TRIGGERnometry - Fraser Myers on the Yellow Vest Protests and Internet Censorship

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is

00:00:10.140 the show for you if you're bored with people arguing on the internet over subjects they know

00:00:14.940 nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our brilliant

00:00:21.860 guest this week is a staff writer at Spiked Online and the host of the Spiked podcast,

00:00:27.340 Fraser Myers, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:29.080 Thanks for having me.

00:00:30.060 It's good to have you here.

00:00:30.980 We've been meaning to get you on for a while and we're glad that you're here.

00:00:33.720 For anyone who doesn't know you, just tell us very quickly,

00:00:35.820 who are you, what's your background, how are you, where you are?

00:00:38.660 So I write for Spiked, which I think is the best magazine in the world.

00:00:43.080 Probably the only magazine standing up today for absolute free speech,

00:00:47.840 democracy, no ifs, no buts,

00:00:50.180 and for a very humanist, pro-human-centered outlet.

00:00:54.580 Have you read The Guardian?

00:00:56.820 Yeah, I have. We've had a few run-ins with them, you know. And I guess, I mean, you know,

00:01:04.320 I have kind of a funny journey, I guess. I mean, I'm a massive, massive Brexit supporter,

00:01:09.740 so I might as well get that out now.

00:01:11.600 Well, when you said democracy, no if no buts, I think everybody got the hidden message.

00:01:15.320 Well, you'd hope so. But I guess I'm not a typical, well, I didn't have the typical journey

00:01:22.280 to being a Brexiteer. You know, I speak two foreign languages. I speak French and German.

00:01:26.200 and I studied them at university. And it's funny because it was actually while I was on my year

00:01:31.440 abroad doing the Erasmus thing that is supposed to turn me into the perfect EU citizen, Remainer

00:01:39.380 type. That was also the year where things were really hitting the fan in Europe. And that was

00:01:47.400 when certain doubts about this wonderful European Union started to creep in. Yeah, the French will 1.00

00:01:53.400 do that to you. It was really funny because actually a lot of it was while I was in Germany

00:02:00.220 and nothing bad was really happening there. But lots of bad things were happening in Greece and

00:02:05.180 you could see that not only had a referendum been ignored over the proposed bailouts, but there was

00:02:14.420 going to be austerity for the next 70 years proposed by the European Union. So these kind

00:02:22.280 of things like, oh, maybe this isn't what I thought it was. You know, I'd always been a sort

00:02:26.620 of, maybe back then I was a bit wet, but, you know, I've always been a kind of lefty type.

00:02:31.840 And I could start to see that that was not really fitting in with, you know, my ideals.

00:02:37.180 And then we kind of get, fast forward to 2016, didn't think about it that much. And then suddenly

00:02:43.080 we have this referendum on the EU question. And it just suddenly becomes really obvious, you know,

00:02:47.520 what am I going to vote for? Well, I'm going to vote to leave because it's, you know, what else

00:02:52.000 would you do? You know, where I live with my friends, you know, from all well-educated living

00:03:00.760 in London, you stick out a bit like a sore thumb, but, you know, all pro-Remain, even if they kind

00:03:07.560 of understood my arguments, they'd say, oh, you know, you're different. You have a different

00:03:12.240 argument. You know, that's not why other people are voting leave. But actually, if you talk to

00:03:15.280 people across the country who vote for Brexit, the same things keep coming up. And the main

00:03:19.780 things are democracy and sovereignty. Few people are interested in immigration, but actually that's

00:03:26.220 bound up in the democracy question, because that's something that's been taken off the table

00:03:30.380 for so long in this country. You cannot have an open debate about immigration. And even if you did,

00:03:36.280 you can't change the policy anyway. So what would be the point? That makes a lot of sense. And we

00:03:40.720 started with brexit uh we want to we want to stay away from that as much as we can sure uh but there

00:03:46.040 is something that there it's part of a bigger thing yeah and one of the things about you speaking

00:03:50.920 french and german is you've done a lot of great reporting on the gilets on the yellow vests in

00:03:55.540 france and we really wanted to talk to you at length about that so for anyone who who just

00:04:00.600 watched the bbc news one time a couple of months ago and saw some french people don't want to work 0.91

00:04:06.400 again. That is accurate. Is it just that or is there a bit more to it? I think obviously it's

00:04:16.280 part of a wider European populist revolt. And Brexit is one part of that. There's things going

00:04:23.560 on in Italy, things even in countries like Sweden, where we don't even expect there to be populist

00:04:29.120 revolts. I mean, this is the French reaction. This is their version of it, I suppose. 0.99

00:04:34.280 It is extraordinary. I mean, it's not just a handful of people turning up protesting. This

00:04:39.820 has been going on at the time of recording for 26 weeks, every weekend. People have gone out in,

00:04:45.600 you know, whatever the weather, including the winter, it started in November, and stood there

00:04:51.280 and tried to make themselves visible. That's one of the exciting things about the Gilets Jones,

00:04:55.460 is that you cannot ignore these people anymore. They're there. These are people who have been

00:05:00.420 ignored in politics for a very long time. They don't live in the cities, so they're not connected

00:05:05.860 into either the global economy or democratic politics. They live in the kind of peripheries.

00:05:13.060 As I often say, just because they're peripheral to the cities, that means they've also become

00:05:19.300 peripheral to politics in many ways. They're not listened to. Their living standards are

00:05:25.460 either stagnating or in decline, and nobody cares, or nobody cared until they started to

00:05:32.820 make their voices heard. Now, this is going to sound flippant, but there's a more serious point

00:05:38.660 behind this. The French have always liked kicking off, haven't they? They always have. They've 1.00

00:05:45.520 always they've always liked a bit of a row they've always loved to strike you know this episode of

00:05:50.840 the podcast is just going to be me and you being racist but that's acceptable you can do the french

00:05:56.700 like onions and yeah yeah yeah yeah but but i mean it's it's a flippant comment but there's a certain

00:06:02.180 amount of truth to it and how much is it that they do like you know you know getting upset yeah

00:06:09.200 throwing a strike and how much of this is actually a genuine working class revolt against the you

00:06:15.740 know the upper classes well i think you have to think about the scale of it i mean yes you're

00:06:20.320 right french people do protest a lot more than than we do for instance you know they do go on

00:06:24.760 strike a lot more than we do and i think that's i think good on them personally you know why why

00:06:29.160 should they put up with um anything less than than what they what they deserve um but the scale of it

00:06:35.560 I mean, this is the biggest revolt since 1968, you know, since the les événements, as they

00:06:41.460 call them, which changed French society, you know, enormously.

00:06:46.460 It changed, it basically ushered in the kind of modern era of, you know, how we think of

00:06:52.740 France today.

00:06:54.300 And this is actually bigger, potentially, you know, you're talking, it started off with

00:06:59.380 200,000 people, you had hundreds of thousands of people after that, still tens of thousands

00:07:03.600 of people going out week in, week out. It's been going on for over five months. And what's

00:07:13.000 extraordinary to me is the way that it just doesn't really get the kind of coverage you expect.

00:07:18.760 You mentioned the BBC earlier. If this were Venezuela or something, it would be on television

00:07:25.560 every day. And it's only happening across the channel. It's not difficult for a journalist to

00:07:31.340 go over there like I did. I spent £35 to get on a coach to go to Paris to go talk to people. It's

00:07:36.580 not hard, but that's not really happening. And it's quite funny because there are these kind of

00:07:41.880 rumours going around the internet and people have asked me, you know, there's a rumour in Britain

00:07:45.760 that there's a de-notice on the gilet jaune. The government has banned, you know, newspapers from

00:07:51.280 reporting on it and people have asked me about that. Completely untrue. The truth is much sadder.

00:07:57.200 people are just not interested. People in our establishment are not interested. People in the

00:08:01.440 French establishment have to be interested because they're afraid of them and they're afraid of what

00:08:05.840 might happen next. But there is a recognition that these are the wrong kind of people.

00:08:12.160 These are the famous deplorables, the French deplorables, if you like. And so their needs, 0.98

00:08:19.600 their interests, their demands do just sort of fall on deaf ears in a way.

