Pints With Aquinas - From Antifa to Catholicism w/ Daniel James

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Check out Daniel's websites: https://www.thetwelve.io/ https://www.danieljames.studio/ Want a GREAT Rosary? Here's the kind The Catholic Woodworker shipped to Danie: https://catholicwoodworker.com/?utm_source=Pints+with+Aquinas&utm_medium=youtube&utm_campaign=Daniel_James  

Hey, Matt Fradd here. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pints with aquinas.com slash give or at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you is Matt Fradd. If you are watching this episode early, it's because you support us on locals or Patreon. Big thanks to you. From now on, all of our long form interviews and debates are going to be given early to our supporters at locals and Patreon. So big thanks to you. Today, I'm going to be interviewing Daniel James, who he'll correct me if I'm wrong, was a far left activist involved with Antifa, was even imprisoned, sent me an email recently telling me that him and his son were coming into the Catholic Church this past Christmas. And so we're going to talk to him about his experience.

Before I bring Daniel on though, I want to say thank you to Halo, who is one of our sponsors. Halo, H-A-L-L-O-W is the number one downloaded Catholic app online. It's a prayer and meditation app that will help you grow closer to God. So check it out, hallow.com slash matfrad, hallow.com slash matfrad, incredibly well produced.

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I've used it, my wife's used it. And we really legitimately believe that it's a terrific thing. It doesn't get into those new age ways of thinking and superstitious thoughts that some other mindfulness apps and stuff have. So check them out. Hello.com slash Matt Fred. Hello.com slash Matt Fred. Good day. Good day, Daniel. Nice to meet you. Hi, Matt. It's great to meet you too. Yeah, this is, this is interesting. I don't usually do interviews where I meet the person like one minute before going live with them. But thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show. Maybe just sort of sum up for people where you've been and where you are,

and then we'll delve deeper into the story. Sure. Okay. Well, firstly, thanks for inviting me on. So from the United Kingdom, and as a teenager, I was very, very much into music. I studied music at a music school in London and I was particularly into very, very extreme left wing political music, punk music, anarchist music. And when I was 17, 18, I started getting involved in activism.

Most anarchist punk rock music talks about a wide range of issues, racial justice, environmentalism, feminism, animal rights, anti-fascism and when I was 17 I turned vegan and I became very very heavily involved in an animal rights campaign called stop huntingden animal cruelty also known as shack and the shack campaign was a grassroots animal rights campaign that originated in the United Kingdom but it kind of spread to the United States and all over Europe. And it was a very, very extreme campaign that was solely focused on closing down

Europe's largest animal testing laboratory, which is a company that at that time was known as Huntington Life Sciences. So I got involved in this campaign as a 17 year old. You know, I thought I was gonna change the world. I thought I was gonna, you know, be involved in something good and positive. I was extremely arrogant, extremely naive,

extremely prideful and I got involved in this campaign and at first it was just going on loud, noisy, obnoxious protests, but I eventually got involved in criminal damage, civil disobedience, and I actually went to prison twice. The first time it was just for a few months I went to a young offenders institute for me and two of the leaders of the Shack campaign. We basically just attacked someone in their car for having a sticker that kind of promoted their support for hunting. And then after I got out of the Young Offenders Institute, I kind of distanced myself a little bit from that campaign,

but it was kind of too late. The campaign had been under investigation for several years by that point, and me, I had been living with the leaders of the campaign, the founders, I'd been living at their home, which was also the headquarters of the of the of the entire campaign. So I was seen as quite a major figure in the campaign. And in 2007, pretty much everyone in the UK that was involved with this campaign was arrested in a big like dawn raid. It was something like 30 houses were raided in Europe as well. And we were charged with conspiracy to blackmail. And after a lengthy trial, I was sentenced to five years in prison. I came out of prison in 2012. I came out on probation in the United Kingdom. You don't serve the full length of

your sentence. Automatically, you do half of your sentence and then the other, the final half you do on probation so they can kind of supervise you in the community and put restrictions on you so you're not just let loose after having been in prison. So I wasn't allowed obviously to be involved in any kind of protest movement at all. When I came out of prison, I went to university, I studied graphic design. I started working as a freelance graphic designer, web designer. And slowly, slowly over the years, my kind of extreme left wing views started to kind of crumble away. I started to mature as a human, as a man. Five years ago, I was blessed with becoming a father

and that really kind of changed everything for me. I'd always been a really just hard atheist. I wasn't brought up in a religious home at all. I went to a Christian school until I was like 11 years old, but it was just because it was a good school in the local area. My mom wasn't particularly religious. My dad left my mom when I was still a baby. I only saw him a few times a year when I was growing up. I had a good relationship with him, but he wasn't really around much. And, and so yeah, when my son was born, my kind of atheist worldview just kind of fell

apart, it just didn't make sense to me anymore. And I just, I just really for the first time in my life, just realized that I just started needing to be honest with myself about who I was and the things that I'd done. And it just led me on a several year journey, which I'm still on. I was extremely impacted by Jordan Peterson's biblical series, which I watched. That just kind of blew my world apart. You know, I'd never heard the Bible spoken of in that way before. I'd never known that it had such deep levels of meaning and truth. I'd always just kind of bought into the idea that, you know, religion was just there to oppress you, to make you feel ashamed

of yourself and to control you by powerful elites. To me, it was just a form of control and exploitation. And that kind of worldview when my son was born and I started to really discover different ways of thinking that my atheist viewpoint fell apart and I've been on a journey of a sense of discovery that's finally led me to this Christmas becoming baptized into the Catholic faith. That's remarkable. There's so many avenues to go down here. I was into heavy metal as a teenager. We might have that in common.

