#118 - Neema Parvini - Elites, Populism & The Illusion of Change
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 134 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Neema Parvini is the author of The Populist Delusion, a defining work in dissident political theory.
We discuss:
– Why democracy is a "soft dictatorship"
– The real purpose of populist parties
– Elite theory, the ruling class & regime mechanics
– Tony Blair, the NGOs & managerial capture
– Globalism, Israel & power double standards
– How power always recentralises post-revolution
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 – Intro
00:01:49 – Populism Is a Trap
00:06:28 – CIA-Created Political Spectrum
00:10:33 – Mass Behaviour & Nudging
00:14:23 – Media Narrative Coordination
00:21:00 – The Myth of Bottom-Up Politics
00:28:20 – The Illusion of Choice
00:34:07 – Billionaires Fund Both Sides
00:37:20 – NGOs and Soft Power
00:42:00 – Gaza, Globalism & Contradiction
00:51:00 – False Revolutions & Resets
00:54:44 – Anti-Blasphemy Laws in Disguise
01:00:27 – Controlled Speech
01:04:21 – Tony Blair Runs Britain
01:08:00 – Real Power Is Visible
01:12:28 – Elite Theory
01:17:30 – Every System Becomes an Oligarchy
01:22:07 – The Myth of Libertarianism
01:38:01 – Were Medieval Peasants Happier?
01:49:15 – Revolutions Centralise Even More
01:56:10 – Mass Immigration as Class War
01:59:38 – Can Bitcoin Spark Revolution?
02:09:47 – Can Rupert Lowe Save Britain?
02:13:00 – Final Thoughts & Next Book
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FILMED BY CURTIS TAYLOR
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EDITED BY CONOR MCCORMACK
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The thing is, the truth is, once you get into, once you understand elite theory, every system is |
| 0:06.6 | basically the same, regardless of what it calls itself. Right. Okay. Now you can get harder managerial |
| 0:13.4 | regimes and softer ones. Okay, I would say that our system is a kind of soft dictatorship. |
| 0:19.8 | Yeah, it's still a dictatorship, right? |
| 0:21.6 | And who is the dictator? |
| 0:23.6 | It's somewhat hidden and diffuse. |
| 0:26.6 | I think a lot of people feel that there needs to be a change. |
| 0:29.6 | Yeah. |
| 0:30.6 | The big test for the current system is can it. |
| 0:34.6 | This was the question that was asked of the Soviet Union |
| 0:37.5 | when it needed to reform Gorbachev and it couldn't |
| 0:42.3 | it couldn't know. It collapsed in on itself, couldn't do it. This is the big |
| 0:46.7 | question being asked of America, Britain and the West in general is can it |
| 0:50.8 | can it? Are these systems now too big to actually be reformed in any real way? |
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