End of Year Review 2024 with Andrew Doyle and Leo Kearse
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 25 minutes
Words per Minute
202.78711
Summary
In this episode, we look at the impact of October 7th and the reaction of American universities to it, and how it changed the way we think about race and identity in the 21st century. We also look at how much money is being wasted on useless, self-perpetuating 'woke' academics.
Transcript
00:00:58.000
And we will have a general election on the 4th of July.
00:03:00.180
One of the first things that happened in the video we just played is the stuff that happened on American universities in response to October 7th, which is the Claudine Gay long running saga.
00:03:12.540
And I feel that one of the reasons that's important is that's when this whole woke thing began to unravel because it really hit the mainstream.
00:03:21.580
And a lot of people who'd never realized it was really going on suddenly woke up.
00:03:25.120
Well, this whole thing of like sort of abolishing whiteness and decolonialism, this is, you know, this has been spoken about in universities for years.
00:03:32.740
We've had this Harvard develop this critical race theory and everybody was fine when it was targeted against white people.
00:03:40.120
And then we actually saw, you know, manifesting in reality in Israel where they went across and they killed who the woke left considered to be, you know, white European settlers, AKA Israelis.
00:03:52.860
So then we could see, you know, professors and students turn around and say like, well, what did you think decolonialism was going to look like?
00:04:01.020
And then people were like, oh, that's what all this stuff is.
00:04:04.180
It's not just like, you know, having more black people in adverts or something.
00:04:07.000
It's going in and like killing people like that.
00:04:09.320
So I think it woke a lot of people up to the realities of critical race theory.
00:04:12.480
It was very interesting to see because it wasn't just Claudine Gay, was it?
00:04:14.900
It was the three sort of heads of Ivy League universities being grilled about their free speech stance.
00:04:19.940
They tried to use the free speech defense effectively because they were asked the question, you know, is it ever OK to call for the genocide of Jews on campus?
00:04:38.780
What I was thinking was the fact that they would say, because if they'd have said, if they'd always had a free speech stance and they'd always said, you can say the worst things on campus because, but they haven't.
00:04:48.160
What they've said is if you exercise any kind of microaggression, we'll make your life hell and kick you out and put you through all sort of tribunals and stuff.
00:04:55.860
But if you call for genocide against Jews, that's OK.
00:05:01.720
And then, by the way, she got caught as a plagiarist, which is kind of amazing because when Claudine Gay, when someone cleverly, I think it was Christopher Rufo, looked through her thesis, her doctoral thesis and found out she'd ripped off a lot of it.
00:05:13.600
And then you had all these articles saying that plagiarism is the new weapon of the alt-right to attack people.
00:05:22.540
No, it's just she was ripping off people's work.
00:05:24.780
I mean, surely, you know, that's really racist is if you say that black people can't plagiarize.
00:05:30.340
I mean, to be honest, you should have plagiarized better.
00:05:32.340
I mean, you change a few words so that then Christopher Rufo can't come along and do a, you know, a search for certain sentences.
00:05:39.480
When they wrote these theses, they thought no one's going to check these obscure texts.
00:05:42.940
And now we've got these major search engines that can find everything straight away.
00:05:46.200
I reckon loads of people are going to get done with this.
00:05:49.300
I mean, it's because, you know, writing a thesis is hard.
00:05:56.140
But yeah, a lot of people, they just rip whole passages off it.
00:05:58.680
But it also points to how worthless academia is now.
00:06:05.080
So much of this stuff is just, you know, just a sort of self-perpetuating pyramid scheme of students taking out loans to pay these professors to get a worthless certificate that says they're now qualified and, you know,
00:06:25.640
Well, isn't it a good thing then that Harvard and these sort of Ivy League universities are basically not trusted anymore?
00:06:30.220
Because they're not actually interested in the pursuit of truth or knowledge anymore.
00:06:35.500
They're just ideological factories to produce a certain way of thinking.
00:06:40.460
I think it's great that new universities are cropping up and new institutions are actually going to teach people,
00:06:45.060
will give people kind of actual classical liberal education because that's what people really, really want.
00:06:52.180
Yeah, the Dumfries and Galloway College of Technology is finally going to have its moment in the sun.
00:06:58.960
It's never going to have its moment in the sun.
00:07:06.920
I don't even know, like higher national certificate.
00:07:14.240
This is like you get them for hairdressing and stuff.
00:07:18.040
But basically it was either go to sixth, like do sixth year and you don't get any money
00:07:22.340
or you go to the college and you get like a grant and all this money for going.
00:07:30.860
No, I got a full grant when I was going to university.
00:07:32.780
By the way, can I just say that was very funny because you were talking about how, you know,
00:07:52.660
But it's funny, the attitude to academia has changed because I mean, my dad, my dad was
00:07:56.640
So he did like, you know, properly skilled stuff with his hands, you know, pretty well paid or whatever,
00:08:04.760
You're not going to, because I'll be like, oh, teach me to make guns.
00:08:06.960
He'll be like, no, no, you're going to go to university.
00:08:09.240
You're going to get, you're going to get a liberal arts degree at some, you know, mid-ranking
00:08:16.600
And then I got that degree and it was absolutely useless.
00:08:18.840
I mean, to be fair, I did a degree in Renaissance poetry.
00:08:22.080
And I haven't really used it as much as, I mean, if you want me to scan a sonnet or something,
00:08:31.560
It's, you know, you end up writing a book that no one's ever going to read.
00:08:37.020
But on the other hand, you know, I think we do have to do something about higher education.
00:08:42.500
And a lot of people do end up going to universities that don't need to.
00:08:45.700
Again, I'll sound really snobbish here, but it's actually the reverse.
00:08:53.260
But it's also that we've had successive governments who want to prove their worth and their success in the educational field by effectively encouraging more and more people to go to university.
00:09:02.640
But you can earn so much more by doing an apprenticeship or doing various things.
00:09:10.560
Like, you wouldn't put me in a football squad and say, why don't you just do that?
00:09:17.240
Because Tony Blair had this plan to get, like, 50% of the population to university.
00:09:21.800
But there's no way 50% of the population are in the top 5% academically.
00:09:30.180
I know that because I studied maths at university.
00:09:34.040
I remember when I went to university, I was like, man, all these people are dumb.
00:09:37.540
And then I was like, shit, does that mean I'm dumb as well?
00:09:41.280
You know, there was a very interesting interview on Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman a few, back
00:09:51.360
And Paxman said to him, you say 50% of, you want 50% of young people to go to university.
00:10:03.880
He just didn't have an answer for it because 50 is something that sticks in people's minds
00:10:08.620
But there's actually no real basis for wanting 50% of people to go to university.
00:10:12.780
Well, I think if they look at, you know, people who went to university in the 60s, when, you
00:10:16.920
know, a much smaller percentage of people going to university, they'd be like, well, look
00:10:20.260
at the uplift in their career prospects and how much they earn.
00:10:25.560
But then it doesn't work that, you know, you scale up the numbers and they all earn more
00:10:30.760
Like those numbers going to university would have been smarter to start off with.
00:10:35.340
And, but the good news is, is that Claudine Gay has not been fired.
00:10:41.620
She's still making a million dollars a year, but I think she may have been suspended.
00:10:50.500
Speaking of people, this is a very, very shitty segue, but speaking of people who've
00:10:54.860
resigned, Hamza Youssef resigned during the course of this year, which I think is cause
00:10:58.160
for celebration for comedians everywhere, because he actually passed a law that criminalized
00:11:06.920
Well, it originated with him when he was justice secretary.
00:11:11.340
So he'd sort of formulated this new hate speech plan.
