TRIGGERnometry - ＂Political Correctness Hurts the Left＂： Eric Kaufmann

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kissin.

00:00:08.560 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.240 Our brilliant guest this week is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, the University of

00:00:18.780 London, and the author of White Shift, which is, as he tells me now, out in paperback,

00:00:23.500 Eric Kaufman. Welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:25.760 Delighted to be here again. First in the new year, apparently.

00:00:28.160 Yes, you are. You're the first interview we're recording since the new year. And since not the first since the election, but the election was very recently. And before we dive into that, and some of the, I mean, one of the reasons we wanted to have you back is some of the stuff you've been talking about for quite a while was predictive in terms of what's happened recently and what may happen in the future. But just before we get into that, remind everybody, who are you? How are you where you are? What has been your journey through life?

00:00:52.720 Yeah. So I'm a professor of politics at Birkbeck University of London. I've studied questions of nationalism, particularly majority ethnic groups. So when we talk about white majorities, that's the kind of thing that I've been studying for over 20 years. And I think that sort of politics has become increasingly important, and particularly with the post-2014 populist wave.

00:01:16.320 So a lot of the elections since 2014, I think, have been characterized by the rise of this new form of populism and also by polarization.

00:01:25.560 So both of these phenomena, populism and polarization, are important.

00:01:28.900 The other thing I would say is I've also done a lot of work on the history of the cultural left going back into the 19th century.

00:01:36.340 And I think that's another part of this story which is really important, which is how the cultural left has changed over time and become now a dominant force in the culture and what that's doing to our politics.

00:01:47.440 So I'm kind of interested in the intersection of the, if you like, the cultural left and this new majority group nationalism and how these two things are interacting.

00:01:57.600 And the polarization that comes from that.

00:01:59.440 Absolutely, yeah.

00:02:00.200 And so they feed off each other. Right. So the populism is in some ways caused by the success of the cultural left, which then in turn reacts to the success of populism.

00:02:10.100 And you get this, you know, polarization in the culture and also increasingly in electoral politics.

00:02:16.400 Sounds like a justification for Nazism. Anyway. All right. Anyway, Eric. 0.87

00:02:20.440 So we mentioned about the election. So let's start there. What do you think happened? And why is it that the left still can't admit that they lost?

00:02:31.240 Well, exactly. So I think this election is a perfect example in Britain of what I'm talking about, which is the rise of cultural conflicts to prominence instead of the old left versus right economic.

00:02:43.680 I'm not saying that's gone, but that issue of redistribution versus free markets, which was so big with Reagan and Thatcher, is increasingly being superseded by questions around identity, immigration, Brexit, and so forth.

00:02:55.680 And we saw in this election that the Conservative Party was able to consolidate that sort of Brexit vote around itself, including a lot of Brexit voters who were to the left economically, historically come from labor voting families.

00:03:09.800 They happen to live in the kind of constituencies you need to win in order to swing because most of the constituencies in England and Wales are leave voting constituencies.

00:03:18.500 So in a way, the rise of this cultural politics, the way the conservatives were able to speak to that Brexit voting group allowed them to win this election.

00:03:27.720 Since then, of course, as you mentioned, yeah, what has been the left reaction?

00:03:30.980 Has it been reflective, right?

00:03:33.500 Because in a way, the proper reaction would be to say, given the electoral map, given the seats, the fact most seats are leave voting seats, the fact that we can pile up votes in the college towns and in London and we're never going to win an election.

00:03:46.960 So the reality is we should be focusing on winning back those seats in the North and Midlands, which means we have to at least make some pitch to the culturally conservative left-wing voter.

00:03:58.160 That hasn't happened.

00:03:59.360 Instead, what there's been is this kind of doubling down and this belief that somehow, well, now that Brexit is gone, that issue is out of the way.

00:04:08.260 We can get back to our same old message, and then we'll get these people back.

00:04:11.780 Because, yeah, okay, Brexit was an anomaly.

00:04:14.320 It was a Brexit election.

00:04:15.340 And with that out of the way, you heard John McDonnell after the election.

00:04:18.700 That was his sort of post-mortem.

00:04:20.760 My view is that's wrongheaded, that what's happened is much deeper than this, that what has occurred.

00:04:27.280 I mean, if we take a step back and we go to the Brexit vote, what you could see is that a lot of longtime labor voters who voted Brexit were a specific kind of voter.

00:04:38.340 They didn't tend to vote very often.

00:04:40.060 They had low interest in politics, very often are less educated.

00:04:44.320 That is a key group of voters, the kind of less educated, less participatory labor voter for the Brexit vote.

00:04:51.840 So a lot of them voted leave.

00:04:53.780 What's happened, I think, in 2017, Corbyn was still able to do reasonably well because these low information voters had not yet twigged to make the association between labor and kind of anti-Brexit and kind of pro-immigration and some of these things which they reflexively oppose.

00:05:11.480 But now, by 2019, the penny had dropped, and they came to view them as, oh, they're trying to stop Brexit, and the other guys actually want to get Brexit done.

00:05:21.580 So I think that it takes longer for the low-information voter to make this equation.

00:05:28.200 We're in the kind of political sphere.

00:05:30.300 We're on Twitter, whatever, so we think, how could anybody not make the association between labor and being sort of anti-Brexit?

00:05:38.000 However, it does take longer for low-information voters.

00:05:41.100 The same thing happened in the U.S. Obama's presidency actually was an important symbol for a certain kind of low information white voter, often in many cases a racist voter, who didn't realize where the Democrats were on these issues.

00:05:56.060 And I'm not saying I don't endorse that by any means, but for some voters, the cues, the kind of ordinary party cues, which are sophisticated, et cetera, will go over their heads.

00:06:07.500 And I think what's happened now is these voters have turned, and it's going to be very hard for them to go back into the labor column, unless labor makes an offer like the Danish Social Democrats, which is more conservative on the issues these voters care about culturally.

00:06:21.760 Which are?

00:06:22.320 Which would be Brexit, which would be immigration, in particular identity issues, national identity, patriotism.

00:06:29.260 So these sorts of questions, perhaps security, but those sorts of questions I think labor is very uncomfortable with.

00:06:36.440 I think David Goodhart, and I know Matt Goodwin's mentioned this, has mentioned that a lot of social democratic parties or left parties are very uncomfortable moving to the right on culture, whereas a lot of conservative parties are more comfortable moving left on economics.

00:06:52.160 That's more true, especially if you look at Johnson, moved left in terms of the minimum wage and spending on the NHS and a number of these issues, deficit, etc., he's really broken with Thatcherite orthodoxy relatively easily, and that's been accepted.

00:07:07.180 It's been a little bit harder going in the United States.

00:07:09.680 Trump has done some of that on Social Security and the deficit.

00:07:12.420 He hasn't gone the full distance in terms of infrastructure spending and minimum wage,

00:07:17.860 but he's gone part of the way.

00:07:19.780 That sort of gets to that point that it's easier for the right to move left on economics

00:07:24.600 than the left to move right on culture, which was Goodhart's point.

00:07:27.640 And that kind of, I think, also speaks to these questions of wokeness and political correctness,

00:07:32.880 which are caging in the left, preventing it perhaps from moving to an area where, you know,

00:07:39.100 in terms of their own self-interest, they probably do need to move, which is, you know,

00:07:43.440 to a more conservative position on culture. Sorry.

