TRIGGERnometry - September 06, 2020


Douglas Murray： ＂We Are Standing on the Precipice＂

Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Douglas Murray Beautiful Noise Donald Trump Boris Johnson Ian Duncan Smith Helen Pluckrose Sweet Caroline James Lindsay Solzhenitsyn Francis Delilah Danny Cohen-Bendit Constantine Kissin Andrew Sullivan Jordan Peterson Jonathan Haidt Robin DiAngelo George Floyd Frank Drebin Neil Diamond and 10 more
Should We Be Ashamed of Our History？ - Nigel Biggar ＂Lockdown Was an Overreaction＂ - Professor Karol Sikora

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 10 minutes

Words per minute

157.93

Word count

11,077

Sentence count

438

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

56

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Madness of Crowds author and journalist Douglas Murray returns to Trigonometry for the fourth time to discuss his new book, The Madness Of Crowds, and the events of September 11th, 2001, which led to the end of the world as we knew it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.680 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:00:06.500 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,
00:00:11.760 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:00:15.760 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:00:22.640 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, The Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:00:27.100 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.
00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to trigonometry from our brand new studio in the heart of london
00:00:39.280 i'm francis foster i'm constantin kisson and this is a show for you if you want honest
00:00:44.840 conversations with fascinating people and the fascinating first guest of the new season we
00:00:50.520 have for you he's an author journalist most importantly he's here for the fourth time
00:00:55.420 Douglas Murray. Welcome back to Trigonometry.
00:00:57.920 It's very good to be here. I can't believe four times.
00:01:00.120 Four times.
00:01:00.580 And helping to break in your new set.
00:01:03.440 You are indeed. It is an absolute honor to have you back.
00:01:06.220 You've just written an afterword for The Madness of Crowds,
00:01:10.220 the book that is now a bestseller pretty much overnight.
00:01:13.540 It's been a tremendous pleasure to read it, to talk with you about it in the past.
00:01:19.320 But I want to go back to the last conversation we had via Zoom,
00:01:23.100 not quite as good as this when we were talking probably i would think it would have been april
00:01:28.580 perhaps early may very beginning of lockdown yes and we were talking about is china going to need
00:01:35.400 to pay for some of what's happened you know all and i remember you sort of dismissively going 0.96
00:01:40.180 if only we could stop talking about this woke shit i think those are your exact words believe 0.96
00:01:45.560 it or not um it was a sort of like minor thing in the background that if only we could just 1.00
00:01:51.280 ignore these silly people on university campuses who are going off the deep end and get on with
00:01:56.760 the adult business of discussing the things that adults should discuss the world would be a much 0.91
00:02:01.540 better place well i put it to you douglas that in the months that have passed between then and now 0.97
00:02:07.960 we have seen that this woke shit is actually existentially threatening to everything that 0.76
00:02:13.580 we hold dear isn't it yeah absolutely i mean i uh i think i've already spoke in the spirit of 0.98
00:02:18.800 optimism more than anything else. I mean, everything we know about COVID has changed
00:02:24.380 in the months since we last spoke. And I think when we were speaking then, we were at the very
00:02:30.660 heart of the feeling that actually we were undergoing a generational pandemic that was
00:02:34.780 going to see each of us lose a swathe of our friends and family. And at that point, it did
00:02:41.200 seem like a lot of the crap receded for a time. You know, there were examples I give in the 0.75
00:02:48.100 updated version of the madness of crowds you know the obvious one is sam smith sitting in his mansion
00:02:53.660 crying and posting that on social media so that people feel sorry for him they them and uh of
00:03:02.100 course various people said well at least they have themselves for company but but uh sam smith um 0.99
00:03:09.380 sam smith didn't get much sympathy because everybody was in the shit you know um we were all 0.90
00:03:16.440 And even if the mortality figures weren't going to be as high as it first predicted, 0.98
00:03:22.480 you know, massive numbers of people were out of work, isolated in their houses, not able
00:03:27.560 to see their loved ones, not able to go to funerals or weddings.
00:03:31.160 So everyone had a lot of reasons to complain.
00:03:34.980 And it was my assumption that in a time when we all had lots of reasons to complain, we
00:03:41.280 wouldn't have much time for people with fake complaints, you know.
00:03:44.320 At a time when, at the very least, significant unemployment starts to rocket, you know, somebody says you've misgendered them or used the wrong pronouns, desire to say F off, finally, finally kicks in.
00:03:59.360 And that was my feeling at the beginning.
00:04:02.480 With real complaints that we all now had, we didn't have much time for people with imaginary complaints.
00:04:08.680 and I thought that was going to hold and it did hold right up until events in Minnesota
00:04:14.860 and I think the historians will say that all of this was a sort of perfect storm
00:04:21.460 you you know you have a lockdown where the first time in modern history everybody is told to stay
00:04:27.620 in their houses a Tory government tells everybody in Britain to stay at home and we do that's an 1.00
00:04:34.280 interesting corner. We might not have predicted it. And what's more, a Tory government says that
00:04:40.000 everyone who is young and not in a committed relationship must be forced into celibacy for
00:04:44.760 months. Again, I'd be surprised if any of us had expected that. But then when the killing of George
00:04:54.220 Floyd happened, it was almost like a combination of things happened. The first was clearly people
00:05:00.420 were fed up of lockdown. And to a great extent, obviously there were sincere protesters, but there
00:05:05.800 were also people who were just delighted to have a reason to get out of the house and start mingling
00:05:10.040 again. And then there was this particular sort of concatenation that it was an anti-racist cause
00:05:17.900 that was able to explode and come out at that point. And I think, yes, that in the period since
00:05:26.900 all of the things that we had hoped might go away have just burst out and i think we've said before
00:05:35.580 that as andrew sullivan said a little while ago we all live on campus now but this is now
00:05:41.600 all of us living on a violent campus it's like everyone's living on evergreen in 2017
00:05:48.980 And this is the moment where all of the theories
00:05:55.300 And the intellectual thinking about stuff
00:05:59.220 Starts to become clear what we were worrying about
00:06:04.580 You know that it's not just play acting
00:06:07.880 And by the way, I do think that that is to an extent
00:06:13.840 What we were engaged in right up until recent months
00:06:17.800 You could even see it with some of the protesters in Portland.
00:06:20.840 They were playing at being like, you know, they had these weird black block things. 0.94
00:06:27.560 They'd advance behind umbrellas like a sort of post-apocalyptic Roman legion.
00:06:35.460 And these sort of desiccated pseudo-warriors were confusing real life and computer games and much more. 0.90
00:06:46.820 They call it lopping and it's lopping. Yes lopping. It's a very useful term and
00:06:52.600 And then we see that thing
00:06:56.280 But the game stops
00:06:58.280 and people start firing guns
00:07:00.820 people actually start to get their heads and skulls smashed in and
00:07:04.760 Then everything changes
00:07:06.920 This isn't laughing. This isn't this isn't computer game stuff. This is the real world
00:07:12.400 world. And I think we all, but America in particular, is standing on a precipice.
