TRIGGERnometry - Claire Fox on Generation Snowflake, Free Speech and Debate

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

Claire Fox (@Fox_Claire), founder and director of the Academy of Ideas, discusses millenial snowflakes, hypersensitivity, offence, bullying, education, free speech, debate, gay marriage, censorship of drill music, Brexit and a lot more with the guys at TRIGGERnometry. Find us on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissin. And this is the show for you. If you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects, they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts. Our amazing expert guest this week is the director and founder of the Institute of Ideas. Claire Fox, welcome to Trigonometry.

Good to be here. Thank you very much for coming on. The first question we always like to ask our guest is, How did you get to where you are? What's been your story and your journey? Actually, for many years, I was a teacher and I worked in further education, and I was passionate about aspects of education that I thought were neglected, and became interested in creating discussion and debate. I was also involved in politics.

I took a year out from teaching to relaunch what was living Marxism and relaunch it as LM magazine. We weren't pretending it had no relationship to living Marxism, which is what I had at LM, but it also was a different magazine and as much as the living Marxism was set up by the Revolutionary Communist Party. Revolutionally Communist Party closed down.

And there was this magazine I thought was great, had a readership. And so I took the year out to relaunch it with a colleague, Helena Goldberg. We did that. You couldn't affairs magazine. recognizing that we were going to go across left and right free speech magazine brilliant we got sued for libel in the first issue

so my big break and we got sued for libel and we decided that as we were a free speech magazine we weren't going to shred the copies or tear it up or apologize because we hadn't done anything wrong and so we then spent the next three years fighting a libel case but bringing the magazine out and during that time it got following in a subscription base and it built and it became very well known and one of the things that we did was we launched a summer of events called the Institute of Ideas and that was after we lost a libel case but we kind of did this summer of events anyway it was a sellout and then we thought oh

and then people came and said you should do these debates you know it's really important to have discussions and why you know discuss things on panels with people who aren't just the obvious suspects and attract particularly young people to come along and debate, create a new public square. So that was it. We carried on by accidents, and that's kind of how I got where I am now. That's brilliant.

That's what we tried to do on here as well is to have conversations with interesting people just as we were talking before we started. You mentioned there were certain errors of education that you felt were not being properly catered to. What particular would... Well, what I meant by that was, I was, this kind of trigger warning that Elfell

foggy comments coming out now. I felt that the young people I were teaching were increasingly not aware, not widely read. I taught in a further education college. I wasn't expecting them to have kind of had access to the canon, but I did think that there was a closing down and a narrowing down

of what they knew, even in terms of cultural references. An example that I used quite often is because it really struck me at the time was, you know, I taught English and I'd be saying, Right, so there's an apple in this poem. What might that symbolise? Anybody, like, look at me. I go, an apple, you know, like an apple.

And then I realised that they didn't have any clue about apples and Garden of Eden and, you know, any of these kind of, like, potential. So I almost like, and then you sort of say, this reminds me, you know, this is like the 18th century. What is that? You know, 19th century? 20th, anything? Right. Lovely. So I was frustrated by that.

And also just politically, I felt that they were being ill-served in terms of getting a very insipid version of kind of left-wing politics, which I was involved in left-wing politics, but a kind of knee-jerk, one-dimensional kind of version of kind of left-wing politics. So I was frustrated at that. And so I just thought we just need to have more debate and discussion. These young people deserve to have a kind of political culture that's rich and open at the very time when it wasn't rich and open. And it was at the start actually of, you know, it's kind of blower was coming. So it was kind of spin doctors, everything, you know, technocratic politics, no ideals, just at the time when universities were beginning to kind of deploy some of the postmodern tropes and the kind of closing down of debate. So I was arrogant. I can't have this.

And I wanted to have a decent magazine that people could read that would be a bit different and open-minded and bring into it people who you wouldn't normally see it. So the first issue had, you know, Roger Scruton alongside some well-known left-wing commentators. You know what I mean? Like interesting people say interesting things, that was what we did.

Well, that sounds great. And your Wikipedia page, which I'm sure is the best source of information, the most accurate source of... Accurate gone mad. information about it says that you're libertarian. Is that accurate? I think that what has happened subsequent over the last 20 years, I don't mean to me, but to everyone,

is that nobody knows how to label anyone anymore. You know, I came from a Marxist background and I believe in freedom. This apparently is not allowed. Apparently you don't teach that in first year politics degrees. Everybody goes, you can't be a moment. Marxist, you know, and I also am aware of the fact that, you know, Marxism was a very important philosophical outlook for me. I don't disavow it, but I'm no longer involved in an active

Marxist organisation or anything. I consider myself to be on the left, but increasingly, God knows what that means. And so I think that what's happened over the years is that people, the one consistent thing that people can work out about me is that I've consistently argued for free speech. I've consistently argued for free thinking. They think that's. They think that's a libertarian is the appropriate tag, then they go, but you don't appear to be into the free markets. So people get confused.

Anyway, I can't be bothered to argue. So I simply say, I don't see libertarian as an insult. It's just that I wouldn't have chosen that tag myself particularly. Because to me, being libertarian and being associated yourself with Marxism, they seem kind of polar opposites in certain instances. Well, they have become that, I think.

I mean, in America, libertarianism or kind of free thinking and the left is not such an alien concept. But in the UK, it has become that. But as all I'm saying is, I don't even know what libertarian. I mean, if it's meant you believe in freedom, no ifs, no, buts, no buts, then I'm not arguing. In terms of where these, strictly where these political labels come from,

probably I don't quite fit into either of that. So I kind of let it ride. And as I said, I don't bother arguing with Wikipedia, which is not. There's no point arguing with that. Let's come back to the kids, to education, because one of the things I've listened to a few things that you were talking about snowflakes and the snowflake culture and everybody being hypersensitive, everybody feeling like a victim. You wrote, I find that offensive. Tell us a little bit about what's going on in universities and schools and why are people now, are they, first of all, becoming more sensitive and if so, why? Yes, one thing that Wikipedia does say is if you look at Generation Snowflake, it says Claire Fox is responsible for introducing this term into the UK.

And that's entirely fictitious. But I sort of know what they mean. Because in, I find that offensive, which is just a short book on free speech, I talked about a phrase that was emerging in American universities of Generation Snowflake. and I decided that I would write the book about and two generation snowflake. And so that's kind of how I suppose it became associated with the term. But I'm aware of the fact that it's an incredibly insulting caricatured term. And in fact, I don't use it in that kind of, you know, you generation snowflake. You're all hopeless. What I was interested in, excuse me, what I was interested in was why young people, and I had observed this myself, because I hear a lot of talks in school,

schools and universities and so on, seem to be increasingly thin-skinned and easily offended. And rather than arguing back, which is entirely appropriate, now I go and speak, you expect to argue back, people say, you can't say that. Then getting upset, I find that offensive, you can't say that. And it was kind of like, I just thought, I can't, I'm sort of developing a reputation of going in and talking to 17-year-old than ending up in tears. I mean, this is kind of like peculiar. Sounds right.

My teaching career. It was a kind of peculiar shift in a way. They weren't kind of balshy or argumentative or even kind of silently, suddenly glowering at me. They were getting upset. And it was almost as though they couldn't believe that anyone would say certain things. And so I was aware of the shifts in university culture,

which is, in fact, sadly, intensifying, which is at university, which after all, almost 50% of the cohort go to university, So we're not talking now about a small group of this generation, that there was an increasing tendency to argue for the protection of students from dangerous ideas and the whole emergence of safe space culture in particular preoccupied me. It wasn't so much no platforming. No platforming was around when I was at university a million years ago.