00:07:46.260 No, I was just going to say, because that is the point. David Goodhart raised it. Matt Goodwin

00:07:51.640 raised it, saying, you know, that it's very difficult for the left, as they are now, to move

00:07:56.000 to a more socially conservative point of view. And I just would like to know, why do you think

00:08:00.260 that is? Well, it's mainly because these sort of activist cadres are influenced by the intellectual

00:08:05.640 currents in the universities, where there's been something called the cultural turn of the left

00:08:10.200 since the 60s, which is away from class and away from this idea of the working class and historical

00:08:16.080 materialism and these sort of Marxist ideas towards the new identity politics, race, gender,

00:08:22.760 more recently sexuality, that these kinds of tropes have become more important. So those

00:08:27.280 issues are their sacred issues now for the intellectuals and who are influential at the

00:08:32.460 upper layers and amongst activists, right? So that then, if that's what's motivating these people

00:08:37.080 to work for the party, to come into the party, the last, you know, they will die on this hill

00:08:42.540 before they kind of give up those aims. And so that simply locks the party in and prevents it

00:08:49.180 from essentially backing off on those issues. So it's really, this is an example of where

00:08:55.040 people always say, well, wokeness, political correctness, it's a storm in a teacup on campus.

00:09:00.820 Actually, it has very far-reaching effects when it percolates down into outside the campus. So

00:09:06.900 one of the examples is left-wing parties. If it constrains their ability to move rationally in a

00:09:15.240 political marketing space towards where the market is, then you've got a problem. And I think that

00:09:23.920 It's very hard for parties to overcome.

00:09:25.900 The Scandinavian left has been able to do it better, partly because I think those are smaller societies where the polarization is less extreme.

00:09:35.300 And I think there's more of a sense that, well, actually, we have to listen to our base a little bit more and so on.

00:09:41.200 But I think in Anglo-American societies, there is much more of a disconnect between the kind of elite metropolitan group on the left who are influenced by these intellectual currents, the new left, etc.

00:09:53.640 And what the voters want.

00:09:56.100 So what you're really saying is they've been captured by this activist fringe.

00:09:59.140 Yeah.

00:09:59.680 And it's not just captured by activists who have an agenda, but it's also what's really important about the wokeness is the ability to intimidate. 0.53

00:10:08.940 So it's not just that a whole bunch of people believe these ideas.

00:10:12.540 It's also that they can enforce a code, a taboo, that if you decide to challenge that taboo.

00:10:20.400 I mean, Len McCluskey did this a little bit talking about immigration just prior to the election, the union leader here.

00:10:27.500 And, you know, that is something that you're going to get hauled over the coals for, attacked as a racist for.

00:10:33.020 Well, do you want to take that risk?

00:10:34.960 It's very unpleasant.

00:10:36.780 So, again, this ability to wield taboos is a kind of force multiplier for the new left.

00:10:43.280 And so it's not just the power of their ideas, but it's the power they hold over reputations and over public morality that allows them to expand their power.

00:10:53.400 But what that does is it sort of locks in the left.

00:10:56.280 And so I think Matt Goodwin tweeted a whole series of countries in Western Europe where the main left-wing party has had its worst result ever since the 30s.

00:11:07.600 The same results that we see for labor occurring in a whole range of European countries.

00:11:14.160 And that's, again, as a result of this, I think anyway, inability to move right, if you like, on culture.

00:11:20.680 The left-wing agenda economically is reasonably popular.

00:11:24.480 That's not the problem.

00:11:25.980 It's more the fact that they are locked in by these taboos or by the new left belief in some of these new left shibboleths.

00:11:35.680 So they're just unable to adapt.

00:11:38.520 And where that goes will be very interesting.

00:11:40.660 Before we dive into that, which is political correctness, which is an area that you've been researching, I wanted to pick up a couple of things.

00:11:46.400 Like, I mean, in terms of moving the right, moving left on economics, I looked at the news websites this morning and there's something, there's a government minister talking about how some kind of rail company will be nationalized immediately.

00:11:58.580 And I literally thought I'd woken up in a great Bradbury novel and someone stepped on a butterfly.

00:12:02.720 You know what I mean?

00:12:03.300 It seems a very smooth process for the right to move left on economics.

00:12:08.700 They don't seem to have a problem losing their base because their base is now the socially conservative, largely working class people, you might say.

00:12:17.760 Yeah, and I think the difference is that there isn't – for the right to move left on economics doesn't break a taboo as much.

00:12:25.740 It doesn't mean you're going to be attacked as a morally deficient monster.

00:12:31.420 So that makes a difference, right?

00:12:32.980 You're not going to be shamed. And it's this whole sort of shaming enforcement of policing of virtue, policing of language, all these sorts of things which are identified with that left side of the ledger, which don't exist as much on the right.

00:12:46.940 Now, of course, there are entrenched interests so that in the United States, for example, in the Congress, there are still a lot of members who grew up on Reagan and Ayn Rand and believe in free money.

00:12:59.340 So it's harder to, you know, for example, to raise taxes or to redistribute would be a harder road to hoe, I think, there because of the, you know, these sort of libertarian ideas probably are more entrenched.

00:13:13.380 But I do think that moving away from that doesn't quite carry the same sting, the same stigma, I guess, that someone on the left moving right on culture would.

00:13:23.340 And before Francis takes us into the political correctness, I just wanted to clarify, because it's a very triggering term for some people when you talk about low information voters.

00:13:33.260 Of course.

00:13:33.620 You are not using that in a derogatory sense.

00:13:36.120 And by this point, all the people who've been offended by it are switched off.

00:13:39.220 So we can just talk to the rest of them.

00:13:41.900 But you're not saying those are bad people.

00:13:44.620 No, no.

00:13:45.000 What you're saying is these are people who are politically not very active.

00:13:48.820 They may not read the Times every single day and whatever.

00:13:52.900 Yes.

00:13:53.200 It doesn't necessarily mean their opinions are any less.

00:13:55.140 No, no.

00:13:55.680 Their opinions are equally valid, but maybe they pay less attention to the warp and wef of politics.

00:14:00.740 They're not in the Westminster bubble then.

00:14:03.320 So, I mean, in a way, that's a good thing.

00:14:05.720 It is correlated with not having a degree, for example, but it's not hard and fast.

00:14:11.240 So there are people with degrees who are not interested in politics and vice versa.

00:14:15.700 And I think what's occurred, there's a long U.S. political science literature on this

00:14:20.380 that essentially if you looked in the 1970s and 80s at the states and you categorize them

00:14:26.400 by how liberal or conservative their electorates were on one axis and then whether they voted

00:14:31.700 Democrat or Republican on the other, there was no relationship at all, right?

00:14:35.900 So most people were conservative and they were Democrat by partisanship.

00:14:42.380 There just wasn't this link between ideology and party, which we think of so automatically because we, again, we think in these ideological terms.

00:14:50.980 A lot of voters don't.

00:14:52.620 The party is one thing.

00:14:53.700 It's something you get maybe from your parents or friends.

00:14:55.860 And then the ideology is just an inchoate bunch of views that you've kind of come to.

00:15:01.180 What's occurred in the U.S., of course, is now, if you take state ideology and partisanship, it's like a straight line, you know, 0.9 correlation.

00:15:08.780 So it just dramatically changed.

00:15:10.840 And that's why you get this polarization.

00:15:13.020 So those sorts of processes, I think, were occurring here, too, where the kind of more, you know, less participatory voter who didn't necessarily understand which ideology went with which party, that equation is starting to be made more and more, particularly on these kind of cultural issues.

00:15:28.820 And as that happens, actually it locks in a sort of more deeply rooted partisanship amongst conservative voters, or if you're liberal-minded, moving towards the left.

00:15:41.140 Although the liberal-minded voters, because they tend to have higher education, are more likely to have already made that move, right?

00:15:47.560 So to be able to identify which party represents which ideology.

00:15:51.380 Basic stuff, but that alignment of ideology and voting is very important.

00:15:57.120 explaining some of the patterns we see, particularly the polarization.

00:16:01.340 That's very interesting. And you're talking about polarization.

00:16:03.660 And one of the factors that has really contributed to polarization is political correctness.

00:16:09.380 Now, I suppose a counter argument to that would be, Eric, what's wrong with political correctness?

