Full Comment - Welcome to the tolerance witch trials

00:00:00.000 freedom of speech freedom of expression these are things that we have guaranteed in our

00:00:14.000 constitutions around the western world but there's something that seems perpetually under threat

00:00:19.660 hello i'm brian lily this is the full comment podcast we've talked about freedom of speech a

00:00:25.000 lot on this podcast in the pages of national post in the pages of the toronto sun and it never seems

00:00:31.320 to die that's because those that want to take away freedom of speech never seem to die they they

00:00:37.040 perpetually find new ways to regulate speech to tell us either through laws regulations or public

00:00:44.940 shaming that you can't say that and that is part of what our next guest wants to talk about but before

00:00:51.180 we get to him i do want to remind you that you can subscribe to the full comment podcast on whatever

00:00:56.120 app or device you're listening to please hit that subscribe button show us some love show us some

00:01:01.400 support make sure you don't miss an episode and of course leave a review uh brendan o'neill is a man

00:01:07.960 who's been writing irreverently for many years mostly at spiked where he used to be the editor

00:01:14.140 now he's the chief political columnist you can also find him in the daily mail and the spectator

00:01:19.040 but his new book just out a few weeks ago now is called a heretics manifesto essays on the

00:01:26.840 unsayable and i have to admit brendan i'm a little bit worried about what you're going to say

00:01:32.900 and how i might get cancelled from hosting you here oh well thanks for having me brian it's a pleasure i

00:01:40.180 will try not to say anything too cancellable we'll see how it goes well you say at the opening of the

00:01:45.500 book and and i find this interesting that cancel culture you get why people use the phrase but you

00:01:52.580 don't like it that that it's not quite right why yeah i mean i do use the term cancel culture i think

00:02:01.360 it's very useful i think people understand what it means you know there's this thing going around

00:02:06.360 parts of the left saying cancel culture is a myth it doesn't really exist people aren't concerned about

00:02:11.540 it but when i speak to members of the public when i do talks around the uk or elsewhere people

00:02:16.780 instantly know what that phrase means they know it refers to a kind of politically correct intolerance

00:02:22.660 for anyone who deviates from the new orthodoxies whether it's on the new racial politics gender

00:02:28.120 ideology or whatever else it might be cancel culture is a real thing but the point i make in the

00:02:33.840 introduction is that it's not sufficient as a term to describe the authoritarian moment that we're living

00:02:40.420 through uh sometimes i think cancel culture is a bit too quaint it's kind of almost comedic it's

00:02:46.740 alliterative and it kind of rolls off the tongue but it feels too light and too soft to describe what i

00:02:53.500 think we're living through which is a counter enlightenment a reversal of the great gains of

00:02:58.940 modernity from freedom of conscience to tolerance to the ideals of equality and democracy i think all of

00:03:05.100 these things are under attack by an increasingly um intolerant authoritarian establishment so cancel

00:03:12.400 culture i understand it it makes sense it's useful but i think we need a bigger larger term to describe

00:03:17.860 what we're going through when i was growing up i used to hear regularly about uh you know voltaire's

00:03:24.300 famous statement whether he said it or not about defending to the death you're right to say something even if

00:03:29.320 disagrees we would often hear that well you know the threat to freedom of speech it comes from those

00:03:35.860 far-right christian conservatives in the united states it's funny i just had um d snyder of twisted

00:03:41.980 sister that hair rock band of the 80s um it popped up in my news feed the other day that it was um around

00:03:49.740 this time in 1985 he was testifying before the american congress because al gore's wife had led a campaign

00:03:56.680 to ban song lyrics so i mean this has been going on for a long time and there's different iterations of

00:04:01.680 it but i would argue that today um it it's not american far-right christian conservatives that are

00:04:09.520 the biggest threat as much as we get said that in canada things are bad i look across to once great

00:04:17.340 britain and wonder if you've given up on the enlightenment completely yeah i worry that we

00:04:23.300 have i think it's and it's tragic this is a britain was an incredibly important place for the

00:04:28.540 enlightenment of course especially scotland um and i think scotland might be worse than the rest of the

00:04:34.040 uk when i look and scotland i think is probably the worst for the kind of trends that we're talking

00:04:38.860 about yes um you know england was england and scotland and wales were incredibly important parts of

00:04:45.100 the world when it came to enlightenment ideals also the ideal of press freedom freedom of speech a lot

00:04:50.300 of that stuff was born here in the 1500s and the 1600s you know the the bill of rights in the united

00:04:57.000 states was very much influenced but by ideas that came to uh came to the fore in the english civil war

00:05:03.200 in the 1640s which is when uh english people fought to limit the power of the monarch and increase the power

00:05:09.600 of parliament so um we are a country that is a long great tradition of standing up for reason and freedom

00:05:16.560 and tolerance and we seem to be abandoning a lot of that this is now a country in which if you make

00:05:23.060 fun of the pride flag you might get a knock on the door from the police this has literally happened

00:05:28.120 this is a country in which if you share a limerick online a funny little poem about transgenderism and

00:05:35.840 the ridiculous idea that a man can become a woman for example you can get a visit from the police that also

00:05:42.060 happened in this country people get arrested almost every day here for things they say online or they

00:05:47.920 at least get questioned there are a huge number of police investigations most of which don't come to