00:08:25.040 And what is it all about? Is it like a French Brexit where these are people who are against the EU or is it much more about, you know, as you said, the kind of people who've lost out through globalization, just wanting to, you know, have a job, have a house, have a secure, stable future for themselves and their children, maybe opposed to immigration. Just tell us a little bit about what is their kind of what is the core of their concerns?

00:08:48.000 Yeah, I think it's, I mean, you know, the EU plays into it. And the EU has played a role in the diminishing of their living standards. And certainly the euro in the last, you know, 10 years has made it very difficult for, you know, the French economy and the French government to adapt to various changes. And that has had a real serious problem. You know, there are serious economic causes. Lots of people are, not only is there high unemployment, but people sort of know that if they lose their job now, that's it.

00:09:17.720 These are people who have quite stagnant careers.

00:09:21.480 Sorry, they don't even have careers at all.

00:09:23.180 They have jobs, not careers.

00:09:25.020 There's no advancement.

00:09:26.780 And a lot of them feel, some of them are nearing retirement age,

00:09:30.860 and they have a sense that things aren't going to be better

00:09:35.040 for the next generation, and that's intolerable, 0.77

00:09:38.820 and we need to do something about it.

00:09:40.140 And in my view, I don't think that the problems

00:09:44.480 of the French economy can be fixed within the European Union. There are some people

00:09:48.580 in the gilets jaunes who are explicitly anti-EU. There is a big crossover as well in the people

00:09:56.040 who are protesting against the gilets jaunes and those who voted in 2015. In 2015 the French

00:10:01.520 were asked to ratify the European constitution and most of them said no. They voted against

00:10:08.720 it was then repackaged as the Lisbon Treaty and forced through onto them anyway.

00:10:14.800 And there is a crossover between many of the people who are the gilets jaunes

00:10:17.380 and who will have voted against that European constitution.

00:10:22.100 But things are a lot less clear cut because it's a leaderless movement.

00:10:27.260 It doesn't have an official manifesto.

00:10:30.700 So it's hard to say that there is any specific demands

00:10:35.480 other than the more general demand for greater living standards and a greater say in politics. 0.64

00:10:43.220 And there's been criticisms from certain aspects or from certain parts of the left

00:10:48.840 who've said that the Gilets Johns is a far right wing, anti-immigration, you know,

00:10:54.860 whatever pro-Frexit, I think it is, movement. Where do you stand on that?

00:10:59.640 Well, I think it's interesting because the far right slur came out, you know,

00:11:03.760 from basically from the French government within hours of people turning up on the streets.

00:11:08.700 These people, as I said before, you know, these are the deplorables. These people don't have to

00:11:13.200 open their mouth before someone has decided that they're far right. And actually, you know,

00:11:17.980 if you look at the police reports, there's no significant far right influence. The far left

00:11:24.180 have started to get a bit more interested in the gilets jaunes, which, you know, fine. And there's

00:11:30.200 There's also been some attempts by the trade union movement to do to make links with the

00:11:34.840 gilogsons. 0.73

00:11:35.840 But the idea that these people are far right is ludicrous.

00:11:39.220 Some of them will have voted for the National Front in the past, but then what other options

00:11:43.860 did they have?

00:11:46.760 It's like many people who will have voted for UKIP, I don't think it's because they're

00:11:50.200 necessarily racist or anything like that, but they have concerns that are not being

00:11:55.460 addressed or they want an alternative to all the other parties that are all exactly the

00:12:02.140 same. And when I went out there, it was interesting. I tried not to put ideas into anyone's heads,

00:12:08.080 so I just asked people what they were there for. And it wasn't even that... Nobody even

00:12:12.420 mentioned immigration, right? So it's not even like... I agree, it's not racist to discuss

00:12:17.360 immigration or even want immigration controls. I take a different view, but I don't think

00:12:21.620 is racist. They didn't even mention it. So I don't really see where this far-right idea comes from,

00:12:28.180 other than as a kind of slur to dismiss these people as irrelevant and people that don't need

00:12:34.460 to be listened to. It has become a bit of a slur. And it's interesting, Francis and I talk a lot

00:12:38.260 about the working class on the show as well. I wrote an article where I think you read in

00:12:42.880 Spectator about far-right being used as a slur. This will be a few weeks ago now. And one of the

00:12:49.260 comments on it was far right is now a label that people use to describe the working class.

00:12:55.060 And I thought that was quite an interesting way of looking at it, because whenever,

00:12:59.480 you know, if a member of the elite rebels against the mainstream narrative, it's handled one way.

00:13:06.140 But if you have a large populist uprising of people who don't agree with the mainstream

00:13:09.780 narrative, they are automatically far right. Yeah, I think that's absolutely accurate. And

00:13:15.220 And I think, you know, a good example of that might be the Football Lads Alliance in Britain.

00:13:19.060 You know, nobody really knew what they were about, but they were declared far right straight away.

00:13:24.260 You know, what were they against?

00:13:25.120 They were against terrorism.

00:13:26.740 I mean, I think we're all against terrorism.

00:13:28.780 I don't know.

00:13:29.220 I didn't think you needed a group for that.

00:13:30.740 Do you need to?

00:13:31.440 Yeah.

00:13:32.040 I mean, you know, but in fairness, you know, they want to make their voices heard because they don't think the issue's being taken seriously.

00:13:37.740 but it's very strange that to be opposed to Islamists blowing children to bits in a pop concert 0.65

00:13:45.660 is a far right position. I mean, it's bizarre. I think what it represents is the way that

00:13:53.740 the working class, I mean, not only have they lost out economically over the last 30 years or

00:14:00.300 whatever, but their status culturally has really been diminished. And I think this is very true

00:14:07.140 this is true of the gilets jaunes, it's true of the brexiteers, it's like these people are 1.00

00:14:11.940 these people are gammon, they're scum, they're uneducated, they don't understand the world, 1.00

00:14:17.220 they don't understand how things should be. I think far right, the slur far right just 1.00

00:14:22.900 embodies the way that these people are just not seen as important or worth listening to.

00:14:29.220 What I find dangerous about that is that there are people who are far right.

00:14:32.260 Of course, yeah. And then you get those two confused and suddenly no one knows what far

00:14:36.180 right means anymore because we do need the label of far right for people who are far right yeah we 0.91

00:14:41.220 have to be able to go no these people believe in white supremacy or killing jews or whatever

00:14:46.240 and they're different but when you start to label massive groups of people yeah then that that's a

00:14:51.920 problem oh it absolutely is a problem and the problem is i think with the gilets jaunes and

00:14:57.240 with brexit in this country is a lot of it is like you said it's because people don't feel that

00:15:02.740 they're represented nobody cares about them and that the only way that they've got in order to

00:15:07.400 make their voices heard is to literally go out on the streets make themselves as visible as possible

00:15:12.920 in order to have their voices heard and that's a really dangerous situation politically to be in

00:15:18.200 that's right and it's true that you know across europe the mainstream parties have been getting

00:15:23.060 becoming more and more distant from the from the public and in particular the people they're

00:15:28.180 supposed to represent. So this is a particular problem for the left. It's emerging as a problem

00:15:35.080 for the Labour Party. The centre-left parties in Europe have been absolutely massacred over the

00:15:41.420 past couple of years. You see the Socialist Party in France goes from being in government to

00:15:47.500 winning only around 10% or something in the elections. Similar things happening in Greece

00:15:53.180 with their centre-left party. And in the Netherlands and in Italy, the Democratic Party,

00:15:57.580 again, sort of center-left, Blairite party, completely massacred in the polls.

00:16:02.380 And there is this enormous distance between, you know, especially the center-left parties

00:16:07.580 who are now sort of representing a more middle-class urban intelligentsia rather than a kind of

00:16:15.240 working-class base. And it's really interesting that they almost, they wish that they didn't

00:16:22.160 have to represent these working-class people, actually. It's not that they're fretting about

00:16:26.400 losing them particularly. Maybe some people are. But they almost feel morally tainted by having to

00:16:33.620 represent these horrible working class people who are far right and hate immigrants and are 0.98

00:16:38.300 homophobic, whatever, which they're not, of course. And you can really see that actually, 0.91

00:16:42.740 it's really crystal clear in America with the Democrats. And if you listen to Democratic

00:16:48.520 pollsters, there's this big argument between them as to whether they should even bother to

00:16:54.160 represent the white working class. And there are people that say, we don't need them to win.

