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This was my favorite Across the Pond conversation we’ve had so far. James Matthewson and I have built something real with this show, and this episode is the best evidence of it.
We started with JD Vance encouraging far-right nationalist protesters in the UK from the White House briefing room and ended somewhere much deeper: a genuine conversation about multiculturalism, collective trauma, the exploitation of human pain, and how not to lose yourself in this fight for democracy. The live chat was also one of our most active ever, and for good reason.
We covered the transnational far-right network that Vance, Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage are building across borders. We pulled apart the mythology underneath the blood and soil argument and showed it for what it is: historically illiterate nonsense designed to exploit economic grievance and channel it at the wrong targets.
We talked about how the boogeyman rotates, from Black people to Latino people to gay people to trans people, and why the playbook always collapses the second you actually meet the people being demonized. And then we got personal. We talked about the people being exploited on both ends of this grift. James talked about his nephew’s immigrant surgeon. I talked about the Republican veteran I met in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who was crying at his door. Then, we both talked about what it costs to do this work and why we keep doing it anyway.
James is based in Edinburgh. He’s a BBC and Sky News contributor and a former Labour Party adviser. He disclosed in this pod that he’s also someone who grew up freestyle rapping to Nas on a farm, which tells you everything you need to know about why we get along.
This was genuinely such an awesome live stream. Thank you to the hundreds of people who tuned in and engaged in the chat live. You helped mold the conversation and made it better. And if you’re just now catching this, welcome! Feel free to chat in the comments, and let’s get more discussions going. I never paywall our live chats or comment sections because I want to hear from you!
You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.
Vance, Robinson & The Transnational Far-Right Network
JD Vance stood at the White House podium and told far-right nationalist protesters in a foreign country to keep going. That was no accident. It fits a pattern that James and I have been tracking on this show for months.
Vance’s comments were a direct endorsement of the Unite the Kingdom rally organized by Tommy Robinson. About 60,000 people attended, though organizers claimed millions. When asked about protesters who believe their culture is being replaced, Vance said that all over the West, there’s this idea that the way to generate prosperity is to bring in millions of unvetted people and drop them into your neighborhoods. I pointed out on the live that this is textbook white supremacist great replacement theory, and that the implication that immigrants are inherently unsafe is straight-up fear-mongering dressed up as common sense.
This is not a coincidence or a series of isolated comments. The pattern is documented and deliberate. Vance met with AfD leadership in Germany at the Munich Security Conference, declined a meeting with the German chancellor, and told European leaders there is no room for firewalls against far-right parties. Elon Musk endorsed AfD and spoke at one of their rallies. Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was welcomed at the State Department by a senior adviser who praised him as a free speech warrior, and he had meetings with Republican congressman Randy Fine and former national security adviser Mike Flynn. I said it plainly: this is a globally collaborative far-right movement, and the Trump administration is one of its primary architects.
James laid out what the rally actually looked like on the ground. Three French women wearing burqas were brought out to chants of get them off before being stripped to reveal sexualized outfits underneath, to cheering crowds supposedly concerned about the safety of women and girls. A prominent far-right influencer was filmed trying to get the phone number of a 15-year-old girl in front of her mother. A crowd of a thousand men chanted at a female counter-protester to expose herself. James noted the bizarre coalition on display: Israeli flags flown not out of solidarity but to counter Palestinian flags from the left, sitting alongside open anti-Semites. All of it, he said, came down to one thing: get them out, remigration, we need our country back.
The White Nationalist Mythology They’re Selling
Underneath the great replacement theory and the remigration calls is a story about a white Christian homogenous Britain and America that never actually existed. James and I both took that mythology apart, and it didn’t take long.
Britain has never been what these people claim to be defending. James traced it out: Romans conquered Britain two thousand years ago. Anglo-Saxons came from Northern Germany. The Geordie accent James speaks with is rooted in Scandinavian dialect because of Viking settlement. Normans came from France. The Beaker people crossed from mainland Europe. Every group that built what Britain is came from somewhere else. The idea that there is some pure white Christian heritage worth protecting, James said, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and everything Britain has ever done of any good has been done by immigrants and by people who came to the country.
The same is true in America, and the hypocrisy runs even deeper. I pointed out that virtually everyone in this country is an immigrant unless you’re Native American, and if you’re Black with a long lineage, your ancestors were likely brought here against their will. Trump’s speech referencing Anglo-Saxon blood when King Charles visited was an attempt to build connective tissue for a transnational white nationalism. Elon Musk in Europe, Vance in Europe, all of it is the same project. I’ve been to the Smorgasburg in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on a Sunday, where every ethnicity you can imagine is sitting in the park eating together, and I’m told that is the rot of America. Now, it is the peak of civilization. They don’t believe their own arguments. They’re playing to fear to gather power.
The NHS point James made was one of the sharpest versions of the self-defeating argument. The majority of the National Health Service is made up of immigrants. James’s nephew had a brain tumor at five years old. His surgeon was Italian. That surgeon was pushed out after Brexit. Every call for remigration is a call to hollow out the infrastructure that keeps people alive, and the people calling for it go home from the rally and stumble into the kebab shop. I said it on the live, and I’ll say it here: you can’t enjoy the benefits of multiculturalism while trying to deport the people it took to build it.
