TRIGGERnometry - Brendan O'Neill - Why We Must Dissent

00:00:00.560 What we're living through is a counter-enlightenment, a reversal of enlightenment values themselves,

00:00:07.660 an assault on reason and truth and freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.

00:00:12.900 I was really shocked the last time I was in LA.

00:00:15.200 You know, we have homeless problems in London and we have poverty problems in London, but

00:00:19.160 LA is off the scale.

00:00:21.220 So they say, it's their free choice.

00:00:23.160 Relax.

00:00:24.000 If they want to defecate in public and shoot up in public, do whatever else they want to

00:00:29.160 do in public, that's freedom.

00:00:30.460 But that's not freedom.

00:00:31.820 That's degradation. 0.53

00:00:34.280 That is self-degradation, but it's also social degradation.

00:00:38.940 It's the unwillingness to make judgments, the criminalization of moral judgment.

00:00:44.320 Let everything happen.

00:00:45.640 Let everything go.

00:00:46.960 You know, don't be judgy.

00:00:48.360 That's, I think, underlies a lot of these problems.

00:00:49.500 Well, once you take away truth, you take away right and wrong, and then you can't make a

00:00:52.840 judgment.

00:00:53.240 Yeah, exactly.

00:00:59.160 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:06.740 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:07.980 I'm Constantine Kissing.

00:01:09.100 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:13.940 Our terrific guest today returns to the show for the third time.

00:01:16.940 He's a journalist and the author of a new book, A Heretic's Manifesto, Essays on the

00:01:21.480 Unsayable.

00:01:21.960 Brendan O'Neill, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:01:23.900 Hi, guys.

00:01:24.460 Pleasure to be here.

00:01:25.320 It's great to have you back.

00:01:26.440 Everybody knows who you are at this point, so we won't do the usual who are you, how

00:01:30.100 have you got to here.

00:01:31.180 The one thing I will say is your new book is excellent, and one of the reasons it's

00:01:35.460 excellent is that I feel like a lot of people who have clicked to watch this, or listen to

00:01:42.840 this, may be like, well, they've had Brendan on.

00:01:45.040 We know what Brendan thinks.

00:01:46.260 He believes in free speech.

00:01:47.580 But you actually, with your new book, you've done a great job of introducing some new ideas

00:01:52.420 and some new concepts.

00:01:53.520 And that, I imagine, isn't actually an easy thing to do in the current environment, where

00:01:57.220 it seems like everyone's talking about everything now.

00:01:59.840 Yeah, well, that was, well, I'm pleased to hear that.

00:02:02.060 That was the aim of the book, was to dig down a little bit more historically into some of

00:02:06.640 the ideas that people like us are talking about.

00:02:08.760 Freedom of speech, tolerance, the new age of unreason, and how do we challenge it?

00:02:14.160 So I wanted to dig down and just look at the historical precedence to that.

00:02:18.140 Where did it come from?

00:02:19.080 What are the similarities in the past in relation to the problems that we face today?

00:02:24.600 So I look at that in relation to the idea of the witch hunt, the idea of this kind of

00:02:30.240 stifling conformism that we face today on so many issues, the cancel culture, the cancellation

00:02:36.060 of people for saying controversial things.

00:02:38.240 So in the book, I look at how those things have taken place in the past, how they take place

00:02:43.940 in the present, and what are the links between those two different eras.

00:02:47.400 So I hope people will read the book and see that the problems that we face today are not

00:02:53.240 particularly new.

00:02:54.700 They may express themselves in a different way.

00:02:56.940 But these kinds of things have been problems that people have faced throughout history.

00:03:01.180 Indeed, they have.

00:03:01.920 And I mean, let's be honest, Brendan, some of the titles or the chapter titles are a little

00:03:07.320 bit provocative, aren't they?

00:03:09.200 In particular, the first chapter title, which is? 1.00

00:03:13.260 Her Penis. 1.00

00:03:14.140 There we go. 1.00

00:03:15.140 Her Penis. 0.99

00:03:15.880 You know, when I sat down and thought to myself, I'm going to write a book on heresy called A 0.99

00:03:22.440 Heretic's Manifesto, I knew from the very beginning that the first chapter was going to be called 0.98

00:03:27.540 Her Penis and that the first line of the whole book was going to be, we need to talk about 0.99

00:03:32.960 Her Penis, which is the first line of the book. 0.99

00:03:35.200 I knew from the very beginning because I thought to myself, I need to drag the reader into the 0.99

00:03:40.760 book.

00:03:41.040 I need to grab the reader, make sure that they know what this book is about. 0.98

00:03:45.660 And also, I just think that the phrase Her Penis is such a brilliant encapsulation of the 0.98

00:03:51.060 problems we face today. 0.97

00:03:52.380 So the question I ask in that chapter is, how did that two-word phrase become an accepted

00:03:58.520 part of everyday discussion?

00:04:00.940 You see it in the media, you see it on the BBC and in the Times, the newspaper of record.

00:04:07.200 You see it in courts of law when they're having trials over rape and sexual assault.

00:04:11.900 You see it from the mouths of leading politicians and cultural figures. 0.99

00:04:16.160 They will literally say those two words, Her Penis, which in my view is an irrational term. 0.99

00:04:21.760 It's a term that would have made no sense to people 10 or 15 years ago. 0.98

00:04:25.260 It makes no sense to me now.

00:04:28.020 I think the only pronoun that should ever come before the word penis is his, the male pronoun. 0.50

00:04:34.720 So in that chapter, I asked the question of how language gets manipulated.

00:04:39.920 How are we encouraged?

00:04:41.540 What are the mechanisms through which we are encouraged or forced, in some instances, 1.00

00:04:46.060 to say something as untrue and regressive and ridiculous as her penis? 0.99

00:04:54.700 So that one, I wanted that to be- 1.00

00:04:57.100 And how does that happen?

00:04:57.680 Tell us, what are the mechanisms?

00:04:59.420 I think it's various things.

00:05:01.360 I think there's cultural pressure on people to buy into the trans ideology or the woke ideology

00:05:08.220 more broadly.

00:05:08.960 There is cultural pressure for people to agree that a man can become a woman simply by declaring

00:05:14.260 that he is a woman.

00:05:15.800 We know there's cultural pressure because anyone who refuses to do that can be cancelled.

00:05:21.460 They can lose their job.

00:05:22.880 They can be no platform.

00:05:24.180 They can be blacklisted on university campuses.

00:05:27.320 We know the cases of Maya Forstata, for example, or Kathleen Stock, Posey Parker down in New Zealand,

00:05:34.060 people who have either been blacklisted from respectable society or attacked by feral mobs of misogynists,

00:05:41.680 which is what happened to our mutual friend, Posey Parker, Kelly J. Keene.

00:05:46.780 So there is this cultural expectation that you will genuflect to the trans ideology

00:05:53.400 and that you will adopt its language and you will adopt its ideas.

00:05:56.420 And if you don't, you face punishment.

00:05:59.040 You will be branded a heretic.

00:06:00.260 So I wanted the first chapter of A Heretic's Manifesto to be on the issue of trans and on 0.98

00:06:06.900 the issue of a phrase like her penis and what that tells us about the authoritarian times 0.99

00:06:11.580 we live in. 0.98

00:06:12.500 And it is a very authoritarian time because it's asking you to deny biology and fact.

00:06:17.340 And you, in the book, I think you give an example of Caitlyn Jenner.

00:06:20.820 Yeah, well, one of the most, I think, the reason the trans ideology to me is so interesting

00:06:28.540 in relation to the question of heresy and the way in which we're forced to believe certain things

00:06:33.860 and banished from public life if we refuse to believe them, is that the trans ideology,

00:06:39.100 as you say, absolutely demands that you reject the evidence of your own eyes,

00:06:44.800 reject the light of your own reason and instead bow down to what the establishment has decreed

00:06:51.460 to be correct and right and truthful.

00:06:54.280 And it really is astonishing.

00:06:56.900 Another example I give in the book is the New York Times and the BBC a few years ago.

00:07:02.540 They published an article about a woman in her 80s who murdered and decapitated another woman,

00:07:10.120 a woman who was in her 60s.

00:07:11.420 And I was reading this thinking, hold on, women in their 80s don't murder other women. 1.00

00:07:17.360 I can't think of any instance in my lifetime where that's happened.

00:07:20.520 They suddenly don't decapitate them.

00:07:22.040 Women in their 80s tend to be quite small, usually a bit frail, 1.00

00:07:27.140 certainly not murderously inclined.

00:07:29.220 So I'm reading this thinking, what the F is this about?

00:07:32.720 You get to the very last line in the BBC article and it says this is a trans-identified person.

00:07:39.180 You get halfway through the New York Times article and it says this person was previously a man,

00:07:45.900 previously identified as a man.

00:07:47.760 So it's a man.

00:07:49.000 It's a man who murdered a woman.

00:07:50.840 So you read something like that and you think to yourself, they're lying to us.

00:07:55.340 They're gaslighting us on a daily basis.

00:07:57.880 They're saying things to us that are simply untrue.

00:08:00.620 They're saying to us 2 plus 2 equals 5, which is what happens, of course, in Orwell's 1984.

00:08:07.560 And if you disagree, if you say actually 2 plus 2 equals 4 and this woman that you're talking about is actually a man,

00:08:15.380 you will be branded a bigot.

00:08:16.920 You will be cast out of polite society. 0.51

00:08:18.920 You will be demonised.

00:08:19.840 So I was very interested in the way in which gaslighting has become utterly mainstream.

00:08:25.320 It comes from the mainstream media.

00:08:26.840 The New York Times and the BBC, these are esteemed media outlets who are telling us that a woman murdered a woman and it was simply untrue.

00:08:36.820 And coming back to this, this is one of the things I'm thinking about a lot.

00:08:39.920 I think I was once probably under the impression that this is all driven by the sort of pink-haired people on college campuses.

00:08:48.640 But increasingly, I'm starting to be persuaded by the idea that a lot of people are going along with this because it's easy,

00:08:57.860 because they don't want to have problems at work, because they don't want to be the one.

00:09:02.040 They don't really care.

00:09:03.280 It doesn't really affect them.

00:09:04.920 And if it does, they'll sort of make peace with it because they don't want to make a fuss.

00:09:09.980 And it seems to me like it's almost like those people are far more numerous and therefore far more dangerous 0.96

00:09:16.100 than the people who may be expressing these ideas out loud in extreme ways.

00:09:22.380 Yeah, I think it's a mixture of different kind of responses to these problems.

00:09:26.760 And then the question that I'm always asking myself is how these ideas get institutionalised.

00:09:31.960 I'm so interested in how consensus is forged and enforced.

00:09:36.880 I find that such an interesting topic of our times.

00:09:39.560 So I think you're right.

00:09:40.480 So there are the true believers.

00:09:42.580 I think the pink-haired people on campuses and in the trans lobby itself, they're the true believers.

00:09:48.280 There are also the political opportunists.

00:09:51.160 There are sections of the Labour Party, sections of the media establishment,

00:09:54.580 who really go along with this because they think it's a way to demonstrate their virtue,

00:09:58.600 to prove that they're down with the new ideologies and with young people.

00:10:03.020 So they really run with it too. 0.99

00:10:04.260 Keir Starmer is a perfect example when he says 99.9% of women don't have a penis, 1.00

00:10:10.120 which leaves hundreds of thousands of women who potentially do have a penis. 1.00

00:10:14.620 So he buys into that irrationalism because he thinks it will benefit him politically. 0.97

00:10:19.440 And then there are lots of other people who I think don't speak out.

00:10:24.240 Now, I'm generally quite sympathetic to those people because I think one of the most pernicious

00:10:29.400 impacts of cancel culture is not that it tries to take down people like J.K. Rowling or Ricky Gervais.

00:10:37.460 You know, these people are uncancellable in many ways.

00:10:39.880 They're too big.

00:10:40.580 They're too famous.

00:10:41.280 They're too rich.

00:10:41.880 They can't be cancelled.

00:10:43.900 But what it does do is it sends a message to the rest of society.

00:10:47.380 It has this chilling effect where it says to everyone else,

00:10:50.300 listen, if even J.K. Rowling, one of the most important cultural figures in modern Britain,

00:10:55.880 can be subjected to rape threats and death threats and vile misogyny on a daily basis,

00:11:01.540 simply for saying that biology is real and women are women and women should have their own rights.

00:11:07.960 Imagine what could happen to you.

00:11:10.240 Imagine what could be done to you, a lowly, ordinary woman or man who has a normal job. 0.82

00:11:16.320 Imagine how much you will suffer if you say the same thing.

00:11:19.220 So cancel culture casts this shadow over everyone's lives and it discourages people

00:11:24.800 from saying what they believe to be true.

00:11:27.700 So I have an element of sympathy, I think, with those people who feel that they cannot speak out

00:11:33.620 because the culture now is so intense and so intolerant and so ferociously censorious

00:11:40.020 that people feel that the consequences of speaking out are too severe.

