00:04:10.940I think, you know, the guy, Mark David Chapman,
00:04:14.720who shot John Lennon, was inspired to do so
00:04:16.840by J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.
00:04:19.420He really genuinely thought that Catcher in the Rye
00:04:22.060was giving him a message to kill John Lennon.
00:04:24.000And so you could argue that Catcher in the Rye caused the death of John Lennon or Charles Manson and his crazy family were inspired to kill all those people in Los Angeles by the White Album.
00:04:34.560I mean, they really genuinely believed deep in their heart that the White Album by the Beatles contained all these messages about race wars and the piggies in the capitalist society who needed to be slaughtered and so on.
00:04:46.600they really believe that and of course you know countless numbers of people have killed because
00:04:52.360they read something in the bible or they believe something in the quran so it's unquestionable that
00:04:56.860ideas can encourage people to commit violent acts it's unquestionable that some people will look at
00:05:02.540a piece of art or read a book or hear a song and think to themselves this work of art is telling
00:05:08.140me to do something really bad but if you were to organize society on the basis that that might
00:05:13.720happen then you are basically creating a lunatic asylum in which all of us are punished on the
00:05:21.160basis that one or two crazy people might do something stupid after reading Catcher in the
00:05:25.380Rye or listening to the White Album and that would be a deeply unpleasant society because there's no
00:05:30.520end of cultural products or artistic things that could be said to inspire violence or
00:05:37.900hatefulness in one form or another so i but my issue with media effects theory which is this
00:05:45.260idea that video nasties cause mass killings or video games make the james bulger murder happen
00:05:51.200or in the modern version because the left the effects theory used to be very prominent on the
00:05:57.740right among kind of old christian women and merry white house types and very conservative
00:06:02.760stiff people now it's kind of shifted to the left and it's very much more often the left now that
00:06:08.680argues about media effects theory and will say that lads mags if they're in shop on shop shelves
00:06:16.000will cause men to become rapacious and anti-women or violence against women in films will cause men
00:06:22.960to commit violence against women in real life so the left has utterly embraced the media effects
00:06:27.400theory. My problem with the media effects theory is that it presents all people as almost like
00:06:33.280animals who just look at something and then think I must act on that. And that is a very demeaning
00:06:39.460view of the vast majority of human beings who actually are perfectly capable of thinking for
00:06:44.240themselves and perfectly capable of making a decision about what they should do with their
00:06:48.280lives. So I would be very wary of any justification of censorship that was made on the basis that
00:06:54.660we basically are monkey see monkey do and that we see something or hear
00:06:59.960something and then immediately feel that we have to commit a violent act on the
00:07:20.880We had him on the show a couple of weeks ago.
00:07:22.300Right. And I agree with him on many things, but one thing that we disagreed on very much about 10 or 15 years ago was dancehall music from Jamaica, which has homophobic lyrics.
00:07:34.400And it includes things like, it says things like, throw the gays onto the fire and things like that, you know, so quite violent imagery.
00:07:43.540And Brighton, I think it was in Brighton, some clubs started to ban this music and then people were calling for a ban across Britain,
00:07:49.460that it shouldn't be played in public that you should even ban the sale of it potentially
00:07:53.040and peter tatchell although he's generally quite good on the freedom of speech question
00:07:57.500was on on the side of banning this music precisely because he said it's incitement to violence and i
00:08:03.140was against that on the basis that to my mind that wasn't a specific enough example of incitement
00:08:08.940to violence i think if you're in a club at two o'clock in the morning and you're dancing and
00:08:13.180you're drunk and there's a song on the speaker over there and probably the most of the lyrics
00:08:19.340are actually quite unintelligible because it's very loud and the music's thumping and you hear
00:08:24.240someone say throw gaze onto the fire or whatever the lyric was if you then go out and do something
00:08:29.660like that you have completely and utterly made a free choice you've used your free will you have
00:08:36.580decided to do this thing this terrible thing and to hold the music responsible for that i think
00:08:43.000is ridiculous, and a complete cop-out, and actually calls into question the very notion
00:21:48.820So it's not as if I'm out there because I'm so desperate to hear this stuff, but I am incredibly keen to defend the idea that the great thing about freedom of speech is that it creates a situation where ordinary people are trusted to make decisions for themselves.
