TRIGGERnometry - Triggernometry- Ep. 2 Andrew Doyle

00:00:00.000 Andrew Doyle, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:01.940 Hello.

00:00:10.060 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:13.440 I'm Constantine Kishin.

00:00:14.560 And this is the show for you if you are bored of people arguing with each other on the internet

00:00:19.200 over subjects they know nothing about.

00:00:21.840 At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be experts, we ask the experts.

00:00:25.900 We're here at the world-famous Angel Comedy Club,

00:00:28.640 and our amazing guest this week is a stand-up comedian,

00:00:31.740 columnist for Spike Magazine, and co-writer for Jonathan Pye,

00:00:35.200 Andrew Doyle. Welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:37.060 Hello.

00:00:46.120 So, Andrew, tell us a little bit about how you came to be sitting on that chair.

00:00:51.060 Because you asked me to. It's that simple, really.

00:00:53.420 And what has been your journey?

00:00:54.640 i'll just do anything well you've had a great career already how have you come to the point

00:01:00.980 that you're at you were a comedian first uh yeah i well i mean i started out writing plays and

00:01:05.380 sketches and this kind of thing um and i was also a teacher at the time and then uh one night we did

00:01:11.060 a sketch show it was an hour long with a couple of friends and we had a sort of 10 minute deficit

00:01:14.840 so i said i'll just write i'll try a bit of stand-up and i did it i mean it wasn't very good

00:01:19.020 to be honest but i enjoyed it and then i sort of went into it that way and then that became my sort

00:01:23.220 main source of income so I went part-time as a teacher and then left teaching and then this is

00:01:27.300 what I do now basically. And how did you get to writing for Spiked and then working with Jonathan

00:01:31.740 Pye? Oh so those are two very different areas of my life but the Spiked thing came about because

00:01:39.340 I'd met a couple of the people who were involved with Spiked and the deputy editor Tom Slater

00:01:44.880 got me to write one or two things because I agree very much with their stance on free speech

00:01:49.680 so i wrote a couple of things and i became very conscious and i was aware of how unpopular spiked

00:01:54.780 is amongst the comedy circuit um um and there's a kind of stigma attached to the publication

00:02:00.820 based typically on a lack of knowledge about what the publication is to be fair um so i was a bit

00:02:06.560 hesitant a bit cowardly about it actually and i thought well i'm not going to make this a regular

00:02:10.240 thing and then a couple of years ago about two and a half three years ago i got to the point in

00:02:14.560 my life where i thought you know i'm going to stop just being mealy mouthed about what i think

00:02:18.680 I'm going to start saying what I actually think

00:02:20.440 because I think honesty is really important

00:02:21.740 it's quite self-destructive not to be honest

00:02:23.540 and also it's about respecting other people enough

00:02:26.100 to be honest to them

00:02:27.200 and know that they're not going to shun you for that

00:02:29.000 so I just started writing what I thought

00:02:32.100 for Spiked on a regular basis

00:02:34.280 so I became a columnist for them

00:02:35.440 and it's been really great I think

00:02:37.360 but some people don't share that view

00:02:39.360 For the benefit of our viewers and listeners

00:02:42.540 who may not have encountered Spike magazine

00:02:45.060 could you describe it a little bit

00:02:46.320 what it is for them?

00:02:47.000 Yeah, it's a radical humanist magazine. It has its origins in Marxism. It's I suppose it's on the left, but it's libertarian, which some people see as a contradiction.

00:02:58.560 but actually it is compatible um it's very much uh got it's got i mean a lot of the uh authors

00:03:05.660 disagree with each other on various points but it has some broad editorial lines as all

00:03:09.620 publications do i'd say it's uh it's very consistently anti-trump uh anti-new labor

00:03:14.880 anti-conservative um it's very um anti-racism pro-human rights uh it believes in unlimited

00:03:23.180 immigration no borders whatsoever these are the sort of central premises uh it also has an

00:03:29.780 editorial line where it has a sense skepticism about climate change which i don't share um but

00:03:35.780 on the whole it's also predominantly a free speech uh magazine so um and that to me is one of the

00:03:42.460 most important uh things and the most important topics that we're facing at the moment so i agree

00:03:47.740 with more than i disagree and that's why i write for it fantastic and you said that these free

00:03:52.640 speech is a very important topic at the moment why do you think it's become more important now

00:03:57.020 as opposed to five years ago just to pick an arbitrary i'd say something has happened over

00:04:02.080 the past five ten years um and we have this kind of creeping authoritarianism that's occurring in

00:04:07.100 in our country in the west generally um and it i think it's come out of a kind of misunderstanding

00:04:14.740 and misapplication of political correctness with political correctness was from my era you know

00:04:18.660 It's from the sort of 90s, this idea that we should have a kind of shared discourse, a shared understanding of the way in which it is polite to interact with other people in the public space, in the workplace, all of this kind of thing, which I'm very much on board with.

00:04:30.780 And I think that's just a good idea, not to criminalise the way that people speak, but to sort of have a sort of shared understanding and as a society encourage and disencourage certain things.

00:04:39.900 I don't have a problem. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's sort of morphed into something new.

00:04:44.580 What's happening now, I wouldn't call political correctness. I don't think that's what this is.

00:04:47.800 I think it's something else, and I haven't really decided what it should be called.

00:04:50.900 I'm not in a position to make that judgment, but it's not really political correctness.

00:04:54.300 It's a new kind of identity politics, which is very much focused on intersectional grievances

00:04:59.500 and the idea of victimhood as currency, and I think it's very, very damaging and extremely

00:05:03.900 divisive, and I think it's something that needs to be resisted.

00:05:06.680 It's also a means by which censorship can be called for from a position of virtue, and

00:05:13.040 that troubles me deeply, because all of the civil rights movements, all of the movements

00:05:17.220 from the new left in the 60s and 70s in terms of gay rights, in terms of feminism, in terms

00:05:21.940 of civil rights for racial minorities, all had at their heart a belief that free speech

00:05:27.160 was essential because if you don't have free speech, none of those other rights will follow.

00:05:32.280 Now we have a situation where people are prepared, particularly on the left, or what I prefer

00:05:36.160 to call the liberal left, to sacrifice the fundamental principles of democracy and the

00:05:40.100 fundamental principles of free speech for something that is perceived to be a greater

00:05:43.480 good.

00:05:44.120 Which is what?

00:05:44.700 which is the protection of vulnerable groups.

00:05:48.300 I find this to be not only damaging to vulnerable groups,

00:05:52.360 but it's a surefire way to generate resentment

00:05:55.400 and divide society more and more and more.

00:05:58.160 And we see what happens.

00:05:59.360 We see what happens.

00:06:00.140 Donald Trump is in the White House.

00:06:01.500 I can't think that, I mean, he ran his campaign

00:06:03.800 on the basis of being anti what he calls PEC, you know.

00:06:08.120 It's a kind of frustration that you see

00:06:10.320 amongst huge swathes of the population

00:06:12.480 that they are continuing, they're poor,

00:06:13.820 they've got nothing they've got no hope they've ever since the third way and the clintons and

00:06:18.700 the blares they've had nothing at all and all of a sudden they're voting for any kind of change

00:06:22.680 they just want to explode the system they just want to change it and they're told while they're

00:06:26.880 struggling and they have nothing that they're privileged and uh that they they are racist

00:06:32.420 when a lot of them are not racist majority of them are not racist they're told they're homophobic

00:06:36.020 they're told they're sexist and they're continually battered in this way um and it generates an awful

00:06:40.960 lot of resentment and then it backfires so what i say to the proponents on the liberal left who

00:06:45.740 push this kind of agenda is you this is self-defeating you were destroying yourselves

00:06:50.060 i'm coming from the left so i'm saying we need to do better than this because if we don't uh then

00:06:55.300 the problem is going to perpetuate but you see somebody would then go well actually what you're

00:07:00.900 you're saying this and you're you know you're in a very comfortable career you are a man of

00:07:05.420 privilege you're a white man of course you would say these things because you've never been oppressed

00:07:09.420 there's a huge amount of assumptions in that statement yes firstly that i have a successful

00:07:13.920 career i think the jury is very much out on that uh if i did have a successful career i wouldn't

00:07:19.940 be struggling for money all the time well there's that no that would be rude that would be rude i

00:07:26.420 wouldn't do that i like that that would be rude although accurate it would be rude

00:07:29.920 you see often the the accusation of privilege comes with all all kinds of assumptions and

00:07:35.360 what i've noticed is the people who peddle this idea tend to be from very upper middle class

00:07:38.660 backgrounds it seems to be a very bourgeois concern identity politics at the moment i'm not

00:07:43.260 saying in all cases but certainly the most prominent vocal elements of the liberal left

00:07:47.440 tend to have double barrel names tend to i mean the the books that are being published about this

00:07:52.100 stuff where people are desperate for victimhood um tend to be quite well-off people people who

00:07:56.860 talk about their holidays in the pyrenees when they were young and and all of this kind of stuff

00:08:00.240 so i don't know where the assumption that i'm privileged is privileged for me of course uh

00:08:04.820 people face homophobia and racism and all this stuff and we need to stand up against that but

