TRIGGERnometry - Douglas Murray Live + Q&A: What Now For America?

Episode Date: January 10, 2021

Political Commentator and author, Douglas Murray joins us live! Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry 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 (@francisjfoster) 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

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I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishen. And this is a very, very, very special, a live interview with Douglas Murray, featuring a Q&A. It is. We have so much to talk about with Douglas today, just to give you an overview of how the show is going to go. We're going to interview Douglas for about 50 minutes to an hour. Then we're going to have a very short break, and then we will go to the Q&A. If you want to ask a question or for us to ask your question, the two options, you can either send us a super chat and our producer will pick it up and give it to us.

Or you can use the PayPal link, which is in the pinned comment as well. And without any further ado, we're not even going to bother setting the context. you all know what this is about and you all know who Douglas Murray is there he is Douglas welcome to the show it's great to be back with you guys I'm not going to lie Douglas we did consider calling this episode of trigonometry hello Douglas my old friend because it has been a rather dark few days and let's start with January the 6th you've you've written about it but I think it's an important moment not only in modern history but you know in the entire history or perhaps democracy will never know how big it is going to turn out

What did you make of what happened in the capital? Yes, I was covering the U.S. election and was in the U.S. for about five weeks ahead of the November election. I was in Washington, D.C. on election night and wrote from there and left a few days later when it became clear that events were going to sort of rumble on. and that although it seemed pretty clear, I think it was clear from fairly early on in the night that Donald Trump had lost the election, it seemed clear that there were a set of legal challenges and others that would have to play themselves out

and that nothing was going to happen for some time. But of course, in that period since the night of the election in November, Donald Trump obviously did continue to make the same assertions that he had on the night of the election. election. He think, as I wrote in a number of places, I think he said fallaciously that he had won the election and the onus was on him and his legal team to prove that he had won the election and they couldn't prove it. They didn't. And by the way, I think it is worth remembering that the various different strata of the American government and the legislative process worked. There were a number of

right-wing conservative figures, you might say, who were saying, I thought it's slightly sinisterly after the election, well, when this goes to the Supreme Court, you know, then it'll become clear. And then we can have Trump as having one. Well, actually, they did go to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court chucked out the applications from Trump's legal teams. And that happened in other jurisdictions as well, at state levels. And it was clear that Donald Trump's assertion was not able to be proved. I said repeatedly that seemed to be the case that even if there were instances of voter fraud and voter suppression, much of which isn't particularly new in American politics, but could well have happened in a more rife way this year than before.

Nevertheless, he did not prove that it had happened to such an extent that he had, in fact, won the election, and Joe Biden hadn't. And I thought, what's more, by the way, that the claims that were made by the Trump supporters became more and more. more tenuous. People said things like, I've said this to a number of, as it were, pro-Trump platforms, that when people said things like there was something that didn't quite feel right on the night of the election, you know, our guy was winning and then it, then he suddenly was losing. And they were saying this as if that's unheard of. And I kept on saying, obviously, to the bemusement of most Americans, but Sunderland. You know how to choose the right metaphor to explain things to America.

They just kept saying, why does he keep shouting Sunderland at us? Of course, all the British viewers know this was a night on the 2016 Brexit referendum when it seemed that Remain had been winning. And then suddenly the vote came in from Sunderland, and the whole night changed course. You know, that's what happens with elections. I think all of us can remember election nights when we thought it was going to go one way and it's gone another.

So the specifics weren't proven by Trump and his people, and the generalities became more and more tenuous. And then we get to this stage where it seems that Trump has his sort of last, well, all the doors have been closing to him, hadn't they, as the days and weeks have gone on since November. All the doors have been closing. And Congress was going to vote to confirm the win for Joe Biden.

