The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 12: David Baddiel: God, Anti-Semitism and the Y-Word

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

How aware are you of anti-Semitism in Britain? Comedian and author David Baddiel tells Alastair and Rory about his family, his upbringing and his views on anti-Semitism in modern Britain. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive a weekly newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's therestispolitics.com. Hi there, it's Alistair Campbell here. And before you listen to our leading interview with David Badele, just a word of warning, even to those of you who may be used to my Malcolm Tuckeresque approach to language, this one does contain some very strong language from the off. So if you're listening with children in the back of the car or running around the kitchen, you might want to plug in your headphones. But do enjoy the show. Welcome to another episode of The Restis Politics Leading with me,

Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. With a, how do you describe him, cultural icon? Certainly was in the old days. Okay, that's bad already. It was a cultural icon with the old footballs coming home and all that. So comedian, first off, but it's become kind of quite a serious, cultural figure. Well, let me read you the first bit of his latest book and see if anyone can

guess. I am an insomniac. There are many potential reasons for this. Most of them probably physical. But if you're going to be psychoanalytical about it and look for something in my childhood, I'd say it was to do with death. So he's insomniac, slightly worried about death. the book, which is not yet published, I don't think. It's bound to be published called The God Desire. So we're going to find out whether he does or he doesn't do God. And I think we'll probably give it away. I think we've given it away with the football stuff.

Also, I've spoken. Now my voice is very recognisable. I guess so. Okay. So we're now going to say who you are. You are David Bedeal. Yeah. I mean, otherwise the podcast becomes a who is this thing, which I think, you know,

it's a whole other brag, isn't it? That is a good title for a podcast. Who is this? Yeah. So why are we here? David. Is that a general question about life? No, why? Yes, it is about life. What am I doing here at the Paladium? Look, if you write a course called the God desire, don't expect not to be asked, why are we here? Or as I'd like to say, what's it all about? Well, the answer to both those questions, why are we here,

and what's it all about is there is no reason. We're not here for any big reason. It's not about anything. And as a result, we have created God, along with various other narratives. Who doesn't exist? He doesn't exist. But we've created God. The book is very, very clear. I would love God to exist as a buffer to that nothingness and oblivion and pointlessness and to give meaning and purpose to our lives and to outsmart death. And that's what the God desire is. So as an atheist book, which it is, it's fundamentally an atheist book. It's different from most atheist books in that it's not about what was there something before the Big Bang or, you know, how can we exist without a moral compass that God, all of those normal things that discussed

in atheist books. It's not about that. It's about what I feel. is at the heart of why God exists, because it's a given to me that he doesn't, which is that we are frightened and desperate and in need of comfort. So he's a sort of father figure who's going to do everything for us and look after us and care for us, and we desperately need that. He's a superhero dad who chases off death, and who wouldn't want that? Before we get in the politics, I wanted to start a little bit with you and your childhood. Yeah, okay. So give us a bit of a sense of how you grew up, who your parents were. Okay, my mum, who's referred to in the book that you just read, was a refugee from Nazi Germany.

She was born in Nazi Germany. In March 1939, there's some confusion about that when I did, Who Do You Think You Are? Her papers were very confusing because I think some that were forged in order to get her out of Germany. But they got out at the last minute there. And her parents were... Her parents were originally, before Hitler came to power, or my grandfather, was an industrialist, quite a wealthy industrialist in a place called Kernigsberg. And his name was... His name was Ernst Fabian.

And Koenigsberg is where Emmanuel Kant comes from. Yes, it sounds like you said cunt there, I'm afraid. How do you pronounce K-A-N-T, except in the way that I did? Kant. In German? Kant. I don't know who else in German. Kant.

Yeah. I think it's simpler for us all if we call it Kant. Otherwise, I feel we're calling, you know, the person who wrote critique of pure reason a cunt, and that's who wants to do that. Yeah. Anyway, your grandfather came from... Kernigsberg. And it's a long way out, right, towards Russia.

Yeah, I've been there. And now it is in Russia. Before the Second World War, it had been a university town, as you say, where Kant came from, and very beautiful. And then it was bombed to Farks during the Second World War. And the Russian word and the F word. Yeah, sorry about that. And it's hideous. Sorry, for any Kyrnik's book. Kalinian Gradients, which is called now listing. But it's kind of the arse end of the old Soviet Union now. But they were industrialists. And very, very wealthy? Really wealthy, as far as I can make out. I mean, I think they had so. servants and stuff. And they had a big society wedding, my grandparents. But then from 1933 onwards, that obviously all went. And by 1939, they had nothing. And my grandfather had been in a concentration camp. We'd been in Dachau after Kristlnacht. And he was forced to clean up the rubble of his synagogue with a number of other Jews and sent to a concentration camp. They lost everything else they had, getting him out of that camp, bribing people to get him out of that camp. And then with literally three weeks to go before the war broke out, they just managed to get into this country. The wider family were

killed. And then you came here, or your mother came here. My mum, my mum then met my dad. Right. And then you became a comedian. Yeah. You did a whole, wait a minute, did a whole show about your family, which I reckon if if I'd done a show about my parents as intimate and as detailed about their lives together, is that I think that I've got a bit of smack around the chops. Well, luckily, my, luckily, my mum was dead. Luckily, sounds weird in that particular case. And my father had dementia by that time.

But I would say that show, if we were going to talk about that show, was a huge act of love. Do you know about the show, Roy? He did a one show. I did a one show in the West End, a one show. It wasn't a way one was, mainly about my mum. Although people seemed to think it was made about my dad. Is this why you talk about the fact that she had an affair with a man and collected golf memorabilia?

Yes, my mum collected golf memorabilia in a very extreme way. She turned our whole lives over to golfing memorabilia. So you couldn't exist in our house without. somewhere a statue of Li Trevino. What's an example of the golf memory? Lots and lots of Deco picture of playing golf. She wrote eight books about coffee table books called things like The Source Book of Golf,

Golf the Golden Years, Out on the Links. She had a stall in Grey's Antique Market down the road from here. They were published these books? They published, yeah. I think Golf the Golden Year sold about 100,000 copies, but she did a very shit deal for it and didn't get any money. And this is because her lover was a great golfer.

