Why ‘anti-Zionism’ is anti-Semitism | Jonathan Sacerdoti

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Summer days are now always discounted. And savings like that, you'll never look at a free nights plan the same way again. Learn more at TXU.com, rep number 1-0-0-0-4. Anti-zionism is effectively the belief that there is this united Jewish conspiracy around the world. She's there to further Jewish aims across the world in different societies and to further the activities of the state of Israel, which they also see as a uniquely evil colonialist, imperialist project. Bernie Burnham and his foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, have spoken out pretty sternly on Israel since they swept the power. They've said, look, you protestors were right, they're bringing in sanctions in relation to the West Bank. Is this simply about appeasing domestic elements, or is there something else going on? Iliband believes what he said about Israel that he believes it is basically quite demonic and evil. Pumping money, millions and millions of pounds of our taxpayer's money, which is almost inevitably going to be hijacked for terrorist means. We look at what's happening in Paris and around France, and now spreading to Milan, in Italy, and who knows, maybe spreading here. Hello, welcome back to the Brendan O'Neil show with me, Brendan O'Neil and my special guest this week, Jonathan Sachedotti. Jonathan, welcome to the show. Great to be with you, Brendan. Great to have you back on, always good to have you on as a voice of uncommon reason in these crazy times. So it's always great to speak to you, especially on issues that are very close to your heart, and close to my heart as well, Israel, the problem of anti-Semitism, the Islamist pox and various other things that you've been writing about brilliantly for quite some time. So there's a few things I want to ask you about in the next half hour, but I want to kick off by asking you about the Green Party, Zach Polanski, what the hell has happened to the Greens. They've just passed this motion, which has caused a fair amount of national discussion, which is Zionism is racism. So I guess I should ask you, is Zionism racism? What do you think? I think Zionism is racism, and I think the Green Party has become one of the most dangerous forces in British politics, partly because of the way it's behaving, partly because of its makeup, and partly because it is considered a mainstream political party, albeit not one of the top two or three or maybe even four, but it is obviously something that gets a lot of attention, and that has a knock on effect of affecting other people in society and making ideas sort of normalized and acceptable in discussion. And in relation to this particular issue, that Zionism is racism, it's not a new idea. It's actually an old Soviet Russian idea to try and make out that Zionism is racism. The party appears in my evaluation and plenty of other people to have been taken over by extreme hard leftists and islamists, and I think that's one of the reasons why this has come about, and they've played a blinder by putting a guy in charge who is a Jewish, apparently, and has even, for effect, changed his name to the most Jewish name he could think of from his original name. Now I don't want to comment particularly on him or what he thinks, I don't know, I've never met the man, but I will say that the reason this idea is so dangerous is because Zionism in and of itself isn't racism. Zionism, as I see it, I think it's a fairly clear definition, is the belief in the right of the Jewish people to have national self-determination in their historic homeland in Israel. And I don't think that is a racist endeavor, even though the state of Israel is seen as a nation which has an ethnic foundation, that is to say Jewish ethnicity, but it is still a nation and has always been since its rebirth in 1948, which welcomes others who are living there and in the region, and which has gathered in, let's say immigrants from around the world, as Jewish ones predominantly, and which has equality for citizens within the state, not to say it doesn't have any problems, but then so does this country when it comes to different ethnic minorities, so does pretty much every country, but it doesn't really have a system of racism in trying to do it in that respect. And I think that it's, they know exactly what they're doing when they made that motion, when they passed that motion, when they refused to soften it or modify it so that Jewish people would feel safer, and ultimately I think that my strong suspicion, again, not the only person to think this, is that the Green Party has been, let's say, infiltrated or taken over by much darker forces than those who just cared about the environment and trees and nature, and now represents two of the most dangerous strains of political thought in most Western countries, but certainly in this one, which is extreme hard leftism and extreme islamism, and those two things combined, they often combine because they find that they can work well together, are effectively pushing to undermine Western values, Western democracy, and that is intrinsically linked to Judeo-Christian values and Judaism, so I do think it's dangerous, and