TRIGGERnometry - Tom Slater on Free Speech, Brexit, Immigration & Communism

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kissing. And this is a

00:00:18.120 show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing

00:00:22.920 about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our fantastic

00:00:29.280 guest this week is the deputy editor of Spiked magazine, Tom Slater. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:34.460 Thanks so much for having me. It's great to have you here. The first question we always,

00:00:38.460 always ask is, tell us a little bit about how you got to be where you are today.

00:00:41.920 Yeah, sure. So I found out about Spiked where I currently work quite young, actually. So

00:00:46.800 when I was about 17, I was involved in a program that Spiked set up to give state school kids in

00:00:51.800 London a kind of leg up into journalism. So I met a lot of them through doing that

00:00:55.000 and basically just kind of kept in contact.

00:00:58.080 Originally I always got into kind of cultural journalism,

00:01:00.860 things like that, but slowly over the years

00:01:02.540 got more and more interested in politics,

00:01:04.140 got more and more kind of radicalised.

00:01:06.180 And I think especially my kind of experience at university

00:01:08.000 insofar as looking around for what sort of politics

00:01:10.260 I'd like to sign up for

00:01:11.120 and not really finding much of interest

00:01:12.620 on either left or right,

00:01:14.500 Spiked increasingly seemed to make a lot of sense to me

00:01:16.220 and seemed to be something I wanted to be a part of, basically.

00:01:18.500 And for those people who don't know Spiked

00:01:20.520 or haven't encountered it, what is Spiked

00:01:22.480 and how could you sum up them politically?

00:01:26.000 So I think our political bent is really,

00:01:27.700 we come out of the left and yet increasingly find ourselves

00:01:29.960 raging against the left,

00:01:31.320 which I think actually a lot of people

00:01:33.200 increasingly are finding themselves insofar as

00:01:35.820 some of our kind of foundational principles

00:01:37.380 are things like freedom of speech,

00:01:38.840 which I know we'll be talking about,

00:01:40.380 democracy, the idea that societies

00:01:43.160 that are constantly striving to produce more

00:01:46.880 and to produce a kind of higher standard of living

00:01:48.680 for everyone is something that's um is something that should be the main goal and yet increasingly

00:01:53.720 it feels like the left are incredibly censorious incredibly anti-democratic incredibly environmentalist

00:01:59.880 in the worst kind of way which seems to be mainly about kind of dampening down production saying

00:02:04.140 that people's lifestyles have gone too far etc and i think really what that whole kind of process

00:02:09.820 tells us that increasingly it feels like the left-right divide doesn't give you very much it

00:02:13.420 doesn't explain very much about where you come from because these terms have become so distorted

00:02:17.680 But the way I would describe it is that effectively we're kind of for freedom, democracy and plenty.

00:02:21.880 And I think that's really what our guiding principles are,

00:02:23.780 whether you want to label that however you choose, basically.

00:02:26.220 And why do you think it is?

00:02:27.640 Because I say to people, oh, you know, we're doing a YouTube channel,

00:02:30.880 we've got so-and-so on from Spite.

00:02:32.840 And there tends to be a sort of distrust of the magazine.

00:02:37.660 Occasionally, even mumblings or rumourings, it's sort of alt-right or alt-right linked.

00:02:42.900 Yeah, this is something that I find pretty disgraceful, actually,

00:02:46.780 because we've had that tag kind of thrown at us a couple of times and the one thing the first thing

00:02:50.540 is that every single thing we've ever written about the alt-right has been absolutely scathing

00:02:55.340 you know we abhor identity politics of all forms whether that's kind of white identitarianism or

00:03:00.300 any of the other forms you see on a university campus for instance and we've been denouncing

00:03:05.180 that movement in no uncertain terms for a very long time and i can't work out whether it the way

00:03:09.900 in which that label was thrown around is just willfully malicious or it's just incredibly

00:03:13.820 ignorant because historically we've always been pro-immigration pro-universalism the idea that

00:03:19.440 racial boundaries gender boundaries all these things should kind of melt away and I think that

00:03:23.420 it can only be someone who either just wants to try and smear us or someone who has never actually

00:03:28.440 read anything that we have possibly said but it is interesting I think it says something about

00:03:32.480 the times that we're in that that label seems to be being thrown about so liberally unfortunately

00:03:36.220 I think it's both isn't it it's both people who haven't read a single thing you've listened

00:03:40.000 and want to smear you yeah I think that that's where that combination comes from

00:03:44.400 you mentioned university campuses one of the things we really wanted to talk to

00:03:47.500 you about is the unsafe space tool which you did I think it was in last year yes

00:03:51.220 yeah yeah and tell us a little bit about that what that involved how that went

00:03:54.940 so the unsafe space tool was a project that we did in the US we've been doing a

00:03:59.240 lot of work on the issue of free speech on campus in the UK and we but we really

00:04:02.920 wanted to kind of take it to the heart of where it was happening because as much

00:04:05.560 as these debates are really raging on UK campuses things are even more intense

00:04:09.580 over there even though it's a country where obviously you have this tradition of the First

00:04:12.580 Amendment and it's seen as kind of more of a foundational principle than it might be here

00:04:16.500 so we put together this tour we went to went to Harvard University we were at American University

00:04:21.780 although we got kicked out there's a story in that in a second we went to Rutgers University

00:04:26.180 in New Jersey and I'm probably forgetting some others but it was the aim of it was first of all

00:04:31.100 to kind of take head on the issue of free speech on campus what that was all about what does the

00:04:34.720 rise of identity politics mean in relation to this what does the rise of a new increasing

00:04:39.220 a liberal form of feminism play into this all these kind of different

00:04:42.160 touchstones but I think the other thing we wanted to do kind of leading off on

00:04:44.920 your question on the alt-right actually was to try and reclaim the free speech

00:04:48.160 argument from people who were using it to incredibly cynical and self-promoting

00:04:52.620 ends you know this was the time in which you had a lot of these kind of right-wing

00:04:55.940 trolls wind-up merchants going to university campuses upsetting students

00:05:00.460 and then making hay out of it and one of the really unfortunate things that was

00:05:04.020 going on particularly in the US was the the debate about freedom of speech just

00:05:07.960 became a left-right culture war, and if you were in favour of freedom of speech it's because

00:05:11.640 you wanted to basically shout obscenities at minorities, as one phrase took it, and

00:05:16.160 that the left were entirely just these kind of snowflakes who had no idea what free speech

00:05:20.160 was. It's not really like that. So we got together this series of speakers who we felt

00:05:25.700 really excelled at kind of putting the kind of liberal to libertarian, even progressive

00:05:29.400 case for freedom of speech. So along with our own Brendan O'Neill, who spoke at a couple

00:05:32.740 of events. Steven Pinker from Harvard spoke, a guy called Camille Foster spoke on our identity

00:05:38.100 politics panel, Mark Lilla, a few others. And so the whole aim of it really was to try and

00:05:42.660 be up front in sort of tackling this problem of censorship, of protest against speakers people

00:05:48.280 dislike, identity politics, etc. But to do it in such a way that drew out what we think is some of

00:05:53.100 the more important arguments for it, which I think are classically liberal and even progressive,

00:05:56.880 which at that particular time seemed to be almost entirely absent from the debate, it felt like.

00:06:01.560 I mean, why is it do you think that the right wing, you know, the moment you talk about

00:06:07.800 freedom of speech, everybody goes, well, you know, that's just, you know, that's just right

00:06:11.820 wing people. When, you know, and people, a lot of people would say that there's no problem

00:06:16.100 with freedom of speech, particularly in this country, when you compare it with, I don't

00:06:19.780 know, Venezuela, China, whatever else. Why do you think people associate freedom of speech

00:06:24.600 with the right wing?

