TRIGGERnometry - The Truth About Woke Indoctrination in Schools - Karol Markowicz

00:00:00.320 Why would anyone want to wage a war on merit?

00:00:03.020 Right, because it's not fair.

00:00:05.200 Merit isn't fair?

00:00:06.180 Merit is not fair.

00:00:07.100 So what is fair?

00:00:08.200 Fair is everybody having the same outcome.

00:00:11.020 We have, in the U.S., we have these gifted and talented schools,

00:00:14.080 and they're trying to limit how many Asian kids get to go because there's just too many.

00:00:19.180 So what is the state of education at the moment?

00:00:22.040 In public and private, it is pretty dire.

00:00:25.640 The woke have marched through our institutions, 0.97

00:00:29.200 and they have taken over schools at pretty much every level.

00:00:32.940 You see this also with pornography in school libraries.

00:00:36.040 That's become a huge thing.

00:00:37.620 What do you mean?

00:00:38.460 What?

00:00:39.220 Yeah.

00:00:39.700 What do you mean pornography in school libraries?

00:00:40.740 Pornography in school libraries has become a giant thing in the U.S. because...

00:00:45.000 What do you mean?

00:00:45.580 This breaks every single safeguarding guideline that I have ever heard.

00:00:54.660 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry, on the road from the U.S.A.

00:01:06.520 I'm Francis Foster.

00:01:07.720 I'm Constantine Kisson.

00:01:08.900 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:01:14.260 Our brilliant guest today is the co-author of this book, Stolen Youth, Carol Markers.

00:01:18.640 Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:19.560 Thanks, guys.

00:01:20.200 Nice to be here.

00:01:20.800 It is great to have you here, and by the way, thank you to our locals for lending us the studio in Miami so we could do this.

00:01:27.040 This is great.

00:01:29.300 Listen, the same question as we always ask all our guests is, who are you?

00:01:33.540 What's been your journey through life?

00:01:34.800 How do you find yourself sitting here talking to us?

00:01:37.360 I'm a columnist at the New York Post for over a decade, and I also write for a lot of other places.

00:01:43.080 And I moved to Florida, which is where we are, about a year ago, very publicly, because I had been a lifelong New York supremacist and really always defended New York City against all slights, you know, real and perceived.

00:01:59.000 And about a year and a year and a bit ago, our family decided that we had had enough, the schools had been closed, the masks had been on kids for too long, the wokeness had overrun everything, reality had ceased to exist for a lot of our neighbors, and we had to get out.

00:02:17.000 So that is how we're sitting here in Florida today, and the book is an outgrowth of that as well.

00:02:24.320 Yeah.

00:02:24.780 And before that, your family moved here from the Soviet Union.

00:02:28.420 That's right.

00:02:28.820 We were thinking about doing this interview in Russian, but, you know, I thought that might be not cool right now.

00:02:32.580 My Russian wasn't going to be good enough. 0.73

00:02:34.000 Francis was fine.

00:02:34.800 I was going to struggle.

00:02:36.180 Yeah.

00:02:36.480 It's also an iffy time to be Russian.

00:02:38.980 Yes, that's right.

00:02:40.300 That's right.

00:02:40.920 So I've been reading the book.

00:02:42.820 I find it very interesting.

00:02:43.900 This is a moment every trigonometry viewer and listener is going to drink because I'm a former teacher, and I was reading about what's happening in education in the United States.

00:02:52.180 It sounds terrifying, to put it mildly.

00:02:54.160 So what is the state of education at the moment in public schools in the U.S.?

00:02:58.800 In public and private, it is pretty dire.

00:03:02.400 The woke have marched through our institutions, and they have taken over schools at pretty much every level. 0.85

00:03:09.160 It begins in teachers' colleges where the teachers themselves are indoctrinated into leftist philosophy.

00:03:17.220 They use Marxist books to teach the teachers.

00:03:19.520 A lot of times the teachers don't even know that they're being indoctrinated, and then these teachers disperse throughout the country and end up arguing things like math is racist.

00:03:28.340 And this is reality that's happening in schools across the country.

00:03:31.720 And I do note that it is public and private because I think one of the main solutions to all of this in America has been school choice, where you get the portion of the funding that would have gone to educate your child in a public school.

00:03:45.540 You could take that funding and go to private or parochial, et cetera.

00:03:49.120 The issue with that is that it's very hard to find private and parochial schools that are also not woke.

00:03:55.320 It's a minority of schools across the country that haven't been ideologically captured.

00:03:59.940 Carol, if I'm listening to this, I'm not someone who is clued up on all this, I don't even know what woke means.

00:04:07.620 It almost sounds like a bit of a parody.

00:04:09.860 You know, the woke people have taken over the institutions.

00:04:12.860 They've brainwashed the teachers.

00:04:15.040 Like, what does that mean?

00:04:17.420 You know, the subtitle to the book is How Radicals Are Raising Innocence and Indoctrinating Children. 1.00

00:04:22.820 What's actually, if I'm a parent, I don't care about the stuff.

00:04:26.620 I've got a job.

00:04:28.620 What's going on in the school that I should care about?

00:04:31.120 So that used to be me.

00:04:32.540 You know, I think before writing this book, I would have said that a lot of this stuff sounds like a conspiracy theory.

00:04:38.420 And I don't know that I thought that I was going to find what we found while writing this.

00:04:43.200 I am a very optimistic.

00:04:45.300 Everybody kind of wants the best for everyone.

00:04:48.040 And come on, you know, obviously they're not teaching Marxism at teachers' colleges.

00:04:51.660 That's crazy, Constantine.

00:04:52.960 So, you know, it ends up being something that's very hard to convince people.

00:04:58.160 And I would have been one of those people had I not seen what I saw in writing this book.

00:05:02.700 So what I say to parents is, you know something questionable is going on.

00:05:08.040 You might not have a label for it.

00:05:09.700 You might not call it woke.

00:05:10.880 Woke is, to me, when leftism meets a forced conformity.

00:05:15.300 That's how I describe wokeism.

00:05:17.860 So the old leftism might, sure, they might indoctrinate your kids or try to.

00:05:23.780 They might try to put in information that is really one-sided into curriculums, yes.

00:05:29.440 But the new wokeism does that and also does not allow stepping outside of the lines whatsoever.

00:05:34.960 They do not allow other opinions.

00:05:36.360 They do not allow other influences or considerations.

00:05:38.740 So while the old leftist teacher might, you know, paint a picture, let's say, of America as being this, like, terrible place where we just, you know, slaughtered the Native Americans and stole all their land and we have nothing positive about us at all, they'll sometimes, they would often present the opposite opinion as well.

00:05:57.140 Now it's like, this is what we believe.

00:05:59.400 We believe this now.

00:06:01.080 And what I say often also is that liberals are hardest hit by this.

00:06:05.020 It's not really conservatives like me.

00:06:06.720 I don't really care what they say.

00:06:07.960 And I could brush it off and that's it.

00:06:09.640 But for liberals, they've gotten to where they're very scared to speak and their liberal teachers are very scared to speak.

00:06:16.900 They don't want to say the wrong thing.

00:06:18.220 They don't want to be ostracized by their tribe.

00:06:22.120 And so you have this conformist thinking that you know has taken over everything.

00:06:27.800 And I think parents recognize it and they might not be able to label it or name it, but they know it's happening.

00:06:33.160 And the reason I ask this is because I think there are quite a few people now who feel this way.

00:06:39.380 Like Dave Rubin had me on his show on this very set yesterday.

00:06:43.120 We recorded it and we're talking about will we ever move to America and why and why not, et cetera.

00:06:48.280 And one of the things I was saying is, you know, the one thing is children's education that is terrifying because you know this as a mother.

00:06:55.940 Like you give birth to this little thing and you raise it, you nurture it.

00:06:59.800 And then, you know, they're not that old when you send them off to be, you know, brainwashed by people.

00:07:07.440 And it is quite scary, I think, for a lot of parents.

00:07:09.560 But I suppose the question is on a practical level, what can you tell us about what children in this country are being taught at school that should concern people?

00:07:18.220 So it's interesting.

00:07:18.860 I lived in the UK.

00:07:19.740 I started telling you guys this before the show started, but I lived in Scotland.

00:07:23.580 And the first time I lived in Scotland, I really loved it.

00:07:27.340 And I moved there because I had just fallen in love with the country.

00:07:31.340 But I moved the first time to study on a commune in Scotland, in the north of Scotland.

00:07:36.880 Open conservative, lived on a commune.

00:07:39.180 All my, you know, flatmates knew who I was and what I believed.

00:07:42.920 And maybe that could still happen in Scotland.

00:07:44.980 I don't know.

