TRASHFUTURE - Gossip Girl

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

We talk at length about Nigel Farage’s callow youth and flirtation with far right racial politics that has, for some reason, put the commentariat into a state of shock. Also, crucial Orb updates. Ge...t more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here! TF Merch is still available here! *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Cool, because the thing about Assad Femboy, right, is now that he's in exile in Russia, he's become a gamer. And as we know, becoming a gamer leads to becoming a femboy, leads to becoming a trans girl. So in a matter of time, we are going to see the most sort of like mustache targeted electrolysis you have ever seen in your life. Wow. Yeah, it's like they've built a red light mask that's perfectly upper lip shaped that does electrolysis. But the issue is like at that point, if you're Putin and you've got like your compound of Sweden Western embarrassments like Girard Departier and Edward Snowden and now, you know, now Assad and the rest of these guys and Jan Marselect. Right. Great sitcom pitch immediate.
Starting point is 00:00:59 Oh, God. Snowden, what's going on in there? You have your meeting with like your, you know, the gang of four. And then you just notice like, Assad, is that a tail poking out of your... Wow, your skin's looking really soft lately. You smell different. Honestly, if it was going to be anyone, my money was on Snowden. The reason why he did all of that stuff was being the one cisgender employee at the NSA. He's the world's first actual case.
Starting point is 00:01:29 of like reverse discrimination. Every day he got shoved into a locker by a bunch of six foot two women and after a few years of this he was like, I've had enough. I'm walking. I'm out of the year. I'm going to Russia where I won't be bullied by trans women.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Welcome to Nyet God, Nietmeyer. Oh no. Hello everybody. Welcome to TF where we have just Hussein has just detonated the phrase Assad Femboy on us, immediately before we started recording. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:01 I found it on Instagram under a news article and I found it very funny and it's been in my head all day and so I made it into a funny screen name. How to achieve Assad Femboy mode aesthetics. So it's like you get like one of those
Starting point is 00:02:16 like one of those guides where it's like all right. So basically what you need is you need to like do a lot of... You're working out upper lip all the time. Nothing else. You got to be working upper lip. You got to be extending your head.
Starting point is 00:02:26 It's the opposite of mewing. You've got to be meowing. We can that jaw. Sisa, we can that jaw. I mean, that is actually good advice for any friends. Anyway, yeah, so I love the idea of the sort of compound of Western failures. And just one of the windows just has like gamer RGB lighting. Hey, how come so many cat ear headbands are getting delivered here now that are in the strangest shape?
Starting point is 00:02:52 These are bespoke cat ear headbands for Assad. Thank you. Thank you. Former President Bashar al-Assad for being the sole purchaser from my Etsy store where I make catea headbands for the weirdly head shape. Actually, no, there was another guy in like Scottsdale, Arizona, but, you know, no, he was just infiltrating. I just remembered, and I don't know why this is, but, like, Fred Durst from Limpiska
Starting point is 00:03:20 has been wanting a Russian passport for a very long time, and he hasn't got one. And I'm looking for, like, the reason why, and I can't find, like, It's just, like, he's been banned from Ukraine. He's, he's inspired by how the offensive in Lujansk keeps rolling, roll and roll. Well, he was, he was apparently trying to buy a house in Crimea. And, yeah, he was also, he had apparently also been invited to move to Russia. Well, they do, they do that kind of, like, cultural outreach. But it tends to be for the more cancelled among Western celebrities.
Starting point is 00:03:50 I'm amazed, Russell Brand hasn't had, like, an offer that he's considered serious. Like, he's, he's going with the Jesus thing. that's fine, but like, arguably you get a better quality of life just going to Russia and you get to, like, wrestle with Putin or whatever. I think I'm just very confused about, like, who Russia sort of gives their passports to because there are like, they're not giving it out to anyone. And that's the thing, because like Fred Durst not getting a Russian passport. But Steven Segal is. But Steven Segal is. Also, the other thing is, like, correct me if I'm wrong, who's saying, Durst has been trying to get one for a while.
Starting point is 00:04:21 He's been like 10 years. He hasn't mentioned it for a while, but also like Fred Durst, I don't know if Fred Durst has become woke. But he is like, he's like, got some fairly progressive, like, opinions on trans people, which I only discovered because apparently he said from while streaming. Yeah, yeah, no, he's a woke ally, Fred Durst and therefore not welcome in the Territory of the Russian Federation. Yeah, he was also, he also had a cameo in I saw the TV glow, a film I haven't seen, but apparently, yeah. Fuck, okay, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, and also, like, obviously, Limbiscuit are having a bit of, like, a renaissance at the moment, you know,
Starting point is 00:04:57 sort of running on a high in a way that a lot of the other new metal bands are not really able to do. So, yeah, like, I don't know whether that's related to the fact that he didn't get a Russian passport and he was just like, okay, fuck it, I'm going woke. This is bullshit. I wanted my house in Crimea. There are now at least three genders. Yeah, but it is, I am just really fascinated about, like, who, because I guess, like, when Snowden went through, there was, like, a period of time in the early 2010s where, like, they were giving out, he was giving out Russian passports to like Western dissidents, right? And the idea is sort of being like, okay, if you're like going to critique the West from like a national security point of view, you know, and obviously there are like political reasons why that was afforded, right?
Starting point is 00:05:37 And there was a lot of criticism leverage to like Snowden, et cetera for doing like, and like Assange as well for doing that. Yeah. But now it's just like, yeah, if you're like a fucking shithead, but also you're not, you've got to be a shithead, but you can't be too embarrassing. And that's why I'm kind of curious as to like, is Russell Brand like too embarrassing for Russia? I saw a film for getting Sarah Marshall, very annoying. Get him to Greek. Why is this? It's insults to our Orthodox culture.
Starting point is 00:06:08 So we got some stuff to get through today. We're going to be talking about the Netflix WB merger, or will it be, maybe it's going to be paramount and therefore another jewel in the Ellison crown. But we're going to be talking about that on Thursday. Today we have an update, most importantly, this is so important. we have an update on the orb watch. It's some old music. Orb music.
Starting point is 00:06:30 I'm so excited. Were you following who won the FIFA Peace Prize this year? You know, I follow this every year that it's, that they've done it. And so, you know, as an avid sort of FIFA Peace Prize watcher, I was, I was not surprised to learn that one Donald John Trump. I was going to say I did make a big bet that Haruki Murakami was going to win this year. Disappointed me again. Yeah. So that's right. Why don't they ever nominate any women for the FIFA Peace Prize? This is bullshit. Well, I think the thing about the FIFA Peace Prize is that you have to kind of go on the campaign for it. Like it's mostly about like what dinner
Starting point is 00:07:17 parties do you go to in the run up? It's like, do you like the 50 oldest guys in like the football equivalent of the Academy Francaise like you. And if not, then you're cooked. People, I mean, people sort of fail to admit, but Donald Trump only won it, like, very, very, like on a margin. And it was, like, actually, like a VACOR that, um, that resulted in the world difference. Well, I think that the key is, I think, like, a lot of people are like, oh, uh, the FIFA Peace Prize is so political.
