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00:01:41.640So this is the psyche, in its search for maturation, runs into an obstacle, which is the tyrannical element of the Great Father that it cannot cope with, and it trots home, runs home.
00:01:54.200A typical part of a hero's story is the initial defeat of the hero when he encounters, usually, either the terrible Great Father or the terrible Great Mother.
00:02:05.400And so this is a retrogressive, Jung would call this retrogressive restoration of the persona.
00:02:11.820So it's sort of like, maybe you're a well-adapted adolescent, and you live at home, and you're a happy adolescent, and everything's good at home.
00:02:18.860And then you go out to try to be an adult, and you fail.
00:02:21.180And then when you come back home, you try to act like a happy adolescent again.
00:03:02.620And so you might think, and of course, the cricket is Pinocchio's conscience.
00:03:06.620And, well, so then you might ask yourself, why in the world would a pejorative, mildly pejorative term for Jesus Christ be applied to a cricket who's guiding a puppet into the water to rescue his father from a whale?
00:03:25.420And the answer to that is, you know why, but you can't say why.
00:03:28.940You can't say why you know, or what it is that you know.
00:03:33.600But the mere fact that it makes sense, and it does, is an indication from a Jungian perspective that you're operating at an archetypal level.
00:04:29.940And that's like the totality of everything that you could be.
00:04:33.340And it's a strange sort of entity, in some sense, because it's partly potential, and it's potential that expands across time.
00:04:41.480But the way that your potential totality calls to you in the present is by placing things in front of you that are your problem.
00:04:50.680So then if you pick up the task of fixing the things that bothers you, then you find the pathway to further expansion of your personality.
00:05:07.960So, and that's what's happening with Pinocchio.
00:05:11.460Now, one of the things that's really interesting about the Pinocchio movie, and that makes it incredibly sophisticated, is that despite the fact that the cricket is an avatar of Christ, so to speak, the cricket has things to learn just like Pinocchio.
00:05:23.980And so that's very cool, because it's so cool, it's so sophisticated, because it means that you do have a conscience that guides you, but until you establish a dialogue with it, both you and the conscience are immature.
00:05:37.320You have to establish a conscious dialogue with it, and then interact together in a manner that propels your development across time.
00:05:44.160And that'll stop you from being a marionette of forces that would make you a braying donkey who does nothing but slave away in salt mines.
00:05:51.440So, okay, so Pinocchio goes home, that doesn't work, and that's where we're going to start here.
00:06:00.420I mean, obviously this is starting to bother you, as you buy into it to begin with, and you're enthusiastic about it to begin with, and you attribute that to, well, the mechanics of the initial education, let's say.
00:06:14.460It's a group phenomenon, it capitalizes on empathy, and it sounds benevolent, certainly.
00:06:22.580In fact, it's the very essence of benevolence in some sense.
00:06:28.020So it's going to be seductive, regardless of whether or not it's correct, but you become uncomfortable with it.
00:06:37.100Well, the first thing you're uncomfortable with is that you were implicitly asked to produce a falsehood in relationship to your own identity, which was when you were asked the question about what you liked about being white.
00:06:54.320And you said that what you said wasn't right, exactly, or wasn't correct, wasn't true.
00:07:00.500It was something that you whipped up on the spot because of the nature of the demand of the situation, and you remember that, so obviously that's significant.
00:07:08.860I think I was just meeting what I thought was an absurdity with an absurdity.
00:07:14.260You know, like, I felt the question was a little bit absurd.
00:07:19.800The premise is, what do you call it, like, how long have you been beating your wife kind of question?
00:07:24.320You know, so the premise of whiteness is, you have to accept the premise in order to answer the question.
00:07:31.940I really have never been comfortable with the premise, period, because I don't think that it, you know, I understand.
00:07:36.520Right, and it takes a lot of presence.
00:07:38.080It takes a lot of presence of mind when you're asked a question, to question the question, especially when you're the student and it's the teacher that's, so to speak, it's the authority figure that's posing the question,
00:07:51.620because you immediately have to rebel and you have to do it in an extremely sophisticated way.
00:07:58.040Yeah, and, you know, this could get back to the school and I might not have passed the class and, you know, I'm white, so that would have been problematic.
00:08:04.420And why are you, why are you, and that would might have had job repercussions or, you know, promotions or whatever.
00:08:10.360You know, you just, you realize that to question the question.
00:08:14.980And to question the question in these circumstances is, you know, the risk of that is so much greater than the triumph of dismantling the question that you're just not, you're never going to, and you may even fail at dismantling the question.
00:08:29.520Like, your little rebellion may lead nowhere and you may be wrong, you know, which is the hesitation that anyone would have with an objection, just that you might be wrong.
00:08:37.860And so, of course, you're just going to fall on that side of the equation.
00:08:48.260It's hard not, like you outlined a bunch of reasons why it's difficult to, you know, come up with exactly the right response at that second.
00:08:55.280It's not like it's a question you're prepared for.
00:08:59.440And, you know, I think the students do it all the time, you know, because there's tremendous social cost to challenging any of the assumptions of our anti-racist programming or the manner in which it's delivered.
00:09:13.920And what are the costs for the students?
00:09:21.240You could have, you know, teachers write recommendations for them if they get a reputation that there's a fear that it could affect their applications.
00:09:34.840Students have come to me with, you know, concerns and examples of papers that they wrote, you know, on taking a position that went against the orthodoxy and they've, you know, suffered a grade hit from it.