00:11:44.360 So I think across the board, the way in which these things get institutionalised

00:11:49.880 are firstly through the lobbying of people who really believe them,

00:11:53.560 the cowardice of the political establishment who won't stand up for a reason,

00:11:57.360 and then the understandable reluctance of ordinary people to put their head above the parapet.

00:12:02.040 But you also think that cancel culture is not really the right way to describe what's going on.

00:12:07.820 There's something else. It's possibly a more nuanced analysis of the situation.

00:12:12.920 Could you expand upon that, please, Brendan?

00:12:14.580 Yeah. So in the introduction to the book, I make the point that I'm frustrated with the term cancel culture.

00:12:22.460 I use it all the time. It's a very convenient term. 0.88

00:12:25.580 The public understands what it means.

00:12:27.340 I hate this idea that the public doesn't know what wokeness is or what cancel culture is.

00:12:31.500 Everyone has an instinctive understanding of what these things are.

00:12:35.160 So cancel culture is a useful term. 1.00

00:12:37.320 It has people recognise what it stands for.

00:12:40.580 But the point I make in my book is that it's not sufficient to describe the problems that we face today.

00:12:47.240 Because I think a term like cancel culture, it's become almost kind of quaint,

00:12:52.060 a kind of cute term.

00:12:53.420 It's kind of quite light and quite flimsy.

00:12:55.980 It gives the impression that the problem we face today is the occasional cancellation of well-known people.

00:13:02.800 The occasional attempt to cancel you guys from speaking or performing your comedy

00:13:07.740 or from preventing Kathleen Stock from speaking at Oxford University.

00:13:13.080 We're encouraged to think that that's the key problem.

00:13:15.720 That is a very serious problem, which we should always confront.

00:13:18.960 But I think what we're living through is a counter-enlightenment, a reversal of enlightenment values themselves,

00:13:27.340 an assault on reason and truth and freedom of speech and freedom of conscience.

00:13:32.140 So it's like the term nanny state.

00:13:35.500 I've never really liked the term nanny state because it sounds like Mary Poppins.

00:13:39.100 It sounds too flimsy to describe the way in which the contemporary state thinks it has the right to intervene in your life

00:13:47.460 and tell you what to eat, how many times you should exercise, how you should raise your children.

00:13:51.660 The argument I make in the book is we need new terms to describe this intense authoritarianism

00:13:58.420 and this reversal of the enlightened values and the commitment to reason that define modern society for a long time.

00:14:06.900 It's such a great point because the term cancel culture, it doesn't encapsulate what's going on.

00:14:12.320 And one of the things that I see coming down the path, and I think a lot of people do, is there's this rise in misogyny

00:14:18.720 and there's a real rise in homophobia.

00:14:21.760 And it's really worrying because you see some of the old tropes that we used to see in the 80s.

00:14:28.060 Suddenly, you start seeing them again and it starts being resurrected.

00:14:32.760 I couldn't agree more.

00:14:34.160 You know, one of the things I find most frustrating as an anti-woke person

00:14:39.380 is that people think if you criticise wokeness, if you criticise political correctness,

00:14:43.400 you must be an old, white, conservative man who wants to...

00:14:47.880 There's nothing wrong, by the way, with being an old, white, conservative man. 0.54

00:14:51.160 More power to you guys.

00:14:52.900 And you want to turn the clock back to the 1950s. 0.97

00:14:55.800 Women in the kitchen, homosexuals living in shame, living in the shadows. 0.99

00:15:02.080 You know, to a past that they think was better than what we have now. 0.95

00:15:06.500 For me, it couldn't be more different.

00:15:08.680 The reason I'm worried about wokeness is because I think it's undoing 1.00

00:15:12.840 all the great progressive gains of the 1960s and the 1970s.

00:15:18.580 Women's liberation, racial equality, colour blindness as an approach to everyday life,

00:15:25.200 gay liberation, all those great things that happened in the 60s and the 70s

00:15:29.440 where we said to ourselves, listen, people should live as they want to live.

00:15:33.880 Black people and white people should be judged absolutely equally within society.

00:15:38.020 There should be no racial judgement whatsoever.

00:15:40.800 Women should have the same rights as men. 0.93

00:15:43.920 All those positive leaps forward, I think, are now threatened by the culture of wokeness.

00:15:50.280 So wokeness depicts itself as the heir to the civil rights movement,

00:15:55.120 but I think it is the usurper of the civil rights movement.

00:15:57.960 So it now says that you should judge people by colour rather than character.

00:16:02.960 You should obsess over race.

00:16:04.820 You should wear racial goggles every single day. 0.99

00:16:07.800 White people are privileged. 1.00

00:16:09.080 Black people are in pain. 0.99

00:16:11.020 They're victims. 0.96

00:16:12.140 And that's how you need to judge these racial categories.

00:16:14.960 It is anti-women.

00:16:16.440 It has rehabilitated misogyny.

00:16:17.960 Look at the vile abuse that gender-critical feminists get 1.00

00:16:21.800 or the way in which supposedly woke trans activists want to invade women's spaces

00:16:27.300 and undermine women's freedom of association. 0.83

00:16:30.260 And it is homophobic.

00:16:31.920 We now have a situation which is almost unbelievable

00:16:35.660 where young lesbians and young gay men, young gay boys, 15, 16, 17 years old,

00:16:43.020 the vast majority of whom would have gone on to become homosexual adults,

00:16:48.240 perfectly happy, are now being subjected to medical intervention,

00:16:52.940 hormonal correction.

00:16:55.080 If you're a young woman who fancies other women, you must be a man. 1.00

00:16:59.540 If you're a young man who is attracted to other young men,

00:17:02.660 you must really be a woman. 0.99

00:17:03.800 Let's correct you.

00:17:04.620 Let's give you the medicine. 0.93

00:17:05.640 Let's change your body so that it accords with your sexual feelings. 1.00

00:17:10.260 That is what they do in Iran. 0.91

00:17:11.720 Iran is second only to Thailand in terms of gender reassignment surgery.

00:17:18.580 And that's not because Iran is a great pro-trans hip country. 0.97

00:17:23.160 It's because it is violently homophobic. 0.99

00:17:26.160 And it would prefer to turn gay men into women and lesbians into men 0.99

00:17:30.860 rather than have gay men and lesbians in its society. 0.96

00:17:34.080 We're now doing the same thing in the West.

00:17:36.720 So the reason I'm concerned about wokeness 0.93

00:17:38.980 is because I think it represents an almost violent reversal

00:17:42.760 of the wonderful, positive, progressive, liberal gains

00:17:47.320 of the 60s and the 70s and the 80s.

00:17:49.920 And that's my key problem with it.

00:17:51.960 But the problem is as well,

00:17:53.420 is that in many ways it's very well-intentioned though, isn't it?

00:17:56.400 That's part of the problem

00:17:57.680 because you're fighting against good intentions.

00:17:59.740 It is.

00:18:01.380 They think they're well-intentioned.

00:18:02.960 Yes, absolutely.

00:18:04.200 And if I were to say to them what I just said to you guys,

00:18:09.080 they would be horrified.

00:18:10.360 They do genuinely think that they're in the same world

00:18:14.820 as Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

00:18:16.960 I mean, you know, I don't want to be crude about it,

00:18:20.980 but they genuinely think that fighting for the right

00:18:24.400 of a biological male to go into a woman's bathroom 0.97

00:18:29.040 and sit down on the toilet and do his business

00:18:31.340 is the same as Rosa Parks fighting for the right

00:18:34.340 to sit on wherever the hell she wanted to on the bus.

00:18:37.480 They genuinely think they are the same thing.

00:18:40.340 And what I want to say to them is they are not the same thing.

00:18:44.620 Rosa Parks, when she sat on the front of the bus

00:18:47.500 and refused to move, she was striking a blow

00:18:50.180 not only for her own dignity,

00:18:52.500 but for the rights of people, regardless of their race,

00:18:55.140 regardless of their skin colour,

00:18:56.380 to engage in public life as they choose.

00:18:58.900 That was an incredibly important and positive moment

00:19:02.260 in modern society.

00:19:05.200 When a biological male demands the right 1.00

00:19:08.300 to go into a woman's bathroom, 1.00

00:19:10.580 he is being antisocial.

00:19:13.140 He is intruding upon other people's already won freedoms.

00:19:17.500 He is actually trying to turn society on its head

00:19:20.100 by saying, I should be able to do whatever I want,

00:19:22.660 whenever I want, regardless of the consequences,

00:19:25.420 regardless of how it makes women feel, 0.97

00:19:27.860 regardless of whether women feel threatened or not.

00:19:30.620 So I just think they are wrong

00:19:32.940 when they think that they are the heirs

00:19:36.020 to those great movements of the 60s and 70s.

00:19:38.640 And the argument I would make to them is,

00:19:40.680 look, I know you think you're doing good,

00:19:43.180 you feel well-intentioned,

00:19:46.060 but the movement that you are part of

00:19:48.340 is having an incredibly destructive impact

00:19:51.300 on people's freedoms, freedom of speech,

00:19:54.940 women's rights, gay rights, and racial equality,

00:19:58.660 and other things that I thought

00:20:00.560 we had already agreed were good things.

00:20:02.880 I think it's impossible to win that argument

00:20:08.420 in the environment that we operate in now

00:20:11.740 for precisely the reason you identified earlier,

00:20:14.040 which is, if this is a counter-enlightenment,

00:20:16.580 which I think is the perfect way to describe it,

00:20:19.260 then the concept of truth itself

00:20:20.980 ceases to have the definition

00:20:22.860 that it has had for hundreds of years now.

00:20:24.980 And so if a man can transform the truth of his nature

00:20:31.320 by incantation, as I'm fond of saying,

00:20:34.160 you know, abracadabra, Stacey,

00:20:36.260 now he's a woman,

00:20:38.400 then all of the things that you've said don't matter

00:20:41.100 because he is Rosa Parks, right?

00:20:43.880 So the question I want to ask you, Brendan,

00:20:46.440 and it's one that I've been wrestling with

00:20:47.940 and we've been wrestling with on the show for some time,

00:20:49.780 is if this is a counter-enlightenment,

00:20:52.620 what does it say about us

00:20:56.380 and what does it say particularly

00:20:58.360 about the role of religion in society?

00:21:00.840 Because I see a lot of people now,

00:21:03.780 and I think quite rightly, going,

00:21:06.540 maybe we were a little bit too quick

00:21:09.240 to throw away the religious traditions 0.92

00:21:13.200 with the bathwater of religious dogma, right?

00:21:16.960 Maybe we were a little too eager

00:21:19.420 to throw down all the things that came from the past. 0.58

00:21:23.580 Maybe in seeking to liberate gay people 0.99

00:21:26.700 and women and ethnic minorities and so on

00:21:29.380 from the stifling oppression that they were experiencing,

00:21:32.900 we actually decided that it is in fact our mission

00:21:36.680 to constantly tear down everything that comes from the past.

00:21:40.540 And so of course we must do this now.

00:21:43.220 What does it say about the current moment

00:21:45.340 and the religious element?

00:21:46.520 I'm particularly keen to hear your thoughts on that.

00:21:47.980 And that's such an interesting question.

00:21:50.180 And I feel so torn on a question like that

00:21:52.940 because one day I'll wake up and I feel really radical.

00:21:56.840 I feel like a revolutionary leftist

00:21:59.020 because I think to myself,

00:22:00.120 I want to tear down the House of Lords,

00:22:02.260 which is undemocratic.

00:22:03.200 And I want to have this extraordinary amount

00:22:07.840 of industrialization and progress.

00:22:09.900 And I want Africa to have exactly the same kind of life 1.00

00:22:12.960 that we have in the West.

00:22:14.280 So I want that kind of revolutionary forwarding

00:22:18.740 of capitalist society and industrial society.

00:22:21.500 So some days I wake up and I think I feel very revolutionary.

00:22:24.620 Other days I wake up and I feel quite conservative

00:22:26.840 because I see the idea of motherhood being torn down

00:22:30.940 and the idea that a bloke can breastfeed his baby,

00:22:34.020 which is an obscenity in my view.

00:22:35.540 And I see schools being bent to the woke ideology 0.99

00:22:41.980 and kids being taught all this LGBTQ plus alphabet crap, 0.99

00:22:48.120 excuse my language. 0.97

00:22:49.580 And I think I'm not in favor of that.

00:22:52.520 And I feel very conservative, in fact,

00:22:54.300 in relation to education.

00:22:55.780 Because in my view,

00:22:56.880 education is about society transmitting

00:22:59.520 the best of its knowledge,

00:23:01.600 the best of its traditions to the next generation.

00:23:04.260 It is not the role of schools to inculcate kids

00:23:08.120 with woke ideas and political correctness.

00:23:11.720 Isn't it, though?

