1 00:00:18,239 --> 00:00:21,879 We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Jasinski, 2 00:00:21,960 --> 00:00:24,480 culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show 3 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:28,920 at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST. 4 00:00:29,239 --> 00:00:33,000 Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and to the premium 5 00:00:33,079 --> 00:00:37,640 version of our site as well. Today we're joined by Brendan O'Neil, columnist, 6 00:00:37,719 --> 00:00:42,679 broadcaster, an author of the new book A Heretics Manifesto, Essays on 7 00:00:42,719 --> 00:00:46,399 the Unsayable. Brendan, thank you for joining us. It's a pleasure to 8 00:00:46,439 --> 00:00:49,119 be here. Emily. Why don't you tell us a little bit since I 9 00:00:49,159 --> 00:00:51,920 think you were on the show maybe a few years ago, but could you 10 00:00:52,039 --> 00:00:56,799 tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up as a 11 00:00:56,880 --> 00:01:03,439 heretic his media climate. Good question. So, I'm a journalist based in 12 00:01:03,479 --> 00:01:07,760 London. I worked for the online magazine Spiked. I was editor of Spike 13 00:01:07,840 --> 00:01:11,400 for about fifteen years. Spiked as a pro free speech, pro reason, 14 00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:17,439 pro enlightenment publication, a current affairs publication too, and I write for the 15 00:01:17,519 --> 00:01:19,840 Daily Mail right for the Spectator, and I've been doing that kind of thing 16 00:01:19,879 --> 00:01:23,959 for a very long time, and as you say, I've got this new 17 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:29,120 book out called a Heretic Manifesto, Essays on the Unsayable. I guess I'm 18 00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:33,319 often called a contrarian. I don't like the word contrarian. I don't mind 19 00:01:33,359 --> 00:01:37,040 it particularly, but I don't like it because it makes it sound like you're 20 00:01:37,079 --> 00:01:40,560 only saying things to wind people up, to try and get on people's nerves. 21 00:01:40,680 --> 00:01:42,400 And that's never why I say things. I say things because I actually 22 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:48,640 believe that they are true and important. I preferred the word heretic, I 23 00:01:48,680 --> 00:01:51,799 think the way I was thinking about it as I was writing the book. 24 00:01:51,840 --> 00:01:55,280 I was thinking and I sent this in a talk at Oxford University a few 25 00:01:55,359 --> 00:01:59,519 years ago, and it kind of went down quite well. Every freedom and 26 00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:05,239 come that we enjoy is the gift of heresy. It comes from people in 27 00:02:05,280 --> 00:02:08,560 the past being willing to put the head on the block literally in many instances, 28 00:02:09,159 --> 00:02:14,479 in the name of the freedoms and the knowledge and the rights that we 29 00:02:14,560 --> 00:02:17,719 currently enjoy. So I just think it's important to remind ourselves of the essential 30 00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:23,599 nature of heresy and descent and argumentation and free thought to the development of society 31 00:02:23,599 --> 00:02:28,360 yourself, and that's an important Lesson. I think it's one of the most 32 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:31,719 interesting things about the times we live in is that the kind of consensus, 33 00:02:32,280 --> 00:02:38,280 the elite consensus, is out of step with the broader consensus, which makes 34 00:02:38,439 --> 00:02:43,879 the heretic the average person in a way that we've just it. It's very 35 00:02:43,879 --> 00:02:46,759 different than when you had you know, maybe tipp or Gore representing moms across 36 00:02:46,840 --> 00:02:52,000 America. But now the cultural consensus has shifted such is that, you know, 37 00:02:52,080 --> 00:02:57,400 the rules that govern Twitter in twenty nineteen were wildly out of step with 38 00:02:57,719 --> 00:03:00,759 you know, where most of the public in the UK and United States would 39 00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:04,719 have been. That seems to be new, at least in modern history. 40 00:03:05,360 --> 00:03:08,680 Yeah. I mean, the chasm between elite consensus opinion and the views of 41 00:03:08,840 --> 00:03:15,520 everyday people is absolutely vast, and I think and hope it's getting even more 42 00:03:15,639 --> 00:03:19,759 vast, and it's becoming more apparent that there is a huge cultural and moral 43 00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:23,800 tension between how the elites understand the world and how ordinary people understand it. 44 00:03:24,199 --> 00:03:28,400 I think that's one of the most fruitful, interesting conflicts of our time, 45 00:03:28,400 --> 00:03:30,840 and it's exploded a few times over the past few years, in the vote 46 00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:35,039 for Brexit, even in the vote for Trump. Whatever one might think of 47 00:03:35,039 --> 00:03:39,080 Trump. I think there was something very interesting in people's desire to basically rock 48 00:03:39,159 --> 00:03:45,159 the old establishment. And across Europe we're seeing people make votes and say things 49 00:03:45,159 --> 00:03:49,400 and do things as a means of pushing back against the Green consensus, for 50 00:03:49,439 --> 00:03:53,240 example, which people are revolting against. Dutch farmers, Danish truck drivers, 51 00:03:53,800 --> 00:03:58,280 French motorists, all of them have taken to the streets in huge numbers to 52 00:03:58,680 --> 00:04:02,759 protest against a Green cons There's a huge pushback in the UK against the gender 53 00:04:02,800 --> 00:04:08,960 ideology. We're sometimes referred to as turf Island because we have so many turfs, 54 00:04:09,400 --> 00:04:13,479 trans exclusionary, radical feminists. I'm very proud to live on Turf Island. 55 00:04:13,520 --> 00:04:15,839 I have huge admiration for the women here who are willing to speak their 56 00:04:15,879 --> 00:04:20,120 minds and to dissent from the new ideologies. So in different ways, there 57 00:04:20,120 --> 00:04:25,879 are lots of flickers of descent coming from ordinary people, from members of the 58 00:04:25,920 --> 00:04:30,279 public. And you're absolutely right that it's a bit of an interesting situation where 59 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:35,439 the consensus that we're all supposed to abide by, we're suddenly expected to is 60 00:04:35,439 --> 00:04:40,920 a kind of very minority pursuit these days. It's the moral minority, really 61 00:04:41,040 --> 00:04:46,439 rather than the moral majority, and we're all expected to genuflect to their eccentric 62 00:04:46,519 --> 00:04:49,160 beliefs, but many of us refuse to do that, even if we get 63 00:04:49,199 --> 00:04:55,199 called a heretic as a consequence. There's a great Saturday Night Life sketch from 64 00:04:55,399 --> 00:05:00,279 the Arts where Fred Armison plays I don't know if you've seen this, plays 65 00:05:00,279 --> 00:05:04,160 like basically a Joey Ramon type who really loves Margaret Thatcher, and it's just 66 00:05:04,519 --> 00:05:09,199 it's one of those funny things where he's supposed to be this punk rock, 67 00:05:09,639 --> 00:05:14,439 leather clad dude that's like really out of touch in the sense that he's like 68 00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:18,240 an absolute rebel. But now you actually kind of are the rebel. If 69 00:05:18,279 --> 00:05:23,399 you're like, hey, you know what, I don't mind like something that's 70 00:05:23,399 --> 00:05:27,079 in the mainstream, like I think Joe Rogan has some good ideas, then 71 00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:30,879 you're you're kind of punk rock now, even though you're representative of a broader 72 00:05:30,879 --> 00:05:33,240 consensus. It's just a strange type of dynamic that I feel like it's different 73 00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:40,120 from when the old ACLU was, you know, standing up for the right 74 00:05:40,120 --> 00:05:43,800 of Nazis to march and Skokie. That was a big push against where public 75 00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:48,959 opinion was absolutely and you're absolutely right about the punk rock. I haven't seen 76 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,560 that ski, but I will look it up because I often think about Johnny 77 00:05:51,600 --> 00:05:56,680 