TRIGGERnometry - Douglas Murray： The War on the West

00:00:00.400 This is all being pushed on us by wild ideologues

00:00:04.680 who want us to see our countries in this remorselessly negative light,

00:00:09.380 who want to turn all of the things that were good in our societies to bad,

00:00:13.460 who want to take all of our heroes and just throw them down,

00:00:17.080 sometimes quite literally, and smash them on the floor

00:00:19.200 to say, look, there's nothing good about you.

00:00:22.740 What have you got to celebrate?

00:00:30.000 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:33.420 I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:34.820 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:36.240 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:41.980 We're delighted to say that our brilliant and returning guest is journalist and author

00:00:46.060 and the author of the upcoming book, The War on the West, Douglas Murray.

00:00:49.400 Welcome back to Trigonometry for the nth time.

00:00:52.460 Great to be back with you both. It's a real pleasure. It's been too long.

00:00:56.220 It has been too long. And we, of course, look forward to having you back in the studio

00:01:00.380 where we've had many of our previous conversations.

00:01:02.900 But you have a new book which is about to come out, which is called The War on the West.

00:01:07.420 You got there ahead of me by a couple of months because I have a book coming out

00:01:10.560 called An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West.

00:01:12.320 So I'm trying to talk about what I think is valuable and what we don't appreciate enough

00:01:16.940 in the UK and America and elsewhere in the Anglosphere.

00:01:20.960 Who is fighting a war on the West? Why is the West under attack, Douglas, in your opinion?

00:01:26.220 Well, my view actually partly ties in with what I think you're describing in your book.

00:01:30.960 I mean, there's a sort of wild underestimating of our own societies in countries like Britain,

00:01:38.480 the United States, and so on.

00:01:40.760 There's been this ravenous self-criticism that sort of ended up being a form of self-hatred.

00:01:48.200 There are lots of forms of anti-Westernism in the world.

00:01:50.740 You know, there's Russian anti-Westernism, Chinese anti-Westernism, Middle Eastern anti-Westernism,

00:01:58.380 all types.

00:01:59.640 But the one I'm really interested in is the Western anti-Westernism,

00:02:03.820 the people who just say these terrible and crucially untrue things about our societies

00:02:11.620 and have been doing so for a very long time and have just been getting away with it.

00:02:17.360 I think they've just had a, for various reasons, they've had a free run at us, almost uncontested,

00:02:25.260 so that people in the West say things about the West which are just not true,

00:02:31.160 at the very least, very much not fair.

00:02:34.800 And I think they've just left this field wide open.

00:02:38.900 I think a lot of people in the West have been cowed by this,

00:02:43.580 have been just sort of scared of the things they've been called,

00:02:47.120 of the names they've been called, of the implications of pushing back in any way.

00:02:53.780 But I think it's high time that people pushed back.

00:02:56.780 I think we've got our own estimation of ourselves wildly out of sorts.

00:03:01.820 And sometimes it needs somebody, I mean, Constantine, as I understand you're doing,

00:03:06.420 you know, somebody who has come from outside a democracy like Britain,

00:03:11.200 to say, actually, hang on a moment, guys, most of the world isn't like this.

00:03:15.940 You know, whilst you're talking about the rights of IVF for lesbian couples or whatever,

00:03:22.480 you know, much of the rest of the world's hacking their neighbours to death.

00:03:26.380 I mean, don't get your estimation of yourselves so wrong.

00:03:32.440 And sometimes it needs an outsider, as it were, to say that.

00:03:35.940 Somebody who's come into a country and says, look, you've got yourselves really out of proportion.

00:03:42.040 I think there's no country in the world that's more the case with than America,

00:03:45.840 America, where, for all sorts of reasons, which I go into in the book,

00:03:50.660 American citizens just have a misunderstanding, not just about their own country and its history,

00:03:58.640 but a misunderstanding about what the world is like, what the rest of the world is like now,

00:04:04.760 and what most of the world has been like historically.

00:04:06.940 Douglas, when I was a kid, we're from the sort of same generation,

00:04:13.400 when we looked at America, it was always a stereotype that Americans were fiercely nationalistic,

00:04:19.600 overly proud, the criticism would be, of their own country.

00:04:23.540 Why has it suddenly shifted so dramatically in recent years with this attitude?

00:04:28.720 Yeah, that's right.

00:04:30.100 I think all of us who weren't born in America sort of had this view of America as being,

00:04:35.360 as you say, fiercely nationalistic, patriotic, you know, swearing allegiance to the flag,

00:04:40.060 lots of things that say British patriotism didn't want to do, you know,

00:04:44.720 flying the flag in your front yard is like, find a person in Britain who'd, you know,

00:04:49.140 do that without cringing, as it were.

00:04:51.460 You know, there was a, we sort of prided ourselves in Britain on having a quiet form of patriotism

00:04:56.720 and thought of Americans as having a noisy form.

00:04:59.500 In our own lifetimes, this is completely flipped.

00:05:01.740 There are, of course, many patriotic people in America who still have the same estimation

00:05:07.740 of their society that they once had, but a vast swathe of the country now has a totally

00:05:14.560 different understanding.

00:05:15.700 The story of America used to be a story of heroism, of individualism, of freeing from tyranny,

00:05:24.880 a much more book I've got behind me, Paul Johnson's History of the American People,

00:05:30.320 published only just over 20 years ago, opens with a sentence that says something like, you know,

00:05:35.140 America is the greatest invention of human species to date, you know, I mean, so you could say that

00:05:40.840 sort of thing even as a non-American not much more than 20 years ago.

00:05:44.720 Today, you'd be derided if you said anything like that, because the whole history has been

00:05:49.280 reframed. Essentially, it's been reframed for the same reason the rest of the history of the West

00:05:55.020 has been reframed through the prism of original sin. In the case of America, through the prism of

00:06:00.480 slavery, where everything is seen remorselessly through the prism of slavery. We have the 1619

00:06:06.200 project of the New York Times, not a fringe project, that set out, when it was founded a couple

00:06:13.420 of years ago now, set out and stated that its aim was to reframe the founding date of America,

00:06:21.040 to move it to 1619, in order to commemorate the date when slaves were first brought in

00:06:27.900 to the American continent. Now, I mean, this is a deliberate attempt, of course, to say,

00:06:35.160 our nation started in slavery, we can't get away from it, with a follow-on suggestion,

00:06:40.200 we sort of never should. We're stuck with it. We're stuck with our legacy. Well, who isn't

00:06:44.560 stuck with our legacy, first of all? I mean, what the hell are people meant to do about that now?

00:06:49.040 But everyone's got a version of this. Obviously, in Britain, we have empire. And you could say,

00:06:54.220 as a fair estimation, is to say, well, slavery and empire were sort of the sins of these things

00:07:00.580 were slightly glossed over in the past, maybe massively glossed over at one point a few generations

00:07:07.200 ago. And that we're going through a period of churn, because we're looking at the downsides,

00:07:13.720 where people used to talk about upsides and so on. And it's possible. But I think if that is

00:07:19.580 what's been going on, it's just gone on uncontested for far too long. So that people haven't just

00:07:28.040 corrected basic untruths. It's not the case that American schoolchildren aren't taught about slavery.

00:07:35.060 It's not the case that British schoolchildren are not taught about the colonial era, or are taught

00:07:41.080 that the colonial era was some sort of grand, wonderful thing we should return to. It's just

00:07:46.140 not the case. And I've gone through all the textbooks of the schools in both countries, just to shoot this

00:07:53.460 down once and for all. American and British schoolchildren are brought up with a lot of teaching

00:08:01.580 about the original sins of their societies. We've got quite enough of that. But it does reframe the

00:08:09.100 country. And I don't understand why we can't look at all of this in the round, except for the fact

00:08:14.560 that this is all being pushed on us by wild ideologues, who want us to see our countries in this

00:08:22.460 remorselessly negative light, who want to turn all of the things that were good in our societies to bad,

00:08:28.140 who want to take all of our heroes and just throw them down, sometimes quite literally, and smash

00:08:33.480 them on the floor to say, look, there's nothing good about you. What have you got to celebrate?

00:08:40.940 Douglas, and one of the things that I find very disconcerting about the events of the last few

00:08:47.400 years in particular is I don't really know what a healthy patriotism looks like anymore. When I came to

00:08:54.580 this country in the mid-90s, I remember people would in this country in the UK would say something

00:09:00.640 like, well, this is the British way, or this is un-British, or in America in particular, people

00:09:06.280 would say, this is America. And that meant certain things. It meant that people are free to have

00:09:12.000 different opinions or whatever. And also, if someone said something is un-American, we all universally knew

00:09:17.980 what that meant. And yet now we're stuck in a position when Francis brought up the idea of

00:09:22.820 patriotism itself. It was, even in the way that he described it, was inextricably linked to

00:09:27.980 nationalism. And we've kind of got to this point where I don't even, if someone asked me, I would

00:09:33.900 struggle to define how we can be proud of ourselves and our country and our history and our heritage

00:09:40.060 without then becoming these evil gammon, you know, bigots with MAGA hats and whatever is the

00:09:47.880 caricature that we are being presented with. And I know that you think about these things carefully,

00:09:52.540 as do we. We don't want to go off one deep end in order to oppose another one. We want to find a

00:09:57.780 healthy course in the middle. What does that look like?

