TRIGGERnometry - ＂2020 Has Been a Year of Mass Hysteria＂ - Andrew Doyle

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kitchen and this is a

00:00:40.240 show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people are brilliant and returning

00:00:45.840 for the hundredth time today 103rd time 103rd time guest today is a comedian satirist writer

00:00:51.860 the creator titania mcgrath brilliant a friend of the show who's been on as i say many many times

00:00:56.800 andrew doyle welcome back to trigonometry it is a great pleasure to be here again

00:01:01.400 as you say it's becoming interminable yes well you know what it's funny it's and it's a special

00:01:07.080 moment for us because this is probably i think the fourth time we've had you on is that right

00:01:12.140 at least plus we've done some live shows together as well but as we are recording this we're about

00:01:17.840 to break through 200 000 subscribers on youtube which is a lot we're pleased and you were actually

00:01:23.700 probably our first sort of big guest that did very well i remember being the i was the set in

00:01:29.300 the second episode yeah yeah and back then you had a very different format it was very minimalist

00:01:34.040 you know not none of this sort of elaborate set that you've got going on now yeah it was

00:01:37.800 fucking atrocious me i liked it was that it was just the three of us around the table it looked 0.92

00:01:42.740 like a seance yeah spotlight it had that sort of eerie quality which i miss in a way yeah he's 0.99

00:01:49.460 lost weight i've lost hair we've all moved on yeah everything changes it's all for the good

00:01:54.000 it's all good so for the good but listen man it's good to have you back uh with the reason we thought

00:01:58.620 we'd get you back on is you know it's been an interesting year to say the least a lot has been

00:02:03.160 going on uh and uh you know we we spent obviously the whole year talking about it in a serious way

00:02:08.800 with a lot of people but we just thought it's been such an absolute i i nearly said the word 0.96

00:02:14.280 shit fuck i don't know why cluster whatever whatever it's been uh we just thought we'd 0.98

00:02:18.940 spend the last week sort of trying to cheer people up and have a light-hearted conversation about 1.00

00:02:22.520 what's going on even though we will touch on the serious stuff as well so of all the things that

00:02:27.640 have happened this year what has stood out for you as as the sort of epitome of 2020 it's very

00:02:33.080 difficult to say because ultimately the year in of itself has been sort of the moment i think it's

00:02:38.780 going to be very important moment historically because it's the moment when everything that

00:02:42.480 we've been warning about for the last five six years has come to fruition so it's just been the

00:02:46.780 complete um explosion of the culture war into the mainstream so whereas uh i've always and i know you

00:02:53.080 have as well i've always had to deal with this accusation that you're talking about a straw man

00:02:58.360 you're talking about something that doesn't exist you're talking about a few uh overzealous students

00:03:02.480 on campus getting upset about certain things you're talking about a few overzealous columnists

00:03:06.720 etc and now of course the evidence of everything we've been talking about is everywhere so so

00:03:12.080 People have actually stopped saying that to me now. It's not sustainable anymore. So all of those elements of the kind of postmodern social justice movement or ideology or whatever you want to call it has now just completely broken through. And it's not really a matter of these things bubbling under the surface anymore. It's just a matter of acknowledging that they are out there front and centre. And now it's a case of what do we do about it?

00:03:37.180 so i think when it comes to pinpointing something from the year it's very very difficult i think i

00:03:42.260 think what's but what's quite interesting is is seeing how seeing how that change has become

00:03:48.280 actuated if you go back to january if you think about the story in january when when over 300

00:03:53.000 guardian staff members signed a petition against suzanne moore at the guardian because they

00:03:58.480 perceived something she'd written was was um was transphobic and i think this actually this was

00:04:03.400 this in february anyway it was back near the start of the year and uh you know that now i mean back

00:04:09.020 then people were saying this is ridiculous i can't believe this is happening now that would be seen

00:04:12.780 as just well that's completely normal that's completely standard there's such has been

00:04:16.660 the the sort of transition uh from a relatively sane society to this pseudo reality that we now

00:04:22.880 occupy so it's it's it's a weird one and andrew how much of uh of that is due to social media the

00:04:29.520 fact that we're cooped up in our houses and we tend to be mainlining twitter into our eyeballs

00:04:34.100 i don't know i mean this is the thing i'm not i'm not an anthropologist or a i'm not in a position

00:04:40.420 to say why all this has happened a lot of people have speculated that there's been this as you say

00:04:44.260 kind of pressure cooker environment and that early in the year because everyone was cooped up under

00:04:48.280 lockdown this is why after the george floyd moment uh the explosion happened this is why people were

00:04:53.640 out there rioting uh this is why everything went so insane so quickly it so if there is a

00:05:00.240 psychological reasoning behind it then then i i i find that persuasive but i'm probably not in a

00:05:07.340 position uh to make the judgment as to its validity but yeah i think that's i think that's

00:05:13.180 true i'm always wrestling with this idea of should i just get off social media and then

00:05:17.020 but i i mean i sort of depend on it for what i do um and and the problem isn't so much that

00:05:23.340 i mean you're absolutely right what is it it's 80 of the country are not on are not on twitter

00:05:28.480 and and the people who are on twitter i think it's something like only five to ten percent of

00:05:32.700 the people who do most of the tweets right so it's it's a twitter and social media generally

00:05:37.180 such a small uh minority that's why so many people just don't know about this stuff but

00:05:42.900 the problem is that now it's very clear that that the social media discourse is in is driving the

00:05:49.280 rest of it so so stuff that last year we would have heard from um the most overzealous blue check

00:05:57.840 academics on twitter is now being parroted by sadiq khan say or people in parliament or

00:06:04.140 or you know the sort of mainstream voices or the headmaster of eton or whatever you know so

00:06:08.620 so that's the problem it it's it wouldn't matter if we could just disregard the whole of social 0.78

00:06:14.660 media and just say oh look they're nutcases they're insane they're they are and there's

00:06:17.960 there is that element of of what ricky gervais talks about like being able to see you know it's 0.86

00:06:22.840 like being exposed to the scrawlings on the toilet wall now that's what that's what it is it's just

00:06:26.620 it's all there for for you to see the problem is that the scrawlings on the toilet wall never

00:06:32.300 directed popular discourse before never never never migrated into parliament and into education

00:06:38.940 and into the the media and into journalism and all the rest of it so that's the that's the really

00:06:44.280 dangerous thing now and i don't know how you reverse that really yeah well we're keeping a

00:06:48.360 light already at the top of the show so that's great andrew did you yeah did you want this to

00:06:52.900 be a bit more frivolous and flippant no no i'm just joking me uh that was my way of injecting

00:06:58.360 a bit of levity into it but you know i was wondering one of the accusations i think all

00:07:02.640 three of us to some extent have always got is that uh like we're delighted that this is happening

00:07:08.600 we're so happy because it validates what we've been saying it it gives us a job it's like all

00:07:15.400 of that stuff and i i can't tell you how how desperately frustrated i am that everything

00:07:22.000 you and i and francis and everybody else has been saying is is turning out to be correct

00:07:26.060 oh i know i agree i want to be wrong i want to be wrong i want it to go away uh you know i mean

00:07:31.620 when people say that to me i just think well that's really weird because my job never depended

00:07:35.260 on this you know i've i've always uh written plays and articles and and comedy and and in the

00:07:42.900 comedic sense i've always mocked the stuff in society that i perceive to be ridiculous which

00:07:47.580 is what we all do and this is the stuff that i currently perceive to be ridiculous i'm obviously

00:07:51.780 going to talk about this the idea that that this is what is sustaining my livelihood is isn't true

00:07:56.980 uh for one thing uh that is not to say i don't earn money out of the comedy that i write i do

00:08:02.960 but if it was if this wasn't going on i'd be mocking something else and earning money that

00:08:06.360 way you know that's what it's it's a very weird accusation isn't it that you're you're cashing in

00:08:11.380 by doing what you do for a living that would mean that absolutely everyone is cashing in whenever

00:08:16.400 they accept a paycheck it doesn't make any sense um i would love to i would love for this to go

00:08:21.480 away it'd be it'd be absolutely wonderful if the titani mcgrath character was redundant it would

00:08:26.720 be a dream come true i want all of this stuff to stop i want uh society to get back to just being

00:08:32.300 sane again that would be that would be great but it's not it's not far from it it's not it isn't

00:08:42.100 have we as rod little uh quoted many many times have we reached peak wank yet andrew is that what

00:08:48.980 said yeah um uh he didn't say we have it's just a term that he used yeah uh so what you're really

00:08:57.620 asking me is can it get any worse yes yeah and i know the answer to this but i feel it's important

00:09:02.260 that we do it anyway well you know the obvious truth is yes it can um and it probably will um

00:09:09.220 i think you know we've seen over the last week or so uh the law commission trying to push for

00:09:16.000 greater hate speech regulation which would include uh criminalizing things that are said in the home

00:09:21.040 it would include um a policing offensive comedy uh the the thing that they keep mentioning in

00:09:27.820 the document is the uh the the cartoons of muhammad for instance so so satire would be

