What is REALLY Happening to Ireland? | Immigration, Identity & National Crisis w/ Keith Woods

0:00 you're very welcome to Counterpoint Uh I think this is going to be a a very interesting conversation in light of the rallies that are that have happened in Dublin and uh last weekend in Cork City with with more planned I can tell you because uh I'm getting uh insights that it's beginning to have an effect uh in the in the in the permanent establishment and in the political establishment Uh you know note is being taken There is an energy here We mentioned it before and it's now it's now having an effect uh in government circles and I think that effect will grow Uh and the reason for it is at the center of this discussion I have in studio tonight Keith Woods Uh Keith Woods not the rugby player as you can see Uh Keith Woods fascinating uh uh writer Uh we are just going to show you his his first book there It'll come up on screen in

0:50 just a second And this is all about um nationalism uh why nationalism is a good thing and I just want to to read a little summary of of uh of his first book which was nationalism the politics of identity and it says another thing Woods gets right is biological race multiculturalism in inverted commas ironically presupposes that we can harmoniously mix races in the same society because they aren't all that different Race is literally a superficial matter of skin color and verticas But if racial differences are more than skin deep then multiculturalism is doomed to create conflict I have found Wood's essays on racial thought in Irish nationalism to be particularly instructive And this writer who is the editor-in chief of CounterCurrence Publishing Craig Johnson then

1:37 finishes his his review of the book by saying "I wish I knew as much about nationalism as Keith Woods when I was in my 20s." I I echo that myself I I especially wish I had this book when I was young Spending a few hours reading it would have saved me years of confusion and searching So read this book and buy copies of it for promising young people What a what what what a fantastic uh review to get Keith I just want to ask you about that because when when when you meet people in the street you're you you you live in Galway And we we we'll get to everything you've done in just a moment And and you and you you're asked like in an elevator you know what's the difference between nationalism and what we currently have got which is centralization power moving up into

2:24 into global super national organizations and a kind of just a big great big blob of humanity um being being man being managed from the center as a sort of division for it Uh how how do you describe nationalism compared to that Well I would say the difference in the worldviews and I think this is kind of the fundamental binary of nationalism versus globalism multiculturalism what we have now is you know our current social planners think that institutions make people and that they can socially engineer people and that you know if you give people you know western liberalism and this package of values that we have that all of these differences will basically disappear and people are basically you know funible interchangeable units and I'd say it's much more that the people make the institutions and so we should be very careful when we do

3:12 something like you know embark on an experiment of of mass immigration that will fundamentally change the demographic character of our people and you know I think Ireland is is so far behind on this in some ways you know we're really sleepw walking into a crisis because although this is a very controversial thing to say here now you know just to profess nationalism openly if you look at the continent the conversation is is really changing I mean just recently Kirst Stmer who you know who would have ever thought of that it would be a labor prime minister to come out and say this Uh but he said that the open borders experiment as he called it is making the UK an island of strangers and even in in places you know traditional social democracies like uh Denmark um is currently experimenting with remigration Uh they've left the European Council on Human Rights

4:01 Um and that's not because they were taken over by farright ideologues It's very interesting in that case They have a left-wing social democratic government And what's also interesting is they actually don't really have a far right They don't have uh street protests or or this great kind of division where people Yeah And the reason for that it's very interesting actually I think the BBC profiled it in a recent documentary They they asked the politicians "Well why don't you have these problems?" and they said "Well you know we we noticed people were getting a bit upset about immigration." So you know the the kind of the Scandinavian mind they decided to to look at this and just look at the data and take a very scientific approach Um and what they realized is that yes mass immigration has created parallel societies Um there's a very interesting statistic

4:47 in that regard and I think this gets to uh what you talked about in the introduction there of of you know fundamental differences between people um that isn't about any kind of uh supremacy or hate but just a recognition of of incompatibilities which is in Denmark um migrants take far more uh cash welfare benefits than natives but and that's true in most European countries but the interesting thing is is Denmark taking the scientific approach approach actually decided to collect crime data welfare data on first second and third generation immigrants And they actually find that the second and third generation immigrants who you would expect to be quite well integrated into Danish society they've lived their whole lives in Denmark uh they actually take more welfare uh than the first generation immigrants and they actually have higher crime rates as well

5:37 I mean the one statistic that stood out is the second third generation immigrants have a murder rate that's 805% times uh the native population and about double say their parents generation So the whole promise of multiculturalism and mass immigration which is that you can take people that are coming from radically different cultures radically different backgrounds and if you just kind of present you know western values to them it will be so irresistible uh they'll become interchangeable westerners that hasn't worked out and increasingly you're seeing a recognition of that from places you would not have expected it in the past you know left-wing governments centrist governments across Europe David Cameron said that multiculturalism was a failure Angela Merkel acknowledged it was a failure Recently in Sweden they have a huge problem with