Rotten, now referred to as John Lydon, the singer in the Sex Pistols, 78 00:05:56,680 --> 00:06:00,560 of course, one of my heroes. I think he's a hugely admirable 79 00:06:00,639 --> 00:06:05,879 person. He's now off the opinion that to be a punk rocker these days 80 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:11,600 means actually thinking Brexit wasn't such a bad thing. Leaving the European Union is 81 00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:15,279 the democratic choice LEDs to it. He says he understands why working class Americans 82 00:06:15,319 --> 00:06:19,920 voted for Trump. It's because they were being treated incredibly badly by the coastal 83 00:06:19,959 --> 00:06:24,959 elites I guess, who look down upon them as ignoramuses who cling to their 84 00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:29,319 guns and their bibles and live in a basket full of fellow deplorables, you 85 00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:31,399 know, shark horror. They're not going to be falling at your feet if 86 00:06:31,399 --> 00:06:35,759 you speak about them like that. And he also makes the point that he 87 00:06:35,839 --> 00:06:42,199 hates cancel culture, and he hates the idea that it's left wing or radical 88 00:06:42,560 --> 00:06:47,439 or anarchic or countercultural to cancel people. He said punk was never about canceling 89 00:06:47,480 --> 00:06:51,480 people. Punk was about having some fun and expressing yourself and then giving voice 90 00:06:51,480 --> 00:06:56,279 to your views, even if they seemed quite dangerous. So the way in 91 00:06:56,319 --> 00:07:00,600 which someone like Johnny Rotten kind of now symbolizes a new counter culture, which 92 00:07:00,639 --> 00:07:04,240 is one that I think is representative of a majority opinion, which is, 93 00:07:04,279 --> 00:07:08,680 you know, let's get back to a bit of normalcy. Let's not cowtow 94 00:07:08,839 --> 00:07:13,600 to every new idea that comes from the rather cut off cultural establishment. Let's 95 00:07:13,639 --> 00:07:17,439 have the freedom to express alternative ideas, more traditional ideas, ideas based in 96 00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:20,800 science, based in reason. That's I think where the cutting edges out of 97 00:07:20,800 --> 00:07:25,639 these days, and I find that quite exciting. There was a really as 98 00:07:25,680 --> 00:07:29,399 we're recording this on Wednesday, there was a really interesting essay published in The 99 00:07:29,439 --> 00:07:31,800 New Yorker by Emma Green. I don't often say there was a really interesting 100 00:07:31,879 --> 00:07:35,360 essay published in the New Yorker, but this one touched on some interesting points. 101 00:07:35,360 --> 00:07:40,639 It was about the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which I'm admittedly not 102 00:07:41,120 --> 00:07:45,920 very familiar with, but was sort of a very wise project that at one 103 00:07:45,959 --> 00:07:51,319 point had people from con Right to Chris Ruffo to Ariel Schreier, all people 104 00:07:51,600 --> 00:07:58,079 really like involved, but crumbled because it sounds like if the reporting is accurate, 105 00:07:58,600 --> 00:08:03,360 a divide over whether or not way in on sex and gender and biology 106 00:08:05,720 --> 00:08:09,480 became paramount and became really divisive. And the reason I want to pose this 107 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:16,079 question you, Brennan, is I wonder if as so many new people start 108 00:08:16,199 --> 00:08:20,839 questioning the left in particular, with censorship being their gateway. A lot of 109 00:08:20,839 --> 00:08:24,120 the people, for instance, who are putting RFK Junior here in the States 110 00:08:24,199 --> 00:08:26,120 up to like sixteen or twenty percent in the polls, are coming along with 111 00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:31,799 Maryann Williamson their gateway to the left, and the same way Trump was a 112 00:08:31,840 --> 00:08:35,559 gateway to the right for some people. Is like this fundamental question of the 113 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:41,120 media, of censorship, of collusion between government and media on what you can 114 00:08:41,159 --> 00:08:46,559 and could not say cancel culture. But that makes a really tenuous coalition because 115 00:08:46,639 --> 00:08:48,120 at the end of the day you end up having a really hard time whether 116 00:08:48,200 --> 00:08:54,039 or not to agree that intolerance involves, you know, single sex spaces in 117 00:08:54,200 --> 00:08:58,279 school locker rooms. If you can't agree on that, what good is the 118 00:08:58,320 --> 00:09:01,919 coalition? I suspect you would have an answer that the coalition is good and 119 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:07,399 of itself because it opposes something bad. But do you sense that a problem 120 00:09:07,519 --> 00:09:11,519 for people like us. Frankly, we're willing to have these conversations. I 121 00:09:11,960 --> 00:09:18,919 think it's disappointing to hear what has been happening at Fair primarily because I think 122 00:09:18,960 --> 00:09:22,519 the trans issue is one of the most important issues of our time. Because 123 00:09:22,639 --> 00:09:26,000 I think if we don't have the right to say that a man is not 124 00:09:26,039 --> 00:09:31,360 a woman, then we lose everything. Because what we're living through at the 125 00:09:31,360 --> 00:09:33,519 moment, and in fact, the opening chapter in my book, which is 126 00:09:33,519 --> 00:09:37,360 called her Penis, is about this is precisely about those two words which you 127 00:09:37,480 --> 00:09:41,320 often see in the mainstream media here in the UK. You see elsewhere as 128 00:09:41,320 --> 00:09:46,039 well. You will be told that so and so used her penis to do 129 00:09:46,120 --> 00:09:48,879 something, and it's a form of madness, it's a form of hysteria. 130 00:09:50,240 --> 00:09:54,399 It's obviously not based in reason or rationalism at all. But even worse than 131 00:09:54,440 --> 00:09:58,279 that, I think it speaks to the purest form of tyranny, which is 132 00:09:58,279 --> 00:10:03,759 this idea the powers that be have the right to define reality itself, and 133 00:10:03,879 --> 00:10:07,759 they have the right to redefine reality as and when they choose. And what 134 00:10:07,799 --> 00:10:11,519 we have as a situation where they are gaslighting us morning, noon and night. 135 00:10:13,039 --> 00:10:16,240 We see a man standing in front of us, and they say it 136 00:10:16,360 --> 00:10:22,320 is literally legally a woman. We see a dude with a beard, still 137 00:10:22,360 --> 00:10:26,799 genitally intact, and they say it's a lesbian and he should have the same 138 00:10:26,919 --> 00:10:31,759 right as other lesbians to use lesbian dating apps, to go into lesbian spaces. 139 00:10:31,320 --> 00:10:35,799 They're gaslighting us. They're putting pressure on us to doubt the evidence of 140 00:10:35,799 --> 00:10:41,039 our own eyes, to doubt the light of our own reason, and instead 141 00:10:41,080 --> 00:10:46,720 to genuflate to what they say is true, even though it's quite latently false. 142 00:10:48,320 --> 00:10:50,960 That to me is incredibly orwelly, and it is tyranny in its most 143 00:10:52,039 --> 00:10:56,519 in its truest form, where they think, not only can they punish opinion 144 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:01,480 or religious expression, or being a communist, or or being a distributor of 145 00:11:01,639 --> 00:11:05,840 obscene literature, all the things that Sensorius at last punished in the past. 146 00:11:05,919 --> 00:11:09,960 And I was opposed to all those punishments. Freedom of speech means freedom of 147 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:15,159 speech. But even worse than that, they now want to punish people who 148 00:11:15,360 --> 00:11:18,840 say that someone with a penis is not a woman. And if we lose 149 00:11:18,879 --> 00:11:22,879 the right to say that, we have lost all our rights, and we've 150 00:11:22,879 --> 00:11:28,759 lost the right to speak the truth, to express scientific fact, and to 151 00:11:28,879 --> 00:11:33,559 give real meaning to words like man, woman, mother, father, All 152 00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:39,120 of those things which are the building blocks of human existence and community life will 153 00:11:39,159 --> 00:11:43,000 wither away at the altar of this new ideology which says that whatever they say 154 00:11:43,159 --> 00:11:50,519 is true is true. So resisting that, I think is incredibly indescribably important. 