00:05:53.060 anything but there is always that menacing threat and for a while i think they're kind of on their way

00:05:58.800 out now we had a thing here called a non-crime hate incident now a non-crime hate incident as the name

00:06:06.100 suggests is something that is not criminal at all but people might judge that it was fueled by a

00:06:12.040 hateful idea for example if you go online and you refer to a man who identifies as a woman as he

00:06:18.840 rather than as she that could be interpreted as a non-crime hate incident it would be logged by the

00:06:24.880 police it would be added to their statistics and it's possible that it would be a black mark on your

00:06:29.840 record and you might not get a job you might not be able to teach children you might not be able to do

00:06:34.480 certain things so that is purely Orwellian that's purely tyrannical that is thought crime because

00:06:41.480 essentially there you're punishing people for an emotion they feel or a certain amount of anger

00:06:46.800 they feel about a new ideology or a new idea so that's how far britain has fallen i think we've

00:06:53.340 gone from a country that put its neck on the line for the freedom of the press and freedom of the

00:06:57.400 freedom of speech to one that now arrests people for making fun of the pride flag it's a very worrying

00:07:03.260 situation i i would say that even if you support the pride flag you should be worried about that

00:07:11.380 because if you can be arrested for making fun of the pride flag well okay what's next where do you go

00:07:18.340 from there um and the idea that they are essentially reaching into your home because you posted something

00:07:27.000 in the privacy of your home online or you said something to someone and you're reported i mean

00:07:32.840 this this goes against everything that we know going back to magna carta declaration of our broth the

00:07:42.740 english civil war all of these things all of these steps that took hundreds of years to get us to the

00:07:48.620 point where the government didn't have control of everything and is putting us back into that state

00:07:55.920 do you think before we get into some of the contents of of your book and the individual points you make

00:08:02.400 do you think that there's a large part of the population that just feels better in the warm embrace of a

00:08:09.100 an all-powerful all-controlling state that we you know will tell you when when and what to say

00:08:16.280 i think it's i think some people do definitely and certainly those whose beliefs and ideas are being protected

00:08:24.160 by the state or are being enforced by the state so for example those who line up behind the pride flag

00:08:30.020 and i completely agree with you even those who support the pride flag ought to be concerned that

00:08:35.220 it's become this object that people are not allowed to blaspheme against you know i think the last

00:08:40.420 blasphemy trial against christianity in the united kingdom was in 19 1977 i think maybe 1978 and that was

00:08:49.660 when a gay magazine here published a poem about christ which was quite sexually explicit and it

00:08:56.460 was judged by some christian fundamentalists so you were talking about them earlier it was judged by some

00:09:01.720 of them to be blasphemous and there was a successful trial against the magazine and they were fined for

00:09:07.420 publishing this poem uh so that's what censorship used to be like you fast forward to uh 2023 and somehow

00:09:15.140 bizarrely it's the people on the on the other side it's the people who stand up for gay rights

00:09:19.720 or who ostensibly stand up for gay rights who are now pursuing those who blaspheme against their

00:09:26.000 paraphernalia their iconic images their flags and so on so there has been an extraordinary turnaround

00:09:32.500 um my view in relation to the pride stuff in particular is that i am fully 100 in favor of gay

00:09:40.380 equality i think the movement for gay equality in the 60s and the 70s including here in the uk with

00:09:45.920 the gay liberation from these were wonderful steps forward for humanity for equality for the ideal

00:09:51.940 that people should be able to live freely as they choose but somehow over the past few years those

00:09:57.660 um identitarian movements those uh one those groups that once fought for equality have become

00:10:05.000 increasingly authoritarian and i find that increase i find that very very worrying but as to the public

00:10:10.280 attitude i think there's a lot of skepticism and cynicism amongst ordinary people towards the new

00:10:15.740 authoritarianism towards the new political correctness they're worried about not being able to say what

00:10:21.240 they want to say and and they're worried about the chilling effect so it's not just the occasional

00:10:26.040 arrest of someone who um blasphemes against the pride flag it's not just the abuse received by someone

00:10:32.220 like jk rowling for example all of this has a chilling effect because it sends a message across the

00:10:38.220 country that if you think about doing something like this if you say these things if you express

00:10:43.460 agreement with jk rowling for example you will suffer as well you might lose your job you might

00:10:49.240 get a knock on the door you might be shamed and demonized on the internet so i think as a consequence

00:10:54.320 of that there's a spiral of silence and people keep their views to themselves very often

00:10:59.180 so it's the culture of self-censorship most people can't afford to fight back against being

00:11:04.820 canceled like jk rowling i mean she can live in her beautiful home up in scotland and you know

00:11:11.340 say what she wants and and just count the money while she's doing it and and that's not a slack

00:11:17.740 against her she that's the reality and most people don't have that i believe the the woman she was

00:11:23.460 standing up for when all of this kicked off and i'm you know it's too long ago now for me to remember

00:11:28.640 all the names and details exactly but that woman lost her job um rowling did not now i applaud her

00:11:36.880 for uh standing up for other people losing their jobs over over things like this but um it i understand

00:11:44.180 why people will and do self-censor um it is uh you know billy brad got us new england but it comes with

