TRIGGERnometry - September 08, 2022


Andrew Doyle: "Vote Left or Right, You Still Get Woke Politics"


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per Minute

199.8089

Word Count

12,477

Sentence Count

942

Misogynist Sentences

14

Hate Speech Sentences

32


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 .
00:00:00.700 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:00:06.520 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,
00:00:11.780 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:00:15.780 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:00:22.660 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:00:27.120 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.
00:00:30.980 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:00:36.860 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,
00:00:42.120 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:00:46.120 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:00:52.860 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:00:57.940 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.
00:01:00.580 To be not racist is a discursive form of racist violence.
00:01:04.780 So you've got these anti-racist activists urging people to be racist in order to not be racist.
00:01:10.340 It makes no sense.
00:01:11.400 If you redefine words and then deny that you are redefining the words, you effectively end up gaslighting the world.
00:01:18.100 What is a woman is not a gotcha question.
00:01:19.900 We all know the difference, but we're expected to proclaim that we don't, that there is no difference.
00:01:27.260 If you can't sit there and tell me what a woman is, then I don't trust you on anything else.
00:01:32.420 But if you say what everyone knows, you open yourself up to accusation and you can be the next to be condemned.
00:01:38.320 We can't vote these people out.
00:01:39.840 You can vote in a Labour government or Tory government, you're still going to get the woke.
00:01:43.040 If the machinery of government is grinding in that direction, there is nothing you can do.
00:01:47.300 When a school board, a county school board, not only removes the books from the shelves, but burns them and calls it a flame purification ceremony and they can't see what the implications of that are.
00:02:01.300 I don't believe they could have done that if they could see with any sense.
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00:03:46.820 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry.
00:03:50.320 I'm Francis Foster.
00:03:51.540 I'm Constantine Kissin.
00:03:52.680 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:03:58.100 Today, we are delighted to say returning for the 73rd time.
00:04:02.380 It's our brilliant friend, Andrew Doyle, who's, of course, comedian, satirist, TV presenter, and the author of his latest book,
00:04:08.800 which is called The New Puritans, How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World.
00:04:13.960 Andrew, welcome back.
00:04:14.800 Thank you for having me back.
00:04:15.820 It's great to have you on.
00:04:17.020 How are you?
00:04:17.620 I'm all right.
00:04:18.160 I'm all right.
00:04:18.340 I have been on a lot.
00:04:19.540 You have been.
00:04:20.000 Haven't I?
00:04:20.640 73rd is an exaggeration.
00:04:21.780 An exaggeration.
00:04:22.580 It's actually 79.
00:04:23.640 Yeah.
00:04:24.180 Because I was on the second ever one you did, I think.
00:04:26.140 You were.
00:04:26.780 And you know what?
00:04:28.140 You confessed to us that you were very sceptical about, and you nearly didn't come on the show.
00:04:34.520 In fact, you dedicated, in this book, you talked about how that brief moment of trust that you showed has resulted in our friendship.
00:04:41.160 Well, exactly.
00:04:41.560 I'd never met either of you, and I was very paranoid.
00:04:43.880 That was my height of my paranoia, and I almost didn't come.
00:04:46.900 Because I thought it was like a setup.
00:04:48.820 I thought you were going to do all these gotcha questions and try and make me look like a fool.
00:04:53.580 I probably did look like a fool, but that wasn't because of the way you behaved.
00:04:56.400 It was a great interview.
00:04:57.700 Was it all right?
00:04:58.260 Yeah.
00:04:58.560 I haven't watched it back, so I don't know.
00:04:59.600 No, no.
00:04:59.940 It was great.
00:05:00.380 I remember it got something like 13,000 views or something like maybe…
00:05:05.520 Given that we had 13 subscribers at the time, it was quite a lot.
00:05:07.980 I think they each watched it 1,000 times.
00:05:09.400 Yeah.
00:05:10.260 It was great.
00:05:11.540 And I will confess from our end as well that we actually didn't know that much about you.
00:05:15.820 No.
00:05:16.320 And we just knew that you were writing for Jonathan Pye.
00:05:20.780 Yes.
00:05:21.300 And we were keen to speak to him and to you.
00:05:24.800 Oh, you were using me to get to him.
00:05:26.000 Exactly.
00:05:26.660 Yeah.
00:05:26.980 Yeah, fair enough.
00:05:27.280 That's what we were doing.
00:05:28.840 But actually, it's funny how that's worked out because he's obviously gone in his own direction.
00:05:33.440 But I think you've contributed so much to many of the conversations that we've had and, frankly, to just the cultural landscape in the UK.
00:05:41.340 And this is one of the things that really strikes me about the personal stuff that you talk about in the book because you're open with a very old good friend of yours, a fellow colleague.
00:05:53.280 We won't go into the details.
00:05:54.340 You know, going after you very hard.
00:05:58.760 Yes.
00:05:59.660 It was a weird one.
00:06:00.400 So, I mean, this is how I've opened the book because I think so many people have lost friends through this culture war.
00:06:07.020 So many people I've spoken to have sometimes family members all over the slightest point of political disagreement.
00:06:13.040 And this was an event that took place in a bar in Soho.
00:06:16.760 And I was out with this married couple who I've known for many years.
00:06:19.680 And we were having a great time.
00:06:20.740 We were having drinks.
00:06:21.380 We were a bit tipsy.
00:06:22.340 But about an hour in, he started shouting at me, screaming at me, calling me a Nazi.
00:06:26.640 And I thought it was a joke.
00:06:27.820 And then I probed a bit and I realized, oh, no, it's not.
00:06:31.000 And he's been thinking about this for a while.
00:06:32.840 And then I tried to work out what it was.
00:06:35.580 And it turned out it was because he didn't like that I'd written for Spiked magazine.
00:06:39.180 And one of the Jonathan Pye videos had satirized a point of view that he held.
00:06:46.160 And that was basically it.
00:06:48.140 And I was like, but that's not fascism.
00:06:51.840 Disagreeing with you slightly on political issues is not the same as calling for an ethnostate.
00:06:57.500 You know, it's just not the same.
00:06:58.580 So it was weird.
00:07:00.220 So really, the book is about me trying to make sense.
00:07:02.300 What kind of world are we in now where someone who knows me, knows what I believe, knows that I'm a vocal opponent of racism, knows that I have no, that fascism is everything I stand against, knows that, nonetheless can convince himself.
00:07:15.620 And this is an intelligent person, that I'm a Nazi.
00:07:19.120 What kind of world can we be in where that can happen?
00:07:21.820 So my book's an attempt to explain how we reach that point.
00:07:26.160 How do we reach the point where it's casually said in the mainstream media that J.K. Rowling is transphobic or has said transphobic things when she actually has never said transphobic things?
00:07:36.280 How are we in this position where people are just buying into fantasies, even though the evidence is there, should you want to spend a minute to Google it?
00:07:44.420 So what's going on?
00:07:46.700 So that's why.
00:07:48.000 It's a really good point, Andrew.
00:07:49.060 I've never, I think those of us who've been sometimes on the receiving end of some of the stuff, we haven't actually processed in some ways what the significance of what you're talking about.
00:07:59.120 Like whether it's David Lammy going on the BBC and saying that Brexiteers, the ERG are worse than Nazis or your friend calling you that.
00:08:09.180 Like, I don't think we've quite understood, like, what a deranging worldview it takes for someone to think like that.
00:08:17.200 We've started to accept it, haven't we?
00:08:18.660 Yeah.
00:08:18.980 I mean, like, even with GB News, if you think about when GB News was announced, four months before it was aired, you had thousands of activists and mainstream commentators saying,
00:08:27.020 this is a far right echo chamber, no one's seen it, no one knew what it was, not even the people who were in it knew what it was at that point.
00:08:34.600 And then when it was on the screens, and it clearly wasn't that, and there were clearly a balance of left and right wing views, and people, you know, GB News always makes an effort to bring people in with different voices.
00:08:43.480 Even when it's clearly not what they said it was, they still say it is what the fantasy they decided on.
00:08:49.080 So I think all of this, and there's so many examples of this kind, you know, I'm sure you must have the same, 99% of the people who attack you online, right?
00:08:58.340 They will be people who've just decided what you are and created this monster of their imagination in order to attack.
00:09:03.560 I rarely have an angry critic come at me and faithfully replicate what I think.
00:09:11.100 They'll say, oh, well, you believe this, you believe this.
00:09:12.980 They often say I'm a privately educated, Tory-loving homophobe.
00:09:18.760 I get that a lot.
00:09:20.120 And it's like, well, I went to a comp, I've never voted Tory, and, you know, if I'm a homophobe, my boyfriend better be told about that.
00:09:26.920 You know, it's like, they're just so wrong.
00:09:29.780 And even when you point out that they're wrong, and you say, no, this is what I actually believe.
00:09:33.740 I mean, look, when I announced this book, The New Puritans, I had loads of tweets saying we're going to burn this book.
00:09:39.160 This is the sort of book I would throw in the bin.
00:09:41.040 Why are you against social justice?
00:09:42.820 I'm like, well, read the book.
00:09:44.260 And you will understand that I'm not against social justice.
00:09:46.920 I'm against people co-opting the phrase.
00:09:49.700 But yeah, but it's become so, it is maddening.
00:09:52.560 And that's the word that, you're right to use that word.
00:09:55.000 Because, you know, this is a movement.
00:09:57.900 I think everyone's baffled.
00:10:00.840 Everyone's baffled.
00:10:01.500 Because, you know, most people are decent people, and they want everyone to have an equal shot of things in life.
00:10:05.760 And this movement comes along that uses all these really progressive sounding phrases like social justice, anti-racism, equity.
00:10:14.920 And so good people are like, oh, okay, well, we should get on board with that, obviously.
00:10:17.880 But they can sense and see that what the movement's actually doing is against all of those things.
00:10:23.500 It's creating more racism.
00:10:25.320 It's dividing us.
00:10:27.120 It's not advancing the cause of social justice.
00:10:30.480 It's legitimizing bullying.
00:10:32.880 It's got a vicious, inhuman, cruel quality about it.
00:10:37.460 And we can see all of this stuff.
00:10:38.840 And people can see, but they're confused because it's sold to them in this progressive language.
00:10:43.880 So one thing I really realized in writing the book is that this is a battle.
00:10:48.400 The culture war is a battle about language and about who gets to define words.
00:10:52.060 And so in order to, in the book, I have to first explain what the movement is, what its objectives are, what it achieves.
00:11:00.140 And all of that is counter to how it describes itself.
00:11:03.080 So it's really messy and complicated.
00:11:04.600 That's why it needed a full book.
00:11:06.060 Because you can't just explain that straight away.
00:11:07.840 You can't explain, you know, if you take the phrase anti-racism, we're all against racism.
00:11:12.320 So why would you object to the principle of anti-racism?
00:11:15.600 Until you read a book such as How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi.
00:11:20.260 And you realize that what he means by anti-racism is not what we mean by anti-racism.
00:11:24.340 What he means is being proactive in the discovery of racism on the assumption that all human interaction is underpinned by racism.
00:11:32.640 And that all white people are complicit in white supremacy, whether they want like it or not.
00:11:36.180 That's the Robin DiAngelo take on it.
00:11:38.080 And so therefore, in fact, Alana Lenten, he put, sorry, Ibram X. Kendi in his book, says that the dichotomy of not racist and racist isn't real.
00:11:47.900 And that being not racist is just another form of racism.
00:11:51.280 Similarly, Alana Lenten, who's another critical race hustler, said that to be not racist is a discursive form of racist violence.
00:11:59.420 So to be not racist is violent.
00:12:02.480 So you've got these anti-racist activists urging people to be racist in order to not be racist.
00:12:08.020 It makes no sense.
00:12:09.100 So you have to talk it through and explain why, if you're genuinely against racism, you have to be opposed to anti-racism.
00:12:16.760 So how do people make sense of that?
00:12:18.000 And this is deliberate, isn't it?
00:12:19.760 If you redefine words and then deny that you are redefining the words, you effectively end up gaslighting the world.
00:12:25.880 And that word, gaslight, is their word, isn't it?
00:12:28.420 Yeah, I love it.
00:12:29.720 Well, it comes from that 1940 film where, you know, the husband is constantly lowering the lights and the wife is saying, why is it getting dimmer in here?
00:12:36.320 And he's saying, no, that's just your head.
00:12:38.020 It's all in your mind.
00:12:39.080 And that's what they do to us all the time.
00:12:40.260 So they'll say, this is a largely peaceful protest.
00:12:43.180 It's burning buildings behind the guy.