00:06:26.020 I think the first thing is to say that it feels like, broadly speaking, the kind of

00:06:29.440 censorship on a kind of state level as well as the sort of censorship you see on a university

00:06:32.900 campus just because of the way things are at the moment it tends to be people either on a campus

00:06:36.860 could just be anyone who's kind of you know to the to the right of center effectively finding

00:06:40.860 themselves being censored because of the political culture on most university campuses and then I

00:06:45.120 think broadly speaking I think people think of censorship ultimately as something which is

00:06:49.060 reserved for far-right nutcases and racists you know and that is there's there's some truth in

00:06:54.180 that but nevertheless I think the other aspect to it is there has been this profound kind of

00:06:59.400 confusion as to first of all the fact that if you censor anyone in any circumstance that there is a

00:07:03.900 point at which that will be used against people you happen to agree with and I think we're seeing

00:07:07.500 that play out in relation to some kind of old feminist finding themselves on the receiving end

00:07:11.780 of censorship etc but the other thing I think is the kind of the sort of historical illiteracy of

00:07:17.740 it really it doesn't really take much for a political culture to change and if you kind of

00:07:22.800 create the means through which what are deemed to be extreme views can be snuffed out either by the

00:07:27.960 state or by you know by campaigns or by university administrations or whatever it won't be long

00:07:34.360 until those same tools are used against you and I think what's kind of interesting about kind of

00:07:38.060 even characters on the kind of US alt-right or at least alt-light is they're increasingly kind of

00:07:42.080 getting people shut down you know James Gunn this guy who was directing the Guardians of the Galaxy

00:07:46.400 series effectively a bunch of kind of alt-light journalists dug up his old tweets and got him

00:07:50.680 sacked because this dynamic say on social media where things you might have said jokes you might

00:07:55.460 have made in the past that were offensive can be used to effectively get you sacked that cudgel

00:08:00.140 can be swung by the other side just as easily so i think it's it tends to be it does i think it's a

00:08:04.840 combination of where the political culture is at the moment but also unfortunately just an

00:08:08.960 incredible kind of short-sightedness on behalf of a lot of left-wingers these days it feels like

00:08:12.680 that's why i always say on that issue is like once you invent this weapon of destroying people's

00:08:18.840 lives and livelihoods because they made some joke or whatever you don't get to control who uses it

00:08:23.480 and i think a lot of people on the left are now finding it being used against them and i don't

00:08:27.560 agree with it being used in either direction but i think once you once you make it legitimate

00:08:32.100 to discredit somebody on the basis of a tweet they they post it at three o'clock in the morning

00:08:36.920 or whatever that's that's that's then becomes the norm that that becomes the way that war the

00:08:42.100 culture was waged no exactly i think we're really starting to see that that's going on both sides

00:08:46.240 now you know if you kind of compare the roseanne situation in the u.s where she obviously tweets

00:08:50.560 this kind of pretty racist stuff effectively um and then instantly there's this very concerted

00:08:55.400 effort to get a sack you saw the flip side of that with the james gunn thing now we could argue who

00:08:59.300 are those two people we find more amiable who we might agree with more and i'm sure where all of

00:09:03.980 us would stand on that to be honest but nevertheless it's quite clear that as soon as you create this

00:09:08.820 dynamic it will be exploited by the other side and it was i think the most um uh irritating

00:09:15.600 thing about all of this is the fact that it's a lot often people who claim to be very radical

00:09:19.860 who claim to be about kind of really challenging the consensus etc who are very keen on censorship

00:09:25.660 which to me is insane if you go about branding everyone you dislike an extremist and insisting

00:09:30.440 they be shut down then if you are someone who's trying to further radical ideas that's something

00:09:34.280 which is an incredible threat to yourself and I think what it actually shows is that vast sections

00:09:38.500 of the left today even though they like to pose as very radical I think the fact that they're so

00:09:43.260 comfortable with censorship speaks to the fact that deep down whether they realize it or not

00:09:46.620 they're not actually saying very much that's actually that challenging to the status quo

00:09:50.660 and to those in power more often than not they seem to be on the side of people who want to

00:09:54.200 bolster state power to do things that and to crush people they disagree with so i think it's quite

00:09:58.560 revealing on that level as well to some extent and do you think students have become more censorious

00:10:02.520 i think it's a tricky one because the last thing i want to do is kind of smear all students and i

00:10:07.520 I think this kind of...

00:10:08.440 I'll do it.

00:10:10.600 You fucking stay up.

00:10:12.360 You don't do any work.

00:10:14.020 Anyway, sorry.

00:10:14.980 Go on.

00:10:15.320 They're lazy.

00:10:16.220 They're grateful they're in time.

00:10:17.260 Yeah.

00:10:17.760 We do the show.

00:10:18.680 Yeah, I know.

00:10:19.500 The UKIP, mate.

00:10:21.680 I think it's definitely...

00:10:23.460 The kind of extremes of student politics are becoming more extreme.

00:10:28.080 And they're becoming more vocal.

00:10:29.380 And I think the one thing that has really been the difference is the fact that where there was always other people in the room,

00:10:34.700 could be student politics could be people within a university administration who would kind of

00:10:40.060 stick up for themselves who would say look we've invited this speaker but you can't just on the

00:10:43.420 basis of a small group of you who are protesting this shut this down because there are other people

00:10:47.300 who want to hear this perspective challenge this perspective etc you know university administrations

00:10:51.740 would previously you know consider free speech to be a kind of guiding value and would resist

00:10:57.080 attempts to kind of censor you know even up until about 10 15 years ago there would always be these

00:11:01.500 arguments in these battles, but the extent to which these small groups of campaigners

00:11:05.180 could succeed was always somewhat more limited because there were at least enough people

00:11:09.100 willing to stick up for freedom of speech.

00:11:10.900 I think the big problem is that a lot of these student protesters, these kind of intense

00:11:16.040 identitarians, people who are really thin-skinned, they've been given the moral authority in

00:11:21.420 these situations.

00:11:22.640 People even are really concerned about disagreeing with them because they know the abuse that

00:11:27.400 could be hurled with them, etc.

00:11:28.400 So there's an element, I think, of kind of cowardice on behalf of a lot of university administrations, say.

00:11:33.620 And I think in relation to students more broadly, I think there's a very strong conformist climate

00:11:38.120 which makes them more likely to either just keep their mouth shut or just kind of leave them to it.

00:11:42.020 So I think that whilst these people have always kind of existed,

00:11:44.260 I think the big change now is, unfortunately, there's just so little pushback against them.

00:11:48.400 And I think that has allowed them to kind of chalk up more wins insofar as censoring people,

00:11:52.980 but also for their ideas to become more and more strange and more and more extreme

00:11:57.040 because there's no one really in the room to kind of temper and challenge them.

00:12:00.340 So what you're saying really is not the students who have become more censorious,

00:12:03.580 it's that the silent majority has become increasingly more silent.

00:12:07.660 I think so. I mean, you do start to see those things changing.

00:12:10.160 I mean, because a lot of the work that we've been doing, particularly in the UK,

00:12:12.260 has been directly with students.

00:12:13.720 We've run kind of tours of universities, working with students to set up debates before.

00:12:19.860 We've worked with them on developing our university rankings,

00:12:23.620 which we've done over the last four years, which looks at free speech policies, etc.

00:12:26.160 and there is a growing number of them of left right and neither who are increasingly appalled

00:12:32.580 by this and they kind of recognize that a lot of this really holds them in contempt in particular

00:12:36.680 because if you're going around saying that we can't have this speaker on campus because it will hurt

00:12:40.400 you it will it will effectively either hurt you psychologically or you might be stupid enough to

00:12:45.820 be won over by it people are really reacting to that in a kind of visceral way and I also think

00:12:49.880 because of the fact that the bar for censorship on campus has been getting lower and lower I mean

00:12:54.120 up until about 10 years ago it was really only about kind of far right nutcases that this debate

00:12:58.840 was had out but you know as of a few years ago the stories you're seeing in the newspaper is

00:13:02.540 Birmingham University banning sombreros and I think this has created a kind of because it's

00:13:06.920 cultural appropriation because it's cultural appropriation let's play this uh this oppression

00:13:11.280 bingo yeah what are some other examples of things that have happened I'm trying to think so there's

00:13:15.580 there's a lot around fancy dress which is quite interesting also cultural appropriation it's a

00:13:19.420 strange mix of cultural appropriation cultural insensitivity I guess so just telling people

00:13:23.060 they can't dress up as gangsters telling people which i don't know because that's offensive to

00:13:26.220 gangsters that's offensive to gangsters etc i mean they're never that is definitely a minority group

00:13:30.000 a lot of protection exactly no one's really speaking up on their behalf the gangster thing

00:13:35.900 what's interesting about a lot of these kind of calls to censorship i mean i don't know who they've

00:13:39.320 got in mind when they say that it's almost like in the thing about when people are obsessed with

00:13:43.360 this cultural appropriation issue is that they actually reaffirm stereotypes in a strange kind

00:13:47.600 of way they're suggesting this will be you know offensive to xyz group i think it's the thing

00:13:52.340 that really makes not so much laugh but worry I guess is the fact that you've