00:16:13.960 Doesn't it mean that I just not allowed any more to hold racial epithets of people outside in my white van?

00:16:20.520 You know, isn't that what political correctness is?

00:16:25.340 Well, I think as you and I probably know, the devil is always in the details that if political correctness means don't call a black person the N word, you know, we're all for political correctness. It's when you define racism in an expansive way, right? So it's when you say, if you're in class reading from a 19th century text where someone used the N word, that you are essentially the same thing as using the N word yourself.

00:16:48.040 Now, I mean, that's kind of ridiculousness of expanding.

00:16:51.040 Or when you say if you're against affirmative action, you are as bad as someone in the Jim Crow cell. 0.72

00:16:58.640 So that's really, I think, what we mean by political correctness is expanding the...

00:17:03.960 Overreach is what you're talking about.

00:17:04.760 Yeah, overreach, sort of this elasticity and bending of what Orwell said, you know,

00:17:09.980 two plus two equals five, and not only will you agree to that, but you will be made to believe it.

00:17:14.160 This is essential when the meaning of words becomes political and not what ordinary people, how they categorize things in a social scientific way, which is based on the scientific method, which is to do with measurement and clusters of differences.

00:17:29.680 And that's how we categorize the world if it instead is about, no, racism is what I say it is.

00:17:36.620 But what this then means is the expansion of concepts like harm and racism and sexism and so on means that more and more people are – we could talk about British politics, for example, if you say that this whole issue about the wind rush, which was about essentially administrative error and not mess-ups at the home office, which was not racially motivated,

00:18:04.200 but which subsequently people like Clive Lewis and Afua Hirsch and one of these commentators

00:18:10.600 are very quick to try and identify that as racism, right?

00:18:13.300 So this broad brush approach.

00:18:15.140 But what that does actually is there's been about four experiments which show quite clearly.

00:18:20.560 And I've actually done one of these studies myself, whereas if you take the same statement

00:18:25.940 and you call it racist, you will get a blowback in public opinion.

00:18:30.960 People react negatively to that, particularly conservative-type voters.

00:18:34.880 We know from the public opinion research, for example, that most white Trump voters are actually fairly warm towards African-Americans and Hispanics.

00:18:44.320 It's not that they are particularly—they're not cool towards those groups.

00:18:48.520 They're just not as cool towards white people as white liberals are.

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00:19:21.920 That's the difference.

00:19:22.840 right so are you saying white liberals have got a problem with white people eric cancel the

00:19:29.760 interviews done right so what what but what this is fascinating because this is the reason we love

00:19:37.440 talking to you and matt and and other people because you've actually done work on this you're

00:19:41.740 not just talking about it on twitter you've actually done the research and what you're

00:19:45.260 really saying is that if you expand these concepts of harm done by words, what that creates is pushback 0.99

00:19:54.800 from people who go, fuck you, I'm not racist. You know what I mean? And that then creates the 0.99

00:20:01.440 polarization that we see, which then leads to election results that we see. Is that what you're

00:20:07.260 saying? Yes. So you get two things. Like in the Trump case, hostility to political correctness

00:20:13.020 was second. I mean, in the work I've done on both the primary, Republican primary vote,

00:20:17.780 but also the switchers in the general election, that this hostility to political correctness,

00:20:21.840 next to views, next to wanting immigration controlled and reduced, that seemed to be

00:20:25.940 the second most important factor. Just pause there. I mean, that's incredible.

00:20:30.900 It is massive. That is incredible. The people care about restriction of speech

00:20:35.700 and being mislabeled as something they're not,

00:20:41.240 almost enough for that to be the primary issue in their choice

00:20:46.220 for the leader of the free world, as they say.

00:20:48.960 That is quite an incredible thing.

00:20:50.900 Yeah, it is an incredible thing.

00:20:52.960 And there's been a number of experiments where I think in one case

00:20:58.220 they were talking about taking down Confederate statues or something

00:21:03.000 and they said that this is a bad policy.

00:21:05.700 And then the next time they said, well, we don't want this policy because it's racist, or maybe the wall was the example.

00:21:14.620 And in all these cases, you could see that when they threw the term racist in there, there was a lot more resistance to the statement, right?

00:21:21.380 So a number of these experiments have kind of found that there's this direct reaction amongst a chunk of voters.

00:21:29.440 Another paper that I'm involved in now with some other people, they've done most of the work.

00:21:34.340 Yeah, don't give them any credit.

00:21:35.260 They've done most of the work, but we'll just call them other people.

00:21:38.540 But it was really about this.

00:21:40.480 It was a sort of an example where, you know, Kirsten Gillibrand, the kind of very woke U.S. Democratic candidate. 0.99

00:21:48.500 And we had the statement saying, you know, if my kid wore a hoodie and was black, he would be arrested.

00:21:54.740 And it's only the fact my kid has white skin that he.

00:21:56.660 So we had this sort of paragraph in there.

00:21:59.360 And you can see the support for Gillibrand amongst people who read that paragraph simply dropped quite dramatically compared to when they didn't have that same wording.

00:22:08.880 And again, it's an example of this reactivity that this sort of expanded use of the term racism invokes in people.

00:22:15.420 Now, in the election here, again, I don't have any—I'm not going to—I always want to see the data and the research, so I can't say this for sure.

00:22:22.940 But there is certainly a perception that there was amongst some voters this idea that the Labor Party in some ways looked down on them and thought of them as being a bit racist for voting for Brexit.

00:22:33.200 Again, we need to see the data.

00:22:35.080 I don't want to jump ahead of the data.

00:22:36.360 But if that was the case, that would be another example of this phenomenon where there is this blowback effect from political correctness.

00:22:42.720 Of course, what happens is if populists then are successful, you get a sort of reaction on the other side, which is like, oh, my God, these people, Trump is so awful. 0.55

00:22:52.280 And so I'm going to be even more opposed to these people and vilify this government or Trump or Johnson or somebody as a monster.

00:23:01.140 And so you actually get this back and forth.

00:23:03.380 So in the last European elections, the 2019 European elections, you could see both the populist right parties increasing, but also some of the kind of more cultural left doing well.

00:23:14.640 Now, of course, green also involves obviously the environment, which is a somewhat separate question.

00:23:19.460 But there is also a kind of, I think, a reaction to the rise of the populist right on the cultural left as well in the college towns and some of the larger cities that have larger professional populations.

00:23:30.540 So you're kind of seeing this dialectic going on, which is sort of polarizing.

00:23:36.080 But another example of particularly this question of political correctness impacting on populism really has to do with the question of immigration, right?

00:23:44.640 So if restricting immigration is defined as racism, or if, for example, deporting people who are in the country illegal is defined as racism, then all of a sudden that is a massive shift.

00:23:58.460 So a voter, you know, a party cannot go, like the Democratic Party could not talk about enforcing the border anymore if that is now seen as a racist thing.

00:24:08.240 What does that do?

00:24:09.260 Well, it emboldens, you know, it allows market share for somebody who is going to talk about this problem.

00:24:15.280 So in the case of Sweden, for example, the only, the two main parties were kind of agreed that we're not going to talk about reducing immigration levels because that would be kind of racist.

00:24:25.420 And this is an example of the power of politically correct norms to constrain the discourse, what we call the Everton window of acceptable debate, and to take certain questions off the table of democratic contestation.

00:24:39.440 Well, what that does is it's – I think I may have used this metaphor last time of the Soviet department store where it's one pair of pants.

00:24:46.980 We're only going to sell this style and that's it.

00:24:50.560 Okay, well, then people want actually a range of other things.

00:24:53.820 They want jeans, et cetera. 1.00

00:24:54.940 So the black market will pop up to provide what the mainstream won't provide.

00:25:00.060 And that's exactly what the Sweden Democrats were.

00:25:01.940 They were kind of a black market party.