Yeah, so the key thing is that this guy, but name him, his name is David White, and he may still be alive, and I think he lives in Slovenia. He was a golfing memorabilia guy, collector of golfing memorabilia, and literally we loved football in our house. I grew up with my dad, he was Welsh and working class with three sons. And we loved football. That was the only sport ever mentioned in our house.

My mum not very bothered with football, but not very bothered with any sport, one day becomes obsessed with golf, starts a golfing memorabilia business called Golfiana, which was the name of the business that David White also ran. She just nicked whole bits of his life. And really it was just a homage. And was he very glamorous? I think in her eyes, yes. If you saw her pictures of him now, you'd think he looked to be like Roger Whittaker.

He had a kind of polo neck. He smoked a pipe. He had a bit. And he was a member of various golf clubs, which in 1973, to a Jew, would have felt glamorous because it was still restricted at that time. So she ended up having come from a moderately wealthy background in Europe. Well, she would not have known anything about that. She wouldn't have known it, but she might have been aware of it.

Well, this is my point. And then she comes here and marries this kind of working class. very kind of angry guy. A Welsh shouty guy who loved her initially, I think. Why did she marry him? Well, I think lots of people got married in the late 50s and 60s because that was the way

they had sex, wasn't it? Like, there wasn't much choice. I'm not sure. Well, I don't know. After all, our parents also got married in roughly that period. And to have sex. Might have quite liked each other.

Well, looking at their diary, the diary of my mom, my dad didn't have, didn't write diaries. He's a very unemotional man. But I think she did love him at the time. But my mum wouldn't have known her own mind. And also, my dad was quite handsome then, and he was an intellectual. He was doing chemistry.

He got out of the sort of working class environment he lived in by doing a PhD in chemistry, Imperial College. And at the time, later on, he got made redundant and his life turned to shit. But at that point, he would have seen quite a prospect. She was very pretty. What there wasn't, I think, was an intellectual connection between them at all. And what I think Alice was going to say, which I think is true, is that when my mum was disappointed in the mid-70s with her life and her marriage, this guy appeared, and it was a version of the life that she might have had if the Nazis had never appeared. Because if the

Nazis never appeared, she would have probably married some kind of Austrian prince in her mind. And although he was not an Austrian prince, he was a golfing memorabilia salesman, that's the best that Cricklewood in 1975 could provide. So what was Cricklewood in 1975 like for a kid? Quite rough, in Dollis Hill, where we lived. I went to an Orthodox Jewish primary school, the North of the London Jewish Day School. And I went there despite the fact that we were not an Orthodox Jewish family. It's complicated.

Basically, my mum's parents who were alive, so she'd got out with her parents. They lived in Cambridge in one bedroom flat for many years, but they still kept sort of Jewish stuff going. But my dad couldn't be bothered with any of that. He used to call it Ollie Wolli Bolly. Prayers, whatever we used to do like Seda and like pass up. He would say, I'm sorry, I'm going to swear again,

when can we get over the fucking Ollie Wolli Bolly and just eats, right? But my mum kind of kept it going, but it wasn't really an Orthodox house. However, the only school near us that a Jew would probably not get beaten up at or at least have some trouble was that school. And it was an orthodox school. So I went to school wearing a yarmica and sits-it, which are sort of internal vestings, learning Hebrew, praying for every meal, etc., etc. And then going home and having bacon sandwiches. So it was weird. And David, one thing that you sometimes tell you, whether it's true, but I was talking to communities in North London,

who's claimed that there had been a big shift in education, that schools were much more mixed in the 60s and 70s, and that it's actually been increasingly the case that people are sending their children to Jewish-owned schools. Many of the people I've spoken to had themselves been to schools where they were 10 or 20% of a mixed population, but they'd very much made the decision that their own kids were going to go to Jewish-owned schools.

But that wasn't your experience. Well, I don't really know why he went to that school. Well, my younger brother didn't go to that school. My younger brother went to a school called Aylstone, and he once said to me to try and describe how hard Ayl Stone was that another kid had burnt down the assembly hall and got suspended, which I think is kind of brilliant. So the schools were rough around there,

but Northlanderese-Dish day school was not, because Jewish schools are not. Which is not to say there wasn't difficulties. I remember there being people throwing stones and chanting outside the school, because that's what it was like in the 1970s. The final thing before we move forward out of your kind of parents, grandparents, Did you know your mother's parents well? I mean, what did it feel like for your grandfather to go from being a prosperous man in Cunningsburg to living in a one-bedroom flat in Cambridge? Did you get a sense of his journey? Yeah, latterly, I did. I mean, it's quite hard for a young kid to take in when I was 11. I said to my grandma, did you have any brothers and sisters? And she said, you'll have to ask Mr. Hitler, what happened to them?

which was, I remember really weird at the time, because all I really knew about Mr. Hitler was the guy in Dad's Army theme tune. But she meant that her brother had been killed. I later found out probably in the Warsaw Ghetto, possibly Teretian, which is incredible. That's my great uncle who I know his name, his name is Arno, but that's what they came from. They came from that level of trauma. He was in and out of mental hospitals, mainly Fulham, in Cambridge for the rest of his life. He worked as a porter in a hotel in Cambridge. in the garden hotel.

Having managed a business when he was in Canada. Yeah, yeah, they're a brick factory. They owned a brick factory. Abramowski and Fabian, I've got a little advert. So he went from managing, you know, lots of people to being a portraiturer. Yeah.

And in his 40s. He never really spoke English. One thing of, but she did really well. She had a very heavy jet. There's another thing you need to remember is the British government. I've written a novel about this.