6:25 gang violence and according to a police report from Sweden 95% of gang violence perpetrators are of non-western origin um and even the Swedish government in 2022 and non-western then just so we're clear on that we're not talking here about when you're looking at the when the Danes are looking at the data you you are you talking about the data of non-western immigrants as opposed to say you know what we've experienced in polls coming in and and Hungarians and and all of that yeah that's what's interesting about Denmark is you know you have countries like France where they very strictly prohibit collecting any kind of ethnic data on crime or welfare for any of these things Um what was interesting with Denmark is they actually did break it down by western origin non-western origin and there's been some economic studies on this recently as

7:13 well And again there is a very you know it's a categorical difference There's two studies on this one in Denmark one in the Netherlands and it found that actually the western immigrants to these countries are a net positive economically but the non-western immigrants uh I think Michael McCarthy may have even mentioned this on your show they're a net drain sometimes in the six figures And Denmark found a similar pattern which was that second third generation immigrants uh children of of non-western immigrants are the biggest net drain on welfare Um and this is a pattern that's repeated throughout Europe It's why in in places that were traditionally very leftwing like like Sweden you actually had in 2022 their prime minister who's the leader of the social democrat party that kind of created the the Swedish welfare state said that mass immigration

7:58 had created parallel societies So when I look across the continent we're seeing a recognition of the problems of this policy and the idea that if we just take a colorblind position if we pretend that these realities don't exist then you know again magically people will just you know wear the skin of a new culture and we'll see a total change to these patterns And what I'm saying from this perspective is no institutions look the way they do because of the people that built them countries look the people the the way they do because of the people have built them Japan is the way it is because it's populated by Japanese people If you replace the population of Japan with Irish people it would be quite different in character and we're witnessing the same thing happening in Europe now And all I'm saying is we have to have an honest conversation about if that's a good thing or not

8:47 But can I just ask you about that honest conversation and and just Denmark if we can pause there for a second because if you if you put in jux the position what the Danes have accomplished now I think they just take in around they make about 5,000 a year of citizens new citizens um and um they've a very wellorganized society we can see that from the outside now they'll have their own problems obviously Sweden of course have huge problems as you know um uh it's been described in one of my talks as by one of their MEPs in Europe as as a low-level civil war going on in Sweden But if you if you if you if if you look at what we did what the doll did on the 25th of June 26th of June last year where where we voted to join the EU migration pact Mhm Which now means that another 15 or 24,000 I think 24,000 is the preparation are going to come in per year

9:38 from the area that we're just talking about Um and uh and and and the quote is going to be decided in the center by the bureaucratic center by faceless bureaucrats Irish civil servants are just second level to them They just go along and they're told what to do and the the doll itself seems to me to be just the summer help you know and uh and you and like the Danes had an opt out from the migration pact and they they were looking at us through their fingers saying "What are the Irish doing?" I mean they had a plan They implemented the plan They looked at the data We have no plan other than build them and they will come You know the IP pass centers I mean it just seems to be chaotic And and if you and if you stand up and say it is chaotic uh there is an attempt to you know

10:27 to try and box you off as a racist or use tropes like far right and and so on And uh although I think that's now wearing thin but how how can you or how can one uh account for the behavior of the Irish government only 12 months ago and the opt into the EU migration pack because on any level on any level it makes no sense whatsoever Yeah And that pact I think is is more insidious than people realize as well because some of the way this was being sold to people was oh well actually if you look at it Ireland has taken so many refugees the last few years that actually if they divvy up the quotas fairly which is the idea of of the EU migration pact is how it's sold is well you know it's not really fair that all of these migrants come to Italy and Greece and they have to deal with all them So really we should kind of share out the problem But there's actually clause in

11:16 there that says that in the case of an emergency situation the EU can set that quota to whatever it wants So okay maybe it's a lower number now but in the case of what they declare to be some kind of global emergency you know you're talking about millions of migrants And they actually have an example of some of the clauses that could trigger that And it's things like climate emergencies So if if they say that people have to migrate in the millions because of climate change uh then these people are legitimate refugees And not only are they legitimate refugees but you have a quota where you're potentially taking you know your individual share of millions of people entering Europe So yeah it's it's it's terrible policy There's really no justification for it Again it's it's Irish politicians uh trying to be the the best boy in class going along with everything the EU provides And I think part of it is I think Irish politicians enjoy being able to pass the

12:04 book to the EU You know so often when the debate around Oh yeah We have we've we've international obligations International obligations Yes this phrase it's it's perfect because of course you know who do you blame Who's to blame Well you know we have all these international treaties and the Council on Human Rights and now the Migration Act and yeah it's a way to bypass the the Democratic mandate on this and and just institute this permanently Well what I find interesting when when when I went to look at it was the uh degree to which the uh the the the senior civil ser certain group of senior civil servants uh in the Irish permanent establishment you know um became pawns of the of the of the UN in the development of the sustainable development goals or 17 of them uh from 2013 2015 and that's been driving an awful lot of the the sort of strategic thinking at that