00:12:44.740 But he'll just say, oh, it's largely peaceful.
00:12:46.300 Because they think by describing something as largely peaceful, it becomes largely peaceful.
00:12:50.440 Everything's about the language.
00:12:51.400 And they can deny the observable reality in front of your eyes and they'll do it and it'll drive you insane.
00:12:58.120 And they'll blindside you with jargon and they'll say, you're too stupid to understand critical race theory, even though the fundamental precepts are not that difficult to grasp.
00:13:06.060 And they'll throw jargon at you and they'll put you off.
00:13:08.320 And actually, what I've tried to do in the book, because I think actually this stuff is understandable.
00:13:14.700 And the only way we can defeat it is if we get it.
00:13:17.200 If we have a secure grasp of what it is they're doing and how to push back against it.
00:13:21.600 So that's the point.
00:13:22.540 Sounds like the words of a Nazi.
00:13:24.180 There we go.
00:13:26.280 But the point you make about words is very profound.
00:13:29.700 Like when you were talking about how they've changed the meaning of words.
00:13:32.200 And the most obvious instance of this is the word woman, where suddenly we all knew what a woman was five, six years ago.
00:13:42.120 But now the word woman is up for grabs.
00:13:44.300 That's just insane.
00:13:45.640 Yeah.
00:13:45.940 And you can see when a politician is asked, what is a woman?
00:13:48.920 Yeah.
00:13:49.100 Have you seen them?
00:13:49.560 They've started saying, that's like a gotcha question.
00:13:51.680 Why are you using these gotcha questions?
00:13:53.560 What is a woman is not a gotcha question.
00:13:55.720 It's actually a means to test the honesty of the ruling class.
00:13:59.620 Because if you can't sit there and tell me what a woman is, then I don't trust you on anything else.
00:14:05.020 Because I know you know what a woman is.
00:14:07.540 I mean, this is the point.
00:14:08.320 You see the fear in their eyes.
00:14:09.400 They're terrified.
00:14:10.360 Like they stammer.
00:14:11.220 They reach.
00:14:12.480 They obfuscate.
00:14:13.100 They do anything but answer the question.
00:14:15.260 Nick, I'm not.
00:14:17.780 I don't think we can conduct this debate with, you know.
00:14:23.740 Sorry, I've offended you in some way.
00:14:25.160 No, no, no.
00:14:25.660 It's just.
00:14:26.580 No, no, no.
00:14:27.220 I just.
00:14:27.600 And the reason they're so afraid is not just because they're engaged in a lie, but because they know everyone knows it's a lie.
00:14:34.960 You know, this idea that none of us know what the difference between men and women.
00:14:38.500 We all know the difference, but we're expected to proclaim that we don't, that there is no difference.
00:14:44.840 And that's why, I think that's a very good example of the notion of a kind of, it's not just mass hysteria.
00:14:53.300 It's people going along with the hysteria for the sake of self-preservation.
00:14:57.580 Which is why in the book I've drawn a lot of parallels with the Salem witch hunts, because I think there's a really good way to understand what's going on at the moment.
00:15:05.460 If you look back at that unique moment in history, which only lasted about a year in the late 17th century in Salem.
00:15:12.380 And you had a small community, by the way, I mean, the Puritans of New England were not witch hunters.
00:15:18.260 This is not something they did.
00:15:19.640 In medieval Europe, thousands of women were burnt as witches.
00:15:22.340 This didn't happen.
00:15:23.440 The Puritans weren't like this.
00:15:24.800 This was a lapse.
00:15:25.880 It was an aberration.
00:15:27.000 And what's so interesting to me about that is you have this community of decent, good people who would suddenly believe there are witches everywhere because a small group of girls claimed that they could see them.
00:15:37.460 And so, and it only lasted that short period of time.
00:15:42.360 But what happened, the key parallel here is not just about the human susceptibility for groupthink or the way in which we go along with narratives if we're told to.
00:15:51.640 It's not just that.
00:15:53.060 It's that the elites were propagating it.
00:15:56.720 So it would never have happened if when these girls started screaming that there are witches everywhere, that judges and the magistrates and the ministers had said, no, that's not true.
00:16:04.600 It would have ended overnight.
00:16:05.780 But they didn't.
00:16:06.660 They became complicit.
00:16:08.260 They said it is true.
00:16:09.200 It's like our politicians.
00:16:10.480 They could all say, we all know what a woman is.
00:16:11.960 Can we stop this now?
00:16:13.180 They don't.
00:16:13.740 They go along with it.
00:16:15.160 You know, and they say, oh, actually, yeah, there is a thing.
00:16:16.900 So they go along with the activists and they perpetuate the hysteria.
00:16:20.060 And that's where I think the main parallel between the two things exists.
00:16:26.500 And the other thing about what I found fascinating about the Salem instance is the more I read about it, the more I realized a lot of the elites didn't believe it.
00:16:34.880 They just didn't believe it.
00:16:35.720 There's a really interesting moment where one girl in court, because, you know, they were pointing at the women on the stand saying they were sending their shape out to pinch them and torment them.
00:16:44.280 They would say, oh, they've just their spirit has just flown up to the beam.
00:16:47.320 I can see it.
00:16:48.520 No one else could see it.
00:16:49.360 But it was the girl's lived experience.
00:16:51.920 It was all the all of the prosecutions were secured by what they called spectral evidence.
00:16:56.260 We call it lived experience.
00:16:57.500 What it means is my truth.
00:16:59.060 I don't need evidence.
00:16:59.920 It's just my truth.
00:17:00.560 I feel it.
00:17:01.520 Therefore, it's true.
00:17:02.280 So it's the same thing, like just as today, the accusation of Nazi, fascist, racist, homophobe is taken as proof because that is the lived experience of the accuser back in Salem.
00:17:12.540 The spectral evidence was taken as proof.
00:17:15.100 And they would say, and as I was saying, though, this one girl, it's a really interesting moment.
00:17:19.440 She pulls out a small bit of knife, something that's been broken off a blade.
00:17:23.080 And she's cut it.
00:17:24.480 And she says, the witch has just dug this into me.
00:17:26.800 And a man at the court, a local farmer, said, that broke off my knife the other day.
00:17:33.140 And you saw that happen.
00:17:34.640 And you picked it up.
00:17:35.960 And so they knew she'd been lying.
00:17:38.860 But instead of acknowledging this, the magistrates say, oh, well, let's quickly move on to the next thing.
00:17:43.340 There's loads, if you read the court records, there's loads of examples of, you know, they will accuse William Phipps, the governor of the colony.
00:17:49.780 They accused his wife.
00:17:51.160 And the magistrates just said, let's move on.
00:17:54.040 That's not real.
00:17:54.920 Let's move on.
00:17:55.480 They accused the acting president of Harvard College, a guy called Willard, Samuel Willard.
00:18:01.460 They accused him.
00:18:02.500 And the magistrate said, you must be mistaken.
00:18:04.500 You must be talking about Constable Willard, who's already in jail.
00:18:07.400 You've already accused him.
00:18:08.220 You're getting confused.
00:18:09.480 Well, does the devil get confused?
00:18:11.000 Or do the elites know, actually, this isn't real.
00:18:13.580 But if we speak out, they'll accuse us.
00:18:16.260 And that's where we're at today.
00:18:18.380 We all know the difference between male and female.
00:18:21.140 We all know that this anti-racist movement is making society more racially divided.
00:18:24.760 But if you say what everyone knows, you open yourself up to accusation and you can be the
00:18:29.820 next to be condemned.
00:18:30.820 And it's a different form of condemnation.
00:18:32.180 You know, no one's going to get hanged as the stakes are pretty high in Salem.
00:18:35.680 But we could, you can have your life destroyed, your reputation destroyed, your career destroyed.
00:18:39.880 If you, if you say what we all know to be true.
00:18:42.580 So there are, there are parallels.
00:18:45.720 And the other reason I wanted to talk about that account is that it's a really good way
00:18:50.840 to get out of this.
00:18:51.700 There's, there's a lesson in Salem of how to get out of this.
00:18:55.320 Firstly, it stopped because there was a tipping point.
00:18:59.200 When too many people started saying, no, the girls are lying.
00:19:02.300 There are no witches.
00:19:03.000 It just stopped.
00:19:04.720 That was one thing.
00:19:06.380 The second thing that happened is that the, some of the, I think it was the deputy governor
00:19:11.720 wrote to the leading clergymen in the country and said, can we use spectral evidence?
00:19:16.480 Can we prosecute on the basis of spectral evidence?
00:19:18.960 And they said, no, that's not admissible.
00:19:22.340 And so all of the things collapsed overnight.
00:19:24.680 So I think it will just take people to stand up and say, no, the witches aren't real.
00:19:29.720 We don't live in a country, you know, which is full of fascists.
00:19:33.920 We can look at the evidence again and go by and make our judgments based on evidence,
00:19:38.320 not based on lived experience and feeling.
00:19:40.400 And if everyone just did that, if all the people in power just did that,
00:19:43.000 this would end and we'd be out of it.
00:19:45.660 But in the play, the Arthur Miller play, it was John Proctor who had to sacrifice himself
00:19:50.220 in order that this could come to an end.
00:19:53.120 Well, that was real.
00:19:53.800 I mean, so when Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, the figures in that who end up being hanged,
00:19:58.960 Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, et cetera, they were real figures who were hanged
00:20:03.540 because they were so devout.
00:20:04.700 They weren't prepared to say, they weren't prepared to lie to save their necks
00:20:08.280 because they believed in the everlasting perdition, hellfire and damnation.
00:20:13.280 They weren't going to damn themselves by lying.
00:20:15.720 But a lot of people did.
00:20:16.800 A lot of people would just say, yeah, I've met with the devil
00:20:19.200 because they were terrified of being hanged.
00:20:21.260 And they said that they'd signed his book and all the rest of it.
00:20:24.300 And of course, the Puritans believed in mercy.
00:20:26.880 I mean, I call this book the New Puritans, but they're nothing like the Puritans of old.
00:20:30.300 It's an analogy.
00:20:31.360 The Puritans of old really believed in mercy.
00:20:33.060 And they had incredible leniency.
00:20:35.720 The courts would let you off if you confessed to Wishcraft.
00:20:37.500 But yeah, you're right.
00:20:40.320 The John Proctor's of this world, that also brought...
00:20:42.720 When people like him, when people like Rebecca Nurse,
00:20:45.260 these local people who everyone loved started being hanged,
00:20:48.600 people got concerned.
00:20:50.420 But it needs people like that.
00:20:52.720 Yeah.
00:20:52.920 And what my worry is, Andrew, is I see the elites, the people at the top.
00:20:58.660 None of them have that level of integrity.
00:21:00.440 No, but we do need people like that.
00:21:02.860 And I think the way out of this hysteria, which is what I think it is,
00:21:05.880 will come...
00:21:06.600 There will be people who will be sacrificed along the way.
00:21:08.840 The people who speak out earliest...
00:21:10.220 Thanks for looking at me, mate.
00:21:11.120 Well, I'm just saying...
00:21:12.380 The people will be cancelled.
00:21:14.120 They already have been.
00:21:15.300 Yeah.
00:21:15.760 You know, people like Gillian Phillip, Rosie Kaye,
00:21:17.820 the people who've lost their jobs, been dragged through the courts,
00:21:20.360 all that sort of stuff.
00:21:21.000 And it will continue to happen.
00:21:23.080 But then we'll reach a point where so many people are getting cancelled.
00:21:26.380 Everyone will be like, enough.
00:21:27.620 We're going to speak out about it.
00:21:28.820 So I think, yeah, you're right.
00:21:30.200 Like, some people will...
00:21:31.720 You know, it'll be horrible for some.
00:21:33.520 But it makes it easier, doesn't it, for the people to speak out later.
00:21:35.900 Yeah, it does, definitely.
00:21:38.380 And, well, I was going to ask you something else, but before I do,
00:21:41.640 where...
00:21:42.240 If we take the analogy that you've given...
00:21:44.900 Yeah.
00:21:45.180 ...of the witch trials in Salem,
00:21:46.600 and the process by which eventually people come round
00:21:49.520 to having a sensible view of these things.
00:21:52.540 Where are we on that journey with this?
00:21:56.300 Well, I thought things were getting better.
00:21:58.280 And then, of course, the key events of the summer of 2020,
00:22:01.920 where the culture war exploded into the mainstream,
00:22:04.440 and all of the stuff that all three of us have been talking about for years.
00:22:07.640 Remember how people used to dismiss us and say,
00:22:09.540 oh, it's just a few students.
00:22:11.340 You're whinging about a few overzealous people on university campuses.