155 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:54,080 And I think anyone on our side, anyone on the kind of the 156 00:11:54,120 --> 00:12:00,840 new countercultural side of this culture war, who doesn't do that has fallen at 157 00:12:00,879 --> 00:12:05,399 the first hurdle, couldn't agree more with that point. Now actually, on 158 00:12:05,440 --> 00:12:07,799 this exact issue, I think a lot of people have sensed that in the 159 00:12:07,919 --> 00:12:16,879 UK and even in Scandinavia, the conversation about biology and sex has maybe advanced 160 00:12:18,039 --> 00:12:22,960 or progressed in a progressive way faster than it has here in the States. 161 00:12:24,159 --> 00:12:30,080 And one of the reasons I've seen positive is that you have you had Tavistock, 162 00:12:30,279 --> 00:12:35,480 and that sort of concentrated the sample size to be sort of inappropriately clinical 163 00:12:35,519 --> 00:12:37,720 about something like that, but it allowed, you know, sort of sort 164 00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:41,919 of for the experiment to be run in a quicker, more concentrated way, 165 00:12:41,919 --> 00:12:43,879 and for people to look at the results that everyone knew you were going to 166 00:12:43,919 --> 00:12:50,919 get and see something more conclusive, but from your perspective, what actually went 167 00:12:50,960 --> 00:12:52,480 on? I mean, why is it that, if you agree, these 168 00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:58,000 conversations seem to have shifted more quickly in these smaller, more homogeneous countries. 169 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:05,759 Explanation is there for that? It's very interesting and the differences between countries on 170 00:13:05,799 --> 00:13:11,279 the issue of transgenderism and other woke issues or however were expected to refer to 171 00:13:11,279 --> 00:13:15,240 them. I think it's very interesting. So I was speaking yesterday to someone 172 00:13:15,279 --> 00:13:20,200 who works at Charlie Headdo magazine in Paris, world famous magazine for a terrible 173 00:13:20,279 --> 00:13:24,360 reason, and he was saying that, for example, in France, there 174 00:13:24,440 --> 00:13:31,840 is still a cultural resistance to American origin political correctness, and the journey of 175 00:13:31,000 --> 00:13:35,600 kind of politically correct ideas is often not always, but it's often. It 176 00:13:35,679 --> 00:13:39,080 starts in America. It starts from American campuses and much among the cultural establishment, 177 00:13:39,159 --> 00:13:45,879 the social media oligarchies, who are incredibly influential globally in terms of form 178 00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:48,879 shaping ideas. It spreads to the UK, it tends to wash over us. 179 00:13:48,960 --> 00:13:50,879 We're not very good at standing up to it. And then it gets 180 00:13:50,879 --> 00:13:54,919 to France and it hits its first barrier, where you have these French professors 181 00:13:54,919 --> 00:13:58,279 and these French intellectual saying no, no, we don't want this rubbish. 182 00:13:58,279 --> 00:14:01,720 But it trickles through even in France, and it trickles through to Europe and 183 00:14:01,679 --> 00:14:07,559 in a slightly different way. But I'm interested in the differences between countries. 184 00:14:07,600 --> 00:14:11,919 One interesting thing about the UK is that we're often referred to as turf Island. 185 00:14:11,879 --> 00:14:16,600 The New York Times is incredibly snotty about modern Britain. It thinks Brexit. 186 00:14:16,960 --> 00:14:20,559 When I go to New York now people and I say I'm from the 187 00:14:20,639 --> 00:14:24,879 UK, people look at me with extraordinary pity and sorrow because they read the 188 00:14:24,919 --> 00:14:26,320 New York Times. And if you read the New York Times, which is 189 00:14:26,960 --> 00:14:31,639 very often anti British propaganda, you will believe that Brexit Britain is a complete 190 00:14:31,679 --> 00:14:35,960 disaster. It's a racist hell whole. It's horrible to live here. It's 191 00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:41,080 full of turfs and these evil women like JK Rowling who are going around calling 192 00:14:41,159 --> 00:14:43,879 women men, when in fact she's calling men men. That's the image that 193 00:14:43,919 --> 00:14:48,399 people give. But I'm actually really happy to live on Turf Island. I'm 194 00:14:48,440 --> 00:14:54,960 happy to live in a country where the gender ideology is very institutionalized. And 195 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:58,399 you mentioned Tavistock, which was a complete disaster. The experiments that were carried 196 00:14:58,399 --> 00:15:03,519 out on children is astonished, and many of them were autistic. Many of 197 00:15:03,519 --> 00:15:07,519 them were young lesbians and young gay men who would have grown up to be 198 00:15:07,559 --> 00:15:11,960 perfectly healthy, happy homosexuals, but instead they were subjected to these hormonal treatments 199 00:15:13,480 --> 00:15:18,600 later onto surgical treatments, really horrendous stuff. So it's bad here, But 200 00:15:18,639 --> 00:15:24,559 at the same time, there is a very strong culture of resistance and a 201 00:15:24,679 --> 00:15:28,919 very strong culture of descent amongst numerous women and men who are saying enough is 202 00:15:30,039 --> 00:15:33,360 enough. We want to push back against it. And it's those flashpoint areas 203 00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:37,000 in the culture war that I find very interesting and very fruitful for those of 204 00:15:37,080 --> 00:15:43,080 us who want to defend freedom and reason. The watchdo on wat Street podcast 205 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:46,039 with Chris Murkowski every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the 206 00:15:46,039 --> 00:15:50,080 economy and how it affects your while. If you're using one credit card to 207 00:15:50,120 --> 00:15:52,759 pay off another credit card, are you really getting read of your debt? 208 00:15:52,799 --> 00:15:56,399 Add that to spending even more of your tax dollars that they don't have. 209 00:15:56,639 --> 00:16:00,320 That's what the federal government got from this debt deal. Any reason why another 210 00:16:00,320 --> 00:16:03,600 deal means to be made in the presidential elections cycle. Whether it's happening in 211 00:16:03,679 --> 00:16:06,480 DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. 212 00:16:06,559 --> 00:16:10,039 Check out the Watchdout on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, 213 00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:18,279 wherever you get your podcast. The response that the left has I've seen 214 00:16:18,279 --> 00:16:21,120 this more and more lately. It's it's always been around, like in this 215 00:16:21,159 --> 00:16:22,720 era of cancel culture, which I could say, I mean, maybe you 216 00:16:22,759 --> 00:16:29,200 can pin that back to like twenty fourteen, maybe twenty twelve, but at 217 00:16:29,279 --> 00:16:34,000 least post twenty sixteen. Is that look like people are flying Trump flags all 218 00:16:34,000 --> 00:16:37,639 over the US. They're they're wearing their Maga hats, they're wearing their Brexit 219 00:16:37,720 --> 00:16:42,840 gear, they are tweeting in support of JK. Rowling. It's not you 220 00:16:42,879 --> 00:16:45,960 know, China where the police are knocking at your door, although in the 221 00:16:47,039 --> 00:16:52,360 UK we have seen some actual police confrontation over speech issues and shocking ways, 222 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:56,879 but they say, listen, you can say whatever you want. What is 223 00:16:56,039 --> 00:17:03,639 what is heretical to any of these statements? If you're allowed to freely express 224 00:17:03,720 --> 00:17:07,920 yourself and you're doing just fine. Facts news exists, all of the sort 225 00:17:07,920 --> 00:17:15,319 of Murdoch tabloids are humming along despite Prince Harry's best efforts. What's the problem. 