TRIGGERnometry - The End of Woke？

00:00:00.000 we were in the western world medicalizing kids because they were gender non-conforming

00:00:07.900 autistic or likely to grow up to be gay we were fixing gay kids on the nhs doing what the mullahs

00:00:15.200 in tehran do what would you say to the argument that wokism the reason it came about the reason

00:00:22.620 it took hold is because of liberalism to say it is liberalism writ large is the reverse of the truth

00:00:31.080 woke is a failure of liberalism not its end goal authoritarianism isn't something that just

00:00:37.720 disappears simply because the people wielding that power have a democratic mandate it's perfectly

00:00:42.260 possible for a democratically elected government to be authoritarian we're living through one right

00:00:46.440 now andrew doyle welcome back to trigonometry thanks for having me it's been a few times it has

00:00:54.940 it has been a few times it's been many times you were the second ever guest on the show i was but

00:00:59.040 we always have fun so you know why not do it a million more times well you've written a book

00:01:03.200 about a subject that has never been discussed previously never the end of work yeah but actually

00:01:07.680 there is a lot to discuss to do with that um and i imagine you didn't write your book only to describe

00:01:13.440 our recent episode with deborah francis white no no but that's opportune isn't it things keep

00:01:17.560 happening uh that could have gone into the book but the book's already written but yes your your

00:01:21.420 appearance with uh with deborah francis white was a good example that was interesting though

00:01:25.580 because we genuinely like tried to have a come and i kind of thought like at this point maybe

00:01:30.180 they've started to realize yeah things i know what you mean well i mean look she reached out to

00:01:35.800 you fair play to her you know she reached out she wanted to go on she wanted to have that

00:01:38.680 conversation we've been saying for ages this is exactly what we need we need people from all sides

00:01:42.300 to sit down and talk and have the conversation but there were still all those brick walls weren't

00:01:45.980 there in the conversation those they they still sort of insurmountable obstacles that were coming

00:01:50.540 up where there was just no point of possible contact which is kind of interesting uh and i think

00:01:55.020 it's because when you are in that woke mindset you're so locked in to a system of thinking that

00:02:01.040 actually breaking out of that is almost a bit like de-radicalization at this point it's so sort of

00:02:04.420 difficult uh to move beyond it did you get the feeling that she was actually interested in the

00:02:08.640 conversation and like a genuine open conversation i did initially but then when i when i began to

00:02:13.920 like just simply say that i didn't agree with something yeah that's when i think it all started

00:02:19.880 so i think she was interested in the conversation as long as there was no pushback right that was my

00:02:24.280 experience because if you remember the whole clown bus driver analogy right and then look i i thought

00:02:31.480 it was a terrible analogy but she's entitled to to have her and then i was like well you know i disagree

00:02:35.940 for this this and this reason and really you know if you were claiming that if 30 percent of

00:02:42.280 bus drivers dressed as clowns for a year i'd stop noticing i just i went in my head and i went would

00:02:47.200 i stop no no i wouldn't no and so i said this and she was like oh so so your brain works differently

00:02:52.640 to everyone else's and i was like well that's just a trick yeah you're just playing a trick because

00:02:57.220 in reality you've made a claim about how people's brains work and i'm saying that claim is false yeah

00:03:02.780 what evidence does she have that everyone else would not no longer notice clowns she doesn't

00:03:06.380 have that evidence but it's an interesting point that you mentioned because in a sense so much that

00:03:11.040 is tied into the woke way of thinking is that any dissent must be evidence of evil either evil or

00:03:16.600 complete or just just plain wrong that there is no so therefore it's going to be really hard to

00:03:22.400 genuinely get those people around the table and talk through these issues that they're already so set

00:03:27.200 on well i'm glad she came on yeah and i i thought we genuinely tried to have the discussion it just i

00:03:32.740 just thought it showed that um why it's so difficult to have those conversations well it's also difficult

00:03:37.420 because a lot of people on that side of the debate haven't really listened to the other side they just

00:03:41.520 haven't so i mean she was talking a lot about gender non-conformity when it comes to the trans issue

00:03:45.840 but it became quite apparent that she hasn't really listened to what the other side is saying she

00:03:50.560 hasn't really listened to what women's rights campaigners are saying what their concerns are what

00:03:54.740 they're grounded in it's not about gender non-conformity i mean women's rights campaigners

00:03:58.520 on the trans issue are all for gender non-conformity they say it doesn't matter how you behave if you're

00:04:03.240 male or female you can be male and you can behave in a traditionally feminine way or vice versa all of

00:04:07.780 that stuff doesn't matter it's not about that it's about recognizing the reality of biological sex and

00:04:12.920 why that has an impact on on women's rights and gay rights um but she couldn't see that she tried to

00:04:17.840 turn it to a question about the way that our western society perceives gender non-conformity

00:04:22.140 and doesn't uh allow the space for it but that's a completely different issue so it's just

00:04:26.780 interesting to me i mean again and again whenever you see these kind of uh online disputes or off or

00:04:31.400 indeed offline you know people you know on the woke side there is a kind of inability to listen in good

00:04:37.180 faith to what the other side is saying and to explore it and to address the arguments as they are

00:04:41.760 presented not not just this kind of weird straw man version which is what they're attacking i do think

00:04:47.700 that the whole woke movement of the whole culture war is which is a point i make in the book is about

00:04:52.860 a kind of imaginary land an imaginary battlefield it's about imaginary hate it's about conjuring up

00:04:59.860 armies of enemies uh you know believing that the world is an area or our society is an irredeemable

00:05:04.740 racist hellhole uh even though every study tells us that our society is the most tolerant that has ever

00:05:09.700 existed in the world ever but it flips in your mindset if you're sort of tied to this ideology it means

00:05:16.100 that you are navigating a fictional terrain all the time and so therefore you're not really talking

00:05:22.920 to opponents you're talking to specters of your own imagination and that's why it is kind of difficult

00:05:29.240 i think uh to have the conversations but you know fair i like to say fair play for her to come on and

00:05:34.180 having and attempting it and and fair play for those who are trying to make i mean some people have sort

00:05:39.860 of edged that way haven't they like people like where streeting for instance used to be of the view

00:05:44.140 uh that trans women are women and he didn't think beyond that and he didn't think to what the

00:05:49.380 implications of that statement are for women's rights for gay rights for children etc but he has

00:05:54.720 come around to it and the reason he's come around to it is because he sat down with people he talked

00:05:57.760 to people like sex matters lgb alliance people like that i don't know who specifically he's spoken to

00:06:02.180 but people of that ilk and once you actually have those conversations listen to the arguments

00:06:07.260 uh it's very difficult actually to reach any other conclusion than the one he has eventually reached

00:06:13.940 and it's just interesting isn't it seeing him in parliament being berated by his own uh colleagues

00:06:18.540 his own fellow parliamentarians people who haven't listened people who haven't actually understood the

00:06:24.400 arguments that are being presented um so i think i think it's really good that you're having the

00:06:28.500 forums that you're having people on that you're talking about well one of the things you met i mean

00:06:32.220 you went straight to the trans issue which has been such a lightning rod of all of this stuff

00:06:35.720 well we've had several things happen uh west treating banning puberty blocks on the nhs

00:06:41.120 but most importantly i think recently the supreme court ruling yeah which said you know controversially

00:06:48.820 that women are in fact women uh we definitely needed some judges in periwigs to tell us that no but

00:06:55.840 look they had to take it to court like four women scotland did an amazing job taking it all the way to

00:06:59.900 the supreme court they had to do i mean they found a way because the snp were misrepresenting the

00:07:04.780 equality act through their guidance it was to do with their quotas wasn't it to do with their

00:07:08.820 male female quotas so they had misrepresented it which gave four women scotland the opportunity to

00:07:15.460 challenge it in the high courts and the high courts had to clarify what the equality act has always said

00:07:20.040 i was quite pleased by the way because that all happened as the very last draft of my book was in

00:07:24.420 so i quickly changed it and i quit i was able to write about it in the book which is good because

00:07:28.280 you're right the supreme court ruling is one of those seismic moments that signals the end of woke

00:07:34.040 absolutely because it isn't just about the ruling it's about all the uh the the ramifications of

00:07:39.060 that the backlash it's going to spill out it can't not you know and and it's been interesting to see

00:07:44.000 the backlash like a lot of companies and charities and organizations are saying we are going to ignore

00:07:48.900 the supreme court ruling a lot of individuals a lot of a couple of lawyers even saying you don't have to

00:07:54.120 go along with it now what's obviously they do but you know because they are in in legal hot water if

00:08:00.320 they don't but worse than that they're actually announcing it on twitter they're announcing

00:08:04.160 their intention to break the law so when it does come to the court cases uh they're leaving receipts

00:08:09.540 so thanks for that it's a good idea but you know you know what i mean though like if you if you if you

00:08:13.940 think about where we've come in the culture war now it is definitely the case that woke is dying

00:08:19.460 it might i'm not saying it will go away it might transmogrify become something else but it's not it's in

00:08:25.760 its death throes and the reason you know it are all those seismic things like the cast review like

00:08:31.160 the ban on puberty blockers like the supreme court ruling like the death of dei you know dei being

00:08:37.120 stripped out of all the big companies mcdonald's walmart ford amazon you know facebook so all of

00:08:44.040 these things trump signing these executive orders regarding uh male and female behavior or there are

00:08:49.320 only two sexes to dei again so all of that stuff black lives matter being discredited too much is

00:08:54.860 happening too quickly like an avalanche so it it won't stand up anymore and and the the the reason

00:09:01.240 why we know this is that it's actually the little things it's like all those things like the jaguar car

00:09:05.920 advert which i've mentioned in the book because of course you know those models are gender gender

00:09:10.280 fluid models you know just mincing around uh not a car in sight and that looked dated when that came

00:09:19.560 out last towards the end of last year wasn't it it looked old-fashioned it looked weirdly passe

