00:00:30.000hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin kitchen and this is a
00:00:40.660show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our brilliant guest today
00:00:46.700is a former social justice warrior and she's also the co-host of the unsafe space which i've had the
00:00:52.500privilege of being on kerry smith welcome to trigonometry hi guys thanks for having me it's
00:00:57.500so great to have you listen tell everybody who are you how are you where you are what has been
00:01:03.100the journey that leads you to being here talking to us so i currently host the unsafe space podcast
00:01:10.280with my friend carter laren and we are more we're not a political podcast we're more of a i would
00:01:16.640say we're a cultural podcast a bit like you guys um i just i think that we necessarily end up
00:01:23.060talking about politics, sometimes more than others. I mean, with the elections recently,
00:01:27.940we're talking a little more about politics. So it's sometimes necessary, but most of what we
00:01:33.360focus on are ideas and philosophy. And on the show, we do interviews, we do a live show on
00:01:40.560Mondays and Fridays. And then we do a deep dive show called Deprogrammed, which is more of an
00:01:47.500examination into my old ideology, which I most often call social justice.
00:01:52.960Right. And you talk about being deprogrammed. It's called deprogrammed. Tell us, first of all,
00:01:59.440how you got programmed. So, yeah, I was indoctrinated is the way I view it
00:02:07.540into social justice ideology. I know some people call it identitarianism. Helen Pluckers has called
00:02:14.520it that. But it's basically this sort of mutated form of Marxism that's based around
00:02:21.720identity and power rather than around wealth and class. So I was indoctrinated into that
00:02:29.640in college over 20 years ago. I went to Duke University. I was a biological anthropology
00:02:35.500and anatomy major, but my minor was women's studies, which is, I don't think exists anymore.
00:02:40.700it's now called gender studies. Women's studies was problematic. Through my minor in women's
00:02:47.780studies, I took a lot of the critical race theory, queer theory classes. And the way that I kind of,
00:02:54.700I look back on it now is it, it's sort of moved in for me, it became a kind of religion. And I
00:03:01.720think it, I think it operates that way for a lot of people who are in it. So it's a way of
00:03:07.140feeling like you were doing good in the world. And, and it's a, it gives you a moral plan for
00:03:16.220how to operate in the world. Now it contradicts itself a lot and it's not, I would say it's not
00:03:22.240internally consistent, but it is, I think for a lot of people, it functions in the place where
00:03:28.280religion might be. Um, so yeah, I was indoctrinated about 20 years ago and then.
00:03:34.200And Kerry, when you say you were indoctrinated, did some guy or girl or someone, gender, non-specific, come up to you and go,
00:03:43.000shh, shh, come over here, I'm going to give you a little taste of this?
00:03:46.100Don't ever do that again, mate, that's awful.
00:03:48.600If it were that easy, I mean, the one thing that, the reason I think it's sometimes hard to talk about this belief system,
00:03:56.000especially with new people who are getting into it, when I say, yeah, I was in it for 20 years,
00:04:00.760And I think it operates like a cult. And when I try to explain what it really is versus what it says it is, it sounds a bit like, oh, conspiracy theorists, someone indoctrinated you. And that makes it a little harder to criticize. It meets a lot of the cult characteristics with the exception of having one charismatic leader. So that's a bit more, you know, you can't point to that person.
00:04:23.440but you can look at all the other characteristics of a cult and see that it lines up with a lot of
00:04:27.320those. I mean, you're not allowed to question dogma. There is a pressure to isolate yourself
00:04:33.780from people who are non-believers to cut people out of your life if they're not in the ideology.
00:04:39.520So it meets a lot of those characteristics, but no, there's no shadowy room. I wasn't pulled into
00:04:45.740a gender study, women's studies office and force fed stuff. It just, it sort of happens
00:04:52.160over time. It happened to me over a period of years. So what starts off as something that I
00:04:59.260think, I think there are some really good things about studying race and gender and,
00:05:05.720and, and studying racism and sexism and, and different kinds of bigotry. And what happens
00:05:12.980is that a lot of people who who get into it they sort of start to adopt some of the tenets of the
00:05:18.940belief system slowly it's not all at once so one of the things they're very concerned with for
00:05:24.460example they're very concerned with language and we were talking about uh orwell before the show
00:05:29.340and he knew this i mean you can control people if you can control their thought and you can
00:05:34.560control their thought if you can control language and so one of the early things they get you to do
00:05:39.380is they redefine words like racism and sexism.