00:07:45.580 That cannot happen in America.

00:07:47.200 Not only, forget about the commune.

00:07:48.560 You cannot have flatmates who have different political beliefs than you do currently in the US.

00:07:53.220 It just isn't, like, when you have ads for roommates in newspapers, it'll say, you know, no conservatives or no, you know, Trumpers or no, just no, not anybody who doesn't believe what we believe.

00:08:05.380 So all of that is scary to me, that kind of conformity.

00:08:09.960 I don't know if you guys have gotten to there yet in the UK.

00:08:12.420 I don't know that you worry about what your kids are learning in school.

00:08:16.000 But for me, I have now seen something that I can't unsee and I have to battle it at home.

00:08:21.580 I was telling you that my kids watched your Oxford Union speech because to me, I wanted to explain to them why the rest of the world is not, let's say, focusing on climate change the same way that our 18-year-olds are.

00:08:33.000 And why that matters.

00:08:35.740 So at home, we try to really lay the foundation so that when they go out into the world, I'm not as worried about them being ripe for indoctrination.

00:08:44.360 And Carol, what specific things are happening in the classroom that you would say is wrong and teachers shouldn't be teaching?

00:08:51.740 Well, we have so many examples in the book of things that teachers absolutely shouldn't be teaching.

00:08:56.740 I kind of joke about the whole math is racist, but that's happening.

00:09:01.940 That is actually happening, where if you believe that 2 plus 2 will always equal 4, that is a racist construct.

00:09:11.320 And that is really happening.

00:09:13.060 That is really happening.

00:09:14.260 How insane is that? 1.00

00:09:14.780 Because I see idiots saying it on Twitter. 1.00

00:09:16.840 But when people assert that it's happening in a school, I'm like, is it? 1.00

00:09:20.200 Yes.

00:09:20.600 We trace it to two teachers' colleges.

00:09:23.020 Again, they're learning this.

00:09:24.360 They're learning the idea that 2 plus 2 does not always equal 4.

00:09:28.560 And if you're adamant that it does, that is a racist construct, a white supremacist construct that you believe.

00:09:35.920 So many other things that go beyond that kind of nonsense.

00:09:40.940 But we keep hearing stories in the U.S. of kids being transitioned in the classroom behind their parents' backs, where they don't tell the parents that the little girl has decided she's a little boy.

00:09:51.180 And they give them a new name, and they let the kid bring in other clothes to wear.

00:09:54.780 And we're talking, you know, when you picture this, you might be picturing like a 16-year-old.

00:09:58.520 But one of the recent cases was a fourth grader, which in the U.S. is around 9, 10 years old.

00:10:04.600 Keeps happening.

00:10:05.500 It's not like one story.

00:10:06.800 It's like dozens at this point.

00:10:08.160 And the idea that the teacher can have a secret with your child is scary.

00:10:14.820 And parents should be afraid, because maybe your child doesn't have gender dysphoria and thinks that they might be a different gender.

00:10:22.180 But they could have other problems that the teacher's going to keep from you and decide that you're not worth bringing into the conversation.

00:10:29.140 And that should really scare people.

00:10:30.740 And Carol, look, as someone, again, who used to work in that sector, it's surely got to be a minority, hasn't it?

00:10:37.900 Because just from my experiences of teachers in a career that spanned 12 to 13 years, I can't imagine that many of them behaving in this fashion, if I'm honest.

00:10:48.640 Yeah, of course it's a minority.

00:10:50.320 You know, if we had 50-plus percent of the teachers across the country deciding that your kid, you know, might be of a different gender and not telling you about it,

00:10:59.620 I think that would really be a bigger problem.

00:11:02.560 But it's happening.

00:11:04.120 And so, again, it's like it could be one thing.

00:11:06.980 It could be another thing.

00:11:08.260 At my kid's school in Brooklyn, getting the kids to march for different causes has become standard.

00:11:15.100 They have marched against guns.

00:11:16.740 They have marched against hate, vague hate.

00:11:20.040 They have marched, obviously, for climate change, you know, policies to be altered.

00:11:26.280 And I tell a story in the book where I let my first grader, my middle son, march in this climate march because we had just switched schools after the school year had started.

00:11:36.560 He was already new and different.

00:11:38.940 And I didn't want to speak up.

00:11:40.960 And I would never, you know, it still bothers me that I didn't say anything because my little seven-year-old marched around with an Earth Dies, We Die sign.

00:11:47.540 And then he came up with, like, ideas on helicopters and caves and what he can do to, like, fight climate change.

00:11:53.980 And you wanted my first grader on it, and now he's on it.

00:11:56.760 And, you know, you could see where this grows into anxiety for kids.

00:12:00.400 And that is a giant problem.

00:12:02.480 So many kids have issues because they are told that the Earth is ending and you are tasked with stopping it, little seven-year-old, you know.

00:12:11.680 And what I find baffling is I look at what – sorry, I look at these things that are happening in classrooms in the United States,

00:12:20.940 and it might be more understandable if your outcomes educationally in this country weren't appalling.

00:12:27.500 Well, that's the whole thing, right?

00:12:28.880 Every minute you spend on woke nonsense is a minute you're not spending on math and science and, you know, history.

00:12:35.220 That's a big issue to me.

00:12:36.860 And, you know, being born in the Soviet Union, I think I have a very – like, my kids must be very into academics.

00:12:43.760 Like, I do not play.

00:12:45.440 You know, you've got a B-minus.

00:12:47.760 You're like a Chinese mom. 0.98

00:12:49.080 Right.

00:12:49.100 Well, yeah.

00:12:50.140 I love the, you know, tiger mom, Amy Chow, but I'm not as good at it as she is.

00:12:56.440 But, yes, I absolutely think academics is so important, and I want my kids to be challenged.

00:13:03.460 I want things to be hard for them.

00:13:04.820 I don't want them just skating by, which my kids love to do.

00:13:08.720 I want them to work.

00:13:10.320 And even that is an idea that you're not allowed to have anymore.

00:13:14.360 So, in places like San Francisco, they're dumbing down their curriculums because it's not fair to have, let's say, an algebra class where the majority is white. 0.84

00:13:26.480 And so, because it's not fair, they're getting rid of, like, algebra for seventh graders altogether.

00:13:30.940 And this is insanity.

00:13:33.260 This is crazy.

00:13:34.180 And the lack, so this, I call it, like, the war on merit, really goes hand in hand with this wokeness because it's all one thing.

00:13:42.160 It's all, like, we do it like this, and this is how we are going to push equity, and this is how it works.

00:13:47.900 And your assertion is that this comes from the teacher training.

00:13:53.040 Well, this part of it, yes.

00:13:54.580 But it has gripped so many different facets of our society.

00:13:58.900 Schools is just one chapter of the book because so many other ways that wokeness has woven itself into our world.

00:14:07.500 Again, I don't know that things are as bad in the U.K. yet.

00:14:10.100 When I listen to you, you know, I think that your universities, for sure, are also captured.

00:14:15.280 But I don't know that the rest of your society has been taken over quite as much as ours has.

00:14:19.820 And so another example, and the one that I find just absolutely scariest in the book, like, I think schools, kids, you can, you know, education,

00:14:27.980 you could sort of still reverse, you can do stuff at home, you can build a block.

00:14:32.700 But the scariest chapter for me is the medical chapter where our medical system has been entirely captured by this woke virus. 0.73

00:14:41.760 And so, for example, every year there's like a conference where the best doctors who deal with premature birth babies get together and they talk about it.

00:14:53.320 And they have like the four absolute best who tell you what happened in the last year because things are always changing and improving in the field.

00:15:00.480 And so they recently had this conference about a year and a half ago maybe.

00:15:06.620 And they realized that the four best doctors in this field are white men and you can't have that. 0.97

00:15:13.560 So now they're going to introduce women and make sure that the ethnicity spread is wider on the stage. 0.95

00:15:21.980 But so now you no longer have the best doctors.

00:15:23.960 You have good doctors maybe, but you're looking for other things other than best.

00:15:28.920 And that is so scary.

00:15:30.540 And then in order to get into medical schools, you need to write an essay on how you're going to promote diversity and the rest in your practice.

00:15:40.420 And it's terrifying.

00:15:42.760 To me, that really takes away the ability of a doctor to say what they want to say, investigate what they need to investigate,

00:15:51.840 and really not feel like they have to conform to some ideas.

00:15:56.900 It's such a good point because with a doctor, you don't want them thinking about any of this nonsense.

00:16:02.940 You just want them to treat you.

00:16:05.160 That's it.

00:16:06.040 Right.

00:16:06.360 And the gender thing comes up in the medical thing too, where the doctor has to pretend that they don't know what gender you are for real.