Divide & Conquer: The Playbook
James put it simply: they can’t do the conquer bit without dividing you first. And naturally, people don’t divide themselves. So the far right has to manufacture the division by finding a new boogeyman every time the last one stops working.
The rotation of targets follows a consistent logic. I walked through it on the live. Black people became too omnipresent in culture for the mythology to hold. Latino people the same. Gay people: eventually, everyone knows one, and the lies fall apart. So they move to trans people, because at 1% of the population, you can build a boogeyman around a group small enough that most people haven’t met one yet. The second you have someone in your life who is trans, James said, it falls to pieces. The second your Black neighbor talks to you, and you become friends, it falls to pieces. Division only works if you can keep people from actually meeting each other.
Trump has run this exact playbook across every front simultaneously. Mexicans are rapists. Muslims need a ban. Trans people are a threat to your children in bathrooms. DEI is an attack on your culture. Meanwhile, he inherited at least $413 million from his father, bankrupted casinos, needed The Apprentice to rehabilitate his brand, built his buildings with undocumented labor, and is now siphoning 1.776 billion dollars into a DOJ slush fund for his allies while signing executive orders that keep your prices up. The boogeymen are the distraction. While you’re looking at the trans person in the bathroom or the immigrant at the border, they are robbing you blind. That is the whole game.
Misdirected Anger & The Exploitation of Pain
James made a point that reframed the whole conversation: their feelings are real. The people in those crowds know their lives aren’t working. They know they’ve been left behind. That’s the truth. What gets exploited is the explanation they’re given for why.
The far right can’t do the conquer bit without the divide, and the divide only works because the underlying pain is genuine. James said it directly: they feel that they’re being taken for granted, that nobody listens to them, that their life is hard. Guess what, he said. They’re right. Fox News, GB News, Trump, Farage — none of them created the pain. They just redirected it. That feeling you’ve got, they tell these people, it’s real. It’s because of him over there, or her over there, or them over there. And the second someone actually sits with these people, as I did knocking doors in Bucks County, you see what’s underneath.
The veteran at the door in Bucks County is the story that unlocked this for me. I was knocking doors for Kamala Harris in 2024 and got the wrong door. The man was rabid, hurling abuse. I stayed and tried to de-escalate. Eventually, he started crying. He was a Vietnam veteran. He was lonely. He was in pain. He was watching Fox News, telling him where to aim it. We didn’t convince him to vote for Harris. But I walked away understanding that this was a man whose trauma was being exploited by a demagogue who didn’t give a damn about him. He was sent to war. A right-wing system failed him when he came home. And then Trump showed up and told him it was my fault.
Nigel Farage is the clearest British example of the grift. James pointed out that Farage has spent his career talking about the damage immigrants do while simultaneously consulting for a firm that helps millionaires move to the UK. He recently received a gift of five million pounds from a tech crypto billionaire based in Thailand and bought a 1.4 million pound house in cash. Meanwhile, James noted, Trump will give you a gold card if you’ve got 14 million US dollars to exchange for it. Immigration is never the actual problem for these people. It is the tool they use while they rob you with the other hand.
How We Stay In The Fight
The last part of this conversation was the part I’ll remember most. James and I talked about what it costs to do this work, how to avoid becoming jaded, and why we both still fundamentally believe in people even after everything we’ve seen.
The answer to all of this, James said, is connection. The mythology collapses every time two people actually meet. Go find a trans person. Have a conversation. Go meet your Muslim neighbor. The second the human being replaces the boogeyman, the whole thing falls apart. That is why they need the division. That is why they attack DEI education, sex and relationship education in schools, anything that might bring people into contact with the people they’ve been told to fear. Don’t let them divide you, James said. That’s the whole game.
We both hold leaders accountable ruthlessly while refusing to collectively punish the people they misled. I said on the live that I know Republicans from growing up in Virginia. Some of the best people I’ve ever met. People fall down rabbit holes. People get held up during COVID and become conspiracy theorists. People leaving MAGA right now are getting viciously attacked in comments, and I understand the anger, especially as a Black person who has absorbed the damage this movement has caused. But the people trying to come back deserve a pathway. The leaders, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes angling for 2028, the ones who know exactly what they’re doing, those people are a different conversation. But regular voters misled by pain and fear, there’s a way back for them.
Don’t let this change you. That’s where we landed. I have a wife. I have a son coming in about a month. James has his people. We all have our lives and our loved ones, and the most important thing we can do is refuse to become unkind because these far-right authoritarians are unkind. James said it best: the best people he knows are the ones who grow continually, change, adapt, and stay decent. That is not weakness. Blaming immigrants, trans people, and marginalized groups for your problems, James said, is the weak option. Looking inward, staying connected, refusing to let the misery merchants win the war for your character, that is the strength. We believe in people. That’s why we keep doing this. And that’s why you keep showing up.
Bottom Line
JD Vance encouraged far-right nationalist protesters from the White House. Tommy Robinson was welcomed at the State Department. Elon Musk spoke at AfD rallies. Nigel Farage is being handed millions by crypto billionaires. This is one movement, and it operates across borders. But underneath all of it is a simple play: find people in pain, tell them who to blame, and rob them blind with the other hand.
The answer to this is just as simple, even if it’s harder to execute. Stay connected. Stay decent. Believe in people. And do not let them make you into what they are.
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