Triggernometry- Ep. 2 Andrew Doyle
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
210.92038
Summary
Andrew Doyle is a stand-up comedian, columnist for Spiked Magazine, and co-writer for Jonathan Pye. In this episode, he talks about how he came to be sitting on that chair, and why he thinks free speech is a very important topic at the moment.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.
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And this is the show for you if you are bored of people arguing with each other on the internet
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At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be experts, we ask the experts.
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We're here at the world-famous Angel Comedy Club,
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and our amazing guest this week is a stand-up comedian,
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columnist for Spike Magazine, and co-writer for Jonathan Pye,
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So, Andrew, tell us a little bit about how you came to be sitting on that chair.
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Because you asked me to. It's that simple, really.
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i'll just do anything well you've had a great career already how have you come to the point
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that you're at you were a comedian first uh yeah i well i mean i started out writing plays and
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sketches and this kind of thing um and i was also a teacher at the time and then uh one night we did
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a sketch show it was an hour long with a couple of friends and we had a sort of 10 minute deficit
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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
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to be honest but i enjoyed it and then i sort of went into it that way and then that became my sort
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main source of income so I went part-time as a teacher and then left teaching and then this is
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what I do now basically. And how did you get to writing for Spiked and then working with Jonathan
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Pye? Oh so those are two very different areas of my life but the Spiked thing came about because
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I'd met a couple of the people who were involved with Spiked and the deputy editor Tom Slater
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got me to write one or two things because I agree very much with their stance on free speech
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so i wrote a couple of things and i became very conscious and i was aware of how unpopular spiked
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is amongst the comedy circuit um um and there's a kind of stigma attached to the publication
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based typically on a lack of knowledge about what the publication is to be fair um so i was a bit
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hesitant a bit cowardly about it actually and i thought well i'm not going to make this a regular
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thing and then a couple of years ago about two and a half three years ago i got to the point in
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my life where i thought you know i'm going to stop just being mealy mouthed about what i think
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I'm going to start saying what I actually think
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and also it's about respecting other people enough
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and know that they're not going to shun you for that
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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.
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but actually it is compatible um it's very much uh got it's got i mean a lot of the uh authors
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disagree with each other on various points but it has some broad editorial lines as all
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publications do i'd say it's uh it's very consistently anti-trump uh anti-new labor
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anti-conservative um it's very um anti-racism pro-human rights uh it believes in unlimited
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immigration no borders whatsoever these are the sort of central premises uh it also has an
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editorial line where it has a sense skepticism about climate change which i don't share um but
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on the whole it's also predominantly a free speech uh magazine so um and that to me is one of the
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most important uh things and the most important topics that we're facing at the moment so i agree
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with more than i disagree and that's why i write for it fantastic and you said that these free
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speech is a very important topic at the moment why do you think it's become more important now
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as opposed to five years ago just to pick an arbitrary i'd say something has happened over
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the past five ten years um and we have this kind of creeping authoritarianism that's occurring in
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in our country in the west generally um and it i think it's come out of a kind of misunderstanding
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and misapplication of political correctness with political correctness was from my era you know
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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.
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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.
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I don't have a problem. I think that's a really good thing. I think that's sort of morphed into something new.
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What's happening now, I wouldn't call political correctness. I don't think that's what this is.
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I think it's something else, and I haven't really decided what it should be called.
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I'm not in a position to make that judgment, but it's not really political correctness.
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It's a new kind of identity politics, which is very much focused on intersectional grievances
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and the idea of victimhood as currency, and I think it's very, very damaging and extremely
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divisive, and I think it's something that needs to be resisted.
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It's also a means by which censorship can be called for from a position of virtue, and
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that troubles me deeply, because all of the civil rights movements, all of the movements
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from the new left in the 60s and 70s in terms of gay rights, in terms of feminism, in terms
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of civil rights for racial minorities, all had at their heart a belief that free speech
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was essential because if you don't have free speech, none of those other rights will follow.
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Now we have a situation where people are prepared, particularly on the left, or what I prefer
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to call the liberal left, to sacrifice the fundamental principles of democracy and the
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fundamental principles of free speech for something that is perceived to be a greater
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I find this to be not only damaging to vulnerable groups,
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I can't think that, I mean, he ran his campaign
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on the basis of being anti what he calls PEC, you know.