00:16:13.520 And they have to give you tests that don't apply to you because you say that you're this gender and your birth sex is something different.

00:16:22.080 We also keep coming across that.

00:16:24.540 And so just every minute that is spent on this, people are going to die.

00:16:30.680 This is going to lead to death.

00:16:32.080 We might not know it.

00:16:33.080 We might not see it.

00:16:34.040 But it is going to happen.

00:16:35.300 And of course, because a woman having a heart attack is very different to a male having a heart attack.

00:16:41.300 Absolutely.

00:16:42.160 And the dosage that you have to give and all the rest of it.

00:16:45.320 And I mean, a heart attack is a perfect example because someone's having a heart attack, you don't have a lot of time to then go, 0.99

00:16:50.800 oh, I wonder what this person with a vagina identifies as. 1.00

00:16:54.840 That's exactly it. 1.00

00:16:55.960 And that kind of thing is really terrifying.

00:16:58.180 So my co-author is the homeschooling mom of six.

00:17:01.960 I have three kids.

00:17:03.120 I have two in public, one in private school.

00:17:05.480 And she homeschools her children.

00:17:07.400 She pre-reads the books.

00:17:09.100 She doesn't let them watch any modern television or YouTube or anything.

00:17:13.340 I'm much more permissive.

00:17:14.520 And for me, we kind of lay down the foundation at home.

00:17:18.220 We really talk about a lot of different things that we wish we didn't have to be talking about on a lot of different levels.

00:17:24.320 But she'll say that no matter how much she opts out of culture, she can't opt out of her pediatrician's office.

00:17:30.260 And so this, no matter how much you want to pull your kids from this insanity, you have to go to the doctor sometimes.

00:17:37.800 And so you might not be interested in woke, you know, but woke is interested in you.

00:17:42.360 And how does this play out against what I think is a very good system?

00:17:46.500 Again, Dave and I talked about this, the federal system where you can do what you've done,

00:17:51.200 which is if you don't like what's happening in the jurisdiction that you live in, you can move somewhere else.

00:17:55.900 Like, are you able in this country as an American to go, well, I don't like this.

00:18:02.260 I am going to move to wherever.

00:18:04.260 And there I can vote for my school district or whatever to be the way that I want.

00:18:08.520 Is that still possible or is this like you can't escape it?

00:18:11.460 Yes, that is still possible in some ways.

00:18:13.920 But the medical thing, for example, that's a national accreditation society.

00:18:18.200 So it's not a local thing.

00:18:20.160 You can't move to Florida.

00:18:21.800 You might, you just might find more doctors who don't subscribe to this kind of thing and who will do things, you know, in a normal way,

00:18:30.500 even though they've been taught to do it in an abnormal way.

00:18:32.980 You might find more of them in places like Florida.

00:18:36.100 But they have been accredited by the same licensing groups that push this.

00:18:41.840 So, and it's happening on such a wide level that it's tough to find rational, sane doctors.

00:18:50.640 And, you know, even in Florida, we sort of have like a whisper network.

00:18:53.760 Like, is your doctor normal?

00:18:55.140 Can I have him?

00:18:55.980 Like, and that's the, that's how you find your MD even here.

00:18:59.760 And I know you left the Soviet Union at a fairly young age, younger.

00:19:03.820 I think you said you were two.

00:19:05.680 I was about 11 or 12.

00:19:07.700 But I imagine you still know, you're familiar with the idea of living in a society as we would have done it, as I certainly did,

00:19:16.260 where your parents had to fight the, the authorities to prevent you from being indoctrinated into an ideology that they thought was wrong or evil, frankly.

00:19:29.460 Right.

00:19:29.800 Right.

00:19:30.920 Do you feel that, look, whenever you make any comparison with anything, people are like, no.

00:19:35.860 Yes, yes.

00:19:36.400 But you know what I mean.

00:19:37.080 Do you think we're sort of operating in a similar environment now where if you don't agree with these ideas,

00:19:42.980 you have to work so hard at home as a parent just to prevent the children from being basically ruined by the school that they end up going to?

00:19:51.820 So we open with a history chapter in Stolen Youth because there are a lot of parallels to what's happening right now.

00:19:58.720 And I don't know about you, but my whole life people have said like, oh, doesn't this feel like the Soviet Union?

00:20:03.020 And I would be like, no, not at all.

00:20:04.560 Not even comparable.

00:20:05.860 Like, what are you talking about?

00:20:07.360 But the last three years, the COVID years, have really felt Soviet. 0.53

00:20:11.040 And in a lot of ways, you know, neighbors informing on each other.

00:20:15.720 You're not allowed to say certain things.

00:20:17.800 You must word things in a certain way.

00:20:20.680 The spectacle of it, like the Black Lives Matter and like the defund police in the U.S.,

00:20:25.340 like it wasn't enough to say it.

00:20:26.800 You had to put the sign in the window.

00:20:28.180 You had to really say it.

00:20:29.540 So I see a lot of parallels.

00:20:31.880 And so the difference is that my parents would have worried about getting into real trouble if they had tried to tell me the truth.

00:20:39.600 I tell the story of Pavlik in the book.

00:20:44.580 And, you know, my mom still does.

00:20:45.760 Pavlik Morozov.

00:20:46.460 Pavlik Morozov, yes.

00:20:47.860 And he was the, he had told, we don't know which part of the story is true is what I was going to say about Pavlik.

00:20:55.060 My mom does not know which part of that story is true.

00:20:57.780 We don't really know.

00:20:58.220 It doesn't matter which part of the story is true.

00:20:59.840 What matters is this was a story that was held up.

00:21:02.340 This guy was a hero.

00:21:03.520 That's what matters.

00:21:04.140 So he was a hero.

00:21:05.180 He had informed on his parents for hoarding grain.

00:21:09.820 And his family had killed him.

00:21:11.620 So let's just get the background to the story for people who don't know.

00:21:14.680 How old was the kid and when was this, et cetera, et cetera?

00:21:17.460 He was, in the Stalin years, he's around 10.

00:21:21.240 He is, he tells, and again, did he tell on his parents or was he randomly murdered?

00:21:26.700 We have no idea because everything there is a lie.

00:21:29.220 But the story goes he informed on his parents who had been hoarding grain.

00:21:34.640 And then his family killed him.

00:21:36.140 And then in retribution, the state killed his entire family, his mother, his father, his

00:21:41.040 cousins, his, like, everybody.

00:21:42.560 Everybody gets killed in the story.

00:21:44.440 The grandparents.

00:21:45.200 I mean, everybody.

00:21:45.360 It's a very Russian story.

00:21:46.360 Yeah.

00:21:46.600 Everybody dies.

00:21:47.880 And then you call it a comedy, like Chekhov.

00:21:49.800 Uh-huh, yeah.

00:21:51.080 So he becomes pioneer number one.

00:21:53.760 And this is a story that they use to indoctrinate other children.

00:21:57.520 Look, you can be like Pavlik.

00:21:58.960 You can be a boy hero.

00:22:01.560 Who told on his family.

00:22:02.580 Yeah, who told on his family.

00:22:03.580 Family matters far less than the state does.

00:22:06.420 So here's the perfect example.

00:22:09.220 And you could be a hero or you could be dead in a ditch.

00:22:11.360 Like, which one do you want to be?

00:22:13.760 And so, yeah, I think that a lot of the, you know, I'm not saying, again, that we're at

00:22:19.460 the same place in the Western world that the Soviet Union was, but we are in danger of 0.53

00:22:24.660 it.

00:22:25.180 And I think that a lot of the main thing to me is that in the Soviet Union, in China, in

00:22:30.260 Cambodia, and a lot of places that we write about in the history chapter.

00:22:33.580 They could say, we didn't know.

00:22:35.240 And a lot of it is true.

00:22:36.180 They really didn't know.

00:22:37.280 They didn't know what was true.

00:22:38.400 They didn't know what was real.

00:22:39.860 But we can't say that.

00:22:41.360 And part of that is why we wrote the book.

00:22:43.380 We don't want people to say, oh, I had no idea.

00:22:45.640 Well, here's what's happening.

00:22:47.220 You have the idea now.

00:22:48.220 And Carol, one of the things that I find extraordinarily troubling about the moment that we're in is, I'm

00:22:55.680 not saying we ever got to the goal, because we didn't.

00:22:59.480 But the aspiration for my generation, and probably, you know, people older than me as

00:23:04.980 well, was we were in the West, we're trying to get to a society where your race didn't 0.93

00:23:10.780 matter.

00:23:11.380 Yeah.

