The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 13, 2024


PREVIEW： Book Club #65 ｜ James O'Brien's How To be Right

Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
James O'Gammon Richard James O'Brien Andy Richards Gary Lineker Jamie Oliver Robert Webb Lib Dem Hitler Abbas Carl Krishnan Gurumurthy Tommy Robinson Emily Maitlis Dan Wallace David Cameron Susanna Reid Stuart Lee Ian Dunt and 5 more
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1062 The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1064

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

187.06

Word count

3,922

Sentence count

320

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

28

sentences flagged

Hate speech

20

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of The Book Club, we re back in the land of James O'Gammmon to discuss his new book, 'How To Be Right' and how to be a better human being. We re also joined by a brand new co-host, Josh.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to the exciting book club sequel that I know that you've all been waiting for.
00:00:05.460 That's right, we have returned to the land of James O'Gammon.
00:00:09.680 And for this, I've gone back to his 2018 bestseller, How to Be Right.
00:00:15.300 You might have seen this in WH Smiths and Waterstones all across the country.
00:00:18.880 You might have seen your nan reading this, your middle-class Lib Dem voting auntie,
00:00:24.340 who's childless but has lots of cats.
00:00:26.780 She definitely loves this book.
00:00:28.480 And I thought it'd be interesting to go back through this, examine his thoughts, examine how you can be right.
00:00:35.300 And then also after this, we'll probably also cover his sequel book to this How Not To Be Wrong.
00:00:40.560 James O'Brien.
00:00:42.240 It's genuinely like some sort of...
00:00:44.180 He's a very humble man.
00:00:46.040 It's like some sort of Mitchell and Webb parody.
00:00:49.120 Like, you know, his book How To Be Right, and then his other book How Not To Be Wrong.
00:00:52.260 It just sounds like early 2000s.
00:00:53.580 How To Be Modest.
00:00:55.360 He is the government mouthpiece.
00:00:57.880 Right now for LBC saying, well, you know, when the government says, have we tried destroying British farming?
00:01:04.080 Have we tried killing all of the poor?
00:01:05.700 James O'Brien is the man who comes out and defends all of that.
00:01:08.720 And he tells you how to do that in this book.
00:01:10.700 And this is an interesting one because I thought How To Be Right.
00:01:14.460 He's not actually going to try and sell it to you as a guidebook on how to be right.
00:01:20.060 But he does.
00:01:21.320 He does.
00:01:21.860 Because it's an actual book that he thinks tells you how to be right.
00:01:25.180 But translating to normal person, what this means is this is a guidebook on how to convince your friends and your acquaintances and your family to be woke, libtard NPCs. 1.00
00:01:38.280 Using a mixture of bullying, shaming, and berating them to make sure that they stay in line.
00:01:45.500 Because one thing that you'll notice straight away from this book is how lazy it is.
00:01:51.380 It is the laziest book I've ever read.
00:01:54.760 Now I did the calculations, and this is being charitable because overall the book says that it's 232 pages.
00:02:01.460 Of the main text itself, actually, there's about 219 pages, but I used the whole book.
00:02:08.200 Of those pages, around about 74, 32% of the entire book are reproductions of his calls on LBC.
00:02:19.680 Transcripts.
00:02:20.740 But if I were to reduce the page count down to the 219, that would be an even greater proportion of the overall page count on this.
00:02:28.060 And then even when you factor that in, just take a look at the actual pages themselves, right?
00:02:33.920 What do you notice?
00:02:35.440 Well, I notice that there's basically double spacing between each line, actually, which you can probably see.