I think the temptation to laugh at them, which is strong as well, is valid, but we must also take them really very seriously. Yeah, that final point is a very good one, because I often find myself laughing at these people, they are ridiculous, but then I think hold on, they're quite dangerous as well. Yes, so I wanted to ask you about anti-signism, in particular, because it's something that I think about quite a lot, there's lots of people writing about it at the moment, you will be more familiar than most with the whole discussion, is anti-signism, anti-semitism and all that kind of stuff. I find myself increasingly worried about anti-signism because even people who openly say, "I'm not anti-Semitic, my friends are Jews," or I vote for a party that's led by a Jewish man, as you say, Zach Polansky, how could I be anti-Semitic, and then in the next breath they will call for the destruction of the Jewish nation, they will say the Jews don't have a right to national self-determination, like every other people do, they will single out this one country and this one people for an unusual form of treatment, and I just think to myself, "Okay, so anti-signism does sound a bit like a system of bigotry. What do you think this discussion about the green motion has told us about anti-signism itself?" And that kind of lust, I guess, amongst certain sections of society to effectively get rid of the Jewish state. It's difficult to know how to answer it because I think that the Zionism that the Antis are against is a bit of a false flag, let's say, to use their language, and I think that's what's really important about this. It's a bit like anti-Semitism. I've started to hate the word and not to use it because it's not real, but because I think that we get very caught up in what it actually means. So when people talk about anti-Semitism, let me start there, they're very often hating or disliking Jews for something that is completely not real, and the same applies to anti-signism. The concept of Zionism that they are against is one that I don't think any Zionist actually represents. So I think that perception of Zionism, which has something in common with the similar perception of Jews and anti-Semitism, is that Jews are an international cabal who work in a unified way across the whole world, taking over societies, taking over elite organisations, secretly controlling them, and do so for some kind of nefarious aim. And I certainly haven't joined any such secret society. And again, I don't want to make too light of it because on the other hand, people will turn around and say, well, you accuse others of doing exactly the same thing. And I do. So Islamism, for example, does have such a state of aim. And we know about it because of documents at the FBI of C's and that have been part of court cases in the US, for example, so the famous memorandum in the US, which actually outlined Islamist Muslim Brotherhood plans, a sort of 100-year plan, to do exactly what I just described. And those techniques are techniques that actually the extreme left have used historically, the so-called march through the institutions, where you just infiltrate or embed people in jobs and places where they can have influence. And to some extent, the reason that this all sounds like conspiracy theory is because it's not necessarily conspiracy, it's not secret. So if people do this stuff actively, if it doesn't necessarily break any rules to do it, it doesn't make it any the less dangerous for democracy and for the preservation of the things which are important. Well, to me anyway, and to many people I think in society, so getting back to anti-Zionism, the allegation that Jews do this is a really old one that has existed for a very, very long time, and it isn't true. So obviously people will point at me and say, "Well, okay, you would say that if you're part of it." So anti-Zionism is effectively the belief, I think, that there is this united kind of Jewish conspiracy around the world, which is there to further Jewish aims across the world, to different societies, and to further the activities of the state of Israel, which they also see as a uniquely evil colonialist, imperialist project. And I don't see any of those things as being true, and I don't see any evidence of those things being true. Yeah, very good answer, yeah, I've been writing about Israel and anti-Semitism for a long time. I've never been invited to join any group, or being offered any money, I'm still waiting for my shackles. People ask me all the time, how much do they pay you, a very telling question when you write on this issue. I wanted to, just on the anti-Zionism thing more broadly, I wanted to ask you about another part of this motion, which is that there should be one state, and they refer to it as the historic state of Palestine, a kind of greater Palestine. We are hearing that call more and more from the radical F, certainly from Islamists, who simply believe that Israel should be done away with. How worried are you about that as an idea, and how worried are you that, I guess, there are strains even in the political class who don't share that idea, and would be much more interested in two state solutions, but they kind of give that idea sucker by