Making Sense - Sam Harris - #93 — Identity & Terror

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.360 Today I am speaking again with the great Douglas Murray.

00:00:50.480 Douglas is an associate editor at The Spectator, and he writes for many other publications,

00:00:55.240 including the Sunday Times, Standpoint, and the Wall Street Journal.

00:01:00.040 He's given talks at the British and European parliaments, as well as at the White House.

00:01:05.700 He's a truly inspired debater.

00:01:08.940 I've never had the pleasure of being on a debate stage with him, but it would be an honor.

00:01:14.660 And he's the author of a wonderful new book, which we discussed in the last podcast, titled

00:01:23.580 The Strange Death of Europe, Immigration, Identity, Islam. 1.00

00:01:29.100 And at the outset of this podcast, I wound up addressing what is currently the most popular

00:01:34.500 question on my Ask Me Anything page.

00:01:36.600 I was going to save that for my next AMA episode, but it just made more sense to work through it

00:01:41.500 here with Douglas.

00:01:43.180 So here's the question.

00:01:45.060 What are your thoughts regarding the Charlottesville incident?

00:01:47.940 Please address the many aspects, i.e. the rioting, the media coverage, the individual groups

00:01:53.440 present, Antifa, BLM, Trump statements, etc.

00:01:58.480 So Douglas and I get fairly deep into that and to related topics like identity politics,

00:02:05.980 guilt by association.

00:02:07.020 And then we finally move on to the topics that have been left out of our prior discussion

00:02:11.580 of his book, topics such as the source of Western values, the problem of finding meaning

00:02:17.700 in a secular world, and related issues.

00:02:22.300 Douglas is really one of my favorite people to speak with, and he's doing very courageous

00:02:26.800 work on the topic of Islam and Islamism in particular.

00:02:30.880 Like many people doing that work, he is often unfairly maligned, but he really is one of the

00:02:38.660 most thoughtful people you could ever hope to meet.

00:02:41.580 So it is indeed a great pleasure to once again bring you Douglas Murray.

00:02:51.840 I am here with Douglas Murray.

00:02:53.720 Douglas, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

00:02:56.080 It's a great pleasure, Sam.

00:02:57.100 So, we were all set to talk about questions of human values and their link to tradition.

00:03:06.600 I think we were going to kind of stumble upon the glories of the Sistine Chapel, having already

00:03:13.480 talked about Islam and immigration and all of that, terrorism, etc., to our heart's content 0.90

00:03:19.840 and to the laceration of our audience.

00:03:23.180 But now we have some major news events threatening to derail us.

00:03:27.520 We have neo-Nazis marching and committing murders in Charlottesville.

00:03:32.320 We have another terrorist atrocity in Europe, this time in Barcelona.

00:03:36.880 And then I think just in the last hour or so, there are reports from Finland of a stabbing.

00:03:43.260 Maybe you have more information than I do.

00:03:44.740 You're in the time zone.

00:03:46.340 It just doesn't stop, Douglas.

00:03:47.500 No, it doesn't.

00:03:49.480 It just goes on and on.

00:03:51.140 And as we've said before, I mean, the thing is that some of the facts vary, but, I mean,

00:03:56.000 not very much.

00:03:58.560 And, you know, it's sort of hard to ever find anything new to say about it, although sometimes

00:04:04.400 new people, you know, discover the facts about it and get new opinions.

00:04:09.160 But there's not much variation in all this, as you know.

00:04:12.340 Yeah, I think there's some new ground to cover with respect to Charlottesville.

00:04:17.740 And I think having you on the podcast for this could be perfect, although obviously we

00:04:23.200 didn't plan to talk about this.

00:04:24.620 But let's start with Charlottesville and Trump and the heat he's getting for his response 0.97

00:04:30.200 to it, because I'm in hot water here with at least the moral imbecile wing of my audience 0.97

00:04:37.520 for a tweet I sent out right after Charlottesville. 0.91

00:04:42.160 I wrote, quoting myself now on Twitter,

00:04:45.540 Seeing the absolutely cretinous response to that, I added, the necessary context, of course, 0.99

00:05:01.280 is the last 200 years of human history.

00:05:03.840 So I think it's perfect to debrief with you over this, because your bona fides as someone

00:05:11.560 who is worrying about immigration are impeccable, obviously.

00:05:15.540 And there's no doubt there are people in the world or even in our audience who worry that

00:05:21.240 you may be a white supremacist or be motivated by racism.

00:05:27.040 So I want to kind of walk through this.

00:05:29.780 And if there's any point where you disagree, I'll be very interested to hear it.

00:05:34.240 But let me just clarify what I was saying about identity politics here, because the point

00:05:39.120 strikes me as absolutely obvious.

00:05:41.080 But given the response, it is clearly not obvious to some people.

