TRIGGERnometry - Brendan O'Neill：＂2020 Has Been a Disaster for Freedom＂

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:09.040 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.260 Our brilliant and returning guest today is the editor of Spike Magazine,

00:00:18.120 Brendan O'Neill. Welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:19.620 Hi, guys.

00:00:20.360 It's good to have you back, man.

00:00:21.540 Good to be here.

00:00:22.180 Listen, it's been an interesting year. Just before we started, we were talking about how

00:00:26.720 you know, I started the whole lockdown thing, strongly disagreeing with the position you guys

00:00:31.680 took and then eventually have come around to lockdown scepticism, if you like. And we will

00:00:37.680 maybe talk about the vaccine and all of that stuff later. But give us, we're almost at the end of the

00:00:42.280 year. Give us a civil liberties view of 2020. What has happened in this time? Nothing good. I think

00:00:51.520 this year 2020 has been a complete disaster for civil liberties but I think it's even worse than

00:00:57.240 that I think the civil liberties thing I've been thinking about this I think it's a bit of a red

00:01:00.940 herring in the broader discussion about freedom I mean civil liberties are incredibly important

00:01:06.120 the right to protest the right to petition your leaders legal rights the right to silence the

00:01:11.600 right to trial by jury all those kinds of legal rights are incredibly important and they accentuate

00:01:17.900 the liberty of the individual. But I think there's something a bit less tangible that's

00:01:24.000 really been destroyed in 2020, which is the culture of freedom. I mean, civil liberties

00:01:28.780 are relatively easily reinstated. I mean, parliamentarians could just put them back

00:01:34.220 on the statute books and there you are, you have the right to protest again. It's just

00:01:37.460 been returned to us. But I think the broader culture of freedom, which is the confidence

00:01:42.480 of individuals to make decisions, to engage in public life, to take responsibility for their

00:01:49.460 lives, I think that's what's taken a real beating this year. Because when your life is micromanaged

00:01:55.160 to such an extraordinary degree that politicians are telling you who you can hug, what you should

00:02:01.200 eat in a pub, how many people you can have Christmas dinner with, I mean, this kind of

00:02:05.680 intimate micromanagement of people's lives. I think that has a really corrosive effect on

00:02:12.660 people's sense that they are capable of organising their own lives and their sense

00:02:16.860 that they ought to enjoy freedom. So I think there's been a double whammy assault on freedom

00:02:21.520 this year. Firstly, there has been the legal rescinding of various civil liberties, and that's

00:02:27.260 been really bad. But there has also been this extraordinary assault on the culture of freedom

00:02:33.180 and on the idea that people and communities know better than officialdom how to organize their

00:02:39.020 lives. Well, what would you say to someone who makes, and it's a reasonable argument to make,

00:02:42.960 I suppose, that the people who've accepted this and who are now having dinner with the right

00:02:49.000 number of people at Christmas and not eating the wrong thing at a pub or whatever else it might be,

00:02:55.260 they are doing this for the benefit of society, to save lives, to protect the NHS, whatever the

00:03:00.340 slogans are. But essentially, they're showing social responsibility by participating in this

00:03:05.740 process. Yeah, I don't buy that. I really don't. I think it's in many ways, it's the opposite of

00:03:10.660 social solidarity, this demand for conformism, this insistence that we almost we all must

00:03:16.160 sacrifice our fundamental liberties in the name of some greater good. I think that's actually the

00:03:20.980 opposite of social solidarity and community solidarity, which is exactly what you need

00:03:25.660 in a pandemic. You do need people to pull together. You do need people to say,

00:03:30.820 I'm going to look after my neighbours. I'm going to deliver medicines to the old lady who lives

00:03:35.300 upstairs. You do need people in a time of crisis. And I fully accept COVID-19 was a genuine health

00:03:41.940 crisis. I'm not a COVID denier. I'm not one of those people who thinks it's a plandemic.

00:03:46.980 I think it's a very serious virus, probably the most serious contagious illness since the Spanish

00:03:52.560 flu and in a moment like that you do need people to come together and work together but I think

00:03:58.240 everything the government has done and everything the woke elites have done has grated against

00:04:03.920 the possibility of people coming together and what's it what it has actually unleashed

00:04:08.260 is a is a an extraordinary lack of self-confidence on the part of individuals and communities because

00:04:14.840 they've constantly been told this is how you must do things and nothing else is acceptable

00:04:19.380 and it's given rise to this kind of spying, curtain-twitching culture

00:04:23.920 where we've been openly encouraged to squeal on our neighbours

00:04:28.240 and we saw some extraordinary episodes of people phoning the cops

00:04:33.220 if someone went for two jogs

00:04:35.000 or people taking photographs of other people in parks

00:04:38.540 and putting them on Twitter and publicly shaming them as Covid-iots.

00:04:42.440 So the culture we needed, which was a culture of people pulling together,

00:04:46.660 was completely undermined by the authoritarianism

00:04:51.880 and the suspicion that was spread by government officials.

00:04:55.460 So I think they've got it completely wrong.

00:04:57.760 I think this was a serious health crisis,

00:04:59.540 and in times of crisis, you do need individuals and communities

00:05:03.520 to take responsibility.

00:05:05.540 But what the government said was, essentially,

00:05:07.660 we don't trust you to take responsibility,

00:05:10.160 and therefore we're going to write all these laws

00:05:12.480 telling you exactly what you can and cannot do.

00:05:14.920 It was the worst thing to do in relation to a health crisis.

00:05:17.900 But don't you think also part of the problem is that,

00:05:20.760 isn't that almost impossible to do in the age of social media?

00:05:23.720 Where somebody can see somebody doing something wrong,

00:05:26.460 take a video of it, bam, it's up on Twitter,

00:05:28.860 viewed by potentially millions of people in a matter of seconds.

00:05:31.540 That could well be true.

00:05:33.620 You know, social media does great against social solidarity.

00:05:36.860 That's the great irony of social media.

00:05:38.520 It's a very divisive phenomenon in my view.

00:05:41.340 I'm sure it has lots of plus sides as well.

00:05:43.140 the sharing of information, connecting with people, sharing news and so on. But I think

00:05:47.460 one of the downsides is that it has given rise to echo chambers and people sticking with their own

00:05:53.340 tribe, distrusting others, demonizing others, attacking others, witch hunts, all that kind of

00:05:59.320 stuff. So social media certainly didn't help. But I think initially at the very, in the first

00:06:05.780 lockdown back in March, April, there was a strong sense of community solidarity. You remember

00:06:11.640 hundreds of thousands of people signed up to assist the NHS. I had COVID-19. And then I

00:06:17.840 got all this information about how important it is to donate plasma and blood if you've had COVID-19.

00:06:24.180 So I was doing that. And there were huge numbers of people who were doing that too.

00:06:27.840 I know lots of people who are working in my local neighbourhood delivering medicines,

00:06:31.680 delivering food. So for the first few weeks, it was actually quite positive. And people thought,

00:06:35.960 right, we've been told by the government this is going to be a three-week lockdown.

00:06:40.900 It's obviously a serious crisis.

00:06:42.920 People need our help.

00:06:44.000 And there was a sense of pulling together.

00:06:46.860 But it fizzled out.

00:06:47.760 And I think it fizzled out, firstly, because the lockdown dragged on far longer than we had been told it would.

00:06:53.220 And secondly, because the short-lived moment of social solidarity caved in and gave way to this finger-pointing, ugly climate,

00:07:03.660 which is very familiar in the contemporary period,

00:07:06.640 where people were denouncing COVID idiots

00:07:08.880 and you had the likes of Piers Morgan,

00:07:10.860 who I admire on some levels,

00:07:12.500 but not in relation to the COVID-19 crisis,

00:07:14.760 you know, denouncing people on television

00:07:16.780 for going to the park or sitting on benches.

00:07:19.440 And the police overplayed their hand.

00:07:22.320 I was in Hyde Park and I saw police

00:07:24.080 chasing people out of Hyde Park

00:07:25.820 for the crime of sitting under a tree

00:07:28.280 on their own with their laptop.

00:07:30.580 And you just thought,

00:07:31.160 well, that person is not doing anyone

00:07:33.320 any harm. What's going on here? So I think mission creep by the authorities, their over-reliance on

00:07:42.000 authoritarian measures, censorship measures. We saw big tech clamping down on anyone who

00:07:47.960 criticised the lockdown, for example. All those kinds of things, I think, just chipped away at

00:07:53.040 people's initial instinct. People's initial instinct was good. I have to help my neighbour.

00:07:58.800 But that was undermined by authoritarianism. And I think that was a very good lesson on how authoritarianism and the instinct for chipping away at people's freedom actually undermines people's ability to take responsibility for their own lives and for their communities.

00:08:14.240 And you mentioned Piers Morgan and the erosion of social solidarity over time. I think he was a kind of human example of a bigger thing that happened, which is he was very critical of anyone who was skeptical about lockdowns, as I was at the time, frankly.