saying Israel is a very problematic state, it's spreading too far, it's becoming too violent, etc, etc. What do you make of this growing cry we hear from certain sections of society that Israel should just not exist? Well, I'm not overly worried that it's going to happen, because the state of Israel does exist and will exist, and I think that that's the bottom line. But to unpack it from there, yes, it's a regressive and stupid argument, which doesn't help to achieve anything approaching peace, let's say, or coexistence, or a better situation than we have now. I use those three versions to indicate the same, because I'm not sure I believe in peace in that region. I don't think there is a solution in that region. I think that that's not really how the world works. I think that there are actions which can be taken, which can help to make the situation better for the people involved in the conflict for sure. And those might move you towards some kind of utopian idea of peace eventually. But I think the idea of reaching such a thing is unrealistic, mostly because this is a much misunderstood conflict. What I mean by that is I think that one side, the Palestinians, doesn't want two states. It doesn't want to live in harmony and peace alongside a Jewish state of Israel. And that is ultimately across, I would say, all of its mainstream political actors, true. So even if, of course, I've met Palestinians, individuals, who would love to live peacefully and prosperity, have a good life for them and their families and their children, work cards, live without fear, without checkpoints, all of those sorts of things. They're not really represented anywhere in mainstream Palestinian politics at all, even by what many who don't know a lot about the situation considered to be the moderate. So that I'm talking about Fattah and, you know, who are dominant in the Palestinian authority at the moment. But they themselves are extremists. If there weren't Hamas and the PFLP and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on the spectrum, I don't think anyone looking at this objectively would think that they were reasonable car moderates. They literally pay, they have a system of paying terrorists who've killed Israelis or Jews, dependent on how many they've killed, how long their prison sentences are. They incentivize through money, terrorist activity. And they are founded on principles of terrorism and what they call resistance. I would say that most of mainstream Palestinian identity is based on so-called resistance. And so when you look at the word resistance, you have to ask what they're resisting. What they're resisting is the existence of a Jewish state of Israel. Now they will say no, we're resisting occupation, we're resisting Israel's actions keeping Palestinians down. But I would say to that that Israel has shown itself very willing to make peace, even quite rubbish, cold peace steels with Arab neighbors when the opportunity has been there that has been real. When there is no real opportunity, it's learned over the years, most notably over the last three years since the disaster of the 7th of October 2023, that it needs to be extremely tough for the purposes of defending itself and also for the purposes of deterrence. So I think around the 7th of October before and on the day, it had lost some of that deterrence undeniably because there was the perception among the Palestinians that they could invade southern Israel and do a lot of damage and then that proved to be very real. So Israel had lost some of its legendary deterrence. So I would say it's hardened, it's positioned since then for those two reasons. One is to actively put down that extremely real and vicious barbaric threat. And two is to ward off other threats because the other thing that is true about Jews generally and especially in the Levant is that when enemies of the Jews think they look weak, they tend to get excited and plan and carry out those sorts of attacks. So Israel is always operated on the principle that it needs to be incredibly strong against that. And again, I think it's developed a reputation among, unfortunately, large parts of the world in the West at least who think that it's become kind of spatter, that in pursuit of that reputation of being extremely strong and projecting that deterrence, it's become a barbaric and bloodthirsty and kind of demonic force. But I would say that what I find so impressive about the state of Israel when I visit it. And again, I don't want to over-emantacize it and say it's perfect, it's not. But what I find impressive is that actually it does those things. But also, day-to-day life there is exceptional, exceptionally liberal, exceptionally free, exceptionally creative, exceptionally productive. It's a country which is tough. And I would say, yes, occasionally ruthless in its toughness against its enemies. But all the time wrestling with this idea that it's doing that to protect a liberal society. And I think that's why for me, actually, the idea that Zionism has become such a kind of problem word, even for those who aren't viciously anti-Zionist, they feel very nervous. Even people who are supporters of Israel, politicians who ask them, are you a Zionist? They're very hesitant to say