12:54 level But uh it but but but but we are now in a situation where we're still driving forward on the on on on on on fulfilling the legal obligations around the compact treaty We're going to get in another 15 or 24,000 Uh there's a huge problem with ipass centers Clearly communities are are are not happy with it Uh and the government itself is now seeing large numbers of people coming out onto the street and very in peaceful rallies and demonstrations How do you see that playing out What's your sense of it Well I mean I think I think just on raw numbers it's really inevitable they're going to create some kind of backlash And if there's no political party uh and no media outlets to represent that it's going to come in this more raw kind of populist you

13:41 know street energy form I mean most Irish people don't even realize the numbers of this but we're increasing our population by 3% a year solely through inward migration While we have one of the highest immigration rates in the world um and we're talking about you know non-western migrants there's actually been a shift in our immigration policy where you know okay during the Celtic tiger there was a lot of uh Eastern European migrants Uh since co a lot of Western countries have shifted to massive south uh South Asian migration especially from India And again we talk about the the kind of conflicts this is creating I think this is this is really inevitable There's a guy in the UK called David Betts who's a professor at uh King's College London and he's an expert in in civil conflict and he has used the example recently where uh you know you might say okay

14:32 India is more western friendly country you know it's not bringing Islamism these kinds of things but he used the example recently where there were mass uh riots and ethnic conflict on the streets of Leicester uh between Hindus and Muslims over a dispute happening thousands of miles away and S who's a very serious scholar is now warned in the British establishment that he thinks there's a high likelihood uh he puts his expectation at over 90% that within a European country in the next 5 years there'll be a civil conflict and if you look at his reasoning for that it's the collapse in social trust that is a consequence of multiculturalism um now in Ireland we've never had uh you know a kind of populist right-wing party um we've had this this you know much more kind

15:19 of parochial division between finale and fall um and I think that's creating a problem where people have very legitimate concerns about immigration and the government has decided to take a position that is just absolutely hostile to any discussion of this I mean with the media as well the media obviously has a big role but there's just there's no release valve there's no Nigel Fra there's no Donald Trump there's no there's nothing to the right of of this great consensus and so Yeah we're we're seeing it burst out in in all sorts of ways and I think it's just an inevitability of this project Well we seem to be we seem to be several years behind Sorry the establishment is several years behind what's going on in Europe When you're looking at the the big shift in in in uh you know in the sort of Overton window I've mentioned it a few times in other programs You

16:04 know the acceptability of what the two political extremes are shifted more to the center In other words because of the growth on the right Uh and it it's interesting to watch what's going on in Holland Are you familiar there the uh the the main um the main right-wing party uh is is pulling out of the coalition and around the area of the compact treaties or sorry the the migration pact as I understand it and that's that's going to be one to watch But in terms of the media over here uh you know I I've long criticized it for the last four or five years of of it's just not exist non-existent Uh we we can't expect anything Can't expect proper reporting about what's going on And I'm talking about RT as well as the broad sheets and uh and also uh there is an agreement between the NUJ and the UN high commissioner for refugees uh that the uh that that any of the coverage that

16:54 that does come will not mention the ethnicity of the perpetrator when even even when there is um even when there is crimes you know murder on the streets It's quite extraordinary that uh that you know that Ireland has changed in such a rapid period of time to become a society which is um which which is tiptoeing towards um authoritarianism and ultimately towards totalitarianism if it goes that far No I think that people are waking up uh especially across Europe and uh we we may see some change there but there is there there's nobody talking this uh having these discussions outside you know within the mainstream media it's just not happening and and when there are when there are things written it's it's usually opinion writers the same the same crowd all the time saying the same stuff which is very dated thinking

17:42 around multiculturalism and and everything and and the Irish sure we we went all over the world the Irish and look look look we had to put up with but I mean we we integrated and assimilated in the societies that we went into and it's quite clear here that there is not going to be integration and assimilation with a large number of the refugees so-called refugees and asylum seekers coming in that are a lot of them are just um you know economic migrants and I find that I find that extraordinary uh uh and and that's why uh you know I had that recent um interview with the uh with with the three influencers you wasn't term because it's it's a bit demeaning but but h you know with you know to discuss this but it looks to me that we're going to end up paying people to leave because because you you can't just force people out at gunpoint I

18:32 mean it just doesn't work you know Yeah Yeah I mean Denmark and Sweden are both experimenting with this now where they're actually offering uh financial incentives for people to return to their homelands And again I think you know people should take that very seriously in terms of think of who's running Denmark and Sweden Like this is not you know this is nothing resembling the far right These are very moderate uh usually left-wing social democrats And the fact that these countries now are moving to a situation where in Sweden's case it's very generous uh financial incentives like 30 40,000 plus help with finding a job the people that move back to their host countries like what would drive these countries to take policy so rapid uh so radical and then you look here and we're pushing full steam ahead with this project and like I've always come at it

