00:03:46.340I have a 40-page bibliography of research that supports that conclusion.
00:03:49.440And I understand that many people disagree, and they should.
00:03:52.300And we should be engaged in constant debates on this.
00:03:55.500And I don't expect it will end anytime soon.
00:03:57.920And the question is, what does it say about a school of thought when it's afraid to hear counter arguments?
00:04:05.820Well, speaking of the counter arguments, a lot of people who've studied history, perhaps not very much, but have studied it would say, well, what about the treatment of starting with, let's say, take Christopher Columbus arrival in North America and Central America?
00:04:21.240The treatment of the locals there, the treatment of the Native Americans from there on in,
00:04:26.780the British Empire's conquests and oppression of people around the world,
00:04:31.980obviously slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, the conquistadors in South America.
00:04:37.800Surely all of that was bad, Bruce. You wouldn't challenge that, would you?
00:04:42.620So first of all, most of what has been built up as kind of a constant oppression,
00:04:50.000starting with columbus um was anything but uh columbus was actually very sensitive to to the
00:04:56.740locals um there's a new article you may have seen in the spectator showing um you know that this
00:05:02.320this was a this was a settlement that was highly restrained for the time yes did did he have kind
00:05:08.900of consultative committees and recycling uh programs no but for the time and certainly
00:05:14.200compared to the cultures that were otherwise likely to show up in these places it was by far
00:05:20.780the most enlightened and human rights sensitive form of encounter between civilizations the world
00:05:26.800has known and i would say that's generally like as a general statement true about not just the
00:05:31.660british empire because the british empire is easy it's easy to defend the british empire i would
00:05:35.260say this applies to the portuguese empire this applies to the germans i have a book coming out
00:05:39.520on german colonialism in about a month we'll probably be back here because there'll be another
00:05:43.540canceled war over that. But, you know, my argument is colonial scholarship is basically a train wreck
00:05:49.800and 50 years of ignorance have been produced by the academy. And it's going to take a lot of work
00:05:55.060to recover an authentic, objective, evidence-based account of colonialism. Was there a lot of bad
00:06:01.240stuff that happened during which half of the globe was ruled by five countries, billions of people
00:06:08.840over hundreds of years and billions of interactions of course there was but this is called selection
00:06:14.360bias when we find out those little incidents and then decide that they invalidate the entire
00:06:19.880experience i don't know of a single case and i again i would say not a single case where we would
00:06:26.500say that people would have been better off had the colonialists not arrived and taking into account
00:06:33.620also, you know, the horrific things that happened in these places, both before colonialism arrived,
00:06:40.840what would have happened had a different set of colonizers shown up, which almost certainly would
00:06:45.280also have been gun-toting Westerners, but without the accountability to governments that actual
00:06:51.600imperialism had, and the great historical amnesia, what happened after the colonialists were suddenly
00:06:57.920forced out, not a pretty picture over the last 50 years. Do you think part of the problem is,
00:07:03.180bruce is that you you make a case for colonialism and in a lot of people's heads what they think is
00:07:08.860that you're making a case for slavery yeah or genocide or you know what about so i call this
00:07:15.140the what about arguments right well what about the what about the mau mau what about the herero
00:07:20.000what about the maji maji rebellion what about tasmania right and so this is this is kind of
00:07:25.220what i called whataboutism so there's two answers to whataboutism yes a lot of bad stuff happened
00:07:30.400And there's no excuse for it. And it was a failure of accountability mechanisms. Sure. Great.
00:07:37.020The second question is, though, I often look into these whatabouts more carefully and I discover there's not much what about to be found there.
00:07:44.680So, as I said, I have a book coming out on German colonialism. I spent a lot of time talking about the Herero Nama wars in German Southwest Africa, as well as the Maji Maji rebellion in German East Africa.
00:07:55.300These two things are supposedly irrefutable evidence for why German colonialism was a terrible thing. And I find both claims empty. Now, people will disagree with me. I have no problem with that. I draw upon the scholarship of many people who do agree with me. That's part of what we do in academia.
00:08:13.100academia. So, you know, the bigger issue is, why are we so scared to have these debates? Why is the
00:08:19.140mere mention of an opposing viewpoint, you know, reason to rush to the cancel culture office and
00:08:25.540instigate an investigation? Bruce, I'm Ingus, you don't have to persuade me that the Germans were
00:08:30.340dreadful. Well, yes, well, to that point, you know, much of the twisted and unfair historiography
00:08:41.260about German colonialism began with the British at the Treaty of Versailles, which is a real
00:08:47.080violation of the British empirical tradition and the British blue book tradition. The blue books
00:08:51.680were, of course, their annual reports on colonies. Well, they drew up a blue book on German colonialism
00:08:55.880in order to justify the seizure of German colonies at Versailles. It was a real violation of that
00:09:03.280British empirical objective tradition and a sad chapter in British imperial rule and foreign
00:09:10.060policy because much of what was produced by the british essentially for propaganda purposes at
00:09:15.280versailles became entrenched in the historiography about german colonialism eagerly lapped up by the
00:09:21.680far left and east german scholars who of course we know were absolutely in a position to engage
00:09:26.800in objective research and has become kind of uh locked in uh in a way that is going to take just
00:09:32.760a massive effort to undo so there you go man it's all your fault and you're far left very good and
00:09:38.020That's what I keep telling him anyway, Bruce.