00:09:24.480 now that would have seemed normal a few in the midst of the craziness of 2020 you'd look at that

00:09:30.900 and think that's what everyone's doing yeah okay but now it seems boring and that's that's the biggest

00:09:37.720 signal i think it's things like that things like people taking their pronouns out of their bios not

00:09:42.720 really acknowledging just sort of getting rid of it i mean there's a lot of people i think waking up to

00:09:45.880 it and thinking how am i going to roll this back and one of the ways you do that i guess is you say

00:09:50.620 either you deny you ever had an involvement in it that's going to be one thing that a lot of people

00:09:55.180 are going to do maybe uh you say well i never really believed it or maybe you just sort of sort

00:10:00.520 of slip get the evidence erased quite you know no more pronouns maybe you delete some old tweets

00:10:05.700 maybe you just you just do that hope that nobody notices and in a way that you have to you have to

00:10:11.280 give people that opportunity like think about how think about how insane we became in our society

00:10:16.880 we were in the western world medicalizing kids because they were gender non-conforming autistic

00:10:24.340 or likely to grow up to be gay we were fixing gay kids on the nhs doing what the mullahs in tehran do

00:10:31.340 doing what the iranian government does when people are homosexual because you either kill them or you turn

00:10:36.500 them straight right we were doing that the nhs was doing that now that kind of we weren't segregating

00:10:43.300 kids by race in that school the american school in london was segregating kids by race for after

00:10:49.180 school activities we were implementing hugely racially divisive ideas and policy in society we

00:10:55.980 were doing all of this thinking it was progressive and you know it's such it's such a sort of bubble of

00:11:03.500 lunacy this period of time it's so mad you know we're in the eye of the storm basically so it's difficult

00:11:09.060 for a lot of people to see it i promise you like 50 years time historians will be like what the hell

00:11:12.680 happened there it that was a moment of hysteria so obviously people are going to have to find a way

00:11:17.940 to move beyond it and say well we did we either didn't have anything to do with it or we didn't

00:11:23.580 understand i mean the the salem issue is the good is a good example of what happened everyone crazy in

00:11:28.220 salem 20 people lost their lives they everyone thought that the devil was running the village

00:11:33.480 and then the year after no one does the year after everyone said we got it wrong and because they

00:11:39.260 well they were pious christians they were able to make that concession they were able to say we were

00:11:43.540 wrong we got it wrong we and and that's maybe what people have to do i don't know if people are going

00:11:48.780 to be able to do that but like you said the fact that people like deborah are willing to talk

00:11:52.280 might be a suggestion that that people have started to realize they've got certain things wrong i mean she

00:11:57.980 talked about recognizing that she was in cult-like thinking so she's right about that right i mean i think

00:12:03.580 that's a that's a very good point but then where do you go from there how do you how do you uh i

00:12:10.260 suppose how do you make amends when you know what you've done is actually not just wrong but it really

00:12:15.560 has contributed to a great evil how do you then psychologically get over that i don't i don't know

00:12:20.620 the answer to that you know there's going to be a lot of people talking about this particularly online

00:12:25.740 the debate is being had it's saying and pointing the figure the finger at liberalism and one of the

00:12:30.800 really interesting things in your book is you make an impassioned defense of liberalism yeah do you

00:12:36.380 what would you say to the argument that wokeism the reason it came about the reason it took hold

00:12:43.280 is because of liberalism well uh i spent the problem with liberalism as a concept is is it there's never

00:12:49.860 been a really uh widely mutually agreed definition so i spent a lot of time in the book outline precisely

00:12:55.420 what i mean by uh liberalism and what i mean by liberalism is the idea of uh individual

00:13:00.280 autonomy uh freedom of choice freedom of speech social responsibility uh treating each other

00:13:07.360 within the rule of law you know you can do whatever you want say whatever you want think whatever you

00:13:10.720 want right up until the point where you encroach on the rights of someone else so therefore there is

00:13:15.900 built into liberalism i feel a sense of social responsibility collective responsibility that's part of

00:13:21.040 it um liberalism has often been interpreted as just a great free-for-all a kind of anarchy you do

00:13:27.840 whatever you want and fuck everyone else doesn't matter what happens to other people that's not

00:13:32.180 that's not liberty that's license those those two concepts are very different i talk about in the

00:13:37.720 book the history of liberalism and i go back to the way that milton talks about this he specifically

00:13:43.000 talked he actually wrote a poem about the difference between liberty and license you know he was so

00:13:47.520 annoyed because he'd written a tract um effectively defending divorce because he didn't like his wife

00:13:52.020 and he tried to sort of he tried to sort of intellectualize his way out of it okay that's what he was

00:13:56.160 sort of defending him um and lots of his peers and those who are normally outside criticized him and

00:14:01.520 said oh you just want a free-for-all you just want to be able to do whatever you want he said

00:14:03.620 no i'm crying for liberty and you're you're you're talking about license and those two things are not the

00:14:09.020 same thing so i think uh you can't say that wokeness and i know that this will annoy people like

00:14:15.140 whenever i say anything like this this really annoys people on my side yeah yeah okay well i know this

00:14:20.320 is what you want it really annoys people well it's not what i want i'm just kidding but actually i think

00:14:24.660 this is a big debate that's being had right now yeah it is i mean james or when we had him on the

00:14:29.660 show a while back he made the you know his view is wokeness is a feature not a bug of liberalism and

00:14:35.200 the reason is that um the instinct to liberate more and more groups from their oppression or

00:14:41.300 restrictions that are placed upon them inevitably produces the sort of things that we've seen

00:14:46.360 because you keep looking for new group there is no there is no self-correction mechanism within

00:14:52.380 liberalism that says okay we've got to a good place now now we have to conserve the liberty that

00:14:58.100 we've created isn't there a self-correction in liberalism though the self-correction is that that

00:15:02.560 key principle of freedom until the point where you encroach on someone else's freedom okay what about

00:15:07.480 gay marriage is what somebody would say okay some people there are people as you know i don't agree

00:15:11.860 with this view but there are people who will say well gay marriage encroaches on other people

00:15:16.400 because it affects the definition of marriage and marriage has a societal function which is a unit

00:15:22.120 that is there to produce children therefore reproducing that society therefore when you

00:15:27.080 erode the concept of marriage by legalizing gay marriage you are having an impact on other people

00:15:32.380 i'm not saying that i believe that i'm just saying you can argue you can argue that i know lots of

00:15:37.600 people are against gay marriage including some gay people by the way you know but the the thing is

00:15:41.180 ultimately marriage is wrapped up with a religious concept isn't it you know this that's the thing

00:15:44.200 the institution of marriage is a fundamentally religious concept it is something it is as you

00:15:49.240 say uh to do with the uh the family to do with children etc uh a religious bond a spiritual bond

00:15:56.340 however the state is also offering marriage the state is also saying to its adult citizens that they

00:16:01.960 can come together in a legal by a legally binding contract that entitles them to certain things right

00:16:06.760 so it's a no-brainer for me that if the state is going to offer marriage to adults it should offer

00:16:11.720 marriage to all consenting adults you know irrespective of their sexual orientation or sex

00:16:15.400 that doesn't mean that that doesn't mean that the state should come in and force churches to marry gay

00:16:21.100 couples so the liberal response to this is quite simple is that like you can have your religious

00:16:25.780 institution you can have marriage as we see it and and and you know bar bar gay people from entering

00:16:31.860 into that uh that contract uh but the state can't do that because the state has to uphold the

00:16:37.020 principle of equality before the law so that that's why i don't think gay marriage is at all

00:16:42.720 an example of where liberalism has failed i also don't think that woke can be seen as liberalism going

00:16:49.540 too far i think what woke is is proof of what happens when you don't apply the principles of

00:16:54.240 liberalism woke is a failure of liberalism not its end goal and i suppose i should explain what i mean

00:17:01.140 by that insofar as tied up in the woke movement what what it what does it mean to be woke what are

00:17:06.360 the key aspects of it the key element of it to me is the idea of firstly an obsession with group

00:17:12.940 identity a cultural revolution where you're going to try and change everything in order to achieve

00:17:17.440 equity according to group identity but that you will do so crucially through authoritarian means

00:17:23.200 wokeness is authoritarianism it is a manifestation of authoritarianism a very specific kind of manifestation

00:17:29.280 of authoritarianism so if you are woke if you if you uh change society to be woke if you apply the

00:17:35.420 principles of wokeness within society you are already an anti-liberal by definition you are saying that

00:17:41.000 my way has to be done irrespective of your beliefs we are going to impose our values on you irrespective

00:17:46.660 of what you think we're going to make you say your pronouns we're going to censor certain speech

00:17:50.720 we're going to destroy art that we find problematic we're going to cut out scenes from comedy shows

00:17:55.360 that we don't like so you don't get to see them and you don't get to make the choice

00:17:58.500 all of this is anti-liberal it's like i think the closest synonym to woke is anti-liberal so to me

00:18:04.920 when people say wokeness is what happens when liberalism goes mad well there are two things

00:18:08.160 happening there it could be that firstly uh the the various sort of um definitions of woke i'm sorry

00:18:13.900 of liberal around the world are muddying the waters in other words the liberal party in australia is the

00:18:19.020 conservative party when americans say liberal they think left-wing liberal democrats who they know who the

00:18:24.580 hell knows what they are but the word means different things depending on where you are

00:18:28.260 if we go back to what liberalism the core values of liberalism that everyone can agree on all the

00:18:33.940 great liberal thinkers from the past it is those it is those values that i've outlined and none of those

00:18:38.840 values that that notion of um freedom individual autonomy uh freedom of speech freedom of the press

00:18:44.560 anti-authoritarianism fundamentally none of those are compatible with wokeness in fact i would go so far

00:18:49.700 to say they're the antithesis of wokeness so i don't buy this i mean i would love to have that

00:18:54.480 argument about what about something like dei since you'd like to take for example dei right yeah

