The Megyn Kelly Show - Meltdown Over Musk Buying Twitter, and Backlash Against Woke Left, with Douglas Murray

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.900 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.220 On the show today, truly one of the greatest intellectuals of our time,

00:00:19.740 so delighted to be bringing you Douglas Murray, the one and only Douglas Murray.

00:00:26.040 I said yesterday, when this guy speaks, I listen. Doesn't matter what forum, where he is, in what manner he's saying it,

00:00:33.300 you always learn something and you always get new insights into how to deal with some of the issues that are plaguing our society today.

00:00:41.920 He comes at all of this stuff from an angle you just won't hear from everybody else,

00:00:46.500 and he's got a lifetime of wit and reading and intellectual heft behind it.

00:00:51.820 So you're welcome in advance for bringing you Douglas today.

00:00:54.980 He's not afraid to speak his mind. Today is the perfect day to have him as our guest for the full show.

00:01:00.020 He is the best-selling author of seven books, including The Madness of Crowds, which he released in 2019.

00:01:06.400 His brand new book is out today, and it's titled The War on the West, How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason.

00:01:16.580 Think about that. How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason.

00:01:20.660 Don't you need that guide? Right? The world has lost its mind.

00:01:25.320 And Douglas, he's the guy who came on my show as episode 55, one of my top episodes, loved it so much.

00:01:30.880 And I remember asking him, you know, these people saying, you don't understand my background.

00:01:34.520 I'm from slaves. And it's like, maybe, maybe not.

00:01:37.220 And he said, we can all do that.

00:01:39.960 We can all do that.

00:01:41.620 Looking back at our history and playing the victim card.

00:01:44.860 That's that's practical advice for how to prevail in the age of unreason.

00:01:49.920 And that's what this book is full of.

00:01:51.980 He gives an impassioned defense of Western culture, institutions and politics and why it should not be a thought crime to still believe in and indeed defend them.

00:02:01.740 So we will get into his book. Plus, there's so much news breaking today, including the left's ongoing meltdown over Elon Musk and why Joy Reid is now being threatened with a lawsuit after accusing Governor Ron DeSantis and his team of using black children as props.

00:02:20.700 Douglas Murray, what a pleasure to have you back.

00:02:22.700 Thank you for being here.

00:02:23.960 It's a huge pleasure to be with you again, Megan.

00:02:26.400 Real pleasure.

00:02:27.560 Now, the thrill is all mine.

00:02:28.760 OK, so let's start with the news on Elon Musk.

00:02:32.280 Now we find out that the deal will likely close in about six months.

00:02:37.040 There is a complete employee meltdown over there.

00:02:39.500 They are tweeting out tear filled emojis.

00:02:42.700 Some told The Washington Post they're too in shock to speak.

00:02:46.800 I can't speak about it yet.

00:02:48.840 You're getting all these lefties tweeting out that they're deleting their accounts.

00:02:52.060 You know, we can only hope that's true.

00:02:53.400 But there's there's basically just a full on moral panic that somebody who all he said is, I'm going to open up the forum and try to offer as much free speech as possible, is somehow going to be something akin to a Hitler-esque figure at the top of Twitter.

00:03:09.620 That's right.

00:03:10.900 As you know, Megan, free speech is now an alt-right dog whistle.

00:03:15.460 I think I've got that right.

00:03:18.680 Yes, it's amazing watching this meltdown because you would think from the people objecting to Elon Musk owning Twitter that we're in entirely uncharted territory.

00:03:30.580 I rather look forward to the people who say that because Elon Musk, a tech billionaire, owns Twitter, I've got to leave the platform and retreat to the safety of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and all those other platforms that are so rigorously overseen by all of the fairest and the most egalitarian public entities in the world.

00:03:53.700 No, I mean, it's it's ridiculous.

00:03:55.280 I feel very sorry for Musk in a way because he's being subjected to these ludicrous character assassinations.

00:04:02.740 But, you know, it's like the Joe Rogan thing.

00:04:05.260 If anyone can survive it, Elon Musk can not just because he's rich, not just because he's successful, but because he clearly shows that these people make themselves look ridiculous.

00:04:17.080 You know, they don't make him look ridiculous.

00:04:18.820 They make themselves look ridiculous.

00:04:20.560 All he has said so far is that he wants the platform to be available for everyone.

00:04:26.820 The first thing he said the night before we're speaking, having had the news announced, was that he said, I hope my critics remain on the platform.

00:04:36.360 That's what free speech is about.

00:04:39.180 Just how refreshing is that to hear?

00:04:41.700 You know, and so he has a very deep and straightforward understanding of what free speech is actually about.

00:04:49.640 You know, when he tried to acquire Twitter first about a month ago, he said Twitter has effectively become the de facto town square and you can't have the town square corrupted, basically.

00:05:01.060 And it is it has been corrupted.

00:05:03.060 It was corrupted, first of all, by people being, you know, in the town square being quietly muted, which Twitter, of course, said that it wasn't doing.

00:05:13.840 And then not only admitted it was doing, but said, said it could do in the terms of service.

00:05:20.320 Then they started to disappear people from the town square.

00:05:24.480 And then they just started to outright ban people.

00:05:27.760 And as of 2022, of course, as Babylon Bee and others showed, you could lose your account on Twitter if you just said that somebody who has male genitals and dates women and competes in women's swimming is maybe not entirely 100 percent a woman.

00:05:50.560 For that, by 2022, you could you could lose your platform.

00:05:54.680 So the whole thing started with a few flamethrowers on the far right being no platform and nobody much cared about that.

00:06:01.280 But it went all the way into the political center and then further out.

00:06:04.940 And at this stage, it's clear that, you know, the people at Twitter who think that they should be censors don't know enough and aren't as clever as they think they are.

00:06:14.580 They're 20 somethings who believe that the idea of free speech is something they've just stumbled upon and no one thought about till yesterday.

00:06:21.940 So I think it's a great development.

00:06:23.680 I'm thrilled Elon Musk has got Twitter.

00:06:26.840 And and, you know, I just hope he does all of the sensible things like putting you and me on the board.

00:06:32.800 I love your plan.

00:06:35.060 If you get on there, you wrote about it in the New York Post.

00:06:37.280 It was amazing.

00:06:38.260 Can I I want to mention this shameless plug?

00:06:40.080 We're having Seth Dillon of the Babylon Bee on the show tomorrow.

00:06:42.680 So I'm really looking forward to that.

00:06:44.040 Right.

00:06:44.200 Because he's I really think he's to be credited for this whole thing.

00:06:48.660 His account got shut down.

00:06:50.560 He because he tweeted something to the fact that they called Rachel Levine Man of the Year, who is a woman who's who is a man who is a trans woman.

00:06:59.160 And because she was named woman of the year by some, you know, magazine or whatever, Seth Dillon tweeted out, she's our man of the year.

00:07:07.780 He's for that.

00:07:09.480 He was shut down on Twitter and Elon got mad.

00:07:12.980 And when Elon gets mad, he buys.

00:07:15.540 It's fantastic.

00:07:16.380 Isn't isn't isn't that fantastic?

00:07:17.840 I wish more people had that power, that when when a very funny, satirical account gets shut down, that shutdown turns out to be the most expensive shutdown in the company's history.

00:07:30.080 It's just great.

00:07:30.980 I wish more people stood up for free speech like this.

00:07:33.500 And it's just great.

00:07:34.380 Great to see someone with Elon's influence and money actually making a stand.

00:07:39.360 And it's just terrific.

00:07:40.920 It gives it gives you actually some hope.

00:07:42.840 Much needed hope.

00:07:43.680 But he's a hero and he will be featured in the War on the West part two.

00:07:48.880 Speaking of leftist meltdowns, Ari Melber of MSNBC in an incredible, I guess it's a self-owned.

00:07:56.300 I don't know.

00:07:56.620 We were looking at it on our team saying, is this satire?

00:07:59.000 Does he is he just trolling us with this?

00:08:01.480 He is taking a lot of guff on Twitter today for his dire predictions of what Twitter or social media could become possibly in the future.

00:08:13.900 Here's the soundbite.

00:08:15.300 You own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you.

00:08:18.320 You don't have to explain yourself.

00:08:19.940 You don't even have to be transparent.

00:08:21.040 You could secretly ban one party's candidate or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else.

00:08:32.040 And the rest of us might not even find out about it till after the election.

00:08:36.200 Say it ain't so.

00:08:38.540 What?

00:08:38.940 It's all said as if it's a hypothetical, none of which has happened before.

00:08:46.000 Right?

00:08:46.980 It's amazing, isn't it?

00:08:48.460 It's like the best soundbite I've heard in days.

00:08:50.840 That's fantastic.

00:08:51.460 I mean, if people aren't careful, you know, Twitter could have the power to, for instance, silence America's oldest published paper.

00:09:01.220 Imagine that.

00:09:02.640 Right.

00:09:04.700 A sitting president could be deplatformed.

00:09:06.980 A sitting president?

00:09:07.980 Imagine.

00:09:08.820 Imagine.

00:09:09.660 Ahead of an election, Twitter could deliberately mess with the algorithms and mute stories that it doesn't like so that its preferred candidate gets into power.

00:09:17.720 I mean, anything could happen, Megan.

00:09:19.180 Anything.

00:09:20.280 Bedlam.

00:09:21.460 Pandemonium is awaiting.

00:09:23.320 It's great to see because, like, I feel like people on our side, which is the side of reason.

00:09:28.040 I know you're not a hard politics guy and neither am I, but I am also on the side of reason.

00:09:33.940 It feels like we've had too few victories.

00:09:38.340 And lately we've had a spate of them.

00:09:40.860 And it's it's invigorating.

00:09:43.220 It's invigorating.

00:09:44.020 It's invigorating.

00:09:44.760 It's invigorating to see the meltdowns as well.

00:09:46.720 I don't normally like to sort of engage in politics at that kind of, you know, tit for tat level.

00:09:51.500 But I just couldn't help smiling also.

00:09:53.500 I'm sure you saw it.

00:09:54.500 Brian Seltzer of CNN minus yesterday said on on air that Elon Musk taking over Twitter.

00:10:03.780 He said it's going to be the Wild West, basically.

00:10:06.520 He said there are no rules.

00:10:07.360 And he said, basically, it's going to be like, I mean, like you have to make this decision.

00:10:10.920 Like when you go to a party, you know, if there's a party where there are no rules, you know, you might decide to stay home and go and not go to that party.

00:10:17.680 Well, people might decide to stay home and think, Brian, I don't know how many parties you've ever been invited to.

00:10:25.760 Maybe none.

00:10:26.920 But in my experience, before a party, you don't get set at a list of rules.

00:10:35.580 There shall be none of this.

00:10:37.020 And you must not discuss that.

00:10:38.640 I'm like, I only confirms the suspicion I already had, which is Brian Seltzer has never been invited to a party.

00:10:45.180 Never.

00:10:45.600 But that's a personal grief.

00:10:47.420 The hall monitor does not get included on the invite list with a prom king and queen make out the invitations.

00:10:53.740 We have that soundbite just for extra kicks.

00:10:56.240 Let's listen to it real time.

00:10:58.980 If you get invited to something where there are no rules, where there is total freedom for everybody, do you actually want to go to that party?

00:11:06.820 Or are you going to decide to stay home?

00:11:08.640 You mean the parents aren't going to be home?

00:11:12.160 Nothing?

00:11:12.680 Oh, no.

00:11:13.640 You mean we're going to go to something where there's total freedom?

00:11:17.100 My God, we've got to stop that.

00:11:19.380 I mean, I'm not going to anything where there's freedom.

00:11:21.860 I want rules.

00:11:23.280 Rules.

00:11:23.760 Particularly at parties, Megan, I tell you.

00:11:25.640 Rules.

