00:00:48.560And one of the things I was thinking, obviously, you and us as well,
00:00:52.300we've spent a lot of time over the last few years talking about the culture war.
00:00:57.640You know, it seems to me that, you know, like when people are dying of coronavirus, when there's a shortage of ventilators, somehow what pronouns you use has become slightly less important.
00:01:13.520Concerns about things like racism and sexism and trigger warnings and pronouns are all very much, they're the kind of apex of first world problems, like very minor hurt feelings that can be blown out of proportion by people who have an interest in doing that sort of thing.
00:01:32.600But as soon as suddenly it's like, well, you might not have food, you might get sick with a terrible illness and die, suddenly these things just naturally take a back seat.
00:01:41.220I guess the woke brigade are desperately praying
00:07:36.160Maybe we can actually make the world a better place
00:07:39.160slightly by degree um but yeah i really would like to rethink the relationship with china because
00:07:44.020it was foolish to allow them to essentially buy up all of the jobs that we thought we didn't want
00:07:49.700to do because that's hollowed out the west anyway you know i think the main the main crisis that
00:07:53.700brought brexit and trump i think was the loss of this kind of social ladder that was manufacturing
00:07:59.000jobs and practical jobs because there's this arrogance about um academia i think and the
00:08:05.260middle class where they think well the only way that you can be smart and successful is if you go
00:08:08.880to university so we need to get everyone to go to university but some people just don't learn
00:08:12.900academically some people learn through doing using their hands you know and they're not any less
00:08:17.860smart than anyone else it's just a different way of viewing the world interacting with the world
00:08:22.220you know it's it's more uh concrete less conceptual and it seems arrogant to say yeah no
00:08:29.680fuck you guys you can just join us in the in the smarty pants area where you can get down and read
00:08:34.620the books you know i mean i know lots of my family who are very much in the category that i'm talking
00:08:38.720they are not academics it's just not what they're about you know but they are hard working and they
00:08:43.560are smart and they can get things done and i think that we we could we could at least you know give a
00:08:49.320bit of ear to these people a bit of consideration but uh but these are the gamins aren't they
00:08:53.980so why would we you know they're the racists i swear to god one of the difficulties with
00:09:01.040doing these uh videos remotely now instead of in studios we did it last time is that francis now
00:09:06.180looks like the most gamony person ever you could not be any pinker if you fucking tried yeah yeah
00:09:14.520i did actually look at my uh skin color on the dope dulox color chart and it is actually called
00:09:19.760a lovely shade of gammon but there we are carl i wanted to talk to you in particular about trump
00:09:27.260uh because initially he was criticized about his response to the virus uh the way that he was
00:09:34.160dealing with it and you know and there are a lot of sound criticisms there but he seems to have
00:09:39.960changed the debate to whether it's racist to call it the china virus and in fact somebody told me
00:09:45.920the other day that one of his cabinet called it the kung flu is has trump rather re skillfully
00:09:53.220really really skillfully reframed the debate from his own approach to it to actually this debate
00:10:00.000which isn't important in any shape or form?
00:10:02.880I think the debate that isn't important in any shape or form
00:10:06.680is essentially a red herring to throw off the sort of woke karate
00:10:10.580who are going to get their knickers in a twist about this.
00:10:12.980Because if you look at what Trump's doing,
00:10:15.520it seems to actually be pretty good, generally.
00:10:18.820Even if, now you've got to remember that Trump is an entity, right?
00:10:23.400He's a political entity and he has known qualities and defined boundaries.
00:10:28.040And, you know, some of these known qualities are him being brash and boorish, and some of the boundaries are, you know, the limits of his ability to articulate. But he's also got other, he has virtues as well, as much as a lot of people don't want to admit it.
00:10:42.920And one of the things I think him and Boris have done, which is actually really sensible, is the daily or almost daily briefings that they've been doing, just streamed on the internet, played on TV, because there is a concern that leadership, like the people at the top, need to show level-headedness, right?
00:16:38.040So, you know, to me, as you know, I mean, I think they're doing a half decent job.
00:16:43.120But to me, it just looked like they'd been working all night, you know, before they came and gave their announcements.