00:18:59.540 there's nothing authoritarian about it it's an elected government uh saying you know we'd like to

00:19:04.960 to for for we'd like to introduce a bill that that is obviously democratically voted for yes uh which

00:19:12.080 says that you must have certain uh uh groups represented at a certain level within major corporations

00:19:18.820 with the government etc but it's how is that incompatible because that is imposed against

00:19:23.660 the will of the people who it affects right so dei as with all woke but so so so laws against

00:19:29.420 pedophilia they're not true the vast majority of people oppose pedophilia yes but but the people

00:19:37.160 whose whose interest it affects are supportive of that right yeah but as you know that pedophilia is a

00:19:43.560 form of rape because there can be no consensual sex with kids so already that is an authoritarian

00:19:47.940 that is something where you are taking away the rights of someone else to gratify yourself

00:19:51.680 dei is a good example because dei is a substitute for meritocracy dei is saying that we are taking

00:19:58.320 away the rights of many many people in society because of what we perceive to be a greater good

00:20:03.620 i think what you're really saying is is it possible no that's not but that's not how they

00:20:07.640 frame it at all dei says there is a problem in society which is some people like children and

00:20:12.620 pedophilia are affected by discrimination yes and their natural rights to an equal workplace to

00:20:17.980 employment etc being taken away from this yes from them by the institutional and other structures of

00:20:23.480 society which deprive them of their rights and here we are brilliant liberals we want to liberate

00:20:29.020 these people from the oppression they experience yes but they're not liberals because they are making

00:20:32.860 an assertion in lieu of evidence capitalism is evil you hear that all the time these days in internet

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00:22:12.340 wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com not liberals because they are making an assertion in lieu of

00:22:18.500 evidence they're not providing evidence of systemic racism often they claim that it exists where there is

00:22:23.340 literally evidence to the contrary right they will literally say uh what was it was it princeton that

00:22:28.420 announced that it was systemically racist right and then of course the department of education in

00:22:32.880 america said okay well then you don't get your funding because that's illegal and of course they

00:22:36.640 didn't mean it they know they're not in system if they were systemically racist they would have a

00:22:41.160 system of racism in place like jim crow they would have something in their document saying we're going

00:22:45.440 to discriminate according to race as it happens ivy league schools do but they discriminate against

00:22:49.060 asian american people asian people and white people yeah and white people okay so they do but

00:22:53.000 that's not the kind of systemic racism they're talking about the implementation of dei uh is is

00:22:58.400 predicated on a couple of things and the first thing it's predicated on an assertion of something

00:23:02.320 that isn't true right so that in itself is already a woke authoritarian thing what you're saying is i

00:23:08.120 don't care about your evidence i don't care about your studies or your or what's real what's true

00:23:13.420 because remember the core of wokeness is also a sort of redefinition of truth so you can have

00:23:17.520 multiple truths uh but they're having multiple truths in order to impose a particular

00:23:21.620 one particular truth which is theirs that's not a liberal thing to do that's an authoritarian thing

00:23:27.200 to do and if a government does it i mean you talk about democrat democratically elected governments

00:23:31.000 etc it's perfectly possible for a democratically elected government to be authoritarian we're living

00:23:35.560 through one right now right we have an authoritarian government here in the uk and they were elected in

00:23:40.340 quite overwhelmingly authoritarianism isn't something that just disappears simply because uh the people

00:23:45.560 wielding that power have a democratic mandate you know i mean the history books are full of this you know

00:23:50.020 this so i would say that dei fundamentally something that has never been supported by the majority of

00:23:54.640 the population by a very small i mean the the last more in common uh study on this suggests that at

00:23:59.700 the height of the woke movement in the uk and in america eight percent roughly eight percent of the

00:24:04.780 population supported woke initiatives and what that means is it's not just a minority view uh in the

00:24:11.680 population it's a minority view in every generation everywhere across the board this is never this is

00:24:17.540 something that has been imposed top down onto a subdued population that didn't want it a handful of

00:24:25.180 activists mostly upper middle class powerful people wanted it and they still want it but it was never

00:24:30.940 going to work ultimately because it didn't have that popular support that's what i mean when i say that

00:24:35.360 it is fundamentally authoritarian that imposition of will on someone else who does not want it to be

00:24:41.680 imposed dei involved all sorts of things like this it involved unconscious bias training sessions it

00:24:47.140 involved your employer probing around in your brain trying to pick it apart and find out where your

00:24:52.640 unconscious biases are in spite of the fact that every study into this shows that those unconscious bias

00:24:58.620 studies don't work the training session they actually make it worse they make incidents of racism

00:25:06.000 more likely in the workplace not less so not only does it not work it's wrong on on on the on the

00:25:10.900 principle like that on the liberal principle your employer shouldn't have the right to delve around in your

00:25:15.000 head that was imposed and then when workers stood up to it and said we don't want to be doing that

00:25:19.500 i don't want to go along and announce that i should try and be less white i don't want to go and go along

00:25:24.580 and admit my white privilege admit that i'm a racist when i know that i'm not and i don't want to to lose

00:25:30.620 out on promotional opportunities and other opportunities because i won't go along with your ideology i don't

00:25:35.460 want to announce my pronouns in my emails or at the start of meetings or whatever and whenever that

00:25:40.700 happened and those employers got in trouble i mean i think of that woman fran itcoff from the

00:25:44.660 multiple sclerosis society volunteer for many decades booted out because she didn't know she

00:25:49.600 didn't understand why people were putting pronouns and she didn't know what why she should do that

00:25:53.240 they got rid of her right when corporations are trying to impose a niche ideological movement which

00:26:00.120 has originated in the upper middle classes onto the working class onto the workers and then the

00:26:05.860 activists and campaigners side with the corporations over the workers well for a start

00:26:11.460 that's obviously not a left-wing thing that's obviously not that's you know we're in a position

00:26:15.400 where wokeness has overwhelmingly benefited those who are financially privileged it has not benefited

00:26:20.940 the working class in fact it's been antagonistic to the working class i can't remember why it went

00:26:24.980 down this road but we started off we started off with dei well i just don't i suppose to wrap up my

00:26:31.100 point is that i i don't think you could identify a single woke initiative that does not have

00:26:36.940 authoritarianism baked into it in some way or another and if it if that is the case if i'm right

00:26:42.140 about that then to say it is liberalism writ large is the reverse of the truth it's when liberalism

00:26:50.420 hasn't been applied and what would you make of the argument that there is a fundamental weakness

00:26:56.700 within liberalism that means that it is unable to combat other ideologies that are not liberal

00:27:04.640 for example radical islam yeah which has no interest in how can i put it it has no interest

00:27:13.340 in being part of this culture it wants to supersede and destroy this culture so how how can liberalism

00:27:20.020 possibly combat that if liberalism said you can believe whatever you want and you do you as long as

00:27:25.580 you know you don't affect anybody else yeah but with radical islam and let's take the violence

00:27:31.400 aspect away from it we can all agree that that is something that needs to be tackled yes because

00:27:36.940 radical islam is an essentially authoritarian ideology of course we can all agree on that as you know i've

00:27:42.440 got a chapter in the book about that very question yeah because it is a thorny question it's not one that

00:27:46.720 you can i mean i get i totally get the opposition right because if you are if you have mass immigration

00:27:52.340 policies that are admitting people to your country who are actively hostile to the idea of democracy

00:27:56.660 and free speech who actually don't want the rights of everyone to be upheld who are anti-liberal

00:28:01.620 you are at risk are you not of changing the culture to a degree where authoritarianism prevails

00:28:06.960 where that ideology prevails over the liberal ideology and of course that is the case that weakness is

00:28:12.040 true and ought to be acknowledged uh but that is not to say that there cannot be and this is the

00:28:17.280 argument i make in the book there cannot be what i call a kind of robust form of liberalism in other

00:28:23.200 words let's take the example of sweden's a very good example right because i was in sweden a couple

00:28:26.780 of years ago and i was uh a book a book of mine was translated into swedish and we had like a book

00:28:31.860 launch and so it was quite nice it was quite i was i was mingling with people and everything and i talk

00:28:35.720 about this in the book because one thing that stayed with me is i was talking to the locals they're all

00:28:40.300 very middle class very liberal minded you know what swedes are like they just want to be nice to

00:28:44.420 everyone um and they're nice people they're nice and beautiful i mean they've got it all right

00:28:48.780 and i was talking to them and they all wanted to talk about the immigration issue all of them

00:28:53.240 not a racist bone in any of these bodies right these are all totally hyper liberal people and they

00:28:59.320 and one woman said and this stuck with me one woman said to me we got it wrong and she said it in such

00:29:03.620 plaintive tone we got it wrong and they did right so to sweden has now got more gun and bomb attacks

00:29:09.660 than any other country in the world not at war it is and it's there are insane problems with gang

00:29:14.900 violence ghettoization grenades going off in the street you know and these are decent non-racist

00:29:20.320 people who are having to accept that they created this situation now how did that situation occur

00:29:24.960 was it because uh there was an excess of liberalism was it because the liberal order said come in do what

00:29:30.880 you want live in your ghettos don't learn the language whatever you know that's fine we'll tolerate

00:29:34.960 absolutely everything no because what they were tolerating were things that were not in accordance

00:29:39.560 with the rule of law and again and again throughout the history of liberalism the rule of law is key

00:29:44.460 the rule of of following that the uh the uh the dictates of the host nation is part of how a liberal

00:29:50.960 nation can function in other words immigration wasn't really the problem if you'd have said

00:29:55.920 you know we're going to have porous borders we're going to we're going to allow people in although i

00:29:59.780 would say that mass immigration at such a rate makes that impossible but let's just say

00:30:03.500 you set the parameters you say that uh uh becoming a citizen within any given society is contingent

00:30:10.860 on adapting to the mores of that particular society it's contingent you don't just get a free pass

00:30:15.660 you can come to the culture so long as you adapt and acknowledge the rule of law within this culture

