TRIGGERnometry - Do Progressives Care About Jews？ David Baddiel

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

00:00:09.180 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.200 Our brilliant guest today is a comedian and the author of Jews Don't Count, David Baddiel.

00:00:18.480 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:19.920 Hello, everybody. Hello, guys. Hello, Constantine. Hello, Francis. Nice to see you.

00:00:23.920 um can i just say i've got a new camera um yeah i normally do podcasts over there on that sofa

00:00:31.320 just with a laptop but i bought a new logitech camera so there's quite a lot of depth of field

00:00:36.800 going on and also i'm worried already in a slightly neurotic jewish way that it shows

00:00:41.680 bits of my study that people are thinking what the fuck is that like what is that big

00:00:44.920 trophy over there why has he put that there is that to say that he won the fa cup once it's not

00:00:50.880 is a trophy that i got for winning richard osmond's house of games uh and i don't i didn't know where

00:00:56.180 else to put it and also these things people are going to be thinking what are they does he have

00:01:00.600 some sort of disability they're not that's something i bought uh because i do that quite a

00:01:05.520 lot i've actually got a podcast i do with faye ripley about just buying shit on the internet

00:01:10.260 and talking about it and what that is is a chair gym right and you're meant to be able to do this

00:01:16.740 with these stuff, hang on, hang on, wait a minute, this, right, it's like a ball walker

00:01:23.300 attached to your chair, so just in case anyone's watching that. This is the best opening in the

00:01:28.180 history of trigonometry, mate, I've got to say. Yeah, so you can both be lazy and get ripped at

00:01:33.040 the same time. That's the idea, all my life I've looked for gadgets that could do that for me and

00:01:38.640 none of them ever actually worked, as you can tell, but yeah, I am the laziest worker outer

00:01:46.220 in the world and i'm always trying to take shortcuts there apart from that i think it

00:01:51.120 looks all right so you know yeah no it looks great and it's good to have you man thanks for

00:01:56.340 coming on the show we really appreciate it i should say for anyone who's not familiar and

00:02:00.460 we'll maybe get you to talk a little bit about your your career and life story as well uh the

00:02:05.400 the title of the book jews don't count it's not like a policy prescription uh just in case anyone

00:02:10.340 from america is tuned in and go finally someone's saying it you know like that's not what it's

00:02:16.080 said that constantly but uh there was some troll who when it first came out he wasn't really talking

00:02:22.920 to me he was talking to i think daniel finkelstein who people will possibly know a little bit in

00:02:28.360 britain won't know he's actually a lord he's a tory peer and jewish and he was talking about

00:02:34.100 the book and some bloke claiming to be jewish had kept on saying that's hate speech uh i'm going to

00:02:40.200 go to the police to get this book shut down uh you know uh who would read this book on the tube

00:02:46.600 i mean that is a good look just sitting on the tube reading a book saying jews don't count

00:02:53.120 yeah i mean if you do take it literally as opposed to what it clearly is which is reported speech

00:02:59.020 summing up an attitude that i feel is prevalent but just as a manifesto i can see his point but

00:03:05.440 He is the only person who seems to have taken it that way.

00:03:08.180 Yeah.

00:03:08.420 So it's not a prescription from a very disaffected Jew

00:03:13.020 as to how we should proceed re-Jews.

00:03:16.180 No, it's summing up an attitude that I'm critiquing.

00:03:19.360 Well, we'll talk about that in a sec.

00:03:21.380 But as I mentioned before we started,

00:03:23.000 we have a very large international audience.

00:03:24.940 A lot of people in the UK for people abroad,

00:03:27.620 David is a very well-known comedian

00:03:29.780 who's created lots of stuff that people really love,

00:03:33.320 and us included.

00:03:34.080 but tell everybody a little bit about your life story David just you know how are you where you

00:03:38.380 are what has been your journey through life well yeah I'm a comedian uh I've done lots of stuff I'm

00:03:44.460 quite old 56 uh and uh I you know started out as a stand-up comedian and then after doing that for

00:03:52.460 a few years I got on telly in Britain with a show called the Mary Whitehouse Experience which was a

00:03:57.420 stand-up and sketch show and that blew up quite in quite a big way and me and a guy called Rob

00:04:02.400 Newman became the first ever British comedians to play Wembley Arena, which was great.

00:04:06.700 Amazing. And then me and him split up quite badly.

00:04:10.880 And I then started another show with another comedian in Britain called Frank Skinner, which is about football.

00:04:16.400 It's called Fantasy Football League. And that did well as well.

00:04:19.680 And I'm probably best. I hate best known for.

00:04:23.340 Like one of the things as you grow older is the notion that the phrase best known for is what's going to be on the news when you die.

00:04:30.580 uh and uh i love this thing that i did but i do know it will be on the news when i die and that

00:04:36.920 is uh me and frank and a band called the lightning seeds uh wrote a song called three lions which was

00:04:42.900 adopted as the kind of english football anthem in the 90s and probably still is the best known

00:04:48.260 football pop song of all time and it was sung by you know crowds at wembley and all the rest of

00:04:53.920 and still is uh and then sort of lastly i've done many many things uh i've sort of returned to doing

00:05:00.720 live stand-up a lot recently although the shows are more complex and more theatrical than they

00:05:05.580 used to be uh i did a big show about my family called my family not the sitcom which uh i toured

00:05:11.560 worldwide actually for about two years uh and it was you know i still think it was really fucking

00:05:17.660 funny show but it was moving and complex about my mother and father or whatever and i also i'm just

00:05:23.440 gonna take too long i write lots of books i've written four adult novels seven children novels

00:05:27.880 and this book that you mentioned jews don't count is my first foray i guess into non-fiction

00:05:33.420 it's a polemic it's quite short i'm gonna get it actually hang on it's here somewhere have you

00:05:39.000 got it there's one this is just for the audience at home this is how trigonometry shows always

00:05:45.720 work the guest just randomly stands up and walks away halfway through that's it and it's quite short

00:05:50.800 and it's a polemic it's in the tradition of uh because published by the times dictionary supplement

00:05:56.080 uh of sort of without wishing to compare it in quality to that but things that like george

00:06:01.220 orwell wrote about i don't know what did he write like on the working classes whatever orwell wrote

00:06:07.020 uh it's that sort of short pamphleteering book uh and that's what i've written recently and yet

00:06:12.680 about the failure of identity politics specifically when it comes to jews and david

00:06:19.460 i read it i very much enjoyed it why did you think it was so important and so necessary

00:06:24.940 in 2000 and 2021 to write this book um well you know you know the question why now you get it a

00:06:33.600 lot from if you take anything anywhere like if you ever go to pitch something to a tv commissioner

00:06:38.820 they often say why now and i always want to say i don't know it's just a good idea it was a good

00:06:43.240 idea 10 years ago it's still a good idea now and with this book although i think it is very relevant

00:06:48.460 now and people seem to feel it's very timely and in a way i guess what happened to the labor party

00:06:54.140 during the corbyn years i don't know if i could have written it or put it out quite so uh thoughtfully

00:07:00.080 i guess because it was so you know via volatile all that and it feels to me that maybe that that

00:07:07.040 now you can talk about it a bit more sensibly although you know it's still very volatile all

00:07:11.640 that but to be honest with you the book itself has been brewing for a long time you know i've

00:07:15.580 been writing sporadically in different places about what i feel is this particular issue

00:07:20.160 which is as i say the sort of like neglect of jews uh within the hierarchy of racisms that

00:07:27.180 people who are anti-racist care about i've been writing about it since about 2002 and in fact i

00:07:33.780 wrote a piece in 2011 for the daily telegraph which was nothing to do well before corbyn and

00:07:38.980 all that which was called how antisemitism entered the zeitgeist and was sparked off by i think when

00:07:44.620 And Galeano, the Russian, not Russian,

00:07:47.900 I think that's you I'm thinking of constantly.