Starting point is 00:07:44 And, like, Trump only won because it was his turn. And, like, there are so many amazing, what, hold out, what do they say they give it for? unwavering commitment and special actions. There are so many unwavering commitment and I love special actions. There are so many that are like actually boundary pushing that are done by like people who aren't
Starting point is 00:08:03 I'm just going to say it. Older white men right and they're always overlooked by FIFA. So, no, what has happened here is Gianni Infantino one of our... Johnny Baby. Yeah, Johnny Baby. One of our favorite European bald men. I would say in many ways
Starting point is 00:08:19 Trump's most sort of high effort Licksbistle, right? Because, like, he's got a lot of sycophants around him. Of course he does. He's the president. But, like, for some reason, this one Italian man has just really decided to get his tongue all the way up there. And so on that basis, has invented a kind of Stalin prize, like a kind of parallel Nobel Prize, in order to give to him. And I really, I'm not so interested in who won the FIFA Peace Prize this year. I'm interested in whether they ever do it again and who they give it to if they do. Well, they're going to, they could, they have a number of things they could do, right?
Starting point is 00:08:54 They could be like, hey, the FIFA Peace Prize is directed at whoever we need something from. Like, it's going to be MBS next year and then maybe it'll be Trump Jr. I like to better when it was a more transparent outreach called the, um, the SEP Blatter, um, like, peace suitcase full of euros. And so, but he, what I think is, is true about Johnny Infantino is that he has absolutely nailed how to like get Trump to do things for you without necessarily. Szili bribing him. Yeah. Zelensky should be paying attention. He should be awarding Trump different kinds of Ukrainian medals.
Starting point is 00:09:28 What Zelensky should do if he wants to, like, you know, get America back behind, you know, back behind Ukraine, is he should just award Trump a Jason Isaacs and the death of Stalin amount of medals for like specific battlefield actions. He'd be like, congratulations Donald Trump. You are now the number one drone countermeasure expert in Carcalfe. I think if Donald Trump had the option to wear a Ukrainian dress uniform to everything he was going to from now on, he would do that. What Infantino said, which I love, is again, like, he knows how to talk to Trump, where he was like, this is, this award is being presented in recognition of his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world. Infantino then turned to Trump and he took the stage to accept the trophy. He says, this is your prize. This is your peace prize.
Starting point is 00:10:16 There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere. you want to go. Incredible. Just lay it all out in front of him. I mean, I think the thing is, like, all of this stuff, every kind of like international prize that's awarded is always like cynical, it's always political, right? Of course it is. But we're now seeing that politics is breaking down into the weird faster than those sort of prizes and stuff can metabolize it, which means, I think we can tie this into another
Starting point is 00:10:42 example of that, the Eurovision song contest, right? like now fracturing because the EBU sort of forced through Israel staying in it. The obvious answer, the compromise answer, how does Eurovision keep going? You give that one to Donny as well. Doesn't even have to do a song, but I'd love to see if he did. I think it would not be hard to get him to at least be involved in planning America's entry into Eurovision. There is no one as gay as Donald Trump.
Starting point is 00:11:11 You know how they said of Catalina he was to like, the worst man unhanged like Donald Trump is the gayest man ungayed and I seriously think that like okay after you give him the Ukrainian Colonel C with all the medals and whatever and we resolve the war in Ukraine's favor
Starting point is 00:11:29 somehow right the next thing to distract him from doing any more evil shit you just put him in charge of American Eurovision he would love it he would be thrilled he would every day he would show up wearing all of his medals and his FIFA Peace Prize medal and he would
Starting point is 00:11:45 Honestly, direct a pretty good performance. Yeah, he would direct like a good performance. Yeah, I mean, it would be kind of like, he's a musicals guy, so I think it would be, it would fall in that direction. But maybe that's okay, you know, maybe that's what Europe's been waiting for. Look, Europe has long ago left its tradition of patter singing for, like, the avant-garde, leaving it largely just to Broadway to carry the torch. It's just like how techno bounced between Detroit and Berlin and Detroit and Berlin to like really become what it was. It's just like that. It's just like that.
Starting point is 00:12:15 sort of be a very distinctly European sound. Like, I think that this actually, I actually would award him the FIFA Peace Prize for finally, like, uniting the world by making European, modern European patter singing. But yeah, they basically FIFA just gave him the C. Montgomery Burns Award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. And, uh, they're the C. Jonathan Baby Award. And the thing is, every other sort of like person that FIFA needs to bust her up is too stupid to fall for this?
Starting point is 00:12:44 I don't think that the like, you know, the Cassery Royals would be like, oh, thank you for the like, um, congratulations on most day laborers thrown off a stadium by accident award, you know? Because they have stuff already, but for Trump, it's never enough. And so he needs the trinkets. He needs the balls. You like shiny things.
Starting point is 00:13:03 He's got, you know, he's got ADHD. I totally get it. Yeah, that's true. He needs his orb. I wish I would be awarded the FIFA piece, so like he gets, what does he gets like a trophy? He gets a medal. Is that like a cash, like award with it, like the Nobel? No, it's just a certificate. I think the certificate probably contains bribe instructions.
Starting point is 00:13:22 It's just like the first award that you have to give you a Swiss bank routing number to accept. The first award that's actually, it's always awarded to two individuals. It's awarded to the individual and an unrelated shell company. Yeah, but also, number one, the other thing is, though, it's an orb. They've given him another orb. Football has given Trump a number. other orb, and I think that's beautiful. He always returns to the orb.
Starting point is 00:13:47 It's the most, the most noble form. The guy, the guy loves a sphere. He does. He can't get enough of his sphere. It's mathematically perfect, you know? He then said he stopped, he's basically stopped every war that is, that could have happened. That was nice one. Yeah, it was pretty good. He says, different, so many different wars we were able to end, in some cases just before
Starting point is 00:14:06 they started. Well, I think, the funny thing is one of the things he likes a reference for that is, um, Thailand in Cambodia, which he did in the most kind of indelicate possible way of just like threatening them both with worse tariffs until they agreed to stop shooting each other. That has now, that might be cooked already. So another victory for the world's greatest peacemaker. Yeah, brilliant. Doing the Tom Lera a bit where it's like I stopped doing sassau when Kessinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, where it's like I stopped doing sassar when Trump dishonored the FIFA Peace Prize. But if the moment that like a conflict erupts between Cambodia and Mia,
Starting point is 00:14:42 Marfifah should strip him of the Peace Prize. You can no longer wear this medal anywhere you want to go. Only some of the time. Yeah, yeah. But this is also another stupid prize. I guess in his segment I'm calling stupid prizes. This is just a little addendum before we go on to the main meet of what we're talking about. You remember how Alex Carp was a little...