00:23:11.500 I'm not saying we got there. 1.00

00:23:13.060 There were still racist assholes around when I was growing up and still are. 0.99

00:23:16.620 But that was the dream. 1.00

00:23:18.500 That was the goal.

00:23:19.300 That was the vision.

00:23:20.020 We got that from Martin Luther King onwards.

00:23:21.900 And it was universally embraced as the way that a multi-ethnic society like the ones that

00:23:27.020 we live in should move forward.

00:23:28.420 And now, I think it's fair to say that the woke ideology has the opposite view.

00:23:35.760 Race matters a lot to people.

00:23:38.220 So what do you, how do you talk to your kids about that?

00:23:43.020 Like, if all they see from the outside is race, race, race, race really matters, how do

00:23:49.140 you teach them about it?

00:23:51.260 How do you talk to them about it?

00:23:52.140 We try to have really honest conversations with them.

00:23:54.840 And that's the thing.

00:23:55.560 Parents are so awkward and they're so afraid of saying the wrong thing to their own kids.

00:24:00.240 I'm not afraid of that.

00:24:01.680 And neither is my husband.

00:24:03.060 I think we talk to our kids about how much character matters and how the color of somebody's

00:24:08.980 skin is irrelevant.

00:24:11.540 And so many different ways that we try to bring home the idea that you're not going to be colorblind.

00:24:17.960 It doesn't mean that you don't see race.

00:24:20.420 Of course, you see race, but you treat everybody the same and you don't, you know, treat anybody

00:24:25.880 differently because of their race in a positive or a negative way.

00:24:30.060 And I think it's crazy that we've moved away from that.

00:24:32.420 That used to be, you know, it was, it was the gold standard of it.

00:24:35.440 Again, you're right.

00:24:36.400 We didn't get there.

00:24:37.260 I'm not saying that we lived in some like racism-free society. 0.98

00:24:40.200 That's ridiculous.

00:24:40.820 But we were heading towards something better and now we're heading towards something far 0.95

00:24:46.340 worse.

00:24:46.980 What are we heading towards, Carol?

00:24:48.520 We're heading towards race being the absolute number one most important thing about you.

00:24:53.140 And, you know, what's interesting about that is it's happening to white people too.

00:24:57.960 So it is leading to an increase in like white supremacist groups, et cetera.

00:25:03.480 If you tell people your race is the most important thing about you, people are going to believe 1.00

00:25:07.240 you.

00:25:07.560 And so, you know, I, I, I like to say to my kids, you know, we're Jewish.

00:25:12.460 So I'm like, I don't know.

00:25:13.400 Are we white?

00:25:14.000 Like, who knows that this, you know, today we might be, yesterday we weren't.

00:25:18.660 And so race really doesn't matter.

00:25:21.060 It's who you are.

00:25:22.000 And I know as cheesy as that sounds, like that's the message we should be delivering to

00:25:26.440 children.

00:25:27.180 It absolutely should be.

00:25:28.260 And also as well, the discrimination against Asian people, particularly when it comes to

00:25:32.840 colleges.

00:25:33.500 Terrible.

00:25:33.960 It's mind boggling.

00:25:34.820 It's going, you can't do this.

00:25:36.240 Right.

00:25:36.440 And it's spiraling past colleges.

00:25:39.060 So the thing is that there are so many books about, um, the way the colleges have been

00:25:43.380 this, had this ideology, ideologically captured.

00:25:46.280 Um, but it's happening everywhere now we have in the, in the U S we have these like gifted

00:25:50.380 and talented schools and they're trying to limit how many Asian kids get to go because

00:25:55.520 there's just too many, too many, you know, like the tiger moms are doing just too good 1.00

00:25:59.280 a job.

00:25:59.800 Um, and it's interesting, like, you know, that they used to limit how many Jews could

00:26:05.200 go to different colleges for similar reasons.

00:26:08.020 They still do, but to a lesser extent.

00:26:10.960 Um, but now you won't even see Jewish kids at these G and T schools because priorities have

00:26:15.600 changed.

00:26:16.060 And, but you will see Russian Jews and they're, you know, they're pushing the same thing that 0.99

00:26:20.640 the Asian parents are that, that, you know, academics matters a lot and we expect high

00:26:25.400 things from you and we want you to work hard.

00:26:27.320 Um, and some, taking this away from people because they have the wrong skin color, because

00:26:31.980 you didn't get the right mix of skin color is just absurd.

00:26:36.020 How have we got to this place where even something, I mean, that to me is nuts.

00:26:41.540 The fact that you, you literally say to someone, you pass every, every one of our standards,

00:26:48.000 but you can't come in because you're Asian.

00:26:51.480 Right.

00:26:52.080 Well, they don't end up saying it to them.

00:26:54.060 Um, so there was a giant scandal in the U S, um, a few months ago, like three or four

00:26:58.680 months ago where there's a school, um, in Virginia called the Thomas Jefferson.

00:27:03.860 And it was like the premier gifted and talented school, um, and high Asian population.

00:27:10.100 The principal of several schools didn't tell kids that they had qualified for a national

00:27:15.980 merit scholarship because they were embarrassed that the majority of the kids who had qualified

00:27:20.500 were all Asian and there just wasn't a good racial mix.

00:27:23.580 So they didn't tell these kids that they were going to get money for college.

00:27:26.720 It's like, to me, that should be the huge story.

00:27:30.960 Even today, it should just be every day.

00:27:32.700 Like they took away something from kids because they were the wrong race.

00:27:35.880 And it was, it was a story for a few days.

00:27:38.440 The governor, um, passed some rule, Republican governor passed a rule that now you must tell

00:27:44.020 them what, if they qualified for a national merit scholarship, like, okay, that's, I guess

00:27:48.720 that's something, but it's not really making the kind of changes that we should be making.

00:27:53.340 Well, it's because it's reflecting a much deeper thing that's going on in society, which

00:27:56.960 is the re-racialization of society.

00:27:59.400 And that, that's where we come back to your point about the war on merit.

00:28:03.580 Why would anyone want to wage a war on merit?

00:28:06.180 Right.

00:28:06.720 Because it's not fair.

00:28:08.320 Because it's not, merit is not fair.

00:28:10.220 So what is fair?

00:28:11.360 Fair is everybody having the same outcome.

00:28:13.900 That's fair.

00:28:14.420 That's, well, that's the word that they use.

00:28:16.060 They use equity, right?

00:28:17.140 Right.

00:28:17.280 It's not equality.

00:28:18.280 Equity is, uh, a standardization of outcomes.

00:28:21.480 It's not about how much work you put in.

00:28:24.240 It's everybody comes out the same.

00:28:26.140 I have three kids.

00:28:27.160 They could not be more different.

00:28:28.560 I will be shocked if they end up anywhere near the same, uh, with, you know, outputs.

00:28:33.920 And they're going to have, I'm sure they're all going to do great, but they're going

00:28:36.520 to do great in completely different ways.

00:28:38.420 And if I tried to apply the equity standard to them, like you three must all come out 0.98

00:28:43.140 virtually the same, it would be a tough, tough haul.

00:28:46.180 Well, Thomas Sowell makes this point a lot, which is how can you possibly expect equity

00:28:49.800 in society when you can't expect equity within people who share the same genetic base.

00:28:55.480 Right.

00:28:55.680 Um, but this, this is also another thing that reminds me of the Soviet Union.

00:29:00.760 I mean, one of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed was the, the fall of the terrible

00:29:04.820 productivity that is produced by a system in which you're not rewarded.

00:29:07.980 Right.

00:29:08.840 For merit.

00:29:09.820 Yeah.

00:29:10.320 And the impact of that sort of mindset on a society, I mean, you've talked about doctors

00:29:15.720 and that's, that's an obvious kind of cold face scenario, but everywhere, if, if you run

00:29:21.500 a business by, I mean, we saw it and we saw it in the UK, you know, with the comedy industry,

00:29:25.780 um, mock the week, which was a huge TV program, comedy program in the UK, the mass report,

00:29:32.360 which I, I worked on for a bit, uh, a, a bunch of them, uh, I basically have died and a big

00:29:38.920 part of the reason is they, they went Uber into sort of left-wing politics instead of

00:29:43.000 doing jokes.

00:29:43.800 Right.

00:29:44.020 Uh, but also it's, I think it's objective, objectively a fact that they picked people

00:29:50.580 to work on the show based on their demographic characteristics and not on their talent.

00:29:55.820 Right.

00:29:55.960 And those shows don't exist anymore.

00:29:57.940 Yeah.

00:29:58.120 And I wouldn't want to be picked because I'm a woman.

00:30:00.780 I like that was just, I would just find that so insulting.

00:30:03.040 I would want to be the best at whatever it is I'm doing.