00:11:14.320
And the idea was that he wanted to abolish the blasphemy laws that existed in Scotland
00:11:18.620
Well, you know, bear in mind, blasphemy laws that were only eventually repealed in the
00:11:22.940
And then this new hate speech bill was meant to get rid of all of that, but then effectively
00:11:31.880
And he introduced various clauses, things like the public performance of a play, if it
00:11:38.860
could be said to have stirred up hatred, would violate this idea.
00:11:42.680
He also said that you could be prosecuted for hateful things you said within the privacy
00:11:47.440
And in the original draft of the bill that he put up, it actually said that intention doesn't
00:11:52.360
It was only when lots of police and solicitors and clergymen and all sorts of people said,
00:11:59.140
I mean, some priests were saying, you know, this would criminalize the Bible, which I don't
00:12:02.120
think Hamza Yusuf would have a problem with, to be honest.
00:12:06.880
But you still ended up with this hate speech bill coming through on 1st of April, whereby
00:12:11.620
the police were obliged to investigate all complaints of hateful speech or hateful conduct.
00:12:18.380
So most of the complaints, the number one person who was complained about was Hamza Yusuf.
00:12:21.900
Because he'd done a big speech about how evil and terrible white people were.
00:12:29.800
And all these laws that are coming through to criminalize speech.
00:12:33.060
I mean, to have a criminal law, a sort of core tenet in the law is it's got to be sort
00:12:40.380
You can sort of accidentally steal a car, for example.
00:12:43.820
So these laws are very easy to accidentally break.
00:12:47.200
You can accidentally do a tweet and somebody perceives it as offensive.
00:12:51.380
And then all of a sudden you can have broken the law.
00:12:58.100
It's a lot like the laws they had under communists.
00:13:01.400
In the Soviet Union, communist systems have laws that anybody could be perceived to have
00:13:09.480
And then the regime can just pick and choose who's broken them.
00:13:12.920
It's really scary because we took Comedy Unleashed up to Scotland on April the 1st to
00:13:18.220
test the law because the Herald had run a front cover article saying that the police
00:13:22.320
had been trained in Scotland in advance of the April the 1st deadline to deal with problematic
00:13:28.580
So they'd actually had training sessions about this.
00:13:30.400
So we tested it and went up there on April the 1st.
00:13:32.520
But I remember the week before, I'd had all these messages from people saying, don't take
00:13:36.780
your phone, don't take your computer because the police might seize it.
00:13:40.420
I even changed the setting on my phone so that it didn't open with my face so they couldn't
00:13:45.700
So they had to put it like I'm behaving like a gangster because I'm worried about this
00:13:52.140
My favorite thing, though, about the hate speech law is that the Scottish government
00:14:02.840
And he did this video, I think it's still online, where he says, I'm the hate monster.
00:14:08.840
And he said something like, I'm inside all of you, which sounds a bit rapey, to be honest,
00:14:13.040
but I'm inside all of you and I can emerge at any point.
00:14:17.760
So everybody has to live in fear and suppress their feelings and suppress what they're saying,
00:14:21.720
which isn't a good way for a liberal tolerant society to be at all.
00:14:28.980
Well, yeah, my favorite thing about the whole hate crime thing was because I stood for election
00:14:37.180
And to raise awareness of the hate crime act that was going through Parliament and all
00:14:44.800
the sort of lefty comedians, especially in Scotland, were like, oh, what are you worried
00:14:49.620
You really think they're going to come after comedians?
00:14:51.860
You should just try not being bigoted and transphobic and racist and all the rest of it.
00:14:55.760
And, you know, I was like, oh, you know, fine, whatever.
00:14:58.160
You know, you don't think this is a threat to comedy?
00:15:00.360
Then, like, you know, a few years on, who are the people that they're coming after with
00:15:06.740
He got, like, you know, cancelled from the Edinburgh Fringe.
00:15:12.340
So they're coming after all the comedians on the left.
00:15:15.240
The ones on the left are suddenly finding out that some of their attitudes, some of the
00:15:19.800
things they say about Israel or whatever turn out to be hateful.
00:15:24.940
Well, Hamza Yusuf's clause about the public performance of a play, there was a discussion
00:15:32.240
about whether that would affect the Edinburgh Fringe, whether a play could classify as comedians.
00:15:41.080
But, you know, as far as I'm aware, it seems to have not worked.
00:15:45.320
Well, for the moment, until somebody goes across the tripwire and sets it off.
00:15:53.020
I mean, look at what happened with Count Dankula, however many years ago.
00:15:59.800
But maybe it's because maybe it will decline because of the decline of the SNP.
00:16:04.460
Because there's something about the SNP that they have authoritarianism baked into their DNA.
00:16:09.560
I mean, they've always had this thing about, they introduced that named person scheme all
00:16:14.020
those years ago where they wanted every citizen in Scotland to have a, every child born in
00:16:18.520
Scotland to have a state guardian because they didn't trust the parents.
00:16:25.380
But then they introduced like minimum pricing for alcohol, ban on two for one pizzas.
00:16:29.420
They want to control how people, they don't want people to be obese or eat.
00:16:37.240
You talk about nanny state, but there is something about them.
00:16:42.440
So the named person's act was rolled back and had other sort of hate speech legislation,
00:16:49.040
That's not what it was called, but that was basically what it was for.
00:16:52.280
But the hate, the hate crime act hasn't been cancelled yet.
00:16:55.800
But I mean, talking to Helen Dale, so she's a liar and she says, you know, because of
00:16:59.980
the sort of the mockery of it, because it was such a car crash when it was launched and
00:17:05.180
everybody made fun of it, there aren't going to be any, any judges that are going to be
00:17:16.020
But don't you think though, that there is this trend, not just in Scotland, but across
00:17:19.300
Europe and across countries more broadly to introduce more and more hate speech laws,
00:17:23.820
because the Scottish hate speech law, in a sense, is not as bad as the Irish hate speech
00:17:28.560
law, which they have scotched, but is going to come back at some point.
00:17:31.280
Because they actually introduced in Ireland, when they were drafting the bill, the wording
00:17:39.380
It actually said hatred is hatred against a certain group.
00:17:43.500
And I was like, well, yeah, so what this is a circular definition.
00:17:49.540
So any future government could use it, could use that kind of legislation to criminalize
00:17:56.100
I'm sure the Labour government would love to introduce a similar kind of thing.
00:17:59.660
We've had, what's her face, Yvette Cooper has said she wants to bring back non-crime hate
00:18:12.720
I mean, the EU has one of these bills, Australia, Canada, lots and lots of places around the
00:18:19.080
And one of the things, you know, you spend some time in America, as have we.
00:18:22.440
One of the things that really strikes me is how crazy this is.
00:18:27.040
Like, we sit and like joke about it and take the piss and whatever.
00:18:30.720
When you go to America and you see a society that doesn't have any of this shit.
00:18:35.500
It's such a shock to go, oh, wait, this is what freedom actually looks like.
00:18:40.940
And they, like Americans on the left as well, think we're crazy.
00:18:44.080
Because they've got their First Amendment and they just think, why would anyone tolerate?
00:18:47.720
Like, it's weird that we even have debates over in this country about this stuff.
00:18:52.120
And for me, one of the actual real bellweathers for this is comedians.
00:18:56.700
Like, you talk to comedians in America about what happens in this country.
00:19:01.000
They literally look at me like I'm mad, like I'm making this up.
00:19:05.660
The idea that you would criminalise and arrest people and take them to court for a joke is
00:19:14.480
It's completely outside the realms of possibility.
00:19:17.540
And it's not even, like, getting down to the real sort of essential root of what these
00:19:29.040
I mean, the real sort of Cartesian essentialism.