00:08:30.040 But the moment his son went on a BLM protest, he was very proud of that.

00:08:36.220 And I think if you extrapolate that from that to a broader issue, the moment that suddenly it was OK for people after the whole country had followed all the rules for a period of time with a lot of social solidarity, as you say, suddenly it was OK for people to go out and protest.

00:08:52.840 And I think that disparity changed a lot of people's minds

00:08:56.760 about the enforcement of these rules.

00:09:00.440 Yeah, I think the BLM moment was really, really interesting

00:09:04.980 because for a huge number of reasons.

00:09:08.100 One of them was I think it became a convenient release.

00:09:12.360 People couldn't find a way out of lockdown.

00:09:14.720 So part of me was sympathetic, even though I'm very critical

00:09:18.000 of Black Lives Matter, the movement, I'm very critical

00:09:20.820 of the woke ideology that surrounds it.

00:09:22.800 And I'm very critical of the extraordinary double standards

00:09:25.840 in relation to public protest.

00:09:27.680 So if you go on a BLM protest,

00:09:29.100 the police will literally bow down to you

00:09:31.500 and treat you with kid gloves.

00:09:33.700 But if you go on an anti-lockdown protest,

00:09:35.540 they'll beat you off the streets

00:09:36.620 and you will be demonized in the media.

00:09:38.540 So I'm critical of all of that.

00:09:39.900 But part of me was a tiny bit sympathetic

00:09:42.540 to the Black Lives Matter uprising

00:09:44.760 from the point of view that we needed a way out of lockdown.

00:09:49.480 The government couldn't provide it.

00:09:50.960 The left couldn't provide it because they were pretty much pro-lockdown.

00:09:54.300 Labour Party was just lining up behind the government on every single measure.

00:09:57.900 And the country was just heading into this constant spiral

00:10:02.540 of keeping everyone locked in their houses

00:10:05.140 and the economy was going down the toilet and everything else.

00:10:08.140 So I think the Black Lives Matter explosion in the summer

00:10:11.040 was really people saying, listen, we need to get out of this.

00:10:14.400 And that was one way people got out of it.

00:10:17.000 The problem, of course, is that when other people try to get out of it

00:10:21.560 by protesting against lockdown or reopening their businesses

00:10:24.700 or saying, I want to go to the pub, they were demonised as COVID-ian.

00:10:28.440 So that double standard was still in play.

00:10:31.060 But I think the Black Lives Matter moment, I think, was fascinating

00:10:35.040 because it really cut down to size this view I had.

00:10:41.980 I thought that COVID-19 would help to keep in check all the woke nonsense that we've had to deal with over the past five to 10 years.

00:10:50.920 I thought all those petty, ridiculous, censorious issues, all those identitarian questions, all that minute policing of what people say and how people behave.

00:11:01.660 I naively thought that a serious, pretty historic health crisis would force us to confront the real problems facing humanity and to forget about all that woke crap that had been taking up so much of our time over the previous decade or so.

00:11:17.540 And I was completely wrong because what actually happened in 2020 after a few months of all us all kind of struggling with COVID-19 is that that wokeness and that identitarianism and that really divisive new ideology exploded back into public life in an extraordinary way with the Black Lives Matter protests and then came to dominate public discussion in a larger way than it had in previous years.

00:11:44.440 So I think that's one question it's really worth us tackling.

00:11:47.540 How is it that even when Western society, all societies in fact,

00:11:52.160 were faced with a grave challenge to health, to our health systems, to the economy,

00:11:58.660 you know, a real historic confrontation that we faced,

00:12:02.000 how is it that even in that situation we still fell back on identity politics,

00:12:08.320 woke politics, the transgender issue, all those things which blew up again in 2020?

00:12:12.420 I find that fascinating.

00:12:13.780 But do you not think as well that it was a true madness of crowds moment

00:12:17.600 in that if you look at what happened directly before the BLM,

00:12:22.580 we were about to kill Dominic Cummings.

00:12:25.620 You know, and people were genuinely, it felt like that.

00:12:30.120 I remember reading people's Facebook pages and going,

00:12:33.580 has everybody collectively lost their mind?

00:12:35.680 And is somebody going to kill Dominic Cummings?

00:12:38.440 Because it felt like that.

00:12:39.400 It went mental.

00:12:41.160 Cummings derangement syndrome was a very very serious problem in this country and you're right

00:12:48.460 to raise it because I think people forget these things because often people usually members of

00:12:53.940 the cultural and political elite not normal people but people get swept up in these moments of

00:12:58.840 hysteria and often almost violent hysteria and then they kind of feel embarrassed about it a few

00:13:05.940 weeks later and hope everyone will forget it but we shouldn't forget things like that we shouldn't

00:13:09.860 forget that there were swarms of journalists outside Cummings flat uh essentially screaming

00:13:16.160 for his head we shouldn't forget that um what's that group called led by donkeys was um projecting

00:13:21.860 all these images of sick people outside his home and in the middle of this you know normal

00:13:26.740 residential street um and there was that real hysteria there was an extraordinary meltdown

00:13:32.080 and the media the media published things about Cummings that were patently untrue so the mirror

00:13:39.020 and The Observer, for example, both said that Cummings went to Durham twice. But he didn't go

00:13:44.680 to Durham twice. He went once. They offered no proof for the second trip. It fizzled out. Everyone

00:13:50.180 forgot about it. Neither of those newspapers has issued an apology or a retraction. It's just faded

00:13:56.200 into history. So that, I think, is a very good example of how hysteria can blow up in a pretty

00:14:02.140 dangerous, destabilizing way. And that is very much linked to the broader COVID hysteria.

00:14:10.020 The thing that we're talking about, which is that the initial social connection, social concern,

00:14:17.840 social solidarity very quickly gave way to the kind of thing that is unfortunately

00:14:21.940 far too common in 21st century Western society, which is this kind of vindictiveness,

00:14:28.520 this desire to destroy people, to shame people, to harass them in public.

00:14:34.360 And I thought the Cummings derangement syndrome episode was a very good example of that.

00:14:38.260 This dragging, it was like a medieval spectacle, dragging this man and his wife,

00:14:44.060 Mary Wakefield, who just for the record, I know, and dragging them into the public sphere,

00:14:51.320 shaming them, demonizing them, holding them up as sinners

00:14:56.660 who we must all metaphorically pelt with rotten tomatoes.

00:15:00.640 There was something really ugly and medieval about that.

00:15:02.720 That's a great word when you say sinners

00:15:04.360 because I feel like this is what it's all about really, isn't it?

00:15:07.720 Because there was a religious fervor about the whole thing

00:15:12.200 and I was watching it and based on what I know of the situation,

00:15:16.320 he probably broke some rules, right?

00:15:18.480 So he was wrong to do it and as one of the people

00:15:20.960 who put the rules in place, you can see why people would be frustrated about that and angry about that.

00:15:25.120 You can understand that. But the vitriol of it and the sort of, there was a religious thing.

00:15:32.040 And you talk about these moments that we're living through. I feel like there are more and more of

00:15:37.360 them because we've almost entered this religious cultural battle where it's two sides, both with

00:15:44.700 that cultish attitude almost. And if you're the enemy, then you must be destroyed.

00:15:50.960 Yes, absolutely. I think there's a, we live in a very, very unforgiving climate. Very tribalistic. There's a very pseudo religious feel to a lot of this stuff. The pointing of fingers, the denouncing of people, it's very Salem like. And we've seen that numerous times over the past few years.

00:16:13.120 I think the Me Too moment was a bit like that,

00:16:16.100 pointing a finger at a movie producer or an actor

00:16:18.720 and then boom, his career is gone

00:16:20.620 and everyone gets off on denouncing him

00:16:23.320 as a pervert or an evil person.

00:16:25.640 We've seen it with someone like J.K. Rowling

00:16:28.200 whose great sin, of course,

00:16:30.260 is to question some aspects of transgenderism

00:16:32.980 while also, by the way,

00:16:35.360 defending the right of trans people

00:16:36.940 to exist and to live freely.

00:16:38.920 But because she questions aspects of transgenderism,

00:16:41.820 she must be destroyed.

00:16:43.120 She's subjected to death threats, violent misogyny.

00:16:47.440 People are sending her photographs of their penises.

00:16:50.400 I mean, really vile, misogynistic stuff.

00:16:52.880 She's on Tinder as well then.

00:16:55.500 Simply because she expressed an opinion that's not popular.

00:16:59.820 And we've seen it in relation to Black Lives Matter as well.

00:17:03.960 Anyone who says, of course, Black Lives Matter.

00:17:08.340 Everyone knows that Black Lives Matter as much as any other life.

00:17:12.180 but black lives matter the movement is problematic and has some dodgy eccentric views anyone who says

00:17:18.580 that is shut down and demonized and called racist so i said we've seen a lot of that over the past

00:17:24.200 few years where there is this kind of incredibly intolerant attitude towards anyone who dares to

00:17:32.520 speak out or dares to question contemporary orthodoxies and i've seen some of that myself

00:17:37.420 when I've spoken on campuses, for example, at Oxford and other places where people will protest.