00:30:20.460 but of course an authoritarian mindset doesn't do that and there's an argument to set to be said

00:30:24.960 that if individuals come in and say we are going to treat women like second-class citizens we are not

00:30:29.940 going to respect your free speech we're going to demand that you be prosecuted if you

00:30:33.300 burn a copy of your own book for instance all of that that you say okay well then you don't get to

00:30:37.900 be in this culture because this is a society that runs on a liberal system but you know better than

00:30:42.700 anyone that most liberal people recoil in horror at the idea of say removing people from this country

00:30:48.900 who refuse to integrate right they're coming around them aren't they to the idea of like criminals at

00:30:54.500 least like the case in sweden that guy who dragged that elderly woman down the stairs and almost killed

00:31:00.720 uh and he was a an immigrant into sweden he had 20 odd convictions since he had come to sweden he'd been

00:31:09.260 in prison for rape yeah before he almost killed this elderly woman right yeah at what point do you say

00:31:14.740 you are not making an effort to adapt to the society's norms you have to go well i think more and more

00:31:19.360 liberal people are realizing that the liberal approach is to deport criminals well look i i certainly agree with

00:31:25.120 although i don't know if it's the liberal person it's just a sensible approach uh and it's liberal

00:31:29.680 because you're upholding the rights of everyone in society if you're not upholding those rights yeah

00:31:34.460 then you're not a liberal but here's what someone who who's coming at it from a different perspective

00:31:38.780 might say i mean i'm stress testing these arguments because i think it's really important discussion

00:31:42.400 yeah i'm glad you are um is well did we really need the mass immigration experiment to work all this

00:31:49.520 if if we'd had if we'd had say a more uh kind of identity based society let's say just for the sake

00:32:00.660 of argument i'm not what do you mean by that just so i'm clear um if we if we had a government that

00:32:06.280 said you know what britain welcomes a small number of immigrants every year we're going to be extremely

00:32:10.860 selective because what we'd like to do is keep britain british right they just said that i'm not saying

00:32:15.600 that's right or wrong whatever they did that and they said mass immigration in principle is wrong we

00:32:20.240 don't want britain to become a nation of immigrants it never has been before we do not want the

00:32:25.320 population to become uh of major cities in this country to become majority not born in this country

00:32:32.240 because of identity we believe in identity which is there's a british identity there's an english

00:32:37.060 identity yeah we want to preserve those yeah because of the identity reasons would these people might

00:32:43.320 say would that not have been better andrew did we need to have millions of people coming to this

00:32:47.440 country uh to the point where the cities now look different the crime is such a massive issue like it

00:32:52.900 is in sweden yeah and now we have to be like well maybe we should deport people who've been convicted

00:32:57.540 of rape and done 20 other crimes i agree it should have been obvious in advance however we've now had

00:33:02.840 all these cautionary tales sweden is a cautionary tale sweden tells us what happens when you do this it's

00:33:08.100 now happening again in ireland i mean ireland's playing catch-up yeah but you know the population of

00:33:12.960 village doubles overnight because they bring people in overnight so that no one can complain

00:33:16.560 right that is not a sustainable situation particularly if the state is not expecting

00:33:22.020 any of those individuals who are coming in to adapt to the way of life of the host country right

00:33:25.620 you're absolutely right we need to have an experiment to work this out we always knew that

00:33:30.080 britishness whatever that i know there are endless debates about this and i know that no one's ever

00:33:33.300 going to agree about it to me it's a cultural thing to me you know it is about values and it is about

00:33:37.240 your way of life you know we are all mongols we are all from multiple different places we all know

00:33:41.660 this right so you know if but if you have a multicultural system not a multi-racial system

00:33:48.320 i think those two things are completely confused if you have a multicultural system where you say

00:33:52.820 preserve your own culture but not just that hermetically seal it live in a parallel society

00:33:58.200 do what you want you end up with the grooming gang right you end up no but hold on but what is

00:34:02.500 the challenge or like why can't let's say people from x country who've come to britain only live with

00:34:08.180 other people from x country under a liberal system well they can so long as they don't

00:34:11.680 encroach on the rule of law but but let's say they're not right they say then they're breaking

00:34:15.800 the law no no no these people live in a ghetto of their own choosing yeah right and for a while

00:34:21.880 it doesn't seem like they're hurting anyone and then later you discover that they've been engaged in

00:34:25.580 grooming yeah well like i say the liberal system says you can do whatever you want so long as you

00:34:29.200 don't encroach on the rights of others if people are living like if i wanted to set up a commune

00:34:33.180 and live in the middle of uh worcestershire i don't know why i plucked that out but like just

00:34:37.760 with my own people and we behave in our own way that doesn't hurt anyone else but everyone else

00:34:41.040 thinks it's weird you know i don't know what we do i'll leave that to your imagination but it's weird

00:34:45.840 but so long as it's not encroaching that would never cause a problem when it starts to cause a

00:34:50.740 problem is when part of someone's cultural values is to negate the law of the land right and we've seen

00:34:57.720 that again and again and that is why and then on top of that you have the authorities who have decided

00:35:03.820 that preserving the idea that multi the myth that multiculturalism is a utopia that definitely works

00:35:09.180 that promotion of that myth becomes more important than the reality under a liberal system you would

00:35:15.640 be applying the law equally right from the start you would never get this situation where for instance

00:35:21.800 with the manchester bombing a security guard doesn't intervene because he's worried about being called

00:35:27.000 racist you wouldn't get a situation where police and social workers and and media editors say

00:35:31.680 don't talk about that crime that is being committed because we'll be called racist you wouldn't get

00:35:36.500 that situation where the police would break into a house where there are seven older pakistani men with

00:35:42.280 a naked 13 year old girl who is inebriated and they arrest the girl for being drunk and disorderly and

00:35:47.600 they ask no questions of the men you wouldn't get that situation because what those people are doing

00:35:52.260 is they are not applying the law equally they are sanctifying group identity and the myth of

00:35:56.760 multiculturalism and as a result of that they are not liberals but are you not being utopian andrew

00:36:01.380 well no because i don't well i'll give you a more pointed example of this right let's say that there

00:36:07.600 are just talking hypothetically here yeah uh there are parts of the country which are ghettos of a

00:36:13.160 particular uh ethnic origin or religious background or whatever those people are far more they're not

00:36:19.400 liberal in in their mindset and you can't make them liberal because as a liberal you can't force people

00:36:23.480 to believe what you believe right they don't have the liberal view they're very tribal they believe

00:36:27.960 that the thing that really matters about people is their ethnic and religious background yes and for

00:36:34.220 that reason they only elect representatives for example uh from their own community right uh the

00:36:39.660 police officers in that community are from that community the social workers in that in that area are

00:36:44.600 from that community are mostly from that community and because of their tribal nature uh they are far more

00:36:50.700 likely to only advocate for the interest of their community they don't want to participate in this

00:36:54.540 great liberal project they want to make sure that their community is looked after yeah uh against the

00:36:59.180 oppressive racist force of the state or whatever and therefore when someone from that community

00:37:03.360 commits a crime yeah they're going to act differently right well there it is that's the point that's the

00:37:08.420 break but by that point you've got millions of people in your country who live in this way what are you

00:37:13.180 going to do about it as a liberal well you you've just hit it i mean at that point they have

00:37:17.480 indeed broken the liberal system broken the law and that's when the state has to step in i mean this

00:37:21.440 is the thing it's not it's not the case that i'm not a utopian as far as i don't i don't think i don't

00:37:26.960 think liberalism is utopian insofar as because what it does fundamentally is it recognizes the

00:37:31.540 imperfectibility of humankind it recognizes that there will always be problems that we always have

00:37:35.100 to face and we always have to tackle as and when uh they emerge but you're describing it's

00:37:40.640 interesting isn't it if you're talking about a a kind of a ghetto a community that that has this value

00:37:45.940 within it you have to remember that within that within that there will be people who do not accord

00:37:51.320 with the values of that community we always have this for instance with the case of radical islamism

00:37:55.200 we talk about preserving the culture of a particular say muslim community what about the women in that

00:38:02.740 community what about the gay people in that community who are not well served by the imposition

00:38:07.160 of sharia law what about them why is it that when we talk about preserving culture we're always

00:38:11.500 talking about preserving the most ultra conservative reactionary male heterosexual culture within that

00:38:16.800 community not the rest of them whereas if you have a truly liberal system you could have your

00:38:21.840 patriarchs uh sounding off about gays and whatever the hell they want but they wouldn't be able to

00:38:25.600 impose those values on the rest of the community they won't be able to tell women you must uh you know

00:38:30.020 wrap yourself in a niqab when we tell you to right you you wouldn't that couldn't work within that liberal

00:38:35.760 system so hang on a second i don't i disagree with that andrew because i think it could because

00:38:40.980 most of those laws they're not implemented by the by law they're implemented by culture yeah that's how

00:38:47.860 it works so in under a liberal system you have to allow these cultures to flourish including the

00:38:54.760 elements of it that are deeply unpleasant no because the deeply unpleasant elements are the

00:38:59.440 authoritarian elements they're the they're the elements that are taking away the rights of other

00:39:03.180 people within that culture that's not liberal anymore no but there's nothing that you can do

00:39:07.600 as a liberal society with people with women being forced to wear niqabs for example because there's

00:39:14.680 simply no way to police it oh so you're talking about the practicalities of policing it yeah that's

00:39:20.120 the massive challenge absolutely and that's why i said what you're doing is utopian because you're

00:39:25.700 pretending these things can be addressed in theory when in practice well no because i'm not saying

00:39:29.720 that any that anyone has all the answers i'm not saying that there is a kind of liberal panacea

00:39:34.800 that will solve but that's what i'm saying to you the anti-liberal wing will say well there is an

00:39:39.220 answer yeah and what is it it's another form of authoritarianism yes which they will say is

00:39:43.680 preferable because it does not create these problems and it's not authoritarianism it's maybe

