Gad Saad vs the Woke People on Piers Morgan (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_904)
Episode Stats
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Summary
Gad Saad, evolutionary behaviour scientist, takes issue with the title of my new book 'Woke Is Dead' and argues that the ideology is dying out. We also discuss the Me Too movement and its impact on masculinity.
Transcript
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To another issue now, Professor Gad Saad, the evolutionary behaviour scientist, who is not woke,
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but was one of the first to take issue with the name of my new book.
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I haven't read it yet, but just from the title, it's a bit presumptuous to celebrate
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that all of the parasitic ideas that constitute wokeism are now eviscerated.
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Well, I don't say, to be clear, I don't say this. This is more an aspirational title.
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I make it clear that woke is still there. It's dying out.
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And the reason I say that is you're seeing screeching reversals now around the world
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in things like corporate DEI policies, in the trans issue of trans athletes and women's sport.
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You know, time and again, we're seeing the reaction to things like the Graham Linehan arrest
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immediately reversed by, I think, huge public opinion against it.
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What you're seeing is a response now from, I believe, the majority of people who have
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a common sense valve saying, we're just not having this anymore. Sorry.
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So that's what I mean by, I believe the ideology is dying out, but we have to make sure it is killed
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off because I do believe, genuinely, it's been very damaging.
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I mean, it's undoubtedly true that there has been a bit of an autocorrection.
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I mean, just having Donald Trump win the presidency resulted in immediate executive orders
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But to draw an analogy from biology, there is something called viral latency in biology,
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right, where a virus can lay dormant in you for years, if not decades, before it gets activated.
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Take, for example, the shingles virus, which would be relevant to people that are roughly
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our respective ages. It could be in you from childhood, and then it only hits you when you're
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in your 50s and 60s. So these parasitic ideas that constitute wokeism took between 50 to 100 years
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to first be spawned and then proliferate from the university ecosystem. So it'll take much longer
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than what you're talking about, the reversal of the DEI stuff or Donald Trump. It's going to require
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many, many years of eviscerating these dreadful ideas. But yes, I am hopeful just like you are.
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That's actually an insane thing to say, though, because wokeism, or whatever you want to call it,
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has existed since literally when Jesus was here. Jesus was woke. I mean, that's the whole point.
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Love thy neighbour, have empathy for people. And he was literally killed for speaking truth
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to power. So what you're talking about is not something that's only existed for the last
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just to be clear. You're implying that people who reject the wokeism are somehow against kindness
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or empathy or those things. I'm not. I want people to be kind and empathetic. It's the scolding,
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the vilifying, the shaming, the cancelling, the destruction. That seems to be coming from the
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right towards the left, especially in the case of your book. Well, no, it doesn't, actually. If you
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read the book... Well, I've read some of the book. We haven't read it all. I haven't read some of the book.
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As always, you come as a limiting amount of information on which you base your statements.
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Am I wrong by saying that you say that the left have basically... The Me Too movement have
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basically caused men to feel like they can't flirt with women? Isn't that what you're saying?
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I said, if you read the book, I say that there are a lot of bad men who've done bad things,
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but actually the over-demonisation of things like masculinity...
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So you're blaming the left. I've just phrased it very deliberately.
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There are bad men and there are bad women, right? But there's nothing wrong with femininity
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or masculinity. These are things that should be treasured and prized in a civilised free
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democratic society. Coming back to Gad, I want to play a clip. This is of Lily Gaddis,
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who came on to try and defend, to me, the indefensible. Let's take a look.
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Would you use the N-word out of interest? Yes. You would?
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I do, quite frequently. You use the N-word quite frequently. Well, why?
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Other than the fact you're a despicable racist. Are you?
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I... Some would say I am. I guess, according to the ADL, I'm a white supremacist. I'm a neo-Nazi.
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Yeah, well, if you use the N-word repeatedly, you are a racist, are you?