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they've got nothing they've got no hope they've ever since the third way and the clintons and
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the blares they've had nothing at all and all of a sudden they're voting for any kind of change
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they just want to explode the system they just want to change it and they're told while they're
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struggling and they have nothing that they're privileged and uh that they they are racist
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when a lot of them are not racist majority of them are not racist they're told they're homophobic
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they're told they're sexist and they're continually battered in this way um and it generates an awful
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lot of resentment and then it backfires so what i say to the proponents on the liberal left who
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push this kind of agenda is you this is self-defeating you were destroying yourselves
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i'm coming from the left so i'm saying we need to do better than this because if we don't uh then
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the problem is going to perpetuate but you see somebody would then go well actually what you're
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you're saying this and you're you know you're in a very comfortable career you are a man of
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privilege you're a white man of course you would say these things because you've never been oppressed
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there's a huge amount of assumptions in that statement yes firstly that i have a successful
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career i think the jury is very much out on that uh if i did have a successful career i wouldn't
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be struggling for money all the time well there's that no that would be rude that would be rude i
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wouldn't do that i like that that would be rude although accurate it would be rude
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you see often the the accusation of privilege comes with all all kinds of assumptions and
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what i've noticed is the people who peddle this idea tend to be from very upper middle class
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backgrounds it seems to be a very bourgeois concern identity politics at the moment i'm not
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saying in all cases but certainly the most prominent vocal elements of the liberal left
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tend to have double barrel names tend to i mean the the books that are being published about this
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stuff where people are desperate for victimhood um tend to be quite well-off people people who
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talk about their holidays in the pyrenees when they were young and and all of this kind of stuff
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so i don't know where the assumption that i'm privileged is privileged for me of course uh
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people face homophobia and racism and all this stuff and we need to stand up against that but
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above all else what privilege comes from money from contacts from opportunity from nepotism
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from all of the stuff that middle class people have only seven percent of this country are
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educated at private schools but they're disproportionately represented in the law
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in the media in journalism and all of the major in politics all of the major uh positions so
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really if we wanted to uh just to sort this out societally we would address uh that imbalance
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so i would never say to someone you're privileged because you are white it doesn't make any it
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doesn't make any sense i mean when munro burgdorff the labor activist said that you can still be
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homeless and have white privilege that is an incredibly insulting thing to say from someone
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who is so privileged so upper middle class um and has had all these benefits but as an ethnic
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minority and trans person all of a sudden the the uh the victim hierarchy shifts and so someone
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who's homeless is suddenly more is privileged or potentially privileged i mean this is a nonsense
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so i think we have to think in terms of class i think if you're not thinking in terms of class
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consciousness you can't really self-identify as left in my view although a lot of people on the
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left do seem to think that by uh by focusing solely and i must emphasize i'm not saying that
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tackling racism and homophobia and sexism isn't important it's key to what i believe in what i'm
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saying is it is often done at the expense of class concerns now there was it would be one thing if it
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was if we were covering everything but that doesn't appear to be uh certainly my reading of it that is
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not how how things are playing out in a practical sense so if you say to me well my argument is is
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undermined by the fact that i'm white well or the fact that i'm male how do we know that i haven't
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been disadvantaged in in other ways how do you know i mean you don't i'm curious about that
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because we were talking just before we started actually and i i asked you if you're gay because
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i read that you did a show that where you talked partly about that and i'm curious that you haven't
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brought that up in defense of your right to speak which i find interesting because that is the
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instinct we most of us now have isn't it to kind of go wait i'm oppressed as well therefore i'm
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allowed to speak i think it's irrelevant and i think i think it would be irrelevant if i were a
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black gay female i i think the argument is what matters i think this okay so this is where i think
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a lot of the liberal left are going wrong it's that they've forgotten how to argue we don't have
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critical thinking at the heart of schooling anymore i used to teach critical thinking at a level
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uh it's really really key and it's important the first thing you'll learn from a critical thinking
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course is as soon as you attack the person and not the argument you've lost it's an ad hominem
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attack so um anyone who invokes uh your race your gender your sexuality has already lost the
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argument um it's not a an adequate argumentative technique so that to me is something we need to
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get back to you need to address the point okay so let me give you for instance so if you say to me
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if i make a point make an argument about identity politics and you say well i don't accept that
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argument because you're white and you're male right what happens then when i introduce you to
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a woman a black woman who is making an identical point so is the point suddenly is the argument
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suddenly more persuasive is that what you're telling me now this is the problem with people
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who peddle identity politics in its current form they are undermining themselves because if your
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rebuttal depends on something that is individual about the person you're arguing then when you when
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you are faced with the identical argument from someone who doesn't fit that demographic you have
