TRIGGERnometry - ＂Activism is Often About Revenge＂ - Mike Nayna

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kitchen and this is the

00:00:11.820 show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our guest today is an

00:00:18.240 australian filmmaker mike nena welcome to trigonometry hey how you doing it's good to

00:00:23.700 have you on the show man uh thank thanks for coming on we met you uh about a year ago now

00:00:28.340 i think it was exactly a year ago wow that long okay cool yeah and we've been very keen to talk

00:00:33.440 to you since and really one of the reasons we were particularly keen to talk to you is so james

00:00:38.700 lindsey our mutual friend uh sent us uh your film uh did you all right okay yeah it was like you

00:00:45.740 must watch this um and we both did and felt that it was really really incredible so they kind of

00:00:51.440 made it um extra special for us to to chat with you but for anyone who hasn't seen the film who

00:00:56.880 doesn't know who you are just give us a little bit of a background as who are you how are you

00:01:01.820 where you are what has been your journey through life okay um i'm an australian filmmaker and i'm

00:01:08.700 interested in the internet and what's that do what's that doing to us as humans and activism

00:01:15.300 i guess this digital part of activism that we're seeing a lot of and yeah i've made several films

00:01:21.320 now in that area i guess how we came to meet at some point was i started looking into activism

00:01:28.200 um a strange kind of activism kind of destructive in my opinion activism it wasn't doing what it

00:01:34.600 said on the box i started looking at that in here in australia and i started hanging out with

00:01:42.360 in activist circles and and monitoring activists on uh on social media and i followed a lot of

00:01:50.820 their concepts and language to the academy it seemed like they were there was an intellectual

00:01:57.000 engine underneath a lot of the things that we're talking about and from there I guess that meant I

00:02:03.360 spoke to a lot of academics and I stumbled into what could be considered a an academic underground

00:02:11.140 I guess with a lot of people who were concerned about certain fields in cultural studies and they

00:02:19.000 weren't i mean they would open up to me behind the scenes but they were very uh concerned about

00:02:25.220 speaking publicly about this kind of stuff so i had a lot of experiences where i'd meet academics

00:02:29.380 and we'd be in their office and they would lock the door and we'd speak in hushed tones or

00:02:34.960 we'd start email threads that would start on their um this happened twice actually it started on

00:02:41.240 their academic their official academic inbox professor so-and-so at deacon.edu.au and then

00:02:50.780 they would take it halfway when we got into the nitty-gritty they would take it to their personal

00:02:54.340 accounts and this started happening I thought that was that was very strange that academics

00:03:00.700 wouldn't feel open about talking about something like that particularly because they were so

00:03:05.180 passionate about it and that eventually led me to cross paths with Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay

00:03:13.280 and Peter Boghossian who were just about to take part in this academic hoax scandal that later

00:03:19.220 became known as the grievance studies scandal and I guess I've been making films in this area

00:03:25.960 it's like a rabbit hole that keeps on opening up further and further into new and interesting

00:03:29.540 things and interesting people i guess we met in london last year as a result of this and i seem

00:03:36.200 to be heading into some strange kind of reluctant pundit role um find myself on stages and being

00:03:42.660 invited on things like this it's not exactly what i want to be doing but it's it's where i am right

00:03:49.420 now well that's the first time a guest has said they don't want to be on the show while on the

00:03:53.680 so that's fantastic usually we get the rejections by email you've decided to come on and tell us

00:03:59.540 you don't want to be on it reminds me of many a date that i've been on mike

00:04:04.680 persons opposite me i like what you guys are doing i respect it it's just it's a

00:04:13.000 i just kind of want to hide away and make films you know like do it in my own time and then show

00:04:18.240 you something and maybe do a q a it's quite strange to be caught up in this political mess

00:04:24.320 and be talking about these things and why were these academics scared mike um well there's there's

00:04:33.340 many reasons i mean why why are a lot of people scared to say things that they're concerned about

00:04:38.700 right now um i think that these particular fields in cultural studies they have uh connections to

00:04:46.660 diversity boards and things like that and it's um it's it's got quite a quite a they uh what would

00:04:52.500 you call it like a hushing um effect an intimidator intimidating kind of uh kind of

00:05:01.080 entities within the university that make people feel weird about saying things openly

00:05:05.680 and it's it's i mean it's the same in arts and entertainment you guys would experience that

00:05:09.660 over there there's certain things that you just don't talk about and if you talk about them

00:05:12.580 publicly then um it's not like anyone will tell you face to face but you do get a sense that there

00:05:20.860 are whispers around and things like that so um there that's very much taking place within academia

00:05:28.080 um in in a big way and the more i'm looking into this the more and more that seems um like that's

00:05:33.720 what's going on mike and just so people understand like what is it that these academics are scared to

00:05:39.300 talk about are they people who want to measure black people's dimples skulls or like what is it

00:05:44.940 that the people are terrified to discuss well that there's forbidden knowledge i guess there

00:05:50.700 are areas of inquiry that people want to go into race iq being one of them um even just talking

00:05:56.240 about biological sex you can get into trouble there's a guy named bruce gilley over in uh he's