And although it's now broadened who is no platformed, and there's well-known examples of, you know, one feminist group, banning another feminist, you know, Jew, Engry and all these kind of examples. The real issue that fascinated me was safe spaces and trigger warnings. The idea that you would go, leave home, go on this exciting intellectual journey to university and immediately demand of the authorities that they make you feel safe seemed extraordinary to me. I mean, this is a period at which the one thing you don't want, historically, if you're young, is to be looked after and feel safe.

That's the aspiration of, you know, old age pensions. These days the old age pensioners are all going off, you know, on the trip around the world and experimenting. But you want them to bust out of this, right? There is a generation that demands that they feel safe and comfortable and don't have their ideas disturbed. I was anxious that this was a problem. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world,

so let me tell you about something that's actually right. sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing and most people have no idea what's actually in it. Avicado green mattress is different. Their mattresses are certified organic built from natural materials designed to actually support your body properly rather than just hold you in one position until morning. The craftsmanship is real. These are mass-produced objects.

Someone has put thought into them. I'll be honest. I'm not the person who thinks carefully about where he sleeps. My dating history will tell you that. I'm the person who's been on the same mattress for eight years and called it fine. But the older I get, the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made, not manufactured,

and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado greenmatress.com slash trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. But that's really, really interesting what you say there. Where do you think that comes from? This idea that I don't want to have my views challenged. I want to feel safe. Is it because we molly collared them too much as kids?

Because of the right-wing tabloid press, you know, pedophiles and all the rest of it? Is it the fact that, you know, that children now they're getting ferried to them from school? Is it the fact that now we indulge them, you know, that you can fulfill your dreams, everybody's special? Even though we're not. There's a billion of us. No one's going to miss us if we die. Yeah, all of that.

And in a way that's why I wrote the book or what's. the books about because actually I didn't want to try and write a book about free speech in as much it's been some fantastically brilliant books recently about free speech and I felt I had nothing to contribute. I wanted to try and understand what had created Generation Snowflake and so I said by time they get to go to university or leave home, they're already preloaded with anxieties. And one of the things that I talk about is a kind of safety first culture in which we've socialised the kids basically as parents. there's teachers, particularly social policy and education policies.

You say, you know, we scaremonger everything, right? I mean, you know, eating too much sugar is like the greatest catastrophe that's going to kill all the children. There's an obesity time bomb. It's called crack cocaine of childhood in the House of Commons. That's like having a bar of chocolate, right? Or having a fizzy drink. There isn't anything that we say to young people is kind of like,

it's all right, you'll cope. You know, we basically scaremonger all the time catastrophes. word that I use a terrible word but anyway and so in a way we've kind of introduced young people from a very early age into telling them that the world is the scariest place in the world and the role of adults historically was you know you get a kid right when you're a kid I knew you know when I was a young child I scared of the dark and I always thought that the jacket behind the door was a monster and you know the dressing it and whatever right and obviously the role of the adult is to come in and say no it's all right it's not isn't it

No, you're having a vivid imagination and to reassure you. Now if you say, I think there's a monster behind the door, there'll be failing child protection, right, and saying, oh my God, there probably is. Oh, my God. You know, so the adults don't reassure the young. They make it worse. And your paedophiles, right, I don't know that that's the right-wing tabloid press

can be entirely just blamed for that. I mean, we have become obsessed with child abuse, children being at risk. And so all sorts of well-known things have emerged. this like children not playing outside anymore and over molly coddled, over terrified of every kind of stranger danger that you can possibly have and then told even that if they stay at home and kind of stick in their bedroom they're going to be groomed by sex gangs online and you know everything is a sort of threat. So I think that that has created an over-anxiety

amongst young people. I mean that's the kind of culture in which they are growing up. at the same time, unprepared to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday life because they also then don't have an opportunity to experiment, take risks, make mistakes. So they are kind of infantilised much later and mollycoddled in the way that you say. And then there's a whole other story about the self-esteem movement

in the way that you said, people aren't special. And so you get a combination of kind of thin-skinned, over-scared youth. He also think they're very special, the most important person in the world. And there's nothing more toxic than that mix, I think. So obviously, not every single young person is like that. Well, cut that bit up. That is the climate in which they are socialising.

It is a generational trend, though. I mean, you know, I insist on that because obviously I still talk to lots of young people. And it's, you know, you can kind of get this like, well, I'm not like that. But that's, you know, you have to be able to discuss generational trends. The model that we have of young people is that they need to be protected. they're vulnerable, they're at risk of mental illness, there's anxiety, rampaging through this generation. We're told that they've never suffered so much as any previous young generation. That makes me laugh.

I mean, that's the idea. Well, you know what? As you were talking there, I was actually thinking it makes sense that they would be the most anxious generation history. Because if you've been coddled in the way that you've described all your life, you feel utterly unprepared for the real world. And you know at some level that the real world is full of challenges and adventures and dangers and you know that you're not prepared. Anxiety is exactly the right response to that situation. So that's what happens is it becomes a fate of complete.

You know, it becomes a kind of, so in that sense it's not made of. It's not a contrived thing. There might be opportunistic student union officers who kind of use these tropes to close down debate in a kind of very opportunistic from getting the papers. you know, we're not having this person. But most of the people actually are scared of words and scared of these things. But I think the reason I'm saying this is that, you know,

in response to some of the educational pressures that young people face, a constant diet of exams, there are problems in schools, I appreciate that. But the adult community, the teaching unions, lots of teachers, their parents, sort of say, you are making our children mentally ill because they've got the stress of exams coming up.

And you think, no, it's called it stam stress. It's meant to be stressed before an exam. I mean, it's not like, everything is talked up, and then people accumulate both the language and the lack of resilience that means that it does become a real problem. You then go at university and somebody says, now you actually have to read some books, and at the end of the time, you know,

you can't take the books into the exam with you at the end. And they can't cope, right? They just can't cope in a way. And, you know, it's actually, it can be stressful leaving home because you don't know anyone, you have to, you know, but this is called growing up. It's exciting. You can look at it as an excitement.

exciting adventure or a scary moment and more and more sitting in the scary moment phase. But the point about this sort of the way that these things oppose is if you think about some of the generational debates that we have at the moment, people say, you know, young have been betrayed by baby boomers. They're facing unprecedented pressures. Britain in 2018, unprecedented pressure. No young people have ever suffered the way these young people suffer. Right. And when I When I say, how, say, well, you know, you can't buy a house before you're 24. That is not a great hardship, right? It might not be great.

I mean, I didn't buy my first house until I was 40 and I thought it was a great privilege to be able to, right? I mean, first of all, there's a little class question there on the other side, but also unprecedented pressures, you know, like cyberbullying, you know, never mind kids going up chimneys or down mines or having to live school at 14 or being recruited. into the army, all of this, right? No, cyberbullying. You know, and how can they possibly cope

because they judge themselves on how many likes they get and the pressures of Instagram and this is driving them? I don't mean these aren't new pressures and interesting, but this is not an, you know, the idea that they're suffering more than any other generation seems unlikely to me. It is, because I still work in a school a couple of days a week.

