Nowheristan: Exclusive Interview with Michel Elefteriades

Interview with Michel Elefteriades, Emperor of Nowheristan, Founder and co-owner of Elefrecords/MusicHall

What was the initial idea behind the concept of Nowheristan?

I saw the need for a new ideology and a utopia – for something that could change the world. The world was in a stage where no one was thinking of great projects for changing the things that are taken as established truths. After encountering many problems in my life, including having to leave my country and go further than Europe in order to be in safe, I thought that something should be done to change things.

I started thinking of projects that could bring about a paradigm shift in various sectors such as the economy, sociology and culture. Nowheristan is a gimmicky name – something that looks almost like a gadget – but that is just a mask for a very serious project and ideology that has attracted almost 400,000 citizens from around the world and is continuing to grow exponentially.

It is interesting to know that you developed this concept on your own. How did you think of this idea and what is your personal philosophy?

I think that my personal experiences and the things that I have seen made me think of solutions. I have witnessed things that people usually only see on TV. I have seen war and have taken part in war; I have seen friends dying and injustice. I have seen what politics can do and how far the economic interests of the great powers can reach and the crimes that can be committed just to protect business interests. I have seen populations being invaded and killed simply for economic reasons.

When I became successful, I believed that I did not have the right to forget my friends who fought with me. Instead of thinking that now that I was rich, I should just try to get the maximum enjoyment and pleasure from my wealth, I thought I had a duty to the people who were not as lucky as I was, including my friends who are not here anymore and their families. This is a way for me to fight the guilt of having taken some people into my projects. I do not have the right to drop it now.

I felt a responsibility to do something, to keep fighting to change the world. Changing the world does not just mean speaking to the media about how I believe in peace and love, and am against AIDS and hunger. We all believe in these things but the question is what are we doing about it? Giving money is nothing – even giving a billion dollars. The problem is not with money, it is with the system. We need to change the system. If we are giving money within the existing system, we are not bringing down the system.

What is happening cannot continue. It is okay if you are living in Sweden, Great Britain, or wherever it does not affect you. But for us here, who are referred to as “collateral damage”, it is our lives, our future and our children; therefore, we must do something. Other people have tried to do this in a bad way which is not how I want to do it. I am talking about those who are considered international terrorists. I want to bring a soft change and not one that places the East against the West, but a moral change so that even the people who are living in excellent conditions in the West will fight with us to bring down the system.

You mentioned that those are the experiences that transformed you and was the impetus for this idea. From history we know many people have lived through horrible experiences but they did not try to make changes such as Nowheristan. What do you think is different about you from all those other people?

I think that people react differently even in the same situations. Some other people experienced what I went through and they accept that reality. I see myself like a lion who roars even if he cannot do anything and even in a vacuum, the lion keeps on roaring. Other animals may hide their heads but even when it was just a few kids against an entire army, we kept fighting. That is my character. I do not want to live if life means having to swallow insults or humiliation. I prefer to die fighting than to live trying to hide, escape or shut my mouth. I will never shut my mouth; I would fight my enemy even if he was a giant compared to me.

I do not accept real politics, compromises, or waiting for changes and making calculations. Feasibility studies are good for people who are selling products, but in moral matters you should not wait and just attack smaller people, nations or enemies. No, if someone is smaller than me, I do not attack him. I usually prefer attacking much bigger sizes than me.

As we can see throughout history and what is happening now is that the big are swallowing the small. It happens that I am in a part of the world where we are small, we do not have technology and we have been abused by other powers for hundreds of years. The crusaders came to kill the Christians in this part of the world. People think that the crusaders came just to liberate Jerusalem but on their way to Jerusalem, they attacked my ancestors in the Byzantine Empire and they destroyed it.

For hundreds of years they were shutting their mouths, but we are not going to keep quiet any longer. We are not going to take our revenge but we want things to change. I believe that the son or grandson of someone who committed a crime is not guilty, as much as I believe that the grandson of someone who was killed should not ask for reparations because his grandfather was killed. It is shameful to try to trade genocides or the bonds of your parents or grandparents. I am not asking for that but I am saying I do not want this situation for myself and I do not want it for my sons and grandsons.