00:10:00.420 I think it's having pride in the things that you've done well, having pride in the things that

00:10:08.040 are remarkable about your country. My late friend Roger Scruton used to say that the nation state

00:10:15.400 was the widest possible application of the first person plural. That is, that you could say we about

00:10:21.160 them. So we say, when we did this, that it was, I mean, of course, there are versions of that with,

00:10:26.960 I know, football teams, people say, we won last week. What the hell did you do? You stood on the

00:10:32.920 terrace and you drank beer and you shouted at a guy a lot fitter than you to run. You know,

00:10:38.080 that's not, that's not exactly we, but, but, but I'm, of course, people do do that with, with,

00:10:44.300 with football teams, with, uh, with sports, where they think of, they think of a collective,

00:10:49.380 even if they themselves have had almost nothing or nothing to do with the success of that collective.

00:10:55.100 Now that nevertheless, they're part of it. Now that, that, that, that should be the case

00:10:59.340 with the nation state. When we did that, I remember some years ago in a conversation with,

00:11:04.220 um, Trevor Phillips, uh, being very stark and very moved when he said at one point in our

00:11:09.260 conversation, when we did this and referring to something in Elizabethan, England. And I remember

00:11:15.960 thinking that's great, you know, like, that's great, uh, for, um, a black, uh, British child

00:11:24.920 of immigrants to Britain to say, we, about the Elizabethan era was just like that, that, that,

00:11:30.920 that to me seemed like almost the ideal, um, that you were so integrated that you would, that you

00:11:36.740 would, you would feel like that you would say, say that now, of course, it's easier to teach the

00:11:41.900 opposite in a way. Uh, and it's, it's, it's fairly easy to teach people a jingoistic, nationalistic,

00:11:48.040 simplistic view of their own past. Um, and that has been done at times in the past. I think

00:11:54.420 in most countries, uh, the late Peter Ustinov used to joke about being, when he was a schoolboy

00:12:00.540 being, you know, having a poster in his classroom, I think of, of, of, of Jesus, you know, sort of

00:12:05.980 signaling to a map where, you know, most of the world was, was, was colored of the color of British

00:12:11.560 empire. You know, he taught as a schoolboy, you know, maybe Jesus wasn't necessarily entirely,

00:12:17.000 you know, involved in the creation of the British empire, but, but he'd look into it. You know,

00:12:20.880 the point is, is that maybe there was a time when that was the case, but, um, you're right that,

00:12:26.500 that, that patriotism and nationalism, particularly in Britain, we worry about, we worry about one going

00:12:31.720 into the other. I didn't have any particular problem with nationalism per se. I'm not,

00:12:35.440 I wouldn't call myself a nationalist. I don't think of myself as a nationalist. I'm, I'm slightly

00:12:40.180 nervous about the term. And I've said this quite often. Um, but, but, but the reason why we don't

00:12:47.240 like nationalism, let's be frank about it. And I said this in Berlin a couple of years ago to

00:12:51.580 significantly not much applause, uh, but just like one of our gigs, Douglas.

00:12:59.600 Right. Yeah. Uh, I said, it was a discussion. And let's be frank about this. It's not that we don't

00:13:08.280 trust, I don't know, the countries in the far East to be able to be nationalist or in the Middle East,

00:13:16.400 or, I mean, there's sort of forms of nationalism in South America or, or Africa. It's not, it's not

00:13:22.660 that we don't trust that. I mean, like nationalistic movements are kind of accepted around the world.

00:13:26.920 It's that we don't trust Europeans with nationalism. Let's go a layer forward. It's that we don't

00:13:31.520 trust Germans with nationalism for very good reason. So my, my belief is, is, is that basically

00:13:39.180 the, the, the, the justifiable fear of German nationalism spilt out into a European fear

00:13:45.240 of nationalism in general in Europe, and then into a fear of nationalism across the West, which

00:13:51.000 has now, um, come to America as well. And, um, I think that is a shame because patriotism is inside

00:13:59.200 of nationalism. Um, but how you feel it, I don't know. I mean, I, I, I, I don't like to overanalyze

00:14:07.000 these things because they're, they're both obvious and hard to describe. It's one of those things,

00:14:12.020 you know, you know, when you see it, I mean, I'm, I'm not nationalistic, but I'm, I'm, I think

00:14:15.900 myself as a very, pretty patriotic because, um, I, and I said this in a book some years

00:14:22.020 ago that, uh, uh, was edited by Gordon Brown and therefore read by nobody. Um, but, but

00:14:29.420 I said there, my attitude towards, um, um, um, my own country has always been one of

00:14:34.260 gratitude. I, I feel, um, I feel very grateful, uh, for it, um, partly because I know what the

00:14:41.580 options, the alternatives might've been. And I, I, I, I find myself, I know I'm not a great

00:14:48.560 flag waver or anything, but I'm, I'm, I move, I'm very moved by my, my, my nation, by what

00:14:53.560 it's done well. And I'm so, I, and I don't like hearing it talked down. I don't like people

00:14:58.900 talking about, uh, heroes of the past in this incredibly negative light. I, I mind it. I,

00:15:04.820 I, I don't, I really resent ideological, uh, extremists for instance, trying to attack

00:15:13.660 Winston Churchill on the most specious, spurious grounds. Um, I, I, I mind because I know that

00:15:21.280 what they're doing is they're attacking one of the holy places of Britishness and they're

00:15:27.060 saying, they're saying it's nothing you guys, even, even Winston Churchill, wasn't anybody

00:15:32.260 in America. There's a version of this. They attack Thomas Jefferson, they attack Abraham

00:15:35.700 Lincoln, you know, and it's like, if you haven't got Lincoln, then you've not really got America.

00:15:40.980 You, you, you, you see what I mean? I say, I, I, I, I, and, and the Patriot recognizes that

00:15:45.780 and, and dislikes it. Um, and, and says, no, that's not fair. That's just not a fair estimation

00:15:51.220 of us. And I think that's what we are in at the moment. It's one of the things I'm trying

00:15:54.180 to push back against is to say what they're doing is not fair. Uh, what they have said

00:16:00.340 about British history, these ideologues in recent years is not fair. It's not fair what

00:16:05.460 they've said about America. Um, it's, it's not the case that slavery is a unique evil of America.

00:16:11.700 Every damn society in world history did slavery in some form and many for a lot longer. Um, it's

00:16:18.020 not fair to pretend that the, that some societies have original sins like Britain, America. Okay.

00:16:26.180 What's the original sin of Nigeria? Tell me that what's the original sin of, uh, Uganda. Tell me

00:16:33.460 that what's the original sin of, uh, of Iraq. Tell me that what's the original sin of Singapore. Tell me

00:16:39.220 that don't tell me that only Western societies have original sins and that we're stuck with them

00:16:44.660 for all time, which is what people like the huckster dominatrix of so-called anti-racism,

00:16:50.740 Robin DiAngelo, pretends that we're stuck with this stuff and we can't escape it. Oh,

00:16:55.940 but the rest of the world doesn't have it. Uh, I've had enough of these people.

00:17:01.700 Douglas, don't you think that what this is, what we're really talking about here is the death of

00:17:06.900 nuance. We don't see that nothing has nuance anymore. Everything's binary. Everything is,

00:17:14.420 you know, Trump or Biden, Brexit remain. And now with this, you know, the British were evil,

00:17:21.140 colonizing Nazi, racist, blah, blah, blah. Nobody ever talks and nobody ever takes the

00:17:27.220 time to analyze the subject, to look at the good, the bad, and then come to their own informed

00:17:32.420 decision. We're just interested in, in reflex reactions. Well, it's, it's, it's worse than

00:17:38.020 that, isn't it, Francis? I mean, they, they actually come for people who try nuance. I mean,

00:17:43.140 somebody who's been a guest on your show, uh, Nigel Bigger, uh, um, experienced this himself. I

00:17:48.740 mentioned him in the war on the West. Uh, he, a couple of years ago at Oxford University after the

00:17:54.500 Cecil Rhodes, um, debate about whether or not the statue of Cecil Rhodes should be torn from the

00:17:59.700 edifice of Oriel College, um, looked into Cecil Rhodes in a way that other people didn't read the,

00:18:06.820 read the entry about him in the dictionary of national biography and, um, and said, oh, actually,

00:18:11.780 people are making stuff up, which they are. And I prove in the book that the Rhodes must fall

00:18:15.700 campaign just made up things that Cecil Rhodes said. They made, they, they, they put the N word

00:18:20.900 into his mouth in quotes that didn't have it. You know, I mean, it's a sort of weird thing to do to,

00:18:26.580 to, to, to make somebody more racist or, or to seek to make somebody more racist historically

00:18:31.540 to fit your own pattern. Nigel Biggeron among others, uh, pointed this out and was just subjected

00:18:36.900 to a slurry of abuse from his peers. I mean, other historians and, and, uh, he said, you know,

00:18:44.580 and tried to at Oxford set up a, a course in the ethics of empire to say, we should look into how to

00:18:51.860 discern if we are going through this post-colonial post-empire phase, let's try to work out how we

00:18:59.220 think about it. Now, Nigel Bigger isn't some, uh, weird whack job extremist. He's, he's the regis

00:19:06.580 professor of ethics at Oxford university. You know, uh, he's not somebody shooting his mouth off.