00:23:13.320 Because if the role of schools are to inculcate

00:23:16.120 the ideas of the society

00:23:18.100 and wokeness is the elite ideology,

00:23:22.680 it is the purpose of schools.

00:23:24.780 Well, yeah.

00:23:25.620 But then that needs to be turned on its head.

00:23:28.500 But you see my point, though, right?

00:23:30.160 I do see your point.

00:23:30.940 And what we need to get back to,

00:23:32.180 this is why, you know,

00:23:33.240 when you see Muslim parents in Manchester at the moment

00:23:36.960 protesting against LGBTQ education. 0.98

00:23:40.360 Shame on you! 1.00

00:23:41.640 Shame on you! 1.00

00:23:43.140 Shame on you! 1.00

00:23:44.640 Shame on you! 1.00

00:23:46.000 Whose kids?

00:23:47.060 Our kids!

00:23:48.020 Whose kids?

00:23:48.900 Our kids!

00:23:49.880 Whose kids?

00:23:50.700 Our kids!

00:23:51.700 We've got all the complaints documented.

00:23:54.080 A child said to his teacher,

00:23:56.080 my mom's going to have a baby boy. 0.70

00:23:59.080 The teacher said to his child,

00:24:00.740 you don't know what that baby is.

00:24:02.340 It'll decide its gender when it grows up. 0.84

00:24:04.640 We have been living side by side

00:24:06.920 with the gay community.

00:24:08.920 We have the gay capital, as they call it,

00:24:11.820 Canal Street, you know, in the city centre.

00:24:14.260 We've been living side by side.

00:24:15.820 We work together.

00:24:16.860 There's never been any issues with,

00:24:18.500 you know, the LGBT community.

00:24:20.820 The concerns are with the safeguarding,

00:24:22.860 inappropriateness,

00:24:23.640 and the age-appropriate content

00:24:25.640 that we're seeing

00:24:26.720 is being pushed down the throats

00:24:28.280 of our children.

00:24:29.400 And it's not even remaining

00:24:30.540 in the PSHSE or the RE subjects.

00:24:34.680 It's been spread across the board.

00:24:37.200 You know, it's going into art,

00:24:38.560 it's going into maths.

00:24:39.540 I don't understand for the life of me

00:24:41.340 why it's going down this route.

00:24:43.860 Muslim parents in Birmingham

00:24:45.020 did it four or five years ago as well.

00:24:47.440 And they got loads of flack,

00:24:48.560 including from the left,

00:24:49.920 which is usually very sympathetic

00:24:51.500 to Muslim parents.

00:24:53.020 But they got loads of flack.

00:24:54.500 There are huge uprisings

00:24:56.140 of minority parents in America

00:24:58.020 at the moment.

00:24:59.080 Muslims, Armenians, Latinos,

00:25:01.940 African-Americans,

00:25:02.760 and of course, white parents as well,

00:25:05.060 gathering at school gates saying,

00:25:06.580 stop telling our kids

00:25:07.700 there are 72 genders.

00:25:09.360 I am completely on the side

00:25:11.040 of those people.

00:25:12.060 I'm not a religious person.

00:25:14.160 I'm not naturally a conservative person.

00:25:16.480 But I'm completely on the side

00:25:17.860 of those people

00:25:18.380 because what they're saying

00:25:19.300 is very positive,

00:25:19.960 which is that we should not

00:25:22.020 be telling kids

00:25:23.100 that there are a million genders

00:25:24.520 and we should not be teaching them 1.00

00:25:26.180 how to give blowjobs 1.00

00:25:27.960 and we should not be doing 0.99

00:25:29.440 all these perverse, weird things.

00:25:32.000 We should not have

00:25:32.600 the pride flagging classrooms.

00:25:34.680 You can put it wherever you want

00:25:35.740 outside of the classroom,

00:25:36.820 but not in the classroom.

00:25:38.340 You should be teaching kids

00:25:39.760 the three R's, 0.99

00:25:41.840 reading, writing, arithmetic.

00:25:43.280 You should be teaching them

00:25:43.980 the history of their country.

00:25:45.360 You should be teaching them

00:25:46.100 how to be good citizens,

00:25:48.020 how to be knowledgeable.

00:25:48.840 So I'm completely on their side.

00:25:51.040 So I think I do feel torn

00:25:54.320 in relation to the question

00:25:56.120 that you raised

00:25:56.740 because on the one hand,

00:25:59.880 there are things

00:26:00.420 I want to tear down.

00:26:01.680 There are things

00:26:02.000 I want to rip apart.

00:26:02.900 There is a revolutionary spirit 0.82

00:26:04.740 I still have.

00:26:05.860 I want to say the unsayable

00:26:07.420 as the subtitle

00:26:08.240 to my book suggests.

00:26:09.780 But on the other hand,

00:26:10.580 there are things I think

00:26:11.320 it's important for us

00:26:12.320 to preserve.

00:26:13.300 And one of the things

00:26:14.220 that's important for us

00:26:15.000 to preserve

00:26:15.580 is scientific reason,

00:26:18.140 the idea of truth,

00:26:19.420 the idea of universalism,

00:26:21.160 all these things

00:26:21.880 that we benefited from

00:26:23.380 in relation to the Enlightenment.

00:26:25.060 I think those things

00:26:25.900 are worth preserving.

00:26:27.780 But in relation

00:26:28.520 to the religious question,

00:26:30.480 I'd be interested to hear

00:26:31.580 what your thinking is on that

00:26:33.700 because I feel torn on that too.

00:26:35.320 Because on the one hand,

00:26:37.100 the issue I always had

00:26:38.460 with the new atheists 0.96

00:26:39.740 like Richard Dawkins

00:26:40.880 and to a certain extent

00:26:43.020 Christopher Hitchens

00:26:43.800 who I'm a huge fan of,

00:26:46.420 my issue with the new atheism

00:26:48.220 is that it was in many ways

00:26:49.820 it was about mocking

00:26:50.840 religious people. 0.81

00:26:52.020 It was about mocking 1.00

00:26:52.780 these stupid rednecks 1.00

00:26:54.620 and chavs 1.00

00:26:55.640 and Irish Catholics,

00:26:58.400 which is my background,

00:26:59.600 who believe in God,

00:27:00.700 you know, 1.00

00:27:01.060 uneducated, ignorant people. 1.00

00:27:03.840 And it was about 1.00

00:27:04.940 basically saying

00:27:06.300 that the idea

00:27:07.640 that humankind is special,

00:27:09.160 that we were designed,

00:27:11.160 that we are

00:27:11.940 above everything else 0.97

00:27:13.700 is a ridiculous idea. 0.94

00:27:16.100 And what I want to do 0.97

00:27:17.160 is find a humanistic way

00:27:18.800 to make the same argument.

00:27:20.700 I want to find,

00:27:21.700 because I don't believe in God

00:27:23.060 and I am not a religious person

00:27:24.760 even though I was

00:27:25.400 brought up religiously,

00:27:26.840 what I'm interested in

00:27:27.800 is finding a post-God

00:27:30.280 humanistic way

00:27:31.820 to say,

00:27:32.740 yes,

00:27:33.560 humankind is

00:27:34.600 a superior species.

00:27:36.580 We are different

00:27:37.440 to every other living creature

00:27:38.700 on this planet.

00:27:39.800 There is something special

00:27:41.060 about us.

00:27:41.620 There is something wondrous

00:27:42.860 about us.

00:27:43.960 It's like I want to defend

00:27:45.040 the idea of wonder,

00:27:46.480 the mystery of how

00:27:47.580 human beings are so

00:27:48.500 incredibly intelligent

00:27:49.600 and morally inclined.

00:27:53.280 So the question then becomes,

00:27:55.060 do you need God

00:27:56.100 to do that?

00:27:57.260 Or can you do that

00:27:58.380 in a post-God environment?

00:27:59.520 And I think that's the struggle

00:28:00.560 lots of us are facing.

00:28:01.900 That's why I brought up

00:28:02.940 the question,

00:28:03.500 because when I was,

00:28:04.280 Jordan Peterson

00:28:04.720 handed me on his podcast,

00:28:05.880 he grilled me about this

00:28:07.080 for three hours

00:28:07.760 and we went around and around.

00:28:09.180 I wrote a piece

00:28:09.900 on my substack recently

00:28:11.140 called The Atheism Delusion.

00:28:12.800 I don't know if you saw that.

00:28:14.620 So I'm thinking about

00:28:15.660 this quite a lot now

00:28:16.500 and it's,

00:28:18.500 my answer

00:28:19.700 on a pragmatic level,

00:28:21.700 forget the philosophical level,

00:28:22.960 on pragmatic level

00:28:23.880 is this.

00:28:24.740 We have a society

00:28:25.960 in which many,

00:28:26.820 many people

00:28:27.160 are not religious

00:28:27.880 and they also require

00:28:31.680 the same things

00:28:32.840 that we all require,

00:28:34.320 which is meaning and purpose,

00:28:36.580 a sense of right and wrong,

00:28:37.920 a sense of what's true and false,

00:28:39.800 a kind of orientation

00:28:41.240 towards having some kind

00:28:43.440 of investment

00:28:43.980 in the society

00:28:44.740 that they live in

00:28:45.480 and an orientation

00:28:46.680 towards seeing it prosper

00:28:48.060 and grow into the future.

00:28:50.740 And to the extent

00:28:52.340 that that can be achieved

00:28:53.360 without religion,

00:28:54.880 someone like me

00:28:55.540 who's agnostic

00:28:56.180 and someone like you

00:28:56.920 who doesn't believe in God,

00:28:58.140 we can, I'm sure,

00:28:59.400 totally get behind that.

00:29:00.760 The problem is

00:29:01.600 I do start to wonder

00:29:03.620 and my issue

00:29:04.240 with The New Atheism

00:29:05.140 is that once you've

00:29:07.000 taken God off the pedestal

00:29:08.580 and you've put

00:29:09.060 the superior

00:29:09.660 in your words

00:29:10.260 human being on it,

00:29:11.920 who gets to decide

00:29:13.180 what's true, right?

00:29:16.200 Because I can pull out

00:29:19.280 a scientific study

00:29:20.220 that shows transitioning

00:29:21.380 is helpful to children

00:29:22.740 at this and that.

00:29:23.820 You know,

00:29:24.440 do you see what I'm saying?

00:29:25.220 Yeah.

00:29:25.580 Right?

00:29:25.780 So once truth is,

00:29:27.620 once there's nothing

00:29:28.460 that's kind of above us

00:29:29.840 that we all take for granted

00:29:31.060 that's passed down to us

00:29:32.160 that is outside of us,

00:29:34.020 it's very difficult

00:29:35.280 to then have people

00:29:36.360 who differ politically

00:29:37.460 agree on a certain set

00:29:39.060 of values

00:29:40.400 that are just embedded

00:29:41.340 in society.

00:29:42.940 Yeah,

00:29:43.620 I get that.

00:29:44.760 I,

00:29:45.120 my argument would be

00:29:46.380 that the only way

00:29:47.660 to understand truth

00:29:49.060 or arrive at truth

00:29:50.120 is through freedom.

00:29:51.580 I know that might sound

00:29:52.980 facetious,

00:29:53.760 but I think that's

00:29:55.420 a very real prospect

00:29:57.180 and something that people

00:29:58.080 should consider.

00:30:00.100 You know,

00:30:00.480 I think

00:30:01.020 it's,

00:30:03.420 people have been talking

00:30:04.320 for a long time

00:30:05.460 about the God-shaped hole

00:30:07.100 in modern society.

00:30:08.760 What do we do

00:30:09.340 after God?

00:30:10.620 How do we define

00:30:11.840 what is right and wrong?

00:30:13.480 Do the Ten Commandments

00:30:14.700 matter anymore

00:30:15.500 in the absence of God?

00:30:17.500 So these are

00:30:18.620 very real questions

00:30:19.700 and very real issues

00:30:20.740 that people are talking about

00:30:21.860 and concerned about.

00:30:23.680 But I think

00:30:24.380 the point I would make

00:30:27.400 is that

00:30:28.100 in my view,

00:30:30.640 and I know this probably

00:30:31.620 is offensive

00:30:32.180 to religious people,

00:30:33.900 all of those values,

00:30:35.320 all of those kind of

00:30:36.020 God-delivered ideas

00:30:37.900 that people generally

00:30:38.860 agreed on

00:30:39.400 and still do

00:30:40.360 to a certain extent,

00:30:42.540 they really came from man.

00:30:44.960 They really were written

00:30:46.160 by man.

00:30:47.180 I don't believe

00:30:47.960 that there is a God.

00:30:48.880 I don't believe

00:30:49.280 that God did give

00:30:50.140 tablets to Moses

00:30:51.860 or hide in a bush

00:30:53.600 and talk to Jesus Christ

00:30:54.860 or anything like that.

00:30:55.640 I don't believe that happened.

00:30:56.700 So these are

00:30:57.720 the creations of man

00:30:59.320 in a very positive way.