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nowhere else to go and you've lost they do have somewhere else to go actually because what they
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do then is they call that person a race traitor or a traitor to the agenda or the internalized
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misogyny or whatever self-hating yeah exactly i can think of nothing more patronizing than a woman
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saying to another woman well you're not thinking in the right way i mean that is underpinned by
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genuine misogyny uh or you're suffering or you're an uncle tom or yours or you're self-hating i mean
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how how dare someone make that assumption about someone maybe someone just disagrees with you
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and maybe that's okay right it's an interesting thing for me because i'm from russia that's where
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i was i was born in the soviet union but i'm from russia and people said to me when in these kind
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of situations well you're white you don't know what you're talking about interestingly someone
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who looks like me in russia i had people in russia come up to me in the street and say
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in russian literally you are black go home wow because people who look like me in russia are
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the discriminated against minority okay but no one in the uk could possibly know that without
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having a conversation with me first quite so they've made an assumption they've made an
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assumption based on their experience as opposed to anything about my experience whatsoever so now
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that my oppression credentials are firmly established yeah it's a shame isn't it that
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feel we have to we have to do that that we have to establish those credentials it doesn't make
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any sense we should be able to talk about ideas irrespective of who makes them surely my problem
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with the whole with the whole debate about and what is currently going on in the internet is
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i think it's quite selfish because i think a lot of these people do it not because they're actually
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interested in supporting uh or progressing the rights of ethnic minorities or gay people disabled
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or trans or whatever it may be i think they do it from a purely selfish point of view
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whereby they do it to essentially propel their own careers and make a name for themselves
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the trouble with that i mean that could potentially be true the trouble i would have with that is i'm
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very wary of ever trying to intuit motive on behalf of the person i'm arguing against it's
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far better to just address the arguments as they are presented rather than because otherwise you're
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more reasonable than me no but it's all you know i mean you might you might very well be right that
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there's this underlying kind of because we know don't we that now victimhood has power attached
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to it which is an odd paradox isn't it but the more of a victim you can present yourself as the
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more the more currency you'll have now we and there's political clout behind being a victim
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and we know that now but the problem is if you if i assume that someone is is not telling the truth
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out of uh a desire for personal gain then again i am as guilty of the thing i've just accused other
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people of which is i am not i'm i'm not addressing the argument and also you can defeat the argument
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irrespective of motive so it doesn't matter what their motive is actually if you've defeated the
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argument then job done so whether that whether their motive is malevolent or benevolent it does
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it doesn't matter you've still won the argument so that would be my my suggestion in that in that
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case people often impute motive to me all the time so um i make these sorts of arguments and
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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
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all of this kind of thing because otherwise they have to deal with the arguments i'm actually
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making so it's much easier to mischaracterize your opponent and enter into a kind of straw man
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debate it's much easier people are very hesitant to address what's actually being said it's a big
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problem do you think that actually social media has just exacerbated the situation because now
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people on social media because they've got literally a computer screen in front of them
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yeah and between their opponent they suddenly feel emboldened to say whatever it is that they
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want and to make horrible claims and say horrible things to people that they would never dream of
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saying it face to face yeah it's terrible isn't it it's the anonymity of the of the online
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experience of course you have this kind of yeah i mean i've had it uh recently i was being uh i
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suppose you call it trolling i've been trolled by a group of anarcho-communists and uh so uh
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what's a narco-communist because my mum's south american narco for me is cocaine
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it sounds like a contradiction in terms doesn't it
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you believe that the state should run everything
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when you get involved in debates with people like this
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but when you're being sort of trolled on the internet
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like five or six people, it feels like the whole world
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and i don't take it too seriously now and i just i just ignore it but like you say
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social media has exacerbated the problem hugely and i think it's because these minority voices
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that aren't really very rational that haven't read very much don't really know very much
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are suddenly amplified and they have this kind of power um and that leads to a kind of polarization
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of politics and we can see it can't we we can see it's manifested itself uh in terms
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of national politics as well hasn't it in terms of the the rise of uh parties that are further
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to the right than ever before we've seen all over europe uh in france in italy here to a degree uh
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we've seen um and the rise of maybe the more kind of leftist corbynite uh style of politics as as
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well so it works in in both ways um and that that that worries me as well is that you're either one
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thing or the other and particularly the debates that i see online it's very much well you've
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so therefore I'm lumbering you in the other extreme,
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I mean, the example I would give is that because I write for Spiked
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and don't really understand where it's coming from,
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it's easy to just say, well, Spiked is an alt-right publication.