00:07:21.780 Do you think, Douglas, a lot of people have said this, that COVID actually acted as a catalyst
00:07:26.020 for all of these particular issues, that this was inevitable, this path that we were going to tread,
00:07:31.640 but with everybody locked down, with everybody being exposed to social media 24-7,
00:07:36.620 it's just sped the whole process up. It is interesting, isn't it? We've all had,
00:07:41.460 the first time in our lives an inability to be able to judge what our fellow human beings friends
00:07:47.780 family are thinking and doing as you know this better than anyone who's comedians you
00:07:52.340 you know you you develop extrasensory perceptions in your finger you can you can judge whether
00:07:59.580 something's going to land right if you have people in front of you you what is it when people talk
00:08:05.820 about public mood but a sense because you and some people really have it and some people think they
00:08:11.100 habit a sense of what the public are actually thinking or feeling that's because we interact
00:08:17.280 and we meet people and we sense what happens i'm standing beside somebody in a shop or speaking to
00:08:21.460 a friend or hearing from an audience strip all of that away isolate people in their homes for
00:08:28.400 many people in a very solitary situation and we all lose that and so online becomes the only way
00:08:36.480 we can imbibe ideas. And that's why it's so complex with BLM, because for a chunk of people,
00:08:42.120 they actually think that this is what it says it is. I mean, as you know, you took some heat for
00:08:50.220 this, but you said early on, this is a self-avowedly Marxist organization. Well, lots of people just
00:08:56.960 didn't believe that because they only had the screen. And by the way, this has been happening
00:09:02.640 in american cities where i i've had this experience i'm sure you have where some american friends say
00:09:08.800 my neighborhood's just been burnt down or all the shops in my neighborhood just got looted
00:09:13.620 and then other people say oh no it's just peaceful protests and then you notice that the people who
00:09:19.920 say it's peaceful protests haven't moved back to their own neighborhoods things like that
00:09:24.940 it's an evolving story you mentioned the the peaceful protests and again last time when
00:09:32.580 we had you on the show we sort of moaned a little bit didn't we about how all the media were asking
00:09:39.120 boris johnson stupid questions about the covid response and i feel like in the last three months
00:09:45.760 i mean what has been happening in the united states particularly but also with the bbc here 0.98
00:09:49.740 uh reporting on riots and calling them largely peaceful uh cnn reporters repeatedly standing
00:09:58.060 in front of burning cities and saying that the idea
00:10:02.300 that the violence is happening is a myth.
00:10:04.980 They're standing in front of a burning city.
00:10:07.400 He was particularly good, wasn't he?
00:10:08.780 He was a sort of comical ally or Frank Drebin in police force.
00:10:12.520 There's nothing to see here when the firework factory
00:10:14.440 is going off behind him.
00:10:15.780 I love that.
00:10:16.500 Please move on.
00:10:17.660 There is nothing to see here.
00:10:19.000 And as much as we can laugh about it, and laugh we should,
00:10:21.840 of course we should, the derailment of the media,
00:10:26.660 the derailing of the media from reporters of information with a slant, perhaps,
00:10:32.000 as we had until a year ago, to now just full-blown, unabashed propaganda.
00:10:38.100 Didn't you think one of the most extraordinary things,
00:10:40.160 everyone's forgotten about it now, the attack on CNN headquarters in Atlanta?
00:10:45.560 So the crowd gathers very early in BLM,
00:10:49.540 starts smashing through the glass front of the CNN headquarters.
00:10:53.960 These are not Trumpies, you know.
00:10:56.080 These are not like MAGA hat wearers.
00:10:58.760 This is the BLM protesters.
00:11:02.060 They start smashing in.
00:11:03.740 One of the reporters is reporting from the lobby of his own workplace.
00:11:08.500 And the people he's broadcasting to upstairs are telling him to get away for his own safety.
00:11:15.000 And nobody at the CNN says, don't do this, get away.
00:11:19.740 They report it as if it's a sort of normal thing to have an invasion of a network.
00:11:26.080 by hooligans and they don't they're not even on their own side these these so-called journalists
00:11:34.180 nobody called it out none of the other networks seem to be bothered nobody seemed to mind nobody
00:11:42.100 said this was an attack on the free press but why have we got to that to this point where you can't
00:11:48.100 criticize them and if you do criticize them like i found out it doesn't end well you have to find
00:11:53.460 a new studio and a new home here's the the best steel man explanation they think that there it's
00:12:05.880 a disagreement about the proximity of fascism if you believe that the fascists are about to take
00:12:14.740 over or have taken over almost anything goes okay everyone's been taught this all their lives
00:12:24.020 what we're living in is a problem of people who think the proximity of fascism to their front door
00:12:32.240 is wildly close and they have completely misinterpreted their universe
00:12:39.480 because by any fair estimation there is no support for fascists
00:12:48.160 in a country like britain one man some anti-covid protest the other day
00:12:54.180 appeared to have like waved the the the strike sort of symbol that was
00:13:00.560 moseley british union a fascist sort of symbol
00:13:03.540 and never said oh my god the fascists are only openly protesting again in london 0.97
00:13:08.100 as far as i could see from that that's one guy some old lunatic who may well be a fascist himself
00:13:17.200 he has no support he has no support now unfortunately there are a lot of people who
00:13:24.840 think for instance and have got away with thinking that fascism is right in front of them and around
00:13:31.440 them all the time they think that donald trump is a fascist god knows none of us have a paucity
00:13:37.540 of complaints to make about Donald Trump. A fascist? I don't think so. I don't think so. 0.85
00:13:45.580 Not by any definition of fascism, I know. The Tory government? No. Not by any reasonable
00:13:54.220 estimation. I think it's absurd that we're even talking about it. I know, but we have to accept
00:13:59.800 that there are people who have been taught and told and whipped, perhaps some honest people,
00:14:04.800 into the belief or imagination that that is the situation
00:14:11.040 and that they live in a state which is going to be fascist at any moment.
00:14:15.760 By the way, that is not a totally new thing.
00:14:20.360 This has gone on for two generations at least.
00:14:25.840 In 1968, in the student protests, this was a common theme as well
00:14:30.800 in America and Britain and other Western countries.
00:14:33.300 the idea was that the that the state was essentially proto-fascist that the police
00:14:41.160 were the the most visible wing of that and that if you push the police sufficiently they would
00:14:49.840 reveal the true fascist nature of the state uh my late friend five james and i often talked about
00:14:56.800 this uh he was in cambridge in 68 when the garden hotel in cambridge famously the crowd outside
00:15:03.780 started to smash the hotel and i remember clive described how he and others said whatever you
00:15:10.940 think of this the moment you throw the first brick everything changes but these students at
00:15:17.560 that point who were prosecuted that's what they thought they thought that you could reveal that
00:15:23.920 the state was truly fascist. And of course, one of the things that the 68ers then learned,
00:15:31.020 even the most vociferous ones, people like Danny Cohen-Bendit from Germany and so on,
00:15:34.600 what they started to learn was that, of course, they ended up as the establishment,
00:15:39.260 you know, they ended up, all the Blairites were all sort of, you know, people within that sort
00:15:43.680 of radical left, former radical leftist milieu, who made a fundamental misunderstanding about
00:15:48.800 the state, not all of them, but some of them. And then they were the state, clearly the state
00:15:52.980 wasn't fascist and people just pretended that they hadn't had their embarrassing youth or
00:15:58.280 whatever they could do to sort of gloss it over. But we never really confronted those
00:16:05.320 fundamental lies. And in recent years, they've clearly grown and grown. And yes, James Lindsay
00:16:14.540 and Helen Pluckrose in their excellent new book talk about this, the way in which these
00:16:19.500 theories on campus about the nature of the state, the nature of society. And if you're told by
00:16:26.680 everybody in authority that you live in an oppressive, patriarchal, quasi-fascistic state,
00:16:31.820 you're going to have a misunderstanding about the nature of the society you're in.
00:16:37.140 And if on top of it, you haven't traveled very far and you don't know any damn history or anything
00:16:42.160 else. I'm giving you my most generous interpretation of what I think is going on.
00:16:48.660 Because that is a problem, isn't it?
00:16:49.920 We throw these labels about. 0.93
00:16:51.340 We say that Boris Johnson is a fascist,
00:16:53.320 but the reality is these people don't know
00:16:56.160 the meanings of the terms that they use.
00:16:58.060 Look at one of the even worse ones,
00:17:00.520 the way the Labour Party members and Labour Party MPs
00:17:05.260 have thrown around the accusation
00:17:06.900 that Ian Duncan Smith killed hundreds of thousands of people
00:17:09.840 in the early part of this decade
00:17:11.160 during the coalition government.
00:17:13.180 That's a completely normal claim made on the left.
00:17:16.620 It's outrageous.
00:17:17.980 It's defamatory.
00:17:19.360 I don't say that because I'm a member of the Conservative Party,
00:17:22.340 because I'm not.