19:21 from you know a kind of empirical approach you know I studied sociology in university and it's an interesting topic to me as much as anything um and really if you look at data on this on a large scale there's just no debate you look at multiple surveys on on social trust and diversity that have been done the finding is always the same which is that when you create diverse societies there's a breakdown in social trust Um there was a landmark study on this called bowling alone Um that talked about this phenomenon where people huddle into themselves They stop participating in their community They stop doing charity work They stop participating with their churches Um and this is really a universal phenomenon Places where the most conflicts are in the world are the the ethnically diverse places Um everywhere that has experimented with this has had downward social

20:07 trends and the trends that was talking about with David Betts which is that there's as there's a collapse in social capital in a sense you make conflict inevitable and that is what would drive a left-wing country like Denmark and Sweden to start paying these people to leave um but like I said 3% immigration per year that's not something that is easily going to be remedied um and even if you could integrate these people at those numbers it's impossible so we are going to create parallel societies we're going to create problems um that will take a generation to fix in my opinion and yeah the tragic thing is that there's just no debate or discussion about this Well well yeah Can I just maybe shift move on then if if I can because uh you you were one of the well I mean early starters I mean you're not 30 yet you're you're on the cusp of it as I understand

20:56 You you you started in 2019 in YouTube and uh you you you you got shut down by the um by the by by the algo by the alos in in YouTube by the way which which to me is is a is is is is a is a badge of honor because when we look at what happened during co and and we now have all the evidence of the interference with the platforms by the by the uh by the establishment you know going after people targeting people it was quite extraordinary what happened uh you got caught up with that So can you just talk us what what happened there You you you you had built up quite a following and suddenly it's gone Yeah YouTube was my main platform and you know a lot of I mean on on things like X you know maybe I'm a bit more uh pmical and controversial but on YouTube I I kept it

21:42 very kind of uh you know academic these kinds of discussions that we're having right now Um I actually never had any I didn't have any active strikes on YouTube or anything Um but actually a US organization Media Matters for America which is a hyperartisan left-wing pro-democrat organization It's actually the same organization that cost uh Tucker Carlson all his advertisers at Fox News before he left there They wrote a couple of head pieces on me and that was me wiped out But why did they choose I mean why would why would you have come on their radar What what because you you'd obviously built up large numbers then and you were beginning to have an impact in the US Yeah it actually came in the wake of uh so I launched a campaign on X called hashband the ADL Okay Which is again it was a to try and create this general push back against censorship So the

22:27 the ADL the anti-defamation league is is the other big censorship NGO Okay Um it organized a large advertiser boycott of Facebook um in 2020 after the George Floyd riots and that led them to institute a lot of the censorship It did a similar thing with with Twitter when Elon Musk took over So I launched this campaign It went number one worldwide There was 100,000 tweets under this tag the first uh evening Elon Musk acknowledged it He said he was going to run a poll um to ban this organization As it turns out I think he maybe cut some kind of deal with them Um but the fact that I had this impact meant I came on the radar of the sensors And so I think it's a good example really because sometimes you know leftists will say "Oh you got banned." Well you must have done something really bad Yeah must have said something terrible He must have been spreading hate But actually in

23:13 my case I raised awareness about censorship So sensors said "Hey this guy is terrible He needs to go." Um so you know we talk about electoral appearance interference and a foreign interference I mean I think an American NGO banning a large Irish content creator like that is probably a good example of foreign interference And you had you had you you had you you you locked with Twitter as well I think before before Musk took it over and take turned it into X M well I was I mean I was banned off Twitter until until Mus took over Um and again it shows it shows the the nature of the censorship and you know I never was given a reason or or a strike or anything but it it was I mean I think it's it's been a big positive Um I think that's that's one of the things that's kind of spurred on the the ride here is that the fact that there has been at least one platform uh with a bit more open space and dialogue You know I think back to um the Irish hate speech

24:03 bill Um and that was something immediately when I got back on I started to to raise awareness about And it had it had been years uh in the making And again you look at the media mainstream media had just never reported on what was actually in the bill It was just well you know of course we all support hate speech laws right Yeah And it took it took the people on Twitter to point out hey you know people of Ireland you might be interested to know that there's a clause in this bill that says as it did that if you have hateful materials on your device you have a offensive meme on your smartphone that you can face up to 5 years in jail And of course that ignited the debate It turned out to be hugely unpopular with the Irish people Politicians began to you know jump ship and and backtrack as it was coming up to an election And you know that to me is is an example of function

24:51 in democracy That's that to me is the the role of what the media should be doing is is holding this to account pointing out the potential scope for overreach and legislation which creates public pressure on legislators But without that space of you know uh unpaid mostly anonymous people putting that message out there it would have went through completely undebated and we'd have the worst hate speech laws in Europe right now Yeah Yeah it Well I mean we're under pressure to try and uh tighten it up again but I mean you're absolutely right Uh it's all part of that uh tightening up of um I mean hate speech of course is a misnomer as you know It's designed to attack anything that is counternarrative to uh to whatever the government wants to put across at any point in time Uh you know disinformation misinformation and it's on it's it's Ursula Vanderlin's top agenda