00:39:48.080 like i i gave you the example and i'm for the for people watching and listening we're playing these

00:39:52.980 arguments out does without necessarily wedding ourselves to any of them right um but the counter

00:39:59.520 argument is obvious did we really need to import millions of people from cultures that are not

00:40:04.300 liberal yeah into our country and then be like well now now that they're doing grooming gangs let's

00:40:08.900 deal with it no like i say and that should have been eminently predictable i don't see why anyone

00:40:12.980 thought that wouldn't be we i mean look there's i'll give an example there's a there's a section of

00:40:18.840 the book where i talk about an old old novel by gk chesterton called the flying in have you heard of

00:40:24.180 there's the flying in from 1912 i think which imagines a islamic britain and it's a it's a strange

00:40:32.880 thing to read because he talks about an imam a guy called the prophet of the moon it's a funny book

00:40:38.180 it's a farce and he comes over and his ideas are so persuasive even though they're crazy like he uh he

00:40:44.000 gets his he inveigles his way into the mindset of a powerful politician called lord ivywood and he's

00:40:50.360 the one who implements all these things across the country the story is a farce insofar as because of

00:40:54.400 the islamic law against alcohol no one can have a drink and so this group sets up a what they call

00:40:59.100 the flying in they go around with a sign selling beer and they have to go very quickly on their donkey

00:41:03.780 with their beer and their wheel of cheese and it's very funny um but but what it does is satirize

00:41:08.800 the mindset of a politician who thinks he's a liberal but really isn't a liberal the kind of

00:41:13.880 politician who thinks i'm going to welcome in this other culture this is a better culture for us

00:41:18.260 and impose it on society and what happens it becomes a deeply authoritarian society that the

00:41:24.840 the the satire of that novel only exists because intelligent people have always been able to

00:41:32.080 anticipate what would happen if you try and do precisely the thing that we are doing now it is

00:41:37.180 prescient in that way you know if you have you you didn't need to run the experiments you absolutely

00:41:42.800 didn't because throughout history we've seen what happens when you allow a particular ideology

00:41:47.660 to prevail mass immigration at an unprecedented rate where those practical concerns that you raise

00:41:54.860 become the problem how do you actually police it how do you actually make sure that you can't you

00:42:00.180 can't once there is massive how could absolutely i agree with you there's no way of doing that

00:42:03.860 so don't do it to begin with well but here's the issue though what sweden is doing now many people

00:42:10.060 would say is illiberal yeah and what they say is what do you do when you've already made the mistake

00:42:13.360 right how do you what they're doing is they're saying you can't have more than x percent of a

00:42:17.980 particular community in a particular school you can't have people living in the same apartment

00:42:22.180 blocks without that being like they're doing all these things yeah but one thing at a time i mean

00:42:26.820 sweden is still what else are they doing tell people well well one of the things that really

00:42:31.140 disturbed me recently was that was these the the murder of uh what was his name saul momika

00:42:36.480 who had i hope i'm pronouncing his name right and he was an iraqi refugee and he'd burnt his own copy

00:42:42.780 of the quran his own book that he bought he did it a few times it's a form of protest that leaves kind

00:42:48.260 of a bad taste in the mouth because obviously the image of burning books is not one that has a

00:42:52.540 a particularly pleasant historical flavor to it because we know what the implications are

00:42:57.920 um but nonetheless the nazis were raiding libraries and other people's property and destroying other that

00:43:03.980 was authoritarian he was simply destroying his own uh belongings in an act of protest that is

00:43:09.540 something that he has every right to do but the swedish government were putting him on trial

00:43:14.180 for effectively blasphemy right it was at the time of the trial just before his verdict that he was

00:43:21.180 murdered during that tiktok live stream um the judge in the case for his accomplice who was then

00:43:27.840 sentenced the judge in that case was said there can be no you don't have the right in this country

00:43:33.040 to offend religion and what he meant by that is islam well then that is sweden that is the

00:43:38.160 swedish government saying we're not a liberal society we're just not we do have blasphemy laws

00:43:43.080 we are going to impose these ideas so all of these other problems that are manifested because of that

00:43:47.420 stuff they will persist because the swedish government still isn't dealing with the fundamental

00:43:51.440 problems they haven't like before we get to the point of what do we do about rectifying the mistake

00:43:55.340 now that we've gone too far how about just impose the actual uh values of a liberal democracy that

00:44:00.620 you can't stand for because you can't because if well they could no they can't and this is why

00:44:05.160 because once you have millions of people who feel very strongly about the burning of a particular

00:44:09.100 book allowing that book to be burned repeatedly which it would be if you allow it to be one time

00:44:14.620 will create a race war at least that's the fear the government has i totally agree that is a is a

00:44:20.620 genuine concern and a real concern and it's not one that i would dare to profess to have a solution

00:44:24.920 to what i would say is why don't we as a society implement the liberal ideas that we stand by that

00:44:31.260 we claim to the reason i just gave you that if you're not sweden hold on what do you mean we're

00:44:35.760 not as far are you saying that somebody being allowed to burn quran's non-stop in britain

00:44:40.980 wouldn't spark riots they should absolutely be allowed to burn a quran in britain but but that's

00:44:46.140 not my question i agree with you in principle what i'm saying is once you have the mass immigration

00:44:52.280 and the demographics that we do if you attempt to enforce the liberal values which you and i agree

00:44:58.120 on yeah what you will get is violence on the street which is why the government is being so cowardly

00:45:05.280 about defending those liberal values because i don't think that's right hold on because in this i am

00:45:10.760 putting this to you in a society in which you have created the demographics situation that we have

00:45:16.820 and you've created the ghettos that we have and you've shown over decades a complete unwilling

00:45:22.240 this to confront the illiberal elements in certain communities then at that point you're like brave

00:45:29.660 clinging to the liberal principle of being allowed to burn a book will actually cause violence on the

00:45:34.600 streets and no government will want to do that but i don't think we're there yet and i and we i know

00:45:39.600 we're not actually how do you mean well there's been a few quran burnings of late and there haven't

00:45:43.120 been any riots okay we aren't there yet one of the things we've always admired about you

00:45:49.340 the trigonometry audience is your intellectual curiosity you don't just want opinions that confirm

00:45:55.560 what you already think you want to understand the why behind events policies and decisions from all

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00:46:28.440 country sees these issues and in today's world that kind of perspective is invaluable so broaden the

00:46:36.340 scope of your political diet listen now to the npr politics podcast only from npr wherever you get

00:46:45.720 your podcasts we're at that that precarious position we're at that kind of tipping point

00:46:51.560 i think we're not we're not where sweden is fine right so let me give an example yeah the guy who's

00:46:56.340 on trial at the moment for burning the quran right this is a great test of the culture because there

00:47:01.520 haven't been riots there haven't been and there won't and there won't be we're not there yet this

00:47:06.120 is this is where i think we disagree i don't think we're there yet but we will get there pretty soon

00:47:11.420 right if the government prosecutes this guy if it persists with it if they if as labor wants to do

00:47:18.400 effectively introduce blasphemy law i mean they're not saying that but they're talking about let's

00:47:23.500 implement the uh you know all part all party parliamentary groups definition of islamophobia

00:47:28.560 which is an insane definition by the way it's uh what is it um uh a form of racism firstly so it's

00:47:35.560 wrong already a form of racism that is based on muslimness or perceived muslimness what the hell

00:47:41.200 is that it doesn't mean anything it's not racism islam is not a race never has been it can't be

00:47:46.360 because there are two billion muslims in the world of various ethnicities so we know it's not racism

00:47:50.660 so that's a factually inaccurate thing that they want to uh instantiate in law right now they're

00:47:57.120 talking about they're saying they're not going to introduce blasphemy codes but they're certainly

00:48:00.920 setting up all the uh the foundations in order to do so at a later date so i think what we do is we

00:48:06.620 look at those kind of cautionary tales like sweden where i agree with you the potential for a riot if

00:48:12.040 they don't criminalize the burning of quran is pretty high we're not there yet and i do think

00:48:16.860 what one thing that we can do in our state and i know a lot of people say it's all lost it's all gone

00:48:22.800 it's all over you know demographics is history all the rest of it i just don't think we're there

00:48:27.880 i don't think we should give an opinion so what should we do i mean people say to me you know

00:48:32.480 i'm the one sort of giving up and i'm saying i don't think that's true i think it's the opposite

00:48:36.980 i think don't do okay well what i would say is as i said i don't have all the answers i don't claim

00:48:42.580 to have all the answers i'm exploring ideas as it might i don't think and also i could be wrong i

00:48:48.180 often am but here's the thing i don't think that weighing in with a a a new form of tyranny to deal

00:48:54.560 with a a burgeoning form of tyranny i don't i think that's something you might regret later on

00:49:00.720 is what i'm saying i think history teaches us that we will regret that later on there are a lot of

00:49:05.520 people who i know and respect who are now talking about how we should ban certain protests you know

00:49:10.760 if we don't approve of what they're protesting uh that we should sort of dilute due process all this

00:49:18.720 kind of stuff that we should censor certain things because they've led to excesses such as wokeness

00:49:24.740 such as radical islam etc i just don't think that's the solution i think what you do then is

00:49:29.360 you set a precedent that is always open to exploitation in the future you are effectively

00:49:34.560 you what you are you are bringing in you are bringing in a new system that is going to be about

00:49:40.460 impositions which you cannot anticipate where that leads just like violence you know the the problem

00:49:46.600 with violent protests is you can never anticipate what the end point of that violence will be

00:49:49.840 you never know where it's going to go so just don't do it just do the peaceful you know we

00:49:54.380 protect ourselves by by taking those precautions early on one thing that we when we say we don't

00:50:00.220 want to censor some crazy imam saying that gay people are going to burn in hell or something we're

00:50:04.640 not doing it because we think it's it's a good thing for society that young gay people are hearing