Starting point is 00:15:03 You mean visibly neurodivergent, you piece of shit? Like, he was fucking Aplist. You mean how Alex Carp was like visibly having... an ADHD moment on stage, just like all the ADHD moments I have where I like sniff a lot and talk way too loudly. Yeah, it's like one of the symptoms of ADHD is you're more susceptible to head colds. And so he's just very sniffily. Yeah, though, of course, the, um, I should have seen it. I should have really seen that clearly what was happening when Alex Karp was, um, unable or unwilling to sit still slurring his words and, uh, talking grandiosely about, I think about how everyone at the New York
Starting point is 00:15:40 Times is fake to him, then, yeah, no, definitely that is classic ADHD. I mean, the thing is with teachers, you have to watch in your class, and like, there are a lot of, especially little boys will present this way where they will also be fidgeting in their chairs and talking about how, you know, New York Times deal books very unfair. The New York Times is very unfast of them. Yeah, exactly. And so they've said, again, in what can only be described as a succession level bit of corporate PR damage control, they've been like,
Starting point is 00:16:10 Okay, what are we going to do? Go on the offensive. We're going to say, oh yeah, well, Alex Carb is neurodivergent. And he went on to say, in the announcement of this Alex Carb Neurodiversity fellowship, where it's worth like $200,000 over a year, he says the Neurly Divergent, like myself, will disproportionately shape America's future. And this is a recruitment pathway for exceptional neurodivergent talent. However, the job description then has to state, this is not a diversity initiative. Yeah, I love to get the Alex Carp Brain Goodening Scholarship. Makes me feel great, I imagine. Yeah, it's the Alex
Starting point is 00:16:44 Carp gamer autism rather than like autism that like causes you. First question, let's see that hearts of iron mod list Playboy. Yeah, exactly. It's the hearts of iron. It's the Alex Carp Award for kids who can game good. Not the Alex Carp Award.
Starting point is 00:17:00 Weirdly it's been awarded to Bashar al-Assad. Yeah, then when Assad actually came in for the face-to-face interview, they needed to be like, oh shit, all right, you're too diverse. This is too much diversity. We can't do it.
Starting point is 00:17:14 Anyway, yeah, so this is stupid prizes. Two very stupid prizes that have the other been in now. This is a pretty good stupid prize. I like this one. Oh yeah. Fucking love that. Another quick bit of news where we get into what is basically our main segment for today, which is something I've been meaning to talk about for a little while,
Starting point is 00:17:29 which is, of course, going back to something I think we're just going to come back to again and again over the next. I hope not too long because I hope something happens that makes these organizations just not exist and that we get a like, I don't know, I want to say like full Presbyterian temperance movement about gambling in the sort of global north. But Kalshi and Polly Market are of course back in the news because Kalshi has a strategic partnership with CNN and CNBC that will basically like give odds on all of the news events that they're talking about. Yeah, great, fantastic. I mean, to be fair, I was thinking for certain news events,
Starting point is 00:18:09 Like, for instance, Trump getting his, like, part of his ear shot off. The polymarket sort of ticker on the bottom that's like, yo, did that shit really happen? Did they get him? That would enhance that experience for me, I think. Maybe also if we could get, like, a little, like, subway surfers vertical in the side of, like, all news channels. And then also I could go on my phone during that.
Starting point is 00:18:30 That would probably kind of complete the experience for me. Yeah, it's like you should be able to get, like, detailed 26-way parlays on like how many bullets did the assassin fire. Was the assassin Femboy Assad? I don't know if we have an answer to whether or not whether or not the Trump would be assassin was Femboy-pilled or not. And I think that's a great shame, you know. This is what happens when you put a podcaster in charge of the FBI.
Starting point is 00:18:54 Yeah, the data, according to Axios, will be featured on CNN's air through a real-time ticker that can be referenced across platforms when any journalist makes a prediction. Oh, God, really? I was joking. Okay. Fuck. No, no. The thing you were joking about is the thing that they're actually doing. Pretty good. Oh, damn. Okay, cool. Fine. That's fine.
Starting point is 00:19:11 Cynically, it's a very smart way for CNN. Because, like, the issue with a lot of kind of broadcast news places is obviously they've been like hemorrhaging views, right? And the question has always been like, how do we sort of like bring more viewers to watch the news? Now, you could argue, well, you could make the news better. You could make it like more informative. You could, you know, you could take your viewers seriously. I'm hearing all of that. But let me put this to you. That shit costs money.
Starting point is 00:19:34 Well, yeah, and yeah, it's like, well, what if instead you turn everyone into Howard from Uncut Gems? Someone was like, yeah, that actually sounds like a good idea. And I think actually, like, I don't know, because like, I was thinking about this today and I was just like, well, whenever like attacks happen and you're sort of waiting for information, like, if you go on any social media platform, though I guess like mostly like X or whatever, but like there's always that sort of period of time where basically you have everyone sort of speculating like what the race of the attacker was, right? Absolutely. Like, they bullied the cops into releasing that information. So now we can put a calcium thing over that that's like white, question mark? Well, this is it. And then now it's just like, well, if you guess the ethnicity, then you can win some money.
Starting point is 00:20:15 And if you guess how many bullets were fired. With a 26-way parlay that's like, because I nailed the precise, like, micro-ethnicity. Tadjic, calling it now. This guy's like, he's Croatian. He used a crossbow. It struck four people. One of them died. Two of them got minor injuries.
Starting point is 00:20:34 It's like weirdly like one guy put an outside bet on one of those people getting shot by the police by accident and that paid out big time. No, it's great. I just didn't expect him to be like, I didn't expect him to be half past. And obviously this won't lead to any problems at all. This won't lead to like really bizarre things happening, but you find out lunch later on. And I'm not saying that Kalshi will do this, but I'm basically saying that like, you know, we've seen how pernicious so much of like the gambling tech has kind of become and we've also
Starting point is 00:21:06 seen how permissive respective Western governments have been about letting these gambling companies like basically take over what's left the public life like I don't I don't watch ads very often because you know I don't like seeing white people on on advertisements that was a joke that's a joke just in case anyone wants to anyone wants to clip that that is a joke the studio immediately raided on suspicion of of, like, incitement to racial hatred. But, like, I was watching, like, TV the other day, and they're obviously advertising, like, Sky Sports and stuff.
Starting point is 00:21:39 And one of the ways of they advertise Sky Sports is, like, that they have integration with, like, one of the big gambling companies. And the way that they present it is very much just like, oh, like, you know, if you want to increase your fun at the sports game, you can gamble. You can treat footballers like horses now. Cool. Do we treat horses well?