00:09:50.320And I've asked them, like, are you sure?
00:09:52.820It just wasn't a good paper, you know, are you sure?
00:09:55.180And they're like, no, I actually cited this, this, and this.
00:09:58.420And I still, you know, and so I think, I think they're real.
00:10:04.320I think that they're real and there's actually been, you know, stories that I've, that they've brought to me that are, you know, someone defends capitalism or something.
00:10:14.820And then they have a big talking to after class or something like that, which is just.
00:10:18.180Well, yes, I mean, how could you possibly defend capitalism while you're going to a $55,000 a year private school?
00:10:34.160So basically you're, you're being, you're being set to task because you have the goal to defend the very attribute of your parents that enabled you to go to the school in the first place.
00:10:45.800And that, of course, enabled the school.
00:10:47.680Right. And it's so, it's such an ironic thing that both the administration and most faculty have such contempt for the very thing that makes them have a job.
00:11:00.560You should be talking about ideas based on what make ideas sound or unsound, not, not the person who's saying them.
00:11:07.020So I was seeing situations where, you know, white students would make a claim and then that claim was discounted by someone else because of their privilege.
00:11:20.000Right. But you're making, of course, the white supremacist assumption that there are such things as ideas and that they can be rank or in terms of quality and that the purpose of discursive speech is precisely to do such things and et cetera, et cetera.
00:11:33.500Yeah. And so the whole solipsistic nature of it, I was like, this is, you can't even have a conversation. This is not, this is not a way to have a functioning, you're not, you're not preparing people to function in a, in a truly vericiated world of ideas. It's not.
00:11:49.880Well, it's, it's worse in some senses that the claim, fundamental claim is that there's no such thing as a conversation. There's just different discourses of power.
00:11:58.140There's no conversation. Conversation assumes ideas and the free flow of ideas and the, and a rational individual actor and the capacity for logos and, and the individual as the central unit and, and so on and so forth.
00:12:12.120People who hold the critical race position, let's say don't, uh, it's not that they avoid confrontational conversations. They don't believe that there's such a thing as a conversation. It's not part of the system. So it's a fundamental dispute.
00:12:30.280Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, and I, I, and then the little things, like I remember talking to a colleague about a new, about a new hire. And then, and, and she said, um, I said, well, well, what's he like this new guy? And she said, well, he's like you, he's like me. Well, what do you mean by that? And she was like, oh, he's white.
00:12:51.760I was like, okay. All right. You know, this is not a person that's a total stranger to me either. And I kind of walked away and like, really? So, okay. And, you know, I also, I also hear the objection to my, to my objection, which is, you know, see how it feels white man. See how it feels to be treated as your race.
00:13:13.760That is, that is, it's, it's a, you know, she might've been trying to teach me a lesson in some sense. Like now, you know, how it feels, but that's not, you know, okay. That's, that's a point that you're making, but that's not, that's not a healthy thing. And that's not, that's not good because it doesn't actually.
00:13:37.860Reduce the sum of misery in the world.
00:14:29.560And, you know, I'm not, not, I don't judge anyone for, for, for balancing their duty to the truth and their duty to their family in whatever way that works for them, because both of them are important.
00:14:46.300Um, or to put things at risk, you know, that's, that's a personal choice and that's, I can, I can't speak to any of that, but I think it definitely not having mouths to feed and, and, you know, having, having some savings from my previous job and, and things, um, being smart with my money and not spending it, um, unwisely as I have, as I had done.
00:15:13.540A decade and a half ago, but, um, I think that, that helped me to do what I'm doing.
00:15:22.820All right. So how are you being treated by the administrative officials to whom you're registering your objection? Are you doing that in writing or are you doing that?
00:15:31.660In person, you know, mostly in person and, you know, I'm not writing anything official. I'm, I'm in the grumbling in my beard phase, I guess I'm in the griping phase, um, where I would go and I would say,
00:15:43.520you know, this is wrong. Like why, why can't we teach, you know, a broad range of viewpoints? Why do we always have to teach this ritualistic thing? That's just a litany of.
00:15:51.940You know, um, basically far left ideas. And, you know, some of, some, some of the administration were very sympathetic, like even overly. So like, I remember talking to, um, the assistant head, he pulled down a copy of Jonathan Haidt off the, off the bookshelf.
00:16:09.280And was like, I'd love to teach this in my class. You know, I, I really want to make this happen. I want to teach, you know, so, you know, more, more than I was sort of, or maybe just modeling it or humoring me or something.
00:16:22.500And he knew the book and he knew where it was on his shelf.
00:16:25.220I know. I know. So like, but, you know, then in public, you know, or in, in public, in the, in front of the community, you know, not saying nothing about it. Right. So I think there was a tremendous amount of preference falsification still going on there.
00:16:38.740You know, well, you, you outlined why. I mean, you lost your job.
00:16:44.480Yeah. So, you know, these are high stakes games and you make a mistake and, and a mistake. You, you veer outside the, the realm of acceptable behavior, let's say. And what happens? Well, you get disproportionately punished for it.
00:17:02.720And there's a moral element to it too, which is, well, there's no bloody way someone like you should be teaching. So not only did we fire you, but we're right to do so.
00:17:12.880Yeah. So, and, you know, that's very hard thing to withstand, which is something I also want to talk to you about. I mean, you know, confident though you may be, or anyone may be, when your institution sheds you and surrounds that with accusations about the nature of your character,
00:17:31.680if you're not a complete psychopath, it tends to strike you to your heart because there's always the possibility that you're wrong.
