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French demographer Emmanuel Todd became famous for having predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union already in the 1970s. The key to his prediction was demographics: lower birth rates and higher infant mortality were signs of collapse. Last year, he returned to the literary spotlight with a book in which, using the same criteria, he predicted the collapse of the United States and the rise of Russia. This month, on April 8, he was in Budapest to participate in an event called “József Eötvös Lectures”. On this occasion, he returned to his usual topic and addressed issues that followed the publication of his book, such as the election of Trump and Europe’s reaction to the refusal to support Ukraine ad infinitum. The content of the lecture was reported by the Hungarian website “Boys of Pest” (or Pesti Srácok), and the editor kindly sent to me a translation of it. In fact, it seems that, outside the Hungarian media, the demographer’s lecture went unnoticed. Pro-Soros left-wing activists blocked a bridge and managed to prevent Minister Gergely Gulyás from attending.

Todd’s Diagnoses and Prophecies

Emmanuel Todd pointed out the usual data, of which it is worth highlighting: that infant mortality is lower in Russia than in the U.S.; that Russia has solid family structures, while in the U.S. this is being lost; that industry, the quality of education and advances in engineering are in decline in the U.S. Thus, although Russia’s GDP growth is not great, the fact that children are not dying and young people are studying engineering points to a promising future. In the U.S., the elites are fooled by the number of students, ignoring the issue of the quality of education.

Another of Emmanuel Todd’s usual topics is nihilism, which, according to him, has taken over the United States since the country stopped being guided by puritanism. According to him, the nihilism of the United States, which emerged after the decline of Protestantism, led the country to so many wars. Another consequence is gender ideology, which, according to Todd, aims to destroy reality and realism.

For Todd, Trump’s election follows a revolutionary pattern common among people who lose wars. Trump’s election is a desperate response to this decadence perceived by the people themselves.

The collapse of the United States has already led to a rupture between the United States and Europe. However, for Todd, European countries have the advantage over the United States of having, to a greater or lesser degree, a consciousness of national statehood. Hungary is better than France in this regard, but it is impossible for France to have completely erased centuries of history. The United States will be the first Western power to collapse, due to the extent of its economic and nihilistic crisis. And only Germany has the military and industrial capacity to wage war with Russia. France and England, no matter how much they boast, do not have the military and industrial capacity to do so. Germany not only has such capabilities, but also has a history of making bad decisions. Since Russia has no intention of invading Europe and only wants Ukrainian territory, a war with Russia would be yet another bad decision made by Germans.

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From an epistemological point of view, the interesting thing about Todd’s prediction is that, in its moral neutrality, it considers that the multiplication of human life is a desirable thing in itself for the powers that be. If everyone believed in Todd’s prophecies, there would not be a single Malthusian in the world. Or, in other words, if Todd had been a humanist beforehand, instead of a simple observer of demographic trends, and had been concerned about the devaluation of human life, he could have reached such conclusions even when the Soviet Union was in full force. Because works such as The Population Bomb (1968) and Limits to Growth (1972), which considered demographic growth and industrial development to be problems in themselves, were adopted as bibles by the Western world. In the beginning, it was about controlling the birth rate of third world countries (such as China with its only child policy, India with its emergency state, and the distribution of experimental contraceptives in Brazil by USAID). However, Malthusian organizations have great influence even in the rich West. Consider the “climate anxiety” that makes young Europeans believe that they cannot have children because the world is going to end. (By the way, will Germany be able to confront Russia on the basis of coal, now that it no longer uses nuclear energy?) Furthermore, to this day Japan and South Korea, with serious demographic problems, are presented as successful countries in terms of economics.

As for the decline in education, it is likely that it is due, above all, to the predominance of speculative capital over the interests of society. It is true that the United States has a history of utilitarianism that is contrary to good education. However, Brazil, as the backyard of the United States, shows that there is a significant economic problem: here, public education has been worsened in order to create a private market. Our higher education, in particular, has been flooded with very poor quality universities that belong to large financial groups that receive government subsidies. If education is a mere pretext for lining the pockets of speculators, it is no wonder that the country’s human level is falling and that there are no major advances in engineering.

The same happens to healthcare. Here in Brazil, even though there is an NHS, the government is now talking about creating an Obamacare, which will divert public health resources to private healthcare insurances for financial capital. In the U.S., Luigi Mangione’s attack on a healthcare CEO made the world pay attention again to the poor healthcare that the richest country in the world offers its population. “Deaths of despair” (which include suicides and overdoses) have already caused life expectancy in the U.S. to start falling, but the sheer and simple lack of access to medical care is also something important to take into account. It is not only the poor in a poor country who die due to lack of access to medical care: it is also the middle class in the U.S. that is denied care because a CEO decided to deploy an AI to deny requests in order to increase his profits, with the complicity of the governments whose campaigns he financed.

Also regarding healthcare, let us remember that giving birth in the U.S. costs money, while having an abortion – often up to the ninth month – is understood as an inalienable human right, which relies on the “charity” of institutions interested in fetal tissue. (It is a very macabre country, this one that seduces Manichean anti-communists.) With the change in the Supreme Court’s understanding, Jeff Bezos began to fund the travel of employees who wanted to have an abortion – without a public questioning about his stance towards women who give birth. Given this infanticidal disposition in the U.S., which did not arise now, it is surprising that Todd once thought that the U.S. would have a more lasting future.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the spiritual issue. I do not think that relativism is a deviation from the Reformation, but rather an inevitable consequence. When Rome and Constantinople split, they both expressed a disagreement about what is true, not on the nature of truth itself. The Reformation was about something much deeper: the freedom for each man to interpret the Bible as he pleases. It is not a disagreement about what is true, but about the very nature of truth. It is no longer to be established in a public and objective way; instead, it must be sought in a private and subjective way. The Reformation was the mother of relativism and the revolt against reality. And if there are no longer public and objective criteria for discussing theology in a rational way, cults grow for reasons related to force, be it money, political Machiavellianism or the charisma of the leader. The same thing happened with science: the trans cult was very well financed and dominated the scientific establishment before moving into the political one. And even this cult was not an opposition to Protestantism; was, instead, a development of its liberal branch, as I have already shown in the article “After all, how did a puritanical nation end up idolizing transvestites?”, for SCF.