00:19:14.820 Uh, and he was mauled for this. Um, his, uh, people withdrew from his orbit. They withdrew from

00:19:24.180 involvement in the course, uh, um, other academics, not least, uh, uh, one particular fool at Cambridge

00:19:30.740 university just defamed him in the most unbelievable way. And, and so that's, so the problem is slightly

00:19:37.540 worse than you say, France. I mean, it's not just, it's not just that, that as it were, there's a,

00:19:42.180 there's a reward for taking an extreme stance and sticking with it. Uh, there's, there's a cost to

00:19:49.700 trying to introduce nuance as Nigel Bigger did. There's a cost to that. And I mean, one of the,

00:19:57.140 one of the points I would make on this and do in the book is, you know, somebody said to me recently,

00:20:01.460 you know, what's, what's the best thing that can be said about the British empire? And I said,

00:20:07.940 Amritza and I can see a slight, you know, uh, worry on the face of, uh, of the questioner.

00:20:16.340 So no, the Amritza massacre was a, it was a terrible thing in 1919. It was a terrible thing.

00:20:23.620 Uh, uh, British troops opened fire on a, a crowd and a crowd of unarmed Indians.

00:20:30.180 Winston Churchill decried it in the house of comments along with many others immediately

00:20:34.740 afterwards. But the reason I said Amritza is because in any other empire in history,

00:20:41.220 I would submit, we wouldn't know the name of Amritza. If it was the Belgian empire,

00:20:46.740 we wouldn't know the name. Uh, if, if, if it was Russian troops that had carried out that massacre,

00:20:53.220 we wouldn't know the name of it. If it was German troops, it would be too small an event to register

00:20:58.980 on the radar. Uh, but we remember it because it was the British empire that did it. So,

00:21:07.060 and then that comes back to a point actually all well-made about Gandhi.

00:21:10.820 It's sort of impossible to improve on points and in, in, in almost any other, um, scenario,

00:21:17.220 Mr. Gandhi would not have been heard of because Mr. Gandhi would have been disappeared. Um, he'd have

00:21:23.140 gone into some prison system. So, so let's have some perspective on this. Let's have some understanding

00:21:29.860 of, of this. And, and I, I try, I try, try, try among other things to arm people with the facts on

00:21:34.820 this. I think, I think the facts have basically got lost in the last generation, uh, because people

00:21:40.900 decided that things like slavery and empire, uh, was sort of, they weren't so much in vogue to study.

00:21:46.740 Uh, and so, uh, only ideological obsessives who hated Western societies decided to focus on them.

00:21:54.100 And effectively the field was left, was left vacant so that things were said about our societies that

00:22:00.580 were untrue. And, and they, people basically got away with it. Yeah. And for the reason that you give,

00:22:06.740 which is anyone who attempted to introduce some measure of facts into would immediately be

00:22:11.300 be destroyed, smeared, et cetera. Uh, and Douglas, I know that you're, you're not a conspiratorial

00:22:16.980 person, but how do you see, is this a war that the West is waging on itself or are the people in

00:22:25.780 our societies who are minded to do this getting help? Oh, that's a very interesting question. Um,

00:22:31.860 uh, several things. One, I think to a great extent, it has happened organically. As I say,

00:22:37.620 it's a sort of response, uh, but there is obviously a huge interest in the rest of the world, uh,

00:22:45.620 or certainly countries that dislike, uh, the Western, uh, democracies, uh, whipping this along.

00:22:52.500 Um, I, I have a, I have a chapter, as you know, and I do these, uh, I do in the book, each, each

00:22:58.180 chapter is, the first one is essentially the war on white people, which I think is an extraordinarily

00:23:03.940 dangerous thing that is going on at the moment where only white people are allowed to be spoken

00:23:08.820 about in, in the most derogatory racializing terms, um, which we would rightly deplore if

00:23:14.660 it was used against anybody else. So the first chapter is basically the war on white people,

00:23:17.940 then the war on Western history, but then the war on Western, um, uh, religion and ideas,

00:23:24.100 including its philosophy. And then the war on, uh, on, on Western culture, which is, you know,

00:23:29.220 where we see this remorseless movement, just take everything in our past, the part and everything

00:23:34.180 we've inherited that's good. Uh, but in between, like in the madness of crowds, I do these, these,

00:23:38.980 these interlude chapters, as you know, and one of the interlude chapters is, you know, what the,

00:23:42.740 what's the rest of the world doing whilst we do this. And, and, and, and an example of something

00:23:48.340 that I give that, which is much of my mind is, I mean, first of all, like, does you, I mean,

00:23:53.780 you don't, but I mean, like, does anybody serious think that China cares about racism?

00:24:02.100 Anybody honestly think that? Because if so, they are totally deluded. Uh, but, uh, at the United

00:24:10.580 Nations, uh, a year ago, uh, in the opening months of the Biden administration, Ambassador

00:24:16.900 Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the UN gave a speech on one of these sorts of

00:24:22.820 international racism awareness days, you know, one of these days that always does a lot of good.

00:24:29.060 Um, and, uh, she gave a speech at the UN where she talked about how racist America is.

00:24:36.980 And she talked about George Floyd and she talked about, uh, Oh, the Asians, the, the, uh, the,

00:24:43.780 the spa incident where this, that, that guy, you know, a year ago, it was guy, um,

00:24:50.020 maniac shot up a massage parlor. Uh, and, uh, and because, um, the number of the women were

00:24:58.340 of Asian origin, uh, it was, uh, put down as an anti-Asian hate crime by some friends. It turned

00:25:03.780 out that actually, um, that didn't seem to be the man's motivation. Uh, he was just a, um, a maniac.

00:25:09.300 He also seemed to have a sex addiction and seemed to be attacking the massage parlor because

00:25:14.020 the fact was a massage parlor, not because the women were Asian. I go into this. Why? Because

00:25:19.060 Linda Thomas-Greenfield, before the facts were out, gave that as an example of ongoing racism in

00:25:24.020 America. So she's on the floor of the United Nations telling the world that America is racist

00:25:29.940 because of something that was not a racist incident. Oh, and at the end of the speech,

00:25:35.620 Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield of the, of the United States remembers to say, also,

00:25:39.940 there is racism going on the rest of the world after all the Uyghur concentration camps in China,

00:25:43.940 and also, uh, the treatment of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. And, uh, the next speaker up on the

00:25:49.940 floor of the United Nations is the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, who says,

00:25:54.340 you have no right. America has no right to talk about China because it has done,

00:26:00.100 this is what the representatives from China said, it has done something. America has done

00:26:03.860 something unprecedented in the history of the United Nations. It has come here and confessed to its

00:26:08.100 racism and its guilt. So we will not listen to them. Wow. I'm like, what an own goal. So this is,

00:26:16.260 this is one of the problems is that, is that bad actors like, uh, the, like the Chinese communist

00:26:24.180 party, certainly government in Moscow and, and, and, and other just hostile governments who are hostile to

00:26:32.020 the West seem quite understandably, they, they, they, they think what a gift this, this is the,

00:26:39.380 these people seem to think that they're guilty of everything that's wrong in the world and, uh,

00:26:43.460 uh, and so on. And we happen to be able to pretend that we agree with them for cynical reasons. Um,

00:26:49.860 and sometimes push that along. Um, but I think that it is a self-inflicted wound first and foremost,

00:26:56.100 you know, we've allowed, we've allowed people to say these things about ourselves from our own

00:27:00.500 societies. You know, the, the problem is it's, it's, it's, it's our institutions have gone rotten

00:27:05.060 in countries like Britain. You know, it's the mayor of London who set up, uh, uh, uh, after the, the,

00:27:10.580 the madness of the post-George Floyd moment, um, who set up a commission for, what's it,

00:27:18.020 just statuary in the public realm or something like that, had some crazily Robespierre-esque title.