226 00:17:15,119 --> 00:17:18,519 Yeah, I get that question all the time, and I've been thinking 227 00:17:18,519 --> 00:17:22,880 about it for a long time as well. The first thing that always strikes 228 00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:27,440 me about it people often say it about gender critical women who haven't been successfully 229 00:17:27,480 --> 00:17:30,480 canceled. So they'll always say, look at jk Rowling. She's still got 230 00:17:30,559 --> 00:17:34,960 fourteen million followers on Twitter, she's still a world famous author, she's still 231 00:17:36,759 --> 00:17:41,960 unfathomably rich, she's doing fine. Or they look at Kathleen Stock, who's 232 00:17:41,960 --> 00:17:45,759 a professor here, who is gender critical and gets into a lot of hot 233 00:17:45,799 --> 00:17:49,839 water for her perfectly reasonable views, who still has columns in the press, 234 00:17:49,839 --> 00:17:52,759 who still gets to speak at universities and so on. They say, look, 235 00:17:52,799 --> 00:17:56,279 she hasn't been canceled. The first thing that strikes me is that there's 236 00:17:56,279 --> 00:18:00,000 always a tone of disappointment when they say. It's always like, oh, 237 00:18:00,400 --> 00:18:03,319 Dan, we haven't quite managed to silence these upper to women. There's always 238 00:18:03,319 --> 00:18:08,279 a tone of we're not we haven't been successful in completely preventing them from speaking. 239 00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:12,920 But the second and more important point is I think those kinds of arguments 240 00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:19,519 miss the point about cancel culture because cancel culture often goes after big names JK. 241 00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:23,599 Rowling, Joe Rogan. If you remember when the Spotify the up starts 242 00:18:23,599 --> 00:18:27,279 at Spotify, the kind of millennial and jen Z cry babies who said they 243 00:18:27,279 --> 00:18:33,359 wouldn't work on his podcast because he's evil or whatever it was. They go 244 00:18:33,519 --> 00:18:37,359 after big names like that. I've been canceled. I was banned from speaking 245 00:18:37,400 --> 00:18:41,519 to Oxford University in two and fourteen. That caused a bit of a fuss 246 00:18:41,599 --> 00:18:45,799 here. But I'm still around, I'm still talking, I'm still doing my 247 00:18:45,880 --> 00:18:49,640 thing. But the point about cancel culture is its chilling impact and the message 248 00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:55,079 that it sends to people in different paths of society. So you're right. 249 00:18:55,119 --> 00:18:59,839 The police have knocked on the doors of gender critical women in the UK and 250 00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:03,839 told them to stop saying certain things. Last year, they turned up at 251 00:19:03,839 --> 00:19:08,960 the house of a man who had profaned against the Pride flag on Twitter. 252 00:19:10,440 --> 00:19:14,839 He turned he put four Pride flags together so that it looked like a swasticker 253 00:19:15,839 --> 00:19:18,680 and they knocked on his door and they put him in handcuffs and accused him 254 00:19:18,680 --> 00:19:22,440 of causing anxiety. There are many cases like that of the police intervention into 255 00:19:22,519 --> 00:19:29,920 speech and the chilling effect this has across society shouldn't be underestimated because what it 256 00:19:29,960 --> 00:19:33,519 means is that women in your average workplace, for example, who don't have 257 00:19:33,559 --> 00:19:38,240 a lot of power, don't have jk. Rowling's money or clout, they 258 00:19:38,279 --> 00:19:41,079 know that if they put their head above the parapet and say I love JK 259 00:19:41,279 --> 00:19:47,799 Rowling or I think there should be no trans women so called in my bathroom 260 00:19:47,799 --> 00:19:52,119 at work, they know what will happen to them. They know they will 261 00:19:52,160 --> 00:19:55,400 be demonized, they will be harassed, they will be called a turf, 262 00:19:55,400 --> 00:19:57,680 they will be called a biggot, and they could very well lose their job. 263 00:19:59,039 --> 00:20:02,759 That has happened, have lost their jobs as a consequence of expressing their 264 00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:08,079 heartfelt opinions and in very many cases, expressing the truth. So what cancel 265 00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:12,799 culture does? It very often fails to slay the big names because they're too 266 00:20:12,839 --> 00:20:18,559 big. Some people are uncancellable. JK Rowling is uncancellable, which is why 267 00:20:18,680 --> 00:20:22,039 she infuriates them so much. But it sends a message to everyone else, 268 00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:26,960 and this is what this is always censorship's grimmaced achievement. It's a warning light 269 00:20:27,039 --> 00:20:30,880 of society at large that if you go too far down this road of reasoned 270 00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:36,759 opinion or controversial speech, the punishments will be severe. So I think that's 271 00:20:36,880 --> 00:20:41,799 that's the most terrible thing about cancel culture. And let's talk about Prince Harry 272 00:20:41,839 --> 00:20:47,720 actually, because Prince Harry and Megan Marko are on. I mean, there 273 00:20:47,720 --> 00:20:51,839 are some complaints about paparazzi, legitimate. Probably he's had a tough life in 274 00:20:51,960 --> 00:20:57,640 large part because of paparazzi. But they also do weaponize these arguments that are 275 00:20:59,039 --> 00:21:02,839 well described as canceled culture to protect their own power, to grow, their 276 00:21:02,839 --> 00:21:06,559 own power, to pad their bank accounts. And I think that's an important 277 00:21:06,599 --> 00:21:10,400 point about everything you were just saying. On the one hand, even if 278 00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:12,720 people can still speak, now, you're raising a generation of kids that are 279 00:21:12,759 --> 00:21:18,839 going to be populating these institutions, running these institutions, and controlling these institutions 280 00:21:18,839 --> 00:21:22,920 the next ten to twenty years, who may make it, indeed, the 281 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:26,599 case that we can't say these things anymore. You've seen this creeping into government 282 00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:32,759 and corporate America, transnational corporations to the EU, all of these places. 283 00:21:33,279 --> 00:21:37,680 One percent. And the second point to that is they're also weaponizing it for 284 00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:41,279 the purposes of their own power. How have you seen that play out? 285 00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:45,880 Obviously I shouldn't ask about the EU because we've discussed Brexit, but you know, 286 00:21:47,160 --> 00:21:48,880 across the pond, the same thing is happening, and it's it's just 287 00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:53,079 as dangerous. Yeah, that's right. I think Harry and Megan are a 288 00:21:53,079 --> 00:22:00,799 good example of lots of the problems of contemporary politics, and particularly wokeness and 289 00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:03,440 those kinds of issues. I think one of the most striking things about Harry 290 00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:07,680 and Megan is that they complain about their privacy being invaded all the time. 291 00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:12,359 They say, the paparazzi invade it, ordinary people invade it by reading newspaper 292 00:22:12,440 --> 00:22:18,680 stories, the tabloids invade their privacy. And then they invite Netflix cameras into 293 00:22:18,759 --> 00:22:22,319 their home to film them having an emotional breakdown. And then Harry writes a 294 00:22:22,319 --> 00:22:26,640 four hundred page book and I kid you not it. I don't know if 295 00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:30,599 you if your listeners have read it. I know more about Prince Harry now 296 00:22:30,599 --> 00:22:33,319 than I do about some of my own best friends. It's the amount of 297 00:22:33,359 --> 00:22:38,359 self revelation in that book. He talks about his genitals, he talks about 298 00:22:38,759 --> 00:22:41,960 when he lost his virginity, where it happened, what it was, like 299 00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:47,440 he talks in great depth about the arguments he has with his brother William and 300 00:22:47,519 --> 00:22:53,720 with Kate, and it's the hypocrisy is literally blows the mind, because this 301 00:22:53,799 --> 00:22:57,440 is a man who complains about his privacy being invaded, and then invade his 302 00:22:57,519 --> 00:23:00,960 own privacy and the privacy of his brother, the privacy of his sister in 303 00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:04,200 law, the privacy of his father, the privacy of his mother in law, 304 00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:10,799 the queen, his stepmother rather the queen. Really just an extraordinary level 305 00:23:10,839 --> 00:23:15,359 of hypocrisy. And I think what that tells us is exactly, it speaks 306 00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:19,599 to the exactly the point you've made, which is that cancel culture. And 307 00:23:19,799 --> 00:23:27,279 this kind of censorship is not about fairness or justice, or protecting oneself from 308 00:23:27,359 --> 00:23:33,000 the invasions of the powerful, or protecting a vulnerable minority from abuse or offense. 