00:16:49.240And I think in a way, that's reassuring.
00:16:51.500I think people need to see that they are taking it seriously.
00:16:53.700They're not being frivolous and flippant.
00:16:55.580And, you know, we just have to pull together, I guess.
00:16:58.800You know, it's the blitz spirit, as they say.
00:17:00.820And Carl, there seems to be this interesting phenomena, particularly amongst the left, where they seem to be wanting to get ever more authoritarian.
00:17:10.200And you see it with some of their commentary online. Do you agree with that? I can guess you don't by what you've said before. And more importantly, why do you think that is?
00:17:19.820I think this is most evident in the proposed bill that Nancy Pelosi put up instead of agreeing to the bill drafted by the Republicans, which, like I said, the bill drafted by the Republicans is effectively a Democrat bill.
00:17:36.740It looked very, very, very friendly to their positions.
00:17:40.080But instead, the bill Pelosi promoted was loaded with wokeness, frankly, loaded with all of their pet projects.
00:17:50.160So, you know, like further political grabs on health care, environment, diversity quotas and information, making it mandatory that every company and every government agency have to give over the diversity information.
00:18:03.740It's like, well, there's only one reason why they're ever going to need that information.
00:18:06.740And that's so they can say, well, that company's racist or that's sexist or whatever, you know, that's the only reason they'd ever ask for this.
00:18:12.680And so this weird power grab is annoying, but I think it's because, honestly, I mean, if we were to boil down the left and the right to being sort of, I mean, the left seemed to have a particular desire for order and central planning.
00:18:30.300and if we're going to say the right is the sort of libertarian types who you know the sort of
00:18:36.240people who want constitutional government and that's the only way i can frame what far right
00:18:40.780is because i think if they thought i was a nazi they'd just call me a nazi but instead they call
00:18:45.160me far right and i'm like okay well i want constitutional order limited government or
00:18:49.460personal independence so if if that's the the the opposite well then they're going to naturally
00:18:54.600push towards more state control in order to create a more perfect system and i think that
00:18:59.920the imperfections are kind of inevitable i don't think it's interesting isn't it because i think
00:19:04.480the desire for order is actually probably something that just both the political extremes
00:19:09.440want there are people on what you might actually accurately describe as the far right who also want
00:19:15.660order mass deportations you know an authoritarian government as well so i think it's actually just
00:19:21.720what it really reveals is that while being an actual far right person is completely unacceptable
00:19:27.820in in civil society in the public square being a far left person is not only acceptable you're
00:19:35.600actually welcomed you you get invited on question time etc well yeah i mean i i'm very dubious about
00:19:42.180calling the fascists far right to be honest i've been thinking about this a lot and i just don't
00:19:46.880see what the definition of far right we're using that could make them and say you know all of the
00:19:53.440sort of like ancap types you know the the anti-state preppers who you know just want the
00:19:58.740government to leave them alone how do they fit into the same box and i really don't think they
00:20:02.120do um and i think that there's a i think honestly the far left has been deliberate about trying to
00:20:08.480portray them as far right um because i think they're a lot closer to the left than they are
00:20:12.540to the right frankly all of the fascists were communists first or socialists first and if you
00:20:17.880It's a natural evolution of the socialist philosophy
00:20:37.660And that, for some reason, fades away over time
00:20:41.460into a stateless, classless, propertyless, moneyless society.