00:31:00.660 And we know

00:31:01.180 that there is a close link

00:31:02.560 between Christianity 0.88

00:31:04.220 and the Enlightenment

00:31:05.200 and between

00:31:05.860 the religious struggle

00:31:08.220 for freedom of conscience

00:31:09.160 and the right

00:31:09.720 to express oneself

00:31:10.660 and the right to believe

00:31:11.800 what one wants to believe

00:31:12.820 and then the subsequent

00:31:13.940 development of

00:31:14.720 enlightenment values,

00:31:16.000 the freedom of conscience,

00:31:17.240 freedom of speech,

00:31:18.440 the freedom to think

00:31:19.260 how you want to think.

00:31:20.520 So I'm not someone

00:31:21.900 who poo-poos religion. 0.57

00:31:23.240 I was brought up

00:31:23.940 religiously.

00:31:24.540 I was brought up

00:31:24.980 as a Roman Catholic.

00:31:25.740 I was an altar boy.

00:31:27.080 I went to Catholic schools

00:31:28.540 from the ages of

00:31:29.280 four to 18.

00:31:31.440 I benefited from them enormously.

00:31:33.760 I was educated by nuns

00:31:35.340 in a school

00:31:36.280 that was built

00:31:37.540 around the bottom

00:31:38.120 of this convent

00:31:38.860 on top of a hill.

00:31:39.940 So it was great.

00:31:42.080 It was wonderful.

00:31:42.720 And it benefited me

00:31:44.900 enormously.

00:31:45.360 But I do think

00:31:46.680 that there has to be

00:31:47.640 a way in which society,

00:31:50.500 precisely through exercising

00:31:52.260 its freedom to think

00:31:53.800 and its freedom to argue

00:31:55.320 and its freedom to dissent,

00:31:56.860 can arrive at something

00:31:58.460 that we can generally

00:31:59.480 agree to be true.

00:32:01.420 And I do think that the,

00:32:03.780 you know,

00:32:04.100 John Milton made this point

00:32:05.420 in the 1640s.

00:32:07.040 he said that the greatest crime

00:32:10.140 of censorship,

00:32:11.340 the reason that censorship

00:32:12.320 was so obscene

00:32:14.620 and offensive

00:32:15.580 and counter to everything

00:32:17.100 that is human

00:32:17.800 is because it restricts us

00:32:20.300 from discovering the truth.

00:32:22.180 Because what it says,

00:32:23.640 the terrible thing

00:32:24.680 about censorship,

00:32:25.220 and I make this point

00:32:25.840 in my book,

00:32:26.720 is that it says

00:32:27.720 you don't have to worry

00:32:28.900 your tiny little head

00:32:30.500 about what is right

00:32:31.940 and what is wrong,

00:32:33.220 what is true

00:32:34.060 and what is false,

00:32:34.780 because we will decide for you.

00:32:37.420 Some greater,

00:32:38.680 superior establishment figure

00:32:40.560 will decide on our behalf

00:32:42.060 what is right

00:32:43.100 and what is wrong

00:32:43.620 and they will tell us.

00:32:45.540 And John Milton

00:32:46.340 made the point

00:32:46.980 in that great moment

00:32:48.040 of revolutionary upheaval

00:32:49.960 during the English Civil War,

00:32:51.900 he said

00:32:52.660 that's an offence

00:32:55.540 against people

00:32:57.020 and the only way

00:32:58.520 in which we can genuinely

00:32:59.760 believe that something is true

00:33:01.600 is if we struggle for it

00:33:03.220 in the realm of freedom.

00:33:04.120 And we make the argument

00:33:05.840 and it is countered

00:33:07.280 and people push back against it

00:33:08.920 and we keep making the argument

00:33:10.460 and we,

00:33:11.020 through that process,

00:33:12.440 through that process of freedom,

00:33:14.280 through that process of engagement,

00:33:16.300 we might arrive

00:33:17.240 at what we can agree,

00:33:18.800 generally speaking,

00:33:19.700 to be a true fact.

00:33:20.700 The more we go through this journey

00:33:24.200 and the more I've seen

00:33:25.740 these views metastasize

00:33:27.540 and spread through society,

00:33:29.260 the more I think

00:33:30.440 that the left created this stuff

00:33:34.120 and it's actually the left

00:33:35.800 who are going to solve it.

00:33:37.180 The left are really

00:33:38.420 the ones who are going to

00:33:40.080 actually solve this problem

00:33:41.840 if it's solvable.

00:33:43.240 So, for example,

00:33:44.100 with the trans issue,

00:33:45.860 the people who make the headway

00:33:47.360 are the Rosie Duffields.

00:33:48.540 They're the J.K. Rowlings.

00:33:50.200 The people who are the,

00:33:51.260 you know,

00:33:51.500 the nice, woolly,

00:33:52.560 lefty liberals

00:33:53.260 who will come out

00:33:54.000 and criticize this,

00:33:55.480 who are strong enough

00:33:56.300 to do so.

00:33:57.240 I think the right,

00:33:58.320 although they may present

00:33:59.960 really good ideas

00:34:00.960 and their criticisms

00:34:01.720 may be incredibly valid,

00:34:03.860 they're not as palatable.

00:34:05.960 It's really important

00:34:07.100 for left-leaning

00:34:08.320 and left-wing people

00:34:09.200 to stand up.

00:34:09.980 Would you agree on that?

00:34:11.460 I would agree on that,

00:34:12.460 actually.

00:34:13.320 And I say that as someone

00:34:14.520 who, I still consider myself

00:34:16.060 a leftist.

00:34:16.840 Most people don't bring it.

00:34:18.160 No one does.

00:34:19.800 Everyone keeps telling me

00:34:20.720 I'm a fascist

00:34:21.540 and I'm a far right.

00:34:23.100 And I'm like,

00:34:23.600 what?

00:34:24.100 I'm a communist.

00:34:25.300 I don't know what I am.

00:34:26.340 Who knows what these words

00:34:27.340 mean anymore?

00:34:28.520 Everything's been thrown up

00:34:29.440 in the air.

00:34:31.400 In a romantic way,

00:34:33.000 I still consider myself

00:34:34.100 a leftist,

00:34:34.780 but even as I recognize

00:34:36.120 that it has no meaning anymore.

00:34:38.040 Because if left-wing now,

00:34:39.600 whether we like it or not,

00:34:41.660 left-wing now means

00:34:43.020 supporting the censorship

00:34:44.180 of women 1.00

00:34:44.800 because they're evil TERFs. 1.00

00:34:46.800 It means supporting 1.00

00:34:47.680 young lesbians

00:34:49.680 having double mastectomies.

00:34:52.060 It means supporting

00:34:53.460 cancel culture.

00:34:55.380 It means...

00:34:56.020 Brilliant.

00:34:56.280 Hold on.

00:34:56.580 Why do you say this?

00:34:57.340 Because your argument

00:34:58.560 sounds a little bit like

00:34:59.600 being on the right now

00:35:00.600 means you support Hitler. 0.57

00:35:01.980 A little bit.

00:35:02.760 Like, there are some people

00:35:04.040 on the fringes

00:35:04.860 of the right

00:35:05.740 who believe...

00:35:07.400 who are Nazis. 0.52

00:35:08.260 There are some people

00:35:09.760 on the fringes

00:35:10.360 of the left 1.00

00:35:10.840 who believe all this crap. 1.00

00:35:11.960 Now, I hear your argument 1.00

00:35:13.580 in my head already.

00:35:14.480 It's in the institutions

00:35:15.360 and that's how

00:35:16.160 it's being enforced.

00:35:16.900 But just flesh that out

00:35:18.180 for people.

00:35:18.800 Why do you say

00:35:19.760 being on the left

00:35:20.720 means that?

00:35:21.300 Because there will be

00:35:21.980 lots of people

00:35:22.520 who watch this show

00:35:23.280 who think they're on the left

00:35:24.180 and don't support that.

00:35:25.340 Oh, absolutely.

00:35:26.140 And I love those people

00:35:28.080 and I consider myself

00:35:29.400 one of them.

00:35:30.380 It's because it's...

00:35:32.260 What I mean is

00:35:33.220 what society has defined

00:35:35.240 left-wing to mean.

00:35:36.820 So I don't think

00:35:37.560 that is left-wing.

00:35:38.720 I don't think

00:35:39.180 that is genuinely

00:35:40.320 left-wing at all.

00:35:41.720 It's like Brexit.

00:35:42.800 You know,

00:35:43.020 that's another can of worms.

00:35:44.280 But when people said

00:35:45.020 that the left-wing approach

00:35:46.300 to Brexit

00:35:46.700 is to support

00:35:47.320 the European Union,

00:35:48.100 I was like,

00:35:48.820 no.

00:35:49.740 Have you forgotten

00:35:50.280 Tony Benn

00:35:51.080 and Peter Shaw

00:35:52.420 and Barbara Castle

00:35:53.720 and all these great

00:35:54.580 historical left-wing figures

00:35:55.880 from the Labour movement

00:35:57.020 in the UK

00:35:57.580 who were hugely

00:35:59.580 anti-European Union

00:36:00.980 and in favour

00:36:01.960 of British sovereignty

00:36:02.780 and British democracy.

00:36:03.620 So very often

00:36:04.960 what gets called

00:36:05.940 left-wing

00:36:06.360 is not really

00:36:06.920 left-wing at all.

00:36:07.820 But I think

00:36:08.680 the situation

00:36:09.820 we have to face up to

00:36:11.460 is that we do live

00:36:13.060 in a society

00:36:13.680 where the presumption,

00:36:15.160 at least,

00:36:15.600 even if it's incorrect,

00:36:16.580 the presumption is

00:36:17.400 that to be left-wing

00:36:18.400 means to be

00:36:19.740 pro-trans,

00:36:21.220 pro-trans kids,

00:36:23.960 pro-cancel culture,

00:36:26.040 in favour of the

00:36:28.200 rehabilitation of

00:36:29.300 racial thinking,

00:36:30.180 although it's never

00:36:30.680 called that.

00:36:31.360 It's called,

00:36:32.160 you know,

00:36:32.420 let's police

00:36:32.960 white fragility,

00:36:34.100 let's defend 0.99

00:36:35.080 victimised black

00:36:36.580 communities. 0.96

00:36:38.580 That's what it means

00:36:39.660 and to my mind

00:36:41.200 that's a great tragedy

00:36:42.180 but that is what it means

00:36:43.220 and what it means

00:36:45.660 to defend trans kids,

00:36:47.900 what that means

00:36:48.640 in the real world

00:36:49.720 is supporting

00:36:51.140 the hormonal intervention

00:36:52.820 into young people's lives,

00:36:54.500 supporting the

00:36:55.540 surgical

00:36:56.480 mutilation,

00:36:58.920 if I can say it, 0.99

00:36:59.760 of young lesbians,

00:37:01.380 of young women,

00:37:02.660 which I think

00:37:03.160 is a grotesque tragedy

00:37:04.440 and I hope in 20 or 30 years' time

00:37:07.240 people will look back

00:37:08.080 in horror

00:37:08.580 and look at it

00:37:10.540 as a controversy

00:37:12.360 on a scale

00:37:13.160 of the thalidomide controversy

00:37:14.820 that society could

00:37:16.500 knowingly,

00:37:17.820 consciously do this

00:37:18.900 without having

00:37:19.860 the restrictions

00:37:20.560 and the common sense

00:37:22.800 in place.

00:37:23.320 So I don't think

00:37:25.560 of any of that

00:37:26.580 as left-wing

00:37:27.240 but that is

00:37:28.320 what left-wing

00:37:29.300 has come to mean.

00:37:31.060 So I think

00:37:31.540 those of us

00:37:32.260 who think

00:37:32.800 we're lefty

00:37:33.600 or liberal

00:37:34.200 or chilled out

00:37:36.000 or counter-cultural,

00:37:37.040 we have to grapple

00:37:37.780 with that.

00:37:38.400 We have to grapple

00:37:39.140 with the fact

00:37:39.720 that that's what

00:37:40.440 it has come to mean

00:37:42.000 which I think

00:37:42.600 is a problem.

00:37:43.700 That doesn't mean

00:37:44.460 I am...

00:37:44.720 Do you think

00:37:45.080 that's a smear?

00:37:46.060 Because there are times

00:37:46.940 where I do actually

00:37:47.900 think that's a smear

00:37:48.860 because when people go,

00:37:50.440 oh, you're on the right

00:37:51.560 therefore that means 1.00

00:37:52.680 that you hate black people 1.00

00:37:53.680 that means that you mean this. 0.99

00:37:54.940 I mean,

00:37:55.280 you go,

00:37:55.600 well, that doesn't mean

00:37:56.380 any of those things. 0.96

00:37:57.420 That's a ridiculous thing 0.97

00:37:58.720 to say. 0.99

00:38:00.560 Yes, it is.

00:38:03.200 But I think

00:38:05.060 it can become a smear.