So this is what we are trying to do with Nowheristan. We are trying to change things that have been going on for too long and create a world where people have equal chances, where there are no boundaries and where there are no strong and weak nations. There would be a world government but not composed of people coming from the same country, culture, race and religion. It would be the elite of the entire planet coming together. The elite are not kids who learn to lie or manipulate nations, it is people who have used the time from university graduation to retirement to prove they are brilliant. It is the best architects, engineers, doctors, scientists, etc., who will come together and rule instead of retiring.

You are speaking extensively about ethics and morals. These are the things that people learn growing up in families. How can Nowheristan transform something like ethics and morals when the groundwork has not been laid for kids today? Should you not be involved in the education process?

When we speak about moral standards, there are things that are specific to cultures and religions, and there are things that are global. I think people who are not educated by their families about the small details of morality still know that exploiting others, hurting others, and stepping on others’ rights just to achieve personal goals are not moral. These are things that are common in humanity from the past to the present in all cultures. It is on these principles that I want to build the future world. It is not about specific things, such as charity, loving others or turning the other cheek like in the Christian religion. In all cultures throughout all times, there are things that are common and we should work on these.

Today people speak about justice and creating a better world. How can we speak about justice in the world when being born lazy and not very smart in Switzerland is much more interesting than being born a genius full of energy in Kinshasa? The idiot in Switzerland lives better than the genius in an African country. From the beginning, being born in a good country is security for a good life and this has to change. I am not against people who are not very smart or lazy people but I think that the world would be a much better place if people who have high potential are given a chance. I think we should allow people to prove themselves for the good of all humanity.

We should not keep doing this thing where we look at the lines on a map and say that you are lucky if you are born above this line, but unlucky if you are below that line. I am not saying that things should be reversed in the future and that in 500 years, it will be better to be born in Brazil than in Switzerland. I do not want that either. I want everyone on the planet to have equal chances and I cannot accept having so many billionaires when there are so many people dying of hunger.

We should limit the upper level of fortune and take whatever is above that upper level and inject it into the lower classes. I think that a very stupid and lazy person deserves to have a small house and eat, not die of hunger, but they should not have more than that. I am not a communist – I am not calling for equality between the genius and the idiot. But I am saying that it is not the idiot’s fault he was born like that and he deserves to have a place to sleep and something to eat.

What about the traditional argument of whether we are going to tax the rich and take their money? Who is going to decide between the different schools of thought – classical capitalism versus socialism? Socialism and capitalism have been tried in the world and they both seem to not be working very well. We have several different types of capitalism, such as the Chinese state capitalism and Western capitalism which seems to be failing now with all the greed it has created. What other options are available?

The ideal solution is to create an eclectic system where we take the best of the different systems. If a system collapses, we should not discard it entirely but we should examine why it collapsed, remove the causes of the problem and keep what made it attractive and interesting. As the saying goes, we should not throw out the baby with the bath water.

When communism collapses, we should try to figure out why; for me, it collapsed because it put everyone on a level field which does not work because people need motivation. It is also unjust because people are not created equal in capacity. As well, communism tried to prevent people from practicing their religious views but the more you try to oppress a religion, the stronger it will come back. The rest of the ideas of communism were quite interesting so we can keep those things.

There are good and bad things about capitalism, socialism, anarchism and all other systems. We can create a system which uses the best of everything. It is being done in music, food, etc. and we can also apply this to economics and politics. We do not have to create something totally new but we can use the experiences of all the various regimes, countries and civilizations to create a patchwork of those experiences.

What qualifies you to be the Emperor of Nowheristan and why do you deserve to have people following you?

When I started Nowheristan, I could have taken the title of Secretary General, President, Chancellor or anything, so I decided to take the highest title just because they are same price. Why not take Emperor? It fits my ideology because I do not recognize a frontier for my project; it is an expansionist project and the goal is going from Nowheristan to Everywheristan. The goal is to rule the entire planet and take the entire population of planet Earth into this ideology. That is why the title of Emperor is the best title I could have chosen. I like it because it is funny, especially because my enemies are existing empires. Historically, only an empire can cause the fall of another empire.

