The Adam Mockler Show - MAGA Leader gets BRUTALLY HUMILIATED In One Question

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

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This is going to be a fun video. I am joined today by Tilly Middlehurst, who is a rising debater and political commentator that is blowing these MAGA folks up. Do you agree that it's a good thing that more women get married and have children in the West? I would ask you, would you say that a sub-Saharan African woman who's experienced female genital mutilation and checks extremely happy in a survey? And I also would check extremely happy in a survey. Who do you think would be objectively more happy, even if they both check the same answer? Okay, so I fully, if you want to talk about how Islam mistreats women, we can talk all day long. Like, I'm all for that.

Me too. Okay, good. So we agree. Absolutely. We agree on many many things. We should shut off Muslim integration to the UK, right? We totally agree. I think that all religious fundamentalism is bad.

And if you take that logic, we should also not allow evangelical Christians. Well, okay. Hold on a second. That's funny. I'm Tilly. I'm just going into my third year at Cambridge University. I'm a political science student. I kind of blew up online initially for debating with Charlie Kirk.

And since then, I've engaged in debates within the Red Pill space with people like Pearl Davis. I debated on a big UK channel called Lab Bible about whether or not billionaires should exist among other things. And those episodes continue to kind of come out. So, yeah, I'm very excited to be here and have a discussion. We're going to play some clips of both Tilly's debates and other debates that have happened in this sphere. But I just want to start off with a broad question. We've seen a lot of democratic backsliding over the past decade in America. and in other countries across Europe and other continents.

Now, the question is, as Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to flood the zone with all of this BS content and carpet bomb our feeds with information that pulls tens of millions of views in, and Elon Musk not only influences U.S. elections, but then also elections in Europe. He's tweeting a lot about the UK lately trying to influence politics there. what do you see as the path to push back against this type of just brazen authoritarianism popping up online in Redfield spaces? I know it's a broad question, but what's your framework for approaching this type of authoritarianism? Well, I always have to look at the data. And the data tells us that to save democracy, the rich must have less power, whether that is through campaign, finance limits, wealth taxes, corporate breakup, stronger unions, institutions shielded

from elite capture, right? I think that when a few ultra-rich actors own and dominate the media, as we've seen with people like Elon Musk, they bankroll campaigns, they dominate industries, they can always push politics towards that authoritarianism and towards that regression of democratic norms. So to protect democracy, we have to insulate institutions from billionaire capture. We have to insulate it from corporate influence, which means we have to resist the far right. I studied a lot in my second year of university, democratic backsliding. And what I found, was just purely objective point of view. This is not even with a leftist slant whatsoever, even though I am a leftist myself. To prevent backsliding, you have to do two things, basically.

The first thing you have to do is you have to establish very robust checks and balances within your democracy. And that's pretty simple, right? It looks like separate branches. It looks like probably don't do theocracy, separate your church and state, prevent bad actors and lobbyists from capturing the interests of politicians and political parties. The second thing you have to do is drive down inequality. So this is not actually because inequality inherently leads to backsliding. It's a bit of a misconception, right? Because oftentimes, countries are doing very well by traditional metrics of poverty and inequality when backsliding happens. And we can see this in the United States because in the state's inequality was trending downwards when Trump is elected for his second term.

The reason why we have to drive down inequality is because oligarchy is very bad for politics and it's very bad for fairness. Billionaires, the ultra wealthy, they gain a lot from backsliding. and engaging in authoritarian behaviours. And a surefire way of consolidating your power as a politician is eroding these democratic norms by handing over some modicum of state control to a handful of unaccountable corporations and oligarchs who have no loyalties beyond market capture,

capturing your time, monopolising your choice, limiting your freedoms and your autonomy as a citizen. And so that's why I think America is such an interesting case study and why I'm very interested in America because it's undergone this democratic backsliding that is maybe slightly asymmetrical to previous data, which has told us inequality is what causes backsliding. It's actually a bit more complicated than that.