00:28:54.200They've always thought there were significant differences between races and so on.
00:28:59.020And now the right is embracing it again through the alt-right
00:29:02.420and through white nationalism and other things like that.
00:29:04.660I see that very much as a response to the institutionalization of identity politics by certain elements on the left and by the political class itself.
00:29:18.700So I think if you create a situation where you are constantly saying to people, you're a white man, you're a white man, you're a white man, you can't say that you're a white man, you shouldn't be here, you're a white man, you shouldn't be speaking over this woman because you're a white man.
00:29:33.260eventually those white men are going to turn around and say okay I'm a white man
00:29:36.740and that's how you're defining me and everything I do and everything I believe
00:29:40.520so maybe that's how I should define myself and everything I do and everything I believe
00:29:45.080so I think this new tragic sad possibly dangerous movement of white men which I still think is quite
00:29:53.440a minority I think it gets slightly blown out of proportion I do see that as a response to
00:29:58.420this new identity politics and this encouragement this incitement of people
00:30:03.140to constantly define themselves by their skin color and their sex lo and behold you have a new
00:30:08.640movement of white men saying okay that's all we are we're white men and we're going to stick
00:30:12.540together and we're going to have white pride so i think that's a new manifestation of the old
00:30:17.560right-wing identity politics and it's been encouraged and infused and shaped i think
00:30:21.900by left-wing identity politics which i think is now an incredibly powerful movement so we're
00:30:28.020talking about identity and whiteness and skin color and all these things here we are three
00:30:32.880white men or technically i mean francis mother is from venezuela so he's technically latino
00:30:36.700i'm from russia i have quite dark skin but nominally we're still three white men well
00:30:42.040i'm irish and we're the blacks of europe right according to roddy okay so none of us none of us
00:30:46.160here is white but actually i i when we had andrew dolan i told him that when i was growing up in
00:30:52.560russia if someone wanted to be rude to me on the street which happened every now and again
00:30:56.740they would say to me you're black go home because people who have dark skin like me in russia they're
00:31:03.380the discriminator against minority but anyway in this country we're white right yeah uh three of
00:31:09.160us talking about race in a room that's got to be a hate crime in itself yeah um you you just wrote
00:31:13.580recently a column about how uh white guilt is essentially become a perverse way of signaling
00:31:21.960your virtue and it's become almost white pride in a way that sounds very counterintuitive what
00:31:26.980do you mean by that yeah it's all these people who are constantly checking their white privilege
00:31:31.060and um you know they go online they go on twitter they go on facebook or they write articles and
00:31:37.360they say i'm white um i have to recognize that i'm a very privileged person i shouldn't speak
00:31:43.260over black people i shouldn't speak over women and so on um and i've been watching this go on
00:31:48.900for a few years now and I was thinking it's really strange because it's it looks shameful you know
00:31:53.160they're very ashamed of being white they're very ashamed of what they call white history and
00:31:56.520colonialism and empire and everything else so they express this great shame but they do it in such a
00:32:01.420showy narcissistic ostentatious way like look at me I'm so ashamed and what you realize is that
00:32:08.180actually there's a real boastfulness to this checking of your white privilege and they're
00:32:12.160really making a public display of it so I think what's going on here is that this expression of
00:32:17.440white shame or this expression of white guilt has really become a new form of white pride because
00:32:22.240in essence what they're saying is we are good white people we're very socially and politically
00:32:28.180aware we're switched on we're sensitive to the crimes of history we're sensitive to the needs
00:32:33.520and interests of black people we're good whites not like those other whites the uneducated ones
00:32:41.180the uncouth ones the ones who didn't go to Oxford University the ones who don't read the Guardian
00:32:44.920and the ones who don't use Twitter, they're the bad whites.
00:32:48.780So what you see is they're creating almost this new white nationalism, ironically,
00:32:53.100where they are demonstrating their decent whiteness in contrast largely to bad white people.
00:32:59.400So it's a very racially driven form of narcissism, I think, this checking of your white privilege.