00:07:51.500 Galeano, the, what is he, French designer,

00:07:54.540 was found to have gone on a big Nazi rant.

00:07:58.740 Well, thank you for that comparison.

00:08:00.420 I appreciate it, yeah.

00:08:01.760 I mean, it's quite offensive to Galeano.

00:08:03.920 He'd never be dressed like this.

00:08:05.800 Because you're wearing a jacket as well.

00:08:07.780 What a nice white jacket.

00:08:08.960 Well, yeah, jacket, Nazi, same thing, really.

00:08:11.020 Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:08:12.200 so anyway I wrote about that then and I've written about it sporadically but to answer

00:08:17.780 your question Francis during the Corbyn years there were a lot of friends of mine left-wing

00:08:24.300 friends of mine who basically said and this is boiling down what they said it's decomplexifying

00:08:30.340 it this can't be right all this anti-semitism stuff because we're left-wing we're anti-racists

00:08:36.320 and that's our whole thing so it just can't be the case we don't we can't put it together

00:08:41.140 cognitively that this is a thing and it seems to be a thing and it seems to be really like eating

00:08:46.840 away at our project but we don't get it i mean and so i ended up having conversations sort of

00:08:53.540 one by one with these people saying well maybe it's about this and maybe it's about that and

00:08:57.020 it's complex it's not an easy straightforward thing people think of anti-semitism very much

00:09:01.620 as coming from the far right as a kind of full-on direct thing from people who own it

00:09:06.840 who say we hate jews and we're very proud of that and that's part of what we like about being this

00:09:12.760 person who waves a neo-nazi flag or whatever that obviously is not how it comes from progressives

00:09:18.160 or the left or whatever so it's more difficult to pass p-a-r-s-e it's more difficult to deconstruct

00:09:23.740 and so that's what i wanted to do all those conversations and all those times i've talked

00:09:29.040 about it elsewhere i wanted to sort of put it in one package and get it out there and see what

00:09:32.760 happened and do you think david that the problem is and you do actually explore it in your book

00:09:38.320 is that people associate jews with being white therefore they have privilege therefore you can't

00:09:44.160 be racist against them is one of the arguments i imagine well that's one of the arguments although

00:09:48.600 i think it's more complicated than that and i begin i talk about the concept of white privilege

00:09:53.500 and about a more slightly more complicated thing to that which which i call schrodinger's whites

00:09:58.400 not my not i didn't invent that uh phrase but it's a very good one i don't know who invented

00:10:02.860 it i just noticed it being said occasionally on the internet schrodinger's whites is a concept

00:10:06.920 whereby jews are considered white or non-white depending on the politics of the observer

00:10:11.280 so far-right people have i mean for years not just recently recently and obviously going back

00:10:17.800 a long time consider jews to be non-white i mean absolutely set in stone uh as part of like say

00:10:25.580 white supremacy in america is that jews are not part of the white races and would not be

00:10:32.300 you know allowed in an ethno state as far as white supremacists are concerned uh and uh that is

00:10:40.020 completely kind of forgotten when progressives as they tend to talk about uh jews and particularly

00:10:45.800 when they kind of dismiss anti-semitism because yeah it seems as if it's just another branch of

00:10:50.020 people saying you know oh you can't be racist against white people is is like but you and

00:10:55.160 Jews seem to be those white people and therefore the racism is downgraded that in itself is I think

00:11:01.300 a lot to do with the fact that Jews are and I talk about this in the book I've talked about this a lot

00:11:05.600 the only ethnic minority who suffer this kind of weird double status racism whereby Jews get all

00:11:13.700 the usual stuff they get all the low status stuff you're vermin you're thieving you're liars you're

00:11:20.200 scum all that stuff but they also get a high status racism which is you're in control of the

00:11:25.580 world you're privileged you're powerful you are secretly controlling all governments etc etc all

00:11:31.820 the conspiracy theories so many of them come back to this notion of the powerful jew and then you

00:11:37.940 get this weird thing whereby that isn't quite recognized as an assault as if it's sort of

00:11:43.680 almost complimentary in some way uh and that's i think what is also bought by some people on the

00:11:50.600 left when they don't put jews into the category of people who need to be protected from racism

00:11:56.220 because they think well they're powerful and so they don't need it and you saw that example with

00:12:01.140 jeremy corbyn and the mural you might want to explain to our viewers and listeners what actually

00:12:05.360 happened with the mural what it was and then go into it a little bit more yeah right uh so this

00:12:11.280 happened after jeremy corbyn came to power but the thing that he did was while he was still just an

00:12:15.320 mp and not uh head of the labor party i think it was 2012 i don't know well you said came to power

00:12:20.500 i thought i was i was having some kind of horrible flashback as if that actually happened

00:12:24.900 never came to power you mean became leader of the opposition still terrifying for jews uh no i um

00:12:31.360 i meant came to power in the labor party yeah yeah and but i think in 2012 or i can't remember

00:12:37.780 it was actually in the book uh but there was a mural in east london somewhere uh done by an

00:12:44.000 artist called mere one and mere one is a very good example the kind of progressive i'm talking

00:12:47.640 about because he's a street artist and he'd done a mural of rich people playing monopoly

00:12:53.560 sort of floridly on the backs of the suffering mainly brown world poor uh and uh he that was

00:13:03.020 then complained about by various local jewish people because they all looked incredibly jewish

00:13:09.660 they all had sort of hooked noses and long beards and two of them actually were jewish two of them

00:13:14.080 it turned out were supposed to be rothschild and warburg who are these two jewish sort of financiers

00:13:20.680 who are often brought up to keep rothschild by people who want to say jews control the world

00:13:25.800 rothschild is really just a substitute for jewish control of the world uh and so it got

00:13:32.560 taken down the mural uh and mere one was very cross about that and he put out a statement on

00:13:38.340 his facebook page saying just to confirm what i said earlier that some white jewish folk it's

00:13:44.600 very interesting that he chose to say white some white jewish i think he said white rich jewish

00:13:49.600 folk but not absolutely sure about that uh were upset by depictions of their beloved hashtag

00:13:56.160 Rothschild hashtag Warburg hashtags very important there because he puts it on his Facebook page you

00:14:01.740 click on hashtag Rothschild you go straight to conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the

00:14:06.700 world so he's done that deliberately as well and Jerry Corbyn underneath his post supported it