00:17:23.500 I don't say it because I agree with everything.
00:17:25.560 It's outrageous as a claim.
00:17:28.880 And yet it's made all over the place.
00:17:31.120 All the major left-wing, you know, Corbynista journalists
00:17:34.480 all made it for years.
00:17:35.840 They went around telling people,
00:17:37.780 Ian Duncan Smith murdered thousands of people in Britain.
00:17:43.580 And that wasn't a problem.
00:17:44.940 And I think the point you're really making there, Douglas, is that this debasement of language over time where people who have nothing to do with fascism are being labeled in this way and ordinary people, some of them, are being convinced that this actually is true.
00:18:03.260 Well, if I put myself in that position, and the Third Reich is rising again, I suppose it would be the Fourth Reich now, if the Fourth Reich is upon us, well, why wouldn't you be on the street with batons burning down?
00:18:18.300 In fact, it's one of the few things, societally, that we all agreed on. It's one of the few things we all agreed on. We're not doing that again. In a conversation Jordan Peterson and I had a couple of years ago, we agreed that basically,
00:18:32.360 I think we came to the formulation in the end that we all almost learned one of the two lessons of the 20th century.
00:18:39.980 But we almost learned the lesson on fascism was pretty near.
00:18:44.000 But certainly we have, this is why I say, an almost total societal revulsion of fascism.
00:18:52.560 And I'd add something more on that.
00:18:54.580 We have an almost total societal revulsion of racism.
00:18:58.300 and so again if you think we live in a racist society and you've had pumped around for years
00:19:09.980 the allegation that we have a racist prime minister running a racist tory party and you know they all
00:19:18.580 found these little nasty lies didn't they that you know the extraordinarily ethnically diverse 1.00
00:19:24.280 British cabinet that we have was only a cover, or their only Uncle Tom's, all these nasty little
00:19:30.640 tricks the left and the far left played all these years. This is the fruit of their labor.
00:19:38.020 You can see the beautiful fruit of their labor in the mobs that ran rampant in this country for a
00:19:44.520 short period, and that are running far more rampant in America to this day. And Douglas,
00:19:51.840 what's happened to common sense because you've got terrible ideas and you get you know you get
00:19:57.320 fed terrible ideas but surely you have your common sense where you analyze the idea and you go well
00:20:01.980 this is palpable nonsense or you do the reading or you analyze it well it all makes you worried
00:20:08.240 about the the fundamental the most disconcerting idea for anyone who cares about ideas is that
00:20:16.320 reason isn't enough.
00:20:19.260 You know.
00:20:22.160 Miguel de Unimuno,
00:20:24.340 the Spanish
00:20:26.420 philosopher, pre-revolutionary
00:20:28.480 Spanish philosopher,
00:20:30.160 described being at a meeting once
00:20:32.340 in Spain where the
00:20:33.680 crowd
00:20:35.800 starts chanting, what was it?
00:20:39.140 My Spanish
00:20:39.780 is Viva la Muerte.
00:20:41.540 Viva la Muerte, yeah.
00:20:43.640 Long live death.
00:20:44.940 Long live death.
00:20:46.320 And Inumino said, what is this necrophilic chant?
00:20:52.620 I mean, how could anyone, and that's what always worries people who think,
00:20:59.640 what if everything we put all of our attention into isn't enough?
00:21:06.980 It's a terrifying thought.
00:21:09.240 And time and again, I remember when the Rwandan genocide occurred,
00:21:17.180 there was one news report of a man being murdered by a rival tribe,
00:21:21.940 massacring everyone, and he was a doctor, he was shot in the head,
00:21:26.760 and the man who shoots him says, he's a doctor, what good are these brands?
00:21:31.020 This is the, you know, what happened a couple of nights ago in America.
00:21:35.680 a man is is shot and immediately you have a crowd on the streets with a woman shouting through a
00:21:46.860 megaphone i do not care that a fascist was killed tonight of course because you you've labeled the
00:21:55.000 victim of the murder you incited a fascist and everyone's been taught not to mind if fascists
00:22:00.280 are dead. You've just moved the goalposts to make fascist majorities of populations. That's why
00:22:07.620 we're in this mess. And then you don't mind about the killing. And then you're back into
00:22:12.500 Viva la Muerte territory again. And this is why I can never understand
00:22:23.040 why the blame never gets to the right doors on this it never gets to the right doors you know
00:22:33.480 the people who make false allegations about the nature of the state
00:22:41.380 frivolously erroneous accusations against individual citizens or politicians
00:22:47.980 that they never have to pay a price for that.
00:22:52.280 Douglas, I haven't seen you this animated before,
00:22:54.880 and we've spoken to you several times.
00:22:56.540 Are you concerned that things are getting worse?
00:22:59.700 Sure, I'm deeply concerned.
00:23:01.580 Broadway's smash hit, the Neil Diamond musical,
00:23:04.500 A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.
00:23:07.340 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more,
00:23:10.720 featuring all the songs you love, including America,
00:23:13.920 Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
00:23:16.140 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.
00:23:20.700 The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
00:23:23.500 April 28th through June 7th, 2026.
00:23:26.520 The Princess of Wales Theatre.
00:23:28.440 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.
00:23:34.660 I think we're standing on a genuine prejudice.
00:23:39.540 And it's getting worse all the time.
00:23:43.660 Because of this misunderstanding.
00:23:46.140 misinterpretation of our societies.
00:23:50.200 And what I mind is that this is the best chance we have.
00:23:55.640 You know, there isn't another option.
00:23:59.560 We don't have, for instance,
00:24:02.200 if we're going to go back to this line of racial segregation,
00:24:06.900 this time enforced by so-called anti-racists, 0.99
00:24:10.600 we go back to hell, absolute hell. 0.70
00:24:13.560 and you can feel it daily what's eroding is the settlement that we had on that you know sam harris
00:24:23.480 and i have said before you know we had hoped to arrive at a stage where skin color was as
00:24:28.900 unimportant as hair color and now these people come along it's like having a ginger separatist 0.94
00:24:36.480 movement. You know, I mean, to decide we should only speak about hair colour for the rest of our
00:24:43.260 lives, then creates countervailing forces and much more. But it's like the settlements that
00:24:48.280 we were hoping to head towards are being pulled apart by people who seem gleeful at pulling away
00:24:54.700 the threads of our society. They seem positively gleeful about it. And that goes back to your
00:25:00.360 point about reason, that's because there is an instinct that drives people to destroy.
00:25:09.780 You know, it's there throughout human nature. The instinct to destroy is very strong. The
00:25:16.460 high octane of enjoyment of destruction.
00:25:21.080 Isn't it also because it's easy, Douglas? It's far easier to destroy than it is to create.
00:25:25.540 That's right. That's one of the central Birkin insights. Yes, you can pull a thing down in a second. It takes a long time to build it up. You can destroy a building or a statue in no time at all. It might take somebody an entire lifetime to create it.
00:25:42.380 And so we find ourselves in a very suboptimal condition
00:25:47.980 Because the desire to pull down is clearly rife
00:25:51.400 But maybe this is an evidence that people have to endlessly relearn the same lessons
00:25:57.680 There's a line in Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral
00:26:00.560 He said, men do not learn very much
00:26:05.260 Except that from generation to generation
00:26:09.280 The same things happen again and again
00:26:12.800 Men learn little from others' experience. 0.94
00:26:16.120 You're sounding very apocalyptic, Douglas.
00:26:19.620 And I don't blame you because I don't disagree with you.
00:26:22.380 And the question that Francis and I really both wanted to ask is,
00:26:26.100 do you think we're past the point of no return now?
00:26:31.240 No, I don't.
00:26:33.220 I'll tell you why.
00:26:35.760 These are the circumstances outside.
00:26:38.640 but the circumstances outside are always bad they're always bad now there's particular
00:26:47.720 peaks to the mania i've been reading quite a lot about revolutions recently for obvious reasons
00:26:54.420 um and it's just so striking the extent to which this is just it's just what happened in 1789
00:27:02.740 It's just what happened in 1917.