00:09:33.940 so it's going the other way you know what what what all of this stuff should be doing is like

00:09:38.120 a wake-up call and people should be saying okay well let's abolish hate speech laws let's let's

00:09:42.560 just repeal all of that stuff let's get back to liberal values let's do all but we're not going

00:09:46.400 the other way and it's you know everyone got a bit crazy when humza youssef and the the smp

00:09:51.360 started pushing their hate crime bill through which they are still uh proceeding with and uh

00:09:56.020 but there was some consolation that well that's just scotland but now the law commission want

00:10:00.020 that to be rolled out to england and wales as well um so obviously if that kind of stuff gets

00:10:06.820 enacted then things are going to get a lot worse a lot quicker i mean people were very shocked

00:10:11.020 at the start of the year when uh it was reported that 120 000 non-crime hate incidents had been

00:10:17.500 recorded by police over the last five years and that is a shocking figure uh well just imagine

00:10:21.940 once if this law commission's proposals are taken on board it's going to be a lot lot worse that

00:10:27.360 kind of thing so yeah i i mean i'm not the thing is i try to be optimistic you can hear the sirens

00:10:32.920 in the background they're coming for andrew right now yeah they probably are i mean i know look i

00:10:38.280 don't want to be i don't want to catastrophize that's the first thing so i don't i don't like

00:10:42.560 talking about the idea that we're in this utter crisis and we're going to end up in the gulags

00:10:46.940 and all the rest of it because i don't think that's true i think we're still in that a precarious

00:10:52.140 position where we can see the fissures breaking in the barricades that we put up to protect our

00:10:57.580 civilization we can see those fissures widening and and what you always have to do in every

00:11:03.240 subsequent generation is is is defend free speech anew and defend liberal values anew it's not

00:11:08.940 something that can just be taken for granted so um so i think it's very important that we do

00:11:13.600 without catastrophizing if possible um uh and and also i think when you do that you give ammunition

00:11:20.760 to the people who say that this is all just a concocted thing of the right you know um so i

00:11:26.480 think let's acknowledge that we're not living in a soviet style scenario at the moment um but

00:11:33.140 we also need to be wary when it comes to these uh the this erosion of our our fundamental values

00:11:39.760 and and rights so you know yes it can get worse in answer your question yes it probably will get

00:11:44.540 worse and then hopefully in about 10 years time everyone will say god you remember all that stuff

00:11:49.020 that was nuts wasn't it what happened and what would be even better is if the people who are

00:11:52.820 the practitioners of cancel culture who deny its existence if in 10 15 years time they look at

00:11:59.080 their own behavior and say i can't believe we we just lost our minds we just went all hysterical

00:12:03.580 for a moment we started believing in all these invisible power structures we start we became

00:12:08.120 religious for a while there and and now we've realized that you know all of that was was just

00:12:13.900 folly i that's my hope it's interesting the the extent to which it's got though because you would

00:12:20.640 probably have seen there's a story about a black boy who was sent a video of his classmate

00:12:28.460 singing along to a rap song using the n-word and he saved it for three years waited until she

00:12:37.300 applied to university and then released it for maximum impact and she got her place at that

00:12:44.060 university cancelled and it so i think one of the concerns for me and where i agree with you about 1.00

00:12:49.880 it getting worse is that this is now being embedded into young people's psyches where they

00:12:55.260 think this sort of behavior is normal and you talk about comparisons with the soviet union

00:12:59.120 i mean obviously i grew up there you know the story of pavlik morozov the the boy who reported

00:13:04.400 his his father to the authorities it's very reminiscent i mean the the i'm not saying there

00:13:09.880 are gulags but the way of thinking is very much this no i'm not denying that at all i think you're

00:13:14.300 absolutely right and it's it these the tactics of cancel culture are from they are based on a

00:13:19.680 totalitarian instinct um that particular story is very troubling because of course it's so

00:13:25.740 calculated isn't it and then of course and then it was endorsed by the new york times and then

00:13:29.900 you have people uh chipping in and saying well this is good because it means there's one less

00:13:34.260 racist at university who you know it's like someone is condemned for uh something they said

00:13:40.660 when they're 15 and there's no redemption it's it's it's not about redemption it's about it's

00:13:45.440 about just constant punishment throughout your life you are you know so yeah all of that is

00:13:49.440 utterly reminiscent and you're right to to point out the echoes because that's a really good way

00:13:55.480 uh to to expose it and to explain why we need to guard against it i absolutely think that's

00:14:00.440 no i'm not i'm not denying that you should make the comparison the comparison is true i mean the

00:14:04.540 entire social justice movement is essentially totalitarian and revisionist that's that is what

00:14:10.140 it is that's what the print the you know i mean this is why you get the odd denial of history and

00:14:15.420 i'll give you a very very clear example of this which pertains to us i think so you'll have

00:14:19.360 noticed there's a lot of articles and writers for the guardian now denying that the word woke was

00:14:25.640 ever used to describe this movement the social justice ideology they just say this is a word

00:14:30.900 that's been concocted by right-wingers and the conservatives to smear us right but you go back

00:14:36.160 to 2018, when Nika Burns gave that opening speech to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in which she

00:14:41.180 talked about how she was looking forward to the new woke world of comedy. She was saying she was

00:14:45.820 looking forward to the next generation of woke comedians who are going to set the parameters for

00:14:49.260 what is acceptable to talk about. No one, no one who reported on that said, hold a minute, isn't

00:14:54.840 that word woke just a conservative word? No, everyone knew that that's just the word that

00:14:59.360 they used to describe themselves. The Guardian repeatedly talked about wokeness and the woke

00:15:04.920 world and all the rest of it in its own articles without irony. And the good thing is we've got

00:15:09.540 the internet that can prove it. But they just gaslight everyone to use their own term. They

00:15:14.380 just are now determined to say that it was a word they never used at all. I think what's actually

00:15:18.780 happened is because people like you and I mocked the term throughout 2019, now the word is used

00:15:25.420 by some as a slur and a smear. So now they pretend that they didn't use it themselves. So they just

00:15:30.140 completely and they just say this they just say what is palpably not true in the way that cnn can

00:15:35.980 report can have a reporter with with the city burning behind him saying that these are largely

00:15:41.000 peaceful protests or the bbc can tell you that a protest in which 29 police officers were injured

00:15:46.360 is mostly peaceful so you know it's the very definition of gaslighting which is that term

00:15:51.600 they gave to us it's the term that they accuse other people of doing even their accusation of

00:15:56.500 gaslighting is a form of gaslighting because they themselves are the ones that do it it's just this

00:16:00.300 i'm really fascinated by this complete uh this complete failure to engage with reality to push

00:16:08.420 a false reality when the evidence is there before our eyes and they expect people just to go along 0.99

00:16:14.000 with it that's how little they regard uh humanity they think that humanity is so stupid and malleable 0.99

00:16:20.660 that they can just flat out deny reality you know in the way donald trump used to he'll say i didn't 0.98

00:16:26.140 say that and then you go on youtube and there he is saying it it's like this is infantile stuff and

00:16:31.840 i think it's something that i'm hoping in 2021 everyone will kind of get over or at least have

00:16:36.180 the courage to say that's not true what you said just isn't true you know but the fight back has

00:16:42.480 started isn't it if you look at for instance with brexit the brexit negotiations have finally come

00:16:48.340 to an end we've signed the deal we've now officially lift the european union surely

00:16:54.260 2021 we're going to see more of a pushback against this maybe but i don't think they're

00:16:59.780 going to let the brexit thing go uh because again they're doing the gaslighting thing they're saying

00:17:04.700 that nobody knew what they were voted for there was no political debate nobody ever discussed the

00:17:09.040 customs union nobody ever discussed the single market again you can go to youtube you can check

00:17:14.220 the biggest debates of the time the one that was in wembley arena for god's sake where within

00:17:18.040 five minutes they're talking about what it would mean to leave the customs union in single market

00:17:21.260 you know all that so the they won't accept it i don't think um so i i don't believe it it is

00:17:30.120 the end of it i think you've you've started the the rejoin eu hashtag is now trending uh people

00:17:35.960 going on about gammons again uh people uh pushing the idea that you are looking rather gamony today

00:17:42.140 i must say andrew am i looking a bit gamony yeah you are you know this is so offensive to me because

00:17:47.220 you know i'm a vegetarian very very upsetting very upsetting thing um yeah you know no i don't

00:17:54.080 think they are gonna let it go and they're going to cling to this myth that this was all about race

00:18:00.760 they're going to cling to the myth that you know it's it's it's it's very interesting isn't it that

00:18:04.660 this comes predominantly from middle class people who don't know any working class people and don't

00:18:08.360 know any leave voters so it's very easy i had a conversation just before christmas with someone

00:18:13.340 i hadn't met before and she was saying to me she was utterly shocked because she started going on

00:18:17.120 about how you know people voted brexit because they were racist and i said well i voted brexit

00:18:21.280 and she was genuinely shocked she said well i've never met anyone who voted leave and she was and