00:11:51.700 a new religion that believes in uh censorship yeah and um you're absolutely right about jk rowling she

00:11:58.880 is uncancellable and and it really infuriates um some members of the of the trans lobby and and the

00:12:05.280 kind of uh the politically correct mobs on the internet they feel they fume that they can't cancel

00:12:10.700 her it irritates the hell out of them they wish they could drag her down and and um reduce her to the

00:12:16.700 to to the level of a witch which is how they view her but she can't be cancelled she's too too much

00:12:21.960 of a cultural institution she's too famous she's too rich she's too culturally powerful so they can't

00:12:27.580 do it um i'm still full of admiration for what she does because she could have a very easy comfortable

00:12:33.420 billionaire's life not saying anything and just living it up which is probably what i would do if i was

00:12:39.500 in her position i'm sure lots of people would but instead she's chosen to speak out put her head

00:12:44.600 above the parapet and say the unsayable which unbelievably these days include saying that men

00:12:50.640 are men and women are women so i admire her for that but yes i think it's a it's a twofold situation

00:12:56.720 because on the one hand someone like jk rowling i think inspires confidence in people and they think

00:13:02.120 well i'm going to speak up too if she can do it i can do it but on the other hand the extraordinary

00:13:07.580 demonization of her the treatment of her as a witch as the scum of the earth as a bigot as a transphobe

00:13:14.540 that also has a knock-on effect of making people think well maybe i should keep my views to myself

00:13:19.060 around the time that your uh book came out brendan i wrote a column in the toronto sun

00:13:24.600 um that was headlined it's it's uh time to stop erasing women from our language

00:13:29.580 and it was really prompted by watching not just the change in government but the change in our media's

00:13:35.540 language uh the government began to use terms like people who menstruate

00:13:39.820 in official documents in the house of commons they began to use terms like chest feed and then

00:13:47.880 i noticed a story at the end of may from the canadian press our national wire service saying

00:13:53.760 pregnant people pregnant people should be especially vigilant when wildfires pollute the air that's when

00:14:00.660 our wildfire season took off and the the air was quite hazy around vancouver and other parts of

00:14:06.620 british columbia well who are these pregnant people i think we'd call them women but they did not use

00:14:11.940 the term women they only used it they quoted a doctor who used the term women but the the journalist

00:14:18.240 write it writing the story was very cautious not to use the term women or mothers it was always

00:14:24.740 pregnant people or pregnant individuals and then the same thing happened on our state broadcaster cbc

00:14:31.780 they did a whole story on the problem of cannabis use uh for morning sickness among pregnant individuals

00:14:39.800 and it's absolutely bizarre to watch and i thought we are you know in so many ways women have fought

00:14:48.140 for equality and now i'm not even sure that it's it's complete uh the fight but they're being told

00:14:56.740 okay we're going to change the language and you don't exist nobody's doing that to men

00:15:00.680 but they are doing it to women and that's part of what you talk about in your book

00:15:06.440 yes i think it is um straight up misogyny i think the fact that some women feel now that they can't

00:15:15.040 even speak about themselves and their own experiences and and their own existence without

00:15:19.880 someone screaming at them that they're a bigot and that they should say pregnant people instead of

00:15:24.280 pregnant women or they should say menstruators instead of women and um cervix havers instead of

00:15:29.840 women and so on all these cervix havers that's a new one to me yeah that was one that was here in

00:15:35.540 the uk you know incredibly dehumanizing terms and then of course terms like chest feeding instead of

00:15:41.340 breastfeeding and so on um very very dehumanizing and it makes perfect sense to me why women would

00:15:47.880 be angry about this and in fact this is one of the things that jk rowling and other so-called

00:15:52.380 turfs which means trans exclusionary radical feminist but which really means which it really means

00:15:57.780 disobedient woman who refuses to do as we tell her a lot of those women gender critical women

00:16:03.580 have raised concerns about the the language changes that are taking place and yeah i talk about this in

00:16:09.480 my in the book in fact the first chapter is called her penis um because i have been grimly fascinated

00:16:16.900 with those two words when they're put together her penis for the past few months past couple of years

00:16:22.200 in fact because you see that phrase her penis everywhere now in the uk you see it in the times

00:16:28.280 the newspaper of record it's even been on the bbc they refer to her penis when when talking about

00:16:34.160 a man who identifies as a woman we've seen that phrase used in courts of law so if a man is arrested

00:16:40.960 a biological male is arrested for sexual assault or rape but he now identifies as a woman in a court of

00:16:47.560 law they have said things like she took out her penis and showed it to the victim etc etc and what

00:16:55.820 you realize as you listen to all of this is that they are lying to us they are this is a pure orwellianism

00:17:03.960 you know the point orwell made uh in much of his writing but particularly in 1984 is that the control

00:17:10.300 of language is very often about controlling thought it's about changing not only how we speak but

00:17:15.180 fundamentally how we think how we think about the world how we think about ourselves and you know one

00:17:20.740 story i draw attention to in that chapter is when the new york times and the bbc both reported on an

00:17:26.860 80 year old woman in new york city who had murdered and decapitated a woman in her 60s and i was reading

00:17:34.440 this thinking hold on 80 year old 80 something women don't do this i can't remember any time in my life

00:17:41.100 when a woman in her 80s has murdered and decapitated another woman women in their 80s tend to be quite