00:14:11.380 and said it was really you know that it reminded him of something that happened to Diego Rivera

00:14:17.000 and mentioned lenin or whatever anyway he basically said you know there are lots of examples

00:14:21.660 of revolutionary art being taken down by the powers that be and this is another example of it

00:14:26.120 that was essentially jeremy corbyn's position on it uh and later on when corbyn was head of

00:14:32.140 this was brought up as an example of his blind spot and that's a very complicated word uh blind

00:14:37.320 in the book about anti-semitism and my point is that if you are a very avowed anti-capitalist

00:14:44.620 like he is you can look at an image like that and presumably just want to celebrate it as an

00:14:51.220 anti-capitalist but unfortunately the imagery of anti-capitalism is deeply entwined with the

00:14:57.920 imagery of anti-semitism and there's really complicated reasons for that some of them are

00:15:01.980 straightforward to do with what i think shaw called the socialism of fools where you know

00:15:07.560 just the way that uh some people on the left depict richness and capitalism and exploitation

00:15:15.780 just seems to involve always coming back to this image of a swarthy fat hooked nose bearded man

00:15:22.240 counting his money and then but in the book i suggest it might have even deeper unconscious

00:15:26.520 reasons to do with christian imagery and you know unable to separate kind of gargoyles and evil from

00:15:32.320 the image from the face of the jew but my point is to a jew and also i think to a sort of ordinary

00:15:40.000 educated person that image of that mural looked a lot like the cover of der sturm which is the

00:15:48.140 nazi newspaper that was published weekly by julius striker and always had a cartoon of essentially

00:15:54.960 jews celebrating their control of the world uh but corbyn kind of couldn't see that and i think

00:16:02.140 that and neither could mere one by the way which i think is as as important in its own way that

00:16:07.620 someone so self-avowedly i'm of the left i'm of you know a person who fights injustice blah blah

00:16:13.700 couldn't see it and in fact was angry at it being taken down so that was a really i'm gonna ask you

00:16:20.300 a question that francis actually came up with but it's gonna sound better coming from me because

00:16:24.560 unlike him i'm jewish and he doesn't have a racist voice exactly for the both of those reasons but

00:16:29.840 Do you think that the allegations of anti-Semitism against Jeremy Corbyn

00:16:34.360 and the Labour Party under him were exaggerated and weaponised by his enemies?

00:16:40.520 Well, I talk about that in the book.

00:16:42.380 I talk about how the book is, you know, short, but I try, for me, the truth is always complex.

00:16:48.660 And actually, one of the things about, you know, podcasts like yours, I think that's good that,

00:16:52.960 you know, I said this before we started, that I wrote a piece about the culture wars in the Sunday Times.

00:16:59.300 and i talked about being asked by and you know do excuse me for saying this but uh you were one of

00:17:05.100 the ones in my mind uh being asked by alt right podcast to go on uh and let's just make sure we

00:17:10.720 put that in inverted commas for people who don't get the joke right um but the but reason that uh

00:17:17.640 that i would be you know even though maybe you know do you would you say that that was any truth

00:17:24.120 at all is that just unfair no no absolutely not so how would you describe yourself in terms of

00:17:29.060 your relationship to progressive thinking we uh i would say that we oppose uh we're anti-woke

00:17:35.800 we oppose wokeness for the same reason we oppose the far right and they hate us equally too yeah

00:17:43.640 so we actually get a lot of anti-semitism including him who's not even jewish he just

00:17:47.460 looks at because the far right hates us as much as the far left yeah because and we'll get into

00:17:53.220 this because i do have something i want to to argue with you about which is the merits of

00:17:58.600 identity politics at all yeah let's let's park that because that's a long conversation and i

00:18:04.240 i've had that conversation a few times and yeah we should talk about that but my point was the

00:18:09.760 truth is always complex right and i think you know that's something that that you're demonstrating

00:18:14.900 in your answer there right uh that actually this idea of easy tribalism is bollocks uh and one way

00:18:23.700 in which i try to make that clear is that i think that anti-semitism was of course weaponized

00:18:28.940 by the tory party during the time of corbyn and i use the example of matt hancock uh getting into

00:18:35.700 trouble at some thing where he was talking about the nhs and flailing really badly because he

00:18:41.240 you know it was clear the nhs were not being supported properly and he just mentions corbyn

00:18:47.800 anti-semitism as a result to try and get out of it and then what happens is the crowd start

00:18:53.340 booing and stamping their feet and taking the microphone away from him and just laughing at him

00:18:59.220 and i pointed out that when i was troubled by this on twitter which obviously a lot of my book

00:19:05.720 is about social media i just got immediately shouted down by progressives can't you see he's

00:19:10.240 weaponized can't you see he's playing a card i wanted to say yeah this is a cognitive dissonance

00:19:14.240 thing he is doing that i am still as a jew disturbed by this mob's reaction to the word

00:19:21.580 anti-Semitism. It is impossible not to be, as a Jew, to hear someone say, what about anti-Semitism?

00:19:28.400 However, you know, cunty it is that he's done that, to hear them stamp their feats and boo

00:19:36.480 and dismiss it violently as a thing that would ever be of any concern.

00:19:40.600 Well, since we've got into that identity politics conversation, we might as well

00:19:45.840 get on with it. This was, so I found your book very good. And I think you, the way I felt was

00:19:52.260 you identify the dots, but then refuse to connect them in my view. And I'll tell you what I mean by

00:19:58.520 that, right? So for me, it's, it's the inevitable consequence of identity politics. The Jews will

00:20:06.280 be perceived as evil oppressors, just like East Asians will be the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans,

00:20:12.380 Basically, any culture that teaches its children

00:20:15.020 to value education, to work hard at school,

00:20:17.940 and as a result of that, succeeds,

00:20:20.520 will always be seen as the oppressor.

00:20:22.840 Because as far as I'm concerned,

00:20:25.160 identity politics is about splitting people into groups

00:20:28.020 and then going, these are good groups, these are bad groups.

00:20:30.640 And the bad groups are the ones that do well.

00:20:32.600 The good groups are the ones that are struggling, right?

00:20:36.300 What would be your view on that sort of position?