00:08:09.380 above all else what privilege comes from money from contacts from opportunity from nepotism

00:08:13.560 from all of the stuff that middle class people have only seven percent of this country are

00:08:17.520 educated at private schools but they're disproportionately represented in the law

00:08:20.260 in the media in journalism and all of the major in politics all of the major uh positions so

00:08:25.680 really if we wanted to uh just to sort this out societally we would address uh that imbalance

00:08:30.840 so i would never say to someone you're privileged because you are white it doesn't make any it

00:08:34.620 doesn't make any sense i mean when munro burgdorff the labor activist said that you can still be

00:08:39.200 homeless and have white privilege that is an incredibly insulting thing to say from someone

00:08:43.300 who is so privileged so upper middle class um and has had all these benefits but as an ethnic

00:08:49.700 minority and trans person all of a sudden the the uh the victim hierarchy shifts and so someone

00:08:54.700 who's homeless is suddenly more is privileged or potentially privileged i mean this is a nonsense

00:08:58.180 so i think we have to think in terms of class i think if you're not thinking in terms of class

00:09:02.600 consciousness you can't really self-identify as left in my view although a lot of people on the

00:09:06.280 left do seem to think that by uh by focusing solely and i must emphasize i'm not saying that

00:09:11.840 tackling racism and homophobia and sexism isn't important it's key to what i believe in what i'm

00:09:16.500 saying is it is often done at the expense of class concerns now there was it would be one thing if it

00:09:21.240 was if we were covering everything but that doesn't appear to be uh certainly my reading of it that is

00:09:26.480 not how how things are playing out in a practical sense so if you say to me well my argument is is

00:09:32.120 undermined by the fact that i'm white well or the fact that i'm male how do we know that i haven't

00:09:38.380 been disadvantaged in in other ways how do you know i mean you don't i'm curious about that

00:09:42.360 because we were talking just before we started actually and i i asked you if you're gay because

00:09:45.860 i read that you did a show that where you talked partly about that and i'm curious that you haven't

00:09:49.880 brought that up in defense of your right to speak which i find interesting because that is the

00:09:55.160 instinct we most of us now have isn't it to kind of go wait i'm oppressed as well therefore i'm

00:10:00.060 allowed to speak i think it's irrelevant and i think i think it would be irrelevant if i were a

00:10:04.880 black gay female i i think the argument is what matters i think this okay so this is where i think

00:10:09.340 a lot of the liberal left are going wrong it's that they've forgotten how to argue we don't have

00:10:12.400 critical thinking at the heart of schooling anymore i used to teach critical thinking at a level

00:10:15.780 uh it's really really key and it's important the first thing you'll learn from a critical thinking

00:10:19.440 course is as soon as you attack the person and not the argument you've lost it's an ad hominem

00:10:22.840 attack so um anyone who invokes uh your race your gender your sexuality has already lost the

00:10:29.640 argument um it's not a an adequate argumentative technique so that to me is something we need to

00:10:36.900 get back to you need to address the point okay so let me give you for instance so if you say to me

00:10:41.120 if i make a point make an argument about identity politics and you say well i don't accept that

00:10:45.880 argument because you're white and you're male right what happens then when i introduce you to

00:10:50.820 a woman a black woman who is making an identical point so is the point suddenly is the argument

00:10:56.440 suddenly more persuasive is that what you're telling me now this is the problem with people

00:10:59.500 who peddle identity politics in its current form they are undermining themselves because if your

00:11:04.900 rebuttal depends on something that is individual about the person you're arguing then when you when

00:11:09.640 you are faced with the identical argument from someone who doesn't fit that demographic you have

00:11:13.540 nowhere else to go and you've lost they do have somewhere else to go actually because what they

00:11:16.640 do then is they call that person a race traitor or a traitor to the agenda or the internalized

00:11:21.100 misogyny or whatever self-hating yeah exactly i can think of nothing more patronizing than a woman 1.00

00:11:26.020 saying to another woman well you're not thinking in the right way i mean that is underpinned by

00:11:31.080 genuine misogyny uh or you're suffering or you're an uncle tom or yours or you're self-hating i mean

00:11:36.980 how how dare someone make that assumption about someone maybe someone just disagrees with you

00:11:41.660 and maybe that's okay right it's an interesting thing for me because i'm from russia that's where

00:11:46.860 i was i was born in the soviet union but i'm from russia and people said to me when in these kind

00:11:51.060 of situations well you're white you don't know what you're talking about interestingly someone

00:11:54.460 who looks like me in russia i had people in russia come up to me in the street and say 0.95

00:11:58.380 in russian literally you are black go home wow because people who look like me in russia are

00:12:04.700 the discriminated against minority okay but no one in the uk could possibly know that without 1.00

00:12:09.920 having a conversation with me first quite so they've made an assumption they've made an

00:12:13.740 assumption based on their experience as opposed to anything about my experience whatsoever so now

00:12:18.880 that my oppression credentials are firmly established yeah it's a shame isn't it that

00:12:22.900 feel we have to we have to do that that we have to establish those credentials it doesn't make

00:12:27.700 any sense we should be able to talk about ideas irrespective of who makes them surely my problem

00:12:33.780 with the whole with the whole debate about and what is currently going on in the internet is

00:12:38.020 i think it's quite selfish because i think a lot of these people do it not because they're actually

00:12:42.340 interested in supporting uh or progressing the rights of ethnic minorities or gay people disabled

00:12:48.740 or trans or whatever it may be i think they do it from a purely selfish point of view 0.90

00:12:52.580 whereby they do it to essentially propel their own careers and make a name for themselves

00:12:57.620 the trouble with that i mean that could potentially be true the trouble i would have with that is i'm

00:13:02.680 very wary of ever trying to intuit motive on behalf of the person i'm arguing against it's

00:13:07.440 far better to just address the arguments as they are presented rather than because otherwise you're

00:13:12.220 more reasonable than me no but it's all you know i mean you might you might very well be right that

00:13:18.180 there's this underlying kind of because we know don't we that now victimhood has power attached

00:13:23.300 to it which is an odd paradox isn't it but the more of a victim you can present yourself as the

00:13:27.360 more the more currency you'll have now we and there's political clout behind being a victim

00:13:30.840 and we know that now but the problem is if you if i assume that someone is is not telling the truth

00:13:36.480 out of uh a desire for personal gain then again i am as guilty of the thing i've just accused other

00:13:42.860 people of which is i am not i'm i'm not addressing the argument and also you can defeat the argument

00:13:47.900 irrespective of motive so it doesn't matter what their motive is actually if you've defeated the

00:13:51.800 argument then job done so whether that whether their motive is malevolent or benevolent it does

00:13:56.580 it doesn't matter you've still won the argument so that would be my my suggestion in that in that

00:14:01.940 case people often impute motive to me all the time so um i make these sorts of arguments and

00:14:06.820 it's and it's because i'm i'm a self-hating gay man or it's because i'm a racist i'm alt-right

00:14:11.420 all of this kind of thing because otherwise they have to deal with the arguments i'm actually

00:14:14.840 making so it's much easier to mischaracterize your opponent and enter into a kind of straw man

00:14:20.020 debate it's much easier people are very hesitant to address what's actually being said it's a big

00:14:25.900 problem do you think that actually social media has just exacerbated the situation because now

00:14:32.480 people on social media because they've got literally a computer screen in front of them

00:14:36.220 yeah and between their opponent they suddenly feel emboldened to say whatever it is that they

00:14:41.040 want and to make horrible claims and say horrible things to people that they would never dream of

00:14:45.480 saying it face to face yeah it's terrible isn't it it's the anonymity of the of the online

00:14:48.580 experience of course you have this kind of yeah i mean i've had it uh recently i was being uh i

00:14:55.060 suppose you call it trolling i've been trolled by a group of anarcho-communists and uh so uh

00:15:02.840 what's a narco-communist because my mum's south american narco for me is cocaine

00:15:08.140 no anarcho

00:15:09.280 oh anarcho

00:15:10.240 alright

00:15:10.620 cocaine dealing communists

00:15:12.880 it sounds like a contradiction in terms doesn't it

00:15:15.160 because if you're an anarchist

00:15:16.800 you don't believe in the state at all

00:15:17.940 if you're a communist

00:15:18.440 you believe that the state should run everything

00:15:19.720 but actually

00:15:20.540 it's a kind of

00:15:22.080 they don't believe in the state at all

00:15:24.280 they want to abolish the state entirely

00:15:25.220 they don't believe in wage labour

00:15:26.360 the idea of employment

00:15:27.960 or that kind of thing

00:15:29.140 we're all comedians

00:15:31.120 we don't believe in employment either

00:15:32.300 no there we go

00:15:33.140 so I'd say

00:15:34.120 sorry

00:15:34.440 they

00:15:35.480 and they're very much

00:15:38.700 when you get involved in debates with people like this

00:15:40.440 they are incapable of argument

00:15:42.300 their entire belief system seems to be based

00:15:44.760 on faith, it's not to do with

00:15:46.860 they can't rationalise

00:15:48.420 but when you're being sort of trolled on the internet

00:15:50.740 even if it's only a handful

00:15:52.520 like five or six people, it feels like the whole world

00:15:54.680 is against you, I've got used to it now

00:15:56.860 because

00:15:58.040 through a couple of the Jonathan Pye videos

00:15:59.860 I've had a lot of that kind of thing

00:16:01.460 I've got used to it

00:16:03.760 and i don't take it too seriously now and i just i just ignore it but like you say

00:16:07.760 social media has exacerbated the problem hugely and i think it's because these minority voices 1.00

00:16:13.680 that aren't really very rational that haven't read very much don't really know very much

00:16:17.600 are suddenly amplified and they have this kind of power um and that leads to a kind of polarization

00:16:24.560 of politics and we can see it can't we we can see it's manifested itself uh in terms

00:16:29.120 of national politics as well hasn't it in terms of the the rise of uh parties that are further

00:16:34.080 to the right than ever before we've seen all over europe uh in france in italy here to a degree uh

00:16:40.240 we've seen um and the rise of maybe the more kind of leftist corbynite uh style of politics as as

00:16:46.960 well so it works in in both ways um and that that that worries me as well is that you're either one

00:16:53.120 thing or the other and particularly the debates that i see online it's very much well you've

00:16:57.280 you've disagreed with me on this slight point,

00:16:59.220 so therefore I'm lumbering you in the other extreme,

00:17:02.620 which is very, very, very dangerous.

