The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Book Club #64 ｜ James O'Brien's How They Broke Britain

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this very special book club. I'm Harry, joined by Carl and Josh,

00:00:07.020 where today we're going to be venturing through the mouth of madness into the heart of darkness

00:00:13.900 as we examine the work of Mr. James O'Brien, or as Carl has memorably dubbed him, James O'Gammon,

00:00:22.320 and his book, How They Broke Britain, a rather dangerous title, some have suggested.

00:00:27.960 And this is one that I've got to thank you, the one voice, or call me voice, as he goes by in the

00:00:37.620 little introduction that he gave us here, his little hello, is that one of our audience members

00:00:42.980 sent this into the office out of nowhere, arrived in a mysterious and dark looking package. I was

00:00:49.680 getting some rather ominous vibes from it. And I opened it and he said, you know, to all the folks

00:00:54.780 at Lotus Eaters have fun dissecting this one. And I thought, you know what, why don't I? Because

00:00:59.940 I keep seeing this, because of course, as it says... Health and safety? Well, we don't have health and

00:01:04.860 safety here. I chose to not fill in a risk assessment form before I read this, so this is not an insured

00:01:11.300 broadcast. I hope you don't know how to tie a noose now, because I'm going to be a bit worried about

00:01:15.380 you having read that book. I would suggest keeping all sharp objects away from me for the next four or

00:01:20.420 so weeks. But as you can see on the front cover, it says here that this is an instant Sunday Times

00:01:25.820 bestseller. The second it was published, literally before anybody could get to the shops to buy it,

00:01:31.080 it was already a bestseller. Everyone at the BBC needed a copy. Well, very impressive, yes, I'm sure.

00:01:36.620 And I keep seeing it everywhere in Waterstones and in WH Smiths across the country. And I have been

00:01:43.480 interested in picking it up, because I thought to myself, yeah, James O'Gammon is an awful bastard. 1.00

00:01:50.420 He's a terrible person, he's a traitor to this country, and I hate him. If I'm frankly honest 1.00

00:01:56.260 about it, his LBC show is the equivalent of Audible Cyanide. But I thought to myself, well,

00:02:04.080 let's get a leftist perspective on what's wrong with Britain, and let's get a look into whether he

00:02:10.780 actually has any decent insights that he can give us, because I find that sometimes the woke can be

00:02:16.740 more correct on certain issues. And James O'Brien is nothing if not woke. And also, it's good to

00:02:23.440 venture outside of your echo chamber and get a broader, better view of the situation at hand.

00:02:30.100 So I thought, you know what, let's give it a look. If nothing else, I wanted to know what the leftist,

00:02:35.520 the Brit leftist, because the Brit leftist is its own unique creature in the global stage.

00:02:41.740 why they're so obsessed with Rupert Murdoch, because this book is kind of, it kind of reads

00:02:48.320 like a miserable memoir. It's written in a very snarky...

00:02:52.940 Oh God, you can hear his sigh.

00:02:54.520 Oh, oh yeah, yeah, you can. Very snarky, miserable manner. And it's loaded with little, 0.98

00:03:01.820 little ad hominems, personal attacks, and little comments that he puts in every single sentence.

00:03:07.320 Um, but it's kind of like a leftist muck-wrecking, um, where each chapter past the introduction

00:03:15.080 is dedicated to an individual figure. Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage, Matthew Elliott, Boris

00:03:21.660 Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Jeremy Corbyn. Um, and he goes through his list of grievances.

00:03:29.800 He doesn't like Jeremy Corbyn?

00:03:30.960 With each of these people. No, he doesn't.

00:03:32.960 Huh. Well, because he's an anti-Semite, don't you know? Oh. And, and, and he, uh, he blames 0.71

00:03:38.680 Jeremy Corbyn in some ways for, uh, leading to Boris Johnson's overwhelming victory in 2019.

00:03:44.440 Well, I mean, there's something to that.

00:03:46.320 Exactly. But, uh, I have made plentiful notes on this in the text itself, so please feel free.