It is not a monopoly and I am not forbidding anyone else to do this. If you want, you can proclaim yourself emperor but the question is how many people will recognize that action. When I started this, I was already rich and famous with a family, and there was a risk of people not taking me seriously and looking at this as a ridiculous idea. Some people said I had lost my mind. So I took some risk in doing this, even though I was well-established and could have entered mainstream politics. It was proposed that I enter politics and become a Deputy or Minister but my choice is for this project. If there is something along the way that is not against the principles of this project, then I will do it, but if there is something, for example, that is great for my business but could jeopardize Nowheristan, I would never do it.

You mentioned your enemies. Who exactly are your enemies?

My enemies are all the existing empires that have their soldiers all around the planet, that are making decisions on who should be elected in each country and who should not and who is a terrorist and who is not. For me, this is the biggest enemy. In a few years it will probably be China because China is growing quickly. Any country that has an excess of power and starts having dreams about destabilizing other countries, sending their people to buy proxies everywhere and interfering with things that do not concern them at all, those are my enemies.

Empires have been going back as far as humanity itself. What makes you feel that one day Nowheristan will not one day be a regional hegemony?

Empires throughout history all emerged from one culture, one nation or one color, so there is always hegemony of a type. Even in Marxism which tried to bring in some Georgians as secondary generals, at the end of the day the center of power was Moscow and that is where decisions were made. People had to study Russian, Russian culture dominated all others and it became a Russian project. That centralism is one of the things that killed it.

Throughout history, all people who were not part of the creators of an empire took it as a humiliation. In this part of the world, they felt humiliated because to be an insider in the Roman world you had to be in Rome, or to be in the Ottoman empire you had to be in Istanbul. But in the empire of Nowheristan, no one will feel offended because Nowheristanis are not born – they became Nowheristanis. Nowheristan is not related to any culture, race or religion; anyone can become a Nowheristani. There is not insult for anyone becoming a Nowheristani but there is a big insult if you want to enter an American project – you will always be treated like someone who is working for the Americans if you are not American.

Your main success story in Lebanon is the MusicHall. It is the pinnacle of night life in Lebanon. You are now taking this concept to Dubai. Please enlighten us about your expansion plans and tell us what is exciting about this business.

We started producing world fusion music in the 1990’s just as I returned from Cuba. I was always working on putting Eastern artists with Western artists and creating fusion not just like Campbell’s soup where everything is mixed together. It was work in the smallest details and it was not like it had to be done in a few hours because of production problems and budgets. I always felt that this kind of project is like creating in vitro what could have been done in vivo. For example, with the project of Hanine Y Son Cubano which is a fusion of Arabic and Cuban music, imagine if the Arabs went with Christopher Columbus to Cuba and met the Indian Siboneys of Cuba, along with the African culture brought over by the slaves. There would be a meeting of Spanish culture, African culture, American Indian culture and Arabic culture. This is what I tried to create with this project. As an example, Afro-Cuban music was born after a few centuries of encounters between different cultures but I had to create this situation in my musical laboratory in a maximum of one year. It is not like a monster with two heads and you are pushing it to work; no, it is something that sounds natural.

When I started to create this fusion music, I decided it would be nice to have my own theater because I felt even in the 90’s when the city was booming, that it is good for a producer to have an entire chain from producing the artist to managing his concerts, releasing his albums and providing a space for concerts when his career is not strong. I thought it would be interesting to be able to present the artist in some venue. That is why ten years ago, I began to look for a theater and in 2003, created the MusicHall of Beirut which has been doing very well ever since.

There have been numerous franchise demands, for example in Sao Paolo, Spain and London. However, I do not want to do this as a franchise. For example, when you franchise hamburgers you just need to provide the meat and bread and that is all but in this business it is art. You cannot just provide the business name and let the owner do whatever they want and book whomever he wants. I cannot have ten MusicHalls at the same time except if I take the time to create one after another with a consistent theme.

We were going to open in Dubai in 2008 but when the financial crisis arrived, it changed everything. It was not the appropriate time and so we waited for three years and began working on it in 2011. It will open this September.