If I was to ever work out again, I would be listening to heavy metal now. But, in a way I kind of respect your passion, even though the passion was violent. You know, like I forget who it was. Somebody gave a speech at a university, they were from Russia. They said, it was like Somebody gave a speech at a university. They were from Russia.

They said, it was like a commencement speech or something. They said, you Americans are boring. We Russians are wicked, but we're interesting. So even though, of course, I'm not sort of saying, hey, good for you for doing all that violent stuff. It's like, yeah, it's like you were very passionate about something, clearly. Maybe speak about that, because as an atheist, you know, what was it

that bothered you about animal cruelty? And we should also point out that we ought to be concerned as Christians about animal cruelty. It's not like I used to be against animal cruelty. And now I'm Christian, and I'm all for it. It's like, no, clearly not. The exploitation of animals and unnecessary violence caused to animals is something we should be kind of upset about. But how was it that and how, and why, how was it that you thought in that kind of atheistic frame of mind, did you justify, I guess your, your, your passion for that, that issue?

Yeah, well, I became interested in animal rights extremely quickly. It was after I moved to London, because I actually grew up in a small town in like a kind of rural fishing type community in a place called Cornwall, which is in the very far southwest tip of the United Kingdom. So it's a small town place, lots of fishing villages. So I grew up there. So I had a fairly sheltered upbringing. And when I moved to London, you know, I moved to London at 16 basically by myself, which probably wasn't a good idea. You know, I got

accepted to study music at this music school. And the idea was that my dad was going to kind of pay my rent and give me a little bit of money to live on so that I could study at this music school because it was a really good opportunity. And to me, it was just like being let loose for the first time. You know, I was very anti-authoritarian. I'd been listening to Radical Leftist music since I was like 11 years old. I was first of all, I was into I was into bands like Rage Against the Machine and Slipknot and Korn, you know, all those kind of-

Me too. I was into those things as well. Yeah. You know, those kind of new metal bands that were popular in like the late 90s and the early 2000s. I was really into them. But then when I got to London, I had no parental guidance over me whatsoever. Um, I was kind of let loose and I was also introduced to the London punk scene, which, you know, before I just listened to like a big mainstream American bands, but then I got introduced to the London punk scene, which is very different. This was anarchist bands. Okay.

Just real quick, how would you define leftism? Because you said you were listening to these like leftist music, and people might want to know, like, what do we even mean by leftist? To me, it's a it's a political ideology that to me at the heart of it, it kind of just rejects original sin. That's the way I see it. The doctrine of Christianity is that we are fallen and we are broken. Right. So it's like, sorry, you go.

Sorry. The doctrine of leftism is that we are born essentially good, we have natural affinity for cooperation and mutual aid and solidarity, which is partly true, we do have naturally good values, but we're also naturally broken. But leftism basically rejects the fact that we're broken and says that we are corrupted by these systems of power and oppression. Because we're born into this world that's controlled by hierarchical systems of power, we are corrupted by that and those systems of power is what creates all of the disorder and chaos and violence that we see in the world. So leftism rejects that.

In doing so, it creates this idea that basically everything that's wrong with the world is outside of me. Like it's not me that's wrong. It's, it's outside of me, you know, it's my T it's my teachers, my parents, it's the police, it's the government, it's the military is absolutely everyone except me. And it just, it just, it's like this. It's the, you can see how appealing it is, right? It is. everyone except me. And it just, it just, it's like this. It's, you can see how appealing it is, right? It is. It is appealing.

Everyone, everything needs to change except me. Yeah. And it reminds me of that, that Matt is it, uh, John Mayer song, like we're waiting on a world to change. Whereas Jordan Peterson's kind of doctrine, if you want to put it that way, is like, now you bloody change. So I can, that's interesting how you went from that to that, but sorry, continue. Yeah. So I think you asked how I got into like the animal rights as an atheist. Well, I mean, I started listening to the, the very anarchist punk bands that I discovered in London. I started going to squat gigs and

meetings of various different radical groups, including Antifa. Black Lives Matter didn't exist back then. But I started hanging out in squats, going to anarchist bookshops, listening to very, very anarchist punk music. What are Squats? A Squat is a building that has been, for whatever reason, it's not occupied by anyone. And so people essentially break into this building and then claim it as their own kind of space. They live there rent-free.

And there are kind of legal loopholes in the UK that allow this to be legal. So anarchists who reject the law, who reject all authority and all forms of government, they use legal loopholes in order to create these squatted buildings where they're basically paying, they're basically living without paying rent. They call them liberated spaces, they call them autonomous social centers,

community centers, and they're basically places where anarchists and activists gather to organize protests, to have meetings, to have workshops. They're, you know, they're often, like I said, they're called anarchist social centers, but they're far from social centers, you know, they're basically spaces that are controlled by people of a very, very narrow political ideology. They're not open to the community. If you went along and said, hey guys, I'm Matt, I'd like to have a Catholic Bible study here, you would not be welcomed. Let's just say it like that. So they're not really community centers, they're just called that. I used to go to squat gigs, which is where they would break into an abandoned warehouse and they would just put a sound system in it and have a punk gig and then a rave in this abandoned warehouse.

