Will Chamberlain talks with Yoram Hazony, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, about why the National Conservatism conference went to Jerusalem and what happened when four young American nationalists told an Israeli audience how support for Israel is softening on the American right. Hazony argues that the fight over Israel and the Jews has become the main threat to the cohesion of the Trump coalition, and that most American and Israeli Jews misread the Republican Party as a contest between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson. The conversation also digs into Bezalel Smotrich's speech on Muslim immigration, Mike Doran's critique and the John Locke debate, James Lindsay, and the coming fight over who inherits the Trump coalition.

In this episode:

Hazony explains why NatCon, which normally alternates between the United States and Europe, held its twelfth conference in Jerusalem

He describes Israel as a model nation state and reflects on what a young, religious, high-fertility society can show Americans and Europeans

He argues that Bezalel Smotrich's speech was the first time a senior Israeli minister said plainly that Muslim immigration to America and Europe is bad for the West, for Jews, and for Israel

He introduces Gadi Taub, the former man of the left who has become one of the most popular intellectuals on the Israeli right

He explains why Israel and the Jews, barely mentioned in NatCon's first seven years, have become the main threat to the cohesion of the Trump coalition

He lays out the idea behind the panel with Matthew Peterson, Amanda Milius, Jonathan Keeperman, and William Wolfe: bringing the tough American right to Jerusalem to talk with the tough Israeli right

He argues that Jewish leaders in both countries see the Republican Party as Ben Shapiro versus Tucker Carlson and skip over the roughly 70 percent of the party in between

Will and Hazony respond to Mike Doran's argument that the panel failed to make the realist case for the alliance

Hazony answers the charge that he wants to write John Locke out of the founding and describes the four factions that make up the NatCon coalition

He contrasts Jeremy Boreing's constructive role on the right with James Lindsay's campaign against the nationalist camp

He argues that young American nationalists broke a de facto ban on going to Israel, and he previews NatCon in Washington, DC, three months from now

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Yoram Hazony: Edmund Burke Foundation · @yhazony

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

00:00 Cold Open: The Fantastic Four

02:18 How did NatCon Jerusalem go?

03:06 Why hold NatCon in Jerusalem?

06:16 A young, religious society

09:00 Bezalel Smotrich on Muslim immigration

12:37 Gadi Taub and the Israeli right

13:55 What was the panel trying to accomplish?

19:15 Softening support on the right, and why the audience was Israeli

21:41 Ben Shapiro versus Tucker Carlson, and the 70 percent in between

26:20 Mike Doran's critique

35:56 Does Hazony want to expunge John Locke?

40:42 Lindsay, Jeremy Boreing, and the libertarian wing

51:09 James Lindsay in Israel

55:09 Breaking the taboo on nationalists going to Israel, and NatCon DC

Will Chamberlain talks with Bojan Pancevski, the Wall Street Journal's chief European political correspondent, about his book The Nord Stream Conspiracy and the small Ukrainian team that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022. Pancevski explains how a seven-person crew on a rented sailing yacht destroyed one of Europe's most expensive pieces of energy infrastructure for about $250,000, and how German investigators tracked them down. The conversation also digs into Germany's long bet on trade with Russia, the Russia and CIA theories, Poland's refusal to cooperate, and what American conservatives misunderstand about Putin.

In this episode:

Pancevski recounts the September 2022 explosions, first registered as an earthquake, that tore through the world's biggest offshore pipeline system

He traces Nord Stream to Germany's decades-old "change through trade" policy toward Moscow and to Merkel's post-Fukushima nuclear shutdown, which deepened the reliance on Russian gas

He describes how a small group of Ukrainian intelligence and special forces veterans drew up a list of targets meant to choke off Putin's oil and gas revenue

He walks through how the team recruited civilian deep-sea diving instructors and tested them with wiretaps, hidden cameras, and staged arrests

He explains how the operation was paid for almost entirely by private donors, and what is known about who in Ukraine's chain of command approved it