00:05:42.760So they say racism and sexism are prejudice plus power.
00:07:57.640and you talk about it being a religion and one of the things religion gives you is it gives you a
00:08:03.380structure in a way that that you see the world how did this particular religion how did it get
00:08:11.180you to see the world what did it do when how did it influence your life so that's another great
00:08:17.360question it basically says so i this is this is the way i try to explain it for people who are
00:08:22.280new to it and are telling me what they think it is. Marxism of old told us that the best way
00:08:28.660to look at the world was as a struggle between class groups for wealth. And it was all about
00:08:35.820who's in the oppressor group and the oppressed group. And they believed in redistributing wealth
00:08:41.000to make things equal. So this is sort of similar, but it says the best way to look at the world is
00:08:46.500as a struggle for power. Power is what's at the center of this belief system. So they say the
00:08:51.580world is a struggle for power between identity groups and we need to redistribute power and
00:08:57.240because you're doing that because you're being told to do that I would say the way that it
00:09:03.400operates in an individual person is that you go into interactions I used to go into interactions
00:09:08.940just looking for the sexism and the racism you're it's like putting on glasses every day
00:09:14.880and you're trying to find it in everything that's why um when people have as it's become more
00:09:20.860mainstream in the past few years become more culturally dominant i would say people have
00:09:25.880started to bump up into this ideology people who didn't learn about it in school weren't indoctrinated
00:09:30.820or whatever they're starting to come into contact with it in different ways and so it might seem
00:09:35.020like some silly thing at first the way in which they're introduced to it like the song baby it's
00:09:41.140cold outside the christmas song right oh that's so offensive and to women and it's patriarchal and
00:09:47.160it's about rape culture and and for a normie who's hearing that they may not understand why
00:09:53.040is everyone attacking this song but wap is being lauded like one of these is offensive the other's
00:10:00.500fine um and and it's because it's it's part of something much bigger and so we're starting to
00:10:06.820see these little uh there's always something in the media these days there's several things a day
00:10:11.080to be outraged about and they're they're they might seem silly if you're just taking them in
00:10:15.480isolation, but they're all a part of this belief system that tells people you need to find the
00:10:20.640hidden racism and sexism and homophobia and everything. Um, and it also, I would say
00:10:26.740when you start to do that over a long period of time, it affects your self-confidence. Um,
00:10:33.520especially if you are a person who's in one of these so-called marginalized groups. I used to
00:10:38.880go into rooms, um, in, in the entertainment world. So after I graduated, I moved into entertainment
00:10:45.420I had my own company. My partner and I managed comedians and musicians. And she wasn't indoctrinated the way that I was. And I was always really, I would look at her and say, wow, like, I remember saying to her, you walk into a room with the confidence of a straight white man, you know, and I couldn't figure it out.
00:11:06.560But that was because she walked into the room just as herself.
00:11:10.340And I walked into the room more as this oppressed, this member of an oppressed group who I was automatically expecting everyone to treat, like all the men in the room to treat me differently because I'm a woman.
00:15:56.900And and there seems to be maybe something of the innate drive to protect children that might be that might be being transferred into this belief system a bit because it's about, you know, it's sold to you as protecting and defending these, you know, defenseless, marginalized groups of people.
00:16:18.500It's about protecting the underdog and speaking for the underdog.
00:16:21.440And I think that women on average, not all women, women on average might be more drawn to this belief system because of that, because they are interested in people.
00:28:27.120So you're always potentially as an agency, you're on the lookout for new talent.