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Now, alt-right means, in common parlance, means white nationalist,
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So how can a publication that's been consistently anti-racist
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that criticizes the alt-right explicitly again and again and again be alt-right it can only be if
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you don't understand what alt-right means or if you're being dishonest about about that about
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that imputation coming back to freedom of speech yeah we kind of got into a little bit of why it's
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so important and i you touched on the fact that freedom of speech is essentially a guarantee of
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our other rights and opportunities and i i wonder how you can communicate that to people in the west
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now particularly younger people because you know i grew up in my first probably 12 13 years i spent
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in the soviet union stroke russia yeah and i grew up with tales of my grandmother telling me about
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how she was born in the concentration camp in the soviet gulag for political prisoners yes and the
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reason that she was born in the soviet concentration camp is that her dad had meetings where they
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discussed fringe elements of politics yeah and this was reported to the authorities he was sent
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to the gulag his wife much the same and they spent 15 years each in hard labor camps yeah and in this
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camp in in in my great-grandfather's camp every morning the whole population of the camp would be
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let out onto the shore onto the ice of the lake this was in siberia three people would be taken
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at random and thrown in the icy rivers in icy waters of that lake and killed in front of
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everybody yeah to remind everybody what happens if you speak out of turn if you don't follow the
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rules etc this was the price that people paid for speaking their mind yeah now i don't think anyone
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in the west now has any conception of what that's like right we have no physical connection to that
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kind of experience we don't have grandmothers telling us that so how do we explain to people
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people who are reading reading or listening or watching or whatever yeah that that is kind of
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what happens when you don't have free speech it's it's a path down towards that it's difficult
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because free speech is something that needs to be fought for in every new generation it's something
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that needs to be maintained and of course what you're describing is such a horrific unimaginable
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experience that we can't share we don't have anything that comes close to that I think a lot
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of the problem is that people of my generation and younger haven't experienced war or anything
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like this we haven't had anything like that so we take these freedoms for granted whereas actually
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we do need to guard against this sort of stuff and comparatively the free speech uh um fights
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that are going on at the moment in this country and in america pale in compared to something like
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that of course they do so it's very easy to say well this doesn't really matter but of course
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these things work uh in an inchmeal way don't they it's it's one thing and then it's the next
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and these things gradually build and build and we've actually seen it uh in our country i mean
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now we have a situation where people are routinely jailed for things they say right now you might say
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well it doesn't matter it's just a few working class teenagers making jokes about madeleine
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mccann on facebook they're not very nice jokes so it doesn't matter right well that's the first
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step right and what happens next these these the law works in precedence so then you get more and
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more people who are who are at risk of this kind of legislation uh and it leads i know a bit about
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history i know where this stuff leads it starts in increments so you have to battle it from the
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from the you can't just wait until it's gone too far and i know that sounds alarmist and i'm not
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suggesting we're going to end up with a tyrannical government that's going to shoot every third
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person or something like that i'm not i'm not suggesting that but i am suggesting it's a
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possibility and i'm suggesting that that history teaches us this um that individual liberty is is
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is worth preserving but it's an interesting point you raised i mean how much do you think i mean
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we'll just touch on corbyn um well my mother's from venezuela and i don't know if you know what's
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going on in venezuela yeah but we're pretty much going the same way as soviet russia depressingly
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um if you are seen to be talking or criticizing the government there'll be a knock on the door
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and you will disappear yeah it's that's literally where it is at the moment and men in ski masks
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we're less classy to come and take you away um i find it very very worrying that corbyn has
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supported it supports the venezuelan government and does not offer a direct criticism of them
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yeah do you find that worrying because i say it to people on the far left and i get slammed down
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as being alt-right yeah but again that that feeds back into what i was talking about if you don't
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fully agree then you must be part of the other faction and not only that the most extreme version
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of the other other faction i have reservations as well about some of corbyn's sympathies um i did
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vote for corbyn as it happened um but i think all three of us did actually the last election yeah
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right um for labor anyway yeah so i do have reservation there's no doubt that what's
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happening in venezuela is it's going to seed you know and then um and sometimes you you have to be
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able to say uh i agree broadly with many of his points but actually he's getting this wrong and
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there's there's various things that he is getting wrong i think and we have to be able to talk about
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that but i think we're we're in a situation where it is that either you are on corbyn's side or
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you're not and that's not how politics works because people are complex individuals with
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many many different views and you have to be able to debate each perspective don't you i suppose a
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counter argument to what you're saying about freedom of speech is where do you draw the line
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is it all right to use racial slurs for instance is it all right for an islamic preacher to say to
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go on a box in some way i don't know in bethnal green for example and talk uh and say that uh
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western civilization is an evil is evil and that it should be wiped from the surface of the earth
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because surely isn't he excising his freedom his right to freedom of speech uh yeah and my instinct
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
00:23:11.560
criminalized and all the rest of it but you see and and of course a preacher calling for the
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
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
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
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
00:28:25.900
could ever deny that the intention was to be funny.
