PREVIEW： Book Club #65 ｜ James O'Brien's How To be Right
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Summary
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
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Hello and welcome to the exciting book club sequel that I know that you've all been waiting for.
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That's right, we have returned to the land of James O'Gammon.
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And for this, I've gone back to his 2018 bestseller, How to Be Right.
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You might have seen this in WH Smiths and Waterstones all across the country.
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You might have seen your nan reading this, your middle-class Lib Dem voting auntie,
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And I thought it'd be interesting to go back through this, examine his thoughts, examine how you can be right.
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And then also after this, we'll probably also cover his sequel book to this How Not To Be Wrong.
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It's like some sort of Mitchell and Webb parody.
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Like, you know, his book How To Be Right, and then his other book How Not To Be Wrong.
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Right now for LBC saying, well, you know, when the government says, have we tried destroying British farming?
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James O'Brien is the man who comes out and defends all of that.
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And this is an interesting one because I thought How To Be Right.
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He's not actually going to try and sell it to you as a guidebook on how to be right.
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Because it's an actual book that he thinks tells you how to be right.
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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.
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Using a mixture of bullying, shaming, and berating them to make sure that they stay in line.
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Because one thing that you'll notice straight away from this book is how lazy it is.
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Now I did the calculations, and this is being charitable because overall the book says that it's 232 pages.
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Of the main text itself, actually, there's about 219 pages, but I used the whole book.
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Of those pages, around about 74, 32% of the entire book are reproductions of his calls on LBC.
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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.
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And then even when you factor that in, just take a look at the actual pages themselves, right?
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Well, I notice that there's basically double spacing between each line, actually, which you can probably see.
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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.
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Yes, where I can write little miniature essays insulting James O'Brien.
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Pass it over to Josh as well, so he can just get a feel for it, okay?
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I actually had a look at this before we started recording.
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What I did like was, you wrote a little note right at the very start, after the first line, saying,
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And he says, I am a very rare beast. I am a liberal talk show host.
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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.
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All the time, the whole way through this book, he's constantly talking, not about the arguments that he's making,
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because what you'll quickly notice is there aren't any arguments being made against his opponents in this.
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It's him asserting that he is correct, and then again, using a mixture of mockery, bullying, berating, and shaming.
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I like the tactics. The tactics are good. It's just the message that's bad.
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Exactly. And what you'll also notice is this starts not from the very first page, but from the first flap of the book.
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Every day, James O'Brien listens to people blaming benefits, scroungers, the EU, Muslims, feminists, and immigrants.
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But what makes James's daily LBC social such essential listening, and has made James a standout social media star,
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is the careful way he punctures their assumptions and dismantles their arguments live on air every single morning.
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In How To Be Right, James provides a hilarious and invigorating guide to talking to people with faulty opinions.
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With chapters on every lightning rod issue, James shows how people have been fooled into thinking the way they do,
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and in each case outlines the key questions to ask to reveal fallacies, inconsistencies, and double standards.
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If you ever get cornered by ardent Brexiteers, Daily Mail Disciples, or Little England Patriots, hello,
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And the interesting thing about that is, the people who've read this clearly do take it as a conversation survival guide,
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because all of the talking points, all of the packaged responses, come straight from this book.
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But again, what you'll notice there is, even in the flap, it's a bit of a foreshadowing.
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They're not going to actually give you the rhetorical, well, the argumentative tools
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to reasonably and logically deconstruct their opponents' arguments on first principles.
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Instead, it immediately just assumes wrong opinions, faulty opinions.
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Something that middle-class Lib Dem voters feel a bit icky if it's mentioned at the dinner table.
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James O'Brien has privileged access to the objective truth on every subject.
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Well, I think what it is meant to be a placeholder for is just opinions that are unsavoury by the people
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And you can tell that immediately by the fact that on the front page,
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you've got glowing praise from Robert Webb, Emily Maitlis.
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You turn to the back, it's got a glowing review from The Guardian,
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Caitlin Moran, Krishnan Gurumurthy, Gary Lineker, everybody's favourite black man.
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It's got a laundry list of everyone that's annoying in British politics.
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Well, and then you get another one on the inside right after the first flat.
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You get Jamie Oliver, Susanna Reid, Danny Wallace.