00:27:26.660 And, um, and this, this, this commission to, to investigate what needs to come down in London

00:27:32.740 and what needs to come up. First of all, who the, who the hell do you think you are to be,

00:27:38.580 to, to have the right to decide that? Who the hell could you appoint to such a committee to decide

00:27:43.460 that? You know, even if Nigel Bigger was, was the chair of that committee, I think that, no,

00:27:48.340 I don't think, I don't think any committee has the right to just decide what should and shouldn't

00:27:54.420 be allowed from our past and our inheritance in our capital city in London to remain on display.

00:28:02.340 But they didn't appoint any kind of, they appointed a bunch of radicals

00:28:06.980 officials to decide what our, what our past should be. They employed people like that nutter, uh, black

00:28:14.420 activist who, uh, who abused the queen in Westminster Abbey and had to be escorted out

00:28:19.540 a few years ago and threatened to punch a black security guard at Westminster Abbey. They, they got

00:28:25.220 him to be one of the members of this roast Darian committee to decide what our past was. You know,

00:28:31.220 they, they, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the same thing, institution across institution,

00:28:35.700 the national trust, you know, uh, uh, what's the national multi-million member organization

00:28:42.420 where people would, you know, decent, you know, mainly middle-class people pay money to be members

00:28:49.380 of an organization where they can at the weekend go to a nice house and enjoy a cup of tea. The heads

00:28:55.140 of that organization, um, believe in something called the green unpleasant land. This is one of the

00:29:02.740 the documents they, they published about Britain, the green unpleasant land, uh, uh, that everything

00:29:09.060 to do with Britain is racist. That, that, I mean, I, I, of course, as ever, I have great fun with some

00:29:14.980 of these people, but I mean, one of my favorite bits of my book, if I can say so myself, is the

00:29:20.100 chapter on racist gardening. Um, um, uh, the, the, the, the, everything is racist. Gardening is racist.

00:29:28.820 The lawns are racist. Um, order is racist. Um, well, to hell with these people. They've taken

00:29:37.300 over institution after institution in our own country. It didn't need the Kremlin to appoint

00:29:42.260 these people. The national trust did it to itself. The mayor of London did it to us. You know,

00:29:47.620 consecutive politicians did it to us. It's the labor party that commissioned a report and published it

00:29:54.420 talking about reparations. Britain paid reparations. We've paid down our reparations. We don't owe

00:30:00.340 anyone any reparations. We don't, but it was a British labor party that commissioned a report

00:30:06.980 that claimed that we do. We do this to ourselves. It's conservative politicians who can't stand up for

00:30:14.020 our own country's culture. You know, it's, it's our own MPs who don't know our past that didn't need

00:30:21.460 the CCP to teach us that they just piggyback off the back of this horrible, horrible masochistic

00:30:29.540 society that we've been created. Your full great outdoors comedy festival lineup is here on September

00:30:35.860 11th through 13th at Arendale park, three nights, five shows, huge laughs, September 11th through 13th.

00:30:43.220 Buy tickets now at great outdoors, comedy festival.com.

00:30:46.740 Douglas, let's be fair. Isn't this just preying on white guilt? This is all it is. I remember

00:30:54.660 talking to a friend of mine, a comedian, uh, Asian guy, and I said to him, why do you think

00:30:59.540 this is all happening? He was like, oh, it's just monetizing white guilt. Yes, I think that's,

00:31:04.580 I think that's great. That's greatly true. So let me say something that needs to be said. I don't feel

00:31:08.740 any white guilt. I don't feel any guilt, hereditary guilt. I feel guilt for things I've done in my own

00:31:16.020 life that have been wrong. I feel guilt sometimes to my actions towards other people, which are not

00:31:19.860 as generous as they could have been. I feel guilt about my own life. I feel no hereditary guilt and

00:31:25.860 nobody else should either. Nobody else should either. You are not guilty because you are born white any more

00:31:33.460 than you are guilty because you are born black. It is a totally neutral thing. It is the place that

00:31:39.380 you start from. Nothing is built into it. So what has happened is that too few people have been willing

00:31:47.540 in recent years to say what I just said. It's a straightforward thing. No, there is no such thing

00:31:53.540 as white guilt. We will not have you pretending that there is. We will not have you pretending that

00:31:58.660 there are what, I mean, what's the latest pathologizing terms we've had, uh, we've had

00:32:02.900 white tears. We've had white women's tears. We've had missing white woman syndrome, uh, given to us

00:32:09.860 by MSNBC when a, uh, a woman was, was killed by her boyfriend, both of them white and, and, uh, this

00:32:17.140 unbelievable racist huckster in America, um, said this is missing white woman syndrome that people know,

00:32:24.100 no people actually just, just, you know, are kind of against people being murdered by their

00:32:29.220 boyfriends. They don't like it. Um, there's no racialization of it. Uh, uh, but we have all

00:32:35.780 it. What's a white rage, white rage. Remember that one? And this isn't one of the things I keep trying

00:32:41.620 to bring across. I hope I do is that this isn't some fringe movement. This isn't just Ibram X. Kendi,

00:32:48.100 not, you know, talking in some silo. This is the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff,

00:32:54.660 Mark Milley saying to Senate and Congress that he wants to look into white rage.

00:33:01.860 There's no such thing as white rage. There's no such thing just that there's no such thing as white

00:33:06.740 tears or white guilt or anything else, no such thing. And if you do think there's such a thing,

00:33:12.820 then play it the other way around. Say you're interested in black rage. Say you're interested

00:33:18.020 in black tears and that you want to taunt people when they're black and they cry. How dare, how dare

00:33:24.260 people talk like this? They would never do it about anybody else. And it's high time they stopped doing

00:33:29.860 it about white people. It's absolutely reprehensible and disgusting. And you're quite right,

00:33:34.260 Francis. It's people taking advantage of basically scared and cowed white people who are fearful that

00:33:43.220 these things actually exist, that they should feel some guilt or historical, you know, responsibility.

00:33:51.300 And, and then the way the race hucksters come along, the Robin De Angelos, the Abram X. Kendi's,

00:33:58.100 and so on. And my God, are they coining it? So I'm one of my self-appointed roles is to put an end to

00:34:06.340 that racket. And Douglas, the fact that this racket is, has been effective or as effective as it has

00:34:15.780 been, is that a product of our success? Are we that comfortable? Are we that rich? Are we, do we have

00:34:23.060 that much spare time now that we can engage in this navel gazing because we're no longer scrapping

00:34:28.580 to survive, to, to put food on the table? Is that where it's coming from? Well, I would have thought

00:34:34.100 that, um, and I would have hoped it in a way. And I think that actually when, when we spoke at one

00:34:40.580 point during the pandemic, near the beginning of the pandemic, I think we might even have said

00:34:45.780 that maybe the pandemic was going to do away with the sort of identity politics era, you know?

00:34:53.060 I have a natural predisposition to hoping that anything, something, anything does away with

00:35:00.020 the woke shit at some point. I've got a natural predisposition because I, I just don't want to

00:35:04.740 talk about it a moment longer than I have to. I don't want my, I don't want my brain cells to be

00:35:08.980 clogged up with this detritus. Um, and, and so of course I wish it was the case. Um, I just see that,

00:35:18.820 you know, the same games being played. I suppose my, my, my short, my, my, my, my prediction,

00:35:25.780 such as, I mean, it's obviously stupid to make predictions at any time, particularly now,

00:35:28.980 my prediction in a way of that at the moment is this, I think that, I think the people who do that

00:35:33.780 are going to double down, but the rest of society is going to have less tolerance for it.

00:35:38.660 I, I, I, and I think that's because, and Lionel Shriver said this recently as well, that,

00:35:45.620 you know, the woke stuff was always a, a rich time and a rich people's obsession. I mean, it was a,

00:35:54.660 it, it, it happened because of a society that didn't have enough problems. You know,

00:36:00.740 it, we didn't have enough of the things that were being complained about. You know,

00:36:04.500 it's only if you've got a society that doesn't tolerate aggression, that you can decide to go

00:36:13.940 to the layer below that and decide to police microaggressions. Like no society in history

00:36:20.420 before ours would have given a damn about so-called microaggressions. Uh, so it's, it's a product of wealth,

00:36:28.180 wealth, boredom, uh, bad education, illiteracy, and much more. Uh, but, but it's, it's,

00:36:36.340 I'm, I'm, I'm pretty confident that as, um, sadly, that as we're all up for, we already are suffering

00:36:43.940 economically. Many, many people have lost their jobs, uh, don't see how they're going to be able to

00:36:51.780 keep their finances together. I just expect that those people are going to care

00:36:57.220 or even less than they already did. If Sam Smith claims that somebody misgendered him,

00:37:04.660 according to what he claims to be this fortnight. And, uh, and I think that's fine. I think that'd

00:37:10.180 be a healthy thing. I think, I think we have, as I say, we've all had our minds clogged up by a lot,

00:37:15.620 too much nonsense. And, but as I say, I mean, you know, both of these things can happen simultaneously,

00:37:22.180 people doubling down and the wider population saying, no, we've, we've, we've had enough of

00:37:27.060 that. We've, we've got real problems now. So we don't have time for your imaginary ones.