00:25:03.420 They provided the opposition to immigration. 0.70

00:25:05.760 And lo and behold, they sort of shot up to 25%.

00:25:09.620 I don't know where they're at now.

00:25:10.700 They're very high again.

00:25:12.600 But that's an example of how this political correctness, the downstream effect of it was to create a marketplace for the populist right by shutting out the mainstream parties because they couldn't cross the red lines.

00:25:24.940 Or another example would be Tommy Robinson and the English Defense League.

00:25:31.160 If the local authorities had dealt with the Asian grooming scandal, as normal local authorities would never have expanded into this big issue.

00:25:41.380 But because of political correctness, because it happened to be Asians, which is most Asians were not involved.

00:25:48.540 And we're talking about a very small number of people here, but the fact that they happened to be Muslim Asians was something that made this very difficult to address by these local authorities, which then meant the problem kind of metastasized out of control and then opened up space for Robinson and others to exploit, right? 1.00

00:26:05.980 So again, if you were going to explain the rise of Tommy Robinson, it's very hard to do that, I believe, without political correctness.

00:26:11.980 Political correctness is really oxygen to that kind of a figure.

00:26:15.700 So if we're going to, we can't just think of political correctness as something that happens on campus and restricts somebody from speaking on the campus.

00:26:24.080 It has these very important kind of downstream effects, which are leading to populism and polarization.

00:26:30.580 And I think that's kind of one of the key messages of my book, too, is to say, well, we have to look at how these things interact in the round.

00:26:38.020 Yeah, it's a great book.

00:26:38.980 And you've talked about a lot of the stuff that's since happened, which is why we're delighted to have you on.

00:26:44.700 Oh, so I just want to make it clear. And I'm a little bit slower than everybody else in the room.

00:26:49.520 So yeah, I just want to. So calling someone racist doesn't persuade you to vote for them.

00:26:55.540 Is that is that is that correct? Something like that. Yeah.

00:26:59.260 OK, lovely to know. And so what you're essentially saying is that the issues of freedom of speech and political correctness are linked.

00:27:07.400 And what you have with political correctness, once it sort of grows out of control, is it affects people's ability to express themselves, which doesn't it sort of give credence and emboldened unpleasant views because it gives them a certain glamour that they never had before.

00:27:23.660 Yeah, absolutely. I think once you kind of debase the currency of racism, then somebody who genuinely is a racist can say, well, you know, they're calling you racist for wearing a Chinese prom dress and they're calling me racist. Well, hey, we're the same.

00:27:38.200 And so it kind of makes it impossible to make what are actually very important distinctions, right, because there really are nasty racists out there that we need to be able to call out. 0.54

00:27:47.800 And even within an individual like Donald Trump, some of the things he says really are, you know, something like insinuating that Mexicans are rapists is an awful racist thing to say, whereas talking about a wall is not.

00:28:00.060 And yet those two things are completely meshed together in this narrative of, you know, like the wall is racist and deporting people is racist.

00:28:07.720 Well, no, actually it isn't. But saying Mexicans are racist is. We have to be able to kind of make those fine distinctions. And that becomes impossible when this charge is being lobbied, being lobbed time and time again.

00:28:19.660 So the free speech question, of course, is, you know, that is a sort of separate arm.

00:28:26.260 So all of these kind of effects, one is that polarization is a result of political correctness.

00:28:31.980 But another effect, of course, is, you know, the effect on free speech, say, in universities or in comedy, as you guys are probably familiar with.

00:28:40.780 And how do you tackle this issue of free speech on campus?

00:28:44.560 because it seems to have been, so going back to when we were at university, which was the turn

00:28:48.920 of the century, which makes us sound incredibly old. I don't remember that being as much of an

00:28:54.620 issue, but it seems to, in your own words, metastasize and it's got worse. How do we

00:28:59.740 tackle that? So we have balance. So we have two sides of people discussing, debating.

00:29:05.800 Well, I mean, I actually, and people have different views on this. I think this is not as new

00:29:11.400 as people think, that when I was at the university, this kind of shows my age,

00:29:16.220 this is kind of in the early 90s, late 80s period, that a lot of the same kind of things were going

00:29:24.240 on, perhaps at a smaller scale. There wasn't social media, but there were speech codes. There

00:29:29.020 was political correctness. There was a lot of these. I think what's happening now is to some

00:29:34.280 degree, there is more of a challenge to these things, and that's bringing out more of a reaction.

00:29:41.400 To some degree, the social media, I think there was some good work by Zach Goldberg, who's in the United States,

00:29:46.100 who shows that the rise of online news services like BuzzFeed and Vox, but also...

00:29:52.780 Quality journalism, Eric.

00:29:54.540 But also social media, it doesn't explain the rise of the populist right,

00:29:58.860 but it does a pretty good job in terms of the great awokening, to use Matthew Iglesias' term,

00:30:04.040 this kind of sudden emergence of this very radical cultural left sensibility.

00:30:09.120 sensibility. Now, how do you address that on campus? So the question is, you have the Heterodox

00:30:14.220 Academy, you have people on the internet, the Jordan Petersons of this world, and they are 1.00

00:30:19.540 creating a counterculture, which I think is very important. But ultimately, I don't think that's

00:30:24.000 going to be able to penetrate these institutions because the institutions are actually captured.

00:30:30.320 Now, speaking in terms of the universities, which I know well, most people are perfectly

00:30:34.220 nice and rational and normal. You have a small group of very committed, very highly networked,

00:30:40.500 radical, authoritarian leftists. And they are very important because they also know

00:30:47.640 how to exploit the procedures and the policies of the university to their advantage to, say,

00:30:55.100 shut down speakers, to get people fired. And I've locked horns with these people on a number

00:31:00.060 of occasions. I think I'm on my third internal investigation. So yeah, what they try and do is

00:31:09.120 to hit you with a trumped-up charge, let's say racism or sexism. And in the policy, it says,

00:31:16.940 we want an environment that is safe for people and no one's going to be discriminated

00:31:21.700 against on the basis of race and sex. And they say, whatever, maybe he read out from a paragraph

00:31:29.540 that had the N word on it. And therefore, he is in the same category as the racist that you

00:31:35.380 mentioned in your policies. And therefore, he must be removed from the university. Or maybe

00:31:40.620 there's a speaker who shouldn't be allowed in, right? So it's that twisting of the meaning of

00:31:44.280 words. Increasingly, my view is that the only way to tackle this is going to be to actually have

00:31:50.800 more government regulation of these sectors in terms of specifying in very, very fine detail

00:31:57.860 what the meaning of words is, what the meaning of racism is.

00:32:01.720 So if someone actually does call somebody the N-word in class,

00:32:04.880 then yes, that is an offense, and there's no way free speech trumps that.

00:32:10.340 But on the other hand, if somebody is in a nuanced way reading a passage

00:32:14.800 or if they are expressing a view on Brexit or whatever in class,

00:32:20.860 then that cannot be interpreted and stretched into meaning they violated college policy.

00:32:25.480 So this is going to require very kind of targeted forensic policies from governments, actually, I think, in order to – what this is about is it's not about – and, of course, I know some liberals who would say – some real liberals who would say, well, institutions have to have autonomy.

00:32:45.460 Isn't it illiberal when we get the government involved?

00:32:47.520 The problem with that reasoning is that if you have a kind of a vigilante or a kind of a spontaneous form of authoritarianism that is kind of emerges in a sort of not disorganized but sort of peer-to-peer way.

00:33:03.100 It's not an official institution that marches in and takes over the university, but it might be a network that self-organizes and is able to exert power that way over who gets invited in, over the content of the curriculum, etc., and can essentially lobby and pressure and coerce the university into doing its bidding.

00:33:23.240 So what you then actually need to do is you have to deal with this spontaneous authoritarianism that's taken root, and you have to actually marginalize it.

00:33:32.100 And that's actually going to create a freer, more liberal university.