Starting point is 00:21:58 I assume we do. you know but it's like the way in which they now present gambling as sort of being kind of like integrated into like your social experience and this is the way that I think that we should see Kalshi and we should see like its successes and its competitors afterwards it is not like a gambling kind of platform in and of itself but it is a reflection of the way in which like the continued gamification of social relations the continued transactional approach to the way that like we are encouraged to make French. and relationships and the ways in which and like facilitating that being manipulated. We're going to see, I really do think that we're going to see a lot of weird stuff happening partly as a result of like gambling tech basically like making
Starting point is 00:22:41 every type of social experience you have one in which you can sort of capitalize on. Oh, completely. I mean, and the thing is, right, is that these companies are, and I think this comes no surprise to anyone who listens to this podcast, these companies are incredibly political, nakedly political.
Starting point is 00:22:57 Polymarket, for example, and I believe Kalshi as well, were, you know, basically putting their thumb on the scale of the New York mayor's election without doing that in any kind of illegal way, because they would just report how Kalshi odds are suggesting that Zoran only has an 8% chance of winning, even after he got the Democratic primary nomination, right? It's that they, and to make it, you know, and that shapes reality. It's basically, you're able to do polling, but by who owns the most cryptocurrency because that's how these betting markets work. You're betting, you're doing, you're buying and selling prediction contracts with cryptocurrency, you're not placing bets on outcomes with money, which is how
Starting point is 00:23:35 they're legal. Now, the only thing keeping them from being legal and utterly pervasive in the UK is the extremely powerful gambling lobby. That's it. That's all. But because these companies are so political, right? Like Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor to Kalshi. Andresen Horowitz is their biggest investor. Like, they are undoubtedly, like, politically oriented organizations. They're also something you can do. For example, you can use Kalshi to bet on when the department of like the United States will next murder a Venezuelan fisherman. You can do that. And so what's to stop a, you know, someone who works at the Department of War in the United States trying to push the murder of a Venezuelan fisherman to a certain date so that some friend of his who's placed a very large
Starting point is 00:24:23 outside bet on Kalshi or Polly Market will be able to, you know, cash in. What's to stop that? Nothing. Nothing at all. Yeah. And like the, there have also been wagers, for example, on when will the IPC classify Gaza as experiencing a famine this year? Or will there be a mass population relocation in 2025 and so on and so on? All right, all right. The main thing I wanted to talk about today is a segment I've referred to as the callow youth of Nigel Farage or I can't believe the Send Them Back Party is teeming with avowed racists or British journalism yet again wins the credulity award. Are you telling me that Dulloch College in Southeast London
Starting point is 00:25:02 is a place deeply steeped in racism and bigotry? Do you expect me to believe that that's plausible? That's a plausible thing to happen in a private school in Southeast London. A place where, like, if you go into the main hall, because I got married in Dulloch College and like... You did, yeah. The main hall is just like there are portraits of just like colonial offices. I once, when I went there, I once spilled a strawberry milkshake on one of those because my poker game got interrupted.
Starting point is 00:25:36 I, yeah, it's a deeply strange place. Once again, fate has conspired to give me some insights personally into the news and, yeah, of course he was a horrible Nazi prick at school. Like, he's a horrible Nazi prick now. You don't need that much investigation into this, but also. Yeah, also something to bear in mind is that he's still bullying children now. Because I was like, my initial thing was just like, okay, fine, like, not to sort of say that, you know, he was a kid and you shouldn't matter because, you know, I think ultimately that's up to people's discretion, whether that's like, you know, something that they would, you know, whatever your sort of thing is, but the point is, like, when this story sort of came out. And the thing that, like, journalists weren't saying is that, like, he's trying to sort of say, on the one hand, he's trying to say that, like, oh, I never bullied these kids. It was just banter, et cetera, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:26:20 But it's like, during this time where he's trying to defend himself and claim he's not a racist, he's putting out, or he's like posting videos or reposting them anyway on like his ex account. And one of these videos is like a school in which like, and I think it's just like a primary school. I don't even know. It might even be like a primary like special education school. And like the kids who are featured in this video are like mostly like either South Asian or they're black. But they're kids. But the main thing is like they are kids and they are British kids.
Starting point is 00:26:48 And he posts this video basically saying that, oh, Is this what you want your schools to look like? Or this is what our schools could look like. You know, without sort of obviously substantiating, like, well, what do you mean by that? And obviously, no one with high paid media jobs are sort of willing to ask him that. But it's like, yeah, you're still bullying, you're still racially bullying kids. Like, you are now like, what, fucking like 60 something and you are still racially bullying kids. It's always rough once someone peaks in high school, you know?
Starting point is 00:27:14 And they just do the same thing. I have a buddy from school who's very much like that. like he kind of like has super racist i can't want to get a super right no i'm just messing around but um he does have this like one line that he says and i'm not going to say it because like i don't want to out him to um to like the two like schoolmates of mine who listened to the show but they'll know who he is like he'll just say this one line that he kind of like he came up with when he was 16 and at the time people thought it was funny and he like we are now in our mid firsties and he's still saying it oh that's wrongly but with nigel with nigel forage it's like his line is being racist so yeah his line is just full full force saying the word. He's also very much still saying it just in ways that are in ways that are a bit more media trained so he can sort of just avoid being seen by anybody. Well, I mean, I think the thing is, right, it's not so much interesting to me or it's not a surprise to me that Nigel Farage used to be racist because, again, he still is, right?
Starting point is 00:28:11 What's interesting to me is that. That's a good version of the Mitch Hedberg joke. Yeah, he still is, but he used to be as well. No, we've now been given kind of the imprimatur of the British, like, kind of press, or at least the Guardian, sort of the last liberal paper left, really, to notice this. And it's so obviously like a Labour attack line to be like, we went back and we did the easiest opposition research in the world. And I think you're deeply naive if you imagine that some version of this hasn't been sitting in a file for maybe a decade at this point, if not more. But now it's the full court press of we have, you know, 20 witnesses who saw you doing the racist chit that you do in public every day. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:55 But in a way that hasn't been shaped to fit neatly into one of the acceptable wings of British sort of public discussion. Well, like, genuinely, I remember hearing about Farage in the in the Dulhage College combined cadet force, which is an institution that exists, like on exercise, marching. through villages in the home counties singing like Nazi marching songs. I remember reading about that in, I want to say, private eye, probably 10 years ago. And I don't think it was that no one was interested in that as a piece of news. I think it was that that was being sort of kept for a later date. And the later date is now, right? That it's gotten to the point where a reform government looks like a serious possibility. And so we're going to have to start leaking the stuff that you know, we've been keeping back.