My third novel is called The Secret Purses and it's about the internment of Jewish German refugees on the Iron of the Second World War. That's what happened to my grandfather. in 1940. And this is very interesting in terms of, I did mention Gary Lindica before we got here, but in terms of the migrant hysteria now, there was migrant hysteria about Jewish immigrants in 1940. And what there was also was the British government was suppressing information about the Holocaust

because they didn't want British people to think they were fighting war on behalf of the Jews. As a result, many people thought, and egged on by the papers, especially the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, what are all these foreigners doing here? And of course they were Jewish, German refugees, but they weren't really understood as such. Churchill, as a result, in June 1940, he said this thing, Collar the lot, and what he meant was we're going to arrest every single German living in Britain, 99% of which are Jewish German refugees,

including my grandfather, and interned them on the art of man for two years. Okay, so let's fast forward. We'll come back to football and comedy and all that, but as you've raised Gary Linneker and the recent sort of controversy over what he said and the kind of convulsion of controversy that in Iran, And he is the executive producer of this podcast. He's the, you know, as per the BBC New Rules, we have to say that this podcast is owned by the...

And I'm really worried I'm going to lose my job. Who co-founded this wonderful company. Yeah, but this is not a BBC production. So I think you can say what you like. No, but my point is that part of the nonsense of the controversial is that every time I went on television to talk about it, the BBC felt the need to point out this... Oh, right. I think I saw you for that.

As you just did. Anyway, because it's funny. So the point is that I actually think. what you just said kind of backs up what he was saying not what they said he was saying but what he was saying

I don't agree because well I actually said this and I actually sent it to Gary which is if you want to make a 1930s analogy there is one and that is to talk about

how the British press and indeed black shirts were in the 1930s towards Jewish immigrants fleeing from Germany and they were using the language of invasion

invasion I think that's part to what you're saying very, I'm afraid, different from the language of the actual Nazis towards, and this is a key point, which I think I was the first person to make, actually, but I'm now seeing more people make it, towards their own citizens. Now, I've seen some people say, well, what difference is about they're all human beings? There is a difference. The Nazis turned their hate, extreme hate, and not, by the way, people say, oh, it was different from 1923 when Mindcap, they turned their hate on their own citizens. My grandfather had roots in Germany going back to the 19th

century. They were Germans. They were not immigrants. So what would be equivalent is to Ella Bravaman saying to me or any other minority group living in Britain, you are vermin, you need to go, you can't marry a British citizen, you can't work. She didn't do that. No, but one of the consequences of the politics that she pursues is that people who live in this country feel ostracized, feel marginalized, feel hated, feel that they are. part of the swarm, the invasion. That's why you're getting all these protests outside hotels, housing assignment seekers. Well, I'm not denying that she's othering the immigrants. She is othering, right? But I think the point is, it's a complex point to do with what we

presumably are going to move on to, which is the Jews don't count phenomenon, which is part of... I've got to say you're brilliant at plugging all your books. Thanks. You should hear him on his books. Part of the Jews don't count phenomenon, and the Jews don't count phenomenon is about how my thinking that particularly in progressive circles, that issues around anti-Semitism, around Jewish inclusion, Jewish representation are dialed down. And I agree with that. One of those issues is that there's a sort of what Deborah Lipschak calls soft core Holocaust denial.

And part of that is a tendency to use the Holocaust as an analogy for all sorts of things that are not really comparable to the Holocaust. And the key element of that is that when Jews, as they often do, like slightly say, actually this isn't really what it's not really comparable. What you get is huge blowback from the left, as if the Jews, as if the Jews, as if the Jews, you know, Jews, as they often do, like, like, slightly say, actually, actually, it's not really comparable. as if the Jews somehow own this and therefore are saying that, like, you can't possibly get, and there are things. There are things. For example, the Uyghurs in China, they are Chinese citizens, they are being put in camps. They are being sterilized. That is analogous. Okay. There's still differences, but it's okay. That's analogous. What Garo Lika said was the policy is immeasurably cruel, which it is, and the debate surrounding it

is redolent of the 30s in Germany. And I think that's true. Let me try to put David's point. It's not actually relevant to the way that people in 1930s Germany talked about their own citizens. It's a different thing. It's quite different to the way that hit the perceived Germans. Also, I'm very interested in specificity. That's what I'm interested in.

I'm interested in intellectual and historical specificity. Which is why Twitter is not a great addition to the world. No, I agree with that. So Gary tweets something. No, I agree. But I'm saying that the kernel of the debate, he's right. Also, can I just say something else? I think Gary should be able to say,

what he likes. It's crazy that someone who is not a journalist and someone who is a private citizen and, you know, he works for the BBC, but that doesn't mean that he represents the BBC, is not allowed to basically say what he likes. The impartiality stuff is, I'm totally thinking he should be allowed to say what he likes. And the BBC just needs to sort out that, but that's different from the fact that constantly, particularly since social media, which in its binaries, leads to extremities and one of those extremities is I'm going to compare

the thing that I'm angry about to the Nazis and the problem with that if you're actually someone whose mother, she's not a disdereating whose mother's life was destroyed.

David, I think there's a thing here where so I've looked at the language of the 30s in Nazi, in the, you know, in Hitler's time, and I've looked at the language of Mussolini

and there's so many echoes. What is it that the Tories are saying that is similar to what Hitler was saying about the Jews. He is saying that the language that was used by Sula Brevman is similar to the language used in Britain in the 1930s. It's not similar to the language used in Germany in the 1930s. The discrepancies of the actual analogy we can argue about, what I am very concerned about, and this is the whole point about Jews being allowed to have some place at the conversation,

which they're often not allowed to have. Totally. Is that the Holocaust is very important in the way that Jews understand how they perceived, how they are vulnerable. So Jewish ownership of, it's kind of the same thing about like what I said to you earlier and what I often say to left wing people when they try and tell me what is and isn't anti-Semitism. In a way, people are trying to tell me what is and isn't the Holocaust is the same thing. Because the Holocaust is the Acme of anti-Semitism. I agree with what you say about separatism.