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The Secret Barrister, who you might remember from his other book, How They Broke Britain.
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Elizabeth Day, Ian Dunt, author of How to Be a Good Liberal.
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So all of you who like making lists, thankfully, you get a pre-packaged one at the beginning of this book.
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If I was endorsed by any of those people, I would re-evaluate my entire worldview.
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Oh God, I'm doing something really wrong, if that person agrees with me.
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But I think one of the reasons that it's so lazy in providing the transcripts
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is that the original text in here, as mentioned, is simply reaffirming
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that if you already agree with all of the centre-left opinions on the subjects that it covers,
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there's like Islam, Brexit, LGBT, these are the chapter headings, political correctness, feminism.
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Yeah, if you were to read these are the chapter headings.
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Nanny States and Classical Liberals, or as I call it, the anti-Karl chapter.
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You know that he's making veiled references to Karl.
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Then the age gap trump, and then you get the epilogue.
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The point is that the text is not really the main feature here.
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Because in those transcripts, you get the reproductions of James talking to people
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Where, again, he engages in very, very bad faith debate tactics.
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And we'll go through a few of these as we go through the chapters.
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If anything, having it as a transcript lends itself better to his arguments
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But actually, what it actually reveals is the pure vacuity of his speech.
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The opponents that he has in these transcripts often are making nuanced and reasonable arguments.
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And it becomes clearer when you have it in text.
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But of course, if you're Robert Webb, or Jamie Oliver, or Gary Lineker,
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you do not have the mental prowess to recognize this.
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And if you're an NPC being taught to be an NPC by this book,
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what you're getting is the immediate programming.
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And it's amazing how candid he is with some of these things.
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So I've put the bookmark on this page because this is the most important one.
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And the bookmark, of course, is a leaflet that Carl got from the farmers' protest, appropriately,
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if you know anything about James' views on the farmers and why they're protesting.
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I would like you to just notice what he admits to here on this page
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when he discusses a conversation he had with somebody.
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I asked him the name of the school and he told me.
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I had a quick scoot online and I couldn't find any reference to a prayer room
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or a particular predominance of Muslim students.
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And I've done something I've never done on air before or since.
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Andy, we've got the headmistress on the other line
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and she doesn't know what you're talking about.
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I don't know why he wanted, perhaps even needed,
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the narrative of being overwhelmed and under threat to be so true.
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Andy, he is accusing of making stuff up to prove it.
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Never once before after this have I been a liar.
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It's interesting that he's just okay with saying,
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well, it just randomly came over me to lie for no reason.
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Because he needed to win against Andy, you see.
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It's not exactly one of the topics that was, you know,
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front and centre of British politics where the stakes are very high.
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It was like a, it's a very strange thing for him to admit.
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Well, in the sequel book to this, How Not to Be Wrong,
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That's presented more as a personal memoir, right?
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And it's very clear through the text of this book,
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but it's even clearer in that book because he outright admits to it,
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that his whole purpose of being in engaging in these discussions
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He outright says that, oh, before I went to therapy,
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He doesn't tell you exactly when he went to therapy.
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Before I went to therapy, all I ever cared about was winning in these discussions.
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if you're a normie NPC who's a regular viewer of his show
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and he makes clear over and over and over again,
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his whole point is winning, which suggests that the NPC perspective is just,
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I am a death bot programmed to win at all costs for my side.
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look, I'm feeling overwhelmed by the number of Muslim students at this school,
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so he just starts making up things to shut him down.
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It's like, okay, but doesn't this guy have a right to feel overwhelmed
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that James O'Brien is currently trying to defend.
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The only thing is, he's not even being a good libtard,
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it's natural for you to feel overwhelmed, perhaps,
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because he could potentially try and win this person around.
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Well, again, like Sam Hyde in the I'm Hitler's Top Guy sketch,
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he uses a mixture of bullying, shaming, berating,
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He uses those tactics to berate the other person
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or at least shame them into being quiet about their actual feelings.
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Which, again, if this is the guide on how to berate other people,
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how not to be right, how not to be wrong is how to do that to yourself,
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how to gaslight yourself into being a libtard NPC.