00:50:08.880 that they're going to burn in hell by some crazy hook-handed cleric right we're not saying that what

00:50:13.080 we're saying is that the principle of free speech that our culture depends upon is far more important

00:50:18.860 than what that idiot has to say or any potential harm that he might cause it's about weighing those

00:50:24.340 two things up i think that's something that people are are often not really thinking about you know

00:50:28.480 with the whole with the whole lucy connolly case for instance which is a terrible case of a woman who

00:50:33.440 tweeted something rash and awful in the heat of the moment in the heat of distress deleted it within a

00:50:38.300 few hours and gets what is it 31 months in prison for that i think her case is coming her appeal is

00:50:43.020 coming up pretty soon but that is an incredible uh miscarriage of justice frankly there was no you

00:50:48.560 know she talked about burn the hotels for all i care not incitement to violence but for all i care

00:50:53.700 what she's saying is i don't care if you happen to go and burn hotels not the same thing but also

00:50:57.940 it doesn't have the impact like she has no influence the tweet was deleted no hotels were burned as a

00:51:04.360 result of that tweet there's none of the fingerprints that need to be there for incitement to be proven

00:51:09.560 so it's not there it was just a nasty tweet sent in the heat of the moment that she regretted an

00:51:14.180 apology should do it right you don't need to bring in these kind of authorities and that question the

00:51:19.360 debates i've had with people about who ostensibly a pro free speech but they're saying yeah but she did

00:51:24.140 say burn down some hotels and i'm thinking weigh it up it's this thing i'm asking people to do weigh up

00:51:30.180 weigh up the the cost of what you are hoping to implement in that case you are weighing up the

00:51:37.120 idea of empowering the state to lock people up for what they say against one woman putting something

00:51:44.220 silly out on twitter and horrible on twitter that gets deleted quickly and you're going to go with

00:51:48.280 that you're going to say let's ignore every historical precedent that that ever happens whenever

00:51:53.880 you empower the state to do this and let's just let's just trust that our state won't morph into

00:51:58.220 that i just think that's nonsense similarly with those of a liberal disposition we're saying let's

00:52:02.560 start making exceptions now and let's get let's let's boot out the people who say the horrible things

00:52:07.640 who threaten our liberalism or our democracy there's a bigger thing to weigh up that that's what i'm

00:52:14.220 trying to say is we probably need to think of the bigger picture i don't think that sacrificing

00:52:18.400 liberal principles well i tell you when you sacrifice them you don't get them back with ease that's that's

00:52:23.460 what history teaches us so that's and again i know what i'm saying i'm not suggesting that that

00:52:28.620 we do that by the way sorry i know francis no i know you're not i know you know but i i'm also

00:52:32.320 aware that you know there are lots of people who are suggesting they are suggesting and they get very

00:52:35.620 angry at me for not and you know this is why i had to write a whole book about it because i don't

00:52:40.620 think it's something that you can do on twitter i think it's an argument that needs to be developed

00:52:45.180 explained i you know i try and trace the history of liberalism liberal thought what i mean when i'm

00:52:51.640 talking about a liberal system and how that might work i'm talking about those bigger questions um

00:52:57.240 and again like the woke mindset where people get we talked about this at the start they get you get

00:53:02.020 so locked into a perspective you don't want to be challenged you don't want to hear something else

00:53:05.280 i'm saying let's let's actually think about what the implications of what you are uh endorsing

00:53:10.740 might be in the future it's always short-term thinking isn't it you know i i i i i get really

00:53:17.400 troubled by that i i guess the pushback to that is people who go well because of everything that

00:53:24.060 has happened over the last 50 or so years particularly with mass immigration

00:53:27.320 you can say it's short-term solutions but when you're in a state of crisis you need solutions

00:53:35.000 and you need them rapidly yeah because you do because where we're heading is deeply unpleasant to

00:53:41.420 put it mildly i guess my question to you andrew is what would you say to a conservative who said

00:53:46.420 this would never have happened if we had fallen the laws of conservatism what are the laws of

00:53:52.540 conservatism the the the desire to conserve one's own country and culture and as a result of that

00:53:58.840 we would never have allowed this amount of mass immigration in we would never have allowed our own

00:54:03.700 laws and values to be subverted in the ways that they have been just to make it clear france would

00:54:08.160 be totally against that because the food would be shit exactly there would not be a lot of brown

00:54:11.580 women yeah exactly exactly that's his thing yeah it is we could just allow the women in but let's

00:54:16.380 not it's not about my argument even though i'm correct those i thought i'd lie in the mood a little

00:54:23.560 bit yeah yeah but i think france's question is a valid one which is what what is the count the

00:54:28.300 argument to people who would say well look if we just kept the country the way it was everything

00:54:32.580 would be fine well yeah but i mean every every every reactionary in history has always said that

00:54:40.140 can't we just go back a bit can't we just there's a bit in a dennis potter play called brimstone and

00:54:45.580 treacle which i really would advise people see where the denim elliott character is talking to where he's

00:54:50.240 talking to the devil he doesn't know it's the devil but he's talking to the devil and he says uh you

00:54:53.900 know i i just want things to go back before all the immigration before the the devil starts to say to him

00:55:00.080 yeah yeah i'm with you why don't we get the concentration camps why don't we round everyone

00:55:03.580 out why don't we do all that and he pushes him to the point where he says that's not really what i

00:55:07.360 want i just want things to be as they were and it's a really interesting scene because it feels

00:55:12.220 like the conversations that are being played out now insofar as yeah okay we all have a kind of

00:55:17.960 societies adapt and change and it's always going to be uncomfortable but that doesn't mean that the

00:55:23.700 core values have to change you talk about uh the idea of a concern conserving what

00:55:29.920 what is it traditions or uh ways of life ways of life etc you know laws yeah why would that be

00:55:38.380 opposed to the liberal system that i'm imagining i don't think it would be you know if you take

00:55:43.920 someone like george alwell who i i write about in the book quite extensively you know he's a

00:55:48.400 hardcore i mean he's left very far left it's also a social conservative as as just part of him if you

00:55:54.920 read his essay the lion and the unicorn you will completely understand this point that he is a

00:56:00.940 progressive in all of the ways that you would imagine but he also believes in british english

00:56:05.920 identity you know uh fair play the values of a country the traditions of a country those things

00:56:12.920 are not antithetical to the kind of uh the kind of world i'm imagining i suppose and i i kind of think

00:56:18.560 it's never been you know we've never gone there we've never kind of there's always we don't really

00:56:22.820 have a liberal system in this country insofar as we have these hate speech laws we have these what

00:56:28.620 is it what was the last thing saying the last stats 12 000 arrested a year for what they've said

00:56:34.420 online yes that's an incredible uh that that's not a free country when that's happening that's not a

00:56:40.560 free country right we don't we don't that's what we should be striving towards freedom we don't have

00:56:44.200 it really the fact that people are in prison for memes at the moment for memes like what was the

00:56:50.500 one guy who put out three memes the most offensive of which was an image of some immigrants with

00:56:55.440 coming to a town near you i think they were holding knives or something and you know you can look at

00:57:00.740 that and and there's an argument that that's offensive etc prison really what what like that

00:57:06.180 why the guy this week was it this week the guy who policed six officers in his house because of a

00:57:11.260 tweet he'd put an ex-police officer himself and they went around to his house checking what books he's

00:57:15.020 got on the shelf they looked at his books douglas murray's books there that what do they say

00:57:19.160 there's some very brexity books well the majority of the country voted for brexit it's not that niche

00:57:24.520 like this is this is that thing you know the reason i always bang on about the college of policing and

00:57:31.980 the plan that's whole system the fact that they have that they're recording hundreds of thousands

00:57:35.900 of non-crime hate incidents the fact that the home office tells them again and again stop doing this

00:57:40.600 the fact that the high court says this isn't lawful what you're doing don't do it and they carry on

00:57:45.300 and the fact that no government has the balls to abolish the college of policing which is an

00:57:50.020 ideological body now it's a quango so you know i i think we need to get that in order we need to get

00:57:56.580 our own house in order like like none of this is liberal like people people think what the college

00:58:01.620 of policing is doing with its non-crime hate incidents and with its arresting some six officers

00:58:06.440 to arrest some pensioner and whack him in a cell because of a tweet he posted that wasn't even that

00:58:11.320 offensive right they think that's that's what liberalism is the argument i'm i'm trying to

00:58:16.680 outline in the book is it's not that's that's what that's when there's a vacuum of liberalism

00:58:21.480 that's when liberalism isn't there anymore and that's what i want to see look i'm not saying it's

00:58:25.840 going to happen nothing i said no one takes what i say seriously no one no one's going to implement

00:58:28.820 the ideas that i come up with but what i'm trying to do is just persuade people to have those

00:58:32.180 conversations so maybe at some point in the future we might live in a government in a society that is

00:58:36.660 actually authentically liberal and see what happens i tell you what wouldn't happen you

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00:59:47.240 before we we go on to the final question there's something that i wanted to talk about because i think

00:59:52.740 it's a very important conversation to have which is okay wokeness is dying for every reaction you have

00:59:59.860 an equal and opposite reaction and we're now in a backlash yeah what do you make of that

01:00:06.260 well what is it you said constantly because i quoted you in the book on that you said every

01:00:10.320 retardation has an equal and opposite retardation it does and you're talking about the woke right

01:00:14.020 that phrase the woke right which i i've been very surprised at the how upset people get about that

01:00:20.880 label uh have you yeah actually genuinely surprised i'm not surprised at all well maybe you're more

01:00:27.200 keyed into this than i because because you know i see the way people talk to you and james lindsey

01:00:31.780 and the people who are using the term and i've tried to outline what i think woke right it means but to

01:00:37.420 me woke was never about left or right anyway like to me wokeness was i mean i define wokeness

01:00:43.440 as a short term as the cultural revolution that seeks inequity according to group identity through

01:00:49.880 authoritarian means i think that covers it well you can be on the right left or anywhere in between