00:09:40.340But let me ask you this, because I'm just curious, actually.
00:09:45.920Why is it important to have this different view of colonialism to the one that's being pushed at the moment?
00:09:57.280So that's a great question, Constantine.
00:09:59.660And, you know, frankly, everyone from my wife on up around me will tell me, why are you doing this?
00:10:06.940you're causing you're causing yourself trouble you're causing your family trouble you're hated
00:10:13.680by your colleagues in your department who spent a lot of time trying to find ways to drive me out
00:10:19.480you're called a white supremacist you know is this worth it like you know why why are you so
00:10:26.340engaged in this so part of my answer is well I'm an academic my job is to seek the truth
00:10:32.820as best I see it and pursue those research topics that I find interesting.
00:10:37.740So that's not very convincing to my wife.
00:10:40.700So I think the bigger issue is, and I think this is where it really is coming back to,
00:10:46.980is you think it's just about the Herero or you think it's just about the Mau Mau
00:10:54.260or the question of, you know, the Anglo-Egyptian condominium over the Sudan and some obscure
00:11:04.140historical issue. It's not because the whole rhetoric about the evils of colonialism
00:11:11.080has now become the rhetoric about decolonize. Now, the decolonize is probably coming soon to
00:11:18.960a theater near you it may be already in your workplace uh and what is decolonize in in a
00:11:25.420nutshell decolonize is an attack on the enlightenment and on science and reason it argues
00:11:31.600that the basis on which liberal civilization has arisen is a fraud and we need to dismantle it
00:11:38.540so we will no longer for instance be promoting our colleagues in the academy based on their
00:11:43.240research records, but will be adopting alternative approaches to promotion, such as whether their
00:11:50.020friends think they're great people, or whether they've made a big contribution to the latest
00:11:56.300social justice movement tearing down the downtown, right? So this is, to me, there's a lot more at
00:12:03.000stake here than just obscure debates about history. And I got into this with the Germans,
00:12:09.220Because one of the big issues in contemporary German foreign policy is, should Germany be engaged in paying massive reparations to the people of contemporary Namibia, maybe Tanzania, maybe Cameroons and Togo, where they were former colonial rulers?
00:12:28.000And the arguments in favor of that say, well, look at how terrible it was for the Germans to be colonizers here.
00:12:35.020So there's something at stake here, not just in terms of contemporary culture and workplace and scientific enlightenment values, but in terms of real policy implications is, you know, there's demand for reparations and reparations assume a harm was committed.
00:12:51.080If no harm was committed, then policymakers need to know that.
00:12:55.420Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
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00:13:17.340April 28th through June 7th, 2026, the Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:13:24.560And what do you say, Bruce, to those people who say, look, that these empires were fundamentally racist?
00:13:30.880It was basically white people going over to countries where there are brown people, enslaving them, taking their natural resources, transporting them, making them more impoverished and enriching the white countries.
00:13:45.280Well, yes, they were racist. Of course, they were racist because everyone was a racist back then.
00:13:49.980So that's a totally anachronistic argument, for one.
00:13:53.100Um, what's the interesting question is, um, in terms of the degree of racism, let's say,
00:13:59.100if we could measure it, um, how racist were they?
00:14:02.000And I would say they were the most unracist examples of governance the world has ever
00:14:06.880seen, especially compared to the racism that most subject peoples had experienced from
00:14:13.300the dominant tribes in their, in their territories.
00:14:16.120Of course, this is how colonialism spread.
00:14:18.060It spread because groups which were facing annihilation or enslavement or extinction by major rival groups, whether it was the Buganda in East Africa, whether it was the major black tribes moving into South Africa and displacing and enslaving the Koysians, the so-called Hottentots, right, that, yeah, maybe they wouldn't let you into their clubs to have G&Ts at the end of the day.
00:14:46.000But the other threat to you was the people who wanted to actually make you their slaves and ship you off maybe to places where slavery remains.
00:14:54.740So so racism is relative and it's historically embedded.
00:14:58.360So to to go through some colonial officials memoirs from 1832 and find some unkind comments on the locals and then say, aha, you see, these things were a complete disaster for peoples is I mean, it's bad history and it's bad logic and it's bad philosophy.