I thought you made an incredibly important point. And I think your whole concept of the hierarchy of racism is incredibly important. And it's a point that I can 100% support. David, let's get back to Deuce their count. And give us a minute on the thesis of that book. Well, the thesis of the book which we've sort of slightly covered, but is that I had the impression and the context is very important, which I think is correct that in the last 20 years,

there's been a massive intensification of what is called identity politics. So politics has now shifted for me slightly away, whether it has in reality, but certainly within the conversation from about big sort of economics and class or whatever to being about what we call identity. And that is a whole branch of like could be ethnicity, which is my primary subject, but it also includes sexuality and gender.

And curiously, to just interrupt, one of the strange things is that a lot of the identity politics of the 70s and 80s was much more focused on class. This is one thing talking Bernie Sanders about that actually the shift has been less focus on class and more focus on issues of ethnicity, sexuality. gender, etc. Yeah, that's what I think has happened. Within that intensification, there's a lot of good things, I think. There's some not so good things, but in general,

a heightened awareness that there are identities within the culture that don't necessarily operate with enough inclusion, enough representation, enough sense that, you know, things are being said about that lived experiences dismissed, etc., etc. I think in general, we're undergoing a period of correction about that and people are trying to be more aware of those things than they used to be. Within that conversation, it seemed to me, certainly when I wrote the book, that Jews were not really included, that it wasn't a big deal, that anti-Semitism wasn't such a big issue for the people who were very worried about racism, that it wasn't even understood as racism, that it was thought of as religious intolerance, which, as I've often said is clearly incorrect

because I'm an atheist, as that book proves, and the Gestapo would shoot me tomorrow. So those things, and indeed, like within diversity quotients, like the one thing you wouldn't have got certainly where I wrote the book. There's been a slight shift since then is someone saying we need to include when we're doing a diversity initiative, some information and education about anti-Semitism. Now I think that is happening and I get asked to do it a lot. I'll be honest, I think that's a result of the book and other conversations. And the fact of Corby's leadership of the Labour Party making the issue so prevalent. Can we touch on that a little bit? Yeah. What is your sense on Corby than anti-Semitism? Do you think he's, he was an anti-semitismid? So I answered this recently on Beth

Rigby show. So there's two things. I actually thought I shouldn't have answered it. not because I can't answer it, but because that was actually on Holocaust Memorial Day. And I am, as we know, somewhat precious about the Holocaust. And I thought, if I answer this, it will just be certainly on social media, what blows up and what everyone talks about. Because I'm kind of polite, despite swearing a lot on this, I didn't say I don't want to answer that. So I did answer it, and that is what happened. And I kind of wish I hadn't. Partly also because I think anti-Semitism is a very complex and also very ancient issue.

And within the political conversation, certainly in Britain, there's a slight sense that it's all about Labor Party 2015-2019. And it really is. There's massively deep social and psychological malaise to do with anti-Semitism that goes back centuries and centuries and centuries. And so I tend to be, let's not talk about Corbyn. A bit like I am about Israel, it's a much more complicated issue. Having said that, and I can show you what's wrong with the conversation with what happened with the answer. So what I said is, I do not believe at the front of Israel, mind that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semaid. And I use the example of that mural that he supported. The picture that went up in East London a while ago, a mural of some very, very hook-nosed-bearded men, rich men playing Monopoly on the back to the world's poor. And some Jewish people complained about it. And the artist said, oh, I see some old white, very important word, white Jewish folk who got upset about my portrayals of their beloved Warburg and their beloved Rothschild. I mean, this is a progressive guy sounding like gerbils, right? And Jeremy Corbyn, supported him. And when I used the phrase at the front of his mind, I got massive hate on Twitter.

And in fact, Jeremy Corbyn himself said, what does he mean? Is he my psychiatrist? How does he know what's at the front or back of my mind? And I realised then that I should have said Jeremy Corbyn is showing unconscious bias. Because what my whole thing, to some extent, is about is I am modeling the language and vocabulary of identity politics. And I'm showing how it doesn't apply to Jews. And I must just say this. And I truly believe that if anyone was to say to Jeremy Corbyn or any other progressive, about any other minority. I think you're showing an example of unconscious bias here. They would at least stop and think about it and think, well, it's not my place

to say, how dare you, you're not my psychiatrist. But that's not what happens with you. And you were actually trying to say something inoffensive. Well, nuanced. You certainly weren't trying to say, Corbyn's an anti-Semite. I don't think he is an anti-Semite in the way like I think Hitler was an anti-Semite. And I believe Kanye West is an anti-Semite. These are people who directly say very, very, very.

very negative, murderous things about Jews. He would never say anything like that, and I do not believe he would think it. How do you feel about Labour now today? Because you're basically a Labour person. Yeah, I voted Labour all my life. I didn't vote Labour in the 2019 lecture. I can't remember if I did in 2017.

Was that the previous one? Yeah, 17. Why didn't she? In 2019, I had become someone who did believe that there was too much of an issue with the really just this sort of not listening to aspect of the Jewish issue. I felt the Jews were saying there's a problem here and they were being dismissed. What were the problems? So there was the mural. What were the other problems? Well, there are lots of other

specific problems like there's that book imperialism, which is a very good example. A lot of the time, what I was trying to point out with the mural and that book imperialism by Hobson, is it? Is that if I felt with Corbyn and with quite a few people on the left, they feel there are bigger issues going on. So with the mural, it's about world poverty. And, you know, that's the important thing. And it's just irritating if people think, you know, but they've represented them in an anti-Semitic way. That's annoying and it's a distraction. Similarly, imperialism is a big book about imperialism in which Hobbson just says there is a race of Jewish financiers. It's a sort of late, early 20th century book, who are controlling imperialism and it's their responsibility. And Corbyn wrote just a glowing

forward without any mention of that. Not because he's an anti-Semitism, because anti-Semitism is not big. It's not important on his list of issues. And how much, how much do you think? I mean, obviously But within the Labour Party, there was lots of other stuff going on. So if you actually hear, for example, the way that Luciano Berger was sort of alienated out of her local Labour Party, it's sort of really unpleasant and violent. And how much this, so I live now in Jordan. How much of this? You live in Jordan. I live in Jordan, live in Amman in Jordan.