00:20:44.680um the the fascists like Mussolini and Giovanni Gentili just openly said well socialism is a
00:20:52.300dead doctrine it doesn't work you know that's not going to happen however we could take over
00:20:58.020everything and perfect the state entirely we're not going to get rid of the state we're going to
00:21:01.620turn the state into essentially our model for god you know provides you know nothing against the
00:21:06.860state nothing outside of the state um I can't remember the exact formulation of it but you
00:21:09.980know what i'm talking about um the state becomes god effectively and so i don't think that you can
00:21:16.140draw a straight line from liberalism to fascism but you'd have to go through socialism and
00:21:21.400communism first i think that's why china's communist party just looks a lot like nazi
00:21:26.260germany at this point i think that the the there are kind of a series of incentives and necessities
00:21:32.100that you end up falling through whether you like it or not well i think sorry francis i just want
00:21:37.580to finish on the point so but i think when we talk about the evolution i mean there is a uh
00:21:43.460evolution from what you might describe as conservatism conservatism being the desire
00:21:48.800for order for cleanliness for homogeneity etc right so when we talk about that being the right
00:21:56.540i'm not talking about the ancap and whatever and the libertarian right but perhaps the conservative
00:22:01.180right people who if you take that to its extreme branch you end up perhaps on what has conventionally
00:22:09.020been described as the far right which is the kind of white nationalist nazi type way of thinking
00:22:14.880yeah i mean as with all of these things the term left and right is not really very useful no no
00:22:22.700this this is why i'm specifically naming ideologies and trying to essentially connect
00:22:28.240a narrative of how they came about and what they led to and the reason they led to these things
00:22:33.620um because then i think you have a more sensible structure of like where people sit in the sort of
00:22:39.640tree of ideology um because essentially all of these things came out of the enlightenment and
00:22:44.060then you've got like say catholic traditionalism sort of thing it's an entire separate branch you
00:22:48.820know it's it's not an enlightenment uh ideal it comes from the bible it comes from theocracy it
00:22:53.860comes from tradition and so it it's got a different set of values and they can end up looking very
00:22:59.400similar you're absolutely right um but i just i just hate using terms left and right because
00:23:03.840this doesn't mean anything like a fascist is so far away from the sort of like liberal libertarian
00:23:09.540type even though you know they get lumped into the same box and i just i don't think it's very
00:23:15.600useful but um but anyway i like i think i think fascism has been successfully discredited at this
00:23:22.360point i don't i think the 20th century has done a number on it and i mean you would have thought
00:23:26.320the same would have happened for communism too but uh essentially the next thing we have to do
00:23:31.200is discredit communism and hopefully we can just hover around a kind of realistic liberalism and
00:23:36.640just kind of a liberalism that's interested in dealing with the facts as they are because a lot
00:23:40.780of the distinction here is like is an ought it's like this is the case yeah but it ought to be the
00:23:45.000case that it's not it's like why you know it is what it is and we kind of have to accept that
00:23:50.040Well, discrediting communism is very easy. Just let Ash Salkar keep coming back on question time. Anyway, sorry, Francis, carry on, man.
00:23:57.240I've got a theory about that. Is that because Shea Guevara looks a lot better on a T-shirt than Adolf Hitler?
00:24:04.460Well, he was cool. You know, you can't deny. And if you wanted to be the resistance to the imperialist Americans, then he was a good symbol of resistance.
00:24:19.340I mean, a lot of people didn't like him.
00:24:44.620Absolutely, there's a right to do it, and there's a reason to do it.
00:24:48.540But there is also a precedent being set where sometimes the government takes away certain liberties and after the problem has passed, they're not so keen to give them back.
00:24:58.020Do you think that what we're going to see after Corona has gone, we're going to see a real struggle to get certain liberties given back to us?
00:25:07.500Well, that's the fear. I believe that there was a specific time frame.