And, I mean, we infantilised children, and of course, it sounds like, Oxymoron, but we really do. I mean, I remember one teacher came up to me was like, oh, look what my like seven-year-olds created. And he showed me a picture of a macaroni picture. And I was just like, look, seven-year-olds made my trainers. Do you see what I mean? We just think that they can't do these things. And children are far more capable and resilient than you give them credit for. So we're dragging that away from them. Yes. We're robbing them. So my bog, in a way, we're saying, my bog, in a way, we're saying,

without letting the kids off the hook. My book was saying, it's awful. Do you see what I mean? So what I was trying to say was, we have created, you know, we've created their own Frankenstein monster. Then when they take it to the logical degree and go to university and start banning us from going in,

we're all like, oh, that's outrageous, what's wrong with them? And then we lampooned them as being these thin skin, but actually it's the culture that they've come through exactly in the way that you've said. And I mean, you see it so often that I taught a girl, a few weeks ago and she broke her foot and of course

it's a bit upsetting for her she's only 10 years old she broke her foot her parents wheeled her in in a wheelchair I mean what was wrong with just giving her

a couple of crutches and look you broke your foot that's a bit upsetting but you know what this is like you're just going to have to get on with it instead of wheeling her around

in a wheelchair it just seems excessive like you know the kids come oh Mr Foster look I've got a little cut on my finger great get on with it

we seem to have forgotten Hardcore. Yeah, we seem to have forgotten that and actually a lot of the times in life, you just need to suck it up and get on with it. If your child goes to Francis school, you know what's happening in there. By the way, for anyone watching, I would like to say Francis was not defending child labour there. He wasn't making a case for it. But I think that... Although it is profitable. Yeah, yeah.

No, but you do make a good point about, about, you know, what we expect. Because I think that one of the examples I give is, you know, where do young people by... 18, how have they developed this notion that words are the same as violence? You know, why would word, why would they think that, right? And then you look at the growth of the anti-bullying movement in schools and you can see where it comes from. So traditionally, bullying, horrible thing to happen to a kid, right? A kid is bullied, but you know, you, some kid comes in and says, I'm being bullied, you sort of think, oh, you know, that's terrible. You sort of have visions of them being totally intimidated by, you know, people who are, uh, you know, people who are, uh,

you know, kicking their head in and stealing them money and just cruelty and all the rest of it. And then you sort of say, oh, what's happening? You all right? And then one, actually, my niece, but she hates me telling this story, actually, it's in the book. But my niece said, yeah, because, you know, all the girls they're going out and they're going to the pictures on Friday and I'm not coming. And then they haven't invited me. And I said, because I thought, oh my God, the poor kids so distraught. And I said, that's not bullying, Abby, that's like going out with you, you know. And she was like, no, it's bullying. Anyway, she goes into it.

Anyway, I suddenly see the school policy is that bullying includes exclusion from friendship group. So she was right and I was wrong. And these are the bullying rules on the wall, right? So I started to look at, this was some years ago, but I started to look at anti-bullying policies, and they have just expanded exponentially what constitutes bullying. And so it's like, you know, aggressive gestures. you know, nobody, nobody,

no, but it is, you know, so bullying looks, all this sort of thing. And, so you have that kind of growth of what bullying is, at cancer's bullying, you tell kids that if anything's happened to you, you are being bullied.

You then look at the anti-bullying literature and the experts in bullying and the people who are given, you know, a set of large organisations and are advising governments and schools and all the rest of it. And they say, if you're bullied at school,

it will have lifelong damaging impacts and will lead to years, of trauma and mental health problems and might mean that you are unemployable, unemployed, you know, that your life is going to be ruined, right? So we tell kids that being excluded from friendship groups is bullying and we then say that bullying, making no distinction between that and getting your head kicked in, will destroy your life. So no wonder if you're 11 and you're being bullied, that not only is it not very nice when it happens to you,

but you then think it's going to ruin your life and you therefore, you might that when people say horrible things to you, that this is going to destroy you. And that exacerbates the problem, right? I mean, as it happens, even if the worst kind of bullying happens to you, I don't think it's going to destroy your life. And I think it's the role of adults to help people get over that and to learn to cope with it. But that's not what they're told. But they're also told the most trivial, silly acts of cruelty by one child to another

is going to have this long-lasting impact. And I think then that makes people think, oh, you know, I'm being bullied on. someone's saying they don't like my dress and somebody's called me fat and somebody's said that I'm and that somebody's prettier that and by time you get through that whole thing and the thing is going to destroy your life that actually makes you anxious yeah and so actually you can't cope so you then associate horrible words and this is where the free speech issue comes with having a damaging traumatic impact on people so of course this becomes theorized around trigger warnings and safe spaces

and so on. We have to ban those people from speaking because their words are harmful. Just like the physical act of being punched in the stomach or kicked in the head, the words are harmful. And the term harm has now become a kind of existential, I don't like it.

And J.S. Mills' harm principle now incorporates harm in this kind of very broad, therapeutic meaning of the sense of the word. The thing I find worrying about kids is a nature of victimhood. And that Everybody nowadays seems to be a victim.

Everybody, you know, has something or, you know, and, you know, that everybody is being oppressed. And I just find it worrying because if you have that attitude, like you said, you are going to collapse when the moment you face adversity. And what we're not teaching kids in school, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone as being a teacher, is we're not teaching them resilience. I teach kids so often and I give them all the strategies I teach year six.

So that's 10 and 11 year olds. And I give them all the strategies. And they understand it. And when I give them questions 1 to 10, where they follow along to the pattern, they can do it. The moment you veer slightly to the right or to the left and ask them for a bit of independent thought, they come up against the barrier.

They give up. Pencil goes down, head goes down. And if you do that at 10, and that's not, we don't knit that in the bud, that is going to create an adult who simply is not going to function. Well, I think that's the thing is that vulnerability in the sense that you are vulnerable, which is the consequence of a climate

that Scaremong is about everything, you are the vulnerable one, constantly a threat of everything and the food that you drink to the people that you meet and so on and so forth. Creates the victim, doesn't it? I mean, that's where you see yourself in that particular way.

The converse of that, of course, is that any young person who kind of is a bit bullshit and a bit, you know, not, you know, tries to say, I'm not that bothered, or doesn't appear to adopt that kind of, is treated as though they're either in denial or as though they're kind of like insensitive. And in fact, one of the things that the, again, the kind of theorizing on the free speech issue is to say that somebody like me who's critiquing Generation Snowflake is that I am insensitive.

You know, I am the kind of person who doesn't understand the suffering of the vulnerable young. And some of the responses to the book were really interesting because I was really nervous. I thought, God, middle-aged woman critiques generation snowflat, I'm going to get hammered. Every young person going to think I'm an idiot, right? And, you know, it's a kind of caricatured middle-aged woman attacking a young, and I was nervous.

Actually, I've had a much more positive response from young people, and the people who absolutely hate the book and who've written horrible reviews about it have largely been people who work in educational psychology, social workers, you know, that kind of world, I mean my peers in the kind of world of policy, who think that I am being horrible about and to young people. And then they'll say, oh, Claire Fox is just a sort of person who thinks that everybody needs to be bullied in order to harden up. Clairfox is a sort of person who somebody's cutting themselves, you know,

and self-harm, said, get on with it, I don't clean on all this. So you're caricatured as as a, you know, a kind of hard-nosed, mean-spirited, ungenerous person. And I can live with all that. What I'm saying is for people growing up, then, the model for if you're going to get some sort of like hearing is that you are the sensitive, easily offended, you know, vulnerable person. If you're somebody who actually can brush it off and get on with it, you're seen to be somehow some kind of psychotic lunatic who's not in touch with their feelings, right?