00:13:56.240 even had it seems like so many kind of people in student unions who are obviously

00:14:00.380 do the lion's share of this kind of censorship on campus they almost have

00:14:03.680 so little self-awareness that you have ridiculous situations like no gangster

00:14:07.340 costumes or things that we've been saying seeing recently over the last

00:14:09.920 couple of years which is free speech societies for instance being blocked

00:14:13.460 from being set up and I think my favorite example is a couple of years

00:14:16.340 ago at the University of Oxford where a bunch of students got together in

00:14:20.220 response to the kind of censorious climate on campus and wanted to start a free speech

00:14:23.720 magazine called No Offence and it was banned from the Freshers' Fair and reported to the

00:14:29.120 police and I think that's just I think goes to show the fact that so much that we see

00:14:33.260 on campus it's so ridiculous that it's often tempting I think whether you're a student

00:14:37.300 there or actually just looking on to think why does it matter but I think actually it

00:14:40.640 speaks to how unchecked a lot of this is gone because we're not even talking about things

00:14:45.040 that anyone with a modicum of common sense would think were a problem anymore it's really

00:14:48.780 gotten that bad it feels like i mean how much of this is students you know uh overreacting and

00:14:54.780 let's be fair we were all 18 19 at one time none of us would ever probably if asked ever want to

00:15:01.960 have a conversation with ourselves at 18 19 and how much of this is something more sinister i think

00:15:07.760 in one sense i think it's important to say that of course students are always going to be i like

00:15:12.560 to think the kind of sharp end of a lot of what's going on in politics at the moment they tend to

00:15:15.660 like to be radical they're idealistic um they you know you could say kind of take things to a kind

00:15:20.900 of just a slightly further extreme they haven't been beaten down by life to a realistic submission

00:15:26.920 yeah exactly to the vicissitudes of fate but there's definitely something like that do some

00:15:30.780 temping dickheads and come back to me tell me how what life's like all right man all right you can

00:15:35.420 vote for you could you just don't need to do it on the show yeah not that there's anything wrong

00:15:40.100 with voting for you yeah i think i think that's definitely part of it and i think the issue is

00:15:44.900 that of course there's a generational element to this it's quite clear that

00:15:49.280 there is a cohort you could see it from kind of Millennials onwards down to the

00:15:53.780 kind of younger generations who have been socialized into a climate which is

00:15:58.520 very hostile to freedom of speech hate speech laws for instance in this country

00:16:02.140 have been tightened up over the last 15 20 years intensively whether you agree

00:16:06.260 or disagree with them I think that sets a kind of precedent in people's minds

00:16:08.780 that there is certain opinions certain views certain statements which are so

00:16:12.280 abhorrent that they shouldn't be heard I think that's one thing which is quite

00:16:14.880 clear. I think there's also the question of kind of multiculturalism as a kind of policy of

00:16:19.580 government insofar as not multiculturalism in relation to diversity that everyone enjoys and

00:16:24.360 everyone is most people have relaxed about but the kind of idea that there are very distinct

00:16:29.600 cultural and even racial groups who have certain ideas and it's kind of rude to discuss them to

00:16:35.300 challenge them or to kind of assume that we might through talking with each other kind of develop a

00:16:40.160 kind of common forum that's been an idea that I think a lot of young people have been fed and I

00:16:43.900 think makes people very nervous and more likely to cry Islamophobia when there's a discussion

00:16:48.380 about religion etc and I think the other thing is that there is a kind of culture of sort of

00:16:53.240 almost self-esteem management that seems to be driven into young people from a young age

00:16:58.120 insofar as the idea that words really hurt the kind of ramping up of various kind of

00:17:03.060 anti-bullying policies etc things that Claire Fox a previous guest on your show has written a lot

00:17:07.520 about and I think that kind of feeds the very in some cases kind of narcissistic character of a lot

00:17:12.440 of campus censorship which is like this offends me personally it harms me as an

00:17:16.280 individual and therefore no one should be allowed to hear it so I think there's

00:17:19.640 different factors but I think that the court the common thing to all of those

00:17:22.800 things is the fact that these are things that they were socialized into they're

00:17:25.820 not entirely of their making I mean if people are going around assuming that

00:17:29.000 this generation just kind of emerged out the womb with kind of blue hair and

00:17:33.180 crazy opinions they didn't spring out of nowhere and I think you can really

00:17:40.640 perceive the cultural trends which have fed into a situation in which a small but quite

00:17:45.580 vocal minority of students think it's entirely acceptable to basically crush opinions they

00:17:49.080 dislike. I think the kind of progression of that is becoming more and more clear.

00:17:52.620 Well Claire Fox made that point actually that you know if there is an element of snowflake

00:17:57.000 around it's not the fault of them of the students of the young people it's the fault of the

00:18:00.900 parents the education system who've made them that way and I don't know when you talk about

00:18:06.180 sensitivity and trigger warnings I don't know if you saw there was an article recently about a

00:18:09.880 study that came out which basically shows that if you convince people that something they're about

00:18:15.600 to read is going to hurt them they then become more prone to being hurt by that thing so trigger

00:18:21.940 warnings are actually counterproductive in that they essentially brainwash people into thinking

00:18:26.760 that the material that they might have been triggered by will definitely trigger them and

00:18:31.780 then they become much more fragile and much less resilient so do you think this culture is going

00:18:37.580 to have long-term repercussions for our society.

00:18:39.960 I think it will insofar as I think it just, it poisons politics, I think, in so many different

00:18:44.660 ways, because I think if you're going around with this kind of intense sense of sensitivity,

00:18:47.900 as well as the identity politics, which I think really attaches itself very firmly to

00:18:51.840 the question of censorship, the number one reason cited most times for why a certain

00:18:56.080 speaker on campus should be banned is that they offend X, Y, Z religious, cultural, or

00:19:01.200 you know, social, sexual orientation group, etc. That's the main justification for these

00:19:05.980 two things and I think the consequences of that even though we should be careful about being too

00:19:09.960 alarmist and suggesting that you know everyone's going to be marching around crushing anyone who

00:19:14.600 you know doesn't toe the party line in five years time is that I think that breeds a certain level

00:19:18.900 of fragility on behalf of people as you say it it basically encourages people to feel aggrieved

00:19:24.840 upset by things that would even wouldn't even bother people you know 10 15 years ago but I

00:19:29.780 think the other byproduct of it is that because of the identity politics itself and feeds it is

00:19:33.760 that it's serving, I think, to really reify a lot of the racial divisions that a lot of

00:19:39.540 people struggle so far to get over. I mean, if you're constantly suggesting that certain

00:19:43.440 particular groups are incredibly fragile, and it's all the fault of a different group

00:19:47.640 over here, that's only going to foster the kind of tensions that mercifully have been

00:19:52.080 kind of fading away over the last 10 years. So I think that, even though we shouldn't

00:19:55.360 be too alarmist about this, I think the consequences of that for politics, for free debate, and

00:20:01.340 also just for how people feel around each other in a social situation at university or wherever

00:20:05.560 I can see that having quite damaging effects. But surely you do need to draw the line somewhere

00:20:10.340 because I mean could you really have like a Richard Spencer coming and doing a speech I know

00:20:15.340 I think he's banned from the UK anyway but certainly in America going to do a speech at Harvard

00:20:19.540 I mean there has to be free speech but certainly aren't there limits to it and don't we have to

00:20:25.800 no platform certain people? Well I think the thing about free speech is that it is for all or it's

00:20:30.880 for none at all because as soon as you make qualifications on it as soon as you say some

00:20:34.280 people are so extreme that they shouldn't be allowed to hurt then that what is deemed

00:20:38.000 to be extreme will be something which is up which will become a political football which

00:20:41.200 can be expanded which can be applied to people on the other end of the spectrum or whatever

00:20:45.640 I think it's it's the slippery slope in in aspects and I think the other point in that

00:20:50.460 is that it's a really important progressive argument for freedom of speech throughout

00:20:54.100 the years is that free speech is the best means for which you challenge and uproot bigotry

00:20:58.660 I mean, this is a point that Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist, made in the U.S.

00:21:03.780 in this speech, or this article rather, it was called A Plea for Free Speech in Boston,

00:21:08.380 where he makes this very powerful point that if free speech in the U.S. was allowed to exist

00:21:13.360 because it was very tampered by various kind of mobs who would shut down abolitionist meetings, etc.,

00:21:19.280 he said that if free speech was allowed to flourish in the U.S.,

00:21:21.840 then it would break every chain in the South and banish the auction block.