309 00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:37,680 It is about storing up the power of a new elite, the power 310 00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:41,839 of an emergent establishment, a kind of graduate class of professional managerial elite who 311 00:23:41,839 --> 00:23:47,440 are increasingly in control in the political sphere, in sections of the media and 312 00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:52,480 cultural institutions, an elite to which Harry and Meghan are essentially king and queen. 313 00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:57,799 That's the establishment of which they are the monarchs, and it's about shoring 314 00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:03,680 up their power. And the thing is, censorship always protects the powerful. 315 00:24:03,839 --> 00:24:07,440 The idea which is put about by cancel culture people, the idea that censorship 316 00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:11,160 can be a way of protecting the vulnerable from offense. Firstly, that is 317 00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:17,920 really racially paternalistic. The idea that it falls to well educated, largely white, 318 00:24:18,720 --> 00:24:23,720 young liberals to protect black people or Muslims, or gay people, or 319 00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:27,720 whoever else it might be, from ever hearing an offensive word or a difficult 320 00:24:27,759 --> 00:24:36,319 idea is shockingly paternalistic. Really really is and deeply a liberal. But it's 321 00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:41,960 really about protecting their own ideological beliefs from criticism. It's about protecting their new 322 00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:48,839 ideological ideas and their desire to have a tighter control over what is permissible to 323 00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:53,279 think and say in twenty first century society. That's what cancel culture is really 324 00:24:53,319 --> 00:24:59,119 about. And I find the idea that censorship could ever be a friend of 325 00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:03,119 the powerless to be so ridiculous and repugnant. Anyone who knows anything about history 326 00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:10,839 will know that every progressive or liberatory movement of ever has seen freedom of speech 327 00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:15,440 as its most important weapon. So the idea that censorship can now play that 328 00:25:15,519 --> 00:25:19,359 role is a complete fantasy. And the perennial problem of the heretic is that 329 00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:23,880 there's a sense of putting yourself out of business embedded in the question of being 330 00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:27,519 a heretic because your espousing ideas that you think are right and should be widely 331 00:25:27,519 --> 00:25:32,039 shared, and the better you make that argument, the less heretical you become 332 00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:36,839 theoretically, And that gives this question I think the ecosystem, which is that 333 00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:41,000 there are always, at least the way Western societies and governments are organizers, 334 00:25:41,039 --> 00:25:45,799 there will always be some segment of the population kind of rebelling against the elite 335 00:25:45,799 --> 00:25:51,440 consensus, rebelling against the cultural consensus. Whether the cultural consensus is good, 336 00:25:51,559 --> 00:25:55,160 virtuous, or bad, there will always there will always sort of be a 337 00:25:55,240 --> 00:26:00,160 natural part of the ecosystem. But that raises this question of what is are 338 00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:03,920 a time that has already existed in very modern history that you know, we 339 00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,119 want to get back to. Was there a norm that we already kind of 340 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,799 understand that we want to get back to, or or what does what do 341 00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:15,680 healthy boundaries, what does a healthier ecosystem for speech really look like. That's 342 00:26:15,720 --> 00:26:21,079 a good question. I don't think there has existed any golden age of freedom 343 00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:26,039 or freedom of speech particularly. There have been good moments in history and bad 344 00:26:26,079 --> 00:26:32,440 moments in terms of freedom and reason. But I try my best to not 345 00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:36,400 fall down the rabbit hole of nostalgia, because I think if you're if you're 346 00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:40,599 always chasing a golden age that existed in the past, you take your eye 347 00:26:40,599 --> 00:26:42,039 of the ball of the future, which I think is the most important thing. 348 00:26:42,039 --> 00:26:47,119 How do we improve society from where it currently is so that younger people 349 00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:52,240 in particular have a better, freer, more comfortable life. But I think 350 00:26:52,519 --> 00:26:56,920 in relation to the role that heresy plays in terms of that challenge to the 351 00:26:57,039 --> 00:27:02,480 establishment, as you mentioned there, I just think sometimes I think people forget 352 00:27:02,519 --> 00:27:07,000 how important heresy has been historically speaking, so I talk about I give some 353 00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:14,559 examples in the Book of Heretics whose bravery literally made my life and your life 354 00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:18,240 better than it otherwise would have been. And we very often don't know these 355 00:27:18,279 --> 00:27:22,440 people's names. People forget their stories. They fade into the history books and 356 00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,319 they fade into history and are forgotten. And it frustrates me when I go 357 00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:30,599 to campuses like Oxford or Cambridge here in the UK to do a talk and 358 00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:37,559 I'm surrounded by young, very pash, very comfortably off people who say freedom 359 00:27:37,599 --> 00:27:42,799 of speech is unnecessary. It's just the tool of arrogant white conservatives who want 360 00:27:42,839 --> 00:27:47,039 to say abusive things. We don't need it. And I think to myself, 361 00:27:47,039 --> 00:27:52,200 you have no idea that your right to speak, to access knowledge, 362 00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:56,880 to live in the beautiful surrounds of Oxford University is down to the heresies of 363 00:27:56,880 --> 00:27:59,759 the past. And one example I give in the book is William Tyndale. 364 00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:07,279 William Tindelle was a very early Protestant reformer in England in the early fifteen hundreds, 365 00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:11,279 and he made it his mission in life to translate the Bible into English. 