TRIGGERnometry - February 16, 2020


Andrew Doyle Liveļ¼š Why I Created Titania McGrath


Episode Stats

Length

52 minutes

Words per Minute

196.25186

Word Count

10,266

Sentence Count

270

Misogynist Sentences

15

Hate Speech Sentences

30


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 so welcome back what we're going to do now is we're going to bring andrew doyle on stage if
00:00:07.700 you don't know what trigonometry is it's a youtube show where we interview people
00:00:10.960 who have interesting and controversial ideas sometimes uh andrew's been on the show a couple
00:00:15.460 of times and but the last time we interviewed him was now a year ago and we did not know at the time
00:00:20.820 he didn't even tell us that he was the creator of titania mcgrath so uh please welcome to the stage
00:00:25.980 Andrew Doyle
00:00:26.680 Thank you
00:00:34.960 It's good to have you back
00:00:36.460 Yeah it's good to be here
00:00:37.340 Well tell us why did you
00:00:40.060 create Titania McGraw
00:00:41.260 Okay so for those of you who don't know
00:00:44.020 she's a Twitter character predominantly
00:00:45.840 and I started it about last April
00:00:48.200 and the idea of the character
00:00:50.100 was to kind of embody that kind of
00:00:52.160 radical fourth wave feminist
00:00:53.860 intersectionalist woke
00:00:55.320 activist
00:00:56.360 and I did it as a satirical character on Twitter
00:00:59.300 and then she got a book deal
00:01:01.120 and then
00:01:02.260 then turned into a live
00:01:05.580 show and that's sort of
00:01:06.860 how it happened to sort of run away
00:01:09.160 out of my hands a little bit. And why do you think it
00:01:11.500 struck such a nerve? Because you started
00:01:13.560 it last April. How many Twitter followers does it
00:01:15.480 now have? Oh I don't know, like 380,000
00:01:17.840 I think. I think
00:01:19.400 what happened was very early on
00:01:21.520 because I did it sort of for myself
00:01:23.740 you know, as a kind of laugh and
00:01:24.860 very early on what happened is it started getting
00:01:27.420 retweeting a lot. And particularly when I, because I wanted
00:01:29.320 her to be like a slam poet. So
00:01:31.240 because I was really, I really like
00:01:33.080 slam poetry. You know, it's so bad
00:01:35.500 isn't it? And it's like, it's
00:01:37.340 really bad. And I love
00:01:39.140 I love watching them do it
00:01:41.260 because they stand there and they sort of do that really sort of
00:01:43.580 self-important pausing at the start
00:01:45.520 you know, where like, oh man, I've just got to get into character
00:01:47.500 and then they launch into it and it's just
00:01:49.460 terrible. And
00:01:50.220 it's always really earnest. I love that
00:01:53.520 sort of stuff it's really earnest and it's about important things it's my my truth you know and so
00:01:58.040 i thought it'd be quite good um for her to do that um and so i when i was writing the poems
00:02:04.300 and putting poems out there they tend to get retweeted quite a lot and then it started getting
00:02:07.820 retweeted by sort of more prominent what they call amplifiers like on twitter um and then she
00:02:13.800 got permanently banned and um so she'd been banned a couple of times right um and then she was
00:02:20.200 permanently banned and i had an email saying titania's gone you cannot come back and then
00:02:24.900 loads of people sort of kicked off about it and they emailed me again saying oh it's all right
00:02:28.440 she's back again so they undid the permanent ban right twitter call it a permanent suspension
00:02:33.540 which is a semantic contradiction but um but they're not literate you know so i they're not
00:02:39.620 though um and so they but they obviously like so this is the weird thing about like so she's had
00:02:45.100 now four seven-day suspensions multiple one-day suspensions a full permanent ban um so twitter
00:02:52.400 obviously don't like this character they're not going to verify it they won't do anything like
00:02:55.760 that so they hate the character because of ideological reasons um because of course twitter
00:03:00.860 and youtube and google and facebook all of these big sort of silicon valley tech giants are all
00:03:06.100 very woke and they all have the same political mindset and actually they have to in order to
00:03:10.780 get a job because there are thousands of moderators
00:03:12.620 at these companies who sit
00:03:14.800 there and there's these woke people
00:03:16.900 who sit there deciding, no you can't
00:03:18.780 say that, you should say this. These little Mary White
00:03:20.740 Houses
00:03:21.060 but they're just trendy and young
00:03:24.040 and they're deciding what you should and what you
00:03:26.720 shouldn't say and in fact you have to
00:03:28.700 answer a questionnaire in order to
00:03:30.740 get the job to prove that you're sufficiently
00:03:32.620 woke and that's why they've all got the exact same
00:03:34.720 mindset. So they
00:03:36.220 obviously hate Titania
00:03:37.760 but it was after the ban, just to make the point
00:03:40.240 After the permanent ban, when that was revoked,
00:03:43.680 the next day I got 20,000 followers within 24 hours
00:03:46.440 because it's the Streisand effect.
00:03:48.260 So you ban someone and then they get amplified.
00:03:50.360 So that's really why it's happening.
00:03:51.540 We recently had the same thing with the interview we did with Posey Parker.
00:03:54.720 Yeah.
00:03:54.940 It was a very controversial gender.
00:03:58.300 There we go.
00:03:59.100 Some of you watched it.
00:04:00.860 So it got taken down from YouTubers' quote, hate speech.
00:04:04.440 Yes.
00:04:04.600 And then two days later it got reinstated
00:04:06.800 and then now it's got ten times the views that it had at the time.
00:04:09.380 Right, exactly, exactly.
00:04:10.880 But it never works.
00:04:12.140 This stuff never works.
00:04:12.880 I don't understand why if you know anything about history,
00:04:14.440 you know that censorship doesn't work.
00:04:16.960 It just gives the ideas you're trying to crush a kind of credence.
00:04:20.740 And so it's self-defeating on their part.
00:04:24.560 You know what I mean?
00:04:25.020 I think if they hate what you stand for,
00:04:27.560 then don't draw attention to it.
00:04:29.080 Well, in Weimar Germany,
00:04:31.200 they had hate speech laws against anti-Semitism.
00:04:34.300 You could not be anti-Semitic.
00:04:36.600 Right, exactly.
00:04:37.100 I mean, Goebbels was prosecuted.
00:04:38.080 all sorts of Nazis were prosecuted under hate speech laws
00:04:40.660 and they used it as a major PR exercise
00:04:42.680 and it gave them a massive boost
00:04:44.760 this is the big myth about hate speech
00:04:46.440 if only we'd had hate speech laws
00:04:48.400 to stop Hitler, no it helped him
00:04:50.120 it always happens like this
00:04:52.120 and the phrase hate speech doesn't mean anything
00:04:54.480 it means the opinion I don't like
00:04:56.760 you can't quantify that
00:04:58.420 and for me, this is why I do believe
00:05:00.400 that hate speech laws need to be abolished full stop
00:05:02.060 because I don't trust the state
00:05:04.160 I definitely don't trust Silicon Valley
00:05:06.060 plutocrats
00:05:07.900 you know billionaires avaricious capitalists uh who claim to be good and noble i don't trust them
00:05:14.860 and i don't trust the state i don't want anyone deciding uh what i can say and plus people should
00:05:19.280 be allowed to if they hate things they should be allowed to say so it's not up to me you know the
00:05:23.400 way you deal with that is you attack those people like i don't want to live in a society full of
00:05:27.480 racists and homophobes and the rest of it but i'd rather they were able to say what they thought they
00:05:32.360 think you know you know the current we know who they are firstly we know who they are you know
00:05:37.580 you don't drive them away so that they sort of fester and never be challenged that's the first
00:05:41.660 thing because that just that just endorses their own views that emboldens them and the other thing
00:05:46.240 is you know i i i don't think that's the best way to i think any response to nasty offensive speech
00:05:51.960 is is to critique ridicule counter argue or whatever because that way you can deal with it
00:05:59.540 but trying to shut it down actually always inevitably amplifies that and that's why i say
00:06:05.240 this a lot and i'm very serious about this and i think people don't take it seriously i believe
00:06:09.140 that the woke movement and the social justice movement as it currently stands is doing the pr
00:06:14.260 on behalf of the far right it is amplifying and boosting the far right without meaning to i think