00:17:00.480 We should just focus on these people. And there are obviously other more sensible people who say,

00:17:05.660 you know, well, we should be represented in any way because they're working class people. That's

00:17:08.880 what we're for, by the way. But they're genuinely people making arguments that the demographics are

00:17:14.820 going to deliver us, you know, election victory after election victory anyway. Why do we need to

00:17:19.400 bother with these deplorable people. And it's like they don't want their votes. It's like if

00:17:24.320 those people vote for them, they're evil and tainted. It's completely bizarre.

00:17:30.000 It's weird in this country as well, isn't it? Because Jeremy Corbyn, that's exactly the direction

00:17:34.240 that Labour has gone under Corbyn. And Corbyn is an old trade unionist.

00:17:37.320 Yeah. Well, the acceleration of Labour becoming a bourgeois party has happened faster under Corbyn

00:17:45.860 than under Blair, which is extraordinary.

00:17:48.180 Extraordinary because, you know,

00:17:50.560 the way that Corbyn is presented in the media

00:17:52.900 is like he's kind of an old lefty, you know,

00:17:56.240 that could, you know, I think with the right policies,

00:17:59.920 with the right attitudes, could really have won back

00:18:03.060 a lot of, you know, the Labour heartlands,

00:18:05.440 you know, working class people in the North.

00:18:07.300 But they're just not interested.

00:18:08.920 They're much more interested in satisfying

00:18:10.580 their kind of Remainer, London, educated.

00:18:14.340 I think one of the worst things about Corbyn

00:18:17.020 is the fact that he's not honest about who he is

00:18:19.540 and that he's pro-Brexit.

00:18:22.020 And everybody knows he's pro-Brexit.

00:18:24.420 It's like when Barry Manilow was like,

00:18:26.000 hey, I'm straight.

00:18:26.840 Everybody was like, no.

00:18:28.320 But it's that same thing.

00:18:30.140 I think he is the, yeah,

00:18:31.700 he has performed the biggest betrayal,

00:18:34.720 in a way, of the two party leaders.

00:18:37.040 You know, Theresa May was a Remainer, 1.00

00:18:39.320 still a Remainer,

00:18:40.520 still wants to deliver a Remain.

00:18:41.860 but Corbyn has completely sold out his principles you know and there are other people in the top

00:18:48.380 Corbyn team who are Brexiteers too you know they come from the Tony Benn school of Euroscepticism

00:18:54.280 which I think is you know really um that's kind of my view on it you know where you'd rather have

00:19:00.520 a bad parliament than a good king uh you know his his view was that we only lend politicians the

00:19:09.520 vote and we lend politicians their power. And for them to give it up to someone else who's

00:19:16.140 unaccountable is unacceptable. So Corbyn kind of comes from that tradition, but I just don't think

00:19:21.880 he's that interested in it. I think he just has other priorities and is quite happy to abandon

00:19:27.580 that particular principle. Well, yeah, he's got to crack down on the Jews. But let's come back to 0.97

00:19:33.480 the gilets-jeans for a moment, just because I thought... I thought you were going to say,

00:19:37.280 Let's come back to the Jews. 1.00

00:19:38.420 Oh, definitely. 0.61

00:19:39.240 We can come back to the Jews every day, man. 1.00

00:19:44.100 The gilets on, one of the things that I think most people may have seen

00:19:47.640 in the news when it happened was the reaction from the government.

00:19:51.680 Yes.

00:19:52.460 Because those were some troubling images that we were seeing.

00:19:55.400 This was physical force being used against people who were out there

00:19:58.680 essentially protesting.

00:19:59.760 So tell us a little bit about how the French government responded

00:20:02.940 to these people amassing in the streets of Paris and other major cities

00:20:07.040 and, you know, speaking up for what they were concerned about?

00:20:10.400 Yeah, well, the response to the gilet genre has been incredibly authoritarian.

00:20:14.540 And, you know, the numbers of police on the streets on some weekends

00:20:20.240 would actually match the number of protesters.

00:20:23.140 So you'd have 80,000 protesters and 80,000 police.

00:20:26.700 So one policeman per protester.

00:20:29.040 And the police have been, on the whole, incredibly aggressive.

00:20:32.500 they have been you know they have they've caused a number of injuries they're firing tear gas

00:20:39.220 grenades they have these weapons called flashballs which are banned everywhere in europe apart from

00:20:44.400 france and these are kind of um rubber bullets and they're supposed to be fired you know almost

00:20:51.720 below the waist kind of thing just that they're supposed to stun people but the police have been

00:20:56.180 firing them at people's heads and people have been losing their eyes you know scores of people

00:21:00.320 have lost their eyes and, you know, will never recover from that. People have been losing their

00:21:05.040 hands. There's a really good journalist called David Defresney on Twitter, and he has been

00:21:11.700 collating all of the police aggressions that he can verify. And when I last checked, it was over

00:21:19.840 780 incidents of, you know, police aggression that could be verified. And I mean, this is

00:21:26.360 extraordinary. You know, if this were happening in some dictatorship, it would be roundly condemned.

00:21:32.920 It wouldn't be off the television screens. But because it's Macron, you know, who is well liked

00:21:38.440 by, you know, the British establishment, by the establishments in other countries,

00:21:43.880 it's not really talked about. And it's certainly, you know, I'm not aware of the British government

00:21:50.480 having issued any kind of condemnation in a way that they would if it were, you know,

00:21:54.780 some far-flung part of the world. And it's also important to recognise it's not just the physical

00:22:01.540 authoritarianism. It's not just that people are being beaten up in the streets by police.

00:22:06.300 There has also been crackdowns on social media. There's new laws against so-called fake news.

00:22:13.840 Fake news just means news that the government doesn't like. It's quite interesting that

00:22:18.680 within weeks of that law coming out, a campaign by the French government was banned by Twitter

00:22:26.100 as fake news. So the subjective nature of fake news is obviously there for all to see.

00:22:35.200 Twitter, for instance, have been under pressure from the government, been banning certain

00:22:39.020 activists. The government have also raided the offices of a newspaper called Mediapar.

00:22:45.800 It's a left-wing newspaper, one of the few to stand up for the Gilets Jaunes, and they've been issued with a court order to raid their offices to basically retrieve the sources of all of these journalists, which is a big no-no in the supposedly free world.

00:23:06.780 Marine Le Pen could go to jail for tweeting about ISIS.

00:23:11.300 What did she say?

00:23:12.520 I'm trying to think, what did she say?

00:23:14.320 She tweeted some graphic images of ISIS beheadings to say, look, this is what ISIS are up to.

00:23:19.920 She could go to jail for that. 0.98

00:23:21.620 And she's, you know, I don't like Marine Le Pen.

00:23:23.420 I don't know Marine Le Pen well, but I assume she wasn't like, yeah, let's have more of this, right?

00:23:27.240 No, she was very much against them.

00:23:29.120 Yeah, I'd imagine.

00:23:30.720 And, you know, Marine Le Pen, unpleasant politician, but, you know, she could go to jail. 1.00

00:23:36.000 Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist leader, his offices have been raided by the police.

00:23:41.300 So there is an extreme authoritarianism coming over France under the rule of Emmanuel Macron, supposedly the liberal strongman, the person who we were promised was going to stand up against populism and authoritarianism and save Europe and European values.

00:24:04.320 And it makes me incredibly sad to see what's going on over there.

00:24:07.420 Do you think this is the death throes of the EU project?

00:24:11.300 In many ways.

00:24:12.180 I think it's the last gasp of that kind of, not necessarily the EU project.

00:24:19.520 I mean, the EU, I think, will carry on.

00:24:23.120 But certainly within nation states and within national politics,

00:24:29.340 I think Macron was the last hurrah for the technocratic third way of doing politics.