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how in the very first page of the first chapter on Islam and Islamism,
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he makes it very, very clear why it is that he's siding with outgroups on this.
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And he talks about how in the 70s and 80s, growing up,
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because other people would make fun of him for being Irish
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Oh, it makes sense why he defends Islam so much now then.
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But the family that adopted him are also Irish immigrants.
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But when we get to the rhetorical tactics, again,
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you say that, oh, well, you don't have to listen to him,
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so it might actually make his rhetoric more effective.
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he basically is trying to make the argument here
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as being the lowest common denominator from that group.
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You can't take the actions of one Islamist who's a radical
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Think of all of these innocent, law-abiding Muslims.
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Can I use the actions of one member of ISIS to characterize the rest of ISIS?
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is calling in regarding the crimes that have been committed
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should issue an apology to the mass of English people
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Well, no, because they're doing it in the name of Islam.
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They might have been doing it in the name of Richard's.
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these people are committing acts of terror in the name of Islam.
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So you can tell that Richard's immediately like,
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How am I supposed to respond to you just being a twat?
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well, David Cameron apologized for like the empire, didn't he?
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Like, didn't Keir Starmer apologize for slavery or something?
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The first of which I don't actually agree with asking
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for an apology from Islam because it makes us look weak.
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And secondly, I think the best thing he could say there,
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because I always feel very frustrated with the callers
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And so what you would actually want Richard to say here would be,
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because not everyone called Richard necessarily
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Whereas Islam, there's got to be at least some overlap, right?
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And therefore, you know, people called Richard,
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that's not a religion in the same way that Islam is.
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but obviously he's a bit flustered because you don't expect,
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I mean, he should have expected, he'd called into James O'Brien,
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but typically normal people don't expect to be met
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with such blatant dishonesty in the responses, right?
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okay, then tell me why you haven't apologised for the shoe bomber
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And in my mind right now is that farmer saying,
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If we're going to say that people with the name Richard
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all right, well, I just apologise for the Richards then.
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Yeah, but I'll just carry on until I get to the point
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So Richard, okay, but these guys are from the Islamic community.
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James, yes, and the shoe bomber was from the community
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it's difficult to argue against you when you're being like this.
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I'm just trying to make a point that these people are from the Islamic community.
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It's difficult to argue against you while you're being like this.
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Well, that's why he's being like this, actually.
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It reminds me, you know, we did that lads hour with that angry AI girlfriend.
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You've got to get James O'Brien to admit, okay, maybe I'm a little bit angry.
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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?
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It becomes even clearer how much of a blithering idiot he is.
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Why would he choose that as one of his, like, showcase examples?
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Every single one in this book is like that because...
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Well, I think he looks back on these calls and goes, yeah, I showed him.
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But then you get the idea of what he actually wants from his callers and the public at large
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when he talks at the end of the chapter basically about a positive call he had with somebody
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where somebody was calling in saying, I used to be obsessed with all of this stuff.
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I was reading the EDL website and listening to Tommy Robinson, and then I just stopped.
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I was just listening to what you said about the internet melting our brains,
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I don't really know any Muslims, but I started reading stuff online a few months ago,
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the EDL in that, and the more I read, the angrier I got.
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Ray, angry about these people poncing off us while plotting to kill us.
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Ray, I know, but they'd back it up by quoting from the Quran or the Hadiths,
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and kind of prove all their points about Muslims without actually ever talking to any.
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Yeah, so he's using, so they backed it up with evidence and actual quotes, whereas...
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Ray, I was getting angry with her, with the family, with everyone really.
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I'd start trying to convince everyone that we were under siege, and they just couldn't
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see it, because they've not looked into it, because it's being kept from them, the mainstream
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media don't report on it, James O'Brien doesn't want you to know about it.
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If he had that conversation again, it would be a much easier sell, wouldn't it, to most
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Well, if it's the EDL website, it might be early in the 2010s.
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I don't think I've spoke to a single person who doesn't admit that there's a problem with
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Even my leftist friends, yeah, they're starting to come around to it as well.
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But he just carries on saying, Ray, the wife said I was making myself ill and making her
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unhappy, and she told me to leave the laptop under the sofa for a month.
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And that's what James is saying, you as the, you know, loyal NPC leader...