00:25:13.180yeah two years two years yeah yeah um so that hopefully will will be as honored as we expect
00:25:21.700it to be because the last thing i want to have to do is fight a revolution against the tyrannical
00:25:25.560government i mean i i'm just saying i don't want to i'm comfortable i'm fat i'm happy you know i
00:25:31.860don't want to have to get barricades and shoot at soldiers i don't have to do that you know we
00:25:38.020could do a rocky montage car exactly just working out mate getting all ripped with ads
00:25:43.820me everyone's gonna have to do it if that's the case like it's not just me um but the uh the the
00:25:51.180thing that is worrying though is i mean i don't want to downplay the danger of corona the coronavirus
00:25:57.900but the the fatality rate is very low uh when like because i mean and every day it's getting
00:26:04.580lower and lower and lower because the the number of people being tested and number of fatalities
00:26:08.980uh is not necessarily congruent with the number of people who have the disease and the number of
00:26:14.160fatalities so every day the number of fatalities actually becomes a smaller percentage of people
00:26:18.220who are tested for it um and so it could be that this is actually a massive overreaction i'm like
00:26:23.840i'm not saying there aren't problems there are obviously problems and obviously shutting things
00:26:28.080down is a way of preventing it from reaching the the worst case scenario um but i i do think that
00:26:34.180that will be a theory that is considered after this is all over. Did we overreact? Did we allow
00:26:41.080the government to have powers that we actually don't want the government to have? And this was
00:26:45.420something that was considered retrospectively with the Patriot Act. And still people are not
00:26:51.140happy with the powers that the American government gave itself. I guess only time will tell, but I'm
00:26:57.480really hoping that cooler heads will prevail and people who actually care about the integrity of
00:27:04.000the system or you know in the future say okay well no this this actually you know this was a
00:27:08.600mistake or you know whatever it turns out to be i'm not going to make a prediction but like
00:27:12.080you know if if it turns out this wasn't necessary this should become understood you know we shouldn't
00:27:17.420just jump just because media environment is panicking i mean watching piers morgan harp on
00:27:22.820on twitter it's like piers shut up right you are a fat idiot you are not a doctor they are taking
00:27:28.940advice from the best you know experts in this in the world and piers morgan's like do this do that
00:27:33.520i don't care what you saw on twitter mate i just don't care like shut up and and that leads into a
00:27:40.100question that i i particularly wanted to ask you in that do you think part of this hysteria comes
00:27:46.800from the media the mainstream media hyping this up because you know this is a chance for them to
00:27:52.920gain ground and you know reclaim some of their lost viewers and listeners and actually create
00:27:58.600this state of hysteria um they they definitely have incentives to do it i mean one of the things
00:28:04.260i don't do in my video titles is put all caps um because that to me feels like uh hysteria mongering
00:28:12.920you know it feels like clickbait um you know so if i just put my my title as as a normal sentence
00:28:19.220a normal title as i would i'd give an essay sort of thing then i feel that i'm not being hysterical
00:28:24.400and clickbaiting i realize they're very subjective that's just the way i feel about it um
00:28:28.220But you can't deny that there is an incentive to do that.
00:28:32.580It probably does get more views, probably does get more clicks.
00:28:35.600And in a media ecosystem where a bunch of them are dying and actively failing
00:28:40.780and need that traffic to justify more investment to advertisers,
00:28:47.360you can see why they would be jumping on this.
00:28:50.080And yeah, I think it's entirely unhelpful.
00:28:51.540I mean, Trump actually did dress down one reporter who was, you know,
00:28:55.900He called him, you know, fear-mongering, and I agree.
00:28:58.820I think that this is why Boris and Trump have been doing such a good job
00:29:02.480of just acting calmly and saying, look, we're doing what we can,
00:43:01.200There is still some value in the idea of self-reliance.
00:43:04.240You know, there's no value in the idea of global trade and movement and stuff like that there is, but there are good parts and bad parts of both.
00:43:12.440And I think that a sensible compromise between the two would be at least a step forward.
00:43:18.240Absolutely. And it's a really important conversation, one which has obviously taken a backseat with everything that's happening now.
00:43:25.800Because one of the things that I thought was very strange is that, you know, Boris is a liberal Tory.
00:43:31.480So what really happened after the last election is he went, yeah, points-based immigration system, except under that new immigration system, actually, I think a lot of the people who've been calling for immigration to be reduced were very likely to be disappointed by the outcome because the way that system was calibrated, you probably were going to end up with the same or if not more immigration, right?