00:17:41.080Right. Right. But I, I really, I really knew I wasn't because, you know, coming out, there was this meeting and I referred to it in the article or my essay, the self-care through an anti-bias lens meeting,
00:17:54.220which is what kicked off the whole past two months for me. It was a, it was a meeting where students were ostensibly going to learn how to take care of themselves during the pandemic,
00:18:08.200how to manage their emotions, how to take deep breaths and cope with things.
00:18:17.300And in that meeting, you know, after some, some mind relaxing exercises like meditation and, and stuff, they put up the white supremacy, you know, aspects of white supremacy culture slide.
00:18:30.340Right. And that's different than the pyramid or this is different than the pyramid and this is, you know, this is elements of white supremacy.
00:18:37.440Right. Right. It's actually, um, you know, they, there's different forms of it, but essentially, you know, it's, it's fairly common in this, in this thing, as you know, and, um, uh,
00:18:51.340Yes. So here's some professional and transactional relationships versus relationships based on trust, care, and shared commitments, protecting power versus sharing power, culture of overworking versus culture of self-care and community care,
00:19:10.440competition and struggle for limited resources versus collaboration and working to share resources. That's all white dominant culture.
00:19:18.400So. Yes. Yes. Yes. And so some of the things that were on this particular slide were objectivity, individualism, um, either, or thinking.
00:19:30.940Right. Right. And, uh, I know that one.
00:19:34.480There was, um, you know, the, the thing that rankled me the most was right to comfort.
00:19:39.940Because, you know, how, how are you giving a self-care workshop where the 200 kids that are in there in this racially segregated workshop are challenged that they might not, you know, that having, imagining that you have a right to comfort is associated with a, you know, genocidal evil.
00:20:02.040So, Kenneth Jones and Tima Okun, dismantling racism workbook, 2001. God only knows what that is, but it's everywhere.
00:20:09.960The characteristics of white supremacy culture, perfectionism, which is an element of conscientiousness, which is a fundamental trait, sense of urgency, defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, paternalism, either or thinking.
00:20:25.160Notice this is all written in words, by the way, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, um, individualism, which seems to be run somewhat counter to the fear of open conflict.
00:20:37.080Progress is bigger and more objectivity, right to comfort.
00:20:41.660Yeah. It's, uh, it's quite the grab bag of conceptually unrelated items.
00:20:46.720It's, it's incoherent at every possible level of analysis, as well as being, it's, it's impossible to parody.
00:20:56.180Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I saw it and I, you know, I had been thinking for a couple months prior to this because there had been some meetings that really upset me.
00:21:06.040And I was thinking, well, and my head of school had actually said that if I was in an appropriate forum, I should feel free to ask questions.
00:21:15.180By this point in the meeting, I think maybe 30 minutes in before this popped up, other faculty had been saying things in the chat area of the zoom meeting.
00:21:29.440Oh, so they were under their own names.
00:21:31.760Yeah. Under their own names. Yeah. Um, and so I thought, well, why,
00:21:36.040you know, when the, when the facilitator had mentioned that, well, if you looked at this slide, I think she said, I think she said, you know, you might have some white feelings.
00:21:48.040Um, and I said, I just kind of blurted out. I didn't, I didn't blurt it out angrily. I didn't blurt it out. I don't think I was too upset. Of course, you know, I, I don't know how it was perceived of course, but
00:22:01.060I said, well, what do you mean? But what is a white feeling? What is a white feeling?
00:22:06.040And I, you know, what came back was, I think she said something that defensiveness was a white feeling. I said, well, these feelings can belong to people of any race. And, you know, I think that it's,
00:22:16.360I don't know whether it's, I don't understand why it's being attributed to a particular, the white people.
00:22:25.660Um, and, you know, I had that kind of opened the gates a little bit and kind of broke the ice, I think, because in the chat, other kids started to ask questions. There was a debate about whether I should be allowed to ask the question.
00:22:40.860Um, there were some other, the white feeling question. Um, there were also some, there was a lot of capitalism bashing in the chat.
00:22:51.140And I said, you know, I believe capitalism is anti-racist since it's done more to, to lift people of all races out of poverty, um, than any, any alternative.
00:23:01.720Um, and, you know, I, I wasn't monopolizing the chat. I was dropping in little things and there was a lot of activity in the chat.
00:23:11.300And then, um, the, the, the facilitator actually went with me and she, she explained stuff, you know, her perspective on it.
00:23:20.260And I thanked her and, you know, we've, she moved on some more and, um, I think I, I asked another question, but I really, as, as she said later in a meeting about the meeting in front of the whole faculty, she felt that I, you know, I was asking out of curiosity.
00:23:35.720It didn't, I wasn't, you know, on a rant or saying it to, to be antagonistic.
00:23:41.720I think some of the, some of my faculty members felt that I was, but the facilitator herself didn't feel that way.
00:23:48.280So, and she was the one I was talking to. So I think that definitely counts.
00:23:51.540No, that's quite remarkable. I would say, because it's very difficult in a group like that, when you know, the implicit ethos to be able to say something that's questioning without having anger build up as a motivation, right?
00:24:06.480Because you need something to break through your resistance. Yeah. So to be able to say it without upsetting the, the, uh, the facilitator.
