TRIGGERnometry - The Truth About Free Speech： TRIGGERnometry Highlights

00:00:00.000 well free speech has been ebbing away on college campuses of course for many years now colleges

00:00:12.720 seem increasingly able to take a joke literally constant kissin is a comedian he's the host of

00:00:17.700 the youtube show triggernometry he was recently invited to perform at a college in london but

00:00:22.520 the group that invited him asked that he sign a contract promising not to engage in any way in

00:00:27.800 quote, racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia,

00:00:33.780 Islamophobia, anti-religion or anti-atheism. That's a long list. What was he supposed to joke

00:00:39.860 about? Well, we've asked him to come on tonight to tell us. Mr. Kesson, thank you very much for

00:00:43.480 coming on. Is that real? Did you make up that list? Is this a comedy bet? No, it's not. It's

00:00:49.980 been very good for my comedy. But actually, if you go further into the contract, they also demanded

00:00:54.460 that all jokes must be respectful and kind,

00:00:58.120 which I think really takes a biscuit.

00:00:59.940 And as you know, I was born in the Soviet Union,

00:01:02.360 and getting this contract made me feel right at home.

00:01:06.560 It's a little ham-handed, I would say.

00:01:09.720 But what is it?

00:01:10.280 I mean, you're a working comedian.

00:01:12.300 That's why I'm so grateful you're on.

00:01:14.100 What is your life like now?

00:01:16.780 Well, it's getting very sensitive,

00:01:18.900 and I think this is obviously an outlier.

00:01:20.480 No one would suggest that every university and college is like this.

00:01:23.480 But I think the reason that I made a stand on this issue is I don't want it to get worse.

00:01:27.900 I don't want this to continue.

00:01:30.180 But it's so striking that this is being applied to comedians, these standards are being applied to all of us.

00:01:35.940 We're all terrified. All of us live in fear and freedom really is evaporating.

00:01:40.480 But comedians used to be the one group that by definition was allowed to be transgressive because that's the whole point of comedy, saying the thing everyone else is afraid to say.

00:01:48.800 Is it ominous? Do you think that comedians aren't even allowed to practice?

00:01:52.740 I think so. I think so. We're the canary in the coal mine. And I think this is why it's gone viral.

00:01:58.320 I think it's nothing to do with comedy. This story, actually, the reason that people all around the world are tuning in and watching the video we recorded of of this is because it's not about comedy.

00:02:10.060 It's about ordinary people up and down the country and here in Britain and in America feeling like they can't say what they think.

00:02:16.140 I've had so many messages from people messaging me, all kinds of people, sometimes women going, you know what, I don't agree with radical feminism. 0.50

00:02:22.840 And if I say that in the workplace tomorrow, I won't have a job anymore.

00:02:26.560 So what it's coming to is the fact that everybody feels like we're we're all kind of under arrest.

00:02:31.880 We are all all everything we say can and will be used against us in the court of public opinion.

00:02:37.000 And they're coming for the comedians first because we're we're the ones that, as you say, are allowed to transgress.

00:02:42.740 but everybody else feels it and that's why the story's got the resonance that it has

00:02:46.640 it's not this is not sustainable this moment thank kevin constant thank you very much god

00:02:51.440 bless you for what you're doing i appreciate it thanks for having me tucker

00:02:54.420 i think freedom of speech is absolute and there should be no restrictions on it whatsoever

00:03:04.300 um no hate speech laws i want to scrap all of those no public order legislation that

00:03:09.680 target speech. No libel laws. I think there should be no restrictions whatsoever. And the best

00:03:15.860 response to speech that is wrong or dangerous or racist or horrible is always more speech,

00:03:22.940 never censorship, never laws, never putting someone in prison. So I'm a free speech absolutist

00:03:29.460 because I think freedom of speech should be completely unfettered and let loose on the world. 0.90

00:03:35.200 So you think, for instance, it should be acceptable for somebody, for instance, an imam to be able to go up on a street corner, stand on a pallet and say homosexuals should be murdered, for instance, for their... 0.95

00:03:49.180 Yes. Yes. And I actually have defended imams who have horrible views about homosexuality or women or whatever else it might be, which a lot of free speech activists, they actually run out of steam when it comes to defending extreme Islamists. 0.98

00:04:03.720 I definitely do, I think, yeah.