00:22:15.580 No one says that anymore, do they?
00:22:16.760 No.
00:22:16.920 Because it's now in the mainstream.
00:22:18.360 The evidence of what we've been talking about is everywhere.
00:22:20.940 It's irrefutable.
00:22:23.020 But it doesn't...
00:22:24.040 There doesn't seem to be any sign of the momentum slowing, does there?
00:22:26.980 You don't think so?
00:22:28.220 No, not really.
00:22:29.100 There are...
00:22:29.420 Let me put some counterpoints to you,
00:22:31.340 which I've been thinking about.
00:22:33.640 So, as you know, I've said from day one
00:22:36.240 that logically it would be the trans thing that broke intersectionality.
00:22:41.280 Because the level of suspension of disbelief
00:22:43.640 and the level of damage, visible damage,
00:22:47.400 that would be done in the name of trans ideology
00:22:50.100 would be difficult even for people
00:22:53.320 who are prepared to live with a lot of cognitive dissonance.
00:22:55.960 I agree.
00:22:56.640 To maintain that illusion.
00:22:59.280 And we've seen the shutting down of Tavistock here in the UK.
00:23:03.160 We've seen thousands of parents now suing Tavistock.
00:23:06.300 We see every day more and more detransitioners.
00:23:09.480 I read this incredibly powerful piece yesterday
00:23:12.360 by a parent who had transitioned...
00:23:16.260 I don't know if you saw this.
00:23:17.360 It was literally called,
00:23:18.460 I Transitioned My Child, I Regret It, or something like those lines.
00:23:21.560 Very, very powerful.
00:23:22.520 You're starting to hear these stories of people
00:23:24.600 who've gone along with this
00:23:26.880 and then either themselves suffered through surgery and whatever
00:23:32.080 or they've hurt children, their own children.
00:23:35.820 And those voices are more and more audible now to me
00:23:39.920 combined with, you know, changes in reality
00:23:42.880 and the clinic being shut down,
00:23:45.940 the Alison Bailey case,
00:23:48.240 the Maya Forstarter case.
00:23:50.040 You're starting to see some shifts on that issue.
00:23:53.480 Are you not reassured that that is the start of the momentum at least slowing?
00:23:57.240 Oh, yeah.
00:23:57.880 I mean, all of that stuff is incredibly reassuring.
00:23:59.620 And I think that those are signs that things might be healing.
00:24:03.620 But I think because we,
00:24:05.280 obviously, we talk to like-minded people a lot,
00:24:07.540 we maybe miss how embedded this is.
00:24:09.800 You know, I mean, closure of the Tavistock is one thing,
00:24:11.960 but look at the way that the trans activists
00:24:13.620 have tried to spin that as a good news story.
00:24:15.800 And that actually just means that they're going to be able
00:24:17.320 to open up gender clinics around the country
00:24:18.820 that are more localized.
00:24:20.240 Of course, it's not good news for them
00:24:21.460 because it means that things will be scrutinized more closely.
00:24:23.680 But absolutely, I mean, you're right that the extremity
00:24:27.400 of what they are expecting us to swallow
00:24:29.280 will be its own undoing, right?
00:24:32.340 Because look, we all know that the majority
00:24:34.520 of gender non-conforming children are gay
00:24:36.460 or turn out to be gay in later life.
00:24:38.780 So you are effectively have a supposedly progressive movement
00:24:42.040 that is effectively medicalizing gay kids.
00:24:45.120 And if you'd have said that to anyone 10 years ago,
00:24:47.160 who would have believed that that would be even possible?
00:24:50.160 But do people fully understand that?
00:24:51.780 Gay and autistic, by the way.
00:24:52.540 Gay and autistic, or people with other issues.
00:24:55.240 There will be some children who have gender dysphoria,
00:24:57.340 but they are the minority.
00:24:58.780 So who would have believed that?
00:25:01.000 Like 10 years back, who would have thought
00:25:02.280 that was something that could potentially happen?
00:25:04.940 And like Salem, it all burst out very, very quickly
00:25:07.260 and ended very, very quickly.
00:25:08.840 This has all come about over the past 10 years
00:25:10.580 and hopefully will burn out just as quickly.
00:25:12.880 But it's going to take one major tipping point, I think.
00:25:14.900 I don't know.
00:25:16.000 And I am reassured by stuff like that.
00:25:18.380 But look, do you remember that there was someone put up a composite image
00:25:21.560 of all the Labour MPs holding up a sign saying,
00:25:24.540 ban trans conversion therapy, right?
00:25:26.940 Now, of course, when you dig in, that sounds great.
00:25:29.520 Because conversion therapy, you think of like back in the day
00:25:31.760 when they used to put electrodes on gay men
00:25:33.720 and try and shock them out of their homosexuality.
00:25:36.280 But of course, it's not conversion therapy.
00:25:39.480 What they call trans conversion therapy is a specialist,
00:25:43.480 a paediatric gender specialist talking to a child
00:25:45.940 to tease out what other possible reasons there might be
00:25:48.700 for this sense of dysphoria, be that homosexuality,
00:25:51.300 internalised homophobia, be that autism,
00:25:53.400 all those kind of things that you mentioned.
00:25:55.460 They say that's conversion therapy
00:25:57.280 because they believe there's an innate gendered soul
00:26:00.000 and that it should be affirmed automatically
00:26:03.420 whenever anyone makes that claim.
00:26:05.000 So when a Labour politician holds up a sign
00:26:07.560 saying, ban trans conversion therapy,
00:26:09.760 they're effectively holding up a sign
00:26:11.220 in support of conversion therapy
00:26:13.140 because they are effectively putting gay kids
00:26:16.360 on a pathway to heterosexualise and fix them.
00:26:19.460 But do they understand that?
00:26:20.800 No.
00:26:21.280 If those politicians understood the implications
00:26:23.900 of what they were saying,
00:26:25.180 they wouldn't hold up that sign.
00:26:26.800 But we've reached the point
00:26:28.060 where the language has been redefined and shifted so much
00:26:30.800 that people don't understand what it is they're supporting.
00:26:33.060 I'm convinced that the majority of people,
00:26:35.000 if they had a full grasp of what the social justice movement
00:26:37.020 is all about, wouldn't support it.
00:26:38.860 Very, very few would support it.
00:26:40.560 Even the 13%, which is what the More In Common initiative found,
00:26:44.280 roughly 13% of the country would be classified as woke,
00:26:47.480 would be classified as supportive
00:26:48.800 of these critical social justice ideologies,
00:26:51.220 the various interlapping strands of it.
00:26:52.620 Even them, if they understood what it was they were supporting,
00:26:56.940 I think the majority of them would back away in a heartbeat.
00:27:00.040 You know, the other good thing, by the way,
00:27:01.500 about that 13% figure is it shows that these people,
00:27:04.280 because this is often,
00:27:04.760 the culture was often mischaracterised as
00:27:06.180 the old failing to keep up with the young,
00:27:08.800 failing to keep up with changing trends.
00:27:10.560 But they are a minority in every generation,
00:27:13.120 including the young.
00:27:14.200 And that's bad news for the activists.
00:27:16.120 Yeah, there's a higher preponderance of younger people,
00:27:18.560 but still the majority of younger people are against it.
00:27:20.880 And if those younger people understood
00:27:22.800 that they were actually supporting illiberal,
00:27:24.760 dangerous, divisive, regressive ideas,
00:27:27.400 they would back away too.
00:27:28.840 So it's all about, the way out, I feel,
00:27:30.840 is all about understanding.
00:27:32.160 It's all about exploding their myths.
00:27:35.280 You know, they put up this brick wall of language
00:27:37.380 to deter understanding.
00:27:39.440 And once people understand what they're actually saying,
00:27:43.320 then it won't be sustainable.
00:27:46.360 Go for it.
00:27:47.680 Andrew, I was going to,
00:27:48.760 something I hope you don't mind me sharing
00:27:51.360 with our audience,
00:27:52.420 but when we were in Edinburgh,
00:27:53.540 we did a live show together.
00:27:54.720 And before, you know,
00:27:55.680 we spent a bit of time together
00:27:56.760 because the three of us were always running around.
00:27:58.980 We're super busy.
00:28:00.000 We actually, even though we're very good friends,
00:28:01.580 we don't actually get to hang out that much.
00:28:03.260 No.
00:28:03.580 But we did hang out a little bit.
00:28:05.520 And one of the things I realised about you
00:28:08.640 is that you were very, very early to all of this.
00:28:12.960 You were very early to all of this.
00:28:14.500 So the falling out with which you begin the book
00:28:17.580 happened way before like Francis and I
00:28:20.080 were doing trigonometry or any of that.
00:28:21.940 You saw this very, very early.
00:28:24.640 Yeah.
00:28:25.460 First of, and really,
00:28:26.680 I want to ask you two things about that.
00:28:28.000 First of all, what was that like for you?
00:28:30.580 And secondly,
00:28:31.600 why do you think you saw it that early?
00:28:34.540 I think it's more,
00:28:36.200 I don't think it's like I'm a Nostradamus
00:28:38.180 or anything like that.
00:28:38.940 I think it's more that it's not in my nature to,
00:28:43.120 I can't just say something that I know not to be true.
00:28:46.280 It's not something I, I can't do it.
00:28:48.760 So for instance,
00:28:50.120 and because it's all happened so quickly,
00:28:51.480 like when the Brexit vote happened in 2016,
00:28:54.860 and because the left and Labour has always been anti-EU,
00:28:58.760 you know, it was a sudden change.
00:29:01.980 It was a sudden sea change overnight.
00:29:03.800 I mean, like even Owen Jones wrote an article
00:29:05.500 saying why we need to get out of the,
00:29:07.020 I think he coined the phrase Lexit,
00:29:08.240 why we need to get out of the EU.
00:29:09.480 This was a standard left-wing position.
00:29:11.360 Jeremy Corbyn was campaigning for 40 years
00:29:13.060 to get out of the EU, you know.
00:29:15.080 And all of a sudden,
00:29:15.760 all my left-wing friends were saying that,
00:29:17.060 oh yeah, we're really pro-EU.
00:29:18.600 They were really pro this trading bloc,
00:29:22.020 this undemocratic bureaucratic trading bloc
00:29:24.120 that has capitalism at the heart of its constitution.
00:29:26.940 I'm like, this isn't a left-wing stance.
00:29:29.360 And so I,
00:29:31.080 when I did my show in Edinburgh at the stand in 2016,
00:29:34.520 so it was about a month after the vote,
00:29:36.100 so it was around the same time.
00:29:37.020 So I did a pro-Brexit set, effectively.
00:29:40.580 I rewrote my show to talk about that.
00:29:43.140 And that was a really fun challenge
00:29:44.340 because I knew all the audience would be Remainers.
00:29:47.200 And so I had to get them on side
00:29:48.360 before I dropped that into the show.
00:29:49.760 And that was quite kind of fun.
00:29:52.000 Sometimes it wouldn't go well.
00:29:54.620 Because it became hysterical.
00:29:56.100 Tenses were running very high.
00:29:57.300 Yeah, I mean, I realized this.
00:29:58.540 And I remember putting a post on Facebook
00:29:59.920 just saying, look, can everyone,
00:30:00.880 you know, calm down a bit.
00:30:02.380 We're not all evil.
00:30:03.540 The thing got reduced.
00:30:05.820 And it was the first time I've ever seen this,
00:30:08.040 where a major political issue
00:30:09.440 in which everyone was engaged,
00:30:11.420 people were more politically engaged than ever.
00:30:13.200 People were having debates and discussions
00:30:14.540 in like pubs and, you know, everywhere.
00:30:16.480 It was really fascinating.
00:30:18.320 But it got reduced,
00:30:19.520 not just by like people online,
00:30:22.040 but by mainstream media
00:30:23.100 as a debate between good and evil,
00:30:25.760 a debate between racist and not racist.
00:30:27.640 And I'm like, this is not mapped onto the reality.
00:30:29.780 And I started to notice this.
00:30:31.240 Vince Cable stood up at his spring conference
00:30:33.900 and said that the reason people voted to leave
00:30:36.660 was because they were nostalgic for the empire,
00:30:39.740 which is just not a thing.
00:30:41.480 There is no one who's nostalgic for empire.
00:30:43.540 You might be able to find one or two crackpots here and there.
00:30:45.600 There'll be a colonel in Kent somewhere.
00:30:46.940 There'll be someone.
00:30:47.240 Yeah.
00:30:47.580 Right.
00:30:47.820 But none of us, that's not a,
00:30:49.620 it's just not a thing, right?
00:30:50.500 So there's complete fantasy without any evidence.