00:17:43.680 The last time I spoke at Oxford, there was a protest, there was a gathering of about 50 people.

00:17:48.800 They'd all made placards. I mean, they must have literally gathered in a room to make placards.

00:17:53.580 And I remember thinking, your students at Oxford, you've surely got better things to do than make placards,

00:17:59.440 calling me evil and a hate speech, whatever they were saying.

00:18:03.160 but people really devote themselves to this idea that anyone who disagrees with them or anyone who

00:18:09.620 offends them not only are you wrong but you are evil and therefore you must be destroyed

00:18:15.340 I want to go back to a society in which you just thought those people were wrong that was great

00:18:21.740 you know when you thought oh that person's saying something I disagree with they're wrong I'm going

00:18:25.000 to argue with them we're going to have a debate instead what happens now is you hear someone

00:18:28.960 saying something you disapprove of or disagree with and you assume that they are the devil

00:18:33.440 incarnate that they are a danger to you they will pollute your soul they will erase you erasure is

00:18:40.120 the kind of contemporary woke word and so their words come to be seen as violent instruments in

00:18:47.800 and off themselves and therefore this person this dangerous person with his violent opinions

00:18:53.420 must be destroyed so that um medieval intolerance i think is incredibly strong today and sadly i

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00:20:31.220 Do you not think the problem as well is that there are narratives, whether it's a Black Lives

00:20:36.000 Matter narrative or the lockdown narrative, and you have to swallow all of the ideas,

00:20:41.820 all of the narrative. And if you don't, if you go, well, I agree with this and I agree with that,

00:20:46.360 that's not enough. You have to adhere to every single letter of their particular idea or law.

00:20:53.400 Yeah, there's a huge expectation of conformism these days. And you have to conform to every

00:21:00.200 single thing that these groups and individuals say. And if you don't, then you're in trouble.

00:21:05.320 And that's why I thought the incident of the Millwall fans booing as their players took the

00:21:10.900 knee in the Millwall v Derby game. I thought that was so interesting because to me, the most

00:21:17.140 interesting thing about that was the response to it. So the booing itself was a relatively minor

00:21:22.260 incident. It wasn't all Millwall fans. It was a relatively small number of them. It's the kind of

00:21:27.380 thing that happens at football. They boo, they chant, they say offensive things. That's what

00:21:31.480 happens at football. But the response to it was staggering. You had this instant response from

00:21:38.580 the sports authorities, from the middle-class media, from the Twitterati, all these wings of

00:21:46.040 establishment thinking just instantly said, this is utterly unacceptable. These people are evil.

00:21:51.880 We should find out who they are so that they can be banned from football. You know, all this stuff

00:21:56.580 was coming out. And that really spoke to how intense the conformist moment is. Anyone who

00:22:05.120 who deviates in any way whatsoever from what is considered to be the correct way of thinking

00:22:10.460 is in trouble. And that's the culture we live in. And you're right, you have to buy into the

00:22:18.100 entire narrative, or you will get screwed over by the new authoritarians. And transgenderism

00:22:24.560 is a good example of this. For example, there are lots of feminists out there who say,

00:22:30.020 of course, trans people have the right to exist, they have the right to refer to themselves how

00:22:34.020 they choose. They have the right to wear what they want. They have the right to have a nice life like

00:22:38.580 everyone else. But I don't think a biological male should be allowed into a woman's changing room

00:22:45.900 because there might be a 14 year old girl and she doesn't need to see a penis, right? So they will

00:22:51.420 say something like that. So they're questioning one aspect of it, which is the idea that you

00:22:58.180 instantly become a woman by declaring it. And then you instantly should enjoy access to all

00:23:03.700 women's areas. They're questioning that one aspect of transgenderism, and people come down on them

00:23:09.420 like a ton of bricks. That is seen as completely unacceptable, and the only option for people who

00:23:15.940 raise those kinds of questions is to be shamed and harassed and destroyed. Well, we've seen it

00:23:22.880 with Deborah So, who's a former guest of the show, who's written a book that covers this issue,

00:23:27.900 people attacking her, trying to get her book cancelled, and Abigail Schreier, of course,

00:23:31.940 as well who will hopefully be coming on the show soon again uh book being taken down the publisher

00:23:37.280 being put under all of this stuff and and but but let's come back to to the blm thing because i think

00:23:43.100 that that was very interesting particularly with this booing incident because it's interesting to

00:23:47.680 me that like there is no logic being applied to it because we have had campaigns to kick racism

00:23:52.720 out of football for a long time uh which were universally supported kick it out etc those

00:23:58.920 campaigns did not see any pushback they weren't booed and yet people are booed maybe in eastern

00:24:03.660 europe yeah that's how we do it but uh but but in in the uk i mean if you look at when a british

00:24:11.460 team travels abroad that tends to be where the racism from the fans happens now i'm not saying

00:24:17.720 there is no racism in british football of course there is but the the work to kick that out had

00:24:22.600 universal support is my point, right? And yet when people choose to boo the kneeling, which is a very

00:24:29.160 specific thing that is important to talk about, no one says that. It's automatically racism,

00:24:34.900 automatically. And I see people now trying to present that kneeling is done for racial equality.

00:24:42.260 Well, I mean, we've talked about BLM quite a long time. A lot of people now understand that there's

00:24:48.800 an agenda behind that organization that goes way beyond that. And yet those very same people are

00:24:53.520 now on Twitter saying it's racism. And I just, I don't understand how there is such a degree of

00:25:01.260 conformity. And you're now seeing, I think there was booing at other games, which was muted. So

00:25:08.480 they're literally pretending that it didn't happen. And it's, I think that raises a really

00:25:15.320 important question because I think the great tragedy of the taking the knee stuff in British

00:25:21.520 football over the past few months I mean if you watch football you obviously you couldn't go to

00:25:26.140 a game for I don't know five or six months you had to watch it on tv and if you watched a football

00:25:31.200 game on tv it was extraordinary there were they constantly flashed up anti-racist messages on tv

00:25:37.800 screens everyone was taking the knee there was all these lectures from sports broadcasters about the

00:25:44.040 problem of racism. And I think a lot of football fans just thought, hold on, why are we being

00:25:49.920 lectured more than anyone else? This wasn't a key feature of rugby games. It wasn't a key feature

00:25:57.140 of other sports. It was really central to football because that's the mass sport. That's the sports

00:26:02.960 that is enjoyed by the most people. And, you know, mostly by working class people. Let's not

00:26:08.520 beat around the bush. And I think people felt like they were being lectured to about things that

00:26:14.740 they actually are very familiar with, which is that racism is a bad thing and it's good not to

00:26:19.560 be racist. And I think the real tragedy here is that, of course, there was terrible racism in

00:26:24.800 British football in the 70s and 80s. Bananas being thrown onto the pitch, black players getting a

00:26:30.160 huge amount of flack. That stuff has almost completely fizzled out. It didn't actually

00:26:36.620 fizzle out because some woke person or some guardianist or some politician said it's bad to

00:26:42.140 be racist it fizzled out because the more that people mingled in crowds of thousands and the

00:26:48.420 more they got to know these players who happened to be black and the more they got to know black

00:26:53.180 fans and white fans etc the more they realized look we're all in this together that's how it

00:26:57.860 works that's the best way to tackle the scourge of racism is is to trust ordinary people to discover

00:27:03.860 for themselves through the process of solidarity that racism is a really stupid thing. And that

00:27:09.400 is what happened in football. And football, I think, British football is now a really good

00:27:13.900 example. It's a really great success story in terms of challenging racism because there's far

00:27:19.540 less racism than there was 30 or 40 years ago. 30% of professional players are black. Kids worship

00:27:26.300 them. Fans cheer them all the time. I'm sure the Millwall fans who booed taking the knee

00:27:31.900 have cheered black players scoring a goal many, many times.

00:27:35.940 Well, their player of the year last year is black.

00:27:38.480 That's right.

00:27:39.060 So football is a very good example of how colour means less and less to people.

00:27:45.680 It might have taken a long time to get there, but we got there and it's fantastic.

00:27:49.540 And, you know, when you hear Guardianistas, for example,

00:27:53.140 slagging off football for being this cesspit of racism,

00:27:55.620 you think, hold on, are 30% of columnists at The Guardian black?

00:27:59.920 I don't think so.

00:28:00.700 So who are they to lecture football, which provides extraordinary opportunities to working class black men, more than any other profession in this country.

00:28:10.120 So football had got to this stage of being largely, predominantly post-racial.

00:28:18.100 And then along come the BLM crew and along comes this critical race theory and this notion that you have to lecture football fans every single week about the scourge of racism and white privilege, black victimhood.

00:28:33.500 And what the elites were doing was reintroducing racial thinking into football after it had been successfully expelled by fans and players and people and campaigners.