00:24:14.680Yeah. I mean, I was passionate, but I wasn't, I don't think I was like enraged or anything like that. Um, it's, you know, I was trying to modulate what I was really upset.
00:24:22.600I was, was the either or thing because I was like, well, if either or thinking is a, is a characteristic of white supremacy, well, then Ibram Kendi has got to be the whitest person in public life.
00:24:32.700Cause his entire philosophy is so Manichaean. I mean, anyway, but I didn't say that of course, cause that would have been inflammatory, but, um.
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00:27:31.860What I really wanted to do, I've been thinking about an opportunity because I wanted to model for the students that you could ask questions that someone who was a teacher or someone who was an authority figure could ask a question and it was okay.
00:27:44.460And how did the students react to your questions?
00:28:51.680I'm not, it's not like I'm plucking this little thing out of the inside of my head and like, well, I intend this to be, you know, that's not communication.
00:29:13.340Well, because I felt that I had, you know, I had done something good.
00:29:18.200Like it was just self-evidently good to me.
00:29:20.500Like it just, when I reflected on it, this is a positive thing.
00:29:24.520Now there were one of the, my colleagues got very upset with me, with my influence on this.
00:29:29.840And, um, because at one point I did say, you know, why, you know, I don't identify as white.
00:29:37.980Must I internalize society's delusions about me?
00:29:42.820Um, which is, you know, like, it's kind of like the neutron bomb to this entire belief system.
00:29:50.560But I, I was on a, I was on a, you know, I felt like it was something that I wanted to put out there so that kids could see it and, you know, understand, you know, that maybe this is a point of view, you know?
00:30:18.080Which is kind of the whole point of anti-racism is that you're not obligated to accept arbitrary racial categories that are unrelated to the task at hand.
00:30:29.740Um, but, uh, you know, then a colleague got, got upset with me and said, kind of got on his high horse and said, uh, you know, I can't believe that I may be mis, you know, paraphrasing here.
00:30:44.120And if I am sorry, but he said, I believe, you know, I can't believe that a member of our, you know, one of my colleagues doesn't understand that we are white, that we are white since birth.
00:30:53.980I am white since birth, that this has carries with it implicit biases that are unavoidable.
00:30:59.180And we must affirm that, you know, and, and that's who, that's who we are.
00:31:03.840And I just, it kind of interrupted him because I felt like he was kind of making me look, I don't know, he's being kind of, kind of a jerk.
00:31:11.720So I interrupted him and said, um, you know, I'm sorry, you're stereotyping yourself.
00:31:17.060Um, uh, and, you know, that kind of was a very awkward moment because it was in front of students and he said, you know, he expressed his dismay, um, and I remained silent.
00:31:32.000And then after the meeting, I said, you know, I apologized to him.
00:31:34.900I said, you know, that was unprofessional.
00:31:38.440Well, you know, I, I understood, I felt it.
00:31:41.560I felt that there might've been a better way that I could do it, maybe wait till he finished and then ask, you know, to respond.
00:31:48.700I, I, I'm, I'm also suspicious of my own, you know, because I am, I, I have been somewhat oppositional.
00:31:56.480I'm not exactly like a Mr. Go long and get along guy with this stuff that I don't always have the best reality check on my own behavior.
00:32:04.320And so I, you know, I, I, I was just saying, well, okay, if I, if I did cause offense, then, you know, I, I feel like it's okay to apologize.
00:32:14.740And there probably was a better way for me to do this.
00:32:17.040And so I did apologize and, you know, thought about it, you know, nothing against that, nothing wrong with that.
00:32:34.700And so when I went home, um, you know, I logged back into the meeting and people were still there talking.
00:32:40.100So I talked to them, but I, I underestimated the effect of this because apparently, um, some of my, some of my comments, you know, were leaked or made or transmitted to other people that weren't in the meetings, people that were in the, the BIPOC meeting, you know, particularly my, my BIPOC is a black and indigenous people of color.
00:33:02.240So they were having their separate meeting of faculty and students where they received different content.
00:33:11.660The rationale as I could, as I can understand it is so that the groups that have been marginalized won't be exposed to, you know, they'll have their own thing so that they're not exposed to the, I think the insensitive, possible insensitivity of the, uh, oppressors.
00:33:32.740It's, it's, it's the best I can understand the rationale.
00:33:36.740Um, but it wound up happening anyway, because it, I suppose it would be rude of me to point out that that's somewhat paternalistic, you know, just as, you know, observation.
00:34:30.540Well, the office of community engagement, coupled with the Dean of Student Life.
00:34:34.080And there, there, there are Dean level positions that exerted a lot of effort and energy because I did not make their lives easy, um, to, to address the things that were said and raised in the meeting, not just by me, but by, you know, lots of different people and students, students, you know, spoke up as well and faculty.
00:34:59.340And so, um, what I found it so interesting because the day after the meeting, there was an email that was released that said healing resources, you know, healing resources that will help you come to terms with what happened.
00:35:17.040And the first healing resource on the list was a CNN interview with a poet named Damon Young, um, and, um, Damon Young, uh, you know, in this interview said things like, you know, we, we need to get rid of all of capitalism.
00:35:39.840Um, we will have to do a carpet bombing, not a carpet cleansing of society.
00:35:45.380And it was incredibly radical statements that were, I would imagine would be frightening to, to many people.
00:35:53.160And that was listed as a healing resource as well as long as the carpet bombing only targets the malevolent people.