00:24:35.600 Whether populists in various countries are going to outright win elections

00:24:40.020 is yet to be seen, but about one in three people, one in four people, depending on each election,

00:24:45.200 are voting for populist parties in Europe now. And it'll be interesting to see what happens in

00:24:50.620 the European elections coming up, because that could be a real bloodbath. Well, we'll see,

00:24:56.500 because by the time this interview comes out, they probably would have happened. Okay. So the blood

00:25:00.400 may well be flowing at this point as people are watching this. But it's, I mean, when you were

00:25:05.140 talking about the injuries and all that stuff, I didn't know anything about this, to be honest with

00:25:08.960 I can't say I followed it that closely, but but it's not like it was there in your face either

00:25:14.240 You know, do you know I'm saying if you if you watch the news if you read the news if you try and keep the rest of all

00:25:19.040 The stuff you don't come across all this information

00:25:21.540 And what you're describing sounds a lot more like Russia than a Western European country to me. Yeah, I think food

00:25:28.940 I think that you know this you never tried

00:25:30.940 I mean, there's two sides to it.

00:25:35.740 I mean, one is the indifference.

00:25:37.140 Just people are not, you know, in the media,

00:25:40.220 not particularly interested.

00:25:41.620 But two is that there are, you know,

00:25:43.580 a lot of Macron fanboys in the British media,

00:25:46.500 including, you know, people who write about France.

00:25:49.720 I won't name them, but, you know, they're there.

00:25:53.060 And they will say...

00:25:53.840 I thought he was about to name them.

00:25:54.860 I thought he was about to do that comedy thing.

00:25:57.260 And they will try out the lines that these people are far right,

00:25:59.720 that these people are all violent, that they're all thugs, and that actually the police have

00:26:05.540 never started anything. It was really interesting. Most recently, the government had to actually

00:26:12.520 admit that it lied about one Gilet-Jean story. So there was video footage of a load of yellow 0.98

00:26:20.560 vests running into a hospital. So the government says, of course, look at these violent,

00:26:25.080 while horrible people storming a hospital. How low can you get? It turns out that other footage

00:26:30.500 shows that they were being chased into the hospital by police. And the government actually

00:26:35.040 had to admit that, yeah, we got that. That wasn't true. We accept that version of events.

00:26:41.720 Before we touch on, we're going to talk about internet censorship. How much of this, and I see

00:26:46.700 it reflected in this country as a comedian, you go up and down this country and you play up north

00:26:51.500 and wherever else in town and country, how much is a clash between the metropolitan elite

00:26:57.800 and the people outside who essentially have been left behind by globalisation

00:27:02.960 and it's a backlash and they feel the elite don't care about them

00:27:06.760 and they're right because they don't?

00:27:09.280 I think it's exactly that.

00:27:10.640 I think that you can draw an outcome.

00:27:16.980 I'm nervous about drawing parallels.

00:27:18.160 I wouldn't draw, for instance, I wouldn't draw, I think there's a lot of similarity

00:27:23.060 between the kind of people who voted for Brexit, the kind of people who vote for Trump, the

00:27:28.260 kind of people who are voting five star in Italy, the kind of people who are marching

00:27:33.260 in the streets of Paris in their yellow vests.

00:27:36.040 The outcomes are obviously very different, so the comparison is there, certainly.

00:27:43.320 And yes, these are the people who are ignored.

00:27:46.100 And I don't really like the phrase left behind for whatever reason.

00:27:51.300 It's something about it that...

00:27:52.980 Because they're right behind.

00:27:54.000 Yeah, I think they were pushed behind.

00:27:55.660 I think that they've been quite deliberately cut out from politics,

00:28:00.360 not just, you know...

00:28:02.940 We paused there because we wanted you to say something even more provocative.

00:28:09.580 What do you want me to say?

00:28:10.700 I was thinking of saying something.

00:28:12.280 Well, the point I guess you're making is that it was much easier to have these working class voices that were often concerned about immigration, let's say, rather than have the debate about immigration.

00:28:24.640 You just go, no, no, you're all a bunch of racists.

00:28:26.760 And that's much easier. 0.96

00:28:28.540 Yeah.

00:28:28.880 And I think that the liberal establishment have found this fantastic way of preserving their interests.

00:28:36.040 You know, it's absolutely genius because you only have to criticize any aspect of the setup and immediately you're derided as far-right, racist, whatever.

00:28:44.680 You know, the gilet genre is a pertinent example of that. 0.98

00:28:47.960 You know, there's nothing to do with immigration, but it has to be about immigration in order to, you know, silence it, I guess. 0.97

00:28:55.220 If you are, if you criticize the European Union, you know, this is a classic example, you're a racist.

00:29:02.500 But the European Union is, in my view, quite a racist construct.

00:29:07.260 The fact is that if you look at the external borders of Europe, they're some of the strongest

00:29:14.780 in the world, some of the longest fences and things like that.

00:29:19.620 It's much worse than Trump's war, what is happening in Europe.

00:29:23.600 Thousands and thousands of people have died trying to get into Europe because the border

00:29:28.400 is so militarized.

00:29:30.660 In North Africa, the European Union is paying militia to put people in camps or to basically round them up and some people are being sold into slavery.

00:29:44.180 That seems pretty racist to me. But if you do that and you support the European Union, you're immune from the charge of racism, whereas a working class person who's concerned about immigration is a racist. 0.75

00:29:57.280 or Nigel Farage puts up a poster with a load of refugees on it,

00:30:02.240 that's racist and that needs to be outright condemned.

00:30:05.600 But if you either support or preside over one of the most brutal borders

00:30:11.800 in the entire world, well, you're not racist

00:30:14.640 because you're supporting this wonderful project.

00:30:17.640 So there's an entirely selective use of words like racist and far right.

00:30:24.380 And I think it's to the benefit of basically, yeah, the liberal elites.

00:30:29.820 They've created a moral force shield for their ideas and for their way of life and for their set up.

00:30:38.480 Reading that article you wrote in Spite, what actually I found quite affecting was you talking about the poverty the Gilets Jeans live in and then how much money Macron spent at this time, I think, in order to refurbish his offices. 0.95

00:30:53.420 That was what everyone was annoyed about. One of the weeks that I went, Macron had spent

00:31:00.200 hundreds and hundreds of thousands of euros refitting his carpet. And it played into this

00:31:06.780 image of Macron, which I think is quite real, of him as a kind of almost monarchical figure.

00:31:11.480 They call him the president for the rich, which I think is quite true. But he doesn't help himself

00:31:18.080 because he has this haughty attitude and he thinks that he deserves to be able to refit

00:31:23.840 his carpet for hundreds of thousands of euros at the taxpayer's expense. He thinks that

00:31:28.800 he basically wants to transform France into a kind of nation of startups where we're all just

00:31:36.520 sitting in Paris on our laptops. I mean, it has no connection to real people's lives. He's very

00:31:43.240 rude to poor people. You know, he can't even have a normal conversation with an ordinary person. He,

00:31:49.540 you know, he slagged off a bunch of factory workers as illiterate. He was talking to a young

00:31:56.520 unemployed farmer and just says, well, I can get you a job. Why don't you just walk down the street? 0.72

00:32:00.600 He once described the people that are left behind, so to speak, as people who are nothing.

00:32:07.300 and that was when he was trying to be nice about them.

00:32:12.140 So it's good to see some of the Gilles Jeans saying,

00:32:14.160 you know, we're the nothing people.

00:32:16.500 It sounds like the Russian former president,

00:32:18.960 now prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev,

00:32:20.220 he went to Crimea and he was surrounded by all these old ladies 1.00

00:32:23.060 and they were all saying, look, we have no money,

00:32:24.880 can you raise our pension?

00:32:26.300 And he went, sorry, there's no money left,

00:32:28.260 and got in his helicopter.

00:32:31.340 A similar thing happened with Macron.

00:32:35.700 There were pensioners, you know, pensioners assailing Macron.

00:32:39.400 And he's like, well, I don't understand what you're complaining about.

00:32:43.120 You know, their pensions are nothing.

00:32:45.040 It's like people are living on, pensioners especially living on, you know, a few hundred euros a month.

00:32:49.720 And he's saying, well, what do you want me to do about it?

00:32:52.660 Right, let's move on.

00:32:53.420 But let's pause because I realized I set an alarm instead of the timer.

00:32:57.100 So you see what I'm working with.

00:32:59.620 Highly skilled professional.

00:33:02.640 So we've got about 25 minutes left.

00:33:05.200 Okay, so we'll go on to...