00:43:54.840so yeah it's hard to know now though isn't it because you know he's like we're going to put a
00:43:59.160points-based immigration system and then suddenly everyone's got to close their borders and no one
00:44:03.060can travel right so did would it work we don't know yeah no i think i think this is the thing
00:44:09.420is i think at least we now are at the point we're having a conversation where you know as you talk
00:44:14.800about we need to compromise you're not saying shut the borders permanently and never let another
00:44:19.000foreigner in and that's never been your position uh but what you are saying is we need to to look
00:44:24.220at a sensible way of managing immigration and we need to check who comes in and it's one of the
00:44:28.940funniest things to me actually about this whole thing was and as you know i know i'm not a ukip
00:44:33.140fan or or even a farage fan particularly but one of the things that got him criticized the most
00:44:39.340during the brexit referendum was him saying that we should check whether people have lethal diseases
00:44:45.880before they come into the country do you remember that yeah yeah why why wouldn't we do that you
00:44:53.400know that's the thing it's you know this is what i mean about like there is i mean it's just prudence
00:44:59.900isn't it it's just common sense it's just sensible to be able to say look if we're going to have
00:45:04.860people come in we have to have certain standards and you know to to make sure that obvious problems
00:45:11.300that could occur like pandemics uh can be mitigated to the best of our ability it's just
00:45:16.840seems sensible um but i think so can we can we talk about the gropers is that okay no we're
00:45:24.160shutting you down turn it off see i told you about the communist education system
00:45:30.120see i because i was of course we can talk about the gropers yeah yeah because because i was
00:45:36.660watching this and like you know they're war with you you're a youtube channel what are you going
00:45:43.240a war over morons you know um but anyway so these seem to be white nationalists right as far as i
00:45:50.460can tell yeah and so and let's just define that as well so we know who these people are we know
00:45:56.180where the telegram channels are they're they're people who send each other swastikas unironically
00:46:01.200all this kind of they're neo-nazis let's call it yeah well yeah yeah i mean i've i've been i've
00:46:08.600been talking to a few of them and it's weird that so many of them love hitler and hate churchill
00:46:14.140i'm like and they're like yeah we're british nationalists i'm like okay um but yeah there's
00:46:20.900a there's an awful amount of apologia for the nazi regime for british nationalists but okay so
00:46:25.620i'll just call them white nationalists right yeah just get that i think that's the most neutral term
00:46:31.400i can give them they are actual nationalists for white race you know white race um but the the
00:46:36.660thing like demanding that you talk about their pet subject i found interesting because like well
00:46:42.060you don't have to and trigonometry isn't the gatekeeper to the to you know to the to the
00:46:48.620rest of the country and this you know if only trigonometry i wish we fucking were man that
00:46:54.500would be a real level of insult or anything like it just seems like such a strange thing and then
00:46:59.900like a bunch of them are like oh we're gonna do it to you and a bunch of them have posted 14 in
00:47:03.860my chat when i was live streaming i'm like this is not rising up lads right you know this is like
00:47:09.420when they were phoning up mike graham and saying mike what about demographic because
00:47:13.360there is a fundamental truth about their argument but mass immigration is going to cause demographic
00:47:18.540change in the united kingdom absolutely yeah no one can deny that it's 100 true the numbers are
00:47:24.320in you know the next census in london especially and in birmingham they're going to be eye-opening
00:47:29.180i think after more than 20 years of mass immigration i think the british people
00:47:32.720like just generally i mean they've always been very skeptical about mass immigration they still
00:47:37.840are so i think it's fair for them to assert themselves say well look we're just like less
00:47:41.980you know we're gonna you know we're not gonna torture immigrants or something we're gonna
00:47:45.320chuck them off the cliffs of dover but we're just you know when someone says can i move to britain
00:47:49.620we'll just say sorry we're not allowing new people to move here at the moment i don't think that
00:47:53.740anyone's rights are violated i don't think anyone gets hurt you know nothing happens i think that's
00:47:58.160fair i think that's a reasonable thing to do and yet these guys are framing it like the white race
00:48:03.560is gonna die and i'm like yeah even if you're like let's assume everyone agreed with you right
00:48:09.020but you you if you want to you know move the needle on anything and i think it is reasonable
00:48:14.380to reduce immigration i don't i'm not interested in kicking out every foreigner that's overstepped
00:48:18.940foot in the country but it is mate i appreciate that but it's but it's a reasonable request and
00:48:26.500framing it in such unreasonable terms you know we want to reduce immigration also hitler did
00:48:31.020nothing wrong and the holocaust didn't happen but it should have done he's like hell man yeah you