00:28:31.440right? That would be part of what you do, correct? Right. Correct. So what would happen if Francis
00:28:36.220walks through the door and like, you know, he's a funny guy, but he's maybe not got quite the same
00:28:43.540views as what you want. And, you know, he happens not to be from a minority background. What would
00:28:49.620old Kerry have done in that situation? I, this is embarrassing, but I'll be honest. I probably
00:28:56.920would not have worked with you um because i felt like my niche was racial justice comics like
00:29:04.460feminist comics comics who were talking about all the social justice stuff and honestly even if i'd
00:29:10.340wanted to there were some straight white male comedians i liked but i didn't know they did
00:29:15.020their comedy wasn't about the same issues and so i didn't know how to even promote them i knew how
00:29:22.460to promote the social justice comedians, but I wouldn't, I didn't think I would have even been
00:29:27.600useful. Um, so it's kind of interesting because social justice says, right, like as a woman,
00:29:32.820I don't have the power to be sexist. I can only be prejudiced. I can't be sick. I don't have the
00:29:38.240power. Well, look at my career. I had the power to say yes to certain comics and the power to say
00:29:45.080no to others and my roster oh gosh uh I think I only had one straight white male comedian
00:29:53.820I had you know it was all it was all people of color women Jesus Christ that dude must have
00:30:00.440been so fucking progressive well he dressed as a woman he did a lot of comedy and drag
00:30:06.660but yeah i worked with trans comics i worked with lgbt but yeah like there weren't a lot of
00:30:15.900straight white guys and did you see in the industry kerry a lot of people go
00:30:23.440i have to jump on board this particular narrative and way of looking at things
00:30:28.960otherwise i'm not going to get ahead i'm not going to get to where i want to be
00:30:33.160Yes, but it didn't happen for a while. So I was doing my thing for a long time, kind of struggling to promote comedians who were not in the mainstream. And then, well, social justice became more popular and became more mainstream. It started over time.
00:30:54.600And so like when we sold the show Totally Bias, for example, that was a new sort of I still I view that as a new sort of thing.
00:31:03.020I mean, the late night comedy shows were always leftist, but they weren't explicitly social justice.
00:31:08.840And I and I think our show, you could look at that now.
00:31:12.380And even now, that was that was an explicitly social justice thing comedy show.
00:31:16.280And then slowly after this, that was around 2011 or 2012.
00:31:19.920And then after that, I started to see a lot of comics who had never really done social justice comedy before or really had not made it the majority of the material were suddenly doing it.
00:31:32.140I mean, you've got Jim Jeffries doing social justice.
00:31:42.940Moshe Kasher did the show Problematic.
00:31:45.640There were all these social justice themed comedy shows that were coming out.
00:31:48.660And at the time that I kind of came out as a wrong thinker, which took me a while because we haven't really talked about the transition yet.
00:32:00.320But there was a period of time there, about six months, where I was really, my beliefs had been changing.
00:32:08.360I had written a letter to Jordan Peterson right before the election in October of, I think it was October of 2016.
00:32:17.260and sort of about some of my changing beliefs.
00:32:21.240And it was called A Liberal Feminist's Point of View
00:32:45.280and I knew he was right, but you don't, that's why when I talk to people now who are afraid,
00:32:50.460I totally understand why people are afraid. There's a real reason. People are afraid of
00:32:57.240losing their job. They're afraid of losing their whole social circle. They're afraid of losing
00:33:02.740friends and family, their reputation. In some cases, their safety, their anonymity. So there
00:33:09.060were a lot of fear you know fearful uh things going through me and i it took me about six months
00:33:15.780after that six months of time before i finally um i wrote an essay called uh leaving the social
00:33:24.100justice cult and that was sort of this was my way of explaining to my friends all my colleagues in
00:33:30.980entertainment all my social justice friends what was happening to me they had been meeting they
00:33:36.420had been my my best friends had been getting calls about me for months you know what's going on with
00:33:41.460Carrie why is kind of stuff she's sharing changing you know she's sharing Jordan Peterson video or
00:33:47.140she's doing you know whatever whatever it is she's sharing she's trying to figure out why Trump won
00:33:51.080and instead of just accepting that it's racism and sexism and um so that was that was sort of
00:33:59.340my coming out essay and then after that um pretty shortly after that I think we we folded the
00:34:06.200company uh but but before that so during that six months of fear right i was flying back i had moved
00:34:13.920to texas by then but i was flying back to la to film a social justice comedy pilot with one of my
00:34:20.220comics that i had we had worked on we had been writing it like a year or two prior you know it's
00:34:25.000a long process to get we've gotten a production company involved and then we'd finally sold the
00:34:29.760pilot to network and then they greenlit the pilot we're going to go make it and they were it was up
00:34:34.540against a lot of other pilots and and a lot of those were also social justice thing i knew some
00:34:38.960of the other comics we were up against and you know i'm out here i was out there in la shooting
00:34:43.440that and i was feeling so conflicted because by the time we were actually working on it i was
00:34:47.520thinking i don't believe in this stuff anymore and so i don't even know like if the show gets
00:34:52.260picked up i'm excited for the comedian i work with i'm excited for her um but i don't know if
00:34:59.640i want to work on this you know it would be good money but i don't believe in this anymore
00:35:04.200and fortunately the universe didn't make i didn't make that decision it was made for me it didn't
00:35:10.120get picked up and so pretty soon after that i was like i guess i'm out i'm gonna because i would
00:35:15.100rather like say what i think be able to say what i think and not work in entertainment anymore
00:35:21.880and work gig jobs but be able to say what i believe it's so it's so much better like any
00:35:29.600Anyone who is, we get people on our show occasionally, as I'm sure you do, people who are afraid, afraid of saying what they believe to be true.