To me, that was just like the ultimate sticking your finger up to the system because you're not in a commercial music venue that's owned by a landlord and is, you know, owned by a big company, you're in a space that's essentially been liberated from this system. So I used to love going to these squat gigs and I started listening to bands like Krass, who are really like the seminal anarchist punk band. And many of the bands talk a lot about veganism, animal rights. And I started reading all sorts of anarchist literature and animal rights literature and watching documentaries about how animals are slaughtered and I became vegan overnight and it was basically the concept of animal rights is the idea that humans and animals have equal right to life and we have equal

and we have equal dignity, which is wrong. But I was fully believed in this. You know, it was it's kind of framed as, you know, you have racial oppression is, you know, traditionally white people oppressing people of color. You know, you have feminism, which is opposing male oppression over females. Animal rights is opposing human oppression over animals. So it's kind of all ties into this rejection of all systems of hierarchy. That is interesting.

That immediately makes me think of Lucifer in the garden, who seeks to usurp the authority of God, you know. And then we live in a world where, you know, the idea that a wife ought to submit to her husband is something that's rejected. That this distinct, all the distinctions must be broken down. So male and female must be broken down. Human and animal must be broken down. Yeah, it's interesting stuff. I mean, you know, in a way, like if atheism is true, then I'm kind of. I can see why thinking human beings are special as a sort of speciesism.

But at the same time, if atheism is true, I'm not sure what would stop or why it would be objectively wrong for the objectively superior, at least intellectually to dominate the inferior. Yeah. Did you ever think about that? Like you kind of metaphysically like that there was something like if atheism is true and this is all just sort of one accident, that's sort of spreading out throughout space and time, that our deep indignation is like, where is that based? That kind of stuff? Did you ever kind of reflect on

that? Or? I don't think I did when I was an agnostic. No, I didn't. This is the glaring contradiction of atheism. You know, the left-wing activists are full of moral righteousness. And I was full of this moral indignation and outrage at what I perceived to be huge injustices. But I never really stopped to think about on what metaphysical basis I based that, you know, and it's interesting you talk about the serpent in the Garden of

Eden because one of the main anarchist philosophers who's called Mikhail Bakunin, He's a very famous Russian 19th century anarchist philosopher, contemporary of Karl Marx. So he actually says in one of his books that the serpent in the garden was the most moral character in the whole story. That's the first hint that you're off to something bad when Satan's the hero. Yeah. Yeah. He says the serpent was the original rebel. He liberated humankind from their ignorance. And so he is the most moral because he wanted to liberate Adam and Eve from the ignorance

that this despotic tyrannical God had placed them in. So anarchism is, and I mean anarchist music particularly is full of religious imagery and religious ideas. They're just flipped upside down. It's not that they really reject religion, it's just that it's a religion that is turned on its head. Speak more about that. That's really interesting. Well, one of the most influential anarchist punk bands is a band called Crass.

And they are famous for having really striking artwork and they kind of plagiarize religious iconography and mash it up and turn it into something extremely kind of disordered and distorted and twisted. Their music and lyrics of a full of vitriolic outrage at religion. The seminal album that really launched them onto the punk scene is named The Feeding of the 5,000. And it opens with this kind of spoken word diatribe directly aimed at Jesus Christ. It uses all sorts of vulgar profane language. It's extremely horrific stuff, but you see this all throughout

You see this all throughout leftism. It's full of kind of religious ideas and just outrage at Christianity and organized religion as an oppressive form of hierarchy. So what's the goal then? So suppose we are able to overthrow the the government. What's, what's the what's the end goal? Well, anarchism is kind of famous for not giving a blueprint on how society should be run, because they say that everyone should decide for themselves how their community is run. So there isn't a kind of overarching anarchist political framework that this is how everything is going to be run except for removing all forms of hierarchy. Anarchists, although they collaborate with socialists and communists, they actually have a very antagonistic relationship with communists because communists and socialists, they want to create a state. They want to put all of the means of production and centralize it in the state.

Anarchists want to remove the state and all private property whatsoever. And the goal is really to just tear down everything that's been built by civilized society, you know Or form, you know tear down the the prison system the military the government the education system and the idea is that because human beings are essentially good-natured and cooperative and have You know and a natural affinity for for mutual aid Yeah, I see You know, the idea is that when humans are liberated from these oppressive power structures that we will revert to our

natural The our natural instincts which is to help each other and to you know, and to self-organize and self-determination. Oh my gosh. Any anyone with an ounce of self-knowledge must see how bullshit that is. Because honestly, like living in America, where I'm not a big fan of the government, like I'm like, okay, I'm open to hearing about anarchism. Like, let's let's talk about it. What is that? What results? Like, suppose we did kind of do away with the government, then it's just like my thought was, okay, you do away with private property, then what do you have? Well, you just have the strong and the powerful taking over.