What do you think it is that Trump was able to exploit so successfully? You're obviously looking at it from an outside lens. What do you think Trump was able to take advantage of? Because it seems like he's breaking all of these norms that we thought existed or were set in law, but they're just unspoken. And we're realizing very quickly that we don't have the mechanisms to enforce some of these norms. So what do you think Trump exploited to, be able to capture our institutions like this?

I think a few things. The first thing is America is an old democracy, but it's a young country. And America can at times feel insecure about its youth. So one example of this is Donald Trump, and I bring this up all the time because it's a very funny thing to me, is he was speaking, I can't remember where, but he essentially said that the United States and Italy have been allies since the days of the Roman Empire, which is obviously not true because the United States didn't exist then. The United States is a few hundred years old, right? And I think one of the things that Donald Trump is very good at is recognizing where people's insecurities lie and where a nation's insecurities lie. I think that this is partly why America

represents, or the backsliding that we've witnessed, represents this fundamental contradiction at the heart of this modern political framework, i.e. Donald Trump's idea of freedom is one invoked so as to mean freedom to conform, freedom to fall in line, freedom to support a set of values prescribed to you by elites you didn't elect because people felt sick and tired of experts. They felt sick and tired of making their own decisions or feeling as though they have the ability to be fully autonomous. They had like decision fatigue. Can I ask you, do you see this sort of bas-sliding that started off? I don't know if it started in the US, but it really got popularized under Trump now bleeding in to Europe and other countries. Because I see this a lot. If you just look

at Elon Musk's Twitter feed, he's constantly trying to spread disinformation. Not only about the US, he kind of shifted his focus away from that, and he's pulling hundreds of millions of views per week spreading disinformation about Europe now. How do you read that? No, I 100% recognize it as a European. What we're witnessing in Europe is a very worrying trend of this pan-European white supremacy, a narrative that dictates something incredibly insidious about the role of women, the role of minorities, the reason as to why Europe has experienced some inequality and some difficulties over the past few decades. And I definitely can see the US kind of being upheld in some context as a bit of a pedestal through which we can mimic

American policy decisions. I also think that we see this in the reverse though. Like Americans love to cite Poland, even though Poland is so contextually rich and variegated and it's like, you can't just do a Poland in the United States because the reason why Poland is 99.9% ethnically homogenous is because it's been consistent. attacked by the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union and its borders have consistently been reconsidered. Like there are loads of complicated political things you can say about Poland as to why you can't do a Poland in the US. But that doesn't stop the far right or like Republicans, however you want to kind of like circumscribe the name. It doesn't stop them from citing European examples

of quote unquote success so that they can kind of like do this mutually reinforcing race to the bottom of far right, what I would describe as a like fascistic tendencies. Yeah, it's insane seeing other countries copy the U.S. Like, in South Korea, they had basically a soft January 6 that seemed modeled off of what Donald Trump did. Can I ask you a little bit about pushing back via debate? Because the checks and balances answer was brilliant. I think that is exactly spot on. How do we battle these bad faith actors in the more debate realm?

So, for example, you debated Charlie Kirk. A lot of your colleagues rolled through Charlie Kirk. just like you did. So many ancient and recent societies embrace same-sex relationships and even the idea of third genders well before Western conservatism even existed. So when you claim that modern conservative values represent some kind of universal objective moral truth, like you said on your chair over there, aren't you just defending a selective, historically recent ideology that erases most of human history and targets people who have always been part of it? Can you point to me a great power that endorsed same-sex marriage, not

cohabitation, but marriage. Ancient Mesopotamia. As marriage. As marriage. As marriage it existed. Recognized by the state. 100%. And how did that work out for them?

I've got perfectly fine. It was an accepted normal society. Okay, I still think it's wrong. And now I see you making your way through some of these more right-wing red pill realms, trying to debunk talking point after talking points. Because again, they just carpet bomb either the video or your feed with all of these lies that build up a narrative, what do you see as the path towards combating

some of this? I think the path is to recognize where the strengths are of some of the rights arguments and their strategy. This is to say, I think we should have some humility and look at where we've potentially had blind spots and weaknesses and not necessarily mimic a right-wing strategy, but just recognize objectively what works to get people on side. So one of the things is right-wing arguments are often simple, repetitive, and sound like common sense. I believe that left-wing arguments can also do that. They can also sound like common sense. They can also be explained in a simple digestible way, not exactly, not in a patronizing way, as in dumbing it down for the masses, as in this is how it works, so that people who don't necessarily have a background in political science