00:28:45.460 That's the great tragedy here.

00:28:46.840 So I think there's something very positive in fans booing, taking the knee,

00:28:50.360 because I think what they're really saying is,

00:28:52.680 we don't want this politics in our game.

00:28:54.640 We came here to watch a game of football,

00:28:57.600 not for a sermon about critical race theory.

00:29:01.780 And so I think the Millwall fans, who knows what their motivation was?

00:29:06.320 We can't see into their souls.

00:29:08.300 But there's something positive in what they did,

00:29:10.660 And it's more positive, in my view, than the establishment idea that we've got to infect

00:29:16.300 football with racial thinking, because that's the kind of thing we were trying to overcome

00:29:20.040 for the past 30 years.

00:29:21.720 I think there's two things that we can sum up about that.

00:29:24.180 There's not many racist football fans, but if they want to be cured of their racism,

00:29:27.660 just watch an all-white England team.

00:29:31.020 That'll do it.

00:29:32.000 That'll do it.

00:29:32.820 You'll be like, no, no, we need diversity.

00:29:35.700 But number two, don't you think the problem is, is that we can't legitimately criticise

00:29:40.420 BLM we can't the moment you do that you get slammed or whatever else well you can you're

00:29:45.060 not allowed to yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly you're not allowed to so by them booing it's a sign of

00:29:51.780 them showing their dissatisfaction which again needs to be eradicated doesn't it show that we

00:29:57.440 simply can't voice our criticisms of this particular organization whichever way you

00:30:02.720 choose to do it and our political party by the way yeah yes uh so as many people have pointed out

00:30:08.900 You know, the idea that you have to stand there and dutifully bow your head as a political organization is essentially put onto a football pitch is ridiculous.

00:30:20.660 And many people have said, would you say the same for UKIP?

00:30:23.520 You know, if there was a weekly celebration of UKIP before every football match, people would say that's a bad idea.

00:30:32.900 I would say that's a bad idea.

00:30:34.160 But of course, when it comes to BLM, they make all these kinds of allowances.

00:30:37.580 um yes it's very difficult to criticize black lives matter and um partly it's because of the

00:30:44.660 name of the group black lives matter you know who no one disagrees with that apart from a handful of

00:30:50.220 bovine idiots probably and and white nationalists and and ethno-nationalists who are in my view a

00:30:56.480 vanishingly small group of people but they probably disagree with it the vast majority of society

00:31:01.560 agrees black lives matter in fact when i hear these kind of you know upper middle class white

00:31:07.000 liberals screaming black lives matter i always think to myself what have you just figured this

00:31:11.280 out the rest of us have known this for a very very long time um so the slogan makes it difficult

00:31:17.380 to criticize it but i think there's a great deal to criticize um because um black lives matter the

00:31:24.060 movement capital b capital l capital m is an ideological movement which is anti-police anti-family

00:31:30.700 it's got some very eccentric views that the majority of people do not share including the

00:31:34.960 majority of black people in places like the US and the UK who think family is very important,

00:31:42.420 who want good policing of their areas. They don't support defund the police, especially if they

00:31:48.600 live in poorer areas where policing is very important. So those views are not shared by

00:31:53.460 the majority of the public. And the public has the right to register their disapproval of those

00:31:58.380 political views. That's your right in a democratic society. And that includes football games.

00:32:04.960 If politicians come along to football games and BLM is essentially a new form of politician and makes a statement or makes a spectacle and tells you to think in a particular way, you have the right to say, I don't accept this.

00:32:19.340 I don't want to listen to this.

00:32:21.020 I don't want this to hijack my sport.

00:32:23.600 So I think the BLM football story actually points to an incredibly important divide that exists between the elites and ordinary people.

00:32:35.280 And for the elites, it seems perfectly natural that football players should bow down about a killing that took place 4,000 miles away seven months ago.

00:32:45.880 Whereas for huge numbers of ordinary people, that doesn't make sense.

00:32:50.180 And that chasm-sized difference between the rulers of society

00:32:54.900 and the people who live in society, I think,

00:32:56.700 is the most interesting story of 2020.

00:32:59.420 That is a very interesting story, and it's not just the story of 2020.

00:33:02.600 I mean, that has been the motif for the last four years,

00:33:06.420 the fact that essentially the elite were shocked in 2016, as I was.

00:33:12.580 Maybe I'm a member of the elite.

00:33:13.980 Never thought of myself that way.

00:33:15.280 Maybe not.

00:33:16.160 But I was shocked by some of the things that happened that year.

00:33:20.900 But my response was to sort of try and educate myself about why people felt the way they felt.

00:33:26.020 And that has been continuing through.

00:33:28.120 But I think a lot of it is also a response to this sort of completely meaningless virtue signaling that we now see.

00:33:35.740 Because three people were shot and killed by the police in this country this year and last year.

00:33:41.620 So the issue of police murdering unarmed black people by shooting them just doesn't exist in this country.

00:33:49.600 And yet every single football club is doing this.

00:33:53.020 And I think that disconnect seems to me like that's going to continue to get worse because, you know, when the northern clubs start playing at home, you're going to start to see a lot more working class people at football matches expressing their opinion.

00:34:06.140 Absolutely. And I think you're right.

00:34:07.760 The elites versus the people, I know that's a slightly crude way of putting it, but that has been the story of the past four or five years.

00:34:14.960 Right from Brexit onwards, although Brexit existed even before Brexit, I'm a huge Brexit supporter.

00:34:24.280 Voting for Brexit was one of the highlights of my political life.

00:34:28.220 So I'm very, very pro-Brexit.

00:34:29.500 I think the EU, the European Union is a racist, neoliberal, anti-working class institution.

00:34:37.120 You can see that in the way it treats migrants from Africa who are basically left to die in the Mediterranean because the European Union is so determined to keep them out of Europe.

00:34:48.060 You can see that in the way it destroyed the Greek working class, the way it intervened in Italy and Ireland and other countries that were struggling economically,

00:34:56.120 which was essentially to punish working class people by enforcing new forms of austerity.

00:35:00.760 So it's always completely bemused me why the left in this country supports the European Union.

00:35:06.480 I think that's one of the great mysteries of modern politics. They didn't always, of course, if you look back to people like Tony Benn, Barbara Castle, Peter Shaw, these kind of huge Labour figures in the 70s and 80s who were passionately Eurosceptic.

00:35:19.980 So I think what happened with Brexit was ordinary people saying, look, we reject this new form of elite governance. We reject technocracy. We reject the European Union. We want a more direct form of democracy. We want more control over our lives.

00:35:37.280 And I think that was a very positive thing for them to have said, but it completely blew up this divide that exists, which had always existed under the surface, but it kind of really brought it to the fore of political life, which is this divide between the political elites who come from a particular section of society and ordinary people who have very, very different views.

00:35:58.960 So that's been the thread that's run through this decade

00:36:02.920 and will run through the next decade too.

00:36:05.460 And on every issue, you can see that.

00:36:07.520 You can see that on Brexit.

00:36:09.000 You can see it on BLM.

00:36:11.100 You can see it on woke issues more broadly.

00:36:13.560 There is this extraordinary disconnect

00:36:16.320 between the people who run society

00:36:18.620 and the people who live in society.

00:36:20.700 And whether anything can be done about that

00:36:23.480 or how those tensions will play out,

00:36:26.100 I think that's one of the big questions of our time.

00:36:28.080 Can anything be done about it?

00:36:29.540 Is there any way to heal this divide?

00:36:31.380 I mean, that's the question, isn't it, really?

00:36:33.060 I don't think it can be healed.

00:36:35.140 Thanks, Brendan.

00:36:35.620 No, I think it's got to be had out.

00:36:39.000 Yeah.

00:36:39.860 And I'm very wary of words like consensus and compromise

00:36:44.360 because it's always compromise

00:36:48.160 in the favour of people who are quite powerful.

00:36:52.200 Whenever people talk, it's always.

00:36:53.620 Well, maybe the thing is, I think as well,

00:36:55.460 I sort of winced when Francis said divide

00:36:57.460 because I don't think it's a divide.

00:36:58.900 It's something else.

00:36:59.940 It's not like we were united and now we're divided.

00:37:03.340 What has been exposed is that two groups of people

00:37:06.520 never had the same views ever in the first place.

00:37:09.360 They've always not seen eye to eye.

00:37:11.940 The question is whether one has too much power over the other,

00:37:15.280 which I think is what we're talking about.

00:37:16.640 I think that's absolutely right.

00:37:17.840 And I think it's pretty clear they do have too much power.

00:37:21.420 And this year has proven that.

00:37:23.340 You know, they are telling us how many Scotch eggs to eat.