That is really quite a commute. I know you had a hard time with the Tory party. You didn't have to leave the country, go and live in Jordan. So I'm wondering how much of this is driven by people's views. about Palestinian issue, how much of this is Muslims in the Labour Party. I don't understand the context of what's going on here. Have you read my book? No, I haven't. Okay. So one of the things I say in it is that I personally, there's a very short bit about Israel, and I make a point of not talking very much about Israel, because I think there's an assumption, again on the left,

that the whole conversation is about Israel. So, for example, Tarik Ali, as an example of a very progressive person, At a Hyde Park March in support of the Palestinians a couple of years ago, said, if the State of Israel would end the occupation, anti-Semitism would disappear. So the State of Israel was started in 1948. There was quite a big anti-Semitic incident just before that. There's no way in the world that anti-Semitism is just about Israel, and the notion that it's all about Israel is dismissive of anti-Semitism, in my opinion. Unquestionably, it is still important, unquestionably it is used by the left and the most bald and annoying way it's used by the left. And this is partly why I refuse to talk about Israel, is that if you're talking about

anti-Semitism, nothing to do with Israel, say online, someone will instantly say, what about Palestine? It's as if you can't talk about that subject without putting your carton and tell you about Israel first. And will you at some point get round you think in your life to focusing on Israel and Palestine, taking it seriously as an issue? No, I don't not take seriously as an issue. I just think it's not.

But is it something that you inform yourself about? I inform myself about it. Do you travel there? Do you think about it? I do, but I don't feel... This is part of my thinking, Rory, is that I think it is not my responsibility to either defend or attack Israel as a Jew, because that is not a stricture placed on any other minority in relation to any other country. If I was a British Muslim and I wanted to talk about Islamophobia in the Tory Party, for example, I don't think anyone would say, well, first of all, I'd like to know how you feel about what's happening in Iran or human rights in San Francisco. Can we clear that up first? It's a sort of mirror of Jews that are not counting.

Yeah, it's the same thing. It's a way in which there's a sort of arbitration that happens with Jews between Jews and what they want to talk about. There has to be a serious hoops and hurdles that they have to go through, and I reject those. Well, we're going to have a short break, and then we'll come back and explore, first of all, what you're going to do at the next election. I'll vote Labour on next election. Okay, well. I'll go ahead. And then the second thing, I think it would be fascinated to hear your account of your conversations with his former leader, Mr Cameron.

Okay, take a break. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest Is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now, we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s.

So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson,

and we'll be talking about one of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to the rest of politics, leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Azte Campbell. And we have David Badeel with us. I just wanted to finish up and I think a really interesting conversation you were getting into, which is the question of how much Jewish identity

is bound up with conversations around Israel, Palestine. And I think you've made a very good point. And I guess, let me try to see whether I've got an analogy here. Often when I was teaching in the States, people would think because I was a sort of upper middle class British person, I needed to take responsibility for the British Empire. And I needed to provide a big analysis of slavery in the 19th century and the responsibility of Britain towards India.

Is that analogous? I don't think it's quite analogous because I don't think an upper middle class English bloke is a minority. All of this has to be keyed into the fact my thinking is that Jews need to be counted as a minority, as a vulnerable minority, which is what they aren't thought of because of the Jewish association with privilege and power. But my point is, no, we are a vulnerable minority because of years and years and years of persecution that is ongoing. Because you don't suffer. By the way, I don't think you should have to answer for that particularly. It seems a bit mad. But I wouldn't say it's something that I would consider in the conversation around how you talk to minorities about minority experience.

I'm very interested in this. I mean, I think you've got yourself a very interesting angle into the wedge issue of identity. And I think one of the things that is both revealing and troubling around it is that it cuts in both directions. You're cutting in the direction of saying that Jews as a vulnerable minority who've experienced immense historic suffering, hatred and abuse should be considered alongside other minorities. I'm not saying in exactly the same way. Right? There are differences. But you also, it cuts in another direction too.

sometimes there's a sort of a reduction taking place here where you're pointing to things which are odd about the way that identity politics in general works. Yeah, maybe. And the more that you keep claiming this, there's a risk that somebody like me listening to it is like, where does this end? Okay. So what you need to know about that is I am not saying in the book, oh, I desperately want the sort of madder ends of what happens when identity politics becomes.

the way we all think and a kind of triggered culture happens and everyone becomes offended about everything to necessarily be applied to Jews. I'm just saying, I'm modelling how that is thought about, how that is talked about with other minorities and asking the question, why are Jews left out of this and what does that mean for how people think about Jews? How people take that is another conversation, but it's not a manifesto about, and now I want people to get incredibly angry every time there's a tiny bit of what might be considered casual anti-Semitism, which by the way, is never going to happen. It's never going to happen.

Can we? We need to talk about language. Yeah. Because I thought it was fascinating in the book. You talk about how nobody will use the P word, rightly, apart from maybe a few far right races in privacy of their own homes. Nobody will use the N word.

But the Y word gets used a lot, and it gets sung at football matches. And I want to tell Roy the story about your exchange with David Cameron. So one of the... So I start the book, and indeed I started, the film that I did about a Jews don't get film that I for Channel 4 with a series of examples of what I call the Jews don't count phenomenon.