25:41 when she campaigned to become the uh you know to renew her position in Europe It's quite amazing um that we're even having this conversation after everything we've gone through But there you go H what seems to be extraordinary is that Ireland now is uh we are at the center of a massive um tatonic fracture between the United States and Europe on the issue of free speech because we now run Kamishun the man Yeah Uh in other words we're supposed to regulate US uh technology companies platforms like X at European standards which are infected with this with this hat speech um legislation uh throughout Europe Um how do you think Ireland's going to manage that Because I I don't see how we can get out of that Uh we we can't talk out both sides of our mouth if we're

26:30 supposed to be regulating it Something's going to something's going to break Yeah You know it's interesting There was a report this week that uh representatives of the US State Department had meetings in Dublin with members of the government to express concern about the free speech rights of of Irish citizens and European citizens because of the implementation of the digital services act which as you said is is being done from Dublin I think Kamishune their office has over uh 200 employees Um but this is this is a very interesting rift that's being created as you say where we've gone full steam ahead with with wokeism and with the the free speech censorship and you know have an administration like people like JD Vance coming to Europe talking about the totalitarianism uh that they're witnessing in Europe So yeah in many ways you know we're

27:19 we're we're quite far behind where the Overton window is moving but yeah this this has to be implemented and again the kind of legislation it basically if you read it it leaves so much scope for censorship and for what counts as hate speech and disinformation that essentially anything can be censored I mean I've seen posts you know they're not illegal under Irish law Yeah They're not illegal in any individual European country but because of clauses in the DSA they're taken down where no one in Europe can view them So it's just an extra layer of censorship that exists in this kind of you know this legal gray area where you're not saying anything illegal but you know it's it's it's too on the nose for Europe Well what seems to be very interesting is that the American administration is now saying that they will sanction potentially uh senior civil servants and regulators in Europe if they interfere with the free speech rights of US citizens in Europe Uh

28:08 and I mean that's that's that you know that to me is a red flag you know but it'll be interesting to watch that develop But I I just want to just move on a small I'll just say one thing as well The reason uh cuz I should have brought this up The reason the the US state department launched this meeting is because there was a little publicized story It's interesting the state department picked up on it because again this is where if we had a function media this would be all over the place but the comeune the man which is going to be in charge of of regulating EU uh digital platforms had a meeting with the hope and courage collective And if people are familiar with them they were formerly called the Faride Observatory which is another one of these bloated state funded NOS's which is essentially it's like a group of of five or six Antifa pro-immigration activists And you

28:55 know they spend most of their time basically doxing and harassing uh Irish nationalist populist people that didn't go along with the the co narrative This is an Irish NGO Yeah One of one of the swarm Yeah Yeah And and it's it's state funded but I mean they're essentially just full-time left-wing activists And so this these are the kinds of people that we have you know a a service that's supposed to monitor platforms across Europe This is the kinds of people they're consulting with This is who's going to be making decisions about what happens companies like Google and Facebook and YouTube I mean it's no wonder the the US State Department was like "What the hell is going on in this manner Yeah this is this isn't this stakeholder capitalism?" I mean in other you know it sounds benign but it's not It's very malign uh you know you you you you put aside representative democracy you alienate the people you you you you keep them keep them distracted

29:43 with stuff you you don't have a functioning media and you just get on with doing whatever you wish where the politicians are completely captive to the bubble of the NOS's around them Uh it's it's it's re really quite extraordinary and I think that's what's going to fuel a lot of the people coming out onto the streets because it's at the moment it seems to be the only other than the collapse of the Greens in the general election Okay Now Rodrik O Garmin nearly called him Rhetoric the Garmin because I often do Um who by the way single-handedly did more to encourage um um refugees and asylum seekers to come to Ireland and than any individual I'd say in the history uh of of of the sector globally I I think it's quite extraordinary He he he he just held on to his seat

30:28 H it it just seems to me that um something's going to break because because this can't hold The Irish establishment is a few years behind what's going on in Europe The media are not doing their work Uh they're they they want to touch this I I already see it myself in in in in venues cancelling potential talks and so on I mean that's ongoing You know you can see the censorship still there The fear is still there Um uh how do how do how do you see that playing out Well we're certainly in a transitional period You know the the state the regime is maybe a better term because the state encompasses so much now uh with the the NGO complex has thrown everything at this movement But

31:14 in some ways I'm quite optimistic I mean you know even looking at your show some of the people that have been on these are voices that emerged uh very recently Um I really came from nothing They're like self-created kind of content creators And I think the the popularity of these people like you know Michael McCarthy on Instagram is getting like hundreds of millions of views It's just there's obviously an appetite for this And we do have we do have opinion polls that bear that out I mean um 80% plus opposition to immigration people that think immigration is too high I think there was a poll in the Irish Independent last year that said one in four people would support what was termed a far-right party And again you have to consider that the way that question is being phrased by the people conducting this opinion poll they use terms like faright it's inherently a bit offputting right But there's there's definitely a base there Um and so it's it's really a question now of of