00:04:05.120 Right, and they suddenly think, oh, I can't do that.

00:04:07.100 But I think, obviously, there is such a thing as incitement to violence,

00:04:11.020 and that's not a free speech issue from the point of view that

00:04:14.720 if you are inciting violence, you are conspiring in the commission of a crime.

00:04:18.620 So that goes beyond freedom of speech,

00:04:20.140 and then you are part of a criminal conspiracy of some description.

00:04:23.880 But I think even when it comes to incitement to violence,

00:04:25.820 we have to be really specific because that has become a very misused term.

00:04:32.020 I was really struck that the Metropolitan Police this week or last week, they were talking about drill videos on YouTube.

00:04:38.940 Drill is the latest form of grime music.

00:04:41.340 Lots of young black kids listen to it in London and elsewhere.

00:04:44.420 Very violent music kind of praises gangs and stabbing attacks and guns and so on.

00:04:49.800 So it's and people are very scared of it.

00:04:52.020 It's like the new gangster rap scare, but in Britain instead of the US.

00:04:56.200 And the police made this incredibly interesting statement where they said,

00:04:59.180 we're taking down hundreds of these videos because we think they're dangerous. So I think

00:05:03.260 that was an act of police censorship. And they said, even if there is no obvious act of violence

00:05:11.740 that has been incited by these videos, we can still say that these videos incite violence.

00:05:18.180 I thought that was really interesting because incitement to violence now means pretty much

00:05:21.560 anything you want it to mean. It basically just means that you really hate this form of speech,

00:05:27.100 whether it's a drill video, whether it's Jermaine Greer going to Cardiff University and arguing that trans people aren't real women,

00:05:33.500 that's also described as incitement to violence.

00:05:36.080 Pretty much any form of speech can now be described as incitement to violence.

00:05:39.000 So even there, I think we have to be very specific.

00:05:42.240 And I would like to see evidence that the speech in question directly contributed to an act of violence

00:05:47.860 before I would be willing to sanction any form of punishment for that speech.

00:05:52.680 but what's interesting about that is is that that has all that argument has always been with us if

00:05:57.620 you think about the jamie bulger killings i mean 20 odd years ago that was blamed on computer video

00:06:02.760 games if you think about the um the school students in boulder colorado they blamed it

00:06:07.860 on marilyn manson yeah do you think you can ever attribute um you know an act of violence to a

00:06:14.240 particular type of thought or oh yeah I think you can I think you know the guy Mark David Chapman

00:06:23.100 who shot John Lennon was inspired to do so by J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye he really

00:06:28.580 genuinely thought that Catcher in the Rye was giving him a message to kill John Lennon

00:06:32.440 so you could argue that Catcher in the Rye caused the death of John Lennon or Charles Manson and his

00:06:38.860 crazy family were inspired to kill all those people in Los Angeles by the White Album I mean

00:06:43.440 they really genuinely believed deep in their heart that the white album by the beatles contained all 0.99

00:06:48.660 these messages about race wars and the piggies in the capitalist society who needed to be slaughtered 0.99

00:06:54.500 and so on they really believe that and of course you know countless numbers of people have killed

00:07:00.340 because they read something in the bible or they believe something in the quran so it's unquestionable

00:07:05.000 that ideas can encourage people to commit violent acts it's unquestionable that some people will

00:07:10.660 look at a piece of art or read a book or hear a song and think to themselves, this work of art is

00:07:16.340 telling me to do something really bad. But if you were to organize society on the basis that that

00:07:21.960 might happen, then you are basically creating a lunatic asylum in which all of us are punished 0.97

00:07:28.920 on the basis that one or two crazy people might do something stupid after reading Catcher in the 0.99

00:07:33.820 Rye or listening to the White Album. And that would be a deeply unpleasant society because 0.99

00:07:38.600 there's no end of cultural products or artistic things that could be said to inspire violence or

00:07:46.340 hatefulness in one form or another so i but my issue with media effects theory which is this