00:17:05.360 I mean, the example I would give is that because I write for Spiked

00:17:08.120 and because a lot of people don't read Spiked

00:17:10.200 and don't really understand where it's coming from,

00:17:12.300 it's easy to just say, well, Spiked is an alt-right publication.

00:17:15.100 Now, alt-right means, in common parlance, means white nationalist,

00:17:19.900 irrevocably connected to white nationalist.

00:17:21.700 So how can a publication that's been consistently anti-racist

00:17:24.340 for its entire existence,

00:17:25.220 that criticizes the alt-right explicitly again and again and again be alt-right it can only be if

00:17:31.280 you don't understand what alt-right means or if you're being dishonest about about that about

00:17:35.860 that imputation coming back to freedom of speech yeah we kind of got into a little bit of why it's

00:17:49.400 so important and i you touched on the fact that freedom of speech is essentially a guarantee of

00:17:53.360 our other rights and opportunities and i i wonder how you can communicate that to people in the west

00:18:00.040 now particularly younger people because you know i grew up in my first probably 12 13 years i spent

00:18:05.680 in the soviet union stroke russia yeah and i grew up with tales of my grandmother telling me about

00:18:10.320 how she was born in the concentration camp in the soviet gulag for political prisoners yes and the

00:18:16.100 reason that she was born in the soviet concentration camp is that her dad had meetings where they

00:18:20.760 discussed fringe elements of politics yeah and this was reported to the authorities he was sent

00:18:26.240 to the gulag his wife much the same and they spent 15 years each in hard labor camps yeah and in this

00:18:32.580 camp in in in my great-grandfather's camp every morning the whole population of the camp would be

00:18:39.300 let out onto the shore onto the ice of the lake this was in siberia three people would be taken

00:18:43.800 at random and thrown in the icy rivers in icy waters of that lake and killed in front of

00:18:48.440 everybody yeah to remind everybody what happens if you speak out of turn if you don't follow the

00:18:53.660 rules etc this was the price that people paid for speaking their mind yeah now i don't think anyone

00:18:59.760 in the west now has any conception of what that's like right we have no physical connection to that

00:19:06.380 kind of experience we don't have grandmothers telling us that so how do we explain to people

00:19:10.940 people who are reading reading or listening or watching or whatever yeah that that is kind of

00:19:16.880 what happens when you don't have free speech it's it's a path down towards that it's difficult

00:19:21.840 because free speech is something that needs to be fought for in every new generation it's something

00:19:26.920 that needs to be maintained and of course what you're describing is such a horrific unimaginable

00:19:31.260 experience that we can't share we don't have anything that comes close to that I think a lot

00:19:36.520 of the problem is that people of my generation and younger haven't experienced war or anything

00:19:42.180 like this we haven't had anything like that so we take these freedoms for granted whereas actually

00:19:46.700 we do need to guard against this sort of stuff and comparatively the free speech uh um fights

00:19:52.800 that are going on at the moment in this country and in america pale in compared to something like

00:19:57.360 that of course they do so it's very easy to say well this doesn't really matter but of course

00:20:01.600 these things work uh in an inchmeal way don't they it's it's one thing and then it's the next

00:20:06.000 and these things gradually build and build and we've actually seen it uh in our country i mean

00:20:09.480 now we have a situation where people are routinely jailed for things they say right now you might say

00:20:15.520 well it doesn't matter it's just a few working class teenagers making jokes about madeleine

00:20:18.540 mccann on facebook they're not very nice jokes so it doesn't matter right well that's the first

00:20:22.800 step right and what happens next these these the law works in precedence so then you get more and

00:20:28.260 more people who are who are at risk of this kind of legislation uh and it leads i know a bit about

00:20:32.980 history i know where this stuff leads it starts in increments so you have to battle it from the

00:20:37.580 from the you can't just wait until it's gone too far and i know that sounds alarmist and i'm not

00:20:41.500 suggesting we're going to end up with a tyrannical government that's going to shoot every third

00:20:44.400 person or something like that i'm not i'm not suggesting that but i am suggesting it's a

00:20:48.060 possibility and i'm suggesting that that history teaches us this um that individual liberty is is

00:20:53.620 is worth preserving but it's an interesting point you raised i mean how much do you think i mean

00:21:00.680 we'll just touch on corbyn um well my mother's from venezuela and i don't know if you know what's

00:21:04.920 going on in venezuela yeah but we're pretty much going the same way as soviet russia depressingly

00:21:09.180 um if you are seen to be talking or criticizing the government there'll be a knock on the door

00:21:14.240 and you will disappear yeah it's that's literally where it is at the moment and men in ski masks

00:21:18.480 we're less classy to come and take you away um i find it very very worrying that corbyn has

00:21:25.700 supported it supports the venezuelan government and does not offer a direct criticism of them

00:21:31.660 yeah do you find that worrying because i say it to people on the far left and i get slammed down

00:21:36.260 as being alt-right yeah but again that that feeds back into what i was talking about if you don't

00:21:41.100 fully agree then you must be part of the other faction and not only that the most extreme version

00:21:45.600 of the other other faction i have reservations as well about some of corbyn's sympathies um i did

00:21:51.360 vote for corbyn as it happened um but i think all three of us did actually the last election yeah

00:21:56.580 right um for labor anyway yeah so i do have reservation there's no doubt that what's

00:22:01.920 happening in venezuela is it's going to seed you know and then um and sometimes you you have to be

00:22:08.320 able to say uh i agree broadly with many of his points but actually he's getting this wrong and

00:22:15.460 there's there's various things that he is getting wrong i think and we have to be able to talk about

00:22:18.480 that but i think we're we're in a situation where it is that either you are on corbyn's side or

00:22:23.320 you're not and that's not how politics works because people are complex individuals with

00:22:28.240 many many different views and you have to be able to debate each perspective don't you i suppose a

00:22:33.320 counter argument to what you're saying about freedom of speech is where do you draw the line

00:22:36.600 is it all right to use racial slurs for instance is it all right for an islamic preacher to say to 1.00

00:22:42.560 go on a box in some way i don't know in bethnal green for example and talk uh and say that uh 0.63

00:22:49.360 western civilization is an evil is evil and that it should be wiped from the surface of the earth

00:22:53.940 because surely isn't he excising his freedom his right to freedom of speech uh yeah and my instinct 0.57

00:22:59.400 would be that he should be allowed to do that um i i'm obviously i'm not happy when i hear a preacher

00:23:04.320 i mean i've had it i've walked through uh this is playing a victim card again isn't it i walked

00:23:07.940 through the city center someone was shouting about homosexuals yeah how they all should be 1.00

00:23:11.560 criminalized and all the rest of it but you see and and of course a preacher calling for the 0.97

00:23:15.880 destruction of the west right yeah okay so these are not pleasant things racial slurs definitely

00:23:20.560 not pleasant things none of us support it but i think the price you pay for living in a free

00:23:25.560 society is that some people are going to say unpleasant things right and i think on balance

00:23:29.560 uh that is the preferable scenario also i'm i'm troubled by the idea that we will reach a point

00:23:35.260 legislatively where racists and uh evil people uh are unable to out themselves as such i'd rather

00:23:44.580 know who they were i'd rather know where they are and i'd rather they were expressing themselves

00:23:48.460 because that way we can combat it uh otherwise what you do is you drive it underground you don't

00:23:54.340 ever defeat an argument by censoring it anyone who knows anything about the history of censorship

00:23:58.060 knows this uh often you draw more attention to it in fact you give it power you give it it's

00:24:03.580 called the Streisand effect you give it a lot of power we've had it this week um the BBC Radio 4

00:24:07.920 are going to broadcast a full transcript of Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech uh now this was

00:24:12.420 going out to a Radio 4 audience no one would have noticed no one would have cared right I'm not

00:24:16.460 saying there aren't people listening to Radio 4 I've written for Radio 4 I like Radio 4 uh but