I then go on to try and explain why I think this is happening to do with the privileged thing and the whiteness of Jews or whatever. But one of the, probably the most violent example is that me and my brother go to Chelsea every home game and we have put up with for 20 years, 30 years, the fact that because there is this association of Tottenham Hotspur with a sort of phantom idea, That's a racist idea of Jewishness because they are located in a fairly Jewish. They are called Yids, and I'm going to use the word. They are called Yids and their fans not only chant Yids and Yid Army,

but it's said back to them, which is the key thing, by Chelsea fans and Arsenal fans and West Ham fans in extreme ways, including with Holocaust stuff, the spurs are on the way to Auschwitz, all that kind of stuff, hissing to simulate gas chain. And that's gone on for years and years and years. There was one particular incident where me and my brother were at Chelsea, and that chance started. We weren't even playing spurs. And then it was directed at us,

me and my brother, with people just going, fuck the Jews, fuck the Jews over and over again. And my point is not that there was an anti-Semite at a football match. My point is that happens. The point is, stewards by then and in the program, and this is my point about the conversation and about identity politics. By then, 2009, the program said,

any racism heard in the grounds will lead to immediate ejection and a banning for life. Nothing happened. Literally, no one said, anything, the stewards just... Because it didn't count. Well, didn't hear it. They didn't even recognise it as racism. And then we did a film about it called the Y word, but that was difficult to get on and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the story, which is a funny story, but sort of also very indicative, I say in the book that if you want to believe,

because a lot of people question the study of the hierarchy of racism, but if you want to sort of prove it, an April way, Alistair is right. You know, no one here, no one in this room would use the N word and the P word, which is a good thing, but I can say the word, I am Jewish, but I reckon either of you could say it, and it would not be the end of your careers. But we could talk about it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, it would definitely not be the end of your careers. And I'll prove why. I'll prove why. I mean, obviously, this was a little while ago, but not that long ago. When I first started talking about this, it became a bit of an issue. A lot of people disagreed.

They started saying that Spurs, fans should be allowed to say it and blah, blah, blah. And in 2014, I think it was, David Cameron was, I think asked by a journalist who doorstep him at number 10 from the Jewish Chronicle, what he thought about that. And he said, I think spurs fans should be allowed to call themselves YIDS. I think it's fine for Spurs fans to call themselves Yids. Then there was a funny incident where I was on the agenda, which you may remember, Tom Bradbury's program, and he was on it. And I'm waiting in the green room. Cameron was on it.

And he was the prime minister. So he came in. But he comes in, he bustles into the green room. He comes straight over to me. And he says, again, with no compunction, I'm a Jew, with no compunction, are we going to talk about the Yid thing? And I said, I don't know. you'll have to ask Tom Bradbury and said, well, I just want to say, if we're going to talk about the Yid thing, you're right. I've spoken to Lord Feldman, and he says, Badiol's right about this. I'm just going to say, you're right. And what I took from that is not that he'd listened to Lord Feldman, adieu, but that he would not, I think, in 2015, have gone up to a person of colour and use any of the hate words about a person of colour, even while saying you're right. He wouldn't have done that. And the reason he wouldn't have done that is that Jewish hate speech is not as hateful. It's seen as not as hateful or as back. because Jews don't count, but more importantly, Jews are not seen as a vulnerable minority.

Do you think it affects anything that David Cameron is interested in his own Jewish identity and Jewish heritage? Not really aware of his Jewish. So he's a quarter Jewish, and that's something he talks about a little bit. And I guess... I don't think when he came up to me and said that. And in fact, it was famous to famous as one due to another. I think we could use his word. The reason this is that actually Alison got in trouble with this, because he produced a poster of flying pigs with David Cameron and Oliver Letwin.

No, it was Michael Howard. It was Michael Howard. That makes quite a big difference because Michael Howard is what you might call properly Jewish. I mean, this is the trouble, to some extent, with anti-Semitism, is that, you know, someone said to me about this book, a progressive person said on Twitter about Jews don't count, oh, I think I'm a progressive person, but I actually realize I share some of these assumptions. And I realize now that anti-Semitism is the racism that sneaks past you. And my book is, to some extent, a primer to spot these things, because it is quite an elusive thing.

and I personally as a Jew think that when Anne Whittaker said that Michael Howard has something of the night about him that there is an anti-Sempsons in there. I don't think she's aware of it. I think that is an unconscious... That's a good example. Was I a victim to unconscious bias

when I put... We put a poster out with Michael Howard and Oliver Lekwin's heads on pigs when it literally did not cross my mind that they were Jewish. No. No, because apart from anything, pigs are not kosher, right? That is not. Pigs are actually not

an example used much, as far as I'm aware, in tropes about Jews. The tropes about Jews, the anti-Semitic troops are more about vermin, or about huge fat capitalist controlling the world, or horrible sexual tropes of them, sort of approaching young Aryan women, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pigs is actually not used very much as a trope around Jews. Well, the Jewish community will not happen with me, actually. Yeah, I wouldn't have been bothered about it. But, you know, I'm an outlier in many ways.

So you're increasingly I mean you're a serious writer I mean I'm looking here at a Serious writer of short books Yeah I failed my niche writing short books And that I'm happy with that Yeah

I'm looking here at 12 books Is that right? Yeah I think so I mean nine of them Not nine of them Eight or seven out of children's books But children's books are I think of very important

No and also a great thing to write And you were doing a thesis at university In English literature Is that right? I did a long time ago I mean to be honest with you even though I think that was a good piece of work in its own way, I did it mainly because I had no money when I left university

and I needed to get some money. And back then you could get a grant to do a PhD, which allowed me to do comedy at the same time. And what was your thesis going to be on? It was about Victorian sexuality and literature, is what it was about. And what was your big idea? My big idea was about the way that women were represented by a lot of the big male writer in the 19th century

shows a inability to imagine women as an actual, as actually kind of like sort of sexual being. So the only version to women that were allowed in the 19th century by Dickens and people like that tended to be sort of idealised little girls, quite creepy, idealised little girls, or very maternal wife, mother figures. So for example, in Dombey and son, Florence Dombey is a tiny little girl for most of the book, sort of angelic, like Little Nell. Then she goes to China in the middle of the book to completely erase any actual

sexual growth on her part and comes back with three children. You went through studying English literature. You're obviously very good at English literature at Cambridge. You went on to do your doctorate. You could almost become an academic if you wanted to do. My grandma, the one who was from Germany, wanted nothing more than for me to be Dr. Badeel

and to have a PhD. And even though she was still alive when I first was on the telly, she was not happy about it. She's just pissed off. I guess one of the questions is, is your perspective on the world, the way you do comedy, the kind of humour you see, the kind of criticism you see.