00:37:32.180 Forlorn hope. Um, uh, you know, within no seconds, you've got, uh, the racialization of the pandemic.

00:37:43.620 You have, um, uh, what's her name? Uh, Afua Hirsch, sort of one of the British race hucksters who,

00:37:50.180 uh, you know, the only achievement has been to write a memoir about growing up in the wild hoods of Wimbledon.

00:37:56.660 Um, um, uh, but, uh, and then to describe her appalling oppression of winning a place at Oxford

00:38:04.100 University, um, uh, Afua Hirsch used to be an it girl before she became, uh, um, an aggrieved, uh, um,

00:38:12.740 campaigner for social justice. Uh, so that, that's what can happen in our era, by the way,

00:38:17.700 I mean, the, the, the canny people of all types, uh, um, spot where it's going and they adjust their

00:38:23.860 stories appropriately. Um, and, and they, they present the most successful societies as being

00:38:33.140 the least successful. They present the most racially diverse and harmonious societies as

00:38:39.380 the least racially harmonious and diverse. And I'm afraid at this point, it's sometimes quite hard to

00:38:46.100 disentangle the reality. And I, and it's one of the things I tried to do in the book, but

00:38:51.060 uh, uh, by the way, before I do say, say what I'm about to say, let me also add,

00:38:55.540 I think that you and I, uh, you two and I, if we're talking at the beginning of the Ukraine war,

00:39:01.300 after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine might've said, Oh, maybe this crap is going to stop in the

00:39:06.420 West. Again, sorry for long hope. Uh, and nothing seems to wake us up to the fact that we're doing

00:39:14.660 these mad things, but we are misrepresenting ourselves to ourselves and it's provable.

00:39:21.620 Let me give you a quick example. There was a poll in 2020, which asked Americans, um,

00:39:26.660 how many unarmed black Americans they think are shot every year by the American police.

00:39:33.860 And, uh, among people who describe themselves as liberal, a very significant number thought that

00:39:40.900 the figure was somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 among people who describe themselves as very

00:39:47.700 liberal, a significant portion, I think about 40% said that the number was over 10,000. That is that

00:39:54.900 more than 10,000 unarmed black men are killed every year by the American police. Do you know what the

00:40:00.260 figure was that year? 10, 10, so they're off by several orders of magnitude. Um, now, and by the way,

00:40:08.340 10 is, is, is, um, less than the number of American police officers killed by armed black men in the

00:40:16.100 same period. So put that aside for a second. America has, has many, many problems with my,

00:40:23.140 like every country, but, but it's, it's provable that the American public have a totally distorted

00:40:30.580 view of their own country now because the press and the media and race huxers and others have given

00:40:37.220 them a distorted view. So it becomes quite hard for people to work out what is real and what is not.

00:40:44.100 You know, I think most of us, because we were locked in our isolation during the post George Floyd

00:40:48.500 period had a moment of thinking on seeing the news about his, his, his death thinking,

00:40:55.460 crikey, can you do that in America? Is it the case that policemen can just kill black people

00:41:01.380 with impunity? And the answer is, of course, of course not. Of course not. Um, uh, but there was

00:41:07.700 a moment because everyone had lost their social antennae and much more where I think a lot of

00:41:13.380 people thought maybe that is the case. There's this, there's this song. It actually happened to

00:41:18.100 John Peterson and I, the other week with a show in New York where there was a, um, by David Burns and there's a

00:41:24.740 song during a show where he said, I want, I've asked to borrow this song because, uh, um, uh,

00:41:31.380 which is the say her name song, say their name, totally banal. It's not really a song. It's just

00:41:37.460 a sort of chant. And, uh, David Burns is Scottish born pop star said, uh, uh, you know, I asked if

00:41:44.020 I could sing this despite the fact that I'm a white male and you know, do I have the right and all this

00:41:48.740 sort of shit. And I, I said to Jordan after God, it just feels like you can never escape. Doesn't

00:41:54.100 it? You can't go to the matinee at the theater without having this crap forced down our throats.

00:41:59.620 It's just so demoralizing. Anyhow. But the point is that that song is a total crock. We can all say

00:42:05.620 the names of every single person who was shot by the American police in recent years in, in the last

00:42:12.500 decade in debatable circumstances, everybody knows the name of Brianna Taylor. Uh, you know,

00:42:21.620 everyone knows the name of Freddie Gray. It's not like these are hidden names. We pretend these are

00:42:27.860 hidden cases of, of secret oppression by the American state. Horrible things were done in, in,

00:42:36.100 in the, in the American past, like every country. But I mean, it is not the case that today,

00:42:42.500 this is permissible and goes on yet. The American people have been told it has. I give the examples

00:42:47.620 in the book of just, I mean, ludicrous examples, American campuses that keep having these weird

00:42:53.140 morals stampedes. Um, in, in the last decade, I have great fun with it, but in the last decade,

00:43:00.020 there've been, Oh, I mean, American campuses where one was put into lockdown because there was a claimed

00:43:06.020 sighting of a member of the KKK walking around campus with a whip.

00:43:13.300 Guys, what do you think is the likelihood that solitary members of the KKK wander around liberal

00:43:19.460 arts colleges in America holding whips? What do you think the chances are? Zero. Nada.

00:43:25.540 Okay. The campus goes into lockdown. Uh, it turns out that the alleged member of the KKK is a Dominican

00:43:33.300 monk who is walking across campus, carrying a rosary. You have, you have examples of, of campuses going

00:43:43.460 into meltdown because there have been alleged sightings of a noose as if there's a lynching about

00:43:50.020 to happen. Okay. And it turns out it's the plastic wrap of a refuse sack that was lying on the floor.

00:44:00.420 On another occasion, a campus goes into meltdown in America because a girl says that a noose has been

00:44:05.860 hung outside the door and dorm room. It's and the KKK therefore were clearly present that day.

00:44:12.660 And it turns out that somebody put a spare shoelace on a hook.

00:44:16.260 Luke. So this is a society in America in particular, that is, is deranged and has a deranged and

00:44:24.420 wrongheaded view of itself. It's why, when I was in America before the 2020 election in like Seattle,

00:44:32.020 the whole foods had a great big sign, bigger than the sign that the whole thing was boarded up of

00:44:37.300 course. But there was, there was a sign that said whole foods, just so you knew which boarded up hell

00:44:41.940 whole shop you were going into, but a much bigger sign said racists are not welcome here.

00:44:47.540 Luke. Well, who the hell thought they were? Who the hell thought that the KKK gather in the fruit

00:44:54.900 and nut aisle of the whole foods in Seattle? What Uber hired the whole side of a building

00:45:02.500 to say that racists, if you're a racist, don't have, don't download our app. We don't want you.

00:45:12.900 Where's the evidence of so much racism that Uber has to take out an entire side of a building to say

00:45:19.220 this? Americans have been force-fed a false interpretation of their present. And to the

00:45:27.140 enormous detriment of the rest of us in the West, we've all been made to imbibe a version of it

00:45:32.260 ourselves as well. And it is partly a product of our well-to-do-ness, our boredom, our lack of causes,

00:45:43.540 our desire to be part of a great cause, our loss of meaning, and much more, and just our comfort.

00:45:56.260 Of course, it has much to do with that. We wouldn't be doing this if, as you say,

00:46:03.060 that we had to worry about putting food on the table. And my worry is that what we're actually

00:46:09.220 doing is basically we're killing the goose that laid the golden egg. But at the end of all of this,

00:46:15.220 at the end of the systems, most likely to set up harmonious societies where people can get on

00:46:24.740 and get on not just with each other, but get on in their lives. We decide these are just the

00:46:30.180 most oppressive societies, the most original sin-ridden societies, and just best to do away with it.

00:46:36.260 Douglas, we're talking about racism and the perception of race, but it mirrors exactly what

00:46:45.780 happened with COVID. My girlfriend's from New York. When she went back to New York to see the

00:46:50.580 organisation that she worked in, the people she knew, the people she went to college with,

00:46:56.500 they're absolutely terrified about COVID. They refused to hug her in Central Park.

00:47:01.300 And some of them were still, well, this was a couple of months ago, and some of them were

00:47:05.540 wearing two masks. And these were intelligent people who went to Ivy League colleges. So it's

00:47:10.340 not just about racism. It's also something, to me, far deeper, where we, in many ways,

00:47:16.420 we live a life that's so safe that we can't properly assess risk without completely losing our minds.

00:47:22.740 Oh, that's certainly true. That's certainly true. I personally resigned myself to the fact that

00:47:29.860 there will be a portion of the public who will triple mask for the rest of time. Well, farewell to

00:47:34.900 them. Farewell to them. You know, shame not to see their faces, but there we go. We lost them.