00:06:18.660 it's probably well intentioned but i think it's doing all the wrong things and it is self-defeating
00:06:23.620 can i just say we've been talking for 10 minutes and we already spoke for about three of them on
00:06:28.160 the nazi so well done everybody we already got straight into sorry yeah but and what do you
00:06:34.040 think the character of titania has been labeled far right i mean it's a nonsense isn't it oh it
00:06:39.480 absolutely is because people don't know what far right means that's one thing people have stopped
00:06:44.860 reading books and they don't know what so i think there's a big confusion about what left and right
00:06:48.680 means i mean i had even the guardian called us both right wing comedians right i think i mean
00:06:53.720 you're further right than me aren't you i'd say thank you well i'm just saying like
00:06:57.480 but given that you are far right
00:07:01.560 me being further right than you
00:07:03.520 I'm pretty fucked
00:07:05.400 you're an old school lefty
00:07:07.540 I'm a centrist right
00:07:09.040 so we're both Nazis
00:07:10.380 if you take
00:07:12.160 if you take the spectrum
00:07:16.000 of where we are
00:07:17.280 you're just objectively further right than me
00:07:19.240 but then the Guardian is further right than me
00:07:21.180 so I mean that's the weird thing
00:07:23.020 when the Guardian calls you right wing
00:07:24.380 but even the Guardian doesn't know what it means anymore
00:07:27.180 Well, they don't. I mean, I've had writers for The Guardian
00:07:29.260 calling me alt-right.
00:07:31.840 I'm not. That's opposed to everything
00:07:33.340 I believe. These Labour,
00:07:35.380 they don't mean anything. People aren't educated politically.
00:07:37.180 I think that's part of the problem. Titania
00:07:39.020 is mocking the woke left. But of course,
00:07:41.200 the problem is that the woke left aren't actually left.
00:07:43.480 They identify as left, but they don't know what left means.
00:07:45.820 They're incredibly, incredibly bourgeois.
00:07:47.680 The woke movement, you know
00:07:49.280 this. You know this to be true. Whenever you
00:07:50.980 hear this stuff online or you see
00:07:52.480 an opinion column in The New Statesman or The Guardian
00:07:55.280 coming from this very woke perspective,
00:07:57.180 invariably like nine times out of ten
00:07:59.100 that person is privately educated
00:08:00.940 really deeply privileged
00:08:02.580 and they just want to talk about how oppressed they are
00:08:05.400 and you know that's funny
00:08:07.640 ultimately that's
00:08:09.440 really funny
00:08:10.200 so let's dig in because we use these terms
00:08:13.480 left and right and no one seems to know what they mean
00:08:15.420 I'm not sure I know what they mean anymore
00:08:17.040 so I guess in your sense
00:08:18.920 being left wing means
00:08:20.920 a focus on class
00:08:22.500 and economics and money
00:08:23.900 that's what it's all about
00:08:25.960 And, you know, the working man should own the means of production.
00:08:31.700 You know, the idea that you can just take away class and money
00:08:36.620 and substitute race, gender, sexuality and identity politics
00:08:41.000 is a complete misunderstanding of what.
00:08:43.200 That's why proper lefties, sort of old school lefties,
00:08:46.100 they never sit comfortably with this kind of identitarian woke thing.
00:08:49.540 Bernie Sanders doesn't fit well with a woke template.
00:08:52.280 Jeremy Corbyn doesn't either.
00:08:53.420 When Jeremy Corbyn stands up and announces his pronouns,
00:08:55.960 It feels weird, right?
00:08:58.860 Not least because there was no one in any doubt
00:09:01.460 about what his pronouns were.
00:09:04.260 And it's weird.
00:09:05.320 There's a weirdness about it, you know?
00:09:07.020 When Jeremy Corbyn, you know,
00:09:08.980 does that speech at Loughborough
00:09:10.140 and white people are charged an extra Ā£10 to see it
00:09:12.980 and you just think,
00:09:13.900 this stuff is not what he really is.
00:09:17.640 It's not what socialism is
00:09:19.060 and it's not what being on the left means.
00:09:20.920 It's been sort of hijacked.
00:09:22.180 And I think, I put it down to class issues.
00:09:24.500 I put it down to the fact that, you know,
00:09:25.960 seven percent of our country is educated privately those people they run the media the arts all the
00:09:32.560 the law policing everything so they are the influencers but they're so but they they're
00:09:38.580 this privileged woke group and that's the problem and then you get this sense that this is everywhere
00:09:42.240 i mean like we see every day don't we get these articles this constant churning of woke stuff
00:09:46.400 down our throats and you you get you you start to believe that this is the world we live in now
00:09:50.780 and it's not, it's a small minority
00:09:53.040 it's a tiny minority of really
00:09:55.020 powerful rich people who are pushing
00:09:57.020 this woke narrative, you know when Kamala Harris
00:09:58.900 said recently that
00:10:00.840 Trump won't win in 2020 because
00:10:02.720 the world is woke now
00:10:04.160 and you're like
00:10:06.060 no, you're woke and your mates are
00:10:08.980 woke, people aren't
00:10:10.860 the voters aren't and you'll find out what come election day
00:10:12.980 you know
00:10:15.020 it's completely true
00:10:16.820 what you said, so this movement
00:10:18.820 seems to have started as far as i can see from the last sort of 10 to 15 years yeah and you say
00:10:23.900 it's seven percent but why do you think it comes from guilt the fact that these people are born
00:10:28.660 into great wealth they've had these wonderful lives they look around the world people are
00:10:32.280 struggling and then somehow they want to be able to feel better about themselves whilst doing
00:10:36.440 i'd love to know why i don't know why i i i yeah it's it's it there's an odd inverse ratio isn't
00:10:43.280 The more privileged we become and the more the more tolerant we become as a society.
00:10:48.580 You know, we live in one of the most tolerant countries in the world where we don't have these problems of racism, sex and homophobia.
00:10:53.740 I'm not saying they're not there, but when it happens, you notice it.
00:10:57.080 It's weird because it's so unusual, isn't it?
00:10:59.160 It's, you know, whenever there's a homophobic attack in the news, everyone is furious.
00:11:04.060 Everyone is outraged. You don't get these voices saying, hang on a minute, maybe that was, you know, we live in that really sweet spot, you know.
00:11:10.780 and yet for some reason
00:11:13.840 now, now that we've reached that point of greater
00:11:16.180 tolerance, we are more
00:11:18.060 convinced than ever, or certain people are more
00:11:19.980 convinced than ever that we're worse than we ever were
00:11:21.820 so there's this weird thing going on
00:11:23.620 I don't know why. And it's interesting to me because
00:11:26.040 in my show in Edinburgh, which you know because you directed
00:11:28.140 it, I
00:11:28.840 Broadway's smash hit
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00:11:58.280 mirvish.com yeah i love nepotism this is like just have my mate this is how it works yeah
00:12:05.780 Well, every night, one of the things I would say on stage is
00:12:10.340 we live in one of the most welcoming, open, tolerant countries in the world.
00:12:13.720 And as an immigrant, I'm allowed to say that, right?
00:12:17.320 You're not.
00:12:18.920 And every night, the crowd would pull back.
00:12:22.020 Like, I've just said Harvey Weinstein is like a top lad or something.
00:12:25.420 Can I just say, Anton, who's our producer, clip that, please,
00:12:29.180 and let's make it go viral.
00:12:31.360 Someone will do it, won't they?
00:12:32.520 so i i what i don't understand is how that there's this terror yeah of just acknowledging
00:12:39.500 a fundamental reality which is that while of course there's racism and sexism and homo sexism
00:12:45.420 in my case with the actor actress uh intolerance all of these things exist yeah but they they need
00:12:51.460 to be taken in relation to the rest of the world right we are one of the best places to be an
00:12:55.920 immigrant in the world why is that a controversial idea how they've created this idea that this is
00:13:00.520 somehow so i think partly it's what you were saying i think it's partly to be that sense of
00:13:04.720 guilt um i partly it's due with the our educational standards i think are pretty poor so i i i think
00:13:11.660 there's that people don't really know about history they don't know about context uh they
00:13:15.400 don't understand where we are on that sort of historical spectrum um why else is it i want to