32:03 organizing that of of making it coherent And I think it's it's why it's great to see stuff like like this that's that's you know professionalizing this a little bit because there's a lot of you know there's a lot of reasonable people out there that see the things we're seeing um and that want to have it represented somewhere and they just haven't until now Can I throw a difficult question at you Uh you probably haven't been expecting it but is the um what what seems what's very noticeable I think is the absence of something in all of this and that's the uh women in Ireland M they're not at the forefront of the uh organization of those rallies which I think is something that the rally organizers need to pay attention to Uh they're not at they're not on the platforms giving talks and they're not in the content creation area that we we described And yet

32:49 uh in in all major political change certainly in modern Irish history it's it's it's it's the it's the maternal it's the maternal Irish culture that has been a huge driver of change And uh yeah I I think they they've got you know if if if this is going to have to happen I think attention needs to be put into that area But is is that something you've given any thought to Well you know I don't know what the the magic formula is exactly that that would that would change that but I do think it is interesting if you look at a place like France actually um women support Marine Le Pen's party at actually higher rates than than men which is interesting Often you see that the other way around with with more right-wing parties Well I think you know I think it'll be a function of of success that when we start to reach a more general audience um that you'll have more women

33:38 come in because obviously women are very much more attuned to social dynamics you know the kind of uh the ethereal you know sense of of where things are going Um so I think when we start to see more women coming to these ideas you you realize that the momentum really is there Um but unfortunately I don't have the the the magic uh the magic formula to attract women I don't either I just general I I don't either by the way And I didn't I it wasn't a unique thought It was put into my head by a senior person in the establishment in that that put it into my head that rang me specifically to make this point My god you're right You know I mean it's so obvious and uh it it's it's something that I think need needs attention Can I finally ask you uh you know we're coming up to a presidential election at the end of the year The existing president Michael D Higgins only

34:26 referred one piece of legislation to the Supreme Court in 14 years as I understand it H uh and and before that you had Mary Malise and before that of course Mary Robinson who didn't even see out her term as president M as I understand it the the the the um in principle what the president of Ireland should be doing is is is protecting using the constitution protecting the Irish people in so far as he or she can against state overreach But that's all we've been talking about We've been talking about state overreach and and yet there's complete silence from the on it Uh in terms of the presidential election coming up what kind of character ideally do the Irish people require in the office of the president compared to what has gone before Well yeah I think you're hinting

35:11 at it there and that there needs to be someone that is willing to take a strong stand against the government I mean I know there there is this idea now that the presidency has to be something apolitical This is something that Michael D was sometimes criticized for that he was politicizing the presidency you know as if it isn't already a political position by nature But I think you know even what we're talking about with the NGO complex I think that's somewhere where you have the creation of a kind of deep state Um you know an unseen unelected state that's really answerable to nobody accountable to nobody It's the kind of thing that you know Deera and the people that drew up the constitution I don't think could have ever really foreseen I think that's the kind of thing where you need someone like a president as a figurehead as a representative of the people to say this is functioning completely wrongly This is you know this is a complete subversion of the kind

36:02 of uh republic that was foreseen the constitution that the president is there to uphold And you know even if if he can't through a piece of legislation change that I think there needs to be a serious conversation about the way our entire institutions are being subverted by that kind of governance Um and so that's something I would like to see from a president which that's not even necessarily you know a superartisan thing that you need someone that's super ideological representing a certain side of the spectrum To me that's just a problem of of a subversion of the basic institutions of a republic But if candidates step forward and they're they're they're basically cloned out of the sort of uh the blob the kind of EU bureaucracy you know ME you know I'm thinking particular now Made McInness for example with Fina Gale or they're coming from you know there were

36:49 retiring member of the uni party fail that have been steeped in the development of all of this they would be entirely the wrong character for me anyway I'm only speaking for myself h to to have in the orus because they're certainly not going to stand up and say well actually all of this that we've tolerated is actually uh needs to be unbounded because that's the kind of dialogue that needs to happen Yeah Yeah And I so I wouldn't be optimistic in that regard Um I mean I would look to maybe something like the the family referendum that happened last year where despite overwhelming political support media support the people rejected it And that was interesting because you saw that there was an attachment there to the existing constitution to the existing way of doing things in Ireland There was a skepticism um about totally overwriting this for these progressive ideals Um and so you know perhaps there would be an appetite there for a candidate that would

37:39 uh have a similar attitude to the government Um but you know it's it's these things tend to be a big popularity contest but we'll have to see what emerges What's interesting there I'm glad you mentioned that was um I my my intelligence because I people contact me and tell me stuff that uh that people people seek serious people um but from from inside that um that that last year just before the uh the Irish people overwhelmingly rejected the constitutional change that uh that the uh civil servants would have been deeply concerned about the potential insolveny of Ireland in the event of it going through something that hadn't come up at the time that the actual mathematics around changing the definition of marriage and everything that falls from that through the social protection system uh and uh for example uh home carers and all the rest of it that when you added