And that's something wrong with you, you're the person that's problematic. So of course, young people learn that in order to kind of gain the respect of the adult world and of society, they actually have to play the victim card. And I think that that's kind of a, it's not the political form it takes, but I think it gives a sort of sense of the world in which some of these big political disputes on free speech occur. And you can then see that it's playing the victim card in terms of identity politics, accruing more and more examples of one's own vulnerability, versus, you know, the absolute villain of the piece in terms of identity politics and intersectionality, which is the white male. And it's always

kind of like the white male stiff up a lip. So again, it's this sort of hard-nosed, you know, Whereas the emotionally sensitive, vulnerable person who feels the pain, they are the ones that everyone says, what a wonderful person. This person over there is written off as some kind of monster for not being in touch with their emotional angst. And how much of this do you think is an exaggerated sense of compassion, this idea, essentially, that being compassionate is so much more important than being practically helpful to a young person?

I mean, that's fundamentally what you're talking about. Being compassionate is not always the best strategy for helping young person through the... Yeah, although I think compassion, I'm a bit of a fan of compassion. I think compassion is not quite the term. I think compassion, it's all right, but you could... But there's a kind of be cruel to be kind in as much as, you know, like, as a teacher, you know, if you go into a class and say, you know, what do you want me to teach? You want me to teach, you know, kind of poetry as rap music, or, you know, the lyrics of rap.

as poetry or do you want me to do Henry the 4th part 1 right they say rap's much more relevant and then you say good we're not doing that we're doing Henry 4th 1 right because I don't need to teach you that but you do need to do this you have to work very hard on well I don't want to do what's the point in doing Jane Austen's you know what's the point of I'm not doing that what's the point of course you know you have to be very unpopular for a period of time young people do not want to learn what they are entitled to know right it's pretty obvious You know what I mean?

They want to have a great time, or they don't want to do anything that's going to make their brain hair or that's not easily accessible. And adults have lost the courage to look young people in the eye and say, I don't care that you don't want to know this.

You are going to. Well, that's what I meant by compassion. I know, but I think, all I'm saying is, I think it's compassionate to give them what they need to know. Right. But I mean, I understand.

You're reframing my book. Yeah, very good. But I think, I think what I'm saying is that you want to be cruel, to be kind, to be compassionate. I don't think that kind of fawning over the young and their wants is doing them any favours at all. I think it's a major betrayal. And I also think it shows a certain indifference to them because you're basically more

interested in being popular with them than in actually giving them what they're entitled to. And for me, generation is a generational transaction. You know, I have a tiny weenie little bit of understanding. about the best that's known and thought, not very much, but a tiny little bit, right? And the little bit I've got, I want to pass on. You know, for me, it's like you should know this stuff, right? This is like the greatest ideas in the world, and I want you to have it.

I'm passing it on to you. And we don't do that now, right? We kind of go, this is the great stuff that's known in the world, but we're worried that it was created by white philosophers who were around you on a slave trade. So it's not that great. I might have to renew it all and review it. But you, interesting 15-year-old digital native, you really do know interesting stuff, right?

I can learn from you. And that's the, you know, when you said what's happening in education. It was that turnaround, right? It was that shift, that beginning to be the shift in educational terms, which was teachers were told that they had to be, you know, guides on the side, you know, and we can learn from the students. Facilators and all this. And I'd say no, you know, I, and of course, if you got the confidence to do it, I mean, I wasn't a great teacher, but I was a good teacher, you know, and, but I would get, you know, these kind of tough, because I talk quite tough kids, really.

But, you know, you'd get these kind of like kids, it'd be complete, especially, you know, some of the lads would be like, I'm not using that. And then you kind of get a rather sensitive essay on the latest Jane Austen novel written. And of course, they wouldn't admit that in class. And it took me in nearly a year to get the, you know, and we even read the bloody thing. And then they'd read it. And then suddenly I'd get it's an essay. It's like, you know, it's really important the dilemmas that Emma would go through.

And they'd think, oh, is that little secret between them and me that they have discovered a little bit of literature and a little sensitivity. Now, I wasn't going to expect. I didn't read it out in class and show them up, right? But I knew that they knew that a little thing had occurred in our lessons. They'd learn something.

They'd read a novel. And also I'd given them a gateway to potentially some literature. that was the least I could do. That just doesn't happen. And in fact, I would consider to be some sort of like old-fashioned dinosaur type for giving a lecture in an FECO, because in an FE College where it's kind of working class kids and not necessarily kind of the greatest academics,

you know, I insisted on doing lectures. You know, you have to listen, write notes. Do you know what I mean? I'd make a bit of a point about the fact they had to read the books. You know, because we're doing literature, all this sort of thing. I was considered to be some sort of. of lunatic. They don't do group work.

Ask them what they think. They don't think anything. Because I haven't taught them anything yet. What's the way? Get them to sit in groups and talk about a novel they haven't read and they haven't thought. I mean, this is just self-indulgent nonsense. It's a fascinating point because I'm thinking back as you're talking about teaching to my school days. My favorite teacher, I didn't even like him.

But he was my favorite teacher because he made sure that I learned what I needed. And I had a healthy respect of him. but I wouldn't say that I felt some great affinity to him. And if I think back through the great teachers, it was much more about respect and them teaching me something as opposed to liking them. This is my great self-justification for why nobody liked me. No, but I mean, I think that's the balance I'm trying to say.

And I think there's taken away from me or teaching, but maybe just to sort of, I think that there's a collapse of adult authority in the world. and I think what I was trying to and a belief in the kind of values of the world, you know, so for me that's the greatest betrayal and so Generation Snowflake in a way is kind of, but the scaring and also this kind of

inabilities as I say to look the young in the eye and kind of say to them, these things matter you know, this is right and this is wrong and there's a dispute about what would be right and wrong but to have the courage to do it rather than to go, I don't really know what do you think. and who cares what they think. I completely agree with you

because I used to teach in the London borough of Newham, which is one of the poorest boroughs in London. And I'd get these kids coming up and they hadn't been taught the basics, no one had explained to them. Every time in the first lesson I'd say to them, here's the thing, I'm your teacher, I'm not your mate, I don't care what you think.

Your behaviour is a choice. You choose to behave, you've come in to learn. if you choose to misbehave, you not only damage your own education, you damage the education of everyone around you. And here's the thing, most kids would die to be in your position. So if you're going to behave like that, I've got no interest.

Out you go. And most of them, actually, even like the supposed... I mean, there was always one or two, but the vast majority went, okay. And if they could see themselves learning and progressing, they liked it. Kids crave boundaries. And all that these people do, these adults do,

who are like, oh, what do you think? It's just, not just accept that you're a weak person because that's all you are. What kids want of any age is to go, this is it. This is what you need to do. Here it is. And I'm sorry, but you've got to work. Well, there's a big argument going on in schools at the moment,

which you probably may be familiar with. And actually somebody would be good for you to interview maybe on this is Tom Bennett, who's the behaviours are for the government. but I think that title is mad. But anyway, he's a great guy. He's interesting, and he and I argue over lots and lots of things, but what he's really good on is behaviour in schools. But one of the things that happens is that if you are somebody

who says that this should be quite a strict behaviour code in schools, and these can be over-codified, and some of the stricter schools kind of slightly drive me mad by almost thinking it's a technical activity, you know, everything, so rules based, but they've kind of lost sight of what they're trying to do. Having said that, the opposite side of the argument that basically says, you know, putting somebody in detention is the equivalent of putting them into internment or like, sort of like prison and depriving, I mean, the hyperbole deployed by people to discredit

and delegitimize a perfectly reasonable way of organising a school is incredible. And I think that's what, you know, something you're recognising, I suppose, with these films, which is, you know, these are, then it starts being a debate. I mean, if what you do is simply demonise as beyond the pale, somebody's like, into child abuse because they believe in disciplining kids, that is not a discussion, right? That is not any way kind of a thing. It means there's nowhere to go with it. There's nowhere to have a fruitful conversation.