00:33:35.820 So it is actually about furthering the aims of liberalism.

00:33:39.720 You're not actually constricting liberalism through government action.

00:33:43.080 We're not there yet, but I think that is increasingly going to have to happen because I don't think that simply setting up an association of people who support free speech and so on is going to do it.

00:33:54.520 Because when you have the institutions that are essentially controlled, not controlled, but where the red lines of what you're allowed to talk about are essentially policed by a sort of self-organizing network, you have to find a way of actually getting at that very small but very influential network and to minimize their influence.

00:34:15.500 So I think we're kind of going to need more intelligent, targeted strategies that are kind of within institutions and not just general debates, which are important.

00:34:25.640 The culture is still important, but we're not going to get the change we need unless we are actually able to apply more targeted policy tools.

00:34:33.820 And actually, on that very subject, the question I was going to ask you is, I was hopeful, maybe just because it was Christmas and New Year, and I thought, it's a new year, maybe things will change. But that now that, you know, the Boris Johnson government has an incredibly strong mandate from the public, huge majority for a party that's been in power for nine years now, or 10 years, almost.

00:34:58.360 Um, is there any evidence that, you know, the overwhelming victory of, of his party and the platform that he's stood on is going to get people to go, okay, well, you know, like with Brexit, most people now accept that Brexit is going to happen, right?

00:35:16.280 Is there a sense in which elections like that, election results like that, will actually potentially reduce polarization as people are given a kind of wake-up call that going so far off the deep end isn't going to work?

00:35:30.740 Is there any evidence for that?

00:35:31.860 Because I was kind of hopeful that might happen.

00:35:34.080 Well, it's certainly no.

00:35:35.180 I mean, no.

00:35:36.680 I don't think this –

00:35:37.580 It's cool Christmas sherry that you've been drinking.

00:35:39.440 Yeah, I think so.

00:35:40.420 I mean, I don't think it's leading to any rethink on the other side.

00:35:44.000 Really?

00:35:44.180 No, I really don't think it has.

00:35:45.860 I think that, and certainly not, I mean, if you take the intellectual heart of, you know, the cultural left, which is in the cultural industries, including university, there's not going to be much, you know, that election is not going to change many minds.

00:35:59.860 Now, there are...

00:36:01.440 Well, there are certainly a lot of center-left people in academia who didn't like Corbyn.

00:36:07.260 And they, of course, are saying, well, look, you know, we've been vindicated.

00:36:11.520 And they're right.

00:36:12.400 So they might say, well, what we need to do is move in a Blairite direction.

00:36:15.360 Some might say that, but of course, there are also a lot of kind of Corbyn supporters.

00:36:19.500 You can't invade Iraq every 10 years, man.

00:36:21.180 No, no, no.

00:36:22.520 But you can't blow up in Iranian general.

00:36:26.480 Sorry.

00:36:29.760 No, I think, however, what might be an opportunity is that there are figures in the government.

00:36:36.580 You know, Muneer Amir is there might be one. 0.96

00:36:38.540 Former guest of Chikinomachie.

00:36:39.580 Absolutely, who do get this issue.

00:36:41.520 They get the importance of kind of having a readjustment in the culture, right?

00:36:47.520 And sort of reining in this excess that's been going on.

00:36:52.780 The problem in a way is that the senior, I think there was a generational divide, so that the senior Tory people in the conservative government are still in the old kind of Thatcherite mold.

00:37:03.960 And they're still mainly concerned about things like Brexit and, you know, economic free trade and things like that.

00:37:10.920 Their focus is very much still on high politics and economics.

00:37:16.040 It's the younger people within the party who I think get the issue much more.

00:37:21.600 And you can actually see that in survey data.

00:37:23.680 If you look at people under 30 or particularly under 25, political correctness is a much bigger concern for them than it is for people who are kind of over 55.

00:37:35.100 Yes, the over 55s are against political correctness, but they don't really care that much about it as an issue.

00:37:39.860 It's not a major thing. Whereas amongst the younger people who are against political correctness, it's like one of their most highest issues.

00:37:48.780 I think that kind of shows you where this culture conflict is much more salient to the kind of under 30 population.

00:37:56.260 Maybe because they're online more, maybe because they see it more in their institutions.

00:38:00.600 And I think the question in this government will be whether those younger voices actually have an influence or not in setting policy.

00:38:10.820 And it's really individual.

00:38:12.220 Some people, they really get the issue and some, it just completely goes over their head.

00:38:17.120 When they think of universities, all they think about is, oh, we've got to reduce the number of people going to university and it's costing a lot of money.

00:38:24.400 I mean, that's that's the extent of their worldview, rather than maybe we can actually enact some reforms to improve some of the quality of some of the issues that that people are concerned about.

00:38:35.240 And Eric, aren't we actually in quite a dangerous situation? Because we've got these two polarized camps. Most people are with, you know, sort of the Boris Johnson model, anti-PC. We've got the left who are sort of, you know, digging down and not really engaging or listening.

00:38:51.100 And effectively, what we've got is an opposition that are useless and provide no real opposition.

00:38:56.920 And isn't that a dangerous place to be in politically?

00:38:59.040 It is a dangerous place because what happens if the conservatives bungle things?

00:39:04.180 You know, they mess up on the NHS or they aren't, you know, maybe economically they're pursuing austerity or whatever it is.

00:39:11.160 You do need to have an opposition that is able to credibly threaten them in power.

00:39:16.680 So, yeah, I think this is another casualty, really, of political correctness, that if that hamstrings the Labour Party and makes them unelectable for a generation, then some very real policy concerns which they bring to the table are going to go unaddressed.

00:39:32.060 And there just isn't going to be the, you know, the Tories' feet isn't going to be held to the fire on some of these questions as effectively.

00:39:39.320 So that's, again, another of the downstream effects of this quite pernicious ideology.

00:39:44.240 Well, that's why people always talk to us about like, why are you constantly going on about what's wrong with the left is because we like Francis is old school lefty. I'm very much in the center. We need a strong opposition. That's right. We need an opposition that can challenge this government and potentially once this government gets old and tired and whatever, to replace them. Right. And have a sensible platform, which they offer to the public.

00:40:07.520 But it worries me what you're saying because, you know, as I said, I was very hopeful that people might start to wake up.

00:40:14.420 I really was.

00:40:15.840 I thought, you know, hey, this 2020, the election's over, people might go.

00:40:20.760 It's all right.

00:40:21.640 Well, it'll be really interesting to see the U.S. election in 2020.

00:40:25.180 This is what I was going to take it to.

00:40:26.000 Yeah, because what you see is in the Democratic primary, the kind of wokeness, it's got some power.

00:40:32.620 Some of these radical new Congress people and some of the candidates, Gillibrand, for example, and Beto O'Rourke and some of these people, a lot of them are trotting out issues like white privilege and reparations and so on.

00:40:50.700 So you can see a situation if all of these candidates sign up to reparations, for example, that could make the Democrats unelectable, right, if they have to tip their hat to that.

00:41:00.420 Now, they have still got some moderate candidates, Joe Biden, and to some extent Bernie Sanders as well.

00:41:07.120 So these are at least moderate on the culture issues.

00:41:11.040 And those candidates are doing well.

00:41:12.560 One of the reasons is the African-American vote, which is actually a moderating influence because they're less politically correct and they're less likely to go for this new style of politics. 0.70

00:41:21.460 So Biden may get in on the strength of that vote.

00:41:24.160 And again, that gets to a lot of this survey data showing, you know, white liberals are much more likely to say that the reason blacks can't get ahead is racism, that diversity, you know, diversity is bad.

00:41:34.880 They know better than black people, white people can't get ahead. 1.00

00:41:38.040 So kind of much more than black people. 0.99

00:41:39.640 So it's sort of, but there is still that old, you know, older Democrats and black Democrats are still there to kind of more or less provide a moderating force.

