The problem with Ferguson’s argument is that he is confusing the US military budget with the capacity to build arms. Those two things are miles apart.

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

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

Niall sounds like a classic government puppet.

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

When this guy called Mike Pompeo a thinker I knew he was full of shit.

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

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

Niall, how are tent cities of African men in Paris contributing to the economy? The half of Muslim women in the UK who are unemployed? We know the migrant demographics that contribute economically and the ones that don't. Stop importing millions of dependents who resent us, it's not hard or complex.

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

Niall Ferguson is a WEF young global leader, class of 2005. Why would anyone trust what he says?

Niall is losing it. He still thinks he is in a unipolar world, and that the opinion of the population does not matter 😮

The argument that Russia would go further after Russia's goals were met in Ukraine is obviously wrong. Russia was willing to call it a day just a few months into the conflict. Why do people keep bringing up this ridiculous notion when it is so obviously countered by the facts?

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

I don't buy Niall's assessment of the war in Ukraine.

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

He's terribly wrong about the anatomy of the ukrainian war.

An analysis poor in arguments and rich in preconceived ideas

Almost breathtakingly sociopathic disregard for the death of hundreds of thousands of young men.

Nial Ferguson: Hans, are we the baddies?

The negativity towards your guest has restored my faith in humanity

Good to see Freddy pushback. Ferguson sounded so contradictory. At the end he says, the cost of this war is in Ukrainian lives not our lives. Just imagine that.

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

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

Why way Nial talks you would think Washington and NATO have nothing to do with the Ukraine war

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

Oh fuck I can’t listen to this bs anymore

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

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

The idea that we need immigration "for the economy" is such a laughable lie, as is shown by the way immigration policy is formulated. For example we allow low wage unskilled immigrants to bring dependents who contribute nothing to the economy and actually drain public servants. Similarly the fact that we allow low wage immigrants at all, since anyone who earns below about £40k in the UK is a net drain on the economy and lowers our GDP per capita, making us a poorer country. How is any of that "helping the economy"? In fact it just helps big business by lowering the wages they have to pay, (privatizing the profits) while the public have to pay the taxes to fund the government services that low wage immigrants need to get by. (socializing the costs). If immigration was actually "for the economy" we would only allow permanent immigrants who would be net contributors to the public finances, we would allow them to bring no dependents, and any low wage immigration would be only via temporary work visas to fill skills shortages, with no access to public services and taxes paid to finance the services they receive purely by virtue of being in the country. The fact that it isn't done that way show that "it's for the economy" is a lie.

I must admit, regardless of how brilliant Niall ferguson may be in many respects, that a guy that still live so hopelessly in the past, to call China, Russia and Iran "The axis of Ill Will" loses my attention totally.

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

Every time I hear Ferguson, he contradicts himself or overlooks things. For example, he said the Tories have been in power 14 years and that Cameron used the referendum as a ploy to please the right. He overlooked the fact that Cameron offered the referendum not expecting to win an overall majority in 2015 and being in coalition again so he could drop his pledge, and that, yes the Tories have been in office since 2014, but that the public were offered a different Tory party under Johnson but it never materialised.

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

“Life expectancy for Canadians decreased for the third straight year in 2022, and more people died of COVID-19 than in any other year since the pandemic began, according to a report released Monday.” So much for Niall’s statement that the decrease in life expectancy in the US was quite unprecedented among advanced countries. Since he is living in the US now, Niall should pay a little attention to his North American neighbours. The reasons for this are various, but one of them is that unindicted war criminal Joe Biden’s Democratic Party and Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party are joined at the hip and follow the same kind of dysfunctional policies to make their own citizens suffer.

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

Niall: We have to give the Ukraine to escalate to push Russia back. How would you do that if Russia has a nuclear weapon that it's willing to use and Ukraine doesn't? How would you escalate when the opponent always has the upper hand on the escalation ladder?

Freddie Sayers should be knighted for his patience with this interviewee. What a load of twaddle from Ferguson ! I mean who listens to this guy ?

"More muscular approach" this guy is a warmonger. That's exact reason west is failing. Insted of adaption and cooperation they choose domination.

I've listened to Ferguson many times and thought he was a great thinker. I don't know what's happened, maybe a knighthood that has gained him access to nice London clubs, but on every point in this interview he has been talking like an establishment shill. He has either bought in or he has been bought. And Freddie has the measure of him.

Very dissapointed by Ferguson. He used to be better. No Niall, migration does not save our welfare state. The migrants are a net cost. They take out a lot more than they put in. Even second generation is far below the original population in work participation. Many studies have showed that. They are a drain on our resources and destabilising our societies. We would be better off keeping the border closed. The West has poured in enormous amount of weapons and aid to Ukraine. We have nothing more to give. And a lot of what they got dissapeared through internal corruption in Ukraine. When Trump is elected he will negotiate a peace deal. Farage not a serious person??? Give me a break! You completely lost me at that point. It tells med YOU are not serious. Farage is our only hope.