00:11:25.960 His little notepad.

00:11:28.000 His safety belt.

00:11:29.780 His headlamp.

00:11:32.440 What kind of party is this?

00:11:34.160 High visibility jacket.

00:11:36.000 High vis jacket.

00:11:38.640 It's so great when people out themselves and you realize the true character and personality of the people who are running the national conversation in too many instances.

00:11:47.180 Absolutely.

00:11:47.660 You know?

00:11:48.140 Absolutely.

00:11:48.480 The failure of CNN Plus has been delightful for one of those reasons.

00:11:52.080 I mean, that's one of the reasons why somebody like Jemele Hill going down, failing again.

00:11:56.620 She's out there constantly lecturing.

00:11:58.020 People didn't want more of that.

00:12:00.400 You know, it's been a terrible week for woke between the collapse of CNN.

00:12:04.120 A guy, Bobby Barack, who writes for Outkick, and he's a great commentator, he sent out a tweet pointing out, Elon Musk buys Twitter.

00:12:11.320 Jemele Hill fired again, or failed again.

00:12:15.400 CNN Plus went down.

00:12:17.000 The mask mandate was killed by that judge in Florida.

00:12:20.180 Spotify dropped Michelle Obama.

00:12:21.840 And this one didn't get enough attention, but Jon Stewart is failing.

00:12:25.420 His ratings on this show are just dreadful.

00:12:29.320 They started out to 180,000 who watched his premiere.

00:12:32.380 Then they were down, in his fourth episode, to 40,000 viewers.

00:12:36.560 40,000!

00:12:38.260 And he's tweeting out, well, they renewed me.

00:12:40.060 He was like, well, of course they renewed you because you're woke, and they think this is what people want.

00:12:45.260 And Joy Reid also hasn't yet been fired.

00:12:47.940 It doesn't mean she has any viewers.

00:12:50.700 That's right.

00:12:51.400 The Jon Stewart one is a very sad story, a very sad demise, isn't it?

00:12:57.100 Because, of course, Jon Stewart in his heyday was a real king of his craft.

00:13:01.040 He was so impressive.

00:13:03.240 And he could do an awful lot, and he could do it with great levity and also be serious at times.

00:13:08.800 And when he made a sort of serious interjection into the public debate, it actually used to make quite an effect.

00:13:15.060 And do you remember when he came out of sort of retirement looking a little bit like somebody in the Japanese army who hadn't realized that the war had been declared over some decades earlier?

00:13:25.380 But he sort of reemerged about a year ago and did an interview, I think, on John Oliver, in which he mentioned…

00:13:31.300 Oh, wait.

00:13:32.220 Or Stephen Colbert.

00:13:33.420 Colbert.

00:13:34.580 It was on Colbert, wasn't it?

00:13:36.500 And he mentioned, Jon Stewart, that it seemed likely that the laboratory in Wuhan that actually does the coronavirus stuff could perhaps be the place where the coronavirus had come from.

00:13:51.660 And that was a very important interjection because it was actually the first time that a sort of figure of the left had unveiled publicly the fact that that was not a conspiracy theory but was indeed a perfectly viable theory.

00:14:08.560 And maybe you shouldn't, again, be thrown off Twitter for saying it.

00:14:12.560 So Jon Stewart showed that he had the ability to break that horrible, you know, mechanized way of thinking where you've got to be lockstep absolutely with your tried thinking.

00:14:23.020 And he showed the ability that actually would be a way out of some of our current manias.

00:14:27.720 He showed that if you do step out of that lockstep mentality, you can do some good because the moment he said that, you know,

00:14:35.040 the more of the media on the left started to accept that they couldn't hold on to the narrative that they'd been pushing.

00:14:40.740 And I thought when this show of his started, well, that's just great.

00:14:44.160 You know, Jon Stewart could actually sort of be one of those figures who sort of breaks the mold.

00:14:48.020 Lo and behold, only a few episodes in, we've got Jon Stewart presenting the episode of The Problem with White People.

00:14:55.800 And it's a struggle session where Andrew Sullivan is invited on under false pretenses.

00:15:01.260 He's called a racist, not only by one of the other panelists who's white, but also by Jon Stewart, the host.

00:15:07.920 And I watched that and I just thought, my gosh, this is just this is the end of Jon Stewart, really, because, you know, he had this opportunity.

00:15:17.440 And instead of being able to think for himself and think out loud and try stuff out,

00:15:22.180 he just fell into the same boring rut that so many people have fallen into in our time.

00:15:28.500 Let's bash on about white people. Let's do struggle sessions for being white.

00:15:34.520 And, you know, surprise, surprise, there isn't a huge audience of masochists who want to tune in to a hilariously unfunny episode of white people

00:15:48.540 talking about how ghastly white people are and punishing any white person who doesn't agree with them.

00:15:54.020 So. So, yes, the market has once again reasserted itself.

00:15:58.960 Yes. Feeling featuring women like some white woman who goes to the dinner parties of other white women by invitation to lecture them about how racist they are.

00:16:08.600 And thousands of dollars a plate.

00:16:12.000 Who would invite such a person? That's Brian Stelter's party.

00:16:15.960 Well, you know, I wish somebody I wish I wish I'd been able to sort of break into one of those things,

00:16:22.100 because it would be the perfect thing to write the modern version of Tom Wolfe's classic radical chic about, wouldn't it?

00:16:28.300 You know, the delicious hors d'oeuvres before which you're served an interim course of racism, you know,

00:16:35.200 and then a wonderful maybe filet mignon followed, you know, accompanied by a lecture about how appalling and disgusting and guilty you are.

00:16:44.660 It would have been a wonderful thing to witness, you know, and then a sorbet.

00:16:48.380 The latest few episodes of Jon Stewart, just so in case people didn't know, again, this is per same guy, Bobby Barak.

00:16:56.640 Last episode include him declaring that America prioritizes white comfort over black survival.

00:17:02.320 Calling Andrew Sullivan a racist, that was shameful and disgusting.

00:17:05.100 Other notable episodes from the past season include taking responsibility for systemic racism, racism and resource guarding,

00:17:11.700 and representation matters, but it doesn't solve racism.

00:17:14.820 No wonder this thing went down, right?

00:17:17.020 And he's like, well, they renewed it.

00:17:18.620 Well, that means absolutely nothing.

00:17:20.240 It doesn't it just means makes Apple feel good about itself.

00:17:23.480 It doesn't mean anybody wants to see it, which is in the end is the goal.

00:17:28.400 Absolutely.

00:17:28.720 And I would, of course, I'd love to see Jon Stewart do an episode on Apple TV about the ethics of Apple.

00:17:36.960 That would be a really interesting one.

00:17:39.760 He can look into what Ricky Gervais raised at the Oscars the other year and what the actual ethics of Apple as a company are in, say, China.

00:17:49.580 That would be a great episode.

00:17:51.320 I'd watch that.

00:17:52.460 It wouldn't be very funny, but wow, I'd watch it.

00:17:55.260 Well, and the old Jon Stewart might have done that.

00:17:57.060 Who knows?

00:17:57.560 You know, back when he was in his daily show seat, perhaps he would have.

00:18:01.640 But speaking of which, it points out the hypocrisy of all these people who want to lecture America on how bad we are, Great Britain.

00:18:08.680 And yet they're happy to do business with China or support companies that do.

00:18:11.980 That brings me to back to Twitter and Jeff Bezos and his bizarre reaction to Elon buying it.

00:18:19.420 So Jeff Bezos feels the need to weigh in on this, tweeting out, quote, interesting question.

00:18:24.420 Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?

00:18:29.600 This was in response to a New York Times journalist noting that Elon Musk's Tesla was extremely exposed to China.

00:18:37.680 That's Tesla's second largest market.

00:18:40.180 So his question is, did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?

00:18:44.300 Well, then he got killed online, absolutely killed.

00:18:47.640 People like Glenn Greenwald pointing out this Reuters 2021 report titled Amazon, that's Jeff Bezos's company, partnered with China propaganda arm.

00:18:59.280 The details of which expose Amazon removing negative reviews about a book by President Xi Jinping and then disabling comments entirely as part of a deeper decade long effort by the company, Amazon, to win favor in Beijing.

00:19:13.140 Then, hours later, Bezos tweets again.

00:19:16.740 My own answer to this question is, probably not, probably not.

00:19:20.600 No, they probably do not gain a bit of leverage.

00:19:25.280 I've got a horrible feeling that Jeff Bezos realizes that the whole sort of Russia thing has been overdone recently.

00:19:32.960 If Musk had bought Twitter even two years ago, he would have been accused of being an agent of Vladimir Putin.

00:19:41.060 Then, Bezos has moved on slightly and realized the best way to do a sort of drive-by reputational shooting on someone now is to do that.

00:19:49.620 And, of course, as people have pointed out about Bezos, Bezos is totally tied into the CCP.

00:19:56.780 He's had to do business in China.

00:19:58.420 He can't do business in China without going through the CCP.

00:20:01.280 So, I don't understand how these guys – I mean, it's the same with Bill Gates.

00:20:07.920 They sort of pose as something, and then the pose falls apart in no seconds flat.

00:20:14.960 And you just think, why didn't you just shut up, you know?

00:20:18.420 Right.

00:20:18.520 Why did you feel the need to speak about that?

00:20:21.700 Make such an idiot of yourself.

00:20:24.520 Well, they are railing.

00:20:25.860 They like crackdowns on free speech.

00:20:28.000 Not dumb speech.

00:20:28.820 That's fine.

00:20:29.480 But free speech is fine with them.

00:20:31.800 And you've got tweets like from the NAACP reminding Elon and the world, quote,

00:20:36.860 hate speech is unacceptable, okay?

00:20:41.060 And really what they normally say is unconstitutional, which is not true.

00:20:44.620 Not true at all.

00:20:45.680 Hate speech is not unconstitutional.

00:20:47.380 But the hate speech is unconstitutional.

00:20:49.060 Do not allow 45 to return to the platform.

00:20:51.580 Then you've got – there's a Washington Post op-ed today by this person, Anand Gerard Haradas,

00:20:58.200 an NYU journalism professor, of course, MSNBC contributor, saying,

00:21:02.880 Musk operates from a flawed, if widespread, misapprehension of the free speech issue facing

00:21:08.060 this country.

00:21:09.180 It goes on to say, in his vision, the freedom to speak without restraint by powerful authorities

00:21:14.540 is the only freedom of speech.

00:21:17.020 And so, freeing Nazis to Nazi, misogynists to bully and harass and dox and brigade women,

00:21:23.520 even former President Donald Trump to possibly get his Twitter account back.

00:21:27.440 The cutting of restraints becomes the whole of the project.

00:21:30.260 Well, yes, yes, indeed it does.

00:21:31.740 Indeed.

00:21:33.160 Freedom means what it says.

00:21:35.660 I thought he might be the guy.

00:21:37.020 There was a guy as well who said that one of the reasons why Elon Musk shouldn't be allowed

00:21:40.580 to find Twitter is because he doesn't have a doctorate.

00:21:45.420 Oh, come on.

00:21:46.880 Yes.

00:21:47.440 There was somebody who said that to an academic who said he doesn't even have a doctorate.

00:21:51.640 And why are we willing to hand over this platform to somebody so unqualified?

00:21:56.780 Well, one reason is all of you people who believe you are qualified, you keep showing

00:22:00.800 yourself to be totally unqualified.

00:22:02.860 And your NYU professor there is another example of that.

00:22:06.760 No, they also pretend, weirdly, that the status quo as it stands at the moment doesn't include

00:22:13.020 any of the things they talk about.

00:22:14.520 I mean, I'd be fascinated to see if any of these people who are now claiming that Twitter is

00:22:20.900 about to become a place where people are harassed have followed, I don't know, ooh, J.K.