00:15:17.420And we know that the reason why these empires found such a ready welcome, by and large, from most places they were, otherwise they couldn't have stayed there, is because people experienced them as less racist than the rivals.
00:15:32.400There's a great book called Baba of Cairo done by a British anthropologist, Felice Smith.
00:15:41.960And Baba of Cairo talks very explicitly about, you know, did I want to be subject to the Fulanis, the slave empire that enslaved us and stole our daughters?
00:15:51.220Or did I want to be under the rule of the British who really just wanted us to stop killing each other and were willing to pay us if we worked for them?
00:15:58.840Hey, I'll take the racist British, if that's what you want to call them, over the racist Volani.
00:16:03.400And I think in all circumstances, you know, this this was the concrete choice.
00:16:07.680And it just seems to me stunningly arrogant and anachronistic for some academic in a Western university sitting there with as much food and security and running water and safety from enslavement and major human rights violations to tut tut those people facing concrete choices of life and death.
00:16:28.840for having accepted or acceded to Western colonial rule.
00:16:33.220I was going to say, Bruce, neither of us is qualified to assess the merits of the historical argument there.
00:16:39.520But one of the things that, as a layman, I would say is, you know, Francis and I were just on holiday in Sicily,
00:16:45.520in the island off the southern tip of Italy.
00:16:49.140And that is a part of the Mediterranean that was conquered repeatedly by different groups and tribes over the centuries.
00:16:57.080And every monument that we went to see over the course of two weeks, the guide would explicitly
00:17:01.940say, you know, the Carthaginians defeated the Greeks.
00:17:05.380They used the Greek slaves to build this temple.
00:17:07.720And then 100 years later, the Greeks came back and they used the Carthaginian slaves
00:17:19.500And it's a sort of universal constant through history.
00:17:23.080Why do you think we now seem to be just obsessed with this idea of slavery as this unique sin of modern Western civilization when, in fact, it was a constant through history?
00:17:35.700I mean, that is one thing that if anyone who has any superficial understanding of history would tell you.
00:17:41.780Because white people love it when it's all about them.
00:17:46.440And that is the essence of Eurocentrism.
00:17:50.160I mean, it is comical to see these radical scholars declaring, you know, arguing against Eurocentric knowledge and Eurocentric systems when their whole intellectual apparatus is to put the white man at the center and to keep him there.
00:18:05.180Right. And so, you know, you read like in this people who talk a lot about the Shelby Steele, his book, White Guilt, talks about this with respect to the United States.
00:18:13.320The need for white people to feel guilty, which is a very Christian response to the world, through guilt to seek some form of benediction, some form of absolution, and through that process of guilty feeling and absolution seeking to therefore be redeemed.
00:18:36.980And then in Christian escatology, of course, not only people are Christians, but they're operating with a fully Christian template to therefore have attained moral superiority over others.
00:18:47.420So what is this? This is about trying to reestablish white moral superiority over other people.
00:18:54.100It is, to summarize, racist, right? To declaim that the lives and histories of other people have not been through their own choices, their own agency, their own cultural repertoire, through the things that have happened to them and through which they have been active agents, but to say, no, no, no, no, it's about me. It's about us, right, is the embodiment of white supremacy.
00:19:19.780So, you know, this is why we know these arguments now about how wokeness and white supremacy, you know, in terms of that that circle, you know, really share a lot of fundamental premises.
00:19:30.300And I think you see it in this argument.
00:19:32.740There's a there's a funny argument that's Thomas Sowell, the great Stanford economist, says, you know, we look at Eastern Europe and Western Europe, you know, what was the difference?
00:19:42.980Why did Western Europe take off? Well, because the Western Europeans were conquered by the Romans and the and the Eastern Europeans weren't.
00:19:49.780And thereby, the Western Europeans got the Latin alphabet and, you know, the rest is history, so to speak.
00:19:55.780So do the Western Europeans feel resentment against the Romans?
00:20:02.160Is there a kind of historical animosity about the Roman Empire in Western Europe?
00:20:07.780No. And it's not just because they realized that the Roman Empire had very clear developmental benefits,
00:20:16.840But also, it's because why would you give up your historical agency to a narrative about victimization?
00:20:24.940Because we don't want it to be about the Romans.
00:20:28.240And it's not about the Romans as a historical matter.
00:20:30.940You know, history takes place through the active agency of those through which history affects them.
00:20:36.460And there's a bigger apparatus here at work through which the attempt to pull slavery and colonialism that were practiced by Western colonies out of its historical context and make it anachronistically evidence of white guilt is part of an attempt to resurrect the centrality of the white man in world history.
00:20:58.240And, you know, I think Terthankar Roy, who is one of the people who blurbed my cancelled book, wrote a letter to the publisher who cancelled it.