Dont underestimate the people...they are quite willing to pay the price of regaining their sovereignty, their national identity and their families

The nonsense this guy said and says about Ukraine is consistently wrong. Russia is just getting their allies involved in the conflict, the received 5 million artillery shells from North Korea. The entire NATO amount is 0.5 million. He also has no clue about the updated nuclear doctrine of Russia. If you're going to escalate into Russia with the long-range missiles enough, they drop some tactical nukes. This isn't a fist fight or medieval fight. Escalate to de-escalate 🙄 Still has no clue how to secure an occupied territory and the amount of security forces involved.

Ferguson says we need to regard history in the same breath that he claims abandoning Ukraine is equivalent to leaving South Vietnam because Putin would then go on to attack the Baltic countries. Sounds like the domino theory used to justify the war in Viet Nam, which provided wrong.

Yes. And in case the message is unclear, they call us deplorables.

“It’s a bargain to keep Ukraine in this war” and “we need to escalate to de-escalate” tells us all we need to know about this individual. Subhuman and an intellectually bigot.

The answer is, yes. Yes, but its not "we", its the elites.

You're omitting the fact that the Chinese are in no hurry over Taiwan. They have no intention of invading.

21:53 “re-elected to the European Commission” Re-installed you mean.

Freddie should of got the knighthood. Thanks for calling the warmonger out.

He's been knighted so I'm not taking anything he says in good faith

Looks like war has been treating Niall very well, nice threads... I wonder if he can hear the screams of the men that died to pay him for that.

Ferguson didn’t mention it but a significant if not the most important factor in people backing Brexit was regaining sovereignty the UK were conned into handing over all those years ago. The mess that has followed wasn’t inevitable but in large part due to the failure of the Tories to grab the opportunity. The collapse in productivity is a European wide phenomenon largely due to similar disastrous policies. As for interest rates, some of us have been pointing out since 2008 that zero to negative rates were disastrous and wouldn’t last for ever. That government chose not to fix at low rates was doubly dumb.

200 billion is a rounding error...right

What a sick elite perspective, Niall is pushing.

Farage is the only politician that has the spine to give a straight answer and take on the media instead of being their puppet, he's more a serious person than any of the other parties are offering, the other parties actively get rid of their best people for not towing the woke party line. Reform may not be perfect, but they're currently the best option to at least start taking us in a better direction and break the circus of Tory/Labour.

Ukraine will never freeze. It's not in Russias interest. This guy is an IR amateur.

Does he work for Black Rock?

@46:00 "it's a bargain...they do the fighting...they do the dying" 💀💀💀 An offensive realist's wet dream I don't think I could ever say those words out loud without feeling humiliated

The situation in most Western countries is so irrationally destructive that the only possible explanation seems to lie in the Greek saying: "the gods first drive mad those they wish to destroy".

Mr. Ferguson swimming in his own shit!!!

He payed no mind to the Minsk accords, or the repeated attempts by Russia to achieve peace through diplomacy ... that speaks volumes about his cultural biases.

Niall Ferguson is an example of how British intelligentsia become utterly ineffective. He reminds me of an Anglican priest, or a Church of Scotland minister, and some Professors I knew in Edinburgh. I hear someone trying to tell as much truth as he can, but within the limitations of not wanting to sound like an extremist to those in power. It ends up incoherent. He says we need Detente. He says we cannot afford war. He knows that we don't have the artillery shells. But STILL, somehow, the answer is to escalate the war in Ukraine; to show Russia that we will not back down. No mate, we will back down, either next year or in 20 years, just like in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, and its pretty clear that Putin has priced that in by now. Only a fool, or an ignoramus which he is not, would actually think that the Russians are going to back down.

We are in late stage Usury. We have an oligarchy driving the open borders Globalisation project, with a Managerial Class in charge. There will be no good ending now.

"European countries are aging, and so require immigration." This is where Ferguson shows his colours. He notes that Europe is not having children. Young people are not having families. He describes this as "aging", rather than totalitarian abuse. He says the solution is immigration, rather than reform of the totalitarian abuse of young people. Young people are being told they will never own a home. They must pay high taxes on low wages. Energy and food bills will keep them in working poverty for their entire lives, and they cannot have a family. Ferguson calls this "aging", and says the solution is immigration. Adam Smith never endorsed a system where the totalitarian planning of economies led to the destruction of the family unit, and the end of all personal freedom. He never endorsed usury becoming feudal tyranny. He never said we should sacrifice our children for the shareholders of banks. Ferguson is living in a dream. He has enough money to sleep easily, and so he sleeps, and dreams of fanciful things.

"It's a bargain to support Ukraine. They do the fighting, they do the dying". Nice. His mother must be proud of person she gave birth too.

"Give Ukraine more arms" , "Escalate to De-Escalate" - This man is quite prepared to watch (from a safe distance, no doubt) as hundreds of thousands of people die for nothing. A warmonger. Old men talk whilst young men die. Please organise an interview with someone credible like Professor Mearsheimer or Professor Sachs.