And I find that one of the things that happened to me quite early on when I started writing about education because when I was teaching I was also writing about education and I suppose that's how I got more interested in getting publishing the magazine, if you know what I mean because I kind of started to be interested in a different kind of journalism and getting the word out. I realised it could have a bit of an influence

and you can't, it's hard to do that when you work full-time for an institution these days because they don't like you I mean all those days anyway because you know you could get disciplined and so on and so forth so anyway um I uh one of the things I noticed was I'd be arguing what I thought were completely reasonable things about educational standards and we have some of these things right and I I'd been teaching for some years before I did my PGCE you didn't have to have a qualification to teach in further education at one point and then I kind of changed it so I thought I'd better rush off and get my great so I went to Greenwich University

as it was then get my PGCE utter I mean talk about you know intellectual nonsense I mean I kind of was shocked

at what was passing for educational theory but anyway I'd argue through these things people were standing up in the class and denouncing me as a kind of that's your right right wing fascist

because I'd say I believed in discipline right you know when I kind of argued for you know one girl stood up in the class she was training to be a teacher with me you know we were all kind of in our I don't know late 20s there something like that she said I can't believe you said that you know I failed every exam all through my life and you're basically writing me off as a failure and I was thinking of course no disrespect

but what are you doing on this course yeah and yes if you fail every exam it probably means something yeah yeah the idea that I should kind of somehow like and she said this is the system that oppresses the working classes. I was like, no, it doesn't. We're not in class, we've passed exams all the bloody time. It's insulting, right? And all this kind of thing. And then kind of, and I got a reputation during the year.

There I was, lefty Marxist teacher. And people started caricatured me. It's like, oh, she's just like a daily male. And I realize that this was just a way trying to close you down and close down debate. And as it happens, on the left, historically, internationally, high standards of education. thinking are actually bedfellows, not the opposite.

You know, or there's no, the idea that the kind of history of radicalism is based on some kind of Philistine, you know, you shouldn't ask people to do exams in case they fail, and then it dooms them to being oppressed. I mean, that's just not what it's about at all. Exams as it happens, by the way, were brought in and supported by trade unions because they were meritocratic, because they took no interest in people's background. They simply measured whether you'd achieved or not. and I always find that rather inspiring universal aspiration.

Anyone can sit the exam and anyone can do really well at it. I think that was great. Although you could argue that towards a far left end of the spectrum, when it comes to the left wing, it eventually ends up in shutting down ideas. So if you're in Cuba, for example, Venezuela. Oh God, there's loads of examples. I mean, I understand that. But all I'm saying is, yes, but as I say,

I don't, that's kind of practical examples of countries that are basket cases and I agree. Yeah. But I'm for free to speech. I was simply saying that in terms of its philosophical tradition, there's nothing that associates the left with being apologists for Philistinism. Yeah. Or for failure, effectively.

Yeah. Well, let me drag the two of you away from education. Sorry. Sorry. We've done a great bit on education. I think it's great. Well, actually, I think the things that, the other things we're very interested to talk to you about, they're kind of the adult manifestation of some of the,

things that you're talking about with kids, which is a culture of hypersensitivity, and partly what you've just talked about, which is a culture of saying, if you don't agree with me, you're evil. If you don't agree with me, you are that other thing that must not be engaged with. And wherever we look at the kind of identity politics, which you refer to, whether it's modern feminism or any other things that happen within that identity politics, bracket, they all seem to be subject to this complete inability or unwillingness to actually debate things, which is what you've created with the Institute of Ideas and the debating things that you do.

Why do you think being able to discuss ideas are so important? Well, I mean, first of all, because there's no, I do not believe that I have stopped changing my mind about things. And so I think it's, you know, the ability to hear other opinions. can mean that I might change my mind or improve the way I argue or just get a new perspective on the world. So even from an entirely personal point of view, I think it's a peculiar idea to have in your head that you know, you at any age say this is what I think and that's it. I mean, never will it ever change?

I mean, obviously as you get older, you're more accustomed to having developed and thought back the way of this. But I mean, nonetheless, we'll want to be open all the time. the world changes as well so you need to be able to take account of things that change sorry that seems to me to be so important because this idea that you sort of say

right this is what I think I'm never going to think anything else I mean you might just hide under the bed I mean what does that mean you just say you know how boring would mean that you'd read a book and nothing would occur I mean you know that you'd never be able

to watch a podcast and your brain work because you'd say no no no no no this is what I think thing else will, you know. So for me, it's because we all, don't we, um, want to access new ideas to stimulate ourselves to kind of test out. And also because by the way, there's a lot of problems in the world that need solving. And we need as many people kind of addressing them as possible. And you need to be open minded to consider that. I think as well that the intellectual life, by the way, is exciting. And I think that, you know, there's nothing more

brilliant than when you read a novel or you read an I've just read um Andrew O'Hagan's essay on Grenfell in the London Review of Books it's it's like something like 30,000 it might even be longer 30,000 words but it's like a little book I mean just I learned every it's the most perfect essay um it makes you think it's shocking it's moving reveals new information. It's a brilliant piece of journalism. It's fantastically important way of understanding the world. Demos have just brought out a new report on nostalgia, which is based on the notion that probably people voted Brexit and populism in France and Germany based on nostalgia, a thesis which I completely disagree with. But the report is well written.

It's got great quotes in it. I loved it. I kind of learned a huge amount from it. So I didn't agree with the thesis, but it was fantastic. And then I kind of bore everyone rich, I'd say, oh, God, you've got to read the demos book on the story. You've got to read the LL as I'm doing with you. Because you learn, you know, things I didn't know. It's not feasible. So I believe everyone's like that.

And everyone should be like that. And ideas are important because society cannot move on, cannot resolve any problems, cannot solve the problems of humanity if we're not constantly intellectually open to each other's developing ideas that people who are brighter than us taking ideas from 2,000 years ago

and thinking about how they apply today, people who are not as bright as us but have got an absolutely sharp wit who see something in a different way. People whose experiences are different which is why, you know, identity politics is one of the great tyrannies of our time. But that's not to say that you don't want to have

any knowledge of somebody's personal experience through that created by their identity because that can give you a great insight as well. So, of course, the frustration of this kind of stratified, static, dead intellectual climate that we live in. I can speak on this. I know you don't. Don't speak to me. I refuse to listen. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without

expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. Well, I think it's more than that, actually. I think quite often now it's not that someone will say you said this thing and you're wrong. No, you're right. It's not even that. It's you're evil, you are bad. You have no right. You are white or you are. Well, they say you're white. I mean, And so it's not just what you're allowed to discuss today. It's who's given permission to discuss it.

And that's become very problematic, of course, because it becomes impossible to have a discussion about confronting racism or any issues in relation to racism if you want from an ethnic minority. And of course, it becomes ever more divisive, by the way, because then you kind of get people saying, oh, well, you know, it's all really well, Megan Markle because she can pass for white, so she's not the kind of right kind of black. or then you get the kind of disputes around politics. Kanye West, you know, wrong kind of politics.