00:33:05.640It's also, so not only does it demean bad whites, I think implicitly demeans bad whites,
00:33:10.040it also demeans black people because it's driven by this idea that black people are quite fragile
00:33:16.040and therefore there are certain things you shouldn't say in their presence or there are
00:33:20.040certain things that we maybe shouldn't publish or there are certain speakers we shouldn't invite to
00:33:23.440campus because black people would disappear into a crisis of self-esteem which I think is also a
00:33:29.060very racially driven denigrated view of black people so I think this idea that whiteness is
00:33:35.620this all-powerful thing and it can even induce trauma in people because you know whiteness is
00:33:40.960this powerful force. Actually what that says is that white people are very strong and black people
00:33:47.380who might crumble if you say something racist or might crumble if you invite Tommy Robinson to your
00:33:52.300campus are very weak. So it actually rehabilitates this politically correct white guilt which is now
00:33:59.820incredibly fashionable actually recreates the idea that whites are the adults with great
00:34:05.340power to cause distress. And blacks are the children who might sometimes need censorship
00:34:10.980and other things to protect them from offensive ideas. I find it really repugnant. And that's
00:34:15.880one of the examples of how identity politics, when you think hyper-racially all the time,
00:34:21.380you end up rehabilitating racial stereotypes. In this case, that whites are all-powerful
00:34:28.060and blacks are weak and that's where this identity politics is taking us it's taken us down a very
00:34:33.440dark alley towards the old racist politics that so many of us spend a lot of time trying to escape
00:34:38.760and or to defeat so what do you make of the concept of white privilege in general then
00:34:43.440i think it's bullshit i think it's uh it expresses a very infantile way of understanding society and
00:34:51.440the dynamics within society. Do I think there's racism? Of course. But I also think racism
00:34:58.740is far rarer now than it was in the past. I think it's become this minority pursuit
00:35:04.440among pockets of people, whereas in the past, and even I'm old enough to remember this,
00:35:08.800it was a fairly dominant ideology in Western societies. I think that's faded away, and
00:35:16.560that's all to the good. But racism, yes, racism still exists.
00:35:20.060But white privilege isn't about racism. Sorry to interrupt. It's not about racism. It's the idea that you and I walking down the street will be treated differently to two black people walking down the street by other people, by shop assistants, by the police, by whatever. That's the idea of white privilege.
00:35:33.640Yeah, but that's not necessarily true. But the reason I think it's a very narrow way to understand society is because I think a far greater influence on people's fortunes is class. And that's how I think is a far better way to understand society.
00:35:49.060So the idea that, you know, people say privileged white men, privileged white this, privileged white that, the vast majority of white people don't enjoy any form of privilege and are actually quite poor or working class, the majority of them.
00:36:02.780and the idea of white privilege is actually one that comes from the very privileged strata of
00:36:10.500society which is academia and professors and all these kind of young people brought up in very
00:36:16.100middle-class homes who go off to university and come up with these theories about white privilege
00:36:19.400so it's this very bizarre twisted ridiculous idea that you know these like those black kids at
00:36:28.840Oxford who are all there on Rhodes scholarships so they come from
00:36:32.020incredibly privileged backgrounds and they're on Rhodes scholarships at
00:36:35.460Oxford the finest university in the world and they spend the whole time
00:36:38.460going on about how privileged white people are what including the the
00:36:41.600Polish white man who who built the extension to your house or I don't know
00:36:47.800the the Turkish white man who cleans your toilet what are we talking about
00:36:53.860here there's a real unwillingness to understand the complexities of modern
00:36:58.180society and the fact that, in my view, class remains the deciding factor as to your fortunes
00:37:05.760and where you go and how successful you can be.
00:37:08.940You know, this was really brought home by, there's a trans, there's a black trans woman
00:37:13.340called Monroe Bergdorf, and she gave an interview to The Guardian recently because she got in
00:37:17.880trouble because she said all white people are racist.
00:37:20.420And she gave an interview to The Guardian and she was explaining her concept of white
00:37:23.800privilege and she said, even a homeless white man has privilege.
00:37:27.020and the justification she gave was that in comparison with a homeless black man he's got
00:37:33.780more chance of getting out now she didn't provide any statistics for that or anything like that
00:37:37.080but the point is she came she comes from an incredibly privileged background her mother
00:37:41.480was very successful in business she had a lovely upbringing she now has a very lovely life and she
00:37:46.580is telling the man who lives under a bridge and is addicted to heroin and might starve to death
00:37:51.260any moment now that he enjoys privilege that's how screwed up identity politics has become and
00:37:56.900And I think identity politics increasingly looks like the revenge of the elite, and it's
00:38:03.340a way for them to fly in the face of all the evidence and to argue that they are the victim.
