00:01:39.840You can vote in a Labour government or Tory government, you're still going to get the woke.
00:01:43.040If the machinery of government is grinding in that direction, there is nothing you can do.
00:01:47.300When 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.
00:02:01.300I don't believe they could have done that if they could see with any sense.
00:02:04.360Did you know that you can ask guests your questions?
00:02:19.380When you join our locals community, not only will you know who we're about to interview, you have the opportunity to ask them your questions.
00:05:28.840But actually, it's funny how that's worked out because he's obviously gone in his own direction.
00:05:33.440But 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.
00:05:41.340And 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.
00:07:00.220So really, the book is about me trying to make sense.
00:07:02.300What 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.
00:07:15.620And this is an intelligent person, that I'm a Nazi.
00:07:19.120What kind of world can we be in where that can happen?
00:07:21.820So my book's an attempt to explain how we reach that point.
00:07:26.160How 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?
00:07:36.280How 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?
00:07:49.060I'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.
00:07:59.120Like 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.
00:08:09.180Like, I don't think we've quite understood, like, what a deranging worldview it takes for someone to think like that.
00:08:17.200We've started to accept it, haven't we?
00:08:18.980I 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,
00:08:27.020this 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.
00:08:34.600And 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.
00:08:43.480Even when it's clearly not what they said it was, they still say it is what the fantasy they decided on.
00:08:49.080So 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?
00:08:58.340They will be people who've just decided what you are and created this monster of their imagination in order to attack.
00:09:03.560I rarely have an angry critic come at me and faithfully replicate what I think.
00:09:11.100They'll say, oh, well, you believe this, you believe this.
00:09:12.980They often say I'm a privately educated, Tory-loving homophobe.
00:11:38.080And 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.
00:11:47.900And that being not racist is just another form of racism.
00:11:51.280Similarly, Alana Lenten, who's another critical race hustler, said that to be not racist is a discursive form of racist violence.
00:12:29.720Well, 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?
00:12:36.320And he's saying, no, that's just your head.
00:12:51.400And they can deny the observable reality in front of your eyes and they'll do it and it'll drive you insane.
00:12:58.120And 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.
00:13:06.060And they'll throw jargon at you and they'll put you off.
00:13:08.320And actually, what I've tried to do in the book, because I think actually this stuff is understandable.
00:13:14.700And the only way we can defeat it is if we get it.
00:13:17.200If we have a secure grasp of what it is they're doing and how to push back against it.
00:14:27.600And 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.
00:14:34.960You know, this idea that none of us know what the difference between men and women.
00:14:38.500We all know the difference, but we're expected to proclaim that we don't, that there is no difference.
00:14:44.840And that's why, I think that's a very good example of the notion of a kind of, it's not just mass hysteria.
00:14:53.300It's people going along with the hysteria for the sake of self-preservation.
00:14:57.580Which 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.
00:15:05.460If you look back at that unique moment in history, which only lasted about a year in the late 17th century in Salem.
00:15:12.380And you had a small community, by the way, I mean, the Puritans of New England were not witch hunters.
00:15:27.000And 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.
00:15:37.460And so, and it only lasted that short period of time.
00:15:42.360But 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.
00:15:53.060It's that the elites were propagating it.
00:15:56.720So 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.
00:16:15.160You know, and they say, oh, actually, yeah, there is a thing.
00:16:16.900So they go along with the activists and they perpetuate the hysteria.
00:16:20.060And that's where I think the main parallel between the two things exists.
00:16:26.500And 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.
00:16:35.720There'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.
00:16:44.280They would say, oh, they've just their spirit has just flown up to the beam.
00:17:02.280So 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.
00:17:12.540The spectral evidence was taken as proof.
00:17:15.100And they would say, and as I was saying, though, this one girl, it's a really interesting moment.
00:17:19.440She pulls out a small bit of knife, something that's been broken off a blade.
00:17:38.860But instead of acknowledging this, the magistrates say, oh, well, let's quickly move on to the next thing.
00:17:43.340There'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.