00:35:59.660Well, yeah, I guess, and then things, there was a Robin DiAngelo article that said, you know, what white people need to be made or kept uncomfortable.
00:36:09.280Um, how can we become more uncomfortable?
00:36:12.520Um, also, you know, really kind of, I would just say racist characterizations of white people in these links, um, things like, you know, all white people have never had to be guests in this country.
00:36:26.060And, uh, like the Irish, for example, they weren't really white to begin with though.
00:37:17.280So some of the things that would happen would be in the week, in the end, as the week continued, there was a faculty meeting about it.
00:37:25.160Um, I had some advisory circles, circle practice was taken away because they felt that it would be, the students would be upset if I was a part of it.
00:37:36.420So the dean has to run my advisory circle is what, um, well, it was, it's a, it's a practice that we've started this year where, um, activities, um, where you, you put up a slide and you talk about an issue and then everyone has to go around and speak one by one about a question.
00:37:56.760And then you kind of do it around twice.
00:37:58.520Um, and then, you know, this is to sort of manage discussion.
00:38:11.880And so, you know, I got a, I got an email saying, you know, under current circumstances following yesterday's meeting and your role and what transpired, you, you know, I've asked you to recuse yourself.
00:38:21.100Um, then, you know, there were subsequent meetings, there was a faculty meeting, uh, I think at that faculty meeting, uh, a colleague said, well, this is, this could be terrible.
00:38:34.500This could undo everything we've ever taught them, which I thought to myself, please, please, I hope so.
00:38:42.600Um, but, uh, the, uh, and there was, how are you, how are you reacting to all this?
00:38:52.180I mean, I, I know that I feel like this is something that I've finally done to, to open up something like some daylight.
00:39:03.000And I, all of this churn is going on around me, but I'm going about my day and I'm teaching my classes.
00:39:09.860Uh, I am, you know, I, I did feel the need to address my classes.
00:39:16.700So I said at the beginning, you know, I am an anti-racist, um, you know, I want you to feel safe.
00:39:23.160And then I would just sort of teach the class.
00:39:25.060And then I was told not to address it with the class, with anyone in the classes.
00:39:29.260With regard to teachers and students in private and public institutions, high schools, junior highs, elementary schools in your state and across your country.
00:39:41.480What, what do you see this, if anything, what does this indicate?
00:39:46.400Well, I have hopes, you know, I, I feel that if, if students can, if I, if, if the type of, you know, willingness to ask a question it in response to some of these, you know, what I consider to be indoctrination, frankly.
00:40:11.460I mean, I, it's no question because of the calls that I've received and the conversations I've had with people all over Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey.
00:40:21.560You know, their, their parents are very concerned with their children.
00:40:24.260They've seen it because of the pandemic through their, through the zoom, zoom classes.
00:40:29.260They've witnessed what's being taught to their kids and they're very, very concerned and they have specific receipts to back it up.
00:40:38.480And, you know, they're sending me curriculum.
00:40:43.080So, you know, I, I have, this is not simply a, a, a rarefied independent school problem.
00:40:51.560This is happening at, you know, school boards and districts all over the country.
00:40:55.560Um, a lot of it spurred by the, you know, the George Floyd, it's killing and the reaction to it.
00:41:04.440Um, I believe it was taken as an opportunity to, you know, redress, um, that with a misguided.
00:41:14.680An opportunity for what it's like, I'm trying to figure out, I keep trying to figure out, cause I've been concerned about this for long time.
00:41:21.580Um, and, uh, I still can't get to the bottom of it.
00:41:26.160It's like, I don't understand exactly.
00:41:28.720I know there's a resentment element to it, but I can't understand exactly what's driving this and, and why it's, despite the fact that it's clearly the view of a very small minority of people, perhaps 5%.
00:41:41.240That's what the survey seemed to indicate.
00:41:43.160I cannot understand why it's making the headway that it's making at the rate that it's making and what it's really aiming at.
00:41:59.760I think I have a sense why, and maybe it's a theory.
00:42:03.700It's not just my theory, but it's, I've seen it in other places or hinted at in other places.
00:42:08.340I think when you sort of, you know, over the past few decades, you have a gradual sort of leeching from the soil of society of sort of a moral sense, a moral tradition, moral grounding in, you know, long, long religious traditions, essentially.
00:42:29.680When they depart from the public sphere, it leaves a kind of vacuum.
00:42:32.760And, you know, wokeness is, is a way to sort of, sort of paint by numbers, moral righteousness, and it gives people the sense that they're good people.
00:42:43.900I think people have an almost, you know, I don't know whether it's evolutionarily based, but they have a need to have a moral character and sense of themselves.
00:42:52.400And if, and if something comes along, which is going to offer that and give you that thing, well, then there's a, there's a tremendous hunger for it.
00:43:03.800And so you can have, you know, a very small percentage of the population that's pushing it can have a real powerful outsized influence.
00:43:12.200Do you, do you have a traditional religious belief of any sort?
00:43:15.260And are you a practicing religious person?
00:43:17.300I am, I am, it's a really good question.
00:43:22.900I am, I was raised Catholic and I, you know, was, I've lapsed, you know, I have a joke that I, I use sometimes, you know, I'm so lapsed, I'm prolapsed.
00:43:33.900But, but, uh, basically, uh, I, I, I, you know, was a functioning agnostic, then atheist, uh, and, um, but I, I don't feel like I really need a lot of God, but I do need to have something, which is like a conscience.