00:30:52.980 He said people were nostalgic for the time
00:30:54.880 when faces were white and passports were blue.
00:30:56.840 And the map, the global map was colored pink.
00:30:59.120 Who are you talking about?
00:31:00.880 You've just decided this thing
00:31:02.400 and you've asserted it as though it's the truth.
00:31:04.760 And it was the first time
00:31:05.640 I was really seeing stuff like that.
00:31:06.880 This people who were mistaking
00:31:08.520 their own arguments for proof.
00:31:10.860 And it was happening.
00:31:11.960 I know that's always happened to some extent,
00:31:13.460 but this was happening across the board.
00:31:15.000 And it was,
00:31:15.700 and the whole political landscape was being Disney-fied.
00:31:18.300 There were villains and there were heroes
00:31:19.940 and that was it.
00:31:20.840 And I'm like, this isn't real.
00:31:22.200 I could tell none of this is real.
00:31:23.700 People are getting upset,
00:31:24.620 painting their faces with the EU flag.
00:31:26.300 They don't care about the EU.
00:31:27.520 They didn't know what it was three months ago.
00:31:30.100 They certainly, you know,
00:31:31.240 I talked to people who were going to vote Remain
00:31:33.280 and said, well, tell me about how the commission works.
00:31:35.400 Tell me about the process.
00:31:36.660 They didn't know what it was.
00:31:38.380 They didn't know what they were voting for, right?
00:31:40.260 They didn't even bother to check.
00:31:41.700 So it was just about,
00:31:42.740 I'm voting Remain because I'm a good person
00:31:45.240 and because I'm not racist.
00:31:47.900 Well, you know,
00:31:48.540 the EU has some pretty borderline racist policies.
00:31:51.620 It has its Fortress Europe immigration policy.
00:31:53.900 It's fine with freedom and movement
00:31:55.080 within its borders.
00:31:56.300 But when it comes to coming from other continents,
00:31:57.900 it's pretty bad.
00:31:58.840 I mean, they're paying Libyan warlords
00:32:00.580 to keep people in camps.
00:32:02.100 You know, this so,
00:32:03.340 it's incoherent to me to say
00:32:05.060 that the reason you vote to Remain
00:32:06.900 is because you're pro-migration.
00:32:09.040 It doesn't make sense.
00:32:10.240 But doesn't this,
00:32:11.500 that point is very profound
00:32:12.900 because this is actually what all of this is about,
00:32:15.720 which is people not analysing
00:32:17.720 what's going on below the surface.
00:32:19.940 They just take a very cursory glance
00:32:22.740 at a very complex issue like Brexit
00:32:25.180 or an issue like social justice
00:32:27.960 and they make up their own minds
00:32:29.840 and then they go with it.
00:32:30.760 Because they are told that
00:32:32.160 these people are on the side of the angels
00:32:34.000 and, you know,
00:32:35.980 the girls are pointing and crying,
00:32:37.700 which?
00:32:38.400 So I'll go along with the girls
00:32:39.380 because they're doing God's work.
00:32:42.020 And also, if I don't,
00:32:43.240 they'll point at me and cry, which?
00:32:44.680 So it's the same thing with Brexit.
00:32:46.220 And then it was the same thing with Trump
00:32:47.820 and everything got reduced to,
00:32:49.680 you know, good and evil.
00:32:51.420 And it's like,
00:32:51.880 nothing is ever about good and evil.
00:32:53.940 There are no good and evil people.
00:32:55.660 It's like Solzhenitsyn says,
00:32:57.020 you know,
00:32:57.320 were it possible to just separate humanity
00:32:59.280 into good and evil
00:32:59.920 and put all the evil people
00:33:00.960 on an island somewhere,
00:33:02.280 that would be great.
00:33:03.440 But as he says,
00:33:04.240 the line between good and evil
00:33:05.520 cuts through the heart of every human being
00:33:07.600 and you're not going to cut out
00:33:08.440 a piece of your own heart.
00:33:09.520 What about Australia, though?
00:33:11.000 Yeah.
00:33:11.620 Okay.
00:33:12.740 They're all evil.
00:33:15.020 But yeah, no,
00:33:15.980 but this is the thing.
00:33:17.000 We're going to get so many emails now.
00:33:21.160 Just for a cheap joke.
00:33:22.660 Andrew,
00:33:22.920 I didn't mean to cheapen the point
00:33:24.120 you were making.
00:33:24.460 I agree with you.
00:33:25.280 I realise I've gone off tangent,
00:33:27.660 but it relates to what you were saying
00:33:29.460 about why in the comedy industry,
00:33:31.780 when I did that show in 2016
00:33:33.360 and I was just saying
00:33:34.280 what I knew to be true
00:33:36.000 and I made it funny, obviously,
00:33:38.020 I hope.
00:33:39.560 But I realised then
00:33:41.180 something was going on
00:33:41.860 because I think
00:33:43.300 the comedian style,
00:33:45.020 I remember one comic
00:33:45.820 who I'd known for a while
00:33:46.440 saying to me,
00:33:47.120 I hear you're supporting Brexit.
00:33:49.800 I thought you were intelligent.
00:33:51.300 And then people were blocking me
00:33:53.200 that I'd known for years
00:33:54.080 on social media,
00:33:55.100 comics, comedians.
00:33:57.040 And then some of them
00:33:57.960 were nervous about
00:33:58.720 some of the Jonathan Pye videos
00:34:00.140 I'd written,
00:34:00.560 which were satirising stuff
00:34:02.240 that they didn't.
00:34:02.640 And I started noticing,
00:34:04.240 oh, because it used to be,
00:34:05.280 I used to just assume,
00:34:06.740 well, we can disagree, right?
00:34:07.800 And we can,
00:34:08.200 I used to disagree with friends
00:34:09.140 all the time.
00:34:09.540 It was fun.
00:34:10.320 Yeah.
00:34:10.540 And we'd have debates and stuff.
00:34:11.600 And then suddenly
00:34:12.160 the climate shifted
00:34:13.300 and to disagree
00:34:14.520 meant you were the heretic,
00:34:16.840 you were evil.
00:34:18.260 And so I don't think
00:34:19.300 it was me noticing stuff earlier.
00:34:21.120 I think it was just me.
00:34:23.120 I wasn't prepared
00:34:24.080 to just lie.
00:34:25.800 You know, I mean, Brexit,
00:34:28.320 the number of comics
00:34:29.900 who were openly pro-Brexit,
00:34:32.740 you could count on
00:34:33.920 one of Abu Hamza's hands, right?
00:34:35.860 None.
00:34:36.480 There were four of us.
00:34:37.800 Yeah.
00:34:38.540 And you became like a pariah.
00:34:40.740 Yeah.
00:34:41.440 And so...
00:34:42.620 Andrew, but you're someone
00:34:44.960 who's got an incredible
00:34:45.740 amount of fortitude,
00:34:46.800 but that must have been difficult
00:34:48.860 to see that happen.
00:34:51.220 I was just surprised
00:34:52.280 that, well, I mean,
00:34:55.800 the account I give in the book
00:34:57.200 of that, there's things like that,
00:34:58.320 the extreme things
00:34:59.080 where people scream,
00:35:00.220 you're a Nazi.
00:35:01.960 There's the thing...
00:35:02.360 No, but even the fact
00:35:03.040 that you were worried
00:35:04.000 about coming to talk to us
00:35:05.480 because you were so concerned
00:35:06.680 about, you know,
00:35:07.360 being misrepresented,
00:35:08.680 being attacked,
00:35:10.160 you know, all of that.
00:35:11.260 Well, at that time,
00:35:12.060 especially though,
00:35:12.580 I didn't understand it.
00:35:14.060 I saw these things online.
00:35:15.300 People kept saying to me online
00:35:16.620 things that I didn't believe
00:35:17.640 as though I believed them.
00:35:18.980 You know, we know
00:35:19.620 that you believe this.
00:35:20.660 We know that you support
00:35:21.520 free speech
00:35:22.220 because you support racists
00:35:23.760 and you want racists
00:35:24.560 to be able to say
00:35:25.060 what they want.
00:35:26.140 And I'm like,
00:35:26.980 I don't support racists.
00:35:28.020 Where have I ever said
00:35:28.800 I support racists?
00:35:29.420 You're just making something up
00:35:31.100 and describing it to me.
00:35:32.940 And at that point,
00:35:33.540 now I sort of understand
00:35:34.400 why it happens more and more
00:35:35.580 because it's easier to fight
00:35:36.600 with a figment of your imagination
00:35:37.920 than actually engage
00:35:38.700 with what people say.
00:35:39.420 But back then,
00:35:40.980 I didn't get it.
00:35:41.540 I didn't understand it.
00:35:42.480 And I was very mistrustful
00:35:44.120 of people asking for interviews
00:35:45.320 because I thought
00:35:46.740 it was always going to be
00:35:47.360 a hit job.
00:35:48.000 Yeah.
00:35:48.440 You know, so that's...
00:35:49.380 And I'd never heard of you two.
00:35:50.580 No offence.
00:35:51.080 We hadn't gigged together.
00:35:52.660 Yeah, yeah.
00:35:53.060 So I was like...
00:35:54.580 Unbelievable.
00:35:54.940 You come in here,
00:35:55.980 you insult us to our faces.
00:35:57.660 I've never heard of you two.
00:35:58.420 But you didn't know
00:35:58.900 who I was either.
00:35:59.880 Yeah, that is true.
00:36:00.520 You know, so it's like...
00:36:01.960 But I'm not trying
00:36:04.060 to dig up that incident.
00:36:05.820 I guess what I'm getting at is
00:36:07.180 it's not been easy.
00:36:09.760 Like, I'm not...
00:36:10.540 You're not someone
00:36:11.060 who complains about it.
00:36:12.120 It's just occurred to me
00:36:13.520 that being first
00:36:15.580 through the breach,
00:36:16.300 you always take
00:36:17.040 most of the arrows.
00:36:18.080 You know what I mean?
00:36:18.520 Well, I still,
00:36:19.920 to this day,
00:36:20.280 don't quite understand
00:36:20.960 when I catch a...
00:36:22.040 You know,
00:36:22.420 because so many comedians
00:36:23.220 don't talk to me,
00:36:23.940 they've unfriended me
00:36:24.460 and all the rest of it.
00:36:25.160 But when I catch a glimpse
00:36:26.180 of something they say online,
00:36:27.980 you know,
00:36:29.740 I'm like,
00:36:30.640 I don't recognise myself there.
00:36:32.460 Like,
00:36:33.620 just casually referring to me
00:36:35.020 as evil
00:36:35.400 or like
00:36:36.720 a far right
00:36:38.620 person.
00:36:40.200 And it's like,
00:36:40.860 but I'm
00:36:41.440 clearly not.
00:36:43.280 But if you've just decided
00:36:44.540 that I am...
00:36:45.020 I mean,
00:36:45.220 someone,
00:36:46.200 a comedian,
00:36:46.500 wrote a blog about
00:36:47.360 the Comedy Unleashed night
00:36:48.460 recently,
00:36:48.820 which is the night I run.
00:36:50.220 And they started talking about
00:36:50.900 how the acts at Comedy Unleashed
00:36:52.620 just go on stage
00:36:53.300 to spout racism
00:36:54.260 and attack minorities,
00:36:55.320 which has literally
00:36:56.620 never happened
00:36:57.400 at Comedy Unleashed.
00:36:58.340 And I wouldn't book that person
00:36:59.540 because that person
00:37:00.300 isn't going to be very funny.
00:37:01.580 That's just not a thing.
00:37:02.720 Again,
00:37:02.940 it's like,
00:37:03.500 so I don't know even how to...
00:37:05.540 I'm continually surprised by it
00:37:06.980 because I'm like,
00:37:07.500 why would you be happy
00:37:08.360 to just live in a fantasy world?
00:37:10.780 Why would that make you...
00:37:11.820 Why not?
00:37:12.120 Why is there not
00:37:13.080 the slightest point of curiosity?
00:37:14.520 If I thought there was
00:37:15.260 a far right comedy night going on,
00:37:17.120 I might want to see
00:37:17.800 what they're actually saying there.
00:37:19.040 And the thing is,
00:37:19.440 a great thing you can
00:37:20.040 because so many of the videos
00:37:20.920 are online.
00:37:21.980 And when you watch them,
00:37:22.760 you realise it's just...
00:37:23.800 Comedy Unleashed
00:37:24.940 is just another comedy night
00:37:26.320 where, you know,
00:37:27.400 where often people come
00:37:28.120 and do the same sets
00:37:28.840 they do elsewhere.