00:18:26.140 then we got to talking and by the end of the conversation she almost came around to my way

00:18:30.100 of thinking because because you know they just haven't they've just willingly blocked their ears

00:18:36.900 to the reasons why the genuine reasons why people voted and substituted it for this very simplistic

00:18:42.780 reductive good versus evil thing which does make it it's an easier way of thinking you know i

00:18:48.500 understand it you know we our brains are built that way that we always go for the easiest way

00:18:53.320 of thinking but it's it's lazy um they're not going to let that go i mean i've already seen

00:18:57.460 people talking still about this idea that people wanted an empire but you know the people who

00:19:02.440 voted leave wanted their empire back i i mean i couldn't i couldn't find someone who thinks that

00:19:07.260 if i tried i wouldn't know where to begin where would you find someone who thinks that that it's

00:19:11.160 just not a thing that those you know you could probably find one or two nutcases and i'm sure

00:19:16.120 the bbc have done their best to find those nutcases and interview them because it promotes

00:19:19.800 that narrative but it's really not a thing and yet you had vince cable you know a major politician

00:19:25.800 giving a talk where he talked about how the brexit vote was because people missed the days of white

00:19:30.900 faces and blue passports and a pink map you know the empire map and it's like nobody thinks this

00:19:37.240 and this just goes to show how isolated they are in their own fantasies it's just lots of people

00:19:42.480 talking to each other reaffirming each other's false beliefs false view of reality and that

00:19:48.280 can't be sustainable can it i mean you you can only live that way for so long you know you've

00:19:53.660 got to you've got to you've got to confront reality at some point and i think that's going

00:19:58.180 to be our that's going to be our battle really is is it is finding a way to to to guide people

00:20:05.320 back from their fantasy world uh and into the real world and i don't know you know i'm not sure

00:20:10.660 how you do that uh but that's going to be that that's going to be the big uh the big battle of

00:20:15.780 2021 i believe constantin how do you like your things printed big like my ego and that's why

00:20:26.720 you should use print it big 3d what they actually do is help you print tabletop gaming pieces

00:20:34.020 short-run manufacturing parts and even statues from your favorite movies and tv shows so you can

00:20:39.680 get ned stark without his head on they also make cosplay costumes car parts and weapons but not

00:20:47.320 real ones obviously and the wonderful people that they are they also make free prosthetics for kids

00:20:52.600 what virtue signalers on top of that they also do individual pieces prototypes and short-run

00:21:00.300 manufactured parts.

00:21:01.880 Do you know what any of that means?

00:21:03.080 Not a clue.

00:21:04.200 Print It Big 3D are offering our fans a massive discount.

00:21:08.280 You get 20% off with our code, which is, of course, TriggerPod.

00:21:11.900 All you need to do is go to the website, www.printitbig3d.com.

00:21:19.740 That's www.printitbig3d.com.

00:21:25.420 I'm going to get Francis a new weapon.

00:21:27.460 I like weapons.

00:21:30.300 One of the big battles that I think is going to happen in 2021 is we've touched at it, well, some people more than others, but certainly whether the BBC has any sort of sustainable future.

00:21:44.920 What are your opinions on it? And do you think that we should be funding it publicly?

00:21:49.360 It's really difficult. I mean, you know, I think that over the, you know, it's very difficult to be politically impartial as a broadcaster.

00:21:58.540 And I think, and I think it's very hard, you know, someone like Andrew Neil is utterly brilliant at this, because he will always challenge whoever he's interviewing, irrespective of his own personal beliefs. And that's what the that should be the sort of ideal. And, and, you know, they will be damned whatever they do, you know, they've been called, they've said that there's people say, accuse them of having an institutional left wing bias. People also accuse them of having an institutional right wing bias, for instance, against Jeremy Corbyn, you know, so, so that's very hard.

00:22:27.120 but i think what is and i so i have a kind of sympathy in a way um uh when it comes to that

00:22:32.980 because i just don't know how you fully monitor that but i think what is indisputable is that

00:22:37.400 they are systemically woke i think there's no getting around that that and that is so built in

00:22:41.940 um and woke isn't about a left right thing it's not um and and so it's it's so built into every

00:22:49.240 into the way they think the way they perceive i mean i just i scrolled through some bbc article

00:22:55.160 the other day and they were they were spelling female f-e-m-x-l-e and and you know it's it's

00:23:01.060 like well the very fact that you do that and you don't even question that is is is evidence of this

00:23:06.420 kind of systemic wokeness so i don't know how they unpick that i don't know how they would begin

00:23:13.280 to do it um i think it's just too built in you know i've had enough conversations with people

00:23:18.620 who work at the bbc and this is not to say that everyone that works in the bbc feels this way but

00:23:22.640 everyone at the bbc knows that they have to toe the line on this they they really do oh i've had

00:23:27.540 i've had a situation where i was on a bbc show as as you know as you and i always are the token 0.62

00:23:33.820 fucking what you know evil bigger whatever it is uh to be for yourself and and well but but what i 0.95

00:23:40.980 mean is they basically get you on to say the thing that a lot of them think but no one is supposed to 0.99

00:23:45.620 say at the bbc and so you i constantly find myself in this position where i am asked onto a show

00:23:52.000 and on on on camera i'm asked to defend positions which are presented as unreasonable and weird and

00:23:59.640 whatever antagonistic whereas off camera the producer is saying to me actually you know what

00:24:05.620 i you know i don't agree with this you know that or whatever so there is that conflict at the heart

00:24:11.820 of it and i'm not someone who particularly wants the bbc to be defunded but on the other hand i do

00:24:16.840 agree with you i think yes on economics they may not be particularly left or right uh or may even

00:24:23.260 lean to the right who knows but when it comes to this woke stuff they are very systemically woke

00:24:27.980 and how how you unpick that i don't know but maybe we should broaden it out to the media more

00:24:32.020 generally because i think one of the things that has happened this year is you know i think the

00:24:37.800 war in iraq and and mps expenses those were things that massively undermined people's confidence in

00:24:44.240 in the institutions of the establishment like the media and government but i think this year

00:24:49.660 has been particularly bad for the media because there have been so many polarizing events which

00:24:54.720 they have just shown their true colors on i think that's it that they just have to really maintain

00:25:00.080 a rigorous high standard you know when do you remember when the uh there was that gathering

00:25:04.340 the brexit gathering i think it was trafalgar square and it was a bbc representative who was

00:25:08.960 who was uh focusing on whiteness and the white the whiteness of the crowd and that kind of thing

00:25:13.440 john snow sorry well no that was the channel four example right oh right but it also happened with

00:25:19.260 the bbc it was it was a similar thing and then and every time that happened of course they don't say

00:25:24.280 that at an extinction rebellion gathering which which is basically like a white rally you know

00:25:29.720 so they don't do that then and and those moments you see will always be seized upon uh by by the

00:25:39.880 critics of the bbc and rightly so and it makes their position unsustainable so i think always

00:25:46.240 with the media it's about holding yourself to incredibly high standards and and that will be

00:25:50.500 the way the way through it and not saying things that are palpably false for instance not editorial

00:25:56.040 izing as we saw with with news night you know just just being really sharp on that and making

00:26:01.600 sure that that doesn't happen you know there's a reason why people don't take channel four news

00:26:04.640 seriously anymore because it because because it is effectively just a mouthpiece uh for the social

00:26:10.880 justice ideology and and so people don't really you know i mean all the people i know who used

00:26:15.180 to read the guardian they do still but they don't really take it that seriously now and and so people

00:26:21.240 are shooting themselves in the foot so yeah i mean and it is a worry i talked to peter bogosin about

00:26:26.820 this recently he used the phrase the legitimation crisis and this idea of the legitimation crisis

00:26:32.420 is this concept that where we no longer have any faith in authority figures and that can be the

00:26:37.340 media it can be politicians but it can also be academic academics and academia and all of that

00:26:42.020 is happening uh concurrently so we're losing faith in all of these major institutions at the same

00:26:47.360 time and and that's a very very fundamental and dangerous uh precarious situation to be in because

00:26:55.280 it it means that you do get this destabilization of reality that's where we are now and and

00:27:00.600 actually it's really important to have i mean i'm all for a public broadcaster that holds the

00:27:05.020 powerful to account which of course is what the the bbc is is meant to do and so i am troubled

00:27:09.820 um when when it fails maybe maybe it fails to be impartial but more than that it fails to be

00:27:16.140 perceived as being impartial and that that the perception is absolutely everything you know

00:27:21.180 um and we saw this in america donald trump very successfully cast aspersions on the on the on the

00:27:27.460 media but it wasn't helped by the fact that the media often did represent what he said so the

00:27:33.740 simple solution to that is just tell us the news right don't don't tell us what to think about the

00:27:39.180 news all the time don't preach at us all the time just tell us what's happening and then we'll we'll

00:27:45.480 do the rest but andrew isn't the problem that you've got this like you said this woke ideology

00:27:51.620 is in all these media corporations but if the people in these corporations have this ideology

00:27:57.440 you're never going to change it no but they like you said a lot of them don't you know i i think