00:30:06.360 I don't want to be, you know, oh, we gave the woman a job. 1.00

00:30:09.940 Um, I find that really, you know, um, insulting.

00:30:13.360 And so again, I have a daughter and two sons.

00:30:16.040 I'm teaching them that they all better work and that they have to, you know, produce and

00:30:22.260 be at their very best and not just expect doors to open for them.

00:30:27.020 You know, the sons, forget it.

00:30:28.320 They're nobody's opening doors, but my daughter, I'm like, you know, I'm not waiting for somebody

00:30:31.900 to offer her opportunities just because she's a girl.

00:30:34.840 And actually she turned down an opportunity where, um, there was a, she's on a robotics

00:30:39.920 team.

00:30:40.520 They didn't make it to States.

00:30:41.620 And then she was invited to join another robotics team because they needed a girl. 0.61

00:30:45.160 And she was like, no, thanks.

00:30:46.340 Like, I don't want to be the girl on your team. 1.00

00:30:48.840 What does this do to kids when you effectively say to them, it doesn't matter how hard you work,

00:30:53.200 you're either going to achieve because you come from a certain ethnic background or you're

00:30:57.560 not going to achieve.

00:30:58.800 I really think it messes them up and, and not just, you know, not just about the merit

00:31:03.360 thing, but just in every way, if you're told that your accident of birth is all that matters

00:31:09.700 about you and things that you had absolutely no control over is, is what's important.

00:31:14.640 Um, I think, you know, one of the things that I believe why so many teenagers are non-binary 1.00

00:31:21.400 now or, you know, switching their gender, I think it's because they don't have any, you 1.00

00:31:25.700 know, points in the, in the oppression meter and they want some.

00:31:29.620 So non-binary is a really easy way to get some. 1.00

00:31:33.020 You don't even need to change anything.

00:31:34.240 You just have everybody call you some new pronouns and now you're oppressed.

00:31:38.420 Now you get to be part of the club.

00:31:40.740 And I always say that if this was happening when I was a teenager, no doubt in my mind,

00:31:46.340 you guys would have to be calling me some pronoun you've never heard of before.

00:31:49.580 I would, oh, I'd make it up every day.

00:31:51.800 I would have my teachers, I can control my, well, my teachers call me every day, every

00:31:56.040 day I can come in and say I'm something else.

00:31:57.980 Sure.

00:31:58.480 I would do it.

00:31:59.240 Yeah.

00:31:59.660 And a lot of power.

00:32:00.740 And you also think as well, what's going to happen to this generation when they go into 0.99

00:32:04.220 the world of work?

00:32:05.720 Well, we used to think that, and then they went into the world of work and the world of work

00:32:09.100 conformed to all this nonsense.

00:32:10.420 And so I don't know.

00:32:12.640 It's more like, what is the world of work going to, what's going to happen to them when

00:32:16.220 this new generation who have pronouns that literally we have not heard of yet goes to

00:32:21.940 work?

00:32:22.580 So that's the problem is that this capture has happened on so many different levels that

00:32:30.160 I think that these people are running the place.

00:32:33.460 What's interesting is, and we point this out a lot in the book, and really I know I'm a

00:32:37.300 huge bummer usually, but this is like my real optimistic point, is that they're still a real

00:32:42.120 minority.

00:32:42.940 They're just really loud and they're able to assert their dominance and they're able to

00:32:49.320 push the kind of conformity that they require in order for this to work.

00:32:54.020 If people in mass said no, if the Bill Mares and, you know, the other liberals who know that

00:33:02.280 this is crazy would be more vocal in pushing back, this could end tomorrow.

00:33:07.200 But people are not brave.

00:33:08.700 They're afraid.

00:33:09.360 They don't want to be called out.

00:33:10.540 They don't want to be ostracized or shunned or called names.

00:33:13.580 And so they don't.

00:33:14.360 And, you know, I think that's going to be step one.

00:33:17.620 Well, one of the elements of the book is the idea of erasing innocence.

00:33:22.640 And the thing that I see that makes me want to get the flamethrower out, frankly, is...

00:33:28.520 That's a metaphor, by the way. 0.98

00:33:29.840 No, it's fucking literal. 0.98

00:33:31.720 I want to get the flamethrower. 0.99

00:33:32.900 When I see a drag queen in a G-string twerking in front of kids, I want to get the flamethrower 1.00

00:33:38.420 out.

00:33:38.660 Yeah, I get that because, you know, this conversation started with drag queen's story hour at your

00:33:45.260 local library.

00:33:46.380 And, you know, it's interesting because I think that a lot of parents at the time were

00:33:50.980 like, oh, what's the big deal? 0.91

00:33:51.940 It's like a clown reading to your kids. 0.99

00:33:53.320 Like, who cares? 0.82

00:33:54.960 And then it spiraled into this G-string thing where when's the last time you saw them read

00:33:59.560 a book to kids?

00:34:00.460 Like, this drag queen story hour has turned into drag queen twerking hour, and we're supposed 0.98

00:34:05.680 to just accept it.

00:34:06.520 And there's so many examples like that where the slippery slope is just... does not allow

00:34:12.400 for any kind of middle ground.

00:34:14.360 I think that, you know, in the past, I would have said, like, oh, I'll call people whatever

00:34:19.060 pronoun they ask me.

00:34:21.080 But then it went to they, and that's already iffy.

00:34:23.540 And then they went to, like, zher, and I don't even know what that is. 0.98

00:34:26.100 And now, like, there are literally just so many others.

00:34:29.060 You can't keep playing this game.

00:34:30.780 You have to say no early now.

00:34:32.500 And it sucks because, like, I don't think I cared when drag queen story hour first hit. 0.88

00:34:38.380 I think I thought, you know, who cares? 0.83

00:34:40.240 If parents want to take their kids to this, whatever.

00:34:42.560 But now when I see that, you know, the G-string twerking, I'm like, no, make that illegal

00:34:46.520 right now.

00:34:46.860 And where is that coming from?

00:34:48.300 Because I don't understand.

00:34:50.320 I don't, I don't, I'm getting old.

00:34:53.180 I don't understand.

00:34:54.520 Why?

00:34:55.380 Why do children need to be exposed to obviously sexualized behavior?

00:35:02.200 I don't care if it's a drag queen. 1.00

00:35:03.840 I don't care if it's a stripper. 1.00

00:35:05.360 I don't care if it's the metal work teacher.

00:35:07.860 It's never going to be a stripper.

00:35:09.420 That's the whole thing.

00:35:10.260 They get it.

00:35:10.780 They get you or they get other people to say that this is OK through using LGBT, you know,

00:35:17.740 community, basically.

00:35:19.480 Right, because if you've got Stormy Daniels to turn up in a G-string, nobody would be

00:35:22.480 like, oh yeah, this is important.

00:35:23.920 Right, nobody thinks it's OK for a woman to, you know, dance around in six-inch heels 1.00

00:35:29.540 in a G-string for kids.

00:35:31.000 But a man dressed as a woman becomes OK. 0.99

00:35:33.860 You see this also with pornography in school libraries.

00:35:36.980 That's become a huge thing.

00:35:38.660 What do you mean?

00:35:39.380 What?

00:35:40.140 Yeah.

00:35:40.620 No, no.

00:35:40.760 What do you mean pornography in school libraries?

00:35:41.660 Pornography in school libraries has become a giant thing in the U.S.

00:35:45.640 Because.

00:35:45.900 What do you mean?

00:35:46.520 Parents keep finding pornography in their kids' school library.

00:35:50.600 What do you mean by pornography?

00:35:52.360 I mean, you, it would shock you.

00:35:54.900 Not like, not like, you know, spreads.

00:35:56.320 I mean, you haven't seen his phone, but.

00:35:59.100 Just a joke. 0.54

00:36:00.120 It's just, it's books that literally talk about, show pictures of sex acts, but the sex.

00:36:07.820 Hold on, but look, when I was a kid, my parents, when I was a teenager, gave me a book which

00:36:12.040 was educational about sex. 0.99

00:36:13.500 Did it have somebody on their knees and giving oral sex? 1.00

00:36:18.120 Uh, no. 1.00

00:36:18.880 No.

00:36:19.140 No.

00:36:19.420 Right.

00:36:19.840 So, no.

00:36:20.880 Um, and did it have, like, sexting in it where two boys sext each other dirty pictures

00:36:26.740 or ask for really graphic things to be sent to them?

00:36:31.120 It didn't.

00:36:31.720 And you would be, again, you would be shocked, and it's happening at elementary schools.

00:36:37.240 So, in the U.S., again, that's till fifth grade, that's 11, 12 years old is where elementary

00:36:42.800 school ends.