And so you essentially have a sort of pseudo government in a sense. Um, so that's tribal warfare. Yes. But that's interesting that you said that no, no, no, no, no, no. Do away with all private property, do away with the government, and we'll all just sort of get along. Which is fascinating because when I think of anarchism, when I think of, as you say, far leftist punk bands,

I would expect them to come across as peaceful and loving and open-minded, because that's what they want to bring about. But I don't think of that when I think of those sorts of things I just think of like angry raging people so is the idea that okay we're angry and raging now but once we disassemble everything then we'll be peaceful and happy and good well if I'm if I'm misrepresenting you and what you believed please correct me I don't mean to do that. I'm trying to understand No, there is a lot of anger. I mean one of the I mean you listen to punk music is

It is anger in musical form. I mean it is just pure rage and What leftism does when I was involved in these very far left activist communities is it actually places anger, outrage, violence, it places that way up on the social hierarchy. So you actually climb the activist kind of social hierarchy by being more angry, by being more willing to take risk. You know, the more risk that you're willing to take, you're seen as more noble and brave because you're putting your personal freedom or your life in jeopardy for the movement, for the cause, for the animals or whatever cause it is that you're fighting for. So the most radical activists, they are kind of, they climb up the hierarchy and they are the ones that receive the most respect

and reverence within that activist community. So it kind of rewards anger as a good and righteous response to the oppression that we're all supposedly under. So I was posting recently about that message that you sent me, that's how we got in touch. And somebody used the canard, how could Antifa be bad when Antifa means to be an anti-fascist?

Which to me is kind of like calling the Taliban freedom fighters and that those who oppose them are against freedom. But what do you say to that sort of thing? Well, Antifa is because it's been talked about a lot in recent years, but it's actually one of the oldest left-wing activist organizations and it goes back to the left-wing. I didn't realize that. Yeah, like when I think of Antifa, I think this relatively new phenomena in the United States.

So interesting. Antifa started in the 1930s and it was basically the paramilitary wing of the Communist Party in Germany. So the Nazi party had their brown shirts, which was their paramilitary wing, and the Communist Party had had Antifa. And so it started as a communist thing that they would just go out and commit violence against their political enemies. Some people actually say that they actually helped

the Nazis gain power because they created so much kind of disorder and chaos in the streets of Germany that people just wanted kind of security, which they saw in the Nazi party. I don't know if that's true or not, but I think the way it went is that after the war, it became more of an anarchist organization. Originally, the logo was originally two red flags

and they changed it to a black and a red flag, so the black flag is the black flag of anarchism. And the people that are involved in Antifa, I used to have many friends involved in this, they're kind of living in a nostalgic fantasy that we're still living in the 1930s in many ways. They still think that they are fighting, you know, a fascist threat that's, you know, the same, that's equivalent to the Nazi party in 1930s Germany. They live in this kind of fantasy and they kind of romanticize the battles that went on between fascists and anti-fascists back then in the 1930s. Like there was a very famous clash between anti-fascists and the police at a

demonstration in the United Kingdom of the British Union of Fascists, which was led by Oswald Mosley. And this led to this, the anti-fascists came out to the streets and opposed it. And this led to what became known later as the Battle of Cable Street. And you will still see, that was like in the 1930s, you'll still see Antifa celebrating this supposedly heroic battle even today. You know, every year they kind of commemorate this event on its anniversary and they use it as evidence that violence is the only way to oppose fascism. Basically, their ideology is that fascism is inherently violent, and the only way to oppose fascism is with

violence. And they use these things like the Battle of Cable Street as evidence. But it's so dishonest because, I mean, the real anti-fascists that defeated fascism was the allied forces that fought against them. My granddad fought in the war. He was rescued off of the beaches of Dunkirk. And to me, those were the real anti-fascists. The people that go out in the streets and just cause chaos and violence and fight the police, they are just fascists with a different set of ideas.

They are just the same as the Nazi fascists. They just have left-wing ideas instead of right-wing ideas. You know, they are just as violent. They're just as violent, they're just as full of hatred and anyone who doesn't agree with them is an enemy. What did you think of your grandfather prior to this conversion if you want? To be honest, I didn't really know him very well because he died when I was quite young. And to be honest, when I was involved in all of this activism, I didn't really think about

him or any of my family very much. I was too busy thinking about myself. I was on this kind of crusade. I thought I was going to thinking about myself. I was on this kind of crusade. I thought I was going to change the world. I was just so arrogant and so narcissistic. I thought everyone who didn't believe what I believed was either stupid or evil. And I didn't really think about anyone. And since I've kind of accepted that I was wrong about everything and kind of seen the

light as it was, I'm extremely proud of him and also just ashamed that I kind of dirty the family, the family history, you know, that I, I sullied his, his great legacy that he left, you know, he was a brave man, you know, married to the same woman his whole life. And so yeah, just, yeah, I guess I just feel ashamed that I didn't live up to the example that him and so many other brave youngsters who fought in that war, you know, we complain about the society we live in, we talk about how hard we have it. I don't think any of us can really imagine what it was like for those young kids, you know, most of them were like 19, 20, 21 going into that war. And so I just have so much respect for him. Well, I know you don't need me to say this, but I'm sure your humility and courage to