00:28:03.380 it's just the ones that do are terrifying i think that's all it is right so the people who will

00:28:09.720 you know the people who you're nervous about speaking in the meeting with

00:28:13.840 i i wrote an article about this recently before the lockdown and all the rest of it happened

00:28:18.360 early in the year friend of mine was putting on a play and the director was extremely woke and

00:28:23.080 extremely you know always looking for something to be offended by always calling out white

00:28:27.040 privilege and toxic masculine and all this sort of stuff he said that he found himself treating her

00:28:32.400 like uh like a dangerous dog insofar as because what you do is you're really careful not to upset

00:28:38.920 it because it'll bite and and that's that's the way people behave around and i don't think i don't

00:28:43.920 think a lot of the woke people know this about themselves how scary they are how people just

00:28:48.560 shut up when they're around because they don't want to risk um being open god knows what this

00:28:53.660 does to their relationships to their friendships um i think a lot of them might be quite turned on

00:28:59.740 by that revelation andrew if i'm honest with you mate also just on another point um we treat

00:29:04.920 dangerous dogs very differently in russia apparently you put them down right yeah yeah

00:29:09.460 that's what we do that i'm not advocating for that to happen to woke people no well you know

00:29:13.700 it's a very brutal race we we are more kind of compassionate over here um but i'm weak is a word

00:29:20.460 you're looking for. You must all be put down. Do you watch problematic content online? Of course

00:29:32.020 they do. They watch trigonometry. Many ISPs log your internet activity and sell that data on to

00:29:38.680 other big tech companies or other advertising companies. I know that is why I use ExpressVPN

00:29:44.740 to hide my browsing activities.

00:29:46.860 I bet you did.

00:29:48.280 Express VPN is a simple app

00:29:50.400 which you can have on both your computer

00:29:52.240 and your smartphone,

00:29:53.520 which hides your traffic into one channel

00:29:55.560 and directs it through a VPN server,

00:29:57.840 which means your ISP

00:29:58.580 can't see anything that you're doing.

00:30:00.000 Look, the question I want to ask is...

00:30:02.220 No!

00:30:02.640 Will it slow down the videos that I watch?

00:30:04.840 Definitely not.

00:30:05.840 That is one of the reasons

00:30:07.240 it's been rated as the number one VPN app

00:30:09.840 by Cinec and Wired.

00:30:11.680 I don't read those publications

00:30:12.980 because I'm not a nerd.

00:30:14.100 stop handing over your personal data to isps and big tech companies which are just going to use it

00:30:19.420 and sell it on visit expressvpn.com slash trigger that's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n.com slash trigger

00:30:32.300 i love it when you spell things out but it gets even better than that expressvpn are offering

00:30:37.140 trigonometry fans three extra months free go to expressvpn.com slash trigger to learn more

00:30:45.060 but what i would say to return to the dog metaphor actually i'll give you a better example

00:30:51.800 i was talking to a young comedian on the circuit this was last year

00:30:56.460 a new comedian to the circuit and she said to me that she every week she goes to these open

00:31:03.200 mic gigs and every week she has to go up to comedians afterwards and tell them what they

00:31:06.620 shouldn't shouldn't have been joking about and she has to go up and berate them for the things

00:31:10.820 that they've done and she said to me and and what was weird about this she said you've no idea how

00:31:15.060 exhausting this is to me that i have to do this and i shouldn't have to do this you should be

00:31:19.240 helping people like you should be standing up and seriously and i'm surprised no one's no one's

00:31:24.040 punched her you know like this isn't like this is incredible this kind of but it was a sincere

00:31:28.560 expression of exasperation why can't the whole world just change to suit what i want why can't

00:31:35.480 that just happen you know it's it's it's this general infantile mentality that suggests a real

00:31:42.080 lack of education there's something gone wrong in our educational system that that people think like

00:31:47.360 this that they act like babies um and and scary babies they're terrifying babies you know that i

00:31:54.200 can't think of anything more frightening than someone coming up to me after a gig and saying

00:31:57.180 you shouldn't have said this and here look i've made a list of the things you should have said

00:31:59.960 but doing it from the position of valor and virtue i mean this is like this is nuts so

00:32:05.680 yeah i think i think and that's why to go back to the bbc point is that even if it's a minority of

00:32:13.280 people at the bbc it doesn't matter because everyone at the bbc knows they're not getting

00:32:17.900 the promotion if they don't toe this line everyone knows that everyone knows that programs aren't

00:32:23.700 going to be commissioned if they mock uh the social justice movement in any way that's not

00:32:27.500 going to happen um you know you have insiders at the bbc telling the guardian well there are no

00:32:33.500 funny anti-woke comics well i don't think i mean i think i think all comic all comics are anti-woke

00:32:40.820 really aren't they all comics mock the prevailing orthodoxies and you know um i mean all that person

00:32:46.300 was saying is they don't find it funny because it upsets them i mean that's fine i i wouldn't

00:32:49.460 expect them to find it funny but it's just simply not true what they're saying and you know the

00:32:53.500 idea that that there's a meritocracy when it comes to comedies is is utterly ludicrous um

00:32:58.220 so it is ideological so if you're in if you're working within those circumstances of course

00:33:03.700 you're going to shut up because you don't want the viper to turn on you it's just it's it just

00:33:07.960 makes sense so how you combat that i think the only way is is a kind of a collective courage

00:33:15.680 when everyone just says what they think and we don't get this preference falsification where

00:33:22.040 everyone's just saying what they think other people want to hear or they're saying the things

00:33:26.140 that they think won't get them in trouble if everyone just says what they honestly believe

00:33:31.140 then i mean imagine what society would be like it'd be amazing if there's no jobs anyway so you

00:33:37.160 can't lose your job well that's true that's true you know just it's horrible isn't it in a way

00:33:41.520 because uh in order to affect this change you have to accept that a lot of people are going to fall

00:33:45.600 you know a lot of people are going to end up fired if they do if they take my advice a lot of people

00:33:50.100 get fired right but but maybe you have to just maybe that just has to happen it's very easy for

00:33:56.940 me to say isn't it because i well you know uh something i always mention to francis is that

00:34:01.700 this is what alexander solzhenitsyn talked about in the gulag archipelago he said that if ordinary

00:34:05.780 people had stood up and resisted minor tyrannies as they happened then the major tyrannies wouldn't

00:34:12.320 have been possible yeah um but yeah sorry go ahead no um go with alexander solzhenitsyn 0.94

00:34:19.660 oh yeah fucking mate but uh one thing that i wanted to ask is look we touch on this again 0.92

00:34:26.300 and again and we've touched on it with various guests well i've got a friend he's in academia 0.99

00:34:31.620 he was like do you think i should come out and say something and he's he's right at the beginning

00:34:36.220 of his career as an academic and my honest advice is no coward why would you sacrifice your career

00:34:42.740 why would you make yourself effectively unemployable because of your beliefs if you know nobody around

00:34:48.880 you is going to speak up and say anything when when when we got cancelled nobody on the in the

00:34:53.820 in the club even people who messaged me privately spoke up because if you don't then this will never

00:35:00.020 end i suppose is the answer to that um yeah i mean it's hard it's just look because i'm speaking

00:35:08.440 as someone who has never been censored i i i've never been cancelled i say what i want and and

00:35:14.840 actually part of my job now depends on saying what i want so it's really easy for me i don't

00:35:19.200 have a boss who's going to fire me for something that i've said you know um so yeah you could you

00:35:25.600 could accuse me of of that and you would be right to to do so but i just don't think i just look i've

00:35:33.080 got a teacher friend who's going through this right now he's on probation at this new school

00:35:36.520 right so he's got a year's probation and um a year's probation so sorry that's a teaching term

00:35:42.220 which basically you're you're being watched for the first year of your employment to make sure

00:35:45.400 you don't put it wrong basically yeah and um it's not a bad term it's not like the term it's not like

00:35:49.840 criminal it's not like it's not what you're thinking um but he's not if he so he's being

00:35:55.260 told you know you're gonna have to talk about white privilege teach kids about white privilege

00:35:58.580 all of this sort of um uh robin d'angelo style stuff you know he's even been told to read

00:36:03.520 white fragility by robin d'angelo stuff like this so if you if in his position he's he raises an

00:36:09.580 objection he's convinced that he won't have his contract renewed that might be true but here's

00:36:15.680 the alternative maybe most people are secretly thinking the way that he is thinking and maybe

00:36:20.580 if he were to say something other people might say something and then maybe you get this kind

00:36:24.440 of tipping point where everyone just says yeah actually the emperor does have no clothes on

00:36:28.380 so and it does take that even in the most horrendous of circumstances and i've used this

00:36:34.440 analogy before but i think it's it's exactly right if you take what happened in salem massachusetts

00:36:39.040 with the witch trials now there was a point where anyone who cast any kind of skepticism on the

00:36:44.180 girl's testimony on abigail williams and all the others all the girls who were saying they could

00:36:47.680 see spirits and devils and all the rest of it anyone who did cast dispersions on that or just