00:06:02.200 a colleague of peter bogosians who wrote something about a case for colonialism so let's look at some

00:06:07.060 positives that took place as a result of colonialism like he never said it was a good

00:06:12.340 thing he just said some there were certain parts of it and this guy's an academic um and he got

00:06:18.200 driven out of his uh his profession he got shamed um and there's a lot of these kinds of stories

00:06:27.000 brett and heather from um brett weinstein and heather hein from evergreen state college i made

00:06:33.320 a series about that i spoke to them about it where um brett stood up to this this orthodoxy

00:06:42.720 i guess his moral orthodoxy that was emerging within his school and an equity plan that they

00:06:48.020 were trying to put in place which um overstepped the bounds i think into his stem field so he

00:06:55.240 started talking up speaking up about that and then uh you've just got to see the series to

00:07:01.540 see what happened there I can't actually do it justice here having a in conversational form but

00:07:06.560 if you go to my channel and check it out you'll see some strange things took place

00:07:10.020 and what we're seeing in academia is people being forced out now these people would argue that what

00:07:17.420 they're doing is good and right and it's the morally correct thing to do after all racism

00:07:22.880 is bad isn't it sexism is bad the more diversity the better what are your opinions on it Mike

00:07:28.420 well it depends there are reasonable edges of this and then there are it's it's difficult

00:07:35.600 to draw lines around there's some pretty hardcore post-modern uh sections of the academy that are

00:07:43.780 studying quite strange things um it's it's almost like it's a fundamentalist sect of the new left

00:07:49.960 um so it is it's not it's not that simple it's it's actually hard to speak about on

00:07:57.160 in simple terms because you have to you you go down layers of this stuff there is a there are

00:08:03.820 surface level arguments that people are having and it's like oh yeah that seems perfectly

00:08:08.480 reasonable but then if you go back in the scholarship uh maybe one decade or two decades

00:08:13.700 or three decades you're getting into some very strange philosophies they've got a different

00:08:18.140 conception of how humans are put together they have this kind of blank slate philosophy of uh

00:08:25.080 human beings, that humans can be reshaped, I guess,

00:08:31.860 through the discourses and the way that we speak about things

00:08:34.620 and the way that knowledge is produced.

00:08:36.260 And so right now we're dealing with, we're probably three decades

00:08:41.360 into some very, very strange conceptions of reality in humans

00:08:45.800 and where we're talking about surface-level things

00:08:49.640 like cultural appropriation and many of these,

00:08:58.000 what is the basis for biological sex? 0.99

00:09:01.300 It's all rooted in this 30-year-old philosophy that's been,

00:09:07.860 I guess, built over the past few decades.

00:09:12.500 Mike, just so you know, what we're going to do is we're going

00:09:14.720 to clip that and Francis is going to say, well, racism is bad, isn't it?

00:09:18.040 And then you're going to go, it depends.

00:09:22.780 Well, think about this.

00:09:25.760 It depends on what your definition of racism is, right?

00:09:29.420 Like if you've got the traditional definition of racism

00:09:33.940 where it's discrimination based on immutable characteristics,

00:09:38.220 then that is horrific and let's work against that.

00:09:41.600 But if you're talking about systems of power and privilege

00:09:44.100 where waking up in the morning and buying a coffee

00:09:47.540 and putting on some kind of hat is racism,

00:09:51.240 then we're going to have to have a bigger conversation.

00:09:54.580 And this is what these fields are doing.

00:09:57.200 They're broadening the concept of racism

00:10:00.320 and it's getting to the point where it's just capturing people

00:10:04.140 just going about their everyday business.

00:10:06.480 And, Mike, there'll be lots of people who would say,

00:10:11.000 look, this is a problem on campuses,

00:10:12.580 but it doesn't affect broader society.

00:10:14.780 you know it's just students being students let's be fair students and knobs um i was a knob when i

00:10:21.060 was that age i think we all were um what what is your argument to that that it has no real effect

00:10:25.980 on sort of the wider culture i guess it's all it just always seemed obvious to me that the culture

00:10:32.540 is down downstream from the academy our our elite classes our cultural producers they all go through

00:10:39.040 the academy and they learn these things and then they come out and they produce art they produce

00:10:42.780 journalism they create the they produce the templates for how we think and so it's it's not

00:10:51.320 it's never really struck me as something that's kind of off in the corner of of our culture

00:10:57.460 that producing strange things it's it um all our all our best and brightest minds go through it

00:11:03.760 and they come out and then they create culture and so we live downstream from the academy so

00:11:09.240 whatever happens there uh it will eventually happen within the culture it'll manifest in some

00:11:14.380 sense i mean you know it'll be pushed back upon from people who don't who who haven't gone through

00:11:20.900 that way of thinking but um it's there it's there it's definitely there i don't exactly know how to

00:11:26.460 articulate that but it just seems so obvious to me i know man it's interesting because uh probably

00:11:32.000 a year and a half ago now i got this offer to do a comedy show at university and they sent me like

00:11:38.940 a massive contract with the list of 50 things that you aren't supposed to joke about um and when i

00:11:44.880 turned it down and it became quite a big story over here people were having a go at me and saying