00:27:06.200 I was reading the other day an account of the days after the revolution in 1917 in St. Petersburg,
00:27:12.240 when law and order, of course, all fall apart, but people are starting to police themselves.
00:27:18.340 No one quite knows, because, of course, the revolution was meant to bring the peace,
00:27:22.800 but no one actually focused on any of the details, just like in 1789.
00:27:26.380 So nobody knows what to do when things go wrong, like crime.
00:27:29.420 and there's a description, an incredibly haunting description I read
00:27:32.680 on a tram in St. Petersburg in 1917, a rather well-dressed woman,
00:27:38.040 and there's a rather well-dressed man standing near her,
00:27:40.900 and she starts screaming.
00:27:43.980 She thinks he's stolen her purse, and everyone gets interested,
00:27:47.920 and they start finding out what's happening.
00:27:50.960 The man insists he hasn't stolen her purse,
00:27:53.580 and a couple of men who were sort of self-appointed police at this point 0.97
00:27:57.320 decided that he must have done clearly and they take him off the tram and shoot him in the head
00:28:01.540 and they get back on the tram and the woman finds that the purse has fallen down the lining of her 1.00
00:28:08.480 coat and then they have a problem of course so they take her off the tram and shoot her in the 0.52
00:28:14.880 head as well it's a russian way mate what can i say that's how we do things you know and that's
00:28:23.340 what happens in revolutions that's what happens when everything starts to break down that's what's
00:28:29.420 happened in kenosha briefly that's what happens when you know one person thinks he's going to go
00:28:35.320 and protect a shop and then gets the peers one particular case of them thinking about obviously
00:28:42.000 appears to have been separated from other people and then the people who are the protesters and
00:28:46.140 recognize who he is and then before you know it he ends up shooting three people dead you know
00:28:51.300 that's what happens. What's happening in Portland? People being dragged out of their cars and smashed
00:28:56.180 in the head or shot. That's what happens when everything else breaks down. So we might be in
00:29:03.120 one of these periods, and it might get a lot worse yet. Or it could get better. But the reason for
00:29:10.900 optimism on it, as it were, is that this is what history is always like. And we've had a very
00:29:19.800 blessed time in our lives so far and i don't need to tell you to all of us here know something a lot 0.68
00:29:28.800 of people outside this room don't which is we're the luckiest damn people in history
00:29:34.520 and luckier than any of our forebears and luckier than we have any right to expect
00:29:41.720 but it was always like this in history and the thing that's most important the thing in a way i
00:29:49.340 think is most important for us all to be thinking about and the people watching particularly young
00:29:54.820 people watching to be thinking about is this it's always like this to some extent and don't wait
00:30:03.200 for more optimal conditions before you do what you're meant to be doing in your life
00:30:08.560 because the optimal conditions will not be arriving and it's a great point you make and
00:30:14.260 Do you think part of the reason we've come to this point is because of cowardice,
00:30:18.640 and I use that word in its truest sense, of a lot of the mainstream media,
00:30:22.340 in particular the left, the centre-left, who seem unwilling to stand up and say to these people,
00:30:29.880 you may be on our side, you may be on our side politically,
00:30:33.620 but what you are doing is fundamentally wrong and destructive.
00:30:36.520 Yes, or they want power more than they want truth.
00:30:41.020 But sorry to interrupt, Douglas.
00:30:42.560 I mean, I don't think you can lay the blame for that only with the left.
00:30:46.160 I mean, look at Boris Johnson on BLM.
00:30:49.000 He did very little, said almost nothing to tackle it.
00:30:54.980 There are two excuses for that, which I don't like at all.
00:30:58.860 One is that he was still ill, possibly,
00:31:02.280 but in that case somebody else in the government had to make a stand.
00:31:06.040 The second is that some people say this is a typical Boris Johnson tactic,
00:31:09.220 that his desire tends to be to wait
00:31:11.180 until there's massive overreach by his opponents
00:31:13.700 and then say something.
00:31:15.680 If it's not overreach when the cenotaph is being attacked,
00:31:18.700 I don't know what is, you know,
00:31:20.820 or when the Winston Churchill statue is being attacked.
00:31:24.020 But your point still stands, which is cowardice.
00:31:26.420 Is that it?
00:31:28.800 Cowardice, a desire for a quiet life.
00:31:31.760 But as I say, also prioritizing the search for power over truth.
00:31:36.120 You know, the New York Times, which is just a lost publication now, clearly, you know, has deliberately inverted the nature of these riots.
00:31:49.020 As pro-Trump supporters become more violent, protesters have to work out how they should react, was one of the headlines, something like that, one of the headlines they did the other day.
00:31:59.060 as if the sort of black bloc protesters
00:32:01.220 are just sitting around a rather
00:32:02.880 contemplative body, these
00:32:04.860 protesters.
00:32:08.320 So yes,
00:32:09.420 those people want to be in power
00:32:11.360 more than they seek truth,
00:32:14.100 which is a
00:32:15.040 calculation that will come back and bite
00:32:17.220 them at some point.
00:32:18.840 Hope it bites them fast, but probably
00:32:21.200 not.
00:32:22.980 But to come back to this point,
00:32:25.460 it's really crucial, I think,
00:32:27.200 we start to bear this in mind, we've spoken before about the over-emphasis
00:32:30.360 of politics in all of our lives, the way in which it's become
00:32:33.840 almost a full-time occupation for too many people, you know.
00:32:40.260 And, I mean, I think that when politics gets as bad as particularly in America
00:32:47.520 it now is, people start to wonder what they can do.
00:32:52.880 And other than voting, there's not very much that most people can do.
00:32:57.200 other than influencing the people around them.
00:33:00.440 What I'm worried about is this endless opportunity cost.
00:33:03.620 You know, Pluckrose and Lindsay say in their book at one point,
00:33:07.360 what would have happened if the academics doing all this complete wank
00:33:11.440 about, you know, intersectionalism and, you know,
00:33:14.580 comparative feminist theory and the intersections with disability
00:33:18.740 and fat studies, what if they'd have done something meaningful
00:33:21.640 with their time?
00:33:23.200 What if they'd studied something that was of importance?
00:33:27.200 What if all of that brain power, and it must by now be a considerable amount of brain power,
00:33:31.860 had been expended on a worthwhile problem? Well, maybe we'd be a bit further forward.
00:33:39.000 What have those people brought us? I thought nothing. But now it turns out it's worse than
00:33:44.660 nothing. It's an actually malevolent, malignant thing that they have been injecting into the
00:33:50.700 thought of our society. So again, just to come back to this point, what do we do as individuals
00:33:57.620 about this? We all have a limited amount we can do in our personal lives in terms of trying to
00:34:04.500 correct untruths, correct false narratives. But other than that, I think it's a very important
00:34:11.400 message that we remember you shouldn't put off what it is you should be doing with your life,
00:34:15.560 nevertheless i was i was reading the other day it's an extraordinary sermon by um given by c.s
00:34:21.960 lewis at in 1939 when the war has started it's a very very brilliant piece of prose
00:34:27.280 and lewis says there he says you know these are so something paraphrasing he says something like
00:34:33.380 you know these are these are suboptimal conditions um and he says he says but
00:34:40.960 But anyone who puts off what they're meant to do to wait for the optimal conditions will realize that they will never come.
00:34:52.320 And there is something highly unusual about our species, that we're not like other species.
00:34:59.000 You know, the ants found their own accommodation and look after their, you know, physical well-being and the well-being of the colony.
00:35:08.280 But human beings are different. And I think what Lewis says, he says, you know, we are beings who, he says, discuss mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities. We make jokes on scaffolds. We talk about poetry when advancing at the walls of Quebec.
00:35:30.000 and comb our hair at the gates of Thermopylae.
00:35:34.380 He says, this is not panache.
00:35:36.580 It's our nature.
00:35:38.520 It's our nature as human beings.