00:33:07.280 Do you want to do it?

00:33:08.380 Yeah, I'll do it.

00:33:09.040 Okay, cool.

00:33:09.640 Are we ready to start rolling, Anton?

00:33:11.580 Right, you touched on earlier about the fact that, you know,

00:33:14.500 fake news and internet censorship.

00:33:17.800 And before, I think there's been a little bit of a sea change now

00:33:21.640 in that more and more people are seeing the way certain posts get censored.

00:33:26.040 How big of this is a problem at the moment?

00:33:29.400 And is it going to get worse, do you think?

00:33:31.180 I think it's a massive problem at the moment.

00:33:32.800 I mean, we've already seen Facebook in the week that we're recording this, or maybe it was the week before, have banned a number of people who they've called dangerous individuals.

00:33:44.340 People like Paul Joseph Watson, Louis Farrakhan, the preacher, and who else?

00:33:52.160 I mean, Alex Jones is already banned, but now you can't even praise Alex Jones.

00:33:57.140 I don't know who'd want to praise Alex Jones, but you're not allowed to do it.

00:33:59.880 I find him so funny. He's hilarious. I don't know. Who could find him dangerous? Who could

00:34:06.220 find a man that rants about, you know, water turning the frogs gay and say, that man is 0.98

00:34:11.520 dangerous. I think it's funny. So there's that. I mean, Twitter's banned a number of people from 0.97

00:34:17.840 Tommy Robinson to Carl Benjamin and all these. And you might say, oh, we don't like these people,

00:34:22.620 whatever. Who cares? But what I find really worrying is that these mega companies in Silicon

00:34:30.380 Valley now seem to have taken on the role of the censor. And they can now decide what is acceptable

00:34:39.180 speech and what is unacceptable speech. And they have absolutely no accountability to us. We can

00:34:45.840 put pressure on them, I guess. We can write lots of tweets about it.

00:34:50.840 Until you get banned.

00:34:52.320 Until you get banned.

00:34:53.400 Yeah, I find that really dystopian.

00:34:56.480 And what is most bizarre is that actually people have been arguing for this to happen for a very long time.

00:35:04.340 You know, lots of people from across the political spectrum have said the problem with Facebook and Twitter is that there's so much fake news.

00:35:12.700 There's so many, you know, there's too many Russian trolls.

00:35:15.540 There's too many, too much racism. 0.98

00:35:17.760 Yep, I agree.

00:35:18.260 too much hate speech and what are they going to do about it? And now they're doing something about

00:35:23.920 it and it actually is incredibly dystopian and scary. And it's going to get worse because the

00:35:29.280 government's going to get involved too. And Britain has set out a white paper, it's called

00:35:34.540 the Online Harms White Paper, and basically it's setting out proposals to have some of the most

00:35:41.200 highly regulated internet access in the so-called free world. Actually, it's probably even worse

00:35:50.040 than China because, at least in China, you can go on a VPN and you can access what you like.

00:35:55.000 Don't tell the Chinese authorities, I told you that. But in Britain, they want to have the power 0.97

00:36:01.540 to find websites if they don't remove posts and even take down some websites entirely.

00:36:09.100 And, you know, I can sympathise with people who say, oh, well, you know, who cares?

00:36:13.260 Who cares if Facebook gets a big fine?

00:36:14.980 Who cares if Twitter gets a big fine?

00:36:16.680 They're just, you know, big tech, whatever.

00:36:19.240 It's been posed as this war on big tech.

00:36:22.300 But really, you know, it's a war on us because, you know, social media, it's not Mark Zuckerberg mouthing off.

00:36:28.700 it's me and you and people we know and your friends and family who occupy social media

00:36:37.040 and who use it to speak their mind. So it's always a war on the user at the end of the day.

00:36:42.820 Well, shit rolls downhill, right? So if they crack down on Zuckerberg, he's going to crack 0.99

00:36:46.460 down on all of us because he's going to have to try and protect himself against the consequences

00:36:50.980 of Fraser saying the wrong thing on Facebook. Exactly. So what it's going to do is it will

00:36:56.520 make those platforms more censorious because they'll want to avoid getting fined. And now

00:37:02.280 they've tried similar things in other countries. So Germany has a law called the NetzDG, which is

00:37:09.040 the first of... Sounds so funny. It does sound funny. All German words sound funny. And it's

00:37:15.600 an anti-hate speech kind of law. And it could fine companies tens of thousands, potentially

00:37:22.740 hundreds of thousands of euros if they host hate speech. And so the effect that it has had is that

00:37:29.300 Facebook is now just taking down posts left, right and centre, trying to cover its arse. 0.96

00:37:33.820 And one really funny outcome, we shouldn't laugh, but maybe we can take some joy in this, 0.89

00:37:40.000 is that the minister who came up with the law and who was promoting the law had one of his tweets

00:37:46.100 taken down because they didn't want to get fined. He'd called an opponent an idiot. 0.98

00:37:51.100 this was deemed to be hate speech it was taken down right okay so i agree with what you're saying 0.98

00:38:00.520 i'm going to put forward the counter argument there which is if we look at the christ church

00:38:04.760 massacre yeah it was obviously awful there was allegations and i think it's widely accepted that

00:38:10.200 he was you know radicalized online with certain you know numbers of far right websites and all

00:38:17.080 the rest of it, and 4chan, I think, was involved as well. Surely do people not need to be protected

00:38:23.680 from these types of hateful, far-right groups, especially vulnerable young people?

00:38:30.320 Well, if these groups are out there, I want to know about them, and I want to know how we can

00:38:34.320 counter them. And actually, it's better, potentially, if they're on Facebook and Twitter,

00:38:39.720 where other people are, than if they're shunted off to 4chan, where no normal people are on,

00:38:45.440 you know, these kind of, well, maybe I'm going to get in trouble. They're going to hate me.

00:38:51.200 But, you know, it's funny. It's like when a lot of the people were banned from Twitter and Facebook,

00:38:57.380 they started moving to Gab, which is like this kind of free speech social network. But if you

00:39:03.580 go on Gab, it's only these people. You know, so it's full of, you know, it's not, I mean,

00:39:09.640 it's not entirely just hate speech or anti-Semitism or whatever, but there's quite a lot of it.

00:39:13.980 But there's none of us around that could ever challenge it.

00:39:17.740 You know, so it just happens underground, and that makes the problem worse inevitably.

00:39:22.700 That's what I did.

00:39:23.440 I went on Gab.

00:39:24.160 I checked it out, and after like 10 minutes, I was like, no, no, I don't want to be here. 0.99

00:39:28.160 And I left because it is full of genuine racism and all people saying the most horrible shit that they can think of. 0.99

00:39:34.240 And like you say, no one is there to challenge them. 0.99

00:39:36.080 But let's explore another counterargument, which comes up a lot, which is we love freedom, don't we, Fraser?

00:39:42.040 Yeah, we do.

00:39:42.660 You love freedom, don't you, Francis?

00:39:43.560 this. I love freedom, don't I? These are companies, private companies pursuing their free will to have

00:39:49.120 people on the platform that they want. You know, if you ran a shop, well, actually, if you ran a

00:39:53.260 shop, you would be forced to do things. But I mean, they're companies doing what they are free

00:39:58.880 to do with their own subscriber base. What's your issue with that? God, this is the dreaded

00:40:03.540 libertarian argument. I can't stand these people. I have a lot of libertarian leanings, but I'm

00:40:10.580 getting increasingly irritated by quote unquote libertarians these days. No, I think that there

00:40:16.780 is a point at which Facebook and Twitter and YouTube or whatever, and that point is now,

00:40:22.260 that they get so large that they are the new public square in a sense. You cannot get by

00:40:28.840 in politics, a lot of businesses. You can't really have a normal social life sometimes

00:40:36.440 if you are not on one of these platforms. And so to deny someone the, you know, platform to be on

00:40:43.960 there, if you're, it's like you're casting them out of public life entirely these days. So I,

00:40:49.800 so I don't think that, you know, I don't really care. I don't care about the property rights of

00:40:55.780 Mark Zuckerberg anyway. But even if you were concerned about that, I think the, it's as much

00:41:01.700 bigger, you know, the problem for public debate is a much bigger issue. So what you're then saying

00:41:07.180 inevitably is we need regulation of the internet. No, I'm not saying that either. So that's an

00:41:12.200 interesting, but I think that because I know that, you know, when we have regulation, it's not going

00:41:18.740 to be in a free speech direction and it's never going to happen. Governments are only interested

00:41:23.520 in regulating to clamp down on free speech. And I simply cannot see, you know, there's no way that

00:41:29.120 you could have like a, you couldn't really have an internet first amendment or anything like that.