00:41:48.840 And so it may be that Biden squeaks through.

00:41:52.360 As the nominee.

00:41:52.920 As the nominee, in which case I think he's got a very good chance of beating Trump. But if, let's say, if it's Elizabeth Warren or if it were to be one of these other candidates, again, because of that politically correct pressure to be woke, that could make the Democrats unelectable.

00:42:08.040 And then you could get, again, another four years of Trump. What does that mean? I mean, with all kinds of attendant risks of what's going to happen in foreign policy. So all I'm saying is, again, it's a version of the same problem where this, and in the context of all these left-wing European parties that are having their worst results ever.

00:42:29.060 You know, and one major reason for that is that inability to shift to where the voters are because of these artificial barriers laid down by an ideology, which is the same political correct ideology you talk about.

00:42:42.920 I'm curious that you make this point that you think Joe Biden would have a good chance because I think in terms of his platform, he's certainly – but I've been watching him.

00:42:52.640 I mean, I'm not sure he's still all there.

00:42:55.300 Right.

00:42:55.500 Well, that's the knock against him, but it's hard to say.

00:43:00.000 No, I don't mean that as an unkind thing.

00:43:02.260 And the way you've laughed at it now makes it seem really unkind.

00:43:04.540 I think he's kind of at that point where he needs to be with his grandkids.

00:43:08.120 You know what I mean?

00:43:08.820 Right, right.

00:43:10.040 Well, you might be right.

00:43:11.440 He's pretty much getting to the point where intellectually he's dribbling.

00:43:16.100 Well, and I don't have a firm view on how serious this is.

00:43:20.680 People have said, well, he's had a lifelong stutter.

00:43:22.720 he's always been a bit of a bumbler in terms of...

00:43:27.440 So I don't know if this is just sort of...

00:43:29.580 It's not a strong salesman.

00:43:32.080 I've always been a bit of a bumbler.

00:43:33.380 Vote for president.

00:43:35.620 Because when you come up against Kim Jong-un,

00:43:37.780 you want a bumbler.

00:43:38.920 That's where you want.

00:43:40.180 But yeah, so maybe his...

00:43:41.440 Someone mentioned that, you know,

00:43:42.820 regardless of who wins this election,

00:43:44.840 the key person to look out for is the vice presidents

00:43:47.160 because they're just like a heart attack away

00:43:48.920 from taking office.

00:43:50.840 So yeah, I don't know.

00:43:52.060 Maybe it'll be the vice president then.

00:43:54.400 And do you think Trump's going to win?

00:43:56.660 I mean, it's a horrible question.

00:43:59.960 I mean, I think if Biden gets in, I think Biden's got a very good chance to win.

00:44:04.160 But I think the other candidates, no.

00:44:06.900 I don't think they have.

00:44:07.520 Why do you think he has a strong chance to win, Eric?

00:44:09.400 Just because he doesn't trigger the Trump base in the same way as the other candidates.

00:44:16.080 Sanders and Biden, I don't think trigger the Trump base as much as the other candidates do,

00:44:20.340 who are more on that woke spectrum, right?

00:44:23.000 Not all of them.

00:44:24.200 Not an Andrew Yang.

00:44:26.160 Andrew Yang, but he doesn't have a chance.

00:44:29.460 Yeah, obviously, if he was the nominee, yes.

00:44:33.080 Do you think he could beat Trump if he was the nominee?

00:44:36.240 Yang might, yeah.

00:44:37.540 Yeah, because he'd have the Democrats behind him,

00:44:39.520 and he has appeal amongst Republicans,

00:44:41.280 but he's not going to be the nominee.

00:44:43.540 Why not?

00:44:44.640 He's nowhere in the polls.

00:44:46.560 But I think with Biden, he is more of a kind of unifier.

00:44:51.960 He's seen as more not somebody who is as hostile.

00:44:55.840 He's not somebody who's likely to think that, you know, all Republican voters are a bunch of deplorables, right?

00:45:00.560 So he doesn't kind of – I don't think he awakens the kind of hostility that a Hillary Clinton would or that an Elizabeth Warren or a Beto would, you know.

00:45:13.320 I think it's a different type of beast.

00:45:15.160 So I think he actually has that potential to be, I won't say a unifier, but more in the Obama mold, more somebody who is going to be less offensive to that kind of voter.

00:45:25.880 And that's why I think they would be well advised to select him.

00:45:29.300 And they may well select him simply given the dynamics of the different primaries that, you know, particularly the more African-American heavy states like South Carolina are likely to support him.

00:45:41.660 He's very popular with African-Americans.

00:45:43.340 Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, he is.

00:45:44.820 and with older voters generally.

00:45:48.320 So I think that, and this is partly a legacy.

00:45:50.380 I mean, he was with Obama,

00:45:52.220 but also he's a longstanding fixture.

00:45:54.920 And I think the African-American vote

00:45:56.300 is kind of more stable in terms of party loyalties

00:45:59.620 and personal loyalties.

00:46:01.560 So that, but we'll see.

00:46:03.440 I mean, the race has still got a lot of people in it

00:46:05.900 and the progressive vote is sort of scattered

00:46:09.100 amongst a bunch of candidates.

00:46:10.700 So as that consolidates,

00:46:12.180 It's always possible that it could consolidate massively behind, say, Warren or another candidate.

00:46:19.640 I don't think Buttigieg is likely to make it through, even though I don't mind his policy offer.

00:46:25.340 But I think that the real risk, I think, for the Democrats is if Warren, if the progressive vote swings behind Warren and she gets the nomination, I think then they're in trouble.

00:46:35.720 I would then bet on Trump.

00:46:37.620 Do you not think her Cherokee heritage will save her? 1.00

00:46:40.280 One over 2020?

00:46:41.520 i just i just you know what just purely as a comedian i would love for her to get nominated 1.00

00:46:49.600 for donald trump to call her pocahontas in a presidential debate just destroy her um

00:46:55.940 so do you i mean you talk about joe biden as a cannot unify but certainly do you think this is

00:47:03.760 kind of the the people who are likely to be successful now we've had maybe a period of time

00:47:09.620 where it took someone like Nigel Farage to break through on Brexit.

00:47:14.880 It took someone like Donald Trump to break through in America

00:47:17.600 on some of these issues.

00:47:19.120 But now the people who are going to start to be successful

00:47:21.800 are the kind of people who can do that, let's say,

00:47:25.340 move left on economics and stay right on culture

00:47:28.940 or move right on culture and stay left on economics,

00:47:33.300 like the kind of people who can come to the middle

00:47:36.780 and bring people in from both sides.

00:47:38.500 Is that going to be the type of politician that is going to be successful going forward?

00:47:42.240 Well, yeah, and we've already seen a lot of that.

00:47:44.520 So the center-right has really done what you've just talked about.

00:47:48.080 Sebastian Kurz in Austria, Mark Rutte in the Netherlands, even Theresa May.

00:47:53.700 She was a great partner.

00:47:55.660 But essentially taking on Brexit, taking the mantle of Brexit on from the Brexit party or from UKIP, making it part of a center-right offer.

00:48:05.740 So the center-right has been quite successful in absorbing the energies of the populist right.

00:48:11.160 Now, the question of how you overcome polarization is a different one, right?

00:48:14.620 So this is more the center-right moving into the center of where the votes are by adopting parts of the populist right platform and not the sort of other parts of it.

00:48:24.560 But in order to overcome polarization, I think, again, we get to this problem of the stickiness of the cultural left, which is related to political correctness, which is preventing the left-wing parties from moving to the center.

00:48:39.160 Because if they move to the center and the right moves to the center, we're then moving into a more unified situation, right?

00:48:44.880 And the politics of the center and of the swing voter becomes much more possible rather than the politics of appealing to the fringes and the base.