00:11:49.700 well why why why you know why do you feel so strongly about it these are just some silly 0.96

00:11:53.640 students and i was like well they're not just some silly students they're gonna grow up and become 0.97

00:11:58.960 you know mps uh lawyers journalists and they're gonna be shaping the world of tomorrow and i don't

00:12:05.380 and so what year was that when when did that take place that was literally the last few days of 2018

00:12:11.040 2018 right right yeah well yeah so not that long ago at all man yeah and it's it's and you know

00:12:18.600 and i was saying at the time that yes slippery slope arguments don't always necessarily accurately

00:12:24.240 reflect reality but if we allow people to censor comedy uh you know whatever we're going to start

00:12:30.820 to find that you know uh we start to go back through history and erase things that were done

00:12:36.620 and and cancel shows that have been on on tv for a long time and question everything uh and uh

00:12:43.920 it's been 18 months and look where we are now man yeah yeah and it's it's it's one way right

00:12:48.860 it's uh when pushing back is seen or even just hold up let's talk about this is seen as immoral

00:12:55.640 then you're on a freight train to something very strange and i mean anyone's picked up a history

00:13:01.360 book this kind of behavior happens and then famines and death and genocide happens so it's not it's

00:13:07.420 not clear to me why why so many people are like hey bring it on man bring it on let's get on this

00:13:12.900 freight train do you think it's just cowardice mike in the sense that i think a lot of most

00:13:17.920 people are busy and they've got busy lives and they don't have time to delve into this stuff

00:13:23.400 in the way that you and I and Francis do.

00:13:26.620 But what they do know, as you said in academia,

00:13:29.580 and I think it's true everywhere else as well,

00:13:31.660 is if you speak out against this stuff, you will be punished.

00:13:37.140 And so if you don't really know what's going on and you're scared

00:13:41.420 and you have a reason to be scared, why would you get involved?

00:13:44.740 Why don't you just go, yeah, look, all right.

00:13:47.220 Well, they keep saying this word cultural appropriation,

00:13:49.840 these two words, cultural appropriation.

00:13:51.480 they keep saying uh white privilege they keep saying like all these things that i don't really

00:13:55.800 know i'm not an expert but if i question the stuff i'm gonna get fired you know my reputation is

00:14:02.480 gonna be ruined i'm gonna be well i mean there's there's even a different population that um are in

00:14:07.360 the middle of that they hear it and it speaks to their moral sensibilities it's it's it still

00:14:13.520 speaks to my moral sensibilities there's this kind of care harm moral access that it's speaking to

00:14:18.580 And so if you haven't done your homework, you would hear a lot of this stuff and go, hey, this is just some kind of extension of the civil rights movement.

00:14:28.400 But if you do your homework and see what's underneath it, it's not at all.

00:14:33.340 And so I find that a lot of people whose moral instincts are being spoken to, poked and prod, they're playing apologetics for it.

00:14:41.780 They're going, no, well, they can't mean that.

00:14:43.520 They must mean and then they say what they must mean.

00:14:45.940 and in in that sense there is this cover for this this strange radical thing that's moving up and

00:14:52.440 it's like hey just look at the look at what they're actually saying abolish police let's get

00:14:57.560 rid of they're actually saying that they're not it's not reform i'm down for reform i'm progressive

00:15:03.640 but but it's not actually what they're saying if you if you go uh if you just do a little homework

00:15:11.320 just get into it that's so true that is so true man because this is the point i've been trying to

00:15:15.480 make to a lot of people and on radio and whatever like the lives of black people matter and everybody

00:15:22.880 supports that but if you look at the organization of black lives matter and that their own stated

00:15:28.100 goals and what they're demanding and what they're suggesting and their agenda and who found it and

00:15:35.800 who runs it, that's a whole different

00:15:37.720 ballgame. And no one wants to

00:15:39.760 believe it. No one wants to go on their

00:15:41.760 website. Can I just say it's quite offensive.

00:15:44.120 As someone who comes from Venezuela, I've got

00:15:45.760 to say abolishing the police did wonders for

00:15:47.720 my country. So

00:15:48.620 we're having a great time.

00:15:53.240 And if you're a regular viewer, Francis has

00:15:55.540 just said that his mother is from Venezuela.

00:15:57.700 So make sure you have a drink. This is your

00:15:59.660 opportunity now. I'll mention

00:16:01.760 I'm from Russia in a second.

00:16:02.980 is there a drinking game here is there yes when we cash in on our ethnicity people drink do they

00:16:10.280 yeah exactly exactly so so it's your turn mate but mike we like constantin said we touched on

00:16:17.600 you know black lives matter uh yesterday was the first day back for premier league football and

00:16:22.300 literally every footballer took a knee imagine if a footballer particularly like a white footballer

00:16:28.220 just didn't i mean that's career over isn't it he's done yeah right right right yeah i mean how

00:16:35.180 have we got to this point where even saying something like saying you don't agree with

00:16:39.660 all aspects of a political organization means cancellation well i suspect it's been sold quite

00:16:46.040 well like people don't look at what's what's underneath it they're not looking at they're

00:16:49.720 looking at the individual arguments um they're not looking at the constellation of what's going