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00:21:09.460 well okay so the book is not a roadmap uh i've had this a few times a few times where

00:21:19.860 people say to me um you know are you suggesting that the intensification of identity politics

00:21:28.220 that are so swirled around other minorities should be applied in every way to jews uh and is that a

00:21:35.060 good thing for jews to be on the same kind of hair trigger sort of radar for offense and whatever

00:21:40.060 and my answer to that is that is not the book is not that the book is not a like a piece of social

00:21:45.940 planning right uh it is an analysis of the way things are and i'm very kind of like assiduous

00:21:52.660 in the book in a way not to make any kind of like easy value judgments about those things my position

00:21:59.420 is this is how it is i mean your point exists because you know you you are critiquing identity

00:22:07.820 politics because you feel it as a very happening thing right all those things you've just talked

00:22:13.960 about uh now i think the book is more valuable because there's been lots of sort of like uh

00:22:20.520 attempts to take apart identity politics that are some are really good and some less less good

00:22:25.500 or whatever but i don't think you get to in a way the people i'm trying to speak to if your position

00:22:31.460 is identity politics politics is shit right and he's doing in a way i think all i take a neutral

00:22:39.200 position on the book which is this is what it is right we we live at a time where the language of

00:22:44.360 privilege and uh the uh intensification of uh microaggressions against uh identity are taken

00:22:51.880 very seriously by you know these people who feel themselves the guardian of that stuff

00:22:56.340 and yet they miss out jews or they have a different attitude to jews they're ambiguous

00:23:00.200 around jews so for example which might make it clearer i talk in the book how it's very much as

00:23:05.960 you know a commandment if you like an article of faith for uh let's call them woke people

00:23:13.780 uh that uh you know the the um people who are discriminated against can define the racism

00:23:21.320 uh so you know a white person should not be telling a black person that isn't racist right

00:23:28.060 um and i would agree with that to be honest with you uh but my main point is whether or not i agree

00:23:34.460 with it it exists that's definitely something piers morgan gets shouted at but online if he

00:23:41.240 tries to tell Meghan Markle that something isn't racist, right, or whatever. That does not apply to

00:23:47.960 Jews, right? There are loads and loads... No, but David, the reason I ask you the question is you

00:23:52.460 repeatedly describe yourself as a progressive in the book, and I think you've already said so

00:23:56.440 yourself. So I guess what I'm asking is, how do you square that circle of, on the one hand,

00:24:02.360 you know, wanting to talk about this issue, on the other hand, supporting a worldview which I

00:24:08.160 would say will continue to contribute to discrimination against Jews well because I

00:24:13.260 think that I'm progressive but obviously the book is a critique of progressives right so I mean

00:24:18.440 actually I met with someone yesterday who said to me that he read the book I don't particularly see

00:24:24.380 it exactly like this because I don't think in a way it goes even into this area but he said

00:24:28.040 that the book at some level takes apart the whole idea of identity politics because without

00:24:35.080 saying it because if it doesn't work for jews and as you say may not work for others then it start

00:24:41.620 then obviously the whole thing starts to fray right but meanwhile he read it like that at the

00:24:47.120 other end i got a review in the times by stephen bush uh who is a left-wing guy and i think he's

00:24:54.120 political editor of new statesman in which he said to me i mean a bit more like you're saying i guess

00:24:59.160 he said to me oh he's left-wing but he doesn't believe in the language of privilege right

00:25:05.000 he's a mixed race jewish and black guy doesn't believe in the language of privilege doesn't

00:25:08.780 believe in the whole concept of white supremacy and structural oppression and all that kind of

00:25:12.380 stuff i might be simplifying but that's the impression i got um and he and he said oh you

00:25:17.660 you know he essentially accused me of adhering to those ideas in the book i said no i'm modeling

00:25:23.540 them i'm saying this is how they are and now i'm critiquing them i'm really not applying any kind

00:25:29.740 of value judgment to them either way now i'm happy to some extent because the book is supposed

00:25:34.940 to just be attaching to a conversation to say for people to take it either way to be honest with you

00:25:41.360 because it's a short book and it's tactically and intellectually i think more useful to say

00:25:49.540 this is how it is this is how identity politics is it misses out jews here's the complex reasons

00:25:53.900 why it does that and then i've noticed and this is just empirical the progressives who read it

00:26:00.280 just say oh fuck yeah right now i'm not sure they'd do that if it was like and identity politics is

00:26:07.460 you know fucked up in all these other ways and also to be honest with you my own thinking about

00:26:14.160 that is complicated you know i think and i you know so what is your own thinking about that tell

00:26:19.920 us that's what i really want to get to is what is your own thinking about that yeah but that's

00:26:23.640 but that's weird that you want to know that constitution i think you want to know that

00:26:31.340 because i think you do want to weaponize the book as part of the culture wars and i don't

00:26:35.300 want to weaponize it for anything i'm just curious how you think about it because

00:26:38.520 for us but that's my point it is complicated and that's what i'm i'm trying to work it out

00:26:44.840 in my head still that's what i want okay so i think okay so so look so so at one point i'm

00:26:50.200 having this conversation with stephen bush who as i say is a mixer a jewish person of color

00:26:54.340 right and at one point he says something like because i say in the book he he appears to

00:27:00.120 completely reject the language of privilege even though he's of the left and whatever and i say at

00:27:05.320 one point something like uh in the book i talk about jews not being white right um not being

00:27:12.420 quite white in the way that i've described um and there's other reasons why i talk about that as

00:27:17.460 well, including personal kind of lived experience,

00:27:19.780 ones like being beaten up myself.

00:27:22.000 One of my first stand-up jokes was I've been beaten up twice in my life,

00:27:25.740 once of being Jewish, once of being a Pakistani.

00:27:28.180 And that's stuff that just happened to me, right?

00:27:31.860 I had something very similar in my routines as well,

00:27:34.120 talking about how on the same day I was discriminated against

00:27:37.160 for being a Pakistani.

00:27:39.120 And then later I got an email from a gig for a comedy show saying,

00:27:42.900 oh, we've got too many white men on the bill.

00:27:44.800 Right.

00:27:45.180 And it was about me.

00:27:46.160 Well, that's a perfect bit of Schrodinger's Whites, I have to say.

00:27:49.100 Yeah, exactly.

00:27:50.340 But in that same bit, I say that I agree that being white brings you privileges in society that the white person may not be aware of, right?

00:28:00.720 And I do agree with that. You may not, but I do agree that it definitely gives you certain head starts in life and certain other ones it may not give you.

00:28:10.900 when you refer to, you know,

00:28:12.560 that you have to complexify it with,

00:28:13.800 well, what type of white person?

00:28:15.500 You know, Boris Johnson as a white person

00:28:18.640 has had enormous privileges

00:28:20.060 that a, you know,

00:28:22.000 Northern Irish working class bloke,

00:28:24.100 you know, has not had, right?

00:28:26.080 So that's what I mean by complexity.

00:28:28.160 I adhere to some of it,

00:28:29.120 but I think you always have to complexify it.

00:28:31.680 Well, I agree with that.

00:28:32.500 That's so, there's no element of this show

00:28:34.620 that's about weaponizing anything, David.

00:28:36.320 I just wanted to make everybody understand that.

00:28:39.140 I'm just curious about how you think, that's all.