00:03:53.520 So, through this, there is the introduction. Let's, let's try and go chapter by chapter.

00:03:57.660 So, the first chapter is the introduction, of course, and this is a very generalised overview

00:04:03.200 of all of the problems that he has with the country. Yet, the first thing, the very first

00:04:09.240 line. Would you like to read it for us, Carl?

00:04:12.120 I would love to. So bad. So, quote James O'Brien.

00:04:16.760 You can't actually boil a frog to death by popping it into a pot of cold water, placing

00:04:22.360 it on a stove, and slowly turning up the temperature. When the heat becomes uncomfortable, the frog

00:04:27.380 will hop out.

00:04:29.340 How many times has he tried this?

00:04:32.660 He must, he is speaking with authority here. He must have tried this multiple times. He

00:04:37.680 must have tested this.

00:04:38.840 Well, it's a clearly evil man. Surely, this is just a preoccupation.

00:04:43.580 How many frogs died for that first line, James?

00:04:45.640 As a scientist, Josh, can you confirm this is true?

00:04:49.500 You've not done the test.

00:04:50.240 I've not done it, hey. 0.94

00:04:51.620 But you're our resident evil scientist. Apparently not evil enough. 0.95

00:04:55.560 I don't boil frogs. I'm not a monster.

00:04:58.060 I like frogs.

00:04:59.080 It's a recurring pattern through the entire book, which is overwhelming pedantry.

00:05:04.160 Yes.

00:05:04.600 In an attempt, a really strange attempt to look clever. And that's something that, again,

00:05:08.460 Brit Libs, they love pedantry to try and get their one little one-ups over you, their 1.00

00:05:14.280 tiny little victories. Well, yeah, you may have won the argument, but I corrected your

00:05:19.300 analogy.

00:05:20.140 So I win, really, don't I?

00:05:22.600 I have noticed this, actually, just arguing with people online, which is a waste of time,

00:05:27.240 obviously, but I enjoy it. And they always sort of, they appeal to procedure and rules

00:05:34.340 just, and things like this all the time. It's sort of weird. It gives me a sort of vibe

00:05:40.060 of a school prefect, that sort of thing, where they're just like, oh, I'm telling.

00:05:44.840 If you're arguing with some British leftist online in particular, and you want to get out

00:05:49.320 of the argument, just make a spelling mistake. They'll be like, correct, gotcha, and it's

00:05:53.400 like, good, thank God.

00:05:54.940 Yeah, you are right, Josh. They are probably the sorts of people who, when they were at

00:05:58.720 school, excuse me, they were prefects who immediately tattled to the teacher every opportunity,

00:06:05.900 and they felt so smug about it.

00:06:07.780 He literally says it here. This book, then, is a charge sheet. A compendium of poor behaviour

00:06:13.140 and bad actors. So you're just dobbing us in.

00:06:16.320 Teacher! Teacher!

00:06:17.920 Just you pathetic bastards. 1.00

00:06:20.640 The problem is, though, and one of the main contradictions that he can't seem to wrap his 1.00

00:06:25.340 head around through this, is that, who are you tattling to, James?

00:06:28.940 Yeah.

00:06:29.320 When the book was written, who was in charge?

00:06:32.500 Um, well, when was it written?

00:06:34.980 Well, it was written in, it was released originally, the first edition, last year. This was the

00:06:39.300 paperback edition that came out at the beginning.

00:06:41.680 Right, so he was tattling to the Tories.

00:06:42.100 Yeah, he was tattling to the Tories. Is that when you're appealing to procedure, you're

00:06:46.860 proceeding, appealing to the procedure governed and administered by the people you supposedly

00:06:51.840 think broke the country.

00:06:53.580 Yeah, I suppose. Or no, he's appealing to the higher power, which is the sort of liberal

00:06:58.140 hive mind.

00:06:58.820 Well, that's true. But in that, there's an implicit acknowledgement that really, he

00:07:03.580 knows that Boris Johnson is just as much of a shit-lib as he is, really. And there 0.99

00:07:08.740 is an interesting admission in this book as well, in the Boris Johnson chapter, is that

00:07:13.560 in 2008, when Johnson was running for mayor of London, O'Brien voted for him.