We are also working on a MusicHall in Istanbul which I believe is an amazing city. Betting on music, nightlife and culture there is also a type of resistance.

You mentioned you did not want to go abroad but now you are going abroad, so what has changed?

I said that I cannot open ten MusicHalls at the same time. The MusicHall in Beirut is doing well and I have someone who is able to manage it well. Therefore I can move on to the next one but it is not like I can take a new franchise and tell someone else to go and open it and manage it.

When they say that the devil is in the details, it is very true. In this business, the small things make all the difference. Sometimes it is in the writing, the sound, the way artists are dressed, the venue stage, the lighting or the coaching of the waiters. Being a waiter in a pizzeria is not the same as in the MusicHall; the waiters need to know when they may or may not move or answer the client. These are small things that take a lot of training.

One challenge with the MusicHall over the last ten years is that you have to continuously come up with new ideas. Lebanese customers are always expecting you to exceed their expectations. We previously discussed this in our interview with the owner of Sky Bar who was saying that it was difficult to always be re-launching with bigger and better ideas and different artists. How do you meet these demands year after year?

My competitors are working according to the fashion and when you are a victim to fashion you have to keep following the trends because the definition of fashion is what will be out of style next year. When you enter this cycle, you have to constantly change the decorations, lighting, music, etc. I was never interested in fashion; usually what I do becomes fashionable after I do it. When I started doing Cuban music in Lebanon thirteen or fourteen years ago when I returned from Cuba, I became disgusted with Cuban music myself because it became so fashionable that I dropped it and closed my club called “Amor Y Libertad” that held 1000 people and was dedicated to Cuban culture.

I am someone who is very allergic to fashion and this is what allows us to grow, survive and remain a place where people go because it is not a matter of fashion. It is classical and in parallel to fashion; fashions come and go but music always remains.

When we talk about many clubs in Lebanon, after two or three years in a location they move and then re-launch the “new” thing, but MusicHall has been here for ten years which proves that if these types of problems were going to happen to us, they would have happened five to seven years ago. But from day one, nothing has changed in the decoration, musical tastes and programming. One Cuban band may be replacing another and one Spanish band replaces another but the type of programming is still the same.

This concept of course works very well in Lebanon because people enjoy night life and loud music. When you expand to another destination where the culture is totally different such as London or Paris, is it possible this concept might not work as well?

If I have the same lineup it will not work; if I put as many Arab bands as I have here it will not work. In London, I would replace some Arab bands with someone coming from the islands such as Aruba because there are more people with this background in London. I would get a band from Jamaica and it would be one act only, unlike in Lebanon. I would have more rock bands, maybe Irish bands, etc.

The concept would be the same but in each location you would of course have some modifications. You cannot ask Europeans to enjoy Arabic music as much as the Lebanese do. In Dubai, for example, I am sure I will take into consideration local music. I would never program a band coming from Dubai here because that would not be attractive for Lebanese living in Beirut. It would be attractive in Dubai for the people of Dubai and the foreigners living there who would like to hear the traditional music of the local country which is hard to find elsewhere. The advantage is that maybe if you have to watch an entire concert with this type of music, you might get bored after a while, but at the MusicHall they will come on stage for five minutes and that is all.

Are you active in real estate? Do you have any comments about the real estate situation in Lebanon?

Each time I want to make an investment, I remember a quote from Mark Twain who said “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore”. The only thing that is not being made anymore is land. Since the big bang, there is not one inch of land that could be created. The population is increasing everywhere and people need houses; there are more and more rich people who want a small piece of land around their houses. Prime locations can only go up.

Prices might come down every now and then but after the crisis you always have a real estate boom. So if you have money and put it in land and then forget about it for a few years, when you need money and go to sell it you will always make money. If you have to sell it during the crisis, then you would lose money but if you can wait it is the best investment.

But we have seen what happened in Russia when the communists came and nationalized everything. Owners who had owned the land for thousands of years were suddenly removed from it, so there was no security.