00:16:56.120 on like if you take a few steps back and you realize it's not just this it's this and this

00:17:00.380 and this and this you start to notice hang on a second there is some kind of revolution afoot

00:17:04.960 um you know on the individual uh case in the individual case it's often very reasonable but

00:17:12.840 if you're if you're losing moving ground on 10 000 different um fronts then all of a sudden

00:17:19.480 you're heading towards some kind of revolutionary uh into joining a revolutionary enterprise so it

00:17:26.820 is it is strange because i i'm all my friends and family are experiencing this from the surface

00:17:32.340 level and they're all yeah black lives they do matter i was like yeah yeah that's that's true

00:17:36.620 i can see where you're coming from but let's go let's go to their website and look what they're

00:17:41.220 actually about this is quite kind of scary but people don't want to do that do they that's the

00:17:47.180 thing that terrifies me is people and and again i keep saying this in our interviews in the last

00:17:52.400 few weeks this this sends me back to echoes of what we went through in the soviet union where

00:17:58.060 people knew what they were supposed to not look at and what information they didn't it's a bit

00:18:04.900 of knowledge right right and and not even so much forbidden knowledge more like i don't want to

00:18:11.160 expose myself to this information because then i would have to have the wrong opinion right right

00:18:16.560 right right and then i will be punished you know and that's i see so much of that flying around at

00:18:21.380 the moment you know what i mean yeah yeah and mike moving swiftly on to your film uh digilanti which

00:18:27.840 we both watched we loved i mean that was very very interesting as well in that it was you know

00:18:32.740 talking about digital activism which you were involved with um for people who haven't seen

00:18:37.640 the film could you just give a brief synopsis about what it's about and then we'll delve into

00:18:41.420 it you're like little gesture i did that was quite nice anyway all right so the film is i guess it's

00:18:49.640 about an experience that i had where um a racist incident took place racist and sexist incident

00:18:57.540 took place on a bus and i filmed it and i was it was 2012 so it was a time when viral videos were

00:19:04.600 just started to enter the kind of uh public consciousness and so i'd had success with a

00:19:12.320 couple of viral videos i kind of knew how you could poke and prod them in a certain way um

00:19:17.600 uh you know seed them on the back end and then and get these things going and so i applied that

00:19:23.620 to this video to get revenge on the guys that that were uh being horribly racist and sexist

00:19:28.660 they were they were they were they were doing the wrong thing and so um and they weren't just

00:19:34.880 being racist and sexist they were also being threatening that's yeah yeah yeah it was

00:19:40.280 inexcusable behavior right like it's way out of line these people were way out of line yeah yeah

00:19:45.840 it's horrific um so what then happened was the video did go viral and it turned into this kind

00:19:54.360 international press incident i think part of it was the zeitgeist about the racism and sexism that

00:20:00.500 really put an engine underneath it but also because viral videos were only just starting

00:20:04.920 to come out and so it turned into this really really big international incident and my experience

00:20:10.680 of it was being on the inside of this press incident and then seeing how it was communicated

00:20:17.380 and how it was talked about was very different to how i experienced it um and so i would meet

00:20:23.440 someone in the street and talk to them about it and their impressions of the incident and everything

00:20:27.100 that was going on around it was very different and so it was it's a very strange experience to

00:20:33.180 be in the middle of a press explosion because you get a first-hand experience of how disconnected

00:20:40.760 a meteor incident incident can become from the actual reality of the event itself and so it's

00:20:47.060 the story is it's a short documentary and it's just uh it's just about that experience and i

00:20:52.020 caught up with some of the the racists uh he wasn't racist he was just being violent um one

00:20:58.140 of such a great excuse he wasn't racist he was just violent only violent or otherwise known as

00:21:06.600 embracing australian culture yeah exactly yeah yeah it's a big sunny day and we're all drinking

00:21:12.880 and so yeah that's that's where it leads to usually um yeah so i guess that's what the film

00:21:19.620 is about it's a short documentary i showed it a long time ago it was like 2015 and it only just

00:21:25.140 recently got picked up by atlantic because i think it just becomes uh more and more relevant as as

00:21:31.540 time goes on and the internet keeps delivering these incidents well i mean i think you've

00:21:36.840 described it factually in terms of the storyline but i actually think that to me that wasn't what

00:21:41.860 it was really about in the sense that for me it was much more about your journey of going from 0.93

00:21:47.640 here's a racist incident i filmed it how do i make this go viral to oh shit this is now viral 0.75

00:21:55.620 and i'm not happy with what i've done here yes yes and um it's about it's about also having 0.85

00:22:03.800 control over something you don't have control over that you can something that goes viral

00:22:08.620 something you put out on the internet you have control of the preconditions and that's it so

00:22:14.340 you once you let it go then it'll turn into something and it did turn into something it

00:22:18.560 turned into something quite ugly i felt and uh the conversations that were happening around

00:22:23.500 racism uh that it sparked they didn't seem to make any sense to me they were it wasn't

00:22:30.660 constructive either i didn't think it was doing any good it was just doing um it was just causing

00:22:36.480 more harm and making people pissed off and so i was looking at that and it kind of made me rethink

00:22:40.640 the dynamics of of these kind of viral incidents and how all this stuff worked and i guess that's

00:22:46.880 why i'm looking at what i'm looking at now because it's it's very much it was an insight into how

00:22:53.880 strange the public discourse is how strange and unproductive the public discourse is around race

00:23:00.000 um and that was and how the media plays into that and how social media plays into that and so

00:23:06.520 So that has launched me into this new thing I'm working on now.