00:07:20.640 Oh, that's where it all started.

00:07:22.300 Would you like to know why?

00:07:24.480 Squad lover, I mean voter.

00:07:25.740 That's an indictment of Johnson.

00:07:27.560 Would you like to, well, exactly, would you like to know the reason?

00:07:31.120 It's going to be something very liberal.

00:07:32.940 Yes, it's because Boris Johnson had promised an amnesty of all illegal immigrants in the

00:07:38.160 city. So that won James O'Brien's vote.

00:07:43.220 Amazing.

00:07:44.100 Yes.

00:07:44.580 But can you...

00:07:45.220 Just a quick thing, though. What I love this, this is very much like Eleanor Roosevelt's

00:07:49.200 dictum here. You know, great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, and

00:07:54.900 small minds discuss people. And James O'Brien's like, yes, people, poor behaviour, bad actors.

00:08:00.460 So yeah, okay, James.

00:08:01.900 But also the expectation that politicians will be any different than how he's probably describing,

00:08:08.280 I imagine that he has grievances with politicians that I would agree with. And I certainly don't

00:08:13.040 like many of the people that he's talking about. But there's a sort of naivety there, whereby

00:08:20.300 he's just like, my politicians are good, but your politicians are bad. When he realises

00:08:24.760 the incentives are all pretty much the same for all. They're all doing the same things.

00:08:28.520 And that's the interesting thing, because most of the arguments that he makes, as you'll

00:08:33.240 see through the introduction alone, he's going through a lot of the scandals, the procedural

00:08:38.020 scandals around the Tories at the time of the COVID pandemic.

00:08:43.040 And the way that there was a lot of WhatsApp backroom dealing with how they were dealing

00:08:47.640 with things and communicating with the media. He's really, really annoyed about that. And

00:08:51.760 he picks apart a lot. Well, he doesn't pick it apart. He just very dryly and dully whines

00:08:58.600 about it while giving you the most bare bones description of what happened in order. But then

00:09:05.060 he also jumps around at the same time to make it completely confusing and unreadable, because

00:09:10.580 you can't really follow along what's happening from one page to another. But yeah, he's

00:09:15.680 complaining about the Tories going about things in a purely procedural way. They're not following

00:09:21.180 the rules. How could the Tories not follow the rules? The rules that they set and can choose

00:09:28.240 to break? Because of course, Dominic Cummings is evil, mostly because of Brexit, because that

00:09:33.460 is the centre that this entire book revolves around. It's the Brexit happened.

00:09:39.340 Which his entire life revolves around that.

00:09:41.180 Yeah. Which is terrible. It's endless Brexit whinging. But beyond that, he's also annoyed

00:09:48.700 that Dominic Cummings did that thing where he went for a drive.

00:09:51.560 Yeah.

00:09:51.980 He broke the rules during COVID, and therefore he deserved to be ousted.

00:09:56.420 What about the guy who was the architect of the lockdowns through his modelling, who also

00:10:00.340 broke the lockdowns? Who's that? The scientist.

00:10:04.100 Oh, Chris Whitty?

00:10:05.440 No, it wasn't Whitty. It was a different guy.

00:10:07.480 I know who you're on about.

00:10:08.940 The guy who's responsible for the modelling that was completely wrong, said like, you know,

00:10:14.040 millions are going to die.

00:10:14.520 Wasn't it not the historian, but Professor Neil Ferguson?

00:10:18.100 That's it.

00:10:18.500 Yes, that's it.

00:10:19.000 Yes.

00:10:19.480 I was just about to say.

00:10:20.620 I always get the dub.

00:10:21.160 Yeah, and he broke his own lockdowns. Does James Campbell complain about that?

00:10:24.900 He was also involved in the foot and mouth thing, wasn't he, that guy?

00:10:27.560 He was, yeah, yeah.

00:10:28.260 Decades ago.

00:10:29.200 Cow genocide and Neil Ferguson.

00:10:31.140 He's got no problem with any of that, though.