Does that have a link back to the tradition of the tide of criticism you apply to Victorian sexuality, for example? I don't know that so much about comedy. I think the book is a PhD in that question, David. There is, but I think the books, well, someone said, which is not exactly answers your question, but it might have to have adjacently answer your question, is a Jewish academic who's read that book and God Desire, which is my new book, and Jude Don't Count said that I have a talmudic way of looking at these questions.

And if anyone has read the Talmud, which I haven't, but what I have a sense of the Talbot is that it's very, very digging in to the deep logical questions of life. And I do, I think, do that in these books. I have a very, very, like, what is actually happening under the skin of these quite complicated questions. And what I do include in both these books, The God Desire and Deucson Gare is jokes. So I also have, I see no reason why, if you're doing some quite hefty intellectual, rigorous work, you shouldn't put a gang in it.

Is your comedy also based on looking at structures? uncovering hidden structures? I don't know. My comedy now tends to be very, very... So I take one subject. So my last three standard shows, I've taken one subject. Fame was the first one. Then my family and lastly,

trolls and tries to... Well, actually it is, yeah, because it tries to dig into what's going on here. The family one was just very personal. Tell us about fame. The fame one was about how... And you'll both know this. Personal to me in a way

because I spent a lot of my time trying to project a version of myself that I feel is authentic because I don't like to be inauthentic. I'm not very good at playing someone who is not me. But as you'll know, Erica Young said, the more famous you are, the more people will get you wrong. So what fame involves is mistaken identity, literally, in my case, where people mistake Ian Brody of the lightning seeds or Ben Elton or whoever it might be for me. I'll tell a quick story about how Roland Keating or Boyzone came up to me once and said, I love you. I was so pleased. I love your work.

Everything you do is brilliant, but I particularly like it was blackadder. And I said I'm not Ben Elton. And he looked really pissed off. Like I was deliberately trying to trick him with my face. I wasn't mistaken of a Nick Clegg the other day, which was Nick Clegg. Yeah.

I once got a free meal in a restaurant in Swansea because someone thought I was Steve Wright, which I really don't know quite the DJ. No, I can see it now. But the fame thing was about that. It's about how there's a version of you out there that is not you, and that's destabilizing, but it's also kind of funny.

And that's why you're upset. with trolls. Well, the trolls thing was about, I think, so it was just about, it came from something very specific, actually, which is that when I first started dealing with trolls on social media, I've thought they were hecklers. And as a comedian, I thought, I can't ignore these. I can't not feed the trolls. I've got to try and make it funny. They're abusing me from the dark. And so I need to make it funny. And I would do that. And I made a show out of it, really. But it was also a show about what does it mean, this level of abuse that's just in public. What have you, because I think there was a time when you were utterly obsessed with social media.

Yeah, I step away now. Yeah. So how do you define the history of your relationship with social media? Because I think Rory's a little bit in this entry into this space a bit. Is he? He doesn't tweet that, Matt. Nobody looks at it a lot. Do you lurk?

I don't know. I think it's an interesting. I think, as Alice's amateur unpaid therapist, used to get very wound up on social media. You could get wind up on social media. I do. But I don't get wound up by social media. So if I'm like... You sure the algorithm's not true?

training your element. It's interesting that because the key element I always say with hecklers. I don't look at the stuff. Charles is don't get angry. If anything, agree with them and then take the down. I don't even look at them. I get so like if I, we're doing this while Boris Johnson's giving evidence. If we were giving, if I was watching Johnson now, I'd probably be tweeting every minute because I want to say what I think about what I'm seeing. I don't care about what people then say what I say. Whereas I've got a feeling that you really care. No, I don't anymore. I think that would be true of me a few years ago. But actually, what I realized was that the whole treating them like hecklers thing is impossible because,

normally if you're in a room and you've got a heckler in an audience of 800 people, it's one person and they shut up soon after you've taken them down, right? But that doesn't happen on social media. It's thousands and thousands. And yeah, you get into and they take your stuff out of context. And it becomes maddening and impossible. And so, latterly, I've completely changed my opinion about it. Having said publicly, oh, yeah, you should treat them like hecklers

and you should make them funny or whatever. I now don't use it as an engagement platform. I do very occasionally. But most of them I say something and don't check responses now. I'm saying. So you've been very successful, you know, famous guy, books, plays, television. Films.

Films, music. Yeah. We haven't even talked about that. I haven't talked about that. We're going to end with that. We're going to sing it together. But do you, I mean, do you reckon a kind of happy person? Does this, has this made you a happy person?

Yeah. I always think that people who complain about being famous unless it's really ruined their lives. It totally hasn't. Really ruined my lives are, you know, sound churlish because, you know, I am as a result of, not a sort of fame, but as a lot of what I do, of which fame is a part, able to write books and tell jokes and make documentaries for a living, which really is better than working for Amazon. You know, it really is. And so anyone pretending, anyone who writes songs or whatever about how terrible life is in fame, about how you have to perform.

I'm going to give you an example actually in the fame show. I talked about how in the fame show, I am not going to be talking about how like Janice Joplin, I do my show and then I go off lonely to my hotel room and I have to take lots of heroin. I'm going to be talking about how I once got on a Ryan Air flight and I deliberately booked only one priority seating thing. And then I tried to keep the seats so that my family could get on quickly. But a man saw me doing that and said, that's very tight. And he didn't say that's very tight. That's very tight. But deal.

And that is what my slightly annoying Monday. level of fame is like. You can be spotted doing something like that. But that's not a big deal. I am, I am pretty happy. I tell you what I am. Happy isn't quite the right word. I am, in my opinion, incredibly comfortable in my own skin. I kind of think I always have been. But I think as a result of that, all the destabilization that happens with fame and my mistaken identity, and I've seen it happen to other people, it kind of couldn't happen to me. Because I have nowhere else to go, except me. You do. No, I get depressed. depressed.