38:30 all that up it would have graced greatly increased the social protection state itself to a point that it would have created a um an issue for Ireland a a financial a budgetary issue a significant budgetary issue like a crisis and I found that very interesting that they that they were thinking that way but I wasn't being discussed publicly No No I mean there was there was practically no discussion about that bill except what filtered true online And even then it it wasn't really organized But it was it was quite amazing cuz I I heard a lot of people just anecdotally saying you know everyone I talked to is voting against this Um just in a very organic way people became skeptical of that bill Uh it was associated with wokeism it was associated with this kind of leftwing progressivism where any mention of of of gender roles of male female of the family

39:18 has to be done away with and so I thought that was that was cause for optimism that there was kind of an instinctual distrust of that and I think that would maybe be a good foundation to build on for a presidential candidate Well let me put this to you then because I just I'm just trying to join the dots here Right So we had the uh constitutional referendum rejected instinctively by the Irish people last year when we had a general election where there was a complete absence of of an opposition party They're still absent They're playing it both out both sides of their mouths all the time which is Shinfane And then people were left with a disorganized um growth of these um uh new generation politicians trying to get through not not really understanding that it's a grind It takes a long time to do that through the because the system is is built to protect the

40:05 incumbents you know So so therefore Fina Gale and Fina Fall do well but they do well I think almost by accident you know And uh I mean to me then the the signal to me was the destruction of the Greens Uh with the exception of uh uh Rodri O' Gorman just barely hanging on by the skin of his teeth Uh and and that to me was the beginning of what we're seeing in Europe which is the beginning of the unwrapping and rejection of wokeism because they they were basically leading that they were the tip of the spear inside in in in in in politics But but the NOS's remain Yeah Yeah And that that was actually a trend across Europe in recent elections is green parties being wiped out because I think that's a positive sign in that they do represent the worst of of wokeness in most people's mind

40:55 But I think the thing about Ireland is although you know we don't have a two-party system we don't have the kind of duopoly that keeps things very stagnant in somewhere like the US in a sense I think in people's minds there is in that you're really realistically when you're looking at what's going to form a government it's going to be final phenofal or it's going to be shinfane and so in that sense okay maybe you vote for an independent but you're basically choosing between do you want the the kind of progressive center the existing regime or do you want the radical left because if shinfe going to government it'll be with this ragtag coalition of of people before profit and and whoever else Um and so that's that's kind of the existing binary Now there are things obviously um that are making Finale and Fina Fall seem less and less like any kind of a center and much more leftwing I mean we have uh we have Mihal Martin is is basically coming out saying nations don't exist

41:45 and we're an island of Mongols now Um but I think that that's a big part of the reason is as much as you know there's understandable frustration with the Irish electorate constantly uh choosing uh these establishment parties I mean at the same time the kind of realistic threat right now is is Shinfane So I think a lot of people are just voting against parties rather than voting for anything because it just doesn't seem like there's a realistic alternative right now Yeah Mihal Martin to me and I know him you know from school days He was even ahead of me in school in Clash of Christ in Cork and I know him over the years You know he's kind of evolved into a kind of what I call a lurggical globalist uh kind of preaching uh uh something that to me is is falling apart uh across Europe And they're just you know for for the leader of Fina Fall uh his antenna doesn't seem to be uh as as well tuned in as as one would expect Uh but we we'll see how all that

42:36 evolves You have another book coming out I think you've done two uh this one the uh nationalism the politics of identity then Irish nationalism essential writing tell us about that that's um yeah that's collection of right of of Irish nationalist writing over over what term so it's the 18th to 19th century um it was interesting when I sat down to put it together cuz I assumed we had something like this that someone had had created something accessible that brought Irish nationalist Australians together but it's uh it's interesting to see how neglected It is um I think maybe if you look at the quotes that were coming out from those Trinity College history professors about Ireland being a nation of mongrels and I think that's maybe more representative of of the academic view and probably why we've had uh understudy of of our own nationalist tradition

43:26 So yeah that was the ideas I put together you know the young Irelanders um Douglas Hyde uh Wolf Tone Robert Emtt these kinds of people and put it together in in one accessible collection because it's great to see people coming to these ideas now Um and people people can get access to these books on Amazon right So they just Okay And then in terms of connecting with you or following you on social media how do they do that Uh so I guess X is is kind of my main platform I have a couple hundred thousand followers there Well I think you have 230,000 Want to be specific Flat more than me anyway Well we'll give you a boost after this But uh yeah it's uh KeithwoodsYT Um I write on Substack Uh it's just Keithwoods.pub So that's where I publish all my content and you can you know it's kind of a hub for my content You can find everything there And what next for