00:13:21.120 get to the bottom of it i'd love to know why this is happening i think the big thing and i could be
00:13:26.880 wrong this is supposition right i think the big thing is like what so if you go back to the 80s
00:13:30.200 and 90s you had this political correctness movement you know where we were we were trying
00:13:33.900 to work out uh we were trying to sort of agree on a social contract about way the way we talk to
00:13:39.520 each other and that was a good thing and you ended up with this kind of there were mistakes made and
00:13:43.600 people were fired for the wrong reason they were it was very very messy but ultimately we got to
00:13:47.360 the point where you didn't have just open expressions of homophobia people at least know
00:13:51.940 that they're free to do it but if they do it people aren't going to approve and that's a
00:13:55.180 really good position to be in um and that kept going when it should have stopped i think so i
00:14:00.980 think we're at we've got this that's why i never talk about political correct i don't think what
00:14:04.620 we're living through is a period of political correctness i don't use that phrase i think it's
00:14:08.560 something i think it's the deformed offspring of political correctness and i don't know what
00:14:13.260 you call that and i really struggle with what to call that um it's a weirdly authoritarian um
00:14:20.200 it's it's it's it's it's a coterie of fantasists it i remind right so it reminds me of so if you
00:14:26.720 go back to the sort of 80s 90s there's a reason right there's a reason why all of the stuff you're
00:14:31.080 going to read at the moment that's calling for bans and censorship and and uh and disapproving
00:14:35.780 of comedians and their jokes it's always going to be on left-wing press now it's always in the
00:14:40.760 garden it's the stuff that you would have read daily mail circa 1985 right that's what it used
00:14:47.000 to be you used to have like the right-wing tabloids talking about we need to ban this film we need to
00:14:50.400 ban this filth the movie crash that the express and the mail called for that to be banned but
00:14:56.100 that sort of stuff now you'll read on the on the left so something sort of flipped uh and i don't
00:15:01.940 know what what i don't know what that is or why um maybe you have some insights but do you see what
00:15:07.200 i mean i think it's a something's gone wrong something's become twisted and the values that
00:15:13.200 we used to believe on the left
00:15:15.120 have been forgotten and particularly things
00:15:17.220 about artistic freedom and freedom of expression
00:15:18.940 and I think the fantasists are now
00:15:21.200 on the left where they used to be on the right so
00:15:22.780 if you read like a column from Richard
00:15:25.120 Littlejohn back in the day and he would
00:15:26.920 be talking about how the country
00:15:29.140 is flooded with asylum seekers
00:15:31.020 and they're being washed with benefits
00:15:33.260 and tiaras and hotel rooms
00:15:35.200 and diamonds and
00:15:36.060 it was never easy to be an asylum
00:15:39.040 seeker in this country right it's this was this
00:15:41.100 fantasy world that he lived in
00:15:42.740 But now it's the woke left living this fantasy one.
00:15:45.880 This is a fantasy world where everyone's a Nazi,
00:15:47.880 where they're behind every pillar.
00:15:49.240 There's probably a fascist over there.
00:15:50.640 There's probably, you know, like, there's fascists.
00:15:52.300 Boris Johnson using the word surrender is a dog whistle to fascists.
00:15:57.060 It's a military metaphor.
00:15:59.780 That's what I mean about literacy.
00:16:01.300 I don't think, I think the woke movement has lost any kind of,
00:16:06.220 it's like they're trying to find, you know what it is?
00:16:08.740 So they identify as anti-racist.
00:16:10.260 They love racism.
00:16:11.220 they can't get enough of it
00:16:13.020 they want to see it everywhere
00:16:14.280 so you know Sarah Silverman blacking up
00:16:17.180 for an anti-racist sketch
00:16:18.500 she's a racist yay
00:16:20.140 we found another one
00:16:21.980 and it's
00:16:23.960 fucking Mary Poppins
00:16:26.400 so I make this point
00:16:28.700 because
00:16:29.380 I tweeted as Titania
00:16:32.300 last August
00:16:33.960 I took that moment in Mary Poppins
00:16:36.020 I took a still
00:16:36.720 you know where she's got chimney soot on her face
00:16:38.840 do you remember that bit in the film
00:16:41.180 and I took a still
00:16:43.200 and I said as to Tanya
00:16:44.120 I said this is blackface
00:16:45.300 this is disgusting
00:16:46.600 Julie Andrews
00:16:47.320 indulging in blackface
00:16:49.160 she's a racist right
00:16:51.060 that was in August
00:16:53.120 February of this year
00:16:54.580 the New York Times
00:16:55.440 ran an article
00:16:56.160 saying Mary Poppins
00:16:57.720 and it's shameful
00:16:58.620 flirting with blackface
00:16:59.820 with a
00:17:01.160 with a still
00:17:02.580 from the same scene
00:17:03.720 now that's the same
00:17:06.000 as what I said
00:17:06.660 but I said it
00:17:07.700 to take the piss
00:17:08.460 right
00:17:10.120 there was an article two days ago
00:17:13.300 in The Nation talking about
00:17:15.200 how Thanksgiving's a great
00:17:17.240 time, forget about
00:17:19.280 avoiding conflict, have a row
00:17:20.900 with your Trump supporting family
00:17:22.800 get into a fight
00:17:24.020 this was in The Nation, I wrote an article
00:17:26.400 I did a fake article last year last year
00:17:28.440 saying if I don't have a punch up with my grandmother
00:17:30.640 over Christmas, over Brexit, I'll be really upset
00:17:32.880 it was the same principle
00:17:34.340 and it really worries me
00:17:36.700 that this stuff is so easy to predict
00:17:38.640 it really worries me because anything I can come up with
00:17:41.560 at the moment, as ludicrous as it sounds
00:17:43.700 is probably going to come true
00:17:45.560 right?
00:17:47.260 that's scary, not least because I don't want that sort of power
00:17:49.860 like I don't
00:17:51.540 you're a comedian
00:17:53.140 you do want that sort of power
00:17:54.500 no I don't
00:17:55.160 I'm frightened, I'm terrified
00:17:57.600 by my own prophetic ability
00:18:00.140 and modesty
00:18:02.520 no I don't have that
00:18:05.460 but there's a
00:18:07.840 question that I want to ask you which is
00:18:10.300 we see the left gradually eating
00:18:12.380 itself, now you and I are both lefties
00:18:14.040 and we eventually want a leftist
00:18:16.540 government to come in, we believe that will make
00:18:18.440 society fairer and all the rest of it
00:18:20.100 but you look at the behaviour of some of the people
00:18:22.600 in inverted commas on our team and you're like
00:18:24.420 well you're ruining it
00:18:25.580 how are you going to win hearts and minds if you just start screaming
00:18:28.520 at each other? We don't have a serious leftist option
00:18:30.560 at the moment
00:18:31.000 I don't think we've got that
00:18:33.800 when you allow
00:18:38.900 the woke movement to take over
00:18:40.400 you are allowing the bullies to take over
00:18:42.680 and it's never going to work
00:18:43.760 that's what's happened with Corbyn's band
00:18:46.820 now
00:18:47.240 and the worst thing about these bullies
00:18:50.660 is they think they're good
00:18:52.180 so that's really scary
00:18:54.560 and then you get
00:18:57.020 all sorts of problems
00:18:57.640 that's why I can never vote Corbyn again
00:18:59.660 because I think he's bought into all this identity politics nonsense
00:19:02.400 I think hiring Monroe Bergdorf to be your
00:19:05.100 advisor
00:19:06.220 that's the LGBTQIA plus activist
00:19:08.780 I apologise if I missed out
00:19:11.060 one of those fucking letters
00:19:12.040 but
00:19:14.860 and
00:19:16.400 that makes me think he's not a thinker
00:19:19.200 he's not a free thinker
00:19:20.120 anyone who buys into
00:19:23.400 the woke movement I doubt their
00:19:25.260 capacity for free thinking because
00:19:26.860 when you talk to them, I got in an argument recently with someone
00:19:29.340 who identifies as non-binary
00:19:30.480 and as soon as they started talking
00:19:32.800 I'm like, I know your opinion about
00:19:34.740 everything. Now that's
00:19:36.580 that I think is really scary because I'm no longer talking
00:19:38.680 to an individual, I'm talking to an ideology
00:19:40.280 I'm talking to a cipher for an ideology
00:19:42.420 and I don't want to feel like that because I like to
00:19:44.680 treat people as individuals
00:19:45.560 but if I can predict everything
00:19:48.580 you're going to say or think about anything, you're no longer