01:00:55.000 and still be obsessed with group identity and still be obsessed with imposing through authoritarian

01:00:59.720 means your values so wokeness was never for me about left and right and i actually think

01:01:03.480 it went so far because we misunderstood the culture war as a question of left versus right and it never

01:01:08.880 ever was authoritarians exist across the political spectrum they can emerge from anywhere at any time

01:01:14.520 you know you can't pin it down to left or right much as people like to do so and i think when they

01:01:19.140 do that there's a kind of tribalism there it's like i don't want my team to be accused of this

01:01:23.080 right i think that's partly what's going on there to say uh that there's such a thing as woke left

01:01:28.140 people on the woke on the left who are woke and people on the right who are woke makes complete

01:01:31.000 sense to me of course there are identity obsessed monomaniacs on both sides of the political

01:01:35.460 spectrum who want you to shut up who want to censor you want to do and you know they they follow the

01:01:40.120 same template this isn't to me a controversial thing but i'd also say when you talk about your

01:01:44.740 quotation about retardation uh which i know is a very upsetting term for some people but it just

01:01:49.000 means to go backwards retard anyway um so no it does um but but you know yeah so sorry where was

01:01:56.540 i'm talking about this idea of of of wokeness transcending the political uh boundary why is that

01:02:01.700 so upsetting to me well i think it's to do with tribe i think we have i think right and left are

01:02:05.380 redundant at this point so i don't think talking in terms of i think if you for many many years

01:02:11.000 obsessively and i'm talking here about the woke hegemony those who were in control of all our

01:02:16.700 major institutions when they for many many years go on about how group identity is everything

01:02:21.020 race sexual orientation sex these are the things that matter the most gender identity whatever you as

01:02:28.440 an individual matters less than what group you belong to and then you get a reaction from white

01:02:35.180 nationalists why would you be surprised by that you've you've you've laid the groundwork you've said

01:02:40.200 yeah you should be thinking about yourself as a white man and what that means and some people

01:02:44.620 might say well to me it doesn't mean shame to me it means pride and some people will go even

01:02:49.400 further and say to me i just want that exclusive enclave that you guys were describing earlier

01:02:53.980 where we just live by ourselves in a white utopia or whatever the hell but that's why i'm putting

01:02:58.500 the arguments to you because it's that's where the direction of travel on the right is particularly i

01:03:02.920 think among younger people particularly among men right and i think it was as you and i've been

01:03:07.520 talking about for years it was a predictable backlash to what we've had which is people saying

01:03:13.560 identity really matters and by the way you're a white man you're a piece of shit yeah and eventually

01:03:18.740 people are going to be like well fuck you and if i'm a white man i'm not a piece of shit it's

01:03:23.640 actually a great thing and let's all unite around this yeah this fact so it's not surprising i think

01:03:28.300 the reason people get pissed off with the a because it's accurate yeah and b because it's that tribal

01:03:33.900 thing that you said which is um you're basically calling them the thing they hate the most right

01:03:39.380 right okay and they hate it the most because actually at some level that's what they are yeah and

01:03:43.800 no one likes to be labeled right and and you know we've had this for years with woke people saying

01:03:47.520 the same thing like saying we don't like to be you know you're just using it as a snarl word

01:03:50.860 it's just an insult well i've never used woke as an insult i use it as a descriptive shorthand

01:03:56.500 for quite a complex sprawling ideology right that's i mean that's what that's the only reason i've ever

01:04:00.520 done so i don't i think people now taking it as a pejorative they're probably a lot of the people

01:04:04.300 who've used it as a pejorative themselves right and they don't like it thrown back at them but maybe

01:04:08.320 you know it it would be i mean you can reject the label but maybe ask yourself why are people

01:04:13.900 calling me that what what is it about my behavior that make that invites that uh epithet and perhaps

01:04:20.580 it's to do with the fact that you are obsessed with group identity and want to censor everyone

01:04:24.820 who disagrees and think that western culture is over and should be demolished i mean maybe it's

01:04:27.920 to do with that maybe it's the similarities with the very people you've been railing against all

01:04:32.320 these years you know maybe it's the fact that you're dabbling in various discourses online that

01:04:36.420 think well maybe it would have been better if hitler had won the second world war maybe it's all of

01:04:39.720 that stuff you know maybe it's all your constant anti-semitism maybe that's part of it you know but

01:04:44.740 my why you know how how can you not see the similarities between the extreme far left with

01:04:50.120 the way that they talk about jews and the way that i'm seeing more and more i'm not alone in this am i

01:04:54.420 i'm set on the right right it's it's very quick i had the funniest conversation with somebody about

01:04:58.420 this because he was like well the difference is we're right said every tyrant in history well he was

01:05:05.900 like the difference is there's a lot of truth to the things that we're saying you know uh there's

01:05:10.940 there is discrimination against white christians sure and he was like can you can you point to

01:05:15.020 something that the woke left said that was true i was like yeah like black people on average probably

01:05:19.900 don't have quite as good a deal as white people in our society and that's probably a fact yeah i think

01:05:24.160 women on average probably don't get quite as good a deal as men now uh does that mean that the woke

01:05:29.180 left solutions to those issues was correct no no but it's the same like that you know we know that

01:05:35.300 there's discrimination against white people and we know there's discrimination against men we know

01:05:39.220 that there's been all of this stuff quite overt i mean the bbc advertising for just whites only right

01:05:43.920 and not no whites right in their kind of internship stuff but i don't know that the solution to that is

01:05:49.580 identity politics for white people the solution to it i think is returning to the ideas that we were

01:05:54.540 talking about which is treating people as individuals yeah but the counter argument to all of this which is

01:05:59.180 why we were kind of focused on a lot of this is that there are some groups who just are more tribal than

01:06:04.560 others yeah yeah it's and well it's the idea isn't it that how far do we tolerate the intolerant

01:06:09.520 how you know how far do we allow those kind of ideas to flourish when they are when they represent

01:06:14.420 an existential danger to the society that's a really good question and it's a but i don't think

01:06:19.540 the sort of the jackboot sledgehammer solution which let's face it has been tried many many many times

01:06:27.100 and always leads to the same end point which is misery so i just don't think that's the way um

01:06:33.180 i would like to see i would like to see a a conversation about that i mean that particular

01:06:37.960 debate is one i'm very interested in is is and and exactly what you said about what do you do when a

01:06:41.980 society has already gone too far and what you know what freedoms are you willing to sacrifice to try

01:06:47.740 remedy it i mean i would say that if your solution is the uh further state censorship uh the curbing of

01:06:57.020 peaceful protest uh that kind of approach that actually your your desired goals may not be

01:07:05.700 realized i don't think that's the solution i think the one of the area where we should be looking very

01:07:10.900 carefully at solutions is uh having a very very very clear distinction between citizens and non-citizens

01:07:18.840 right and that and that you you would have to and you would satisfy certain conditions to have

01:07:23.360 citizenship not only that i think you should have different rights if you're not a citizen right okay

01:07:28.220 for example i don't think anyone who's a foreign citizen should have access to any benefits in this

01:07:32.860 country okay so that again is a debate to be had and it's certainly not the same thing as you know

01:07:36.940 we're having a lot of those debates in america at the moment with the deportation of students on

01:07:39.860 on student visas yes right well the rules are different and they should be and that's absolutely

01:07:45.680 fine you know it's like you know the analogy that i've often heard used is you know if i invite you

01:07:49.380 into my house and you start you know criticizing my pelmets or whatever i can not perhaps a bit camp

01:07:55.380 but you know i can throw you out it's my house right those people are there on a visa you know i've

01:08:00.420 got a visa now for america if i go out there and start burning the american flag and chanting of death

01:08:04.540 to america and everything i don't expect to be allowed to stay and i think that would be reasonable

01:08:08.720 right so i do think there's different at the same time you can also argue that due process still

01:08:12.640 matters and that you know there are some concerning cases in america where due process appears to be

01:08:17.360 being bypassed and due process by the way is different for people who've immigrated it's not

01:08:21.260 actually as thorough as the right but there's something there there's the opportunity to stand

01:08:25.500 up and make your defense in public that matters right it's possible to have both to hold those both

01:08:30.500 those positions at the same time those who say just get rid of them don't grant them you know

01:08:35.660 run roughshod over all of our conventions just to do it that's not helpful either i suppose is what i

01:08:42.580 would say i think as well the thing that ties the two ends of the spectrum together and a lot of these

01:08:47.940 social justice movements and the thing that i don't think we talk about enough are the emotions that lie

01:08:53.580 underneath it which is to me the emotion of vengeance the desire for vengeance the feeling that

01:08:58.680 they've been robbed therefore we need to make some kind of intervention but it's not only an

01:09:05.940 intervention it's the desire to punish like we saw that with the woke movement whereas these minorities

01:09:12.740 have been discriminated against they've had a terrible time in the past it is the fault of straight

01:09:17.940 white men therefore you are going to be punished and all of those movements wherever it was blm me too

01:09:22.860 etc etc they all had that impetus behind them if we look at what we should term like the woke right

01:09:29.000 whatever you want to call them again it is the desire for revenge it is you have made me feel

01:09:36.200 terrible this for this entire 10 years you've discriminated against me you've mocked me

01:09:40.740 you have reduced my career opportunities and they are right just like the other side are right to a degree

01:09:46.140 as well and then it's the desire for vengeance which just means we're in this permanent

01:09:51.340 swinging back and forth it could be i mean i i'm always a bit aware of trying to mind read trying

01:09:57.360 to work out why people do the things they do it's it's likely that there are people who genuinely do

01:10:02.240 believe in their ethno state idea or whatever the hell it might be there are others who are doubtless

01:10:07.220 fall into the category i mean we've seen them we've seen them online like the whole cancel culture

01:10:11.380 phenomenon was about revenge right well a lot of it seemed to me to be about revenge and then you saw it