00:37:26.160 you know this is insane they're telling us to open our windows on christmas day if we have

00:37:31.800 people over if you have old relatives over open your windows so you know what they'll catch

00:37:37.420 hyper hyperthermia you know this is this incredible power they have to constantly tell us how we

00:37:43.020 should be living what we should be doing and how we should be thinking and what we're allowed to

00:37:47.160 say i mean really incredible levels of governance over our consciences our daily behavior our social

00:37:55.000 lives, our intimate lives. And this year has proven just how much power they're willing to assume.

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00:39:11.940 I'm going to get Francis a new weapon.

00:39:13.960 I like weapons.

00:39:14.740 now a lot of people would have said brendan look i may not like or agree with boris johnson but

00:39:23.720 you know 2019 end of the year he got a huge majority by appealing to precisely the sort

00:39:29.340 of people that you're talking about not being represented and not having their voice heard

00:39:33.140 he said he's going to get brexit done i think he sort of lifted the skirt a little bit on

00:39:37.760 cultural issues as well didn't he flat you know so there was a lot of that and i find it a very

00:39:43.080 strange position as someone who used to vote for the Liberal Democrats, that I've remained exactly

00:39:49.040 where I've always been in politics. And somehow the whole cultural spectrum, I'm not talking about

00:39:53.960 economy, but culturally, politics has moved all the way to the left. And I voted Conservative for

00:39:59.840 the first time in my life last time. And now I'm watching Boris Johnson driving past me back

00:40:05.640 towards the Greens, seemingly. So the people who had hopes that Boris Johnson would be representing

00:40:12.080 their views. Do you think they were mistaken? I think they will be disappointed. I think they

00:40:19.180 were right to vote in the way they did. I voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 as well. For me, it was

00:40:25.560 the second time I'd ever voted Conservative. I voted for Theresa May as well. I really regret

00:40:30.100 having done that. I mean, there's an exclusive. Theresa May's... That'll be the title of the

00:40:36.180 episode, Brendan O'Neill. I voted for Theresa May. Confession. No, we're going to take out the word

00:40:40.060 voting and put in support. I support Theresa May. But you know, Theresa May, their manifesto in

00:40:46.620 2017 was very positive on two issues in particular. It said we will do a proper Brexit, which I thought

00:40:52.160 was very important because people had voted for it. And they said they would not introduce the

00:40:58.200 part of the Leveson inquiry that would have forced newspapers and magazines to sign up to state

00:41:03.320 regulation. So those are two issues that are very important to me, press freedom and democracy.

00:41:07.160 and they promised to uphold both.

00:41:10.300 Turns out they were not telling the whole truth.

00:41:12.600 So I regretted doing that.

00:41:14.280 But then in 2019, I think the reason millions and millions of people,

00:41:18.180 including vast numbers of working class Labour voters in red wall areas,

00:41:23.040 the reason they voted for Boris Johnson seems so clear cut to me.

00:41:26.280 It's because the Labour Party stabbed them in the back.

00:41:30.940 I mean, it really cannot be overstated how badly the Labour Party

00:41:35.520 has treated the working classes of this country they treat them like scum i mean they really do

00:41:41.320 and i think that's the one of the most important political shifts in politics in this country over

00:41:46.900 the past few decades has been the drift of the labor party away from the working classes towards

00:41:52.500 becoming this kind of middle-class metropolitan machine very woke obsessed with issues that

00:41:58.460 working class people don't really care about um not interested in the big economic questions of

00:42:04.140 jobs and housing and the economy and people's power in the workplace and people's working

00:42:11.300 conditions, all those things that Labour used to talk about. They're not interested in now

00:42:14.560 in any real way. They're obsessed with ridiculous cultural identitarian issues.

00:42:20.860 And Labour, I think, over the past few years has betrayed the working classes to a staggering

00:42:27.560 degree. They turned their backs on the vote for Brexit, even though huge numbers of Labour

00:42:32.280 supporters voted for brexit and even though the more working class you were the more likely you

00:42:38.060 were to have voted for brexit um they i think betrayed jewish people by allowing anti-semitism

00:42:44.940 to run riot in the party and failing to get a handle on it um and they turned their backs on

00:42:50.400 all the people who in various ways had been the grassroots founding members of that party

00:42:58.460 So to me, it made absolute perfect sense

00:43:01.720 that working class voters looked at the Labour Party

00:43:04.020 and said, we're not voting for you because you hate us.

00:43:06.400 So we're going to take a gamble on this guy,

00:43:09.040 this posh, foppish, Eton graduate

00:43:12.460 who has nothing in common with us,

00:43:15.880 but at least he says he will respect our democratic vote for Brexit.

00:43:19.900 And I think that really spoke to how seriously

00:43:22.300 ordinary people take the issue of democracy,

00:43:25.580 you know, because all they have is the vote.

00:43:27.940 They don't have TV shows like you guys have.

00:43:31.440 They don't have newspaper columns.

00:43:33.160 They don't have a seat in the House of Lords.

00:43:35.280 It's nice of Brendan to call this a TV show.

00:43:37.740 Rather than two mediocre successful comedians

00:43:41.200 doing something in someone else's bedroom.

00:43:44.660 Well, they don't even have that, right?

00:43:46.780 They don't have pity.

00:43:47.720 Yeah, no, it's not in dispute.

00:43:49.540 Now I pity them.

00:43:51.120 They don't have anything like that.

00:43:52.900 But they have something really important.

00:43:54.980 It's a very good point, Brendan.

00:43:56.140 We're just joking.

00:43:56.940 You're absolutely right.

00:43:57.720 have the vote they can't call up the junior minister for whatever and and dip in they can't

00:44:02.700 do anything like that and so and that's i mean the past few years have been such an extraordinary

00:44:07.020 reminder of how important the right to vote is because it is really the the it's the great

00:44:12.340 equalizer right the the day on which you vote is the day in which the woman who cleans richard

00:44:17.100 branson's office has the same power as richard branson to determine the future of this country

00:44:23.200 And that's what happened in June 2016.

00:44:26.580 Vast numbers of people said, right, the future of this country

00:44:28.840 is outside of the European Union as an independent democratic nation.

00:44:32.700 And that, I think, gave people a real sense of power

00:44:35.500 that they were able to say that.

00:44:37.500 So the fact that the Labour Party, the supposedly working-class party,

00:44:42.300 turned its back on that and argued for a second referendum,

00:44:44.840 which, by the way, let's not forget what a second referendum would have entailed.

00:44:48.700 it would have entailed voiding the largest democratic vote in the history of this country.

00:44:54.800 It would have entailed putting into the dustbin 17.4 million votes, which would have been

00:45:01.800 unprecedented in the history of this country or any serious democracy. The fact that the Labour

00:45:07.000 Party was knocking on people's doors and saying, we are going to throw your vote in the bin if you

00:45:14.620 vote for us and get us into government. The least surprising thing in the political history of this

00:45:19.800 country is that the working classes revolted against the Labour Party, because the Labour

00:45:23.840 Party was threatening to take away from them the only thing they have, which is the right to vote.

00:45:30.080 So they invested their hopes and aspirations for their democratic rights in Boris Johnson. And I

00:45:36.740 think initially he responded very well to that. And he was expressed real gratitude. And he said

00:45:43.020 he did that speech shortly after his victory,

00:45:45.520 in which he said, listen, I know you've lent me your vote

00:45:47.600 and I really appreciate that and I'll do my best.

00:45:50.720 But as you say, he's losing his way

00:45:52.520 and he's floating back towards elite consensus opinion,

00:45:58.340 which is not the way that Red Wall voters think.

00:46:01.000 It's not the way that most people think.

00:46:02.800 So Boris, he's been dragged one way by the majority of society

00:46:07.860 who are saying we want democracy, we want less of this woke nonsense,

00:46:10.680 we want to get back on the straight and narrow.