00:43:54.240Like, I guess I believe in a conscience, I believe in some little mirror of the divine, which sort of is, is in me.
00:44:02.300It's not like above me or around me, but it is within me.
00:44:05.420And so it's sort of like a reflective thing that I can, and it's sort of reactivated, I guess, and as part of this whole experience.
00:44:13.600So I can, I can take in the world and the world of reality, but I can reflect it against something, which is not of this world.
00:44:29.300You know, like what comes back is something that I should attend to.
00:44:32.620It's something that is, it is, it is something important.
00:44:35.540And that is the, you know, and, and now that I feel like I have that or own awareness of that, you know, it's just like, you know, ah, you know, okay.
00:44:50.820I want to say thank God, but I don't, I don't, I don't know.
00:44:53.820I don't know that there's a God with a capital G.
00:44:57.420I just know that there's something which is, which is not of this world, but is in this world.
00:45:03.280Well, my point, my principal argument in the book is that absolute freedom of speech is always going to be better.
00:45:11.780And in fact, by promoting free speech, you're doing something to help those very people that you are concerned about.
00:45:18.820So recently the Scottish parliament passed a hate crime law that has its supporters and also its detractors.
00:45:29.520And I'd be interested in your feeling about that.
00:45:33.480Now, you said, I believe in this book, if I remember the statistics correctly, that there have been 120,000 incidents of police investigated speech hate crime in Britain in how long?
00:45:48.540Since that's been over the last five years or so?
00:46:24.840And at the moment, unfortunately, in the UK, the police who are trained by the College of Policing, who do issue very specific guidelines about this.
00:46:33.700And anyone can check this because if you go to the government's website on hate crime and hate speech, they make very clear what they're talking about.
00:46:39.920What they say is that there are five protected characteristics and these fall into race, gender, sexuality, gender identity and disability.
00:46:48.420I think I might misquote that, but there's one missing.
00:46:50.860But anyway, there are five protected characteristics.
00:46:52.940And if a victim and they do use the word victim rather than complainant, if a victim perceives that any speech or crime was motivated by hatred towards any of those five protected characteristics, then it qualifies as a hate crime.
00:47:09.520If it's criminal, if it's not criminal, if it's just speech or something like that, it qualifies as a non-crime hate incident.
00:47:38.560You get something flagged up when you, particularly if you're applying for a teaching job, say something like that, where you're working with children, it's very important.
00:47:44.980So it does have serious ramifications.
00:47:47.420But even beyond that, we have hate speech laws, which are encoded into the Public Order Act, which is one example.
00:47:54.480But the other, the main example is the Electronic Communications Act 2003.
00:47:59.100In this country, and I do quote the statistic in the book as well, we have roughly 3,000 people arrested a year for offensive things that they have said online.
00:48:11.020So in other words, nine people a day, roughly, the police in the UK are arresting.
00:48:16.140And people in the UK will be familiar with this, because if you see the Twitter accounts of various police forces, various police departments across the country, they often put things out like, you know, make sure you don't say anything offensive or thoughtless online, or we will be knocking on your door.
00:48:28.200They say these very kind of frightening things.
00:48:31.680There was a recent police display outside a supermarket in the UK.
00:48:38.740It was them next to a big digital billboard.
00:48:40.900And the slogan on the billboard was, being offensive is an offence.
00:48:45.000And this was flanked by police officers who were socially distanced, but they were there in their masks, which made it seem slightly more sinister.
00:48:53.340They got in a lot of trouble for that, because people were saying, well, being offensive surely isn't a crime.
00:48:58.620But actually, the problem with that is that the police clearly thought it was a crime.
00:49:02.420And they, you know, they were acting on that basis.
00:49:04.440They'd obviously hadn't just concocted this billboard out of nothing.
00:49:07.260They'd really considered what it should say.
00:49:09.040And more to the point, actually, they were right.
00:49:11.800In this country, you can go to prison for jokes, for offensive remarks.
00:49:18.020And people have gone to prison, have been arrested routinely for causing offence.
00:49:23.500And of course, the notion of offence is incredibly subjective.
00:49:27.300In fact, the legal stipulation in the Communications Act is that you will have broken the law if the judge and jury deem that you have communicated material that is, quote unquote, grossly offensive.
00:49:39.780Well, I don't know how you define that.
00:49:42.760And also, who defines it is the real question as far as I'm concerned.
00:49:45.860I mean, I've looked into this legislation to some degree.
00:49:48.760And one of the things that struck me about it was that it seems to be purposefully left up to the hypothetical victim to define offence, which has become a subjective reality.
00:50:03.660And you can understand why that might be to some degree, because how would you define hate and how would you define offence without, especially the latter, without making recourse to someone's subjective experience?
00:50:16.420But then, of course, well, we'll delve into that in a moment.
00:50:21.180I should start with the hard question, I suppose, which is, well, clearly people can say hateful things, and those things can be damaging psychologically and physiologically, I suppose, if people are stressed enough and the borderline is very difficult to identify.
00:50:36.760Why is it that people shouldn't just assume that you're a mean, loudmouth and that they shouldn't pay any attention to you at all because you're concerned about this?
00:50:47.640I mean, that's the general criticism of critics of hate speech, let's say.
00:50:54.520And so why in the world aren't the people who are putting this forward just trying to make the world a nicer place?
00:51:02.800Well, I think a lot of people do assume that I'm a mean, loudmouth.