00:02:42.360 There's a lot of space between each line, and there seems to be voluminous spaces in the margins where you can make your notes.
00:02:49.940 Yes, where I can write little miniature essays insulting James O'Brien.
00:02:53.640 Pass it over to Josh as well, so he can just get a feel for it, okay?
00:02:56.600 No, um...
00:02:58.820 It won't infect you. I've disinfected it.
00:03:02.740 I actually had a look at this before we started recording.
00:03:06.220 What I did like was, you wrote a little note right at the very start, after the first line, saying,
00:03:12.880 You're so special, James.
00:03:15.260 And he says, I am a very rare beast. I am a liberal talk show host.
00:03:19.220 Well, I think...
00:03:19.620 Oh, yeah, where were you going to find those?
00:03:21.120 Yeah, exactly, right? So I think part of the other point of this is just for James to have a big ego-boosting exercise where he aggrandizes himself.
00:03:29.540 All the time, the whole way through this book, he's constantly talking, not about the arguments that he's making,
00:03:35.600 because what you'll quickly notice is there aren't any arguments being made against his opponents in this.
00:03:42.180 It's him asserting that he is correct, and then again, using a mixture of mockery, bullying, berating, and shaming.
00:03:50.200 I like the tactics. The tactics are good. It's just the message that's bad.
00:03:53.960 Exactly. And what you'll also notice is this starts not from the very first page, but from the first flap of the book.
00:04:01.160 Would you mind reading this?
00:04:03.000 Every day, James O'Brien listens to people blaming benefits, scroungers, the EU, Muslims, feminists, and immigrants.
00:04:09.780 But what makes James's daily LBC social such essential listening, and has made James a standout social media star,
00:04:17.480 is the careful way he punctures their assumptions and dismantles their arguments live on air every single morning.
00:04:22.840 In How To Be Right, James provides a hilarious and invigorating guide to talking to people with faulty opinions.
00:04:30.880 With chapters on every lightning rod issue, James shows how people have been fooled into thinking the way they do,
00:04:36.920 and in each case outlines the key questions to ask to reveal fallacies, inconsistencies, and double standards.
00:04:43.800 If you ever get cornered by ardent Brexiteers, Daily Mail Disciples, or Little England Patriots, hello,
00:04:49.940 this book is your conversation survival guide.
00:04:52.840 And the interesting thing about that is, the people who've read this clearly do take it as a conversation survival guide,
00:04:59.520 because all of the talking points, all of the packaged responses, come straight from this book.
00:05:07.940 But again, what you'll notice there is, even in the flap, it's a bit of a foreshadowing.
00:05:12.520 They're not going to actually give you the rhetorical, well, the argumentative tools
00:05:17.280 to reasonably and logically deconstruct their opponents' arguments on first principles.
00:05:22.780 Instead, it immediately just assumes wrong opinions, faulty opinions.
00:05:27.480 What's a faulty opinion?
00:05:29.260 Something that middle-class Lib Dem voters feel a bit icky if it's mentioned at the dinner table.
00:05:35.300 James O'Brien has privileged access to the objective truth on every subject.
00:05:38.780 Well, I think what it is meant to be a placeholder for is just opinions that are unsavoury by the people
00:05:45.140 that I want to ingratiate myself with.
00:05:47.220 Non-Libtard opinions. 1.00
00:05:48.520 Yes.
00:05:49.060 And you can tell that immediately by the fact that on the front page,
00:05:52.140 you've got glowing praise from Robert Webb, Emily Maitlis.
00:05:55.980 You turn to the back, it's got a glowing review from The Guardian,
00:05:59.460 Caitlin Moran, Krishnan Gurumurthy, Gary Lineker, everybody's favourite black man.
00:06:05.320 It's got a laundry list of everyone that's annoying in British politics.
00:06:08.580 Well, and then you get another one on the inside right after the first flat.