00:28:30.880
Now, what is troubling about this particular ruling?
00:29:02.800
But if you are serious about propagating Nazism,
00:29:16.280
First triggering moment of this podcast is well and truly done.
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,
00:29:45.080
firstly because the man in question self-identifies
00:29:48.940
well I don't think he's a comedian, it's irrelevant
00:30:05.080
people don't quite understand the whole meaning of that
00:30:20.540
There were three million views, not one complaint,
00:30:23.020
because people aren't stupid, and they got what it was.
00:30:27.460
And then comes the argument, well, this is offensive to Jewish people.
00:30:31.100
Because there's an awful lot of Jewish people who found it funny.
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?
00:30:46.980
And then what happens is, of course, they say, I find it offensive.
00:30:54.700
That's their right to find that offensive and to be upset by it.
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.
00:31:24.380
People aren't watching this pug video and going out and thinking, right, I want to attack Jewish people.
00:31:33.360
but this is the point I'm making about hate speech
00:31:37.620
now it's all very well you saying an imam standing up
00:31:44.880
now look I don't want to live in a society where that person exists
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
00:31:55.520
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
00:32:11.420
their conclusion, right? So what we have here is a kind
00:32:15.360
And this is why I'm also troubled by hate speech.
00:32:23.220
and awful, and we put that under the bracket of hate
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
00:32:49.260
the police, the Metropolitan Police have a guideline
00:32:52.080
which you can check online about what hate speech is
00:32:58.340
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.
00:34:12.100
And I said, well, you are now inciting violence, sarcastically.
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
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
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
00:36:17.620
A physical attack is a different level, isn't it?
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.
00:37:43.320
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
00:38:27.040
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.
00:38:38.060
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?
00:38:56.860
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.
00:39:49.240
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
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
00:41:34.980
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,
00:42:06.580
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
00:42:25.780
But he's actually been criticizing the left for ages.
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.
00:42:41.340
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.
00:42:51.180
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.
00:43:00.380
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.
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.
00:43:28.480
The media have an expectation of a certain narrative
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.
00:44:12.040
because friends of mine keep sending me screenshots
00:44:13.600
and saying, look what these people are saying about you.
00:44:17.800
Yeah, they seem to take a certain light in it as well.
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
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.
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.
00:46:03.580
And some of the stories they have told us is there's unquestionably discrimination against women.
00:46:08.160
right it does happen with there are situations in which women are paid less not only for the
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
00:47:29.440
and there are more female stewards for instance in in the case of ryanair and the person who flies
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
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
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
00:51:14.420
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
00:51:28.600
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
00:52:03.360
You know, like when people talk about the gender wage gap,
00:52:17.180
It's surely not enough to then go and spout my opinion
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
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
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
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
00:56:26.060
The question of free speech should be at the heart of anything,
00:56:31.560
But because the left have continually eroded free speech
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,
00:56:45.800
and what we really mean by that is that you don't self-censor,
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
00:59:28.020
now the cameras are rolling it's called Thought Crimes
01:00:02.140
I would say as well, it did get excellent reviews.