366 00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:14,880 The Bible was only ever published in Latin. It was absolutely forbidden to 367 00:28:14,920 --> 00:28:18,599 publish it in English. It was seen as the property of wise, educated, 368 00:28:18,799 --> 00:28:25,279 Latin speaking priests who would tell the plebs at church what they needed to 369 00:28:25,319 --> 00:28:29,440 hear. It was not your right to read the Bible. And William Tindale 370 00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,799 said, I don't accept this. I'm going to translate the Bible into English 371 00:28:33,039 --> 00:28:36,640 so that ordinary people can read it, because I trust their judgment. There 372 00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:40,359 was a revolutionary idea. I mean, in some ways it's still a revolutionary 373 00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:42,400 idea, and to do that he had to go to Germany. He couldn't 374 00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:45,960 do it in England. He would have been executed instantly. He went to 375 00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:52,119 Germany, the ecclesiastical authorities chased him across Europe and across Germany. He was 376 00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:56,079 in hiding most of the time. He was publishing his English language Bibles and 377 00:28:56,160 --> 00:29:02,039 sneaking them back into England, and they were being distributed among his supporters who 378 00:29:02,039 --> 00:29:04,200 would had to read them at candlelight and be ready to throw them away if 379 00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:08,880 anyone knocked on their door. And eventually the authorities caught up with William Tindale 380 00:29:08,960 --> 00:29:12,720 in southern Germany. They arrested him, they took him to Belgium. They 381 00:29:12,759 --> 00:29:18,480 strangled him to death, and they burned him at the stake. And I 382 00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:19,680 I tell this story to people sometimes when I say to them, look, 383 00:29:19,759 --> 00:29:26,759 next time you see a pocket bible in the English language, think about where 384 00:29:26,759 --> 00:29:30,400 it came from. Because the first person to ever publish a pocket Bible in 385 00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,119 the English language was William Tindale. And the reason he did it was so 386 00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:37,559 that people could have one in their pocket, hidden away, because they wanted 387 00:29:37,559 --> 00:29:41,319 to expand their mind and expand their understanding of the world in their own tongue. 388 00:29:42,039 --> 00:29:45,559 And I just thought it was so important to tell that story in the 389 00:29:45,559 --> 00:29:49,880 book as a way of refreshing our historical knowledge off the sacrifices the heretics made 390 00:29:51,359 --> 00:29:55,799 which had a palpable impact on our lives. And in doing what he did, 391 00:29:55,839 --> 00:29:59,400 William Tindale didn't only get the Bible into English. He changed the way 392 00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:03,519 we understand and freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, the freedom to read, 393 00:30:04,119 --> 00:30:10,799 the intellectual capacities of ordinary people. All of those things were utterly thrown 394 00:30:10,839 --> 00:30:15,680 in the air and rethought as a consequence of his criminal heresy. So it's 395 00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:21,759 so important to remember that fresh thinking, daring thinking, eccentric thinking have played 396 00:30:21,759 --> 00:30:26,640 a key role in improving life for all of humanity. Our Catholic listeners are 397 00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:30,240 going to just love that story. And I say this as a as a 398 00:30:30,319 --> 00:30:34,240 Catholic myself, but I have huge admiration for Wood and Tinder. Michael Nose 399 00:30:34,319 --> 00:30:40,559 makes a really interesting argument in his recent book about how conservatives that have sort 400 00:30:40,559 --> 00:30:45,000 of thrown their lot in with free speech absolutism are kind of a making a 401 00:30:45,079 --> 00:30:48,599 mistake, and you know, need to recognize that there's a difference between you 402 00:30:48,599 --> 00:30:53,799 know, supporting a pushback on the current concept of censorship without saying, you 403 00:30:53,839 --> 00:30:57,119 know, yes, let's just burn it all down and have you know, 404 00:30:57,119 --> 00:31:02,480 the worst of the worst become not subversive. And that's something I wanted to 405 00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,839 ask you about, because I do think it's an important sort of point to 406 00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:08,759 internalize. I don't think these things are mutually exclusive, maybe to the extent 407 00:31:08,799 --> 00:31:15,000 that Michael does, but there is something where It's like when they're conservatives, 408 00:31:15,039 --> 00:31:18,319 people on the right, and even probably most people who say their free speech 409 00:31:18,319 --> 00:31:22,839 absolutists, don't you know, there's a line somewhere for the most part, 410 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:26,559 and you know it's true. We live in a very crass society in the 411 00:31:26,559 --> 00:31:30,519 West, and increasingly crass society, and that distinction is a useful one. 412 00:31:30,559 --> 00:31:33,799 I don't know if you have thoughts on that, or if you think it's 413 00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:37,759 also useful, or maybe you don't. Yeah, I do think about that. 414 00:31:37,799 --> 00:31:40,720 I think it's a difficult one. I mean, I am as far 415 00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:44,839 down the road of free speech as it's possible to get. I think I'm 416 00:31:45,319 --> 00:31:48,880 like the old Aclu. I'm like the skoky Aclu. I would support the 417 00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:53,759 right of Nazis to march through a largely Jewish town for all the reasons that 418 00:31:53,799 --> 00:31:59,400 the ACLU supported it, Because if you take the freedom away from people you 419 00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:02,000 hate, will soon be taken away from people you like. I think they 420 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:05,759 were absolutely right on that. I think what's happened to the ACLU is a 421 00:32:05,759 --> 00:32:08,680 great shame. I don't think they're very good at defending freedom of speech, 422 00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:14,960 and in more, I think they have slightly slightly elevated woke concerns over liberal 423 00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,400 ones, and that's that's a problem I think for America and the world. 424 00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:22,400 The ACLU was inspiring to many people around the world in its prior state. 425 00:32:22,519 --> 00:32:28,200 It's now become slightly lost, I think. But I think, yeah, 426 00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:31,880 we live in a cross society. We live in a society saturated with pornographic 427 00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:35,880 images, which I think is a very real problem, and I don't know 428 00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:38,519 what the solution to it is, not only on the Internet, but in 429 00:32:38,559 --> 00:32:45,279 popular culture. I think the way in which the pornified sensibility impacts on popular 430 00:32:45,319 --> 00:32:49,039 culture is a real problem. The fact that you have eight year old girls 431 00:32:49,119 --> 00:32:52,799 listening to Rihanna sing songs about whips and chains is a problem. That's a 432 00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:57,240 very old cultural reference around. Yeah, Na hasn't done a song for a 433 00:32:57,319 --> 00:33:00,480 very long time. But there's a lot more you know yeah, or you 434 00:33:00,519 --> 00:33:06,759 know that WAP song. I can't remember who's sang it, but that I 435 00:33:06,799 --> 00:33:10,200 won't say what WAP stands stands for all of that, there's a lot going 436 00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:14,000 on where I just think, Oh, that's gross, that's horrible, that's 437 00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:16,599 not necessary. I don't particularly want young people listening to that or looking at 438 00:33:16,599 --> 00:33:22,440 that. But I think the solution is never to give up on freedom of 439 00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:25,200 speech, and it's never to say, well, let's censor that stuff, 440 00:33:25,279 --> 00:33:29,400 because that just doesn't work. The solution, I think is to improve the 441 00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:36,160 