00:17:46.980 small and frail and certainly not murderously inclined you get halfway through the new york times

00:17:53.100 piece and it says this woman previously identified as a man you get to the very last line of the bbc article

00:18:00.700 which many people won't get that far and it says this is a trans person so it was a man it was a man in

00:18:07.940 his 80s who by the way had murdered women previously in the 1960s earlier in his life

00:18:13.180 so those news reports were lying to us they had sacrificed objectivity and truth at the altar of

00:18:20.320 ideology and i think when the media does that when the media elevates the need to express an ideological

00:18:26.420 belief over the duty to tell us the truth of what's happening in the world then you know we've

00:18:33.200 crossed the rubicon and we've moved into a new era of thought control essentially and trying to

00:18:38.680 make us think in a particular way we're told repeatedly that this is all all these changes

00:18:44.680 are so that uh you know we can be respectful of others well there's a way to be respectful

00:18:53.540 and and still discuss things properly and openly and her penis those are two words that don't go together

00:19:01.480 and you know unless your wife is claiming ownership of your penis i don't think those two things go

00:19:06.580 together in any way shape or form uh you mentioned heresy trials earlier and it was the late 70s you

00:19:14.660 said in 1979 uh monty python came out with the movie life of brian and it was described as blasphemous

00:19:21.720 heretical it was condemned um new church of england the vatican everywhere uh but they were foreseeing some

00:19:31.020 of this there's a scene that gets passed around an awful lot now where eric idol announces that he

00:19:37.340 wants to be a woman um and and that he wants to have a baby and while they discuss that he can't have

00:19:43.260 a baby um it's it's important for the workers movement to fight for his right to have a baby

00:19:48.520 even if he can't and then they all agree and they think this is good and they congratulate themselves

00:19:53.560 were they did they have a crystal ball were they because it that is exactly what's happening now

00:20:01.860 yeah i mean it's such a brilliant scene in life of brian yeah eric idol plays uh a man called stan

00:20:08.440 even the name stan in in ancient uh biblical times is funny uh he's a member of the people's front of

00:20:14.260 judea of course and he wants to become loretta and it's it's a brilliant scene it it it does

00:20:19.560 foretell what was to come a few years later a few decades later i wrote a piece for the spectator

00:20:25.320 in fact a few years ago here in the uk saying that if life of brian came out today it wouldn't

00:20:30.220 be christian fundamentalists protesting outside cinemas it would be trans activists and i have no

00:20:35.360 doubt whatsoever in my mind that that is what would happen absolutely no doubt in fact there was some

00:20:40.620 discussion here about i think life of brian becoming a musical or moving to the stage in some way

00:20:45.540 and even then there were uh some squawks of disagreement and disapproval online because of

00:20:51.380 that particular scene uh where they essentially make fun of the idea that a man can become a woman

00:20:56.940 or a man can give birth and so on um yeah so it's a it's a very good it's they predicted it perfectly

00:21:03.240 well and it's also a good reminder of how censorship can change over time and how the nature of

00:21:09.640 authoritarianism can change so uh you know i think about my own time in journalism one of the first

00:21:15.360 things i ever wrote about years and years and years ago in the 1990s was this video game called

00:21:20.820 carmageddon and as the name would suggest it was a pretty dark grim game you would drive around and

00:21:27.460 i think the aim was to try and knock down as many people as possible it was quite a bloody brutal video

00:21:33.460 game and i and uh christian activists and right-wing people wanted to ban it and i wrote a couple of

00:21:40.420 pieces um in defense of it that was one of the first things i ever did i think um so even i can

00:21:47.100 remember a time when censorship and authoritarianism tended to come from the right tended to come from

00:21:53.100 christian inclined people it that's changed enormously beyond recognition and now whenever i hear people

00:22:01.060 demanding cancellation or demanding that someone be blacklisted from university campus or demand that we

00:22:06.420 will change the way we speak in order to be supposedly respectful as you say i just know it's going to be

00:22:11.980 someone who claims to be left-wing someone who claims to be small l liberal so that shift i think is is it has been

00:22:18.140 dramatic and very eye-opening years ago i remember talking to ben shapiro about his um his time going

00:22:25.200 around hollywood and and speaking to producers and directors and and writers about how they worked in um

00:22:33.420 uh purposely they worked in progressive messaging into their stories and in the biggest people in

00:22:38.800 this were the the people behind friends and you look at a show like friends now is as innocuous as we

00:22:44.620 thought it was i can't believe it's still on streaming services when you watch it you say those jokes could

00:22:51.400 not be made today this storyline could not be told today uh we have um that that is the extent of

00:22:58.960 self-censorship it's not just the life brian not going to the the musical uh show we would cancel

00:23:05.040 chandler and monica yeah and and one of the recent discussions about friends is that it was too white

00:23:12.100 and i think in fact one of the creators of friends actually caved into that criticism and said yeah we

00:23:18.080 it was too white we should have uh thought about the characters so it's not even the things they say

00:23:22.860 which would get friends canceled these days that is no doubt the case it's also even just who they are

00:23:27.880 the fact that it was six white friends most of their other friends were white as well even that

00:23:32.020 would be intolerable in 2023 um yeah it's it's remarkable how quickly you know i refer to it in