00:06:11.960 You get Jamie Oliver, Susanna Reid, Danny Wallace.
00:06:15.800 Yep.
00:06:16.140 The Secret Barrister, who you might remember from his other book, How They Broke Britain.
00:06:20.840 Elizabeth Day, Ian Dunt, author of How to Be a Good Liberal.
00:06:24.380 Stuart Lee, and et cetera, et cetera.
00:06:26.420 So all of you who like making lists, thankfully, you get a pre-packaged one at the beginning of this book.
00:06:33.200 But what I'm getting at here...
00:06:34.100 Sorry, just as a quick thing.
00:06:35.320 If I was endorsed by any of those people, I would re-evaluate my entire worldview.
00:06:39.760 Yeah, you do.
00:06:40.220 Oh God, I'm doing something really wrong, if that person agrees with me.
00:06:43.560 You're doing something wrong here, definitely.
00:06:46.000 But I think one of the reasons that it's so lazy in providing the transcripts
00:06:49.480 is that the original text in here, as mentioned, is simply reaffirming
00:06:53.700 that if you already agree with all of the centre-left opinions on the subjects that it covers,
00:06:59.180 there's like Islam, Brexit, LGBT, these are the chapter headings, political correctness, feminism. 0.93
00:07:07.560 I love it.
00:07:08.220 Yeah, if you were to read these are the chapter headings.
00:07:10.660 Just, oh my God.
00:07:12.180 Nanny States and Classical Liberals, or as I call it, the anti-Karl chapter.
00:07:16.060 Written in 2018.
00:07:17.300 You know that he's making veiled references to Karl.
00:07:21.780 Then the age gap trump, and then you get the epilogue.
00:07:24.400 So again, very, very short book.
00:07:25.980 The point is that the text is not really the main feature here.
00:07:29.920 It's the transcripts.
00:07:31.100 Because in those transcripts, you get the reproductions of James talking to people
00:07:35.640 who disagree with him.
00:07:37.000 Where, again, he engages in very, very bad faith debate tactics.
00:07:41.600 And we'll go through a few of these as we go through the chapters.
00:07:43.900 If anything, having it as a transcript lends itself better to his arguments
00:07:47.820 because it makes him less insufferable.
00:07:50.060 You don't actually get to hear his voice.
00:07:53.540 That's a fair point.
00:07:55.100 But actually, what it actually reveals is the pure vacuity of his speech.
00:08:01.380 The opponents that he has in these transcripts often are making nuanced and reasonable arguments.
00:08:07.980 And he responds to them like a child.
00:08:11.260 And it becomes clearer when you have it in text.
00:08:14.060 But of course, if you're Robert Webb, or Jamie Oliver, or Gary Lineker,
00:08:20.100 you do not have the mental prowess to recognize this.
00:08:23.520 And if you're an NPC being taught to be an NPC by this book,
00:08:27.060 what you're getting is the immediate programming.
00:08:29.240 Your new programming.
00:08:30.040 Oh, this is how I respond to these people.
00:08:32.400 And that's what the transcripts are there for.
00:08:34.420 And it's amazing how candid he is with some of these things.
00:08:38.120 So I've put the bookmark on this page because this is the most important one.
00:08:43.380 And the bookmark, of course, is a leaflet that Carl got from the farmers' protest, appropriately,
00:08:48.740 if you know anything about James' views on the farmers and why they're protesting.
00:08:52.620 I would like you to just notice what he admits to here on this page
00:08:57.080 when he discusses a conversation he had with somebody.
00:08:59.700 I think it was about prayer rooms in a school.
00:09:02.720 Yeah, it is, yeah.
00:09:03.340 I asked him the name of the school and he told me.
00:09:05.000 I had a quick scoot online and I couldn't find any reference to a prayer room
00:09:08.600 or a particular predominance of Muslim students.
00:09:11.880 And I've done something I've never done on air before or since.
00:09:15.420 I lied.
00:09:17.120 Andy, we've got the headmistress on the other line 0.97
00:09:19.220 and she doesn't know what you're talking about.