00:48:54.560 or the activists. But there are two problems here. One is, and I mentioned this in the book,

00:49:01.280 is this backdrop of demographic shifting, which I think is very important. The US case,

00:49:06.660 roughly 80, 85% non-Hispanic white in 1960, and it's now about 60%, and it's going to be below

00:49:13.500 50% by 2050, let's say. That kind of process is well underway in, say, Canada, New Zealand,

00:49:19.700 Australia. It's not taking place quite as fast in Europe, but certainly we're going to probably see

00:49:25.640 ethnic majorities in the minority by the end of the century in the main immigrant receiving West

00:49:30.960 European countries. So we're at the beginning of a process where these more diverse electorates,

00:49:36.980 what this means is you are starting to get a kind of response from voters who say,

00:49:43.660 we want this change to occur not as quickly. We want to have time to assimilate people. And

00:49:48.640 probably through intermarriage in a deep way versus the people who say, you know, diversity

00:49:53.540 is great and we want more diversity.

00:49:55.140 That is becoming a fault line.

00:49:56.720 And this is this culture, the cultural fault line is reconfiguring Western politics, taking

00:50:03.100 over from the economic left, right?

00:50:04.560 So this kind of idea of are you pro-diversity and change or are you in favor of slower change?

00:50:09.860 Not as some people would accuse them of, not ethno-nationalism and white exclusion, but

00:50:16.900 simply slower, not zero, right? So slower change and less diversity in the sense that you want

00:50:23.780 time for assimilation to take place. That is kind of the dividing line. But that's a very hard thing

00:50:29.820 for if you are ideologically committed. If diversity is a sacred value to you, then you

00:50:35.560 can't compromise on it. So sacred values are by definition values you cannot compromise on.

00:50:40.760 And that means that it's going to be really, really, really hard for the left to compromise

00:50:46.040 on these issues and move to the center. That then means that there's going to be this response from

00:50:52.640 the other side. And then especially if that's a populist response, you're then going to further

00:50:56.660 get entrenchment. As we've seen with this great awokening between 2016 and 2018 in the U.S.

00:51:02.860 survey data, you can see, for example, the number of white liberals supporting higher levels of

00:51:07.940 immigration doubling up to 60%. They want more immigration. This is at a time when border 0.65

00:51:15.580 apprehensions have doubled and there's all kinds of things. So this question of one side reacting

00:51:23.040 to the other and the other reacting to the other and how you break that cycle, the only way I can

00:51:27.900 see it being broken is if, and I think really responsibility here has to lie with those who

00:51:34.260 are pushing political correctness because that is what is preventing the system from adjusting.

00:51:37.840 It's like a monkey wrench in the machinery. And it's preventing people having a rational

00:51:43.020 conversation about the pace of immigration, the issue of assimilation and national identity,

00:51:50.080 because that's seen as a sacred value, you're either for it or against it. It's black and 0.99

00:51:56.460 white binary. We can't have the kind of nuanced shades of gray question about, do we want slower

00:52:01.320 or faster instead of zero or a hundred? That is the way the issue is framed. So I think that

00:52:09.280 until we get there, until we overcome these political correct barriers to debate, we're

00:52:16.680 not going to be able to compromise on these questions. And they will be cast in very kind

00:52:21.240 of zero sum. You're a racist or you're a rootless globalist cosmopolitan. That's a very binary 0.55

00:52:28.020 way, which is very unproductive.

00:52:29.240 Yeah. I do like to hear, though, that the Latinos are fucking their way to victory. 1.00

00:52:32.840 your people are doing well 0.99

00:52:35.460 both your people

00:52:37.460 I guess we all can claim

00:52:39.920 we can both claim Latino

00:52:41.240 we are great lovers

00:52:42.620 well that's not what your girlfriend tells me

00:52:46.260 but anyway

00:52:46.680 so basically

00:52:50.080 what you're saying Eric

00:52:51.200 and just to extract the theme of what you're saying

00:52:54.140 what I'm talking about

00:52:56.320 is essentially a left

00:52:58.200 of centre politician who comes in

00:53:00.260 and goes we're going to stick with our economic policies

00:53:02.380 Right. But we're going to be more sensitive to the fact that our traditional base working people up north, outside the big metropolitan cities, the university towns, what they want is, you know, reduced levels of immigration for a period of time.

00:53:17.580 So people can come, they can settle down, they can learn the language, they can be assimilated.

00:53:22.620 Someone like that, according to what you're saying, is in the current environment, could not be successful in, let's say, the Labour Party or the Democratic Party because they would be called racist, as Joe Biden has been.

00:53:35.140 Right. That's what you're saying, which is that is the monkey wrench, as you put it. That is the constraining fact in the system that prevents a credible left of center alternative to what we now see as a kind of center right politics infused with elements of right wing populism.

00:53:52.800 Yeah, exactly. And of course, immigration is the key issue, but also there are questions around national identity. I mean, is the United States defined by slavery and the sins of conquering the land from the Native Americans? I mean, if you are going to take that approach to the American past and reparations.

00:54:11.300 So it was also about the question of patriotism, of national identity. Is Britain just defined by sins to do with colonialism, for example? There has to be a leader that resists that and says, yes, that is part of the past, but there are all these great things and this is what I'm going to talk about is more the great things.

00:54:29.980 That would be the kind of emphasis that you would need to break through to kind of be that unifying figure that would say, of course, we're going to admit the sins of the past, but that's not what we're going to focus on when we get up in the morning as a country.

00:54:43.360 And that's not what defines us, right?

00:54:45.380 Just that kind of a tone that would be more unifying and that would sort of speak to different groups in the population.

00:54:52.560 That would also accept that not wanting the culture to shift as quickly is a valid thing.

00:54:58.580 It doesn't make you a racist.

00:54:59.960 You know, that's sort of a figure.

00:55:01.500 I mean, I try to imagine that kind of politics occurring very difficult, right?

00:55:05.460 I mean, it's very difficult because the nature of the high culture, which through the universities,

00:55:10.600 through influencing the top levels of the parties and the activists is very powerful.

00:55:15.020 And it is all essentially about excavating these grievances and focusing on injustices of the past and essentially magnifying the meaning of terms such as racism because that gets you sort of points as being a virtuous person.

00:55:30.400 Somehow we've got to break that in the high culture, move it back towards something that still calls out real racism.

00:55:36.480 We are, of course, going to focus on real instances that are evidence-based and definitionally tight, but we're not going to just broad brush.

00:55:44.600 And of course, the right does this too, to some extent with anti-Semitism, where the Labor Party, there are anti-Semites in the Labor Party, and perhaps at the very top, there may be some anti-Semites, right?

00:55:56.900 But to say that the Labor Party is anti-Semitic, I just don't agree with that sort of framing.

00:56:02.840 I think that's not accurate.

00:56:04.580 And I think we have to have tight definitions.

00:56:06.920 We have to have evidence for the claims, and we shouldn't overscope these claims.

00:56:10.360 Or it just, I think, just increases polarization and reduces the quality of government that we have.

00:56:17.000 Do you think what America actually needs, weirdly enough, despite his flaws, is sort of a Clinton or Obama-like figure?

00:56:23.880 Someone who'll come along, who'll be more reasonable, who'll be more sort of, you know, in the center,

00:56:29.420 and actually somebody who can really unify and can talk to both sides in the way that Clinton and Obama could.

00:56:34.600 Well, there was an amazing clip of Obama from, I think, 2006 or 2008 or something where he's talking about the border.

00:56:42.640 Yes.

00:56:42.960 And someone's literally put a clip of him next to a clip of Trump and they're saying the same thing.

00:56:47.720 Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:48.440 So, yeah, Obama and Clinton were both in the center on the issue of immigration and the border.

00:56:55.260 They were both in favor of enforcement, in favor of reducing illegal immigrants, the number of people coming across the border.

00:57:04.520 They're very sensible on these issues, and they were very much the unifier.