yes because they know how it will be misunderstood or misrepresented. But the truth is, Zionism represents something that this country, Britain, could really learn a lot of lessons from. Strong historical identity, strong cultural identity, strong willingness to fight and protect that identity, strong connection to history and nationhood. And all of those things are what I would say millions of people in Britain and around the world recognize as missing from their own society. So I think that Israel kind of presents actually something of a blueprint for how we might fix a lot of our problems in Europe. And tragically, Europe is increasingly pushing away that country which seems to have a lot of the models for how to deal with this stuff. But we're very different places, we're not in the Middle East, and we're not necessarily dealing with exactly the same manifestations of those enemies, adversaries, whatever you want to call them. But there's so much room to learn there, and we're doing it. We're learning from it secretly. Our country is constantly learning from and relying on the state of Israel for information and training and intelligence. But publicly, Britain, especially under this government, but even under previous governments, is pushing them aside, pushing them away. And so I think it's actually, it's very bad for us. It's very bad sign for our future as much as for theirs. Yeah, I think that last point about learning from Israel is such a key one. I've just come back from Israel, and the two things that strike me when I go there as firstly, as you say, that it's a normal functioning liberal society. It's very open, and it's fun. It's nothing like the kind of demonic presentation we see in the West. And also, there are things that I wish we had in Britain. I wish we had more secure borders. I wish we had young people who were willing to spend a year doing national service or training or taking responsibility for their country. There's so much there that I admire that I think we could do with, but we, I think we spend rather too long demonizing Israel rather than learning from it. And demonizing ourselves, by the way, that's part of the problem. It's like, I think there's a lot of self-criticism within Israeli society, but we've made an art of constantly demonizing ourselves. feeling guilty for everything. Even the bits of our history and culture that are great. We feel eternally guilty and you know I think that's also quite sick. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned this government, the Labour government now run by Andy Burnham and Ed Milliband and various other not particularly impressive politicians in my view. Both of them, Andy Burnham and his foreign secretary Ed Milliband have spoken out pretty sternly on Israel since they swept to power. They've said, look, you protestors were right. The Warren Gaza has been horrific. I don't think anyone would disagree that it's been horrible. They've put sanctions, they're bringing in sanctions in relation to the West Bank or Judea and Samaria. Some people call it. What have you made of some of that posturing and some of those measures? Is this simply about appeasing domestic elements or is there something else going on there? To some extent, I'm not sure I might care which way around it is. But I do think that it starts there. But I think that it's very easy. I think it's really easy when looking at people who disagree with you to attribute their position or their beliefs to bad intentions and I would say that I owe them the courtesy of assuming they believe what they say. So I think often we talk ourselves into positions that applies as much to things I think because it does on the other side. I do try to challenge myself and to question those things to make sure that it's not tribal or that I haven't convinced myself of something because I want it to be that way. So with that sort of throat clearing done, I would say that I ought to take them, they're word, that they believe this stuff, that Milliband believes what he said about Israel, that he believes it is basically quite demonic. And evil, which is, you know, I'm sorry to overstate it a little bit, but that's more or less the tone he was taking in the party conference speech he gave. And the reason I say that is because you can't just take it on its own. You have to compare it to what he says to the other side. So they decided to recognize Palestinian statehood without recognizing any details of this Palestinian state where its borders are, who its people are, etc. And no real words of criticism for anything that so-called state does or is doing. I mean, now they're very, very kind of vaguely suggested maybe it would be good if it held elections. But no, you know, it's not, nothing's conditional on that. There's no, there's no if you don't X and Y and Z will happen or there'll be sanctions on you, nothing, none of that. But for Israel, the toughest of talk, sanctions introduced limiting to the extent they can sell of arms or parts to the country while it's still in the midst of an existential war effectively. All of those things, nothing comparable on the other side. In fact, hugs for the guy that, you know, represents the PLO in the UK. And now the so-called