00:10:33.860 Inaccurate models that lead to catastrophes. That's fine.

00:10:36.760 But there's also the complete contradiction that Josh was pointing out as well, which

00:10:41.900 is that obviously when the Tories break procedural rules, it's terrible. It's awful. It's the

00:10:46.600 worst thing in the world because these people break rules for bad reasons. Whereas, you

00:10:50.720 saw that...

00:10:51.340 We break the rules.

00:10:52.140 Yeah, you saw that struggle that he had, what was it, last week when we were recording

00:10:56.000 this, or the week before, when there was the LBC caller calling about the Starmer spending

00:11:01.780 scandal about receiving gifted tickets that he didn't declare or something like that,

00:11:06.880 where he was really struggling to justify it.

00:11:09.640 Well, he resorted to just saying, well, how'd you know about it? Well, he declared them,

00:11:14.180 didn't he? So he did it right.

00:11:16.380 Well, and yeah, but the Tory government also, after it was revealed what Dominic Cummings

00:11:22.320 did, you know, they fired him and held him accountable. So it was all made right in the

00:11:25.660 end, right?

00:11:26.820 There we go.

00:11:27.560 So that's the big problem. And he has, on that same basis, a complete and unwavering

00:11:33.020 trust for NGO institutions.

00:11:36.720 Oh, I don't doubt.

00:11:37.380 Yeah. You can find it, if you flip through some of the introduction, I'll have made some

00:11:41.900 notes on it, where there are a few of these institutions that he names that he unwaveringly

00:11:47.980 and completely blinkers on, says, well, if they say it, it's true.

00:11:52.780 Oh, yeah.

00:11:53.160 There's the Institute of Economic Affairs, which he praises two thumbs up. They must always

00:11:58.760 have the... wait, no, not the Institute of Economic Affairs. 0.99

00:12:01.720 Well, no, the IMF and the OECD upgraded their forecasts for the UK economy, and so the idiocy 0.99

00:12:07.440 of these jingoistic positions would be laid bare. Neither Jessup, Riesmog, or any of the 0.95

00:12:11.900 other free market fetishists argued that the institutions were now acting out of sudden

00:12:15.980 irrational affection for the UK. Again, just, the UK is always wrong, the Tories are always

00:12:21.200 wrong, but the International Monetary Fund and the OECD, oh, they must be right, when

00:12:25.740 they're making up forecasts for the future that can't possibly be proven.

00:12:28.960 Yeah, because I will say, there is one good thing in the book, which is the... which chapter

00:12:34.300 is it in my notes here? There's one chapter in particular, I think, yeah, it's Andrew Neil,

00:12:41.300 his Andrew Neil chapter, I think it is, or Andrew Neil and Paul Dacre, where he actually talks

00:12:48.320 a lot about all of the various web of right-wing NGOs that make up the British right-wing spectator,

00:12:58.040 the Daily Mail media sphere, and how Andrew Neil and a lot of those people have ties to

00:13:03.760 them, like the London Institute of Economics.

00:13:06.920 Tufton Street.

00:13:07.580 Yeah, yeah, Tufton Street. He really doesn't like Tufton Street, because of course, those

00:13:11.540 institutions are completely full of bad actors, people who have vested interests and are paid

00:13:18.180 by nefarious people to give them the sorts of...

00:13:21.660 But our NGOs are funded by George Soros!

00:13:23.900 Exactly, and George Soros only has the best intentions for the world.

00:13:27.700 I mean, he's right, but for the wrong reasons, you know. A lot of the Tufton Street groups,

00:13:32.860 there are a few good ones there, but some of them are sort of a little bit wet and lame

00:13:37.480 and give bad advice, I think. So, but obviously I'm doing that from the right and not the left.

00:13:44.660 Yeah, of course, but you would, rightfully so, as would I and as would Carl, put doubts

00:13:51.380 on all of these organisations, a blanket distrust to them, because a lot of them are full of people

00:13:57.100 who are not going to be perfect, are going to have their own, excuse me, vested interests,

00:14:02.100 they are going to have their own problems and biases that are going to dictate the sorts of

00:14:06.800 forecasts and ideas that they put out to the world. James O'Brien only has that problem when

00:14:12.880 they're technically on our side.