Starting point is 00:29:46 And again, the least surprising thing in the world, but also I think it's one of these things. I think it is another piece of Morgan McSweeney's Jupiterian mind, right? Not to necessarily attribute it to him, but whoever it is, right? Whatever kind of labor right, politics is happening here is you really sort of attack him on this when he's sort of at his electorally strongest, and he's going to flounder because of course he does. But there's a decent chance that what you just do is establish a norm that like, yeah,
Starting point is 00:30:11 you could just have been a racist bully at school until the age of like 18 and continue on that course for the rest of your political life and that's fine actually. Also there's this idea right that it's like well it's not as though he was a racist bully who then sort of changed you know
Starting point is 00:30:27 he's it's been a pretty fucking straight through line all that's happened is he's gotten more refined. Yeah he's learned that he can't sing the songs about the national fronts in public we can do it in private but also I think the other thing is like my sort of like take on the whole reform thing in terms of like what it represents on a sort of political
Starting point is 00:30:46 level is that like what Nigel Farage has basically done has well what his big realization is that like you can build an entire political movement around being a cunt and by that I mean like you know you can sort of take we know things that we've talked about on this show for many many years a lot of the time where it's just like well you know for a long time like the sort of consensus in British politics is that like things cannot materially get better things can only get worse and the sort of, you know, the bit of rope that other parties will give you is like, okay, things might get worse for you, but there'll be someone else below you and we'll make their lives even worse, right? And you can take great joy in the fact that the people that you
Starting point is 00:31:21 don't like for like whatever reason are really, really struggling and, you know, in your mind, you can be like, oh, it's their fault and stuff like that. But like ultimately everyone's way of life kind of is just getting sort of worse and harder to finance and so on and so on. What Farage, I think, will realize was that, yeah, like you can sort of build a political movement around not just being miserable, but making other people's lives miserable. And there will be lots of people who will just kind of simply enjoy watching suffering, right? And in a way that like, you know, he's sort of brushed off his kind of like, you know, the sort of racist things he did in school, not even by way of sort of even saying that, yeah, like, you know, this happened and I was young and I'm sorry and
Starting point is 00:31:58 like the political environment like is one that like, you know, I actually like my political movement rejects and like wholeheartedly. Because also to say that you reject it is just kind of be like, well, you're rejecting like your MP who just a few weeks ago went on like TV to say that there were too many like non-white people and advertisements and then had like members of the party defending her, right? Including like runners in the press being like, yeah, actually like she was right. And what she actually meant was that like, you know, DEI is sort of like taken over everything and become too well. Because like no, she said very directly what she means. You don't need to sort of like, you know, portray it in anything, you know, kind of like, you know, you don't need to try to add
Starting point is 00:32:33 nuance to it. She said what she meant very, very directly. And I think. his big gamble is this very much like you can kind of you know you can take people's anger and you can take people's frustration but you can also take this kind of like the sort of broader political consensus that he emerges out from where he's like you don't actually have to make
Starting point is 00:32:50 anything better no one's asking you no one's asking the reform party to do that they are actually you know if anything like you know the most sort of like fervent reform supporters just want other people's lives to be worse they're obsessed with mass deportations they're obsessed with like you know cutting whatever benefits
Starting point is 00:33:06 are left. They're obsessed with like kind of getting rid of public transport. Like all these things that will demonstrably make people's lives worse. That's what they're for. And he's and his movement in many ways is like the easiest vehicle in order to establish that. So yeah, there is absolutely a free line that goes from like his childhood up to now. But I feel like the way in which other media outlets haven't quite recognized what's going on is going to be like, I mean, this has sort of been the case for a long time. And so in many ways, this is like a continuation. What I think is interesting is like maybe like 20 years ago this could have been something that would have been a real
Starting point is 00:33:40 like, you know, it could have done some real damage to him and the fact that like it's kind of been a bit of a square, I'm not saying that it hasn't had any impact at all, but I do think that like the impact that like the Labour Party believe it will have will be so minimal. And that's not even really because of like
Starting point is 00:33:55 Farage's charisma or anything or the fact that like people really like reform. It's just the fact that like the environment in which Farage thrives in is one in which like the Labour Party and the Tories and like, basically every party except for the Greens and maybe the Lib Dems are very much kind of like, they very much have a desire
Starting point is 00:34:12 to maintain that. I can't believe my school bullies have unionized. Also, when you read, right, well, The Guardian published an interview with another former pupil Jean-Pierley-Lew who claimed that he heard Farage making racist and anti-Semitic comments and singing gas them all at Jewish pupils or chanting Oswald Mosley in the
Starting point is 00:34:28 playground. To be clear, when a lot of this stuff that he's accused of is from when he was a prefect, mind you, in the sixth form and up a sixth. So like when he was like 17 or 18, he would sidle up to me and growl, Hitler was right, or gas them and add a long hiss to simulate the sound of gas showers. And it's like, name me a single person who cannot envision Nigel Farage still doing that now. Oh, 100%. But he said, they also said that he was the leader of a group of teenagers who would wait
Starting point is 00:34:56 for Jewish boys as they came out of prayers to taunt them. Or he would say, you know, to African students, like, that's the way back to wherever you came from and so on and so on. And, you know, The thing is about Nigel Farage is, and again, this is where I think, you know, British journalism, it wins its massive credulity award is it's not just that that's part of the background. It's that that's what he's selling. It's like, that's already priced in. The idea that he's a, and by saying, oh, ultimately, ultimately the argument being, oh, he was rude, essentially. He was far too rude. Because that's what it boils down to, which is he said things he shouldn't have said, not this is one person. who is at the head of a movement that genuinely believes these things and in order to safeguard everybody who lives here, they need to be stopped. But rather, you said the no-no words, right?
Starting point is 00:35:45 Is that all of the thrill that people get from, I never want anyone to tell me I can't say the no-no words again because I'm 12. Yeah, the thing that made him as a teenager decides to sort of like brand himself as like the school neo-Nazi. And like all of that is,
Starting point is 00:36:02 that's what is being advertised. So what you're doing is it's like you're saying to someone they shouldn't smoke because, you know, the cigar smoke makes a room smell bad. Looks just as cool when you do it, et cetera. Yeah, it may look cool, but it does annoy people around you. And there are a lot of people who are like, really both? It does both things? Amazing. So you're telling me you're triggered and owned?