00:24:19.540 look let's face it these people aren't going to go out and go on a big rampage right but because

00:24:25.360 of the complaints and the the the twitter storm that's happened today everyone's going to listen

00:24:30.080 right so you've just drawn attention to the very thing that you would you're not happy about that's

00:24:34.040 that's all that's happened there um so i would say in terms of free speech um we already have

00:24:39.620 laws about harassment um you know if you if you are harassing someone or libeling someone i mean

00:24:45.480 there are debates about whether our libel laws are too stringent i suspect they probably are

00:24:48.620 but we have those laws in place i don't think that it's sensible uh to curtail speech out of fear

00:24:56.840 that it might influence people in a bad way because what you're doing then is you're you're

00:25:01.400 allowing the perpetrators of crimes to not have responsibility for their own actions which i don't

00:25:06.580 think is right so i'm actually very skeptical about the concept of hate speech full stop um

00:25:12.880 because if somebody calls for you to go out and beat up gay men and then somebody does that the

00:25:18.360 responsibility must lie with the person who did it uh not with the person who said it so you 0.82

00:25:22.220 actually think people should be incite should be allowed to incite violence i think it's a really

00:25:26.780 difficult question uh i think on balance i think probably i don't want to see anyone criminalized

00:25:35.100 for what they say or what they think i think it's true it's interesting because i personally

00:25:38.320 wouldn't go quite that far i think for me the cutoff is definitely the incitement to violence

00:25:42.000 if you're calling for other people to commit actions which are illegal yes then that shouldn't

00:25:47.920 be allowed in my opinion yeah you would go further than that i think i would and just because i think

00:25:52.100 we have to get back to the idea of individual responsibility i also don't believe that people

00:25:57.000 are these mindless drones that are just going to be influenced in this way i believe i have a much

00:26:01.020 greater faith in humanity than that i think we have autonomy um i i do i am uncomfortable with

00:26:06.020 anyone calling for violence very uncomfortable with it i i despise it and i think protest

00:26:11.620 ridicule these these are the weapons to use against people like that as you as soon as you

00:26:16.480 shut them up lock them away you give them this odd kind of martyrdom that they don't deserve

00:26:20.640 you give them this glamour uh you end up propagating the ideas that they're attempting to

00:26:25.000 spread um so that's why i'm you know i'm i'm willing to be persuaded differently um my instinct

00:26:33.440 would be to never police people for what they say or what they think it's interesting well let's

00:26:37.900 talk about you mentioned hate speech let's talk about a couple of incidents that have happened

00:26:40.940 in the uk recently and you know the count dankler thing for example has been talked to death and we

00:26:45.640 don't want to really spend too much time on on the guy himself but there are some implications

00:26:49.140 that came out of that court case particularly which i think are hugely relevant to society

00:26:53.760 do you want to tell tell the listeners and viewers first of all what actually happened briefly and

00:26:57.700 then yeah very briefly because it has been covered very briefly a man in scotland um called marcus

00:27:02.760 meekin created a youtube video where he taught his girlfriend's pug to perform a nazi salute

00:27:08.240 and to react in an excited way to the phrases gas the jews and zeke heil um and there's even

00:27:14.580 a moment where the dog is watching uh an excerpt from hitler's speeches etc so that's the joke i'm

00:27:20.280 really trying not to laugh because i haven't watched the video it is unquestionably funny 0.82

00:27:23.860 if you laugh you're a fascist so i mean all right my my jewish grandfather great grandfather died

00:27:29.360 fighting the nazis yeah let's get that in it's all fine i'm allowed to laugh very interested we 0.93

00:27:33.260 did we i mean i've i run a comedy night every month um in london we played the video last week

00:27:38.260 uh and we actually prefaced it the host uh prefaced it by saying you know this probably

00:27:44.020 isn't very funny

00:27:44.580 I mean he didn't think

00:27:45.140 it was funny

00:27:45.640 and he said

00:27:46.600 I'm not going to tell you

00:27:47.060 what to think

00:27:47.540 and then we played it

00:27:48.340 and the audience laughed

00:27:49.200 a lot 0.93

00:27:49.620 because it's a Nazi pug

00:27:51.940 where did you find 0.94

00:27:52.400 so many Nazis

00:27:53.280 I know

00:27:53.760 with a Jewish host

00:27:55.300 as well

00:27:55.540 it's very interesting

00:27:56.060 but it's a pug 0.98

00:27:58.480 and I think

00:27:59.380 whenever this argument

00:27:59.980 comes up

00:28:00.240 we have to keep in mind

00:28:00.800 it's a pug

00:28:01.160 now people who haven't

00:28:02.740 seen the video

00:28:03.320 will tell you

00:28:04.960 that it's the repetition

00:28:06.080 of the phrase 0.72

00:28:06.680 gas the Jews 1.00

00:28:07.520 it's a horrible phrase 0.99

00:28:08.540 that's the joke

00:28:09.240 because it's a cute pug

00:28:10.800 and the joke is

00:28:11.660 that he's using

00:28:12.060 this really really

00:28:12.700 ghastly phrase

00:28:13.400 that anyone would find inexcusable.

00:28:15.740 But that is the joke, okay?

00:28:17.260 So whether you find it funny or not

00:28:19.040 or whether you find it offensive or not

00:28:21.060 is beside the point.

00:28:22.580 No one, no one with a reasonable IQ

00:28:25.900 could ever deny that the intention was to be funny.

00:28:30.880 Now, what is troubling about this particular ruling?

00:28:34.380 And I don't want to get into the debates

00:28:35.400 of whether it's funny or not

00:28:36.320 or whether it's offensive or not.

00:28:37.540 It's irrelevant, isn't it?

00:28:38.000 It's irrelevant.

00:28:38.360 Completely irrelevant.

00:28:39.180 The whole point about defending free speech

00:28:41.060 is you have to defend it

00:28:42.380 when people are saying things you don't like.

00:28:45.560 Otherwise, it's not free speech.

00:28:47.100 The prosecution's contention in this case

00:28:49.580 is that he is using humour as a guise

00:28:51.740 to disseminate anti-Semitic hatred. 0.82

00:28:54.660 He's using a pug.

00:28:55.480 Can we just remember that pug?

00:28:56.920 I have to keep saying that. 1.00

00:28:58.620 And they are the stupidest of all the dogs. 1.00

00:29:00.660 Well, there we go. 1.00

00:29:01.560 I wouldn't know about that.

00:29:02.800 But if you are serious about propagating Nazism, 0.88

00:29:06.840 you're not going to use a pug. 0.75

00:29:07.760 You're just not.

00:29:09.360 A German shepherd, maybe.

00:29:10.520 Yeah.

00:29:12.380 Exactly.

00:29:16.280 First triggering moment of this podcast is well and truly done.

00:29:19.640 It is an important point, I think,

00:29:23.100 that this particular case is a new benchmark.

00:29:27.040 As I've said, there's lots and lots of cases

00:29:28.520 where the Communications Act has been used to jail people for making jokes.

00:29:34.560 It happens all the time, but we don't hear about it.

00:29:36.700 Certainly people are prosecuted and investigated all the time,

00:29:39.240 and there has been jail time served.

00:29:41.060 We don't really hear about it.

00:29:42.380 this case is a bit more significant

00:29:45.080 firstly because the man in question self-identifies

00:29:47.180 as a comedian, again there's all debates about

00:29:48.940 well I don't think he's a comedian, it's irrelevant

00:29:50.280 but he's put up a comedic video

00:29:53.020 so that's the first thing, secondly the court

00:29:55.180 has said explicitly that intention and

00:29:57.020 context do not apply and do not matter

00:29:59.020 well if that is the case

00:30:00.820 then anyone making a joke could be in trouble

00:30:03.260 can you just say that again because I think

00:30:05.080 people don't quite understand the whole meaning of that

00:30:07.020 the context and intention

00:30:09.120 do not matter

00:30:10.320 The court said they decide the context.

00:30:13.380 They do not believe his intention.

00:30:14.820 They decide the context.

00:30:15.840 It doesn't matter.

00:30:16.740 It's the repetition of that phrase.

00:30:19.080 Now, bear in mind that this video went viral.

00:30:20.540 There were three million views, not one complaint, 0.65

00:30:23.020 because people aren't stupid, and they got what it was. 0.77

00:30:26.180 Okay? 0.99

00:30:27.460 And then comes the argument, well, this is offensive to Jewish people.

00:30:30.220 Who gets to decide that?

00:30:31.100 Because there's an awful lot of Jewish people who found it funny. 1.00

00:30:33.340 Right?

00:30:33.600 So there's that.

00:30:34.620 Not one complaint.

00:30:35.440 The police took it upon themselves to investigate this.

00:30:37.260 And what they did is they actively sought people out who might be offended.

00:30:40.920 So they approached the Scottish Council of the Jewish Communities and said, what do you think of this?

00:30:45.240 Right?

00:30:46.980 And then what happens is, of course, they say, I find it offensive.

00:30:50.920 Well, that's their right.

00:30:52.280 I find things offensive, you know.

00:30:54.700 That's their right to find that offensive and to be upset by it.