00:14:14.580 Yeah, I think British politics has a softer variant of what American politics has, whereby

00:14:19.780 the right tends to be a bit more sceptical of institutions more generally, and the left sees

00:14:27.720 them as unequivocally good, and I think that James O'Brien epitomises that.

00:14:32.100 By his unwavering devotion to some institutions, and not even questioning the source of the

00:14:40.640 information, or the validity therein, or the possibility that they could make a mistake.

00:14:45.420 Is it conquest second or third law, where any institution that's not explicitly right-wing

00:14:49.260 becomes left-wing over time?

00:14:50.780 It's certainly one of them, yeah.

00:14:51.980 I get the feeling it's that effect on James O'Gammon.

00:14:54.200 But isn't it interesting, though, that the idea of an unwavering trust and dedication to

00:15:01.600 British institutions is kind of one of the pillars of Scrutonian conservatism?

00:15:07.180 Oh, yeah.

00:15:07.800 So it's actually a remarkably conservative position that he's taking there, but in pursuit of progressive

00:15:13.700 aims.

00:15:14.120 But it's because, as Conquest points out, it'll inevitably become left-wing over time.

00:15:18.920 And so James O'Gammon's like, yeah, well, we're going to win in the end, because you'll

00:15:21.800 just become a leftist like me.

00:15:23.120 That's why I'm voting for Boris.

00:15:24.620 And it's like, God, he's right.

00:15:26.580 Because we need all of those illegal migrants as a tax base. 1.00

00:15:29.580 Yeah.

00:15:31.400 The Deliveroo economy, it's so...

00:15:33.000 They're not paying tax, but we need their tax money.

00:15:35.140 So what we're learning from this as well...

00:15:37.300 The introduction's long, isn't it?

00:15:38.500 It is very long.

00:15:39.920 Most of the chapters are quite long.

00:15:41.220 It's quite a long book overall.

00:15:42.680 It's like 350 pages.

00:15:45.520 Yeah, I didn't know that James O'Brien had it in him.

00:15:49.360 Yeah.

00:15:49.600 But all he's revealing the whole way through is that he is a dedicated NPC.

00:15:57.720 His mind is wide open, right?

00:16:02.320 His brain is an empty vessel for leftist ideas to be poured into without question.

00:16:10.680 I will uncritically accept my programming.

00:16:12.820 There's like 350 pages of it to explain it.

00:16:15.420 Yep.

00:16:15.900 And that's what makes him such a good mouthpiece.

00:16:18.160 Yeah.

00:16:18.640 That's what makes him...

00:16:19.460 Because that was what makes him the attack dog.

00:16:21.820 Because back in university, right?

00:16:23.640 So I did a media degree at the University of Salford.

00:16:26.420 One of the things that we were shown as an example of good journalism and how to do a

00:16:32.360 good interview, if you're interviewing, say, a politician, was James O'Brien in 2014

00:16:37.520 interviewing Nigel Farage.

00:16:40.340 Which, if you've ever seen it...

00:16:41.860 I haven't.

00:16:42.440 Well, happily, if you flip to the Nigel Farage chapter, he literally transcribes the entire

00:16:48.240 thing.

00:16:49.220 Because he's that proud of it.

00:16:51.480 Because he's an NPC. 1.00

00:16:52.820 He's a complete empty vessel for leftist bullshit. 0.98

00:16:55.760 Oh, you've got lots of notes on the Farage chapter. 1.00

00:16:57.680 But he's also a complete, smug, prideful scumbag, and will endlessly self-promote if he gets 0.99

00:17:06.660 the opportunity. 1.00

00:17:07.480 Oh, here we go.

00:17:07.800 Yeah, yeah.

00:17:08.560 Just read through some of the questions and how he's phrasing them and how he's responding

00:17:13.860 to the answers that Nigel is trying to give.