00:21:07.860And his letter has been widely circulated because he says to the publisher, you know, we people in South Asia and Africa are tired of white people telling us what we can and cannot read.
00:21:19.760That is the essence of white supremacy.
00:21:23.180Stop trying to control our history with your white guilt syndrome.
00:21:28.240The US election is coming up and you might be wondering what makes people vote for Donald Trump?
00:21:35.720Racism. Obviously, that's a joke, guys.
00:21:37.940As you know, a lot of people, even from minority backgrounds, are considering voting for Donald Trump this time around.
00:21:44.340And we saw a movie the other day, which was just amazing, talking about this very issue.
00:21:48.760It's got a very nice, ambivalent, subtle title.
00:21:51.340Gotta love Trump. But don't be put off. It's actually a great film.
00:21:54.600and it actually really explores the reasons why people,
00:21:58.680and particularly those from an ethnic minority background,
00:22:23.100Absolutely. And we want to re-emphasize that. That's two Ks. Trigger, KK, FF, 2020. And enjoy Gotta Love Trump.
00:22:34.140So, Bruce, answer me this. How should we deal with, you know, I've put it in the context of Sicily and other countries as well, of course, that civilizations have done terrible things forever.
00:22:47.160That is human nature. It's inescapable. The moment you open a history book, you're immediately confronted with all sorts of, you know, human behavior that is abhorrent. And it's inevitable. And there's no doubt that the colonial powers and the people whose land they came to rule, all of them were involved in this.
00:23:06.340how should we look should we not ever feel guilt for anything that was done in the past should we
00:23:11.240just go oh no that was part and parcel of the time there's nothing wrong with genocide there's nothing
00:23:15.820wrong with to taking millions of people from africa putting them on on slave ships in which
00:23:21.000they suffer and drown and die of hunger and malnutrition uh there's nothing wrong with that
00:23:25.740that was par for the course is that how we should look at things surely we should have a bit more
00:23:29.500uh more sort of contrition about things shouldn't we okay two issues constantine first of all
00:23:35.240Constantine, how many black people have you enslaved in your life?
00:23:51.500So, I mean, honestly, just as a starting point, that's a horrible, horrible, even pre-modern form of thought that one would ascribe wrongs done by A to B merely because B shares a similar genitalia or skin tone or heritage.
00:24:13.580I mean, that's a very dangerous form of philosophy. If you think about it, Chinese people in the United States are sometimes scapegoated now because of COVID. That's a horrible thing. They did nothing to do with COVID. In fact, most people in China had nothing to do with COVID.
00:24:30.100So that that is like I don't want to call it Old Testament because it's not fair to the Old Testament.
00:24:34.260But, you know, what people think of this is this is the blood debt that you inherit by virtue of some vague association to people who may or may not have done bad things in the past.
00:24:45.700So let's let's stop that right away. That is dangerous and evil.
00:24:49.640the second question is yes we by all means in history engage in examination of good things
00:24:59.040and bad things that happened as a result of people's actions at different times in the past
00:25:03.600great that's that's our that's that's what we do right we look at history we try and objectively
00:25:08.360assess the good and the bad what i would say is again we have to always keep in mind two things
00:25:16.360And this is, you know, this is just social science. And I think a lot of historians, because history has moved towards the humanities in the last decades, historians don't actually know what it means to conduct scientific research.
00:25:26.900So I always say three things. First of all, counterfactuals. Right. You cannot say this was terrible, you know, as a meaningful statement, unless you are pretty sure that in the absence of the forces that led that to happen, the people's well-being, whatever happened would not have been less terrible.
00:25:46.440OK, now that's hardly difficult to do, but actually we can do counterfactual thought experiments, especially when we have side by side places, for instance, one of which was colonized, one of which was not.
00:25:58.220Would you rather be a resident of contemporary Haiti or would you rather be a resident of contemporary Bahamas?
00:26:03.680OK, Bahamas is a counterfactual to Haiti.
00:26:09.580Secondly, controls. People who study colonialism recently, and I think Frederick Cooper is probably the best known for saying this, is, you know, colonialism wasn't really a thing in the sense that pretty much everything that happened to non-Western areas during the area of Western imperialism would have happened anyway.
00:26:31.220Why? Because so much of those forces, economic, social, technological, geographic, the spread of disease burdens, this would have all happened with or without Columbus or Lord Lugard, right?
00:26:45.840I mean, Western Europe was expanding and mainly through privateers and colonialism was an attempt to govern that encounter in a way that would be better for both parties.
00:26:59.560So controls, super important. You know, that's the controls, meaning the other things that were also happening at the same time.