00:47:45.220 There are people for whom, particularly in America, that's just an identity issue,

00:47:48.500 and largely created by the absurd way in which everything in American politics is just totally

00:47:56.740 binary. If Donald Trump had been pro-mask, Republicans would have been pro-mask and Democrats

00:48:03.780 would be flaunting their noses and their chins in public. They would be congregating in public places,

00:48:12.900 inside, without masks. It's only because the Republicans, Donald Trump went one way that they

00:48:19.140 went so far the other. That's just, that's how American politics works now. And you've just got to

00:48:24.660 try to step away from being too deranged by yourself. Well, Douglas, let me interrupt you there,

00:48:29.300 because this is something I wanted to ask you very much about, which is the derangement that seems to

00:48:34.500 be happening. And of course, your last book was called The Madness of Crowds.

00:48:38.020 Yeah. And you talked largely about the madness of crowds that is coming from the very people we've

00:48:44.020 been talking about today. But in recent times, I think both you and I and some other people have

00:48:49.440 also noticed that there's a, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And there is an equal

00:48:56.580 and opposite derangement that seems to me emerging on the other side of the political spectrum. Talk to us

00:49:01.900 about that. Well, this is very interesting. I'm so glad you bring this up. Yes, you're completely

00:49:07.200 right. Some, some years ago, Jordan and I had a conversation about where the left goes wrong.

00:49:14.000 And we had it on the presumption that we recognize both of us and perhaps wider people recognize where

00:49:22.320 the right goes wrong. And therefore, it was more fruitful to have a discussion about where the left

00:49:28.400 goes wrong, because people haven't really worked that out. And still haven't. Today, I mean, I would say,

00:49:36.080 we also need to have that discussion about where the right goes wrong, because there are clearly

00:49:40.480 elements of the American right and, and European right and others who are going wrong. And as

00:49:48.240 somebody who's more identified with that side than the ideological left, you know, that is, that is a

00:49:52.800 concern to me and is, is, is terrain that worries me. I'm not interested in not critiquing people who are,

00:50:02.240 you know, vaguely allied with me or on my own side, you know, and I think that, I think,

00:50:09.040 well, if I just say something, I want your view on this. I mean, I think basically what's happened

00:50:13.200 in the last few years, we've had, we've had a succession of things that's essentially isolated

00:50:17.760 all of us from each other. I mean, um, the COVID debate was highly, highly divisive, because it was

00:50:24.720 something most of us have not thought about. And suddenly, everybody had extremely strong views about

00:50:28.960 very few people thought about pandemics. Suddenly, you had to have very strong views.

00:50:34.160 Um, and that was totally unconnected with all the existing, well, aside from the politicization

00:50:40.800 over in America, was largely unconnected, I should say, with most preexisting ideological divides.

00:50:47.040 So the COVID thing came down and it split people, even among each other, even around families,

00:50:52.480 even among people who pretty much agree. Then you had things like the masking thing that, that did

00:50:57.520 more of it. Then you had things like the, look at the ivermectin debate. I mean, there are people

00:51:03.440 who've fallen out with each other over whether or not ivermectin is, A, the miracle cure for COVID,

00:51:09.360 or B, not, um, with no permitted terrain in the middle for, I don't know, we don't seem to know

00:51:16.800 quite enough. Maybe you'd have something, but it's not the wonder drug that you, you know.

00:51:21.600 That's divided people. Then you come across, then Russia, I don't know, fast forward to a whole

00:51:27.680 succession of other crazy events. Russia invades Ukraine, and then that suddenly divides people as

00:51:34.400 well. You, you, uh, my point is, is that on the sort of family tree of events that have occurred in

00:51:40.480 recent years, very few of us have traveled exactly the same path and ended up in exactly the same place.

00:51:49.440 You know, they'll, and, and, and so I think we've probably all had the experience of feeling like

00:51:56.800 we've lost friends to some corner of this and finding it hard to bring them back. And, and in a way,

00:52:08.400 I don't want to say bring them back because that sounds, that sounds like there's a correct position

00:52:14.560 and just set of obviously incorrect ones. I don't want to suggest that I, I, uh, maybe I could put it

00:52:21.840 better. I think keeping them in the fold of the reasonable discussion, something like that.

00:52:28.560 The one thing I would say, Douglas, that you, you mentioned, you know, having our input on it,

00:52:34.080 that maybe is worth adding to the mix of the things that you've talked about is the deep,

00:52:40.400 deep alienation many, many people feel with the mainstream media.

00:52:45.520 Yeah, absolutely.

00:52:46.560 Absolutely. And the product of that is, I think when you talk about Russia and Ukraine,

00:52:50.720 and you've written recently about a fringe of the right in America seeming to, to, to like Putin

00:52:56.400 and be obsessed with him and think he's doing the right thing. I think a lot of that is...

00:53:00.560 Not that much of a fringe either.

00:53:01.920 Yeah. Well, well, let's talk about that in a sec, because I think for me, where part of that comes

00:53:08.160 from is there are a lot of people who, who now believe that the truth is the opposite of whatever

00:53:16.240 the mainstream media says.

00:53:18.000 Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:53:20.320 I think that's where it's coming from to a large extent.

00:53:22.560 Absolutely. Um, you can see it in the people who are like bored with, with President Zelensky

00:53:28.560 being presented as a hero. Like I'm bored of him being presented as a hero. Therefore,

00:53:33.280 I'll find out other stuff about him. I'll decide he's a Nazi. Yes, you're right. To a great extent,

00:53:40.800 it is what, and again, people are onto something about the, the, the, the, the suspicion of the

00:53:49.840 narrative they're given. You know, I agree with that. I mean, I'm, I'm pretty fed up with the way

00:53:55.200 in which, you know, I mean, obviously for most of us, for many people, the, the, the, the moment of

00:54:02.240 transition that was sharpest, the most obvious was the movement between stay at home, isolate,

00:54:09.120 and then get onto the streets and protest about racism. Okay. The movement. I had a lot of readers

00:54:17.200 who've said this to me, but the, that was one where the whiplash was, was clear enough that people

00:54:23.360 noticed it. Definitely. That, that, that, that suddenly the, the pandemic was replaced by another

00:54:30.720 pandemic, which was racism and that, and that, and the answers to that were totally the opposite

00:54:34.560 of the answers to the other pandemic. So I think a lot of people have that. Um, uh, so, so we have

00:54:39.840 right, that we have good reasons to be rightly suspicious of media narratives and of political

00:54:45.120 narratives. However, that does not mean that, as you say, that the opposite of everything is true.

00:54:54.640 Um, and, uh, I think there is on the Russia thing, there are a set of things, but the most interesting

00:55:04.800 to me is, well, two things I made very quickly. One is let's talk again, historical ignorance. We are

00:55:11.920 dealing very significantly with people who know, uh, we've discussed this before. No, nothing about,

00:55:16.880 uh, communism. No, nothing about the communist era. No, nothing about the cold war. No, nothing about

00:55:22.320 Russia in the 20th century. No, nothing about, about the Kremlin and are discovering have been

00:55:31.600 discovering it for the first time. I mean, imagine, imagine somebody who has grown up into, you know,

00:55:39.120 born in 2002, say a complete sentient adult. They're now, they're now 20 years of age. They

00:55:43.840 were born after nine 11. They were born more than a decade after the end of the cold war,

00:55:49.120 the breakup of the Soviet union. Um, and suddenly they're told about Russia and Ukraine. And what

00:55:55.520 do they know? They just learn fast. They learn something fast. What's the best way to do that?

00:55:59.840 Just grab a, grab an opinion off the shelf. Um, uh, and you can do it on any subject, but this is,

00:56:05.760 this is one of them. Uh, so that's one thing is we're, we are, we are very often talking in the,

00:56:12.000 in, in this space with people who, who genuinely seem to find it surprising that for instance,

00:56:18.160 there is such a thing as Russian disinformation. Well, but, but again, you can't entirely blame

00:56:26.560 them because on the one hand, they never knew anything about Russia. Yeah. They never knew

00:56:30.480 anything about the Kremlin or its tactics. And on the other hand, they've been force fed lies

00:56:36.160 about Kremlin disinformation in recent years. And everybody who voted Brexit was told that they'd

00:56:41.280 done it because the Kremlin told them to do it. And everyone who voted Trump was told that it was

00:56:45.440 the Kremlin that made them do it. So to hell with your Kremlin stories, I'm going to watch Russia today,

00:56:50.640 get the real story. So that's one thing. The second thing, which, uh, which is in a way is even more

00:56:59.600 interesting to me is let's start to admit something which nobody has yet, which is that the right has

00:57:06.880 been going wrong recently because it's, it's, it's absorbed a form of the criticism of its own society

00:57:14.160 that was previously the preserve of the ideological left. So since the war in Ukraine started,

00:57:21.600 there are people on the right saying things like, who are we to stop, uh, Vladimir Putin?