00:36:43.920 In Florida, Governor DeSantis has made, you know, made them go through all the libraries,

00:36:49.320 and for this he's called a book banner, and remove a certain, uh, these books that they

00:36:54.520 know that exist, right?

00:36:55.880 So, he sent out, um, so he had a press conference where he was talking about what books they were

00:37:00.980 getting rid of, and he started reading from these books, and news channels had to pull

00:37:04.620 away from his press conference because they can't show that on TV.

00:37:07.580 They can't have that language on TV.

00:37:09.180 But you can't show that to 10-year-olds. 0.51

00:37:10.580 But you can't show that to 10-year-olds, and the quirk here is it's always, always a gay 1.00

00:37:16.420 story because, you know, you can't show straight sex at that age to kids, but somehow it becomes

00:37:24.180 okay when it's a gay story, and this is how they are able to protect themselves from a 0.89

00:37:30.300 lot of criticism because, you know, we're just showing LGBT youth, um, you know, stories

00:37:35.560 about them, and this, if you have a problem with this, you're a bigot.

00:37:39.060 Carol, you're not making this up, are you?

00:37:40.580 Swear.

00:37:41.480 I'll, I'll send you, I will, you can, you're, I don't know if you're going to be able to

00:37:44.760 post the pictures, but you will be, look up pornography elementary schools, Florida.

00:37:51.100 I mean, I don't want that in my Google history, but.

00:37:54.180 Anton's our producer, mate, we're going to do that on your phone.

00:37:56.660 You have a look, mate.

00:37:57.660 All right, yeah, I hear you.

00:38:00.080 But we use the word they, and I think this is really important to specify.

00:38:03.920 Who are they?

00:38:05.280 There's a lot of theys. 1.00

00:38:06.280 Um, I know, I know that they, it seems like, um, I'm just, I'm calling out some group that

00:38:12.860 doesn't, some shadowy group that doesn't exist.

00:38:14.800 But there's, it comes from a lot of different places.

00:38:16.680 Um, so one of the examples, again, with one of these pornographic books, um, they're a,

00:38:23.540 a, a 11-year-old boy, I think, around that age, got up at a school board meeting, started

00:38:28.120 reading from this book.

00:38:28.820 Again, they're all shocked, like, please stop speaking. 0.77

00:38:30.860 That's really disgusting.

00:38:31.640 And they're like, he's like, I got this in my elementary school library.

00:38:34.860 He got it from the librarian.

00:38:37.220 The librarian offered him this book and then said, if you like it, I have others like it.

00:38:42.260 Um, yeah, this is, again, happening where it's at every level.

00:38:46.920 We have a chapter on libraries and book publishing where, again, super woke, completely ideologically

00:38:53.500 captured and pushing a very specific agenda.

00:38:56.520 This, and I'll look, I'm looking at it through a UK teacher's lens and I go back to my training.

00:39:04.320 This breaks every single safeguarding guideline that I have ever heard, that I've ever heard.

00:39:11.060 Because if someone told me that a boy in my class or a girl, it doesn't matter, was getting

00:39:16.080 content or books which have sexual connotations and pornographic, that to me is grooming.

00:39:25.200 And I would have to report it.

00:39:26.520 And if I didn't report it, I would get in trouble, quite rightly so.

00:39:30.720 It's absolutely grooming.

00:39:32.100 And it's grooming them to not have a perspective on what safety is.

00:39:37.560 Not being able to say, this doesn't feel right to me, because you're supposed to be okay

00:39:41.480 with all of it.

00:39:42.660 You must see these books, because the fact that you haven't seen these, I don't know if,

00:39:47.020 again, I would love to hear if this is happening in UK schools once you see the book titles,

00:39:51.360 because they're really common here.

00:39:52.620 It's not like two schools found it.

00:39:55.040 It's like dozens and dozens of schools founded just in Florida and in other states.

00:39:59.920 And it's everywhere.

00:40:02.840 Sorry, Francis, just to follow up on that.

00:40:05.840 We, as far as, I mean, I didn't know you had this here.

00:40:09.200 I don't know if we have in the UK.

00:40:11.000 We did have some kind of, a show that was marketed to families with children.

00:40:19.100 It was called, I think, the Family Sex Show. 0.97

00:40:21.220 Sex Show, yeah. 0.99

00:40:22.040 Family Sex Show. 0.97

00:40:22.860 In which the actors were encouraged at one point to remove items of clothing up to and 0.66

00:40:31.460 including full frontal nudity. 0.99

00:40:33.120 And I still remember when we talked about it on the show, the lines were, I have a penis 1.00

00:40:39.640 in my pants. 1.00

00:40:40.640 Touch it, touch it, touch it.

00:40:42.040 God.

00:40:43.420 Yeah.

00:40:43.640 And where is this, where is this, why, where, why is this happening?

00:40:49.660 Why is this happening?

00:40:50.280 I feel like, why is it happening?

00:40:51.580 Why is it happening?

00:40:52.620 Who wants to, who is it?

00:40:54.140 Look, I'm sorry.

00:40:55.340 In my day, if somebody wanted to sexualize children, we knew what that was, right?

00:40:59.160 We had a name for those people and we tried to arrest them and put them in prison, right?

00:41:02.940 Why is this happening now in our society?

00:41:05.340 So, again, why it's happening is to, it is to end up with these kids being messed up.

00:41:12.880 I know that that sounds, I know how it sounds.

00:41:15.320 I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory.

00:41:16.720 Who would want to mess up kids? 1.00

00:41:18.060 But look, in all these totalitarian societies, that was the goal, to unbalance the family,

00:41:22.360 to make the kids all messed up and make them easier to control.

00:41:26.100 So, even though that sounds like something that is crazy, like who would want to harm kids,

00:41:30.460 this is something that has happened throughout history in so many other places.

00:41:33.920 It's just unique that it's happening here and now.

00:41:37.340 And then the idea of removing the kids' barriers and making them more awake, woke to everything

00:41:45.300 that's going on is absolutely part of it.

00:41:48.100 You know, why have kids protest?

00:41:49.940 Why have kids do any of this?

00:41:51.380 Why have kids learn about grown-up topics?

00:41:54.180 It's all to remove, like, the barrier of this is not for kids.

00:41:59.240 This is not okay to do to children.

00:42:01.540 And once you move that barrier and kids become your little activists who can be, any agenda

00:42:06.700 could be pushed, they're really hard to argue with.

00:42:09.040 Look at the climate, you know, Greta, it's impossible to argue with her. 1.00

00:42:12.240 It's getting easier as she gets older.

00:42:13.700 But who's going to argue with her when she was, like, a, you know, adorable little crazy 1.00

00:42:18.180 teenager?

00:42:19.020 And it's, we have that with gun control in the U.S. too.

00:42:22.300 Like, the teenagers who speak out on guns, they're impossible to challenge because they're

00:42:27.580 kids and you don't want to argue with children.

00:42:29.120 And this is the thing that ends up happening.

00:42:31.860 Carol, do you think as well, maybe we're projecting a bit too much.

00:42:35.220 I'm not talking about the pornographic stuff because that's vile.

00:42:39.080 But I'm talking about the other things.

00:42:40.960 Is it just that these people see that they are, to quote what they always say, on the

00:42:46.120 right side of history?

00:42:47.600 And that being the case, it's only right that we teach kids about what it means to be on

00:42:52.280 the right side of history.

00:42:53.360 Then the whole kind of indoctrination and mind control.

00:42:56.660 Do people really think that deeply?

00:42:58.220 I'm going to be honest with you, I don't think they do.

00:43:00.320 I think the reason this ideology is so powerful is it makes you feel good.

00:43:05.560 It makes you feel you're doing the right thing.

00:43:07.020 And if you feel you're doing the right thing and you feel good, then you're going to spread

00:43:11.260 it, aren't you?

00:43:11.900 Right.

00:43:12.180 But so which part?

00:43:13.100 Like, you're saying the drag queens or gender ideology?

00:43:14.900 No, no, not the drag queens. 0.96

00:43:16.280 No, not the drag queens. 1.00

00:43:16.860 So I don't know.

00:43:17.200 Right.

00:43:17.640 I'm willing to believe you.

00:43:19.020 And again, I'm so, I'm...

00:43:20.700 But for instance, like with the climate.

00:43:22.100 If you genuinely believe that we're in a climate emergency, then why wouldn't you teach kids?

00:43:27.200 Do you see what I mean?

00:43:27.940 Why?

00:43:28.340 Why would you teach kids that the earth might end soon?

00:43:30.720 Like, what are they going to do about it other than not sleep at night?

00:43:33.200 Like, I don't know.