00:19:31.480
It's impossible to know what somebody's genuinely feeling unless they honestly tell you, because
00:19:35.660
a feeling is something that only that person has.
00:19:37.400
So you can't, you can't criminalise, you can't say that, what they're trying to do is they're
00:19:42.040
They're saying this person is doing this out of hatred.
00:19:44.300
They could be doing that thing because of, you know, concern for their country, out of
00:19:49.600
There's lots of reasons they could be doing it.
00:19:51.880
So to say that, you know, this person's doing it, most comedians tell jokes because they
00:19:55.280
want people to laugh, which is a sort of, it's quite a giving thing.
00:19:59.500
No, no comedians are really doing things out of hatred because hatred isn't, it doesn't
00:20:09.740
Insofar as, haven't we sort of evolved to, to, to have that emotion from time to time?
00:20:16.420
You know, if you're going to criminalise negative emotions, why not envy?
00:20:23.080
Well, right, we should be criminalising behaviour, not emotions.
00:20:26.800
Yeah, but, but this idea that, you know, the police should be auditing your emotions, should
00:20:34.280
But I think, you know, guys, the truth of this is, at least in my opinion, what I've
00:20:39.220
been thinking about is one of the reasons that this is happening is, of course, social
00:20:43.000
media amplifies, you know, the moron in the corner of the pub that used to say all the
00:20:47.080
horrible shit that nobody cared about now gets amplified.
00:20:50.400
But I think there's another truth here, which is that as our society increasingly becomes
00:20:56.920
unhappy at the things that are happening to it, the need to suppress expressions of dissent
00:21:04.660
And so if you have tens of thousands of people coming illegally on small boats and the government
00:21:10.300
won't do anything about it and people are saying things about it, well, you've got to,
00:21:15.780
If you have 900,000 people net coming legally into the country, which no one voted for.
00:21:21.640
And in fact, people voted against time and time and time again.
00:21:25.200
Again, when they speak up about it, if you're not going to solve the problem, well, then
00:21:32.580
So you're saying that effectively the hate speech laws are a kind of ruse to stifle dissent.
00:21:39.660
And I think it was James Orr, who I think we all love and respect.
00:21:44.820
He said in an essay that he wrote on my sub stack in a debate that dying societies accumulate
00:21:57.040
You know, a society that finds itself in a position where it won't fix the things that
00:22:04.220
Well, let's at least fix the fact that they're saying something about it.
00:22:07.100
So it could, I mean, I'm sure that's an element to it, but I think there is also another element,
00:22:12.780
which is that I do genuinely believe that a lot of people in authority have bought into
00:22:20.840
They genuinely do believe that the things that, I mean, this was Mary Whitehouse's view
00:22:26.860
She launched that, you know, clean up TV campaign.
00:22:29.860
She genuinely believed that if you put something out there on TV, the masses would watch it
00:22:34.220
and would react and behave as they were told to by the TV.
00:22:37.780
Now, that's the view that the current, most politicians believe that people act on cue on
00:22:47.280
But we know it's not true because there've been decades of research into media effects
00:22:52.840
We know there's no causal link between what someone reads online or sees in popular culture
00:22:58.960
So my question is, if this is unevidenced, if this thing isn't real and we know it's
00:23:04.080
not real, why do we keep having people standing up in government and making legislation on the
00:23:09.840
Why do we have judges sentencing people to two years in prison for a tweet when there is
00:23:14.520
no evidence whatsoever that that tweet caused any crime?
00:23:17.120
Because they want to prevent people from expressing things that they don't want to be part of
00:23:30.400
Look, what happened in the intermediate between the thing we started talking about and this
00:23:34.680
is Jeremy Corbyn got forced out of the Labour Party.
00:23:40.120
Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, called an election.
00:23:46.500
And almost immediately after that, we had this, we all have to be very careful, but
00:23:52.660
we had this attack in Southport in which a guy stabbed several children, killed three
00:24:04.320
And that's where you saw the type of suppression of speech that you guys are talking about.
00:24:09.520
Well, the judges, firstly, Keir Starmer explicitly said that he was expecting harsh sentences.
00:24:17.520
There was definitely some sort of collusion between the government and the judiciary, which
00:24:19.940
should never happen anyway, where the government was basically dictating that we should have
00:24:24.680
Which the judges then not only acted out, but were open about their motivations.
00:24:28.400
In court, the judges repeatedly said, I'm giving you the harshest possible sentence as a lesson
00:24:33.420
to other people, to prevent other people from doing it.
00:24:35.500
Bear in mind, there were some people who just put memes out, offensive comments.
00:24:39.180
To give a very specific example, which I think is one of the most egregious ones, there was
00:24:43.080
a mother of three, Lucy Connolly, who put out a tweet.
00:24:46.080
She got 31 months sentence, so she'll end up serving one and a half years, probably, in prison.
00:24:57.260
She was angry and upset about the Southport stabbing.
00:25:01.260
I think the way she phrased it was like, you know, I don't care if they do these things.
00:25:05.080
It wasn't a direct sort of order or incitement.
00:25:08.420
But my point would be that even if she said, go and do it, the fact is that that tweet would
00:25:14.920
We know that there's no evidence whatsoever that it would ever...
00:25:18.040
If someone burns down a hotel, that's their responsibility.
00:25:21.600
If you're going to mitigate their responsibility by saying, well, they read a nasty tweet, then
00:25:25.240
you're doing a big favour to the worst kind of thugs in society.
00:25:34.760
And the solution to that is you just block it and say, I don't want to read that.
00:25:37.820
Not go to the police, get the woman thrown in prison.
00:25:40.480
I love this idea that there's, you know, violent criminals out there who are like, wait.
00:25:44.680
And, well, we've got to wait and see what this housewife says.
00:25:48.060
She's going to have half a bottle of white wine and then she's going to tweet something
00:25:55.580
I can understand why her passions would be high.
00:25:58.200
She lost a child to a doctor from overseas who I believe there was some sort of, he hadn't
00:26:12.540
So in her mind, she lost a child to mass immigration.
00:26:17.320
So for the judge not to sort of give any leniency, you know, to this, you know, poor woman who's
00:26:24.060
obviously suffering and, you know, tweeted and deleted in a moment of high, you know,
00:26:28.720
high temperature, I just, I couldn't believe it.
00:26:32.440
And I know, I think we disagreed on a podcast a couple of years, a number of years ago about
00:26:36.980
this, about where does the threshold for incitement of violence lie?
00:26:40.560
And I really do believe the more I look into it, that we need to adopt a similar form of
00:26:50.400
The Brandenburg test, that's based on a prosecution of a KKK leader, Clarence Brandenburg, I think
00:26:59.700
And they said, we're overturning this because the, he said basically that he wanted people
00:27:04.600
to commit acts of violence, but that there was no imminent threat.
00:27:07.400
So the Brandenburg test basically says it has to be intended to stir up violence.
00:27:12.100
There has to be an imminent likelihood and that it would happen imminently.
00:27:15.760
None of those would apply in the case of Lucy Connolly or some of the other people who were
00:27:25.940
He literally, there's three memes and they weren't even inflammatory.
00:27:29.920
They were just, they were just saying like one of them had a picture of sort of, you know,
00:27:33.260
Muslim looking guys getting off a boat and it said coming to a town near you.
00:27:36.480
And it's like, how is that even, you know, that's...
00:27:40.420
That would get you kicked out of most WhatsApp groups for not being racist enough.
00:27:44.200
That is, you know, there's no way that's even, you know, the foothills...
00:27:47.320
And what about, there's the guy, I can't remember his name.
00:27:50.820
There's a guy who's been found guilty already of wearing a Halloween costume that caused
00:27:56.160
And he's due to be sentenced, I think, in January, but he's already been found guilty.