00:51:06.760I think they assume that about most people who defend freedom of speech.
00:51:11.280And I'm sure the latter part of your question is absolutely right, insofar as I imagine a lot of the people who are sceptical about free speech are, in fact, trying to make the world a better place.
00:51:22.340I mean, the problem here is that the legislation as it currently stands here means that, for instance, if you say something critical about me and I perceive that it was motivated by hatred towards me on the basis of my sexuality, for instance, I could phone the police.
00:51:37.800And that would be recorded and would appear on hate crime statistics in this country because it's all about perception.
00:51:44.200That word is used about five or six times within the one passage in the hate crime legislation, the word perception of the victim.
00:51:50.740And again, I say victim, not complainant, which suggests a complete disregard for due process.
00:51:55.320But I suppose we can leave that aside. But the most common, the most common and the most frightening misconception I have found when it comes to people defending free speech is that they are doing so because they want to have the right to say appalling things about people with no comeback whatsoever.
00:52:11.660And they want to go back to some imaginary good old days, you know, where you could just be casually homophobic and racist and sexist and all the rest of it.
00:52:19.760And no one would call you out for that.
00:52:21.680Now, I don't know anyone who falls into that category. And most people who are, you know, advocating for free speech are doing so precisely because they are aware that in countries where free speech protections are meagre, minorities tend to suffer the most.
00:52:35.720And in fact, there is a it seems to be a corollary to me that those who are genuinely for free speech are also for equal rights and protecting the vulnerable in society.
00:52:45.980And this perception, which I really find unpleasant, this perception that if you are standing up for this most foundational of principles of freedom of speech, if you're standing up for that, you can only be doing so if you have a nefarious motive.
00:52:58.400I mean, what a horribly pessimistic view of humanity.
00:53:00.980Well, it seems to be a direct derivation of the hypothesis, for example, that all Western social organizations, particularly Western, are based on power and are best conceived of as tyrannical.
00:53:21.220And so if that's your view, why would you not assume that most use of speech is essentially an exercise of power in the service of tyranny?
00:53:32.340But then why would you assume that the government in control of any particular country isn't part of that tyranny that you're describing?
00:53:39.860It seems odd to me to be mindful of the potential for tyranny, but then to outsource all your individual liberties to the state.
00:54:02.080I mean, the problem I've run into, and this is partly why I appreciated your book, is that increasingly people are called upon to defend fundamental assumptions that were so taken for granted
00:54:16.040that virtually no one has an argument that's fully articulated at hand.
00:54:22.220When no one questions free speech, no one has to defend it thoroughly.
00:54:26.240As soon as it's questioned, well, it becomes an extraordinarily complicated problem.
00:54:59.460I don't like the message they portray, which is that everyone is criminal enough, so they should be surveyed all the time, and someone needs to be watching.
00:55:11.040I noticed, too, in London in particular, that many buildings had instituted airport-level security,
00:55:19.580so that you had to pass through a metal detector and have your bags checked, etc., while you were moving in and out of buildings.
00:55:26.560And it struck me as quite horrifying, given that, as far as I'm concerned, Great Britain and its legal and parliamentary traditions are at the epicenter of Western freedoms.
00:55:39.820I mean, you could make a case for France, I suppose, but not a strong one, as far as I'm concerned.
00:55:45.540Yet, your citizens seem to have accepted this with virtually no problem.
00:55:52.360And now, on the heels of that, we have this multiplication of hate crime.
00:55:59.100That's as much a surprise to me as it is to you.
00:56:01.980I mean, you won't have seen all of the CCTV cameras.
00:56:06.760You can't walk anywhere in the UK without being potentially monitored.
00:56:12.520I'm not saying someone's watching you all the time, but things are being recorded and digitized.
00:56:16.120Yeah, and it's interesting to me, because I remember back in the early 2000s, when the government was trying to push through its ID card scheme.
00:56:24.400And broadly speaking, the left were unanimously against it.
00:56:27.720And they didn't like this idea of living in a society where there's someone on the corner saying,
00:56:59.660I mean, you mentioned specifically the problem in Scotland.
00:57:03.060And seriously, it relates very closely to what you're saying, because the SNP, who are the only really party with any clout in Scotland, that's the Scottish National Party.
00:57:12.320And it's never a good idea, is it, when you have one political party which doesn't really have an opposition.
00:57:16.880They have a reputation for quite nanny state-ish policies.
00:57:20.460You know, they introduced a, what was it called, the named person scheme.
00:57:24.340It didn't go through in the end, but they wanted to assign every child born in Scotland with a state guardian.
00:57:30.320You know, they effectively didn't trust the parents to raise their own kids.
00:57:33.680They have other examples, you know, minimum pricing on alcohol or a ban on two-for-one pizzas because they don't trust poor people not to gain weight.
00:57:41.040So all sorts of, these sorts of policies.
00:57:42.860But in this current hate crime bill, which has just sailed through because there's no opposition, Hamza Youssef, the Justice Secretary, has pushed through, he specifically included an element to this bill which says that they can criminalize you for things you say in the privacy of your own home.
00:57:58.220I mean, that to me is, I mean, that's just a given.
00:58:00.500I would have never thought that anyone in this country would not consider that to be an incredible invasion on individual liberty.
00:58:07.440You can make a strong case for Scotland as the ground zero for many of the, developing many of the concepts that undergird the entire Western notion of freedom.