00:43:34.520 No, no.

00:43:34.800 They're going to stop using plastic straws.

00:43:36.800 Right.

00:43:37.020 And everything's going to be fine.

00:43:38.140 Right, right.

00:43:38.940 And when Britain can, you know, I love referring to your speech, but when it sinks into the

00:43:42.680 sea and nobody cares, like that, it's still not going to make a dent in climate change.

00:43:47.040 So there's no real purpose of teaching kids about adult issues unless you want them to

00:43:53.260 stress and worry about it because they can't do anything.

00:43:56.480 Again, I can send you my son's, you know, plan from when he was seven years old and how

00:44:00.760 we're all going to live in caves.

00:44:02.040 And that's what they end up coming up with.

00:44:04.580 They're not like the smartest, these seven-year-olds.

00:44:07.040 I mean, you know.

00:44:07.620 Well, right.

00:44:07.900 And, you know, on this, I mean, you are right.

00:44:10.720 When I was growing up, we were also told, you know, we're about to run out of oil, we're

00:44:14.440 about to run out of coal, all of these things.

00:44:17.260 I don't remember this level of, like, intensity, anxiety, you know, that wasn't happening.

00:44:26.640 Right.

00:44:27.080 So, again, had we been having this conversation three years ago, I probably would be with you.

00:44:32.680 Like, nobody thinks about this this deeply.

00:44:34.580 This is crazy.

00:44:35.740 But so much has changed in the last three years where I do think so much of it is willful

00:44:40.300 and it is meant to mess the kids up.

00:44:42.660 And so many of the people in charge or, like, Randy Weingarten basically runs schools throughout

00:44:48.960 the United States.

00:44:49.940 He's head of the teachers union.

00:44:51.400 Very powerful, you know, at the Biden White House.

00:44:54.020 Got to write COVID policy for whether schools opened or not.

00:44:57.320 Not a scientist, obviously, not a doctor.

00:44:59.440 Just got to write policy about whether kids get to go to school.

00:45:02.920 Doesn't have kids.

00:45:03.740 Doesn't have any kind of care about kids.

00:45:06.120 And yet she gets to control so much of what happens to children.

00:45:09.200 So, do I think it's by design?

00:45:11.560 I do at this point.

00:45:13.060 There's too many coincidences here.

00:45:15.320 I think a lot of the, you know, you were saying about the grooming and whatever.

00:45:20.920 There's other ways, not just sexual grooming, but to groom them to accept different ideas

00:45:25.820 and to be able to immediately convince them of things is another kind of grooming.

00:45:32.360 It's intellectual grooming.

00:45:33.640 But that's what's happening also, making them believe that this set of ideas is the only

00:45:38.260 set of ideas allowed.

00:45:39.600 And this is what we're going to push to.

00:45:41.320 Yeah.

00:45:41.940 And look, and I think that's a problem.

00:45:43.900 Plus, as well, you know, one of the great tragedies about education is that education

00:45:49.240 rapidly becomes political because adults are political.

00:45:52.180 And unless they have a real discipline, they bring politics into the classroom.

00:45:56.060 And the problem is with doing that is kids, they don't yet have the capacity to take on

00:46:03.420 an idea, to break it down, to analyze strengths and weaknesses, unless you teach them that.

00:46:09.360 And that's another part of the problem is that we don't teach critical thinking in schools.

00:46:13.120 Absolutely.

00:46:13.740 Because you're not allowed to.

00:46:14.880 Why would we allow critical thinking in schools when we need them to believe certain things

00:46:18.960 that we're telling them?

00:46:20.940 We do a lot of critical thinking stuff at home.

00:46:23.660 For us, it's really important that my kids can identify when somebody is trying to convince

00:46:28.540 them of something.

00:46:30.220 And so my older two, you know, my youngest is seven.

00:46:32.880 He doesn't count yet.

00:46:33.680 But my older two are really, they're woke police.

00:46:37.020 They are like, wait, I heard something.

00:46:38.880 Is this something?

00:46:39.800 And often they're right.

00:46:41.900 Sometimes they're not.

00:46:42.760 Sometimes I'm like, no, it's fine.

00:46:43.860 Don't worry about that.

00:46:45.100 But they're very careful about what gets told to them.

00:46:49.040 And I let, you know, again, my co-author protects our kids from all media.

00:46:52.860 My kids are on YouTube.

00:46:54.240 They're watching stuff.

00:46:55.480 And what I end up discovering is that like they, because I let them watch whatever they

00:46:59.260 want, they end up watching the world's most wholesome stuff.

00:47:01.940 They are just like the Mormon channel. 0.80

00:47:05.500 Like, oh, this Mormon comedy skit with no cursing at all or, you know, bad themes is what my kids

00:47:11.240 watch.

00:47:11.600 And Carol, if people want more on that, I really recommend they read the book, Stolen Youth.

00:47:16.700 But before we wrap up, I wanted to spend a few minutes.

00:47:20.540 I mean, the COVID policies managed to achieve something that's very difficult, which is to

00:47:24.580 get some New York Jews to move out.

00:47:27.160 That used to be pretty hard.

00:47:30.100 What happened?

00:47:30.880 Well, for us, it was really what around schools, that the schools were closed, only the public

00:47:38.860 schools, which is the public schools in Britain, I know, mean private schools.

00:47:42.020 But here, like our local schools were closed.

00:47:45.120 But if you paid 50 to $70,000 to go to private school in New York City, your schools were open

00:47:50.320 because they were COVID safe.

00:47:52.600 And the thing was that our neighbors had spent that summer of 2020.

00:47:56.420 We lived in a very left neighborhood, which never mattered.

00:47:59.340 It was fine.

00:48:00.140 We didn't care at all.

00:48:01.220 It was like, yeah, we were open conservatives.

00:48:02.860 We had friends, you know, which we still do.

00:48:05.680 But it never mattered until then, where we watched them march for equity and then not

00:48:11.300 say one word when the poorest kids in the city couldn't get help, couldn't go to school,

00:48:16.660 didn't get to, you know, my neighbors hired for their own kids tutors, or they formed pods,

00:48:21.960 or they moved to their beach house and sent the kids to school there.

00:48:25.060 And they didn't speak up at all for the kids all around the city.

00:48:28.700 I grew up really poor in Brooklyn, you know, the immigrant story. 1.00

00:48:32.540 And so all of my kids from, all of my friends from childhood were, are blue collar workers

00:48:38.540 who didn't get to like sit at home and order Uber Eats during the pandemic and treat it

00:48:44.280 like a little vacation.

00:48:45.780 And I saw that nobody cared about them at all.

00:48:48.360 And the New York that I had always loved was one that when bad things happened to us,

00:48:52.420 we joined together and we, you know, 9-11 happens, we become the world's most patriotic

00:48:56.500 city, or we had a blackout in 2003.

00:48:59.420 We ended up, you know, helping each other.

00:49:02.020 Old ladies, you know, would just, people would bring them food or we really do step up. 1.00

00:49:06.980 Superstorm Sandy was another one.

00:49:08.800 We had a major hurricane and power was out throughout most of the city and people really

00:49:13.360 helped each other. 0.98

00:49:14.000 And this was the first moment that I was like, these assholes, like, didn't want to help 0.99

00:49:19.360 anybody, didn't do anything at all, took care of their own kids, all while marching for 1.00

00:49:24.800 equity in the streets, like liars.

00:49:27.200 And I could never unsee that.

00:49:28.800 And that was the, what really pushed us out the door.

00:49:31.160 It was a lot of things were going right in Florida.

00:49:33.600 Governor DeSantis, I think did an amazing job on COVID, but on so much more.

00:49:37.240 And we liked the way the direction Florida was going and we wanted to be somewhere sane

00:49:42.200 for the first time in our lives.

00:49:43.980 And one of the things about New York, Francis and I were there last year, we'll be back

00:49:47.380 there very soon again.

00:49:49.740 And it's not just New York, because the same thing is the case in Nashville, the same thing

00:49:53.860 to an even larger extent is the case in LA.

00:49:56.800 And this is what we've seen with our own eyes.

00:49:58.420 And I know San Francisco is even worse.

00:50:00.620 I mean, for people who haven't been to New York lately, I'm not exaggerating when I say

00:50:05.120 you walk out of the door and in quite a lot of parts of New York, I mean, it is literally

00:50:11.540 a human zoo now.

00:50:12.820 Right.

00:50:13.140 In terms of like homeless people with no clothes on the street.

00:50:16.040 We were driving, we went to pick a parcel up in DC and we had to go out of like the main

00:50:21.840 pretty bit in the center and we were in a cab somewhere and we were stopped at a traffic

00:50:27.080 light and there was a guy lying there with no shirt on.