00:21:25.000 That was always a kind of foundational point.

00:21:26.780 And I think it's kind of common sense.

00:21:27.840 I mean, you can't tackle a bigotry that you are effectively pretending doesn't exist by refusing to engage with it.

00:21:33.840 But I think the problem that we're in now is actually something a little bit more complicated,

00:21:37.180 because the thing about characters like Richard Spencer is that they're ultimately incredibly marginal, strange, odd and very unrepresentative people.

00:21:45.860 But because there is this culture of censorship and of wanting to shut these people down

00:21:49.920 and also wanting to constantly kind of point to them as proof that society is still as toxic as it might have been in any other era,

00:21:56.080 you make them far more prominent than they need be

00:21:59.320 and I think he's an interesting example

00:22:00.560 because he was trying to give a speech at a university in Florida

00:22:03.800 about a year or so ago I think

00:22:05.240 and the response was so ridiculous

00:22:07.820 they spent about half a million dollars or something on protecting this event

00:22:11.200 there was police all in the streets

00:22:12.880 there were people being turned away

00:22:14.040 and about just over a dozen of his supporters showed up

00:22:18.540 completely surrounded by protesters who were kind of shouting him down

00:22:21.500 and there is part of me that thinks whilst of course

00:22:23.660 and whenever you come across views that disgusting you want to rail against and you want to protest

00:22:28.060 and people should that's how you really um that's how you really uproot and challenge bigotry

00:22:32.940 but at the same time i think there's a byproduct which we're kind of creating folk devils who don't

00:22:36.700 need to be puffed up at the moment and i do think when you look at the likes of richard spencer when

00:22:41.060 you look at these kind of alt-right lunatics it seems like a more fitting response would just be

00:22:44.880 allow them to kind of like z-carl to each other in drafty rooms by themselves you know there's a

00:22:49.140 kind of question of proportion here i think but i think yeah the the moment at which you draw the

00:22:53.180 line, the more you make these problems worse, i.e. someone like Richard Spencer, rather than

00:22:56.820 better, it feels like. Let me imagine for a second if I was a progressive, censorious student. The

00:23:02.120 counter-argument that I might put to you would be, over the last 20 years, the kind of things that

00:23:07.040 it's acceptable to say to somebody have changed, right? And that has coincided with a period of

00:23:13.680 time when there's been political correctness, there's been an increasing sensitivity, we've

00:23:17.960 had a little bit of extra you know awareness of other people isn't the fact that we are now less

00:23:24.200 willing to insult minorities and women and other people isn't that a reflection of the fact that

00:23:30.040 this movement has been a positive thing for society well i think the thing about political

00:23:34.040 correctness is that people often attribute it to things that have kind of nothing to do with

00:23:37.160 first of all they kind of conflate it with manners and no one's against manners you know no one is

00:23:41.400 against the fact that um people don't address each other in kind of horrendous ways but also

00:23:45.640 Also, political correctness is a kind of, broadly speaking, I mean, how you define it, it becomes a bit of a bloated term, it's thrown around a lot, but broadly speaking, a kind of move, particularly within academia, to suggest that if you effectively demonise certain words and try to snuff them out, that that would have the knock-on effect of making society kind of more harmonious, you know, in some sort of way.

00:24:02.080 I think it effectively tries to take credit for a process of integration, of anti-racist activism, of society slowly becoming more at ease with itself and kind of give it to people in the ivory tower.

00:24:13.660 You know, the fact of the matter is the reason people don't shout racial obscenities down the street at people is not because of the fact that some academic went around shushing them.

00:24:21.220 You know, it's because views have changed.

00:24:23.200 Certain groups have been considered, who have been considered beyond the pale for a long time, but nevertheless have been successfully shown to be as toxic as they really are.

00:24:31.200 And people are more integrated, people are more relaxed around one another, et cetera.

00:24:35.520 So I think the thing about the political correctness thing is that it's trying to basically claim credit for a process of change and anti-racist activism and just society becoming more and more integrated, which I think it really had nothing to do with.

00:24:48.760 and in its current form, I think, is actually driving more division

00:24:52.280 than it is actually kind of alleviating it

00:24:54.300 insofar as making things so hypersensitive,

00:24:56.540 so over-the-top, microaggressions, et cetera,

00:24:59.040 that actually, I think, have the opposite effect,

00:25:01.200 which is to make people feel more nervous

00:25:02.800 around engaging people who aren't like them

00:25:04.700 rather than more relaxed about them.

00:25:06.540 What's a microaggression?

00:25:07.940 It's a microaggression, for those who might not know.

00:25:09.480 I feel really old.

00:25:10.600 It's easy to go...

00:25:11.440 No, what's that? I don't know.

00:25:12.880 No, it's like if I ask you where you're from when we first meet.

00:25:16.320 Yeah.

00:25:16.700 That's implying that you're foreign.

00:25:18.260 okay therefore it's implying that you are other yeah therefore it's me trying to undermine your

00:25:24.940 self-esteem and make you feel bad about yourself all right okay so they're just behaving really

00:25:32.400 like they've just smoked too much weed and they're just getting paranoid there's a huge element of

00:25:36.700 I mean it's the sort of thing where it to me if you're being really cynical about it you would

00:25:41.380 say it's the problem where it feels like the as increasingly society becomes more kind of

00:25:47.080 egalitarian you have to find more and more small things to be upset about i mean some people refer

00:25:50.420 to it it's like the kind of st george in retirement syndrome where he slayed the dragon now he's going

00:25:54.180 around slaying smaller and smaller animals there is a bit of that to it but effectively it kind

00:26:02.200 of comes down to this question of you know some universities in america have even kind of drawn

00:26:05.700 up lists of things that you shouldn't say to an ethnic minority person where you're from being

00:26:09.220 one of them some of it is things that you could say are kind of like clumsy with a kind of racial

00:26:14.180 tinge to them telling someone who's black that they're very articulate which we could also a bit

00:26:19.500 awkward a bit unpleasant not always said with the malice that some people would like to attach them

00:26:24.220 but also things i think broadly speaking people can kind of challenge and deal with in a sort of

00:26:28.620 friendly situation but then in the u.s in particular has been some universities which have drawn up

00:26:32.640 lists to them i think they're quite corrosive first of all because of the fact that um what

00:26:36.380 it's effectively preaching is a strange kind of racial etiquette that you should treat people

00:26:39.980 not naturally as that you would treat any human being but that you would adjust your behavior

00:26:43.920 in order to treat them in a particular way and with kid gloves.

00:26:47.420 And I think that's pretty patronising and kind of strange.

00:26:49.940 But I think the other thing it does is that it's kind of...

00:26:52.160 Microaggressions are actually a pretty useful example

00:26:54.820 of how identity politics actually reifies racial differences

00:26:57.960 because on one university campus,

00:26:59.720 I think it was the University of California, which campus did we get?

00:27:02.980 Some of their microaggressions, including saying things like,

00:27:05.520 America is a melting pot and I don't believe in race.

00:27:09.660 Because that was deemed to be incredibly insensitive

00:27:12.460 to someone who might be still experiencing oppression etc so i think it is ridiculous

00:27:16.860 and thankfully it's not quite as widespread particularly in the uk as it is in other parts

00:27:21.860 of campus life but i think it's actually quite a useful example of how racial differences racial

00:27:27.660 tensions on some sort of level that's kind of being ginned up again by people who claim to be

00:27:31.400 in favor of the opposite i feel like so far we've basically certainly i don't have any course to

00:27:36.980 disagree with anything that you said one thing i wanted to ask you about because a lot of our

00:27:40.880 Audience, I know from experience, are people who are concerned about the level of immigration into this country,

00:27:47.020 people who might be aligned with everything that Spiked writes about and talks about.

00:27:52.620 But on that issue, I think there might be quite a fundamental difference.

00:27:55.120 So why don't you give us your best defense of mass immigration and almost...

00:28:01.120 I don't know if you're pro-open borders quite, but your view on immigration anyway.