So he's an Uncle Tom because he looks like he's supporting. So even within the identity groups that are given permission, you actually can only follow one script anyway as it goes. And it becomes particularly unpleasant in that way of sort of like accruing. You know, because I always make the point, you well, when people say I find that offensive, I mean, they're not just telling you. I mean, they're saying, I find that offensive. shut up.

It's not like just an observation. Of course, it's given an added moral way today when you say, you know, as a woman, I find that offensive. I mean, that's it, right? Or then, that's not enough. You see it. As a Muslim woman, I find that offensive.

You know, as a disabled trans woman, you know, and so on and so on. And so, so you're accruing all the time because it's like sort of ratcheting up. How can I stop, you know, what's my unique position to say this? and not, it's like creates a field around you. Once you've said, as a woman, I find that offensive,

that means no one's allowed to comment. It creates a culture of fear because then what you're saying is that my opinion is worth more than yours and also as well, you're potentially now entering into the realms of racism and intolerance. And if you enter into the realms of race and tolerance

and that label sticks to you, that can affect everything from how the way people see you to your career prospects, And it is a feeling of terror. And we all feel that at certain points when we engage in these topics of conversation. I do it and I start getting worried. I call it sweaty back syndrome

where you just think, oh my word, have I said the wrong thing? Can I be misinterpreted? Am I going to look racist, sexist, whatever it is? And can you imagine what it's like? So that is entirely accurate and I think you only have to look at what's happening on American campuses to see how far we could go

we're only starting and we're usually kind of behind the trends in terms of America just in terms of the number of people who are being sacked and, you know, people being kicked out of universities and so on and so forth, they're being expelled. And as you say, it's not just, they're being called racist. I mean, you know, once you've got that label, I mean, you know, and obviously because I'm not interested in, you know, because it's like the, it's kind of the worst thing, isn't it? You know, misogynist, racist, you know, bigot, right? you'll never work again, but it's not just that anyway.

I'm not a bloody bigot, so you don't want, you know, it's like, it's like a horrible thing. You spend the whole time having to get out of the straitjacket of that term. But the other thing about the terror is, can you imagine what it's like for people who aren't no faith with the rules? I mean, we know the rules. Right, what happens is, is it millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people in this country. Right, they haven't, they don't know the rules of intersectionality in what language.

you can use, right? They can inadvertently wander in and say something perfectly reasonably in good faith and can be absolutely castigated, humiliated, you know, and thrown to the dogs. I mean, it's so unpleasant. And I think it's difficult if you know the rules, but it's just that people will break the rules inadvertently, you know. I remember, I mean, this is quite a controversial one, but, you know, the gay marriage issue is fascinating for me because Many years, nobody demanded gay marriage. I mean, it really wasn't a big issue in the kind of LGBT community. It wasn't like a big radical demand.

People weren't actually, there were some people like, it really wasn't a big thing. Largely because I think in a kind of lesbian and gay culture, there had been a kind of like, you know, we're not interested in bourgeois marriage, you know. It's like, you know what I mean? We want equality. We don't want to be treated differently,

but we're not, marriage wasn't a big thing. Anyway, within six months or something, you know, camera and announce it's going to bring in a Tory, he's going to bring in gay marriage. And suddenly, you had to agree with gay marriage or you were a homophobic bigot. Now, I mean, it was like, there wasn't even, there wasn't a campaign, there was no argument, there was no debate, and I think perfectly reasonably, you know, friends of mine and family from, you know, from where I'm from, um, uh, less in the kind of intellectual world and so on, were a bit like they couldn't, they were a bit bemused.

I mean, they weren't particularly hostile. I mean, they didn't go on marches against it, but they sort of said, well, that's a bit, gay marriage is odd. Why does a man want to marry a man or a woman want to? I was like, oh, those backwards, you know, bigots. You know, it's that kind of homophobic deplorable. How would you have just worked out that you're meant to change your mind?

Marriage has been between people of opposite sex, sexes, for a very long time. You come along and declare from on high that if you don't agree with that, you're a bigot. without ever trying to convince anyone. And that was it. It's a very effective tactic, isn't it? Yeah, that's the reason.

And it made me realize how scary it was because I found it very tricky to kind of have that argument. And even now I'm sort of like, I don't know if I'm not a bigot. I don't wait at you want to think. But it was the speed with which you had to learn the language, right?

And that people would go on today and sort of say, I'm not sure about game management. People would say, you know, there would be a problem of, you know, they need to go on it, re-education courses and all that sort of thing. And I think that what happens then is that it silences many people.

It effectively kicks them out the public square because they know that they don't know how to react. Or there's a kind of underground reaction to it. And this can take quite an unpleasant form sometime, which is to kind of associate yourself with people who play on the bigotry question a bit because you kind of, you're just aware the fact that you're walking on eggshells a whole time. You can't say what you think. You're frightened that you might get done over for saying the wrong thing. your sweaty back point, that happens to so many people.

What that either does is kind of kills the soul, right? It kicks you out public discourse, right? It means that you're not allowed to ever speak again. You have to go away, drop out politics, drop out of everything. Or you can only do it in the kind of most clandestine underground sort of sense. And very often with young people, that can take the form of a kind of a reaction, a kind of quite reactionary reaction I know I'm talking

that's why we have you here yes keep talking I was very upset recently about what happened at Warwick University I went to Warwick University so I kind of just 11 students I was a Facebook

private Facebook group 12 students involved in lads and they had conversations on their Facebook group that were met where they made some of them made rape jokes

and some of them said some pretty racially insensitive things, say the least. But in my opinion, first of all, it was a private conversation amongst 12 people. For me, it was an insight into if you make everything verboten, a kind of childish reaction is to kind of tell the bad jokes that you're not meant to tell. On the one hand, one of those people reported them. They've now been suspended from university. lives are destroyed effectively and they've been accused of being part of the rape culture and that Warrick's going to let them back in some of them are going to be lawyers that's that

that's that they're dispensable collateral damage in the culture worlds of today right vile behavior in my view um so private conversation no longer private so god knows and then there's sort of front pages of the local newspapers and of the student paper that women at Warrant universities are frightened to cross campus because they think there's going to be rapes I mean, these are kind of pure our stupid boys. I mean, let me tell you, rapists don't kind of make a habit of kind of loving a chat on Facebook before going out raping.

That's not the kind of modus operando, right? You know, well, I'll just have a chat about it before I do it? I mean, do you know what I mean? But this was kind of right, so it has a scaremongering impact on young women, demonises all the male students at Warrick universities. And my original point was there was something about that chat,

and I've noticed it myself in terms of things that happen on Twitter in social media and young people I know who personally is a way of kicking against the you can't say that culture kind of go into kind of Milo Yanlopoulos you know kind of feminism is cancer mode almost out of frustration yeah and I can understand that psychologically because you can't just be told you can never speak about anything you're not allowed it's one of the reasons Jordan Peterson I think is so popular is that he makes he makes all these points in a coherent way and people go, oh wait, there is something unexplained and here's someone who's actually giving shape to some of the things that I've been thinking about.

There was a very interesting article in The Times a couple of weeks back. I don't know if you saw it. It's with Matthew Parris when he wrote about the bad behavior of the liberals in Ireland and when it came to the abortion campaign. And he just said some of the way they spoke to the conservatives, the way they demonized them, the way they portrayed them. And he came out and said, look, the classic thing, I'm actually pro-abortion. I believe in women's rights for her to have an abortion. However, I believe the behaviour by the campaign, by some of the proponents of the campaign, was disgraceful.