00:05:44.780 Just to give you the predictable response, I've been accused of virtue signaling in the

00:05:50.960 most abject way.

00:05:52.540 This is kind of reverse racism. 0.94

00:05:54.560 You know, so racism against white people is OK, or you can only be racist if you're white. 1.00

00:05:58.920 I hate white people. 0.99

00:06:00.340 Something in that genre just came to me in torrents. 0.99

00:06:04.820 So let me just clarify this and then see if you disagree.

00:06:08.380 So just as not all religions are the same, you know, I have much more to say against Islam 1.00

00:06:15.660 than I have against Anglicanism, though I can find something to say about Anglicanism.

00:06:21.920 And I have much less to say against Buddhism.

00:06:24.300 I think there's wonderful things in Buddhism, although I have negative things to say about

00:06:28.620 it as a religion, there are differences here.

00:06:31.420 And so, too, with identity politics.

00:06:33.720 Not all identity politics are the same.

00:06:36.480 And they're certainly not the same with respect to the context in which they're being practiced

00:06:41.920 in history.

00:06:42.620 I mean, if you were practicing German identity politics in London in 1950, well, then you deserve 1.00

00:06:51.240 to have the shit kicked out of you, right? 0.99

00:06:52.980 I mean, this is just, you know, and the same could be true for, you know, Japanese identity 0.99

00:06:57.800 politics in Nanking.

00:07:00.060 And if you compare that to black identity politics in Alabama in 1964, which I think most sane people 0.91

00:07:10.940 would acknowledge was not only morally understandable, but morally and politically necessary, right?

00:07:17.660 I mean, that is identity politics, a.k.a. the civil rights movement in America.

00:07:23.120 Now, my tweet was actually fairly carefully written.

00:07:26.780 I mean, it starts with, you know, in 2017, all identity politics is detestable.

00:07:32.800 And, of course, I'm thinking about the West, and I'm thinking primarily about America.

00:07:36.580 I was commenting on Charlottesville.

00:07:38.700 And I believe this.

00:07:40.200 You know, I think Black Lives Matter is a dangerous and divisive and retrograde movement. 1.00

00:07:46.300 And it is a dishonest movement.

00:07:48.340 I mean, it's not to say that everyone associated with it is dishonest, but I find very little

00:07:53.960 to recommend in what I've seen from Black Lives Matter.

00:07:57.840 I think it is the wrong move for African-Americans to be organizing around the variable of race 1.00

00:08:03.640 now.

00:08:03.980 It's obviously the wrong move.

00:08:05.300 It's obviously destructive to civil society.

00:08:08.100 But let me just say that Black identity politics in the U.S. in 2017 is still totally understandable. 1.00

00:08:16.440 I think it's misguided, but I think it's completely understandable. 0.93

00:08:19.740 And in certain local cases, perhaps even defensible.

00:08:24.460 What is not understandable, generally speaking, is white identity politics in the U.S. in 2017.

00:08:30.440 I mean, you've got pampered doughboys like Richard Spencer, who have never been the victim of 1.00

00:08:36.080 anything except now the consequences of his own stupidity. 1.00

00:08:39.640 And now he gets punched as a Nazi because people mistake him for a Nazi, though he doesn't 1.00

00:08:44.460 think he's a Nazi and perhaps he isn't a Nazi. 0.60

00:08:46.380 But you have white nationalists and white supremacists marching in the company of actual Nazis and members 0.70

00:08:54.940 of the KKK. And that is aligning themselves with people who actually celebrate Adolf Hitler and

00:09:02.540 the murder of millions of people.

00:09:04.700 Right. And so this is not the same thing as Black Lives Matter.

00:09:07.560 And it's not the same thing as even Antifa, these goons who attack them and perhaps got

00:09:15.020 attacked in turn. It's hard to sort out who started it there.

00:09:18.540 And I've got nothing good to say about Antifa.

00:09:21.800 These people have been attacking people all over the country and they're responsible for

00:09:27.620 a lot of violence. I think it's a dangerous organization, but it doesn't have the same

00:09:31.280 genocidal ideology of actual Nazis.

00:09:35.600 Right. So you have to make distinctions here.

00:09:38.040 And all identity politics is not the same.

00:09:41.360 So I guess I'm just wondering, do you disagree with any of that?

00:09:45.100 I think I have a slightly different take on it.

00:09:47.060 I mean, I mean, I agree with most of what you just said.

00:09:49.800 I think there are several things.

00:09:52.380 One is that I think it's inevitable that if identity politics runs a riot rampant among

00:09:59.860 one group of people, it's almost always going to cause a counterforce.

00:10:06.800 In my latest book, In the Strange Death of Europe, I mentioned how it's quite hard to see

00:10:12.820 how you don't get, you know, nasty white identity politics at some stage as a response to nasty

00:10:22.280 identity politics of other kinds.