00:23:10.620 And one of the things that I found very interesting about it

00:23:13.280 was this desire, and I don't know whether it's innate in us,

00:23:17.960 of the desire for revenge, where you saw what happened to these men

00:23:22.680 who did, let's be fair, they were awful, awful, reprehensible behaviour.

00:23:27.580 There's no way you can condone it.

00:23:29.620 But then the reaction, I would say, was even worse

00:23:32.940 in a desire to destroy these men's lives.

00:23:36.080 Well, there was this bus incident that took place in real life

00:23:39.900 and then there's this digital incident that looked a hell of a lot

00:23:43.800 like what took place on the bus.

00:23:45.140 And so it's such a strange thing that it kind of echoed

00:23:48.740 into this giant mythological event where the anger that was on the bus

00:23:55.980 and the thing that people were angry about, they were just replicating.

00:23:59.260 So it was just creating more destruction and more anger

00:24:01.940 and more threats and violence and saying horrible things about people.

00:24:06.080 And so, yeah, I think something that I noticed from that experience

00:24:12.560 is that revenge isn't constructive.

00:24:15.020 There's nothing constructive about revenge.

00:24:17.040 No one wins in the end.

00:24:18.440 And so I guess that's the position I have now with this new kind 1.00

00:24:23.040 of activism that I'm looking at.

00:24:24.520 It looks a lot like it looks more like revenge to me

00:24:26.740 than anything constructive.

00:24:28.180 And so I think that a lot of modern day activism has revenge deep inside it.

00:24:34.400 And the internet has a way of looking after that.

00:24:39.320 You know, it's kind of the internet selects for emotion and revenge is a deep, deep, deep, deep emotion.

00:24:44.200 And so I think that is echoing through our current situation more and more.

00:24:51.760 And I guess that's why the Atlantic was picked it up because it's become more relevant,

00:24:56.660 not less relevant over the years yeah it has and you mentioned that one of the things you

00:25:01.860 realized is the way we talk about race and racism and all of the discrimination all of these things

00:25:07.900 uh particularly in age of social media isn't actually constructive we're not trying to get

00:25:13.140 to a better place would that be fair to say uh i think we're trying but it's uh but it's not

00:25:21.000 a good method so so what i see from these uh these disciplines these kind of fundamentalist

00:25:28.060 sect of the new left i've been i've been talking about it um i think as polite society we all agree

00:25:36.240 that racism sexism homophobia they're bad things but we don't agree on how to remedy them and i

00:25:41.960 think that in the past uh liberal ethics or treating everyone the same was something that

00:25:46.500 delivering gains on those fronts on their civil right like culturally and socially i think a lot

00:25:52.260 of people became a lot more accepting because of liberal ethics universal liberal ethics and so

00:25:58.180 this new post-modern ethics that these people have is a completely different um remedy for

00:26:06.500 the problem and i don't think it's going to work i think it'll make things much worse and so

00:26:10.580 So the way I look at it is that if racism and sexism, homophobia is a flu

00:26:17.620 and we're looking at a patient and we're both like,

00:26:19.800 well, there's something wrong here, right?

00:26:21.420 We want to fix this.

00:26:22.960 This is a pathology.

00:26:24.780 Let's get in there.

00:26:26.720 These postmodernists are saying chemotherapy.

00:26:29.080 Let's just give it chemotherapy. 0.99

00:26:30.420 That'll sort it.

00:26:31.260 And then the rest of us are like bed rest, maybe some antibiotics.

00:26:34.680 Let's just calm down.

00:26:36.120 But they're like, let's just throw everything at this thing.

00:26:38.520 and i don't think it's constructive or it's going to kill the patient and secretly when you actually

00:26:44.660 look at what they're on about they want some kind of total revolution so they secretly do want to

00:26:50.380 kill the patient because the afterlife is the left-wing utopia that they that they want to

00:26:55.960 take us to mike but you say that as you say most people won't be familiar with that so what's your 0.97

00:27:00.440 evidence for that what's your evidence for them wanting to to you know overthrow society or

00:27:05.780 whatever it's there the thing is they're very explicit and so you can just go to um i think

00:27:11.820 james lindsey has he has a great resource on this new discourses so he's he james helen peter

00:27:19.760 bogosian uh were the subjects of my new film but i didn't want to take what they were saying uh on

00:27:25.760 face value i didn't want to be like a glorified cameraman that was just like recording what they

00:27:29.500 were saying and delivering that to the people i wanted to figure out what the hell was going on

00:27:32.740 myself just out of interest and so over the course of the last few years we've kind of morphed into

00:27:39.800 this weird um startup think tank where we're mapping the landscape and trying to figure out

00:27:45.880 what the hell is going on here uh mapping out these disciplines from the outside and where