00:50:31.560 And I said to a producer, I said, do you think he's all right?

00:50:34.640 And Anton went, I would go with no.

00:50:37.940 But you literally have in the most powerful, wealthiest country in the world, hundreds

00:50:43.920 of people in major cities lying around in the street because they're addicted to drugs

00:50:49.880 or whatever.

00:50:50.600 Like, how is that happening in this country?

00:50:53.680 So I would tie this all back to wokeness because, again, I grew up in 1980s Brooklyn.

00:50:58.460 Things were really bad.

00:51:00.240 Crime was worse than it is now.

00:51:01.720 Um, but it had been bad for a long time.

00:51:04.760 And the difference that I always like to point out is that nobody in 1980s Brooklyn was saying

00:51:10.440 like, oh, this isn't that bad.

00:51:11.940 Look at the numbers from the 1970s.

00:51:14.640 Like we are doing so much better than we were doing 10 years ago.

00:51:17.620 But now it's like a giant ask to get people to admit that crime is bad, that crime is bad,

00:51:24.460 that crime is happening, that homelessness is bad, that homelessness is happening.

00:51:27.700 It's very like, what are you talking about?

00:51:29.960 Look at the 1980s.

00:51:31.040 It was so much worse back then.

00:51:32.240 But who cares?

00:51:32.980 Who cares that it was worse back then?

00:51:34.320 Then we had the, you know, years and years of New York being the most amazing place to be.

00:51:40.140 And that's the thing.

00:51:41.100 I was so into New York and I was so defensive of New York because it was great.

00:51:45.300 It was a great place to be in my 20s.

00:51:47.620 It was a great place for us to have our kids in my 30s.

00:51:50.520 And then now it's like you can't admit that there's a problem.

00:51:55.220 And that, again, is step one.

00:51:57.200 And you can't admit there's a problem because wokeness says that you're not supposed to notice

00:52:02.040 that these policies have led to this outcome.

00:52:04.520 And that it's only happening really primarily in blue areas.

00:52:08.600 Like, Miami has problems.

00:52:09.900 I'm not saying it's not.

00:52:10.860 Dallas, you know, Houston, all cities have problems.

00:52:14.400 But at least they, like, admit these are problems worth fighting or challenging or doing something about.

00:52:20.720 In New York, they can't get to that first step of, like, this is a problem.

00:52:24.020 Let's do something about it.

00:52:25.040 Do you think we spend far too much time talking about other things

00:52:27.960 and not enough time talking about these things?

00:52:30.480 I mean, I feel like we talk about a lot about crime in the U.S.

00:52:36.560 and the homeless issue because places that are doing crazy things like legalizing drug use out in the open

00:52:43.700 are seeing, obviously, an increase in both drug use and homelessness and also crime.

00:52:49.500 And in the U.S., we do talk about, like, look, your policies are leading to bad outcomes.

00:52:54.040 And it's like, no, but these policies are equitable.

00:52:56.320 So this is what we're going to be doing now.

00:52:58.780 So we do talk about it a lot.

00:53:01.220 It's not like this isn't a topic that gets covered a lot.

00:53:03.980 It gets dismissed as right-wing, you know, paranoia.

00:53:07.080 And if you notice that things are bad and things are –

00:53:10.200 and I watched this happen to liberals in my very leftist neighborhood in Brooklyn

00:53:13.700 where if they said they were worried about crime, they would get it on Facebook in a group or whatever.

00:53:18.740 They'd get hundreds of comments like, what crime?

00:53:21.160 What are you talking about?

00:53:22.040 What are you – like, put away your MAGA hat.

00:53:24.680 You don't have to be ideological.

00:53:26.060 Just walking around New York, you are literally confronted with human misery.

00:53:32.960 It's not that you go, oh, these people are smelly.

00:53:35.220 Get the plebs away from me. 1.00

00:53:36.580 You're going, like, these people are in distress.

00:53:38.660 And 10 years ago, this wasn't the case.

00:53:40.280 Absolutely.

00:53:40.520 Which is really what the point is.

00:53:42.440 Like, it wasn't like this.

00:53:44.020 It wasn't like this for a long time.

00:53:46.380 It was eight years of Rudy Giuliani followed by 12 years of Michael Bloomberg and even the first term of –

00:53:52.520 Eric Adams.

00:53:53.300 No, no.

00:53:54.180 De Blasio.

00:53:54.960 Mayor de Blasio. 1.00

00:53:56.060 We were coasting because even though he's like a super leftist and his ideas are really stupid, 0.99

00:54:00.000 things were so good for so long that New York was just, like, free-rolling, basically. 0.99

00:54:05.980 And then that ended.

00:54:07.780 And it's going to take a long time and a lot of work to get back to that place.

00:54:12.260 And I don't know that New Yorkers want it.

00:54:14.120 I think that they keep voting for policies that don't do that.

00:54:19.360 They don't solve any of these issues.

00:54:21.380 When is the pendulum going to swing back?

00:54:23.100 Because the reality is it has to.

00:54:24.860 You can't have, you know, policies like, oh, if somebody steals something, as long as it's not –

00:54:30.380 I'm not sure if New York has $999.99, then it's not a crime.

00:54:35.380 You go, this can't carry on.

00:54:37.180 This is literally unsustainable.

00:54:39.260 Right.

00:54:39.540 And these businesses keep leaving these areas.

00:54:42.300 This, like, major retailer, REI, just left Portland.

00:54:45.480 REI is, like, hiking gear.

00:54:47.160 Basically, everybody in Portland wears REI from head to toe.

00:54:51.320 And that giant business has left Portland because they're just getting robbed all the time.

00:54:56.100 And it's become an issue.

00:54:57.360 You know, they don't really like that.

00:54:59.480 So, yeah, it has to stop.

00:55:00.960 And just the migration levels in the U.S., like, the fact that people are moving to places like Florida and Texas at such a high rate.

00:55:08.060 Last year, in 2022, the year that we moved, we were two of 36,000 just New Yorkers who moved from New York to Florida.

00:55:17.900 And that number is way higher than, you know, just New Yorkers.

00:55:20.920 So, it's happening.

00:55:23.040 People are making changes.

00:55:24.960 And I don't know.

00:55:26.220 I do see the pendulum swinging because it absolutely has to.

00:55:30.120 But, you know, you never know.

00:55:31.240 Communism lasted a long time.

00:55:32.620 It wasn't like they didn't know it wasn't working.

00:55:34.500 They did.

00:55:35.100 But it still managed to keep on keeping on for decades.

00:55:40.280 So, I hope it changes in my lifetime.

00:55:42.880 I hope my kids don't grow up in the insanity that we are living in right now.

00:55:46.400 I'm kind of, I feel lucky that they're young. 1.00

00:55:48.880 And I still have a few years of, you know, getting them ready to be in college and be around the woke idiots and, you know, et cetera. 0.99

00:55:56.660 All right. 0.99

00:55:57.180 Well, there's a note of optimism.

00:55:58.560 This may or may not end in the next few decades.

00:56:01.100 There you go.

00:56:01.900 Carol Marcus, recommend Stolen Youth to everybody.

00:56:04.420 Where can people find you online and follow your work?

00:56:06.760 On Twitter.

00:56:07.400 I'm just at K-A-R-O-L.

00:56:10.460 My pinned tweet has a newsletter where I send out everything I'm up to.

00:56:14.400 And that's really it.

00:56:16.380 Perfect.

00:56:16.840 Well, we're going to ask you a few questions from our local supporters that they will only get to see on our locals page.

00:56:23.340 So, follow us over there.

00:56:24.820 Thank you for watching.

00:56:25.640 Thank you for listening.

00:56:26.380 And we'll see you on Locals very shortly.

00:56:27.860 You've written that parents should tell their children that marriage is as important, if not more important, than money and a career.

00:56:35.260 Why do you think parents are giving the opposite message to their children?

00:56:38.560 Is there anything social or government policy can or should do to encourage and support the formation and continuation of stable families?

00:56:44.980 I'll see you on that.

00:56:45.820 Bye.

00:56:46.000 Bye.

00:57:03.580 Bye.

00:57:04.140 Bye.

00:57:04.420 Bye.

00:57:04.760 Bye.

00:57:04.820 Bye.

00:57:05.220 Bye.

00:57:05.400 Bye.

00:57:06.500 Bye.

00:57:06.860 Bye.

00:57:07.120 Bye.

00:57:10.260 Bye.

00:57:13.480 Bye.

00:57:14.420 Bye.

TRIGGERnometry - June 11, 2023

The Truth About Woke Indoctrination in Schools - Karol Markowicz

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Transcript