00:10:23.680 Or in other words, I think, as I said at one point, you you it's not in the long term sustainable.

00:10:30.460 Everyone's allowed to do it on the basis of their skin pigmentation, apart from people 0.97

00:10:34.880 of one skin pigmentation.

00:10:36.320 It's sort of it's just hard to imagine how that would be sustainable in the long term.

00:10:40.240 Although I agree with you, there are there are ebbs and flows in history of when you would

00:10:45.180 legitimately have a cause among one group and and then it would diminish and so on.

00:10:51.860 And I think there are two other things.

00:10:53.440 One is that it's very hard once you go down this route to know when to stop.

00:10:58.460 And it's not just a personal judgment, is it?

00:11:00.420 Because it's it relies on the goodwill of everybody else from your background or or of the same

00:11:06.280 skin pigmentation.

00:11:07.460 I mean, it it it means that you you're not going to have an opportunist on your side.

00:11:12.660 Well, you know, we all know human nature.

00:11:14.500 You always have you always have hucksters and you always have opportunists and you always

00:11:18.500 have people who who, as I often say, remain on the barricades even after the battle is won

00:11:23.980 because they don't have a home to go to other than the barricades.

00:11:26.540 And that phenomenon is going to going to happen.

00:11:29.980 And I think it's it's been happening in a whole set of of rights claims in recent years.

00:11:35.900 And and I think I suppose thirdly that the I don't entirely agree.

00:11:39.900 I agree with you.

00:11:40.640 I mean, I can't see why somebody like Richard Spencer could ever be regarded as having a

00:11:46.300 sort of, as you say, legitimate grievance, as it were.

00:11:50.820 Not that there's any legitimate grievance that could could permit somebody going down into

00:11:55.360 those fetid byways anyway.

00:11:56.840 But but I disagree that it that it's not possible that, as it were, a white person somewhere

00:12:03.400 in the States or some people might be feeling some aggravation.

00:12:07.280 And I don't again, again, I mean, I'm talking as much like you in the in the issue of context

00:12:12.680 to do with particular groups at this moment in time.

00:12:14.860 Let me throw out the obvious one.

00:12:17.120 I can see how a white American in a, you know, former steel town without a job and with all 0.99

00:12:28.360 the same sort of lack of prospects as people of other skin colors in the area and so on.

00:12:34.600 Also, on top of all of that, has to endlessly hear from the media and from a lot of rich kids

00:12:40.220 at universities, the claim that he has got white privilege and him feeling, you know,

00:12:47.600 particularly at this moment in time, particularly disgruntled about that.

00:12:52.000 Now, as I say, all of this, to my mind, is is is just it's just horrible, horrible terrain,

00:12:57.400 which I I just wish we weren't collectively stuck on.

00:13:01.100 I mean, of course, we agreed on that sort of too obvious to say.

00:13:03.500 But but I say it because I have to say as an outsider looking at America, it does seem

00:13:09.340 to me that you're driving yourselves mad at the moment.

00:13:12.580 And one of the ways in which you're driving yourselves mad is in this way in which you

00:13:17.240 went towards something which I thought was the purpose and the dream within America, the

00:13:22.360 dream after the civil rights achievements and so on, which was which now seems to me to

00:13:27.980 be being thrown away and and almost bungee jump going back from after after the moment

00:13:35.560 of progress.

00:13:36.420 And I think that this is happening because people are going down the whole avenue of this

00:13:42.020 identity politics in general.

00:13:44.260 I see it everywhere in the States, on everything.

00:13:47.320 And I've never heard I've never heard. 0.96

00:13:49.180 No, the only one I can claim to have any legitimate kind of personal insight into is the sort of gay 1.00

00:13:53.640 identity politics.

00:13:54.580 I've never seen people at such a pitch of of illegitimate agitation.

00:14:01.620 And I don't know why they're doing it.

00:14:04.220 Again, I fully agree.

00:14:05.520 And this is why, you know, I I would say that all identity politics is toxic at this point.

00:14:12.840 Now, again, there are local cases where this almost certainly isn't true.

00:14:16.560 I mean, if you're going to tell me that the Rohingya Muslims need to practice some identity

00:14:20.480 politics against the murderous Buddhists in Myanmar, OK, fine, you know, I'll sign that 1.00

00:14:26.600 waiver.

00:14:26.920 But generally speaking, in developed societies where civil society is or was well established,

00:14:36.100 where you have norms of a kind of universal political argumentation, where the color of

00:14:42.300 your skin is irrelevant to the position you are arguing for or should be, must be to be 1.00

00:14:47.520 persuasive.

00:14:48.580 Identity politics is a disaster.

00:14:51.480 And yes, as you say, the light was just fully visible at the end of the tunnel here. 0.92

00:14:57.220 And we've had you hit a two term black president. 0.84

00:15:00.680 If we can't secure that as a as a durable gain for civil rights, what the hell is going on?