00:19:50.760 an individual or indeed thinking for yourself
00:19:52.720 you know, I mean this was
00:19:54.100 someone who is a comedian apparently
00:19:56.480 and
00:19:57.180 I like you looked at me when you said that
00:20:00.460 Yeah, sorry about that.
00:20:04.400 And goes to various gigs.
00:20:06.900 And she said to me, like, I go, you don't understand.
00:20:08.600 I go to...
00:20:09.300 Yes, because she's female, evidently, right?
00:20:12.120 No, no, I'm sorry.
00:20:12.900 The thing about this is there is a biological reality to gender.
00:20:17.140 No!
00:20:20.620 Listen, I'm not...
00:20:22.260 Okay.
00:20:23.760 And that's the moment we get cancelled, guys.
00:20:25.720 Right, look.
00:20:27.460 Okay, look, let me explain that.
00:20:28.760 so I'm a full on liberal
00:20:31.500 I'm a liberal so I believe you should be able to call yourself
00:20:33.780 whatever you want
00:20:35.080 identify however you want
00:20:36.840 and I have no problem with that and also there are people
00:20:39.440 who genuinely
00:20:41.060 feel in their heart
00:20:43.440 that they have been born into the wrong body and want to do something
00:20:45.440 about it and that is not
00:20:46.940 something I support wholeheartedly
00:20:49.040 do whatever you need to do
00:20:50.600 so the idea of non-binary as a label
00:20:53.400 is a form of self-identification
00:20:55.320 which has no grounding in reality
00:20:56.880 right it is the idea of it's actually an incredibly conservative idea because what you're saying is
00:21:01.920 my version of being feminine or being masculine isn't right i'm not it's not i'm not feeling it
00:21:06.340 so what you're in fact doing is saying that i believe that actually boys should behave this way
00:21:10.720 and girls should behave that way it's incredibly conservative you're reinforcing conservative
00:21:15.720 values of gender i don't think there's a problem with a girl a little girl being a tomboy i don't
00:21:20.500 think there's a problem with a little boy behaving in an effeminate way because i don't believe in
00:21:24.620 those issues i don't i think so i i don't like people re-inscribing the kind of conservative
00:21:29.540 ideas about gender that we tried to get rid of that's what i mean so i so i'm so if you want
00:21:34.360 to call yourself non-binary that's fine and i will support your right to do so and i will
00:21:38.720 and i will oppose anyone who tries to demonize you for doing so but i'm not going to expect other
00:21:45.160 people to believe that it has any material reality okay it's a gender we've bought into this faith
00:21:51.620 based idea that gender is entirely
00:21:53.740 a social construct right
00:21:55.560 it's not it's a
00:21:56.920 very complicated blend
00:21:59.560 of social and cultural and biological
00:22:01.620 factors and we don't
00:22:03.660 always fully understand it
00:22:04.960 so any kind of ideologue that comes along and says no
00:22:07.600 it's 100% about biology or no
00:22:09.700 it's 100% about
00:22:10.580 society and about culture
00:22:13.260 they're both wrong and they're
00:22:15.680 both unwilling
00:22:17.540 to look at nuance right
00:22:19.240 so that's why sorry this just came because I
00:22:21.520 misgendered someone right that's that's all this came from you know but you were talking about this
00:22:26.060 comedian okay so so what she was saying was that she'd go to a club and go up and um like
00:22:33.120 constantly be having to berate comedians for the jokes they tell right and and and i was expected
00:22:39.060 to say that i support this i'm like i'm surprised i'm surprised i'm being punched to be honest like
00:22:43.040 so the idea of and it's really kind of but i think it's authentic i think this person felt
00:22:47.400 genuinely harmed and hurt
00:22:49.360 by the jokes that these comedians
00:22:51.680 were telling and that's very scary
00:22:53.740 because firstly that suggests that
00:22:55.400 there's a misunderstanding of what comedy is
00:22:57.560 right but also there's a real sense of
00:22:59.580 entitlement there that's what worries me about
00:23:01.680 it's almost like the whole world is different
00:23:03.600 to what I want it to be so I'm going to demand
00:23:05.520 not just persuade or talk but I'm
00:23:07.660 going to demand that the whole world changes around me
00:23:09.560 and I just totally mistrust that if I
00:23:11.720 get married tomorrow
00:23:13.200 and I meet a say
00:23:15.700 an evangelical Christian and that
00:23:17.520 evangelical Christian says I do not
00:23:19.000 accept your relationship
00:23:21.280 I'm not going to call that person your husband
00:23:23.400 I can say well hold a minute can we have
00:23:25.660 a discussion about it or whatever but ultimately
00:23:27.840 I can't say if you don't call this
00:23:29.720 person my husband you should be arrested
00:23:31.180 it's up to them that's their freedom that's their
00:23:33.560 conscience so that's my
00:23:35.520 defining line the liberal
00:23:37.700 perspective is you can call yourself what you
00:23:39.700 want and be whatever you want and say whatever you want
00:23:41.620 but once you try to impose by law
00:23:43.780 your own values onto someone else
00:23:46.420 then that's an illiberal perspective to hold
00:23:48.480 right? So that's why I'm not on board
00:23:50.340 with this idea of misgendering. If someone
00:23:52.360 wants to call me she, they can
00:23:53.860 right? And I can say well that's
00:23:56.360 just factually wrong
00:23:57.220 but they, I'm not, you know, what am I going to do?
00:24:00.500 That's their call. It's a bit
00:24:02.320 stupid but I mean it's like
00:24:03.480 that's their call isn't it? It goes
00:24:06.300 back to that conversation you and I had
00:24:08.180 at Unleashed where before, you know, the difference
00:24:10.440 between men and women was the hackist
00:24:12.540 topic in comedy. But now
00:24:14.460 it's cutting edge and dare I say it's even fucking
00:24:16.540 dangerous. Yeah, exactly.
00:24:18.020 The moment you started talking about binary differences
00:24:20.400 between men and women, there was a real tension.
00:24:22.120 There was a real tension in the room. But why?
00:24:24.060 You should be able to... Also, we need to be able to...
00:24:25.720 First thing, we need to be able to discuss this stuff.
00:24:28.100 And we need to be able to joke about this stuff.
00:24:30.540 And by talking about it and discussing,
00:24:32.320 you're not endorsing
00:24:34.020 hatred against a particular group.
00:24:36.800 The opposite. You're saying,
00:24:38.280 let's talk about why you feel the way you feel
00:24:40.480 and let's see how we can make this work.
00:24:42.540 you know, I'm against that kind of intolerance.
00:24:45.600 I'm against hatred, right?
00:24:47.840 But once you start using language like,
00:24:49.360 you are erasing my right to exist,
00:24:51.580 what you're doing there is you're conflating speech and violence
00:24:53.860 and they're very, very different things.
00:24:55.240 And it's a trick.
00:24:56.180 It's rhetorical sleight of hand and it shouldn't be trusted.
00:24:59.340 It's gone very serious.
00:25:00.480 No, it has.
00:25:02.040 We're going to do a Q&A in about 10 minutes.
00:25:03.900 But before we get to that,
00:25:04.840 I wanted to pick up on this thing that you mentioned about
00:25:07.180 the woke movement reinforcing stereotypes.
00:25:11.340 yeah it's like the joke that titania made about francis looking jewish right oh yeah okay and i
00:25:16.360 love jews because they're cunning and all this kind of stuff right right like it seems to me
00:25:20.440 that a lot of this stuff is actually reinforcing a lot of stereotypes for example you're not gay
00:25:26.020 because you don't buy into it right you're automatically not your gayness is erased by
00:25:30.880 this thing or black people are not black if they don't vote for the democratic party or whatever
00:25:35.420 it is sounds like a joke but that's what people are saying that's what people say yeah yeah yeah
00:25:39.020 they're saying that to be to be gay is if you uh basically are on the left
00:25:43.840 or like or you know like alexander the great um uh it's very tolerant very tolerant this idea that
00:25:56.780 and i this is why i think it's so it's rooted in a kind of homophobia and racism you know because
00:26:00.980 it's this idea that basically if you're gay you're all the same aren't you or you should all think
00:26:05.900 the same way. You're not individuals
00:26:07.680 with different ideas. There is no difference
00:26:09.880 between
00:26:10.560 Reggie Cray and Christopher Biggins.
00:26:16.720 It'd be a hell of a podcast, Andrew.
00:26:19.640 Right.
00:26:22.760 I find that
00:26:24.140 more homophobic