00:07:53.700 idea that video nasties cause mass killings or video games made the james bulger murder happen

00:07:59.640 or in the modern version because the left the effects theory used to be very prominent on the

00:08:06.200 right among kind of old christian women and merry white house types and very conservative um stiff 1.00

00:08:12.460 people now it's kind of shifted to the left and it's very much more often the left now that argues

00:08:17.580 about media effects theory and will say that lads mags if they're in shop uh on shop shelves will

00:08:24.660 cause men to become rapacious and anti-women or violence against women in films will cause men

00:08:31.400 to commit violence against women in real life so the left has utterly embraced the media effects

00:08:35.840 theory. My problem with the media effects theory is that it presents all people as almost like

00:08:41.720 animals who just look at something and then think I must act on that. And that is a very demeaning

00:08:47.900 view of the vast majority of human beings who actually are perfectly capable of thinking for

00:08:52.660 themselves and perfectly capable of making a decision about what they should do with their

00:08:56.720 lives. So I would be very wary of any justification of censorship that was made on the basis that

00:09:03.100 that we basically are monkey-see-monkey-do,

00:09:06.660 and that we see something or hear something

00:09:08.740 and then immediately feel that we have to commit a violent act on the back of it.

00:09:17.640 My model is non-violent direct action,

00:09:21.240 inspired by people like Martin Luther King,

00:09:24.040 but also Mahindra Gandhi and others.

00:09:26.300 I think their methods of peaceful direct action

00:09:31.300 and, where appropriate, civil disobedience against unjust laws

00:09:35.880 is the model by which all successful movements for social change have won through.

00:09:44.440 But I'm curious about, there will have been other people

00:09:48.620 who would have been watching Martin Luther King marching and seeing those movements

00:09:53.000 who would not have had the courage or whatever it is that's driven you

00:09:57.920 to risk your life and limb essentially for what you believe in what do you think it was that made

00:10:03.040 you prepared to do that to be willing to risk your life essentially for for that well you're right i

00:10:09.120 mean my school friends uh also saw the same images but didn't act um i guess i've just got quite a

00:10:17.800 strong sense of right and wrong um perhaps an overdeveloped conscience um i don't like to see

00:10:25.740 other people suffering you know I love freedom equality justice I love other people I put myself

00:10:32.220 in their shoes if it was me who was being persecuted or unjustly treated I would want

00:10:40.080 someone to help me so when I see others suffering I think well if I want others to help me in that

00:10:46.940 situation then surely I have some responsibility to do something to try and help them and were you

00:10:52.580 always like that were you like that as a kid if you saw something some injustice happening as a

00:10:56.760 10 year old would you try to step in or defend people who can yeah yeah and I don't know exactly

00:11:01.440 where it came from I suppose it's partly from my very strict quite fundamentalist Christian

00:11:06.780 upbringing my parents instilled me in a very strong sense of you know follow your own conscience

00:11:14.380 don't just go along with the mob think for yourself stand up for what is right even if

00:11:21.440 it's unpopular. And, you know, from a religious point of view, be a good Samaritan. You know,

00:11:28.380 don't walk by another side of the street when someone is suffering. So I guess that was

00:11:33.680 part of the fact that impelled me to take up these human rights causes.

00:11:43.840 I do not believe that I have stopped changing my mind about things. And so I think it's

00:11:50.600 um you know the ability to hear other opinions um can mean that i might change my mind and uh or

00:11:58.440 improve the way i argue or just get a new perspective on the world so even from an

00:12:03.280 entirely personal point of view i think it's a peculiar idea to have in your head that you know

00:12:09.040 you at any age say this is what i think and that's it i mean never will it ever change i mean

00:12:13.800 obviously as you get older you're more accustomed to having developed and thought back right this

00:12:18.160 But, I mean, nonetheless, we'll want to be open all the time.

00:12:22.840 The world changes as well,

00:12:24.220 so you need to be able to take account of things that change.

00:12:29.660 Sorry, that seems to me to be so important

00:12:31.300 because this idea that you sort of say, right, this is what I think,

00:12:34.640 I'm never going to think anything else.