00:41:33.200 I don't think it would work. But I think it's up to us to really, you know, put pressure on these

00:41:36.840 companies to say that there is an alternate view to the Twitter mob who just wants everyone to be

00:41:43.420 shut down, to say that, you know, we value all voices, even the ones we hate, because we believe

00:41:50.280 in free speech. And for that to be a kind of competing idea. I think, touching on what you're

00:41:58.640 saying i think the problem is is the illiberalness of the sort of the liberal elite who we talk about

00:42:04.340 and you see in cancel culture yeah and we saw in particular the case of michael jackson of course

00:42:09.060 there were all those allegations that came out about him and all the rest of it and people were

00:42:12.580 up in arms and and then they were saying right we need to cancel it we need to get rid of jackson

00:42:16.940 we need to everything and it was just you know how if you don't want to listen to michael jackson's

00:42:23.440 music. That is entirely up to you. But how dare you say to every other person, you are not allowed

00:42:28.560 to listen to it. And I am going to be the moral arbiter of whether you have the choice or not.

00:42:33.620 Well, that's the thing. I mean, we have these self-appointed, you know, moral arbiters,

00:42:37.580 these kind of like new, the new Mary Whitehouses in a way. It's the book burning mentality,

00:42:43.360 essentially. It's the idea that we're all so stupid and vile that, you know, not only do I 1.00

00:42:49.800 not have to listen to this because it will upset my mental health. I couldn't care less if people 1.00

00:42:53.680 think that. Whatever. Do your own thing. Don't listen to it. But it's that other people need to

00:42:58.940 be shielded from it because they will, you know, either it will hurt their feelings or it will,

00:43:04.700 you know, give them bad ideas and that everyone else is unthinking, unable to challenge the things

00:43:13.140 that they see and read, unable to do anything other than simply absorb and agree with it and,

00:43:17.740 become this internet troll over time because there's so much hate out there and we're all

00:43:24.740 going to just turn into walking Pepe the Frogs unless this stuff is banned and we put a stop to

00:43:30.660 it right now. And the danger is that actually we lose our ability to argue and that's what I'm

00:43:37.620 quite worried about. I'm not confident that an 18-year-old now today could make actually a

00:43:45.960 coherent argument against racism because they never have to do it. Never heard one, right? It's

00:43:52.180 just ban, ban, ban. And that, you know, that is what is making us, it's going to make us stupid 1.00

00:43:59.260 in the long term. It's going to make us unable to respond to much more serious political challenges 0.98

00:44:05.860 because in the end, you know, we can't just pull the plug on if, you know, if a far right movement

00:44:13.560 were to emerge. We're not just going to be able to pull the plug on it. It doesn't work like that.

00:44:17.300 You can't just ban it into existence. I mean, my favorite analogy, I guess, is hate to make Nazi

00:44:23.520 analogies, but it is true that there were laws against hate speech in Weimar Germany. These

00:44:30.880 politicians were constantly getting banned, banned for their views on X, Y, Z. It didn't stop it.

00:44:38.120 It didn't help. In fact, it made it worse because they were able to pose as defenders of the truth.

00:44:44.720 You know, think about Tommy Robinson, right?

00:44:47.180 The fact that he is persecuted by the British state, which he is, I'm not a fan of his, but I think that's true, 1.00

00:44:55.140 gives him more credence because it says, you know, these are the things I'm saying what they don't want you to hear.

00:45:02.020 And, you know, therefore I'm the person telling the truth and they are the liars.

00:45:05.960 So, you know, we have to be really, really careful with censorship.

00:45:08.600 Censorship is more dangerous than free speech.

00:45:11.660 I always take it back to about six or seven years ago,

00:45:15.220 maybe eight years ago, when they had Nick Griffin on Question Time.

00:45:18.620 Yeah.

00:45:18.940 And he was just destroyed.

00:45:20.420 It was a fantastic moment.

00:45:21.360 Yeah, it was destroyed.

00:45:22.400 And any chance of him being a credible political force evaporated

00:45:26.920 because if you were a sound mind, you just looked at him and you went,

00:45:30.760 oh, you're clueless and out of your depth.

00:45:32.940 Yeah.

00:45:33.020 Yeah. And you need to be able to expose wrongness in order to tackle it. You can't just assert that something is bad and shunt it away. The Nick Griffith episode is exactly that, I think.

00:45:50.120 But I'm curious about your point about not needing regulation and being worried about it, because obviously I understand the mistrust of government 100 percent on the one hand.

00:45:59.480 On the other hand, I think this idea that, you know, trigonometry and spike and, you know, a few other people who care about free speech are just going to get together and put pressure on Twitter and Facebook and Google.

00:46:11.480 Well, we've got to meet with Zuckerberg on Friday, haven't we?

00:46:13.440 Yes, we have about our future upcoming bans, about how we're going to get banned from everything.

00:46:22.000 But I think this idea that there's going to be enough of us putting that pressure, I don't see that as a credible way to deal with.

00:46:32.080 I mean, look at, as you know, I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump, but if you look at that leaked Google meeting video, did you ever see that?

00:46:40.220 Was that the kindly sent someone or something like that?

00:46:42.720 I don't remember, but basically the day after, they had a massive meeting after Trump's election in 2016.

00:46:48.040 And they were all in tears crying and going on about how we must never let this happen again.

00:46:53.440 Yeah.

00:46:53.780 Right.

00:46:54.140 This is people at Google.

00:46:55.780 Because they think that they did it.

00:46:57.300 Yeah.

00:46:57.600 They think that much.

00:46:59.500 Yeah.

00:47:00.060 No, but they honestly think that highly of themselves that they, you know, created this monster or whatever.

00:47:05.260 I mean, it's nothing to do with them.

00:47:06.660 So I don't, but my point is, I don't think that people respond to incentives, right?

00:47:10.700 I don't think you and me and a few other people complaining about the need for free speech is ever going to be a strong enough incentive for a huge tech company to allow people the freedom to speak, which is why I think we will eventually have to have some kind of First Amendment for the Internet of some kind.

00:47:28.980 Well, I think what we need is, you know, you're right, a few of us talking about it is not going to change the world.

00:47:36.280 But what we need is a broader cultural shift.

00:47:38.620 You know, the problem is that culturally free speech is not valued and there's no reason why it couldn't be in the future.

00:47:47.360 I mean, the thing, you know, the First Amendment is a good example because, you know, obviously there is a First Amendment in America.

00:47:53.480 But it's not as if, you know, you go on a college campus or whatever, and they have free speech. Far from it. There's a hostility to free speech among a lot of young politically active people. And, you know, you can't tackle that through legal means. That requires a cultural change. And, you know, it's going to be a hell of a lot of work. It's not going to come easy at all.

00:48:18.680 Well, I'm not sure I agree with you there, because we had Jeffrey Miller on the show, who you may know, and he was talking about free speech on campuses in America. And one of the things he was talking about is actually Donald Trump has put in, he's put in threats and he's made threats that universities or colleges that don't uphold the First Amendment principles will lose funding and stuff like that.

00:48:38.580 So the law, if it's correctly calibrated, can be used to mandate freedom.

00:48:46.000 It can be used to do that.

00:48:47.480 If you have a law, for example, that says that you can't murder me for what I say,

00:48:51.240 that allows me to speak freely in a way that I otherwise might not.

00:48:56.040 I mean, my view is that a free speech crackdown is kind of a contradiction in terms.

00:49:01.100 And it's something we tried in Britain, actually.

00:49:03.220 I remember talking about it a couple of years ago.

00:49:05.200 You know, the government put out this thing.