speak out, I mean, it does take courage to admit your bloody wrong and to start speaking out against those things. I'm sure he'd be proud of that now. How would you talk to a Black Lives Matter activist? So suppose they sat down with you and they were really willing to hear you out. How would you critique, say, Black Lives Matter, while maybe affirming whatever good there is in it in a way that you think they might be begin to listen to you? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Well first I would say with my track record I don't really think anyone should take advice

from me on anything. But I guess I would just say that we all want to live in a world where nobody is kind of treated in an unfair way, you know. when you label the police as the ultimate enemy, you essentially just kind of... When you put yourself morally above who are your supposed enemies, you remove the ability to look within your side yourself and accept the fact that we are all broken and we are all fallen and we all make mistakes and we all are selfish and treat people in ways that they shouldn't be treated. And when you externalize all of your enemies, when you buy into this ideology that we are essentially victims of an oppressive state that just wants to murder us and that's it. You basically, you fail to see the humanity in everyone. Failing to see the humanity in

your enemies is a really, really big mistake. And it's something that I committed, along with my fellow activists, the people that were victims of our campaign, we would literally call them scum. To us, they were just animal killing scum. And when you view someone in that way, you don't see a shred of dignity or humanity in them because they kind of have a different opinion or, you know, they work for an organization that you don't agree with. You are really treating them no different to the way that a slave owner would have treated his slaves. So I think really the key to leftism and these far-left activist groups, they're full of pride. That's really is at the heart of it. And I think the key to undoing it is, it's just humility.

What was it like when you went to prison or when that five year sentence was handed down? That must've been a crushing thing. Yeah, it was. I mean, to be honest with you, I wasn't in the most terrifying prison that someone could find themselves in. Sure. I was, I have to say now, like prison was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was treated with respect by the prison guards. I mean, there were some that were rude, just like everyone is,

but I was always treated with respect and humanity. It was, more than anything, it was just extremely boring. You know, you're just doing the same thing every day. But it's a training ground for people who have no discipline and no, you know, my life was so chaotic before I went to prison. You know, I wasn't capable. I didn't know how to focus on one thing and work towards it. I was all over the place. I was impulsive.

I would just follow my whatever impulsive desires and selfish addictions and needs that I had, I would just follow those without question. And prison is an amazing place to kind of learn how to be disciplined because you're quite literally disciplined by your environment. You literally can only go at certain places at certain times. You have to wake up at a certain time, go to bed at a certain time.

You're controlled physically. And the amazing thing is, is that I felt more free in prison than I did being in the activist movement, doing whatever I wanted. I felt more free. I started to understand that freedom doesn't come from doing whatever you want whenever you want, that rules and limitations, they actually liberate you from your selfish desires, you know?

Um, I, and it was really, it, it taught me so much about discipline. Um, and it, I mean, it was very boring. It was at times a little bit scary. I mean, at one point, I shared a cell with a guy who had stabbed someone multiple times and he was showing me photos of his victim, which he thought was hilarious. So that was kind of a little bit on the... And you were like, ah, ha, yeah, don't piss him off. Exactly. Yeah. Um, to be honest with you, it wasn't, um, it wasn't this like unending,

terrifying ordeal. It's often made out to be in like prison documentaries. It was mainly just boring. But if it was also, you know, I could work out and do exercise like all day. I worked in the gym in the prison gym. So I had unlimited access to, you know, exercise, you know, I studied, I read. So, you know, and studied, I read. So, you know, and you don't have to worry about paying rent. You don't have to worry about where the food is coming from. So in some ways, yeah, I mean, I felt more free in there than I did when I was an activist. Yeah. And in the beginning, you see, when you go to jail as an activist,

In the beginning, you see when you go to jail as an activist, your name is published in all of the activist magazines, your name and address is published. You're a hero. Yeah, on all of the activist websites. So you receive massive amounts of support mail. I had thousands and thousands of letters sent to me for activists all around the world. And to be honest, that was one of the things that really started to kind of open my eyes to how fraudulent I was and how it was all everything that I believed was just a lie. Because I was having thousands of people write to me telling me, you're a hero, you're so brave.

I was having thousands of people write to me telling me, you're a hero, you're so brave. And I didn't feel like a hero, Matt. I knew deep down, I knew I was no kind of a hero for anything that I had done. And all these people, they didn't really know me. They didn't know what I'd been involved in or what I'd done. They were just writing to me out of support because they saw me as someone who had been imprisoned for his beliefs you know who had been imprisoned by the oppressive state and you're kind of when you go to jail as an activist you're kind of elevated to almost like a celebrity status and it just felt so fraudulent to me. It's impressive that that didn't just go to embolden your belief about yourself

and what you were fighting for. I would imagine for many people that would just reaffirm their pride. Well, I think it probably did for a while in the beginning. I was very indignant and very defiant. Um, but I think sort of midway, the halfway point of my sentence, I think I started to have a change of heart and it took me a long time to actually

fully acknowledge that I was just wrong. When I was released from prison, I would still tell my probation officers that I still believed everything that I had done was right and that it was just that I'd done it. Deep down, I didn't really believe that, but it was more of like a face-saving exercise. It was just my pride talking. But they really helped me so much because they separated me entirely from the activist community. You know, when I was in jail, I was receiving all of these letters. But when I was released

on probation, I wasn't allowed to use the internet. I wasn't allowed to communicate with anyone involved in animal rights or any kind of activist movement. I wasn't allowed to use the internet. I wasn't allowed to communicate with anyone involved in animal rights or any kind of activist movement. I wasn't allowed to go on any protests or anything. So they completely... Sorry, I just thought it'd be weird if they didn't allow you on the internet, but they're like, all right, we'll allow the protests. Yeah, so by doing that, they kind of gave me the space to really for this insane ideology to just fall out of my head.