00:57:29.440 Look at the millions of people we killed in Iraq. Now that, apart from being untrue about the

00:57:37.040 millions of people killed, the people killed in Iraq, like in Afghanistan were primarily killed by

00:57:42.000 Islamists and various other militia, uh, is not to override any of the mistakes made. But my point

00:57:50.080 is that is a, that is a claim and a figure that used to only come from the Chomskyite left.

00:57:57.120 You never heard that from patriotic Americans of the right. They didn't do that stuff. There was a

00:58:03.040 sort of Buchananite fringe of the right to played with some of that stuff and isolationist fringe of

00:58:07.760 the right. But you didn't hear those left-wing stories of who are we because we did this bad

00:58:14.400 thing in, in the Vietnam or something. And therefore we don't have the right to do this now

00:58:18.560 or to criticize people. Now that used to be the left that did that. Now a segment of the right is

00:58:23.200 doing it. Let me give you another example. Um, my close enemy, uh, Julian Assange, uh, uh, used to be,

00:58:31.920 uh, a hero only to parts of the left. He's become a hero to parts of the right. Edward Snowden,

00:58:39.920 the sniveling little grot bag used to be a hero only to the American left. And he's become a hero

00:58:46.480 to the American right. Like part of the right has gone into the same place that part of the left used

00:58:55.920 to be in. And I desperately want them to come back in from it. You know, Edward Snowden

00:59:05.920 decided to mass steal American national security secrets and expose the intelligence gathering

00:59:13.200 secrets of America and her allies, including Britain sought sanctuary. It seems first of all,

00:59:21.200 in China and ended up plumping to have sanctuary in Putin's Russia. Does anyone think that there's

00:59:28.080 something completely kosher about that? Okay. You may, you may deplore some of the things that

00:59:34.480 were discovered in the Snowden files, but you have to be an idiot to think that Edward Snowden is,

00:59:40.320 is, is, is some kind of whiter than white hero in this, but a part of the right now does just like

00:59:46.960 a part of the left used to. And I mean, I've remained filled with hatred of both of these

00:59:53.520 people consistently for the last decade, because I think if you did have concerns, for instance,

00:59:59.360 about the way in which your, if you worked for the intelligence community and you had concerns about

01:00:06.080 how it's operating, there are many better ways to address that. I should have thought than handing over

01:00:11.040 all of those secrets to Vladimir Putin or the Chinese communist party. Um, so yeah, I, I, I'm sort of

01:00:19.680 amazed to watch a part of the right do this. Um, it's ended up and it's so unpatriotic. I, I, I, and then

01:00:28.160 they go into other conspiracy theories. I mean, there are people on the right in America who now sort of

01:00:31.760 say things like, you know, I'm starting to doubt whether we actually landed on the moon,

01:00:35.520 but you're even taking away your extraordinary accomplishments. Like you can, you can answer

01:00:45.360 this constantly. I mean, you know, Russia managed to land on the moon. Um, is there anyone in Russia

01:00:51.520 who would consider themselves as ordinarily patriotic, who would doubt that they did or would think the

01:00:57.600 whole thing was made up? No, I don't know. I mean, I mean, can you imagine anyone doing that?

01:01:04.160 Douglas, let me posit a theory for you and see what you think about this. My working theory on

01:01:10.240 why there are elements of the right doing this is that because of the media lies and because of the

01:01:17.120 political lies we have had for a period of time, and because of the intensity of those lies and the

01:01:22.640 consistency of those lies, there is a portion of, so the, the far left always hated the West. They

01:01:28.160 hate the West in general and they support the West enemies and that's par for the course. And we expect

01:01:32.720 that. But on the right, what I think is happening is there are sections of the right that are so

01:01:37.760 disillusioned with what has been happening as frankly, you and I and Francis all are really,

01:01:42.880 but their response to that is to hate the Western elites as much as the far left hate the West.

01:01:50.640 And so they now feel a, some kind of affinity with people who are attacking what they think of the

01:01:58.400 Western elites. They think that Vladimir Putin, this Christian, Christian.

01:02:04.640 Yeah, that's one of the best, totally uncynically adopted, the Christian faith.

01:02:08.800 Yeah, the KGB colonel, head of the KGB, massive Christian is all about turning the other cheek

01:02:15.040 and forgiveness. They think that he is a beacon of, of some kind of pushback against this,

01:02:24.800 this anti-Christian, anti, you know, he's pushing back against the trans, which they,

01:02:31.120 they think Vladimir Putin really cares about trans, Douglas. That's it. I think that,

01:02:36.400 what do you think of, what do you make of that idea?

01:02:38.640 Yeah, I think that's true. I think there's a segment of the right that mistakenly thinks of,

01:02:44.720 the Kremlin, for instance, being a bulwark against the craziness of our own side. And this is one of

01:02:49.680 the reasons why this needs to be addressed. It's why the whole damn thing needs to be addressed,

01:02:53.600 why we need to get our past in correct order, for instance, or in some correct approximation.

01:03:00.480 It's why we need to, in the present, not derange ourselves with absolutely ludicrous stories. I

01:03:07.920 mean, um, you know, obviously I wrote about that stuff in the manners of crowds, but, um,

01:03:12.400 you know, I just wrote about recently this story of, uh, it's just too much fun not to mention,

01:03:18.320 but that one of the, the, the, the, the, the woman who used the wheelie bin as a sex toy in public,

01:03:25.040 exposing her penis, and you just go, oh, for God's sake, first of all, how do you use a wheelie

01:03:31.360 bin as a sex toy? That's very strange. Or any form of bin. Uh, anyhow, but then that's not what's

01:03:38.000 wrong with the, the, the headline. I mean, that's comparatively minor in the headline of anything,

01:03:42.480 like her penis? What? Now, of course there was a type of person, and I know some, uh, I mean,

01:03:49.440 like my friend Saurabh Amari would be one who, who just, who says, I confess I've, I've had enough

01:03:54.800 of it. I've, I've had enough of this liberal madness. I've had enough of her penis. I've had

01:04:02.480 enough of, um, uh, of all this stuff. Um, uh, uh, Western liberalism's the problem.

01:04:11.840 It's the same thing with, I mean, I think actually again, Saurabh, um, uh, felt bad over

01:04:20.160 the silencing of the New York post by Twitter and Facebook. That was a total scandal. I mean,

01:04:25.760 unbelievable scandal. I'm a columnist in the New York post. I, I love the paper. I think it was an

01:04:29.680 absolute scandal. What happened where the post got the Hunter Biden files, tried to run them before

01:04:36.240 the election with really important information, which now the rest of the media has admitted,

01:04:39.840 uh, was true and wasn't Russian disinformation, despite the fact, again, that dozens of members

01:04:44.720 of the senior former members of the intelligence community claimed that it was Russian disinformation.

01:04:48.720 Um, but you know, there's Saurabh was one of his things was I, you know, basically I'm out,

01:04:54.960 you know, Twitter can censor America's oldest newspaper and silence it and stop a story getting

01:05:03.200 out there because they want their guy, Joe Biden in office. Like the whole thing's corrupt. I'm out.

01:05:08.000 I, you know, I understand it. I do because we probably all have moments where we think that,

01:05:15.360 but, but I, in my view, the alternatives are all at least as bad and almost certainly much,

01:05:22.240 much worse, much, much worse. If you mind, um, internet, uh, um, domination by a few, um,

01:05:31.600 tech overlords in Silicon Valley, um, then I, your, your answer is not, does not lie in Russia.

01:05:39.680 It doesn't lie in Eastern Europe. It's, it's, this is, this is, this is to this, you know,

01:05:46.960 there are examples of places you can learn from there are small examples you can take, but,

01:05:51.440 but I, I, that's what I think is happening is, is people have, have people have got so sick of the

01:05:57.200 stuff I'm describing that they're, that they're, they're basically calling time. They want out.

01:06:04.160 And, um, I wish they wouldn't, but I think we need them.

01:06:07.520 Douglas, don't you think part of it as well is that we're all being encouraged to see ourselves

01:06:11.200 as victims. And once you see yourself as being a victim, whether you're right and you're left,

01:06:16.000 you start to feel put upon. And once you start to feel put upon and things are happening to you,

01:06:22.400 then you become innately suspicious and you start seeing patterns where they don't exist.

01:06:27.920 I agree. I agree. Well, our era obviously prioritizes victimhood over heroism.

01:06:34.080 I don't go along with this. It's one of the many things I say to people. You don't have to go along

01:06:38.080 with that. You don't have to at all. I don't. Um, I don't like whiners. I don't like people who

01:06:44.640 pretend to be victims, particularly, I don't like people who, who present themselves as victims,

01:06:48.960 even when they are victims. Um, I think broadly speaking, the world is, uh, has got enough reasons

01:06:54.880 to be unhappy without you adding to the general flow of misery. Um, uh, so I certainly don't have

01:07:01.200 any time for would be victims or aspiring victims or want to be victims. Um, and I have no truck with

01:07:09.680 those people who use it as a way to try to browbeat me or you or anyone else, any of us,

01:07:16.080 um, speaking as I come from X community. So what, what's your point? You know, uh, I want to tell

01:07:23.440 you that my ancestors, okay, so what, what's your point? Um, you don't, we live in an era where you,

01:07:30.560 era where you, where you get to grab the mic. If you can present yourself as a victim, not interested.