00:38:11.240They are the great victims of life because the white man who's living in a skip has more
00:58:25.480In fact, the cladding is very much related to the Climate Change Act, which encourages public buildings, particularly residential buildings, to have cladding which keeps heat inside so people turn on their heaters less often.
00:58:40.740So there are so many different political, social, historical questions that influence this tragedy, like are we spinning out of control with climate change policies? Is the fire service too risk-averse and unwilling to encourage people to take risks to save their lives?
00:58:58.440all these things and they completely brushed over that they're coming out now thanks to the
00:59:02.840London Review of Books which published a an amazing 60,000 word essay on Grenfell last week
00:59:08.480which I would encourage everyone to read really really interesting and the inquiries they're
00:59:13.520coming out there as well but what the left did it just ignored all those complexities all those
00:59:17.680difficult questions or the possibility that you know left-wing officials also contributed to these
00:59:23.340situations as much as right-wing people did they ignored all that and just used this tragedy
00:59:27.560to demonise the Tories and to big up Corbyn,
01:05:45.580but you should leave the phone outside.
01:05:47.020But it's like, even the bathroom is now a place
01:05:51.320from which you can speak to the world.
01:05:53.480Even that place where previously you would have just
01:05:55.740gone on your own and had your whatever privately,
01:05:59.760Even then, you're still saying, ah, fuck this, fuck that, whatever people are saying.
01:06:04.260And I just think those boundaries between private life and public life existed for a reason.
01:06:09.760And the key reason I think they existed was because everyone needs a sphere in which they can just be themselves and relax and get away from the kind of demands of public life and the pressures of public life and the pressures of work life and everything else and just like chill out.
01:06:24.800and I think the more the line gets erased the less we have that private zone and everything
01:06:29.120is pushed out into the public so um twitter I think I don't think twitter is the cause of this
01:06:35.580culture but I think it has facilitated it it's kind of it's the tech it's a technology that
01:06:40.160has molded itself around a culture that pretty much already existed which is this culture where
01:06:45.320you know when Stephen Fry is diagnosed with cancer he makes a one-hour video
01:06:51.000youtube video about it now i know that a lot of people like that and they appreciate it but i
01:06:56.480find it strange and i think the erasure of the boundary between how you live and what you say
01:07:04.320in public is probably a really bad thing for humans it's very interesting we talk about social
01:07:09.900media all the time and it's interesting for us because we know now given what's come out in
01:07:15.760recent months that Facebook essentially they have people sitting there trying to
01:07:21.200make it more addictive yeah they literally have people dedicated to
01:07:24.540making it more addictive yeah and social media all the studies pretty much show
01:07:28.240social media is terrible for your mental health right and we we both know that on
01:07:32.440the one hand on the other hand we're making the show right and we have to
01:07:36.220put it out we have to reach people right and social media is a great way of doing
01:07:40.480it can we just say from everybody here at trigonometry social media is brilliant
01:11:20.060but they are not politically neutral at all.
01:11:24.240coming from California, they don't reflect the full spectrum of opinion, they make sure
01:11:30.680that certain videos are watched more than others, they make sure that certain people
01:11:34.060don't, I mean, James Damore is a good example of someone who was working with Google, made
01:11:39.460some what you might call factual but conservative leaning points about men and women and whatever,
01:11:44.920and he was dismissed, and that tells you about the culture that exists there, so there's
01:11:48.320no way that company then has an equal tolerance for all the different political opinions.
01:11:53.160No, we are sleepwalking into a situation where very politicized, massive companies are getting to decide what you can and can't say in public.
01:12:02.120Because, you know, this is the new public square.
01:12:05.380You know, billions of people use Facebook.
01:12:07.560I don't know, is it a billion or millions of people use Twitter?
01:12:10.860This is the forum in which politicians speak, in which certain institutions make statements, in which ordinary people gather to have conversations.
01:12:19.980So if you are prevented from being part of that, or if you are prevented from saying
01:12:24.220certain things in there, then you are being prevented from expressing yourself in the