00:28:40.900 yeah well that's i don't know how else to put it really and then i think that

00:28:45.880 well okay so here's another example slightly adjacent to what you're saying but i think it

00:28:50.000 might help uh so i get asked a lot and i have talked in my shows about what is okay and not

00:28:56.460 okay to make jokes about right and obviously that's something that you've talked about as well

00:29:00.480 right and i say you can joke about anything it depends not the subject matter but the joke

00:29:06.540 right so actually in my last show about trolls i tell a number of holocaust jokes one particularly

00:29:12.360 one particular one and say this these jokes are not offensive right they're not and not just

00:29:17.820 because i'm jewish and have relatives who were killed in the holocaust look at who's actually

00:29:21.600 being targeted here these are not jokes these are not pro-nazi jokes nor are they laughing at the

00:29:26.240 victims they are jokes complicated jokes that might make people feel less alone or they might

00:29:30.820 i mean i'll tell you the joke that i use right which is an old well i don't know how old it is

00:29:34.940 but it was not it's like a traditional joke someone told it to me right and uh it's about

00:29:41.320 a holocaust survivor who after the war uh dies of natural causes sometime after the war goes to

00:29:47.900 heaven when he gets there god asks the survivor to tell him a holocaust joke so the survivor does

00:29:55.540 he tells god a holocaust joke and god says that's not funny and the survivor says well i guess you

00:30:00.860 had to be there and i love that joke i love that joke because you know it's funny but it also says

00:30:06.940 something very profound about the absence of god in the years 1939 to 45 right that's a holocaust

00:30:14.580 joke you can tell it so my point is you have to examine it on a joke by joke basis you can't just

00:30:20.220 say you can't tell jokes and i would say the same thing really about identity politics i would say

00:30:25.280 it works sometimes and it doesn't work at other times and you need to look at the specifics

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00:31:36.720 And David, wouldn't you say that identity politics just increases divisions within people?

00:31:41.680 And it's in many ways just a form of divide and conquer.

00:31:44.480 It just gets, you know, it starts and starts.

00:31:46.280 I wouldn't always say that, Francis. Not always, no.

00:31:48.420 Sometimes I think that is the case and sometimes it's not.

00:31:51.060 It depends, again, on the community you're talking about, sometimes on the individual you're talking about.

00:31:56.140 um I think it definitely can become that and there are times when I read shit that's happening

00:32:02.700 and I think yeah that's totally happening and other times I think like you know I mean to use

00:32:07.480 an example right I'm reading um Satnam Sangara's very brilliant I think Empire Land right which

00:32:14.160 is about the British Empire and there's like a thousand things in that book I didn't know about

00:32:19.520 as a British person which is primarily what I feel myself to be by the way and all the shit that's in

00:32:23.780 my past i feel myself to be a british person quite proud at many levels of being a british person

00:32:29.180 uh and yet i read i read this book stuff about the amritsar massacre that i don't know anything

00:32:34.080 about right and then i do think and this is an identity politics way of thinking okay these

00:32:40.200 voices have been silenced so you know until now in the discussion of what it means to be british

00:32:45.420 and in british history it's a good thing that that's complexifying and i really don't agree

00:32:49.600 with those people who get furious about it and feel that you know he's just complaining and

00:32:57.280 you know what blah blah blah i mean he himself said uh of a ipso mori poll that came out quite

00:33:05.380 recently which asked the question are you proud of being uh of the british empire or are you

00:33:11.140 shamed of the british empire all right that's a stupid question because history is not a football

00:33:15.820 difficulty you know you don't just support it or feel bad if you lose you basically you know

00:33:21.680 try and absorb new ideas into it as time goes on right yeah yeah and moving moving on now david

00:33:28.720 one thing that i found particularly interesting in the book was and particularly because i'm a

00:33:33.240 football fan and it's a word that has been used many many times throughout football is used by

00:33:37.560 tottenham hotspur is the is the word yid and you were saying that it's a racist word and

00:33:42.360 lots of people have been discussing it since time immemorial why is it to you that this word

00:33:47.580 is a racist word well the primary thing about that again everything i say in that book needs

00:33:53.340 to be seen in context um so we you know over the 40 years that i've been going to football

00:34:01.000 you know it started as an incredibly racist environment uh and lots of work was done by

00:34:08.160 football and by uh organizations like kick race about football or whatever to change that

00:34:13.120 uh so that by the time you get to 2010 which is the story i tell about that in the book

00:34:18.940 it's already in the program it says that any racist abuse uh will lead to be a banning for life

00:34:26.400 so that's the context in which i'm talking about the y word right uh it's not just you know oh is

00:34:32.820 this a racist word or it isn't although we can argue about that separately it's we live in a time

00:34:38.120 of very high awareness of offense of those words right so my question is not really is that word

00:34:44.980 racist it's why is it not considered racist given how fucking offended we are by all these other

00:34:50.960 words right so that's so then what happened was in that particular case is me and my brother are

00:34:56.620 at chelsea and we weren't even playing spurs for anyone who doesn't know because this is a global

00:35:01.460 podcast right Tottenham Hotspur they are a football club uh they I uh you not everyone

00:35:08.780 for Tottenham Hotspur but some of them uh own the word yid because Tottenham is a Jewish area

00:35:16.440 uh and they feel that you know they've claimed that as an identity and blah blah blah and their

00:35:22.160 own position on it is that that's somehow you know a nice use of the word right uh and my whole

00:35:29.160 point about that is has happened in this case is well there's a number of things involved firstly

00:35:33.400 most tottenham fans aren't jewish right it's a myth that tottenham fans are jewish uh there's

00:35:38.080 like if five percent of what used to be white art lane uh you know is jewish that would be massively

00:35:45.700 more there's only like 0.3 percent of the country are jewish so if five percent of them were jewish

00:35:52.020 that would be loads of jews that means 95 percent of them chanting the word yid and yid army are not

00:35:58.360 jewish right so that would be the first ever reclamation of a hate word by people who are

00:36:04.460 not part of that minority and as i've said before the equivalent is you know if there had been a

00:36:10.060 club in a black area say brixton or whatever that had you know decided mainly white fans decided

00:36:16.700 we're going to adopt the n-word as our identity and enchanted n-word army that club would have

00:36:22.520 been shut down like 20 years ago i mean i have to say the comedian in me would like to see that

00:36:28.000 yeah you wouldn't see it for very long you could just rename it milwolf

00:36:33.260 yeah yeah so um so basically what the story i tell in the i mean you know this totally like

00:36:43.340 happened a lot at chelsea and it was always really depressing when yido started because

00:36:48.080 tottenham's some tottenham fans i think it has shifted a bit but anyway some tottenham fans

00:36:53.120 celebrate that as their identity right uh and say it's a really positive thing but what they're not

00:36:57.560 listening to is the fact that Arsenal fans and Chelsea fans and Millwall fans and West Ham fans

00:37:02.700 it comes back that identity with menaces with like Auschwitz charts Spurs are on their way to

00:37:09.920 Auschwitz and hissing to represent gas chambers and in this one particular case as I say we

00:37:15.040 weren't even playing Spurs I think Spurs were losing to Hull are you a Spurs fan by the way

00:37:19.100 who either of you no I support West Ham he supports Everton okay fine so we I think it

00:37:26.980 was they were losing to hull and it came up on the scoreboard it was a boring game we were playing

00:37:31.280 villa and the crowd just start chanting yido yido over and over again in this incredibly aggressive

00:37:36.760 non-celebratory way and then a bloke behind us just start shouting fuck the fucking yids

00:37:41.760 fuck the fucking is over and over again and then blasting through this notion that by yids he just

00:37:48.360 means tottenham fans that's fine he doesn't mean anything else he just changed it to fuck the

00:37:52.900 fucking jews over and over again and in terms of the context that i'm talking about after about

00:37:59.100 10 minutes of this my not very old brother iva stands up and says shut up mate right and he says