01:10:17.000 the reverse you know when when when the assassination attempt happened against trump and that woman

01:10:20.900 from home depot was filmed because she put out some stupid joke about the you know he should have

01:10:25.840 aimed better or something like that the guy went to her place of work she's on a minimum wage just

01:10:30.240 some cashier filmed her went online went viral she got fired that's cancel that's cancel culture from

01:10:36.740 the right it's the same sort of thing elon musk actually put a tweet out saying you know there's

01:10:40.740 a lot i'm having so many requests to just ban uh left-wing accounts i'm not going to do that

01:10:45.000 right so so look vengeance is a human emotion that is a major driving force throughout history and yeah

01:10:52.180 of course that's going to be part of it um for a lot of people absolutely and you know it always

01:10:58.360 happens doesn't it when there's a sense of injustice you want to lash out hence the scapegoating of

01:11:03.500 various groups scapegoating is a is a manifestation of vengeance i think it's what happened in nazi germany

01:11:08.240 you scapegoat the jewish population because of what happened to after the treaty of versailles and you

01:11:12.440 you you see it as their fault and then you know so obviously that's all part of it but that's but

01:11:17.920 that's to diagnose i suppose the uh the the the human um tendency uh towards those kind of impulses

01:11:25.420 um but i would say just acknowledging i think one of the healthiest things to do is to acknowledge that

01:11:32.200 we all have it in us we all have the capacity to seek vengeance it's actually i think we all have

01:11:38.200 i think authoritarianism is the default in in in humankind and i think we sort of know that

01:11:44.480 instinctively because of the way we were as kids you know when someone steals your kinder egg you go

01:11:50.380 and smash up their kinder egg i'm not saying that happened to me but something it did it did occur to

01:11:56.280 me right we know that we are socialized out of that instinct for authoritarianism and so we are able

01:12:03.540 to discuss and not just lash out and punch to talk like adults we know that that's the case i think

01:12:10.200 too often we're assuming and a lot of a lot of criticisms of liberalism actually are uh that it

01:12:14.440 is uh has a utopian idyllic idea of human nature that we're all just essentially good i don't think

01:12:19.320 that's true i think well certainly where i'm coming from is that liberalism is not the norm that you have

01:12:25.040 to kind of fight for it that actually we are we do have a base at animal quality we do seek revenge as

01:12:31.860 an instinct you know i read uh um kenneth williams diaries you know the sort of camp actor and he

01:12:38.500 he says he says at one point he says uh i've just realized that every time i'm wronged my instinct is

01:12:44.420 how and when will i get revenge straight away and like i think i think we all feel that's also why

01:12:49.340 revenge plots work so well yeah that's why you watch kill bill and it's great the wrath of khan best

01:12:54.080 star trek film why because we all get it he's been fucked over he wants to kill kirk i'd want to kill

01:13:00.060 kirk right we all get it so the revenge element the authoritarian element you know like when when

01:13:06.440 people have a good when i get piled on online as as happens every few months i get a weird dog pile

01:13:11.520 thing and it can come from any angle by the way it can come from the far right far left feminists

01:13:16.060 anti-feminists whatever the hell it is uh whenever that happens i do sort of think something in me says

01:13:21.040 i just wish i could shut them up i just wish i could get rid of them right and i know that i i don't

01:13:26.980 want to do that seriously but the thoughts there you know you understand tyranny you understand power

01:13:32.100 you know you understand just making your problems go away making your opponents go away would it

01:13:37.120 matter if that person who's been really horrible to me just disappeared probably not well imagine if

01:13:40.900 you had the power to make them disappear that way tyranny lies i think and one of the key arguments of

01:13:46.980 the book is that we the authoritarian impulse is the default of humankind the liberal countries where

01:13:52.620 you have free speech we have individual freedom those are vanishingly rare historically and cross

01:13:57.340 culturally and historically they don't exist in on in the world today very much we have something

01:14:03.060 very precious in our country we i say we i'm saying at the moment we are living under under an

01:14:08.400 authoritarian government i believe that i think the labor government has extreme authoritarian

01:14:11.420 tendencies i also think by the way the conservative party has authoritarian tendencies i don't think any

01:14:15.740 major western political party is absent of authoritarian tendencies which is why it's a constant battle

01:14:20.860 which is why we have to constantly push back to it and try and strive towards that that or at least

01:14:26.600 try and resist that thing which comes naturally to us so to say that liberalism is a utopian naive view

01:14:34.380 of the essential innate goodness of humankind is to get it backwards i think it's the opposite i think

01:14:38.780 what liberalism is is a kind of armor that we build up against those natural urges that we all have and

01:14:46.520 that we are socialized out of the things that enable us to build up that armor are socialization

01:14:52.540 as i say an effective education and a robust rule of law and of course free speech so that you can

01:14:59.320 challenge uh things like unjust laws when they appear on the statute books it's a constant negotiation

01:15:05.380 it's it's hard it's harder than this is the other thing the authoritarian solution whether it comes

01:15:11.080 on the right or the left is easy it's easy solution you just make your enemies go away you shut them up

01:15:16.820 it's done problem solved that's why it's so appealing that's why you're seeing the right turn that way

01:15:22.520 i mean they always did it before so why wouldn't they go back to it now it just so happens that we

01:15:26.300 live through a bubble where the the woke left were dominant for 15 15 or so years and that's now dying

01:15:30.700 what's going to replace it it's probably going to be a bit of both isn't it's probably going to be

01:15:34.580 elements of the woke left coming back phoenix like in a different form another disguise

01:15:39.360 you know changing their language as they always do so they can work around it and the and members of

01:15:45.580 the right adopting these authoritarian things as well that that seems to me to be the default

01:15:50.400 and it also seems to me to be the easy easy shortcut solution just get rid of well maybe as a society

01:15:59.180 we should be saying well actually let's let's let's accept that it's going to be hard

01:16:02.620 and let's actually have the conversation and not just impose what we want not least because

01:16:10.060 once you set those precedents once you make those impositions the backlash is going to be something

01:16:14.160 you didn't you didn't anticipate andrew before we go to substack what's the one thing we're not

01:16:18.920 talking about before andrew answers a final question at the end of the interview make sure to head over

01:16:24.660 to our substack the link is in the description where you'll be able to see this is spotify discrediting

01:16:31.160 itself by not hosting you know i i'm just enjoying watching it exactly this is andrew

01:16:38.600 if the culture magically became unstupid tomorrow what would you write about there are um enya hasn't

01:16:47.820 done an album in 10 years what's going on there i think that's important her last album was dark sky

01:16:53.140 ireland in 2015 best still can't believe best album she's ever done there's a real snobbishness

01:16:58.160 about it because it's shit this is what i'm talking about this attitude right here is exactly why she's

01:17:03.860 not recording more no because of people like you it's no it's not it's objectively terrible people are

01:17:08.860 really snobbish about pop music right all pop music no i love pop music i love michael jackson i love

01:17:12.900 prince i love but it's all basically dispensable right it's not it's not mozart it's not bach so let's

01:17:17.420 just say you know just because something's a bit cheesy or something it doesn't really it's no different

01:17:21.100 than michael jackson or prince or anything else no that is you can get out also in this but i'm

01:17:26.280 authoritarian you've gone too far enya's got a a beautiful ethereal voice genuinely great singer

01:17:31.420 voice really great musicianship composes wonderful melodies she created a whole sound when you hear

01:17:36.260 an enya song you know it's enya because she did that incredible thing of layering her own voice

01:17:39.380 hundreds of times who thinks of that she's a cheap kate bush she's a cheap kate bush when did kate

01:17:44.680 bush ever layer her voice over 200 times for an album she didn't need to she didn't need to

01:17:49.040 anyway look i can't believe this is the thing that we're getting we're having an argument about

01:17:52.820 but look there's that we need to talk about that i think we also need to talk about education

01:17:58.740 right i think we need to talk about dealing with the educational system so that kids are actually

01:18:02.560 thinking critically i think critical thinking has to be embedded into the educational system it's not

01:18:08.140 there it's not there anymore it really isn't and and i'm not saying have classes on critical

01:18:13.960 thinking where you sit down and learn how to think critically what i mean is it's got to be sort of

01:18:17.660 there all the time within every subject you know you have to find a way that the the fact that

01:18:23.140 that's not there i think explains a lot of our problem and by the way i think isn't education like

01:18:26.860 everything like the trickle down effect of that in terms of the way adults behave the crime rates

01:18:32.260 the success rates the success of a country innovation everything so a lot more needs to be

01:18:38.300 spoken about in terms of education uh i suppose i'm you know i used we both used to be teachers so

01:18:42.960 we have that you know don't get in style you know i know i know but the other thing is the arts i

01:18:47.220 think the arts generally right here's the thing i know so many people in this sphere about who are

01:18:52.540 trying to fight the culture war push back against the culture warriors try and you know weed out the

01:18:57.760 woke from society etc but their priority is never really the arts they're talking you know they talk

01:19:04.400 about politics and they talk about these debates and everything but the arts is the whole ball game

01:19:08.220 i think i think if you know if you have every major film studio and television studio you can't get

01:19:14.220 commissioned on the bbc to write a drama unless you're basically propagating the approved message

01:19:18.560 right so therefore no good tv drama is being made the woke the woke scenario the woke world cannot

01:19:24.100 produce great art it hasn't done so prove me wrong there's no great work of art that has been

01:19:28.440 produced in the last 20 years adolescence was very good it was fine no it was very good no no i don't

01:19:34.260 but that's well-written well-acted you know it was fine it was fine it was a dispensable piece of

01:19:38.860 drama right it's like no well look again like i'm you're talking about popular culture head

01:19:44.320 head on over to substack where we continue this debate

01:19:47.480 do you think the decline of traditional faith in the west has created a moral vacuum that movements

01:19:54.600 like this inevitably rush to fill

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TRIGGERnometry - May 21, 2025

The End of Woke？ - Andrew Doyle

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