00:46:12.420 but he's been dragged in another way by his bloody fiance and all these other influencers around him

00:46:19.400 who are saying let's be more woke let's be more green let's be more right on that's a really

00:46:25.180 important tussle I think in Britain right now and the problem is as well is that if Johnson goes the

00:46:32.040 way where the way he's going the way we all think he's going to go Labour already over there that

00:46:37.420 leaves a huge sway to the electorate without someone to vote for which is incredibly dangerous

00:46:42.020 isn't it really dangerous really worrying um a real indictment of the state of politics in this

00:46:47.860 country um and you know one of the depressing things is that um whoever you vote for you end

00:46:53.380 up with wokeness yeah right that's what's really depressing especially if boris goes further and

00:46:58.400 further down this route people will say well whoever i vote for we end up with a woke agenda

00:47:03.340 a green agenda we end up with all this stuff about a green new deal instead of what people

00:47:08.520 really want to talk about, which is the creation of new forms of industry, new jobs, new mechanisms

00:47:15.060 for people to express themselves, new forms of democracy, all that kind of stuff that,

00:47:19.340 from my experience anyway, when I've travelled around the country over the past few years

00:47:23.260 talking to Brexit voters in particular, that's the kind of thing they want. And they will

00:47:28.740 be thinking, who is going to make the argument for these things? And at the moment, there's

00:47:33.420 nobody. And I think it seems increasingly, it seems to me that Boris Johnson in late 2019 was

00:47:41.680 a bit of a performance. It was a bit of an act. It was him saying, I'm Mr Brexit and I'm Mr British

00:47:49.600 traditions and I'm not going to put up with all this kind of green woke nonsense. It was an act

00:47:55.680 and a lot of us fell for it. And I think if it becomes clearer and clearer that he's not going

00:48:02.240 to make good on those promises he's not that he's not going to get Brexit done in a meaningful way

00:48:07.440 that he's not going to hold back the tide of chattering class nonsense that he's not actually

00:48:12.540 going to stand up for British history and values and things that people think are important if it

00:48:17.540 turns out and becomes clearer and clearer that he's not going to do all that then I think people

00:48:21.860 have no choice but to punish him at the ballot box but then that keeps by voting for Keir Star

00:48:27.100 the question is how you do that and i think one way you might do that is by not voting

00:48:33.180 and that would be depressing because there's been a real sense of democratic

00:48:36.760 engagement over the past few years people have felt democratically alive and if you look at

00:48:45.560 for example the polls that were taken around the time of the eu referendum people were asked

00:48:50.240 how are you making up your mind on how to vote in the eu referendum and people were saying things

00:48:55.040 like we're having discussions in the workplace i'm talking to my friends and family we've had

00:49:00.140 discussions in the pub and much further down the list was i'm listening to politicians i'm reading

00:49:05.720 the media at the top of the list was people saying i'm talking to my neighbors and my family

00:49:10.480 and my community so it was a real sense of democratic momentum and if that is um undermined

00:49:17.540 or allowed to die because the political establishment is incapable and unwilling

00:49:22.720 to make it a real thing, I think that would be a great tragedy.

00:49:26.980 But again, it's dangerous because you have these whole swathes of people.

00:49:31.560 So what do we do? Do we need a third party?

00:49:33.400 Well, do we class the Lib Dems as a party? No.

00:49:36.040 No, but there have been attempts, right?

00:49:39.500 You've got Heritage, Remain, Reform, Reflect.

00:49:43.760 I mean, they all begin with art.

00:49:45.460 Yeah, yeah. Retrain.

00:49:47.120 Retrain, yeah. So you've got a lot of these parties,

00:49:49.960 but are they ever going to be anything useful?

00:49:53.280 And will they ever challenge the duopoly that we have in this country?

00:49:57.960 See, these are the big questions facing us,

00:50:00.600 and it's unclear what the answers are.

00:50:02.180 I mean, my view of all these new parties is let a thousand flowers bloom.

00:50:07.160 You know, the more the merrier.

00:50:08.480 Let's go out there, let's see what happens.

00:50:11.480 I think a few of them need to kind of take themselves a bit more seriously

00:50:14.840 and recognise what they're up against,

00:50:17.840 which is this extraordinarily powerful duopoly

00:50:20.600 and a pretty staid, rigid electoral system.

00:50:26.440 I do think we need electoral reform.

00:50:28.980 I know that sounds a bit Caroline Lucas,

00:50:31.440 but I do think we need proportional representation in this country.

00:50:36.340 I never thought I'd say that because it's such a middle-class obsession

00:50:39.720 and I don't like to go along with middle-class obsessions.

00:50:42.960 But the good thing about, I think, proportional representation

00:50:46.680 is that it would open the doorway to smaller parties.

00:50:50.840 It would allow people, if people got a greater sense

00:50:55.380 that it was possible that you could intrude

00:50:59.460 into the corridors of power

00:51:00.900 because how many votes you got

00:51:03.240 would reflect the power you eventually had,

00:51:05.380 that would, I think, encourage more people to set up parties,

00:51:08.200 to take themselves more seriously

00:51:09.280 and really to go out and campaign.

00:51:10.940 At the moment, when you know

00:51:12.440 that it's going to be Labour or the Conservatives,

00:51:14.740 that's it maybe a coalition every now and then um there isn't that real drive to try something new

00:51:21.260 and instead we all find ourselves hoping that boris will do everything for us

00:51:25.540 or alternatively i'm sure people some some people hope that keir starmer will do everything they

00:51:30.180 want him to do so you end up investing your hope in leaders you don't really believe in

00:51:34.800 whereas i think a more a fairer electoral system would allow people to experiment a bit more i

00:51:40.960 think that's definitely something that's got to happen but i think i i think there are two things

00:51:45.480 that really need to happen firstly we've got to um start taking democracy seriously start taking

00:51:51.820 people's voices seriously stop writing people off just because they didn't go to oxford just

00:51:57.080 because they don't read the guardian just because they live in the north and support brexit the way

00:52:01.980 in which those people are written off it really makes me feel nauseous that's the first thing we

00:52:07.140 got to stop doing we've got to really start taking people's democratic rights seriously

00:52:11.180 and the second thing is i think we need electoral reform root and branch electoral reform we need

00:52:18.000 proportional representation we need to abolish the house of lords which i think is a complete blight

00:52:23.600 on political life in this country we need to properly remove ourselves from the european

00:52:28.780 union in order to be a mature democracy once again and we need to fix these constitutional

00:52:34.040 electoral issues in order to liberate political life and make it fairer and more reflective of

00:52:41.320 public opinion so that's the challenge we face it's not impossible if if there was a party that

00:52:48.020 promised to hold a referendum on abolishing the house of lords and a referendum on proportional

00:52:53.040 representation i would be on the streets every day campaigning for it because i think that's

00:52:58.080 are such important steps towards a more democratic future. So any party that takes hold of those two

00:53:05.600 questions in particular, I think would win a lot of support because people recognise

00:53:09.820 there's a layer we've got to break through before we can start having those really free and open

00:53:16.300 democratic debates. So you won't vote for Black Lives Matter then, Brendan?

00:53:19.320 will not be done in the BLM.

00:53:25.980 Brendan, you mentioned, obviously,

00:53:28.500 we talk about woke stuff a lot on the show,

00:53:30.740 but there's been a very interesting development

00:53:33.260 in the last couple of weeks,

00:53:34.860 which opened my eyes to the extent

00:53:38.440 of the institutional takeover of this worldview,

00:53:42.120 which is Eton.

00:53:43.940 I mean, yes, I can understand that SOAS are woke.

00:53:47.640 I can understand the kids at schools, posh, sort of, I don't know, middle-class schools.

00:53:54.240 B-Dales would be the best example.

00:53:56.240 Which one?

00:53:56.940 B-Dales.

00:53:57.540 I haven't even heard of it.

00:53:58.380 It's a very progressive artsy school.

00:54:00.120 Is it?

00:54:00.500 Yeah.

00:54:01.040 How do you know that, mate?

00:54:02.140 Because I applied to a teacher and they gave me that.

00:54:06.020 They just took one look at you.

00:54:07.900 Yeah, they went, no, thank you.

00:54:09.240 Correctly, as it turns out.

00:54:10.840 So, you can understand all of that, but Eton is supposed to be this crusty old institution

00:54:16.400 that indoctrinates its kids to be conservative prime ministers.

00:54:20.300 And yet here they are, not only being quite woke, it turns out,

00:54:24.420 but actually also being extremely contrary to the values of freedom of expression,

00:54:29.720 which you would have thought an institution like that would inculcate in its pupils.

00:54:34.660 So I hate to say this, but if Eton is woke, I think we're fucked, aren't we?

00:54:40.040 Yes, I completely agree.

00:54:41.800 If Eton falls, we're finished.

00:54:43.700 And Brendan O'Neill had never been expected to say that.

00:54:47.340 And I think that's true.

00:54:48.720 And I say that as someone who I think every kid in this country

00:54:52.520 should have an Eton standard of education.

00:54:56.020 I've spoken to Eton twice, so they weren't always woke.

00:54:59.520 They used to let riffraff like me in to speak.

00:55:02.160 I've spoken to the students there twice over the past few years.

00:55:06.500 I mainly spoke on the issue of freedom of speech.

00:55:09.860 Eton is this unbelievable place.

00:55:12.140 it's like a super posh university but for school children um it's as soon as you go in

00:55:20.040 you know that it's a place devoted singularly to knowledge and education you don't get the same

00:55:26.500 vibe and because the one thing i always say i say no to lots of things but i always say yes

00:55:31.340 to speaking at schools because i think everyone has a bit of a responsibility to

00:55:35.180 assist in education in whatever way they can so but when i speak at other schools you don't get

00:55:41.440 the same vibe at all you know they're too trendy or there's discipline issues or whatever it might

00:55:50.120 be. Brendan O'Neill destroys Harold with facts and logic. So there's something incredibly admirable

00:55:59.480 about Eton educationally speaking sadly it's only available to very very rich people and as you say

00:56:05.720 it's the school that's produced most prime ministers it's the school that produces military

00:56:10.360 leaders. It's the school that has produced the people who for a period of time were the backbone

00:56:15.140 of this country. And if that school becomes woke and censorious and sees it's the young men who go

00:56:22.240 there as being so weak and lily-livered that they cannot cope with a supposedly incorrect idea or a

00:56:29.280 disagreeable idea, that's really problematic. A friend of mine said it's like the Vatican

00:56:37.080 and suddenly becoming atheist.