And then you had people on Twitter and whatever else saying, you know, he's disgusting, what he's saying. And it was just, I know, but when did it become reasonable, just to be unreasonable? I know. When did we, when did it become acceptable to start a, attacking other people and to be vile just because they disagree with it. But there's a near liberal liberalism, isn't that?

Which is very dangerous for those of us who have some aspiration to fit under the liberal heading, liberal in the sense of being the liberal tradition associated with the Enlightenment of free thinkers. It's the liberals who are leading the charge on this. And I felt equally squeamish about the abortion debate, by the way, because I was very excited and from an Irish Catholic background. I was overexcited about the island vote and about what happened because, you know, that's a fantastic thing. But, and I never thought I'd say it either, right? But I hated some of those campaigners.

Because, you know, the thing is also that, you know, people are allowed in conscience to say that they think that abortion is a sin, is wrong, is morally wrong. that is allowed, right? That doesn't make the misogynist. I think they're wrong. I don't agree with their religious sensibility. But you've got to, otherwise, you basically abolish free conscience. And you basically say, we'll change the law, you've got to go along with it now. Well, no, you don't.

I mean, if the law is going to be the decider of conscience, obviously that's authoritarian, I mean, that's a kind of fascist outlook. I mean, that's like a proper state controls your mind. stuff, right? No, I mean, there's lots of laws I disagree with them, I'm going to say so. But particularly in relation to religious freedom, it's hugely important to defend religious freedom, even if you don't agree with it, because that's the basis on which you say we are a tolerant society. It doesn't mean that I'm going to, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be protected, as in, you know, we can't say that if you insults a religion, that you're going to

be done for offensiveness. But similarly, you're going to say that somebody has to follow their conscience. That's the basis on which we are individual autonomous citizens. That's the only way it works. And again, this is the infantilising process because if you've got only one script to follow, then actually you can never grow up. You don't need to hear the other side of the argument, do you know what I mean? Just have to learn the script. You learn the script. Anyone who doesn't follow the script is a lunatic. You've read, hateful. Should be banned anyway because they're not following the script. And in terms of why this does young people know favours,

is because as soon as they encounter an argument that is an argument, because they've actually not ever heard an argument, they can't maintain the script because they're actually only repeating something, as it were, by rote. They're not used to having to defend that argument. So I don't mean that they should change their mind when they argue with someone like me or anyone else. but they're so unused to the argument

that they actually collapse and heap but they can't do it so of course then they associate and then they definitely don't want those speakers and then because then they kind of might have to argue but you know that's what

JSML brilliantly explains that you don't really understand that your argument's right unless it's kind of clashed against unless you've heard the other arguments that's you can't just say my argument's right I know this because it's the only argument I've heard

it has to be exposed to the light of the other argument so you can work work it out. And actually, you might never change your mind, but you'll get better at arguing if you expose yourself to a society. Francis, before you ask your next question, by the way, the correct term is pro-choice. You said pro-abortion. I think it would have been a lot less likely to get a successful outcome of America. Oh, wow. I'm kidding me.

Although, in fact, for many years, I think many of us said that we were pro-abortion. Yeah. So they go on-retra. He's got less of an appeal. No, but the reason why they kind of change it, of course, was because I thought it might put people off. Yeah. It's a marketing. Yeah. I'm kidding me. No, no, but it's, you made me forget my point,

how do you think that this sort of polarisation we've got now? I don't want to interact with you because you're racist, sexist, you're a snowflake, blah, blah, blah. Do you think it's given rise to what we see now in politics? We have someone like Trump on one hand, Hillary on the other, there doesn't seem to be a middle ground, Brexit, remain, people screaming at each other. I think that the, I think that the, I think that the,

echo chamber effect or the kind of the sense of saying, following that script, as I say, is reflecting that. I think it's all slightly different. I mean, I'm trying to say yes, but it's not quite right. I mean, I think that we know that Trump, one of the reasons why Trump got elected

was because he definitely appealed to those people who felt that they were the ones who weren't being listened to, weren't following the script, and really, you know, part of the, left behind scenario. It's not just an economic left behind, and that's a misunderstanding, I think. It was kind of aware of the fact

that there was this kind of whole culture built up that apparently the only, that you had to support, you know, you know, it was the toilets argument on transgender, I can't really remember the way. But it was kind of like this sort of, if you don't agree with transgender toilets, then you're really out, you know what I mean?

And people were sort of, there was a big debate in America about it, and people just sort of saying, what? What? What? What? And so I think that there was that. And then also identity politics informed the people who voted for Hillary. She assumed that identity would be one of the big things. So she didn't try and argue beyond that.

And I think that something of Trump's appeal kind of said, well, there's one identity that gets ignored and that's the white working class. And there was a kind of element of that as well. So I think that there was certainly a reaction against crudely put political correctness and identity politics in Trump's vote. But I also think that Trump is kind of himself a hugely significant snowflake. I mean, he's like, for me, the embodiment of snowflakery, you know, surrounds himself by sycophant so who agree with him the whole time.

It's a kind of safe space and, you know, lashes out any criticism and kind of takes, you know, and try to close it down, you know, trying to ban anyone. So the irony is, is that he himself is kind of like a walking embodimentary. of that kind of over spoiled, unable to interact, not prepared to debate type person. So I don't want to make any virtues in relation to what I think is a real problematic way that he's running society. But on the other hand, I think that the way that the inability, as explained by Mark Lula, brilliantly after Trump got elected, he's a professor of humanities at Yale, he wrote a fantastic article. on identity in the New York Times and is of course as a consequence gone on to be now called

an apologies for white supremacism but anyway he's a I mean really seriously and he's like a serious humanities guy right um professor but anyway he sort of said that one of the problems was the the inability of the kind of liberal young liberals to go beyond a kind of narcissistic obsession with their own identities that meant that they were unable to reach out beyond them to to to to to gain the votes of people not like themselves. And I think that that was quite an astute. He explained it, a better quote than I've just given, but more or less that.

And that really struck home, rang home for me. I think that in the buildup to the Brexit referendum, into the EU referendum, I constantly was meeting people in the circuits that I travel in, who would say, I mean, has anyone ever met a Brexit supporter? He'd say, yes. Well, first of all, I'm one,

and they'd laugh because I thought it was joking. Yeah. I was both saying. They go, ha-ha. I say, no, I am going to vote Brexit. Oh, my God. But when they'd say, you know, has anyone ever met a Brexit?

It's like sort of like get out more. You know what I mean? I mean, you know. And subsequent to the vote, people still make these kind of comments. I mean, who's met these people? It's like, what do you mean? There's an awful lot of them.

You shouldn't be based on it. You don't know them, right? Yeah, exactly. And in the bills of the referendum, there might, at that point, we might not have known there was going to be a majority, but we did know that there was a lot of them, right? But in there, there was no imagination.

So I think one of the consequences of kind of identity politics and the broader sense of sort of saying, our kind of people means that there's this inability to understand a world beyond people who follow the script. And to assume, which is the other thing, because this is not just equal-sided, is it? I mean, you know, it's not just that, I mean, it's to write off huge swathes of people

as deplorables and low information that is most distasteful for me. And so it's not a kind of equal thing. I mean, you could say, well, of course, if you're living in, you know, part, you know, if you're living in Sundelins, you also don't understand the worlds of being part of the metropolitan elite. You know, we've all got separate lives, right? But what I think is most horrible is that, you know, people in the metropolitan elite, who are often very influential, right off people in parts of the country,

because they haven't got qualifications as being stupid and ill-informed, rather than just living a different life. And those kind of attitudes that emerged have really grated. And so that's made it worse. You know what I mean? I mean, if you're called a racist, ignorant, stupid person because you voted Brexit, it's really hard to not get wound up. Well, absolutely.