00:35:41.240 We do extraordinary things in the face of terrible beleagueredness
00:35:48.240 and confoundedness and confusion.
00:35:52.660 But it was always like that.
00:35:55.300 It's not an excuse.
00:35:57.780 And do you think part of the problem is as well,
00:35:59.340 especially in America more than there is here in that people are disenfranchised by the democratic
00:36:04.380 system like you look at the democrats with Biden in charge you look at republicans with Trump and
00:36:10.540 you know whatever happens if you're amongst the very poor whoever you vote for nothing's really
00:36:15.440 going to change well it could do I mean it can do I mean by the way actually I'm not a supporter
00:36:22.900 of Trump but the job figures until the COVID crisis suggested there was something he could do
00:36:29.080 And if you're a poor working class person in a relatively poor state in America, having a job or not having a job is important, much more important than all of the abstract things that we could talk about.
00:36:43.560 you know i mean obama for instance you know who had many virtues but i mean there was an awful
00:36:48.760 lot of just lovely rhetoric and um you know for most people it's very basic things that more like
00:36:55.540 to change their life having an income being able to provide for their family that's the most
00:36:59.900 important things and so there are things that can be done um and you can always moan about your
00:37:07.380 present political class again i mean uh um everyone all my life has moaned about our political class
00:37:14.660 that's part of the joy of being in a free society they're never good enough i mean even as we were
00:37:21.060 in a famous example everyone gives churchill in retrospect is universally was to everyone decided
00:37:27.780 that he was the worst racist and a totally unforgivable figure used to agree that he was
00:37:32.100 But, you know, the British public famously rejected the election in 1945.
00:37:35.920 We always moan about our political class.
00:37:40.820 Do you think that's it?
00:37:41.980 You said something there, Douglas, about not knowing how good you have it,
00:37:46.380 which is really what you're saying.
00:37:47.480 Do you think we have had minor aberrations aside since 1945,
00:37:57.200 this tremendous period of perpetual growth?
00:38:01.820 endless stability every generation that came after was wealthier was freer was safer lived
00:38:11.000 longer uh wherever you look any metric you measure by we have just had this extraordinary life in the
00:38:18.500 west did we forget the other side of the coin did we forget that the moon can be light and dark that
00:38:27.160 life is pain as well as pleasure did we forget that that's the philosopher i cited early spanish
00:38:32.340 philosopher um famous book uh the 30s the tragic sense of life um he had something i suggested in
00:38:41.540 my last book one strange death of europe was that western europeans and americans had forgotten the
00:38:47.120 tragic sense of life i mean to a great extent we suffer from a lack of willingness to face up to
00:38:56.420 the most basic facts you know i mean i've always been interested in the way in which the spillage
00:39:02.340 of christianity and post-christianity means that you have certain things still in your society
00:39:08.660 which are not willing to confront so for instance it's a bleak one but when people die there's still
00:39:14.860 a tendency to sort of they were with the angels now and you get me i mean i know metaphysical
00:39:21.340 systems in which you can believe that but what's yours that allows you to believe that or say that
00:39:28.020 you know um rest in peace those sorts of things like yes there are systems of belief where you
00:39:35.160 can say that but if you don't believe in any of that it's like well yeah i mean there's no other
00:39:41.260 option and we have lived for a while in a weird metaphysical system where we have a bit of the
00:39:48.460 hangover of that belief but it means that we're totally unwilling to confront that so we're
00:39:56.340 unwilling to confront the reality of death famously in a society like us have been for a long time
00:40:02.080 many people have pointed us out death is something that occurs elsewhere in retirement homes and in
00:40:08.900 hospitals and you know graveyards are way out of the center of town you know everything everything
00:40:16.840 we can do to keep the realities of life away from us, we do. And there are answers that are
00:40:24.820 non-religious to that, but we don't bother with them either. I mean, in my view, we could do, 0.97
00:40:30.200 for instance, with a dose of Stoicism. That would be much, much more useful than, for instance,
00:40:36.380 the medicalization of everyone in society to help avoiding truths we don't want to face up to.
00:40:42.740 Much better that everyone got a dose of Marcus Aurelius or somebody who says these are the facts of life that are unalterable, and this is how we can cope with that terrible knowledge.
00:40:58.880 This is one means of training ourselves to do so.
00:41:01.660 That would be quite a useful thing to teach in schools, for instance.
00:41:06.520 But we haven't done any of that.
00:41:08.380 We've run off this sort of diluted, content-free post-Christianity.
00:41:15.440 We've run off, as Jonathan Haidt and others have pointed out,
00:41:20.260 the fumes that we've got that are positive from our success in 1945. 0.96
00:41:29.540 And they've been running lower and lower and lower.
00:41:32.300 and at the same time
00:41:37.580 people have been told
00:41:38.260 life will give you the following things
00:41:41.160 and of course you'll get that
00:41:42.380 and you deserve this
00:41:43.520 and you deserve that
00:41:44.280 and what if that's not the case
00:41:47.940 I mean I would have thought
00:41:49.200 in an era we're going into
00:41:50.480 the living standards are going to decline
00:41:52.220 for all of us
00:41:53.080 I can't see how they can't
00:41:54.540 and people said that
00:41:56.120 after the 08 financial crisis
00:41:58.180 which we still haven't got over
00:41:59.660 so i would have thought if that's the case we should prepare ourselves for that and that's
00:42:05.780 not a totally hopeless exercise you know things have gone down before it's just i'm sure like me
00:42:13.360 you have that feeling that if the party's over for a time at least people ought to be prepared
00:42:19.840 for what that feels like rather than standing over demanding that the party continues to be
00:42:24.900 laid on for their personal enjoyment.
00:42:28.140 But isn't it also part of the problem that, you know,
00:42:30.160 for these people who come and graduate university after 08,
00:42:34.960 the party's over.
00:42:36.460 Sure.
00:42:37.140 And in a way, we've discussed this before,
00:42:39.480 how can you expect them to believe in capitalism
00:42:41.340 when capitalism is doing very little or nothing for them?
00:42:44.680 No, I agree.
00:42:45.420 I think there are big questions that shouldn't remain unanswered
00:42:49.720 or so little answered this long.
00:42:52.100 I think that wanting to get onto the housing ladder,
00:42:55.400 feeling like you never can, these are very...
00:42:58.980 That problem is about to be solved, Douglas.
00:43:02.920 Yeah.
00:43:04.280 Yeah.
00:43:05.300 Could be.
00:43:09.060 But it's very demoralizing for people, that sort of thing.
00:43:11.640 And I notice that, you know, people who are sort of big defenders
00:43:15.520 of the status quo and have not been doing a great job in shoring it up.
00:43:20.360 I don't think, by the way, capitalism per se is responsible for that.
00:43:24.040 It's a longer debate, but I think there's a form of capitalism which can go wrong,
00:43:28.660 which everybody knows about.
00:43:30.120 It's a sort of corrupt, crony capitalism.
00:43:32.380 Yeah, but I don't even think we particularly live in an era of crony capitalism.
00:43:36.520 We certainly don't in the UK.
00:43:39.460 So what is it then?
00:43:40.780 How has capitalism become distorted?
00:43:43.120 Well, for instance, zero interest rates.
00:43:46.120 I mean, it's an obvious one for this long
00:43:48.020 because you do that in order to help get yourself
00:43:49.940 out of the last financial crisis,
00:43:51.720 but it means that nobody's rewarded for saving.
00:43:54.340 Yeah.
00:43:55.020 And in fact, inflation ends up meaning
00:43:57.780 that what you're saving is worth less and less.
00:44:01.620 Oh, no.
00:44:02.320 I mean, the response to the 2008,
00:44:05.060 essentially we had a medical problem.
00:44:08.180 We emptied the medicine cupboard
00:44:09.440 without dealing with the problem.
00:44:12.080 And it's just waiting to come back.
00:44:14.240 but the cupboard is empty.
00:44:17.000 That's what's coming.