00:12:36.200 I mean, you might just hide under the bed.

00:12:37.820 I mean, what does that mean?

00:12:38.620 I mean, you just say, you know, how boring.

00:12:41.300 It would mean that you'd read a book and nothing would occur.

00:12:43.820 I mean, you know, you'd never be able to watch a podcast

00:12:46.480 and your brain work because you'd say no no no no this is what I think and nothing else will you

00:12:51.320 know so for me it's because we all don't we um want to access new ideas to stimulate ourselves

00:12:59.200 to kind of test out and also because by the way there's a lot of problems in the world that need

00:13:03.600 solving and we need as many people kind of addressing them as possible and you need to be

00:13:08.260 open-minded to consider that I think as well that the intellectual life by the way is exciting and

00:13:13.400 And I think that, you know, there's nothing more brilliant than when you read a novel or you read an...

00:13:19.400 I've just read Andrew O'Hagan's essay on Grenfell in the London Review of Books.

00:13:26.380 It's like something like 30,000, it might even be longer, 30,000 words, but it's like a little book.

00:13:32.520 I mean, yes, I learned everything. It's the most perfect essay.

00:13:37.960 It makes you think, it's shocking, it's moving, it reveals new information.

00:13:42.420 it's a brilliant piece of journalism

00:13:44.220 it's a fantastically important

00:13:46.520 way of understanding the world

00:13:48.060 demos have just brought out a new

00:13:50.600 report on nostalgia

00:13:52.360 which is based on the notion that

00:13:54.440 probably people voted Brexit

00:13:56.020 and populism in France and Germany

00:13:58.760 based on nostalgia, a thesis which I

00:14:00.720 completely disagree with, but the report

00:14:02.940 is well written, it's got great quotes

00:14:05.000 in it, I loved it

00:14:06.740 I kind of learnt a huge amount from it

00:14:08.980 so I didn't agree with the thesis

00:14:10.860 and you know and then I kind of bore everyone

00:14:13.640 you've got to read the devil's book

00:14:16.440 as I'm doing with you

00:14:18.140 because you learn things I didn't know

00:14:20.700 it's not feasible

00:14:21.500 so I believe everyone's like that

00:14:24.120 and everyone should be like that

00:14:25.540 and ideas are important because society cannot move on

00:14:28.800 cannot resolve any problems

00:14:30.980 cannot solve the problems of humanity

00:14:34.780 if we're not constantly

00:14:36.540 intellectually open

00:14:38.160 to each other's developing ideas

00:14:40.400 is that people who are brighter than us taking ideas from 2,000 years ago

00:14:44.320 and thinking about how they apply today,

00:14:46.480 people who are not as bright as us but have got an absolutely sharp wit

00:14:50.500 who see something in a different way,

00:14:52.380 people whose experiences are different,

00:14:54.000 which is why, you know, identity politics is one of the great tyrannies of our time.

00:14:57.500 But that's not to say that you don't want to have any knowledge

00:14:59.820 of somebody's personal experience created by their identity,

00:15:03.480 because that can give you a great insight as well.

00:15:05.940 So, of course, the frustration of this kind of stratified,

00:15:10.600 static, dead intellectual climate that we live in.

00:15:14.660 I can speak on this.

00:15:16.300 I know you don't.

00:15:17.980 Don't speak to me.

00:15:19.020 I refuse to listen.

00:15:25.920 We talk to people on the right, we talk to people on the left,

00:15:29.000 and I think it's that,

00:15:31.780 it's the fact that we talk about free speech a lot.

00:15:34.000 I think that's the number one issue that makes you a fascist.

00:15:37.080 That is a problem.

00:15:37.780 And I think, you know, we talk about the tone of the debate on the hard left

00:15:40.960 is some of these terms like fascist, racist and stuff

00:15:43.700 is that, you know, they seem to think that they're like,

00:15:46.900 you know in Karate Kid, the crane kick, you know.

00:15:48.860 They seem to think that that's always going to be the conversation ender.

00:15:51.580 And once upon a time, possibly it was.

00:15:53.580 Problem is, is that you keep rolling it out every single day on Twitter,

00:15:57.100 you know, every single day online for people that patently aren't.