00:28:02.020
It was, he dressed up as the Manchester Arena bomber.
00:28:04.260
So he dressed, so he dressed up in like an Arabic outfit.
00:28:08.220
He had a rucksack with the word boom written on it now.
00:28:19.060
I mean, look, I get that if you lost someone in that, it's horrible.
00:28:33.740
And the joke is, I'm going to dress in the most sick possible way.
00:28:37.960
Well, I don't know why I'm explaining this to you.
00:28:42.800
He's a guy who committed a big terrorist or tried to commit a big terrorist atrocity.
00:28:46.620
Well, my point would be, I don't give a fuck about a guy dressing up as the Manchester
00:28:55.420
I'd much rather the police spent time preventing the next Manchester Arena bombing, please.
00:29:01.520
Rather than not intercepting the potential bomber because they didn't want to be seen as racist.
00:29:08.660
I think we've come to the point now where you see governments, and this is conservative
00:29:12.500
Labour governments, and they remind me of kind of crap football managers where they don't
00:29:17.880
So they're just subbing people on, making these rules, and in order to be seen to do something.
00:29:24.440
The reality is they are completely, utterly incompetent.
00:29:31.400
They don't actually have the moral conviction or the courage to actually confront these problems
00:29:37.560
They just bring in stupid laws so that it can kind of sometimes even more
00:29:44.480
This comedy podcast is working out really well.
00:29:47.140
The moment I start talking, they're like, this isn't comedy.
00:29:51.220
But the reason it's hard to be funny about it is just it's so, so serious.
00:29:56.820
But, I mean, to try and bring a flippant element to it.
00:29:59.560
I mean, the non-crime hate incidents are very, very funny insofar as some people have been,
00:30:05.160
you know, well, not prosecuted, but they've been recorded by the police for, there was
00:30:09.320
one for a line call in a tennis match that someone disagreed with.
00:30:13.080
There was one who was whistling the Bob the Builder theme tune got done for a non-crime
00:30:21.080
There was a dog that defecated on a lawn got a non-crime hate incident.
00:30:32.200
Well, there was the kid who called someone in his class a retard got a non-crime hate
00:30:38.200
A kid got one for calling their classmates short.
00:30:45.540
An adult got one for giving someone an aggressive haircut.
00:30:49.820
So, but actually, there is something quite sinister about...
00:30:56.580
I mean, I don't understand if they'd gone up to somebody in the street and started cutting
00:31:02.380
I mean, have you ever had a really shit haircut and just looked at the barber and acted?
00:31:06.980
We obviously both go at the same person, Francis.
00:31:12.520
A producer at GB News went to get his haircut and they were talking.
00:31:16.520
And because he mentioned he worked for GB News, the barber gave him a deliberately bad
00:31:21.060
So it was shaved off half of the back of his head.
00:31:25.500
But what I wanted to say was, you were talking about laws and all these sort of draconian
00:31:30.380
There is an added dimension, an added problem, which I think is revealed by the existence
00:31:40.700
But I think it's because of the activist bodies that now control the quangos.
00:31:45.860
You know, you had the horrific murder of Stephen Lawrence back in the 90s.
00:31:53.340
In that document, it says you need to record racist incidents, even if they're not criminal.
00:31:59.780
But it's not until 2014 that the College of Policing said, yeah, we're going to start
00:32:05.540
But I only read recently that the guy who was in charge of the College of Policing in
00:32:09.900
that year, the year before, had won Stonewall's top award.
00:32:16.260
So in other words, it was an activist running the body that is responsible for training police
00:32:22.000
And that's why we now have a generation of police officers that are effectively activists,
00:32:25.400
or at least who think that their job is to behave like activists.
00:32:29.200
And it's not like the government have been able to do anything about it, because you've
00:32:32.340
had two home secretaries telling the College of Policing not to do this, and they were
00:32:37.700
And in fact, since that happened, the College of Policing has recorded more non-crime than
00:32:43.160
So in other words, the government can't even stop them.
00:32:48.720
Yeah, except that, as I say, Yvette Cooper wants to increase the recording of non-crime.
00:32:53.300
Well, what do we make of Starmer's first however many months?
00:32:59.760
It's like, we knew it was going to be bad, but this bad, this fast.
00:33:03.540
He's really done a sort of speed run into just oblivion.
00:33:17.140
Because I'm a little bit wary of a knee-jerk kind of anti-Labor, anti-Starmer reaction.
00:33:22.500
Because let's be honest, gentlemen, the previous lot, fucking useless as well.
00:33:29.640
I never had high expectations for Starmer, not because he's on the left, but just because
00:33:33.900
I don't have high expectations for any of them.
00:33:36.460
Can I just say, actually, the Conservatives were worse than Loosers because they were deliberately
00:33:41.760
In the words of Kemi Badenoch, we talked right and governed left.
00:33:45.180
And that is awful, awful, whatever side of the political spectrum you're on, because
00:33:50.880
what she admitted was that the government lied again and again and again about their
00:34:00.820
Yeah, and that's why I thought Starmer might be better.
00:34:02.780
I mean, he said a lot of the things you were saying were sort of like, you know, your dream
00:34:06.380
And also, he had the advantage of being from the...
00:34:13.000
So there's this perception that he's going to be able to get the civil service to do all
00:34:16.640
the things that the Tories couldn't make them do.
00:34:20.380
When Tony Blair came in, he had a sort of root and branch reform and really made sure
00:34:24.720
all his ideas were propagated out and actually, you know, followed through by the civil service.
00:34:30.940
Whereas the Tories just, you know, points about at the top and don't get anything done.
00:34:36.820
So I thought Starmer was going to do something.
00:34:39.340
The point he lost me and the point he lost a lot of people in Britain, I think, is after
00:34:47.120
And I think we all, you know, kind of know what was the motivating factor behind it.
00:34:51.800
Now, after that happened, he could have come out and he could have unified the nation.
00:34:55.900
He could have said, look, I understand people are upset.
00:34:58.160
You know, we're going to deal with this issue, but we're also going to deal with the riots
00:35:04.940
and we're going to deal, you know, we're going to deal with both sides of it.
00:35:08.260
Instead, he just dealt, like you've been saying, he just dealt with the symptom, not
00:35:15.220
To call everybody who was upset about these little girls getting stabbed to death, to
00:35:18.740
call them all like far right thugs is just a disgusting thing to say.
00:35:22.560
And also one of the points that I discussed with Chris Williamson when I was on his show,
00:35:26.840
I don't know if it will be out by the time, you know, Chris is from the North and he was
00:35:31.120
saying, when I looked around, I just saw a lot of very unhappy people who saw this as
00:35:36.180
an opportunity to go and smash things up and express their anger, which may not be about
00:35:41.060
that particular incident in some cases, but just people going out as they have done in
00:35:46.440
many occasions, including the previous riots when it was a whole different demographic
00:35:52.620
And it's an expression of the fact that there's a lack of jobs.
00:35:57.900
And what I found particularly disgusting about what Starmer did is he made it a political
00:36:04.460
thing when I didn't think it was a political thing.
00:36:07.760
I didn't think that the people who were on the streets were there to express a political
00:36:16.620
They were there, some of them, to express their disgust of what had happened and a lot
00:36:21.900
of others just to smash it up because that's fun if you've got nothing else to do.
00:36:25.300
I don't think many of them had read the works of Evola and were genuinely far-right activists.
00:36:31.740
I mean, there were some who have previous convictions for far-right stuff.
00:36:34.960
And there were people who, you know, it would have been perfectly possible for Starmer
00:36:37.800
to say there is an element of opportunistic thuggery going on here.