Palestinian state at the party conference, literal hugs. I mean, I remember debating that guy on Al Jazeera years ago before he was here in this country. I think it was, you know, we were all down the line. And at the end of the show, I could hear him in the earpiece after the show, berating the producers because there was a guest from Israel, there was me and there was him somewhere else in the world. And he was berating them for having been biased towards the Zionists in the programme. I mean, Al Jazeera. So I just say as a sort of weird anecdote, because he's not a reasonable man. He's not reasonable or fair in his discussions. He's typical of, I would say, the movement he represents. So this government is not acting fairly if it considered itself a broker in this conflict. It's acting incredibly tough against the state of Israel and really giving, I would say, a free pass to what it calls the state of Palestine. And I keep saying as well, if they've recognised a state of Palestine, which they have, and then they introduced these sanctions on state of Israel to paraphrase, but only loosely, because they felt that this was killing the prospect of a two-state solution in the future. How does that work? Either there are two states now and they recognise them both, or there aren't. But this idea that you can recognise a state and then still give it an absolute free pass in all of its behaviour, in all of its political representation, absolutely no threat of sanctions or anything towards it. Instead, pumping money, millions and millions of pounds of our taxpayers' money towards it, which you know is almost inevitably going to be hijacked for terrorist means, or at the very least, not used fairly and evenly to help the population you're pretending it's going to help. I just think it's distinctly dishonest. And if they do believe this stuff, it's very, very dark and bleak. It says a lot about their bad judgement. And if they don't believe it, well, that's even more cynical. I wanted to ask you about the West Bank area. Some people call it the disputed territories. I don't know what term you use. I've just come back from, I visited Judea, parts of the Judean hills and some of the Jewish settlements there, and also a couple of Palestinian towns. I ate in one of the restaurants that will be impacted by the government's sanctions as and when they come into force. There's lots of talk about violence there, settle of violence against Palestinian communities. It's been a major item on the BBC news for two nights running, I think, which strikes me as quite disproportionate in terms of other things that are happening around the world. But what do you think about the settlement question, the West Bank question? Because that is often raised as proof that Israel is really out of control. It's expanding the settlements. It's moving further into that parallel world. There's not no possibility of a Palestinian nation as long as Israel behaves like this. What do you make of that discussion? It's a very tricky one and to do it justice, you need to go into a lot of really boring detail. I'll try not to do that, but I will try to add a bit of complexity, let's say. So obviously, I'm against vigilante violence completely and where it takes place, I'm completely against it. What's happened over the last couple of days has been interesting because there has been an element of that on both sides. Yet, I think the way that it's reported is very unfair. So I think that what tends to happen quite often, and as far as I can tell though, it's really hard to tell exactly what happens, especially from afar. What seems to happen is that people go journalists, Western journalists will go with Palestinians to areas where the flashpoint areas basically, and do their olive picking, let's say. But I've seen footage, it's again hard to verify what's what, certainly at this stage. But footage where you'll see the Palestinians go to this area, and deliberately start violent activity towards the Israelis living in the area, rock throwing, and things like that. And then there will be some of the Israelis who react in a similar way, and then these journalists who are kind of embedded with the Palestinians there, film it in a tendentious way and present one side of it. Now, I can't really say what went on there, but I think that's the point. I think nobody really can at this stage, and that's what makes it really difficult to see some of the reporting, because yes, what I did see was that an American, well, she is American, but she's also an Israeli citizen, I believe, who lives in Israel and brings up her kids in Israel, but she's a dual citizen, I presume. A journalist, photojournalist was injured and appears to have been quite horribly beaten by people, and that is dreadful. And the people that do that don't help their cause in any way. That said, I don't know if what's going on there is as typical and widespread as some of the commentary would have us believe, and it often ignores similar behavior in the other direction. And I get reports and see reports about violence and aggression in the other direction too. So, for example, there's been a, I have read a lot of, a lot of sort of nasty stuff going on, there was a report