can grapple with the issues in a way that's fair and democratic. Like, I think that one of the ways that we can successfully deal with these figures online is, unfortunately, we are at a point where we do need to engage with them. I don't think oftentimes the left has this narrative that, at least it's a minority on the left, that we kind of need to ignore this and push it away and hope that it goes away, because it feels worrying, it feels frightening to watch an uptick in, you know, far-right nationalism and this kind of stuff. The solution is, firstly, to engage.

to engage well, what does engaging well look like? It looks like having this like systematized worldview in a similar way that other successful movements have done before. So I think one example of this that I think is a great example is like you have the civil rights movement in the states throughout the 1960s, which is diverse. It has various different interest groups coalescing with one another to achieve varied, get aimed and goals.

But ultimately, it's finally, position is one of unity and unity within its diversity, right? I just, I think it's definitely it's possible. And I don't think, I think one of the things that we have to do is not lose hope, that in an age where algorithmic sophistication is driving out left wing voices, that we should kind of like preemptively surrender ourselves to that. Yeah, I entirely agree. I think the left can be aggressively, you know, purity testy, like over and over fracturing our coalition because we want everyone to be perfect.

And that's something that people point out all the time, but I even see it in people in my audience or my fan base. I can push for all the right things, but if I disagree on one thing, people don't want me in the coalition. It's pretty wild. So we need to add a bunch of people to the coalition, have a framework of thinking that is really easily digestible

and repeatable for the average person. and Donald Trump is really, really good at that. Just easily repeatable slogans. Drill baby drill or build the wall or lock her up. And we need our own version of that. How do you feel about the rise of this red pill phenomenon? I feel like it happened a lot under the Biden era online. And now it's just blown up.

Do you see yourself as someone who's going to go into these spaces, combat that, push back and make sure that people have the right facts, especially young dudes my age who get sucked up into this? I feel like they could benefit from seeing, like an intelligent person who can articulate these points in a really digestible way? It's a slightly difficult one because as a woman, going into spaces with men who don't believe that consent is something that's important when you engage in sexual activity, going into a space with men who don't believe in women's suffrage or women's enfranchisement in the workplace,

who strictly abide by norms that may have even been considered out, dated 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago is a little bit dangerous and at times kind of pointless and fruitless. It's like if I were male, I would be more inclined to consistently engage with these spaces. And I have done, right? I'm not someone who shies away from it necessarily. I just think that I can't do it alone. And as a woman, it's more so that I would be speaking through these people, not to them. I do think that the rise of the red pill stuff is, inherently dangerous

partly because at the epicenter of the red pill phenomenon is Nazism. And this is something that maybe people feel so, like,

that this is not necessarily possible, right? The average red pill guy who's engaging with the red pill content doesn't identify as a Nazi. He doesn't identify as far right or a fascist.

He believes that these things are leftist buzzwords used by like blue-haired women to, you know, to promote god forbid the body positivity movement right like this is not something that men necessarily identify with but it is something that is like um systematizing a set of ideas that have now been brought back into mainstream culture so it's like it is very very important for me to engage with them it's more so i will engage with them carefully i'll engage with them knowing and keeping in mind that i am

female myself and i think that it is i would encourage i would also i would encourage more men in the left space to be engaging with these people as well. Like, what I've seen is women feel compelled to do this, and I feel compelled to do it, but it's less likely that the leftist men are, like, as compelled, because it doesn't affect them to the same degree. Well, I got you. We'll do some work in this regard, and I'd love to work with you on certain frameworks I can approach these spaces in, because I feel like I need the input of somebody with a different

experience than me, much different experience in these spaces. But thank you so much, Tilly. You can find all of Tilly's social medias in the description below. I urge you to go follow. We're on both YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, wherever you are. Go follow Tilly. Thank you so much for your time. And I hope that we can work together to build something strong, fast, and that can punch back against this constant propaganda. So thank you. Thank you.