That's not because of fame. No. You've had that before you. That's why I didn't say I was happy because I've had clinical depression and I know what it's like to be clinically depressed and I still feel it from time to time. And why do you get depressed? I think that. Depress has never known the answer to that, Roy.

I don't really know the absolute answer to it. I do think to come back to what we're talking about that, it will have a little bit to do with the inherited trauma. Because my grandfather was in and out of mental hospital. My mother was definitely, you know, had lots of issues. Dad as well probably. Yeah, my dad, I don't know if my dad was depressed, but I came from a difficult in a way background.

And I'm not really a glass half full person. I wouldn't say that. But I am very happy with who I am, which is a different thing to being happy. Should we close with the thing we haven't mentioned, which is football's coming home and all that sort of said about our culture? I mean, do you think it's kind of going forever,

this sort of myth that England are going to, in a major tournament and football coming home is going to be the anthem to it. Well, the interesting thing about that as a question is that, of course, football's coming home of three lions is primarily a song about losing. Yeah. That's what it is. The reason that it chimed such a large chord with England football fans is it was the first England song about the real experience, perhaps the real experience of all football

fans, except if you're a Manchester City fan now, which is that most time you lose. And what you do is you go to football magically thinking, well, maybe this time we're to win, even though most of them. We don't. Certainly as an England fan. Certainly it's a Burnley fan. Certainly as a Burnley fan. Yeah. So... I managed to get promoted. I'll just put that on the record.

Yeah. Got to the quarterfinal of the cups, played Man City, played them off the field, just that they beat us. Good. Yeah. Good. I mean, I think one of the things that's good is that, you know, you come from a football fandom that isn't just about winning everything. And most people, that's most people's experience, right? But it's sort of England's experience. I mean, English's experience is maybe more about like really thinking we're going to do well. And that's partly to do with the songs, because the songs were all this time more than any other

time. You know, they were all about winning. Did you think when you wrote it? And we weren't winning. And then what happened was, we wrote Three Lions. And people now talk about it, as you say, it's like, oh, football's coming home as if it's a song of triumphalism. It's not.

It's a vulnerable song about thinking we're going to lose. But did you think when you wrote it that it would become the sort of phenomenon that it has? No. It's a bit crazy. That's the case with everything. But, I mean, to be fair about me, I only write. things that I feel quite deeply.

I've never really written anything or done anything, but does engage me in a very deep level. And when me and Frank were asked by Ian Brody to provide the lyrics to that song, we sat around and talked for a bit, and what we said was let's try and write a song about what it's really like me in England fan. And we didn't

know, but on the and I have told this story, but hey, on the day of England, Scotland, at Euro 96, after the song had already come out and done quite well, got to number one, all very excited, but we thought that its time had come and gone. And England weren't playing very well in that tournament.

They'd lost or drawn to Switzerland in the first round, first game. And then they closed Scotland. They weren't playing very well. In the second half, Gary Macaster, missed a penalty. Seaman pumped the ball upfield. Gazist goal, one of the greatest goals ever scored. The sun came out. And a man who I really owe an enormous debt to,

and I don't know the name of the DJ at Wembley, put three lions on as they came off the pitch. And here's the thing. The whole crowd, apart from the Scottish feds, started singing the song. At a point in time where there was no lyrics on screens, we didn't know everyone had taken the song to their heart. We had no idea, me and Frank.

Like 80,000 people just start singing every line, not just the chorus, every line of the song. And people say, the best day of your life is when your children were born. Sod that. Well, David, thank you for being with us. My pleasure. It's been a real laugh.

So, Rory, what do you think, David Bidiel? By the way, you should have read his book. You should have read the Jews don't camp, but I send that to you. did. Come on, do some bloody research. Do some homework before I go on. That's right. It's good that you're plugging his book, though. He did pretty well plugging his book, but not as well as your thing. I caught his seven book.

And you've just add an eighth book plug in there too, haven't you? I think he's extraordinary. I mean, he's obviously, he's got a very interesting, quirky, yeah, quirky mind. He's good at being tough and taking it back to the interviewer. We haven't done an interview with somebody who's interrupted us as much, argued back as much. speak through it quickly, doesn't he? No, he's very good. He's actually got that sort of, that tactic the lot of politicians use is that they spot when the next

question's coming, but they just sort of, you know, steamroller through it. But I do think, I mean, honestly, you should read Jews Don't Count. It's a very, very interesting, clever book. And I think he does have an interesting take. And it's quite interesting to the, he's now writing about God from this atheist perspective. I don't know if I buy the kind of people believe in God

because they believe in a superhero. No, I, I, I, I don't. And I think that is the thing that if I'd had more time, he says he's very comfortable in his skin, but he's also very, very confident in his views. And I think this idea that the reason why people believe in God is that they're afraid is a lack of imagination, that there are many, many varieties of religious experience, there are many varieties of religious belief. And I think that's a slightly, if I was going to confront him, a slightly patronizing atheist view of the situation. The other thing we didn't really talk about, but I've talked to him before about it is the fact he said, terrible insomniac, sleeps very, very little. He says he never, ever has a good night's sleep. And I think it's hard to say

you're comfortable in your skin if you're not sleeping. There's got to be stuff going on there that's keeping you awake. And as you said, he's depressive, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't know if he takes medication now, but I know he has done in the past. No, I think he's got a very, very interesting mind. And also, he's gone through these sort of various stage of his career.

I don't know why he cares so much about how people perceive him, you know, that whether they say, sims the football lad with frank skinner or the intellectual who's writing interesting books or I think if you're comforting your skin you don't really care about or anybody's really thinking and I think he's moving to that but I'm not sure he's really there yet I reckon he'll find God in the end yeah there we are it's a good good good prediction I know I really enjoyed it thank you for setting that out and I thank you for the conversation see you soon