00:22:25.660 Rowling's Twitter account and the responses she gets.

00:22:28.420 It would be interesting to see whether they've noted the fact that anti-Semites are still trolling

00:22:35.660 around on Twitter and there's no particular worry about that from these groups who are

00:22:42.620 now suddenly speaking out.

00:22:44.340 It's very strange.

00:22:45.760 They're talking about the platform as if it was absolutely perfect and happy for everybody

00:22:50.840 until the moment that Elon Musk bought it, at which point it's going to be turned into

00:22:54.740 into some kind of Nazi machine.

00:22:57.280 There was somebody who said the night before he bought Twitter, I think it was, or put together

00:23:06.420 the last deal, there was an academic who said that this evening on Twitter, he said, feels

00:23:12.300 very much like the last evening in a bar in Weimar, Germany.

00:23:17.240 And I said the next day, I said, so what's today, the starts of the roundups?

00:23:26.300 Do you see it happening?

00:23:28.120 Do you see the jackboots coming for you?

00:23:29.980 Or are you once again talking what we would call in Britain utter balls?

00:23:36.640 I like that, utter balls.

00:23:38.740 I was familiar with bollocks, but I've never heard utter balls.

00:23:42.620 Can I start using that one immediately?

00:23:44.760 I hand it to you, I hand it to you as a phrase.

00:23:47.960 So what do you make, Douglas, of the thought that maybe, you know, the old go-woke-and-go-broke

00:23:52.100 thing is actually starting to happen, you know, between those examples I was listing,

00:23:56.300 Disney stock is down some 15% now, right?

00:24:00.820 You've got BLM under investigation in several states.

00:24:04.540 You've got a pending midterm disaster for the Democrats.

00:24:07.980 You've got Biden at a 33% approval, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

00:24:12.480 It does seem like concurrent with the release of your book.

00:24:18.480 People are starting to get it, and they are starting to fight back.

00:24:22.900 Right.

00:24:23.120 That's my sense, Megan.

00:24:24.240 I'm glad you feel that as well.

00:24:25.380 That's my sense, is that there's been a sort of massive overreach by a certain type of

00:24:32.020 activist in particular in recent years, you know, who thought that all of the toys of

00:24:37.140 the town square belonged only to them, and who are also sort of, and I think we briefly

00:24:42.820 spoke about this when we spoke last time, and are also sort of motivated by a resentment

00:24:47.180 and a desire for revenge, an active glee in hurting their opponents.

00:24:53.080 That's why I said I try not, I laugh at my opponents a lot, but I try not to actively

00:24:57.500 hurt them, but these people have been actively trying to hurt a majority in the United States

00:25:05.140 in particular.

00:25:06.220 You know, they've shown themselves gleeful in trying to do this, you know, and perhaps

00:25:11.760 the beginning of a backlash against that is beginning.

00:25:16.340 The Disney case was a very telling one.

00:25:19.580 You know, there is no reason for Disney to engage in politics.

00:25:23.520 There is no reason for Disney to misrepresent a law in Florida, and weirdly sort of campaign

00:25:30.580 against it.

00:25:32.520 By the way, I mean, the thing they were campaigning about, as you well know, Ron DeSantis' bill,

00:25:37.680 simply aims to stop kindergarten kids and a bit above being told absolute nonsense gender

00:25:45.400 ideology, which is, of course, that there aren't two sexes, but there are about a million genders

00:25:49.560 still being added to.

00:25:50.840 Nobody knows quite how many or what they mean.

00:25:52.860 And that a child can become the opposite sex tomorrow if they wake up on the wrong side

00:26:00.040 of the bed.

00:26:01.120 All that the bill was doing was saying, that's not such a great idea, and you shouldn't teach

00:26:04.580 this stuff in kindergarten.

00:26:05.660 How about starting to educate American kids in, for instance, arithmetic and writing, which

00:26:09.740 they still lag behind the developed world?

00:26:12.260 So embarrassingly in.

00:26:14.900 Disney didn't have to misrepresent what Ron DeSantis' bill does.

00:26:18.860 They didn't have to pretend that it actually was don't say gay, as the Oscars also joined

00:26:25.160 in in pretending.

00:26:26.580 You know, they don't have to lie like this.

00:26:28.440 They don't even have to speak up about this.

00:26:30.140 But, you know, if they do want to, then then let them let them do their thing.

00:26:36.080 You know, if it is the case, as has been reported before, that at Disney parks, people shouldn't

00:26:43.120 be addressed as princess if they seem to present as a girl because they might not be comfortable

00:26:48.120 with that gender identification.

00:26:50.640 You know, if Disney wants to give up on the dream of princesses, let them do it, and let's

00:26:55.720 see what happens.

00:26:56.480 Let's see if the company that made its money in Mickey and Minnie Mouse makes any money when

00:27:02.440 it presents us with non-binary gender-fluid mouse.

00:27:06.500 Let them try their place in the marketplace, and let's watch their shares continue to plummet.

00:27:13.320 But yes, I think that there is a turning point that we may be at, which is that the ordinary,

00:27:23.020 regular, sensible folk in America in particular have simply been pushed too far and are starting

00:27:30.980 quite understandably to make themselves heard.

00:27:35.560 This book will be, as I said about Madison of Crowds, this is my new Dianetics, but this

00:27:40.100 book will be an able guide to help them do that.

00:27:43.380 But when you talk about Disney, I'm going to squeeze a break in here in a second, but

00:27:46.740 when you speak about Disney and the princesses, it reminds me, anybody who's gone there, especially

00:27:51.060 with a daughter, knows, I mean, the princess theme is everywhere.

00:27:54.380 As soon as you walk in, it's the big Cinderella's castle.

00:27:57.260 And then you can pay extra because all the little girls want to get their hair done in the

00:28:01.640 little princess cafe, and they make them look like a princess, and they give them a little

00:28:05.480 princess dress, and they give them a little princess wand.

00:28:08.240 You just try replacing that with drag queen story hour and see how things go, see how

00:28:13.620 the attendance at the park goes.

00:28:15.120 Because already, Trafalgar last week, or maybe this week, released a poll showing that nearly

00:28:20.040 70% of voters say that they are less likely to do business with Disney.

00:28:25.900 And I don't think it's as a result directly of the fight with DeSantis, though that's part

00:28:30.760 of it.

00:28:31.240 It's those videos.

00:28:32.660 It's the videos of their executives on camera admitting that they are sneaking, quote,

00:28:38.080 a queer agenda into their films and products wherever they can.

00:28:43.640 That's right.

00:28:44.320 That's right.

00:28:44.860 It's the same thing with Netflix, isn't it?

00:28:46.280 I mean, exactly the same thing.

00:28:47.500 You know, Netflix used to be so great when it started off and has just been pumping out

00:28:51.900 less and less watchable content because you think, oh, I thought I was watching a drama,

00:28:55.960 but it turns out it's a sermon.

00:28:57.860 It's another diversity sermon.

00:28:59.340 It's another equality sermon.

00:29:00.900 It's another equity sermon.

00:29:03.260 You know, unsubscribe.

00:29:05.680 That's right.

00:29:06.780 I mean, it's ridiculous, especially in the wake of, you know, George Floyd.

00:29:11.520 I know you've written about that.

00:29:12.340 If you turned on any streaming device, I mean, every single movie that was offered was some

00:29:18.480 sort of a lecture on racism, how bad we are, you know, how much work we have.

00:29:23.860 It was like, oh, my God.

00:29:25.060 And as it turns out, there really isn't a market for it.

00:29:28.900 I'm so fed up of this monotone thing.

00:29:31.920 That's what, apart from the fact that I disagree with it, it's what I mind.

00:29:34.960 I mind this idea that we all have to be sort of force-fed the same product all the time.

00:29:38.820 It was like after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, remarkable woman, very,

00:29:43.380 very admirable woman.

00:29:44.160 But I went into a bookshop in New York, as it happened, The Strand.

00:29:47.820 Every single book was about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, children's books, adult books,

00:29:51.860 and the other books were all about racism.

00:29:53.820 And I just sort of, I said to a friend, I was weird, what if I don't want to buy a book

00:29:58.280 about Ruth Bader Ginsburg today?

00:30:01.280 It's like, maybe I want to read a novel, you know.

00:30:04.920 Meanwhile, Amazon took down the documentary about Clarence Thomas, if I'm not mistaken.

00:30:10.720 That was the story.

00:30:11.520 They actually took down the documentary.

00:30:13.060 So it's so absurd.

00:30:15.140 All right, stand by, because there's so much more to go over.

00:30:17.520 I can't wait to dive into the book.

00:30:19.060 It is well worth your time.

00:30:20.560 Buy it today.

00:30:21.580 You will not be sorry.

00:30:22.640 Douglas Murray's latest offering, The War on the West, How to Prevail in the Age of

00:30:27.980 Unreason.

00:30:29.660 Don't go away.

00:30:30.380 Quick break first.

00:30:33.200 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:30:34.840 Here with me today, Douglas Murray.

00:30:36.700 In his new book, The War on the West, Douglas takes an in-depth look, in particular, at the

00:30:42.520 left's determination to destroy the life and legacy of British Prime Minister Winston

00:30:47.880 Churchill.

00:30:48.360 I mean, among others.

00:30:49.680 But the Winston Churchill part is amazing.

00:30:52.220 As you may remember, the left's hatred was on full display in the summer of 2020, when

00:30:56.400 protesters spray painted the word racist on Churchill's statue outside of the British

00:31:02.020 Parliament.

00:31:02.880 The statue was unveiled in 1973.

00:31:05.060 It depicts a famous photo of Churchill in 1941 during World War II, inspecting the damage

00:31:11.280 to the House of Commons after Germany's air raid on London.

00:31:15.080 The statue eventually had to be encased in a metal box to keep it away from protesters.

00:31:21.900 In his book, Douglas writes, quote,

00:31:23.540 If Churchill's good points cannot outweigh any bad points, then no one can ever do enough

00:31:29.980 good in their life.

00:31:31.560 The attacks on him make all human endeavor seem futile.

00:31:35.940 Douglas Murray is back with me now.

00:31:37.520 And I heard you making this point on trigonometry, which I love, too, that it's the same thing with

00:31:41.900 Lincoln.

00:31:42.400 If you can't have Lincoln, you can have no one.

00:31:44.180 It's all tied together.

00:31:46.580 Absolutely.

00:31:46.780 I'd go further.

00:31:48.980 As I say in the book, it's absolutely everybody in American history, as it is absolutely everybody

00:31:54.060 in British history.

00:31:55.520 You know, when I grew up, the main heroes we had politically were Lord Nelson, the Admiral

00:32:03.720 of the Fleet, who defeated the French.

00:32:07.620 We had, oh, we had Winston Churchill, because he stood alone against Nazi Germany.

00:32:13.460 And certainly, if he hadn't been prime minister at that point, then it's almost certain that

00:32:19.840 the Nazis would have been up against an appeasing prime minister or somebody not willing to stand

00:32:25.820 up to Nazism, and that Europe, at the very least, would have been flooded over by the Nazis

00:32:30.220 successfully.

00:32:32.180 He was, in my life also, and for all people, I think, who are British, as well as many Americans,

00:32:38.560 he was the single figure who showed something about the importance of grit and determination.

00:32:43.960 Even standing alone against the worst of enemies.

00:32:47.660 He was the epitome of bravery.

00:32:48.940 And of course, there was something more personal in it, which is that the generation that's now

00:32:53.800 pretty much died out, he was the person who rallied them, not just to fight for their country,

00:32:59.980 but to put up with night after night of bombardment.

00:33:03.220 You know, my grandparents told me this.

00:33:06.020 You know, my parents' generation grew up under the shadow of this extraordinary man, because

00:33:11.460 we knew that if it hadn't have been for him, we would have been speaking German and much

00:33:19.680 more.