00:26:26.600 than what is often called homophobia.
00:26:29.880 I find that worse.
00:26:31.140 I find the patronising view of minorities.
00:26:33.540 I find it when people say,
00:26:34.380 you know we had this it was at the battle of ideas where we had the debate where someone said you
00:26:37.860 know about joking about islam and like if you if you're saying that we shouldn't joke about islam
00:26:42.040 i'm going to ask you why you have such a low opinion of muslims frankly why do you why do you
00:26:47.480 why do you look down on muslims like this where you think they can't have a joke what's the matter
00:26:50.760 with you i i think that's and that's what i think a lot that's why titania is really a bit racist
00:26:54.780 big and she she is a bit homophobic she's got all those prejudices that she's projecting on
00:26:59.620 everyone else because i think the woke movement even though it's it's weird it's a well-intentioned
00:27:03.680 racism when did that happen it's it's it's well-intentioned all of it and yet it's it's
00:27:10.120 it looks down on on groups so it's like white liberals deciding what people of color should
00:27:14.680 think what is going this is this is the weirdness of it you know and if they were just if it was
00:27:20.560 malevolent i'd find it easier to deal with that's the weird thing if they were if they were just
00:27:26.020 cunts then then well they are cunts but they're but they're inadvertently cunts right um some of
00:27:33.200 them aren't nice. So we shouldn't let them
00:27:35.180 all off the hook. So a certain contingent
00:27:37.280 of the woke group are unpleasant
00:27:39.060 human beings who just want to exert power.
00:27:41.660 And a lot of them are comedians, let's
00:27:43.160 be honest about it.
00:27:45.040 They're just not nice. They're bullies who enjoy bullying.
00:27:47.360 That's what it is. And the reason
00:27:49.200 why they get so angry about Titania
00:27:50.380 is because it's someone standing up to the bullies and they don't like
00:27:53.320 it. That's really what it is.
00:27:55.640 Well, one person tried to agree with you
00:27:57.120 during that speech. Everyone else doesn't give a fuck.
00:28:00.800 Do you want to do one more question before we take it to the audience?
00:28:03.200 Yeah, so you were talking that you were prophetic.
00:28:06.620 Yes, boasting, I think.
00:28:09.800 You've gone fully into character.
00:28:12.760 So we are where we are.
00:28:14.940 It's the end of the year.
00:28:16.480 What do you think 2020 is going to bring as far as we can see?
00:28:21.100 Okay, I think it'll be a Tory majority.
00:28:23.560 Yep.
00:28:24.180 I think Trump will win again.
00:28:27.980 I know I'm smiling when I'm saying that,
00:28:29.560 but it's like I'm not a fan of Trump,
00:28:31.420 but part of me likes that it's annoying
00:28:33.500 these people
00:28:34.140 I do
00:28:36.400 I know
00:28:38.360 I know there's a lot at stake
00:28:41.300 but
00:28:43.520 it's the look of their face
00:28:45.720 you know it's like
00:28:46.700 he triggers them like no other
00:28:49.160 I mean I love that he tweeted that picture
00:28:51.700 of himself superimposed onto Rocky's body
00:28:53.580 I love like it's
00:28:56.760 he is really funny
00:28:58.620 and that's it
00:29:00.140 But by the same token, I don't want the president of the United States to be funny.
00:29:04.140 So I really don't.
00:29:05.280 But since he is, you know, let's just like...
00:29:07.660 I mean, wasn't that thing with Ilhan Omar where she wanted to go back to see her grandmother in Palestine?
00:29:13.200 And no, she'd applied to the Israeli government and they'd said, yeah, okay, you can if you just see your dying grandmother.
00:29:22.020 And then she replied saying, no, I'm not going to.
00:29:24.960 I'm not going to dig down or whatever it was.
00:29:26.160 and then Trump said well the only winner in this situation
00:29:28.980 is her grandmother who won't have to see her
00:29:30.740 and that was
00:29:33.080 and that was
00:29:36.720 tweeted out
00:29:37.540 from
00:29:38.780 and
00:29:40.440 it's funnier because it's the president
00:29:42.700 that automatically makes it funnier
00:29:45.080 right
00:29:45.420 I'm not a Trump supporter
00:29:48.020 I agree with you and I think the thing that
00:29:50.900 if you pay attention to the
00:29:52.980 democratic debates, the democrats
00:29:54.800 like you were talking about Kamala Harris
00:29:56.340 they've decided that they
00:29:58.660 weren't woke enough
00:29:59.800 and they're going to go further off the deep end
00:30:02.760 so that's why Nancy Pelosi hates the squad
00:30:04.880 she can't stand the
00:30:06.740 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of this world
00:30:08.580 because they, whenever you think of
00:30:10.660 democrat, you're now thinking
00:30:12.920 of her
00:30:13.460 and that's Trump's plan I guess
00:30:16.860 it's a really good call
00:30:18.260 because woke politics is an
00:30:20.760 electoral death, it doesn't work
00:30:23.200 people aren't going to vote for it
00:30:24.760 they just convince themselves in their little bubbles that they will.
00:30:27.520 But in a way, it doesn't matter to them
00:30:29.440 because I see a lot of the people
00:30:30.900 who are on that sort of momentum side of the Labour Party
00:30:33.300 and they almost don't care if they win
00:30:35.060 because they have two narratives.
00:30:36.740 Number one, if they win, we won, we're great,
00:30:39.460 you know, the world is a better place.
00:30:41.080 Or number two, the world is racist, it doesn't matter.
00:30:43.620 Well, yes, that's it.
00:30:44.500 So if they lose, it proves their point that there's a problem.
00:30:47.120 Yeah, we had James Lindsay of the hoax papers on trigonometry last week
00:30:51.540 and this is one of the things that he was saying
00:30:53.020 essentially is if they
00:30:55.020 lose, they will only see it as
00:30:56.940 reinforcement of their view. They basically say, well
00:30:59.020 we lost because the world is racist and terrible
00:31:00.960 and bigoted. Right, exactly. And that's why everyone
00:31:02.820 voted for Trump again. They actually don't
00:31:04.940 see it. No, and they
00:31:07.000 don't see that when
00:31:08.940 they lose, the best thing to do is to reflect on
00:31:10.900 why you lost. And maybe
00:31:12.980 with a bit of introspection, you'd realise
00:31:14.880 that you're the problem.
00:31:16.720 But they don't do that. They didn't do that after Hillary lost.
00:31:19.600 They didn't stop and think, well why did we
00:31:20.960 put up this, you know, millionaire
00:31:22.900 hawkish character
00:31:24.600 who is really an unattractive
00:31:26.500 I don't mean physically but I mean
00:31:27.920 an unattractive prospect
00:31:30.340 as a candidate
00:31:31.800 this dynastic idea who felt
00:31:34.920 entitled to the presidency
00:31:36.100 there were all sorts of problems, someone who was willing to play
00:31:39.020 identity politics and divide up the electorate
00:31:41.020 according to race and gender and sexuality
00:31:42.700 and say we'll help you guys, we'll help the Latinos
00:31:44.640 and we'll help the women and we'll help the gays
00:31:46.480 and actually we know that that doesn't work
00:31:49.100 in terms of elections
00:31:49.840 so why not do that
00:31:51.820 rather than go out on a big march
00:31:54.220 in pussy hats and sort of
00:31:56.140 compound the problem.
00:31:57.780 Why do that? That doesn't make any sense to me.
00:32:01.420 Same in this country.
00:32:02.540 I guarantee it'll be the same after
00:32:03.840 Labour lose. I think they will lose.
00:32:06.480 And after they do, there's going to be lots of people saying
00:32:08.080 we've bought
00:32:10.280 into this narrative in this country. And this is the real problem.
00:32:12.400 The left have bought into this fake narrative
00:32:14.380 that Brexit was about race.
00:32:16.540 And they've bought into this idea that we live in a racist
00:32:18.480 country and we just don't.
00:32:20.280 And the more they say that,
00:32:21.820 the more resentment they're going to generate
00:32:23.560 from the vast majority of just normal, nice people
00:32:26.420 who are sick of being called racist.
00:32:28.300 It's just not going to work.
00:32:30.440 What I see in that is, and tell me if you agree with it,
00:32:33.160 it's kind of like almost a little bit like
00:32:35.100 we're living through the last days of the Roman Empire,
00:32:37.440 where we've lost so much confidence.
00:32:39.500 It's quite grandiose, isn't it?
00:32:40.880 But it is.
00:32:41.640 Keep it light, mate.
00:32:42.540 Fuck it.
00:32:45.440 At least he didn't say Russian Empire.
00:32:47.200 Yeah.
00:32:48.400 It wasn't really that great.