00:35:39.820And I hear from people in the entertainment industry still all the time, especially since the summer when social justice kind of went really big.
00:35:48.060I hear from people in entertainment and academia and the media and people who feel like they're in this kind of self-censorship like I was in.
00:35:57.940and i know they you it's hard to believe when you're in it but i always say to them whenever
00:36:04.580however long it takes you to get out of it on the other side of it it it doesn't matter like all the
00:36:11.300things that you're gonna lose you and you will lose things and you will lose people but the
00:36:16.040things that you get out of it are so much more meaningful like i i don't know it's hard it's
00:36:22.280hard to explain i had a friend being able being able to be honest and authentic i think is what
00:36:26.140are talking about and piss people off on twitter and delighting in doing so which i do every single
00:36:32.300day well with facts and logic no i'm joking but um kerry what do you think this the landscape is
00:36:39.240like now in entertainment so it's you left entertainment 2012 2013 2016 oh sorry sorry
00:36:45.080my apologies 2016 yeah and then obviously you know then they had me too and then blm what is
00:36:51.520it like now do you think in entertainment yeah well i don't as you know i don't work in it now
00:36:57.020but just as an observer as someone looking at what's happened since june it's become the
00:37:03.280predominant belief system in entertainment and i think um i think that it's that that offers a
00:37:12.760unique opportunity because because things move in cycles in entertainment you remember when
00:37:18.480anthony everybody was looking for an anthony bourdain style show everything every pitch we
00:37:23.080were doing was like oh this is a great pitch but could you make it more like anthony bourdain
00:37:26.580and you know it's like could we make it more like what he's doing and so right now everyone's
00:37:32.420looking for social justice themed shows i think but at some point they're going to get tired of
00:37:37.360that cycle and there's going to be have to be there's going to be something that's a breakout
00:37:41.820show that's totally different that's not woke that's a hit and that will change things i think
00:37:49.280because then they'll start to say oh can we get something kind of like that show you know can you
00:37:54.120put just something like that and um i think it it's a it's an opportunity for people who are
00:37:59.760courageous enough to to continue working on their craft their comedy their series ideas whatever um
00:38:06.540without regard for where we're at culturally right now,
00:38:10.520without regard for what's currently popular.
00:38:16.100Are you tired of using bulky old wallets
00:38:19.060that give you a bulge where you don't want it to be?
00:38:21.920If you are, Ridge wallets are an incredible solution.