00:33:21.020 So something very extraordinary happened in Britain in recent years, which was every one

00:33:25.520 of our heroes, but particularly Winston Churchill, the radical left activists and others, the

00:33:31.160 race hucksters and others came for.

00:33:33.020 You know, they accused him of all sorts of crimes, many of which are totally fictional.

00:33:38.740 Noam Chomsky, one of the great heroes of the left, claimed that Churchill had gassed the

00:33:43.820 Kurds in the 1910s.

00:33:47.460 He'd done no such thing.

00:33:48.740 Chomsky as ever was sloppy and thought that what the gas referred to was mustard gas, when

00:33:54.060 it was in fact tear gas of the kind that the British police and others still use on civilian

00:33:58.340 populations and extremists.

00:34:00.080 So anyway, they tore down Churchill.

00:34:02.540 They said he was a racist.

00:34:04.020 They said he was a colonialist and much more.

00:34:06.820 And I noticed that happening in Britain, this horrible, remorseless process whereby all of

00:34:11.660 our heroes were looked at in this light.

00:34:14.180 And then, of course, I saw the closer I looked at exactly the same thing.

00:34:17.900 And much worse was happening in America.

00:34:20.320 You know, that you could say there was a time a few generations back where Americans learned

00:34:25.840 about the founding fathers and didn't know much about the slavery that went on in their

00:34:30.360 time and the fact that they owned slaves.

00:34:32.600 You could say that was the case generations ago.

00:34:35.020 It hasn't been the case for generations.

00:34:37.360 A more rounded picture of American history has been on the curricula for a very long time.

00:34:42.380 But now we've gone to a different place.

00:34:44.500 What do people know in America now about Thomas Jefferson if they've gone to American schools

00:34:48.880 apart from the fact that he owned slaves?

00:34:52.080 You know, what do they know about Washington apart from what they've been told in the same

00:34:57.140 light?

00:34:57.900 So the founding fathers all came into it.

00:35:00.000 Obviously, Christopher Columbus has come into it for years.

00:35:03.160 And I think that the current settlement, as far as I can see, in American schooling and

00:35:07.400 education is that it would have been better if Christopher Columbus had never set out and

00:35:12.240 America had never been found by him.

00:35:14.920 I think that's the current state of play.

00:35:16.720 Either he should have taken a left and avoided America, or he should have left things to

00:35:24.880 the natives.

00:35:26.780 And if so, America would be much better off in the current era, and there'd be much more

00:35:32.000 Native Americans, and everything would be so much better.

00:35:35.640 Or he could have gone home, of course.

00:35:37.620 This is the other thing that seems to have been an option for Columbus.

00:35:40.320 He could have gone home and said, look, I've discovered this entirely new world, but there's

00:35:44.400 no promise there, really.

00:35:46.320 A lot of real estate opportunity, but not really.

00:35:49.540 Best we just forget about it and pretend it isn't there.

00:35:52.740 I mean, they've already done this with Columbus, and they've made him into this monstrous figure.

00:35:58.240 They did it with the founding fathers.

00:35:59.720 They've done it literally in recent years with the founding date of America, where the New

00:36:03.640 York Times has taken it upon itself to appoint a total ignoramus non-historian, Nicole Hannah-Jones,

00:36:09.960 to come up with a new version of American history, which by its own definition, and albeit they

00:36:17.380 lied about it afterwards and pretended that this wasn't their definition, and actually

00:36:20.560 rewrote silently and re-edited the copy that they had published.

00:36:24.300 But they said originally their whole aim was to reframe the founding date of America so that

00:36:30.100 in actual fact America was founded in 1619, because that's when the first slaves came into

00:36:34.680 America.

00:36:34.960 So in other words, America was born in sin, has always been mired in sin, and just in

00:36:40.700 case you didn't get the memo, we are going to reframe the date of the American founding

00:36:46.220 to make sure that you're totally guilt-ridden forever.

00:36:49.100 But then you come up further to date, you pass the founding fathers, you get to both sides

00:36:53.320 in the Civil War.

00:36:54.260 There was a time when there were people who were more critical of the people on the South,

00:36:57.420 but now it's equally critical of the people on the North and the South sides.

00:37:00.380 And even Abraham Lincoln, even the people who freed the slaves, now have their statues

00:37:07.440 torn down in American cities.

00:37:10.120 And if the mob doesn't get to them first, as they did say in Portland when I was there,

00:37:16.120 the Lincoln statues are now taken down preemptively by councils, worried that the mob will get

00:37:22.940 to them next.

00:37:23.600 We see Thomas Jefferson's statue boxed up and wheeled out of the back of the New York City

00:37:29.480 council chamber, wheeled out the back door in a crate because, as one of the council members

00:37:36.120 said in New York, Thomas Jefferson no longer represents our values.

00:37:40.840 You get Teddy Roosevelt with the same treatment, you get everyone put through the same treatment.

00:37:46.000 Why?

00:37:46.760 So that America has no heroes left.

00:37:49.860 Just like Britain, no heroes, no one to look up to, nothing good in the past.

00:37:54.840 These people have got away with this for years, and it has to stop.

00:38:01.340 It is totally unfair.

00:38:03.580 It is totally ahistorical.

00:38:05.860 It ignores not just the truth about the great figures of the American past, like the British

00:38:10.720 past, but it also ignores what the rest of the world was doing.

00:38:15.200 You know, the absolutely maddening thing about the illiteracy of the Robin DeAngelos and Ibram

00:38:25.140 X.

00:38:25.500 Kendi's and Hannah Nicole Jones, the absolute madness of what they have done is that they

00:38:31.440 have persuaded American society not just that American history is just totally rotten and

00:38:38.220 that people today, as a result, are rotten and have to just keep on feeling guilt about

00:38:42.640 themselves, even though, I mean, I never did anything with colonialism.

00:38:45.540 I never did anything with slavery.

00:38:47.240 Neither did you, nor did anyone listening.

00:38:49.200 Nobody should have any guilt about it through the lives because we didn't do anything about

00:38:52.280 it.

00:38:52.580 But we're told we've always got to have that guilt.

00:38:55.160 And then, of course, you have this monstrous misrepresentation based on the fact that the

00:39:00.420 people doing this misrepresentation never, ever tell anyone what the rest of the world

00:39:06.640 was doing, you know, the founding fathers didn't come up with slavery and decide to

00:39:11.600 institute it in America.

00:39:12.940 Every damn country in the world, every society was doing slavery at the time.

00:39:17.140 The remarkable thing about the Western world is that Britain first and then everyone else

00:39:21.840 after actually abolished the trade that every civilization in history has involved itself

00:39:27.260 in.

00:39:27.960 You know, do one in a million Americans know that?

00:39:31.820 The one in a million Americans know that horrific and huge as the transatlantic slave trade was

00:39:38.680 that there was a much bigger slave trade at the same time that took Africans east to Arabia

00:39:45.100 and that the Arabs took even more people, roughly 18 million people they stole from Africa, sold

00:39:52.260 into slavery.

00:39:53.280 Why do we not know about the Arab slave trade?

00:39:55.880 For one reason, among others, which is that unlike the Americans, the Arabs castrated every

00:40:01.860 black male so that there could never be another generation of black Africans in the Arabian

00:40:09.100 Peninsula.

00:40:10.140 Now, does one in 10 million Americans know this?

00:40:13.960 I very much doubt it.

00:40:15.740 We have been force-fed not only a false version of our own past, but a totally false version

00:40:23.000 of the rest of the world's past.

00:40:25.160 So we're told and invited and then told to think appallingly of ourselves, but we don't

00:40:33.140 have to.

00:40:34.100 We don't have to at all.

00:40:36.240 It's incredible.

00:40:38.720 You go through some of the examples so methodically to put the point to it.

00:40:43.640 They lie about the individual heroes to tear them down or reduce them to their worst quote

00:40:49.400 with total ignorance of the rest of their life or, you know, willful blindness to the West

00:40:54.680 of their life.

00:40:55.180 And they do the same countrywide to Great Britain, to America, to the West.

00:40:59.040 And if you look at the specifics, it really brings the point home that you've done it

00:41:04.040 here and in the chapter on Churchill, you do it there as well.

00:41:08.180 Now, even at Churchill College, even at a college named for Winston Churchill, you write about

00:41:16.620 this panel.

00:41:17.240 It made news when it happened that that got together to take a look at his true legacy,

00:41:21.760 his true legacy.

00:41:22.400 And it devolved to the point where in the book you point out, you point the following

00:41:25.900 out, there was no there were no depths to which the participants would not sink.

00:41:31.700 At one point, one of the participants started to snark at Churchill for being a coward, quote,

00:41:36.180 I mean, was it Churchill out there fighting the war?

00:41:39.500 Because I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

00:41:41.360 I'm pretty sure he was at home.

00:41:44.660 And you go on to write, you must wonder how hostile somebody must be to ask why a prime

00:41:51.200 minister who, as a young man, saw action on four continents and volunteered to fight in

00:41:57.180 World War I should, in his 60s, have fought on the front line of the conflict like some

00:42:02.180 medieval warlord.

00:42:04.160 Exactly right.

00:42:05.760 But even his own namesake college betrayed him without anyone on the panel to defend him.

00:42:12.180 That's right.

00:42:13.180 And, you know, as I say, these people, I mean, that panel in question had, again, a bunch

00:42:17.640 of just non-historians, totally unqualified figures.

00:42:21.660 Sort of race hucks the sociologists and others.

00:42:24.420 By the way, that panel in question was chaired by an extraordinarily venomous and unpleasant

00:42:31.060 academic at Cambridge University who has made herself in Britain in recent years somewhat

00:42:36.960 notorious for, among other things, tweeting out white lives don't matter.

00:42:42.340 And on another charming occasion that she said that she finds it very hard every day because

00:42:48.520 she has to every day resist the temptation and the urge to kneecap white people.

00:42:54.540 So this is what we're dealing with, of course.

00:42:57.060 We're really dealing with very, very racist people, very, very racist anti-white people.

00:43:03.360 And if it was anyone else being spoken about like this, you know, we'd know.

00:43:08.860 I mean, you know, one of the points I make in the book is that you just, you see in panels

00:43:14.660 like that, in publications like the ones I cite, you see what's really going on.

00:43:19.960 This isn't even, they don't even bother to make a fair estimation of the Western past.

00:43:25.340 They don't even bother to make a fair estimation of our Western heroes.

00:43:28.820 They just want to hurt us.

00:43:31.440 You know, I mean, we could all do it.

00:43:34.140 I mean, I could go to, I don't know, Ghana and decide to say to everyone locally that

00:43:40.480 there was nothing good about Ghanaian history, that there were no good people from Ghana and

00:43:46.300 that all of their local heroes were total scumbags.

00:43:49.800 You know, I could do it, but I think people would identify what I was doing.

00:43:53.980 They would say, you seem to have a problem with Ghana and its people.

00:43:58.220 Um, and if, if I were to be the sort of person who then went on to say, and also I have to

00:44:05.380 resist the urge to kneecap black people in Ghana, I think, I think people would cotton on at

00:44:11.080 some point that, Oh, there's a racist seems to be that we're dealing with a nasty old racist

00:44:16.380 here.

00:44:16.760 Well, it's the same with these people.

00:44:19.100 They're nasty anti-Western, anti-white racists.

00:44:22.860 And, uh, this has to be identified because these people have got away with it for far

00:44:27.780 too long.

00:44:28.100 And here's the, here's the, one of the real things I want, want people to take away from

00:44:32.340 this book is in my experience in recent years, people, particularly American parents, I mean,

00:44:37.640 you know, you're a parent, uh, Meg, um, but particularly American parents, um, have had this

00:44:43.520 sort of experience mainly perhaps when the children get to sort of college age, uh, that

00:44:49.420 the children come back from college and are sort of crammed full with, with 50% of the

00:44:55.180 facts.