00:37:29.800 It's just that every now and then
00:37:30.900 we cultivate an audience
00:37:32.480 that isn't going to complain
00:37:33.440 about being offended.
00:37:34.500 We cultivate an audience
00:37:35.580 that is comedy literate
00:37:36.640 and understands that,
00:37:38.260 you know,
00:37:38.840 the comedian on stage
00:37:39.840 is not literally
00:37:40.600 expressing their opinions.
00:37:41.660 Yeah.
00:37:42.200 That they're expressing jokes.
00:37:44.220 And every now and then
00:37:45.100 a comedian will phone me up
00:37:46.020 and say,
00:37:46.580 can I do this night
00:37:47.900 because I don't feel
00:37:48.600 I can try this new material
00:37:50.160 anywhere else, right?
00:37:51.300 And that's a perception
00:37:51.920 in the industry
00:37:52.400 whether people deny it
00:37:53.620 but it is a perception.
00:37:55.300 It's not that we've set up
00:37:56.640 a night to platform
00:37:57.820 far-right people
00:37:58.980 because we hate minorities
00:38:00.080 or that we think
00:38:01.400 that comedians can't say
00:38:03.080 what they want
00:38:03.480 on other platforms
00:38:04.220 or on other stages.
00:38:05.160 That isn't what we're doing at all.
00:38:07.200 But it's a weird...
00:38:08.540 I mean, look,
00:38:08.920 when we announced
00:38:09.400 the Comedy Unleashed tour recently,
00:38:11.260 the hysteria from comedians
00:38:12.500 was hilarious.
00:38:13.240 One guy started saying,
00:38:14.140 if you do this tour,
00:38:14.940 you're a fucking scab.
00:38:16.320 Ha!
00:38:17.360 I'm an anarchist.
00:38:18.220 And this is a guy
00:38:18.620 who's got a Radio 4 show
00:38:19.540 so he's not that much
00:38:20.220 of an anarchist.
00:38:21.480 You know, it's like,
00:38:22.380 it's weird
00:38:23.220 and then the blog
00:38:24.060 and all these people
00:38:25.080 going on about
00:38:25.900 attacking the comics
00:38:27.280 on the bill, you know?
00:38:29.040 And the comics we have
00:38:31.060 are from a broad spectrum
00:38:32.300 of political views.
00:38:33.680 They're mostly left-wing
00:38:34.600 because there's more left
00:38:35.220 than right-wing comics
00:38:35.900 but there are some
00:38:36.680 right-wing comics there as well.
00:38:37.800 There are different comedic styles.
00:38:39.520 The key thing is
00:38:40.020 they're just all really funny
00:38:41.160 and interesting
00:38:41.940 and, you know,
00:38:43.700 that are prepared to sometimes
00:38:44.840 put some of them
00:38:45.420 push the boundaries.
00:38:46.260 Not all of them even.
00:38:47.040 That's not even a criteria.
00:38:48.920 But it was just,
00:38:49.800 it's like,
00:38:50.220 so there's a tour
00:38:50.920 going around the country
00:38:51.780 which just has a variety
00:38:53.000 of different acts
00:38:53.760 and people come along
00:38:54.880 and laugh
00:38:55.320 and people are reacting
00:38:56.500 as though it's like
00:38:57.800 a far-right rally or something.
00:38:59.480 It's weird to me.
00:39:00.860 I don't, you know,
00:39:02.040 I'm perpetually baffled by it.
00:39:04.300 But the whole thing is weird.
00:39:06.540 Let's just be honest.
00:39:07.620 This, what you've written about,
00:39:09.180 is fucking weird.
00:39:10.320 It's nuts, isn't it?
00:39:10.920 It is.
00:39:12.040 You see them talk
00:39:13.120 to one another
00:39:13.800 and, like,
00:39:14.400 some of them I considered
00:39:15.280 my friends at one point.
00:39:16.480 I mean, they probably
00:39:16.940 don't consider me
00:39:17.600 a friend anymore
00:39:18.100 but they just go,
00:39:19.080 No, they hate you now.
00:39:19.640 Yeah, they do.
00:39:20.400 They do.
00:39:20.960 They'll just say things
00:39:22.100 like, in casual conversation,
00:39:23.500 like, I'm a cis man.
00:39:25.140 What the hell is going on?
00:39:26.720 Yeah.
00:39:27.200 You know, I'm a cis white man.
00:39:28.780 It's just,
00:39:29.660 it's infected language
00:39:31.620 and it's infected
00:39:32.820 their world view
00:39:33.880 but it's utterly
00:39:35.080 normalised around
00:39:36.060 these people.
00:39:36.420 It's weird, isn't it?
00:39:36.960 It's when
00:39:37.720 the left
00:39:40.760 took a turn
00:39:41.380 from class
00:39:42.020 to group identity.
00:39:44.200 That's,
00:39:44.520 you know,
00:39:45.560 that's what
00:39:46.020 happened here.
00:39:47.560 And, like,
00:39:47.980 I try and explain
00:39:48.820 this thing in the book
00:39:49.480 and I see it as like
00:39:50.200 a kind of hydra
00:39:51.000 with many heads,
00:39:52.680 you know,
00:39:53.040 because you've got
00:39:53.760 a strand
00:39:55.180 about race,
00:39:56.240 gender,
00:39:56.700 and all these things
00:39:57.480 are different.
00:39:57.920 Like, critical race theory
00:39:58.840 is very different
00:39:59.520 from queer theory.
00:40:00.840 Say,
00:40:00.960 but they all come
00:40:01.560 from the same wellspring.
00:40:02.840 They all come
00:40:03.140 from the same
00:40:03.680 fundamental
00:40:04.740 postmodern assumptions
00:40:05.800 that, for instance,
00:40:07.460 our understanding
00:40:08.220 of reality
00:40:08.720 is constructed
00:40:09.300 through the language
00:40:10.040 that we use.
00:40:10.960 That's why they're all
00:40:11.600 obsessed with language
00:40:12.300 and the manipulation
00:40:13.520 of language.
00:40:14.280 So they all have
00:40:14.960 a shared body,
00:40:16.260 just many different strands
00:40:17.160 and therefore it's really
00:40:18.260 hard to describe them
00:40:19.540 because what do you call them?
00:40:21.300 Because they waged
00:40:22.520 the war through language,
00:40:24.000 you know,
00:40:24.300 well, for a start,
00:40:24.920 they called themselves woke.
00:40:26.060 In 2015,
00:40:27.520 they were all calling
00:40:28.280 themselves woke
00:40:29.000 and Jack Dorsey
00:40:29.740 went on stage
00:40:30.320 with a Stay Woke t-shirt.
00:40:32.120 Nika Burns launched
00:40:33.100 the Edinburgh Festival
00:40:33.760 by saying,
00:40:34.640 the next generation
00:40:35.200 of comics
00:40:35.580 are going to be woke
00:40:36.240 and we look forward
00:40:36.900 to comedy's new woke world.
00:40:38.480 No one said,
00:40:39.120 oi, why are you using
00:40:39.820 a right-wing slur?
00:40:41.560 No one said,
00:40:42.320 that's a snarl word.
00:40:43.120 But then,
00:40:43.740 because people like us
00:40:44.480 started using the word
00:40:45.240 to describe them
00:40:46.220 because that was the word
00:40:46.900 they were using themselves,
00:40:47.700 that was a courtesy.
00:40:48.620 I was just using their word,
00:40:49.960 right?
00:40:50.520 And then they say,
00:40:51.420 no, it's just a right-wing
00:40:52.160 snarl word to attack us,
00:40:53.420 to denigrate us,
00:40:54.340 anyone who uses the word.
00:40:55.560 And so,
00:40:56.360 but I'm like,
00:40:56.700 but I can Google that
00:40:57.460 and like 10 minutes ago
00:41:00.320 but they don't care about that
00:41:01.660 because they just deny reality.
00:41:03.520 So,
00:41:04.480 in other words,
00:41:05.100 if you can't name an enemy,
00:41:06.120 you can't defeat that enemy
00:41:07.020 in the marketplace of ideas.
00:41:08.160 So,
00:41:08.600 any term that we come up with
00:41:10.180 to describe them,
00:41:10.780 they will problematize.
00:41:12.340 So,
00:41:12.800 I call it the critical
00:41:13.700 social justice movement
00:41:14.780 but that's kind of difficult
00:41:15.800 to explain.
00:41:16.680 You have to sort of
00:41:17.160 explain it first.
00:41:18.440 You could call them
00:41:19.080 leftist identitarians
00:41:20.500 but they're not meaningfully
00:41:21.880 left-wing.
00:41:22.040 I just call them
00:41:22.360 extreme progressivists.
00:41:23.780 But that's misleading as well
00:41:24.880 because they're not progressive,
00:41:25.720 they're regressive.
00:41:26.380 I agree.
00:41:26.980 So,
00:41:27.180 so,
00:41:27.500 whatever we come up with,
00:41:28.960 there isn't a way
00:41:30.400 to sort of pin them down
00:41:31.720 and that's,
00:41:33.160 and that's another reason
00:41:33.900 I wrote the book
00:41:34.380 because I want to try
00:41:35.120 and pin them down
00:41:36.100 and I call them
00:41:36.740 the new Puritans
00:41:37.720 because the,
00:41:39.060 the analogy of Puritanism
00:41:40.880 as being,
00:41:41.680 you know,
00:41:41.860 it's been a colloquial term
00:41:43.660 for many years
00:41:44.620 which we all understand
00:41:45.720 as meaning someone
00:41:46.400 with a precisionist
00:41:47.720 and prohibitionist tendency,
00:41:50.920 priggish if you like,
00:41:52.780 and intolerant,
00:41:53.360 intolerant,
00:41:54.220 sensorial.
00:41:55.060 I'm not making,
00:41:55.960 I've had lots of Christians
00:41:56.940 get onto me,
00:41:57.480 they're very angry.
00:41:58.440 I'm not,
00:41:59.080 they usually are,
00:41:59.840 but I'm not attacking
00:42:00.840 the Puritans of old.
00:42:01.880 I'm very clear
00:42:02.600 that there's a distinction
00:42:03.360 whereas the Puritans of old
00:42:04.440 believed in their,
00:42:05.980 they had a constant awareness
00:42:06.980 of their fallibility.
00:42:08.220 They were constantly
00:42:08.840 doubting themselves.
00:42:09.640 They didn't know
00:42:09.960 if they were part of the elect
00:42:10.860 or the damned.
00:42:11.920 They,
00:42:12.040 they,
00:42:12.260 they knew that
00:42:13.300 they were unworthy
00:42:14.220 before God.
00:42:15.500 The new Puritans don't.
00:42:16.680 They have extreme certainty.
00:42:18.220 You hear the way they talk.
00:42:19.560 Never,
00:42:19.860 never crosses their mind
00:42:20.800 they could be wrong,
00:42:21.480 you know.
00:42:21.700 So,
00:42:21.960 I'm not saying they're the same.
00:42:23.060 I'm using a shorthand
00:42:24.740 so that we can understand
00:42:26.120 who they are
00:42:27.220 and where they're coming from.
00:42:27.880 That's the attempt anyway,
00:42:28.960 whether it works or not.
00:42:30.700 But you said that
00:42:31.880 they're not progressive,
00:42:32.940 they're regressive.
00:42:33.740 I would push back on that
00:42:34.980 because they wouldn't
00:42:36.160 identify
00:42:36.900 as being regressive.
00:42:39.140 They're utopians.
00:42:40.600 They want to get
00:42:41.600 to this magical utopia.
00:42:42.980 Yeah.
00:42:43.480 And they think that
00:42:44.180 if they keep doing
00:42:45.320 what they're doing
00:42:46.160 and, you know,
00:42:47.080 they force out
00:42:47.820 all the bigots,
00:42:48.540 the racists,
00:42:49.080 the transphobes,
00:42:49.760 all of this,
00:42:50.580 they stamp it out,
00:42:51.700 they destroy it,
00:42:53.000 we're going to get
00:42:53.880 to this beautiful utopia
00:42:55.180 where we're all equal.
00:42:57.580 Well, right.
00:42:58.720 And it's not true
00:42:59.420 because humankind is messy.
00:43:01.220 Yeah.
00:43:01.380 And the great thing
00:43:02.200 about the Liberal Project,
00:43:03.220 I mean,
00:43:03.560 they reject liberalism
00:43:04.920 quite explicitly.
00:43:05.620 So if you read
00:43:06.160 the foundational text
00:43:07.380 of critical race theory,
00:43:08.640 they describe it
00:43:09.300 as being an anti-liberal movement.
00:43:10.760 They don't believe in liberalism.