00:27:50.220 they come from what's the intellectual history behind it and james is starting to run out creating

00:27:57.900 a uh platform new discourses and it's just it's he's he's aggregating all the all the proof that

00:28:03.660 you you were talking about what proof do you have so it's it's in the literature it's all through

00:28:08.220 the literature it's um i've spent a lot a lot of time reading this stuff and i can i mean i can

00:28:13.280 email you stuff we can uh we can sort it out but it's it's there and they're quite explicit about

00:28:17.760 this um so what is it that they want exactly a revolution they want to change everything

00:28:24.580 but it's strange because you've got it's almost like there are foot soldiers that don't know who

00:28:30.280 the generals are so if you go back further in time you real that they're talking about totally

00:28:35.540 they're they're uh disaffected marxists i guess and they want a new they want a new way to jimmy

00:28:42.720 up the population into uh creating the new marxist utopia um and so they changed the way 0.97

00:28:52.580 the new left changed the way that that would take place um yeah and so and so then you've

00:29:00.280 got then you've got generations upon generations that are kind of moving along with with this way

00:29:05.200 of thinking and uh expanding upon it and then moving into further further uh details and and

00:29:12.480 smaller smaller papers smaller um uh arguments and all of a sudden you've got you've got this

00:29:19.240 whole entity that's actually it starts in this strange revolutionary enterprise but if you're

00:29:23.920 reading the today's paper in your in your hands it's about cornbread being racist or something

00:29:28.960 like that it's it doesn't it's hard to figure out what what the enterprise is when you look at the

00:29:35.740 the surface level arguments that we're swimming in now we're swimming in these surface level

00:29:40.060 arguments we're swimming in the meme level of this thing where if you look underneath it and

00:29:44.220 you go further and further down there is a revolutionary philosophy underneath it and why

00:29:49.160 do you think it's resonated so so much especially with these this current generation because look

00:29:55.440 there must be a reason is it a dissatisfaction is it the fact that capitalism isn't working

00:30:01.040 for young people why do you think it's resonating so strongly mike well um there's a lot there's a

00:30:09.160 lot to go into like we can look at it from a philosophical angle we can look at it from a

00:30:13.680 uh an economic angle like things are harder to it's harder to advance now we can look at it from

00:30:20.120 uh an overproduction of elites that are they're trying to find new ways to advance within our our

00:30:26.780 our centers of cultural production you can look at it from a moral perspective that we're god is

00:30:32.260 dead and we're all dealing with the existential weight of not having a plausible uh external

00:30:38.840 source for morality and so um any any external doctrine for morality will the market value of

00:30:47.860 that will go right up in a time like that like you meet people who are just staunch vegans it's like

00:30:52.280 i'm i'm i'm grabbing onto this one moral thing and that will define me that's like my the one

00:31:00.040 thing that i can i can grab onto and so you see all these these doctrines popping up which are

00:31:05.900 moral communities saying hey look you can you don't need that existential weight of um creating

00:31:13.740 your own moral system we have a moral system over here and i think it's something to do with i mean

00:31:18.860 i sound like a madman i know but um if you the more of the philosophy you dig into the more you

00:31:25.440 you realize that there's some there's some strange big tectonic shifts taking place in our culture

00:31:30.720 right now uh what is there anything in particular that you could pinpoint any of these big tectonic

00:31:36.880 shifts that you'd be able to explain to our audience who might not be aware of it um that's

00:31:43.220 why i want to make films like i can go and make films and be a weird guy and then just drop it

00:31:47.280 and people can understand because it's got uh it explains it in a different way i don't think i

00:31:51.880 don't know how to articulate some of these things but it's um i mean people it's just moral

00:31:58.700 communities, moral communities that are evangelizing and people want to become part of a moral

00:32:03.320 community. It's a dearth of religion. It's a spiritual problem that we've got. And so people

00:32:10.840 are trying to solve it and they're trying to solve it. Certain people are trying to solve it

00:32:15.920 politically. And do you think as well, it taps into our latent narcissism as well, especially

00:32:22.480 the virtue signaling, especially the online activism. And it's a narcissism that we all

00:32:27.300 have like when you created your video part of it was like you talked about that when in the film

00:32:32.620 you saw the guy walking away and that made you feel angry that in a sense you got away of his

00:32:36.400 crime but also part of it and let's be fair i share this as well it's like i want to make my

00:32:41.960 video go viral yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah well the thing is is that there's a level of if you

00:32:48.980 have moral standing you have like a divinity role in your moral community and so that that's a

00:32:54.340 status and so i'm also part of uh building um if you look at letter.wiki i'm building um

00:33:02.240 uh social media networks and if you look behind the scenes of what social media actually is it's

00:33:08.580 it's status as a service so if people are using social media to mature to a point where people

00:33:13.420 are kind of uh using social media in order to ratchet up their status and so when you've got

00:33:19.680 this kind of moral system uh that's got its own language and it's it's ready to go and it's

00:33:24.700 zeitgeist friendly then that's a resource for uh for ratcheting up your divinity factor within your

00:33:32.580 moral community and so there's a lot of people who i mean you look at the instagram models kind

00:33:38.280 of going black lives matter and they're like taking all these photos of themselves at rallies

00:33:43.760 and things like that this is part of that that is it is about creating some kind of moral standing

00:33:49.260 within um within the community so this i mean the cynical ways to look at it there's there's um

00:33:56.320 there's there's there's kind of people searching for answers ways to uh look at it there's economic

00:34:03.620 ways to look at it we're just in this kind of maelstrom of change and it's uh i mean it's

00:34:08.660 fascinating but also scary it is and uh by the way francis has never had a video go viral so

00:34:14.700 So here's what we're going to do, Mike.