00:44:56.720 50% is a generous estimation, but they've got, let's say they're crammed full of one side

00:45:02.620 of the argument, you know, and they, and they come home and they, they basically anger or

00:45:09.000 befuddle their parents with these claims about people like Abraham Lincoln, these claims about

00:45:16.100 people like Thomas Jefferson, or, you know, claims that America is racist institutionally

00:45:21.400 today and has been since its founding.

00:45:24.080 And that therefore we must atone in some way.

00:45:26.280 And in my experience, a lot of American parents, and increasingly this has happened in recent years

00:45:29.760 to me, American parents, you know, what I do, um, uh, uh, what I say in response to these

00:45:36.480 things, you know, we can't all become scholars and experts in Thomas Jefferson, you know, Abraham

00:45:42.800 Lincoln, all the founding fathers, everything to do with the civil war, everything to do with

00:45:46.300 the 20th century, you know, um, nevermind, you know, world history, we can't all do that.

00:45:52.360 What do we do?

00:45:53.720 And one of my self appointed tasks is to arm such people with the facts that they need,

00:45:59.760 to push back, uh, is to say, actually, there are specific lies that your children are being

00:46:07.040 told and that, and they're not just specific.

00:46:09.980 They're also general lies.

00:46:11.800 The lie that for instance, there should be hereditary guilt for one racial group and not

00:46:17.540 for any other.

00:46:18.980 The monstrous lie that some children, white children are born with some inherited sin and

00:46:26.260 evil that they must atone for because they look like people who did something bad in

00:46:31.240 the past, you know, these, so there's the specific mistakes and crimes.

00:46:36.360 And then there is the much, much larger moral crime of what is being taught to a new generation

00:46:43.600 in America and in the West as a whole.

00:46:46.420 That's right.

00:46:46.700 And you've done a deep dive on that.

00:46:48.420 And that's where we'll pick it up right after a quick break.

00:46:50.940 There's so much, it's such goodness with Douglas Murray and more goodness after a quick, quick

00:46:55.580 break.

00:46:55.780 Don't go away.

00:46:56.560 And don't forget folks, you can follow and download the Megan Kelly show podcast on Apple,

00:47:00.840 Spotify, Pandora stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts there.

00:47:03.920 You'll find our full archives, including I mentioned it episode 55, which is the first time I had the

00:47:08.380 pleasure of interviewing Douglas Murray.

00:47:10.460 Again, I, if you don't like that show, you don't, you're not going to like this.

00:47:13.800 You're not going to like my show at all because it's among the best work I could do.

00:47:17.740 He's just, I don't want to reduce him to a soundbite machine, but he is, his insights

00:47:22.700 are invaluable.

00:47:23.920 Check it out.

00:47:26.740 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show here with me today.

00:47:29.300 Douglas Murray, author of the must buy new book, the war on the West, how to prevail in

00:47:36.080 the age of unreason.

00:47:38.700 Here's an excerpt in the war on the West.

00:47:40.580 White people are one of the first subjects of attack.

00:47:43.180 A fact that has been steadily normalized and made into the only acceptable form of racism

00:47:48.460 in the societies in which it happens.

00:47:51.540 And to your point before the break, I've heard you say all of the white guilts and white

00:47:58.540 rage and white tears that we see in the headlines.

00:48:02.060 If somebody says that to you, that's your white guilt speaking.

00:48:06.000 That's your, oh, those are your white tears, your white woman's tears.

00:48:08.960 Uh, you're with the question you've asked is how dare people talk like this?

00:48:14.740 People need to be called out on what is clearly racist messaging.

00:48:20.040 Yes, absolutely.

00:48:21.240 I mean, uh, we have this pathologizing of white people that is going on at the moment and it

00:48:27.520 is time that it stops.

00:48:30.040 It, it, it, it would be totally unacceptable and rightly unacceptable to do it to any other

00:48:36.000 group of people.

00:48:36.880 Um, every month there is a new pathologizing term about white people.

00:48:42.740 Uh, as you mentioned, Megan, you know, we've had, we've had white tears.

00:48:46.380 We've had white women's tears.

00:48:48.420 That's a, that's one that you can especially laugh at, you know?

00:48:52.520 Oh, she's just crying her white woman's tears.

00:48:55.820 I mean, imagine that.

00:48:57.680 Imagine saying, oh, those are just black tears.

00:49:00.940 Those are just black woman's tears.

00:49:03.440 I mean, how disgusting it would be.

00:49:06.100 How appalled we'd be by anyone who did that.

00:49:08.900 What about, what about the, that, the, the moment when, uh, uh, Joy Reed, you mentioned

00:49:13.540 earlier, decide that that terrible case a year ago where that poor young woman was murdered

00:49:19.660 by her boyfriend, uh, in America and it was exactly, and was missing and the press was

00:49:27.620 all over it inevitably because, you know, a nice looking young woman and, and, and she

00:49:33.100 seemed happy and, and she'd gone missing and it seemed like she'd been murdered and it

00:49:36.920 turned out that she wasn't, what does Joy Reed say?

00:49:40.440 But, oh, what we're seeing here is missing white woman syndrome where everyone cares because

00:49:46.420 no, people didn't care because the victim was white.

00:49:49.900 They cared because she was a young woman on the cusp of her life had been brutally murdered.

00:49:55.780 You know, that was why they cared.

00:49:57.560 But every, every month there's a new pathologizing term about white people.

00:50:01.560 We had, as you say, white rage.

00:50:03.480 And again, you know, if anyone thinks what I'm describing is in any way, a fringe movement,

00:50:08.860 they have to remember it isn't no lesser figure than Mark Milley, General Milley, the chairman

00:50:15.180 of the joint chiefs of staff testifying before Congress last year talks about white rage.

00:50:22.140 Again, imagine a situation, whatever had happened before, whatever the situation that happened

00:50:30.140 before, where Congress heard from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and asked him

00:50:35.480 his views about black rage.

00:50:37.900 And he said, well, that's a very interesting subject, black rage.

00:50:41.040 I'd like to know more about this black rage.

00:50:43.640 I mean, we would know exactly what was going on.

00:50:47.520 It'd be the pathologizing of white people, of black people, sorry, the demeaning of black

00:50:52.640 people, the attempt to other black people, to use one of the left's favorite phrases.

00:50:57.200 Well, this is what's happening with white people.

00:50:59.820 And as you know, and I'll give a quick example if I may, it's not hard to see where this actually

00:51:05.180 leads.

00:51:06.060 And again, I'm not quoting this from obscure places or obscure sources.

00:51:10.440 This goes right to the top and all the way through Western society and American society

00:51:16.160 in particular.

00:51:16.760 Here is a charming lady called Aruna Kilinani speaking at Yale University in April of last

00:51:23.220 year.

00:51:23.480 She gave a talk at Yale University, again, not some backwater, one of the jewels in the

00:51:30.520 crown of American culture and education, or at least used to be.

00:51:34.700 She gave a talk at Yale called The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.

00:51:40.040 Again, imagine a talk at Yale, The Psychopathic Problem of the Black Mind.

00:51:45.420 Here is, among other things, what the lecturer said.

00:51:48.440 One point in her talk, she said that she fantasized about, quote, unloading a revolver into the

00:51:56.280 head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands

00:52:02.680 as I walked away guiltless with a bounce in my step, like I did the world an effing favor.

00:52:08.660 Again, not to belabor the point, imagine if somebody gave a speech at Yale in which they boasted that

00:52:17.760 they dream about putting bullets into the heads of black people and are doing the world a favor

00:52:24.040 when they do.

00:52:25.420 This is psychopathic itself.

00:52:28.360 It is psychopathic behavior itself for people to talk this way about any group of people by

00:52:37.180 dint of the color of their skin.

00:52:39.580 And they're doing it about white people now.

00:52:42.600 Almost nobody has been willing to identify it.

00:52:45.120 It has to be identified.

00:52:47.320 And among other things, there's a really crucial point I have to make here, Megan, which is this.

00:52:51.620 I think if you tried this nonsense, this vicious, vicious nonsense on any group of people, it

00:52:59.560 wouldn't work.

00:53:00.860 I think that if you were so psychopathic and so vengeful and so racist that you wanted to

00:53:08.360 persuade a minority ethnic community in, say, the United States that they were so disgusting

00:53:15.720 that they were evil from birth, that they owed everybody else, that all of their ancestors

00:53:20.260 had been appalling, that they had nothing good in their culture, nothing good in their

00:53:24.100 present, that the best thing they could do would be to get out of life and get out of

00:53:27.820 everyone else's way because they were such a nuisance and their very existence demeaned

00:53:33.300 everybody else and diminished them.

00:53:35.600 And in addition, you know, you sort of said that in our spare time we dream of putting bullets

00:53:40.340 in this minority's heads.

00:53:41.720 I think that wouldn't work because said minority would be highly unlikely to be wooed and attracted

00:53:50.140 by the moral and philosophical and political offer being given to them.

00:53:57.860 Well, these psychopaths are trying to make majority populations believe this.

00:54:05.200 You know, the majority of people in countries like Britain and America are still white.

00:54:10.300 Why on earth would anyone think that you could actually persuade majority populations to believe

00:54:19.120 that they have to hate themselves, that they have to hate their culture, that they have

00:54:24.360 to uniquely hate their past and feel guilt because of it?

00:54:27.720 You know, this is, has to be said, a completely psychopathic project.

00:54:33.440 It's been pushed through our culture and we have to push it out.

00:54:38.100 You know, the response is generally, it's not racist if the comments are coming from a group

00:54:44.720 that is out of power, is if the white majority is the group that has the power, then they can

00:54:51.140 be spoken about that way.

00:54:53.000 And if the group doing the speaking is a minority group that traditionally or present day is out

00:54:59.420 of power, then they have the right to say those things because racism is defined as hatred of

00:55:03.840 other, you know, based on color, race, et cetera, plus power, plus power.

00:55:08.660 Right. Well, exactly.

00:55:10.220 That's, that's the amazing thing.

00:55:11.140 They always try to present this stuff as if it's mathematics, you know, like it's, uh,

00:55:15.140 we've come up with a formula.

00:55:16.400 It's, uh, it's, uh, this plus power.

00:55:19.260 It's, it's total, uh, total balls again, I'm afraid.

00:55:22.460 Um, but, but let's run with their definition and pretend that it was, it was true for a moment.

00:55:27.200 Okay. Let's say I'm an American at any point between 2008 and 2016, the incumbent, uh, president

00:55:40.280 in the white house voted in two very, um, successful election victories is Barack Obama, a black

00:55:47.320 American. So who has power in America at that point? I think you can say very easily that

00:55:54.380 the most powerful person in the country was black.

00:55:57.200 Would that mean that anyone who was white in America, because nobody else in America has

00:56:03.600 much power as him at that point, could say racist things about black people because the

00:56:08.520 most important person in the country was black. Obviously not. Obviously not. So their own

00:56:16.960 mathematical formula doesn't work. It's not about power. It's not about white people having

00:56:25.340 power and black people not. And they don't even work out that this doesn't, this stupid claim of

00:56:32.440 theirs doesn't work on its own terms. And here's what's actually happening. We are not talking about

00:56:39.260 people actually interested in justice. As I say, at one point in the book, quotes, quote,

00:56:45.520 quoting Nietzsche, we are talking about people who talk of justice, but mean revenge. They talk about

00:56:55.680 justice, but they mean revenge. What they really mean is this black people undeniably did not have

00:57:03.600 the same rights as white people at points in the American past. No doubt about it. No doubt about it.

00:57:10.240 Just like women didn't have the same rights as men in all of the American past, just as gay people

00:57:17.300 didn't have the same rights as straight people throughout almost all of the American past.