00:17:15.640 Now, I will admit, reading back through it, it reminded me, Nigel didn't really do very

00:17:19.660 well in that interview because he wasn't really prepared for such a hostile interview.

00:17:23.260 But there's a difference between an actually well-done, hostile political interview, which

00:17:34.200 is, I would say, the recently Stephen Edgerton has been doing some absolutely fantastic journalistic

00:17:40.380 work interviewing right-wing politicians like Nigel Farage, where he's putting forward

00:17:45.300 the questions flatly and bluntly, but without being personally, on an interpersonal level, 0.90

00:17:53.420 a dick about it. 0.97

00:17:54.580 Whereas James O'Brien is just letting you know, I'm a bellend. 1.00

00:17:57.480 I hate you. 1.00

00:17:58.380 I despise you. 1.00

00:17:59.700 I want the audience. 0.95

00:18:01.000 I don't care about the answers that you're going to give me.

00:18:03.420 I want the audience to know that I'm full of virtue.

00:18:06.520 The whole interview serves some virtue.

00:18:07.960 I want to give you an example of just how awful James O'Brien is.

00:18:11.700 Farage says this.

00:18:13.480 My argument, James, is this.

00:18:16.060 Wherever we have found people who have had extreme, racist, unpleasant views, we've unceremoniously

00:18:20.060 got rid of them.

00:18:20.980 And he goes on a bit further.

00:18:22.280 And O'Brien replies with, well, okay, what about your associations with the BMP?

00:18:27.280 James, he just said he's getting rid of all the racists.

00:18:30.580 It's like, yeah, but you're associated with the BMP, aren't you?

00:18:32.400 Yeah, he's associated with the BMP because people like James O'Brien associated him with

00:18:38.000 the BMP.

00:18:38.580 Nigel Farage brags about how he destroyed the BMP.

00:18:41.720 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:42.460 Do you want to know what his association with the BMP is?

00:18:44.380 If we go back to 1997, you had lunch with a chap called Mark Devon.

00:18:50.580 Sorry, I had lunch in 1997.

00:18:53.300 So now I'm associated with the BMP, says Nigel Farage.

00:18:55.480 What?

00:18:55.700 Come on.

00:18:57.060 Unbelievable. 0.56

00:18:57.880 He is just the worst.

00:18:59.400 A month after that lunch, Devon wrote an article, so it didn't even happen in advance of the

00:19:05.100 lunch, right?

00:19:06.100 So this guy's done nothing wrong.

00:19:07.600 And then a month later, he writes an article for the far-right journal Spearhead, never

00:19:11.840 even heard of this, suggesting the BMP and UKIP get in bed together.

00:19:15.940 What?

00:19:17.560 What is this?

00:19:18.480 Well, Nigel should have activated his anti-fascist radar.

00:19:22.060 Anti-fascist prophesying radar.

00:19:24.600 The all-leftists like James O'Brien come fitted with from the factory that they're produced

00:19:29.100 in.

00:19:29.620 Also, the notion there is that you only eat a lunch with people you agree with.

00:19:34.660 But also that you know you'll always agree with.

00:19:37.360 Yeah, exactly.

00:19:38.600 I'm having lunch with a guy who's not done anything that James O'Brien can find exception

00:19:42.380 with, but in a month's time, he might do something that hasn't happened yet that I

00:19:46.740 can't foresee.

00:19:48.020 Like, just, it's so... 0.80

00:19:49.220 Like, I've found the source of why James O'Brien is so miserable.

00:19:52.080 He never goes to lunch with anyone because he's terrified of what they might do.

00:19:57.080 He's terrified they might be thinking micro N-words in their brain as he's eating dinner

00:20:02.720 with them.

00:20:04.240 And this might get him cancelled somewhere down the line.

00:20:07.140 But, again, that was the example fed to me of good broadcast journalism, of how to conduct

00:20:14.760 an interview.

00:20:16.200 Accused your opponent of not being able to see the future and therefore he's a racist.

00:20:20.260 Yeah.

00:20:20.660 Yeah, amazing.

00:20:21.640 But again, that's why he's so useful.