00:43:11.860 And they say,
00:43:12.700 we live in a society
00:43:14.060 where racism still exists.
00:43:16.100 Therefore,
00:43:16.560 the Liberal Project has failed.
00:43:18.100 Social liberalism has failed.
00:43:19.700 But of course,
00:43:20.120 social liberalism
00:43:20.820 never makes any claims
00:43:21.920 that it can make
00:43:23.100 humankind perfect.
00:43:24.620 It's an ongoing project.
00:43:26.580 And whereas what we do
00:43:27.520 as liberals
00:43:27.920 is address racism
00:43:29.860 and injustice
00:43:30.360 as and when it happens,
00:43:32.140 what they do
00:43:32.780 is they try and seek it out
00:43:33.940 in the shadows
00:43:34.520 and identify it
00:43:35.940 where it may not exist
00:43:36.760 and often doesn't exist.
00:43:38.140 So they will call
00:43:38.840 an institution,
00:43:40.180 they will say
00:43:40.540 it's institutionally racist.
00:43:41.720 They'll say Oxford University
00:43:42.460 is institutionally racist.
00:43:44.060 And then someone else
00:43:44.560 might say,
00:43:45.180 but the data shows
00:43:46.120 that incidents of racism
00:43:47.440 at Oxford are really rare.
00:43:48.680 They barely happen at all.
00:43:49.800 It doesn't matter
00:43:50.200 because we have
00:43:50.900 some lived experience
00:43:51.780 of someone who's,
00:43:52.540 you know,
00:43:52.960 so therefore,
00:43:53.860 you know,
00:43:54.280 it must be.
00:43:55.820 So that's the way
00:43:56.460 they operate.
00:43:58.200 And I don't think
00:44:00.640 they are progressive.
00:44:01.480 And I think we do need
00:44:02.100 to push back
00:44:02.660 in the way
00:44:03.280 that you're describing.
00:44:04.500 But the,
00:44:05.060 but the,
00:44:06.300 okay,
00:44:06.580 I think why
00:44:07.260 it's become so difficult
00:44:08.260 is whereas before
00:44:09.760 this was being peddled
00:44:11.360 by activists online
00:44:12.560 with anime avatars,
00:44:14.220 or like the people
00:44:15.100 you can safely ignore,
00:44:16.460 the screamers,
00:44:17.100 you know,
00:44:18.300 the insane ones.
00:44:20.620 But now it's,
00:44:21.540 it's,
00:44:22.020 it's from the elites
00:44:23.260 and it's from the people
00:44:24.140 in power.
00:44:25.380 You know,
00:44:25.980 the,
00:44:26.280 the,
00:44:26.560 the,
00:44:26.760 these ideologues
00:44:27.980 dominate the civil service.
00:44:29.840 They dominate the NHS,
00:44:31.600 the army,
00:44:32.320 the police,
00:44:33.260 the government,
00:44:33.900 by the way,
00:44:34.160 the Tory government
00:44:34.920 has presided over most of this
00:44:36.660 over the past 12 years.
00:44:38.040 Yeah.
00:44:38.280 Right.
00:44:38.780 They have just instituted
00:44:39.840 the online harms bill,
00:44:41.660 online safety bill,
00:44:42.420 it used to be the harms bill,
00:44:43.360 which talks about legal
00:44:44.340 but harmful speech.
00:44:45.620 Harmful speech?
00:44:46.660 So they're using the lexicon
00:44:47.680 of critical social justice.
00:44:49.080 They're part of the problem.
00:44:50.360 When you try and describe
00:44:51.420 the culture war
00:44:51.860 as a left versus right issue,
00:44:53.020 you completely misapprehend
00:44:53.920 what's going on.
00:44:54.900 There's a problem
00:44:55.340 in all political parties.
00:44:56.640 We can't vote these people out.
00:44:58.180 You can vote in a Labour government
00:44:59.460 or Tory government,
00:45:00.120 you're still going to get the woke.
00:45:01.660 Because if the civil servants,
00:45:03.500 it's service,
00:45:04.200 if the machinery of government
00:45:05.260 is grinding in that direction,
00:45:07.400 there is nothing you can do.
00:45:08.400 And that's why this is a problem
00:45:10.460 because it is everywhere.
00:45:11.820 It's in all major institutions.
00:45:13.120 And look at what's happened
00:45:13.980 with the leadership election
00:45:14.980 where the one candidate
00:45:16.000 who actually was talking
00:45:17.480 quite a bit of sense
00:45:18.320 on these issues
00:45:19.000 was quite purposely excluded
00:45:21.980 from the vote by members
00:45:24.340 who would overwhelmingly
00:45:25.540 have voted for Kimmer Bayden.
00:45:27.380 And this is why I think
00:45:28.480 when you say that you're more positive
00:45:29.900 about the movement,
00:45:31.820 because it hasn't been rooted out
00:45:33.180 among the echelons of power,
00:45:34.640 that's where I get nervous.
00:45:36.040 And it's so easy to dismiss
00:45:37.460 and mischaracterize
00:45:38.160 what's going on here.
00:45:38.740 You know, we get these stories
00:45:39.760 every now and then
00:45:40.420 of like someone puts
00:45:41.660 a trigger warning
00:45:42.300 on Hemingway's
00:45:43.660 The Old Man and the Sea.
00:45:44.780 And this did happen at university.
00:45:46.080 They put a trigger warning
00:45:47.020 saying it contains scenes
00:45:48.360 of graphic fishing.
00:45:50.340 And that's...
00:45:50.700 What?
00:45:51.260 Graphic fishing?
00:45:52.180 Yeah, that was the trigger warning.
00:45:53.500 So animal cruelty?
00:45:54.520 I guess.
00:45:55.320 Graphic fishing.
00:45:56.000 Yeah, it's pretty graphic
00:45:56.900 because he hangs the fish
00:45:58.120 on the side of his boat
00:45:58.840 and the sharks eat them bit by bit.
00:46:00.500 So yeah, it's quite graphic,
00:46:01.780 but it's still fishing.
00:46:03.520 And they put a trigger warning
00:46:05.620 on Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped
00:46:07.300 saying it contains themes of kidnapping,
00:46:09.320 which is implied in the title.
00:46:11.560 Similarly, Julius Caesar,
00:46:12.960 apparently it's got a plot
00:46:14.300 that revolves around murder.
00:46:15.240 Does someone get stabbed?
00:46:16.160 Someone gets stabbed in Julius Caesar.
00:46:17.500 Don't read the book.
00:46:18.100 You'll be very upset about it.
00:46:19.320 It's absolutely graphic.
00:46:21.220 So all of this stuff is funny, right?
00:46:22.780 And we can laugh at this.
00:46:24.300 But then take a step and think,
00:46:25.860 is it that funny?
00:46:26.720 Because this isn't some activist online
00:46:28.400 saying this.
00:46:29.340 These are major universities.
00:46:30.720 Andrew, I never found this funny
00:46:32.280 because like you,
00:46:33.000 I can play the mover forward.
00:46:34.180 Yeah.
00:46:34.640 And if you play the mover forward,
00:46:36.540 you can see where this goes.
00:46:38.460 There's no question about it
00:46:40.060 that if this movement was allowed
00:46:41.500 to carry on down that path,
00:46:43.520 the damage that would be done.
00:46:45.380 And this is, as you know,
00:46:46.540 the point I make in my book,
00:46:48.000 which is if the West continues
00:46:50.840 to engage in this,
00:46:52.040 it opens up the door
00:46:53.120 for other hostile actors
00:46:54.460 to come in and take advantage
00:46:55.640 of our division and weakness.
00:46:57.880 Can we talk about the nonces?
00:46:59.820 The what?
00:47:00.260 The nonces.
00:47:00.960 The nonces?
00:47:01.860 Yeah.
00:47:03.100 You've got a whole chapter
00:47:04.100 on the nonce philosophers.
00:47:05.140 Yeah.
00:47:06.320 The pedos.
00:47:07.140 I've got a chapter
00:47:07.700 on the origins of this thing.
00:47:12.220 And yes, a lot of it does come
00:47:14.360 from the postmodernists
00:47:15.640 of the 1960s,
00:47:16.540 the French postmodernists,
00:47:18.000 Jean-Francois Lyotard,
00:47:19.420 Jacques Derrida,
00:47:20.500 Michel Foucault
00:47:21.180 being the most obvious ones.
00:47:23.560 There's an element too
00:47:24.720 of themes and ideas
00:47:27.440 from the Frankfurt School,
00:47:28.700 most notably the,
00:47:30.240 you know, people like Adorno
00:47:31.280 and Max Horkheimer
00:47:32.620 and people like that.
00:47:33.460 The mistrust of the masses,
00:47:35.440 that very much is something
00:47:36.440 that comes from the,
00:47:37.380 you know, they think that,
00:47:38.520 you know how like
00:47:39.140 social justice activists,
00:47:41.120 they want to take scenes
00:47:42.780 out of comedies
00:47:43.620 that they seem problematic,
00:47:44.800 which is streaming services
00:47:45.640 are now doing, of course.
00:47:46.860 Or they want to ban films
00:47:48.040 or various books,
00:47:49.680 you know, whatever.
00:47:51.180 That comes from this idea
00:47:52.260 that if the masses
00:47:53.080 are exposed
00:47:54.200 to popular entertainment,
00:47:55.460 they can be corrupted.
00:47:56.300 And that's something
00:47:57.740 that has echoes
00:47:58.820 of what they believed
00:47:59.560 in the Frankfurt School.
00:48:01.220 You know,
00:48:01.800 the cancellation
00:48:02.300 of Jerry Sadowitz's show,
00:48:04.020 you know,
00:48:04.160 that's an adult show
00:48:05.100 that is advertised
00:48:05.780 at adults
00:48:06.980 with so many warnings
00:48:08.580 saying what it is.
00:48:09.880 But the Pleasance has said,
00:48:11.140 we need to decide
00:48:11.820 on your behalf
00:48:12.460 whether you can buy tickets
00:48:13.560 for that.
00:48:13.980 It's not safe
00:48:14.640 for you to buy tickets
00:48:15.680 for that.
00:48:16.160 And they actually said,
00:48:16.880 you know, it's harmful.
00:48:17.540 They described it as harmful.
00:48:19.240 But that means
00:48:20.280 that they believe
00:48:20.840 in this idea
00:48:21.360 that popular entertainment
00:48:22.120 can corrupt the masses,
00:48:23.220 which was the identical perspective
00:48:24.560 that Mary Whitehouse had.
00:48:25.740 Well, it's a very
00:48:26.520 socially conservative
00:48:27.340 point of view
00:48:28.060 if you think about it,
00:48:29.000 which is like,
00:48:29.540 you know,
00:48:30.040 the low leap,
00:48:32.780 whatever,
00:48:33.400 masses must be...
00:48:34.720 The plebeians.
00:48:35.160 The plebeians must be protected
00:48:36.620 from the corrupting influence
00:48:37.920 of, you know,
00:48:39.280 degrading art
00:48:40.760 and culture
00:48:41.420 and whatever.
00:48:41.900 Exactly.
00:48:42.440 And to go back
00:48:43.520 to your question,
00:48:44.080 Foucault,
00:48:45.080 and it's principally
00:48:46.120 Foucault that they cite,
00:48:47.020 they don't cite
00:48:47.740 Marcuse of the Frankfurt School,
00:48:49.500 even though he wrote
00:48:50.020 an essay on repressive tolerance
00:48:51.760 where he was very explicit
00:48:52.680 about the need
00:48:53.840 to effectively
00:48:54.820 not allow conservatives
00:48:55.880 to speak,
00:48:56.680 not allow right-wingers
00:48:58.060 to speak.
00:48:58.440 So it's interesting
00:48:59.040 that they don't cite that more.
00:49:00.600 Yeah.
00:49:00.800 But they do cite Foucault
00:49:01.740 and they won't have read him.
00:49:03.540 And what's interesting about it,
00:49:04.380 like all religions,
00:49:05.880 a lot of the faithful
00:49:06.660 don't read the holy texts,
00:49:07.700 you know.
00:49:08.880 And I had to read
00:49:09.920 a lot of Foucault
00:49:10.540 because I was teaching him
00:49:11.420 and he formed a major
00:49:13.420 aspect of my doctoral thesis.
00:49:15.120 So, you know,
00:49:15.760 I was already steeped
00:49:16.660 in this kind of stuff.
00:49:17.680 But in short,
00:49:18.700 the most important thing
00:49:19.620 is Foucault's belief
00:49:21.200 in this nexus
00:49:21.860 of power and language.
00:49:23.100 Yes.