01:07:36.400 Sorry, you can't, you can't make me interested in you because of that. Uh, if, if you actually have

01:07:43.040 a story of, um, actual oppression that is relevant to the discussion we're having, then sure,

01:07:49.600 let's discuss that. But, um, uh, all of this, uh, sort of, I've been diagnosed bipolar.

01:07:58.320 Uh, you have to listen to me diagnose. Ooh. Oh, um, I've been actually prescribed to diagnose PTSD.

01:08:10.960 Ooh, now we've got to listen to you, I guess. No, no. People have problems in their lives. We all do.

01:08:18.080 Uh, but look at the, look at the people who use that stuff again, um, close enemy Owen Jones,

01:08:24.640 when he was recently, when he was recently hauled over the coals for his proven misogynistic bullying

01:08:30.720 of, uh, female colleagues at the Guardian. When this was exposed in private eye, uh,

01:08:35.600 Owen Jones and his, um, his cohorts decided to present it as homophobia. I might, I don't think

01:08:42.880 privatized the greatest magazine. I don't think it's been particularly funny in about 20 years, but,

01:08:46.640 um, uh, I don't think it's the home of homophobia. Um, um, whenever they've gone for me,

01:08:53.680 as they have occasionally, uh, I don't say, Ooh, it's homophobia.

01:09:00.080 There's a certain type of person does certain type of person wants to win and uses alleged

01:09:05.200 victimhood status as the means to win to help with these people, not interested, don't have the time.

01:09:11.040 But Douglas, it's a right doing it as well, because the rights say, you know,

01:09:14.880 the woke are trying to destroy us. They're trying to, you know, they're trying to ruin our reputations.

01:09:19.760 And look, you know, there is that does that argument does have certain value,

01:09:24.160 but then they're portraying themselves as victims as well. So before you used to be just the left

01:09:29.600 doing it. Now the right are playing the same game. Um, and that's even more worrying.

01:09:34.320 Yes, I think so. I think if it would be, it would be as worrying. Um, uh, I think that's true to some

01:09:40.800 extent. And again, it would, it depends on, on the extent to which it's, it's the case. I mean,

01:09:46.560 I do think that people have a right to feel aggrieved if they are told that there is nothing

01:09:52.960 good about themselves. You'll notice that what I said just now about victimhood, I didn't say,

01:09:57.680 as a result, the people are of zero value. I said, I'm not interested in people using victimhood

01:10:06.720 alleged or otherwise as a way to grab the microphone and browbeat other people. I didn't say,

01:10:12.480 therefore they have no right to speak that. I don't think that's the legitimate qualification

01:10:17.680 to speak. If you said by dint of the thing you are claiming, you have zero right to be heard,

01:10:25.680 then that person would have a right to be, uh, aggrieved. Likewise, I believe that people of the

01:10:32.720 right and, and mainstream are right to feel aggrieved when people come at them and say,

01:10:37.920 you have nothing to be proud of. But worse than that, look, go back again to what, what I quote

01:10:43.120 in the book, the opening chapter of what Robin D'Angelo and Ibram X. Kennedy and co say now about

01:10:49.040 white people. They say, and Robin D'Angelo says, she said there is, she's of course white herself.

01:10:54.400 Um, Robin D'Angelo says there is no good form of whiteness. Okay. No good form of whiteness and it

01:11:03.520 cannot be escaped. So you're locked. You're locked in. Of course, again, she would not say about any

01:11:10.800 other people. She would not say there's no good form of being Indian and you can't escape or anything

01:11:16.320 like that. She wouldn't say there's no good form of being black. Plus you can't ever escape. This is

01:11:21.360 what they say about white people. Uh, the, uh, answer that Ibram Kendi gives is yes, there has

01:11:28.240 been oppression in the past and the answer to oppression in the past is oppression basically

01:11:32.800 in the present. Okay. So people are right to feel aggrieved about that. They are right to be,

01:11:38.800 to be aggrieved when they're told shut up whitey, just as they would have a right to feel aggrieved.

01:11:44.480 If people said, shut up, you black, whatever. Okay. Like that would be

01:11:52.720 a horrible thing to do. So, so I think that there is a unique, uh, in the current era, again,

01:12:01.280 it was different in the past. In the current era, there is a unique permissible mistreatment of

01:12:06.880 certain people. And that's what I think has to stop and must be stopped in order,

01:12:13.680 among other things, not to create some kind of wild backlash.

01:12:17.360 Quite well, Douglas, one of the things that we love about having you on the show

01:12:21.600 as regular as we do is you're one of the people who's attempting to chart what I think is a healthy

01:12:27.040 path through all of this. And, uh, all of us will fall off the wagon every now and again in different

01:12:32.720 directions. You will, we will, but in having these conversations, I think we're trying to do

01:12:36.960 something productive. So thank you very much for coming back on. The book is The War on the West,

01:12:42.240 which everyone of course should read. Uh, we're going to do a couple of questions for our local

01:12:46.880 supporters from our local supporters, but you know that before we let you go in the main interview

01:12:51.520 itself, we always have the same final question. Uh, which is what is the one thing we're not talking

01:12:56.400 about, but we really should be. Oh God, I forgot that you asked that question. Yes. Well,

01:13:01.440 now you're going to have to, now you're going to have to come up with something. God,

01:13:04.080 I don't think there's anything we're not talking about at the moment. It feels like we're talking

01:13:07.120 about absolutely everything. I mean, certainly I am. Um, uh, God, we've been, uh, every,

01:13:13.200 every, every year feels like a long year and every day feels like a long day. Anything we're not

01:13:20.400 talking about that we should be, I'm going to have to think about that. Maybe we're talking too much,

01:13:26.160 Douglas. Maybe that will be the title of the episode. Stop talking, Douglas Murray.

01:13:30.880 It's, it's possible, you know, it's possible.

01:13:33.520 That's not the title of the episode. The title of the episode is I've had enough of her penis.

01:13:40.240 I don't want her penis forced down my throat every morning.

01:13:44.480 That'll get a flex, guys. My God, you know how to work this algorithm. Um, no, I actually,

01:13:49.600 I actually think that might be true. I think we might've just got to something. I don't, I don't want,

01:13:54.320 I don't want any more people coming at me with their views on their, their newly discovered views

01:13:59.760 on, I don't, I don't want the people who were, who've just like raced from being experts in

01:14:06.560 epidemiology to experts in Afghan withdrawal tactics to experts in Ukrainian nationalist politics and

01:14:17.440 experts in ivermectin. And I, I, I don't really want to hear too much more from the people who know

01:14:25.840 all of these things and don't want to listen. Um, just are on, are on play, but not listen.

01:14:33.360 Yeah. Douglas, it's been an absolute pleasure. When is the book released?

01:14:41.280 28th of April in the UK. So almost immediately after this interview goes out, uh, Douglas,

01:14:46.640 we'll make sure to put the link in the description. So people check it out.

01:14:49.760 I'm going to say you can, you can, if you can find a bookshop anymore, you can go in and get it

01:14:54.400 there. Um, you can of course order it from Amazon and all competitors sites. Um, but I really,

01:15:00.080 I really hope people, um, benefit from this because, um, it's, uh, for me writing The War

01:15:05.840 in the West has been one of the most exciting things I've done. I can't wait for people to read

01:15:10.400 it because it's just, if I say so myself, jammed full with the things that I think people should

01:15:15.680 know about what's going on and, uh, the ways to answer them. Douglas, it's been an absolute pleasure.

01:15:24.160 If people want to find you online, where's the best way to do that?

01:15:27.200 Oh, you can find me on Twitter for the time being, uh, Douglas K. Murray. I don't know how

01:15:32.080 long that'll last. Um, uh, and, uh, I'm on Instagram and various other places and you can

01:15:37.600 always find me at The Spectator and various other, the many venues I, I, I'm writing at, um,

01:15:45.120 in my highly prolific, um, not to say promiscuous way.

01:15:49.840 Uh, Douglas, it's been a pleasure to have you back on. Thank you for being on the show. Thank

01:15:54.640 you all for watching and listening. We're about to ask Douglas an exclusive couple of questions from

01:15:59.280 you for you, for our locals. But in the meantime, enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you for watching.

01:16:04.160 And we'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or our show. All of them go

01:16:09.040 out at 7 PM UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go,

01:16:13.600 it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon guys.

01:16:19.920 The miserable state and fate of the French elections. What does Douglas think?

TRIGGERnometry - April 25, 2022

Douglas Murray： The War on the West

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