00:44:18.280 Yeah, and I mean, there are people who say,
00:44:20.700 I mean, I'm not an economist.
00:44:22.460 There are people who say to me who are economists
00:44:24.920 that you don't need to worry
00:44:26.280 that the perpetual growth keeps going anyway
00:44:29.340 or that, I was having this argument with somebody the other day,
00:44:32.940 or that the debt can continue to be accumulated.
00:44:35.340 Yeah, MMT, the idea that you can print and borrow money.
00:44:38.580 And I just, that worries me because I don't see that.
00:44:41.960 I think they're an obvious consequence.
00:44:44.900 All the time.
00:44:46.100 Yeah, it's weird.
00:44:47.180 You can just spend money endlessly.
00:44:48.540 But historically, what always happens...
00:44:53.240 By the way, I have a great friend who's an economist
00:44:55.700 and was born in India, Deepak Lal,
00:44:59.080 who some time ago described me going to a university
00:45:01.520 somewhere in America, I think it was,
00:45:03.440 asking to see their library.
00:45:05.700 They showed him the library.
00:45:06.300 He said, where's the economics section?
00:45:09.700 They said, oh, it's all online.
00:45:11.320 He said, but what about all the books about economics?
00:45:13.720 He said, oh, they're all moribund, I mean, because we've learned now what, and he said, he realized this was increasingly a study that believed it had no history, you know, and that's why the history of economy is so interesting is because people, some people in it think it's like medicine.
00:45:30.300 a book on economics from the 19th century
00:45:33.360 has no more to teach you than a book of medicine
00:45:35.320 from the 19th century because we know more
00:45:37.160 and the problem with economics is actually
00:45:38.940 there's lots of stuff you do know
00:45:41.160 but there's also
00:45:43.280 history recycling
00:45:45.560 itself in certain ways
00:45:47.420 and in the case of economics
00:45:49.060 of the kind we're going through at the moment
00:45:50.580 one of the reasons why one feels
00:45:53.220 very very worried about the moment we're in
00:45:55.280 is because ordinarily we just financially
00:45:57.320 take away these other bad signs
00:45:59.080 what normally happens at this point is that it all gets corrected by a war yes absolutely and
00:46:05.900 this has been something that I've I've been thinking about this whole time which is obviously
00:46:11.600 our reading of history is perverted by that dogma that it's written by the winners and so
00:46:18.960 and such a weird claim that isn't it because it's not true at all I mean lots of time the
00:46:23.240 losers write the history sure what what i mean more accurately i think is that our reading of
00:46:30.280 history is based on things that happened as opposed to things that were avoided do you see 0.72
00:46:35.560 what i'm saying yeah let me elaborate so for example if a plane crashes that's a huge event
00:46:41.040 if a mechanic tightens a bolt that prevents a plane from crashing that never gets covered in
00:46:47.060 anyway nascent talib writes about this in the black swan so the question that has been
00:46:52.980 borrowing away into my head this whole three months or four months is has there ever been
00:46:59.320 in time in history where we have been on the trajectory on which we are now so far down that
00:47:06.820 trajectory and there is no question that the trajectory leads to what you've just said which
00:47:11.760 is war and we decided you know what let's step back from the precipice let's stop this madness
00:47:20.760 of crowds let's remember that as individuals we have the capacity to think and reason well i mean
00:47:29.600 you you can hope that that can happen if i go back to experience of the individual because
00:47:34.680 there is something very instinctive in us when we know we get suddenly a glimpse of what it is
00:47:43.500 that's about to happen uh i was reading a lot of tolstoy in lockdown and he's so depressed
00:47:49.160 you russian writer um but there's a that magnificent description in war and peace of
00:47:57.700 the two sides of the army coming together you know they have the gap between them and they know
00:48:02.200 as they're facing each other,
00:48:03.320 but just a centimeter forward
00:48:05.140 and you are into this other terrain.
00:48:07.480 And the other terrain is where everything happens,
00:48:09.600 every limb's hacked, everyone.
00:48:12.100 But as long as you're standing there
00:48:14.100 and you haven't taken that small step
00:48:17.000 into that terrain,
00:48:19.900 that small step is everything.
00:48:24.940 And all of us sense that.
00:48:28.480 The people engaging in violence in America,
00:48:30.840 in particular. The protesters in the UK, you could see it. They were testing whether to dare to take
00:48:38.220 that step into that terrain. And actually in this country, partly because eventually the policing
00:48:43.940 became okay, realizing you can't step there, all changes. In America, it seems that some people
00:48:52.600 have started to step into that terrain. Now, some of them might immediately see that it ends up with
00:48:59.160 people being shot through the skull and they might see an exit wound of a bullet for the first time
00:49:05.080 in their life and human being and think you know what maybe we get back to the formation we were
00:49:11.120 in before maybe that was more fun and there will be others who will enjoy being in that train but
00:49:17.580 i i have some confidence that once people see what they're about to step into they will step back
00:49:25.840 So I hope.
00:49:29.620 Is that how crowds work, though, Douglas?
00:49:31.620 Well, the other option, of course, is you do get in, again,
00:49:35.520 I go back to these events in Kenosha the other day,
00:49:38.300 you get that and then you never know where you are
00:49:43.040 because suddenly the melee, I mean, you know,
00:49:45.860 I wrote some years ago a book about the events of Bloody Sunday
00:49:48.920 in Northern Ireland, and I have a particular interest
00:49:52.200 in this thing of what happens when the first shot fires.
00:49:55.300 because when the first shot fires, the perception of everybody outside is,
00:50:00.820 well, then you knew that, for instance, that person fired from there
00:50:03.340 and that person fired from there. 0.83
00:50:04.640 You don't have a damn clue what's happening. 0.94
00:50:07.280 Once it kicks off, once violence kicks off, you don't know. 0.97
00:50:13.220 You don't know where the sound is, the recall of a bullet.
00:50:16.380 You don't know where it is, the rebound of a bullet.
00:50:18.920 You don't know who shot where.
00:50:20.760 It's a free fall, the whole thing.
00:50:23.580 So, yes, that's the other option.
00:50:26.640 And this is why it seems to me that the aim of the era is not to join the crowd.