00:38:06.940 no fuck off and there's about to be an enormous fight and then he just does stop iva sits down

00:38:12.200 and says i think i'm going to cry which was very sort of funny but also kind of moving but the

00:38:17.980 point is no one says anything no steward intervenes there are no that bloke is not banned for life

00:38:23.320 and me and my brother have to try and create a film which we call the y word a short film

00:38:28.460 to raise awareness of this is happening which is hard to get made keep racing out of football at

00:38:33.940 first they're not interested don't want to do it they've got more important things to talk about

00:38:37.440 is it really a problem that's what i'm talking about in the book and actually to come back to

00:38:42.040 your point about identity politics right that is really a violent form actually of anti-semitism

00:38:47.540 right it's properly violent when you hear a crowd and lots of people join in or whatever

00:38:52.360 and whatever your thoughts about identity politics it's a real fucking hole in it if that is just

00:38:59.140 ignored and invisible and whatever and so you sort of have to whatever your uncertainty is about

00:39:05.100 identity politics grasp the nettle of identity politics and say okay if we are living at a time

00:39:11.260 where aggressions against minority are a problem,

00:39:15.200 then can we apply it to this ethnicity as well, please?

00:39:18.780 I just think you have to.

00:39:20.460 No, I totally agree with you

00:39:21.920 that there's a lot of inconsistency and double standard

00:39:25.340 in that philosophical way of thinking about the world.

00:39:28.820 I totally get that.

00:39:30.400 My concern about identity politics,

00:39:32.720 and I actually really like the point that you made

00:39:34.840 about how it's not a universal thing.

00:39:38.160 There's different elements of it.

00:39:40.040 and sometimes it might be appropriate.

00:39:42.140 For example, the civil rights movement in America in the 60s

00:39:46.300 was an example of identity politics, right?

00:39:49.400 But the way it was conducted, it was made inclusive.

00:39:52.540 So it wasn't about antagonizing groups against each other.

00:39:55.720 So you're right, you're right there's a nuance to this.

00:39:57.780 And what I would say is my concern about identity politics

00:40:00.920 comes much more from the way it's done

00:40:04.340 as opposed to the concept in general.

00:40:06.300 I think there's nothing wrong with people

00:40:08.000 who are members of a particular group

00:40:09.760 of having an identity that encompasses parts of that as well my worry is that we now live in a

00:40:16.240 world where groups are being pitted against each other that's what i think we oppose on the show

00:40:20.520 um so i'm really glad i don't disagree with that and i and you know obviously you know every day

00:40:28.540 you see like shades of it you see like you know where as you said certain like the other day in

00:40:34.940 the lancet i don't know why the lancet wants to get involved in this shit it's a medical journal

00:40:40.680 but the other thing in the lancet there was a suggestion to asian americans that they should

00:40:45.600 sort of not take pride in being a successful within the medical community or whatever

00:40:52.740 because that allows racists to say oh look here's a minority that's doing well and that can be

00:40:59.200 weaponized against other minorities right and you kind of think like this is written by a white

00:41:03.140 person not an Asian American who are you to tell Asian Americans that they can't take pride in

00:41:08.080 their own achievements do you know what I mean and that's stuff where you think it's it's yeah

00:41:13.140 it's mental do you not think as well and this is coming from my own perspective of it and people

00:41:19.020 who we were watching this on the show would know of this like I'm actually technically could argue

00:41:24.500 mixed race my mother's Latin American grandfather was an Arab so on so forth from Venezuela my

00:41:31.360 problem with identity politics is this it's incredibly reductive i believe it's what it

00:41:37.580 does is it boils people down to in fact what are the most unimportant parts of them what i think

00:41:43.760 is most important who you are how you see the world the way you conduct yourself and by just

00:41:48.160 saying you are part of this group it's incredibly shallow way of thinking because yes it has to be

00:41:55.960 but it's far more complicated than that it has to be i think it is it is when all it is really

00:42:02.280 is a way into shouting right yeah if it's just a way into shouting about like you know i'm more

00:42:09.040 oppressed than you and you know and i hate you because you're more privileged or whatever then

00:42:14.340 then it's no use at all right uh but i think you know firstly i don't agree you know with

00:42:20.940 it being useless i think there are forms of structural oppression yeah that affect people

00:42:26.120 of color and also affect other people you know that there are gender issues and all sorts of

00:42:31.900 things they do exist right in built prejudice it does exist but in a different way as you speak

00:42:40.040 i i have to say i don't agree because i i don't agree that identifying yourself in a certain way

00:42:46.800 necessarily is reductive when i put jew as my bio on my twitter feed that is enormously complex

00:42:54.080 because i'm not religious yeah that's something i haven't even discussed but i'm an atheist uh

00:42:59.460 you know and i'm always having to explain to twats on the internet that antisemitism is not

00:43:05.340 religious intolerance it's racism because the gestapo would shoot me tomorrow right and i and

00:43:10.400 i'm an atheist i don't believe in god at all right yeah but i do have a very complicated and quite

00:43:16.000 difficult to describe certainly to non-jews identity that i feel very strongly of myself

00:43:21.520 as a jew but it's not simplistic it's not reductive but so i would push so i would and all we're doing

00:43:28.200 is talking about our experiences as well i'll be honest with you david i'm really loving this

00:43:31.480 conversation so people would say to me oh you're white you've never faced racism my mother wanted

00:43:36.080 to call me francisco jaime foster palis my i grew up in a low middle class working part class part

00:43:41.920 of South London, my father was worried about racism, I changed. I used to work at a garage

00:43:46.500 when I graduated from university, doing admin as a way to earn money. And there was a very racist,

00:43:54.660 racist, there was a lot of people in there with very unpleasant racist views, to the point where

00:43:59.440 I actually, when mum gave me a lift sometimes in the morning, she had to park around the corner

00:44:04.200 because I didn't want them to see the fact that my mum was brown. I know what it's like to have

00:44:09.680 members of my family

00:44:10.940 being racially abused.

00:44:12.700 Me and my cousin got chased

00:44:13.840 when we went to watch

00:44:14.540 a football match.

00:44:16.080 And I find when people go,

00:44:17.600 oh, you're white,

00:44:18.280 therefore you're this,

00:44:19.160 therefore you've never

00:44:19.620 experienced this.

00:44:20.360 I'm like, no,

00:44:20.780 that's a completely reductive

00:44:23.400 way of thinking.

00:44:24.440 And it doesn't allow

00:44:27.020 for the complexities

00:44:27.840 of human emotion

00:44:29.140 or, in fact, race.

00:44:30.900 I would agree with that.