00:09:21.400 Andy hung up.
00:09:22.280 I don't know why he wanted, perhaps even needed,
00:09:24.760 the narrative of being overwhelmed and under threat to be so true.
00:09:27.760 So much so that he made stuff up to prove it.
00:09:30.540 Sorry.
00:09:31.680 So he made stuff up to prove it.
00:09:33.660 Andy, he is accusing of making stuff up to prove it.
00:09:36.340 But James literally is making stuff up.
00:09:39.360 And admits it here.
00:09:40.700 But he has the nice caveat.
00:09:42.740 I've never done it before or since, guys.
00:09:44.320 Oh, yeah.
00:09:45.000 Never once before after this have I been a liar. 0.81
00:09:48.620 All I am in this book is an admitted liar. 0.56
00:09:52.200 That's remarkable. 0.82
00:09:53.620 It's interesting that he's just okay with saying,
00:09:58.360 well, it just randomly came over me to lie for no reason.
00:10:02.600 Because he needed to win against Andy, you see.
00:10:04.260 It's not exactly one of the topics that was, you know,
00:10:07.600 front and centre of British politics where the stakes are very high.
00:10:11.020 It was like a, it's a very strange thing for him to admit.
00:10:15.440 I'm very surprised he did it.
00:10:16.600 Well, in the sequel book to this, How Not to Be Wrong,
00:10:19.840 again, hold your laughter.
00:10:20.980 We'll get to that when we get to it.
00:10:23.160 Basically.
00:10:24.680 That's presented more as a personal memoir, right?
00:10:27.480 And it's very clear through the text of this book,
00:10:29.820 but it's even clearer in that book because he outright admits to it,
00:10:33.320 that his whole purpose of being in engaging in these discussions
00:10:37.300 has never been truth or honesty.
00:10:40.060 He outright says that, oh, before I went to therapy,
00:10:43.560 whenever that was, he doesn't leave it.
00:10:45.260 He doesn't tell you exactly when he went to therapy.
00:10:47.180 Before I went to therapy, all I ever cared about was winning in these discussions.
00:10:53.480 So, if you're a viewer of James O'Brien,
00:10:57.060 if you're a normie NPC who's a regular viewer of his show
00:11:01.460 and you watch him frequently,
00:11:03.220 why do you trust him after reading this book?
00:11:06.480 He's admitted that he's lying,
00:11:08.100 and he makes clear over and over and over again,
00:11:09.900 his whole point is winning, which suggests that the NPC perspective is just,
00:11:14.520 I am a death bot programmed to win at all costs for my side.
00:11:20.280 And that's literally what he's saying there,
00:11:21.880 because, I mean, Andy says,
00:11:23.940 look, I'm feeling overwhelmed by the number of Muslim students at this school, 0.99
00:11:27.740 their prayer rooms, this is a big thing.
00:11:30.160 James O'Brien can't find anything online,
00:11:32.120 so he just starts making up things to shut him down.
00:11:34.580 It's like, okay, but doesn't this guy have a right to feel overwhelmed
00:11:38.340 by the demographic change in this country?
00:11:40.640 Like, is that not something legitimate?
00:11:42.060 It's like, maybe,
00:11:42.900 but that would threaten the libtard order 0.95
00:11:45.580 that James O'Brien is currently trying to defend.
00:11:47.500 The only thing is, he's not even being a good libtard, 1.00
00:11:49.780 because he could be like, well, you know,
00:11:52.000 it's natural for you to feel overwhelmed, perhaps,
00:11:55.340 but, you know, you've got to get over it.
00:11:56.860 He's not even being very good rhetorically,
00:11:59.240 because he could potentially try and win this person around.
00:12:01.560 Maybe, but instead he's...
00:12:02.960 Offering them reassurance, yeah.
00:12:04.360 Well, again, like Sam Hyde in the I'm Hitler's Top Guy sketch, 0.65
00:12:09.100 he uses a mixture of bullying, shaming, berating,
00:12:13.820 and other aggressive tactics.
00:12:16.480 My favourite tactics, yeah.
00:12:17.520 Very, you are Hitler's top guy as well. 0.93
00:12:21.640 He uses those tactics to berate the other person
00:12:24.780 and shame them into agreeing with him,