I have to give them props to the British probation service and the prison service, you know, they saved my life. I think if I hadn't gone to jail and the police, you know, I think if I hadn't gone to jail, I probably would have done something really extreme and stupid and maybe, you know, hurt someone or hurt myself. So I'm so grateful that I had that opportunity to go to jail and reflect. And it didn't really change me in the sense that I changed like overnight in jail, but it kind of set me on the path. It gave me the opportunity to change.

And then after being in jail, studying, for the first time in my life, feeling the kind of the dignity that comes from working, I'd never had a job before. When you're an activist, we lived off of the money that we basically fleeced from the public. So I'd never had a job before. So when I came out of jail, when I got my degree in graphic design and started working, I just felt this sense of dignity and self-confidence that I'd never had when I was a leftist. I'd never felt that. And I just kept going in that direction and it, and it's, um, I'm still, I'm still going, I'm still learning and still trying to grow.

You know, just as an aside, I looked up your website and you're very good at what you do. I'll put a link to your website in the description, but for those listening now, what, what, what is your website? If people wanted to hire you to do some graphic work, listening now, what is your website? If people wanted to hire you to do some graphic work? It's danieljames.studio. So yeah, I'm a web designer and I actually had an idea of a small little project that I wanted to start this year. So there's not much that I know how to do well, but designing websites is one thing that I do know how to do well, but designing websites is one thing

that I do know how to do well. And since I've been exploring the Catholic faith, I have noticed that not every Catholic website is... That's fair. Not everyone is probably, you know, the most, let's say, easy to use experience that you could like Vatican dot VA, we could start there. So I've actually had an I had this idea that I wanted to offer a free website every month to Wow, one Catholic church or nonprofit or religious order. So I'm actually at the

moment building a website for my local parish where I was baptized, but I made a very simple website because there's 12 months in a year, so I'm going to do one a month. So that's why I call it the 12. So if there are any Catholic churches or nonprofits or organizations or schools that would like an updated website, then I would like to offer my services for free. I can only do one a month. Of course. Yeah. And that website is at danieljames.studio as well or is? Well, it's the12.io. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So we've got some questions here online. I want to kind of get to them now. Somebody asked, like really interested,

like was it really kind of, you already mentioned Jordan Peterson's lectures that really sort of sent you down this road to Catholicism. How did that begin? How did you first come in contact with him? And what was that like? It's Cecilia, she says, what made you want to start watching

the Jordan Peterson Bible biblical series? I don't specifically remember how I ended up there. I think I saw something about him and his 12 rules on the internet somewhere. I didn't even realize at first that it was a book. I think it was, I just thought it was like a meme that someone had created of these 12 rules. And it's, you know, they resonated with me.

And then I discovered that it was an actual book and I read his book and then I, you know, started watching his YouTube channel. And I think I was watching his YouTube channel and I think I was watching his videos for quite a while before I even delved into the biblical series because they looked very long and I had a lot of prejudice towards religious thinking and I thought you know this is going to be a load of crazy, boring stuff. But when I watched the first one, I was just addicted and I just watched all of them, you know, watched them multiple times and I was just blown away. You know, I'd never heard

the Bible spoken about in that way. And it didn't really convert me to Christianity or Catholicism right there. It, all it really did is it just opened the door. It was like the gateway drug. It just kind of broke down the prejudice way of viewing religion that I had, you know, this idea that the Bible is this silly book written by, you know, as Lawrence Krauss, the renowned atheist says, you know, ignorant Bronze Age peasants, you know, that was kind of the way I thought of it, you know, in this very arrogant way of thinking of the Bible, that it was just

written by ignorant people from the past. And Jordan really just opened the door for me to understand that, yeah, the it was written by people who lived in an era before science, but they were by no means ignorant at all. And like he says that he says that it's not just that these stories are true, but they're so true that it's, it's really hard to understand how a human being even wrote them. And I guess that's why we call them the Word of God. Wow. And I mean, from Jordan Peterson, I just started delving into all of the

debates about God's existence. I watched multiple debates between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, like all the famous debates on God's existence. And I started reading books and it just kind of snowballed from there. And I just couldn't find an argument that convinced me that atheism was true. And I found several multiple arguments that convinced me that atheism was true. And I found several multiple arguments that convinced me that Christianity was true and Catholicism was true. And how did you start looking into Catholicism then? I mean, you go from Jordan Peterson,

who's taking away these prejudices, as you say, he's like a gateway drug, love that and then you start listening to these sort of theist atheist debates what is it that sort of led you into thinking about Catholicism well I think part of it is the fact that I live in a predominantly Catholic country I live in Colombia and South America and I've been here for six years. And it's very, very different culture here to the United Kingdom. This is a culture that still holds on in many ways to having religion as part of the culture. And that really influenced me just in itself,

just seeing how beautiful that was. Colombia is a country with multiple social and economic problems. By no means is it like a perfect Catholic paradise, but it does have Catholicism as part of its culture. You can't really get in a taxi without seeing a rosary hanging from the rear view mirror. Every taxi driver, when they go past the church, they will make the sign of the cross. Anytime you ask someone, how are you doing? They won't just say, I'm fine, thanks.