Starting point is 00:36:23 Yeah, well, kind of. And, you know, the idea that this is some kind of revelation, because, hey, as you guys were saying earlier, this has been known about in the public domain for a while. It's just everyone started to care about it now that it's frankly too late for it to make any of a difference and the fact and also like Farage is still in some sense flailing but in another much more real sense actually I think fighting back kind of effectively because he's denying it
Starting point is 00:36:48 he's denying it up until the point where basically I think 28 of his former schoolmates came forward I've come forward and been like yeah this guy's a Nazi piece of shit and then he said okay well maybe it happened when I didn't mean anything by it all of these people are politically motivated anyway. All 28 of these people were politically motivated. And then he said, I've never engaged in racist behavior with intent, which Dick Wolf, law and order, racist intent,
Starting point is 00:37:13 let's make a picture. So he said, have I said things 50 years ago that you can interpret as being banter in a playground? Your Honor, Dulwich College upper sixth is a lot like a comedy podcast in that it's got like paste to it. And sometimes you lose yourself in the bit and you say something that's just the cheapest, dumbest chart, and you don't necessarily mean it. And on that basis, I think I should be given grace. Listen, I am the only person on earth equipped to compare Dulwich College senior school and doing comedy bits and doing banter, right? No one else has got, has like come from Dollar's College to being funny, right? It's never happened. It just isn't. It just wasn't. It never has been. He was just a fucking little Nazi. Yeah. And like, and so he also says,
Starting point is 00:38:01 have I said things 50 years ago that you could interpret as being banter in a playground that you can interpret in the modern light of day in some way, of course, but have I been part of an extremist organization or engaged in direct unpleasant personal abuse on that basis? No. Listen, you might have me banked to rights on this stuff. What about a bunch of other stuff that be harder to prove? Yeah. You could never prove that I was in the national front from the years 176, 1992. That's true. We could never prove that. Those are just random dates,
Starting point is 00:38:27 I guess. I grabbed that as a joke to lawyers listening. Farage also said, I've never directly racially abused anybody. He's also fighting back. He's saying it's disgraceful. He's saying it's disgraceful to frame a question linking himself to dictator Adolf Hitler. And it's like, well, hang on
Starting point is 00:38:43 a second. You did say he was right. You linked yourself to him. The person who linked you to Adolf Hitler was you. It was It was disgraceful of him to do that. Yeah, it was disgraceful of you to note that thing I said. But that's the thing. If you are, and I think this really, again, this is, I don't think there's a lesson for
Starting point is 00:39:02 the left here because this, you only get to do this if you're a Nazi. You only get to do this if you're very right way. And you only get to like operationalize this thing that everybody knew about him, but which could never stick if you are the labor right. Yeah, because otherwise it's just like, oh, you're, you think everyone's racist, blah, blah, blah, You think everyone's racist. Are you insulting his supporters? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:39:24 Like, what if, if fucking like Zara, say for the sake of it, pulling a name out of a hat, if Zara Sultana had like gone with any of this, right, is a real attack line against Farage. The first response would have been who. And the second response would have been, oh, that crazy Zara Sultana shoots her mouth off again, right? And so to us anyone who doesn't necessarily have the like admittedly waning and kind of farcical institutional power to to, like, make this stick as journalism. Well, and also, I think it comes back to the way I tend to see British political media. They're asking you, and this is more than, like, American political media as well.
Starting point is 00:40:03 This is kind of unique to us is their ask is everyone has a very set role to play. And the role of someone like Zara Sultata, Jeremy Corbyn, Zach Polanski is to be ridiculed, right? Like, everything you say is to be treated with maximum contempt. Are you suggesting that the British media ecosystem just kind of replicates the dynamics of the Dalich College playground? Why does the media resemble the school? Oh my God, I can feel my hair falling out in my t-shirt becoming a turtleneck. If you as Zaras Sultana or Zach Polanski make this point, then you're playing, it doesn't matter what you're saying because you're playing the role of, oh, you just accuse everyone of being racist. You think breakfast is racist for God's sake, right?
Starting point is 00:40:51 Yeah. That's, and that's your role. And it's like, well, if I have 28 witnesses saying that my breakfast racially abused people, I might start concluding that my breakfast was racist. Or the other thing they would do is they would say, by calling, by saying this to him, you're insulting all the millions of people who vote for him by suggesting they would vote for an avowed racist.
Starting point is 00:41:11 You've like lost the argument here because like you're not attacking him on his policy. You're going for like personality. You're going for his personality. He has the personality trait of saying, gas them all. Yeah, exactly. Which is going to shortly to be a protected characteristic under the EHRC. If it's not, oh, I have some stuff from the EHRC about this as well. I hope you're excited for that great Equalities and Human Rights Commission to do its job.
Starting point is 00:41:38 So Farage went on saying, and the BBC was very happy to use blackface back then, not just in the black and white minstrel show. They did it in It Ain't Half Hot Mum. It's, it's, this is such a like, uh, murdering your parents and then falling on the mercy of the court as an orphan, right? Like, it was, it was society what made me racist, which to an extent is true, sure, is the BBC racist. Yeah, of course it is. But like, do we have the kind of common sense to know that the person saying this is a panicked more racist racist, racist trying to like deflect attention from himself? I would hope so, but I could be disappointed. Yeah. Unfortunately, uh, if you're ever going to have, uh, an audience. larger than podcast you just started doing one day. I'm afraid you're not allowed to notice that. No. Yeah, I'm afraid this is, this is kind of the limit. But he says, I can't put up with the double standards of the BBC about what I'm alleged to have said 49 years ago and what you were putting out on mainstream content. So I want an apology from the BBC for virtually everything
Starting point is 00:42:37 you did throughout the 1970s and 80s. And it's like, look, the BBC has a great deal to apologize for from the 1970s and 80s, a great deal. Certainly some of its programming about who will fix it. But again, like, he, but what's he doing? He's just going on the attack, and this is completely, they cannot metabolize it. They cannot metabolize it because their response to him is just going to put them then in the, okay, well, now it's time for the BBC to get made a mockery of and say that they're not in touch with the country in time for GB News to attack them.
Starting point is 00:43:09 There is no way, I think. any of this was not obvious, no way any of it makes really altogether that much difference except to like, I don't know, dozen or so people who were wavering about reform support genuinely on the basis that like they have a certain immigration number they'd like to hit because they like that particular number, right? There's no universe in which anybody cares about this because it's just another advertisement to the people that already like him. But asked why Farage had not apologized as he was urged to do on Sunday, but the outgoing head of the government's equality's watchdog Baroness Kishwar Faulkner. Danny Kruger, the Reform MP defected
Starting point is 00:43:45 from the Tories, told Times radio that Farage contested the allegations. So he can't acknowledge what he doesn't believe to be true. Asked about Farage's comments. Faulkner said she felt, quote, confused and disturbed. You have a situation where when you read these allegations in terms of what's attributed to him, it looks utterly ghastly on paper. But then you try to contextualize it and you think, this is 50 years ago, you know. Young people say all sorts of things. I love Kishua. Faulkner's peace, love and understanding turn, I just think it's, in many ways, one of the crueler things that Nigel Farage has done lately, it seems, since getting out of school, is to take Baroness Faulkner away from her true love of foaming transphobia. That's what she wants to be talking about, and you're making her, like, deal with actual racism just because she was in charge of the Equality and Human Rights Commission? What does this have to do with Equality and human rights?
