relation to what Dave said at the end there, you know, just final word to you, where does that leave us do you think?
01:01:05
Eric Weinstein: Uh, I’m, I’m confused because I, I watched these videos and I, I hated- Uh, it scars my mind. I will never be the same person after watching the gruesome nature of what’s happened in Gaza. Some of it is fake, some of it is r- real. Uh, it doesn’t matter. Uh, what I don’t understand, and I’m just completely at a loss, is this hardens one’s heart against whom? Um, you know, my, my tweet that I keep reading from, uh, October 17th, before Israel went into North Gaza, IDF-assisted suicide, zugzwang, Munchausen by proxy. I said, “This is going to be horrific. Innocent life is going to be lost in Gaza. This is a plan.” And every time I see that, and I see people holding hostages, I think, “Wow, how fascinating that the world can’t put together the fact that Israel is in effect forced to move.” And this was clear before Israel ever went into Gaza. Uh, Sinwar… Uh, one of the things I did when I was in Israel was to yell at the Israelis, saying, “You had an evil genius who bested you. You pride yourself on your intellectual achievement. You lost. You’re still talking about human shields. This guy’s two moves, three moves ahead of you from the grave.” And the fact is, I feel what Dave feels. I just feel it 100% towards Hamas. I don’t understand. If people do not realize what war is, where it will be brought, uh, whether it’s Charlie Hebdo, or the, the Bataclan, or, uh, an, a parade in Nice, you are talking about a level of warfare that you cannot accept because it is predicated on a strategy of women and children being the biggest munition in war. This is the great asset in hybrid war. And what we are seeing is an innovation that has to be stopped. Israel is so bad at this. It hasn’t figured out… Imagine if they had the supposed [laughs] imaging we have for under the pyramids to map the tunnels of Gaza. Imagine that they developed ingenious ways of getting down there to spare more life. Um, this is a call for Israel not to lose its soul, but the fact is, is that it’s being outplayed by a dead master strategist. And, you know, my feeling is, is that what, uh, when Israel speaks and tries to justify itself, it tends to lose me. The way that I really shifted my sympathies in this whole thing was by listening to the Arabs and listening to Hamas. And when they justify this, I, I just think, “My God.” Uh, as bad as I, uh, uh, think Netanyahu has been in handling all of this, the absolute genius and complete evil of the Arab position here is something that has to be contested, and Israel does not appear to have better means to do it.
01:04:14
Piers Morgan: Yeah. And let’s not forget that the official spokesman for Hamas about two weeks after October the 7th, on camera, said that their intention was to do the same thing again, and again, and again. Uh, which I think is something that people often forget about in the, the mix of all this, which is Hamas is wedded to, uh, annihilating Israel. Um, and that’s-
01:04:37
Eric Weinstein: And itself if necessary.
01:04:37
Piers Morgan: … I think a very important cog in this… Yeah.
01:04:40
Dave Smith: Yeah. Let, let’s, let’s keep in mind who’s-
01:04:42
Piers Morgan: Um, guys, I’ve gotta leave it-
01:04:42
Dave Smith: … actually been annihilated.
01:04:46
Piers Morgan: Well, I think, oh, listen, there’s no question that the scale of the retribution, one of the questions I asked repeatedly, as you know, Dave, throughout the months after October 7th, was what is proportionate? I, d- I, I don’t know the answer. I do know from relatives of mine who’ve fought wars that once a war starts, it’s very, very difficult to control it, and it tends to be, uh, something that evolves in the way that it evolves, and history will show that a lot of innocent people get killed in e- every, every war that’s ever been conducted. Um, but what is happening in Gaza right now, I, d- I, I’ve never understood quite what Israel’s endgame is. I totally understand they wanna have the hostages released, and they should be. But what happens after you have flattened Gaza, um, you know, short of what Trump is advocating of two million people migrating to neighboring Arab countries, um, which is a form of ethnic cleansing we haven’t seen in modern times, um, in my estimation, by the definition of ethnic cleansing. I don’t know how this ends or what happens afterwards, but it’s, uh, it’s, whatever it is, it’s gonna be extremely messy to resolve. Um, I’ve gotta leave it there, guys. Dave, uh, I thoroughly enjoyed your debate with Douglas. I thoroughly enjoy you coming on Uncensored. I think you’re what I would call a, a, you’re good faith actor. I, I always believe with you, as I do with Douglas, actually, that I think you believe what you say. People may take issue with it. They may disagree with you, but I, I think both of you come from a position of believing what you say. And I obviously feel the same with you, Eric, and that’s why you’re three of my favorite guests. So thank you all very much.
01:06:24
Dave Smith: Thank you, Piers.
01:06:25
Eric Weinstein: Thank you.
01:06:25
Dave Smith: Thank you, Eric. [upbeat music]
01:06:28
Piers Morgan: Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. If you enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain. And we’ll do it all for free. Independent, uncensored media has never been more critical, and we couldn’t do it without you. [upbeat music]