If you want total security, there is really nothing that is totally secure. Even if you have gold under your bed, someone might come and go looking for gold under the bed. There is no total security and life is full of dangers. You might meet and marry a wonderful, beautiful woman who is sweet to you but then later she might become fat and start yelling at you all the time. She could go from your dream to your worst nightmare. If you keep thinking like that, you will never get married or have children because they may turn out to be idiots or have an accident. If you want to be safe, it is better not to be born.

Life is full of risks but in real estate there are many fewer risks. People who invest in stocks or industries or new technologies hold more risk, such as people who invested in the dot-com bubble in the 90’s and lost fortunes. But no one lost fortunes investing in real estate except if they bought something in Katanga, for example, making speculations that there is gold underground; if you buy an apartment in Paris now you can be sure you will be able to sell it in a few years for much more. It never happens unless someone is a total idiot, like he buys something that is collapsing or a building that has problems. But if someone is smart and does due diligence for what he is buying, in real estate you are always a winner.

Do you feel that Lebanon is experiencing a real estate bubble?

Yes, for example I would never buy in Lebanon when the prices were skyrocketing. It was higher two years ago and I did not buy anything then but the prices are down somewhat now. I often tell people and I am teaching my sons that you should never go with the crowd. If the crowd is going somewhere, it is already too late. When you feel that a current idea is great, it is too late and there are probably many people who are trying it. When an idea sounds absurd, then there is hope for it. This is the blue ocean theory – do not go where the sharks are or all you will see is blood; go to the blue ocean and that is where you can make things work.

Can you comment on the lifestyle of the Lebanese?

I think that some people have the luxury of choosing their own lifestyle because they have enough money and do not have to work all the time. Someone who has to work all day does not think about his lifestyle; he thinks about the food that he needs to provide for his family and the problems of paying his bills. But people who have the luxury of being able to choose their lifestyle should never do things just because they are trendy or feel obligated to spend their money on certain things like going to Ibiza or buying a big yacht even if they do not like sailing. This does not make any sense.

When you have money, you should enjoy it and spend it on things that you like and not on things that are good for appearances or other people. Live your life, enjoy it, do not hurt others and never accept the dictates of fashion, society, newspapers and TV. Enjoy the things that you like even if they are not popular.

Do you feel confident about the idea of socialism? Can you share your thoughts about Che Guevara?

I am very good friends with the family; for instance, his daughter Aleida visited me last year and I have a signed photo of her and her family. Che Guevara’s son visited me ten years ago. I think there are things that can appear fashionable. Some people might think that Nowheristan is just a trend.

People tend to think that famous revolutionaries and philosophers were only in books. No, those people had real lives. Karl Marx had a son by his maid and was going out drinking with his friends – he was not thinking 24 hours a day about revolution and avoiding the things of everyday life. Che Guevara had a great sense of humor. It is not like the imagined philosopher who is under a tree all day long.

I think if I can start a revolution while having a good time it is much better than doing it from a university behind the big walls with only my students to listen. I want pop and rock culture, pop and rock revolution, and pop and rock philosophy. I do not want culture to be in museums and in big, boring books. I am someone with a lot of admiration for philosophers who do not take themselves very seriously, such as Slavoj Žižek.

The difference between what I do and what politicians do is that I give very deep philosophical ideas in a funny, cool packaging while they are serving garbage in nice packaging. They take courses in how to speak with a perfect accent, how to move their hands – it is all studied. But when you analyze what they are saying there is no content. I am giving you in a humorous way, which may not be appealing to Westerners, very serious content that might look exotic or not very serious, under the name Nowheristan.

When you look at the long names of some political parties, when you analyze what they are proposing, it is nothing. It is exactly, with some small differences, what their political opponents are proposing. They all keep bringing up the same boring ideas with small differences, like instead of 2.3% it is 2.38%. But what are they proposing? They are not suggesting anything new. They work on their appearances, the polls and what people want to hear. It is like bad parents who give chewing gum, candy and chocolates to their kids all day long because kids like candies. But this is not the role of parents – they should provide nutritious food even if the child does not want it. That is how to develop future generations, not with candies.