00:23:39.540 the book as the constant churn of political correctness and you never know what's what's going

00:23:44.060 to become unsayable tomorrow you know things can change very very quickly one minute you're being

00:23:49.900 really politically correct and and supposedly polite and you're using all the right terms and all the

00:23:54.820 right pronouns etc but it might change tomorrow you can still get canceled you can still find yourself

00:24:00.100 thrown under the bus for failing to keep up with the constant changes in language and ideology that

00:24:05.800 are taking place i think the point you made earlier about um politeness and respectfulness i think that's

00:24:12.400 a really important thing to shine a light on because i'm fully in favor of people being polite and

00:24:17.560 respectful i think that's a good way to go through life uh but since you know since when did being

00:24:22.940 polite means saying things that you don't believe to be true since when did being polite means

00:24:28.480 referring to someone who has a penis and may even have a beard and his name might be dave or something

00:24:34.820 since when did being polite mean accepting the idea that that person is not only a woman but might also

00:24:40.680 be a lesbian you know politeness doesn't cover being dishonest to yourself and lying in public because

00:24:48.660 you want to stay on the good side of the correct thinking people that's not politeness that's

00:24:53.700 cowardice in fact and that is caving into the authoritarian agenda and uh you know where was

00:24:59.520 the politeness when when a rape claimant in a british court was pressured to refer to the man who

00:25:06.740 raped her as she therefore not only did he violate her bodily integrity but then she was also forced to buy

00:25:14.540 into his delusional identity where was the politeness and respect for her where was the respect for her

00:25:20.780 experience where was the respect for the experience of that woman who was killed by the 80 something man

00:25:26.640 in new york city when the new york times wrote about that man as a she they were not only lying to us

00:25:32.740 about his idea his sex they were also demeaning the experiences of his victims who were attacked by a man

00:25:39.920 not by a woman so if we're going to be respectful let's make it go across the board and also be

00:25:44.700 respectful to people who don't accept some of these new ideologies and have a very legitimate criticism

00:25:50.160 of them the book is called a heretics manifesto essays on the unsayable brendan o'neill the author

00:25:55.860 with me perhaps we've already said some unsayable things we have to take a quick commercial break

00:26:00.700 we'll see if we come back after this okay so hopefully we haven't cancelled each other and

00:26:06.300 people can still hear brendan o'neill and myself talking his book is uh heretics manifesto essays

00:26:13.160 on the unsayable and and and brendan i was pretty sure on you where you were going when you started

00:26:18.900 talking about uh witches and conjuring weather i was sure you were going to talk about climate change

00:26:24.480 but i didn't i thought oh is he stretching here is he stretching trying to link women in scotland and

00:26:33.440 1590 and east lothian with with climate change but you weren't and and you surprised me with this

00:26:41.400 story i'd never heard of it um tell us a bit about that background of conjuring weather before we get

00:26:48.020 into how we have to uh you know discuss climate change in a way so that again we don't offend the

00:26:55.660 perpetually offended yeah so that's um yeah chapter two in the book is called witch finding and it

00:27:02.360 really draws a link between some of the witch trials of the 1500s and the 1600s in particular

00:27:08.360 and the contemporary attitudes towards climate change particularly towards climate change

00:27:13.480 skepticism anyone who criticizes the idea that the world is ending is instantly denounced as a as a

00:27:19.320 denier or overly skeptic or a wrong thinker who should be banished from polite society and the point

00:27:25.540 i make in that chapter is that a lot of the witches who were hanged or burnt at the stake in europe

00:27:30.760 particularly northern europe in the 1500s and the 1600s one of the accusations made against them was

00:27:37.280 essentially climate change that they had had a detrimental impact on the weather that they had

00:27:43.480 conjured up contrary weather which is how it was referred to and they were punished for having done

00:27:48.940 so because crops failed or there was too much rain too much heat too much cold particularly too much cold

00:27:55.160 and they were often burnt at the stake for having caused these uh terrible weather incidents so i i

00:28:01.440 write about the north berwick witch trials um in scotland in the 1590s which they uh preceded the more

00:28:08.160 famous salem witch trials in america by more than a hundred years um or around a hundred years and they

00:28:14.440 were um a really shocking incident in in in british history i think around 25 women in total were killed

00:28:21.620 many were tortured many were arrested and and branded and punished in some way and one of the

00:28:28.180 accusations made against them was that they had caused terrible weather which which prevented anne of

00:28:34.480 denmark from coming to scotland where she was supposed to marry king james so and if you look at the

00:28:40.460 history of uh witch trials what you recognize is that they were very much linked to the little ice age

00:28:45.900 because this was the time of the little ice age there was very cold weather in northern europe for a few

00:28:51.120 centuries and uh witch trials exploded in times of particularly cold weather crops were failing

00:28:59.200 people were going hungry people were terrified and they looked for the demonic force that was

00:29:03.560 responsible for all of this and they found it in the crazy old woman at the end of the street or the

00:29:08.360 hysterical woman who spoke her mind or however they uh viewed these women and those women had too many

00:29:14.280 cats too many cats cat ladies i'm sure as well and and so the the point i make and um it's funny you

00:29:21.340 pinpoint that chapter because i've had so much feedback on this chapter from people who are either