00:57:22.280 These things are undeniable. But as I read about in the matters of crowds, in relation to the second

00:57:27.580 of those two things, sex and sexuality, you would make a huge moral error if you thought that the

00:57:36.180 best way to make up the past inequality for women was to beat up on men for some time, or because

00:57:43.780 you, because of the situation for gays in the past, that the best way to rectify that was not to seek

00:57:49.480 equality, but to beat up on heterosexual people for a bit and tell them that they were less, you know,

00:57:54.280 you'd be making a huge strategic as well as moral error. Well, this is the error that these race

00:57:59.620 hucksters and others are in at the moment. What they seem to believe is that because white people

00:58:06.580 had power in the past, they have white power now. They have power because they are white now. All

00:58:14.120 white people have this power now, and that all black people are still in the position that black

00:58:19.380 people were in in America two centuries ago. Ergo, you have to beat up the white people for a time.

00:58:25.800 Metaphorically, sometimes literally, you know, you actually have to indulge racism against white

00:58:33.680 people in order to make up for racism against black people in the past and any residual such racism

00:58:39.680 today. It's such a monstrous moral error. And it's basically what Kendi has put in writing. I mean,

00:58:47.080 Kendi's owns that in his own writing. Yes. As I quote in the book, Ibram X. Kendi says in his book,

00:58:54.780 how to be an anti-racist, which is really a guide for how to be a racist. He just should have taken

00:59:00.220 the anti out of the title, and he would have accurately titled his own book. Kendi says that the

00:59:07.360 answer to past inequalities is present inequalities, that the answer to past prejudice is present

00:59:12.960 prejudice. So I have quite a lot of questions for Kendi. Of course, he won't answer them because

00:59:19.740 he won't debate his ideas in public. He just puts them out there and never, never, never debates.

00:59:26.500 You probably saw the wonderful Coleman Hughes pretended on April Fool's Day that Kendi had

00:59:32.240 agreed to his offer to debate. Of course, it was an April Fool's joke. Kendi never agrees to debate

00:59:36.680 anyone any more than does Robin DiAngelo, who happens to be white, that I always describe as the

00:59:42.320 Miss Whiplash of anti-racism. She's paid by white men to come around and scold them for how naughty they are.

00:59:49.180 Anyhow, the thing with Kendi in particular is that he makes these claims, but obviously,

00:59:58.520 you have to say back at him, how long would this go on for, among other things? And what are the

01:00:05.340 limits of it? If you believe that we should have present inequalities and that white people have

01:00:10.980 to be done down for a bit, how long does that go on for? And are there any limits to it? Well,

01:00:18.200 as it happens, Robin DiAngelo, who wrote White Fragility, another one of the apologizing anti-white

01:00:23.360 books of our time, Robin DiAngelo says in her book very explicitly an answer to the thing that Kendi

01:00:30.320 can't answer or wouldn't answer. Robin DiAngelo, the Miss Whiplash of anti-racism says,

01:00:36.240 there is no good form of whiteness. There is no good form of being white. And here's the rider she

01:00:45.980 gives. And whiteness is inescapable. So again, I play the same moral exercise. Imagine what would

01:00:59.100 happen if some horrible racist were to write a book in 2021, 2022, in which they said, there is no good

01:01:09.740 form of blackness. No good form of blackness. There's no good way of being black or being proud

01:01:15.380 of being black. And you can't escape it. What would we call such a person? I think we know. So

01:01:22.600 time to call Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi and the others the same thing. We are dealing here

01:01:28.340 with racists, pure and simple. That's right. It's crazy to me, even notwithstanding the pushback on

01:01:36.560 figures like that in our circles anyway. You know, right wing media or more conservative or

01:01:41.980 more independent media. They'll talk about things like that, even at our school. And keep in mind,

01:01:47.360 you know, we talked about this last time we fled the New York schools because they were so crazy left

01:01:52.680 and woke and part of this war. And we found more reasonable schools in Connecticut and we're enjoying

01:01:58.780 them. But they've just formed a sort of a diversity group at this one of the schools and the meetings

01:02:05.620 which I've been attending because I want to know what's happening are talking about how do we get

01:02:10.300 Ibram X. Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy here? How do we get Robin DiAngelo here? I know that's my like, what

01:02:16.240 are you, what could you be thinking that that you're thinking about inviting raging racists, anti-white

01:02:23.840 racists to come to this school to try to influence what the agenda, the curriculum, the teachers, I will

01:02:29.840 fight you. I will fight you. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, it's worse. They are attaching

01:02:36.780 electrodes to the brains of young Americans. You know, they are wiring them to be miswired throughout

01:02:44.960 their life. On this and the trans stuff too. Absolutely. As you know, I wrote about the trans

01:02:50.840 stuff and the madness of crowds and on and on that still goes sadly. But we have to identify what is

01:02:57.360 happening here. They are trying to attach electrodes to the brains of America's children.

01:03:02.660 You know, here is the thing, again, I am responsible, as you are, for what we have done in our lives.

01:03:10.400 For mistakes that we've made, for wrongs we have done, people, and everybody in the world has.

01:03:15.920 And we have to deal with that with our own conscience and try to rectify that in our own

01:03:20.480 lives where we can. But none of us is responsible for things we have not done. I am not responsible

01:03:28.500 for anything that was done centuries before my birth by people who may have looked like me.

01:03:35.940 But here is the follow on as well. We are now at the stage, the stage of vengeance, particularly in the

01:03:43.820 case of reparations, where people, including, again, including this, it can't be stressed enough,

01:03:49.080 not a fringe thing, including the government of the United States of America, is looking into

01:03:55.340 historic reparations. And here's the deal that includes. It means people who look like people

01:04:04.300 who did something bad in the past, giving a large wealth transfer to people who look like people to

01:04:11.660 whom a bad thing was done. Where exactly is the justice in that? And I mean, I don't want to

01:04:17.980 overstress the point, or belabor the point, but we are in America in a country which seems to find it

01:04:24.440 incredibly divisive to suggest that people should show a piece of ID when they go to exercise their

01:04:31.680 rights at the ballot box. This is something so controversial that it is said to be extraordinarily

01:04:37.920 racist in America in the 21st century to identify yourself when you go to the ballot box. Well,

01:04:44.240 here's the deal with reparations, which major figures like Tanhazi Coates, and again, everybody

01:04:50.740 running for the Democratic primary in 2020 talked about. What we're talking about here would be a wealth

01:04:58.500 transfer, which would include taking money from people who have arrived in America in the last century,

01:05:04.500 or the descendants of such people, and giving it to people who can prove that their ancestors suffered

01:05:11.920 from slavery. Well, here, among many other things, is just one of the moral problems.

01:05:17.400 Voltaire said in the 18th century, he said, the only thing more evil than what Europeans are doing in

01:05:24.180 selling Africans is what the Africans are doing to their brother Africans. Because, of course,

01:05:31.100 I mentioned Ghana earlier, one of the centers of this trade at the time, it was the Africans who

01:05:39.080 sold their brothers and sisters, who stole their brothers and sisters. I have behind me on the shelf

01:05:44.220 the memoirs of a quite extraordinary and heroic man called Equiano, who was one of the people who

01:05:49.300 wrote, who was a slave, and who actually wrote a memoir of his experiences. And he describes this

01:05:57.120 terrifying thing of people from a neighboring village in Africa, clambering over the garden wall and

01:06:02.200 stealing him from his bed. So, how do we prove exactly who is descended from somebody who was

01:06:11.260 only descended from slaves, and who is descended both from slaves and slavers?

01:06:17.300 Why, if we're interested in reparations, do we not go to Africa to get some of those reparations?

01:06:26.400 Why don't we find the governments and the descendants of people in Africa who stole Africans by the

01:06:33.060 millions and then sold them to the Europeans, why don't we find them and at least take some of their

01:06:38.040 money and redistribute it? I mean, to even ask the question is to answer it. Who honestly thinks that

01:06:45.020 any of this would create racial or social harmony? It's almost the definition of how to put a pipe

01:06:53.760 bomb underneath your society and then set it off. Which may be the point, right? That's part of the

01:07:00.880 point for some. Politics is the point for many others. And there's a general push in all of this.

01:07:08.760 Noah Rothman has a good book coming out. I reviewed it in advance. And it's about this from a different

01:07:14.260 vantage point. But one of the points he makes is they take delight in extinguishing joy. I think

01:07:21.360 the book's called The New Puritans. And it compares the woke to the Puritans and how really the point

01:07:29.660 is to eliminate joy, or you might say, love of country or your national figures. They want to

01:07:37.820 eliminate the joy. They resent it. That's part of the point. And your book gets to that in a different

01:07:43.060 way, because you sort of go through the institutions and how they've been disparaged, corrupted,

01:07:48.280 manipulated. The one that stood out to me is what's happening at the Tate with Rex Whistler.

01:07:54.420 You mentioned slavery, and there's a teeny tiny piece of a Rex Whistler mural that shows a black boy

01:08:02.920 being led on what appears to be like a leash or a rope. It's not like a rope around his neck, but he's

01:08:11.680 being led. And this has wound up becoming an absolute nightmare. And your point is, people have

01:08:20.380 been enjoying the mural as a whole, not this one teeny tiny piece of it for decades, without any

01:08:28.240 problem. People of color, white people, conservatives, liberals, writing raving reviews about it in places

01:08:34.840 like The Guardian. And now, under modern day standards, it too must go.

01:08:41.500 Yes. I'm so glad you mentioned this, Megan, because this is actually one of the things that bothers me

01:08:46.400 most. You know, I loathe the politicization of everything. You know, I loathe the racialization of

01:08:54.940 everything. The monotone, boring thing which is done to everything. You know, using this race

01:09:03.120 hucksters thing to take down everything. It's bad enough when they do it in politics. It's bad enough

01:09:09.320 when they do it in education. But they're doing it to everything in our culture. You know, the British

01:09:14.600 Library in the summer of George Floyd ordered an audit of its books and authors to find out who was

01:09:23.000 guilty of being connected to colonialism or slavery. And by the way, they actually were totally inept at

01:09:29.580 the task. They identified people who had no connection with slavery and put them on a sort

01:09:34.040 of blacklist. It was absolutely reprehensible. We've seen the Globe Theatre in London, the remake of

01:09:40.500 Shakespeare's Globe, criticizing Shakespeare for his use of language. One scholar in the decolonizing

01:09:49.100 Shakespeare seminars announced that Shakespeare's use of the terms of light and darkness was racist

01:09:55.840 language. They said, Shakespeare's language is all over the place. You know, hitherto, Megan,

01:10:02.680 hitherto, people thought that William Shakespeare was quite the user with language. I thought we were

01:10:09.860 meant to admire him as one of the jewels in the crown. But no, he also racist, everybody else like

01:10:17.640 everybody else. And the case you just cite of the Rex Whistler mural at the Tate is one that really

01:10:22.840 bothers me. I'll tell the story very quickly. But yes, Rex Whistler painted this mural, his first

01:10:28.720 mural at the Tate Britain, as it then was in the 1920s. He spent months and months doing it. It's a

01:10:36.780 wonderful, beautiful, fantastical mural. And like all of his work, for anyone who knows it, I urge people to

01:10:42.980 see his work. He was an extraordinarily talented man and loved by everybody. And this is a sort of

01:10:50.480 fantasy mural. And like all of his fantasy murals, there's always something which says, even in Arcadia,

01:10:58.380 there am I, there am I, death, suffering, evil, wickedness. There's always something. And in this

01:11:06.240 particular, in this particular mural, there is, as you say, in one tiny section, a black child who's

01:11:13.580 being pulled by a woman in a frilly frock, who's laughing. And clearly Whistler is saying,

01:11:19.440 et in Arcadia, ego, even in Arcadia, you know. It has now been, thanks to a very hostile campaign by a

01:11:27.620 tiny number of people. It has been closed, the room in question. It has been locked off from the

01:11:34.800 public. Whistler's name has been removed. Nobody knows if it's ever going to reopen or be shown to

01:11:41.580 the public again, because the whole mural has been designated by the trustees of the Tate, who are meant

01:11:48.200 to look after the national collection of the Tate. They have designated it a racist mural, and they've

01:11:54.260 smeared Rex Whistler as a racist. Here's why I mine, among much else. First of all, this is a work

01:12:00.900 of art. This is not a political manifesto. It is a whimsical, beautiful work of art. So I mined it for

01:12:09.300 that reason first. Here's the second reason I mined. Rex Whistler didn't live long enough to marry and

01:12:16.180 have children. So there are not people around to defend him. And the reason why was when the Second

01:12:21.400 World War started, and people in my own country of birth, Great Britain, were being called up,

01:12:26.280 Rex Whistler immediately signed up. He joined a tank battalion, and he died on his first day of action

01:12:32.340 in Normandy in 1944. This was a man, an artist, who could have had an easy war. He could have tried

01:12:42.140 to be a war artist, for instance. That wasn't entirely easy, very difficult by modern standards,

01:12:47.400 but he could have found ways to survive. He decided he didn't want to do that.