00:56:38.720 I mean, it really is like something's gone horribly wrong.

00:56:42.900 And so I think that's very significant.

00:56:45.080 I think this year there have been a lot of significant moments like that

00:56:48.180 when you had the Natural History Museum saying,

00:56:51.320 we're not sure about Darwin anymore.

00:56:53.680 And you think, Darwin, you know,

00:56:55.920 arguably the most important scientific figure in history.

00:56:59.200 And the Natural History Museum's like,

00:57:00.660 well, he went on a bit of colonial...

00:57:02.700 One of his research projects was facilitated by a colonial ship,

00:57:07.700 and therefore he's a questionable figure.

00:57:09.360 Or you had the British Museum hiding the bust of its founder

00:57:13.700 because he had links with slavery in some form or other.

00:57:16.760 You've had this real outburst of self-loathing,

00:57:20.560 institutional self-loathing in Britain,

00:57:23.320 where the institutions, many of which were founded during the Enlightenment,

00:57:28.580 were the express aim of expanding human knowledge,

00:57:32.040 expanding our understanding of the world and our place within it.

00:57:35.880 The British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the British Library.

00:57:38.640 I mean, these great institutions which are admired across the globe

00:57:42.500 because they really are about consolidating and promoting knowledge.

00:57:46.800 When institutions like that are acting in this shame-faced way

00:57:50.440 and saying, well, we're actually pretty disgusting

00:57:53.080 because the guy who founded us 350 years ago was not very nice.

00:57:56.980 And some of our exhibits were taken from Africa 200 years ago.

00:58:00.900 and just behaving in this kind of self-flagellating way,

00:58:05.980 then I think that's really important to recognize

00:58:08.040 because it suggests that wokeness is not simply a problem

00:58:11.920 of irritating, blue-haired 21-year-olds

00:58:15.380 censoring you from going to campus.

00:58:17.860 It's a problem that actually infects the upper echelons of society

00:58:21.400 who've lost faith in themselves

00:58:24.000 and lost faith in the project of modernity, in essence,

00:58:27.300 and lost faith in the values of the Enlightenment

00:58:31.760 and are now essentially saying,

00:58:33.700 we are horrible institutions,

00:58:35.920 you probably shouldn't come here,

00:58:37.400 you won't learn much and you might be offended.

00:58:40.540 And when Eton is doing that

00:58:42.080 and all these museums and all these libraries

00:58:43.960 and when people like Boris Johnson

00:58:46.020 are failing to stand up and say,

00:58:49.260 stop being so embarrassed,

00:58:51.860 defend your traditions,

00:58:53.840 defend your history,

00:58:54.820 promote your virtues and your values he's not doing that he's just kind of skulked off

00:59:00.120 into Downing Street then you know there's a real problem in British society and that's something

00:59:07.240 that we really have to hold the line against we have to hold the line against this notion that

00:59:11.500 Britain is a an inescapably evil nation founded in the sins of imperialism and colonialism and

00:59:17.880 everything we do is horrible that's something it's really worth challenging because actually

00:59:22.020 Over the past 350 years in particular, Britain has given rise to some of the most wonderful, epoch-defying ideals of all time in terms of the struggles for freedom, the struggles for democracy, and the struggles for enlightenment and understanding the world.

00:59:39.840 And if we're not going to stand up for that, what are we going to stand up for?

00:59:43.040 And it's also, as well, the fact that it always amazes me, the woke movement, in that it's blind spots.

00:59:49.740 So you've got people at Eton talking about social justice.

00:59:53.120 How much does it cost to go to Eton?

00:59:55.180 You know, it's people marching for black...

00:59:57.340 41 and a half grand a year.

00:59:58.520 41 and a half grand a year whilst talking about social justice.

01:00:02.100 It's people on a Black Lives Matter march.

01:00:05.200 But it was the third anniversary of Grenfell.

01:00:07.640 No one talked about that.

01:00:08.700 That's a far more important social justice issue in this country

01:00:12.320 than the murder of some poor unfortunate 4,000 miles away.

01:00:16.880 The thing that really brought that point home to me this year

01:00:20.240 was the events in France, actually,

01:00:22.920 because you had the beheading of Samuel Paty.

01:00:27.340 Virtually no one in the UK talked about it.

01:00:29.740 None of our government officials made a statement.

01:00:32.140 The teaching unions very reluctantly...

01:00:34.560 I think Priti Patel eventually did, just to be accurate.

01:00:37.880 Yeah, so Patel eventually did.

01:00:39.300 But there was no big outcry.

01:00:40.140 There was no big outcry.

01:00:41.220 The teaching unions, after a bit of pressure,

01:00:43.640 eventually made these kind of begrudging statements,

01:00:45.920 which had none of the passion of the statements they made

01:00:48.580 in relation to George Floyd,

01:00:50.180 even though Patti was a schoolteacher

01:00:52.480 and was beheaded in broad daylight

01:00:55.340 for the crime of teaching his children about freedom of speech.

01:00:59.140 And this is in the country that's next door to us.

01:01:01.540 This is in our neighbouring country, 30 miles away,

01:01:04.920 whereas George Floyd was killed 4,000 miles away.

01:01:07.880 So that disconnect, I thought, was really interesting.

01:01:11.280 And the thing that I found most shocking this year,

01:01:13.160 I was thinking about this the other day,

01:01:15.180 the bishops in this country got more angry about the internal market bill

01:01:21.680 than they did about the murder of three Christians in Nice.

01:01:26.140 These were three Christians the week after Samuel Paty was killed,

01:01:30.160 three people in a church in Nice who were killed,

01:01:32.820 one was almost beheaded for the crime of being Christians

01:01:35.860 by this Islamist radical, nothing from our bishops.

01:01:40.520 They were too busy writing letters to the Financial Times

01:01:43.220 saying the internal market bill is very bad

01:01:45.060 and we should stay in the European Union.

01:01:48.240 And you just think something's gone horribly wrong here.

01:01:51.880 And then you have the Vicar of Dibley,

01:01:53.520 the Christmas special of the Vicar of Dibley.

01:01:56.560 She, of course, Dawn French's vicar,

01:01:58.800 is going to take the knee and talk about George Floyd.

01:02:01.300 And I just keep thinking, okay, what about that young mother of three who was stabbed to death in a church and niece because she's a Christian?

01:02:10.400 The question I have is, why hasn't that connected with us more?

01:02:15.540 And that's another issue about the double standards in this year and the hypocrisies of 2020 and the extent to which the woke agenda dominates things so much now

01:02:28.220 that we all have to bow down literally to the ideology of American wokeness

01:02:34.720 because BLM is essentially an American import.

01:02:37.380 But when these gruesome crimes happen in a country right next door to us,

01:02:41.680 which Britain and France are the most longstanding frenemies in history,

01:02:46.620 we don't say anything.

01:02:48.720 We don't talk about it.

01:02:49.880 No one takes the knee.

01:02:50.980 No one blacks out their Instagram page for these people.

01:02:53.540 No one even talked about it more than a day after it happened.

01:02:56.860 So that double standard, I think, really demonstrates the depth of the problem we face. You were talking earlier about narratives. The narrative is so clearly written by people who have an agenda. And until we start to push another narrative, one which takes these things seriously, one which takes freedom of speech seriously,

01:03:17.080 one which thinks it's really important to talk about a situation where people are beheaded for

01:03:22.020 defending freedom of speech one which says football fans must have the right to boo

01:03:27.080 political ideologies and one which says people should be free to express themselves in any way

01:03:31.820 they choose until we start to really successfully push that narrative i think we're going to face a

01:03:37.040 really uphill struggle it's a good point and very well made but before we ask you a last i've got

01:03:42.520 one question to ask as well which is we're talking about narratives but we're seeing a whole new

01:03:47.480 narrative being constructed in front of us which is the coronavirus vaccine where people who say

01:03:55.080 i'm not so sure about this not that covid doesn't exist not that vaccines don't work or that they're

01:04:00.280 a legitimate tool which they are for fighting disease the moment they say i'm not sure about

01:04:05.960 this because it's been developed in record time because it uses new technology because we don't

01:04:12.020 know what the long-term effects of this vaccine potentially are and because the virus is not as

01:04:17.160 dangerous as polio or measles or one of these diseases that have been successfully eradicated

01:04:22.000 through vaccination why is just theoretically just theoretically i'm not saying you know you love it

01:04:28.120 you you love a bit of uh i was going to say owen jones it's not owen jones it's uh what's his let's

01:04:33.460 not talk about my personal life uh but i'm taking sputnik five of course you are patriotic to the