00:29:26.080 infuriated by it or who who feel enlightened by it as well i think and the point i make is that

00:29:32.340 there are similarities to the climate discussion today we don't burn witches at the stake anymore but we

00:29:38.280 do brand people as deniers we do blacklist them if they if they criticize um the the idea that the

00:29:44.920 world is ending we there is a an unforgiving climate i think pun intended around the climate change issue

00:29:52.680 and i think it has echoes of those uh witch trials of the past you know for the longest time i've said um

00:30:00.920 my biggest problem with the climate change movement is it doesn't matter what the problem is this

00:30:07.240 solution is always um uh socialism communism some sort of uh left-wing authoritarian government and

00:30:16.540 and you know thus i often call the green party watermelons but it you know they just if you don't

00:30:23.260 agree with the outcome even we could sit here and say well you're absolutely right but that's not the

00:30:28.560 solution you're still denounced as a denier or if you ask for evidence we had a a massive forest fire

00:30:36.720 in british columbia burned most of a town to ground a place called lit in british columbia um the uh

00:30:43.760 the most probable cause of that fire were sparks coming off of a train that locals had complained

00:30:51.780 about these train tracks going through a certain area causing sparks and is still

00:30:58.400 to this day it's no lit and burned to the ground due to climate change we had a whole episode

00:31:03.360 recently talking to a specialist on this who says yes there's a base level warming that's happening

00:31:09.040 may have an impact but there's no correlation to the forest fires which go up and down on an annual

00:31:16.180 basis but we are obsessed in this country that if you don't say all of these forest fires are caused

00:31:22.520 by climate change even the ones caused by careless campfires and cooking fires by people out in the

00:31:27.760 woods well then you are a a climate denier yeah that's it's a similar vibe here in you in the uk and

00:31:36.200 across europe as well i think um you know i'm not i'm not a climate change denier i think climate change

00:31:41.580 is happening i think there's an important discussion to be had about why it's happening and what we might

00:31:46.540 do about it but i am an apocalypse denier i'm a proud apocalypse denier so when extinction rebellion

00:31:53.300 for example says that billions will die unless we achieve net zero by 2050 there is nothing in the

00:32:00.560 scientific literature not a single word that backs up an idea like that nothing in the ipcc report says

00:32:06.940 anything like that uh there is didn't the the recently appointed head of the ipcc recently come

00:32:14.220 out and make statements that against the the constant uh threat of apocalypse saying that this isn't

00:32:21.060 helping us he said yeah i think there are a lot of people at the ipcc who are worried about the

00:32:26.420 political politicization of their reports and the way they get bent to this apocalyptic mindset that

00:32:32.600 some people have so i'm an apocalypse denier i don't think billions of people are about to die

00:32:37.540 because of fossil fuel use and i think that's simply completely untrue and when you see front page

00:32:44.660 front pages of the newspapers which we've had in the uk over the past few weeks saying the planet is on fire

00:32:50.620 that's not true that is simply false you know there are wildfires at the moment particularly tragic

00:32:56.340 ones in hawaii and i think we need to investigate why they happened and why there was a failure of

00:33:01.380 warning to the citizens of of that region who were not warned in time in order that they might escape

00:33:06.840 uh there are wildfires in greece there have been wildfires in portugal so yes there are wildfires

00:33:11.740 as there are every year around the world but the planet is not on fire so when the evening standard

00:33:17.860 here in the uk had a front page of a photoshopped image of the earth uh in a ball of flames that is

00:33:24.880 not science that is not objective journalism that is hysteria that is a form of uh delirium and i think

00:33:32.240 we need to call that out and you know my attitude you know it's interesting that you use the term

00:33:37.860 watermelons because i i've always i've always actually been slightly uncomfortable with the term

00:33:42.440 watermelons i i know what it means green on the outside uh red on the inside so they they use the

00:33:47.200 uh environmental issue as a cover for a kind of left-wing communistic agenda i think something more

00:33:53.300 interesting has happened i think the left over the past few decades has actually abandoned its old

00:33:59.720 commitment to industrial progress to economic growth to liberating the world's poor from poverty and need

00:34:07.260 all of these were great causes of the left for decades you look at someone like sylvia pankhurst

00:34:12.480 one of the suffragettes here in the uk who was also a radical radical leftist um she wrote very

00:34:18.160 often about needing to create more and more stuff we she said we need more production more consumption

00:34:24.940 so that if anything we have too much stuff and certainly enough for people to live on that was the

00:34:30.540 attitude of the left for decades but something turned over the past 30 or 40 years and the left is now

00:34:36.380 one of the great cheerleaders for degrowth instead of economic growth for so-called sustainable

00:34:42.420 development in the third world which really means no development at all and for winding everything down

00:34:48.180 shrinking the human footprint my view is that that is a grotesquely irresponsible argument to make

00:34:53.600 in an era in which three billion people still live in dire poverty when most many people around the world

00:35:00.100 use the same amount of electricity as an american refrigerator when there is an extraordinary

00:35:05.640 energy divide between people like us who are lucky enough to be surrounded by abundant relatively cheap

00:35:12.320 energy and people in parts of africa and asia who have virtually no energy at all the left has abandoned

00:35:18.900 its commitment to economic equality across the globe in favor of going along with this apocalyptic idea