00:44:20.000this actor um and it hasn't aired yet but we're going to put it out soon anyway in that conversation
00:44:25.740we were talking about what's happening with DC and Marvel and how there are all these independent
00:44:31.340comic book creators now who are filling the gap and who are crowdfunding and are making beautiful
00:44:37.980work and people are supporting it because yes I do believe not all but a lot of companies are going
00:44:44.880to put this ideology ahead of profits and as long as you have a large enough number of social
00:44:52.360justice diehards in your company they don't they don't care about i think that's hard for people
00:44:58.340to wrap their head around it they may care about profits but profits are secondary to being
00:45:02.960ideologically correct and ideologically pure and so i think we will see a some kind of shift
00:45:09.600happening the the question for me is it's easier not that it's easy but it's easier to make an
00:45:16.320independent comic book than it is to make an independent game of thrones no or you know a
00:45:24.020television show or a movie so uh we i haven't really seen a lot of people do you know filling
00:45:31.160the gap yet and doing and anti or unwoke um series and and movies yet this is where the internet is
00:45:39.580interesting because yeah you're right you can't make an unwoke massive budget thing but what you
00:45:44.480can do with comedy for example is short sketches or things like that which you know we're going to
00:45:49.640start to do some of that and you just see that on the internet what works is what works as opposed
00:45:56.400to what what is in demand according to three people and a dog who's barking in the background
00:46:02.280you're getting heckled by a dog mate reminds you of your comedy career it reminds me of my
00:46:08.920open mic comedy career. Exactly. Three men and a dog and only the dog is paying attention. But
00:46:14.600yeah, so I guess my point is, I think with the internet, there is also an opportunity. And I
00:46:20.080think I can certainly speak for myself. I think maybe a year and a half, two years ago, I was
00:46:25.220quite bitter and resentful about how things were going more broadly, not even in terms of my own
00:46:31.900career, because I was progressing, everything was going pretty well. But in terms of the industry
00:46:35.700as a whole, I kind of felt like you have to toe the line in order to get anywhere. Whereas now I
00:46:41.980feel like these people who are the gatekeepers, they're very much dinosaurs. They're trying to
00:46:47.520hold on to something that's very much a dying model. And what you have with the internet is
00:46:54.460the opportunity to circumvent all of that, to go around all of that, and to go straight to people,
00:46:58.340the people who watch the show, who enjoy non-woke stuff. So I think there's maybe
00:47:04.940be a reason to be optimistic there, in my view. But I want to come back to what you were talking
00:47:12.520about, how in 2016, you start to watch videos of Trump supporters being assaulted. How do you go
00:47:19.960from that to like, I'm leaving? It was a long transition. So just like getting into it is slow.
00:47:28.340Getting out of it was slow for me. It's not something that happens overnight. If anyone
00:47:33.400tells you they leave this ideology like that. I just don't, I don't buy that. Um, it's,
00:47:40.260that was one of the first things I remember sort of changing, cracking, cracking my belief in,
00:47:47.120in, um, how the world works or what the truth is that, that really put a crack in, in, um,
00:47:56.340my belief that I knew how, you know, what was really happening. And then after that,
00:48:01.280or maybe it was right before that there was another significant thing um there was there
00:48:05.400were the shootings of the cops at the blm rally in dallas and in my echo chamber my social justice
00:48:13.080echo chamber online i saw a lot of people um almost not really celebrating it but making
00:48:22.000excuses for it and in some ways sort of saying well i remember one comedian even saying a lot
00:48:27.800of white men are going to have to die and you know trying to excuse that sort of sentiment is
00:48:33.940like i'm just half joking guys like i was half joking earlier about being a woman that's um
00:48:39.920i don't know it just felt like i i didn't i didn't sign up for this is not progressivism
00:48:45.420for murder of you know to support to support some guy just taking a rifle and shooting a
00:48:51.720bunch of people and it's okay because they're cops somehow. Um, so that really stuck with me.
00:48:58.220And, uh, and then I discovered who I've mentioned a few times in this, this interview, I saw a video
00:49:05.200of Jordan Peterson. Someone had sent me, um, a video saying he was transphobic and I clicked on
00:49:12.140the video fully expecting to hate on him. I was still in the social justice world, you know, and
00:49:16.640I watched the video and I really listened to what he was saying and I didn't find him to be
00:49:21.180transphobic at all. I thought he was making a really great point about compelled speech
00:49:25.880being codified in law. And, and the more I listened to him, I listened to a lecture he gave
00:49:33.600about, it was an old lecture. It was about tragedy versus evil was what it was called.