00:15:07.000 Right.

00:15:07.140 Exactly.

00:15:08.200 And the secretary of state and so on.

00:15:10.500 But I see, I think I think this thing about, as it were, it's not just about where you

00:15:16.020 individually or I individually or any other individual holds it.

00:15:18.640 It's the fact that there there are always going to be people who, for short term political

00:15:22.460 gain, do not want to exercise the same standards.

00:15:26.120 You know, there will always be somebody who who who wants to who feels that, you know, they

00:15:31.380 haven't had a fair enough, you know, go at things and or they just want more or they want

00:15:35.740 to be famous or they want to be rich or something.

00:15:38.400 They want to lead a crowd.

00:15:40.360 And and they will claim that it doesn't matter that, you know, we've had a two term black

00:15:45.200 president. 0.85

00:15:46.160 The whole country is still institutionally racist.

00:15:48.720 And we're only minutes away from slavery again.

00:15:51.300 There's always going to be there's always going to be a reward for those people, it seems

00:15:56.160 to me, in the situation that we are or you are in America setting up for yourselves.

00:16:00.820 Yeah, well, so let me just again reiterate that I agree with you that in certain cases,

00:16:06.660 even white identity politics is understandable here.

00:16:10.520 Again, if you're talking about people who have been kind of passed over by the new economy

00:16:17.220 and are in addition to finding it difficult to get a job, they're being told that it's good

00:16:24.940 that it's more difficult for white people, given the history of racism.

00:16:29.240 And then they have to confront the reality of immigration taking some jobs, say.

00:16:35.160 So, yes, that's understandable.

00:16:36.580 But again, that doesn't map on to Richard Spencer.

00:16:39.960 Right.

00:16:40.200 And no, no.

00:16:41.620 And I wouldn't want that person to go remotely near white identity politics as a response.

00:16:47.760 Yeah.

00:16:48.220 Yeah.

00:16:48.520 It's just that it's just it's it's it's it seems to me more likely that people are going

00:16:53.420 to be pushed in such a direction if you sustain for too long.

00:16:57.720 The idea, as I say, that everyone has that right other than them.

00:17:00.900 Of course.

00:17:01.700 And that's what I see happening.

00:17:04.800 I mean, by the way, it's just a thought.

00:17:06.760 I mean, this all these things, the context of these things in a way reminds me of that

00:17:10.380 really interesting thing.

00:17:11.880 Some years ago, our mutual friend, I think I can say friend, certainly in your case,

00:17:17.600 somebody I admire very much, Richard Dawkins.

00:17:20.860 Some years ago, do you remember in an interview talking about children?

00:17:25.980 He didn't want, you know, he didn't want people to be called Christian children.

00:17:30.280 They're just the children of Christian parents and so on.

00:17:32.120 Your listeners will probably be very familiar with this point.

00:17:34.580 There was this really interesting point when Richard in one interview said, you know,

00:17:37.700 there's no such thing as a Christian child. 0.54

00:17:39.380 There's no such thing as a Muslim child. 1.00

00:17:41.200 And then he stopped himself.

00:17:43.180 He stopped himself because he was about to say something he knew he didn't want to say.

00:17:47.000 And he acknowledged it.

00:17:47.740 He said, I don't want to say there's no such thing as a Jewish child.

00:17:51.540 Now, why do you not want to say it?

00:17:53.320 Because because of the echoes we all know about this.

00:17:56.420 And this is just that that is a horrible thing.

00:17:58.860 And he knew it and he pointed to it.

00:18:00.480 It was it was fascinating.

00:18:01.480 And that's the same, it seems to me, slightly with what's going on with the what the identity

00:18:06.960 politics thing we are.

00:18:10.200 Tolerant of the black identity politics, because we recognize that within living memory, 1.00

00:18:15.620 the black communities, particularly in America, had legitimate grievances and legitimate cause

00:18:20.940 to have an identity that they that they marched on, as it were.

00:18:25.560 Um, and we're also aware that in living memory, uh, uh, there were, you know, white people in

00:18:32.280 the South who, who, who, you know, lynched people and because of the color of their skin.

00:18:37.220 So what we're doing is, is getting around and, and, and coping with the sharp corners of not

00:18:44.540 that distant history.

00:18:46.180 The thing I think that's so, that's so worrying about it though, as I say, is that I hear almost

00:18:51.780 nothing of mending this.

00:18:54.600 I see only, and I hear only in America, people staking their careers and their, and their livelihoods

00:19:00.820 and, and, and their entire occupations are making this worse.

00:19:04.680 People claiming it's never been so bad.

00:19:07.380 People setting up their own stalls in the identity marketplace.

00:19:11.520 And I just, I mean, maybe, as I say, maybe it's just nature of the media and of people becoming

00:19:17.180 well-known because they make the most outrageous statement or whatever, but, but I just, I'm

00:19:22.040 not hearing in America anything to do with a sort of spirit of, of mending.