00:30:57.580 Okay?

00:30:58.060 But it's not the state's right to then imprison someone for it.

00:31:01.000 Then, once the man from the Scottish Council of the Jewish Communities testified in court,

00:31:07.260 Then you have these awful people online sending him anti-Semitic messages and abuse, which is a terrible thing to happen, right?

00:31:12.800 But then the media retrospectively pretend that those messages came out of people incited by the video.

00:31:18.200 It didn't happen, but it came out of the testimony.

00:31:20.580 I'm not in any way defending the abuse, but let's get the story right. 0.87

00:31:24.380 People aren't watching this pug video and going out and thinking, right, I want to attack Jewish people. 1.00

00:31:28.900 It's never happened and it wouldn't happen.

00:31:30.920 So it is very, very troubling.

00:31:33.360 but this is the point I'm making about hate speech

00:31:35.340 and why it is so dangerous

00:31:37.620 now it's all very well you saying an imam standing up 1.00

00:31:39.480 and calling for the deaths of homosexuals 0.99

00:31:41.060 it's a pretty clear cut 1.00

00:31:42.940 this is a nasty horrible guy 0.95

00:31:44.880 now look I don't want to live in a society where that person exists 0.96

00:31:46.920 or says what he says but I'd rather live in that society

00:31:49.700 than a society where people can be thrown in prison

00:31:51.360 for what they say and that's why I make that

00:31:53.220 point okay and I know that some of you

00:31:55.520 are uncomfortable or you might be uncomfortable with that but that's my

00:31:57.340 broader point which I'm willing to be persuaded

00:31:59.380 out of if you can convince me

00:32:01.100 but in this case the court decided

00:32:03.220 that the repetition of the phrase

00:32:05.540 gas the Jews without context, without 0.96

00:32:07.460 intent, is tantamount to hate 0.97

00:32:09.600 speech and incitement to violence. That was

00:32:11.420 their conclusion, right? So what we have here is a kind

00:32:13.540 of concept creep, right?

00:32:15.360 And this is why I'm also troubled by hate speech.

00:32:17.400 Because what if, okay, if you have that

00:32:19.480 sort of case where we could say, oh, that

00:32:20.800 man is obviously hateful

00:32:23.220 and awful, and we put that under the bracket of hate 0.88

00:32:25.480 speech, who then decides?

00:32:27.200 Who then decides that me making a joke

00:32:29.420 isn't hate speech as well?

00:32:31.340 because the parameters are constantly shifting

00:32:33.520 because the window is constantly getting bigger and bigger

00:32:36.460 then there comes a point where we're all potentially within that window

00:32:40.040 and that's why it's probably better on balance

00:32:43.640 to not have hate speech legislation at all

00:32:46.240 because the potential for abuse is too great

00:32:49.260 the police, the Metropolitan Police have a guideline

00:32:52.080 which you can check online about what hate speech is

00:32:54.120 and their definition of hate speech is that

00:32:56.280 irrespective of the intent of the person

00:32:58.340 So long as someone deems something to have been offensive and also perceives that the person did it out of prejudice or hatred for their sexuality, race or gender, that is enough to qualify as hate speech.

00:33:10.860 So even if the person did not mean that, even if it was unintentional, it can still be a crime.

00:33:17.060 So it is so nebulous that nobody in a free society is safe under that legislation.

00:33:23.200 Now, I'm willing to have the debate about, well, someone calling explicitly for violence.

00:33:26.680 that would be one thing but i'm not confident that the state or the people in power or the

00:33:31.640 police understand the difference between someone calling for violence explicitly and someone making

00:33:36.880 a joke on facebook well that's the interesting thing because i was discussing this issue this

00:33:40.820 incident with count dankler with comedians other comedians on facebook and different things and

00:33:45.340 there were a lot of people i found who were very happy to defend the court's decision yeah lots and

00:33:49.420 their argument seemed to be well first of all i didn't like the joke which as you say irrelevant

00:33:53.840 But the other thing is, one incident in particular just blew my mind.

00:33:57.180 I was talking to somebody, and they said, well, the thing is, I don't think he should have gone to prison.

00:34:02.560 He just needed to get a clip around the ear, old school style, and just teach him a lesson.

00:34:07.240 Were you talking to my dad on Facebook?

00:34:09.920 All the time.

00:34:10.500 What do they mean?

00:34:12.100 And I said, well, you are now inciting violence, sarcastically.

00:34:16.760 But yeah.

00:34:17.340 Right?

00:34:17.720 And they said, well, context matters.

00:34:20.640 And I said, well, that's the whole point.

00:34:21.960 the core rule that context doesn't matter yeah you know and people seem to miss this point entirely

00:34:26.460 if context doesn't matter then even us discussing i've quoted the phrase he used a number of times

00:34:30.460 right if context doesn't matter then i've just incited anti-semitic hatred i just like to

00:34:34.440 publicly disassociate myself from anything that happens to i would do that because i'm all right

00:34:38.920 yeah you know i mean people don't listen so uh but yes you're right it's i'm i'm fully

00:34:46.320 understanding of comedians who don't want to ally themselves with this guy um i understand i'm not

00:34:51.920 saying that if you don't i understand in the jonathan pie video we wrote about this we have a

00:34:57.060 line where it's like where are the comedians right but that's a character delivering that line yeah

00:35:00.220 i'm not saying comedians have an obligation to stand up for anyone or anything right that's an

00:35:04.800 individual matter but when somebody sides with the court actively sides with state authoritarianism

00:35:09.180 i have a problem with that and and i'm going to argue against that i think that's i think that's

00:35:13.500 really dangerous and it's self-defeating and i can't believe people can't see it one of the

00:35:18.140 interesting things for me as well is this notion and not just in the cantanker thing but brought

00:35:22.260 more broadly in society there is this idea somehow that words can be violence words yeah are violence

00:35:29.480 sometimes so people talk about the fact that basically it's like a forced continuum almost

00:35:34.340 like first of all you call me a derogatory name yeah and if that's okay then you do something else

00:35:38.700 and if that's okay then you're going to punch me in the street yeah now how do you what what are 0.67

00:35:43.640 your thoughts about we have to be able to separate words from violence i mean we grew up we all grew 0.61

00:35:47.600 up with the phrase sticks and stones may break my bones but names will ever hurt me now we believe

00:35:51.700 the opposite why nobody is denying that words can cause psychological harm some of the most

00:35:57.960 distressing experiences of my life have been from things that people have said not things people

00:36:01.540 have done so nobody denies that okay but there has to be a distinction between words and violence

00:36:09.380 because when you are upset by words it is something that you have emotionally done you know it's a way

00:36:14.540 that you have interpreted something, okay?

00:36:17.620 A physical attack is a different level, isn't it?

00:36:20.540 I would have thought.

00:36:21.380 Well, I mean, the problem is as well

00:36:23.660 is that certain words that some people use,

00:36:26.420 racial slurs, they do cause damage

00:36:30.320 and they are almost a form of violence.

00:36:32.100 Could you not agree?

00:36:33.920 Like, you know...

00:36:35.320 It's like if someone hits you on the head,

00:36:37.500 they're damaging your brain.

00:36:38.960 Yeah.

00:36:39.140 If someone says something nasty...

00:36:41.380 I don't agree with this argument at all,

00:36:42.980 but I'm just putting it on.

00:36:43.980 just propagating

00:36:44.940 for instance

00:36:45.880 if you call an Asian person

00:36:49.700 a paki that means 0.66

00:36:51.300 that is a form of violence is it not

00:36:53.720 that is you trying to intimidate them

00:36:55.900 that's you trying to upset them

00:36:57.360 that's you trying to engender in them

00:36:59.820 a negative reaction

00:37:01.360 you're trying to hurt them

00:37:02.580 what you've just described is

00:37:04.760 unforgivable antisocial behaviour

00:37:07.180 not violence

00:37:08.460 I don't see them as the same

00:37:10.880 I think it's a failure of socialisation as well

00:37:13.320 I mean, I believe in adult autonomy 100%, but I believe at schools we need to have the debates about how children are socialised, what terms are.

00:37:21.740 We need to be able to register objections to certain terminology and the ways in which we express ourselves, and just treating people with respect.

00:37:27.880 What you were describing is someone who has not been successfully socialised, I would say.

00:37:32.660 But I think we have to draw those distinctions.

00:37:35.400 I think we do, because for one thing, it's often used as a pretext to justify pre-emptive violence.

00:37:41.320 Like Antifa, what they're doing now.

00:37:43.320 good example so they will say words are violence so that justifies us pepper spraying a trump

00:37:50.080 supporter as happened in berkeley i think that's happened in berkeley and many other places it

00:37:54.020 justifies us kicking down the doors and and charging into somebody's meeting or someone's

00:37:58.880 peaceful uh discussion event right it justifies the violence then uh that's dangerous so that's

00:38:05.480 why i think we have to have whilst we have an acknowledgement that words hurt and can't and

00:38:09.120 and that we should be encouraging as a society responsibility

00:38:12.320 in the way that we express ourselves and how we express ourselves

00:38:15.120 and calling for empathy and all of the rest of it, really important.