that Palestinian had gone feeding poise and dates to sheep in the area that would then kill the sheep of the Israeli shepherds and things like that. So, there is this kind of two way sinister vigilante violence, which is very problematic. Now, when it comes to the West Bank or Judea and Samaria, more broadly, the bit that's dishonest about the conversation is this. There is no question that Israel will continue to have Jews living in pots of it. And even the Oslo Accords, which didn't commit to a two-state solution, despite what many people say now, even the Oslo Accords, which are tempted and to help give some sense of autonomy to the Palestinians in areas where they were living, recognized that there are Jewish communities and towns there that will continue to be and that would potentially one day be part of the state of Israel and not disputed. Now, if you took out all of the Jewish presence from the whole of that area, firstly, we have to ask ourselves why Jews can't live in the whole of that area. Arabs can live in Israel. And if they were a Palestinian state there, why should Jews not be able to live in it. They may not want to. But secondly, to remove the Jewish presence from those parts, which aren't really that disputed, would put the rest of Israel at enormous risk. And it's a risk that we've seen now very, really played out on October the 7th, the invasion from Gaza. Gaza was a sort of sandbox for this idea. Israel withdrew unilaterally and completely from Gaza, removing every Jew from Gaza, including the dead ones. They dug up their corpses from the graveyards. They literally evacuated every piece of Jewish presence. And 20 or years later, we saw exactly what happened. And in the run-up to that, we saw how horrific it was for Palestinians as well when Hamas took over. And so I think the idea that we would reproduce that experiment in the West Bank and expect a more positive outcome is foolish. And again, it doesn't mean that I know the answer. But I'm just trying to say that in the conversations we have politically and in commentary, we ought to be a bit more honest about it and recognize that, of course, there has to be Israeli presence in that area. Geographically and topologically, it's high ground. It overlooks Bengurian airport, Israel's main airport. It overlooks all of central Israel where Tel Aviv is. Those things aren't going to change. And to create a state of Israel, which would be at the same or high level of risk from that typical Palestinian behavior of invasion and terrorism across the whole state that it was in the South is obviously not going to happen. Israel will never do that. And so the conversation I think needs to start from that point. And I recently wrote a piece in which I actually look back at what I consider to be a very sensible proposition for two states, which was given by actually Benjamin Netanyahu in his famous Bar-Alan speech, where when he did say that he could foresee a two-state solution, it was one in which he said that, you know, the question of sovereignty is an interesting one in today's age, but that he was willing to work towards a Palestinian state, if that is what they would call it, which would have all the autonomy to govern itself, but none of the power to threaten Israel. So it wouldn't have on armies, and it wouldn't have free air travel, and it wouldn't have the ability effectively to do what they did on October the 7th. But this was years before October the 7th. So I think that is a relatively fair thing to work towards. But I also think that what we've seen since then has made it clear that's never been their intention, and it's not really possible. So I think it leaves us in a very sticky situation, but it's made worse by the fact that most politicians won't even acknowledge that situation, which means that there's very little that can be done to approach even a desirable outcome at the moment. Yeah, that's very well explained. It always strikes me that, you know, the left and other people accuse Israel of apartheid and ethnic cleansing and all the rest of it, and yet some of those same people will call for the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, disputed territories, and I presume the expulsion of those Jews, you know, they shouldn't live in an Arab state, and you know, what's more ethnic cleansing than that. Jonathan, I've just got one more question for you before we end. I've got a million things I want to ask you about, but we'll have to save them for future podcasts. I want to ask you about the Islamist issue. I know you're currently working on a documentary about this question, the problem of Islamism. I think we're seeing some of this stuff playing out in what's currently happening in France, which I find quite terrifying, just that kind of street nihilism. I know it's not just Islamist, there's other factors too, but it's very interesting that a lot of those rioters are waiving the Palestine flag as they burn down political institutions or break into shops. The Islamist problem is not going away anytime soon. Is it either in France or Britain or anywhere else in Europe? How serious is this problem and what can governments do to address it? It is a massive problem. I think it's one of the main