00:19:27.400 And this worries me.

00:19:29.460 Yeah.

00:19:29.800 Well, I think one way to mend it is to make the kinds of distinctions we're making now.

00:19:34.960 It's relevant that within living memory, as you say, these kinds of atrocities and

00:19:41.500 injustices were commonplace.

00:19:44.340 And, and, and, you know, as you know, you and I point out ad nauseum, it is relevant when

00:19:49.340 you talk about Islam at this moment, it is relevant what is happening not only in living

00:19:55.000 memory, but in, in, you know, our working memory entered consciousness two seconds ago

00:19:59.940 with respect to the news and to not move in the next sentence to some statement of moral

00:20:05.380 equivalence with respect to the crusades.

00:20:07.700 So context matters here.

00:20:09.400 Perhaps I don't need to belabor this, but I stand by this tweet.

00:20:13.080 I think if you can't differentiate the identity politics of black people in America from the 1.00

00:20:20.300 white supremacist identity politics, we're seeing given voice in, in Charlottesville, you've

00:20:27.420 got some moral calibration problems on your hands.

00:20:30.860 That's not to say that some form of white backlash against the rampant identity politics we're

00:20:38.360 seeing practiced in America isn't to be expected or, or, or, or understandable in certain cases.

00:20:44.640 I know.

00:20:45.260 I mean, I just, I just look at all this with such horror because I, you know, I genuinely

00:20:49.960 have thought for most of my life that we were getting beyond this.

00:20:54.040 And, and I sort of still think we are, I just, I just think, as I say, that the, the standards

00:21:00.340 that, that we might wish to apply, there will always be people who, who, who, whose careers are

00:21:06.140 predicated on not applying them.

00:21:08.060 I mean, you know, in my country, in Britain, we had this, this long business with the Cecil

00:21:13.480 Rhodes statues a couple of years ago, the roads must fall thing.

00:21:17.580 But, you know, that whole thing really was, was whipped up by some South African students

00:21:22.680 who happened to be Rhodes scholars who were, were, you know, basically appealing to an audience

00:21:28.660 back home in South Africa and were, were going to make careers when they went back.

00:21:33.660 You just, you know, there are always going to be people who are going to do that and are

00:21:38.480 going to take advantage.

00:21:39.180 Look at, look at one other, by the way, a little hobby horse of mine, this Anne Frank Center

00:21:43.600 in America, uh, Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect and Tolerance or something.

00:21:48.960 It's, it's, it's, it's run by a couple of just activist Democrats who are standing on the name

00:21:56.900 of a murdered Jewish girl who they never had met or had any connection to and using this dead Jewish

00:22:03.620 girl to attack Republican politicians. 1.00

00:22:06.800 They don't like, I, I, I myself think it's, it's just grotesque beyond words.

00:22:11.680 I think if they had any shame, they would stop, but they don't, they, they, they were furthering

00:22:17.080 their careers.

00:22:17.620 They're really, really keen on it.

00:22:19.360 You know, they, they ran some kind of gay rights group and then they obviously rise.

00:22:23.140 It was sort of, you know, it wasn't such running and so much fuel in that maybe.

00:22:27.060 And then they just decided to, as I say, grab a dead Jewish girl and, and, and run with, 0.99

00:22:31.900 with, um, you know, using her name.

00:22:34.120 And I mean, I just think this is from every community and every background and every skin color

00:22:39.080 and everything, you just, you're always going to have these people who, who just don't want

00:22:43.720 to exercise the standards because they need not to.

00:22:47.320 And there's also just an impressive degree of confusion here.

00:22:50.720 People just can't follow the plot.

00:22:52.340 So you, so you have something like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which in the face of a Nazi 0.69

00:22:58.680 rally in Charlottesville seems like an absolutely necessary institution.

00:23:05.620 This is what the Southern Poverty Law Center is for, to combat this kind of white extremism

00:23:11.860 in the country.

00:23:12.940 But in the, in the same period, they have listed our friend and colleague Maja Nawaz as a anti-Muslim

00:23:19.360 extremist.

00:23:20.000 And as much as we've gotten the word out about that, you still have people like Tim Cook,

00:23:26.320 the head of Apple, giving a million dollars to the SPLC in recent weeks.

00:23:30.780 People can't cohere in a vision of what makes sense morally and politically because there's

00:23:37.800 this identity politics and political correctness has just kind of cleaved our conversation about

00:23:44.980 current events in ways that are just confusing to people.

00:23:48.780 And, and the response to Trump in the aftermath of Charlottesville or the response to Trump's

00:23:53.600 response, it has been emblematic of this.