00:58:19.020And to see that emerging in Scotland is absolutely stunningly terrifying as far as I'm concerned.
00:58:25.220You think of Mel Gibson with a face covered in woad shouting freedom as he's executed, you know, in Braveheart.
00:58:31.200You do think of Scotland as being associated with it.
00:58:33.380But honestly, Scotland, for some reason, and I don't know what it is, and it might be to do that it's effectively this one party state, it seems to have this incredible sense.
00:58:42.040And they've really bought into this idea that unless they can police the thought and speech of their citizens, then they will just run amok.
00:58:53.360There's a specific element on the bill which talks about the public performance of a play.
00:58:57.100So they've effectively said that they will criminalise public performances.
00:59:02.240So say if it can be deemed that those performances were designed to stir up hatred, that's the formulation, stir up hatred.
00:59:09.300I'm not quite sure what that means necessarily.
00:59:11.000But when Hamza Youssef was questioned about this in Parliament, he actually said, well, theoretically, a neo-Nazi or someone from the far right could get together with a group of actors and put on a play to recruit people to his cause.
00:59:23.400And as I said at the time, you know, I don't know any neo-Nazis, but they're not into amateur dramatics.
00:59:56.160I mean, if you wrote a play that then stimulated someone to join the far right, then you were still responsible whether you intended it or not.
01:00:02.760Now, the problem was, you know, with theatrical representation or any kind of artistic representation is sometimes you want to represent the worst aspects of humanity, because that's part of drama and literature and all the rest of it.
01:00:15.380There would be no artistic freedom if that went through.
01:00:17.260So fortunately, that element of the bill was modified.
01:00:20.720Well, and also the attempt to reverse the idea that intent is important, that's even more catastrophic.
01:00:29.780It's always been a miracle to me that our legal system ever became psychologically sophisticated enough so that intent rather than outcome was what mattered.
01:00:40.480Because you have to be a sophisticated thinker to see that someone has done damage to someone else, and so the damage is real and marked and troublesome and costly, all of that, painful.
01:00:53.800But because the intent wasn't there, the severity of the action is dramatically mitigated.
01:01:01.340That's a sign of maturity and sophistication to note that, and the fact that it's built into the legal system is nothing short of remarkable.
01:01:08.620And then to remove that and to make the felt consequences the arbiter of the reality of the situation is a dreadful assault on the integrity of the law as such, as far as I can tell.
01:01:22.340Well, moreover, it's something that everyone intuitively understands.
01:01:26.780We all understand the difference between murder and manslaughter.
01:01:29.760You know, we all understand that intent actually does, like you say, escalate the severity of a crime.
01:01:38.340It's because this idea that intention doesn't matter is actually built into so much of this, what we call social justice discourse.
01:01:45.560If you think of critical race theory, it's just a given that there are racist structures and you can be racist without intending to be racist.
01:01:53.640And I really do dispute that, because I think in order to be racist, intention has to be at the heart of that.
01:02:07.580It's examining free speech, which alone, I mean, first of all, everybody involved in it, the directors, the writers, the producers, were fantastic people.
01:02:56.920Just to hear Adam describe how different our backgrounds is, is worth the price of admission, which he does most of the time when we go public.
01:03:06.440Adam, why don't you give a brief review of how different our backgrounds are?
01:03:58.260I see that there's a very limited number of people on the right that you could describe as extremists.
01:04:05.140And there's a very limited number of people on the left who appear to support the more extremist leftist propositions.
01:04:12.360And so I do believe that, in some sense, it's more difficult for people on the left to draw distinctions between acceptable leftist ideas than it is for people on the right.
01:04:23.420I mean, on the right, you draw the line with claims of racial superiority.
01:04:26.720On the left, there's obviously trouble brewing on the extreme, but defining exactly where it is and drawing a border around it seems to me a relatively complex task.
01:04:37.300And, well, you asked me why I got in trouble.
01:04:38.920I mean, I got in trouble because I said, well, I'm not sure where to draw the line, but that particular law compelling speech with its implicit theory of identity, that's gone too far as far as I'm concerned.
01:04:50.380But, you know, the fact that that caused so much trouble, I think, is indication of the fact that it's difficult to draw the line.
01:04:57.660And so, well, I'm interested in both your comments about that.
01:05:02.020Well, I think you're on to something with the extreme part of the right wing party is pretty definable.
01:05:09.760And I think most reasonable people agree that the farthest right, you know, Jews shooting laser beams into the sky and shooting down satellites or whatever crazy stuff comes out of QAnon or sort of far right stuff, racial things of that nature.
01:05:31.620I think we can all agree that that's pretty definable and that most people on the right will not cross that border.
01:05:41.280And William Buckley helped with that, wouldn't you say?
01:05:45.280But on the left, I feel like there's a much greater sense of, well, we don't agree with AOC, but we're not going to say anything about it or we're not going to define it or the squad.
01:05:58.820So there's a much more, you know, I live in California, most everyone, I work in Hollywood, everyone's on the left.
01:06:05.860Their thing is sort of like, we don't like what Gavin Newsom is doing, but he's still our guy.
01:06:14.420Well, that's part of this difficulty withdrawing borders.
01:06:17.280Like I've had conversations with Democrats about the idea of equity, for example, which is a no-go zone as far as I'm concerned because of its connotations of equality of outcome.
01:06:26.360But they insist, generally speaking, that most of the people who are using the term equity are really using it as a proxy for equality of opportunity.