They will say, I'm fine, thanks to God. Catholicism is part of the culture in this country and that influenced me. You know, I saw how united the families were here. You know, you see multiple generations of families living in the same home and, you know, going on holiday together. I thought that was really strange. The fact that people would live with their parents into adulthood and their grandparents. I mean, obviously it's also influenced by economic things, but the families just seem so much more united here. So that influenced me. And I don't really know where I started formally looking into Catholicism. I think I just noticed that a lot of

the people that I was reading and listening to, a lot of them seemed to be Catholic and they seemed to be kind of quite kind of cool people. That was influenced me as well, you know, like, I mean, you're one of them. I'd always had this idea of Christians in my mind as these kind of very strange people who are a bit superficially like over the top nice. I mean, the only really

exposure to, like, Christianity that I'd had, apart from going to a Church of England school until I was 11, was my sister converted to the evangelical church when she was 18, and I went along to her church a few times when I was still a teenager. And that just really freaked me out. I saw people with their hands in the air and speaking in tongues and all this. They just seemed very, I just didn't trust them. They just didn't seem real to me, you know?

Yeah, I know what you mean. You know, and I don't really know where it started, but the Catholics that I was reading and listening to, they just seemed like genuine down to earth people, the kind of people that I would like to hang out with, you know? Yeah. people, the kind of people that I would like to hang out with, you know, the people and they weren't, they didn't seem like crazy religious ideologues. They seem like intelligent people with multiple intellectual arguments for what they believe, you know, not just spiritual arguments, but valid intellectual arguments that I've, I found no good rebuttals to. And that, you know, that over the over the years, you know, step by step,

I just moved more and more towards Catholicism until, you know, last year, I found myself for the first time going into a Catholic church. And I'd been kind of looking up churches online for like several months before, like trying to pluck up the courage to go to one. I was like, what happens if they see my tattoos? You know, will I get thrown out? To be honest, my first experience going to one

wasn't that great because it was at the height of the pandemic. It was very kind of strict about putting your mask on. You know, you had to be socially distanced and have the mask and everything. So it didn't feel super welcoming. So for a while that I kind of just kept like reading and researching on my own without going to a church. And then I found myself, I bought a rosary beads and a little statue of Mary and a crucifix and I put them up in my home and I decided you know this is now going to be a Catholic home. And it was actually thanks to your channel,

I downloaded the Halo app, I saw one of your adverts and so I downloaded that because I had no idea how to pray a rosary at all. And so I just kind of, I remember getting on my knees and just, well, just saying, God, I'm so sorry. And just listening to the rosary on the Hello app. And I was just listening along because I didn't know the prayers. Yeah, I just felt just at peace, and I just felt like, I don't know why, I just felt like this is what I need to be doing. When I heard the, I think it's the fact of my prayer, the Hail Holy Queen, when I heard that prayer, I almost fell off my seat when I heard that.

It was just so beautiful. Just these it was just so beautiful. Just these prayers are just so beautiful. The words, there's just something about them. I don't know, but they just really affected me. I've been trying to say a rosary every day since and I've now learnt the prayers. So I now know them. But yeah, and then I started going to a local church and started RCIA and it's just, yeah, now I'm baptized.

That's beautiful. I wanna point out too, that when I sort of shared that email you first sent me to my patrons, Jonathan, who runs catholikwoodworker.com wrote to me and went, I wanna send this guy a rosary, give me his address. So I'm not sure if you realize that or not, but that rosary that he sent you,

that's from the guys at catholicwoodworker.com. It's a beautiful rosary, isn't it? Well, all thanks to him. He just said, I want to, I want to do that. So it's just lovely. Well, thank you to him and thank you to you. It's very, very generous. What was it like being received into the church? What was it like being received into the church? It was just, it just felt like such a privilege. You know, it just, it was just so humbling, you know, all the terrible things that I've

done. It was just so humbling that I could just be received with open arms like that, you know, and know that I'm forgiven. There's no forgiveness in leftism. There's, it's anti-forgiveness. There's no such thing as forgiveness, you know, it's resentment in leftism, you know, we hate our enemies. One of the slogans that we would always shout at demos and protests would be, we never forgive and we never forget. And just the fact that just the fact that someone like me can be brought into the church and redeemed. I mean, it's just glory to God. I was just so grateful that it's such a privilege to be able to go to church on a Sunday and receive the Eucharist. You know, and, and, you know, to be able to bring my son into that as well. Yeah.

How beautiful. That's lovely. Thank you. Hey, one of our supporters, Callan asks, which of your previously held beliefs were hardest for you to give up? Was there anything you came to believe was wrong, One asks, which of your previously held beliefs were hardest for you to give up? Was there anything you came to believe was wrong, but had a hard time to come to terms with it? Probably the question of sexual morality was the hardest for me to come to terms with.