01:12:51.400 He wanted to fight with the other men of England on the front line against Nazi Germany. So here we

01:12:56.360 are in the position in the 2020s, where a man who died fighting Nazism is posthumously defamed

01:13:05.260 by people who are meant to be safeguarding his legacy and defamed as a racist. This is not an

01:13:13.780 exceptional thing. This is a common thing now. Everybody in our entire cultural history,

01:13:21.680 everybody is being defamed by not living in 2022, by not sharing all of our values. We stand

01:13:32.020 beside all of our history as judge, jury, and hangman. And we're not even curious to hear the case

01:13:40.260 for our own defense. It's an unbelievable, masochistic, devastating thing for a culture

01:13:48.640 to do to itself.

01:13:51.220 Right. And the Whistler mural isn't a celebration of slavery. It's a depiction of this utopia where

01:14:00.700 even something as awful as that could be pictured. It's complicated. It's art. You point out in the book,

01:14:07.020 take a look at poetry, take a look at literature. Are we going to scrub them all of references to

01:14:14.240 the slave trade or to slavery to sort of cleanse them of acknowledgement of something that did happen,

01:14:21.900 not just in our country, but in many countries around the world? This is a fruitless, pointless,

01:14:27.380 virtue signaling effort that makes no sense. And it's really an impossibility.

01:14:32.780 Yes. And it's also, I mean, it's so, as I come back to this phrase, this word, it's boring among

01:14:41.080 much else. It's reductive and it's racist, but it's also boring. Who wants to live in a world where

01:14:49.280 everything is just stuck on one side or other of this ledger, where everything is either perfectly

01:14:54.960 ideologically correct in the arts and politics and everything else in our lives or bang, bang, scrubbed,

01:15:02.560 closed? Who wants to live in that situation? Isn't, I mean, in art in particular, in literature,

01:15:07.760 isn't, isn't moral complexity interesting? Isn't it, isn't it one of the things that makes art? I mean,

01:15:15.260 I mentioned Shakespeare earlier. I mean, who doesn't know that a play like The Merchant of Venice

01:15:19.920 is highly morally complex? Who, who, who wants, who wants to be given? Oh, well, the answer is

01:15:26.920 anyone who still subscribes to Netflix, but who wants to be given such a bland, monotone, good versus

01:15:34.080 evil, everything's always so damn obvious moral view of the world? Who wants to keep being force fed this

01:15:41.720 like a, like a, a goose just force fed this pack all the time? You know, who doesn't want a bit of

01:15:50.960 complexity? I would like a bit of complexity in this. I'd like a bit of a recognition that, for instance,

01:15:55.860 the history of art is not just something you ransack through in order to find the good guys and the bad

01:16:03.360 guys and then chuck out the bad guys and actually not bother when you also chuck out the good guys.

01:16:08.600 You know, I, I'd appreciate some recognition that things are more complex than that. And here's

01:16:15.000 one reason why just off the top of my head. One reason why is because we know that we're more

01:16:19.700 complex than that. That's right. And if, and if we don't accept that other people are complex and

01:16:25.820 that history is complex and that it requires a bit of damn nuance, what are we meant to think of

01:16:31.040 ourselves and our own actions in this world? And sorry, one other thing whilst I'm on this,

01:16:35.440 because it just, this is the thing that maddens me most. You started by talking about Churchill

01:16:40.720 earlier. One of the reasons I mind this whole thing about not just art, but about history being

01:16:47.960 so savagely misrepresented, particularly in America and in Britain is this. See, as, as I, as,

01:16:54.740 as you said in that bit of that quote you did about the Churchill section in my book,

01:16:58.520 if we have no heroes left, we don't know how to act well in the world. And in fact, it's worse than

01:17:08.380 that. There's no point because if you can give your life fighting Nazism as Rex Whistler did for

01:17:16.580 only for a century later to be defamed as a racist and none of your work to matter, none of your

01:17:23.240 paintings to matter, why would you bother? If, if you can actually defeat Hitlerism as Churchill did

01:17:29.640 and still be defamed only a couple of generations down the road, why bother doing anything in this

01:17:35.620 world? You know, why bother with absolutely anything? Why bother doing any action, any good

01:17:42.660 in the world? Because it seems that the ledger is such that even if you did do some good,

01:17:50.620 a future generation will just decide it was nothing really and it didn't matter. So in other words,

01:17:56.960 what I'm saying is it's an innovating movement among much else. It's a, it's a demotivating

01:18:03.460 movement. It's a movement that seems almost designed to tell us that the only thing we should really

01:18:10.580 aspire to do in our lives is to find that we've been born, cringe at having been born the way we've

01:18:18.440 been born and with the culture we have, sidle through life, hope that we don't take any joy from

01:18:24.340 anyone else, don't experience any joy ourselves and then sidle off silently in the hope that no one

01:18:30.580 noticed us. Well, I don't think that's a great example of a life well lived. I think it's almost

01:18:40.340 exactly the opposite. So to hell with these people, call them out, identify them, tell them what we

01:18:48.660 think of them and show people what a good life actually is, what heroes actually are. And it's not

01:18:54.220 as if we don't have them, you know, they may have assaulted them all, but it's not as if we don't

01:18:59.620 have heroes. It's not as if we don't have a culture. It's not as if we don't actually have people to

01:19:04.500 look up to and to emulate. We've got an abundance of it as much, if not more than anyone else in the

01:19:11.980 world.

01:19:14.040 D'Angelo actually recommends that as a white person, you should enter any room with a person of color by

01:19:20.140 apologizing on, on entry and before exit, apologizing for your history, uh, as being a white

01:19:26.160 person, whether you've done something or not and so on. And, and your comment, I'm going to squeeze

01:19:30.580 in a break, but your comment about the demoralization that happens as a result of this explain, I had a

01:19:37.560 light bulb moment there where we've been talking a lot on the show about the malaise that people feel

01:19:43.100 just a general sense of malaise. And I think a lot of it has to do with social media, the addiction of

01:19:48.040 the iPhone, the algorithm, how it pulls you in. It, it takes you to the device and away from other

01:19:53.000 people. And there's no more bowling leagues and all of that, you know, the loss of human contact,

01:19:57.620 COVID exacerbated it, the political tribalism, all of that is at play, but this, and this I've been

01:20:05.120 encapsulating by saying, and then, you know, you're told you're bad because of your skin color, or you're

01:20:08.460 told you're inferior because of your skin color, but it's, it's more pernicious than that. As you've

01:20:13.400 just outlined, it's not just, yes, all of that's happening. And those messages are being given,

01:20:18.040 which are not uplifting, but it's, it really is destruction of all you hold dear on a more macro

01:20:25.920 level. Not, not, not necessarily your intimate family, but your country, your history, your,

01:20:31.580 your love of neighbor and, and of your shared history. You know, I, the patriotism we used to feel

01:20:38.140 as Americans for what America stands for and what you, what we accomplished in, especially in the

01:20:42.100 20th century and great Britain, Britain, the same, the destruction of it matters. And it,

01:20:47.820 it's kind of painful. And it, I do think is contributing to that malaise. I'll give you the,

01:20:53.680 I'll give you the floor and then I'll squeeze it in a break.

01:20:56.240 I couldn't agree more. Let me just, just say one other thing about that. Any civilization you want to

01:21:02.320 topple, any culture you want to topple as the history of the ancients shows,

01:21:07.540 you go into the society where you, you infiltrate the society, you exist in society and turn against

01:21:13.520 it. And what do you do? You come for the holy places, you strip the altars, you smash their

01:21:20.340 icons, you destroy their holy places, you leave them with nothing to worship, nothing to admire,

01:21:26.940 nothing to revere. You say, look what I can do to even your holiest places. And the people that have

01:21:34.840 that done to them are a people who can then be totally subjugated. That's what's going on.

01:21:42.600 Wow. Okay. Up next, I am going to ask you about the joy read comment because I said I would,

01:21:48.260 and I've got to ask you, how do you decide, I've been dying to ask you this, how do you decide

01:21:53.700 what book to read next and how can we do exactly the same thing so we can be more like you?

01:21:59.780 Douglas Murray, the one and only, more with him right after this. Again, the book is The War on

01:22:05.440 the West, How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show. Here with me

01:22:13.680 today, Douglas Murray, author of the new book, you must buy this, The War on the West, How to Prevail

01:22:21.720 in the Age of Unreason. One thing we haven't touched on is how damaging this messaging is

01:22:29.660 to people of color, how awful it is to people of color. And so often the purveyors are white like

01:22:38.040 D'Angelo, but you also have the joy reads of the world. And the case in point, the reason I really

01:22:43.780 wanted to get to this is finally somebody is pushing back on her. A person of color is pushing back on her

01:22:49.580 and her damaging rhetoric. So here's what happened. DeSantis signed into law the bill that it's

01:22:58.220 basically Florida's Stop Woke Act. This is different from his other more recent legislation.

01:23:03.880 This legislation bars schools and private businesses from making students or employees feel guilt or

01:23:09.580 quote, any form of psychological distress or stress because of their national origin, sex or race.

01:23:15.920 So he's trying to stop people from doing that in classes. And when he signed it, children from the

01:23:23.660 Jack Brewer Foundations after school club were photographed holding up signs in opposition to

01:23:29.020 CRT. Black children, white children were there. Now, she assumes the black children are all just

01:23:38.240 props. And she tweets out this misuse of black boys is tantamount to child abuse. I would really like to

01:23:46.980 hear the backstory on who these kids were and how they wound up at a DeSantis event. Given how anti-black

01:23:54.320 DeSantis is, using black children this way is extra sick. Okay, so here's what happened.

01:24:01.180 Uh, Jack Brewer is a former NFL star. He is now threatening to sue her. He runs the American

01:24:08.280 Heroes program. He's this guy who played NFL for the Vikings Giants and others. He once supported

01:24:13.580 Obama, but he later switched and pledged to support Trump. He spoke at the 2020 Republican National

01:24:18.560 Convention. He was a member of black voices for Trump. And now he's angry about what she said. He

01:24:24.480 has, he said, Joy Reed has quote, completely humiliated my kids and my program. He says,

01:24:32.200 you have 24 hours to apologize to these children. And if you fail to do so, I'm going to sue you for

01:24:38.280 death for defamation. He says, and I quote, it is just so hurtful. She needs to be held accountable.

01:24:44.540 She does it so often. And you know, her words and the way that she comes across to black America

01:24:51.000 leaves a stain on all of us. I won't put up with it when it comes to my kids.