Starting point is 00:44:34 Equality and human rights is about gender policing the bathrooms. Yeah, exactly. This is not about whether or not the, there is no commission and there should not ever be a commission, I guess, to figure out if the putative next prime minister of the United Kingdom ever had a gas them all phase. Nah. I wouldn't think so. I don't think that really relates to a quality of human rights. No, nor commissions even. No.
Starting point is 00:44:56 She said, there was, however, she said an element that she did not understand. The one thing that sadly confuses me about him, and I hear his contextualization of it all, why can't he just offer an apology for? for any distress he would have caused, even if he genuinely didn't mean it. I wonder, could it be because he means it and he likes it and he's going to keep doing it? I mean, just a thought. I appreciate the sort of like responsibility and the kind of caution here. Again, to have been brought in as a kind of like hired gun for an institution to
Starting point is 00:45:28 reconfigure British society in a way that is like deeply insane to any person who ever has to implement it of being like you have to like kick trans women out of all of your shit, then be like, oh, I couldn't, you know, possibly impugn Nigel Farage. It's, you know, but I have concerned. Yeah, it's like, she's, she's being like, Nigel, I am prepared to maximize the amount of benefit of the doubt that you could get. Yeah, in many ways, it's like, as your lawyer, I am advising you to, like, do a fulsome apology. And for some reason, he won't do it. Yeah, or, and then Stephen Pollard has written that, of course, Nigel Farage is not an extremist. He says, it's important to remember Stephen Pollard of course.
Starting point is 00:46:07 Hold on. Hold on. Hold on a second. I understood anti-Semitism to be a kind of grievous poison that is like omnipresent in British political life. And, you know, obviously we had to sort of like get with Corbyn on that basis because, you know, he could have been prime minister for God's sake, right? And if you're going to be maybe prime minister,
Starting point is 00:46:23 you should have, you should be above suspicion, right? And not only do you have to have a sort of guarantee to people that you're not personally anti-Semitic, but also that you won't tolerate those who are, right? And so in that case, on that basis, like, not being sort of effective enough at rooting out anti-Semitism in the Labor Party meant that he could never be Prime Minister. But reform, though, I understand they're fine, right? Well, let me see, I'm sure
Starting point is 00:46:47 Stephen Pollard is a pretty good argument for this. Let me see what he says. He says, I was at a London private school at the same time. Antisemitic abuse was common. One classmate, now a city bigwig, who is doubtless proud of his institution's commitment to diversity, smeared a pork pie in my gym bag. Did the insults and abuse upset me? Initially. But it was soon so common that it became something I barely noticed. Oh, Jesus Christ. Uh-huh. Okay. And the point of this then is, um, bygones are bygones? Boys will be boys. Yeah, he boys will be boys as it. He says, casual racism was normal. We've moved on along,
Starting point is 00:47:19 uh, then, and rightly look back in horror at behavior that was normal. And not too much horror. Not enough horror that would sort of demand that he, you know, resign around a second. Also, like, you're looking, I guess there's like a kind of energy field around, I want to say 1996, maybe 2000, where anything from before then
Starting point is 00:47:39 is the past and we look back on the past but that's different people than now. That's past Nigel Farage
Starting point is 00:47:48 who was a past person and this is present Nigel Farage who's a different guy. They're just similar. That clears it all right up for me. Yeah, and there's also
Starting point is 00:47:56 like a type of anti-Semitism that is like, you know, purely fixed in the past and like something that it shouldn't be taken
Starting point is 00:48:02 seriously time, there is another type of anti-Semitism, which is an ancient prejudice that can only sort of truly be understood by walking through Whitechapel market. Well, Nigel Farage isn't Muslim enough to be inherently anti-Semitic, right? It's not in his DNA. That's a step away from the argument here. Like, I think it's like implicit in it is, well, no, he's not like anti-Semitic as like a kind of like a racial trait.
Starting point is 00:48:27 It's just like a quirk that he had. Well, it was, it was a quirk of the time because, you know, and all. Also, like, the thing is, if you would imagine, I don't know, future Farage, you know, the future Farage who will be like, you know, the leader of whatever version of reform has like it's sort of horrible old guy. If he's in sixth form right now, maybe at college even, you know, probably what he's doing is he might be like, you know, taunting students about Gaza, for example. Because what you're trying to do, and I think what you're trying to do in that case is you are trying to be maximally horrible to people you think are beneath you, you know? And I mean, I will say Dalish College, great place to learn to do that. Really sort of in Colcate you with a lot of history and tradition to really just facilitate those interactions. Yeah. And so, you know, I mean, that what I'm driving at here as well is like he might have just grabbed that like gas them all anti-Semitism because it was in the currents of the air at the time. And the same person now would probably be a sort of virulent Islamophob.
Starting point is 00:49:25 Yeah, I mean, like it was a it was of a time. This is the point that I will give to Stephen Paul. It was all the time when every like. white person who was famous had a flirtation with the National Front bar the clash. Like David Bowie was getting racist with it. It was a weird time. But that's not, that's the opposite
Starting point is 00:49:45 of an excuse. That's an indictment. And also it's like whatever direction it went, it bespeaks ultimately, again, the thing that's really there, which is not about not saying the bad words, but that's about genuinely your belief that there are people
Starting point is 00:50:01 who can be easily marked out, who are hierarchically lower and therefore who should be abused or who should be hurt by the law or whatever right now just humiliated i would say that's the the the key thing is i would take it as a kind of like attack on on dignity well than more than anything else let's go back to paul maybe paulard pulls it out maybe he turns it around uh is are we really going to judge and damn people based and awful things they said when they were children you know 18 year old children um who not really changed that much except in tone, especially when those things were said at a time when sensitivities were very different. It's as if we consider Kirstarmer to want Britain to be a Soviet totalitarian
Starting point is 00:50:40 state because he holidayed in Czechoslovakia as a teenager. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's the thing that is said of Kirstama and it's like similarly cooked. I, this is, I don't know, the whole thing is infuriating. Because as I said, you don't need to sort of go back very far in the archives to be like Nigel Farage is a racist, right? All this is doing, this is like background information about his like racist origin story. It's like we've completed his racist loyalty quest and now we get his like sort of racist law dump. And it's like none of that should even be important because he should be unelectable based on
Starting point is 00:51:21 the things that he says and believes now. And the reason why he isn't is because of decades of compromise in his favor. And Pollard goes on. It's clear what's going on here. An attempt to portray Farage is far right. Yeah, you know, it's crazy. This attempt to portray the Hitler was right guy is far right. Crazy.