00:36:52.140 say this isn't real the girls then turned their fingers on them and accused them and they got 0.99

00:36:57.760 hanged you know and ultimately what is it 1918-19 people were hanged in in in salem but there came

00:37:03.400 a point where too many people started saying no this isn't real this is a myth and the reason and

00:37:09.260 they couldn't hang everyone and the real the real turning point was when i think the governor's wife 0.76

00:37:13.460 was accused by the girls and at that point of course people felt a bit more empowered so maybe

00:37:18.240 it will be when this stuff starts affecting the people on their own side you know or something

00:37:23.920 like that i mean already you're getting this kind of this kind of uh change but i'm getting more

00:37:29.380 messages than ever from people within either the comedy community or the arts saying oh this is

00:37:34.760 going a bit far you know i've always been on board with this woke stuff but it's going a bit far now

00:37:38.180 i'm a bit nervous about it now and i think you will get a salem tipping point where everyone

00:37:44.600 just says and it does have to start with a few sacrificial lambs unfortunately that you know

00:37:52.040 it does i don't there was a little blint in his eye and as he said that but uh you you talk about

00:37:57.600 the the governor's wife andrew one of the interesting things for me that's happened i

00:38:01.500 think a lot of the people who uh you know boris johnson said lent him their vote and i include

00:38:07.920 myself in that i used to be a lib dem voter voted label the previous election yeah for the first

00:38:12.900 time ever in my life i voted for the tories and that was mainly because i thought uh well i even

00:38:18.200 though i voted remain i thought brexit had to be had to be done because you're a democrat right

00:38:21.980 Right. Yeah. Unusual, given my background, but nonetheless. But I thought Brexit needed to be done. So democracy was important. I thought that Corbyn was useless, obviously. And the third thing I thought was, look, Boris Johnson has hinted that on this cultural stuff, you know, he's gonna be, you know, he's not, I didn't think he was going to be some anti-woke warlord, but I didn't think he'd be particularly woke.

00:38:47.120 and my sense is both to use your metaphor the government and the government's governor's wife

00:38:52.080 are actually sort of woke or or on on that on the path to that yeah although you know you get these

00:38:59.900 sort of moments don't you like with liz truss's speak yeah the other day or or kemi badenock also

00:39:05.680 but i feel like that every now and again they come out and sort of throw a steak to

00:39:09.880 to the dogs but the rest of the time it's it's a it's a meager diet yeah it is and i remember

00:39:16.060 during the height of the the black lives matter stuff and i was and all the critical race theory

00:39:19.780 stuff i spoke to someone within uh you know within the government who said the trouble is no no one

00:39:25.320 can say anything you know because it would it would have to be a person of color for a start

00:39:28.960 to say anything and and and and and so few people understand what's going on and everyone's very

00:39:33.620 nervous about it understandably eventually it became i mean kemi badenock did stand up and say

00:39:37.900 and actually all she did was reiterate the point that that um that you have to be impartial when

00:39:43.120 it comes to teaching politics in schools but of course because they hadn't associated critical

00:39:46.800 race theory but it is such an essentially political uh discipline so um so that you

00:39:52.000 know that shouldn't be a controversial thing but you're right like yeah i mean i think a lot of

00:39:57.080 people did lend their vote to uh johnson for the same reason i think brexit was the big thing though

00:40:01.460 but i think those other concerns were were there as well that maybe that the tories would stand up

00:40:07.520 well if anyone was going to stand up against this this ideology surely it would be the tories but

00:40:12.160 of course it's so pervasive now its tentacles have reached out so far uh that it's it's it's

00:40:18.860 in the Tory party as as well so you know which means that we don't really have an option I mean

00:40:25.480 can we really rely on the occasional victory can we really rely on the occasional speech by Liz

00:40:31.080 Truss or someone like that is that sufficient if the cabinet itself is is is is too cowardly

00:40:36.920 to stand up to this stuff? I mean, I don't know.

00:40:40.680 But Andrew, going back to The Crucible,

00:40:43.860 which is a brilliant play for those of you who haven't read it.

00:40:47.160 At the end of the play, because I used to teach it,

00:40:50.320 John Proctor says, you must leave me my name.

00:40:53.060 It's the only thing that I have. It's my name.

00:40:55.520 But isn't that what people are worried about

00:40:57.260 when they're confronting this stuff,

00:40:58.800 is that they will have their name and their reputation slurred.

00:41:01.820 They'll be tarnished as a racist, a bigot, whatever else.

00:41:04.280 and you know we joke about it but those labels really hurt and they're very very very destructive

00:41:10.220 i love that you've brought in a literary illusion it's really raised the tone it's so highbrow now

00:41:15.620 now you're right john proctor says leave me my name he'd like he doesn't in a sense being

00:41:19.340 executed is is one thing but reputation yeah i mean it it's more it's more damaging than people

00:41:25.200 understand i think um i think it's different for us because we're just so used to being called

00:41:29.740 these things you know i think you just get used to being called a nazi or whatever um and and you

00:41:35.560 just you just learn to ignore it but um because it well firstly it's probably not true it's also

00:41:40.940 weird because it's the exact opposite of my belief system it couldn't be it couldn't be further

00:41:44.960 removed from what i believe so so in that sense it's not worth getting upset about you know um

00:41:50.800 but i understand you know if if if you're being accused of these things it's it's it's hurtful

00:41:56.440 um this is why ultimately i think the brexit vote went the way it did i think it tipped over the

00:42:02.020 edge because we had months and months of the media saying that if you voted leave that means

00:42:06.860 you're a racist and of course because the vast majority of people who voted leave are aren't

00:42:10.620 racist they resent the accusation and therefore it's almost a kind of well i'm gonna i'm gonna 1.00

00:42:16.360 do what i want then you know it's a it's a it's a kind of fuck you um which i get i get that because 0.98

00:42:22.580 nobody responds well when they're being insulted and this is ultimately why the tactics of cancel 0.98

00:42:28.400 culture won't just just don't work all they do is intimidate and and put people in in a state of

00:42:34.840 fear but everyone can see that it completely lacks basic human empathy and compassion and most people

00:42:41.080 are just decent people who who react against that kind of inhumanity so you know it's in that sense

00:42:47.020 something to be very optimistic about and that i don't think those tactics uh will work and you're

00:42:52.580 right you're you're right to mention the crucible and that speech at the end and and and that does

00:42:58.040 explain why people are nervous about it rightly so because you won't get a job if you're called

00:43:03.120 racist on social media uh you won't get a job you know because because most employers now just

00:43:09.700 google you don't they yeah and they have a look at your what's been said about you and they're

00:43:13.900 not going to take the risk it's all right we're hiring a trigonometry no problem right but that's

00:43:19.400 but that's interesting isn't it the fact that that tactic can work undermines the purpose of

00:43:24.920 the tactic it can only work because we live in a society in which racism is not tolerated that's

00:43:29.620 the only reason it works right whereas the people who use the tactic of smearing people as racist

00:43:34.060 they do so because they believe our society is built on that it's actually it actually proves

00:43:38.500 the opposite the fact that everyone's so terrified of being called a racist why would we care if

00:43:43.060 racism was normalized and was mainstream in our society why would you care about being called

00:43:46.220 racist wouldn't affect your job prospects it'd be fine the you know and this is this is the

00:43:50.420 one of the many contradictions at the heart of cancel culture and it's interesting you've

00:43:56.120 obviously talked about brexit quite a bit and i brought in the lack of cultural activity from

00:44:02.340 from the tories you put those two things together and it seems to me like we are sort of preparing

00:44:07.880 the ground for another kind of potentially popular revolt.

00:44:11.760 Because if the democratic system isn't representing a significant viewpoint in the public, then

00:44:18.700 what will eventually happen is there will be some kind of uprising against it, not a

00:44:24.160 violent one or anything like that, maybe a democratic one through some kind of other

00:44:27.800 party or whatever.