44:14 you then Uh like like what more what more is in you I mean you've you've contributed enormously in my opinion so far It's quite extraordinary for somebody for for somebody as relative I'm speaking now as a somebody spice your age somebody some it's quite extraordinary the impact you're making I'm just I just want to see you do more uh you know without kill I know now you write as I asked you off camera you write you you're writing up to 12 hours a day from what I can see you know it's absolutely extraordinary output uh and you just have to mind that that you don't you know you don't you don't burn yourself out but what what what more do you want to do over the next few years How do you see that happening for you Yeah the the 12-hour days This maybe a bit of an anomaly I can't I can't press to be that hard work in this I'm working on a a book which will look at

45:00 um decentralization and localism and and some of the problems we've discussed in terms of this totally unaccountable democratic structure that we've constructed now you know pseudo democratic with with NOS's and quangos and unelected bureaucrats Um so that's that's one thing I'm very interested in looking at and presenting people real alternatives that do exist out there So a shift in power to local government Yeah Um decentralization uh skin in the game I think is a great concept for politics The idea that you know Napoleon and and Alexander they used to be they're at the front of their armies leading the charge Um people used to face real consequences for uh failed policies We've built an entire system I think Ireland is maybe the best case of this of of it's just unaccountability You really see this at the local level Um and I think fixing that would

45:48 be an important step putting accountability back in politics Um you know I use the example I don't know how much more time we have left here but I use the example of Switzerland which is is a good example of this that has power at at quite a local level Um and and so it's a way to preserve the kind of local cultures because it's quite ethnically diverse within Switzerland Um but they actually interestingly took a referendum against mass immigration in 2014 using their uh direct democracy system you just need 100,000 signatures to to bring that That's very interesting because Switzerland may have headed the direction of of other countries in Europe as far as mass immigration Um the elite were very much in favor of EU integration But this referendum which was actually brought by a political party that had marginal support at the

46:34 time 1 or 2% kind of a similar position to where we are right now uh it passed despite massive opposition from the business community from the establishment political parties It forced the government within a period of three years to uh implement strict quotas country bycountry quotas to opt out of certain EU treaties And as a result I mean Switzerland has has avoided the the worst of of the immigration crisis other countries have faced And interestingly enough the the party that brought that is on 28% in in Switzerland now That started as as one of these uh obscure what would be called Faride parties here It's it's the largest party in in the federal I'm not surprised I mean you know what what what what listeners uh viewers will uh will find interesting is that we actually had this direct democracy clause in the 1922 constitution which

47:19 would allow the Irish people who who are the preamble to the constitution The constitution the rest of the constitution is is us giving our instructions to the state and how we wanted to run uh actually jumping in and saying sorry we have 100,000 we have 100,000 people here behind this motion We want we want that um we want that put to a national referendum and um uh because that would that would that would sort out a lot of coughs wouldn't it It certainly stop a lot of the madness what I regard and what a lot of us would regard as madness going on like joining the EU compact I mean that uh that that decision to me was was beyond reckless you know way beyond reckless Yeah I mean I mean that's the pattern we've been talking about throughout the show is is it happens on two levels in terms of the way Irish liberal democracy has has changed

48:04 which is that you know the buck is passed in one respect where it's passed down to the the NOS's uh and it's passed up to international obligations EU courts UN human rights and so on And so you get something like hate speech law where they say well you know we have to pass it We consulted with the public and uh wouldn't you know they're all in favor of it And of course the public turns out to be 50 NOS's that are supposed to represent these different segments of society that are funded by the government and you know they're full of uh people that have come through the university system super leftwing in their orientation reliant on the government for their funding and you know this is this is the function and externally Keith they're reliant on a lot of external funds as well Yeah What what's what's what's remarkable about that is that and we just we just end on this point is that and it to Nick Deahanti to be fair to him brought this to to my attention and I I

48:56 have it in my talks that the the only NGO that was ever stopped or closed down certainly in the last number of years was was the NGO that was actually telling us where all was going with his benefits Yeah I remember this Yeah Yes I mean quite clearly and that was that was the uni party deciding uh we don't want the public to see what's going on Yeah I think it's it's quite a lesson there It's Yeah it's a good point to end on You know we got we got an organization that basically just gave us complete transparency and where the money was going and it was pretty much immediately shut down Yeah Well we leave it on that note He thank you so much It was a fascinating romp around the whole thing H I feel there's an awful lot more to come from you h over the next number of years I can't recommend your books highly enough and and your engagement and and I wish you well with all your endeavors and thanks for coming on All right I appreciate it Thank you everyone Well there you go Well that was a very interesting uh conversation with somebody

49:44 that has a lot to say Uh very studied uh great writer great content producer That's why he's got so many followers Somebody that I think is going to have an important voice uh to add to all the other young people's voices And I have a particular focus on that because I think that's that's that's that's part of the solution uh to to to get more people especially young people engaged in what's happening to Ireland and uh and and and this drift towards a kind of a totalitarianism uh of the 21st century with all the technology and the digital ideas and all the rest of it to go with it You'll be hearing much more about that from Counterpoint I can assure you of that uh over the months and weeks ahead Thank you very much for listening