This is what is happening now in the world, especially in Europe, and it is the result of looking at what the people want and not what is in the best interest of the people. They look at what the polling companies are telling them people want to hear and they tell them that. No, you do not tell them what they want to hear; you give them what is good for them even if they do not want to hear it. Otherwise it is demagogy.

Studying what people really want is how Obama was elected and how Bush was elected, but at the end of the day it is a reflection of the people themselves is it not?

There is something I would like to add that is very important. It is the myth of democracy, as if democracy is a great thing. That is garbage. Democracy brought Hitler to power and in all Arab countries democracy will bring Islamist radicals to power. Democracy is where two idiots will beat Einstein; democracy is an awful and ridiculous thing.

But people think that when you say democracy is bad, you are for totalitarian regimes. It is not black or white – as if there are just two choices. There are hundreds of choices in life. So what is being said in the media in Europe and America about democracy – that they are bombing Iraq and Libya and destroying entire populations because they want to bring democracy – is completely untrue. Democracy is not the solution and cannot work. There are other things that can work but democracy is rubbish.

Does it not depend how you look at it? What about Sweden with its education system?

But it is not democracy that is working in Sweden. If you had Che or any other system in Sweden it would work because the Swedish have reached a certain level. It is not democracy that is making some countries function well because anything would work well in those countries.

Democracy in itself is very bad for countries like Iraq, Egypt and Libya. When I say that, people think I am against human rights. What are human rights? Human rights are being used by Western powers to enter a new colonialist way. They are using big ideas like human rights, democracy and love of freedom to re-colonize those countries.

They are in a crisis. They consume so much and buy so many things that they cannot pay for it with only what they produce. They have to steal from other countries to keep on living the way they live. I am not saying this is the decision of the poor guy in a building in the suburbs of Paris. No, this is the decision of the governments not the people.

The American people are very nice. I was invited by the State Department and it was my first visit to the United States last year and probably the last one because I will not be invited anymore. I have seen that the American people are very naive, full of good feelings and so happy they helped the poor people of Iraq get rid of the awful monster Saddam Hussein. They do not know what their government is doing; they have no idea.

You have to admit that Saddam Hussein was a monster.

Saddam Hussein was no more of a monster… Bush is a human monster, Cameron is a monster, Sarkozy is a monster. It is not the best way to do it, but if you just want to see how many people are being killed by certain countries or individuals, each president of the United States is much more of a monster than any Arab dictator.

Arab dictators are killing by the hundreds and thousands but any president of the United States in the last thirty or forty years killed by the hundreds of thousands.

The difference is the diffusion of responsibility; whereas in the United States it is a consensus.

No, in Iraq it was also a consensus – you see Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi but do not think he was alone. Saddam Hussein also had thousands of people working for him and he had his administration but you do not seem them. This is because they use clowns like Sacha Baron Cohen to epitomize a dictator and the dictator has a long beard and is Arab.

No one in the Arab world would do a film like that about George Bush. With the level of education that George Bush had, if he was in the Arab world he would be cleaning the streets; he would never become president because he was an idiot and his IQ is that of an idiot. However, the IQ of Gaddafi who succeeded in a coup d’état at the age of 27 – if you read his books, they are philosophy. What president of any Western country has written a philosophy book in the last fifty years? Where do they come from?

They are in power because they are supported by lobbies, they had money, they paid people, they got money from the third world to invest in their campaigns – like Sarkozy who received money from Gaddafi, for example. Before him they used to get diamonds from African presidents to fund their campaigns. It is all about money. No one becomes a president if he is not willing to kill. This is how the world is being ruled.

The problem is if you look blond with blue eyes, have a nice tie and are well-dressed, it is much more difficult to convince people you are a criminal but it is very easy to convince people you are a criminal if you are dressed in a military uniform and come from Latin America or the Arab world. This is because you have an entire industry in Hollywood and the media that is working night and day to stereotype and create images showing what is good and bad. These are the same principles of Goebbels who wanted people to believe Jews were evil, saying that if you have a big nose and curly black hair then you are evil but if you are tall and blond with blue eyes you are good. This is being used nowadays by Western media, by people like Rupert Murdoch and people in Hollywood, to make films and propaganda about who is good and who is bad.