cultural fabric. And that's a much longer term prospect than a longer term task 442 00:33:36,279 --> 00:33:39,400 and an uphill struggle. And it can seem so difficult that people prefer to 443 00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:43,319 say, well, let's ban that horrible thing. That will that will fix 444 00:33:43,359 --> 00:33:45,400 it. Of course, it won't fix it. People will just go and 445 00:33:45,519 --> 00:33:49,880 find it somewhere else. It's about, I think, in improving the cultural 446 00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:55,200 sensibility, people's cultural sense of sensitivity. It's about improving education so that the 447 00:33:55,279 --> 00:34:00,720 young are more inclined to read books, reader what an old fashioned idea that 448 00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:06,960 is, or even watch old movies engage with culture, Engage with it rather 449 00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:09,320 than be scared of it, rather than to feel triggered by it. To 450 00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:15,840 see ideas and art and beauty as things worth engaging with and worth aspiring to. 451 00:34:15,079 --> 00:34:21,840 That's how it was in the past in some eras, anyway, rather 452 00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:27,239 than this very instant gratification culture where you can switch on your phone and you 453 00:34:27,280 --> 00:34:31,360 can get horrible images in thirty seconds, or you can listen to grotesque pop 454 00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:36,800 songs, or you can do stupid, horrible things. I think that's probably 455 00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,840 the only solution to the crassness of our era. It is to think about 456 00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:45,920 how to deepen and liberate the culture from the stranglehold of this kind of aggressive, 457 00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:51,440 crass ideology, rather than to say, well, we need the tool 458 00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,320 of censorship in this instance because things have gone out of hand. Yeah, 459 00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:58,039 that's a really interesting way to put it. I think. Yeah, like 460 00:34:58,199 --> 00:35:01,480 drag is sort of the tragically perfect ample of the something that probably thrived as 461 00:35:01,519 --> 00:35:07,239 an art form when it was subversive and relegated to the CD comedy club. 462 00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:14,280 Then it is now and you know, there's it's inevitable in just about any 463 00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:15,920 society that you're going to have. I mean, even people love to talk 464 00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:21,320 about here in Washington, DC, how drag evolved out of one of the 465 00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:24,480 first drag performers, Swan here in DC, and the Victorian era. Um, 466 00:35:24,639 --> 00:35:28,280 this stuff, you know, is sort of a natural occurrence in any 467 00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:34,440 Western constitutional republican society. On that note, you cover a lot of topics 468 00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:37,440 in the book. You mentioned the Herpinus essay. Do you have a favorite 469 00:35:37,519 --> 00:35:44,400 essay or is there one that you think makes an underappreciated point. Um. 470 00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,840 I think I have two favorite ones. Chapter two, which is called witch 471 00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:53,360 Finding, that's about the witch hunts in Europe in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds, 472 00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:57,199 And I just made the point that a lot of those witches were burnt 473 00:35:57,199 --> 00:36:00,519 at the stake for the crime of climate change. So this was the era 474 00:36:00,559 --> 00:36:07,280 of the Little Ice Age, when freezing weather caused agricultural crops to fail and 475 00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:12,239 people to starve, and great hardship for many people, and that's when witch 476 00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:16,760 hunts really take off. There's a close correspondence between the lack of food and 477 00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:21,760 the suffering of a community and the persecution of witches. And the witches were 478 00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:28,360 openly accused of causing contrary weather, contrary winds. They were thrown into the 479 00:36:28,440 --> 00:36:30,199 flames and the end date before they were done, so they were forced to 480 00:36:30,199 --> 00:36:36,079 admit that they had brought about climatic instability. So in that chapter I just 481 00:36:36,159 --> 00:36:42,239 traced through the witch hunting, the persecution of climate changing witches in the medieval 482 00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,960 era right through to the persecution of climate criminals as they refer to today. 483 00:36:46,639 --> 00:36:52,360 And I talk about climate change alamism and the idea that there are bad people 484 00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:54,719 out there who are causing contrary winds. You know, that's now said again. 485 00:36:55,079 --> 00:36:58,960 So I talk about I draw a link between the witch hunts of the 486 00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:00,800 past and the witch hunts of the present. So I think I quite like 487 00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:04,599 that one. And then the other one I like is chapter five, which 488 00:37:04,639 --> 00:37:07,960 is called Rise of the Pigs, which is really just about how there's this 489 00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:13,599 phrase in the UK called gammon, and the word gammon is used to refer 490 00:37:13,760 --> 00:37:20,679 to working class, middle aged men with red faces, hence gammon, who 491 00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:24,679 vote for Brexit, who are anti woke, who are not very politically correct. 492 00:37:25,039 --> 00:37:30,400 The bourgeois left here refers to them as gammon. And I just point 493 00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:36,039 out that in the past in England the masses were referred to as swines. 494 00:37:36,199 --> 00:37:39,400 They were referred to as the Swinish multitude, and they couldn't possibly have democratic 495 00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:44,519 rights because how could you trust political decision make into pigs. That's essentially what 496 00:37:44,599 --> 00:37:47,039 was said in the late seventeen hundreds. And I just draw a line from 497 00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:52,519 the Swinish multitude to the Gammon and I look at the Trump phenomenon as well, 498 00:37:52,559 --> 00:37:53,960 and the people who voted for Trump and the way in which they were 499 00:37:54,360 --> 00:38:01,320 obscenely defamed by sections of the American elites as deplorables and regressive and backward, 500 00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:05,800 didn't know what they were voting for, and too stupid to be trusted with 501 00:38:06,079 --> 00:38:10,960 electoral decisions. So Rise of the Pigs is about the ordinary people's assertion of 502 00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:15,360 their democratic rights and how that itself is an act of heresy against an establishment 503 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:20,559 that would prefer to keep decision making to itself. So those two chapters I 504 00:38:20,559 --> 00:38:27,440 think are quite nice because they trace the historical development of hysterical ideas and censorious 505 00:38:27,519 --> 00:38:30,639 ideas and just make the point that these things have been a long time coming, 506 00:38:31,039 --> 00:38:35,800 which is why I think it's worth to think about to try and historicize 507 00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,119 the moment we live in, to appreciate the roots of it, and to 508 00:38:38,199 --> 00:38:44,039 appreciate some of the ways out of it through understanding the great heresies of the 509 00:38:44,079 --> 00:38:47,480 past and what is valuable about them. Yeah, that's so important. We 510 00:38:47,679 --> 00:38:53,119 lose perspective very, very easily in the era of social media. Last question 511 00:38:53,199 --> 00:38:58,639 you mentioned at the beginning of a conversation, you mentioned confidence. Actually you 512 00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:01,079 had a lot bit of trouble just trying to speak at Oxford, for example. 