00:34:17.120 Next time he is being racist, I'm going to record it.

00:34:20.500 I'm going to send you the footage and we're going to make a little film.

00:34:23.420 You want to do it?

00:34:24.260 All right.

00:34:24.620 We'll take it now.

00:34:25.500 Red-faced gammon being racist against somebody.

00:34:31.260 It would be terrific. 0.78

00:34:32.900 I've got the face.

00:34:34.600 I've got the wardrobe.

00:34:35.600 And most importantly, I've got the voice.

00:34:37.680 So it's absolutely perfect.

00:34:43.080 But this is a question that we always ask people,

00:34:46.360 but I would really be interested to get your opinion on it.

00:34:49.120 All political movements inevitably burn themselves out.

00:34:52.160 They have their peaks and then they sort of fizzle out.

00:34:55.260 Do you think we're close to it fizzling out

00:34:57.820 or do you think it's just going to continue to get stronger?

00:35:02.720 Well, from what I've been looking at, it's a billion-dollar industry.

00:35:06.620 There's bricks and mortar.

00:35:07.760 There's a doctrine that's been sitting there for 30 years.

00:35:11.660 It's been built upon.

00:35:12.500 and so it's not it's not i can't see it going anywhere it's these people have careers and

00:35:16.900 jobs built around this stuff um there is a a lot of these kind of non-profit organizations popping

00:35:23.780 up um with this doctrine underneath it and so it doesn't it doesn't go away we we have to develop

00:35:30.660 tools to live with it and to understand it i think well that's interesting i hadn't thought

00:35:36.660 of that before because my up to this point i think our position has very been very much

00:35:41.780 this stuff is nonsense we've got to fight it and defeat it but you think it's well

00:35:49.220 no it's new it's like i'd be very surprised if it if it disappears you know it'll continue on

00:35:55.540 in some sense i think it's part of the enterprise that uh jim and i are getting into is we can

00:36:00.260 potentially draw lines around part of it like i don't we're talking about this huge phenomenon

00:36:04.900 but we're looking at this kind of fundamentalist new left sec set which i think is the dangerous

00:36:09.940 part of it right there's there's all sorts of culturally woke people but there's there then

00:36:14.900 there's the clergy um and so we if we look at that and we can draw lines around it and um actually

00:36:21.000 talk about it as some kind of religious entity then maybe it will get ratcheted down and we can

00:36:27.360 apply separation of church and state principles to it but i don't know i don't imagine i know it's

00:36:33.020 funny and it's it's almost ludicrous that we're living in a time like that but um strange times

00:36:41.020 call for uh for odd solutions i guess it's you've got we've got to do something i can't imagine it

00:36:46.600 disappearing i just said it's it would be very strange because this has been i mean i know it's 0.99

00:36:52.540 going to sound incredibly stupid and naive now that i'm saying it out loud but that is how stupid 0.94

00:36:57.100 and naive i am i've been sitting there for the last few years going look look at this new thing 1.00

00:37:02.520 they're saying that's really obviously stupid more people are going to realize that this stuff is 0.97

00:37:07.960 nonsense now and then look at this other thing you know they're banning sombreros from uh from 0.98

00:37:13.240 university parties you know that's or they're now they've now they've banned clapping at some

00:37:18.360 universities because it's triggering and it's a microaggression now they're doing this now they're

00:37:22.920 doing that not you know and and i was thinking well like eventually all of that is going to stack 0.98

00:37:29.240 up to a point where enough people are going to go this is bullshit you know let's wake up let's 0.71

00:37:35.560 stop this but but it's not happening no it's a but it it's not just some thing that popped out 0.95

00:37:43.140 of nowhere it's got it's it's it's got decades of academic work underneath it it's it's a it's

00:37:49.800 a sophisticated worldview um and i mean we can laugh at it we can we can poke at it and give

00:37:56.220 it shit because it is kind of crazy and weird but it's um it's it's also sophisticated they view the 0.89

00:38:03.040 world in a different way and the more you realize what what the way they view their what the way 0.99

00:38:08.040 they view the world you realize how different it is from the way that you view the world it's like

00:38:12.440 hold on a sec we're uh we're gonna have you i think you realize how deep that the the schism

00:38:20.620 actually is it's not political anymore it's philosophical it's um we're heading into a new

00:38:26.380 strange territory i think and mike this has been frequently described as the culture war

00:38:33.400 and if it is a war who is winning is it that side that's winning or is it the other side

00:38:39.540 well i would find it very difficult if if this phenomenon is

00:38:45.700 not as widespread spread as i think it is i would find it very difficult to gauge that because i've