00:32:49.680 but it is we've lost confidence in ourselves as a as a civilization as a culture just to such an
00:32:59.600 extent that we're now being encouraged to be shame to feel shame rather than pride in who we are
00:33:04.320 i think i see a lot of that in that i'm not i'm not nationalistic i don't really have that so i
00:33:09.360 don't but i do understand the uh the idea but i also don't think there's anything wrong with
00:33:13.560 being nationalistic and i don't think there's anything wrong with being acknowledging where
00:33:16.820 you're from without without sort of linking it to a sense of shame or sin you know i don't think
00:33:21.980 that's helpful either all right let's open up to the audience if you've got a question just stick
00:33:25.540 your hand up and we'll try and get as many as we can oh you said the front go for it
00:33:28.380 go for it oh sorry you might be oh god um i'd be interested in your view on it's interesting you
00:33:36.260 say you won't support corbin um because i know that broadly speaking you're on board with his
00:33:42.320 economics yeah two questions one i have a whole bunch of friends who still refuse to believe that
00:33:48.980 corbyn is anti-eu yeah and utterly deny any issue whatsoever of anti-semitism within the party
00:33:56.100 okay so because if i the reason i voted for corbyn in 2017 the reason i liked him when he
00:34:02.820 first came to power the reason i supported him before he was leader is because i got a sense
00:34:08.420 from him that this is someone who's not speaking
00:34:10.380 through a kind of PR machine. He's
00:34:12.360 literally saying what he thinks and I found that really
00:34:14.200 refreshing. I don't
00:34:16.500 believe he is doing that anymore. He's
00:34:18.400 the biggest Eurosceptic. He
00:34:20.320 hates the EU. He's been opposing it for 40
00:34:22.300 years consistently. He wants us
00:34:24.260 out. And if he'd have just said
00:34:26.300 I want us to leave the EU
00:34:28.020 if he'd have said the truth
00:34:29.900 which you can't really call yourself
00:34:32.240 a socialist if you support the European
00:34:34.340 Union. Those two things simply cannot
00:34:36.300 work because capitalism is built into the
00:34:38.220 constitution of the european union okay it's a pro-corporate body so there is no way you can
00:34:42.920 those two things cannot be married together and he knows that but he won't do it and the reason
00:34:46.920 why is because he's a this support base of largely middle class pro-eu uh capitalists who like to who
00:34:54.060 like to call themselves left-wing that's the that's the that's the first thing and then when you see
00:34:57.860 the interview with andrew neal where that where andrew neal says to him uh see i've never heard
00:35:01.800 corbyn say anything explicitly anti-semitic so i'm very wary of putting that label onto him
00:35:05.760 But what I would say is he was asked an example of, I think Andrew Neil quoted an obviously anti-Semitic trope.
00:35:12.720 And he had to bully Corbyn into saying that's an anti-Semitic trope.
00:35:16.660 A Rothschild conspiracy, yeah.
00:35:17.780 Right, exactly.
00:35:18.500 So he's not being honest there.
00:35:21.400 So he knows that's an anti-Semitic trope, anyone does.
00:35:24.440 And what he's trying to do there is the same with the Brexit thing.
00:35:26.440 He's trying to keep people in his party together.
00:35:28.480 because there are people who, let's face it,
00:35:34.540 have such a problem with Israel that it does tip over into that world.
00:35:38.600 And he's trying to keep them on side,
00:35:40.020 but he's trying to keep the other lot on side.
00:35:41.260 And then with Brexit, he's trying to keep the Eurosceptics on side
00:35:43.840 as well as the pro-EU people.
00:35:46.280 So that means he's not being honest anymore.
00:35:48.720 So he's behaving like every other politician,
00:35:50.400 and that's not why I liked him.
00:35:52.020 That's what I mean.
00:35:53.200 Well, you know, on the anti-Semitism thing,
00:35:54.720 it's an interesting thing because 87% of British Jews
00:35:57.980 now think that Jeremy Corbyn's
00:36:00.120 anti-Semitic. 84%
00:36:01.920 think the Labour Party's anti-Semitic.
00:36:04.160 A number of Jewish MPs have left the
00:36:06.000 Labour Party. Now, riddle me this.
00:36:08.200 If Diane Abba, David
00:36:10.060 Lammy and Dawn Butler
00:36:11.680 had left the Labour Parties claiming
00:36:13.980 that it was institutionally anti-black
00:36:16.260 and 87%
00:36:18.100 of British black people thought that
00:36:20.080 the Labour Party was racist against
00:36:22.020 black people, would we be having this conversation?
00:36:24.900 In any way?
00:36:26.580 But we still should.
00:36:27.980 in a sense, is that I don't trust
00:36:29.640 these labels insofar as I need
00:36:32.020 some evidence. Calling someone an anti-Semite
00:36:33.920 as in calling someone a racist or calling
00:36:36.000 someone a homophobe is quite a serious accusation
00:36:38.200 and I need some specific
00:36:39.940 evidence of that, which I haven't seen of Corbyn
00:36:41.840 but I think the fact that he
00:36:43.900 won't, because
00:36:45.720 I could tell from that interview that he knew
00:36:47.940 that that was an anti-Semitic trope, he just didn't want to say it
00:36:50.040 for political reasons. That doesn't equate to
00:36:52.000 anti-Semitism but it certainly doesn't
00:36:53.660 it certainly won't quell the fears
00:36:55.620 of Jewish people.
00:36:57.740 Right, who else would like...
00:36:59.880 Yes, a gentleman over there with your hand up.
00:37:02.180 I'm afraid you're going to have to shout
00:37:03.100 because I can't reach over with the mic.
00:37:04.740 It's actually a lady. Well done, mate.
00:37:07.900 At Trigonometry, we don't see gender.
00:37:10.400 Thank you very much.
00:37:13.480 Just shout, please, mate.
00:37:14.560 I'm not seeing any masculinity in here at all.
00:37:19.160 Just curious, the free speech stuff.
00:37:21.600 I'm just wondering how we start to roll that back
00:37:24.140 given the level of institutional charities, HR departments, NHS schools
00:37:30.740 that are all sort of jumping on board this, you know, curbing free speech
00:37:34.960 and trying to make people say certain things, compelling speech,
00:37:38.260 about tendering specifically, obviously, I'm talking.
00:37:40.460 So I'm just wondering how we start to roll this back
00:37:42.740 because we seem to be fighting, we're fighting a big tide here
00:37:47.280 of compulsive speech, basically, and that concerns me greatly.
00:37:51.880 Yeah, and you're right to be concerned.
00:37:53.640 it's the thing about firstly I think
00:37:55.760 we need to scrap the quangos
00:37:57.480 I think we need to stop the government
00:37:59.620 outsourcing powers to people who will decide
00:38:01.800 what we can and cannot hear and see
00:38:03.120 the example I've given before is about the advertising standards
00:38:05.960 agency who decided that certain
00:38:07.640 adverts that promote gender stereotypes
00:38:09.780 are to be banned so that we're not
00:38:11.940 I don't know what radicalised by that
00:38:13.940 I don't know what that even means
00:38:15.360 so you've got like a group of woke idiots in an office
00:38:18.260 saying well look in the Volkswagen
00:38:19.920 advert there's a woman with a pram
00:38:22.020 and that might
00:38:23.520 suggests that women can be mothers
00:38:25.360 and then you'll have
00:38:27.840 all these people thinking that women can be mothers
00:38:29.160 so I think
00:38:30.080 we get rid of the patronising
00:38:33.520 quangos but the
00:38:35.780 problem is that it's so in
00:38:37.460 the publishing industry, the
00:38:39.600 arts, all of these things, it's the
00:38:41.620 government, there's very few politicians who are
00:38:43.640 willing to stand up for free speech, who are willing to
00:38:45.720 stand up and make an anti-woke
00:38:47.960 argument and the only way it's going to happen
00:38:49.680 probably is through legislation and things like that but so the recent
00:38:51.620 case of harry miller who who is currently fighting a legal battle because he was investigated by the
00:38:56.980 police for retweeting a transphobic poem um it is quite funny and it's like it's and the policeman
00:39:03.640 said to him we've got to check your thinking you know this is quite a famous case and the problem
00:39:07.060 with that is that um that that's come from the college of policing which is not the same as the
00:39:12.380 police it's just a group of woke people who've written a book but that is how all the police are
00:39:17.240 trained. And that's what all the police
00:39:19.180 think. So you have to tackle that. But the
00:39:21.180 government doesn't stand up and want to tackle that.