00:38:08.600 It can become a smear

00:38:09.580 if you caricature it too much.

00:38:11.620 But we do have to face up

00:38:13.160 to the fact

00:38:13.560 that just in a very

00:38:14.480 measurable,

00:38:15.660 provable way,

00:38:17.340 the people who now

00:38:18.860 define themselves

00:38:19.740 as left-wing

00:38:20.420 are pro-EU.

00:38:22.540 They're pro-trans.

00:38:24.720 They're pro-trans surgery.

00:38:26.860 They tend to be

00:38:27.940 pro-cancel culture

00:38:28.820 although there are

00:38:29.400 obviously exceptions.

00:38:31.520 That is what it means.

00:38:33.420 And it's worth arguing

00:38:35.180 against that.

00:38:35.940 It's worth saying,

00:38:36.780 in my view,

00:38:37.280 it's always worth saying

00:38:38.520 that the left

00:38:39.500 used to be counter-cultural,

00:38:40.940 used to be libertine.

00:38:42.120 It used to be very much

00:38:42.980 in favour of freedom.

00:38:44.720 You go back

00:38:45.360 to the French Revolution

00:38:46.280 which is where

00:38:46.820 the word left comes from.

00:38:48.760 People who stood

00:38:49.240 on the left side

00:38:50.240 of the assembly

00:38:51.120 and people who stood

00:38:51.740 on the right side

00:38:52.380 of the assembly,

00:38:53.280 the people who were

00:38:53.780 on the left side

00:38:54.440 of the assembly

00:38:55.000 in France,

00:38:56.280 the parliamentary assembly,

00:38:58.080 were the most radical,

00:38:59.480 the most in favour

00:39:00.280 of freedom,

00:39:00.840 the most in favour

00:39:01.560 of individual sovereignty

00:39:03.220 and national sovereignty

00:39:04.120 and revolutionary ideas.

00:39:06.460 That's where it comes from

00:39:07.360 but it has changed enormously.

00:39:10.060 And one of the things

00:39:10.680 I find interesting

00:39:11.500 about the contemporary left

00:39:13.200 in the UK

00:39:13.760 and other countries too

00:39:14.900 is their distance

00:39:16.660 from ordinary people,

00:39:18.860 their distance

00:39:19.440 from working class people

00:39:20.900 because the left

00:39:22.180 used to be

00:39:22.940 the one section

00:39:24.880 of political society

00:39:26.000 that was in touch

00:39:26.840 with ordinary people

00:39:27.700 that wanted to fight

00:39:28.900 for their economic interests

00:39:31.100 and their cultural interests

00:39:33.060 and their rights.

00:39:34.500 It's now the complete opposite.

00:39:36.260 If you talk to

00:39:36.780 a supposed lefty now,

00:39:39.260 within five minutes

00:39:40.680 they will be raging

00:39:41.660 about gammon,

00:39:42.640 which basically means

00:39:44.320 the lower orders.

00:39:45.860 They will be raging

00:39:46.740 about Brexit voters,

00:39:48.080 the low information masses.

00:39:49.680 They don't know

00:39:50.440 what they're doing. 1.00

00:39:51.640 They're ignorant, 1.00

00:39:52.380 they're xenophobic, 1.00

00:39:53.240 they're racist, 1.00

00:39:53.980 they're obese, 1.00

00:39:55.740 they're feckless. 0.99

00:39:57.460 All those ideas

00:39:58.700 that you would once

00:39:59.820 have heard from

00:40:00.460 hard right-wingers,

00:40:02.420 you now tend to hear

00:40:03.580 from people who claim

00:40:04.780 to be left-wing.

00:40:05.960 So I do think

00:40:06.620 we have to face up

00:40:07.420 to the fact

00:40:07.840 that we live in a world

00:40:08.800 in which those terms

00:40:10.000 of right and left

00:40:10.800 probably mean

00:40:12.680 very different things

00:40:13.780 to what we would

00:40:14.600 understand them

00:40:15.240 traditionally to mean.

00:40:16.660 And that's the world

00:40:17.440 I think we have

00:40:17.840 to grapple with.

00:40:20.200 And Brendan,

00:40:21.240 picking up on what

00:40:22.640 Francis said earlier

00:40:23.480 about many of these

00:40:24.380 problems coming

00:40:25.120 from the left,

00:40:26.240 I'm curious,

00:40:26.900 you mentioned

00:40:27.280 the nanny state earlier

00:40:28.800 and I would describe

00:40:31.120 what I think people

00:40:31.920 mean by that

00:40:32.600 is a growing

00:40:33.440 and increasing

00:40:34.760 interference

00:40:35.600 in the lives

00:40:36.480 of ordinary people

00:40:37.560 and their individual

00:40:38.340 decisions about

00:40:39.220 how to live their life,

00:40:40.260 how to raise their children,

00:40:41.540 you know,

00:40:41.820 all sorts of other things

00:40:43.040 from the government.

00:40:45.120 And that seems to me

00:40:47.520 to be an idea

00:40:48.360 that's spreading

00:40:49.060 incredibly rapidly

00:40:50.180 and wherever you look,

00:40:51.480 I mean,

00:40:51.960 you look at,

00:40:52.560 you know,

00:40:52.680 gas prices go up,

00:40:53.800 the government's got

00:40:54.380 to give people a handout.

00:40:55.880 Interest rates go up,

00:40:56.840 the government's got

00:40:57.440 to step in.

00:40:58.280 This has happened,

00:40:59.000 the government,

00:40:59.520 the government,

00:41:00.020 the government,

00:41:00.440 we're all,

00:41:01.220 it's almost like

00:41:01.960 whenever there's a problem now,

00:41:03.460 it's always the government

00:41:04.400 that's supposed to fix them.

00:41:06.320 And that seems to me

00:41:08.560 to have two consequences.

00:41:10.000 Yes,

00:41:10.240 on the one hand,

00:41:11.280 it means you are more protected,

00:41:12.760 but the people

00:41:14.040 who protect you,

00:41:15.100 it's like your dad

00:41:15.820 saying to you at 15,

00:41:17.020 you can do whatever you want

00:41:18.200 when you move out,

00:41:19.320 right?

00:41:19.440 You can do whatever you want

00:41:20.680 when you're not living

00:41:21.940 under my roof.

00:41:22.960 And we're all increasingly

00:41:24.440 now living

00:41:25.160 under the government's roof.

00:41:26.680 Is it any surprise

00:41:28.080 that the government

00:41:28.880 is telling us,

00:41:29.660 don't say this,

00:41:30.360 don't think this,

00:41:31.160 don't go here,

00:41:31.860 don't drink this,

00:41:32.660 don't consume that?

00:41:34.400 That's a good point.

00:41:35.260 I think that the more 0.95

00:41:36.560 that we get sucked

00:41:37.580 into the remit

00:41:38.620 of government assistance, 0.98

00:41:41.020 you will get sucked 0.82

00:41:42.400 into the remit

00:41:42.960 of government control.

00:41:44.320 I mean,

00:41:44.500 that's the logic of that.

00:41:46.460 COVID was a good example.

00:41:47.740 COVID is a very good example

00:41:48.960 of that,

00:41:49.440 the whole lockdown idea.

00:41:50.980 I think,

00:41:51.700 yes,

00:41:52.980 we live in a situation

00:41:54.420 in which,

00:41:55.780 tragically,

00:41:56.400 I think lots of people look,

00:41:58.560 very often their first instinct

00:42:00.140 is to look to the government

00:42:01.140 for assistance.

00:42:02.360 I do think that speaks

00:42:03.600 to a great fraying

00:42:04.940 of community solidarity

00:42:07.100 and community connections.

00:42:08.880 You could have gone,

00:42:09.920 you could go back 40,

00:42:11.160 50,

00:42:11.540 60 years,

00:42:12.600 and if people were hard up

00:42:13.860 for cash,

00:42:14.880 or they didn't know

00:42:15.380 how to make ends meet,

00:42:16.340 or they didn't have anyone

00:42:17.040 to look after their kids,

00:42:18.240 or had to go out to work,

00:42:20.160 you would turn to your neighbours,

00:42:21.720 you would turn to your family,

00:42:23.600 you would turn to those people

00:42:24.700 around you.

00:42:25.480 You know,

00:42:27.160 my parents are Irish immigrants,

00:42:29.160 they came to this country 1.00

00:42:30.040 in 1970,

00:42:32.220 and they were incredibly young.

00:42:35.120 The idea that they would

00:42:35.960 ever have turned to the state,

00:42:38.400 I mean,

00:42:38.800 there were restrictions

00:42:39.460 on their ability to do that,

00:42:40.960 but the idea that they would

00:42:41.960 ever have done that

00:42:42.660 was unimaginable.

00:42:45.280 Unimaginable.

00:42:45.640 It would have been the last

00:42:46.820 on their list of things

00:42:48.080 that they would do.

00:42:49.440 Instead,

00:42:49.820 they struck up friendships,

00:42:51.100 they mixed in other Irish circles.

00:42:54.620 You would say,

00:42:55.640 who might look after my kids? 0.99

00:42:56.980 Who might do this?

00:42:58.280 All those things,

00:42:59.220 I think,

00:42:59.460 are fraying,

00:43:00.300 and one of the consequences

00:43:01.460 of that fraying

00:43:02.300 is that people do turn

00:43:03.540 to government,

00:43:04.340 and then you start

00:43:05.820 to develop this assumption

00:43:06.860 that the government

00:43:07.480 will always look after you.

00:43:09.400 But the point

00:43:09.960 that we need to remind people of

00:43:11.260 is that the government

00:43:11.900 very rarely has

00:43:12.940 our best interests at heart,

00:43:15.160 and that's not because

00:43:16.000 they're particularly evil

00:43:17.900 or anything like that,

00:43:18.680 but just because

00:43:19.280 it's the machinery of government.

00:43:21.700 It has lots of things to do.

00:43:23.200 It doesn't particularly

00:43:24.040 care about the individual

00:43:26.020 or the struggling mum 0.96

00:43:27.040 or the dad

00:43:28.240 who needs someone

00:43:29.100 to look after his kids

00:43:30.100 or whatever else it might be.

00:43:32.680 So the way in which

00:43:34.080 I think people feel

00:43:35.380 ever more reliant

00:43:37.020 on the government

00:43:37.600 for handouts,

00:43:38.680 for welfare,

00:43:39.820 for childcare,

00:43:41.940 for lockdown,

00:43:43.560 protecting us from disease,

00:43:44.960 whatever else it might be,

00:43:46.580 I think that speaks

00:43:47.720 to a tragic hollowing out

00:43:50.820 of the solidarity

00:43:52.380 that once knitted people together.

00:43:54.560 And not only did it

00:43:55.520 knit people together,

00:43:56.280 but it knitted people together

00:43:57.660 in opposition to

00:43:59.260 external forces

00:44:00.820 who said,

00:44:01.760 we'll look after you,

00:44:02.640 but we knew they wouldn't.

00:44:04.180 So the absence

00:44:05.420 of those kind of

00:44:06.220 community connections

00:44:07.340 and that social connectedness

00:44:09.280 is, I think,

00:44:10.580 one of the things

00:44:11.120 that underpins

00:44:11.740 the nanny state.

00:44:12.500 And the lockdown 0.73

00:44:12.940 is a perfect example of that,

00:44:14.300 because I think

00:44:15.040 what the lockdown did

00:44:16.220 is that it further

00:44:17.600 corroded social connectedness

00:44:19.680 because it criminalised

00:44:22.520 social connectedness.

00:44:24.000 It was a crime

00:44:25.060 to go outside of your house

00:44:27.100 and to knock on

00:44:27.840 your neighbour's door

00:44:28.600 and to say,

00:44:29.840 shall I buy you some food?

00:44:32.120 Shall I come in

00:44:32.820 and keep you company

00:44:33.460 and watch TV for the night?

00:44:35.860 Shall I go to my sister's house

00:44:37.800 across town

00:44:38.620 and help her look 1.00

00:44:39.700 after her kids?

00:44:40.360 They were criminal offences.

00:44:42.200 So one of the chapters

00:44:43.560 in my book

00:44:44.060 is on COVID as metaphor.

00:44:46.240 And the point I make

00:44:47.000 is that the tragedy

00:44:49.280 of lockdown

00:44:49.840 is that it institutionalised

00:44:52.160 the idea that

00:44:52.980 human beings are toxic,

00:44:54.980 we are diseased, 1.00

00:44:56.360 we are a problem 0.97

00:44:57.340 not only to ourselves

00:44:58.560 but to other people

00:44:59.620 and we need to be controlled

00:45:01.640 and cajoled

00:45:03.180 and kept in our own space

00:45:04.960 and forced to behave

00:45:06.060 in a certain way.

00:45:07.440 So I think going forward,

00:45:09.500 the impact of the nanny state

00:45:11.180 is going to get worse and worse

00:45:12.500 and we need to develop

00:45:13.460 some really good arguments

00:45:14.660 to counter it.