00:12:26.940 or at least shame them into being quiet about their actual feelings.
00:12:31.560 Which, again, if this is the guide on how to berate other people,
00:12:36.100 how not to be right, how not to be wrong is how to do that to yourself,
00:12:39.820 how to gaslight yourself into being a libtard NPC. 0.99
00:12:43.820 Spoiler.
00:12:44.700 Yeah, spoiler.
00:12:45.820 But it's interesting, again,
00:12:47.720 how in the very first page of the first chapter on Islam and Islamism,
00:12:51.640 he makes it very, very clear why it is that he's siding with outgroups on this.
00:12:55.820 Oh, yeah.
00:12:56.480 And that's because he's not English. 0.94
00:12:58.640 Oh.
00:12:59.040 Well, he's Irish.
00:13:00.000 Well, he's O'Brien, I suppose.
00:13:01.260 Yeah, yeah, he's Irish.
00:13:02.840 And he talks about how in the 70s and 80s, growing up,
00:13:06.580 he was the subject of bullying
00:13:08.200 because other people would make fun of him for being Irish
00:13:11.420 because they would say,
00:13:12.440 oh, you're part of the IRA.
00:13:13.880 Oh, it makes sense why he defends Islam so much now then.
00:13:17.060 Yeah.
00:13:17.760 Also, it wasn't James O'Brien adopted,
00:13:20.440 so it's not even his...
00:13:22.120 Well, no, no, his biological parents,
00:13:25.420 from what he knows, are Irish as well.
00:13:27.140 Oh, okay.
00:13:27.840 But the family that adopted him are also Irish immigrants.
00:13:31.100 Okay.
00:13:31.700 So he was doubly cursed from the outset.
00:13:36.260 There was no winning for O'Brien.
00:13:38.420 But when we get to the rhetorical tactics, again,
00:13:40.840 you say that, oh, well, you don't have to listen to him,
00:13:42.840 so it might actually make his rhetoric more effective.
00:13:45.820 It doesn't.
00:13:48.280 So on the subject of Islamism,
00:13:50.480 he basically is trying to make the argument here
00:13:52.560 that it's not all right to judge all groups,
00:13:55.940 all people within a group,
00:13:57.920 as being the lowest common denominator from that group.
00:14:03.300 You can't take the actions of one Islamist who's a radical
00:14:05.980 and use it to smear everybody else.
00:14:08.120 You know, the Norm Macdonald.
00:14:09.320 Think of all of these innocent, law-abiding Muslims.
00:14:12.000 Can I make a characterization about ISIS?
00:14:14.380 Can I use the actions of one member of ISIS to characterize the rest of ISIS?
00:14:19.020 Not all of ISIS actually kill people, Carl.
00:14:21.600 That's exactly what his book would have to be.
00:14:23.140 I mean, that is technically true,
00:14:24.620 but it's a very weird way of going about it.
00:14:26.520 Well, the point is that this caller, Richard,
00:14:28.640 is calling in regarding the crimes that have been committed
00:14:31.560 in the name of Islam 0.99
00:14:32.600 and saying that they as a group
00:14:35.220 should issue an apology to the mass of English people 1.00
00:14:39.700 for what they've done.
00:14:41.180 James O'Brien finds this is terrible
00:14:42.580 and his tactic for saying that it's not,
00:14:45.680 allow me to quote some of it.
00:14:47.120 Okay.
00:14:48.040 James, have you apologized yet?
00:14:50.240 Richard, apologize for what?
00:14:51.880 James, the murder's in France on Wednesday.
00:14:54.260 Why would I need to apologize for that?
00:14:55.980 Well, why does Abbas?
00:14:57.140 He was in Berkshire.
00:14:58.460 Well, no, because they're doing it in the name of Islam. 0.99
00:15:00.600 If it was done, James, not his Islam. 1.00
00:15:04.340 They might have been doing it in the name of Richard's.
00:15:06.780 Wouldn't mean it was about you.
00:15:09.140 Richard, I know, but that gets cut off.
00:15:11.400 So why haven't you apologized then?
00:15:13.020 You can do it now if you want.
00:15:14.660 Richard, there has to be some,
00:15:16.820 these people are committing acts of terror in the name of Islam. 0.98
00:15:19.060 So you can tell that Richard's immediately like,
00:15:21.120 well, I'm making an actual point here. 1.00
00:15:22.940 You're being a twat. 0.99