00:39:23.380 So it takes one individual
00:39:25.100 who goes to a court case. And then when it
00:39:27.120 gets to court, the judge is like, this is ridiculous.
00:39:28.980 Day one, the judge was saying, what the hell is going on here?
00:39:31.260 And also the judge was saying that free speech
00:39:32.860 is there to defend unpalatable views.
00:39:35.020 That's what it's for. We don't have
00:39:37.240 the conservatives. Now,
00:39:38.700 interestingly, in the new conservative
00:39:40.840 manifesto, there is a commitment to
00:39:42.720 free speech. There's a commitment
00:39:44.840 to uphold certainly
00:39:46.500 freedom of the press which is new
00:39:48.820 that's quite interesting because up until then
00:39:50.880 I would have said that neither the conservative
00:39:52.540 because I mean Theresa May had a terrible record on free speech
00:39:54.820 Theresa May kicked out Tyler the Creator
00:39:56.740 it wouldn't allow a rapper Tyler the Creator
00:39:58.740 to come to the UK because of his lyrics
00:40:00.660 and then he did a rap about Theresa May
00:40:03.300 right
00:40:04.380 that's great there's like a rap about Theresa May
00:40:06.960 anyway so
00:40:07.600 but also the Labour Party is anti-free speech
00:40:10.840 explicitly you've had Corbyn
00:40:12.520 threatening the press
00:40:13.940 basically saying if we get in you better watch out
00:40:16.620 right and then we've got
00:40:18.360 that sort of trash talk and then you've got
00:40:20.660 like and their freedom of speech
00:40:22.080 just generally speaking they're not good on freedom of speech
00:40:24.260 so hate speech laws need to be abolished
00:40:26.780 we need to get rid of the electronic
00:40:28.140 section 127 of the electronic
00:40:30.380 communications act but who's going to do it
00:40:32.440 that's the act by the way that says that
00:40:34.460 if you transmit or write something online
00:40:36.380 that could be deemed to be grossly
00:40:38.400 offensive you can be arrested
00:40:40.500 it's a dank
00:40:41.940 clause
00:40:42.980 Exactly. Thousands of people arrested every year under that clause. And some of them saying really horrible, ghastly things. But so what? As in, that's their right. Not that you shouldn't criticise them for it, but no, I draw the line at arresting anyone for anything like this. This is why Joe Brand was investigated by the police for an obvious joke.
00:41:04.780 so this stuff you might say is not serious
00:41:06.840 but it is serious because
00:41:08.780 you've got to be vigilant when it comes to free speech
00:41:10.720 otherwise you end up like Canada, otherwise you end up
00:41:13.060 like, you do, you end up
00:41:15.020 like Mike Ward
00:41:16.920 yesterday it was discovered, the comedian
00:41:18.860 Mike Ward who was
00:41:20.400 taken to the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal
00:41:23.240 for a joke he told about a
00:41:24.880 disabled boy
00:41:25.640 and the idea being that this is such an offensive joke
00:41:29.060 and he was fined Ā£42,000
00:41:31.300 in the end after some legal wrangling
00:41:33.200 it got down to $35,000
00:41:35.560 and then he appealed it
00:41:38.080 and they've said his appeal won't be upheld
00:41:40.800 he has to pay $35,000 for this joke
00:41:43.100 he's not going to do it
00:41:44.400 which means potentially he could go to jail
00:41:46.340 and he's not just some shit poster on YouTube
00:41:49.440 he's one of Canada's most successful comedians
00:41:52.760 so you've got
00:41:53.980 Canada has a terrible track record
00:41:56.540 on free speech
00:41:58.440 it is now becoming
00:42:00.680 one of the most illiberal
00:42:02.200 countries in the west
00:42:03.860 which is really weird
00:42:04.880 under Justin Trudeau
00:42:07.840 who spends more time in blackface than out of it
00:42:10.120 let's take a question
00:42:16.180 from this section if anyone's got one
00:42:18.060 there you go, gender non-specific
00:42:20.460 person at the back
00:42:21.420 I've noticed that I've actually been
00:42:25.940 self-centered quite a lot
00:42:27.780 where someone sent me something
00:42:30.160 and I think, oh that's funny
00:42:31.780 I want to say a joke
00:42:33.620 I'd be like
00:42:34.320 oh that's gay
00:42:34.940 but I don't want to say that
00:42:35.960 maybe you should be
00:42:39.400 self-censoring
00:42:40.020 it wasn't animated
00:42:42.920 about volleyball
00:42:43.560 or something like that
00:42:44.380 and I was like
00:42:44.760 oh that's gay
00:42:45.360 volleyball is quite gay
00:42:47.520 I mean if you've seen
00:42:49.420 Top Gun
00:42:49.840 you know that
00:42:50.440 if I get any
00:42:53.280 type of success
00:42:54.280 in my life
00:42:54.900 like say 20 years
00:42:55.960 from now
00:42:56.240 that's going to get
00:42:57.580 no offense to archaeology
00:42:58.620 they're going to dig that up
00:42:59.580 he said that
00:43:00.980 20 years ago
00:43:01.740 yeah exactly yeah like do we just not say it or just keep that quiet or is it like look because
00:43:08.640 then we can't just joke about it well you should always think about what you say and you should
00:43:12.380 always decide whether you know that you know can i justify that i don't think there's anything wrong
00:43:15.720 with that i think where i have a problem is if you choose if you've if you've had that conversation
00:43:19.880 with yourself and you choose to say what you want to say and then people are going to attack you for
00:43:23.260 it and hound you out of your job i can't get i can't get on board with that at all um the offense
00:43:27.960 psychology thing is a really scary thing is it's literally anything anything probably some stuff
00:43:32.320 i've said today could get me in trouble um everything everything yeah and and i i just
00:43:39.180 but no more than that mistakes that you've made like what if i've made a joke and it didn't quite
00:43:44.460 work or maybe i've i've said things which i don't mean or so you know all that sort of stuff and
00:43:48.900 then someone can sort of find it and and and and try and smear your character but as obama said
00:43:54.100 we're all human beings with flaws
00:43:55.520 and we're not perfect and the expectation
00:43:58.060 of ideological purity is a horrible
00:44:00.280 intolerant thing
00:44:01.460 but then the New York Times just said
00:44:04.300 yeah but he's a boomer so he would say that
00:44:05.880 literally, that's literally what they said
00:44:08.160 so that's the level of debate that we're at at the moment
00:44:09.960 I don't know
00:44:11.840 when it comes to things like
00:44:13.280 racial epithets, homophobic
00:44:16.400 epithets, all the rest of it, what I'd like to think is that
00:44:18.040 we're sort of educated out of the moment
00:44:20.260 when we're at school, I think
00:44:22.100 at school is where you can be quite militant
00:44:24.020 about what people say because you said about it
00:44:25.960 because I think to be an autonomous adult
00:44:27.620 you have to be well socialized
00:44:29.240 so you can't just have kids just swearing and you know
00:44:32.000 you know taking gack
00:44:33.880 or whatever it is they're doing you know
00:44:35.780 you can't have you've got to control kids
00:44:37.800 and make sure they understand parameters and boundaries
00:44:39.900 I think when it comes to adults
00:44:41.500 no fuck off they can say whatever they want and do whatever
00:44:43.820 they've made that choice they're autonomous beings
00:44:45.480 you know so yeah it's a
00:44:48.040 it's a tricky one
00:44:48.860 I don't think anyone should lose their job for saying
00:44:51.900 a joke is gay you know i think it's probably a silly thing to say but so so what but what do
00:44:59.460 you think about this idea of self-censorship because it's something people ask me a lot as
00:45:03.260 well a lot of people and i know this from talking to a lot of people from doing my show most people
00:45:09.420 actually in the country i think it's 73 percent of people british people think that i know you
00:45:14.180 don't like this but political correctness has gone too far basically right so most people feel like
00:45:19.000 to some extent they are having to censor themselves
00:45:21.620 yeah but I know what they mean by that
00:45:22.780 so how do we break out of that
00:45:25.540 as a society of being in this kind of
00:45:27.500 death grip of fearing
00:45:29.260 to speak your mind
00:45:30.240 so honesty is a really good thing
00:45:31.720 I think
00:45:32.900 saying what you actually think is a good idea
00:45:36.960 to a degree
00:45:38.440 but I think like
00:45:40.040 in our job we do say whatever we want
00:45:42.660 and we're very privileged
00:45:44.460 but you don't do that