513 00:39:01,159 --> 00:39:06,440 But do you sense that this is getting better? But I do. 514 00:39:06,599 --> 00:39:07,920 I don't think it means it's over. I think it means it's it's going 515 00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:12,440 to be a really long kind of simmering conflict because there are now all kinds 516 00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:16,079 of people with these ideologies who are just coming into power and aren't as powerful 517 00:39:16,119 --> 00:39:20,400 as they eventually will be quite yet. But it does seem at least on 518 00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:23,880 the Spotify stuck stood by Joe Rogan, offered him a huge deal, stood 519 00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:30,079 by him, even under pressure from Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. But do 520 00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:34,159 you do you sense that at all? Do you think things have changed or 521 00:39:34,159 --> 00:39:37,440 where do you see this going? It's cancel culture or cancel culture are over? 522 00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:43,360 Yeah. I'm an optimistic person by nature, but I do flit between 523 00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:45,719 thinking it's getting better and it's getting worse. I have days when I'm happy 524 00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:49,480 about how things are going, in days of when I'm a bit more depressed 525 00:39:49,519 --> 00:39:52,320 about how things are going. I think there are some definitely some great developments. 526 00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:55,079 Turf Island, which I mentioned, is a good one. Women standing 527 00:39:55,119 --> 00:39:59,119 up and saying no, get out of my space. You're not a woman, 528 00:39:59,159 --> 00:40:00,960 You're a man. That's all to the good. I think there was 529 00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:05,360 a really interesting case here in the UK a couple of years back, a 530 00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:09,599 few years back, where a woman who identifies as a man gave birth to 531 00:40:09,679 --> 00:40:14,800 a child and she went to court to demand her right to be referred to 532 00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,920 as the father on the birth certificate, and the Core said, I'm sorry, 533 00:40:19,039 --> 00:40:22,519 this is unacceptable. This goes against reason and nature and our understanding of 534 00:40:22,519 --> 00:40:25,559 the world. And I thought that was a positive development. These things I 535 00:40:25,679 --> 00:40:30,119 send an important message. I think these acts of resistance, even if they're 536 00:40:30,159 --> 00:40:35,360 done by wig wearing judges in dusty, old core rooms, so I think. 537 00:40:36,239 --> 00:40:40,800 And there are so many interesting publications and how and podcasts and networks and 538 00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:45,599 connections. You talked about coalitions. I find the new coalitions that are coming 539 00:40:45,679 --> 00:40:50,119 up very interesting. Some of them work, some of them don't. I 540 00:40:50,199 --> 00:40:53,519 find it interesting that I can have just as much in common with an old 541 00:40:53,599 --> 00:41:00,840 conservative Catholic thinker as I might with a kind of traditional Marxist lefty who hates 542 00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:06,119 woken us. I did a podcast recently with Susan Niman, who's a brilliant 543 00:41:06,920 --> 00:41:09,719 philosopher, describes herself as a socialist. She's just written a new book called 544 00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:15,559 Left Is Not Woke, and she argues that current wokeness has nothing to do 545 00:41:15,639 --> 00:41:20,039 with what the left traditionally stood for, and you hear similar arguments from the 546 00:41:20,119 --> 00:41:22,800 right as well. I find all these coalitions fascinating because what it suggests is 547 00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:28,559 that the current moment we're living through is more important than left and right. 548 00:41:29,079 --> 00:41:35,400 It's more important than Catholic and brodiston. It's more important communist or capitalist. 549 00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:43,119 Because what's being challenged now and undermined are the foundation stones of civilization itself. 550 00:41:43,599 --> 00:41:45,559 The idea that there is such a thing as truth, the idea that it's 551 00:41:45,599 --> 00:41:49,920 good to use reason to try to understand the world around us, the idea 552 00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:54,000 that freedom is a great cardinal quality that allows us to understand ourselves and our 553 00:41:54,079 --> 00:41:59,800 world. These are the building blocks of the republics and the countries that some 554 00:42:00,079 --> 00:42:02,559 of us are lucky enough to live in and when you chip away at them 555 00:42:02,639 --> 00:42:07,920 and say, get rid of the dead white men from university syllabuses, stop 556 00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:13,320 reading Supernoza and can't and whoever else it might because they're too white, to 557 00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:20,440 stop listening to classical music because it's infected with whiteness. What's happening is that 558 00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:25,679 we're witnessing a cultural war against civilization. And that's why I think these coalitions 559 00:42:25,679 --> 00:42:30,079 can emerge, because people are recognizing there is so much at stake here. 560 00:42:30,480 --> 00:42:32,280 And that's one of the points I really hope I get across in my book 561 00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:38,480 that people fought incredibly hard for us to have the right to understand ourselves and 562 00:42:38,559 --> 00:42:43,440 our world, and if we sacrifice that now, we're doing an injustice to 563 00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:45,800 those people who died for those rights, and we're doing an injustice to ourselves, 564 00:42:46,039 --> 00:42:51,280 and we're doing an injustice to future generations. So standing up for the 565 00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,440 gains of Western civilization is such an important thing to do. That's a really 566 00:42:55,440 --> 00:43:00,480 good way to put at the gains of Western civilization, truly, as no 567 00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:05,559 matter what the modern left says. Brendan O'Neill is the author of a Heretics 568 00:43:05,639 --> 00:43:09,719 Manifesto manifesto essays on the Unsayable. You can follow his work at Spiked, 569 00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:14,440 at the Daily Mail, anywhere else. People should look Brendan to follow what 570 00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:17,039 you're up to, and they can find me on Instagram. By the only 571 00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:22,480 social media I use is Instagram. I'm on there and I've got a weekly 572 00:43:22,519 --> 00:43:25,599 podcast called The Brendan O'Neill Show, so they can get that on Spotify. 573 00:43:27,119 --> 00:43:29,719 Yeah, that's about it. Really there you go. Make sure to check 574 00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:31,039 it out everyone. Brendan, thank you so much for your time today. 575 00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:36,079 Thanks Emily. All right, make sure everyone you check out Heretics Manifesto. 576 00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,360 I'm Emily Johnski, culture editor here at The Federalist. You've been listening to 577 00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:42,880 another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. We'll be back soon with more. 578 00:43:43,199 --> 00:43:50,840 Until then, the lovers of freedom and anxious for the prey, all right,