00:57:07.460 I'm not saying that there are...

00:57:08.960 Obviously, there are some wingnuts who claim that Obama wasn't born in the United States,

00:57:12.380 et cetera.

00:57:12.960 So you're always going to get the nuts.

00:57:15.060 But at the same time, I think they were effective.

00:57:17.500 And you could see it in their election victories that a lot of people voted for them.

00:57:21.980 What happens, however, I would say is that in the last couple of years of the Obama administration,

00:57:27.900 he sort of succumbs to pressure from the more...

00:57:31.500 people who want to defy, who want to get out on the streets and protest when you deport people.

00:57:36.020 And he sort of... Now, you could argue that it was because the 2014 immigration reform package

00:57:41.700 failed that the Republicans didn't buy into the package of stronger enforcement with path to

00:57:46.940 citizenship. And then he said, okay, well, if I haven't got this, I'll just go for it. I might

00:57:51.080 as well please my base. But regardless, it was the base that kind of pushed the Obama administration

00:57:56.740 in the direction of lax border enforcement, which is sort of the backdrop for the rise

00:58:02.400 of Trump, of course, which is post, you know, mid-2014 with the first big wave of Central

00:58:07.920 American mothers and children coming to the border, again, and quite smartly, I would

00:58:14.220 do the same thing as them, that they know that the laws are such that if you come as

00:58:18.520 a mother or child, you've got a much better chance of staying in. 0.98

00:58:22.380 But essentially not addressing the loopholes in the legislation that allowed that serve as a kind of magnet for these people to come in larger and larger numbers was kind of a backdrop for allowing Trump then to exploit that issue.

00:58:37.080 So the salience, the importance of the immigration issue for Republicans was at an unprecedented high level between mid-2014 and when Trump was nominated.

00:58:48.660 And also in the general election, you could see a lot of the non-voters or Obama voters who were concerned about immigration.

00:58:56.820 Those were the people that switched to Trump, right?

00:58:58.960 So he really drew in people on that issue.

00:59:03.460 But that was only made possible, I would argue, in part because of the pressure from the—you call them woke activists or people who wanted to define border enforcement as racism or as beyond the pale.

00:59:15.540 I mean, they really sort of handcuffed Obama and made it, you know, essentially opened the field for somebody on the other side who was willing to break the taboo.

00:59:25.180 Because there was a taboo on the Republican side, too.

00:59:27.300 And in the right-wing media on Fox News, they didn't want to talk about immigration as the central thing either.

00:59:33.400 And so Trump had a wide open field, 17 candidates.

00:59:37.480 He was the only one who was willing to make this the central feature of his pitch.

00:59:41.800 And so that is, you know, this is the key reason why he's in power.

00:59:45.540 So a lot of these things are connected to, again, these limits on public discourse, the Everton window of what's acceptable to talk about and not to talk about.

00:59:54.440 Of course, we'd still need the Everton window, right?

00:59:57.400 So there was a politician called George Wallace in the 60s who wanted segregation.

01:00:02.700 So there, of course, we need a—the main parties should not go there.

01:00:07.040 They shouldn't touch segregation.

01:00:08.360 But something quite different with an issue like immigration and enforcement of the border, which is a perfectly reasonable thing from a liberal point of view to enforce.

01:00:19.200 It's the kind of, again, the expansion of the meaning of racism from something like segregation, which absolutely falls very clearly within the meaning of not treating people equally on the basis of race to something like immigration, which is something completely different.

01:00:31.660 It has to do with the relationship of the nation to the world outside it, which is a very different relationship.

01:00:38.360 Well, as someone who works with the Venezuelan, I have to say, not Latin, Latinos, that's a great idea. 1.00

01:00:44.920 So let's make sure, build a wall is what I'm saying.

01:00:47.440 But Costa Ricans are okay.

01:00:48.640 Yeah, Costa Ricans, you're okay.

01:00:51.080 Eric, we're out of time.

01:00:52.740 And it's been a brilliant interview, as always.

01:00:55.040 Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

01:00:56.760 Make sure you get White Shift, Eric's book, out in paperback now.

01:01:00.060 It's brilliant.

01:01:00.540 I remember reading it with great interest.

01:01:02.280 And you talk a lot about the demography side of things,

01:01:04.580 which kind of underpins a lot of the things that we've been talking about today.

01:01:08.360 But our last question always is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we ought to be talking about?

01:01:14.780 Well, I think what if Trump loses is one question I haven't seen written about much.

01:01:20.400 So what if he loses?

01:01:21.720 What's going to happen to polarization on the right?

01:01:26.020 Especially, you know, so I think that I would like to see someone think about that question of what is the Republican opposition going to be like in a world where they're out of power?

01:01:38.360 especially if they're out of power multiple elections for demographic reasons,

01:01:43.700 what does that mean? And what might that mean in terms of the risk of terrorism, for example?

01:01:49.200 Now, there may be no risk of terrorism, but I think it's something that I haven't seen anyone

01:01:52.880 write about and would be interesting to see. And what do you think would happen if he was to lose?

01:01:57.040 I think what would happen is if he was to lose, especially if for demographic reasons,

01:02:03.960 the Republicans, and particularly the kind of border control Republicanism that Trump

01:02:08.760 represents, if that were to be sidelined almost permanently, then I think you've got a more

01:02:15.420 risky situation. I think that what will happen is that the Senate, which is based on territory and

01:02:21.380 therefore favors more white-dominated states, would become the kind of center of this kind 0.97

01:02:28.320 of resistance. And then the Fox News and the right-wing media would be kind of taking it up

01:02:33.360 a notch in terms of attacks. I think it would be a very unhealthy situation where I think the

01:02:38.840 polarization would get even worse. Go Trump. All right.

01:02:44.040 We're going to put that right across there.

01:02:46.820 Not that I want Trump in, but I'm saying that a situation where they are permanently out of

01:02:52.840 the president's agenda is potentially a dangerous one. And I think Yasha Monk, who's clearly on the

01:02:57.840 left has said something similar, that it's not enough to attack this guy. You actually have to

01:03:03.660 have a vision that is unifying. And that's lacking. So we're going to call this episode

01:03:09.480 Eric Kaufman, Make America Great Again. No, but you're right. I think that's what we need. We

01:03:17.000 need people to start finding a way of coming together because this is not sustainable. And as

01:03:21.540 you hint at the consequences of this polarization at some point potentially could go from

01:03:28.860 conversations to actual physical confrontation. And that's very dangerous.

01:03:33.740 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that... I mean, I don't want to overdraw this. I think

01:03:38.760 fear-mongering is not a good idea either. But I think that...

01:03:40.840 You've got to play the move forward, Eric.

01:03:42.260 Yeah, yeah. I know.

01:03:43.060 You've got to play the move forward.

01:03:43.720 Right. But I think, yeah, I think that the risk of, again, small-scale attacks might go up. I

01:03:51.120 I mean, that seems to be a pattern.

01:03:52.280 We know, for example, that there is an inverse relationship between how well populist right parties do and how many sort of white nationalist terror attacks there are.

01:04:01.040 This is a kind of inversely related phenomenon.

01:04:03.380 So we might expect there to be more such attacks when the populist isn't doing as well, which is not by any means a reason for the populist to be in power.

01:04:14.380 Okay.

01:04:15.160 Well, there we go.

01:04:16.080 So thank you very much for watching.

01:04:18.040 Make sure you follow Eric.

01:04:19.200 Get his book, White Chips.

01:04:20.240 follow him on twitter at epkauffman uh at epkauffman yeah there you go epkauff uh and uh as always

01:04:28.820 follow us at triggerpod we'll see you in a week with another brilliant episode take care see you

01:04:32.780 next week guys

TRIGGERnometry - January 26, 2020

＂Political Correctness Hurts the Left＂： Eric Kaufmann

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