00:50:35.020 You must have seen, as I did, that amazing footage of the restaurants in Washington, D.C., of these totally reprehensible, spoiled, mainly white as far as I could see, 1.00
00:50:49.660 college age kids going around and demanding that restaurant goers put their fist in the air
00:50:57.680 there's a black power salute some people say the salute for something related as ever they
00:51:03.460 you know pretend the whole thing is is a mystery even whilst they're enforcing it on the population
00:51:09.060 but like taking the knee it's all this sort of modern crass iconography they just want to
00:51:16.500 force it doesn't matter in a way just so long as you've demoralized people enough that they
00:51:20.820 do the thing you tell them to do take the knee raise your fist jump and they go around all these
00:51:27.160 restaurants and do this you can see that the clientele some of them uh they go downstairs
00:51:33.400 in the restaurant and you know you see these guys just you know some of them just start doing it 0.87
00:51:36.860 anyway and then it's like you know and then they also say fuck the police and then you can see one 0.79
00:51:41.560 of the guys like oh i'm not sure about um but in that situation there were some people there's one 0.99
00:51:48.660 woman in one of those videos who doesn't do it and the whole damn mob is around her screaming 1.00
00:51:55.620 to her to do it and she won't be that woman be that person do not join the crowd do not do what 0.99
00:52:04.780 the mob demands be that woman. It doesn't matter what the mob demands. It matters less what the 1.00
00:52:11.940 mob demands than that you do not do what the mob says. So there are people. And examples like that
00:52:19.760 throw up these people. That woman may not have known that she was that sort of person. She may 1.00
00:52:25.140 not have known that she had the heroic quality needed. And it is heroic to say, no, I will not
00:52:30.840 join the madness of the crowd. I will remain a human being with my own sense of dignity and my
00:52:36.180 own sense of self-worth and you will not demoralize me because I know that if I do this you will demand
00:52:41.380 that I do something next. And it seems that these crowds have a narrative. They adhere to a particular
00:52:49.200 narrative. Whatever it may be, it may be the Black Lives Matter narrative of, you know, racism is
00:52:54.100 everywhere we live in a racist structure of oppression all the rest of it why has it come
00:53:02.020 to this point now where if you don't adhere to this narrative if you don't go along with it it
00:53:09.500 can't just be that we're two people who have a difference politically why has it got to this
00:53:15.800 point that you must be cancelled destroyed defenestrated and ultimately ruined because
00:53:21.840 the crowds are good they're really good they really know what they're doing i mean i'm in
00:53:28.300 this position where i can say whatever the hell i want why because i don't owe anything to anyone
00:53:35.940 really i mean my editors papers i write for could be persuaded not to publish me i suppose my
00:53:43.040 publishers could be persuaded not to publish me but i other than that i don't have anyone i sort
00:53:49.120 of need to have on side maybe i shouldn't have given that list of people i come to think about
00:53:55.760 it uh no i mean but most people aren't in that situation most people are beholden to someone
00:54:01.140 yeah they have an employer they teach somewhere and there is a boss or there's a board at their
00:54:06.180 company and so on and those people are in a very vulnerable position and they are um being well
00:54:13.900 picked off by the current mob and the mob is not just physical it's obviously online
00:54:20.900 and they come for people and they make them essentially unemployable and that's the aim so
00:54:26.440 as i've probably said to you before those of us who aren't in that vulnerable position i think
00:54:31.000 have a disproportionate duty to say the truth as we see it even if we're wrong and i have no doubt
00:54:36.040 like everyone i can be wrong um but the thing that alarms me is that things we could all say
00:54:42.900 until yesterday have become impossible to say you know i have this example i give in the madness of
00:54:47.860 crowds about relations between the sexes in the chapter on women we all know in our society that
00:54:54.100 the the motif of the predatory male we all know that one almost all news about relations between
00:55:04.720 sexes is about the dreaded alpha male the predatory alpha male uh well left wing
00:55:10.240 I was just getting ready to make the same point I've made on every live stream for the last two months,
00:55:18.960 just enjoying the fact that, you know, all these wonderful people who are very kind and compassionate.
00:55:26.180 Turns out.
00:55:27.140 Right.
00:55:27.420 Well, the first thing is, of course, as we discussed before, within that is the people who are actually predatory males,
00:55:34.500 who pretend to be little harmless little men who say, 0.98
00:55:38.500 oh, I'm a feminist, and I'm for Black Lives Matter, and I do all these things, and then turn out to be rapists and rapacious perverts of every kind. 0.99
00:55:46.440 But that's not the point. 0.99
00:55:47.800 The point is that we knew that, and we've always known that, and there's also always been another thing in history, which is the rapacious, predatory female.
00:56:00.180 Totally familiar type.
00:56:02.400 Literature is filled with it.
00:56:04.720 Shakespeare revels in it.
00:56:06.480 Chaucer revels in it.
00:56:08.240 Every single civilization and country has a version of this literature.
00:56:12.200 And we pretend now that there's no such thing.
00:56:14.640 There's only the predatory men.
00:56:15.900 Macbeth, I mean.
00:56:16.680 Samson and Delilah.
00:56:17.700 Samson and Delilah.
00:56:18.940 Every single tradition has predatory females.
00:56:22.680 But our age has decided since yesterday there is only the predatory male.
00:56:26.600 So most people pointing this out get into a whole world of trouble.
00:56:30.720 Say to most bosses in an office,
00:56:32.460 is there such a thing as a woman who'll do a certain amount of stuff just to get somewhere? 1.00
00:56:37.640 see whether he wants to have that conversation you know you were right you know the first time
00:56:42.580 we interviewed Douglas uh Francis looked at you and went you know what Douglas he's a bit of a
00:56:47.040 troublemaker possibly but not you know it's mischievous I think mischievous sometimes but
00:56:55.620 the point is is that there's a lot of stuff we all knew till yesterday on this yes yes and I'm
00:57:02.600 And I think we should all be worried that this stuff which is true
00:57:06.300 is not able to be acknowledged.
00:57:10.300 And that's the case now overwhelmingly.
00:57:13.160 It's becoming clear that in the racial thing this is becoming a particular issue
00:57:17.620 because what we've done is, among other things, subvert a whole load of discussion.
00:57:23.600 And as I say, my own hope in all of that has always been that,
00:57:27.480 well, my own belief in it is you have only two ways to go on the race one.
00:57:32.660 You either do what people like me had put our store in,
00:57:38.980 which is you say, well, we should seek to get to a society
00:57:44.460 where it's as unimportant as hair colour.
00:57:47.540 And I grew up in London in which that was, to my mind,
00:57:51.940 and some people say, well, you would say that because you're white, wouldn't you?
00:57:54.520 But to my mind and to my mind of my contemporaries and my friends,
00:57:58.420 I thought that had basically happened or was in the process of happening.
00:58:02.560 That's one option.
00:58:03.680 We are united by certain civil and other unifying factors.
00:58:11.780 And race is an unimportant element of that.
00:58:14.200 Now, in the name of anti-racism, a group of people have come along who said,
00:58:17.640 no, no, no.
00:58:18.660 No, race is the only thing that matters. 0.98
00:58:20.760 And if you say that it doesn't matter, you're a racist. 0.99
00:58:23.080 And if you say that it does matter, you're a racist. 1.00
00:58:25.840 And everywhere you go, you're a racist. 0.96
00:58:28.420 And then you get people into the great double-blind moves that everyone's been getting caught in by total crocs and fraudsters like Robin DiAngelo, money-making monsters, who goes around American college campuses and to firms and charges them tens of thousands of dollars to tell them that if they say they're racist, they're racist, and if they say they're not racist, they're racist. 0.98
00:58:53.900 And the only best correct answer is to always say you're a racist.
00:58:58.600 We should have got into that, right?
00:59:00.300 We should have got into the ground floor. 0.99
00:59:03.840 Mate, you're definitely racist. 0.99
00:59:05.280 What can I say? 0.88
00:59:06.060 And these people have come, therefore, with the only other option to the one I had put my story, which is, okay, it's about race.
00:59:17.500 Well, here's a warning on that one.
00:59:19.040 Even if you don't want to go down all of the other warnings you can do on it.
00:59:22.380 even if you were of the group pushing that step back because it's not going to work
00:59:28.780 what is the black population in america 13 13 percent you think that a that a population that
00:59:36.740 is still a majority is going to forever suck up the claim that they're evil no but this is where
00:59:43.860 the war part comes in right and it's the same in this country to a lesser extent you think that 0.92
00:59:49.180 white people are still a majority in this country. I hate talking about that. I hate the idea that we 0.98
00:59:54.340 have to talk about white people and black people. But fine, if they force us to do that, let's just 0.98
00:59:59.140 do the maths on that. White people remain the majority in this country. You think they are 1.00
01:00:03.900 going to be happy to be told your past was disgusting and reprehensible, and not just 0.98
01:00:09.940 ordinarily reprehensible, but uniquely reprehensible. None of your forebears are of any 0.96
01:00:16.360 worth. Your society didn't get anything that was good other than by stealing it. What you have now
01:00:22.920 you do not deserve. You should give it to other people. You should give it to other people who
01:00:28.460 look like people to whom things were done in history because you look like people who did
01:00:33.080 some of the things that were done. We will ignore anything bad done by any other group of people
01:00:38.380 other than you. You've got to do this for all the rest of time. Are you happy with that? You think
01:00:43.980 you're going to win? You think that the British public's going to suck that up forever? You think
01:00:51.120 that they're going to be willing to sit there and take it as they're told that our forebears all had
01:00:56.320 the best imaginable time? You think that's going to work? Oh, it might work this year. It's not
01:01:04.460 going to work for very much longer. And I can see exactly what the play is that comes back,
01:01:11.160 Which is, that's a shame. We have put an awful lot of faith in this pluralistic multicultural ideal.