00:36:41.960
But we also have to look at the underlying cause why so many people are upset.
00:36:49.880
And there were people smashing stuff up and hurting people.
00:36:53.920
There were a lot of opportunistic thugs involved in the Black Lives Matter.
00:36:57.920
Why couldn't he have just said it in that more moderate way?
00:37:01.060
Why do you think he didn't say it in a more moderate way?
00:37:06.540
I think the country was really, I don't think we realised how close we came to a really serious
00:37:12.780
The police, you know, with thousands of people out in the streets all across the country
00:37:18.360
And we're close to, you know, the army getting called in to control the situation.
00:37:22.200
It was spiralling out of control for the police.
00:37:24.040
And do you think the army would have turned their guns on their own brothers and uncles?
00:37:29.660
If, you know, I'm not saying, you know, the army are related to these people.
00:37:33.660
A lot of people in the British army come from the working class.
00:37:37.320
So do you think they would have done that to enforce the decisions of some guy who's
00:37:43.520
siding with, or is seen to be siding with, you know, this horrible ideology that keeps
00:37:53.520
Do you think, though, it might be that he genuinely believes, like, I think a lot of people on the
00:37:56.820
left have swallowed this idea that we live in this far right hellhole.
00:38:00.660
They do believe that this is much more prominent than it is.
00:38:03.200
I mean, I think if you were to try and assemble the neo-Nazis in the UK, you could fill this
00:38:12.480
I think what's very interesting is the card that Starmer used, whilst it was highly effective
00:38:18.000
at putting down the riots and cutting and stopping them, I think that's a card that can really
00:38:25.880
And I think what, and I take no joy in saying this, I think things could get potentially
00:38:33.840
very, very ugly in January when details from the court case start to be disseminated into
00:38:39.980
Well, I think what they've got on their side there is it's going to be January, so it's
00:38:47.360
They're hungry, which you see in the Middle East.
00:38:50.740
Every time there's the Arab Spring or whatever, the riots in Egypt or wherever it is are never
00:38:58.500
And the other thing is, it's got to be hot outside, which is always hot outside in the
00:39:04.760
But it's only hot outside quite rarely in the UK, which is why we're such a stable country.
00:39:10.000
But I mean, whilst what you say is true, but there have been, I'm sure there have...
00:39:18.480
No, no, but riots are far more likely to happen in summer.
00:39:22.280
And also as well, in August, because kids aren't at school and so, you know, they can
00:39:34.160
But also, I think as well, when it comes to an issue like this, it's been a powder keg
00:39:39.360
And then you put on top the fact that if it turns out that this ideology is behind this
00:39:47.180
awful, awful murder, the people will then think, not only has it been a murder,
00:39:52.260
has this happened, not only have you lied to us, but you have also gaslit us for so
00:39:59.520
And I think that people, people message me and they're really angry and it's trying
00:40:07.000
And I'm kind of going, I'm kind of running out of reasons.
00:40:11.720
Well, it's also partly because people can see they're being lied to.
00:40:14.820
Like you said, the gas, I mean, we saw it a few weeks ago where, what was it?
00:40:17.920
Was it Surrey police put out this tweet or this post on X about, you know, you're going
00:40:22.740
to see some police with machine guns at the Christmas markets.
00:40:26.160
We're not looking out for any particular threat.
00:40:31.900
We're just here to, you know, just, you know, just be there.
00:40:35.240
If they could just say, look, there is a, you know, the MI5, 75% of the MI5's attention
00:40:41.460
is far-right Islamism, you know, fascist Islamism.
00:40:48.800
So, and just be honest, that's what's going on here.
00:40:53.400
We're saying that there are significant more jihadists now living here than they used to
00:40:58.480
If there was a, you know, now we have the diversity barriers in front of all the Christmas markets
00:41:03.500
Why not just, they call them diversity barriers.
00:41:08.200
Everyone else calls them the diversity barriers.
00:41:10.300
Why not just be honest about why there are people with machine guns at Christmas?
00:41:16.320
Because if you're honest, then you have to do something about it.
00:41:19.340
And the police and the security services deserve an enormous amount of credit in this country
00:41:25.120
for the way that they actually deal with that threat.
00:41:28.180
Because we know from speaking to people who actually do know that they are preventing
00:41:36.660
But the problem is that as long as you have the people in the country who want to do that,
00:41:44.640
Therefore, if you start being honest about it, then the next question a normal person is
00:41:49.240
going to ask is, why do we have 43,000 jihadists on the watch list?
00:41:53.580
And why aren't they back wherever the fuck they came from?
00:42:02.660
And also at the moment, the situation is going to get worse.
00:42:04.680
The circumstances that could lead to a large terror atrocity are going to get, is going
00:42:12.960
They've got to move focus to China, Russia, and Iran.
00:42:16.320
So foreign states, after 30 years of foreign states not really threatening us, we've now got
00:42:21.960
So we're going to be taking the eye off the threat from Islamism.
00:42:25.740
And also because MI5 is, you know, systemically woke now, they also have to pretend that there's
00:42:29.800
this mad, you know, massive threat from the far right.
00:42:32.960
So the eye is going to be taken off Islamic fundamentalism.
00:42:36.760
And I think that could mean it becomes much more likely.
00:42:40.180
And also you're going to have all these, you know, Syria and the whole sort of Idlib Emirates
00:42:44.400
sucked in all the jihadis from around the world, from Chechnya, from wherever, to fight
00:42:49.700
against, you know, Assad or fight against, you know, create this Islamist state.
00:42:59.360
So they're going to be looking for the next thing.
00:43:02.840
They're going to be returning to, some of them will be returning to Europe.
00:43:06.060
So there could be, you know, more people with time in their hands to do stuff like that.
00:43:17.320
People are tuning in going, I thought this was fucking comedy, mate.
00:43:20.800
Well, speaking of something a little bit more lighthearted, did you guys follow what happened
00:43:29.200
And I'm not just talking about the bloke beating up the woman in the final, in the boxing
00:43:33.300
and that, but this opening ceremony, which I just thought was absolutely, it was, I sometimes
00:43:39.660
think these people are deliberately testing the waters to see if, they're almost like doing
00:43:47.440
They're like, oh, we're going to be outrageous.
00:43:50.460
We're going to be new and outrageous and we're going to do the exact same thing that's been
00:43:56.000
Oh, we're going to, we're going to mock Christianity.
00:44:11.400
It's like, it seems deliberately goading to me is that because they know that they can
00:44:14.200
do this and they know that it annoys everyone and they know that it's naff as well.
00:44:17.960
Like Gareth Roberts wrote a piece about this, like that open, you know, where they mocked
00:44:21.540
the Last Supper, the image where, and it was just all drag Queens in a row in the, in the
00:44:28.120
And Gareth Roberts made this point that they were doing stuff like that back in the Royal
00:44:32.760
And everyone thought it was naff then, but at least it was contained within our sort of
00:44:37.240
gay world of naffness, which was fun for us, but we didn't think it was good.
00:44:45.180
It's more, although I think, you know, when I watched that, cause I did watch that bit,
00:44:48.880
but coincidentally, I just turned it on while that was happening and I just thought it was
00:44:53.080
boring and I just thought it was just uninteresting.
00:44:56.740
I thought the reaction was actually really extreme and hysterical from the right as well.
00:45:00.860
I mean, you had that, who was that pseudo historian who said this, this was the, the, the, the
00:45:06.240
photograph of Nazis going into Paris during the war was, was preferable to, to the drag
00:45:15.300
You know, like it's a bunch of drag Queens, who cares?
00:45:17.260
And then there were all these people saying that.