Starting point is 00:51:39 I have this attempt to portray the sky as being blue. I'm attempting to locate this fork in this kitchen. And thus reform is some kind of British version of the French National Rally. That's interesting. Are those guys hanging out together? Are they friends? Are there a bunch of photos of them? Like, is that like, is there an increasingly obvious sort of,
Starting point is 00:51:58 international, like a kind of fascist international that they're both in? Because if there was, then it would be kind of an apt comparison, I would say. I mean, look, Stephen Pollard is a very busy journalist. Do you think he has time to Google? That's true. That is true. Yeah, but we're all busy. I get that. Yeah, is he still, is he still on Hinge? Is he still dating? I think he had a rough time on the apps, you know, which is not, I get it, you know? Of course, for anyone who may have forgotten this, Stephen Pollard wrote, what is, I think, the canonical. The whineiest fucking article I've ever read. There are too many anti-Zionists on Tinder and Hinge for me to get a date. Yeah, it is, this is up there in like the article
Starting point is 00:52:41 pantheon of like a whiny conservative articles. Uh, no, he says, uh, whether you agree with reform or oppose everything about it doesn't alter the fact that it is a mainstream party led by a mainstream politician with mainstream supporters. It has been mainstreamed. It is not mainstream by accident. It didn't like fall on the earth like a meteor. Also, like, when all this, when it was like all this stuff was being leveraged on Corbyn's like, well, Labor were a mainstream party. Yeah. Would you say that, would you say that like, sort of Corbyn supporters had very real concerns and it was like insulting to them to dismiss Corbyn off of like sort of personal attacks? Uh, no, we were, uh, activists or worse, uh, extremists.
Starting point is 00:53:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, don't, you know, it's so easy. It's so easy to not know the rules, but, you know, this is, thankfully, thankfully, thankfully, we have. you know, Stephen Pollard, who's, you know, taking time off of his busy getting hedgual to to, you know, give us a little lesson on the, on who's mainstream and who's not.
Starting point is 00:53:41 Any case, any case. All of this is to say is, it's always strange sort of doing like 30 minutes of discussion on something where the conclusion is, this probably isn't anything, right? Because it's like taking a very long journey to nowhere. But rather, it feels a lot
Starting point is 00:53:56 of the same gullible, columnists probably feel as though this is something. They feel as though this is meaningful. And it's just another bit of the copper wire getting yanked out of the, God, they want to Utah and talk about the institutions, the sort of general levels of social trust. The idea that there should be any kind of approaching a standard in public life, these like liberal pillars that have gone just demolished one after the other, partly because they have no material basis, but also partly because well, the sort of erstwhile liberals of the last sort of what 15, 20, 25 years, you can start counting for more or less whenever you want, have decided that it is inconvenient that these things should be in public life have made no case for them because they only want to turn to them when convenient. And I'm sorry, just because it's convenient for you to use them now, they have been neglected because you are all complete morons who are utterly short-termist. Sorry. I think the other aspect of this is also like lots of kind of media types who are really trying to sort of really trying to think about what their place will be in a British politics, like increasingly defined by people like
Starting point is 00:55:03 Farage and defined by reform. We've seen how much like language has kind of changed, especially around like migration, the fact that you have like, you know, risk, so called like respected kind of like analysts and like political commentators and stuff who go on, you know, national TV and national radio and sort of very openly talk about like mass layer support for like mass deportations or, you know, expressing concerns about, you know, white replacement in London or whatever, right? Like, these are things that were really kind of untenable until quite recently. And it does sort of reflect. I mean, you know, people will sort of say that, oh, this, like, reflects, like,
Starting point is 00:55:36 reforms dominance in politics. But, like, again, I kind of think that actually, like, the reverse is true. Like, reform is sort of a response to, again, like, a very hostile, you know, an aggressive, uh, in, you know, political environment that has very much been defended by, you know, the mainstream political parties. Like, like, I would probably wage, like, post 2008, but like, you know, particularly in recent years and particularly after Brexit, where like the failures of Brexit, the failures of like the existing the European Union was sort of constantly sort of like, you know, the blame of that was
Starting point is 00:56:06 constantly put on like various groups who kind of prevented, you know, Britain from becoming this kind of, you know, mass force afterwards, like if they sort of believe that or not. I mean, also it's like a reflective of kind of like inequality at its sort of highest point historically and the ways in which that is like continued to be justified. Reform is like a response to all of these things. But I think like one of the, you know, this is something that like, you know, media types, like mainstream media types don't really understand or they sort of have an unwillingness to understand, but that's partly because British media is so insular and it's so kind of, you know, very much about like who you know and what parties and what dinners you go to, that there's no actual incentive
Starting point is 00:56:42 to really interrogate like the system in which, you know, journalists kind of operate in this country. And I think all of that is sort of important because I think Farage is like the one who really recognises that and has spent a very long time sort of like building or or at least sort of contributing to like an alternate media system. But is like a lot more influential than, you know, your sort of mainstream newspaper columnists and you're, you know, your like BBC news reports and stuff. And I think what we're going to see and what we're going to kind of continuing to see
Starting point is 00:57:09 are lots of like mainstream media types, even trying to figure out whether they have a place in this new media economy where they are far less influential than, you know, the reactionaries on GB News and, you know, they're sort of increasingly radical like younger conservative talking heads who they sort of let run rampant on YouTube or whether like, you know, I guess the choice that they have to make is like,
Starting point is 00:57:30 well, do you sort of bend the knee for Farage, which I think many of them will do. Some already have, but I think we'll see more of that kind of coming in the next kind of few years. Or will they sort of bow out because they kind of recognize that there is no place from them anymore.
Starting point is 00:57:42 And so this is very much like a crisis of media that very sort of like predictably Farage kind of realized quite early on and now these guys are sort of playing catch up while also sort of being in denial about what's going on. Oh, well, I think, they sound pretty well set up for it.
Starting point is 00:57:56 So all the best, guys. Look, I'm sure, I'm sure Rory Stewart's got something up his sleeve. Like, he knows, you know, he knows what he's doing. Be fine. Oh, 100%. Anyway, I think that's probably about time for us today. But I want to, of course, thank everybody for listening. Remind you that there will be another episode this week on the Patreon where I hope to be
Starting point is 00:58:16 discussing the Netflix Warner Brothers or not deal. So do check that out. In the process of scheduling the next Left on Red with Massey Lubchanski about Matti Lubchanski's graphic novel simplicity, which you should buy spoilers. It's very good. We'll talk about it as soon. And also, sorry, we know it hasn't been out recently. There's been a lot of things going on, but we are going to put it out. I forgot how to read again.
Starting point is 00:58:39 Yeah. Sorry. All right, all right. Cool. All right. See you there. Bye, everyone. Bye.
Starting point is 00:58:45 Bye. I'm going to be able to be able to be

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