00:35:25.080 that if we don't stop developing then the world will end so i think they've jettisoned their

00:35:30.720 traditional commitments for a hysterical campaign so in terms of um the the impact of climate change

00:35:39.100 and and the movement on the um on the language i like your term apocalypse denier um because you know

00:35:46.860 i don't think it helps anybody's cause to say well there will be no more snow after 2007 here we are in

00:35:52.860 2023 and i can assure you many of us went skiing over this past winter um but in terms of the effect on the

00:36:00.040 language where do you see it hitting the most i think there's an increasing hysteria behind the language

00:36:07.540 so um i touch on this in the book a little bit but it's got even worse since the book came out so we used to

00:36:13.340 talk about climate change then it was climate emergency then it was climate breakdown then the new yorker used

00:36:20.280 the term climate apocalypse and when i read that in the new yorker i thought to myself this is really an interesting

00:36:26.100 shift in language because there's nothing you rational you can say about a climate apocalypse you

00:36:32.140 can't say okay well i think the way we can solve this is by having more economic growth over there and

00:36:37.640 maybe doing this over here because it's an apocalypse it's the end of the world it's the end of life as we

00:36:42.540 know it and there's no rational response to that so one of the points you know i i i see what you're

00:36:48.200 saying a lot of people will still complain well it used to be global warming then it became climate

00:36:53.220 change but you can understand why that difference may have been made and why people wanted to change

00:36:58.600 it but you're right how what do you do in the phase of a climate apocalypse uh go into the bunker make

00:37:05.000 sure you have enough supplies and don't come out till it's over exactly right and that's the impact i

00:37:10.560 think it has on lots of people that i think the more they up the ante and and make the language even

00:37:15.420 more hysterical i think they have a counterproductive impact and we know that there is a rise of climate

00:37:21.580 anxiety amongst young people i've seen reports about climate anxiety amongst teenagers it's been

00:37:26.820 reported in newspapers here and elsewhere i'm sure and i think to myself well that's not surprising

00:37:31.640 they've got greta thunberg the prophetess of doom who's become supposedly the spokesperson for young

00:37:37.600 people i should say for for well-off western young people there are many many young people in other

00:37:43.760 parts of the world who would like some economic growth thanks greta if you don't mind um but she's

00:37:48.860 become the spokesperson and her message is very very unhinged if i may say so the idea that the

00:37:55.980 world is coming to an end that she and her generation have no future that the planet is on fire she has

00:38:01.640 said things like that as well and it has the impact i think of making people either think this is a load

00:38:07.700 of nonsense and i think it is a load of nonsense so they kind of back off and leave it alone and think

00:38:12.080 about other issues instead or it makes them think well if everything's coming to an end and i have no

00:38:17.100 future and there's no point having any children i'll just give up i won't campaign i won't try and

00:38:21.960 change the world i'll just revert to a metaphorical bunker at least and and get on with my small life

00:38:27.940 so um the the hysterical language doesn't help anyone including those who would like to have a cleaner

00:38:33.420 environment and they're listening to the um uh the apocalyptic apocalyptic musings of uh those with

00:38:42.120 the gnostic climate gospel they can only they can know it uh brendan you you remember the childhood

00:38:49.020 uh chant sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me uh i'm not sure why a

00:38:55.140 parent's taught us that because words can definitely hurt um and we all know that but you do close your

00:39:01.660 book uh talking about words wound um are you arguing that words don't wound that they can but

00:39:10.980 there's nothing we can do about it or what what what is your point on writing about words wound because

00:39:17.460 we all know you know journalists love to use phrases like the pen is mightier than the sword

00:39:22.240 um not sure i agree with that all the time but you know words can spark revolutions words can

00:39:27.680 spark movements words can make you fall in love devastate your soul what do you say that we do

00:39:34.440 about language that will offend language that will hurt yeah the reason i wrote that closing chapter

00:39:42.020 is because i think there is a tendency among some of us who support freedom of speech to say to people

00:39:47.820 look they're just words relax calm down they won't kill you they won't hurt you it's just everyday

00:39:53.760 speech because on the um regressive left as i prefer to call them rather than the progressive left on the

00:40:01.400 regressive left there is this view now that words are so hurtful and so damaging to one's self-esteem

00:40:07.080 and and so potentially violent they treat words as violent that they have to be closed down and i think

00:40:12.660 there's a there's a defensive response amongst free speech defenders to say listen relax it's just words

00:40:18.680 so the point i make in that chapter is that we shouldn't say that we shouldn't do that because it's not

00:40:23.120 true words can wound when words can hurt people in fact words can overturn society words can

00:40:31.240 overhaul society every revolution begins with words and ideas and uh you know words make people upset

00:40:39.140 they can change society in a way that feels very disorientating they push forward new ideas that

00:40:45.920 older generations might find quite offensive and and disorientating as well so we should be honest

00:40:51.740 about that and i think that's one of the reasons we should defend freedom of speech precisely because it

00:40:56.440 has the power to change society in a way that is not violent but we should absolutely challenge the

00:41:02.020 idea that words are violence this is a new idea that's been making the rounds for quite some time

00:41:07.180 and and the thing that worries me most about the conflation of words and violence is that it justifies