00:16:00.720 It's such serious words.

00:16:01.800 It's such an awful thing to be, like a genuine biological racist,

00:16:06.160 which is probably the worst sort of view that you could hold.

00:16:08.920 So once people see that applied to people that patently aren't,

00:16:13.120 then the word has already lost its power.

00:16:15.580 And that's what I think that they're running up against now.

00:16:17.560 And in a way, and this is a problem for the left,

00:16:19.920 is that some legitimate call...

00:16:22.340 I mean, it is very much the boy who cried wolf, isn't it?

00:16:25.220 Some legitimate criticisms of people,

00:16:27.720 and now people are able to sort of shrug them off

00:16:29.400 because they're now looking at it in a litany of things

00:16:31.900 where people have, you know, again, it's this thing hyperbole.

00:16:34.300 People have tried to get an idea across the line

00:16:36.980 with emotion and guilt trips rather than with reason.

00:16:41.340 And it's a good example of what you're talking about

00:16:43.680 because, like, every time Francis calls Tommy Robinson

00:16:46.520 far right on the show, we get a bunch of people going,

00:16:49.540 he's not far right, he's just, you know, a normal guy.

00:16:52.240 And you go, well...

00:16:52.800 I mean, if he's not far right, what...

00:16:55.800 Right, and I think the reason people now think that way

00:16:59.340 is because that label of racist or fascist

00:17:02.060 has been so debased

00:17:03.540 that no one really knows what a racist is anymore.

00:17:06.860 Yes.

00:17:07.340 Do you know what I mean?

00:17:07.900 Yeah, and I think as well, like,

00:17:09.920 and this is one of the problems in public life,

00:17:11.940 is, like, do you remember when people get accused of being racist?

00:17:14.360 No one ever owned it either, you know,

00:17:16.300 and I'm not, this is not a proven of racism, 0.89

00:17:18.120 but when people say that things are patently fucking racist, right, 0.64

00:17:22.680 or being caught saying stuff that's racist, 0.94

00:17:24.940 like, you know, Mel Gibson, I mean, those phone calls,

00:17:26.780 if you've never, I mean, they're just mind-blowing, right?

00:17:29.340 but if someone

00:17:30.460 just come out

00:17:31.220 and just said

00:17:32.120 you know

00:17:32.460 yeah I'm

00:17:33.320 yeah yeah

00:17:34.020 you know

00:17:34.320 they never say

00:17:34.860 and not only that

00:17:36.200 they always go to the opposite

00:17:37.020 of saying

00:17:37.360 I'm the least racist person

00:17:38.580 you ain't the least

00:17:40.420 you know what I mean

00:17:41.840 you don't use those words

00:17:42.960 Mel

00:17:43.240 if you're not a little bit

00:17:44.680 you know

00:17:45.060 I'm just saying

00:17:45.660 it's a spectrum

00:17:46.320 and you know

00:17:46.840 you're closer to that end

00:17:47.680 than you are

00:17:48.700 that end

00:17:49.300 so I think on both sides

00:17:50.840 it's been fudged right

00:17:51.860 you get the people

00:17:52.500 that are calling people

00:17:53.020 who are racist

00:17:53.440 that possibly aren't racist

00:17:54.400 and then people

00:17:55.120 who are clearly racist

00:17:56.020 like you say

00:17:56.780 going

00:17:57.380 no no me

00:17:58.760 Me? You ask anyone in the tiny community of my wife, right, and they'll tell you I'm a lovely bloke.

00:18:07.400 You know, a person that possibly depends on me being in work, weirdly, they will support, you know, my character.

00:18:18.780 And one of the really unfortunate things that was going on, particularly in the U.S., was that the debate about freedom of speech just became a left-right culture war.

00:18:26.440 And if you were in favour of freedom of speech, it's because you wanted to basically shout obscenities among minorities, 0.99

00:18:31.680 and that the left were entirely just these kind of snowflakes who had no idea what free speech was.

00:18:37.320 It's not really like that.

00:18:38.560 So we got together this series of speakers who we felt really excelled at kind of putting the kind of liberal to libertarian,

00:18:45.720 even progressive case for freedom of speech.