00:44:32.920 But that comes back

00:44:33.740 to what I was saying earlier,

00:44:35.340 which is, you know,

00:44:36.660 just as you have to examine

00:44:37.580 jokes on a case-by-case basis,

00:44:39.380 you have to examine people on a case-by-case basis you know and there are people you know

00:44:45.620 and i've used boris johnson as a fucking easy example of it but i would say he still is an

00:44:50.220 example of it who you know have lived their life with all sorts of privilege primarily class

00:44:56.680 privilege primarily money privilege but him being white is part of that it's in the mix as well

00:45:02.200 uh because he just wouldn't have been you know in his generation you know he wouldn't have found

00:45:06.860 very easy to get into eton and all that is that true though what about rishi sunak well he's

00:45:12.220 younger uh i don't i don't know if it's true i it seems like you know this is a new thing you're

00:45:19.420 talking about which is partly to do with identity politics you know the fact is rishi sunak is brown

00:45:25.820 and he's privileged right but when i was growing up you're you're younger than me both of you but

00:45:31.600 there was no fucking chance of a brown person being Chancellor of the Exchequer when I was

00:45:34.700 growing up uh at all uh which is a different argument by the way to the fact that I put

00:45:40.260 something out in the book which is that I personally think that you know it's an interesting

00:45:44.520 thing that Jews are never thought of as BAME you know it's a much derided acronym but Jews

00:45:49.580 theoretically are BAME uh because of minority ethnic uh which is what that means and I very

00:45:55.440 much do think that Jews are an ethnic minority so meanwhile I noticed that whenever BAME is

00:46:00.160 celebrated like for example Sajid Javid being the first uh brown chancellor I say no that's

00:46:07.360 Nigel Lawson right the first brown chancellor but the first BAME chancellor was Nigel Lawson

00:46:12.700 in my opinion right but no one ever would grasp that as a thing it's a so it's partly you know

00:46:18.800 the whole Jewish thing is partly about that as well it's about representation and celebration

00:46:23.660 not happening it's partly about that too but I totally agree what you just said Francis

00:46:29.280 which I'd say was really moving right right is exactly what I just said about complexity

00:46:36.640 the truth is always complex so yeah you can pass as you know people always saying Jews can although

00:46:44.240 I don't think I can really I don't think Constantine can but people are always saying

00:46:48.520 Jews can pass as white or whatever you can pass as white right but that doesn't mean that your

00:46:53.660 history is like easy you know and actually the example i use a bit in the book i hate i sort of

00:47:01.980 hate the hierarchy of racism but i'm going to use it a bit like if you wanted to sort of actually

00:47:05.600 place jews and whatever uh sort of people who are not immediately apparently someone who might fit

00:47:12.300 into identity politics it's worth thinking about gay men or i suppose gays in general but gay men

00:47:18.260 more more apparent in a way uh for the argument which is they have white privilege right uh they

00:47:25.380 are generally economically fairly secure right but who's gonna say which progressive is gonna say

00:47:31.440 so you're probably all right as long as you don't tell anyone as long as you stay in the closet

00:47:36.020 you're probably all right aren't you so fucking shut up about homophobia no one's gonna say that

00:47:40.080 are they but that is sort of said to jews you know it's sort of an anti-semitic science society

00:47:45.600 people sort of say well you know no one really knows you're Jewish so just keep quiet about it

00:47:49.140 and then you're all right yeah yeah David it's it's all interesting I'm really enjoying this

00:47:54.700 conversation as well because I think uh all of us might have come into this conversation with

00:47:59.660 slight misperceptions about each other and we're sort of flattening them out as we go which I

00:48:03.620 really like I think it's great and um I've got to say about that by the way I I don't any

00:48:11.260 misconceptions i had about you which i probably but i sort of didn't really see what i mean so

00:48:15.180 that i was sort of taking the piss earlier when i said about yeah podcast that's all right

00:48:19.420 actually i have i've seen you do stand up and i wouldn't be doing this podcast if i just thought

00:48:24.180 you were you know just a bald or i know that you're i've still got hair man i've still got

00:48:31.920 hair just a little bit that is the most he's going to be seething about that for days thank

00:48:36.640 you, David. I really appreciate it. See, this is why

00:48:38.460 I never actually liked Jews.

00:48:42.240 No,

00:48:42.760 okay, that was the wrong word.

00:48:44.380 It was an ill-chosen word, right?

00:48:46.660 And it wasn't in my subconscious

00:48:48.320 in any way, because I'm looking at you.

00:48:50.680 It wasn't.

00:48:52.020 You know, I know that

00:48:54.460 you're, you know, from your stand-up

00:48:56.740 that you're a thinking bloke, and that's

00:48:58.460 the point, really. The point is that

00:49:00.360 the whole cultural thing

00:49:02.180 gets devolved into non-thinking

00:49:04.440 responses. Yes, yeah.

00:49:06.640 Yeah. And that's why I, you know, I really hope a lot of people watch this interview because I

00:49:10.620 think this is how you talk about this sort of stuff. But David, it's a great book. I don't

00:49:14.380 want to let you go just yet. It's a brilliant book. I recommend people get it and think and

00:49:18.040 discuss these issues actually in the way that we've been having. But if you don't mind, I did

00:49:22.040 want to take a few minutes because all three of us being comedians. And I remember when the whole

00:49:26.300 Count Dankula thing happened, you took what to me was an interesting position. Someone who

00:49:31.740 who simultaneously describes themselves as progressive,

00:49:34.880 but also is a thinking person.

00:49:37.960 And, you know, you talk about, you can joke about anything.

00:49:40.980 What is your view of this heated discussion

00:49:44.160 we've been having in the comedy world

00:49:45.980 about freedom of speech versus making sure

00:49:49.360 we don't offend people and all of that?

00:49:51.140 Where do you come down on that?

00:49:53.740 Well, as I said earlier,

00:49:55.800 I think you have to look at it on a joke-by-joke basis.

00:49:58.920 So with Count Dankula,

00:50:00.180 uh i mean actually i wrote quite a lot about that because i changed my view about that but not

00:50:05.240 completely well no not completely uh so my first position which i was on ricky gervais's podcast

00:50:10.880 was uh this is obviously or can it can so easily be seen as someone taking the piss out of nazis

00:50:19.340 because yeah i believe there actually was someone who was arrested by the nazis do you know about

00:50:25.580 this you probably do yes because they're taught their dog how to do a nazi salute and the nazis

00:50:30.700 took that fair enough in a way i mean you don't often hear that with the nazis but fair enough

00:50:36.500 as taking the piss right yeah and that's what it seemed to me when i first saw it right

00:50:41.660 teaching your pug particularly a pug yeah to do that and then someone got in touch with me

00:50:48.620 and said no but you don't really understand the nature which maybe i didn't at the time of shit

00:50:52.880 posting right and the idea that shit posters do this thing which i do understand more now

00:50:58.840 of sort of subsuming really hateful right-wing ideas uh into lols right into like oh we're just

00:51:08.060 being funny and blah blah and he showed me this um uh you've probably seen it thing from i can't

00:51:15.860 remember what the website's called now it's called something like the daily stormer uh which is a

00:51:19.980 kind of manual for shit posters which basically says if you want to get kike hating ideas out

00:51:28.420 there do it under the cover of comedy right and pretend it's all just plausible deniability

00:51:34.720 because i was just having a laugh so so i then wrote another piece well i've done the ricky

00:51:40.560 thing and then i wrote a piece for the tls in which i said oh right i'm folding all this into

00:51:44.680 my thoughts i still think uh probably in this case it's mainly funny and i quoted peter cook

00:51:52.840 and dudley moore who i think on derrick and clive peter cook says something about watching