He lays out why the theory that Russia blew up its own pipeline never made sense

He argues that Biden's pledge to end Nord Stream 2 referred to sanctions, which have kept the pipelines offline more effectively than explosives

He reports that senior CIA officials were relieved when Putin blamed the United States rather than Ukraine

He tells how German detectives cracked the case by combing through thousands of speed-camera photos and running one driver's face through recognition software

He explains why German prosecutors charged the suspects with war crimes ahead of the Hamburg trial that opens October 14

He describes how Poland obstructed the investigation, including a Polish judge who refused extradition and called the sabotage part of Ukraine's just war

He closes on what he thinks American conservatives get wrong about the war and why commercial deals will not move Putin

YouTube: [YOUTUBE LINK]

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Bojan Pancevski: The Wall Street Journal · @bopanc

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

00:00 Ukraine's target list

02:28 What happened to Nord Stream in September 2022?

05:25 Germany's change-through-trade bet on Russia

10:21 Merkel's nuclear shutdown and the gas addiction

12:46 How he got inside both the plot and the investigation

14:52 The Ukrainian team behind the sabotage

18:28 Recruiting and testing civilian deep-sea divers

21:28 A privately funded operation, and who signed off

27:44 Did Russia or the CIA do it?

32:07 What Biden meant, and why sanctions beat explosives

36:54 The German investigation and the speed-camera breakthrough

41:52 Arrests, the Hamburg trial, and the war crimes charge

46:12 Poland's refusal to cooperate

49:43 What American conservatives get wrong about the war

55:09 Why deals will not move Putin

Will Chamberlain talks with Heather Mac Donald about the Cornell 7 accusation, why Jane Doe's own 2024 statement to police does not describe a crime, and why handing the case to Letitia James does not change that. The conversation also digs into the old tort of seduction, whether Washington should impose stricter campus rules, the empty campus rape bureaucracy, and what colleges gave up in the 1960s.

In this episode:

Heather Mac Donald says the gang-rape story around the Cornell 7 is a fiction, and that Jane Doe took part voluntarily in a drug-soaked night at a fraternity.

She says Jane Doe drank heavily before she arrived, then drank more and took ketamine, and walked into the encounter on purpose.

She says the young men should not be prosecuted or sued, and that the night was instigated by Jane Doe.

She rejects the idea that the old tort of seduction fits these facts, because Jane Doe kept assenting.

She is wary of using the Department of Education to impose Liberty- or Hillsdale-style rules, because it strengthens the precedent for the next administration.

She describes how colleges dropped in loco parentis in the 1960s and 1970s, then built a Title IX bureaucracy on top of an anything-goes sexual culture.

She says the campus rape centers sit empty, because students the surveys label as victims say they were not raped.

She says the claimed one-in-four campus rape rate is not a real crime rate, and that rising female enrollment at Cornell shows people do not believe it.

She says conservatives have spent their energy debunking the rape-culture myth and not enough time criticizing the bacchanal itself.

She argues that female modesty, not another tribunal, is the practical protection.

She says alumni pressure at Penn after October 7, including Marc Rowan and Ross Stevens, has not fixed the anti-academic culture.

She leaves the policy program to others and says the job is to keep exposing the falsehood.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/counterweight-with-will-chamberlain/id6803321469

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/18jtv7U8cB0IW82qM9xoK8

Heather Mac Donald: Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute · @HMDatMI

Will Chamberlain: @willchamberlain

Instagram / TikTok: @counterweightpod

0:00 Jane Doe walked in on purpose

0:52 The Cornell 7 accusation

2:31 What the 2024 night actually was

5:45 Consent is the only moral language left

9:01 Defending the students, and the tort of seduction

12:33 Imposing real restrictions on the party scene through Title IX

17:31 What colleges gave up in the 1960s

21:12 Rape centers nobody calls

24:59 If the one in four statistic were real

29:03 Modesty, shame, and the defensive crouch

33:35 Federal power or alumni pressure

38:35 The Greek system