00:18:47.500 So along with our own Brendan O'Neill, who spoke at a couple of events, Stephen Pinker from Harvard spoke,

00:18:52.280 a guy called Camille Foster, spoken on our identity politics panel, Mark Lilla, a few others.

00:18:57.300 And so the whole aim of it really was to try and be upfront in sort of tackling this problem of censorship,

00:19:03.680 of protests against speakers, people dislike identity politics, etc.

00:19:06.900 But to do it in such a way that drew out what we think is some of the more important arguments for it,

00:19:11.200 which I think are classically liberal and even progressive,

00:19:13.740 which at that particular time seemed to be almost entirely absent from the debate, it felt like.

00:19:19.180 I mean, why is it, do you think, that the right wing, you know,

00:19:23.520 the moment you talk about freedom of speech, everybody goes,

00:19:26.800 well, you know, that's just right wing people.

00:19:29.980 And a lot of people would say that there's no problem with freedom of speech,

00:19:34.020 particularly in this country, when you compare it with, I don't know,

00:19:36.840 Venezuela, China, whatever else.

00:19:38.980 Why do you think people associate freedom of speech with the right wing?

00:19:42.900 I think the first thing is to say that it feels like, broadly speaking,

00:19:45.880 the kind of censorship on a kind of state level as well as the sort of censorship you see on a

00:19:49.380 university campus just because of the way things are at the moment it tends to be people either on

00:19:53.300 a campus could just be anyone who's kind of you know to the to the right of center effectively

00:19:57.340 finding themselves being censored because of the political culture on most university campuses

00:20:01.260 and then I think broadly speaking I think people think of censorship ultimately as something which

00:20:05.780 is reserved for far-right nutcases and racists you know and that is there's there's some truth in

00:20:11.060 that. But nevertheless, I think the other aspect to it is there has been this profound kind of 0.59

00:20:16.280 confusion as to first of all, the fact that if you censor anyone in any circumstance, that there

00:20:20.580 is a point in which that will be used against people you happen to agree with. And I think

00:20:24.060 we're seeing that play out in relation to some kind of old feminist finding themselves on the 1.00

00:20:28.180 receiving end of censorship, etc. But the other thing I think is the kind of the sort of historical

00:20:33.860 illiteracy of it, really, it doesn't really take much for a political culture to change. And if you

00:20:39.480 kind of create the means through which what are deemed to be extreme views can be snuffed out

00:20:44.320 either by the state or by you know by campaigns or by university administrations or whatever

00:20:49.940 it won't be long until those same tools are used against you and I think what's kind of interesting

00:20:54.360 about kind of even characters on the kind of US alt-right or at least alt-light is they're

00:20:58.120 increasingly kind of getting people shut down you know James Gunn this guy who was directing the

00:21:02.500 Guardians of the Galaxy series effectively a bunch of kind of alt-light journalists dug up his old

00:21:06.900 tweets and got him sacked because this dynamic say on social media where things you might have

00:21:11.420 said jokes you might have made in the past that were offensive can be used to effectively get

00:21:15.660 you sacked that cudgel can be swung by the other side just as easily so i think it's it tends to

00:21:20.700 be it does i think it's a combination of where the political culture is at the moment but also

00:21:24.460 unfortunately just an incredible kind of short sightedness on behalf of a lot of left wingers

00:21:28.720 these days it feels like that's what i always say on that issue is like once you invent this weapon

00:21:33.180 of destroying people's lives and livelihoods

00:21:36.800 because they made some joke or whatever,

00:21:38.480 you don't get to control who uses it.

00:21:40.800 And I think a lot of people on the left

00:21:42.480 are now finding it being used against them.

00:21:44.140 And I don't agree with it being used in either direction.

00:21:46.360 But I think once you make it legitimate

00:21:48.980 to discredit somebody on the basis of a tweet

00:21:51.880 they posted at three o'clock in the morning or whatever,

00:21:54.800 that then becomes the norm.

00:21:57.480 That becomes the way that war, the culture was waged.

00:22:00.140 No, exactly.