00:27:07.100counterfactuals controls and finally case selection don't cherry pick your evidence
00:27:14.800right whenever you measure something which is for instance how long did that rule last
00:27:20.720how many rebellions were there right you need to have a proper understanding of how we
00:27:26.840conceptualize and then measure something like rebellion it turns out when you scratch a little
00:27:32.360below the surface of most of this history, what is today called a resistance against the West or
00:27:37.940anti-colonial rebellion or self-emancipatory struggle. It turns out none of these struggles
00:27:44.840had anything to do with that. It was usually, you know, we don't like this tax or could you please
00:27:49.380help me to expand and, you know, take over my neighbor's land. I mean, these were, these have
00:27:55.440been back these have been back casted at a as kind of as struggles against things that we later
00:28:02.320invented and decided were wrong so that's just that's just bad history right and so many of
00:28:07.240these issues that we talk about there's no attention paid to controls counterfactuals
00:28:13.800and case selection and yes i'm sorry i'm boring you because this is what social scientists do
00:28:18.020but but so many of the historical critiques i get come from people who i don't think could even
00:28:23.900vaguely understand those concepts because history has become kind of about humanities. It's about
00:28:28.920progressive visions and finding kind of stimulating and extolling the virtues of
00:28:37.020voices that haven't been heard. That's great. That doesn't give us good answers to those big
00:28:42.880questions. And Bruce, you know, we're talking about bad history and so on and so forth.
00:28:48.800A few months ago, there was a statue of Edward Colston, who was a British slaver.
00:28:57.380I don't know if you were following this at the time.
00:29:00.440Where do you stand on that, that we are reappraising these historical figures, looking at them?
00:29:05.300And for instance, in the case of Edward Colston, he was involved in the slave trade, made a lot of money from it.
00:29:11.020Should he have his statue in a prominent place?
00:29:13.720And if we're doing that, aren't we celebrating his crimes?
00:29:16.180Well, I think, let me give you a very pedantic answer, but he should be there if the process of decision making in Bristol, through which it is decided what should be where in public space, says he should be there.
00:29:37.740And if the process of decision making results in the decision he shouldn't be there, then he shouldn't be there.
00:29:43.660I mean, I don't think I don't think we can have a big deductive philosophical claim that he must be there.
00:29:51.880If the people of Bristol don't want him there, then he shouldn't be there.
00:29:54.740And if the protesters led to a change of heart by the city councilors, that's that statue shouldn't be there.
00:30:05.500I have no problem with that. I mean, public spaces change all the time and things that people like and don't like get removed and added.
00:30:13.140And that's fine. That's what the public space is for. Of course, if that had been someone's private property displaying an Edward Colston statue and they had invaded the private property and defaced and destroyed that, well, that's a legal issue because that has to do with property rights.
00:30:29.940And that would be wrong, unless the property owner also had a change of heart and decided to take it down. But that's fine. That's within their right. So I don't I don't like putting a lot of analytical weight on these statuary issues, because to me, it doesn't really matter whether his statue is there in terms of the big debate and right and wrong.
00:30:50.800Indeed, I would argue that I would much prefer these great statues to be in a safe place where people can learn about them than in the public with a bunch of 20-something thugs defacing them with spray paint every day.
00:31:06.600I have no problem with democratic processes which lead to changes in public spaces consistent with the mores and preferences of the population affected.
00:31:17.360And what do you think about this wider trend, though, of reappraising historical figures and judging them with the values of our time?
00:31:23.860For instance, you know, Gandhi is now a racist and so on and so forth.
00:31:30.980The only people who didn't know Gandhi was a racist were the people who have Gandhi bumper stickers on their cars and keep making up things like, you know, always recycle your plastic bags, Gandhi.
00:31:41.340You know, you know, he just he became a totem and he was so ripe for destruction.
00:31:48.440Gandhi, of course, was a very loyal member of the British Empire and served in British forces in South Africa in World War One until he discovered he could make a name for himself by being anti-colonial.
00:32:00.720But yes, I have, again, no problem with Gandhi's statue being reappraised and those responsible for a space in which his statue is displayed, having decision making power to remove it and following the processes of democratic decision making through which these decisions are made, coming to the conclusion that it's being taken down and sent somewhere else.
00:32:24.220I have no problem with that. I mean, no one has a no statue has a right to the public square.
00:32:30.060That's different from the history itself. Right. Which is we need to and must continue to have open minded debates that include the possibility of saying Churchill, Lord Lugard, a slave trader.