00:28:05.120 Well, I think that the point that Spiked's always made historically in relation to immigration

00:28:08.340 that is a kind of question of freedom

00:28:10.700 and it's the ability of people to kind of flourish

00:28:12.720 wherever they are around the world

00:28:14.520 and to be able to be on the move

00:28:15.740 and it's also a kind of question of so many of the arguments

00:28:17.740 against immigration historically

00:28:19.420 and particularly in the current period

00:28:20.880 have often had to do with the kind of low horizons

00:28:23.340 of that particular society

00:28:24.460 one of which is the idea that there's some people

00:28:26.880 who just can't be integrated

00:28:28.040 you know that's a kind of classic

00:28:29.140 you know almost like Powell-like kind of idea

00:28:30.980 that has kind of existed

00:28:31.840 there's also the kind of broader idea

00:28:33.840 that there's only so much a nation can produce

00:28:36.200 you know that some place is kind of full an argument that used to be made by outright racialists

00:28:40.800 and is increasingly made by kind of green people these days in relation to the question of

00:28:45.020 immigration but I think the thing that's actually complicated the argument of immigration more

00:28:48.960 broadly is the question of citizenship because a lot of the mass immigration we've experienced

00:28:54.220 has not only never been done with the say-so of the electorate you know European free movement

00:28:59.860 this was never something that there was a referendum on that people knew that they were

00:29:02.760 signing up to this was always a kind of elite process through which that was introduced

00:29:06.880 and similarly I think it's come hand in hand with a process by which what it means to be a citizen

00:29:12.040 in a sort of democratic country has been increasingly undermined and the idea that a

00:29:17.100 nation should have a particular political culture and a centre which people from various different

00:29:22.740 origins and roots can kind of meet in the middle and understand themselves as part of one entity

00:29:27.320 has increasingly been painted as something suspect you know the idea that there should

00:29:31.480 just be diversity for its own sake rather than some sort of common culture so I think actually

00:29:35.700 a lot of the anxieties around immigration I think they've been entirely decoupled in the large part

00:29:40.320 from the kind of racist arguments of the past I think that's quite clear in many respects you know

00:29:44.980 concern about immigration has maintained largely speaking over the last few years even as racial

00:29:49.880 animus continue to that's it that's exactly it isn't it yeah actually people's hostility towards

00:29:55.060 immigrants has been dropping rapidly at the same time as concerns about immigration levels have

00:30:00.220 been rising quite quickly and I that's to me that's a fascinating argument

00:30:04.720 which brings us straight on to brexit which is something that we because this

00:30:09.520 will go out a few weeks from now we have no idea who is who's going to be the

00:30:14.680 prime minister of this country who's going to be the foreign secretary is

00:30:18.160 there going to be a brexit is it not going to be a brexit but one of the

00:30:21.340 things and we've talked about it so much on the show is then how first as an

00:30:25.060 immigrant myself to this country how frustrating I find that the argument

00:30:28.180 about Brexit has been confused as an argument about xenophobia and racism when I think it

00:30:34.180 really is very little to do with that.

00:30:38.360 So we don't want to get too much into Brexit, into the nuance of it, but we talked before

00:30:42.120 we started about the idea that Brexit is a good indicator of the fact that mainstream

00:30:47.340 opinions or the majority opinions in society are becoming unpalatable in polite society.

00:30:54.060 Tell us what you think about that.

00:30:55.420 And I think that's one of the things that was most revealing and kind of shocking about the Brexit vote.

00:30:59.080 I think the comedian Jeff Norcott's made this point, or at least this joke before,

00:31:02.200 is that you're in a situation where the majority position is the one that's demonised.

00:31:06.160 That's really weird, you know, because, again, the whole idea of, say, free speech, for example,

00:31:10.960 is kind of prefaced on the idea of the fact that the mainstream can look after itself.

00:31:14.340 What most people think, what is broadly speaking a consensus,

00:31:17.480 is not something that needs the protection of free speech.

00:31:20.000 It's all about the kind of batty ideas on the edges which need that protection

00:31:23.880 because they're always going to be the ones which are demonised.

00:31:26.400 But I think what we've seen recently is, again,

00:31:28.180 the majority of the electorate in a particular referendum vote for something

00:31:31.920 in numbers that we haven't seen for any other vote in British political history.

00:31:36.180 And yet it's treated as something aberrant, strange, vicious, racist,

00:31:41.540 and something which must be kind of crushed at all costs.

00:31:43.640 And I think whilst on the one hand it shows the fact that we're in this bizarre position

00:31:47.700 that the majority position is demonised,

00:31:49.060 But really that is born of the fact that the gap between the electorate and the people they elect has become so wide that not only do they not agree on something, but also the elite has a tendency to assume the worst about those people in every single situation.

00:32:04.840 And just the simple fact that 52% in the referendum voted Leave, whilst about 75% of MPs voted Remain, I think tells you everything about that.

00:32:14.120 And what's been even more shocking about the kind of post-Brexit vote situation is the fact that you would think that given there was this huge blow to the political class as authority,

00:32:23.460 all of the main parties advocating Remain, the country voting Leave, that that would force some kind of reassessment for them to think maybe we're not in touch with the people who vote for us.

00:32:32.420 maybe there's something that we're missing about people wanting more control over their own lives

00:32:36.800 and their own societies the sneering actually got worse and it got more explicit and it got more

00:32:42.520 extreme and it's been going on like that for over two years now so I think what that bizarre

00:32:47.820 situation we find ourselves in where the majority position is demonized is largely a product of the

00:32:52.080 fact that the elites have been becoming ever more distant it feels like from the public and

00:32:58.240 increasingly not caring about that fact and I think that's really aside from the question of

00:33:02.460 how and if and when Brexit is actually implemented is the broader issue for our democracy that we

00:33:07.880 need to try and bring back together because I think that's really what the next story is in

00:33:11.960 effect. I mean one of the things that was interesting with the Brexit campaign was where

00:33:15.600 you had people like Katie Hopkins I mean looking back because you know you're a staunch Brexiteer

00:33:20.600 do you think that that was actually a mistake by the Leave campaign because then it was very very

00:33:27.220 easy for people who are in the remain campaign to go well it's obviously racist you know look at

00:33:32.580 the fact that you know katie is going on tv and saying frankly intolerant things no i mean it was

00:33:39.220 there's definitely the case that there's going to be people on the side of something good who do it

00:33:43.140 for bad reasons i mean there's always going to be examples of that um and i think it's important not

00:33:47.300 to smear the majority of a particular position on the basis of what some you know people with ill

00:33:53.220 intent actually want to want to do with that kind of thing. I think in relation to the Brexit

00:33:56.980 question, the thing that made that more potent was the fact that the left had completely abandoned

00:34:02.040 the cause of Euroscepticism. I mean, Spike, broadly speaking, comes out of a left wing

00:34:05.140 Eurosceptic tradition. And even at the time of the referendum, the Labour Party was being led by

00:34:10.000 someone, Jeremy Corbyn, who spent his entire political life being a staunch Eurosceptic,

00:34:15.480 a hard Brexiteer in the current kind of language. And the fact that even various kind of commentators,

00:34:19.960 people who write for newspapers who had previously been of that kind of left-wing Eurosceptic hue

00:34:27.020 abandoned it because they effectively lost their bottle. And I think they gave in to this very

00:34:32.720 specious argument that just because you so happen to agree with someone like Katie Hopkins on this

00:34:39.280 one particular issue does not mean you're tainted by that. But I think, unfortunately, just by dint

00:34:44.940 of their own kind of cowardice, they effectively abandoned the field. And that made it so much

00:34:48.240 easier for people to say well look who's on that side you know that's what that side is all about

00:34:52.860 but I think that again with the referendum campaign one of the best things to come out of

00:34:56.720 it is that people in voting leave and even people who voted remain given you see the number of

00:35:01.640 people who still think it's something that should be implemented and you know whilst they might be

00:35:06.100 concerned about it know that that must be done is that I don't think they've bought into that kind

00:35:10.020 of that kind of guilt by association and I think the result can approves how the attempts to do

00:35:15.720 that um really don't wash with most people i think they see right for it you know what troubles me

00:35:20.280 with this whole brexit conversation is the fact you're going home mate yeah russ is russ is not

00:35:26.680 in the eu mate as far as i'm concerned goodbye yeah um you know what troubles me with this whole

00:35:33.800 brexit thing is uh we actually had a meeting with some uh i'm not going to name names but we had a

00:35:38.040 meeting with someone who i really respect who both francis and i voted remain uh and she voted leave

00:35:43.960 and we were talking about

00:35:45.920 what we're doing, the show, whatever

00:35:47.820 and she was like, well you guys are Remainers

00:35:49.880 I'm a Brexiteer

00:35:51.300 and I didn't say anything at the time but I actually thought

00:35:53.860 that is an incredibly unhelpful

00:35:56.040 way that we talk about each other because

00:35:57.680 I'm not a Remainer, I voted

00:35:59.980 to remain

00:36:00.640 but that doesn't make me an identity

00:36:03.920 of a person who is Remainer, I'm not out there

00:36:06.060 campaigning to reverse

00:36:08.020 the referendum or whatever

00:36:09.220 people put to that label

00:36:12.160 I just voted Remain

00:36:13.820 You know, maybe I had no clue which way to vote.