00:15:24.280 Yeah. 1.00
00:15:24.560 How am I supposed to respond to you just being a twat? 0.99
00:15:27.580 But the thing, the caller could say, 0.99
00:15:29.000 well, David Cameron apologized for like the empire, didn't he?
00:15:32.340 Like, didn't Keir Starmer apologize for slavery or something?
00:15:36.140 You know, like national leaders make apologies
00:15:38.720 on behalf of the nation all the time.
00:15:40.580 So there's a couple of things to say here.
00:15:42.660 The first of which I don't actually agree with asking
00:15:45.660 for an apology from Islam because it makes us look weak. 1.00
00:15:48.300 And they wouldn't do it anyway.
00:15:51.020 And secondly, I think the best thing he could say there,
00:15:54.780 because I always feel very frustrated with the callers
00:15:57.020 because they're normal people.
00:15:58.300 Yeah, they're not professional.
00:15:59.440 Exactly.
00:16:00.320 And so what you would actually want Richard to say here would be,
00:16:04.200 well, one of these makes sense
00:16:06.780 because not everyone called Richard necessarily
00:16:09.580 has the same beliefs about something.
00:16:12.300 Whereas Islam, there's got to be at least some overlap, right? 0.93
00:16:15.540 And therefore, you know, people called Richard,
00:16:18.440 that's not a religion in the same way that Islam is.
00:16:21.520 Well, he's trying to make that point,
00:16:23.800 but obviously he's a bit flustered because you don't expect,
00:16:26.680 I mean, he should have expected, he'd called into James O'Brien,
00:16:29.480 but typically normal people don't expect to be met
00:16:32.020 with such blatant dishonesty in the responses, right?
00:16:36.380 Yeah.
00:16:36.580 And also he keeps getting cut off.
00:16:39.340 So he says, James carries on,
00:16:41.780 okay, then tell me why you haven't apologised for the shoe bomber
00:16:44.320 whose name was Richard,
00:16:45.340 because Abbas has to apologise for a terrorist
00:16:47.220 who said he was a Muslim.
00:16:48.440 Take all the time you want, mate.
00:16:50.520 And in my mind right now is that farmer saying,
00:16:53.020 I'm not your mate. 0.99
00:16:53.840 I hate you. 1.00
00:16:54.600 You're an idiot. 1.00
00:16:55.720 Okay, fine. 1.00
00:16:56.680 If we're going to say that people with the name Richard
00:16:59.060 are part of a shared ideological group,
00:17:02.360 all right, well, I just apologise for the Richards then.
00:17:04.480 Now where's my Muslim apology? 1.00
00:17:05.680 Yeah, just turn it back around at him,
00:17:09.260 just say, all right, I apologise for Richards.
00:17:11.140 All right, now Islam, pay up. 1.00
00:17:12.540 Yeah, but I'll just carry on until I get to the point
00:17:16.320 where I'm going to stop.
00:17:17.040 So Richard, okay, but these guys are from the Islamic community.
00:17:20.640 James, yes, and the shoe bomber was from the community
00:17:22.760 of people called Richard. 1.00
00:17:24.320 God, he's such an idiot. 1.00
00:17:25.500 Yeah. 1.00
00:17:25.780 He's such an idiot. 1.00
00:17:26.640 Richard. 1.00
00:17:27.140 All the Richards live together, don't they?
00:17:29.640 They have a whole group chat on WhatsApp.
00:17:32.040 They all coordinate with one another.
00:17:33.600 It's a Richard conspiracy.
00:17:34.340 As if there's a shared doctrine of Richard. 1.00
00:17:37.440 You moron, James. 1.00
00:17:38.660 You're an actual moron. 1.00
00:17:40.400 So Richard just responds, 1.00
00:17:42.000 it's difficult to argue against you when you're being like this.
00:17:45.140 I'm just trying to make a point that these people are from the Islamic community.
00:17:49.820 James, what does that even mean?
00:17:51.660 What does the Islamic community even mean?
00:17:54.080 Playing the hatchling.
00:17:54.960 What does that mean, James?
00:17:56.580 But I love it.
00:17:57.560 It's difficult to argue against you while you're being like this.
00:17:59.360 Well, that's why he's being like this, actually.
00:18:01.540 It reminds me, you know, we did that lads hour with that angry AI girlfriend. 1.00