00:38:19.220 But again, the dangers, the implications of conflating words and violence

00:38:24.280 are too dangerous to contemplate,

00:38:27.040 and therefore we have to be able to make that distinction.

00:38:29.400 One interesting thing that just occurred to me in relation to what you said, Francis,

00:38:32.620 is that actually you don't need to use derogatory terms to hurt someone's feelings.

00:38:37.600 No.

00:38:37.820 Really.

00:38:38.060 You could insult someone or have really heard them psychologically by using perfectly normal language that's not insulting in and of itself, but you are diminishing their status or whatever it is that you're doing.

00:38:50.980 You could insult someone and hurt them just by speaking normal words.

00:38:53.840 But in many ways, those words are a shortcut, aren't they?

00:38:56.700 Yeah.

00:38:56.860 So, for instance, you know, like if you use a racial, I'm not going to use a word, but use a racial against a black person, you know, that is a word that we all know that has been used as a derogatory term for generations and comes from horrific oppression.

00:39:10.520 And immediately it's a shortcut for you to say to them, you are inferior to me.

00:39:15.020 Right. So it has baggage. Language has baggage and it has implications.

00:39:18.000 And nobody, I don't think anybody is denying that.

00:39:20.620 and so it is difficult

00:39:23.280 but I think your argument though

00:39:24.720 is based on this utopian idea

00:39:26.020 that if we police people's language

00:39:27.440 and the words that we are

00:39:28.220 and are not allowed to say

00:39:29.420 suddenly we will fix society

00:39:31.340 and all of the people

00:39:32.420 who have these instincts

00:39:33.500 that are unpleasant

00:39:34.100 will disappear

00:39:34.660 but it won't happen

00:39:35.660 it won't happen

00:39:36.680 and I think I'm more comfortable

00:39:39.060 you know

00:39:39.960 I don't like when people

00:39:41.160 use horrible words against me

00:39:42.540 as they have done many times

00:39:44.220 it's a horrible experience

00:39:45.740 it's really unpleasant

00:39:46.280 I'm quite a sensitive person

00:39:47.340 in spite of the fact

00:39:47.900 I probably don't seem that way

00:39:49.240 um but you know in a sense that is part of life that human beings are complex creatures and some

00:39:56.480 of us are not going to be particularly pleasant creatures you learn who to avoid uh you learn how

00:40:01.380 to get out of certain situations um i just think the implications of criminalizing speech

00:40:06.880 are so vast uh that and i'm not saying we tolerate these sort of people who use these

00:40:13.640 kind of language you challenge them or you reject them or you don't you don't associate with them

00:40:17.840 all of the rest of you they become pariahs thankfully i think that is the case i mean i 0.63

00:40:21.680 think if you start going on twitter and using racial slurs you're not going to get a job

00:40:24.440 anywhere anytime soon that you you will be a pariah we live in a society where we that is the

00:40:29.380 case it's it's it's become the case uh would you not agree with that i think we are definitely no

00:40:34.060 i don't know anybody i don't i could literally not name anybody that i've ever encountered

00:40:38.400 uh on a personal level who thinks that uh calling a racial minority a term like that

00:40:43.980 is acceptable i don't i wouldn't associate with that sort of person it's something i think racism

00:40:48.760 is just unforgivable i couldn't i couldn't be a friend or even an acquaintance with someone who

00:40:53.740 had those instincts but isn't also part of that in that you live in this sort of uh again i'm

00:40:58.100 going to use terms but lefty liberal uh bubble in london you know where all your friends are

00:41:03.020 you know part again i'm generalizing but do i yeah i don't know if i do i mean this is a big

00:41:07.780 assumption there yeah uh i i wouldn't agree with that yeah i mean partly because of my family

00:41:12.960 background that i i know people from all sorts of walks of life my family are not uh from this uh

00:41:18.700 london uh metropolitan elite yeah they're sort of working class northern irish people yeah this

00:41:23.720 isn't and i'm not saying that gives me license or whatever but i'm just saying that my experience

00:41:29.240 of people is perhaps a bit more broad than you assume yeah but even if it even if it wasn't

00:41:33.540 my opinion i think would be the same

00:41:34.980 so we were talking we've been talking about a lot recently you've uh recently released a video

00:41:48.300 uh um well jonathan pi has what you're talking about the gender pay gap and it called uh widespread

00:41:55.060 uh outrage i think is the right word to use well i mean it depends on who you look at i mean it

00:42:01.780 It followed off the back of the video we did about the Nazi pug,

00:42:04.460 which I think probably caused more outrage.

00:42:06.580 It was unfortunate because we'd written the video a few weeks before that.

00:42:09.360 It just so happened that the pug thing happened,

00:42:12.460 and then we had to release this at this time because it was ready to go,

00:42:15.160 and it looked like we were being deliberately provocative

00:42:17.460 doing two consecutive pieces like that.

00:42:20.240 Because that was the narrative, actually.

00:42:21.680 It has been, isn't it?

00:42:22.320 Like, you've gone all right.

00:42:23.460 Like, Jonathan Pye has gone all right.

00:42:25.160 Sure.

00:42:25.780 But he's actually been criticizing the left for ages.

00:42:28.220 I mean, hasn't he?

00:42:29.540 You both, I mean, you have the two of you together.

00:42:31.680 Absolutely. I mean, if you're familiar with the back catalogue, Jonathan Pye is a lefty who bashes the Tories more than anyone else.

00:42:39.580 The Tories and Trump more than anyone else.

00:42:41.340 So, I mean, if you're going to pick out these few videos where he's, I mean, he does attack the left for where the left is going wrong because he cares about where the left is going wrong.

00:42:48.760 So that makes sense to me.

00:42:51.180 But the trouble is, I suppose, that the videos that cause contention are the ones that people remember or know about.

00:42:56.360 And maybe they don't watch all of the other ones.

00:42:58.120 So they don't get that perspective, perhaps.

00:43:00.380 So on the gender pay gap, you made a video where Jonathan Pye interviews what he thinks is a feminist academic who's releasing a book.

00:43:09.520 And he's asking her, expecting her to provide the usual narrative about the gender pay gap.

00:43:13.360 And what he encounters and very quickly gets frustrated by is that she's more of a second wave feminist than a third wave feminist. 0.96

00:43:20.800 In other words, she's not into the whole victimhood thing that's now so popular, which is what you've been talking about.

00:43:26.760 Right, so it's a satire in the media as well.

00:43:28.480 The media have an expectation of a certain narrative

00:43:30.500 that they have to produce.

00:43:31.560 And then when they're confronted with something

00:43:32.640 they're not familiar with, they don't know what to do.

00:43:34.740 So it's a satirical piece.

00:43:35.820 Yeah.

00:43:36.580 And what was the response to that?

00:43:38.240 Okay, so...

00:43:39.500 Deep breath.

00:43:42.480 Some people weren't...

00:43:43.380 I'm loving the body language.

00:43:45.260 Yeah, I know.

00:43:47.040 Some people weren't...

00:43:47.980 I sort of stayed out of this one quite a bit

00:43:49.880 when people started attacking us on Twitter.

00:43:53.560 But yes, there was a bit of a backlash

00:43:55.460 from certain feminist groups

00:43:56.980 and from certain feminist figures

00:43:59.480 and comedians more than anything.

00:44:02.200 I mean, I didn't get involved,

00:44:04.520 but I am aware of lots of threads

00:44:07.360 that appeared on Facebook

00:44:08.280 in which I was described as an alt-right,

00:44:09.980 anti-feminist, all the rest of it,

00:44:12.040 because friends of mine keep sending me screenshots

00:44:13.600 and saying, look what these people are saying about you.

00:44:16.620 It's good to have friends, eh?

00:44:17.800 Yeah, they seem to take a certain light in it as well.

00:44:20.420 It is odd.

00:44:21.960 It's odd that, for a start,

00:44:23.540 a piece of fiction a piece of satire uh can generate that kind of response um um but it's

00:44:30.900 also i'm up for the debate you know if anyone wants to email me and say why i'm wrong great

00:44:35.140 and we'll talk about it uh you know i'm and also what was very interesting on all these threads i

00:44:39.720 saw all these arguments not once did anyone present a coherent counter-argument to any

00:44:43.800 argument that was made in the video not once uh it was just ad hominem it was just you're

00:44:48.320 alt-right you're anti-feminist uh well i'm not uh and i always uh called myself a feminist always

00:44:54.140 have um i worry now that to use the word means that because the word is so currently being used

00:45:00.840 to describe a kind of victim-centered feminism uh whereas i believe feminism is about equality 0.97

00:45:05.680 and empowerment and unfortunately that makes me an old-fashioned kind of feminist but on the other

00:45:10.260 hand i shouldn't allow people to misappropriate the word so in a sense i should hold on to it

00:45:14.240 But so that's what we were in the character in that video is, as you say, a feminist who hates the fact, for instance, that the BBC have promoted an app for your phone that will help women to speak up in meetings.

00:45:28.560 And we make the point that this is horribly patronizing.

00:45:31.940 I mean, some of my female friends found this the most disgusting thing, but it's hailed as the BBC is this really progressive, wonderful thing.