Niall can barely defend his position "support Ukraine or the Jews Will be destroyed" what's he going to say when Russia wins "Russia won because we let them win" he's such a bad advocate for the current policy

Well, well, well. Good talk, but Mr F goes bonkers in his analysis regarding Ukraine, and populist definitions. Hiscstrenght in reasoning is suggesting causality when there's none.

Sorry, but Mr Ferguson did not convince me. There were so many obvious inconsistancies in his argumentation. Freddy did a good job pointing some of them out.

Sign me up for *not* escalating a war against a nuclear opponent.

I agreed with quite a lot he said on Britain, Western Europe and the US but then he got to the Ukraine and China. It's almost nostalgic to see the long and proud history of British elites having nfi what they are talking about when it comes to Russia and China coutinues to this day. Bravo.

Oh my God!!! Niall went for the preposterous 1930s Appeasement trope!!! Can anything be more cringe? I really thought he was smarter than this.

"Follow the money" is not a test of good faith. The NRA donates to politicians who are sympathetic to its views, but that doesn't mean they're bought and paid for.

Despite Freddy’s best and most diplomatic efforts to extract something interesting from Sir Niall, ‘‘twas all in vain. Mindnumbing. A further reminder of why there is no hope to be found within the system as we currently know it.

The guy loves the Cold War 2, it's like a football match to him. He is both a keyboard warrior and an intellectual, a rare combination.

Gee Niall sounds a lot like the "elites" he criticizes for being "out of touch"

The one time I would thumbs down an "unherd". Might as well have Nikki Haley on the show.

The first half of this interview was illuminating and rational but Ferguson suddenly remembered that he was straying from his conservative,right wing trope and made a uturn, contradicting himself in the process. The interviewer did well.

Follow the money he says except when it is the US/UK money

He talks about the death of hundred of thousands with no comprehension of what that really means. Negotiating has to be the answer. And quickly.

Escalating to de-escalate only works when you have complete military superiority that is understood by both sides. I challenge warmongers like Ferguson, who claim to be historians, to show at least one example where this approach has worked where both parties don’t accept complete military superiority of the other side. Before the obvious is stated, Israel past glories cannot be considered a success given that they never achieved the peace, and Israel pursuing this policy today has led it to the catastrophic cup de sac it finds itself in today.

This is shockingly the most concise and insightful discussion on modern America that I have come across. I work for the Air Force and as a knowledge worker we see this unfolding everyday even at our ranks. "Death by despair" and non-merit based advancement is dead on. Thank you...

Yes I'm a bit confused with Ferguson's analysis of Ukraine. I think he is underestimating the financial cost to the civilian west in terms of their living conditions today. I'll give him the benefit doubt on the strategic benefit of supporting Ukraine but he does allude to the sovereign debt crisis earlier but skims over it. I think he is severely underestimating this. Freddie challenges in the right areas though and is a great at asking questions. Interesting all round though. Thanks gents.

I've just witnessed Naill demonstrate beyond any doubt that he can only see the future in terms of the past, whereas history is littered with examples of where this fails. Do not respond to the new with the old.

Hello from the LSA (Late Soviet America). We better pray we aren’t treated as we have treated others.

I think Freddie has to platform the regime now and then

The only striking moment from this interview was the vision of Niall's Red tie.

Oh dear, I guess I now have to add Niall to the list of formally serious minds that I used to take into consideration, when I would try to formulate my opinion, on the best solutions, to solve complex problems.

Omg, Niall Ferguson is done, he is even mentioning "climate emergency" - London at 19C in July lol 🙂 As others have mentioned in the comments he used to be quite insightful but he sounds totally pro-establishment right now, and not in a good way -

Nial speaks in inuendo. Once you get past all the sophisticated language he really doesnt say much. "Farage is not a serious person"

For those of you confused by Ferguson - it might be because he doesn't fit neatly into our "polarized" politics. He's critical of both the identitarian (woke) left and the populist right. I love this about him as it demonstrates actual critical faculties and not lazy ideological group-think. He's a clear and nuanced thinker.

Ferguson sounds like a confused emeritus professor chiding Freddie for pointing out his inconsistencies.

Was Niall nursing a hangover? Seems far more irritable than his normal suave delivery...

Starts with a valid question, rapidly devolves into “the Americans must fight 3 simultaneous wars in Europe, Middle East, and Asia!” 😅

I think the biggest question we can ask is...why is house affordability [house value divided by salary] the biggest it has been since Victorian times? Forget national debt...this is the real experience of people in my generation who can't afford to buy a property let alone afford to raise children.

Ah, this guy. I read one of his books a long time ago. Still hoovering around the Americans trying to convince them they are Rome. Smoke ass blow.

An Englishman talking about Russia about is as predictable as the Pavlovian dog after the bell was rung.

I used to think Niall Ferguson was switched-on; apparently I was wrong!

44:29 This guy sounds like the guy who would order a filet mignon at dinner but not put anything toward the check, then ask "what's the problem?"