problems facing us as a society in Britain and across Europe and in parts of the West, more largely. Again, I think one of the key elements that needs to be dealt with before we can even think of how to tackle it is acknowledging it more publicly and more openly. I think it's very sensitive because there's a lot of deliberate obfuscation of what it means to criticize Islamism and whether or not that is Islamophobic, a word that basically Islamists invented to stop us discussing those things. Again, it is worth saying that saying that doesn't mean that I'm in favor of persecuting or attacking Muslims and that I don't acknowledge that that happens, but I don't think that that is what Islamophobia specifically was ever intended to refer to. I think that the main issue is not acknowledging it and we've had in our country now the head of MI5 warning about these sorts of threats from Iran and from those sorts of players. We know that among those on the terror watch list and those threats that we face, Islamism is a very, very serious one growing and we've seen the head of our army now warning that we're likely to appear at war soon and the population needs to adapt and prepare for it and the government needs to become honest with us. Again, I think honesty is the key. I don't know if it's easy for politicians to be honest on this stuff because maybe it gets them voted out or hated, but I suspect maybe the population is waiting for someone to be honest with us about this. When we look at what is happening in Paris and around France and now spreading to Milan in Italy and who knows, maybe spreading here. The French love to have these sorts of riots. It seems to be part of their national historical culture much more than it is part of ours, but we did have riots in 2011 which didn't look that drastically different. They involved burning and looting in the same way. It can happen here. I think we need to take it really seriously. We need to confront this threat and the problem with Islamism to put it in a nutshell. When you look at movements like the Muslim Brotherhood which was founded in Egypt around a century ago, is that they developed this strategy of infiltration and of gentle sort of progressive slow movement, initially non-violent, taking control of our own institutions and our own systems to use them against us and to threaten the very whole that they are part of. That has been happening. We've discussed some of the ways in which that's been happening already in the last half hour. I think that the difficulty for us as a liberal and free country is to control that and stop that because when it takes place using the liberties and freedoms that we have, it's very hard to look at it and stop it. I know in Germany, for example, they have got something a bit different from the system we have where they they have a kind of body that will look at extremism but not only when it's violent extremism and terrorism. There is a sort of notch down from that where there is extremism which poses a threat to the republic and they have that I think as a result to their history with Nazism, a recognition that these things don't always start in a violent and obviously, externally, obviously problematic way. We are wrestling without problem, I think, all the time because we can look at things which are so patently and obviously wrong in how they're operating and sinister, but lots of people will say, "Well, it would be to dent something of what makes our country special, dent something that is fundamental to who we are to even act on this." So you're right, it looks problematic but they did have a vote on it and they did represent it fairly and this is according to their democratic system and the country's democratic values. But I think that those things aren't worth anything unless we can protect them and so sometimes we have to be able to limit or put limits on them because of the threats to the broader thing and I think the obvious example is one that we did all struggle with but we have done this before in recent memory and I think it will actually only make it harder for us to do it now because of how it was handled and that was during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people accepted limits on their freedoms, drastic limits on their freedoms because they felt that it was going to help their overall individual and collective survival and yet when it comes to this sort of threat where our collective survival is absolutely challenged, there seems to be a massive reluctance to even entertain the idea that we might need to modify some of our freedoms or in certain circumstances and I say that with a huge amount of caution. So I think that in a nutshell that is the underlying problem and that's what I've spent a fair amount of time at the moment talking about because I think it's really important that at least we start the conversation and then we can start to find ways to actually take careful proportions against it but the time is running out of it. Jonathan, thank you very much. Thanks, Brenton. If you're looking for a better way to save on electricity, both night and day, look no further than TXU Energy Free Nights in cool summer. 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