00:36:15.620 Maybe I flipped a coin on the day.

00:36:17.300 You know, how do you know that I'm a Remainer?

00:36:20.020 What does it mean that you're a Brexiteer?

00:36:22.560 You know, we've got these rigid identities.

00:36:24.820 Now, what if I change my mind?

00:36:26.200 What if I'd suddenly go, yeah, no, Brexit is a great idea.

00:36:28.840 We'll send Francis back to Venezuela.

00:36:31.500 You know, right?

00:36:34.100 So that's what troubles me is this rigidity of identities almost.

00:36:38.000 We've become like different tribes.

00:36:40.240 and there is not the kind of like you know you voted to leave we wanted to remain we can still

00:36:45.060 have a conversation we don't need to think about each other as different species of animal you know

00:36:49.400 what i mean yeah yeah and i think it's kind of interesting because i think the big divide now

00:36:52.560 broadly speaking is between democrats and anti-democrats i think whether you're a remainer

00:36:57.260 or a lever cease to mean much on the 24th of june 2016 i mean it's i think the reason that people

00:37:03.060 speak so much about the idea that there's this there's these two tribes still um that the country

00:37:07.800 is more divided than it's ever been, which I think you just can't substantiate, is driven

00:37:12.200 by the fact that they're trying to effectively use people who voted Remain as a kind of stage

00:37:15.660 army against implementing the results. Whereas if you look at polling, if you look at the

00:37:20.900 electoral failures of, say, the Liberal Democrats who kind of paint themselves as we can hoover

00:37:25.960 up this 48% and got one of their worst results, you know, in recent years, I think just speaks

00:37:30.560 to the fact that most people cease to be Remainers or Leavers on that question. Most people

00:37:34.640 know that when a referendum of this magnitude is taken that of course the thing has to be

00:37:39.760 implemented and I think a lot of this talk about division I just don't really see it most people

00:37:43.740 who voted leave know a lot of people who voted remain and vice versa we're not beating each

00:37:48.120 other up in the streets and it's just I think often that kind of all that question about division

00:37:51.680 and the idea that um yes there are these kind of two tribes I think it's only really in elite

00:37:56.780 circles that that's kind of talked about mainly because they don't have much experience outside

00:38:00.420 of those quite rarefied circles oh come on are you not being naive and saying that people aren't

00:38:05.460 divided i mean i know lots of people who who don't speak to their parents or don't speak to their

00:38:09.320 sister or their brother or other some people got divorced over this i i hear anecdotes about this

00:38:13.860 but i just don't see it personally now that's anecdote versus anecdote i suppose but then the

00:38:18.700 only thing the thing i would stack up next to that is again if you look at the kind of the polling

00:38:22.100 for all of this and so far as seven out of ten people think that the vote should be implemented

00:38:26.120 that's much higher than the 52 and that can't just be remainers who suddenly think leave is a great

00:38:30.020 idea either and i just feel like there's there's a tendency particularly on the kind of continuity

00:38:35.440 remain campaign side to present the um what is effectively a very slim part of the population

00:38:41.140 as actually far bigger than it actually is and i think this calls for this talk about division just

00:38:45.140 plays into that too neatly i'm not saying that people didn't have these issues over brexit i'm

00:38:49.140 sure it did happen in certain circles but on the extent that it's being talked about i just don't

00:38:52.780 really buy it i guess why is brexit such a good idea i mean like everybody goes oh you know i

00:38:59.400 hear so much about it yeah i voted remain because in all honesty i'm quite conservative and i'm

00:39:06.500 quite an anxious person i'm like well we're doing pretty well within the eu why change you're quite

00:39:11.680 conservative i always knew you were yeah but you know yeah it finally comes out yeah crush your

00:39:18.020 poor tory scum yeah tory scum hashtag no um i just i just thought that why change a winning formula

00:39:24.540 this country was doing well under the eu i thought anyway i think there's there's various

00:39:29.700 different arguments kind of involved in it so i guess i'll just pick out one and that is the

00:39:33.060 democratic argument insofar as in myriad ways the european union limits democracy you know from

00:39:38.300 everything we've talked about from effectively from many positions of left or right if you just

00:39:42.700 want simply to control your borders which isn't necessarily even a right-wing position but one

00:39:46.160 that a lot of people on the right are concerned about you can't do that as a member of the

00:39:49.720 European Union and that's a policy which we have adopted irreversibly by dint of being EU members

00:39:54.620 that we cannot have any control over whilst we're still members. Similarly if you take even something

00:39:59.300 like some of the policies, pretty light social democratic policies that someone like Jeremy

00:40:03.200 Corbyn wants to implement, state aid etc, you couldn't implement that whilst being a member of

00:40:07.860 the European Union and that the entirety of the kind of structure is designed to limit the scope

00:40:12.640 of politics within member states and also becomes very helpful for our elected politicians to

00:40:17.720 effectively outsource responsibility for various things that they used to have to do in relation

00:40:22.740 to a country decisions they had to take ideas they had to think about and to this distant

00:40:27.060 bureaucracy who would effectively do it for them and I think the main thing is it's a question of

00:40:31.460 democracy control self-determination that comes with risks because who knows what might be around

00:40:36.760 the corner but at the same time considering how the European project has been panning out over

00:40:40.500 the past 10 years I don't think we can say that Brexit is the only risky option either but I think

00:40:45.300 It all comes down to a point that, again, as we were talking about

00:40:48.200 the strange death of left-euro-scepticism,

00:40:50.400 but Jeremy Corbyn's great hero, Tony Benn said,

00:40:53.140 was that he'd rather have a bad parliament than a good king.

00:40:56.020 And I think that's a crucial argument in relation to Brexit

00:40:58.280 and why, despite who knows what will happen next,

00:41:00.720 that's the main reason why I think we were right to vote to leave,

00:41:03.040 and that's the ultimate promise of it,

00:41:04.260 is just more control of ordinary people over the people who govern them.

00:41:07.640 But, I mean, doesn't it feel at the moment,

00:41:09.720 and maybe, again, I'm buying into mainstream media,

00:41:13.260 it just feels like there's chaos.

00:41:15.020 I mean, there's the issue with the border in Northern Ireland.

00:41:18.140 Nobody really knows what's going on with that.

00:41:20.800 The fact that I was reading an article about, you know, Kent,

00:41:24.660 with Dover, with the port, there's going to be massive issues.

00:41:28.140 People talking about the army coming in with supplies.

00:41:31.020 We're going to run out of insulin.

00:41:32.820 Do you know what I mean?

00:41:34.740 Is it worth it?

00:41:36.140 I mean, well, first of all, I think we have to take some of these prognostications

00:41:40.060 with a bit of a pinch of salt.

00:41:40.980 I mean, some of the things that are being talked about at the moment

00:41:42.600 were things that we actually heard during the Remain campaign.

00:41:44.560 itself about what would happen immediately after a Brexit vote you know the idea that would be

00:41:48.460 instant recession that there would be problems in relation to bringing things into the country

00:41:52.040 these are things that we have heard before and I mean the fact that people are effectively saying

00:41:56.080 that people will die if this happens whenever someone makes that kind of a claim in politics

00:41:59.960 and they're not actually talking about a war if they're not talking about a war then you've got

00:42:05.680 to question those kinds of arguments it's just classic fear-mongering but I think in relation

00:42:10.180 to how chaotic things are I think a lot of that speaks to the fact that first of all Brexit was

00:42:15.140 never going to be an easy process because of the fact that the European Union does not want this

00:42:19.680 to be a success for us their main concern is not even their own economic self-interest it's holding

00:42:24.900 the project together and if Brexit or leaving the European Union begins to look like something which

00:42:29.560 is you know a bit of a rocky road but something which isn't necessarily going to be too difficult

00:42:34.420 and of course there's going to be many countries many places on the continent are far more

00:42:38.480 you're a sceptic than Britain even is and to start considering it as a viable option but I actually

00:42:43.200 think the fact that it was always going to be difficult and it's been exacerbated by the fact

00:42:46.760 that it's being negotiated by the political class we rejected in voting for Brexit most people not

00:42:53.600 only in this government but in parliament don't actually agree with it and at the very worst even

00:42:57.820 if at the very best rather even if they know that it has to be implemented are terrified of actually

00:43:03.500 implementing it so I think the extent to which there is a lot of chaos and uncertainty I think

00:43:07.740 It speaks to the fact that there has been this very fearful, uncertain and often quite botched approach to actually implementing it.