00:32:44.940right uh have a aspect of their biographies we should we should value we should honor um and be
00:32:53.020historically understanding about the context in which they operated that's the history debate
00:32:58.780got nothing to do with the statuary and bruce let's move on to the other aspect of all of this
00:33:05.480because let's say i'm listening to you and i fundamentally disagree with every single thing
00:33:11.580that you said, right? Even if that were the case, I would still think that it's perfectly legitimate
00:33:18.720for your work to be published, to be peer reviewed, to be criticized by your peers who are qualified
00:33:25.900to talk about history, to say that Bruce Gilley doesn't know what he's talking about. Here's some
00:33:31.040counter evidence. Here's the counter argument. Here are the facts of the matter. And for that
00:33:35.520to be a process of academic debate, discussion, etc. But that doesn't seem to be what's happened
00:33:42.320in your case. Why do you think the people who disagree with you, which I'm sure are many people,
00:33:47.760why can't they just do that? Well, as you say, there's two types of critics. There's the critics
00:33:53.800who say, Bruce, I think you really got it wrong. You know, I think the evidence is not in your
00:33:59.460favor, but I will support your right to say it because I realize that you refer to evidence,
00:34:07.840that you use logic, and that there's a lot of scholars who have produced things saying exactly
00:34:14.740the same that you've said. And as one Harvard scholar said to me after the Case for Colonialism
00:34:19.500article, he said, Bruce, you know, if you hadn't written that article, someone else would have,
00:34:24.420because it's been brewing for a long time. Brewing for a long time was that phrase he
00:34:29.340used, meaning there's been a counter, a revisionist literature growing, and someone was going to
00:34:34.420summarize it and say, hey, this kind of treatment of colonialism as a unique, you know, Western
00:34:42.360Columbia, unique historical evil is just really so one-sided. We need to have that other counter
00:34:48.240argument. Okay. Then there's the other critics who say this argument is so noxious, so offensive
00:34:55.260as Sahar Khan at the Cato Institute claimed in one of the most widely read critiques,
00:35:01.720that it can't be heard. And I'm not a censor. It's because we need to uphold academic standards.
00:35:07.620And some things are so offensive and so beyond the pale and so inconsistent with the research
00:35:15.620is even to entertain them, even to give them a platform is to engage in a kind of academic
00:35:21.700misconduct right we are the guardians of truth and the guardians of truth have a gatekeeping role
00:35:28.100and sometimes we just need to keep barbarians outside of the gates so uh two types of critics
00:35:34.680right and the former i am completely comfortable with indeed uh as i tell them you know much of my
00:35:40.640research on this topic draws upon people who disagree with me but i respect their scholarship
00:35:45.560because they provide evidence and facts that are transparent enough to allow me to draw different
00:35:50.940conclusions from. No problem with them. Most of those people are signing the petition in my favor
00:35:55.240right now. It's the cancel culture mob, right, who is found in very prominent positions and you can
00:36:04.460find their names. They're the ones who seems to me feel insecure about their premises because they
00:36:12.720have responded with such virile attacks on me and my scholarship is it makes you wonder
00:36:21.140why do you feel so insecure? And Bruce, do you think that the attacks would have been
00:36:26.720any less vitriolic if you weren't a white man? Well, of course, I don't think there would have
00:36:33.240been attacks if I hadn't been a white man, because I can give you a half a dozen scholars
00:36:39.080who are not white, who have said what I've said, and it just kind of passes under the radar. I think
00:36:45.120my new book on German colonialism, I'm going to show you how much pushback there has been among
00:36:50.080Africanist scholars, scholars in Africa, right? Black African scholars pushing back against the
00:36:56.300anti-German colonial historiography of mostly white Germans in Germany. So yes, that's, you
00:37:13.280And what one of my sense of privilege is, is nobody can attack me for violating the norms of my tribe.
00:37:23.560Right. And a lot of these scholars in places like Pakistan, right, we actually the book series that got canceled.
00:37:30.120We had a very interesting proposal from a Pakistani scholar rewriting Macaulay, you know, the story of Macaulay and arguing that Macaulay has been misunderstood by anti-colonial scholars.
00:37:41.680Well, he's now scared to death because he was submitting a proposal.
00:37:46.020I've told him you're safe. I've told anyone about this.
00:37:48.400But, you know, they have this problem that this can be a life and death choice for them to step outside of the anti-colonial safe space.
00:38:00.420And so one of the privileges of not being in one of those tribes is I have the role of speaking out.
00:38:09.740And yes, the vitriol that attends that.
00:38:12.640We've spoken to many people, not just Nigel, but other academics who've been cancelled, you know, had their careers curtailed, and they all seem to make a similar point that it's not just about what's happened to them, it's fundamentally damaging to their subject, because it means that certain lines of questioning can't be explored, which means that the subject can't be progressed. Do you think the same thing has happened to history?
00:38:37.260Yeah, and I think this is fundamental.
00:38:39.540And I think what you have seen this summer, since a drug-addled felon who had just robbed a store and was then resisting arrest, died because of his drug overdose in Minneapolis, tells you what's at stake here.