00:23:56.680 So for instance, I despise Trump as deeply and as broadly as I think any person I can

00:24:03.800 think of. 0.98

00:24:04.420 I mean, I just think he is a conscienceless monster and, you know, I don't need to go 0.77

00:24:09.160 into that at length. 0.53

00:24:10.160 I probably have 15 or 20 hours on this podcast of me railing against Trump, but leave it to

00:24:16.420 the left to attack him in ways that make him look nuanced and judicious in the aftermath

00:24:22.360 of this, of this thing.

00:24:23.620 I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable how bad the commentary has been.

00:24:28.340 I mean, so perhaps we can parse this and before we get off Charlottesville, because I think

00:24:32.940 it's important.

00:24:34.320 So the first point to make is that Trump failed what, as many people have said, is, is perhaps

00:24:41.040 the easiest test of moral leadership a U.S.

00:24:43.860 president can ever face, which is to condemn Nazis in our own society, right?

00:24:50.420 I mean, like that didn't happen early and it didn't even happen to a satisfactory degree

00:24:56.180 late.

00:24:57.440 I mean, he just, he just has never managed to articulate what is wrong with a full embrace

00:25:04.860 of the public square by Nazis and armed KKK members.

00:25:09.680 I mean, we had people marching with military rifles in a U.S. city, intimidating people.

00:25:17.740 And in the context of this march, someone gets murdered in what I'm sure will prove to be

00:25:24.960 an actual act of terrorism, which is to say that the person who did it wasn't mentally ill,

00:25:30.440 but was actually ideologically motivated by his beliefs, his, you know, white supremacist

00:25:34.680 beliefs.

00:25:35.260 I don't think we know that yet.

00:25:36.460 Perhaps that's been discussed in the news and I'm unaware of it, but it's absolutely

00:25:41.980 the easiest possible thing for a sane and ethical U.S.

00:25:46.600 president to get up and condemn this in the strongest possible terms.

00:25:49.880 And he didn't do that.

00:25:50.940 So that's what people are appropriately reacting to.

00:25:54.100 And in addition, there's the fact that because he's been so bad on this issue and because

00:25:58.540 he flirted with these people throughout the campaign and in the last six months and because

00:26:04.160 he's managed to give white supremacists in our society the impression that he's on their

00:26:09.340 side or at least giving them cover or winking at them in some sense, it's just he's in some

00:26:15.160 sense culpable for the brazenness of this emergence of white supremacy in recent weeks.

00:26:22.880 And so that's one point.

00:26:25.220 But what the left is also doing in response to his failure here is they're castigating

00:26:30.840 him for things that actually are true and make sense.

00:26:35.380 And there's no distinction here.

00:26:37.380 They're castigating him to the same degree for points like that Antifa were also violent,

00:26:43.520 right?

00:26:43.820 And they're also a dangerous organization.

00:26:45.560 And it's also despicable to have them attacking in many cases, perhaps across the board, but

00:26:52.240 at least in some cases, were actually peaceful marchers who just happened to be Nazis, right?

00:26:58.280 But if you're a Nazi who's marching peacefully and get attacked by Antifa goons, well, then 0.82

00:27:05.680 your violence is actually in self-defense in that case, right?

00:27:09.560 It is a morally ambiguous situation when you have these two groups in the public square.

00:27:14.340 And yet he's getting savaged for making that point as much as any other point he did or

00:27:18.980 didn't make.

00:27:19.680 The other thing about Trump is that he, as he always does, his narcissism and self-regard

00:27:26.900 bled through even in the moment of commenting on this political emergency.

00:27:32.440 And so when he mentioned the mother of the slain woman and talked about how she sent him such

00:27:39.720 a nice message on social media and how he appreciated that, it was so dripping with the focus on himself

00:27:47.340 that it was just, you know, appalling.

00:27:49.580 So virtually everything was wrong with how he handled that news conference.

00:27:53.580 And yet the left still manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by focusing on the few

00:28:02.920 points he was making that were in fact legitimate or at least potentially legitimate.

00:28:08.580 Unless we can learn to talk about these things in an honest way, what's happened now is the response

00:28:15.560 to Trump's failure has been so uncritical of, with respect to these issues, that the left has managed

00:28:23.800 to say all of the things that make it seem like just a purely partisan overreaction to his failure.

00:28:32.020 And so the Republican base or the Trump supporting base now discount everything that's being said

00:28:38.420 about him in the aftermath of Charlottesville. 1.00

00:28:41.260 And you have, of course, again, idiots and goons, anti-Trump appearing on all the major television 1.00

00:28:48.540 stations in America, saying that, yeah, we should, you know, we should bring down the statues of 1.00

00:28:54.240 Abraham Lincoln and, and, and all the founding fathers, and we should also blow up Mount Rushmore.

00:28:59.840 And, you know, I mean, you get, you get all those people coming out, making their short term

00:29:03.320 political opportunity.