01:24:59.160 Oh, God, good for him. Absolutely good for him. Good luck to him. I don't know what the chances are

01:25:09.020 of winning a libel case in the U.S. on such a thing, but my God, I hope he can take it to the

01:25:13.780 cleaners. There has been two easier runs for these people. I mean, you mentioned just before the break,

01:25:19.720 Megan, that, that Robin DiAngelo thing of a white person going into a room and encountering a black

01:25:25.080 person should apologize. I'm just, the minute you reminded me of that, you know, I'm just,

01:25:29.720 I have this horrible mental image of what would happen and what my black friends would think.

01:25:34.840 Yes. Every time I went into a room, I said, I'd just like to, before we start drinking,

01:25:40.480 you know, I should just say that I, Oh, Douglas, my little boy had his other little buddy come over

01:25:46.940 for a play date the other day. The little boy is black. His mom came to pick him up. The thought

01:25:52.880 of me greeting her in my home being like, I just want to start with how sorry I am for my whiteness.

01:25:58.400 It's so condescending. It's absurd. It's divisive. It's awful.

01:26:03.440 Yes. Yes. It's, it's, it's just, it's unimaginable, totally impractical. And, and, and as well as being

01:26:12.620 totally immoral. Um, but yes, you're right. The, the, the, the people like Joy Reid do have to be

01:26:17.940 stopped. I think they have to be called out. And I say stopped. I do think every, everyone should speak

01:26:23.360 against it. Uh, um, she has the right to her point of view, but it should be exposed to what it is. Um,

01:26:30.440 she's engaged in a deliberately divisive game. Uh, and again, I mean, I say repeatedly at points in

01:26:39.240 the book that there are moments when you can see the game that's actually going on under the game.

01:26:44.060 You know, you can see when everyone is torn down from the past, apart from Karl Marx,

01:26:50.040 that there might be a game going on here, you know? And when you have, in the same way, when you have a,

01:26:57.540 um, uh, uh, a prominent black, uh, figure just spewing out the same accusations, the same

01:27:06.120 malevolent malicious accusation against white people, against black people, against everyone

01:27:12.320 constantly, just, just like machine gunning the whole of the American public square with the same

01:27:18.140 accusation. I'm afraid we can see what's going on. This is somebody who is using a bully tactic,

01:27:24.200 a bully tactic in order to maintain their place in the hierarchy of modern America. Um, it does,

01:27:31.580 as you say, Megan, it does profound damage to black Americans among others, because this, all this does

01:27:39.100 is massively increased distrust. We've actually got evidence. And I give some of it in the first

01:27:46.060 chapter of the book, as you know, of the distorted impression that many Americans now have about their

01:27:51.820 country. We've got that evidence, you know, the number of unarmed black people that people who

01:27:57.340 identify as liberal think are actually gunned down every year in the United States, uh, is, is several,

01:28:03.960 several, um, figures are, I mean, most people who identify as very liberal think that the American

01:28:09.660 police kill more than 10,000 unarmed black people every year. And then the actual number is somewhere

01:28:16.560 around 10. Um, you know, we know from the examples I give of the panics that happened on American

01:28:22.840 college campuses in the last decade, where campus after campus shuts down when it is reported that

01:28:30.460 the KKK are on the campus. Oh, we've got to talk about the one. Can we talk about the one that the

01:28:35.080 April, 2016 university of Indiana is amazing. This is in your book. Oh, that's amazing. That's one of my

01:28:41.460 favorites. Yes. There's a reported sighting of a member of the KKK going across campus, carrying a

01:28:48.180 whip, uh, a totally common occurrence that liberal arts campuses. I think you'll agree, Megan. I mean,

01:28:53.740 they're almost too mundane and, uh, and commonplace to even notice. But anyway, this, uh, student made

01:28:59.100 the claim others, the whole campus goes into lockdown. Uh, on this occasion, they actually can't,

01:29:04.760 they actually, the authorities catch up with the phantom figure. And it turns out to be a Dominican

01:29:09.720 monk in traditional robes carrying a rosary. Well, I wish I could say that. Is that the guy

01:29:17.800 who was at the frozen yogurt place? Oh yeah. I mean, it's, it's, there's another one where

01:29:23.700 a homeless person carrying a blanket is, is claimed to be a Ku Klux Klan member. There's,

01:29:28.720 I give the example of Seattle before the last election, when there was a great big sign on

01:29:33.500 the Whole Foods, which was about the only remaining, um, shop in town. Uh, everything was smashed

01:29:39.260 up, uh, but it was a small sign above the boarding still saying Whole Foods and a much bigger sign

01:29:44.600 saying racists are not welcome here. As if the Ku Klux Klan are famous for meeting up in the fruit

01:29:51.860 and nut aisle of the Seattle Whole Foods. You know, there's a, there's a completely fictitious view of

01:29:59.200 the country, which exists in this country and which the best you could say about it is that it's

01:30:05.140 like at least a century out of date, at least a century out of date, but young people in America

01:30:11.900 in particular are being given this totally false version of their country. They're being told that,

01:30:18.700 that, that, that a situation exists, which doesn't exist. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like a mind game is being

01:30:25.340 played on them. And, and, and, and I'm afraid that the, the, the, the, the only thing you can do in that

01:30:32.280 situation is for the adults to step up, you know, not to give in, not for the trustees of every institution

01:30:39.680 and every university and, and more to just give in to this cultural revolution, but say, you know what,

01:30:45.680 we're adults. And there are, there are things that, that you learn with time. And one of them

01:30:52.800 is a reasonable attitude towards your own country because you've lived a bit longer and you can say

01:30:58.680 a bit more clearly what the situation is actually like. So instead of pandering to the child who

01:31:04.120 believes that they see the KKK around every corner, you say, actually, there was a time in the past

01:31:11.540 where that could have been the case, but it hasn't been in my lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime.

01:31:17.840 And it certainly isn't in your lifetime. So don't be afraid of false bogeymen. Don't be scared into

01:31:26.100 believing a version of your country that isn't true. Don't listen to the people who tell you that

01:31:31.780 everyone is divided by the color of their skin. We are trying to get in America and in the West in

01:31:37.800 general to a position where the color of someone's skin is basically as uninteresting as the color of

01:31:43.260 their hair. And that it is, it is no more desirable to divide people by skin color than it is by hair,

01:31:50.160 by hair color. You know, that's the position we're trying to come to. We're not far off it. You know,

01:31:56.600 we're certainly much closer to it than any other societies on earth. We're not far off it. And there

01:32:02.580 might be things we can do to make that situation more, you know, embedded and complete. But the

01:32:09.740 worst way to reach it would be to re-racialize society by telling people, the KKK around every

01:32:16.480 corner, that white people are all the problem and that everyone who's black suffers from the very

01:32:22.600 existence of whiteness. And the only thing that white people can do is to go up to their black

01:32:26.660 friends and neighbors and spouses and much more and say all the time, I'm so sorry for stealing your

01:32:32.500 black joy.

01:32:33.880 The, uh, the, instead you should say total balls. Um,

01:32:37.600 I've got to go, sadly, I could keep this going for five more hours, but I have to ask you that

01:32:43.260 question that I teased before the break, because it's something I want to know as someone, I realize

01:32:48.140 we're, we're dealing with your 44 years of reading and wisdom and so on, whatever.

01:32:52.740 42, 42, 42. Sorry. Oh, sorry, sorry.

01:32:57.540 Megan. Wow.

01:32:58.520 I know. I got it. I misstepped. Um, what do you do? Like, how do you figure out what to read,

01:33:03.600 Douglas? When you're, you're, you're referenced to the book about the person's experience and,

01:33:07.320 uh, earlier the, uh, in as a slave and the books behind you, I'm, I want to know, and I'm sure my

01:33:12.900 audience would love to know, how do we even begin to educate ourselves and make good choices? I've got

01:33:17.300 about a minute left.

01:33:18.060 Well, obviously, I mean, in a way I do some of the reading so that other people don't have to,

01:33:22.980 uh, like Spain in my books, like the war on the West and stuff that I just don't want other people

01:33:28.200 to have to wade through, you know, bad books, like some of the ones we've mentioned, but also some of

01:33:33.280 the good books, some of the really inspiring books, including ones that I mentioned in the book,

01:33:36.920 inspiring figures. One of the things I definitely try to do is every time I have to imbibe a load of

01:33:41.920 absolute mental junk, I try to make sure that I read really good things, you know, and read

01:33:47.180 backwards, read classics, read things you haven't read before. I'm reading at the moment,

01:33:51.480 Stefan Zweig's biography of Marie Antoinette, which is so beautifully, so wonderfully done.

01:33:56.480 And it's a sort of break for me in a way. And I do urge people to do that. You know,

01:34:00.660 it's good to keep on top of the things of your time. But as I always say, one of my favorite quotes,

01:34:05.700 you know, um, be a part of your century, but do not be its creature. Um, um, it's very important

01:34:12.580 to me always to read back, to read about other things. You know, as I say, we live in this era

01:34:17.940 where we talk all the time about lived experience, but actually your own experience is not the only

01:34:23.140 thing that matters in the world. The experience of other human beings matters too. Part of the

01:34:28.400 point of reading is to discover that. And for me, reading is one of my great joys. I try to make sure

01:34:33.640 I never view it only as a work project. And of course, for me, the greatest excitement of reading

01:34:39.120 is that one that C.S. Lewis so famously said when, um, when he said, you know, we read to know we're

01:34:44.560 not alone and you read across the centuries and you discover other people felt like you,

01:34:49.780 other people thought like you or thought differently. And what an amazing, amazing discovery

01:34:55.220 that always is. And the discovery just goes on and on and on. And the first order of business is to

01:35:02.860 read the war on the West, how to prevail in the age of unreason, do it to support Douglas

01:35:09.100 Murray, uh, do it to enlighten yourself and do it to arm yourself with meaningful options. When

01:35:15.560 people spew nonsense in your presence or the presence of your children, Douglas, such a

01:35:20.420 pleasure. Thank you so much. Such a pleasure. Thank you, Megan. Wow. Okay. Uh, thank you so

01:35:27.480 much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. I was just saying to my

01:35:32.300 team, you can't, you can't do that kind of thing on cable news. You know, you can't put Douglas

01:35:37.100 Murray on for three minutes and get up and down on a conversation like that. That is one of the

01:35:42.680 joys of this forum, right? I'm so delighted to have been able to bring him to you. I hope you

01:35:48.700 enjoyed it. I know you did. How could you not? Right. And tomorrow more goodness. We've got Seth

01:35:54.700 Dillon, uh, CEO of the Babylon Bee, as I just discussed, uh, with Douglas is, is he the reason

01:36:00.920 Elon Musk just bought Twitter? We'll get into the whole thing, how they took a stand,

01:36:05.900 um, on their tweet about Rachel Levine, how they backed libs of Tik TOK after she came under attack

01:36:13.120 by the Washington post and whether Seth actually does think, uh, what happened to him led to some

01:36:20.100 really great news, I think in the social media world. Uh, in the meantime, do us a favor. Would you,

01:36:25.040 would you download the show or follow us on Apple? That's how they changed it to follow now.

01:36:29.400 I know you, if you enjoy the show, maybe sometimes you forget to download, but it helps us. If you

01:36:33.540 could just subscribe or download, follow the show, uh, on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, or Stitcher,

01:36:38.980 we'd be very grateful. Also, thank you for helping us cross the 400,000, uh, subscriber, uh, mark on

01:36:45.280 youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. We're on our way. We've only been on video for less than a year. So I feel

01:36:51.100 like that's pretty good, but, uh, still building. Thanks to all of you. So we'll see you tomorrow.

01:36:55.140 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 26, 2022

Meltdown Over Musk Buying Twitter, and Backlash Against Woke Left, with Douglas Murray ｜ Ep. 308

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