00:45:15.620 And it also betrays

00:45:16.540 a certain kind of helplessness

00:45:17.840 within people

00:45:18.420 where people feel

00:45:19.080 that they're no longer

00:45:19.760 in control of their lives

00:45:20.900 and they feel completely disempowered.

00:45:23.060 Absolutely.

00:45:24.220 So, you know,

00:45:25.700 when I see the nanny state,

00:45:26.880 you know,

00:45:27.300 there is this argument

00:45:28.220 that I see on sections

00:45:29.320 of the right

00:45:29.960 which is, you know,

00:45:31.200 the sheeple,

00:45:32.500 you know, 1.00

00:45:32.820 the idiot public 1.00

00:45:34.020 who bought into lockdown 1.00

00:45:35.460 and who buy into

00:45:37.040 the nanny state

00:45:37.840 and who nod along

00:45:39.340 to all this stuff

00:45:40.420 that we're getting told,

00:45:41.920 I feel so uncomfortable

00:45:43.460 with all of that stuff.

00:45:44.580 It really,

00:45:45.340 to me,

00:45:45.860 it echoes the arguments

00:45:48.080 that you hear

00:45:48.420 from sections of the left

00:45:49.460 about the low information public, 1.00

00:45:51.300 the stupid Brexit voter, 1.00

00:45:52.960 you know, 1.00

00:45:53.200 the stupid northerners 1.00

00:45:54.540 didn't know 1.00

00:45:55.320 what they were voting for.

00:45:56.880 There was that great placard

00:45:57.940 in Westminster

00:45:58.540 at one of the pro-Brexit rallies

00:46:00.020 where a woman 0.97

00:46:00.540 had a placard saying, 0.99

00:46:02.140 I'm a dumb northerner 0.99

00:46:03.700 who knew 0.99

00:46:04.080 what she was voting for.

00:46:05.180 So there was that,

00:46:06.840 on the left you see

00:46:08.080 those elitist arguments

00:46:09.500 but you also see them

00:46:10.920 from sections of the right

00:46:13.520 in terms of the sheeple, 1.00

00:46:15.680 the idiots, 1.00

00:46:16.480 the dumb masses. 1.00

00:46:19.100 And I feel uncomfortable 1.00

00:46:21.040 with that

00:46:21.600 because as someone

00:46:23.560 who adheres

00:46:25.400 to the old ancient Roman phrase,

00:46:28.400 nothing human is alien to me,

00:46:31.120 I try to understand

00:46:32.140 where people are coming from.

00:46:33.720 And I think one of the reasons

00:46:35.060 people feel

00:46:36.160 that they can't turn

00:46:38.960 to their neighbours

00:46:39.580 or they have to rely

00:46:40.780 on the government

00:46:41.380 or they have to follow

00:46:42.240 the lockdown rules

00:46:43.220 or they have to do

00:46:44.580 all these things

00:46:45.200 is precisely because

00:46:46.440 they have been

00:46:47.140 so ferociously atomised

00:46:49.720 and alienated

00:46:51.060 from everyone else

00:46:52.060 and told constantly

00:46:54.280 that they don't know

00:46:56.220 what they're doing

00:46:56.780 and the state

00:46:57.360 does know what it's doing.

00:46:59.080 If you have that message

00:47:00.180 drilled into you

00:47:01.120 again and again and again,

00:47:02.460 there is going to come a point

00:47:04.240 where you start

00:47:05.460 to lack the confidence

00:47:06.820 to act on your own volition

00:47:09.400 and to act

00:47:10.100 on your own judgement.

00:47:11.700 And I think that

00:47:12.140 one of the points

00:47:12.680 I make in my book

00:47:13.380 is that that's what

00:47:14.200 we need to recover.

00:47:15.300 We need, you know,

00:47:16.680 the Enlightenment

00:47:17.820 is built on the idea

00:47:19.780 that people know

00:47:21.340 how to run their lives.

00:47:23.140 If I would encourage

00:47:24.120 all your listeners

00:47:25.560 and viewers

00:47:26.100 to read

00:47:26.820 Immanuel Kant,

00:47:28.880 he wrote an essay.

00:47:29.960 Immanuel Kant is a very

00:47:31.220 difficult Enlightenment

00:47:32.440 thinker to read.

00:47:33.760 It's hard to work out

00:47:35.040 what he's talking about.

00:47:36.160 But he wrote an essay

00:47:37.080 called What is Enlightenment?

00:47:38.860 which you can Google

00:47:39.680 and find online.

00:47:41.000 It's really short.

00:47:42.080 It could be published today.

00:47:44.240 He basically says

00:47:45.460 there are too many

00:47:47.920 apron strings

00:47:48.760 attached to ordinary people.

00:47:50.760 We have physicians

00:47:51.840 who tell us what to eat.

00:47:53.380 We have spiritual leaders

00:47:54.980 who tell us what to think.

00:47:56.240 We have books

00:47:56.980 that tell us how to behave.

00:47:58.600 We need to push

00:47:59.440 all of that aside

00:48:00.500 and think for ourselves

00:48:01.980 and use our own

00:48:02.860 moral reason

00:48:03.800 and moral judgment

00:48:05.300 to act in the world

00:48:07.060 and to act in our own lives.

00:48:08.740 That was the

00:48:09.780 Enlightenment idea.

00:48:11.700 And so when we talk about

00:48:12.760 living in a

00:48:13.340 counter-Enlightenment,

00:48:14.920 the nanny state

00:48:15.600 is an expression

00:48:16.300 of the counter-Enlightenment.

00:48:17.840 The lockdown

00:48:18.300 was an expression

00:48:18.980 of that counter-Enlightenment.

00:48:20.360 Cancel culture 0.98

00:48:21.020 is an expression

00:48:21.680 of that counter-Enlightenment.

00:48:23.180 All of these ideologies

00:48:24.640 which constantly say to us

00:48:26.060 you don't know what's best.

00:48:27.640 You don't know what to think.

00:48:28.760 You don't know how to behave

00:48:29.800 so we have to tell you.

00:48:31.420 So it basically

00:48:32.620 is about recovering

00:48:33.840 some of those

00:48:34.480 that Enlightenment

00:48:35.460 self-confidence

00:48:36.360 in ourselves.

00:48:37.400 There's one thing

00:48:38.040 that no one wants to say

00:48:39.620 as part of that conversation

00:48:41.120 that I feel needs to be said

00:48:42.480 which is

00:48:43.580 it's not true

00:48:45.040 that everyone knows

00:48:46.320 how best to run their life.

00:48:48.440 What is true

00:48:49.380 is that it's preferable

00:48:50.760 to behave

00:48:51.380 as if that's true

00:48:52.340 and to bear the consequences

00:48:54.620 of your own

00:48:55.320 bad decisions yourself.

00:48:56.960 but we don't seem

00:48:59.060 to ever

00:48:59.980 air that part of it.

00:49:01.360 We don't ever say

00:49:02.500 you messed up

00:49:04.020 and now you're in debt

00:49:05.500 and now you've got to pay it off.

00:49:08.640 Right?

00:49:09.340 You messed up

00:49:10.440 and you did this

00:49:11.780 and now you've got to

00:49:12.800 take responsibility.

00:49:14.280 And

00:49:14.560 if we're not willing

00:49:15.820 to say that

00:49:16.340 nothing else works.

00:49:18.100 This whole thing breaks down.

00:49:19.360 Yeah.

00:49:19.700 That's a really good point.

00:49:21.080 I think

00:49:21.560 most people

00:49:23.000 know what's best

00:49:24.480 for themselves

00:49:24.960 and their families.

00:49:25.820 I trust that you two

00:49:26.700 know what's best

00:49:27.320 in your lives.

00:49:28.060 That's because you don't know

00:49:28.860 as well enough.

00:49:29.780 Maybe I need to find out

00:49:30.800 a bit more.

00:49:31.780 Most people that you meet

00:49:32.840 in the public

00:49:33.280 on the street

00:49:33.960 you know this

00:49:35.240 from your own lives.

00:49:36.280 People you know

00:49:37.800 who are not in the public eye

00:49:38.920 at all

00:49:39.140 they know what they're doing.

00:49:40.060 They know how to raise

00:49:40.720 their kids.

00:49:41.380 Most people do know

00:49:42.340 but you raise

00:49:42.940 a really important point

00:49:43.960 which is that 1.00

00:49:44.780 some people are stupid. 1.00

00:49:47.140 Let's be honest about it. 1.00

00:49:48.140 Some people don't know.

00:49:49.220 They make bad judgments.

00:49:51.360 But even that

00:49:52.440 I think is part

00:49:53.320 of the enlightenment freedom

00:49:54.540 that I'm talking about.

00:49:55.880 It's the right

00:49:56.720 to make wrong choices.