00:49:06.640 you know we're going to promote free speech on campus it didn't go anywhere it's not going to

00:49:11.120 change it's not going to win hearts and minds and it's not going to it's not going to stop people

00:49:16.060 from thinking you know the underlying ideas the underlying ideas which are which are the problem

00:49:21.200 which are that today people think that speech is violence or you know that hurt feelings at the end

00:49:27.160 of the world that the you know speech inevitably leads to disaster bad speech inevitably leads to

00:49:34.580 disastrous outcomes. People also just seem to think that speech can't be countered with

00:49:39.020 more speech. So I think it's a more fundamental battle than anything that could be solved by the

00:49:47.580 flick of the pen. And why do you think free speech, we talk about it a lot, and immediately,

00:49:56.160 again, the far right slur comes up. And then they always joke about it. People make slurs about

00:50:03.260 trigonometry go, oh, they're right-wing, they're obsessed with free speech. 0.99

00:50:07.460 Why is wanting of freedom of speech right-wing?

00:50:11.200 It's because of your voice, mate.

00:50:12.700 I do have a racist voice.

00:50:13.860 I don't think there's anything right-wing about it.

00:50:15.480 I mean, it's an incredibly, it's actually a really radical idea.

00:50:19.560 You know, the idea that everyone should be allowed to speak,

00:50:23.800 that should be permitted to speak, and should be trusted to listen to everyone.

00:50:29.740 Right. I mean, it's traditionally it has been the right that has sought to clamp down on free speech, you know, whether that's through censorship of the theater or, you know, we had Mary Whitehouse in the 80s complaining about sex and all that stuff.

00:50:42.960 It's only, I suppose, there's always been censorious elements in the left. Of course, I mean, we had Stalinism, for Christ's sake.

00:50:48.440 It's not, you know. But it's interesting that in the 60s in America, you know, you had a lot of radicals and kind of hippie types who were very pro-free speech.

00:50:58.480 And they recognized that free speech was a tool for them to affect social change and to, you know, make the changes that they wanted.

00:51:07.700 There would be no civil rights movement without free speech. There'd be no feminist movement without free speech because... 1.00

00:51:13.200 Let's ban it. 0.97

00:51:13.740 sorry that's Konstantin's Russian side coming out but I mean it's it's it's it's so it's um

00:51:25.020 it's a recent shift I guess um that I think I think at the moment I think you know to be honest

00:51:31.260 I think there are a lot of people on the right who are maybe bad faith defenders of free speech

00:51:37.420 and um you know it's it's politically convenient at the moment to for them to defend free speech

00:51:42.880 because they are the ones being censored.

00:51:45.540 In a different time, maybe would it be the left standing up for free speech

00:51:51.680 because they're being censored?

00:51:53.040 It's interesting, I mean, to talk about the one instance

00:51:56.240 where I've heard someone from the Labour Party in the last few years

00:51:59.080 talk about free speech was in relation to the anti-Semitism scandal

00:52:02.640 where they say, but why can't we say what we like about Israel

00:52:06.040 and Zionism and stuff like that?

00:52:09.020 And you're right, yeah, why shouldn't they say what they like?

00:52:10.500 but they wouldn't defend free speech in any other circumstance.

00:52:13.900 So, you know, free speech is not so much a left-right issue,

00:52:22.300 but I think who supports it, who's against it,

00:52:25.260 depends very much on where we are, you know, in a period of time.

00:52:29.060 And at the moment, you know, culturally the right are on the back foot

00:52:31.920 and so it's their speech that's being suppressed

00:52:35.960 and we need to defend their free speech.

00:52:38.160 and that's what happens is uh we seem to be in this world now where we play this

00:52:42.660 association game all the time yeah it's like oh you believe in free speech who else believes in

00:52:47.940 free speech let's ignore the people in the middle let's go to the far right oh you and this guy

00:52:53.060 believes in free and and it's always about like who can you associate with this particular view

00:52:58.260 we're constantly playing this like six degrees of white supremacy like how do you connect this

00:53:02.640 person that'd be a great board game six degrees of white supremacy but what I particularly wanted

00:53:10.580 to ask you about is this culture of fear that has now started which I've seen a lot and you know I

00:53:17.820 work in comedy where it's ultra liberal and then you do the classic over the shoulder blah blah blah

00:53:22.120 I was in uh last week I was in a burger restaurant with my girlfriend and a chap sat down next to me

00:53:28.940 he recognised me from trigonometry, looked over his shoulder and said,

00:53:34.280 thank you for what you're doing, and then went, almost whispered,

00:53:38.160 but you know you're going to get banned like everyone else.

00:53:40.940 And we do live in this culture of fear where we worry about things being said

00:53:46.460 or misinterpreted and saying things which aren't controversial in any shape

00:53:50.600 or form, but worrying that it's going to get overheard and people are going

00:53:53.700 to lose jobs, our careers, our reputations are going to get damaged.

00:53:57.240 Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

00:53:58.640 And I think that what is really interesting, what's been really interesting over the last few years is that free speech did seem a bit of, you know, I've always been a fan of free speech, but it was once a bit of a niche issue.

00:54:09.220 It's like what people would say to me, you know, when I'm actually a bit bored about talking about college campuses now because it's like, no, this is the real world now.

00:54:18.380 But when I was talking, when I was talking about that years ago, people said, why do you care?

00:54:21.540 I was like, well, because there are going to be real consequences if we let this happen.

00:54:24.780 And now ordinary people who have very normal, average opinions, sometimes in the majority opinion, feel as if they cannot speak, feel as if they cannot speak their minds normally and just say what they think. And that's really, really scary. And that's really, really troubling.

00:54:43.760 I was doing some research for my Edinburgh show, which I'm doing about this whole SOAS, behavioral agreement form, contract.

00:54:50.760 And last year in Russia, because I want to contrast what's happening in the UK with what's happening in Russia,

00:54:56.760 400 people were arrested for things they said online.

00:54:59.760 Yeah.

00:55:00.760 Do you know how many people were arrested in this country for things they said online last year?

00:55:03.760 No, well, it's 3,300.

00:55:05.760 Yeah.

00:55:06.760 Wow.

00:55:07.760 Nine people per day.

00:55:09.760 When I tell people this, there is not a single person that I've said this to,

00:55:15.620 left liberal, right wing, center, whatever. 0.99

00:55:18.880 There's not a single person who has not gone, what the fuck? 0.99

00:55:23.160 But people don't know this, right? 0.98

00:55:25.320 So I think a lot of people say to you, well, why do you care about free speech?

00:55:28.520 Because they don't really understand the scale of what's happening.

00:55:31.040 Yeah.

00:55:31.820 And I think because of the scale of it and when you point these things out to people,

00:55:37.620 I think people realize that it is actually something that affects you and you and me and your mum and your, you know, your gran.

00:55:45.120 Definitely affects my mum.

00:55:46.520 Because it's not, it's honestly, it isn't just about far right agitators anymore.

00:55:51.420 It's about completely normal opinion.

00:55:53.600 I mean, you know, think about the way that people might suppress their views on Brexit, which most people are in favor of.

00:56:00.560 Think about the way that people might express, might, you know, suppress their views on the trans issue.

00:56:05.100 Most people, if you look at polling, don't think that men can become women overnight.

00:56:12.100 They're not bigots for thinking that.

00:56:13.520 They just think that.

00:56:15.100 But you can't express that view because it's hate speech or whatever.

00:56:21.580 Perfectly normal opinions.

00:56:22.480 But is it, hold on, the counter-argument might be, well, look, you're free to express your opinion about Brexit.

00:56:27.940 And the fact that your neighbor might not like you and throw dog poo over the garden wall doesn't mean that you're being censored.

00:56:35.100 Well, I think if there, A, it is possible to be censored. I mean, censorship doesn't just come from, you know, the state slamming its boot on your face. There are many ways that people can be, you know, silenced, whether it's just through, you know, through fear, through, you know, feeling that you can't express a certain view.

00:56:59.820 There is also, you know, low level kind of low level policing of these things as well with around hate incidents.

00:57:06.760 So technically, someone has been reported to the police for voting for Brexit and the police have recorded that as a hate incident.

00:57:13.860 So it can happen. There's no consequences to that for you legally, but that's pretty scary.

00:57:19.780 Right. Or, you know, there was a guy who posted a a limerick about transgenderism on his Twitter.