01:01:19.960 Turns out it wasn't wanted. How do you unknit that without going to hell?
01:01:25.880 These people are playing with the most dangerous elements of our society.
01:01:31.180 they're like they are it's like seeing a child playing with a nuclear device
01:01:43.100 and we've got to stop but don't you think the problem is so for instance in venezuela in 99
01:01:52.080 when chavez came to power and he had a lot of the same ideas a lot of the same rhetoric that
01:01:56.440 black lives matter espoused i saw what happened in venezuela a lot of people don't understand
01:02:04.840 what it is to live in a communist society they don't know what it means you know i i have people
01:02:09.860 coming up to me and going you know cuba's not all bad it's always meant to be the schooling
01:02:15.480 good weather nice cigars as well yeah um it's always meant to be the schooling system isn't
01:02:21.960 of the health care system.
01:02:23.040 Yes.
01:02:23.700 There was always some crock.
01:02:24.980 There always was during Cold War as well. 1.00
01:02:27.060 There was obviously always a certain type of fool 0.99
01:02:29.440 who could tell you how great something was. 0.98
01:02:36.860 Maybe one of the most important tasks of our time
01:02:39.800 is for everybody of your age, younger, older,
01:02:45.720 to tell more about this.
01:02:48.180 i am going back to that thing i said about almost learning one of the two lessons of the 20th
01:02:54.020 century why don't we work harder at teaching telling people explaining whatever voice we
01:03:00.080 have how we do it what that second lesson ought to have been you know and again the formula that
01:03:08.100 jordan and i came to some time ago was how about trying to work out where the left goes too far
01:03:14.960 like we all know where the right goes too far the right goes too far and gets into the worst
01:03:19.460 possible territory when it starts playing games of racial separation or racial superiority okay
01:03:26.180 not that the left can't do racial superiority claims but it's more historically it's more
01:03:31.880 been a factor on the right yeah the far right um and could be again on the far left where does the
01:03:38.340 left go to the far left nobody seems to care nobody seems to know um the obvious place is
01:03:44.620 put it at equity, the search to make everybody equal. By the way, I think, for my gut, I think
01:03:50.280 it's a disgusting idea. I don't want everyone to be equal. You know, I don't like equality in
01:03:54.840 sports. I don't like it in any other realm of life. You know, I like human difference. I don't
01:04:03.740 want everything to be this flat, monochrome, monotone, boring society. But some people do
01:04:10.280 seeks at least a greater degree or put a greater emphasis on equality than for instance than i do
01:04:16.460 and then to equity well that would be where the left goes wrong has always gone wrong
01:04:22.800 why don't we start to name names put blame why do we start to to put the blame at the doors of the
01:04:33.480 people who make this happen again and again and make sure we learn nothing from others experience
01:04:39.480 in Venezuela, in Russia, in Cuba, everywhere else.
01:04:45.700 Why don't we start to trace this?
01:04:47.800 Because we still, all of us must be able to agree
01:04:51.140 that the amazing thing that the left got away with
01:04:55.400 in the 20th century was that it got away basically scot-free.
01:04:59.720 And the right didn't, and for good reason.
01:05:04.020 And the left somehow did.
01:05:07.720 That's because we needed the left to defeat the right, that's why.
01:05:10.600 Yeah, and that made sense at times.
01:05:12.440 I have a great degree of sympathy for people who actually did think
01:05:16.960 that communism was the only way to cancel out fascism at a certain point.
01:05:24.540 Yeah, until Solzhenitsyn wrote the book.
01:05:26.500 Well, once Solzhenitsyn, after Hungary, after Czechoslovakia,
01:05:29.420 after Solzhenitsyn, how the hell do you still think that?
01:05:32.080 Well, also after 1945 in general.
01:05:34.180 you know i mean but but i have some sympathy for people do i have sympathy for people who
01:05:40.140 became fascist because they thought it was the only way to deal with communists no
01:05:46.180 that's an example of the inequity of the calculation i'm just describing for some
01:05:53.260 reason i mean i have that too why because we we focus more and are more maybe it's also because
01:06:01.900 in Western Europe, a communist threat didn't come as completely close
01:06:05.460 as the fascist threat did.
01:06:06.940 There's something in that, a simple geographical issue.
01:06:09.600 But why is it that we are still in this situation in 2020
01:06:14.540 where they fly the Marxist banners, they fly the Soviet flags,
01:06:19.600 they'll play a Soviet anthem, they'll play games,
01:06:25.520 they'll wear T-shirts of Che Guevara, and they'll admire Venezuela, 0.52
01:06:31.060 and they'll they'll they have this horrible roster of first and second class sadists and they still
01:06:40.140 think that they can make it work and why aren't they more shamed about it all after this amount 0.72
01:06:45.160 of time it's not like it's a damn secret anymore well it's been a great opening the first season
01:06:51.280 of trigonometry with an uplifting episode yeah there was a massive amount of time for gags i
01:06:57.020 natives yeah yeah but douglas i do think it's important that we talk about this in this way too
01:07:04.040 because i think people need to understand that the time for half measures and for wishing it all 0.95
01:07:10.820 would just go away and we can stop talking about the woke shit that time's over now sure that time 0.91
01:07:17.820 is over sure this is the time for the opposite of the cowardice that francis talked about this is 0.99
01:07:23.920 the time for people who can we're privileged you're privileged in that position to have that
01:07:28.400 freedom but it's also now time for other people to to in their small ways not to raise the fist
01:07:35.620 not to bow to the mob not to join the mob and i think the message that you have carried and your
01:07:42.520 book presents to people is exactly that it's an important message right now and you talk about it
01:07:49.880 in the afterward that you wrote to the to the madness of crown just now every time you publish
01:07:53.840 a book now you expect that it will be the last book you publish it's true it's true but but this
01:08:02.740 is why it's so important that you do and it's why it's important that we have these conversations
01:08:08.700 and it's important that other people who can do the same and i hope that watching this listening
01:08:14.960 to this gives them some measure of inspiration to do that because in my opinion that is the only
01:08:20.400 way we get out of this completely agree so with that in mind we've got one final question for you
01:08:27.180 as always which is what's the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be
01:08:32.000 i think we just talked about it actually i think it's that thing i think it's finding
01:08:38.980 and agreeing on the place where the left
01:08:41.080 goes wrong
01:08:41.620 and I think it is people
01:08:44.680 it should be incumbent
01:08:48.960 on people to know their own ignorance
01:08:51.420 on this
01:08:52.280 if somebody said to you
01:08:54.980 what's Auschwitz
01:08:57.180 that person
01:09:00.440 is 1.00
01:09:02.880 ignorant 1.00
01:09:04.460 wickedly 1.00
01:09:07.160 ignorant 1.00
01:09:07.560 they should not say that 0.99
01:09:10.520 nobody should say that
01:09:12.600 if somebody said to you
01:09:15.500 who is Pol Pot
01:09:17.700 that person is also 0.99
01:09:20.480 ignorant in an evil way 0.98
01:09:21.860 if they don't know 1.00
01:09:24.120 by now
01:09:25.600 they should know
01:09:28.640 and we should make sure
01:09:30.520 they know
01:09:30.960 thank you for coming back
01:09:35.600 it's been a pleasure
01:09:38.560 Thank you so much for watching, guys.
01:09:41.020 If you want to follow us, please do.
01:09:43.220 And also remember that we go out,
01:09:45.080 our episodes are Wednesday and Sunday, 7pm.
01:09:49.160 We also have live streams, don't we, Constantine?
01:09:50.960 Every other day except Monday.
01:09:52.520 So we will see you at 7pm.
01:09:53.800 I love the way we ended on a very dark note.
01:09:55.640 And now we're just brazenly plugging ourselves
01:09:59.140 for the capitalist returns that we deserve.
01:10:02.320 We'll see you very soon with another episode.
01:10:06.500 Take care.
01:10:06.880 Thank you and see you soon.