00:48:35.980know i mean i'm i'm someone who wants immigration reduced and i'm not a white nationalist and as
00:48:40.780far as i'm concerned the groupers just seem to be a dead weight to the cause of reducing immigration
00:48:46.180we're right they make reasonable people look really really bad because they are coming at
00:48:50.780it from the completely the wrong angle and see the thing is that like all of us would agree that
00:48:55.640immigration needs to be reduced but and i i am a fierce critic of blair's immigration policy and
00:49:02.060one of the reasons is that i think letting so many people in such a period of time prevented
00:49:06.580integration and then any backlash that happens as a consequence of that is going to be targeted
00:49:11.180people like me who've actually done their utmost to integrate right not enough in my smart as far
00:49:16.680as i'm concerned but anyway absolutely mate but so that's the thing but having people who are
00:49:22.460genuine neo-nazis attach themselves to very reasonable concerns the ordinary people have
00:49:27.340and then come into our channel and start demanding that we have conversations with their favorite
00:49:32.160neo-nazi right it's really annoying isn't it it is uh but it's quite funny in in a way as well
00:49:39.420because these people look so childish and i don't think they realize how pathetic they look
00:49:43.640you know yeah i saw i saw alistair williams uh giving one of them a grilling the other day
00:49:48.600just saying look at you know you you don't look like someone worth having a conversation with and
00:49:53.000you know you know that that is in some ways true so it's it's one of those things where it's just
00:49:58.240like i just i mean it you know if they wanted to do something useful phone up phone up james o'brien
00:50:04.140on lbc guys seriously seriously is there anyone who deserves to have to be you know constantly
00:50:10.120phoned up by neo-nazis all day every day more than james o'brien i want him i want to listen
00:50:17.100To James O'Brien, not talking to a rando member of the public
01:09:30.180And so the invention of slavery was actually a moral innovation
01:09:33.680because prior to that it was just murder.
01:09:35.140and so instead of the this you know the the conquerors were like oh we can make them farm
01:09:40.100our crops or whatever not not optimal obviously terrible situation but it's probably better than
01:09:45.780having a head calf right and you know and you get this kind of long development of morality
01:09:51.360and the only reason that we would want to i mean it was for moral reasons that britain ended the
01:09:58.200slave trade because the the british have never really tolerated slavery they never had it in
01:10:03.620Britain, really. It was William the Conqueror outlawed the slave trade, not for any altruistic
01:10:08.160reasons, but just because he thought he could make more money. He thought that if he could catch
01:10:11.740slavers, then he could just take their money. And that was it, you know, so it was a source of
01:10:16.220revenue. But that ingrains in the society that slavery is just a normal thing. And then, you
01:10:21.420know, it was England that essentially created the kind of, the sort of liberal spirit of freedom,
01:10:27.940the idea of personal freedom that we have and so it was natural that it was going to be england
01:10:33.800that said no we're not having the slave trade actually this is actually because i mean like
01:10:38.400there was um there was a petition that was something like 30 000 signatures a mile long
01:10:44.820that the women of england stitched together so had got signed stitched together and delivered
01:10:49.000to parliament and you can view it on the parliamentary website you know and it's it's
01:10:53.300you know this is a lot of work you know and that's a lot of feeling and depth of feeling behind it
01:10:57.780And so when someone says, oh, the British Empire is nothing but evil, well, I disagree. And contemporaneously, who would you have preferred to be in charge of the world?
01:11:06.960Well, this is the thing. This is the thing that people always forget. And I'll say this before we ask you our last question, is that everything exists in comparison, right? So if you're saying that the British Empire was this evil slave-owning empire, then there's an element of truth to that because that's what it was. It invaded other countries. It took people as slaves, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
01:11:27.800But what we see around the world today is that there are places in the world where there's more slavery than we've ever had.
01:11:35.520And are we saying that those people, had they been in our place, had they won that battle of civilizations, they wouldn't have had slaves?
01:11:42.940Of course they would, and they did, right?
01:11:45.080So it's all about, yes, okay, we've got to reflect on our past and learn from it, but do we need to continually beat ourselves up about it?
01:15:18.400which is why you like the Birmingham school children, for example.
01:15:20.580But I don't know what the population of Birmingham looks like because we don't have that information yet because the census hasn't been done.
01:15:26.660And the 2021 census is going to be the census where people like Nigel Farage will be proven right, basically.
01:15:33.800And, you know, there was a problem with mass immigration.
01:15:36.540After 10 years of it, it probably does need to change.