00:43:14.100 So we should take a lot of this from a pinch of salt, but also just recognise that this is the battle that we have on our hands

00:43:19.200 by trying to actually force through something and get our politicians to implement something that none of them actually wanted in the first place.

00:43:25.540 So if you want Brexit to happen, you need a real Brexiteer.

00:43:28.280 Yeah, exactly.

00:43:34.340 There's one question I've got to ask you.

00:43:35.940 What does everyone who gets involved in Brexit gets fired?

00:43:39.860 It feels like a cheap horror movie.

00:43:41.480 Suddenly the character turns up, they're dead.

00:43:43.300 The next one turns up, they're dead.

00:43:45.320 It just keeps going on.

00:43:47.020 What's going on?

00:43:47.880 So you're talking about people in cabinet?

00:43:50.660 David Davis.

00:43:52.600 Loads of them just seem to turn up for a couple of weeks

00:43:54.980 and then just leave again.

00:43:57.020 Right now, this might change, as you say, in a matter of days,

00:43:59.860 but all of the main offices of state are held by people who voted Remain.

00:44:02.940 Some would campaign quite fiercely for Remain.

00:44:04.880 and I think it just gets to the point of first of all the fact that there's been this assumption

00:44:11.220 that the Tory party is kind of the party of Brexit but it never has been. A majority of Tory MPs

00:44:15.560 voted for Remain and even though the party membership is broadly speaking quite Eurosceptic

00:44:19.720 it's certainly not that way on the higher level and I think it just speaks to the fact on the one

00:44:23.760 hand I think the kind of inability of a lot of people who even though they presented themselves

00:44:29.000 as the kind of heroes and the leaders of Brexit people like Boris Johnson failed really to kind

00:44:33.780 of stand up for it when it really mattered were too likely to kind of capitulate in so many

00:44:37.520 situations which made their positions increasingly untenable i think but it also i think just speaks

00:44:42.320 to the fact that um again the core contradiction you make a vote against a political class it's

00:44:47.420 now left for a political class to implement and i think the fact that people are dropping like

00:44:51.260 flies i think speaks to the fact that they're increasingly proving themselves either unwilling

00:44:55.500 or unable actually to kind of implement this as much as people want it to be so and can we make

00:45:00.540 success of hard Brexit? Because everything I've read about it, apparently, it's going to be the

00:45:04.440 end of the world. I mean, this is what's so strange about it, because the idea that it's going to be

00:45:08.180 kind of economic Armageddon for all times, I mean, the proportion of trade that we did with the

00:45:11.600 European Union has been decreasing over the past, you know, 15, 20 years, as trade with the rest of

00:45:16.280 the world is increasing. Obviously, the process of leaving quite abruptly would have effects,

00:45:20.600 no one's saying that there wouldn't be. But at the same time, the one thing, the main, first of all,

00:45:24.960 I think the kind of Armageddon claims just don't fully stack up and I think that can be slightly

00:45:30.680 ludicrous but also I think actually Brexit voters in particular had no illusions when they voted I

00:45:35.340 mean there's various bits of research which suggests that most Brexiteers when they voted

00:45:39.060 for that particularly in the short term it would make the economy about as good or maybe a little

00:45:43.600 bit worse because you know we're separating ourselves out of this entire legal and trading

00:45:48.060 order that we've been intertwined with for decades but nevertheless I think what the vote showed was

00:45:52.740 the fact that short-term economic instability, a little trouble at the ports, certain things

00:45:58.920 being things that we have to kind of contingency plan for, et cetera, is a pretty small price

00:46:03.280 to play for self-determination.

00:46:05.560 And I think it's pretty upsetting that it feels like that pretty basic democratic principle

00:46:10.040 is something that so many people in the elite feel uncomfortable with and think is so strange

00:46:14.220 and reckless.

00:46:15.440 All right, well, let's move on a little bit.

00:46:16.880 I wanted to ask you, you've debated Ash, is it Sarkar?

00:46:20.420 Sarkar.

00:46:21.120 Sarkar.

00:46:21.520 Ash Sarkar, who recently made headlines because she went on the Piers Morgan, Susanna Reid show

00:46:27.940 and talked about how she's literally a communist.

00:46:31.380 What do you make of the rise of this kind of new socialism in the world where, you know,

00:46:36.700 for me coming from Russia, I mean, I personally see no difference between someone saying

00:46:40.600 I'm literally a communist and saying I'm literally a Nazi.

00:46:44.300 To me, there is no difference between those two ideologies are responsible for a similar

00:46:48.040 number of deaths in the world.

00:46:49.120 Communism probably has claimed more lives, actually.

00:46:51.520 Certainly in my country, you know, what do you make of the fact that it's perfectly normal now for people to go on TV and go?

00:46:57.920 Yeah, I'm a communist. It's luxury communism. Luxury communism. Luxury communism. Yeah, that's it. That's what I call it.

00:47:02.760 Yeah, yeah, which is a new rebook.

00:47:04.760 I think it actually speaks to the I think the fact that people are selling t-shirts with I'm literally a communist on them.

00:47:09.920 People are going on was a good morning Britain and declaring themselves communists.

00:47:13.680 It just effectively underscores the death of communism just because of the fact that it's become an incredibly safe

00:47:19.560 and meaningless category for, you know, self-styled radicals in the West.

00:47:24.000 I mean, first of all, because a lot of people in this kind of

00:47:25.600 fully automated luxury communism crew,

00:47:28.440 they're openly campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn.

00:47:30.360 And it was always a kind of principle of the kind of, you know,

00:47:32.580 the far left that it was almost worse to support the Labour Party

00:47:35.380 because they were holding back, you know,

00:47:36.820 the kind of glorious revolution that was to come.

00:47:38.860 So a lot of these people calling themselves communists

00:47:40.620 are spending their entire days advocating

00:47:42.760 for a pretty milquetoast social democrat.

00:47:44.520 So I think there's an element of posturing and projection

00:47:47.720 in a lot of this, to be honest.

00:47:49.200 but at the same time i think there is a there's a tendency especially in the kind of right wing

00:47:53.980 reaction to a lot of those um statements to give them a little more credit than they actually have

00:47:58.600 to paint them as more radical more dangerous you know um more serious than they actually are when

00:48:03.780 broadly speaking i think the way in which marxism and communism have kind of become

00:48:08.300 just poses that people strike it's something that gets written up in teen vogue as happened

00:48:12.640 with the ash sarka thing i think speaks to the fact that it's just become a favorite publication

00:48:16.440 it's incredible

00:48:18.780 so you don't think she wants to organise

00:48:20.460 a system of gulags

00:48:22.960 in the UK? I don't think so

00:48:24.740 no and I don't think any of the people saying this stuff would be

00:48:26.720 capable of such a thing in the first place

00:48:28.040 unfortunately I think a lot

00:48:30.780 of left wing labels whether it's communism, Marxism

00:48:32.660 or whatever have been stripped

00:48:34.560 of a lot of their content, they've just been

00:48:36.440 fashion accessories that I think a lot of people

00:48:38.720 don and I think in some respects

00:48:40.820 the reaction

00:48:43.200 to it gives them more credit

00:48:44.720 than a lot of these people actually deserve.

00:48:46.220 What they're pushing is far more boring than they like to rely on it.

00:48:48.760 It's interesting to say it because you'll know that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez,

00:48:52.740 who was just elected in America,

00:48:54.960 I listened to a few of her interviews.

00:48:58.000 I'm not sure she knows a lot, much about what she's talking about, many issues.

00:49:01.760 But one of the questions that was asked to her,

00:49:04.000 she gave a very cogent answer, which I thought was quite relevant.

00:49:07.000 She was asked why young people are increasingly going for things like social,

00:49:10.880 you know becoming social democrats or democratic socialist socialism socialism and she said that

00:49:16.980 if you look at young people say people who uh who are in their 20s now for example they've never

00:49:23.020 experienced the benefits of capitalism in the same way that our generation people in their 30s or

00:49:28.380 people older than they have they they came of age after the 2008 crash so all they know really is

00:49:35.480 expensive housing, economic instability, lack of jobs, lack of future. So what they're seeing

00:49:41.560 is a world that doesn't work for them. They're seeing a world in which their future is likely

00:49:46.120 to be worse than their parents. And that's why they're looking at these policies and these

00:49:52.240 parties that represent in their minds, at least theoretically, an opportunity for a fairer society.