00:49:23.420 That he sees power
00:49:24.220 as not being this
00:49:24.820 top-down phenomenon,
00:49:25.620 but that it runs through
00:49:26.440 all strata of society,
00:49:27.980 like a grid
00:49:28.640 that runs through.
00:49:30.140 And that's why
00:49:30.700 they always bang on
00:49:31.240 about power structures
00:49:32.440 and the way in which
00:49:32.960 language or jokes
00:49:34.100 normalise hate
00:49:35.220 or legitimise violence.
00:49:36.680 That's how they see it.
00:49:37.940 They see this as a
00:49:38.780 fundamentally linguistic discourse.
00:49:40.420 That's how they comprehend reality.
00:49:42.040 So you do need to understand
00:49:43.380 where it's come from,
00:49:44.140 I think.
00:49:44.480 And that's why
00:49:44.880 I don't want to alienate people
00:49:46.340 or go into it too much.
00:49:47.580 It's just one chapter.
00:49:48.380 So I just talk about
00:49:49.160 those origins
00:49:50.020 in a hopefully accessible way.
00:49:51.460 But the reason I brought up
00:49:52.420 the nonsense
00:49:53.240 as a sort of jokey point
00:49:54.840 is that,
00:49:55.740 I mean,
00:49:56.560 we know that Foucault
00:49:57.820 was a bit partial
00:49:59.380 to that sort of thing.
00:50:00.500 He slept with underage boys,
00:50:01.680 yes.
00:50:01.780 Yes.
00:50:02.820 And some people,
00:50:04.460 I see this online,
00:50:05.700 I don't know what it,
00:50:06.960 you know,
00:50:07.160 how much basis there is to it,
00:50:08.360 but are increasingly concerned
00:50:09.500 that this process
00:50:10.840 of never-ending deconstruction
00:50:12.680 is aimed at deconstructing
00:50:14.740 all sorts of social norms.
00:50:16.640 And one of them,
00:50:17.880 you know,
00:50:18.120 once you get past
00:50:19.280 deconstructing the idea
00:50:20.860 of sex
00:50:21.440 and gender,
00:50:22.820 then the next thing
00:50:24.180 is to start calling
00:50:25.160 pedophiles
00:50:25.740 minor attracted people
00:50:26.780 and on and on it goes.
00:50:30.720 What do you make
00:50:31.580 of all of that?
00:50:33.200 I think I'm concerned
00:50:35.120 when I see activists
00:50:36.200 and academics,
00:50:37.580 which are basically
00:50:38.060 the same thing now,
00:50:39.780 basically talk about
00:50:41.540 minor attracted persons
00:50:44.380 and how maybe we should
00:50:45.200 bring them into
00:50:45.700 the LGBTQIA umbrella
00:50:47.640 and all of that.
00:50:48.560 And the thing is,
00:50:49.080 it is very few people
00:50:50.340 are saying that
00:50:50.740 and we do have to be clear
00:50:51.480 about that.
00:50:51.880 I don't think this is
00:50:52.500 a common thing at all.
00:50:54.100 And I think it's a bit
00:50:54.900 conspiratorial to sort of say,
00:50:56.620 because Foucault
00:50:57.520 had these tendencies,
00:50:58.880 therefore he's developed
00:51:00.340 these theories
00:51:00.980 that now other,
00:51:02.060 you know,
00:51:02.660 secret nonces
00:51:03.440 are picking up on.
00:51:03.940 You do think
00:51:04.600 that's conspiratorial,
00:51:05.740 that his theories
00:51:06.580 were partly produced
00:51:08.080 by, you know,
00:51:09.220 I don't know why
00:51:10.080 he thought the way
00:51:11.060 he thought.
00:51:11.360 Yeah, you're not a mind reader.
00:51:12.760 Or why he created
00:51:13.420 the theories he created.
00:51:14.680 But I think the reason why...
00:51:15.540 But the person who sort of,
00:51:16.700 you know,
00:51:17.060 was at the foundation
00:51:18.440 of transgenderism also
00:51:20.140 had...
00:51:21.340 John Money.
00:51:21.900 Yeah.
00:51:22.380 Yeah.
00:51:22.760 So you're like,
00:51:24.180 to me that is
00:51:25.000 not insignificant.
00:51:26.620 It's not insignificant
00:51:27.840 because it's morally
00:51:29.280 reprehensible behaviour.
00:51:31.580 But I think...
00:51:31.900 But it's like,
00:51:32.120 why would we design
00:51:33.520 society around
00:51:35.080 the ideas of two paedophiles?
00:51:36.840 Is I guess the question.
00:51:37.600 That's not why
00:51:38.080 those ideas took hold though.
00:51:39.700 Yeah.
00:51:39.960 People weren't...
00:51:40.680 Within academia,
00:51:41.480 people weren't elevating Foucault.
00:51:43.180 I mean,
00:51:43.300 people really did.
00:51:43.960 There's even a guy
00:51:44.480 called David Halperin
00:51:45.640 who wrote a book
00:51:46.160 called Saint Foucault
00:51:47.200 Towards a Gay Hagiography.
00:51:49.200 He literally deifies...
00:51:50.900 I mean,
00:51:51.120 when I was at university,
00:51:53.460 Foucault was like a god
00:51:54.320 and people would invoke him
00:51:55.700 and that was sort of
00:51:57.220 an end of discussion
00:51:58.000 and I was very sceptical
00:51:59.040 about Foucault
00:51:59.520 and I didn't think
00:52:00.860 he was a good historian
00:52:01.720 and I wanted to talk
00:52:03.440 about this stuff
00:52:04.040 and I remember being
00:52:05.340 in a conference
00:52:05.900 and this academic
00:52:06.740 talked about how
00:52:07.620 Foucault...
00:52:08.840 Foucault mentioned
00:52:09.840 that this particular
00:52:11.120 sexual activity
00:52:11.840 wasn't...
00:52:12.740 didn't happen
00:52:13.340 in the ancient world
00:52:14.120 and I asked the question.
00:52:15.300 I said,
00:52:15.420 how did he know?
00:52:16.780 And they didn't know
00:52:17.640 why he knew
00:52:18.120 and he used to do...
00:52:19.080 He'd just assert this stuff.
00:52:20.740 It's shoddy stuff really
00:52:21.800 but theoretically,
00:52:24.700 those ideas caught on
00:52:26.220 almost by accident.
00:52:28.380 It wasn't because
00:52:29.060 of what he thought about.
00:52:30.340 I kind of feel
00:52:31.380 sometimes this stuff
00:52:32.220 just happens accidentally
00:52:33.200 a little bit.
00:52:34.620 You know,
00:52:34.880 these ideas become fashionable.
00:52:36.520 Fashion explains an awful lot.
00:52:37.860 Yes.
00:52:38.280 And then all of a sudden
00:52:38.980 people are like...
00:52:39.640 And also deconstructing
00:52:40.440 the text is fun, right?
00:52:41.880 If you take that approach...
00:52:42.740 When I was studying
00:52:43.560 at an undergrad
00:52:44.040 at the English literature,
00:52:45.220 we weren't really reading
00:52:46.240 a poem for its artistry,
00:52:49.120 for its numinous quality,
00:52:50.420 for the poetry of the thing.
00:52:52.640 We were trying to work out
00:52:53.480 which bits are sexist,
00:52:55.040 which bits are homophobic,
00:52:56.600 which bits are racist
00:52:57.420 and then write up
00:52:58.220 that up in an essay
00:52:58.860 and you get a first.
00:53:00.360 It was moral detective work,
00:53:02.420 right?
00:53:03.300 It's, you know,
00:53:04.180 it's really boring,
00:53:05.920 actually,
00:53:06.640 teasing out the contradiction
00:53:07.580 in the text,
00:53:08.600 trying to work out
00:53:09.120 problematizing the text.
00:53:10.160 Look, I used to do it myself.
00:53:11.640 You know,
00:53:11.820 I used to do it
00:53:12.440 about Shakespeare
00:53:13.780 and I find that
00:53:17.300 sort of stuff embarrassing now,
00:53:18.540 but that...
00:53:20.160 And it's easier.
00:53:21.640 It's an easier approach.
00:53:23.240 And it's also,
00:53:24.060 you know,
00:53:24.380 my supervisor,
00:53:25.320 Robin Robbins,
00:53:26.300 who I've dedicated the book to,
00:53:27.840 I...
00:53:28.620 He said to me once
00:53:29.700 that all of this sort of
00:53:32.020 post-modernist fashion
00:53:34.900 within English literature,
00:53:36.000 those books get published
00:53:37.320 because the publishers
00:53:38.280 don't understand the jargon.
00:53:39.920 So you have people
00:53:40.480 like Judith Butler
00:53:41.180 dressing what is a relatively
00:53:43.220 simple idea
00:53:43.920 up in 20 different clauses,
00:53:46.140 overloading,
00:53:47.400 really turgid prose
00:53:48.780 that is just jargon-laden
00:53:50.660 and unpleasant to read
00:53:52.060 and lacking in clarity.
00:53:53.880 But these are ideas
00:53:54.740 that can be expressed
00:53:55.580 with elegance
00:53:56.340 should you wish to do so.
00:53:57.740 They're smart ideas
00:53:58.560 and I do understand
00:53:59.680 that difficult ideas
00:54:00.380 sometimes take difficult terms
00:54:01.880 to explain them,
00:54:02.880 but not those ideas.
00:54:03.920 And so he was saying
00:54:05.100 that's why these things
00:54:05.820 get published.
00:54:07.400 Also, these theorists
00:54:08.140 were constantly quoting each other,
00:54:09.700 creating this illusion
00:54:10.740 that they'd generated
00:54:12.400 this body of knowledge
00:54:13.420 that they were important
00:54:14.720 and they're just quoting each other
00:54:16.080 and they were flimsy ideas.
00:54:17.640 I mean, that's how
00:54:18.440 I think it took on.
00:54:19.200 I don't think it was
00:54:20.240 queer theorists
00:54:22.260 trying to normalise paedophilia.
00:54:24.040 I don't think that's
00:54:24.580 what was happening there.
00:54:25.340 Interesting.
00:54:25.960 Andrew, do you think
00:54:26.740 part of it as well
00:54:27.620 is it just makes you feel good?
00:54:30.880 Oh, yeah.
00:54:31.400 Like, there's nothing more fun
00:54:32.440 than sort of judging someone else
00:54:33.560 and saying I'm more morally
00:54:34.420 superior than you.
00:54:35.380 Oh, it's brilliant, isn't it?
00:54:36.500 Just going,
00:54:37.120 look how great I am.
00:54:38.420 Look what I've done.
00:54:38.780 The Pharisees had a great time,
00:54:39.840 didn't they?
00:54:40.040 Yeah.
00:54:40.220 But, you know, of course.
00:54:41.640 And, yeah, there's partly that.
00:54:43.980 There's an excuse.
00:54:45.420 You know, like the Inquisitors
00:54:46.360 who were strapping women
00:54:47.080 to the rack back in the day,
00:54:48.400 they thought they were good people.
00:54:50.520 And it's great
00:54:51.240 because you can behave cruelly
00:54:52.700 and you can bully people,
00:54:53.760 but you can still call yourself a saint.
00:54:55.720 I mean, what's not to like?
00:54:57.360 Right.
00:54:57.720 You know, and so many
00:54:58.860 of these people do this.
00:55:00.480 But also, in addition to that,
00:55:02.080 and again, I think
00:55:02.640 that's sort of veering
00:55:04.100 into trying to work out motives
00:55:05.280 and I don't think
00:55:05.720 we necessarily can do that.
00:55:09.220 I think the other possibilities
00:55:10.300 people do genuinely,
00:55:11.080 they genuinely have bought into it.
00:55:13.100 They genuinely believe it.
00:55:14.340 How could it be otherwise?
00:55:15.260 You know, when you get like,
00:55:16.980 it was in Ontario,
00:55:18.160 wasn't it, last year,
00:55:18.880 where a school board,
00:55:21.100 not just a school board,
00:55:22.580 a body of 30 schools,
00:55:23.780 the board that controls 30 schools,
00:55:26.220 removed 5,000 books
00:55:27.560 from the library shelves
00:55:28.760 because they had outdated
00:55:30.240 depictions of race.
00:55:31.700 And they burnt a number of them.
00:55:34.140 And they called this
00:55:35.140 a flame purification ceremony.
00:55:37.560 And then they used the ashes
00:55:38.960 of the burnt books
00:55:39.840 to fertilize a new tree.
00:55:41.980 Isn't that beautiful?