00:49:59.360 And actually

00:49:59.780 John Stuart Mill

00:50:00.580 talks about this

00:50:01.300 in On Liberty

00:50:02.100 published in the 1860s

00:50:04.100 I think

00:50:04.460 where he says

00:50:06.460 that even

00:50:07.200 if it's true

00:50:09.060 that the government

00:50:10.440 has a better idea

00:50:11.980 than this person

00:50:12.940 this dad

00:50:14.020 or this mum

00:50:14.600 or this drunken

00:50:15.880 on the street

00:50:16.520 even if it's true

00:50:17.660 that the government

00:50:18.140 has a better view

00:50:18.960 of that person's life

00:50:19.900 than that person themselves

00:50:21.240 still that person

00:50:22.860 must be allowed

00:50:23.880 to make

00:50:24.500 their own judgments

00:50:25.700 because it's only

00:50:26.880 through the process

00:50:27.700 of making your own choices

00:50:28.940 making your own judgments

00:50:29.980 making your own mistakes

00:50:31.520 that you might

00:50:33.040 potentially learn something

00:50:34.300 and that you might

00:50:35.020 actually correct yourself

00:50:36.060 and you might actually think

00:50:36.920 I need to improve

00:50:38.220 and some people don't

00:50:39.800 some people just

00:50:40.420 I suppose

00:50:41.800 let me just push back on that

00:50:42.880 so we spend a lot of time

00:50:43.940 in America

00:50:44.340 and we love America

00:50:45.160 but if you go to San Francisco

00:50:46.620 or any city

00:50:48.420 in the United States

00:50:49.560 you see

00:50:50.820 homeless people

00:50:52.400 wandering around

00:50:53.440 drug addicted

00:50:54.480 clearly incapable

00:50:55.740 of functioning

00:50:57.260 on any level

00:50:58.480 any level whatsoever

00:51:00.020 the argument is

00:51:01.680 well it's cruel

00:51:02.220 to keep these people

00:51:03.300 in you know

00:51:04.320 mental hospitals

00:51:05.560 or drug counselling

00:51:07.640 they should be free

00:51:08.540 to live their lives

00:51:09.500 that doesn't really work

00:51:12.300 on a purely practical level

00:51:14.640 because what it leads to

00:51:15.700 is San Francisco

00:51:17.720 yeah

00:51:18.220 and that isn't good

00:51:19.380 for anybody

00:51:19.940 yeah

00:51:20.980 or San Francisco

00:51:22.180 as our mutual friend

00:51:23.280 Michael Schellenberger

00:51:24.140 calls it

00:51:24.680 I don't disagree 0.95

00:51:25.940 I think there is a point

00:51:27.860 at which

00:51:28.600 the defence of freedom

00:51:31.640 becomes something else

00:51:32.560 it becomes the defence

00:51:33.600 of

00:51:34.080 self-destruction

00:51:36.500 it's very

00:51:37.940 we have to be very careful

00:51:39.320 in working out

00:51:39.960 where that line

00:51:40.680 is

00:51:41.260 but you see it

00:51:42.700 I've seen it in San Francisco

00:51:43.980 I've seen it in Los Angeles

00:51:46.160 last time I was in Los Angeles

00:51:47.700 I was horrified

00:51:48.700 it's every big city in America

00:51:50.200 including in Red State

00:51:51.460 by the way

00:51:52.020 unbelievable

00:51:52.520 I was in Salt Lake City

00:51:53.640 a few weeks ago

00:51:54.800 there's just people

00:51:56.100 wandering around

00:51:56.960 harassing people

00:51:57.860 sitting outdoors 0.99

00:51:58.660 just mentally ill people 0.96

00:52:00.080 and they're not 0.96

00:52:01.560 they're not

00:52:02.360 that's not freedom

00:52:03.940 no

00:52:04.460 that's not freedom

00:52:05.440 I agree

00:52:06.000 and I was really shocked

00:52:07.840 the last time I was in LA

00:52:09.000 it's

00:52:09.300 you know

00:52:09.920 we have homeless problems

00:52:11.020 in London

00:52:11.460 and we have poverty problems

00:52:12.740 in London

00:52:13.020 but LA is

00:52:13.780 off the scale

00:52:14.920 you know

00:52:15.680 there are tents

00:52:16.580 and tents

00:52:17.160 on the streets

00:52:18.320 and people

00:52:18.980 living on the streets

00:52:20.300 it's horrendous

00:52:20.680 you don't even know

00:52:21.380 if some of them

00:52:21.920 are alive or not

00:52:22.600 you're literally

00:52:23.080 walking past people

00:52:24.000 who could be dead

00:52:24.700 it's third world conditions

00:52:26.740 it's really shocking

00:52:28.200 that that could exist

00:52:28.880 you say that

00:52:29.020 I lived in the third world

00:52:30.480 this does not happen

00:52:32.180 is that right

00:52:32.340 this doesn't happen

00:52:33.580 in Russia

00:52:34.400 in Ukraine

00:52:35.140 in Armenia

00:52:35.880 in Uzbekistan

00:52:36.900 I have never seen

00:52:38.400 anything like this

00:52:39.200 in the third world

00:52:40.420 it's horrendous

00:52:41.400 there's no question

00:52:42.240 about that

00:52:42.720 there are smaller scale

00:52:44.720 versions of it

00:52:45.540 I think in Europe 0.66

00:52:46.440 I go to Ireland a lot

00:52:48.400 and I go to Dublin

00:52:49.800 on my way to Galway

00:52:51.220 which is the place

00:52:52.240 I mostly go to

00:52:53.060 and even in Dublin

00:52:54.180 you'll see some of these problems

00:52:56.360 expressed in a smaller way

00:52:57.860 you'll see long queues of people

00:52:59.100 for methadone

00:52:59.780 and so on

00:53:00.300 on certain streets

00:53:01.720 and so there are lots of problems

00:53:03.220 I think the issue there

00:53:05.480 is that

00:53:06.340 I think

00:53:07.520 some people confuse freedom

00:53:09.980 with non-judgmentalism

00:53:11.920 that's the problem

00:53:13.300 and so I am

00:53:14.280 I am a fervent defender

00:53:16.560 of freedom

00:53:17.060 freedom of speech

00:53:18.320 freedom of choice

00:53:19.120 freedom of conscience

00:53:19.980 freedom of association

00:53:21.100 the vast majority

00:53:22.520 of human beings

00:53:23.400 should enjoy those freedoms

00:53:24.660 and have every ability

00:53:26.000 to do so

00:53:26.660 but there is

00:53:28.280 a section of society

00:53:29.560 that

00:53:29.880 who fall under the radar

00:53:31.300 or who

00:53:32.440 who

00:53:33.200 fall on hard times

00:53:35.560 and I think

00:53:37.040 what contemporary

00:53:38.200 western elites do

00:53:40.200 is that they use

00:53:41.860 the language of freedom

00:53:42.840 to justify

00:53:43.760 those people's

00:53:44.940 self-destruction

00:53:45.720 so they say

00:53:46.960 it's their free choice

00:53:48.100 relax

00:53:48.900 if they want to

00:53:50.160 defecate in public 0.98

00:53:51.580 and shoot up in public 0.98

00:53:53.020 and do whatever else

00:53:55.180 they want to do in public

00:53:55.840 that's freedom

00:53:56.420 but that's not freedom

00:53:57.700 that's

00:53:58.520 degradation

00:53:59.900 that is

00:54:00.960 self-degradation

00:54:02.400 but it's also

00:54:03.220 social degradation

00:54:04.320 that individual

00:54:05.720 should not be experiencing

00:54:06.960 such horrific

00:54:07.920 living conditions

00:54:09.140 and the other people

00:54:10.920 in that society

00:54:12.180 whether it's San Francisco

00:54:13.300 or Dublin

00:54:14.040 or whatever else

00:54:14.880 it might be

00:54:15.360 should not have to

00:54:16.400 observe those

00:54:17.260 living conditions

00:54:17.960 so that's another

00:54:19.220 failure of solidarity

00:54:20.680 another failure of sense

00:54:22.180 another failure of reason

00:54:23.400 and there are situations

00:54:25.200 I think

00:54:25.720 extreme situations

00:54:26.840 in which society

00:54:27.780 should make a judgment

00:54:29.460 which is very

00:54:30.100 unfashionable these days

00:54:31.200 and should say

00:54:32.520 we judge

00:54:33.380 that these people

00:54:34.300 their behavior

00:54:35.760 is so

00:54:36.360 self-destructive

00:54:37.880 and also

00:54:39.580 socially destructive

00:54:41.200 that action

00:54:42.240 needs to be taken

00:54:43.020 to try to get them

00:54:44.500 on the straight and narrow

00:54:45.360 sometimes that will work

00:54:46.680 sometimes it won't

00:54:47.420 but the effort

00:54:47.960 needs to be made

00:54:48.740 but it's the

00:54:49.820 unwillingness

00:54:50.740 to make judgments

00:54:51.540 the criminalization

00:54:52.880 of moral judgment

00:54:53.900 let everything happen

00:54:55.880 let everything go

00:54:56.800 you know

00:54:57.500 don't be judgy

00:54:58.380 that's I think

00:54:59.320 underlies a lot of these

00:55:00.160 you take away truth

00:55:00.980 you take away right and wrong

00:55:02.200 and then you can't make a judgment

00:55:03.440 yeah

00:55:03.780 exactly

00:55:04.540 yeah

00:55:04.880 and it's also as well

00:55:06.220 because we talk about

00:55:07.140 nanny state 0.53

00:55:07.600 and look

00:55:07.880 I'm in agreement with you

00:55:09.040 on pretty much everything

00:55:10.240 that you say Brendan

00:55:11.120 but there are elements

00:55:12.540 of the nanny state

00:55:13.220 that we need

00:55:13.860 you know

00:55:14.460 Islamic fundamentalists

00:55:15.820 need to be tracked 0.87

00:55:16.600 they need

00:55:18.300 you know

00:55:18.600 they need to

00:55:19.300 something needs to be done

00:55:20.800 you know

00:55:21.380 at some point

00:55:22.480 the state needs to step in

00:55:23.860 do you see what I mean

00:55:25.360 you can't just let people

00:55:28.380 just be completely free

00:55:30.660 there needs to be

00:55:31.600 checks and balances

00:55:32.480 and I think where the discussion

00:55:33.920 gets really interesting

00:55:35.240 is where we talk about

00:55:36.840 what checks

00:55:38.060 what balances

00:55:39.060 how much freedom

00:55:40.620 and actually

00:55:41.680 when does the state

00:55:42.880 needs to step in

00:55:43.720 because I feel that

00:55:44.860 the libertarian argument

00:55:45.680 not saying that you're presenting it

00:55:46.980 of just maximum freedom

00:55:48.500 whatever else

00:55:49.360 it doesn't work in reality

00:55:51.540 I think one of the issues

00:55:53.360 I don't disagree with that

00:55:54.800 I think one of the questions

00:55:56.280 in relation to

00:55:57.020 Islamic fundamentalism

00:55:58.180 is the question of

00:55:59.020 when you intervene

00:56:00.140 so I am

00:56:01.800 very much

00:56:03.080 I'm so pro

00:56:04.340 freedom of speech

00:56:05.400 that I think

00:56:06.000 I thought you were going to say

00:56:06.280 something I'm saying

00:56:07.040 no no no

00:56:07.720 I'm so pro

00:56:09.040 freedom of speech

00:56:09.780 that I even think

00:56:10.740 Islamic radicals

00:56:11.800 should be allowed to go on campuses

00:56:12.840 and make their speeches

00:56:13.700 and so on

00:56:14.280 and say you know 1.00

00:56:15.500 stupid kafirs 1.00

00:56:17.000 and backward 1.00

00:56:18.360 regressive

00:56:18.940 non-Muslims 0.67

00:56:20.420 you know 1.00

00:56:20.740 beat your wives 0.99

00:56:22.120 I'm a real 0.99

00:56:23.000 free speech extremist

00:56:24.440 I think people should be allowed

00:56:25.820 to say those things

00:56:26.720 and I know that makes

00:56:29.280 some people uncomfortable

00:56:30.600 but that is what I believe

00:56:32.040 but then there is the question

00:56:34.060 of when does

00:56:35.120 the state have the right

00:56:36.400 to intervene

00:56:36.880 so there does obviously

00:56:38.240 come a point

00:56:39.080 where extremist ideas

00:56:41.520 and extremist ideology

00:56:42.540 crosses the line

00:56:43.440 into some form of behaviour

00:56:44.660 some form of action

00:56:46.100 some form of conspiracy

00:56:47.400 and if you look at the failures

00:56:49.240 over the Manchester Arena

00:56:50.640 bombing

00:56:51.480 I've read all three

00:56:53.720 of those inquiry reports

00:56:55.220 and I encourage everyone

00:56:56.180 to read them

00:56:56.660 it's absolutely astonishing

00:56:58.000 the failures

00:56:58.680 at every level

00:57:00.320 the failure to clock

00:57:02.800 that the bomber

00:57:03.720 was planning this

00:57:04.680 they completely failed

00:57:05.740 to do that

00:57:06.180 the failure to clock

00:57:07.640 on the night itself

00:57:09.100 that this young fellow

00:57:11.020 was walking around

00:57:12.080 with a massive rucksack

00:57:13.360 for hours

00:57:15.620 before he detonated it

00:57:17.120 and in fact

00:57:17.800 one of the people

00:57:18.460 who worked at the

00:57:19.260 Manchester Arena

00:57:19.960 said he didn't accost

00:57:21.100 this young man

00:57:22.120 because he was afraid

00:57:23.000 of being accused

00:57:23.700 of racism

00:57:24.360 that's where the

00:57:26.100 obsession with Islamophobia

00:57:28.020 gets you

00:57:28.540 you don't even want

00:57:29.280 to walk up to a young bloke

00:57:30.380 with a rucksack

00:57:31.320 at 9pm

00:57:32.180 at a Manchester Arena

00:57:33.260 Ariana Grande concert

00:57:34.540 in case someone

00:57:35.400 calls you racist

00:57:36.160 and then the failure

00:57:37.220 after the fact

00:57:38.420 and the way in which

00:57:39.520 we don't talk about

00:57:40.480 that bombing

00:57:40.940 we don't talk about

00:57:41.720 Islamic radicalism

00:57:42.620 we don't talk about

00:57:43.320 Islamic terrorism

00:57:44.140 because you might offend 0.95

00:57:45.680 apparently the Muslim community

00:57:47.600 so there are huge 0.98

00:57:49.000 failures across the board

00:57:50.700 from the state

00:57:51.400 and from society

00:57:52.440 in relation to

00:57:53.960 radical Islam 0.85

00:57:55.100 but I do think

00:57:56.140 it's worth