Not really intellectually, more just because I myself was in the grip of sexual sin and disorder and addiction and I always felt like when I was a leftist, I always felt like sex is natural, it's beautiful, it's great, you know, why would anyone say that there should be any kind of restrictions or limitations on it. You know, what I've now come to understand is that limitations actually set you free. You know, I'm by no means perfect in any way, but I feel so much freer now because I'm on the way to being liberated from my selfish disorder desires and I'm now able to actually love someone honestly. Instead of just trying to get my own personal needs met, I'm in a, I'm in a relationship with a beautiful woman. And we're practicing Christian chastity. And it's just been the most liberating experience that I've ever had, you know, because we're able to get to know each other honestly.

And it's just built so much trust between us. Because she can see that I'm willing to deny my selfish, natural desires in order to build something true and honest and based on love with her. And so, you know, it just creates so much trust and everything is just so much easier. You know, I've never had a relationship like this in my life. And yeah, it's been amazing experience and with God's grace, if she says yes, then we're married. I don't know if you ever heard of Jason Everett, but I'd highly recommend you check out chastity.com because I became a Christian when I was 17. I didn't really understand why the church

taught what it did about sexuality. It wasn't until I really listened to Jason as like a 20 year old that it just smacked me across the face. He's really good at explaining it. But I was thinking as you were speaking that, you know, saying things like, well, pornography and fornication and adultery and masturbation are okay because sex is natural. It's a little like saying obesity and bulimia can't be bad because we were made to eat things and food's natural, you know, it's just like, yeah, but there's a way in which things work. That's beautiful.

Well, congrats on your relationship with your your girlfriend. So somebody, one of the supporters here, Cecilia says your journey also reminds me a little of Joseph Pierce's journey to Catholicism. Have you heard of him? I have not. No. Okay. I want to send you this book. If you'll allow me to shoot me. If you want to shoot me your address after this and I'll send it to you. Joseph Pierce is from the UK and he was a neo-Nazi and he was imprisoned. And he is one of the most brilliant people I've met, had the pleasure of meeting. Um, so he was in IRA and anyway, he's got a book called race with the devil.

So if you want it, I'll ship it to you. Let's see. Um, James says the former Eastern block communist states used So if you want it, I'll ship it to you. Let's see. James says the former Eastern block communist states used anti-fascism to eliminate their opposition. Is there a connection between the anti-fascist activities now and those communist activities? I'm not sure is the honest honest answer to that. It's possibly I don't really know a huge deal. Yeah, the Eastern Bloc communist situation.. That's fine. That's beautiful.

Humility is a cool thing, isn't it? Isn't it so much easier? I don't know. That's half of what I do now. Cecilia asks, it is beautiful that you mentioned fatherhood as a catalyst to your journey to Catholicism. Could you describe your mental spiritual journey since your son was born? You talked about it a little in the beginning. Well, it's really just been a case of reflecting on myself and just thinking, you know, what kind of a role model do I want to be for my son? You know, I can tell him to do this and do that, but at the end of the day, our children follow our examples.

They copy what we do. So if I want my son to have a chance in life at not following my same mistakes, then first I need to look to myself and sort myself out, you know, so I can model a good, a good behavior for him. And it's really just, it's just been such a blessing. Being a father is, yeah, it's, it's awesome, dude. Bradley Grueser, and this will be the last question here. He says, do you still enjoy punk rock?

Even as a very conservative American in the deep red states, I do enjoy old first wave punk. I don't know what that is, is that everything that we may think is evil and wrong, everything has a kind of shards of truth and beauty in it because we're all made in God's image. And the most anarchist, Satanist, punk band member, the most radical leftist is also made in God's image. And some things that they do and say will have shards of truth in it as well, because we were created by God and they may have ideas and they may point their creativity and they are in disordered directions.

But yeah, so yeah, I do still, I don't really listen to that music anymore. But, you know, it does have a certain energy and a certain creativity to it. Some of the early bands that I got into like Rage Against the Machine, they are radically socialist and Marxist, but you can't deny that they're talented musicians and they make music that really impacts you. So I guess it's a case of, these bands are just, they're using their God-given talents in misguided ways.

So there is still something beautiful about it. their God-given talents in misguided ways. So there is still something beautiful about it. It's just misses the mark, you know, which I think someone said that's what sin means, you know, it's to miss the mark. Right. I'm so grateful for you coming on and God bless you. And thank you very much, Daniel.

Anything else you want to touch on or leave us with before we wrap up? I just want to say thank you to you for the content that you put out. You introduced me to so many great Catholic thinkers. And I just wanna say that to the people that were affected by the stuff that I was involved in, I just wanna say that I'm sorry to those people and that I hope your listeners can pray for them. That's it. And thank you again. Thanks, Daniel. I'll put links below to your good work that you're doing. But yeah, yeah, one last time, danieljamesstudio.com. Is that correct?

DanielJamesStudio.com, is that correct? DanielJames.Studio Okay,.Studio, yeah, great. Well, thanks brother. God bless you. Thank you, Matt.