So at this point, tell us why the London Derangement Syndrome came about and how it should be dispelled.

Yeah, so I think over the past few years, and you can trace this back for many years, actually, to reports that were in the media, particularly on Fox News, 10 or more years ago, there has been a concerted effort by people on generally the right of American politics, aided by some people on the right of British politics, to portray the Britain and London in particular in a bad light.

For most of that time, not all that time, I must say, London has been headed by a left-wing mayor, currently Sadiq Khan.

Previously, though, it was Boris Johnson, certainly not a left-wing mayor.

Ken Livingstone was a quite a left-wing mayor in the mold of sort of traditional British trade unionism, who was the first London mayor.

London only got a mayoralty relatively recently in the last few decades.

London and England hold this particular sort of value in American politics.

a

What is Antifa?

Antifa is short for anti-fascist, and generally it's a far-left group, or rather a collection of groups and individuals, very loosely organized.

It has its roots in the United States, at least, in the 1980s, in the punk music scene.

largely went away in the 1990s and the early 2000s, but then came back big time when Donald Trump first came onto the political scene about a decade ago.

Now, anti-fascists believe that what they believe are fascists, and they certainly view Donald Trump as a fascist and his administration as a fascist administration, they believe that they should be confronted at every turn, that far-right groups who, say, march in the streets in support of Donald Trump should be confronted.

Right.

Right.

And what do we mean by attacks? Because I believe that, particularly on the left side, they're different.

Where did it start? Where does it come from?

Well, i- it's originally a European movement, right? If you go back to the history, there were anti-fascist groups in Germany in the 1930s prior to World War II.

They don't really have any sort of direct lineage to the groups that sprung up in the 1970s and the 1980s.

In the American context, it's a little bit different.

In the 1980s, uh, there was a group called Anti-Racist Action, which developed in Minneapolis and other Midwestern cities, and basically, uh, this was around the punk scene.

Uh, it was a subculture.

At the time, as punk and underground music was taking off, those sc- kinds of scenes were attracting not only sort of left-wing anarchists, but also Neo-Nazi skinheads, and the anarchists didn't really wanna hang out with the Neo-Nazi skinheads, so they formed these sort of self-defense units to keep those people away from their movement.

That's the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is a think tank in the US

What does he actually do, and what's the kind of message that comes across from the film?

To tell it in se- sequence, it, it, it starts with a very sort of vicious murder of, uh, what looks like a mother who's standing next to her son doing some grocery shopping.

It's interspersed with news reports and social media clips illustrating how, uh, the situation in Europe, this unnamed European country, is completely out of control and migrants roam the streets.

We see the Armie Hammer character, um, go after gangs.

Uh, a- an Interpol police officer shows up in, in a very interesting sort of scene where he claims that Michael Sanders, the, the character, um, that Armie Hammer plays, is connected to Russia or China or terrorist groups, when really he's really a, a lone wolf.

And the Interpol chief is sort of the, the baddie of the whole s- thing, corners, uh, Michael Sanders, and then loses several SWAT teams' worth of police to this, uh, in his, his absolute bloodbath.

Michael Sanders escapes.

But where does he stand on things? Like, what, what's he saying at the moment?

What does he actually do, and what's the kind of message that comes across from the film?

To tell it in se- sequence, it, it, it starts with a very sort of vicious murder of, uh, what looks like a mother who's standing next to her son doing some grocery shopping.

It's interspersed with news reports and social media clips, illustrating how, uh, the situation in Europe, this unnamed European country, is completely out of control, and migrants roam the streets.

We see the Armie Hammer character, um, go after gangs.

Uh, a- an Interpol police officer shows up in, in a very interesting sort of scene where he claims that Michael Sanders, the, the character, um, that Armie Hammer plays, is connected to Russia or China or terrorist groups when really he's really a, a lone wolf.

And the Interpol chief is sort of the, the baddie of the whole s- thing, corners, uh, Michael Sanders, and then loses several SWAT teams' worth of police to this, uh, in his, his absolute bloodbath.

And Michael Sanders escapes.

But where does he stand on things? Like, what, what's he saying at the moment?