00:55:43.380 And they obviously think this is,
00:55:46.260 this is Fahrenheit 451,
00:55:47.560 but they think this is,
00:55:49.320 to do something that self-satirizing,
00:55:52.140 and it's not just like I say,
00:55:52.880 not just activists,
00:55:53.720 that's a school board
00:55:54.720 that controls 30 schools, right?
00:55:56.000 It's a major body.
00:55:57.180 That's why it matters, right?
00:55:58.660 If it was just activists burning books,
00:55:59.760 they do that all the time
00:56:00.340 with J.K. Rowling's books.
00:56:01.320 And stuff.
00:56:02.040 They've threatened to burn my book, right?
00:56:04.300 I don't care about that.
00:56:05.360 They can burn as many books as you want.
00:56:06.520 You buy it first, right?
00:56:07.840 Do that.
00:56:08.520 But when a school board,
00:56:11.220 a county school board,
00:56:13.000 not only removes the books
00:56:14.640 from the shelves,
00:56:15.660 but burns them
00:56:16.600 and calls it a flame purification ceremony,
00:56:19.220 and they can't see
00:56:20.760 what the implications of that are,
00:56:22.660 I don't believe they could have done that
00:56:24.120 if they could see with any sense.
00:56:26.020 I think they must have bought into this.
00:56:27.700 They must think
00:56:28.600 that those books are dangerous.
00:56:29.700 Historical books
00:56:30.480 that represent people in a way.
00:56:32.220 The reason why Dr. Seuss,
00:56:33.460 the estate of Dr. Seuss,
00:56:34.320 is no longer publishing
00:56:35.100 six of his books
00:56:36.220 because of outdated racial stereotypes.
00:56:38.200 Enid Blyton,
00:56:38.860 they'll talk about
00:56:39.360 her outdated racial stereotypes.
00:56:41.260 They republish Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn
00:56:43.140 without the racial epithets.
00:56:44.740 Doesn't make sense
00:56:45.420 because it's an anti-racist book.
00:56:46.740 It's a book that satirizes
00:56:48.140 these sort of priggish,
00:56:50.580 self-righteous,
00:56:51.800 good Christian people
00:56:52.720 who nonetheless
00:56:53.180 enslave their fellow human being,
00:56:54.800 and it takes a boy
00:56:55.840 to see through that,
00:56:57.700 right?
00:56:57.960 That's an anti-racist book.
00:56:59.300 And once you take those racial epithets out,
00:57:00.940 it doesn't work.
00:57:01.560 The satire loses its teeth.
00:57:03.780 So To Kill a Mockingbird,
00:57:05.500 you know,
00:57:05.660 again,
00:57:06.380 they can only see the language.
00:57:07.900 They only see
00:57:08.960 the racial epithet
00:57:09.920 in To Kill a Mockingbird
00:57:10.740 and they ignore
00:57:11.400 the message of the book.
00:57:12.420 It's kind of like people
00:57:13.220 who don't understand comedy,
00:57:14.460 particularly satire,
00:57:15.400 satirical comedy.
00:57:16.220 They just,
00:57:17.000 they can't understand
00:57:18.560 that somebody
00:57:19.480 could be
00:57:20.600 in a character
00:57:21.920 on stage
00:57:22.960 saying something
00:57:24.300 that they don't believe.
00:57:26.300 It's incredible
00:57:27.160 how humorless
00:57:28.080 these people are.
00:57:29.880 And I do find
00:57:31.920 that very strange.
00:57:32.640 But Andrew,
00:57:34.020 The New Puritans,
00:57:35.560 I really recommend
00:57:36.960 people get this book
00:57:37.860 and have a good read of it.
00:57:40.120 And we're going to ask you
00:57:41.580 some questions
00:57:42.040 for our locals,
00:57:42.800 but I will finish.
00:57:43.940 There's just one question
00:57:45.340 that I want to ask.
00:57:46.000 And the one thing
00:57:46.620 I want to push back
00:57:47.320 and you say
00:57:47.740 you can't look
00:57:49.480 into other people's,
00:57:50.740 you know,
00:57:51.540 minds and blah, blah, blah.
00:57:53.080 Francis can.
00:57:54.020 I can.
00:57:54.480 I know you can.
00:57:55.360 Yeah, of course I can.
00:57:56.580 But look,
00:57:57.160 we all know
00:57:58.000 some very, very
00:57:59.200 dodgy people
00:58:00.120 in our industry
00:58:00.920 and they're always
00:58:02.040 the most woke.
00:58:03.000 Yeah.
00:58:03.580 Yeah, sure.
00:58:04.760 There is that coincidence,
00:58:06.820 isn't there?
00:58:07.900 But why do you think
00:58:09.220 that might be?
00:58:10.140 Because I think
00:58:10.620 they use it as a tool
00:58:11.440 to shield and protect themselves
00:58:12.580 and also attack other people
00:58:13.860 who they perceive
00:58:14.540 to be their enemies.
00:58:15.240 And I also think
00:58:16.700 that is very likely.
00:58:17.800 What I won't say
00:58:18.380 is that I definitively know.
00:58:20.200 I don't know why.
00:58:21.100 Maybe they have bought into it.
00:58:22.500 But it's, look,
00:58:23.660 I mean,
00:58:23.920 I say in the book,
00:58:24.620 you know,
00:58:24.860 some people don these
00:58:26.500 sacred robes
00:58:27.520 out of a sense of duty
00:58:29.240 and some people don them
00:58:30.660 as a disguise.
00:58:31.920 And we'll never know
00:58:32.800 which is which.
00:58:33.940 All we can do
00:58:34.720 is really push back
00:58:35.400 against the argument
00:58:36.120 and push back
00:58:36.620 against the ideas.
00:58:37.200 You know,
00:58:37.440 if you're propagating
00:58:39.760 these terrible ideas
00:58:40.620 that are making society
00:58:41.460 more racially divided,
00:58:43.120 that are attacking gay kids,
00:58:44.800 all of that sort of stuff,
00:58:46.120 and you're doing it
00:58:46.980 for nefarious reasons,
00:58:48.960 or you're doing it
00:58:50.020 because you sincerely believe it,
00:58:51.140 actually it doesn't matter
00:58:51.840 either way.
00:58:53.080 We still need to treat,
00:58:54.260 take the argument
00:58:54.760 at face value,
00:58:55.700 push back at it.
00:58:56.360 An argument stands or falls
00:58:57.560 on its own merits,
00:58:58.180 not whether the person
00:58:58.920 sincerely holds the belief.
00:59:00.460 So it's just more sensible,
00:59:01.880 I argue,
00:59:03.040 to assume good faith
00:59:05.120 and destroy the argument anyway.
00:59:07.540 And this is the best way.
00:59:08.620 Because also,
00:59:09.100 the other thing is,
00:59:09.580 if you don't do that,
00:59:10.720 you're doing what they do.
00:59:12.300 You're on their level there.
00:59:13.740 You know,
00:59:13.940 because when I present arguments
00:59:15.000 in defense of free speech,
00:59:16.440 they make these claims
00:59:17.680 that I'm,
00:59:18.160 you know,
00:59:18.320 as I said earlier,
00:59:19.300 that I'm trying to support fascism.
00:59:21.660 And, you know,
00:59:22.460 that's not an argument,
00:59:23.340 is it?
00:59:23.920 So,
00:59:24.960 I mean,
00:59:25.300 that would be my advice.
00:59:26.280 Or, you know,
00:59:26.980 even if you know they're lying,
00:59:28.360 or you're pretty sure,
00:59:29.740 just to,
00:59:30.400 these arguments fall apart
00:59:31.320 really easily.
00:59:32.360 It doesn't depend
00:59:33.080 on their sincerity.
00:59:34.760 Fair.
00:59:35.520 Andrew,
00:59:35.940 thank you so much
00:59:36.540 for coming back.
00:59:37.520 The new Puritans,
00:59:38.640 make sure to go out
00:59:39.480 and grab that.
00:59:40.780 And,
00:59:41.180 Andrew,
00:59:41.520 we're going to ask you
00:59:42.020 a couple of questions
00:59:42.900 that our local supporters
00:59:44.140 have already submitted
00:59:45.020 for you.
00:59:45.860 I'm nervous.
00:59:46.480 But before we do,
00:59:48.160 before we do,
00:59:49.060 we,
00:59:49.500 as always,
00:59:49.800 have the final question,
00:59:50.740 which is,
00:59:50.980 what is the one thing
00:59:51.820 we're still not talking about
00:59:52.900 as a society
00:59:53.780 that you think
00:59:54.460 we should be?
00:59:56.260 Okay.
00:59:56.740 And I knew you were
00:59:57.320 going to ask this.
00:59:58.320 And every time you ask me this,
00:59:59.520 I forget that I was meant to prepare.
01:00:02.060 Freeze.
01:00:02.240 I was meant to prepare.
01:00:02.660 In the headlights of our interrogative.
01:00:04.300 Isn't that funny?
01:00:04.760 It's the only thing
01:00:05.520 that I struggle to answer.
01:00:07.760 It's that,
01:00:08.500 what do I think
01:00:08.960 we're talking about
01:00:09.500 that we,
01:00:10.320 I don't think we don't,
01:00:12.020 sorry,
01:00:12.320 what do I think
01:00:12.980 we're not talking about
01:00:13.820 that we should be talking about?
01:00:15.240 What is an issue
01:00:17.620 that you don't think
01:00:18.200 gets enough attention
01:00:19.060 that actually really matters?
01:00:21.180 Well,
01:00:21.320 to be honest,
01:00:21.740 it's the issues
01:00:22.240 that I wrote in the book,
01:00:23.280 which I know we talk
01:00:24.260 about them a lot,
01:00:25.140 but I don't think
01:00:25.820 the mainstream are particularly.
01:00:27.400 You know,
01:00:27.720 I cover a lot of these issues
01:00:29.020 on my show on GB News
01:00:30.500 and other news channels
01:00:32.880 just don't touch them.
01:00:34.360 And so I think
01:00:34.820 we often fall into the trap
01:00:36.280 of assuming
01:00:36.800 that because we talk about them,
01:00:38.900 everyone's talking about them.
01:00:40.220 Actually,
01:00:40.580 most people aren't.
01:00:41.740 And most people
01:00:42.120 don't understand it.
01:00:42.660 I mean,
01:00:42.820 you mentioned earlier
01:00:43.520 people describing themselves
01:00:44.760 as cis.
01:00:45.480 I would suggest
01:00:46.300 that most people
01:00:46.840 still don't know
01:00:47.280 what cis means.
01:00:49.080 And they certainly
01:00:50.060 don't understand that,
01:00:51.280 you know,
01:00:51.500 if you don't believe
01:00:52.160 you have a gender identity,
01:00:53.220 if you don't subscribe
01:00:53.720 to that ideology,
01:00:54.740 describing yourself as cis
01:00:55.760 is incoherent.
01:00:57.080 Like,
01:00:57.920 describing anyone as cis
01:00:59.060 is incoherent
01:00:59.740 because the word means
01:01:00.940 someone whose body,
01:01:02.920 biological sex,
01:01:03.720 aligns with their gender identity.
01:01:06.620 But you can't call someone that
01:01:07.900 if they don't believe
01:01:08.400 in gender identity.
01:01:09.100 It doesn't make any sense.
01:01:10.000 So I would say,
01:01:11.840 yeah,
01:01:12.180 the issues that we are
01:01:13.300 talking about now
01:01:14.160 are the things
01:01:14.980 that most people
01:01:15.420 aren't talking about.
01:01:16.600 Now,
01:01:16.740 that might be a bit
01:01:17.200 of a cop-out.
01:01:18.200 No,
01:01:18.660 but no,
01:01:19.120 that makes sense to me.
01:01:20.400 That makes sense to me.
01:01:21.280 Great cop-out,
01:01:21.980 Andrew.
01:01:22.560 There we go.
01:01:23.000 Andrew Doyle,
01:01:23.600 thank you so much
01:01:24.200 for coming back
01:01:24.820 and thank you for watching
01:01:25.980 and listening.
01:01:26.700 We'll see you very soon
01:01:28.100 with another brilliant episode
01:01:29.440 like this one
01:01:30.100 or our show.
01:01:31.520 All of them go out
01:01:32.320 at 7pm UK time.
01:01:33.440 And for those of you
01:01:34.080 who like your trigonometry
01:01:35.120 on the go,
01:01:36.120 it's also available
01:01:37.220 as a podcast.
01:01:38.520 Take care
01:01:39.000 and see you soon,
01:01:40.060 guys.
01:01:40.380 We'll see you on Locals.
01:01:41.000 Does Titania
01:01:44.120 ever have sex?
01:01:45.240 Titania McGraw.
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