00:44:28.860 Do you think that the lack of representation of the cultural concerns that people like

00:44:36.020 us i think uh voice and represent will eventually lead to a political movement and and that will be

00:44:42.200 the only way that any of this happens i hope so yeah i mean i'm all for that i think as many new

00:44:47.020 political parties as as possible uh as many voices in in parliament uh pushing back against

00:44:53.200 this stuff it's not even about winning the general election it's about making those voices heard

00:44:57.980 and not just having an opposition that just echoes what the what the current government says

00:45:02.580 when it comes to these particular issues obviously they have they have many points of

00:45:05.900 disagreement but when it comes to this stuff they're all in lockstep um and i think that

00:45:09.460 that will be the case i don't have any uh illusions that we can transcend the two-party system but i

00:45:14.700 think electoral reform would help if we can somehow get proportional representation and maybe if we

00:45:19.640 could get um other smaller parties rising up i think the sdp is basically right on everything

00:45:25.080 and i think it would be great and i would have voted for them if there was a candidate standing

00:45:29.100 in my constituency but there wasn't uh so i spoiled my ballot but i think if we could get

00:45:33.620 someone like that uh into parliament then then uh then yeah you would get uh sensible adult

00:45:40.100 discussion restored i think so um i don't know about a revolt i think if any revolt has to come

00:45:45.700 it has to come through the ballot box you know if you want to live in a civilized democracy that's

00:45:49.000 what's that's what's got to happen agreed you know so hopefully yeah i think that'd be great i mean

00:45:54.220 i'm not getting into politics god god forbid you know i would never uh consider that you should do

00:45:58.940 it why don't you start a trigonometry party you know i think the trigonometry party why not

00:46:04.040 oh mate i think we get enough hate as it is mate i'd love to see you in parliament yeah i'd love

00:46:11.360 to see you in parliament right the thing is right yeah you know you can do that what about them 0.97

00:46:16.340 fucking pedos yeah i think it happened like glenda jackson became a very successful politician you 0.99

00:46:21.380 know you can be uh you can do this you can you can follow her route what do you think go on 1.00

00:46:26.160 go on francis no absolutely not one of you has got to step up because i'm not going to do it

00:46:31.660 you know i think i think being a politician is terrible because firstly everyone obviously

00:46:35.360 uh that well particularly if you've been a comedian because you know anyone who's a

00:46:40.020 politician the media are going to dig into everything you've ever said and as comedians

00:46:43.060 we've said a lot of offensive stuff inadvertently actually because i'm not particularly offensive

00:46:46.660 comedian but you could take some lines from my stand-up and and certainly paint a grim picture

00:46:51.100 um as you could with any stand-up uh so but also i think it's just towing the party line i couldn't

00:46:56.980 bear it i really feel for those politicians when everyone they're on question time or something

00:47:00.460 and they can't answer a question because they know that their their honest answer would would

00:47:05.000 go against the party whip and so therefore that you see them squirming and i think it's really

00:47:09.040 it's an unpleasant thing to watch and i wouldn't want to participate unless you just go full trump

00:47:14.380 and double down on everything and just be completely unapologetic yeah gain a massive fan

00:47:19.180 base i'm all for this i want as i said earlier i want politicians just to say what they think

00:47:23.540 because at the moment all we're ever doing is trying to fathom what they're secretly thinking

00:47:27.640 and trying to trying to work out that's impossible for one thing you can't actually do it and it's

00:47:32.660 just a waste of everyone's time so if if everyone just said what they honestly thought then we could

00:47:37.900 we'd know who we were voting for and we could we could elect the people that represent our values

00:47:42.560 and that it would be i know this this sounds like a really shocking system right but it's so basic

00:47:48.420 it's so basic do you think everybody should be a little bit more like andrew adonis

00:47:53.200 more like andrew adonis do you not follow him on twitter mate he is the best account he's way

00:48:01.080 better than titani i'm sorry to say this but look you know i love you i think you're a great writer

00:48:05.280 but andrew adonis is a much much higher quality of troll on the internet i know but look people

00:48:11.680 People like that. Andrew Adonis and Priyamvada Gopal at Cambridge and David Lammy and all the professional trolls on Twitter. Right.

00:48:19.940 But they know what they're doing. And when you talk to them, you know, I was recently trolled by this academic.

00:48:25.140 I can't remember which university he was at. And it was like it was like some truculent teenager had got drunk, had raided his parents vodka cabinet and was like it was just incredibly aggressive and and rude and weird and not listening and all the rest of it.

00:48:40.140 and then i heard him on radio four talking to melvin bragg and he was really polite and

00:48:44.520 seemed quite nice and i bet the same is true of like of lammy and gopol and and and yes adonis

00:48:51.360 who you've met i'm sure these are really nice people and i bet i could sit down with any of 0.98

00:48:55.700 them have a sensible conversation but as soon as i left they'd be on twitter saying oh that scum 0.91

00:48:59.200 nazi doyle it's you know that's and that's a weirdness there's a weirdness about it there's 0.92

00:49:04.200 a kind of performativity about it i have no doubt that sometimes adonis send puts a tweet out there

00:49:09.860 thinks i don't really i don't think that i'm just gonna i'm just gonna stay after the brexit deal

00:49:15.680 he went on twitter and said i think the best policy for the united kingdom is to rejoin the

00:49:20.800 european union immediately you cannot you cannot get better than that we've got right we've got to

00:49:26.180 give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he's lying right because because otherwise he's just 0.98

00:49:31.080 being stupid and i don't think he is stupid so i think no he's a lovely man he's a lovely man 0.98

00:49:35.780 lovely as i say we interviewed him on the show we both voted romaine it was fun but as i say there's 0.99

00:49:41.980 a level of deludedness about that that i can't believe that he actually is that deluded but

00:49:47.220 most people are just nice aren't they most people are just nice when you when you when you meet them

00:49:50.940 and talk to them um i bet even the most vicious trolling you get if you spoke to them they'd be

00:49:56.660 they'd be just really nice and probably a bit embarrassed uh by what by what they said and i'm

00:50:02.000 sure the same goes for these these kinds of these kinds of people um uh but yeah i mean yeah i think

00:50:08.120 with adonis i could literally cut and paste some of his tweets and put them out as titania i've done

00:50:13.060 that a few times from prominent uh sort of celebrity activists you know and uh it's it's

00:50:18.960 always quite fun to do because i'm continually told that the stuff that she says is like a straw

00:50:23.160 man and these people don't exist but this is why in the when i wrote the first book it's interspersed

00:50:27.980 on every page with quotations from real life activists which are exactly the same as what

00:50:32.140 titania is saying you know i'm trying to make the point that it is it is the same it is the same

00:50:36.660 thing uh and and actually the accusation of straw manning is completely demonstrably false um uh you

00:50:43.120 know i could put out some of adonis's tweets or lammy's tweets and you would say i've made that

00:50:46.420 no one would actually say that well yeah it's actually a member of the house of lords who's

00:50:50.340 who said that you know but do you not find it a little bit depressing using david lammy as an

00:50:55.240 example. So Lammy roundabout 2011, you would say that he'd be very much a blue Labour acolyte.

00:51:00.720 Those were the policies that he espoused, the policies that he supported and all the rest of

00:51:04.860 it. And we've slowly seen him drift towards that extreme. We've seen people who are centre-right

00:51:10.180 drift towards the other extreme. Do you think as a society, we're simply not going to get more and

00:51:14.480 more polarised? Maybe. I mean, I hope not. I think, again, people went a bit mad. I mean,

00:51:24.560 i'm really torn on this because i have essential optimism about humanity and the goodness of human

00:51:29.060 beings but i also can see so much evidence from the past four years of the propensity for hysteria

00:51:34.940 and there's no other word to describe it the stuff about brexit you know we our democracy is

00:51:39.320 sustained on the loser's consent as you know and the utter hysteria of going out in droves painting

00:51:44.100 your face in the eu flag and screaming gammon at everyone and calling everyone a fascist about 0.58

00:51:50.500 membership of an international trading bloc that you didn't care about before 2016 you didn't pay

00:51:56.120 it a second thought you cannot be this passionate about something unless what it is is a kind of

00:52:00.840 religious devotion that that's the only explanation for this i mean sure there have been some people

00:52:04.980 who have always been passionate about the eu but you could fill them in like one church hall or

00:52:08.240 something there's not many uh in fact most of the people who were talking about the eu most of the

00:52:12.840 discourse about the eu from the past 30 years in in advance of the referendum was in fact people

00:52:16.900 who wanted to leave you know had the like the referendum party back in the 1980s and then of

00:52:21.060 course UKIP and all the rest of it and Nigel Farage so it wasn't people who were celebrating

00:52:26.400 the EU and talking about how wonderful it was they didn't care about it they just didn't care

00:52:30.460 and I don't believe you can go from complete apathy to extreme zealous passion where you hate

00:52:38.140 anyone who disagrees with you I don't think that can happen if it's been thought through from a

00:52:42.060 of rationality that has to be a kind of hysterical uh phenomenon that's what that is um and and you

00:52:49.620 know i think when when you see people tweeting in the way you've described they are succumbing

00:52:52.500 to a hysteria when david lammy talks about how the erg are worse than nazis or whatever it was

00:52:57.240 he said i'm paraphrasing that that's someone succumbing to hysteria that's not someone who's

00:53:01.960 thinking rationally and because i have a belief in him as he's an obviously intelligent man so i

00:53:06.980 believe that in about five years time he'll be able to look back on that and say yeah he'll be 0.98

00:53:11.200 able to put his hands up and say that was stupid wasn't it he will because we all have the capacity 1.00

00:53:15.020 to say stupid things in the heat of the moment particularly when emotion is heightened who 1.00

00:53:19.540 hasn't i have you have everyone who hasn't done that and i think most of us have the humility 0.98

00:53:25.480 to be able to say yes that was a mistake and i and i and i do believe that will be the case i

00:53:30.180 believe in about 10 years time all of the people who had the f what is it fbp uh hashtag the real

00:53:37.600 angry uh you know the bullies online the really vicious ones you know i think they'll look back

00:53:44.480 and say i cannot believe i behaved so disgracefully i can't believe i smeared all these people as