00:20:24.620 And that's what this book is as well.

00:20:26.200 This book is a regurgitating of the Brit-lib leftist talking points.

00:20:34.560 So they can throw them...

00:20:35.240 Because as I was reading through that, I noticed something, which...

00:20:38.280 This is just a...

00:20:39.160 Sorry, this James O'Brien for our interview is just a racism interrogation.

00:20:44.460 Oh, yeah.

00:20:44.760 It's the Stasi. 0.60

00:20:45.600 Yeah.

00:20:46.100 It's just the anti-racist Stasi.

00:20:47.740 Well, I mean, James O'Brien, in that chapter, puts his perspective out very flatly when he writes...

00:20:53.200 He writes a paragraph essentially explaining racism, why one would be racist, and making

00:21:01.540 it all sound quite reasonable.

00:21:03.100 Okay, where's the...

00:21:03.920 I think it's closer to the beginning of the chapter.

00:21:06.280 Of the phrase.

00:21:06.780 So you'll see that I'll have made a note around the entire thing, marking it out.

00:21:12.140 Yeah, but I can't read your writing.

00:21:13.560 Oh, no, no, no.

00:21:14.220 Let me find it.

00:21:15.180 Let me find it.

00:21:18.300 So...

00:21:19.180 James O'Brien makes the reasonable case for being racist.

00:21:22.420 It's basically...

00:21:23.920 Basically, yes.

00:21:25.480 Here we go.

00:21:26.540 Here we go.

00:21:26.980 He says, whether...

00:21:28.600 I think it's here.

00:21:30.420 Whether racist or not, discomfort...

00:21:32.280 Yeah.

00:21:32.680 Discomfort with immigration is a constant background hum, and whether we admit it or not, everybody

00:21:37.780 knows at least a little of what it feels like.

00:21:40.280 If the person pushing in front of you in a supermarket queue speaks an unrecognisable language

00:21:45.300 or wears a hijab, or simply looks different, the initial offence of their conduct can easily 0.99

00:21:50.140 be compounded by the thought that they have somehow less right to be there in the first

00:21:55.200 place than you.

00:21:58.120 That's quite a reasonable argument to make when, literally, James, they do have less right

00:22:02.740 to be here than me, and their presence is actually inconveniencing me and the nation

00:22:07.340 as a whole.

00:22:07.980 But then he just follows that up with, it is obviously bunkum. 0.93

00:22:11.380 So James O'Brien has racist thoughts, but he mind-kills himself.

00:22:16.440 He's like, no, I've had the right...

00:22:17.560 No, that's the wrong thought.

00:22:19.340 My NPC programming kicks in and shuts that down.

00:22:22.840 Well, he doesn't realise that all of this stuff is innately built into human nature, is

00:22:27.500 biologically enforced, and that actually, the way it works is you give more favourable

00:22:34.060 treatment to people who are genetically proximate to you than further away.

00:22:38.060 That's why we give our families special treatment, and people we have no relatedness to, less

00:22:45.060 special treatment.

00:22:45.940 You know what's great?

00:22:46.580 That's true, but, like Carl said, the NPC programming kicks in, and he says just outright,

00:22:52.620 well, there is no biological reason for differences in people.

00:22:56.960 What?

00:22:58.620 How are our skin's different colour?

00:23:00.060 To watch the full video, please become a premium member at lotuseaters.com.

00:23:08.060 Love, goddammit.com.

00:23:12.420 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:13.260 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:14.060 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:16.260 Love, goddammit.com. 0.82

00:23:17.900 Special support. 0.67

00:23:17.980 Love, goddammit.com.

00:23:18.100 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:19.940 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:20.280 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:20.680 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:25.520 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:26.640 Love, goddammit.com. 0.92

00:23:27.060 It's pretty much Alles. 0.88

00:23:29.500 The last name I see for you when you see now is against all of your friends.

00:23:31.260 Bye-bye.

00:23:32.000 It's been good for you.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 12, 2024

PREVIEW： Book Club #64 ｜ James O'Brien's How They Broke Britain

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