00:18:06.060 Yeah.
00:18:07.000 It's basically that same sort of concept here.
00:18:10.360 You've got to get James O'Brien to admit, okay, maybe I'm a little bit angry.
00:18:14.600 Do you see what I mean, though, that James O'Brien does not come across better in his rhetoric when it's put on page? 1.00
00:18:21.120 It becomes even clearer how much of a blithering idiot he is. 0.97
00:18:26.300 Why would he choose that as one of his, like, showcase examples? 1.00
00:18:29.160 He does.
00:18:29.560 Every single one in this book is like that because...
00:18:32.760 That's a really bad example.
00:18:33.940 I don't think he has the...
00:18:35.800 Well, I think he looks back on these calls and goes, yeah, I showed him.
00:18:40.180 He's never going to recover from this one.
00:18:42.660 God, that's embarrassing. 0.98
00:18:44.020 It's ridiculous. 0.96
00:18:44.880 But then you get the idea of what he actually wants from his callers and the public at large
00:18:50.020 when he talks at the end of the chapter basically about a positive call he had with somebody
00:18:55.740 where somebody was calling in saying, I used to be obsessed with all of this stuff.
00:18:59.780 I was really worried about this stuff.
00:19:01.320 I was reading the EDL website and listening to Tommy Robinson, and then I just stopped.
00:19:07.740 And everything became better.
00:19:09.800 So it's a gentleman called Ray saying,
00:19:12.420 I was just listening to what you said about the internet melting our brains,
00:19:15.380 and I wanted to tell you what happened to me.
00:19:17.460 I don't really know any Muslims, but I started reading stuff online a few months ago,
00:19:21.240 the EDL in that, and the more I read, the angrier I got.
00:19:24.400 James, angry about what?
00:19:26.000 Ray, angry about these people poncing off us while plotting to kill us.
00:19:30.140 James, wow.
00:19:31.840 Ray, I know, but they'd back it up by quoting from the Quran or the Hadiths,
00:19:36.140 and kind of prove all their points about Muslims without actually ever talking to any.
00:19:40.240 Why would they matter to a Muslim? 1.00
00:19:42.280 Yeah, so he's using, so they backed it up with evidence and actual quotes, whereas...
00:19:47.500 The literal interpretation of their doctrine.
00:19:49.940 Yeah.
00:19:50.540 James, so what happened?
00:19:51.880 Ray, well, my wife told me to stop.
00:19:53.840 James, what do you mean?
00:19:55.040 Ray, I was getting angry with her, with the family, with everyone really.
00:19:58.340 I'd start trying to convince everyone that we were under siege, and they just couldn't
00:20:01.760 see it, because they've not looked into it, because it's being kept from them, the mainstream
00:20:07.760 media don't report on it, James O'Brien doesn't want you to know about it.
00:20:10.820 If he had that conversation again, it would be a much easier sell, wouldn't it, to most
00:20:16.160 of his family?
00:20:16.880 This was in 2018.
00:20:18.340 Yeah, most of the people I've spoke to...
00:20:20.180 Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:20:20.580 Well, if it's the EDL website, it might be early in the 2010s.
00:20:23.640 I don't think I've spoke to a single person who doesn't admit that there's a problem with
00:20:27.840 Islam in this country.
00:20:28.820 Not one, no matter what their politics is.
00:20:30.320 Even my leftist friends, yeah, they're starting to come around to it as well.
00:20:33.460 But he just carries on saying, Ray, the wife said I was making myself ill and making her
00:20:37.960 unhappy, and she told me to leave the laptop under the sofa for a month.
00:20:41.780 James, what happened?
00:20:42.840 Ray, I was sorted in less than a week.
00:20:45.280 Never look at that stuff anymore.
00:20:46.820 Couldn't be happier.
00:20:47.680 Ignorance is bliss.
00:20:48.540 Yep, blissful ignorance.
00:20:50.040 And that's what James is saying, you as the, you know, loyal NPC leader... 0.99
00:20:55.860 Just remain ignorant, and I'm great. 0.98