01:04:39.480 call but why is it that immediately anti-vaccine all of these epithets get hurled you know you're

01:04:47.840 seen as somehow someone who is just ridiculous anti-science etc etc etc i think that is that is

01:04:54.560 one of the important narratives the and there's the way in which any kind of discussion about

01:05:00.820 the vaccine is being shut down i find really worrying i say this as someone who's very pro

01:05:04.960 vaccination i think vaccinations historically have been one of mankind's greatest breakthroughs

01:05:09.700 they've saved millions upon millions of lives um and it's testament to human ingenuity that

01:05:17.120 vaccines exist um so i'm very pro vaccine i i i'm very happy to take the covid vaccine i'm actually

01:05:25.200 looking forward to it especially if i get a freedom pass which means i can go to the pub

01:05:29.040 whenever i want i don't think freedom passes are a good idea but i would like to get one if that's

01:05:33.260 the option um so that but at the same time i do think the attempt to demonize and clamp down on

01:05:40.320 anyone who raises any questions at all is really worrying and will backfire because i think one of

01:05:46.380 the issues with the anti-vaxxer movement like the crankier side of the movement is that they are

01:05:51.660 incredibly suspicious of authority they're often sometimes actually they're driven by conspiracy

01:05:56.660 theories and the sense that the man is out to get us and inject us with all these poisons

01:06:01.460 and censorship will inflame that sensibility because it will make them think what are they

01:06:07.500 trying to hide when youtube is censoring us and the government is calling us evil and everyone

01:06:12.680 is saying we're going to destroy human life as we know it they're out to get us what are they

01:06:16.740 trying to hide so i think that kind of censorious approach will inflame um the more conspiratorial

01:06:23.500 side of anti-vaxxers the thing that i find really funny about all of this funny as in depressing

01:06:29.040 is um you know very on brand right but who was who has been primarily responsible for promoting

01:06:37.540 anti-vaxxer theories over the past 15 or 20 years it's been establishment figures if you go back to

01:06:43.060 the mmr scandal the idea that taking the mmr vaccine causes autism that was promoted by the

01:06:49.460 lancet magazine that was promoted by writers for the guardian there were um you know lovey-dovey

01:06:57.060 TV dramas about Andrew Wakefield, who was the doctor who came up with this nonsense idea that

01:07:02.700 the MMR vaccine causes autism, that anti-vaccine idea, that sense that the powers that be want to

01:07:11.280 poison us with all these horrible injections, that comes from the chattering classes fundamentally.

01:07:17.060 That's where it originated over the past 20 or 25 years. And so when they now turn around and say to

01:07:22.880 some bloke on the internet, how dare you say this? You should be censored and we're going to demonize

01:07:27.740 you. That to me just doesn't add up. My view is that I'm a free speech fundamentalist. I think

01:07:33.160 we should be able to say anything we want. And I think my take is that I'm going to defend the

01:07:38.340 vaccine, especially once we have more information. And I'm going to defend to the hilt the right of

01:07:43.720 people to say the vaccine is wrong. The vaccine is full of poisons. The vaccine is evil. Because

01:07:49.980 if we are serious about freedom of speech we have to defend it even for people who say things that

01:07:55.620 are incorrect even for people who say things that are potentially dangerous or concerning or worrying

01:08:01.320 because freedom of speech is not just about the freedom of the person speaking it's also about

01:08:06.740 the freedom of the people who are listening it's about the freedom of the audience to use their

01:08:11.580 mental moral faculties and to decide for themselves that's the great thing about freedom of speech it

01:08:17.620 treats us as adults we get to decide we get to weigh things up we get to exercise moral judgment

01:08:23.540 whereas censorship turns us into children whose eyes and ears are covered because the authorities

01:08:29.600 know better so i think the anti-vaxxer stuff is going to be a real test for people's commitment

01:08:35.580 to freedom of speech and we have got to defend the right of people to dismiss the vaccine to

01:08:40.840 demonize the vaccine and to say it's wrong to take the take the vaccine that's how serious we have to

01:08:45.280 be about freedom of speech. This puts a very nice bow on the whole conversation, because if you

01:08:48.920 remember when we started, you were talking about the culture of freedom being eroded. And it's

01:08:53.320 fascinating. We were talking before you got here about our interview with Dr. Suchari Bhakti,

01:09:00.440 which is now approaching a million views, I think now. And he's skeptical of lockdowns. He didn't

01:09:06.020 think the vaccine was particularly necessary. He had controversial views on the issue, but he's

01:09:10.720 former chair of medical microbiology at a major German university. He's not a random guy off the

01:09:15.980 internet. But in any case, the reason we were talking about it is that if you look at the

01:09:20.160 comments under it that we get on a daily basis, they're literally interchangeable comments from

01:09:25.140 both sides. People who don't like him saying what he said say, this should be taken down.

01:09:32.700 And the people who appreciate his point of view say, I can't believe this has not been taken down.

01:09:39.740 So the expectation now is that controversial ideas will be censored.

01:09:46.000 And it's incredible.

01:09:47.060 But we're running out of time.

01:09:48.740 So in lieu of asking our final question, let me ask you a question that maybe may inject a little positivity into the conversation finally, which is I've always thought the intersectionality, wokeness, whatever you call it, would be destroyed by the trans issue.

01:10:05.240 because you can have all your theoretical ideas in your head.

01:10:10.060 The moment you start giving hormones to children

01:10:11.820 and chopping their breasts off,

01:10:13.480 that's when ordinary people are going to wake up

01:10:16.420 and go, hold on a second.

01:10:17.740 And I've been saying there's going to be a wave of detransitioners

01:10:20.500 who are going to break this whole thing apart.

01:10:22.920 And we've seen now with the Kira Bell case

01:10:25.100 that I feel is starting to happen.

01:10:28.480 Do you think that is the beginning of something

01:10:30.480 or are you less optimistic about that?

01:10:32.680 No, I am quite optimistic, actually.

01:10:34.100 I share your optimism on that.

01:10:35.600 I thought the Kira Bell case was incredibly important.

01:10:38.540 I think she's a very brave young woman who's getting a lot of flack

01:10:43.200 simply because she regrets her decision when she was a teenager

01:10:47.040 to transition to male.

01:10:49.960 And then she took the NHS to court for prescribing puberty blockers

01:10:53.680 to very, very young people.

01:10:55.860 And I thought her victory in that court case was really important

01:10:58.760 and demonstrated that individuals, when they clubbed together,

01:11:03.120 she had lots of support, can achieve really important things. I think you're right. I think

01:11:10.040 the trans issue is the thing that will explode a lot of this. I keep thinking, I'm hoping,

01:11:16.060 if humanity comes to its senses, in 25 years time, I can imagine us looking back on the early 21st

01:11:22.700 century and thinking, hold on, we offered medical correction to lesbians, which is essentially

01:11:28.780 what's happening with young women who are gay, who are being told, maybe you're a man, maybe you

01:11:33.740 should take these drugs, maybe you should mutilate your body. I think in the future, we'll look back

01:11:38.200 and say, we offered medical treatment to lesbians. We told young gay boys, young gay men, that they

01:11:46.440 might actually be women, and we castrated them. And we allowed blokes, people with penises,

01:11:54.920 to go into domestic violence refuges, women's prisons, women's changing rooms.

01:12:01.440 I trust that humanity has got enough sense to realize at some point

01:12:06.660 that these are really, really bad things to do.

01:12:10.700 And not only are they bad things to do for women and children and for gay people,

01:12:15.620 but they're bad things to do because fundamentally they're calling into question reason itself.

01:12:21.360 because what they are doing they're saying that um if you believe in biology if you understand

01:12:29.300 that there are two sexes if you adhere to a traditional view of manhood and womanhood if

01:12:37.220 you believe there are mothers and fathers and that they play particular roles in children's lives

01:12:41.260 if you believe any of these things which have been established for thousands of years

01:12:46.040 you're a bad person you're a transphobe and you must be silenced so even to stand up for reason

01:12:53.500 and science and tradition is now seen as a bad thing that you must be punished for so

01:12:59.060 i'm hoping uh the kira bell case will open the floodgates to a lot more common sense

01:13:04.420 or a lot more people having the the guts to stand up and say what they already believe

01:13:09.100 which is that biology is important reason is important and the meaning of words is important

01:13:16.500 and we shouldn't allow all those things to be sacrificed at the altar of a pretty eccentric

01:13:21.760 identity all classic examples of bigotry but brendan thank you so much for coming on the show

01:13:29.280 if people want to find you online where would be the best place to do that spiked read spike

01:13:35.060 that's where i write and um i'm on instagram if you want to see brendan's abs yeah head over there

01:13:41.320 and thank you as always for watching we will see you very soon with another brilliant episode or

01:13:46.860 live stream always going out at 7 p.m uk time take care guys and see you soon

01:14:05.060 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - December 13, 2020

Brendan O'Neill：＂2020 Has Been a Disaster for Freedom＂

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