00:45:20.060
Is it just a bunch of drag Queens, drag Queens, who cares?
00:45:23.260
I don't know that I agree with that because I think the, the, the, your point, actually,
00:45:29.540
I'm agreeing with you while disagreeing with you.
00:45:31.360
Your point about the, the nature of the stage on which this happened.
00:45:36.360
Com, compounded with the fact that as Leo says, this has been going on and on and on and on
00:45:41.060
and on and on and on, starts to feel a little bit.
00:45:44.160
And I don't know if any of us in the room are actually Christian, are we?
00:45:51.480
Well, I mean, the fact that you're asking that question means no.
00:46:00.360
I'm a cultural Christian, like Richard Dawkins.
00:46:04.160
Because he's, he's, you know, after criticizing Christianity for so long, he was like,
00:46:09.880
To be fair, like with the Church of England, you never really had to believe in God anyway.
00:46:13.020
It was more about the tea and muffins and stuff like that.
00:46:14.760
Actually, now, yeah, the Church of England is more like the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics.
00:46:19.920
So, I guess what I'm saying is none of us is like, oh, you know, like, oh my God, they're mocking my faith.
00:46:26.240
But I do feel that in some ways they're like mocking our civilization through this.
00:46:44.380
I have no interest whatsoever in competitive sports.
00:46:46.340
So, you know, it may as well be an origami competition.
00:46:49.040
But it's the one chance you can watch a man beating up a woman and clap along and everything's
00:46:59.060
Under Humza Yusuf, you're not allowed to clap along anymore.
00:47:02.120
Do you not think, though, that the reaction was a bit like when they started saying...
00:47:06.900
But then also the whole thing about people claiming there was a guy with his testicles
00:47:10.660
out through the fishnet tights, which just wasn't true.
00:47:17.800
But, you know, I just thought it was a bit like, just turn it off.
00:47:21.360
Well, I'm saying that from someone who doesn't care about the Olympics.
00:47:26.320
It's because this is something that is being broadcast to hundreds of millions of people
00:47:32.260
Did you feel the same about the Danny Boyle one?
00:47:34.120
Well, you know, because that was effectively a big advert for the NHS, wasn't it?
00:47:36.940
That was a big kind of very left-wing opening ceremony.
00:47:43.900
So that was like the reinforcement of the state religion.
00:47:46.820
A lot of people did have trouble with that as well.
00:47:55.840
Whether you or I or anyone else has the Christian belief, Christianity is the bedrock of Western
00:48:07.840
So when you mock it in that way, bringing in all of this latest LGB fucking endless acronyms
00:48:17.060
into it, I think you take the culture together and you see that as a symbol of what I see
00:48:23.140
is the attempt to destroy Western civilization from the inside.
00:48:29.020
Well, I don't think they thought about it that much.
00:48:32.000
I'm not saying they thought about it that much in the same way that a blue-haired person
00:48:36.300
on a university campus doesn't think that they're undermining Western civilization when
00:48:40.560
they try and introduce blasphemy laws or whatever, or advocate for something else.
00:48:47.680
I mean, people have always mocked Christianity.
00:48:53.640
It's something that is a term that actually I first heard come from you, Leo, which is
00:49:05.680
However tasteless or judge you think it is, to me, it was like a comedy subversion.
00:49:11.040
You get the something sacred, then you subvert it and you make it ridiculous and grotesque.
00:49:17.880
But they would only do that with certain things.
00:49:21.960
There are certain things that you can do, certain things you can't.
00:49:24.600
I don't know what you're thinking of there, Francis.
00:49:26.820
But then the other element of it is you could tell yourself that you're being edgy.
00:49:32.920
And then your peers will then clap along and go, isn't this edgy?
00:49:40.420
When the fact is doing none of those things, all you're really doing is re-establishing
00:49:45.360
what we have done for however long, when the real edgy thing to do is to do other things.
00:49:51.760
So to me, it's part of what the problem is with comedy.
00:50:03.540
Well, also, I mean, the whole drag area has become, I mean, drag used to be really subversive.
00:50:10.220
I've seen drag acts that have genuinely shocked me in what they've done.
00:50:13.780
And I thought, well, I can't believe you're saying that or doing that.
00:50:16.240
And now they're reading bedtime stories to children.
00:50:20.600
This is now like you've taken a whole underground art form and made it about as banal and tame and mainstream as you can possibly make it.
00:50:30.940
I'm sure there must be some drag queen saying, what the fuck happened to our art form?
00:50:35.580
Well, I think the real edgy drag queens just dress up as the gender they are.
00:50:44.300
Yeah, but it is a manifestation of communism, like Constantine's saying or hinting at.
00:50:49.860
These ideas that developed in university campuses like critical race theory, queer theory, they're now in the institutions.
00:50:57.700
The left used to be against the left used to be.
00:50:59.900
I was left wing in the 90s and we were like suspicious of corporations, suspicious of government.
00:51:05.440
And now the left are like, oh, you've got to do what the government says.
00:51:10.300
And if you don't go along with it, then you're a bad person.
00:51:17.160
Let's get the multibillionaires to censor us, please.
00:51:21.320
Well, one of the things that happened to the left this year is they got absolutely crushed in America.
00:51:25.560
And that's something we've yet to get to, but we should talk about, which is the American election.
00:51:29.500
I mean, first, the Trump assassination attempt, Biden dropping out, Kamala, and then the absolutely sweeping landslide that Trump managed to secure.
00:51:40.800
Well, when the assassination attempt happened, that photograph of him standing up shouting fight was almost like a Renaissance painting, the way that it was composed.
00:51:48.540
It was almost, it was too perfect with the flag behind him and the secret agents and the blood down his face.
00:51:54.280
It was, and I thought when I saw that, he's won it now.
00:51:58.700
And the way the media managed to memory hole it so quickly.
00:52:02.500
So people would stop talking about it like a couple of weeks later.
00:52:04.940
And then there was another assassination attempt.
00:52:06.660
It's like, oh, well, this should be like major insane news.
00:52:11.480
It's like a candidate who was formerly the president almost killed twice.
00:52:16.440
This should be, we should still be talking about it.
00:52:21.360
I genuinely have no idea how I would answer this question.
00:52:24.180
What do you think would have happened if that bullet had been two inches to the right?
00:52:32.720
He just turned his head and it just clipped his ear.
00:52:34.820
I mean, that was a, that was an easy shot to make.
00:52:36.920
I'm not just saying that because my dad's a gunsmith.
00:52:38.860
But I mean, if anything, it was a real, I think in people's minds, it was the moment
00:52:43.960
they realized the left were so incompetent, they couldn't even make a shot like that.
00:52:51.860
This was the sort of manifestation in politics of all the sort of, you know, fat, ugly people
00:53:02.300
Wasn't he a straight white man though, this assassin?
00:53:14.220
He wasn't like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't put him on the poster.
00:53:17.160
He kind of looked like a mutated jelly baby, didn't he?
00:53:19.700
You know, it came out and then the haircut was terrible.
00:53:23.580
What do you think would have happened if he'd been killed?
00:53:26.880
I think somebody, I mean, the Republicans would have obviously had a replacement candidate who
00:53:31.480
would have just, you know, won, absolutely stormed it.
00:53:35.560
I mean, I think actually the assassination attempt was the turning point, particularly
00:53:49.260
I mean, not just to two assassination attempts.
00:53:50.760
Then you've got the Biden debate, him dropping out, all this revelation.
00:53:55.780
But, you know, the fact that the media had covered up for this obviously senile individual
00:54:00.240
for so long, you know, the moment when he stood up and called for a woman who died a couple
00:54:09.460
At that point, every person in the White House press briefing room should have said, can
00:54:13.680
we see records, the medical records of the president?