00:45:39.060 I would say that victim-centered feminism, although the people who promote it are not, of course, misogynists, but the premise of it is misogynist.

00:45:47.260 The premise of it is that women are weaker and need extra protection. 1.00

00:45:50.660 And that's why I don't agree with it.

00:45:52.820 It's interesting because some of the episodes we'll be releasing probably after this one, we've talked to several very accomplished women who have been political advisors or economists or business people. 0.99

00:46:03.580 And some of the stories they have told us is there's unquestionably discrimination against women. 0.94

00:46:08.160 right it does happen with there are situations in which women are paid less not only for the 1.00

00:46:13.020 same work but actually for jobs that they do better than the men who are they are competing

00:46:16.680 against and when that happens it is illegal and and tribunals ensue right so so not always that's

00:46:22.920 been from what we've been told for the most part when you have um but no but also nobody is

00:46:27.900 suggesting i've certainly never suggested that there isn't discrimination against women

00:46:31.740 in the workplace in fact the point is made explicitly in the video i've never suggested

00:46:36.900 that well i'm not saying you have suggested what i'm actually saying is that that has been the

00:46:41.900 smear that's been used against the whole video which actually tries to make some factual points

00:46:45.760 about the causes of the gender pay gap if you want to boil down the the main uh point of the

00:46:51.000 video is actually about media it's actually sat on the media uh the sky news survey that found

00:46:57.160 that 70 of people in this country believe that women and men are routinely paid differently for

00:47:02.300 the same work now that is factually incorrect and it wouldn't be a story if it was just a few people

00:47:07.580 but the fact that it's 70 percent of people now that suggests that the media is misrepresenting

00:47:11.060 this and they are misrepresenting this the headlines in all of these stories that tom

00:47:14.680 and i came across while we were working on this it's always on men at hsbc paid more than women

00:47:19.720 etc men at ryanair paid more than women and then the articles themselves would explain why would

00:47:25.080 explain the fact that there are more men in in higher paying but there were more male pilots 1.00

00:47:29.440 and there are more female stewards for instance in in the case of ryanair and the person who flies 0.98

00:47:34.680 the plane generally gets paid more than the person who makes the tea right now that happens then you

00:47:38.900 have another debate about well why is that the case right but that's a different debate why is

00:47:42.560 it that women uh tend to make different choices or why is it that women tend to end up in different 1.00

00:47:47.100 jobs right and they're doubtless there's an element of discrimination involved there uh there's an

00:47:51.780 element there's all sorts of possible variables going on there the video does not make a distinction

00:47:55.980 about that the video actually says that fine let's have that debate let's have that debate

00:47:59.540 uh that wasn't what we were talking about we were talking about the fundamental misunderstanding

00:48:03.080 uh about the the the media's deliberate conflation of equal pay and a gender pay gap that's what we

00:48:10.260 were saying which is factually true no one's been able to refute it yet people keep sending me

00:48:14.340 articles which just back up my point and they think that they're refuting it but they're backing up

00:48:17.780 my point so i don't think um i think it's a misunderstanding of what the video is is saying

00:48:23.160 i'm all for having debates about uh structural imbalance is it you know are there sort of these

00:48:29.360 so i i'm very skeptical about it because i've studied post-structuralism and i think it's a

00:48:33.820 very reductive view of the world and i think what we're seeing at the moment is a kind of watered

00:48:38.220 down half understood version of this fukodian idea of power networks that sort of infest society

00:48:44.860 um and i'm very skeptical about it um and i don't think i think power explains some things

00:48:50.560 but it doesn't explain everything and it certainly doesn't explain most things i think it's so the

00:48:55.380 problem with the current ideology is everything is to do with power so first we work out whether

00:48:59.480 you're female male whether you're what race you are what sexuality you are then we try and put 0.80

00:49:03.920 you on a kind of grid to see where you fit in in the power structure and that's how we forget about

00:49:08.020 class forget about money and opportunity get rid of that doesn't matter and all of these things are

00:49:11.580 intersecting okay and then we kind of work out where you are and that explains everything like

00:49:16.180 every ideology which is a simplification of the world that's why anyone who subscribes to an

00:49:22.060 ideology wholeheartedly uh is failing because it is a it is inherently simplifying oversimplifying

00:49:28.340 very complex ideas when you try and explain everything away because of power structures

00:49:33.140 these nebulous power structures that we can't pin down uh that is not a convincing stance in my view

00:49:40.320 because it it must ignore all kinds of factors so that's what we're sort of so actually we were

00:49:46.620 trying to open up a debate we were saying we can all agree and we can all agree i think that it is

00:49:51.400 illegal to pay men and women differently for the same work that is a fact so let's just start by

00:49:56.580 that at that point and then we discuss why why people end up in different roles that's a different

00:50:01.680 debate we didn't have that debate but people attacked us as though we were saying there's

00:50:06.920 no such thing as sexism there's no such thing as discrimination uh we don't need to talk about it

00:50:11.820 anymore right that's that seemed to be the criticism which is a fundamental misunderstanding

00:50:16.220 of what the video did and again what it shows is that people are just so polarized that all they

00:50:22.540 can do is simplify oversimplify their opponent's view and then attack a straw man argument just

00:50:29.240 attack something that attack a point that neither tom nor i were saying right do you think a lot of

00:50:34.980 reason that these sort of arguments happen and people get so upset is because they don't like

00:50:40.260 you said they don't engage with the point you're trying to make because that takes time yeah really

00:50:45.340 i mean i'm i'm not i'm not i'm sort of probably average in terms of intelligence but in order for

00:50:51.660 me to really understand an argument i have to read something three or four times yeah i have to go

00:50:56.040 away and i have to think about it and i have to mull it over in my head you know whereas it's much

00:51:00.560 easier to go and read something

00:51:02.260 then have an emotional

00:51:04.700 response to it and then do

00:51:06.660 a rebuttal in 40 seconds

00:51:08.980 whatever it is or a minute

00:51:10.160 and actually it takes real time for

00:51:12.600 something to be able to truly understand

00:51:14.420 something. That's why we do the show is because we're trying

00:51:16.600 to get to the bottom of some of these issues. You can't have

00:51:18.640 a debate in 280 characters

00:51:20.240 so absolutely that's

00:51:22.760 right. Partly it is

00:51:24.840 people don't know enough

00:51:26.420 they often, some of the debates

00:51:28.600 i've seen about this video people literally do not know what they are talking about and i bet you

00:51:33.000 a lot of them haven't seen the video well there's that possibly i don't know that's been my experience

00:51:36.740 with a lot of these discussions people a lot of people argue about stuff they haven't actually

00:51:40.260 watched that's that's that's almost certainly the case um but i'm willing to accept that i you know

00:51:45.180 come with me come at me with the facts and let's talk about the facts and maybe i'm wrong and then

00:51:48.800 if you present facts that prove i'm wrong so be it i accept that um but but that's but yes you're

00:51:53.400 it's an oversimplified form of argument.

00:51:58.240 And that is a problem.

00:51:59.020 It is hard, isn't it?

00:52:00.040 It is.

00:52:00.540 Learning about stuff and...

00:52:01.800 But this is it.

00:52:03.360 You know, like when people talk about the gender wage gap,

00:52:05.940 I mean, I wouldn't get involved in it

00:52:07.560 because I don't know enough about it.

00:52:09.300 Right.

00:52:09.720 I'm not...

00:52:10.540 I mean, I read The Guardian,

00:52:11.940 I read The Times pretty much every day,

00:52:13.860 but I wouldn't say that I'm an expert on it.

00:52:17.180 It's surely not enough to then go and spout my opinion

00:52:19.820 all over the internet.

00:52:20.840 Well, also, you wouldn't assume

00:52:21.740 that someone who's raising an objection is inherently evil for doing so oh yeah i would

00:52:25.480 sorry andrew the interesting thing for me i wanted to ask you about this video as well was that

00:52:32.520 um one of the main arguments that i saw being made about it was that here were two men

00:52:38.460 who'd got a woman to spout their misogynistic opinions for them yeah uh and one of the 1.00

00:52:46.120 interesting things that i point out have you considered the possibility that maybe she agrees

00:52:50.420 with what she's saying i mean i don't know if the actress that you had agrees or not but

00:52:53.780 yeah that was the argument that i saw popping up probably more than anything well i mean it's very

00:52:58.420 patronizing isn't it to assume that a woman who did an acting job uh didn't consent to what they 0.59

00:53:04.520 were doing i mean it's it's it's it's a bizarre thing to me and also again i mean this goes back

00:53:09.900 to what we're saying about identity politics well if you if you're saying that this argument is

00:53:13.060 invalid because it was two men who wrote the script what happens when i can introduce you as

00:53:17.320 i can uh to women who have similar feelings to the character i could introduce you to a number

00:53:23.600 well we know that internalized misogyny right yeah oh it's internalized misogyny which again

00:53:28.260 is a point that we recognized in the in in the video um and because she dismisses that as

00:53:32.860 patronizing bollocks i think that's what she says but that's exactly what it is yeah um it's it's

00:53:37.520 it's another strategy to avoid the argument right so i call you oh right i say you're suffering 0.58