00:53:49.260 nazis i can't believe i i lost my senses and i do believe that will happen particularly once

00:53:54.040 we're out the eu because i mean it's not something that anyone would rejoin sensibly i mean this was

00:53:58.340 one of the strongest arguments i thought during the brexit debate if if we weren't in the eu and

00:54:02.340 the debate was about should we join that would have been a very difficult argument to win you

00:54:06.740 know not least because the the eu has such a terrible track record of economic growth but

00:54:10.500 quite aside from that it's it's it's borderline racist policies when it comes to immigration and

00:54:15.940 things like that would have put a lot of people off it's complete bureaucracy uh it's complete

00:54:20.900 democratic unaccountability all of this stuff you know if you'd have said we're going to subscribe

00:54:25.000 to this thing that's going to make anywhere between 30 and 60 percent of our laws and 0.84

00:54:28.340 regulations but we will have no means to vote these people out the left would never have got

00:54:33.300 on board with that certainly not and and you would never have been able to persuade the population

00:54:38.000 to get on board it just wouldn't have happened so i think ultimately you know look at someone

00:54:42.900 like ac grayling who is a tremendously talented writer i mean he's a philosopher obviously but

00:54:47.580 if you've ever read any of his books he is calm he is measured he is collected he is forensic

00:54:52.680 in some of his analysis um and yet his behavior on twitter is like a child when it comes to brexit

00:55:01.140 it's like it's it's like a child who doesn't who hasn't even thought this through can only think

00:55:06.000 in terms of of of good versus evil who could only think in these these black and white it's it's it's

00:55:12.040 almost sad to see someone of such stature degrade himself to this degree and i just wonder again i

00:55:20.920 hope there is the possibility of redemption i hope in you know i i mean i look at some of those

00:55:25.620 tweets i'd be so ashamed to have written those tweets he can't see it at the moment but you make

00:55:30.400 This is where, even though I'm very optimistic and I was hoping we would have a more lighthearted conversation, but it is what it is because that's how we feel.

00:55:38.880 My concern is that with the existence of social media now, in the past, if you'd made mistakes, those mistakes could only be used against you for so long before they were sort of purged from the public record.

00:55:52.840 You know, if you made some innocuous or maybe inappropriate, but it's not particularly major comments 10 years ago, you know, people moved on.

00:56:01.620 It wasn't really there easily accessible.

00:56:04.000 It was hard to find.

00:56:05.040 It might have been covered in a newspaper article or whatever, but it wasn't really a thing.

00:56:09.700 Nowadays, all your history is there forever.

00:56:13.120 And I think that also one of the things that does is it actually makes it quite a lot more difficult to go, you know what, actually, I don't like the person I used to be.

00:56:24.360 And to me, you know, I've always thought about it.

00:56:26.700 If I don't like the person I was 10 years ago, I've always seen that as a sign of progress. 0.97

00:56:31.220 I've always thought, well, of course, I think I was an idiot at 18, right? 0.75

00:56:35.540 Because I'm now bigger, better, stronger, more intelligent, more emotionally intelligent, whatever. 0.94

00:56:41.480 i'm not sure young people or frankly anyone at this point has that luxury anymore because

00:56:46.980 if you start to move away from your previous position someone is instantly going to pop up

00:56:53.020 and go well this is what you said you know yeah and the example you gave of the the the 15 year

00:56:58.360 old who put that video out yeah that example it's going to be held on to yeah that's true and

00:57:02.920 but but i think the the reason to be cheerful with this is that everyone knows this to be the

00:57:08.580 case right everyone i mean i i remember seeing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe by a friend of mine

00:57:11.860 and she writes for the guard you know she's a very very um pro social justice writer a very

00:57:16.680 good writer and um the play was about how anyone's life can be ruined if you have complete access to

00:57:24.080 everything they've ever texted or tweeted or or written in an email there is no one who would not

00:57:30.200 fall foul of that because anything can be selected uh can be taken selectively against you um and

00:57:35.960 used against you and also people change like you say and and and and people make mistakes more

00:57:40.480 importantly and no one is morally pure or morally uh infallible and so the expectation that people

00:57:46.980 should be is is is actually unworkable and i think because everyone knows that even the woke

00:57:52.780 they know that because because so many of them get eaten by their own um everyone's just living

00:57:58.000 in this continual state of fear and that's not something that anyone wants it's not desirable

00:58:01.440 for anyone so i think um yeah i that's something i really wish we could change i wish we could

00:58:07.780 change this idea that just because you said something 10 years ago it still counts against

00:58:12.120 you you know uh and that's not to say you don't take responsibility for the things you've said

00:58:16.020 but you should be allowed to change your mind you should be allowed to grow as a person and move on

00:58:20.320 as a person i mean this is these are basic principles of humanity more than anything else

00:58:23.860 um and i hope we can do something about that as of next year this is why i think we need to be

00:58:28.820 better as well i think i think people on all sides of this debate should not be dragging up things

00:58:34.260 that our opponents have said many years ago i think it happens on both sides and i uh and and

00:58:38.860 of course the temptation is there because you want to point out the hypocrisy of someone i mean i saw

00:58:42.540 this happen uh the other week where i won't mention the name but it's a very very famous uh left-wing

00:58:48.060 journalist um who who loves to engage in cancel culture and call people out well someone called

00:58:52.620 up something that he'd written while at university uh and put on on on the internet and it did paint

00:58:59.800 him in a very bad light but i thought you know if we start doing that then we lose all moral

00:59:04.920 high ground everyone's just got to stop stop doing that that doesn't mean not holding people's

00:59:08.960 account it doesn't mean challenging people when they say things but it does mean uh just not

00:59:13.340 dragging through people's past and expecting everyone to be morally pure because that just

00:59:17.120 gets us nowhere what happens if you destroy someone with facts and logic like me is that

00:59:22.180 what you that's what you guys do isn't it and that's how that's how you label your videos isn't

00:59:26.520 it destroying libtards with fat no we've never we've never ever used the word i know i was i 0.88

00:59:34.140 was mischaracterizing you you are you're smearing us with your bigger to the right wing opinions

00:59:39.320 andrew but i know i love that though because that's i get this all the time i'm called an

00:59:42.880 edgelord and oh so i love this though because whenever someone does this to me online and

00:59:46.980 they say oh you your whole career is is bitching about snowflakes and libtards and i just say 0.97

00:59:52.600 can you find me one example of when i've ever said either of those things just one because if

00:59:58.440 it's my whole career if it's my whole shtick this should be a really easy task for you and the fact

01:00:03.840 they can't find anything because i've never done it i love it like the the claims of i had one the

01:00:09.200 other day some academic oh no writer i think he's a journalist saying that i've uh i'm a bit i'm

01:00:13.700 whinging again because i wrote an article about my experiences when i came out as titania amongst

01:00:18.300 the comedy community and he was saying look at him again whinging about how he's got no voice and

01:00:22.700 how he's being censored all the time and being cancelled and he can't say what he thinks but

01:00:26.040 here he is being paid to write an article i'm like i've never made the claim i've never made

01:00:30.120 the claim and if you think that's all i ever do you should easily be able to find an example

01:00:34.600 shouldn't you and if you can't maybe you might want to reflect on the validity of your criticism

01:00:38.540 but of course that would take a degree of introspection that a lot of these people do

01:00:42.560 not possess well i never i never i would never use the word libtard mainly because i'm liberal

01:00:47.860 myself right so uh i know and i just also don't find that sort of language unhelpful andrew so

01:00:54.620 let's let's look at some of the what has been amusing you the most this year what have you

01:01:00.240 found really funny there have been loads there have been loads of things so i actually made a

01:01:05.080 little list oh did you uh of of the various things that have happened this year and some of the some

01:01:11.760 of the amazing ones i mean there's so many like so i was just going through the year and i was

01:01:15.460 thinking what happened when and there's just been some some astonishing things happening so like in

01:01:19.740 january for instance when the the pink news started praising pakistan because they said they were

01:01:24.840 going to subsidize trans surgery and of course the reason the government was doing that is because if

01:01:29.280 you're gay you're in a lot of trouble so they they're encouraged it was actually a homophobic 0.92

01:01:34.980 thing and then the pink news which is meant to be a gay publication were praising this homophobic 0.56

01:01:39.500 policy i thought that was hilarious a bit scary but but but but but quite funny oh the one i loved

01:01:45.240 in january was the um sheffield university paying its students nine pound 34 an hour to spy on

01:01:53.380 fellow students in case they said any racial microaggressions that was amazing i mean that

01:01:58.660 because that was i mean you talk about comparing with the soviet union that that was pure that's

01:02:03.200 that's that's pure soviet style isn't it no it's not pure so let's not get our wires twisted here

01:02:09.340 it's much better than the soviet south in the soviet union those jobs were unpaid that's true

01:02:14.280 yeah so at least you're making a buck out of it exactly exactly so capitalism at work this is

01:02:19.500 brilliant i mean yeah that was incredible um the uh the the constant cancellations throughout the

01:02:27.540 year and yet people talk about how cancel culture is a myth that's really funny to me that's really