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Sure, I'll embrace that. If that means forwarding, you know, helping white people achieve freedom
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of speech, real freedom of speech, which, by the way, includes... I mean, Shiloh Hendricks is being
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attacked on all fronts. They're trying to bring legal charges against her. They're trying to get her
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children taken away. So you were saying, Carmelo Anthony, it doesn't matter.
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I mean, a pretty staggering thing to say on a show like this. I want to really quote Gad
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from the book about this issue. I said, we're now seeing the first early murmurings of a new brand
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of silliness from right-wing people who have spent years railing against all things woke.
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They have very different opinions about the world, but use the woke tactical playbook to win
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arguments and get what they want. You don't have to travel far on social media before you encounter
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a furious, straight, white Christian man who's convinced the whole world is against him.
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And I do believe that is becoming an increasing issue. In the same way that I found a lot of the
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woke activists incredibly hypocritical, I also think it's very hypocritical of people on the right
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to start behaving like the very people they've been criticizing for years for being hypocritical
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Right. So let me tie what you just asked with what the gentleman before mentioned about Jesus.
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The idea that human minds can be parasitized has existed since time immemorial. So in that sense,
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he's right. But wokeism involves a specific set of bad ideas. Two, 300 years ago, we used to think
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that it was a good idea to throw a woman into a body of water. And if she swam, that meant that she
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was a witch. So the capacity for human minds to be parasitized has always existed. The term
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wokeism relates to specific parasitic ideas that are contemporary. Regarding your other point,
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both people on the right and on the left could have parasitized minds. So for example,
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when it comes to accepting evolution, it's people on the right that are against it. But when it comes
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to applying evolution to the study of the human mind, it's people on the left that are against it.
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So it's not a political orientation issue, although all of the parasitic ideas that constitute
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wokeism do stem from the left, because all of those ideas come from the university ecosystem.
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And it is largely professors on the left that inhabit the university ecosystem.
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Do you believe it's dying, wokeism, as a concept, as an ideology?
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Uh, not fully. So that's why I wouldn't throw the celebration parades yet. For example, in Canada,
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we don't have an agent of change like Donald Trump. And so I recently had to appear in front of a
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House of, you know, House of Commons committee, where I was trying to argue that it is wrong
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to use DEI when judging scientific excellence. But for many of the people that serve in the Canadian
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Parliament, that was, you know, blasphemous for me to say that, right? And so, yes, there is some
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auto-correction taking place, but I wouldn't throw the party yet.
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Donald Trump is an agent of change. What change?
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Well, Donald Trump is clearly an agent of change. You may not like the change.
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No, no, no. I'd like to know what the change is.
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Not having 6'4 women with 9-inch penises that used to be called Bubba yesterday, but today
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are called Linda, sharing the bathroom with my 13-year-old daughter would constitute a return
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Now, can you answer the question in a non-silly way? Because I don't know anybody 6'9. Can you answer
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Yeah, and a penis that long. So can you answer it in terms of real-world things? What do you mean?
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Having reversed the policy of having trans women, i.e. biological men, competing in women's sport,
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until 15 minutes ago, the 117 billion people that had existed on Earth throughout human history
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seemed to be able to navigate through the very difficult conundrum of what constitutes male
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and female. But 15 minutes ago, we were no longer able to do that.
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Well, actually, you're wrong, because there have been cultures in which they have made
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definitions of what male and female are. And they're not majority cultures. They're not the
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ones that we live in. But through human history, this has always been an issue. Always.
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In those cultures that you're referring to, which I'm very familiar with the field of cultural
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anthropology, when people decided to mate in those cultures, did they typically mate
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by having two phenotypes called male and female get together?
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Yeah, yes, yes. You're right. But I'm saying you're absolutely right.
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But you're absolutely right. But you do know as well that there were cultures in which those
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two things flowed back and forth. When you're talking about procreation, of course, that's
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true. But there are also definitions of male and female that went back and forth.
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We're straying into actually a different area, which I want to discuss with another guest.
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Gad, thank you very much indeed for joining me. I appreciate it very much. Good to have you back.