00:38:55.980And, you know, I'm sorry to make it so plain, but this is what's at stake.
00:38:59.440You don't think he was killed by the police officer, Bruce?
00:39:05.260And he did not die of asphyxiation. Yes, the police officer was restraining him in a way that is not a good form of policing. And it was a violation of Minneapolis police protocols and should be subject to discipline for the manner in which he died. I have no problem with that.
00:39:25.040But but the reason for his death, according to the coroner, was he had a heart attack and he was having a heart attack long before he was put on the ground and his neck placed under that officer's knee.
00:39:36.800He was having the heart attack when they were trying to get him into the car and he was resisting arrest. Right.
00:39:41.340I mean, so I go back to people like, well, there's George Floyd. I said, let's look at George Floyd. Let's look at this.
00:39:47.440this is the hero of your movement, right? This is problematic. And I think there's a lot more
00:39:54.660at stake here. You know, when I talk about what's at stake, why am I spending time arguing about
00:39:59.300Lord Lugard? Because this is where it's coming out in the wash, right? And what is at stake here
00:40:05.960is, and this happened in Britain, this is happening in Canada, this is happening in Australia.
00:40:10.020Once you allow a distortionary account of your national past to seize the high ground in the national discussion, there becomes a level of hatred and a level of dissonance in your society that will very quickly spill out into social chaos.
00:40:30.300And I don't mean social chaos is bad if people are protesting against things, but what's happened is a loss of faith in the structures of democratic government and liberal society itself.
00:40:40.940And where does that come from? That comes from this kind of historiography that says, oh, all your highfalutin language about democracy and good governance, that was just a cover for exploitation and oppression and racism.
00:40:53.060And so when you tell us. We were we were called to this store to deal with a robbery and we found ourselves in a difficult situation.
00:41:02.660And yes, this is not ideal policing. And yes, he died. And yes, this is the subject investigation.
00:41:09.760Oh, this is a whitewash. We're tearing the place down.
00:41:12.740So so black neighborhoods, black businesses, black lives have been lost at an alarming rate in the last four months, not just in the United States, but elsewhere.
00:41:23.060because of a movement that grew out of what is this fundamentally distortionary account
00:41:29.200of liberal society. And I think a lot is at stake here. This is not just about
00:41:33.340obscure historical arguments. This is about the foundations of a liberal society and whether we
00:41:39.420should understand them as basically good or basically bad. In other words, what you're
00:41:44.520saying, and I'm not sure in terms of George Floyd, I just, from my perspective, what I understand was
00:41:50.140That was the initial coroner's report. There was since an autopsy done by someone else, which suggested it was asphyxiation. But it doesn't really matter too much in terms of what you're saying, because if my understanding of what you're saying is if we tell ourselves stories, false stories about how bad we are and how bad our history is, then it almost makes sense to tear that down.
00:42:13.680Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, the world media and the BBC love and Australian media, too.
00:42:20.040They love these kind of TV nightly news reports, America at war with itself.
00:42:26.700Right. I mean, there's just a kind of ghoulish fascination for watching American violence on the streets.
00:42:34.300But look in your own backyard. You know, I'm Canadian and the CBC loves, you know, stories about.
00:42:43.680protests in the US. But meanwhile, you know, Alberta and Saskatchewan want to secede.
00:42:50.000Quebec is going to probably have another referendum.
00:42:54.880This is a country falling apart because it has been victimized by the same sort of narratives
00:43:01.120about its evil colonial settler colonial past as inspired protests and violence in the United
00:43:08.480States. So this is a global phenomenon, and it's rooted in a global set of claims that have
00:43:17.460dominated the academy and therefore spread into society at large, and in particular into elite
00:43:22.980and media culture for the last 50 years. And the chickens are coming home to roost.
00:43:27.540And so what do you think is the endgame of this particular movement, Bruce?
00:43:31.520Well, at a certain point, reality clicks in, right? You do get mugged by reality. So to take a very close example, to me, there was a girl raped in our neighborhood this summer in Portland.
00:44:21.260and the economies that support our flourishing realize they're shooting themselves in the foot.
00:44:27.540They start to suffer the consequences themselves. Right. And I, you know, I hate to say this,
00:44:33.000but I think the only way for this movement to arrest itself is to discover the consequences
00:44:38.240of what it's doing. Right. And black businesses are the first to feel this. Right. Now,
00:44:44.080black communities in the U.S. where murder rates are skyrocketing, thanks to the BLM movement,
00:44:48.460are starting to discover this too so i mean this is basically the revolutionary process right we
00:44:55.200can trace this in every revolution um at a certain point you get to the point of thermidor and the
00:45:01.440backlash and the reaction but in this case the reaction is really just maybe we do need police
00:45:08.160maybe we do need to fund our police maybe our police should be investigating rapes instead of
00:45:13.820trying to keep a bunch of delinquents from destroying our federal courthouse do you think
00:45:18.000that's the only way out of it, Bruce. There's no positive way. The only way is essentially is to
00:45:22.920let people create sort of chazzes all over the United States, go there for a few days.