01:02:32.600 funny to me there's a there's a thread online i should send you the link uh which records every

01:02:37.220 instance of cancellation it's thousands long and it's just con it's just it's just non-stop

01:02:41.720 and the very people who perpetuate it say yeah it's just a myth it's just a right-wing myth

01:02:46.000 no one's no one's because no one's lost their job because of something they've said no that's

01:02:50.940 never happened it's like that that to me is just hilarious that's really great um i quite enjoyed

01:02:57.560 the oscars i quite enjoyed the um jane fonder having ethically sourced diamonds i love the

01:03:06.220 hypocrisy of that i love natalie portman with her deor cape embroidered with the female directors

01:03:10.880 who should have got the nomination that was quite funny um just the incredible lack of self-awareness

01:03:15.760 when the most privileged people in the world are hectoring everyone else uh of course we've had

01:03:20.400 that with megan and megan and harry as well i mean they're particularly funny because they'll

01:03:25.060 they'll they'll hector everyone about their carbon footprint then fly off to out in john's house for

01:03:29.300 private party in their private jet so that's that's inherently funny um you know it's just

01:03:34.280 funny when someone's telling you about privilege you know he did a big thing about white privilege

01:03:39.280 it's like you're a prince you're an actual prince you're not in a position to to lecture us about

01:03:45.580 privilege you're just not um so there's all of that um there's what else has been been quite

01:03:51.920 good oh yeah all the revisionist stuff has been quite interesting like i think the removal of the

01:03:56.260 native american indian from the lander lakes butter pack uncle ben's rice that's been dixt um

01:04:01.360 all of that kind of stuff as though this will do anything at all i mean in the case of the land

01:04:05.380 of lakes thing that was designed by a native american artist if anything this is a this is

01:04:10.760 attacking that person's cultural heritage but in the name of progress so all of that's been quite 0.56

01:04:15.320 interesting and of course all the uh the the the you see there's there's been something disturbing

01:04:20.120 about the mobs tearing down statues and i don't want to undermine how how anti-democratic and

01:04:24.720 problematic that is right to use one of their phrases but by the same token the overreach of

01:04:30.260 some of it has been has been funny when they start targeting mahatma gandhi because he didn't what

01:04:34.800 did he ever do um or or or you know winston churchill you know the man who defeated fascism

01:04:41.520 or abraham lincoln i mean wanting to tear down statues of abraham lincoln you'd think he'd get

01:04:46.100 a free pass for the whole abolition of slavery thing you would think but it's not there but my

01:04:50.880 favorite was the british library you know they have this decolonizing working group at the british

01:04:54.500 library who decided that they need to revisit all of their western manuscripts why it's a library

01:05:00.240 it's a repository of historical artifacts you know so you don't need to go through it and and

01:05:05.320 flag up where things are problematic they even made the mistake of saying that ted hughes was

01:05:08.760 now a problem because of some tenuous relationship to an ancestor from the 16th century who he wasn't

01:05:13.300 even related to you know and the best thing about the decolonizing working group at the british

01:05:17.420 library is that they claimed that the architecture of the building itself was colonial because it

01:05:21.400 looks a bit like a battleship so that stuff is funny to me so so all of this stuff these things

01:05:27.300 are they're great they're ripe for comedy if they weren't quite so sinister i really like this so

01:05:34.660 andrew because if you think about it like the historical aspect of uh your your uh descendants

01:05:40.320 being punished for things you say like there is a guy who descended from me four centuries down 0.99

01:05:45.780 the line who is absolutely fucked isn't he yeah oh yeah you're you i mean you are you are ruining 0.99

01:05:51.280 i mean you don't have children right no not yet so right well maybe you shouldn't because 0.99

01:05:58.540 you're basically condemning them you know exactly i'm not a breeder so i don't have to worry about

01:06:05.660 that but you know i i love that sort of sins of the father business i mean you can't even pin that

01:06:11.240 on me because all of my ancestors were you know irish in the bogs you know being sort of colonized

01:06:17.520 themselves so i mean you know i don't get to inherit uh that guilt um or maybe did they have

01:06:22.580 their pronouns in their bio they probably did they were good people unlike you and yours good moral

01:06:28.820 people yeah andrew listen it's been great having you back man uh we wish you all the best uh give

01:06:35.180 our viewers some thoughts about what you see happening in 2021 what are you excited about

01:06:40.400 for next year uh i've written a book on free speech which i'm very excited about i wrote it

01:06:46.260 in lockdown so you know silver linings you know i was i was it forced a kind of disciplined work

01:06:51.520 ethic on me you know it was meant that i had nowhere to go so i was writing which was good

01:06:55.600 um and that is called free speech and why it matters and that is going to be published uh in

01:07:01.800 february so it's all very quick and very excited about that and um and the idea of that is i wanted

01:07:07.000 it to be like it's not a long book it's a short punchy uh sort of covering all what i what i

01:07:12.320 perceived to be the most important arguments in relation to this the free speech battle and i do

01:07:16.620 perceive it as a battle insofar as i i like i said i don't think we're there yet we're not facing

01:07:20.960 but we are definitely experiencing the early signs of some very disturbed of a very disturbing road

01:07:26.140 that we're going down and i think we need to be well equipped to deal with that to to have the

01:07:30.940 arguments in place you know so really what the book is doing is going through systematically

01:07:34.480 all the various reservations that people understandably have you know because everyone 0.99

01:07:39.120 hates it when you hear some idiot stand up and say the most horrible thing and your instinct is 0.99

01:07:44.020 to shut them up your instinct it makes sense that people want to phone the police and all the rest 1.00

01:07:47.800 of it you know and so i i'm trying to approach that from a sympathetic perspective i'm not just

01:07:52.460 saying oh everyone's got to man up and stop being snowflakes which is what people will doubtlessly

01:07:56.460 say that i'm saying because they won't read the thing but uh i think we need to understand why

01:08:02.380 people have reservations about free speech understand why they want limitations on it

01:08:06.360 and then uh talk about the dangers of that and explain to people why however well intentioned

01:08:13.220 that might be uh that is a is a perilous uh road to go down so that's that's what so that's what

01:08:19.100 i'm quite excited about that because i think it's um it's nice to have a book out that isn't written

01:08:23.280 as a 24 year old woman you know because you know the last two books i've done have been to tanya

01:08:28.980 books and so a book in my own name would be would be rather nice um and uh yeah and then i'm i'm

01:08:36.240 also working on another book which should be ready by the end of next year about the culture war so

01:08:41.200 those two things are happening uh i'm hoping that i can tour with titania later in the year because

01:08:47.720 that tour has been postponed you know the live titania show which was meant to be last march and

01:08:52.140 then it was this march and so hopefully that'll be in november um hopefully the show with douglas

01:08:58.660 murray will be going ahead the show at the hammersmith apollo which is scheduled at the

01:09:02.980 moment for late June so who knows maybe I have to wait and see what happens with the um with the

01:09:08.120 vaccine and the regulations and the lockdown and all the rest of it but hopefully hopefully that's

01:09:11.420 what I'm looking forward I'm really looking forward to everything getting back to normal

01:09:14.380 right am I being stupidly optimistic there he is a comedian yeah that's what I want that's what you

01:09:20.180 want well thank you so much for coming on the show Andrew uh your books will be released uh in

01:09:25.140 February and later on um the one question that we always finish with is what's the one thing we're

01:09:30.360 not talking about but we really should be and i knew you were going to ask that because you ask

01:09:34.420 it every time and yet i still don't have an answer isn't that interesting why couldn't i

01:09:38.280 have simply prepared something why can i have done something i could have then i could have

01:09:41.980 finished on a flourish and as it is it's a damp squib it is uh but at least you told us and all

01:09:47.280 our viewers about the books you're now using to cash in on your right wing bigotry so there we

01:09:51.660 are exactly so for you know the threats to free speech are great for my bank balance apparently

01:09:56.960 I'm just getting in there early

01:09:58.540 because that's what people

01:09:59.100 are going to say

01:09:59.660 your entire career

01:10:01.220 depends on these two books

01:10:02.640 about how you've been censored

01:10:04.080 as the Guardian review

01:10:05.980 will no doubt say

01:10:06.820 Andrew it's been great

01:10:07.520 having you back

01:10:08.100 and thank you all for watching

01:10:09.880 this has been our final

01:10:11.340 interview of the year

01:10:12.600 we wish you all the best

01:10:13.760 we'll see you in 2021

01:10:15.400 when hopefully

01:10:16.460 all of us will be cancelled

01:10:17.600 and then it's not going to matter

01:10:18.720 if you've been cancelled

01:10:19.480 absolutely

01:10:20.320 if you don't get cancelled

01:10:21.580 the virus will get you

01:10:22.700 see you soon guys

01:10:26.960 We'll be right back.

01:10:56.960 The next musical mega hit is here.

01:10:59.240 The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

01:11:02.000 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:11:06.200 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

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TRIGGERnometry - December 30, 2020

＂2020 Has Been a Year of Mass Hysteria＂ - Andrew Doyle

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