00:45:45.680 I wouldn't do that if I was still working as a teacher
00:45:47.500 and I wouldn't tweet the things I tweet
00:45:49.840 or when I worked at the call centre
00:45:51.460 like a lot of people when they work in place
00:45:53.080 they don't joke very much anymore
00:45:55.760 because they're worried about what people will overhear
00:45:57.860 and misconstrue
00:45:59.480 and all the dangers that come with it
00:46:01.120 you get fired from Asda for retweeting a Billy Connolly video
00:46:03.480 stuff like that
00:46:04.120 so people are very nervous
00:46:08.340 so this is why I'm very clear about this
00:46:10.400 so when people say to me
00:46:11.220 the criticism I always get is
00:46:13.280 you're always going on about how no one can say anything anymore
00:46:16.040 and I don't say that and I don't argue
00:46:18.440 that. What I'm saying is we've created a
00:46:20.300 climate where the consequences for being
00:46:22.340 honest can be so devastating
00:46:24.480 that people aren't going to do it
00:46:25.900 and that's why the polls are always wrong because
00:46:28.240 if you have a mass media telling everyone
00:46:30.340 in the country if you vote for Brexit
00:46:32.220 you're a racist or support racism
00:46:33.840 you know and someone phones you up and says which way are you planning on voting
00:46:36.500 you're not going to say well I'm a racist
00:46:37.640 you're going to keep it to yourself and then the polls
00:46:40.340 are misleading right so I think you've got
00:46:42.340 two sort of discourses going on you've got
00:46:44.100 You've got what people actually think
00:46:45.340 and what they're expected to think.
00:46:46.820 There's a thing called preference falsification
00:46:48.300 where what you do is you articulate the view
00:46:50.920 that you expect to be the most popular
00:46:52.640 instead of the thing you actually think.
00:46:55.960 And that's not helpful to anyone
00:46:57.320 because we need to have open discussions
00:46:59.780 and debates about stuff.
00:47:00.840 If you want to say anything I've said tonight
00:47:02.940 is wrong or objectionable even,
00:47:06.040 then I would love to have that conversation.
00:47:08.460 But what I don't want you doing is phoning the police
00:47:10.280 and saying he shouldn't have said this or whatever.
00:47:12.440 That's where I think it's too far.
00:47:14.100 Out of interest, if there's anyone who's got a question
00:47:15.800 who would like to disagree with me, that would be really good.
00:47:17.940 Because I do really welcome that.
00:47:20.980 Oh, there you go.
00:47:21.500 It's not a disagreement, but just something...
00:47:23.680 What did I just say?
00:47:28.600 What's your take on anonymity?
00:47:30.360 For instance, it's easy to be anonymous and say what you want,
00:47:33.280 but it's harder to kind of put your name out there
00:47:35.840 and say what you think.
00:47:36.800 So what's your take on that?
00:47:38.620 Right.
00:47:39.180 I suppose it fits into what we've just been saying as far as...
00:47:42.240 I think if everyone were just honest,
00:47:44.100 if everyone were just open about what they think
00:47:45.860 they would reach a kind of tipping point
00:47:47.400 where you can't sack everyone
00:47:48.780 and particularly when it comes to the excesses
00:47:51.720 of the social justice movement
00:47:52.700 because most people hate this stuff
00:47:55.680 and are sick of it
00:47:56.560 and are sick of being talked down to
00:47:58.020 if everyone just spoke their minds
00:48:01.000 we might realise that actually we're in the majority
00:48:03.100 and this powerful clique
00:48:05.340 of privately educated bigots
00:48:09.080 wouldn't have the power anymore
00:48:11.820 and I think that's why
00:48:12.800 think it's really great when people
00:48:14.380 and you end up with strange bed photos. So now
00:48:17.120 I have friends who are conservatives
00:48:19.280 who I never had conservative
00:48:21.140 friends. That sounds awful. But just because of the
00:48:23.180 circles I moved in and now
00:48:24.860 I've got lots and I've got
00:48:26.600 friends from all over. With that
00:48:29.000 event we went to recently where
00:48:30.100 at lunch there was the head of the
00:48:32.960 Atheist Society sitting next to an Evangelical
00:48:35.000 American pastor.
00:48:36.820 But they both agree on the free speech issue.
00:48:39.340 They hate everything each other stands for but they can talk
00:48:41.040 about this stuff and that's what we want.
00:48:42.800 But that's a weird situation to be in now, isn't it?
00:48:46.440 And also, I've started meeting all these monsters of the right.
00:48:50.900 You meet these monsters, the people you've told are absolute monsters,
00:48:53.420 and you meet them and they're like, you're nice.
00:48:55.800 You meet them and you realise that they're actually decent people.
00:48:58.500 They've just been completely mischaracterised.
00:49:00.500 And this is the big...
00:49:01.860 I spend all my...
00:49:02.940 Whenever I get into arguments on Twitter, which I shouldn't do, right?
00:49:06.380 But whenever I do, it's always someone has mischaracterised what I think
00:49:10.980 and misrepresented what I think.
00:49:12.680 and they've said, you think this, you think this, you think this
00:49:14.900 and they're always completely so far off
00:49:17.260 so I end up arguing
00:49:18.680 from a position I don't hold
00:49:21.120 I end up sort of
00:49:22.900 embodying this monster they've created
00:49:24.700 in order to argue and it's absolutely
00:49:26.960 futile, you know, so
00:49:28.120 we need to do something about
00:49:29.920 again, I don't know any of the answers
00:49:32.480 but I think honesty is a really good
00:49:34.520 place to start
00:49:36.040 just saying what you think and not being afraid of
00:49:39.120 there's more support
00:49:40.940 than you think, is what I'd say
00:49:42.660 and the question that we always end on
00:49:45.680 every episode of Trigonometry
00:49:47.120 Constantine would you do the honors
00:49:48.580 is what's the one thing we're not talking about
00:49:51.020 as a society that we really should be talking about
00:49:53.020 okay there's lots of things
00:49:54.860 I think education is a big thing
00:49:57.200 I think
00:49:57.500 I think
00:49:59.200 I wonder if I said this last time when I was interviewed
00:50:02.980 but fuck it
00:50:03.680 we've interviewed so many times
00:50:05.160 we're running out of answers to that question
00:50:07.060 I'll be unoriginal but I do think it is about critical thinking
00:50:10.600 I think it's about
00:50:13.020 I think it's about
00:50:15.400 if you let people know
00:50:17.260 it's about political debate
00:50:19.300 it's about argument
00:50:19.960 if you let people know that once they've insulted someone or shouted something
00:50:23.720 or pretended they think
00:50:25.480 your opponent thinks something they don't
00:50:27.120 you have automatically lost that argument
00:50:29.100 it's over
00:50:30.300 so trying to instill that
00:50:33.500 into people, trying to get people to think
00:50:35.500 for themselves and not according to an ideological
00:50:37.340 rule book would be great
00:50:38.640 getting people to challenge their own ideas
00:50:42.120 would be really good, all of this stuff comes back to what
00:50:44.100 you embed at school I think
00:50:45.760 not just assuming that something that someone
00:50:48.180 says is right
00:50:50.220 I'm terrified of people who cannot
00:50:52.080 self-reflect and cannot
00:50:53.920 think about their
00:50:55.040 perspectives and why they hold them
00:50:58.020 I think that's really scary to me
00:50:59.860 and I see that a lot in the
00:51:02.080 woke movement
00:51:02.720 so yeah, I think that's the thing we should be talking about
00:51:05.800 how do we make that change
00:51:07.640 again I don't know the answer to that but that's something that
00:51:09.480 if we could get to that point
00:51:10.660 that would probably solve all of our problems in terms of
00:51:13.620 political tribalism and all of that
00:51:15.680 kind of thing but how we get there I don't know
00:51:17.460 and on that note but guys
00:51:19.800 thank you so much for coming out
00:51:21.820 please please please
00:51:23.580 give a round of applause to Alex Marshall
00:51:25.360 give a round of
00:51:27.640 applause to our guest Andrew Doyle
00:51:29.600 and you've been absolutely
00:51:31.800 awesome thank you very much
00:51:33.480 have an amazing rest of your sunset
00:51:37.640 We'll be right back.
00:52:07.640 The next musical mega hit is here, the Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise,
00:52:12.620 now through June 7, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:52:16.820 Get tickets at Mirbish.com.