00:53:41.680 from internalized misogyny therefore i don't have to talk to you i don't have to bother engaging

00:53:45.540 with the argument that it's a strategy it's not good enough um so yeah that you're right i heard

00:53:51.420 that again and again and again it's the flaw of identity politics in its current form is that it

00:53:55.900 can't see beyond the person to the point it can only focus on that and it's a it's it's why anyone

00:54:03.360 who peddles those kind of politics can never win an argument they think they won it but they didn't

00:54:07.480 win it and also no one is persuaded that way no one so where do we go i mean we've got a couple

00:54:12.980 minutes left where do we go from here it sounds pretty bad right we're in a pretty pretty difficult

00:54:17.900 situation i think education is the key i really do i think we need to uh reinstate critical

00:54:23.640 thinking at the heart of the natural curriculum i think uh kids need to be taught that insulting

00:54:29.040 someone or resorting to ad hominem attacks means you lose um the assumption that people are wicked

00:54:36.580 because they don't think the way that you do we have to rid ourselves of that um that's not

00:54:41.640 happening the opposite thing is happening right now so how do we counteract what's happening now

00:54:45.380 i don't know but but but i i know what i want to happen but i don't know how to make it happen

00:54:48.940 um we need to stop the the polarization we need to stop that somehow i mean if you say

00:54:54.640 we've got into kind of camps into tribes haven't we so for instance if somebody tells you uh their

00:55:01.040 position on abortion i bet 99 of the time you could guess what their position on every other

00:55:06.100 political point is right similarly with brexit right people don't like me claiming to be on the

00:55:12.840 left because i voted leave for instance and they don't they can't reconcile that for me on a

00:55:17.360 personal level i can't reconcile voting for a right-wing corporate body to be anything other

00:55:22.080 than a right-wing thing to do so i can't reconcile being on the left with voting in favor of the eu

00:55:26.460 i can't so but that's my that's my view it's a separate issue but the point is that the assumption

00:55:30.600 is made okay i write for spiked okay alt right yeah uh you know i voted leave okay right wing

00:55:36.900 right you're completely wrong about this but it doesn't matter because your simplified world view

00:55:40.860 you can only you can only deal in confirmation bias you can only deal in in in your own assumptions

00:55:47.000 being played out and and therefore you don't bother addressing your opponent properly and in

00:55:51.860 an adult manner that that is a problem but i think if i were to suggest a solution which i i don't

00:55:56.620 know i think after trump for instance after after trump happened i was convinced and it's part of

00:56:02.540 the reason we wrote the video i was convinced that the left would try and get its house in order

00:56:05.880 but actually what's happened is everyone's just doubling down on all the same stuff and making

00:56:11.200 it worse and worse and worse and and pushing this form of identity politics which is pernicious and

00:56:16.440 divisive and we need to somehow find a way i think it comes from criticism within its own ranks it

00:56:20.500 has to be people on the left that address this stuff for instance just to make this point because

00:56:24.720 I think it's an important one.

00:56:26.060 The question of free speech should be at the heart of anything,

00:56:28.580 of anything left or right.

00:56:29.880 It transcends left and right.

00:56:31.560 But because the left have continually eroded free speech

00:56:34.140 or allowed it to be eroded,

00:56:35.500 and in some cases pushed for it to be resisted,

00:56:40.020 what you find is when people mention free speech,

00:56:42.260 you assume it's a right-wing person.

00:56:44.120 When I set up this free speech comedy night,

00:56:45.800 and what we really mean by that is that you don't self-censor,

00:56:47.680 we're encouraging people not to self-censor.

00:56:49.740 The Sunday Telegraph wrote an article saying,

00:56:51.080 thank God we've got a right-wing comedy night.

00:56:54.720 now it's run by two lefties we do have some right-wing people very few because you couldn't

00:57:01.480 fill a bill uh we have we have had a few right-wing people which we want we want we want people more

00:57:05.780 right that's the point yeah but actually so far it has been mostly people on the left to in truth

00:57:10.200 um but that assumption tells us a lot that that the connection of free speech because what happened

00:57:16.000 is the left created a vacuum around this issue they they stopped defending the principle and

00:57:21.740 then the right swooped in and now you've got people like tommy robinson katie hopkins god

00:57:26.540 you've got these people defending uh and they're they're right on the principle this is the this

00:57:30.840 is the problem the reason why so many people and comedians don't want to defend count dankler

00:57:34.320 is because he's associated with tommy robinson the reason that association exists is because

00:57:38.100 subsequent to the trial remember that it doesn't predate the trial tommy robinson came in to defend

00:57:42.420 him right so now we can't defend him because it's been the mantle's been seized by the right

00:57:46.920 what's going on there no we have to be able to say actually this principle is bigger than robinson

00:57:52.360 it's bigger than anyone it's bigger than left and right and it's a it's the i'm so frustrated i'm

00:57:58.780 more frustrated with the failings of the left than i am of the right because i'm from the left

00:58:01.620 i know what the failings of the right are and people often criticize me so why aren't you

00:58:05.100 slagging off the right all the time because it's a given to me like i know where they're going wrong

00:58:08.880 and and i think i think if we are going to get out of this quagmire it has to be the left that put

00:58:13.620 its own house in order and the first step on that is ridding ourselves of this form of identity

00:58:17.280 politics because we're dividing everyone up and we're creating a lot of resentment and we are not

00:58:21.840 convincing anyone you know if you just block everyone on twitter who who has a different

00:58:26.460 opinion than you well are you really serious about your convictions then because you're obviously not

00:58:30.800 prepared to attempt to persuade anyone and i think that's a perfect way to end it actually

00:58:36.340 fantastic stuff so before you go thank you very much andrew i think you're absolutely brilliant

00:58:41.600 is there anything that you would like to plug

00:58:43.300 whether it's your Twitter handle

00:58:44.320 whether it's Spike

00:58:45.000 whatever it is

00:58:45.740 oh well I don't know

00:58:46.880 I'm on Twitter

00:58:47.580 andrewdoyle underscore com

00:58:49.340 so if you want to send abuse

00:58:50.400 or any kind of accusations

00:58:52.940 I will

00:58:53.380 that's where you go for that

00:58:55.340 yeah

00:58:55.640 I've had a lot of that recently

00:58:56.740 a lot of fun

00:58:57.420 yeah

00:58:59.120 what's your comedy night called

00:59:00.580 and where is it

00:59:01.240 it's called Comedy Unleashed

00:59:02.320 and it's every month

00:59:03.080 at the Backyard Comedy Club

00:59:04.240 in Bethnal Green

00:59:05.740 and it's the second Tuesday

00:59:07.020 of every month

00:59:07.880 and we've got some great lineups

00:59:09.620 we've got Bobby Mayer

00:59:10.540 is doing the next one

00:59:11.500 we've got Shazia Mirza

00:59:13.540 Jonathan Pye is going to come and do one

00:59:15.340 and Jeff Norcott

00:59:17.720 some very fantastic

00:59:20.000 acts so yeah do come along

00:59:21.960 to that I've got a show on at the Soho

00:59:23.820 Theatre in July can I plug that

00:59:25.920 yes of course you can you're plugging it right

00:59:28.020 now the cameras are rolling it's called Thought Crimes

00:59:30.340 obviously

00:59:32.040 what's that about

00:59:33.860 yeah who knows

00:59:35.440 it's a random title I just chose

00:59:37.180 no it's

00:59:38.460 It's the show I did in Edinburgh last year

00:59:42.260 and a lot of it is rooted in the idea

00:59:43.960 of all the friends I lost over Brexit

00:59:45.640 because of people's unwillingness to debate

00:59:48.920 and just to make assumptions.

00:59:50.820 So it sounds very worthy.

00:59:53.100 And actually because this has been

00:59:53.880 such a non-comedic discussion,

00:59:55.840 I would like to emphasise that

00:59:57.220 when I write comedy, it's quite funny.

00:59:59.300 When I talk off stage, it's not.

01:00:02.140 I would say as well, it did get excellent reviews.

01:00:04.560 So go along and see it.

01:00:06.160 Yeah, thank you very much for coming along.

01:00:07.660 I'm Constance and Kitchen

01:00:08.900 you can find me on Twitter

01:00:09.820 at Constance and Kitchen 0.99

01:00:10.800 I'm Francis Foster

01:00:12.380 you can find me on Twitter

01:00:13.360 at Failing Human

01:00:14.320 yeah

01:00:15.260 send me abuse as well

01:00:16.440 mostly people just do it

01:00:18.380 about my face

01:00:19.200 or my general comedy

01:00:20.320 but yeah

01:00:20.860 subscribe to our YouTube channel

01:00:22.100 follow us on iTunes

01:00:23.200 and do whatever it is

01:00:24.220 to stay with us

01:00:25.160 yeah and absolutely

01:00:25.920 please give us a rating

01:00:26.980 on iTunes

01:00:27.740 download it

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01:00:30.060 whether it's Twitter

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01:00:32.260 and thank you very much

01:00:34.000 for tuning in

01:00:34.480 have a lovely week

01:00:37.660 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - April 30, 2018

Triggernometry- Ep. 2 Andrew Doyle

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