00:49:39.980And he gave this, he talked about the Cain and Abel story in the Bible. And he talked about
00:49:43.940how you can view that story as an allegory for how to be in the world. And so there are these
00:49:49.620two different ways of being in that story. You can be like Cain and you can refuse to make
00:49:55.220necessary sacrifices for what you want. And you can be resentful and you can blame God and blame
00:50:02.800your brother, blame others. And that is a path towards murderous rage. And he's like, or you can
00:50:08.560be like Abel in the story and you can make the necessary sacrifices and you can be humble and
00:50:15.100full of gratitude and you can and you can be blessed and it and i started thinking about that
00:50:20.800a lot and about how my ideology was really about it's it's a way of being like cane it's it's very
00:50:29.460resentful social people and social justice especially ones who are like living it every day
00:50:35.140waking up putting those glasses on where's the sexism and racism you know they're very resentful
00:50:42.060people. And, um, I, I, I started questioning almost every choice I was making, even little
00:50:49.980choices throughout the day. Is this like Cain or is this like Abel? And trying to root out
00:50:55.720the Cain in me, I'll put it that way. So, um, yeah, he was really, he, he helped me see,
00:51:03.720he helped me put a, uh, words to what I was seeing in my belief system. So, you know,
00:51:09.500And when you first start, if you're in a cult-like belief system or ideology and you first start questioning it, well, everything in the belief system is set up to make you think you're crazy if you're questioning it or you have some deep-seated racism and internal misogyny against yourself or something.
00:51:26.240And so to be able to say, wow, this person is perfectly articulating the problems that I'm finding in my system of belief, that was really helpful for me.
00:51:37.140so um so yeah and and like i said it wasn't a it wasn't a short thing it even after the six
00:51:44.280months it took me to get over my fear and have my sort of coming out essay um i still
00:51:49.140i still believed in a lot of the tenets of social justice i've discarded most of those now there's
00:51:55.780still probably a few i could i could agree on with social justice people and the few who have
00:52:00.420not unfriended me i'm still friends with some i'm still friends with the comedian whose pilot i was
00:52:05.960pitching at the time that I got out and you know when she comes to Austin we have lunch and we have
00:52:13.580completely opposing worldviews and it's okay because I know she is in that belief system for
00:52:21.120the same reason I was she thinks that it is the way to end racism and sexism so at if I tear down
00:52:27.960everything you try to find like what's our base point of agreement and then from there we can
00:52:33.160figure out where we diverge. Well, the very base, she and I both agree that racism and sexism are
00:52:37.720bad and we want to end those things. It's just that her philosophy, I think, is due. I think
00:52:43.120it makes those things worse. But I know she's in it with a good heart. So if she hasn't unfriended
00:52:49.080me and she's one of the few, why would I, why would I unfriend her? It's a really, really good
00:52:56.080point. And sadly, that's what we don't have a lot of, which is tolerance of each other's opinions
00:53:00.460and points of view the question I really want to ask Kerry is do you think we've reached peak woke
00:53:05.640yet oh I would like to hope so but I don't think so I think it's going to get I think it's going
00:53:14.640to get a lot worse thanks Kerry thanks mate wait but here's the silver lining here's the silver
00:53:22.360lining I think we're close to hitting peak wokeness um unfortunately I think I think things
00:53:28.900are going to have to to get bad economically too uh in this country and i'm sorry just because
00:53:38.860a lot of the younger people who have who've been in see i was indoctrinating college i didn't learn
00:53:44.280any of the social justice stuff in elementary school we've since been indoctrinating kids in
00:53:48.900elementary in kindergarten in the states i mean kids are learning about critical race theory
00:53:54.420and they're learning these things at a younger age and so I think unfortunately you almost have
00:54:00.400to get to a place where things are really hard before people start to question it so when people
00:54:05.820ask me what woke you up there's an important part I didn't mention guys I was going through a
00:54:10.840personal transformation too I I was going through a divorce so I was and I was going through a it
00:54:17.200coincided with the spiritual search like I was going I started going to a spiritual center for
00:54:22.420the first time in 20 years, I was open to the idea of God again. Um, I was going to, uh, Agape
00:54:28.280in LA, which is like this big sort of non-denominational church. Oprah is friend. I
00:54:34.440think it's her pastor there. She's friends with him. And it was really beautiful. It was the only
00:54:39.740kind of church I would have gone to at that time in my life. And, um, and so I was, I was trying
00:54:45.960to figure out who i was like what i wanted out of life i i got to a very dark place personally
00:54:55.380when all these things were happening and so i almost i think you i think that can happen for
00:55:02.980a country too and for a civilization it's almost like you have to get you have to get to a really
00:55:08.200dark place sometimes because that's sometimes the only place you can see the light it sounds cheesy
00:55:13.460but I say that as something that absolutely, I know is true because it happened to me.