00:45:28.700If they make it out alive, they come back a little bit with a little bit more perspective,
00:45:34.760let's say, on this whole issue. Is that the only way? Is there no way we can talk about this?
00:45:38.980Well, you know, again, I'm a big supporter of
00:45:42.740liberal fixes, such as let's reinvigorate debate. Let's make sure we all adhere to
00:45:50.180democratic procedures. Let's make sure our protest is peaceful. Let's ensure that
00:45:56.180diversity of political viewpoints are present in the places where people are learning about the
00:46:02.560facts. So I love that. And that's obviously a program I'm fully on board with. I think what
00:46:10.720I've written about my own book being cancelled in the Wall Street Journal this week is, I'm
00:46:18.200starting to, and maybe just because I'm getting old, but and like Thomas Sowell, the great black
00:46:24.100economist at Stanford, starting to wonder if we're not reaching a point of no return. And at that
00:46:30.460point, with the ship sinking, I'm not sure the bucket brigade is enough anymore, right? We need
00:46:38.020some more radical attempts to keep this thing afloat. And the sort of liberal fixes to a
00:46:45.040totalitarian problem don't always work. Just ask the people who had to flee the Russian revolution.
00:46:51.260Bruce, this is a question that I seem to be asking almost every episode,
00:46:55.280but how much responsibility do the universities need to take for this?
00:47:01.500Well, I'm not sure we can ask the response to the universities, if by that you mean the faculty
00:47:07.160and the administrators to fix this problem, because they are the problem. I do think that
00:47:12.360the chancellors and the boards of trustees or boards of governors and the departments of
00:47:21.180education that oversee the standards and the funding and the rules that govern these institutions
00:47:32.880do have to take responsibility um it won't come from within the university the university is the
00:47:39.480problem um sorry to interrupt uh francis is a lefty so when he said who should take responsibility
00:47:45.780what he meant is who should be punished oh i see who should take responsibility well you know i i
00:47:52.720i don't blame anyone i don't think anyone did wrong i mean if i'm a if i'm a young scholar
00:47:59.180And I want to get a job in the English faculty. I will most assuredly write a dissertation on a hitherto undiscovered black transgender woman who had her land stolen and how we need to elevate that voice.
00:48:14.700And I'll get a job. Well, good on you. You know, I mean, you you had a system put before you that was institutionalized and you acted in response to those incentives and you got to where you want.
00:48:25.880That's that's great. I you know, why would we say that's unfair?
00:48:29.960That's the whole the whole idea of property rights is that people have reasonable expectations that are created by a system and you can't blame them when they hit the jackpot.
00:48:39.740However, over time, we need to change those incentives.
00:48:43.000And the people who are responsible are the people who are essentially asleep at the wheel, boards of trustees, chancellors of universities, departments of education or education secretaries, especially when they are representing a government that is, let's say, center or center right, where we know that their constituents want the university system to be changed.
00:49:05.780they should take responsibility because they failed to enact their jobs to make sure that
00:49:13.100universities, like all other parts of federally funded or state funded or government funded
00:49:19.020institutions, follow the expectations of democratic majorities.
00:49:23.560Well, Bruce, thank you so much for your time. We're wrapping up. So we've just got one more
00:49:28.280question for you, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society,
00:49:32.400but we really should be. I think we need to talk about what is the end game for this,
00:49:39.000because it seems the more information we have, the more debate, the more podcasts, the more
00:49:44.400blogs, the more difficult it is going to be for us to understand why people have different
00:49:50.940perspectives on issues. And surely we don't want to tear ourselves apart each time we discover a
00:49:57.080disagreement. We're not talking about the, in some ways, evolutionary flaw in our brains.
00:50:03.720That was really brains which were designed to deal with groups of 60 or 70 people and are now
00:50:10.200interacting with several billion people simultaneously. We have to find a better
00:50:14.880way of responding to things we disagree with or that we find offensive, because I do think
00:50:20.060humanity is at stake. That's a really good point. Bruce, thank you so much for joining us. If people
00:50:25.360want to follow your case or support you in any way what do they do uh my twitter handle is bruce
00:50:30.800gilly three and that probably gets you all you need to know all right fantastic thank you so much
00:50:35.940and thank you for watching we will see you very shortly with another episode or live stream all
00:50:41.840of them go out at 7 p.m uk time absolutely they do wednesday and sunday for our episodes
00:50:47.460and tuesday thursday friday and saturday for our live streams we'll see you soon guys