00:29:06.020 If I can say so about, about this, I mean, I, I'm, I'm, maybe it's just be, as it were,

00:29:12.020 more generous in my interpretation of this, I may be wrong on it.

00:29:15.480 But it seems to me that there are two bits of the criticism of Trump after Charlottesville.

00:29:19.500 The first was, was whether what some of what he said was wrong or right.

00:29:24.380 And the other one is whether the timing was wrong or right.

00:29:26.320 Now, it seems to me that self-evidently, the timing was obviously wrong.

00:29:30.400 You don't do a moral equivalence thing after somebody's being killed.

00:29:33.760 You just come out and condemn the people who did the killing and, and so on.

00:29:37.020 Um, the, the problem is that, that, that I think there is probably a legitimate sense

00:29:43.260 of grievance among some people in America about the fact that, that as it were, in terms

00:29:49.160 of this anti-far, um, violence and so on, you're not starting from a level playing field.

00:29:55.120 I mean, the so-called anti-fascists in America are allowed to just go onto campuses and burn

00:30:01.220 them down and, and, and, and smash everything up and still be called anti-fascists, people 0.63

00:30:07.400 who are actually the closest thing to fascists until you see the people in Charlottesville.

00:30:12.380 And, and that just doesn't get the, that doesn't get the, the, the condemnation and so on.

00:30:17.000 So I imagine that what Trump was thinking was, I'm not, I'm again, I may be being generous,

00:30:21.840 but, but my, my impression would be that he was thinking, I'm not giving them that the so-called

00:30:28.220 anti-fascists are indeed all anti-fascists and that everyone they call fascists are fascists.

00:30:34.280 But this is, again, this is a breakdown of the, of the terms. This is as a result of the overreach.

00:30:39.680 I mean, again, if, if, if you, if, if the Southern Poverty Law Center is allowed to designate churches

00:30:45.980 that don't agree with gay marriage as hate groups, then we're already slipping. If Charles

00:30:53.180 Murray is allowed to be called a fascist and allowed to be drummed off a campus and a, and a,

00:30:59.340 and a female professor he's with assaulted, and it doesn't get any sympathy or care or concern,

00:31:05.980 then we're already slipping down this problem. I'll give you a couple of examples that strike me as

00:31:11.320 fairly egregious, which make your point. And this is, I haven't really taken stock of who is guilty

00:31:18.640 here, but they're, you know, very prominent people who you and I respect as journalists in every other

00:31:24.500 context. But people tweet photos, you know, from D-Day saying, you know, alt-left rioters, you know,

00:31:33.760 attacking fascists or something like that. It's like, so, so making fun of Trump's point. And so the,

00:31:40.060 the suggestion is, is that the people who are the, the Antifa people or whoever, whoever they were,

00:31:45.980 who are fighting the Nazis in Charlottesville were the, the moral equivalent of our soldiers

00:31:53.440 during World War II. It's terrific, isn't it? I mean, it makes you, it also, by the way, how,

00:31:57.740 how cheap and easy is it? I mean, you know, the soldiers who stormed the beaches of D-Day saw their

00:32:02.480 friends and comrades shot down beside them. A lot of them saw things they'd never forget and went

00:32:07.720 through unbelievable things. Every single person there that day had a courage that, that most people in

00:32:12.680 our generation, thank God, will never have to even try to summon up or imagine. And here are these

00:32:17.340 people who just have to tweet and they make themselves feel like the moral equivalents of

00:32:21.740 those people. Again, I mean, I've said enough against Trump to hopefully never be condemned for

00:32:30.140 failing to detect any of his moral or intellectual lapses. But in this case, I will give him the benefit

00:32:38.260 of the doubt and follow you there and, and imagine that he was just trying to be fairly scrupulous about

00:32:47.320 the blame that existed on both sides and how, and what a danger this represents to civil society where

00:32:54.820 you have people, you know, members of the KKK and, and neo-Nazis marching with a permit, right?

00:33:02.500 Which is something our first amendment protects. And they're getting attacked by the people who show

00:33:09.460 up to protest. Now, I, I'm sure, I'm sure that ran both ways. Perhaps there were neo-Nazis who were

00:33:15.780 doing the attacking first, but still you can't attack members of the KKK and Nazis just because you don't

00:33:24.160 like them. I mean, that's like, if you are using force first, you are the criminal in our society.