And I find it very frustrating. I mean, look, Francis is mothers from Venezuela. I am from Russia. I came to this country when I was 11. We both vote women, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we both vote remain.

But what I found incredible and very upsetting, actually, is in the Brexit campaign and after the Brexit campaign, this idea that British people are these racist xenophobes is completely counter to every experience I've had in this country. I mean, this is one of the most tolerant countries in the history of the world. But it's also the case that most people who voted Remain have accepted the referendum results

and, you know, loads of my friends voted Remain. Loads of my friends voted Brexit. As you know, it was lots of people arguments before and afterwards and, you know, my family was split, but actually not in that way that everyone says very acrobrenious. But I have been really shocked by how a substantial hardcore have kind of framed the debate subsequent, well, in the buildup to and subsequent, of writing off Brexit voters. But I've been encouraged by how many of my remain friends are also shocked, as in the way that you've said. I mean, it's given us an insight into way things work in a way that is like, it's horrible, right? Absolutely horrible.

But it's definitely kind of like a kind of top, you know, it's kind of like it's like, one of the things is you think, oh my God, you know, the establishment don't like it when they lose. Yeah. Like, these people don't like it. Like, like, there's whole swathes of very influential people who are just furious and furious and will never forgive and I'll knock it everything God on my. And whereas most ordinary remain voters are like, well, that's a shame, but now we've got to leave the EU, have we?

And then suddenly you end up in a civil war. And the problem is that then the people who are kind of leading the remain, weren't giving, they're not letting this happen easily, have kind of whipped up. What then becomes a sort of new form of identity politics, whether you'll remain or leave. And I keep trying to say, and by the way, we're not the Institute of Ideas anymore, I should. just to add that we've changed our name to the Academy of Ideas because the Institute of Ideas apparently is a word you can't use the word institute and so after 18 years we had to change it because somebody complained so for 18 years it was perfectly fine and then now I don't suppose it's got anything to

do with the post-Brexit you know make people can't possibly be couldn't be but anyway and but but I think that it I've tried to the Academy of ideas work at the Battle of Ideas Festival that we organise. I've tried to say, can we just go beyond these labels? Can we just go and say it doesn't matter? But what's your attitude now? Yeah. I mean, the one thing that I find frustrated me with a lot of Remain voters is this,

is that they vote to Remain and therefore that means they're a good person. And I find it baffling, especially when they go, oh, I'm a Corbinista Remainer. And I'm like, well, Corbin isn't for a Remain. Corbin's a brain. If you are hard left, you would argue that's incompatible for voting for the EU. Exactly. I mean, I don't know Jeremy Corbyn very well, but let me tell you, the main ways that I've

known Jeremy Corbyn over the many years that he's been involved in politics, and I've kind of known him as somebody is because of his attitudes to the EU. He was a Benite anti-EU person, all my political life that I've known. And you're right. I mean, so people don't understand that bit. But no, you know, we haven't discussed virtue signaling, and I know we've got to stop discussing everything. But there is this kind of, I find it very galling

that people would say, you know, all these ignorant Brexit voters don't know anything about the EU. And I'd ask people, well, let's talk about the EU then. Then you knew nothing about the EU. Oh, yeah. What they were saying was, particularly young people, actually. And of course, there was this kind of like, as young people were being betrayed, you know.

And the EU is everything. and, you know, people would say, you know, EU, how we're going to travel? Yeah. What are you talking about, right? You know, sort of like, well, I mean, EU. And, you know, people would say things. I kind of made this point. You know, somebody said to me, yeah, but you like Beethoven.

I mean, what's wrong with you? And I said, well, the EU didn't create Beethoven, right? You know what I mean? It's like this sort of like everything. But you like European culture. How can you be so anti-European? I'm not anti-European. I'm not anti-European.

It's a particular institution. I think we should get out. I love Europe. I consider myself to be European. You don't know, I mean, what do you, you know? But it became a, I am a good person. Yeah. And that became a closing down of mind.

So the irony of saying that people were ignorant bigots who were voting Brexit was that far too many people before the vote assumed that you would just vote in Maine if you were any kind of a nice person who liked, who was international outward looking. That was it. And not racist. And not racist.

So. Well, I think that's, Our time, before we finish, we always like to ask one final question, which is what is the one issue that no one is talking about that we should be talking about? This is a slightly peculiar one, but I think there's a real problem with allowing the police to close down rap videos on YouTube. I think that the issues of youth violence and crime in society are underestimated. Sorry, the way that that issue has been used to assault-free speech is something that we should look out for. So there's a consistent attempt by the police to target certain types of music videos and remove them from the web. So that might sound like, what is you talking about?

I did not expect you to bring rap music up, I'm going to be honest. No, but the reason why it's important is because, I mean, it's particularly drill music, but I think that the reason why it's important is because these small little aspects of the culture wars kind of go on. And suddenly you get the head of the Metropolitan Police saying that it's very important to check whether the lyrics of songs incite violence. And you think, what? The head of the Met? and then in telling YouTube to remove videos of types of music now this seems like

such a small thing that you could just let it go to do with anything and you know drill music hardly me do you know what I'm not a fan particularly all the drill musicians who are watching now thinking thank God for that our credibility but on the other hand to let the state

or indeed the big corporates who run the social media platforms remove types of music because the lyrics don't pass some purity test is one of those kind of free speech issues that we should all make much more of us about. And so I suppose for me, sometimes you have to find these small issues. And also on the rap music issue,

a 19-year-old Liverpoolian girl was recently found guilty because she posted a rap song on her Instagram page after a 13-year-old was killed in a car accident and he liked that rap singer she posted the lyrics and of one rap song that contained the N-word

and as a consequence she was found guilty of Section 1, 2, 3 I think it is at the Communications Act she's on a, she's found guilty she had no criminal record before that she was found guilty of race you know of hate crime

she got a fine but she's got a tag and she's got an 8 to 8 curfew and 8 in night or 8 in the morning curfew She's 19 and a criminal record for hate crime Which, you know, racism, right?

Yeah. Because she likes rap. So these like little things, right? And they chip away behind the scenes A bit unfashionable And I don't, you know And a lot of the people who create drill music are gang members

And undoubtedly some of them are unsavory And I might feel a bit weird To say that somebody like me should defend them but they're the hard cases on free speech that we need to defend. So we organise a big festival, the Battle of Ideas Festival, which I hope you till come to. We'd love to. And also, like, we've got loads of speakers.

You'll be able to get loads of people for the show. We'd love to do. Let's talk about that. Yeah, brilliant. Anyway, we're going to have one of the big debates are going to be on rap. Amazing. Amazing. So all sorts of things.

Yeah, so that's one of my, I want to talk about that a lot more. It's interesting. You're the second person we've spoken to today who's brought up the issue of job music. Yeah. Really? Yeah. We'll talk about that after. Anyway, you are on Twitter.

I'm on Twitter. At Fox underscore Claire. At Fox underscore Claire. And if you follow Claire also by her book, I find that offensive. I'm at Failing Human. I'm at Constantine Kissin. And do you want to do the honors? Yes.

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