00:38:54.620 been looking at it for several years now and obviously we're kind of hooked up in some kind

00:38:59.320 of network and so all my algorithms are bent toward it and because i've started speaking

00:39:04.840 publicly about it all my inbox is full of people with stories about um how it's entering their

00:39:10.060 workplaces and um how they feel totally alienated by certain uh groups they have knitting groups

00:39:17.940 and things like that it's coming it's coming into all these areas of the world and i just get a

00:39:23.020 constant influx of people going can you help me help me out i don't know what's happening here

00:39:28.240 and i'm concerned about it so my world view is is is just flooded with this so it looks it looks

00:39:37.440 huge so if it wasn't as big as i think it is then i'm kind of stuck in this little bubble that i

00:39:43.300 can't get out of but i do i will put my hat in the ring and say this is quite large this is i think

00:39:50.460 there's enough evidence to suggest that that uh there is there is something afoot um so i don't

00:39:58.120 i don't see it in view in terms of winning and losing i don't i don't it's not exactly how i

00:40:03.420 look at it yeah well my i know that you feel like you know your primary way of expressing what you

00:40:09.820 feel and you think uh is through making films uh but actually i have to say i think uh this

00:40:16.000 interview has been really really insightful and helpful for russ and for a lot of our viewers

00:40:22.180 and listeners as well because you've really narrowed it down to to what it is you know

00:40:27.800 like you said these people want a revolution it's based on 30 years of academia uh and longer but

00:40:34.360 yeah but maybe it started getting harder in 30 yeah yeah they started getting serious after 30

00:40:39.560 years exactly and it's not going away and we're all going to have to find some way of dealing with

00:40:44.540 it um i think it's been it's been really really great to have you on um so before we uh ask our

00:40:51.420 last question which i really i'm keen to hear your answer to just tell everybody where can they

00:40:56.440 they find some of your work on the on these issues where can they watch you know your primary way of

00:41:01.600 expressing yourself which is of course your film yes um check me out on on twitter and then youtube

00:41:09.960 just mike nana n-a-y-n-a um i want to spend more time on youtube but i'm behind the scenes i'm

00:41:16.840 obviously researching this stuff with the guys and i'm working on a feature-length film that i want to

00:41:23.260 um release through other distribution networks uh channels so i can kind of break the bubble

00:41:29.540 that we're kind of stuck in so hopefully i can throw it out and get a netflix or something like

00:41:33.880 that who knows how the way that things are going right now yeah so what's that sorry i said they're

00:41:40.060 not work at all yeah look look it's gonna be a i'll have to trojan horse it or something i have

00:41:47.840 to do something in order to get that in but anyway uh so i'm i'm gonna put more time into the uh

00:41:52.980 the YouTube channel as soon as I can find time.

00:41:56.080 And so subscribe to that and wait, there'll be some more stuff.

00:42:00.900 Brilliant.

00:42:01.420 Well, we'll put out all the links to the video.

00:42:04.040 Digilante is absolutely fantastic, genuinely enjoyable.

00:42:07.380 And the last question we always finish with is what's the one thing

00:42:10.740 we're not talking about as a society, Mike, that we really should be?

00:42:15.260 Well, I was just thinking before how much my inbox is full of people

00:42:20.960 who are having trouble with this stuff and who feel alienated

00:42:25.860 and they're not speaking up.

00:42:28.940 So I think that there is this sense that public conversation

00:42:32.940 and private conversation are two very different things.

00:42:35.900 Even public persona and private persona are two very different things.

00:42:39.480 And so I don't distinguish between the two and so I get myself

00:42:44.500 into a lot of trouble by bringing my private persona to the public.

00:42:47.760 It's probably some kind of disability.

00:42:49.120 But I think that if we can just talk more, like talk the way you're talking at home in your workplace and stop being so afraid to say what you think, I think of that.

00:43:04.640 If we can have more conversations around that so people feel empowered just to be themselves, I think that's something.

00:43:10.480 fantastic it's a really really important point because the more we silence our thoughts the

00:43:18.080 more we don't engage the more we don't share ideas the bigger this problem will be and the

00:43:22.480 more it will embolden a very very angry minority who want to in your words and i believe it as well

00:43:29.780 start a revolution and for those of you've never experienced one they're not fun so thank you very

00:43:36.080 much for coming on it depends what you like mate it depends what you like if you like killing

00:43:40.180 people and chaos and and all of that they're quite fun for you so there is a section of

00:43:45.800 population that would like that and a lot of people don't a lot of naive people think that

00:43:52.880 they don't exist but they they really do i've met a few of them and i don't want that i don't

00:43:57.520 want that guy in charge that guy is that's that's not the guy you want looking after things absolutely

00:44:03.120 no uh well mike thank you so much for coming on make sure you head over to twitter follow mike

00:44:08.000 he puts up some great stuff and of course check out his work and the movie we were talking about

00:44:13.940 is Digilante but he's also got a range of other things and we look forward to the feature film

00:44:18.480 Mike Nenna thank you so much for coming on the show cool thanks for having me man it was good

00:44:38.000 Thank you.

TRIGGERnometry - July 01, 2020

＂Activism is Often About Revenge＂ - Mike Nayna

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