00:54:18.580
He brought Vladimir Zelensky to the stage as Vladimir Putin.
00:54:25.640
It's like reading a Dostoevsky novel, you get lost.
00:54:29.580
What's interesting was it was another one of these things that we're told is a far-right
00:54:34.340
The idea that Biden's got cognitive decline was a far-right conspiracy theory until it
00:54:40.080
And suddenly George Clooney and everybody else was saying, he's got cognitive decline.
00:54:45.320
And it just becomes, it's like what Keir Starmer did just this week.
00:54:48.040
Like what he's going along, like all the, all the idea, the idea that, you know, mass
00:54:53.080
immigration is a, is a deliberate plan is, that's a far-right conspiracy theory.
00:54:58.820
Then Keir Starmer stands up and says, this is done by design.
00:55:01.860
And we've been gaslit for the last, you know, however many years.
00:55:06.020
And then suddenly the window, the Overton window can not just move.
00:55:11.720
Did you see the report from Congress this week about how it turns out the COVID virus
00:55:21.420
So all of the things you're told are far-right conspiracy theories come true.
00:55:24.780
My worry with that is that you then end up, and a lot of people I know have gone completely
00:55:28.920
mad and now believe every single conspiracy theory.
00:55:31.520
They think Paul McCartney's dead, that he was killed in the 70s.
00:55:34.600
They think the dinosaurs were faked by 19th century paleontologists by assembling sheep
00:55:40.140
They genuinely, but they think the moon landings were fake, all of this stuff.
00:55:42.720
Yeah, I mean, and then everything now is, you go, well, why is this happening?
00:55:51.280
And then also you've got now people saying Donald Trump's assassination attempt was planned
00:55:59.260
By the way, during that, I worked out that with one question, you could work out who was
00:56:03.940
a Republican or who's a Democrat in the US, even if they didn't want to tell you.
00:56:07.060
Because if someone said he was shot in the ear, they were a Democrat.
00:56:11.440
If they said he was shot in the head, they were a Republican.
00:56:22.220
And then he got elected in what I think is one of the most stunning electoral victories
00:56:28.280
It's been interesting that the meltdowns haven't been anywhere near what they were in 2016.
00:56:40.480
I mean, in the UK, we know before people have even left the polling station.
00:56:48.260
But over there, yeah, California still counting votes.
00:56:54.940
You know, it was very interesting talking about California.
00:56:58.360
I think it was 40% of people voted Republican in California.
00:57:02.000
And that's stunning because you look at the job that Gavin Newsom has done in California
00:57:10.880
And of course, you've got, you know, obviously the black vote is very much swung towards Trump
00:57:15.200
And, you know, all of these attempts to call him racist.
00:57:18.080
I think what this all shows is that the racist accusation, the fascist accusation is just
00:57:23.440
Like, did you see the MSNBC coverage of the rally that Trump held?
00:57:33.660
Speaking of Jewish Nazis, it being New York, at least, I don't know, 20% of the crowd
00:57:43.020
Oh, they weren't there at Nuremberg, were they?
00:57:49.100
Anytime any of the speakers said anything about Israel, it got a massive cheer.
00:57:52.620
I'll be honest with you, I wrote and did a video about this, that one moment being there
00:57:58.760
and then reading the coverage of my phone while being there, that for me permanently
00:58:04.320
broke what was left of my faith in the mainstream media.
00:58:08.760
That's when I realized they've been lying about this guy this entire time and in Britain
00:58:14.780
in particular, even people, prominent conservatives like Michael Gove and others were pro-Kamala
00:58:20.800
and I understand why now because in Britain, what we do is we listen to British journalists
00:58:27.380
who mostly don't ever go to America, so they never see any of the stuff they're talking about
00:58:31.860
And if they do go to America, they don't go to America, they go to Washington, D.C.,
00:58:37.900
which is 92% Democrat, or New York, or if they go on holiday, go to L.A. or something
00:58:45.080
So they're not seeing the parts of America that are pro-Trump and so they have no conception
00:58:49.580
of how to understand it and then they are swallowing the lies of the American journalists
00:58:57.300
And so what we get in Europe is a complete misunderstanding of everything.
00:59:01.720
And then you add to that that because we speak the same language, we assume that our cultures
00:59:08.700
And as someone who's been to America, our cultures are not the same.
00:59:13.020
Trump is way more representative of America than most people in Europe realize.
00:59:17.700
Like the way he talks straight to business, you know, all of that is how most Americans
00:59:24.140
And they don't mince words nearly as much and they're not as well as we are.
00:59:28.080
And so the fact that he offends our British sensibilities, it just makes people blind to
00:59:33.660
the reality of his movement, which fundamentally is about what it says it's about, which is
00:59:46.400
I mean, you saw it for yourself, the disparity between the coverage and the reality that now
00:59:50.940
everyone has seen it, but, you know, and actually I think that kind of coverage has become self
00:59:55.540
discrediting because, you know, when MSNBC, they jumped the shark, didn't they?
00:59:59.860
Because they didn't just show the footage from the rally.
01:00:01.740
They intercut it with images from a Nazi rally in the 1930s.
01:00:05.740
And they said, look back in Madison Square Garden, there was another fascist who did, you
01:00:10.460
know, even though it was a different building, but that doesn't matter.
01:00:14.340
And that, that tenor of politics, I just think it's over, isn't it?
01:00:18.480
You've, you know, and Tim Waltz got involved and, you know, Kamala Harris would suggest
01:00:21.780
to be fair, Trump also started calling Kamala Harris a fascist.
01:00:24.960
And I think we should just maybe just retire the word fascist and say that happened a long
01:00:36.780
It describes a political movement and ideology which still exists.
01:00:41.240
And the problem is, is that if everything is fascism, nothing is fascism.
01:00:48.440
I mean, the point is that if you look at what fascism actually means, what it actually
01:00:51.680
meant to Mussolini, right, you can find elements of what he described as fascism in every Western
01:00:58.460
I think it's more on the left because it's this sort of totalitarian, big state, you know,
01:01:02.140
corporatized government where the government controls all business and all institutions.
01:01:06.180
But it's still not helpful to call Kamala Harris a fascist.
01:01:12.380
I mean, really, when you get to like a big government, a big state, it naturally becomes
01:01:18.360
My problem with the fascist was not their affinity for the big state.
01:01:22.000
I mean, it's impossible to be a fascist if you have a small state.
01:01:27.060
And also as well, I mean, to me, one of the central tenets of fascism is that the individual
01:01:35.480
And then when you look at, you know, the way people talk, particularly on the left about
01:01:41.100
things like the vaccine and particularly in America, and you're like, well, you're going
01:01:45.400
And if you're not, you're going to lose all your rights and you're going to lose your
01:01:52.000
But I just think using that term fascistic, saying that things are fascist in that way,
01:01:55.720
it kind of evokes all of those things, those elements of the 1930s, those elements of the
01:02:01.580
Holocaust that I just think aren't helpful in modern popular discourse.
01:02:05.320
You know, I think you're right insofar as I think when the state is trying to control
01:02:09.500
the way people think, trying to censor speech, that is obviously something that fascist regimes
01:02:17.340
It's more helpful to describe such things in modern parlance as authoritarian, because
01:02:23.520
I think the Conservatives and the Labour in this country have authoritarian tendencies.
01:02:27.180
I think both Democrats and Republicans have authoritarian tendencies in different ways.
01:02:31.660
I think when Tim Waltz in the vice presidential debate with J.D. Vance said that the First
01:02:36.760
Amendment doesn't cover hate speech, that is an authoritarian...