00:57:26.880 and he gets a phone call from the police.

00:57:29.660 They're not going to arrest him,

00:57:30.840 but that's still pretty scary.

00:57:32.400 They find out where he works.

00:57:35.600 So there is a kind of creeping authoritarianism

00:57:39.520 that I think people are right to be a bit wary of,

00:57:43.040 right to be afraid of.

00:57:44.040 Whether people are being censored directly

00:57:46.360 is by the by, I guess.

00:57:50.500 But the point I've made to people as well is,

00:57:53.140 look, even if someone got arrested

00:57:54.460 and then didn't get prosecuted,

00:57:55.840 If you arrest 3,000 people a year for saying something and you don't then prosecute them,

00:58:02.040 that is still the government intimidating citizens into not doing something.

00:58:05.540 Because if you were to do something and got arrested for it five times and never prosecuted,

00:58:10.780 you'd still be worried about it.

00:58:11.880 Yeah.

00:58:12.140 Well, you'd be worried.

00:58:13.160 I mean, you could be arrested.

00:58:15.580 You could be sacked.

00:58:17.020 You could be at the end of a Twitter storm.

00:58:19.420 It doesn't even involve the government or your employer.

00:58:22.040 But you would feel so much, you know, the pressure on you to shut up

00:58:26.780 and to stop saying what it is you're saying or to recant for what you've said

00:58:30.720 is so great that it does, you know, amount to a form of censorship.

00:58:36.000 We've got time for one more question?

00:58:37.180 We have, we've got, and it's a question we always end on, which is,

00:58:41.100 what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be talking about as a society?

00:58:45.560 Bloody hell. That's a big one. I haven't thought of one.

00:58:50.940 yeah

00:58:51.680 that's alright

00:58:52.900 can I have a second

00:58:53.740 yeah have a second

00:58:54.840 oh by the way

00:58:55.640 I realised we talked

00:58:56.440 about Brexit

00:58:57.040 and we voted

00:58:58.020 Remain because

00:58:58.520 we're good people

00:58:59.120 we needed to get

00:58:59.940 it in there

00:59:00.360 we always do that

00:59:02.340 we're actually

00:59:02.720 going to bring out

00:59:03.280 a range of t-shirts

00:59:04.300 we voted Remain

00:59:05.460 we're good people

00:59:05.960 yeah because

00:59:06.620 we're good people

00:59:07.720 yeah so we display

00:59:08.720 our virtue

00:59:09.220 wherever we go

00:59:09.920 because that is

00:59:10.640 the selling point

00:59:11.500 of Remain isn't it

00:59:12.480 you're a good person

00:59:13.440 yeah no that's it

00:59:14.240 yeah that's what

00:59:15.180 they're all there for

00:59:16.020 yeah

00:59:16.340 I went to the

00:59:17.840 Remain march

00:59:18.920 and it's scary

00:59:19.720 how many good people

00:59:20.520 there are

00:59:20.840 The one thing that people aren't talking about is, I think, class. And it's interesting that in an age of identity where we are and of intersectionality, I suppose, we're obsessed with dividing people into these little boxes of race, sexuality, gender.

00:59:43.220 We'll even invent new boxes for, you know, people who fancy it.

00:59:48.640 But what we really ignore is class.

00:59:52.880 And I think it's really important because it's not just an identity, actually.

00:59:57.780 And if it was an identity, I wouldn't care about it.

01:00:01.020 It's about your position in society.

01:00:03.080 And I think that, you know, one thing that the kind of identity politics of the elite has really done successfully

01:00:13.040 is to mask those divisions.

01:00:15.740 You know, I think that's the real dividing line.

01:00:18.700 And they've managed to almost paper over the cracks ever so nicely.

01:00:23.980 And if you obviously speak up about these things,

01:00:27.000 then you're in trouble because you're a bigot,

01:00:29.260 because you're questioning, you know, as I said before,

01:00:33.340 you know, they have this moral force field around them

01:00:36.220 and you can't question them.

01:00:37.920 and yeah so class is the the one thing that i think that people should be talking about be

01:00:45.500 thinking about a lot more and you know it should inform how people see the world oh god france

01:00:51.960 is going to keep banging on about his working class roots i've taught in croydon mate

01:00:56.720 what are you what time are you setting what time am i setting i'm setting the working class

01:01:02.780 oh I've got three seconds

01:01:05.240 I'm working class again

01:01:06.260 I'm not I'm lower middle class actually

01:01:08.580 but there we go

01:01:09.200 oh I see banging on about class again

01:01:10.960 you can't win

01:01:12.560 no I can't win

01:01:13.560 alright Fraser thanks so much for coming on

01:01:19.740 it's been a brilliant interview

01:01:20.820 follow Fraser on Twitter

01:01:24.020 remind us your Twitter handle

01:01:25.280 at Fraser Myers

01:01:26.400 on Twitter readers articles are inspired

01:01:29.220 and you write for Medium as well don't you

01:01:31.480 you don't

01:01:32.280 okay

01:01:32.560 also as well

01:01:34.940 you've got a

01:01:35.460 Spiked podcast

01:01:36.120 if you want to

01:01:36.760 promote it

01:01:37.320 yeah it's

01:01:38.280 called the

01:01:39.080 Spiked podcast

01:01:39.800 and we do that

01:01:40.860 every Friday

01:01:41.740 we talk about

01:01:43.420 three different

01:01:44.240 you know

01:01:44.680 exciting and

01:01:45.760 spicy topics

01:01:46.700 in the news

01:01:47.180 so check it out

01:01:48.060 yeah check it out

01:01:48.840 absolutely

01:01:49.280 as always

01:01:50.240 follow us on

01:01:50.960 all the social

01:01:51.460 media

01:01:51.800 at TriggerPod

01:01:52.880 subscribe to

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01:01:54.580 click the

01:01:55.440 bell button

01:01:56.000 next to the

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01:01:57.160 to make sure

01:01:57.660 you get notified

01:01:58.440 when a video

01:01:59.200 comes out

01:01:59.740 and as

01:02:00.720 Francis always 1.00

01:02:01.240 likes to remind us a lot of people are getting randomly unsubscribed from our channel so if that

01:02:06.100 is you please please please comment on the YouTube video or send us a tweet if you're a listener

01:02:10.840 and we'll complain to YouTube and they will do absolutely nothing. Absolutely and I thought

01:02:16.700 about doing this actually as a social experiment we got a brilliant clip we had was of Andrew Doyle

01:02:21.940 talking about woke comedy and it got it refused to get promoted by Facebook right and they would

01:02:29.400 just said because it contravened their terms and conditions. And I'm going to do something

01:02:33.300 I'm going to want her to do. Let's see if we can try and make that clip go viral. 1.00

01:02:37.500 So if you listen to Trigonometry or you

01:02:41.360 watch it, you've got a Twitter account, you've got a Facebook. Tomorrow

01:02:45.200 I'm going to put it up. We're going to tag lots of people. Let's see if we can make it go viral

01:02:49.320 against those bastards' best wishes. Sounds great. Speaking of woke comedy, 1.00

01:02:53.400 I'm doing a show in Edinburgh, Francis. Yes, you are. You are. Absolutely.

01:02:56.900 This is where you say something nice about it

01:02:59.300 Yeah, it's going to be great 1.00

01:03:01.020 You bastard 0.98

01:03:04.460 But yeah, where is it? 1.00

01:03:07.760 It's called Orwell That Ends Well

01:03:09.900 It's about freedom of speech

01:03:11.780 and it's going to be at 7pm

01:03:13.180 and the Gilded Balloon tickets are already on

01:03:15.020 the Edinburgh Fringe website, so grab yourself a ticket

01:03:17.020 Yeah, we'll see if I can get Francis

01:03:19.420 to squeeze in a joke

01:03:20.240 Okay, right, absolutely, yeah, it's going to need some

01:03:22.440 No, it's not, it's going to be brilliant

01:03:23.580 Go and watch it, but guys, thank you so much

01:03:25.620 and we'll see you next week.

01:03:26.760 Bye-bye.

01:03:27.000 See you in a week.

01:03:27.520 Bye-bye.

TRIGGERnometry - June 16, 2019

Fraser Myers on the Yellow Vest Protests and Internet Censorship

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