00:51:59.480 the dangers of watching nazi stuff and he said it's terrible because you what i watched a documentary

00:52:05.620 the other day and then before i knew it i'd gone down to golders green and massacred about 200 of

00:52:10.220 them right and there's no question i think that's funny not least because again on a joke by joke

00:52:16.360 basis he's taking the piss out of he's not taking the piss out of massacring jews he's taking the

00:52:22.160 piss out of the idea that people can be so easily influenced right that's why he's taking the piss

00:52:26.540 out and that's what my thinking is always you always have to see where the joke is

00:52:30.960 well the thing with dankler of course the police did go through all his online communications and

00:52:37.440 found no evidence of any kind of prejudice so i think in his case the evidence would suggest that

00:52:43.220 it was just a joke uh and i've met the guy and he doesn't seem like a bad guy to me but look that's

00:52:48.420 that's personal but what about the broader conversation do you think comedians should be

00:52:54.280 you know wary of offending people or do you think it's just quote-unquote a bunch of snowflakes

00:52:59.640 ruining comedy like those seems to be the two polar opposites in the yeah i don't think either

00:53:03.680 those things yeah i think i think also you have to you know i mean i do think that comedy is

00:53:10.280 obviously much more policed now than it used to be and i think that is an issue and uh you know

00:53:16.580 some of the time i think it's a conversation and it's a conversation that's worth having

00:53:22.360 and some of the time it does it's more you know what i sort of worry about it more

00:53:27.700 with the second guessing than i do with the thing itself if you see what i mean

00:53:32.220 so it's less for me about like oh here's an example of someone who got really attacked and

00:53:37.480 whatever because he did this joke or whatever that it is what is that doing to the writing

00:53:42.680 of comedy or the thinking before you even do the joke and i think that is a worry i think that a

00:53:48.100 lot of people including myself now when about to sort of put pen to paper with a joke or

00:53:53.760 whatever think oh yeah but what are from all sides x y and z gonna say you know are they

00:54:01.880 going to find bad intent in this joke that isn't there and that i think isn't that i think isn't

00:54:07.940 good for comedy because i think you need to have a kind of free form ability to to just say what

00:54:13.060 you feel and then maybe like you know deal with the fallout but the sort of like stifling of your

00:54:19.800 head beforehand i think is a really bad thing it is and if when you think about the greatest

00:54:24.620 comedians the comedians that we all love or respect whether you know the richard prize

00:54:27.880 patrice o'neill to bill hicks whoever it may be you know they they certainly didn't have that

00:54:32.320 filter yeah well i don't i mean i was turned on to comedy by derrick and clive that's why i'm a

00:54:38.420 comedian i don't know if you know it that well uh that might be okay but i mean but that for me

00:54:44.500 what i thought was funny about that and brilliant about that and still do is it was two blokes with

00:54:50.520 no filter like just quite drunk improvising both of them comedy geniuses particularly peter

00:54:58.080 kirkville so was dudley moore in my opinion and as a result you get this unbelievable you know

00:55:03.520 level of sort of extreme tourette's like swearing and obscenity and whatever and it's fucking

00:55:11.140 hilarious you know some of it probably hasn't dated that well but i still think of it as really

00:55:19.560 fucking hilarious and that's my worry is that that side of the brain is being closed off yeah it is a

00:55:26.440 worry isn't it and that self-censorship that you talk about is the thing that i think i think a lot

00:55:32.060 of people feel and look i i really admire you for saying it because i know that as a progressive that

00:55:37.280 isn't the mainstream view necessarily on that side of the spectrum yeah but i mean you keep saying as

00:55:42.340 a progressive i mean what i am is as with jewishness and as with the humanity that france

00:55:48.600 were talking about earlier you know i'm just a i mean politically i've said this for a while i think

00:55:54.500 of myself as sort of i think that was a progressive but i am basically no wing for a long time now i

00:56:01.420 was i would have described myself as left wing growing up very much so but now i think of myself

00:56:07.300 as my main thing is original thought that's my thing right and by original thought i mean

00:56:15.200 and certainly as regards politics but possibly with everything i'm not gonna have a pre-arranged

00:56:20.640 ideological map that i'm gonna impose on any issue i'm gonna look at the issue and i'm gonna look at

00:56:26.960 the question that's being asked of me and i'm gonna think what do i fucking think about this

00:56:31.000 yeah not i'm a left-wing person so i have to think like this about it right so that that's

00:56:38.080 always been how long for a long time how i've been trying to think all right well that's good

00:56:42.900 to know that's that try that is how we try to think about stuff as well and i think look all

00:56:47.360 of us fail at that right all of us sometimes we all fall into ideology but you i mean the only

00:56:52.600 reason i just is an apology the only reason i called you progressive is that's how you describe

00:56:56.780 i do describe myself as a progressive so that's why probably in terms of you know i think because

00:57:07.080 I do agree with some of that stuff.

00:57:09.760 Yeah, absolutely.

00:57:11.520 But David, it has been a pleasure and an honour.

00:57:14.080 And it's, I will say openly, one of my favourite interviews.

00:57:17.380 It's been absolutely brilliant.

00:57:18.540 We close our interviews always with the same question,

00:57:20.960 which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society,

00:57:24.100 but we really should be?

00:57:26.540 I think it's Constantine's baldness.

00:57:32.000 I'm glad I brought it up now,

00:57:33.560 because it really isn't being mentioned enough.

00:57:36.160 Yeah.

00:57:37.080 Absolutely. I don't think we talk about it enough.

00:57:40.480 We should talk about it more.

00:57:43.520 In fact, we should talk about it outside the scope of trigonometry.

00:57:46.940 It gets discussed on trigonometry quite a lot,

00:57:49.180 but I think we need to broaden out the conversation.

00:57:51.960 Anton is our producer. Anton, darling, could you turn that into a meme, please?

00:57:55.860 Let's not forget I said that.

00:57:56.560 Don't worry, Anton doesn't need to. Someone else will take care of it.

00:57:59.140 I was asked the question by Francis and I said it without self-censoring,

00:58:02.500 knowing it might cause offence.

00:58:04.620 But that's brilliant.

00:58:06.020 That's what I love, man.

00:58:08.360 David, thank you very much for coming on our Alt-Right podcast.

00:58:11.740 We appreciate it.

00:58:14.960 I hope you've managed to put up with anti-Semitism on this show well.

00:58:19.700 It hasn't traumatized you too much.

00:58:21.400 No, no, it's been great.

00:58:22.360 It's been really enjoyable.

00:58:23.300 Thanks, guys.

00:58:23.900 Very enjoyable chat.

00:58:25.220 David, thank you so much for coming on.

00:58:26.980 Jews Don't Count is the book.

00:58:28.760 Please go and get it.

00:58:30.000 It's available everywhere.

00:58:31.900 And we will see you very soon with another brilliant interview like this one.

00:58:35.540 or a live stream.

00:58:36.680 All of them go out 7pm UK time.

00:58:38.500 Take care and see you soon, guys.

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00:59:22.200 of wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com

TRIGGERnometry - March 07, 2021

Do Progressives Care About Jews？ David Baddiel

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