00:22:00.680 I think we're really starting to see

00:22:01.960 that that's going on both sides now you know if you kind of compare the roseanne situation in the

00:22:06.360 us where she obviously tweets this kind of pretty racist stuff effectively um and then instantly 1.00

00:22:11.100 there's this very concerted effort to get a sack you saw the flip side of that with the james gun

00:22:15.000 thing now we could argue who are those two people we find more amiable who we might agree with more

00:22:19.520 and i'm sure where all of us would stand on that to be honest but nevertheless it's quite clear

00:22:23.860 that as soon as you create this dynamic it will be exploited by the other side and it was i think

00:22:29.800 the most um uh irritating thing about all of this is the fact that it's a lot often people who claim

00:22:36.000 to be very radical who claim to be um about kind of really challenging the consensus etc who are

00:22:41.380 very keen on censorship which to me is insane if you go about branding everyone you just like an

00:22:45.940 extremist and insisting they be shut down then if you are someone who's trying to further radical

00:22:50.360 ideas that's something which is an incredible threat to yourself and i think what it actually

00:22:54.080 shows is that vast sections of the left today even though they like to pose as very radical

00:22:59.020 I think the fact that they're so comfortable with censorship

00:23:01.360 speaks to the fact that deep down, whether they realise it or not,

00:23:03.540 they're not actually saying very much that's actually that challenging

00:23:06.700 to the status quo and to those in power.

00:23:08.620 More often than not, they seem to be on the side of people

00:23:10.640 who want to bolster state power to do things

00:23:12.720 and to crush people they disagree with.

00:23:14.940 So I think it's quite revealing on that level as well, to some extent.

00:23:17.300 And do you think students have become more censorious?

00:23:20.700 It's a tricky one, because the last thing I want to do

00:23:22.740 is kind of smear all students, and I think this kind of...

00:23:25.280 I'll do it. 0.99

00:23:25.820 You fucking stay up 1.00

00:23:28.840 You don't do any work 1.00

00:23:30.640 Anyway, sorry, go on 0.77

00:23:32.160 They're lazy

00:23:32.720 The real you's coming out

00:23:34.360 As we do the show

00:23:35.340 Yeah, I know

00:23:36.100 The you kit, mate

00:23:37.220 I think it's definitely

00:23:40.020 The kind of extremes of student politics

00:23:42.900 Are becoming more extreme

00:23:44.640 And they're becoming more vocal

00:23:46.060 And I think the one thing

00:23:47.180 That has really been the difference

00:23:48.700 Is the fact that

00:23:49.520 Where there was always other people in the room

00:23:51.580 Could be student politics

00:23:53.200 Could be people within a university administration

00:23:55.640 who would kind of stick up for themselves,

00:23:58.020 who would say, look, we've invited this speaker,

00:23:59.480 but you can't just on the basis of a small group of you

00:24:01.920 who are protesting this shut this down

00:24:03.460 because there are other people who want to hear this perspective,

00:24:05.380 challenge this perspective, et cetera.

00:24:07.120 You know, university administrations would previously, you know,

00:24:10.660 consider free speech to be a kind of guiding value

00:24:12.660 and would resist attempts to kind of censor.

00:24:15.820 You know, even up until about 10, 15 years ago,

00:24:17.500 there would always be these arguments and these battles,

00:24:19.640 but the extent to which these small groups of campaigners could succeed

00:24:22.840 was always somewhat more limited

00:24:24.500 because there were at least enough people willing to stick up for freedom of speech.

00:24:27.800 I think the big problem is that a lot of these student protesters,

00:24:32.000 these kind of intense identitarians, people who are really thin-skinned,

00:24:35.780 they've been given the moral authority in these situations.

00:24:39.280 People even are really concerned about disagreeing with them

00:24:42.820 because they know the abuse that could be hurled at them, etc.

00:24:45.220 So there's an element, I think, of cowardice on behalf of a lot of university administrations, say.

00:24:50.500 And I think in relation to students more broadly,

00:24:52.620 I think there's a very strong conformist climate, which makes them more likely to either just keep their mouth shut or just kind of leave them to it.