00:33:29.200 Now, you might want to rewrite those laws. You might decide that, that at a certain point,

00:33:34.880 Nazis shouldn't be allowed to assemble. You might want to follow Germany and pass laws against Holocaust 0.84

00:33:40.960 denial or the display in the swastika. I don't think you, you do want to do that. I think, 0.99

00:33:46.920 I think our first amendment is the right way to go here, but given the laws and the norms of civil

00:33:53.500 society, you can defend much of what Trump was saying there. What you can't defend is his,

00:34:01.180 is the man and how he has practiced politics up until this point and the dog whistles he has given

00:34:07.020 to racists for now years. And so the context matters and, and that, that's what's misleading

00:34:14.520 people here. Can I, can I make two, two points to that? The first is this comes down to a consistency

00:34:20.360 point. Um, this reminds me of a, of a, of a very important issue that has come up, uh, in my country,

00:34:28.280 uh, all sorts of times. What do you, what, what do you do about a collective group of people, uh, or a,

00:34:35.240 um, a voluntary organization of people? And where do you draw the line between, um, uh, claiming they're

00:34:41.460 all responsible for something or not. Now you'll see where I'm going here, but let me give you an

00:34:45.560 example. Um, I don't think I would, there, there are, there's a mosque in, uh, in, um, not far from

00:34:53.180 where I'm presently sitting. That's, that's run by, uh, uh, among others, uh, somebody who's a

00:34:59.340 former military commander of Hamas. Okay. Um, I, I would not say, you know, that everybody in his

00:35:08.140 mosque was a terrorist or that everybody in his mosque was Hamas, or even that everybody 0.83

00:35:14.500 in his mosque was, um, sympathetic to Hamas. I just, I just would be very careful about that 0.51

00:35:20.020 for all sorts of reasons, some legal, some just practical and some to do with just not wanting

00:35:26.700 to imply to all sorts of members of the public that, you know, that whole place is filled with

00:35:33.460 terrorists because there are consequences potentially of such speech.

00:35:38.140 Now I would like to think that it was possible to be consistent on that sort of thing. As I

00:35:45.140 understand it, Trump seems to have thought, and I don't know whether this is the case or

00:35:49.160 not, that there was a, there was a protest, um, uh, happening and then the KKK and the

00:35:54.900 others show up and so on. Now that there are lots of other cases of that, um, stop the war 0.86

00:36:00.500 coalition marches, for instance, you start to stop the war coalition march. And then, uh, some

00:36:05.740 people come along with a load of stuff that like hates the Jews. To what extent can you say, okay,

00:36:12.580 everybody on that march hates the Jews. I think you can't, I think you have to say, look, it attracts

00:36:18.520 those sort of people. So what can we infer about your cause for instance? But I think, I think in order

00:36:25.380 to be, you know, uh, in order to try to think our way through this, I think we do need to have some

00:36:31.440 kind of consistency on that approach. And I think that there is a deliberate desire to say in certain

00:36:38.420 directions, actually, I need these people all to be fascists or all to be Nazis. And I reckon, you know,

00:36:46.340 I mean, I can't foresee a situation where I was on a march and was marching along and a bunch of

00:36:53.020 people with swastikas were beside me and I was okay with that. Okay. So, but I mean, it's the sort 1.00

00:36:58.900 of scenario that we've, we've seen, as I say, in similar situations. And one of the, one of the big

00:37:04.160 problems in this, it comes back to my point about the so-called anti-fascists is, as I've said many

00:37:08.980 times, they desperately need fascists. And the bar for describing people as fascists is commensurately

00:37:16.580 low as a result. And this comes down to, there's a second point I wanted to make, there's a, there's

00:37:22.660 a member of the cabinet here in Britain who I'm a great admirer of called Sajid Javid. Um, he's been

00:37:29.340 in the cabinet for some years now as a conservative MP. And he, um, was among others, among our politicians

00:37:36.140 in Britain who immediately sort of leapt on, um, you know, the Charlottesville thing and made public

00:37:40.940 pronouncements. Um, um, now he said, uh, uh, in a tweet, I think it was, you know, look, it's not

00:37:48.000 hard. I'm abbreviating. Um, it's not hard. Um, you know, we're against fascists where we support

00:37:55.020 anti-fascists. You know, I was taught that in school. This, this niggles at me because I just don't 0.98

00:38:03.360 think it's as easy as that. And I think a lot of this is, as I say, short-term political opportunism

00:38:10.200 and, um, and a desire to, I mean, I mean, as I say, who, who doesn't find it easy when the KKK

00:38:16.740 come along to condemn them? I mean, well, it turns out some people do, but it turns out the president

00:38:21.040 of the United States does. That should be a straightforward one. The one that concerns me

00:38:26.540 are all the levels beneath that, including people who can just willfully be described as,

00:38:33.820 uh, I don't know, fascist. I've just seen too much of the kind of finger pointing and fascist

00:38:38.160 claiming. And, and I know, and as I say, and I know that, I mean, just vast numbers, it seems to me

00:38:45.940 of the self-described anti-fascists are just very obviously fascistic. And so I don't see the same

00:38:53.740 simple view of this. I think that, I think there are fascists and there are Nazis. I think the KKK

00:39:00.780 fit that bill. And I think the photographs I saw... If you'd like to continue listening to this

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - August 21, 2017

#93 — Identity & Terror

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