00:41:12.700 violence in response to words because if you say that those words are so wounding and so hurtful

00:41:18.340 and so violent they have to be silenced eventually people will think well if words are violence

00:41:23.240 why shouldn't i use violence in response to those words that hurt my feelings and i think the perfect

00:41:28.580 example of that was the charlie hebdo massacre in 2015 where two radical islamists visited violence

00:41:37.360 upon cartoonists and writers who they felt offended by whose depictions of muhammad and and other

00:41:43.740 scurrilous material allegedly scurrilous material they found hurtful and violent so we have to maintain a

00:41:51.600 clear distinction a clear moral distinction between words and action but at the same time acknowledge

00:41:57.680 that words are powerful and that the best tool we have for trying to change society for the better

00:42:02.400 okay so you you talk you spoke about the regressive left in in saying you know being offended by words but

00:42:12.760 you've got a faction of the people supporting free speech and often on the fringe of the right i don't know

00:42:20.240 what part of the right to call them who feel it necessary to be needlessly antagonistic in defense of free

00:42:29.000 speech i will say whatever i want i will get in your face i will yell a little scream that doesn't help the

00:42:34.960 cause of free speech either you know being a jerk um sure you're free to be an absolute jerk if you want but being

00:42:41.820 a jerk um well you're just being a jerk you're not advocating for free speech what would you say to those

00:42:47.680 those people i i really agree with that and in fact it's something i find increasingly worrying uh there

00:42:55.340 are sections of the new right the anti-woke right that actually makes me feel quite uncomfortable and i

00:43:01.980 say that as someone who is implacably anti-woke myself um and but you know one of the problems people

00:43:08.380 like me face is that if you criticize wokeness if you criticize these new ideologies people instantly

00:43:14.800 assume you're an old white man you're an old conservative bloke who wants to turn the clock

00:43:19.960 back to the 1950s when women were in the kitchen and gay people were in the closet and black people

00:43:25.880 were not being served at certain restaurants for me the reason i'm against wokeness is the opposite

00:43:31.500 reason to all of that it's precisely the gains of the 1960s and the 1970s those wonderful progressive

00:43:37.800 leaps forward for women's equality for gay rights for civil rights for equality between the races not

00:43:45.020 only in the united states and the united kingdom but also across the world in anti-colonial struggles

00:43:50.020 many of which i find find incredibly inspiring it's precisely those progressive gains that i think

00:43:56.600 are now being undone by the new woke ideologies are now being undone by a trans agenda which i'm sorry

00:44:04.040 sometimes crosses the line into misogyny and sometimes eats away at women's hard-won rights

00:44:10.000 or the idea that young gay people for example might need to have hormonal treatment or surgical treatment

00:44:18.440 in order to correct their sex we see lots of young lesbians in britain undergoing hormonal treatment because

00:44:26.140 they don't want to be lesbians and i find that a potential backwards step for the hard-won rights of gay

00:44:32.140 people um in the race issue as well i'm very worried about the way in which wokeness is rehabilitating

00:44:38.740 the racial imagination and we're now uh pressured to judge everyone by race rather than by character

00:44:45.040 to think that white people are privileged and therefore problematic black people are victims and

00:44:50.500 therefore deserving of pity apparently rather than equality so it's the undoing of those leaps forward

00:44:57.640 that i find most concerning about all of this and i think sections of the right that is anti-woke

00:45:02.640 doesn't really understand that the um the comedian ryan long a canadian fellow from toronto down in new york

00:45:10.060 now um does a lot of sketch comedy videos he did one a little while ago on exactly what you're talking about

00:45:15.080 on um the shift in how we look at race and and he just using comedy magically detailed how

00:45:22.700 uh the the new anti-racism agenda fits perfectly well with the old racist agenda yeah the races should

00:45:31.640 be separate oh i agree uh we we shouldn't date each other oh i agree and like these two you know

00:45:38.280 one guy playing the the old racist the other one playing the new anti-racist they agreed on everything

00:45:43.960 um it it's a bizarre world that we live in and we need to be able to talk about it and that's why i

00:45:49.700 think your book is important brendan well thank you very much brian i think um i really agree with

00:45:55.440 what he's just said i think some of the new race discussion is horrific actually and i am a firm

00:46:01.200 believer in racial equality i had a big argument with robin d'angelo who's the author of white fragility

00:46:06.640 on bbc tv a few years ago where she was going on and on about whiteness and i said look let's forget

00:46:12.560 about skin color and talk about what we have in common and it was like i was an alien from another

00:46:17.240 planet so yeah i think we do have to introduce reason and i would say ideals of equality and

00:46:24.760 tolerance and freedom back into all these discussions if we want to make society a better place all right

00:46:30.520 his new book is a heretics manifesto uh essays on the unsayable and uh thanks for saying them with me

00:46:37.920 today brendan thank you all right my name's brian lily this has been the full comment podcast full

00:46:43.700 comment is a post media podcast this episode was produced by andre pru with theme music by price

00:46:49.480 hall kevin liban is the executive producer you can subscribe to full comment on apple podcast google

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00:47:02.300 rating give us a review tell your friends about us share it on social media thanks for listening

00:47:07.760 until next time i'm brian lily

Full Comment - September 18, 2023

Welcome to the tolerance witch trials

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