00:24:58.900 So I think that whilst these people have always kind of existed, I think the big change now is, unfortunately, there's just so little pushback against them.

00:25:05.280 And I think that has allowed them to kind of chalk up more wins insofar as censoring people, but also for their ideas to become more and more strange and more and more extreme because there's no one really in the room to kind of temper and challenge them.

00:25:16.820 So what you're saying really is not that students have become more censorious, it's that the silent majority has become increasingly more silent.

00:25:24.520 I think so. I mean, you do start to see those things changing.

00:25:27.020 I mean, because a lot of the work that we've been doing, particularly in the UK, has been directly with students.

00:25:30.360 We've run kind of tours of universities, working with students to set up debates before.

00:25:35.740 We've worked with them on developing our university rankings, which we've done over the last four years, which looks at free speech policies, etc.

00:25:43.040 and there is a growing number of them of left right and neither who are increasingly appalled

00:25:49.460 by this and they kind of recognize that a lot of this really holds them in contempt in particular

00:25:53.560 because if you're going around saying that we can't have this speaker on campus because it will hurt 1.00

00:25:57.280 you it will it will effectively either hurt you psychologically or you might be stupid enough to 0.99

00:26:02.700 be won over by it people are really reacting to that in a kind of visceral way and I also think 0.98

00:26:06.760 because of the fact that the bar for censorship on campus has been getting lower and lower I mean

00:26:11.000 up until about 10 years ago it was really only about kind of far right nutcases that this debate

00:26:15.720 was had out but you know as of a few years ago the stories you're seeing in the newspaper is

00:26:19.420 Birmingham University banning sombreros and I think this has created a kind of visual kickback

00:26:23.860 because it's cultural appropriation because it's cultural appropriation let's play this

00:26:26.920 this oppression bingo yeah what are some other examples of things that have happened I'm trying

00:26:31.820 to think so there's there's a lot around fancy dress which is quite interesting also cultural

00:26:35.180 appropriation it's a strange mix of cultural appropriation cultural insensitivity I guess

00:26:39.280 telling people they can't dress up as gangsters

00:26:41.120 because that's offensive to gangsters

00:26:43.560 that's offensive to gangsters

00:26:44.640 that is definitely a minority group

00:26:46.880 that needs a lot of protection

00:26:48.880 no one's really speaking up on their behalf

00:26:50.940 the gangster thing

00:26:52.780 what's interesting about a lot of these calls to censorship

00:26:55.140 I don't know who they've got in mind when they say that

00:26:57.280 but it's almost like

00:26:57.900 the thing about when people are obsessed with this cultural appropriation issue

00:27:01.480 is that they actually reaffirm stereotypes

00:27:03.620 in a stretch kind of way

00:27:04.760 they're suggesting this will be offensive to XYZ group

00:27:07.960 i think it's the thing that really makes um not so much laugh but worry i guess is the fact that

00:27:12.980 you've even had it seems like so many kind of people in student unions who obviously do the

00:27:17.480 lion's share of this kind of censorship um on campus they almost have so little self-awareness

00:27:22.080 that you have ridiculous situations like no gangster costumes or things that we've been

00:27:25.580 saying seeing recently over the last couple of years which is free speech societies for instance

00:27:29.800 being blocked from being set up and i think my favorite example was a couple of years ago at

00:27:33.440 university of um oxford where a bunch of students got together in response to the kind of censorious

00:27:38.300 climate on campus and wanted to start a free speech magazine called no offense yeah and it

00:27:43.160 was banned from the freshers fair and reported to the police and i think that's just i think goes

00:27:48.960 to show the fact that so much that we see on campus it's so ridiculous yeah it's often tempting

00:27:53.120 i think whether you're a student there or actually just looking on to think why does it matter but i

00:27:56.520 think actually it speaks to how unchecked a lot of this has gone because we're not even talking

00:28:00.480 about things that anyone with a modicum of common sense

00:28:04.280 would think were a problem anymore.

00:28:05.440 It's really gotten that bad, it feels like.

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00:28:29.920 See you next week. Bye-bye.

TRIGGERnometry - December 17, 2018

The Truth About Free Speech： TRIGGERnometry Highlights

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