00:57:56.740 tussling with a question

00:57:58.520 of when it is

00:58:00.680 justifiable

00:58:01.280 for the state

00:58:01.840 to intervene

00:58:02.460 because they think

00:58:03.840 you've gone beyond

00:58:04.920 rhetoric

00:58:05.400 into something else

00:58:06.240 but the broader point

00:58:07.640 I would make on freedom

00:58:08.660 in response to your

00:58:09.720 question Francis

00:58:10.520 is that

00:58:11.140 I think it's an

00:58:12.520 important point

00:58:13.160 freedom is not

00:58:15.040 necessarily

00:58:15.580 nice

00:58:17.000 it's not necessarily

00:58:18.560 a good

00:58:20.020 comfortable

00:58:20.660 thing

00:58:21.520 sometimes freedom

00:58:22.840 gives rise to

00:58:23.920 horrible things

00:58:25.260 and ugly ideas

00:58:26.440 and racist ideas 0.51

00:58:28.140 and prejudiced ideas

00:58:29.640 and hate speech

00:58:30.840 I'm one of those people

00:58:31.900 who thinks that

00:58:32.440 even hate speech

00:58:33.540 shouldn't be censored

00:58:34.800 because

00:58:35.600 the best way to

00:58:37.160 challenge those

00:58:38.060 regressive ideologies

00:58:39.120 is in the public realm

00:58:40.520 it's in the

00:58:41.860 open

00:58:42.480 free space

00:58:43.700 where you can

00:58:44.640 deploy reason

00:58:45.760 and truth

00:58:46.460 to counter

00:58:47.080 the arguments

00:58:47.700 of people

00:58:48.200 who we

00:58:48.640 all agree

00:58:49.720 are backward 0.99

00:58:50.600 and regressive

00:58:51.240 and prejudiced

00:58:52.000 and dangerous

00:58:52.620 you know

00:58:54.140 the classic example

00:58:55.680 is

00:58:56.360 holocaust denial

00:58:57.480 that's banned

00:58:58.940 in many

00:58:59.420 European countries

00:59:00.380 it was banned

00:59:00.940 in France

00:59:01.740 around 25 years ago

00:59:03.520 because it's a

00:59:04.600 racist ideology

00:59:05.420 we all know

00:59:06.000 it's a racist ideology

00:59:07.000 and France now

00:59:08.740 has one of the

00:59:09.360 worst problems

00:59:10.160 in Europe

00:59:10.600 of antisemitism

00:59:11.400 it has one of the

00:59:12.600 worst problems

00:59:13.320 of holocaust denial

00:59:14.660 for various

00:59:15.780 social reasons

00:59:17.100 and I think

00:59:19.100 the censorship

00:59:19.860 contributed to that

00:59:21.000 because if you force

00:59:22.160 these things underground

00:59:23.160 you create a situation

00:59:24.840 where they can

00:59:25.440 fester and grow

00:59:26.800 and they can take hold

00:59:28.200 amongst isolated

00:59:29.600 communities in particular

00:59:30.720 and in France's case

00:59:32.340 immigrant communities

00:59:33.300 who feel cut off

00:59:34.200 from the mainstream

00:59:34.880 and they latch onto

00:59:36.180 these dangerous

00:59:36.980 ideologies

00:59:37.640 so freedom

00:59:39.720 can be uncomfortable

00:59:42.640 and it can feel

00:59:43.640 dangerous

00:59:44.080 and it can feel

00:59:44.780 like you're

00:59:45.560 allowing all sorts

00:59:46.620 of problematic ideas

00:59:47.900 to have free reign

00:59:48.800 and what are we

00:59:49.800 going to do with them

00:59:50.460 but that is always

00:59:51.940 preferable

00:59:52.500 one of the points

00:59:53.060 I make in my book

00:59:53.860 is that freedom of speech

00:59:55.200 is always preferable

00:59:56.420 to censorship

00:59:57.000 because censorship

00:59:58.360 is far more likely

00:59:59.380 to unleash prejudice

01:00:00.440 and violence

01:00:01.180 than freedom of speech

01:00:02.440 ever is

01:00:02.960 and it's worth

01:00:03.700 remembering that

01:00:04.360 and we saw

01:00:05.000 it's a great point

01:00:06.180 because we saw

01:00:06.780 over Covid

01:00:07.320 with the suppression

01:00:07.980 of the lab leak discussion

01:00:09.120 and actually

01:00:09.940 what happened

01:00:11.320 and it seemed to me

01:00:12.480 was that we tended

01:00:13.320 to get this explosion

01:00:14.640 of conspiracy theories

01:00:16.300 where people were

01:00:17.960 actually saying

01:00:19.060 a variety of different things

01:00:22.140 and as a result of that

01:00:24.800 you know

01:00:25.100 the people

01:00:25.460 the scandemic

01:00:26.320 and all the rest of it

01:00:27.320 and you saw

01:00:27.820 people who I regarded

01:00:29.300 as friends

01:00:29.780 and at one point

01:00:30.460 being perfectly reasonable

01:00:32.260 suddenly descend

01:00:33.940 into a form of madness

01:00:35.440 in many ways

01:00:36.180 I couldn't agree more

01:00:37.580 and it's one

01:00:38.240 of my big concerns

01:00:39.220 coming out

01:00:40.040 of the Covid era

01:00:40.880 is the way

01:00:42.300 in which

01:00:42.860 I actually think

01:00:44.660 that the Covid deniers

01:00:47.020 the people who think

01:00:47.720 that it was a scandemic

01:00:48.680 I'm sorry

01:00:49.780 but I think

01:00:50.240 what they've done

01:00:50.760 is unforgivable

01:00:51.440 because they have

01:00:53.260 trounced

01:00:54.420 the very important

01:00:55.840 discussion

01:00:56.320 we need to have

01:00:56.920 about lockdown

01:00:57.540 we need to have

01:00:58.780 a very important

01:00:59.460 social open discussion

01:01:01.100 about whether

01:01:01.740 lockdown was the right policy

01:01:03.380 when is it justifiable

01:01:05.780 to lockdown society

01:01:06.740 did we go too far

01:01:07.900 did we have too many

01:01:09.020 does it need to be

01:01:11.060 institutionalised in law

01:01:12.480 or can we have

01:01:13.060 a voluntaristic approach

01:01:14.140 as they did in Sweden

01:01:15.060 these are important

01:01:16.440 discussions

01:01:16.920 but what the

01:01:18.660 scandemic lobby

01:01:20.600 have done

01:01:21.220 and the anti-vax lobby

01:01:23.140 and others who think

01:01:24.180 the WEF

01:01:25.060 has got its

01:01:25.600 puppeteering hands

01:01:26.900 behind all of this

01:01:27.820 they have

01:01:29.440 blown apart

01:01:31.000 that discussion

01:01:31.640 by polluting it

01:01:33.180 with ideas

01:01:33.920 that are just cranky

01:01:34.880 and conspiratorial 0.99

01:01:35.900 and crazy

01:01:36.360 so I have no truck

01:01:38.520 with these people

01:01:39.020 at all

01:01:39.340 and it's won me

01:01:40.100 few friends

01:01:41.200 and lost me

01:01:42.100 some followers

01:01:42.920 but I don't care

01:01:44.380 because it's important

01:01:45.200 to defend reason

01:01:46.160 and truth

01:01:46.600 and another example

01:01:48.280 is the Ukraine issue

01:01:49.440 I'm afraid to say

01:01:50.700 I think Ukraine

01:01:52.860 has now started

01:01:54.000 to become bound

01:01:55.700 together with

01:01:56.480 the lockdown

01:01:56.880 conspiracism

01:01:57.740 you know

01:01:58.640 Zelensky is just 0.95

01:01:59.640 a puppet 0.98

01:02:00.240 he's just a WEF

01:02:01.640 actor

01:02:02.140 he used to be

01:02:03.320 an actor

01:02:03.720 ooh that's suspicious

01:02:04.720 that is about

01:02:07.560 the sophistication

01:02:08.520 level of the argument

01:02:09.400 that is what it is

01:02:09.960 and you know

01:02:10.440 why are we

01:02:11.620 supporting Ukraine

01:02:12.320 why are we

01:02:12.800 sending them

01:02:13.160 weaponry

01:02:13.620 why are we

01:02:14.020 doing this

01:02:14.400 it's cynicism

01:02:15.840 that masquerades

01:02:17.280 as criticism

01:02:18.540 and it makes me

01:02:20.380 very uncomfortable

01:02:21.240 and what I want

01:02:22.120 to say to these

01:02:22.640 people is

01:02:23.020 look I agree

01:02:24.100 with some of

01:02:24.620 your points

01:02:25.180 in relation

01:02:25.800 to the nanny 0.97

01:02:26.400 state

01:02:26.800 or wokeness

01:02:27.980 or the trans 0.87

01:02:28.520 ideology

01:02:28.940 and so on

01:02:29.520 but you lose

01:02:30.860 me

01:02:31.220 when you

01:02:32.440 jeopardize

01:02:33.860 important discussions

01:02:34.640 about lockdown

01:02:35.460 important discussions

01:02:36.580 about Russia's

01:02:37.380 barbaric

01:02:38.420 imperial invasion

01:02:39.620 of Ukraine

01:02:40.280 by introducing

01:02:41.980 all these

01:02:42.440 cynical elements

01:02:43.400 introducing the idea

01:02:45.200 that these are

01:02:45.720 conspiratorial

01:02:46.820 measures

01:02:47.300 that were introduced

01:02:48.100 by people

01:02:48.700 that we have

01:02:49.680 no control over

01:02:50.500 because that's

01:02:51.580 undemocratic

01:02:52.280 it's illiberal

01:02:53.280 and it feeds

01:02:54.600 into the very

01:02:55.160 climate

01:02:55.660 that I think

01:02:56.520 people like us

01:02:57.160 are supposed

01:02:57.460 to be challenging

01:02:58.080 there you go

01:02:59.000 the title of

01:02:59.620 this episode

01:03:00.120 is going to be

01:03:00.680 Brendan O'Neill

01:03:01.640 controlled opposition

01:03:02.700 that's me

01:03:05.300 Brendan it's great

01:03:06.040 to have you back

01:03:06.580 on the show

01:03:07.060 before we head

01:03:07.780 over to locals

01:03:08.580 where our fans

01:03:09.500 will ask you

01:03:10.040 their questions

01:03:10.760 tell us

01:03:11.800 what is the one

01:03:12.460 thing we're not

01:03:13.040 talking about

01:03:13.700 as a society

01:03:14.560 that you think

01:03:15.080 we really should be

01:03:16.280 god that's

01:03:17.460 I always forget

01:03:18.940 that you guys

01:03:19.600 ask this question

01:03:20.420 even though we're

01:03:21.020 a mind of you

01:03:21.660 I know

01:03:21.840 even though you remind me

01:03:22.940 and we've done it

01:03:23.540 before I'm never

01:03:24.120 really prepped

01:03:24.740 I think

01:03:27.120 well the first

01:03:28.200 thing to say

01:03:28.620 is that we are

01:03:29.320 now finally

01:03:30.420 talking about

01:03:31.040 the things

01:03:31.380 that we should

01:03:31.760 be talking about

01:03:32.380 we are talking

01:03:33.180 about the

01:03:33.600 trans

01:03:34.720 the transing

01:03:35.680 of kids

01:03:36.140 we are talking

01:03:36.780 about the

01:03:37.780 problem of lockdown

01:03:38.360 so there are

01:03:38.820 some good things

01:03:39.380 that we're talking

01:03:39.900 about

01:03:40.160 I think

01:03:42.040 we do need

01:03:43.040 to talk more

01:03:44.040 we are talking

01:03:45.780 a lot about

01:03:46.220 freedom of speech

01:03:46.960 but I do think

01:03:48.000 we need to talk

01:03:48.560 about it more

01:03:49.160 I mean it is

01:03:49.940 the issue

01:03:51.240 that I am

01:03:51.700 most obsessed with

01:03:52.620 I do think

01:03:54.100 we need to start

01:03:54.800 to dig down

01:03:55.480 into terms of

01:03:56.140 what we mean

01:03:56.860 by freedom of speech

01:03:57.860 how expansive

01:03:59.200 we think it should be

01:04:00.420 does it apply

01:04:01.320 to everyone

01:04:01.740 does it apply

01:04:02.300 to our radical

01:04:03.000 Islamist friends

01:04:04.080 there is still

01:04:07.480 a discussion

01:04:07.960 to be had

01:04:08.580 I think about

01:04:09.440 what freedom of speech

01:04:10.180 means

01:04:10.420 one of the things

01:04:11.040 that worries me

01:04:11.940 about the freedom

01:04:12.520 of speech question

01:04:13.240 at the moment

01:04:13.760 is that very often

01:04:15.120 people are defending

01:04:15.940 me speech

01:04:16.820 rather than free speech

01:04:18.080 and I fear

01:04:19.780 that even

01:04:20.140 gender critical

01:04:20.760 feminists

01:04:21.320 and I'm a huge

01:04:22.020 fan of gender

01:04:23.020 critical feminists

01:04:23.860 they will often

01:04:24.820 go to the barricades

01:04:25.760 in defence of

01:04:26.320 gender critical

01:04:26.960 feminist freedom

01:04:28.040 of speech

01:04:28.600 but if you were

01:04:29.900 talking about

01:04:30.360 dapper laughs

01:04:31.180 going onto a campus

01:04:32.620 and making a few

01:04:33.440 kind of off colour jokes

01:04:34.740 or some right winger

01:04:37.480 going on campus

01:04:38.320 and saying

01:04:39.020 I don't like

01:04:39.700 all these immigrants 0.59

01:04:40.680 coming over here

01:04:41.460 they would probably

01:04:43.320 go quite quiet

01:04:44.280 so I still think

01:04:45.600 even though freedom

01:04:46.380 of speech

01:04:46.760 and cancel culture

01:04:47.600 and all those things

01:04:48.340 have become part

01:04:49.320 of common discussion

01:04:50.780 there still needs

01:04:52.060 to be a more

01:04:52.600 rigorous

01:04:53.260 everyday debate

01:04:55.160 and analysis

01:04:55.860 of how important

01:04:57.280 freedom of speech

01:04:57.900 and how far

01:04:58.380 it should go

01:04:58.900 brilliant

01:04:59.520 Brendan

01:04:59.940 thank you for coming

01:05:00.700 back

01:05:01.000 we're going to

01:05:01.340 head over to

01:05:01.820 Locals

01:05:02.160 make sure you

01:05:02.700 get the book

01:05:03.180 A Heretic's 0.99

01:05:03.820 Manifesto

01:05:04.360 and we'll see you

01:05:05.280 on Locals

01:05:05.680 when is it right

01:05:07.920 and when is it wrong

01:05:08.700 to ally yourself

01:05:09.700 with groups

01:05:10.160 that are ideologically

01:05:11.320 different

01:05:11.900 when you have

01:05:13.080 certain common causes

01:05:14.280 but strongly disagree

01:05:15.540 on other issues

01:05:16.340 we'll see you

01:05:17.200 we'll see you

01:05:18.400 in the next一

TRIGGERnometry - August 02, 2023

Brendan O'Neill - Why We Must Dissent

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