00:49:58.880 Did you buy into that argument? Do you think young people are persuaded by that for that reason?

00:50:02.760 I think there's definitely an argument with that.

00:50:04.080 I think, for instance, take something like the housing crisis,

00:50:06.420 which is a huge issue in the UK

00:50:08.380 and no one ever seems to be able to grapple with.

00:50:10.440 This is a big problem for the right, I think,

00:50:12.040 because you can't expect people without any capital

00:50:15.140 to be pro-capitalist.

00:50:16.500 I mean, it just doesn't make any sense.

00:50:18.000 But nevertheless, I think, to be honest,

00:50:19.800 to be slightly more cynical about the kind of rise

00:50:22.580 of this sort of new form of socialism,

00:50:24.320 this new left-wing progressivism,

00:50:25.960 not only because I think the extent of it

00:50:27.120 is often a bit exaggerated,

00:50:28.780 but also it feels like what it means to be a socialist,

00:50:31.260 which historically is quite an important

00:50:33.340 and at many points positive doctrine

00:50:35.820 has been watered down

00:50:37.620 you know you take someone like Ocasio-Cortez

00:50:39.360 what she's talking about is basically NHS

00:50:41.580 free education I mean these are not

00:50:43.500 particularly radical ideas it speaks to how

00:50:45.400 narrow the political culture in the US often is

00:50:47.540 that these things are seen as such but that's

00:50:49.420 kind of quite limited. But she does say things like capitalism

00:50:51.540 has had its day and stuff like that. I know

00:50:53.400 but it's empty sloganeering and I mean

00:50:55.400 for instance a lot of the people who are very excitable around

00:50:57.420 the Corbyn movement feel that they're effectively anti-capitalist

00:50:59.780 But what they would be voting for is not necessarily going to be a kind of revolutionary program.

00:51:03.640 You know, I mean, it's the sort of thing where I think there's a bit of a failure of political labels in relation to this stuff.

00:51:08.240 And I also think that there's been a bit of a danger that left wing politics and socialism or being a Corbyn Easter has kind of become its own breed of identity politics.

00:51:16.700 It often feels quite shallow. It often feels like the centre of it is not entirely clear.

00:51:22.980 And it often just becomes about I'm a good person and you're not.

00:51:26.380 There's an element to that which I think is really key.

00:51:28.700 key it often feels about posture rather than substance and I think one perfect example about

00:51:33.380 that is the fact that everyone's saying that they're really pro-corbyn really pro-policy

00:51:36.320 and yet a lot of them are pro-eu something which would render those policies completely inert

00:51:40.820 so I think it just speaks to the fact that largely speaking what it means to be a socialist has kind

00:51:45.280 of been defined down to some extent and at the same time I think that it's unfortunately been

00:51:50.820 absorbed as a kind of at least for young people as a kind of another form of identity politics

00:51:54.860 So I think we should kind of temper a lot of the slightly either excitable or terrified response that a lot of these new movements have.

00:52:02.740 I think they're slightly different from what people think they are.

00:52:04.620 Because one thing I've seen that I've just been baffled by is just a backlash against centrists.

00:52:10.040 And they demean centrists, so it's almost like another extension of the alt-right.

00:52:15.000 I'm like, what?

00:52:16.020 The kind of centrist ads phenomenon.

00:52:17.580 Yeah.

00:52:18.040 And it works the other way around.

00:52:19.140 Like we have people calling us cucks because we are not right-wing because we are centrists.

00:52:24.400 yeah you know so it kind of comes from both ways it's like if you're not on an extreme you are evil

00:52:30.780 yeah yeah no there is there is a lot of that going on i think the one thing i would say about that

00:52:34.900 is that obviously it's ridiculous um and there's been this kind of attempt to by both sides to

00:52:39.820 kind of just suggest that you know if you happen to be in the center of politics that makes you

00:52:43.280 complicit in xyz you know there's all this there's all these kind of things if you're on the sort of

00:52:47.180 centered labor party you're effectively a tory all this kind of stuff is just a bit infantile

00:52:50.520 and a bit embarrassing but I think the one thing that's important to recognize is the fact just

00:52:56.860 because we live in this age where you do have kind of crazy people it feels like in the extreme

00:53:00.080 shouting at each other and into the darkness all the time about things that don't really much seem

00:53:04.340 important it doesn't necessarily mean that the center is always the most you know the position

00:53:07.840 that everyone should hold I think it's fair to say that you can have a radical left-wing politics say

00:53:11.700 that wasn't batshit crazy in the same way that it is possibly that you can have progressive politics

00:53:16.880 which is aimed at really fundamentally changing society

00:53:19.020 that doesn't mean either gulags or ridiculous identity politics.

00:53:22.440 You know, it just feels like the one thing

00:53:24.660 that I really wouldn't want people to take away

00:53:26.100 from the very strange climate for debate and discussion

00:53:28.360 that we're in at the moment

00:53:29.140 is the idea that splitting the difference is always the right way.

00:53:31.860 Because if anything, the Brexit revolt, for instance,

00:53:35.140 is really a rejection of that kind of politics on some level.

00:53:38.220 Not just centrism, but I think something which is always,

00:53:41.100 particularly in nature of politicians and political parties,

00:53:44.080 that has come with centrism,

00:53:45.560 which is this new technocracy, the belief that it's better to kind of outsource power to unaccountable bodies, etc.

00:53:51.740 European Union being an example of it.

00:53:53.280 So I think on the one hand, whilst it feels like so few people are being reasonable,

00:53:57.740 and there's this kind of reasonable people like yourselves in the centre,

00:54:00.200 that's not to say the fact that being more radical in certain ways is necessarily a dirty word.

00:54:05.880 And I think, in fact, in many respects, Brexit is an example of something which is radical

00:54:10.180 and which could actually change society for the better,

00:54:12.280 against some of the kind of slightly more centrist

00:54:14.840 or technocratic trends that we've been seeing

00:54:17.020 in the last kind of 20, 30 years.

00:54:18.720 All right, well, thanks for speaking with us.

00:54:21.420 The final question we always like to ask is,

00:54:23.860 is there one thing that no one's talking about

00:54:25.920 that we ought to be talking about?

00:54:27.460 I think for that, I would say, what next?

00:54:29.780 And I mean that in relation to Britain,

00:54:31.280 in relation to Europe and America.

00:54:33.220 Over the last couple of years,

00:54:34.740 we've seen all these kind of revolts

00:54:35.820 against the establishment.

00:54:37.320 They've taken different forms in different places.

00:54:39.280 Sometimes they've empowered people that we don't like.

00:54:41.100 sometimes they've been something like Brexit which was just a kind of leaderless you know

00:54:44.780 bottom-up type of revolt but I think the question for anyone who's interested not just in something

00:54:49.680 like Brexit but the bigger question about how do you make societies more democratic open how do we

00:54:55.280 make sure that people are more kind of involved in how these societies are shaped and that the

00:54:58.480 terms of the debate aren't set either by a vocal minority or by the elites I think the question is

00:55:03.220 what comes after this how do we carve out a new politics for a new age and it feels like all the

00:55:07.980 old politics are knackered and i think that um that at the moment is the most interesting question

00:55:12.700 that anyone interested in democratic also progressive politics should be trying to answer

00:55:16.920 as broad as that is great uh before you go is there anything you'd like to plug or promote tom

00:55:23.180 twitter handle twitter handle or i'm at tom underscore slater underscore but also people

00:55:28.580 should of course go and check out spiked online we're spiked hyphen online.com and our twitter

00:55:33.420 handle is at spiked online so not just for brexit free speech but um the whole gamut of issues you'll

00:55:38.320 find plenty to read there brilliant and uh i'm at constantin kitchen on twitter i'm at failing human

00:55:43.780 and uh if you enjoyed this episode as always subscribe to our youtube channel and most most

00:55:48.400 importantly if you've already subscribed uh click that bell right next to subscribe button to make

00:55:53.340 sure you get notified every time we release a video thank you very much for tuning in as always

00:55:57.760 and we'll see you in a week's time bye

TRIGGERnometry - September 04, 2018

Tom Slater on Free Speech, Brexit, Immigration & Communism

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