01:02:40.880
And it's interesting because that comment did not make the official transcript, almost as
01:02:44.920
though the media didn't want you to note that he'd said that.
01:02:47.540
And John Kerry said, you know, they were going to look at the First Amendment, look at the...
01:02:58.260
He described the First Amendment as a major block.
01:03:04.660
That's really disturbing that now what you've got is mainstream politicians like John Kerry,
01:03:08.020
like Tim Waltz, openly saying they want to amend the First Amendment.
01:03:11.820
That's the thing that makes America the last bastion of free speech in the world.
01:03:15.280
They shouldn't have called it the First Amendment because that makes it sound like it can be
01:03:22.660
It's incredibly difficult to do and I don't think they'll ever succeed.
01:03:26.040
You know, I was going to say that actually I don't find that what I completely push back
01:03:30.740
on what you're saying, Doily, because I think it's good that they said that.
01:03:35.900
Because they're out in the open, they're being honest and then people can go,
01:03:39.160
oh, what you are, and Rogan made this point when we were on his podcast, he went, if you
01:03:44.460
were against the First Amendment, then what you are is un-American.
01:03:48.920
And people looked at those people saying those words and go, oh, you're un-American, I'm not
01:03:54.300
So actually, I commend them for being honest and saying, oh, we don't believe in free speech.
01:04:01.640
And I think that's also why it was omitted from the transcript when the media reported
01:04:05.000
I think it was a slip of the tongue, which obviously revealed something about what he
01:04:11.840
Speaking of authoritarianism, one thing that did happen during the election is the death,
01:04:22.420
He's been waiting all fucking out and destroyed by this thing.
01:04:32.420
Squirrels you're into, all those capybara things.
01:04:40.140
What I love about a lot of these rodents, like capybara, it looks like it was made in
01:04:52.820
There's a few places in the UK you can see one.
01:04:54.400
Guys, no offense, but we're getting sidetracked.
01:04:56.440
They've got one at Cotswold Wildlife Park and it's the...
01:05:00.560
I love the way you just finished the sentence anyway.
01:05:04.120
Can we please talk about Peanut the fucking squirrel?
01:05:14.500
I'm not sure if she was driving, but it was a rescue squirrel.
01:05:18.640
And so this guy had taken the squirrel in and, you know, nursed it and then tried to
01:05:24.400
Or release him into the wild, because we're going to anthropomorphize him a lot.
01:05:28.700
But the squirrel just came back and was like, going to stay in your house.
01:05:43.520
And then basically somebody grasped up, because you're supposed to have like various permits
01:05:51.180
It's got to be, you know, checked off by the state.
01:05:54.440
So because he didn't have these permits, it was basically a illegal squirrel.
01:05:58.060
So the state sent round its apparatchiks, its goon squad, its squirrel execution force to boot
01:06:05.600
down his door in a sort of Stalinist way and seize the squirrel and execute it.
01:06:13.540
Dragged out into the garden and shot in front of him.
01:06:21.140
But I mean, that's still, you know, the statists, all the leftists are all like, oh, well, they
01:06:30.080
It's not even like, you know, it's not like it's come from another country.
01:06:33.200
What harm is it doing if it's eating bananas in this guy's kitchen?
01:06:42.760
Well, they're saying this squirrel doesn't have the paperwork.
01:06:44.660
What about all the illegal immigrants, the millions of illegal immigrants that are allowed
01:06:48.120
to just stream over the border and they get all these benefits and so much taxpayers money
01:06:52.420
is sort of lavished on them to provide them with hotels and EBT and phones and all the
01:06:57.900
rest of it so they can live a life and so they can stay and they get all these legal services
01:07:03.660
Why would the state not provide and peen up the squirrel with a lawyer?
01:07:09.020
You know that we no longer have the red squirrel population in the UK because those American squirrels
01:07:22.040
Just to correct you, the red squirrel population is actually increasing now in the UK.
01:07:32.980
And there used to be a feral colony of gerbils on the Isle of Wight.
01:07:59.660
I mean, if it gets me off some Greg Wallace-style allegations in the future,
01:08:08.660
It's like, what, you're counting up these allegations?
01:08:14.580
He just wanted to get to a nice round number, so he kept going.
01:08:17.800
He's like, man, Greg Wallace, he should have gone for something other than autism.
01:08:23.980
He should have been like, hey, guys, I'm trans.
01:08:25.920
Because then any woman, any middle-class women who are saying,
01:08:30.940
they would have then been saying they were sexually threatened by a trans woman.
01:08:36.140
So they would have had to retract the allegations.
01:08:38.900
because he has got a Millwall FC tattoo on his chest.
01:08:42.460
Can you really have a trans woman with a Millwall line?
01:08:44.540
Are you questioning his ability to self-identify as a woman?
01:08:54.700
it's something we haven't talked about on the show for a very long time,
01:09:10.700
You think the benchmark for self-ID should be whether you find them hot?
01:09:19.220
people have got this issue with trans women going into female toilets or whatever.
01:09:35.780
I think you should have single-sex spaces for toilet facilities,
01:09:39.420
and I think people who identify as the opposite sex find ways around that.
01:09:42.480
They go to cubicles or they go to unisex facilities.
01:09:58.640
But one of the other reasons we've not really talked about it more
01:10:02.200
is because we feel like we're actually on the right track
01:10:04.880
on all of these issues in this country, at least.
01:10:16.100
We've just had the Labour government, by the way,
01:10:19.320
announce that puberty blockers are going to be banned for children in this country.
01:10:26.020
because if you think about all the people who've tried...
01:10:28.780
All the campaigners who've been working towards this over years
01:10:51.500
I just thought you were going to have to say who reads the Pink News.
01:10:56.160
All of those organisations, Pink News, Stonewall, Mermaids,
01:11:00.160
every organisation that has been pushing for puberty blockers for children,
01:11:08.800
I don't want to defame anyone, but aren't they a bit...
01:11:20.380
Honestly, you'd think they were BBC presenters.
01:11:24.300
It's also bullying, workplace bullying, all sorts of stuff.
01:11:29.860
Mermaids took an action against LGB Alliance, you know,
01:11:35.840
they sort of exposed themselves to all sorts of...
01:11:38.800
Mermaids secretly were sending chest binders to kids
01:11:41.520
without parental consent and stuff like insane stuff.
01:11:44.760
And it always happens, all of these organisations.
01:11:53.180
But actually, West Streeting has been really brilliant
01:12:03.720
There was always a lot of evidence that they caused damage.
01:12:06.820
There's been cases of testicular atrophy, cancer,
01:12:12.960
And this was a massive medical experimentation on children
01:12:20.160
in the vast majority of cases disappear through puberty.
01:12:23.020
So by blocking puberty, they were blocking the cure.
01:12:40.000
And that's now been confirmed by West Streeting
01:12:43.200
Because there were all these private clinics as well
01:12:47.440
because they still want to make money out of this stuff.
01:12:49.560
And he said, no, that's going to be banned as well.
01:12:53.100
And we should give West Streeting and Labour credit for that.
01:12:58.240
like Sajid Javid for commissioning Hillary Cass,
01:13:08.840
Do you think part of the reason that he's been,
01:13:15.200
West Streeting used to be on the other side of this debate,
01:13:20.760
because the only way this stuff ever gets preserved
01:13:27.480
Because when you have the debate, it falls apart.
01:13:29.920
And we've seen it in the Supreme Court in America
01:13:37.960
and you ask them to defend this notion of gender identity.
01:13:49.400
that there's a sexed soul within all of us, right?
01:13:53.940
Jackie Smith, who's the spokesperson for the government
01:13:58.460
was asked explicitly in the Lords a couple of weeks ago,