And on that day, you know, Trump calls on supporters to mass in Washington and to protest against this, basically, to, to, he says stop the steel. This is one of his slogans. But again, I mean, repeat that if the election had been stolen to such an extent that it was Donald Trump who won it, not Joe Biden, then it was in. upon Donald Trump and his legal team prove that. And they didn't. And so there was something not just irresponsible, but reckless in calling for people to gather to protest something which was not true. I don't want to delve into trying to understand the minds of any person

who I don't know, but I suppose it will be up to historians to try to work out in the future whether Donald Trump himself actually believes this at this stage or not. Nevertheless, he encouraged people to amass. And although, as is always has to be stressed, the majority of protesters were peaceful and seemed to be decent law-abiding Americans, a number of people turned up, a large number of people turned up, who certainly weren't. And I think that there's going to be a very interesting,

I wrote from the spectator the other day, it's going to be a very interesting question over the extent to which one can directly claim that the president was liable for what happened on the capital, because his speech, I thought, in the run-up to it, was, I wouldn't say it was incitement, but it was certainly highly inflammatory, and does raise the whole question, which I think should be on the minds of everybody of every political side, and it should have been for some time now. It's not like we should have been starting from scratch.

They're very interesting question of who exactly bears responsibility for what once you raise a crowd. I mean, it's what some of us always worry about with crowds of any size for any purpose. I think I've said to you before how much I myself dislike them precisely because you never know. You run a whole book about it, didn't you, Douglas? I did. And I worry, I've always worried about. that. I've seen it in so many different contexts of what happens when large numbers of people come out. And you get sincere and serious people, as you did, for instance, in the BLN protests last summer.

And you also get very insincere people. And you get gadflies and weirdos. And that's the best, in the bad part of the scenario. And the worst part is you get the sort of people who are willing to turn violent. And then you see scenes like we saw the Capitol and, you know, the extraordinary tarol side of, you know, a woman, a youngish woman being shot. For what exactly? It's a very, it should be a salutary moment for everyone. But I think that for the president and his team and the people around him who goaded on this particular claim, it's not surprising to me, I think that it was. so solitary that the president finally conceded. You know, it's very interesting that that happened finally.

I mean, we've been waiting for a concession speech. How tragic it is for America. And, of course, on much less important scale, how tragedy it is for Donald Trump's legacy, where there were some things he achieved in his presidency. It's terrible for his legacy that he should have needed, effectively an appalling break-in at the capital and the death of a number of people to persuade him to finally do what he should have done around about the 6th, the 7th of November.

So I think it's been a very concerning period, but it's one we, you know, that I think everybody should learn from. And Douglas, there are a cause for him to be impeached. Do you agree with that? Do you think he should be? No, I mean, we'll see if people can come up with evidence that he should be, I suppose. That'll be. I have no particularly strong views on that.

I think impeachment is a word has been bandied around so often in American politics and in every direction. I, in a way, I think one of the things that's most important, I'm not an American myself, although I spent a fair amount of my life in America and have a great admiration for the country. and for the culture of the country. I think it's just as an observer, as it were, as a friend of the country, I'd say that I think it's very important that, in the same way as it was important

that silly, you know, sort of chant of lock her up about Hillary Clinton didn't actually lead to Hillary Clinton being locked up, you know, or sort of put on trial or something. So I think it's important that in victory, the Democrats don't go for something like impeachment, Just as, by the way, as I think it would have been unwise had the Republican, again, no, politically it would have been opportunistic and clever, but it would have been morally unwise and unwise for the health of the nation

if Republicans had held on to the Senate and Congress, for instance, and then pushed on with an attempted impeachment of Joe Biden over family business. You know, what I'm saying here is I think anybody who is an American, anyone who's a friend of America, It wants to work out how America can be walked back from this brink and everything that involves terms like impeachment, imprisonment, prosecution, and much more of any of the two major candidates in a presidential race seems to me to be a very unwise position to get into

because it's going to exacerbate, it's going to make people big down. so I myself would think any of these moves would be unwise. Douglas, let me ask you this. You mentioned the word responsibility. You talked about liability. And we had Brett Weinstein, who's a friend of both of ours on the show, talking about these things from a left-wing perspective. But let me put a question that might make people on the right,

yourself perhaps included uncomfortable, which is you talk about the lock her up. Is there a degree of responsibility to take for many people? on the right, who did not take Donald Trump seriously when he said, I'm going to lock up my opponent, and are they now culpable to some extent for what has happened, for the lives that have been lost, for the huge damage that's been done to the democratic process? 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,

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That's avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. Republicans in America should think about that. I think it is something they're thinking about. I think I've been thinking about it for more than four years. I said when I was in America recently that something very strange had happened. I think I actually said this to Brett,

that I noticed that with the perhaps exception of Brett and his wife, and maybe I should say some other American friends, the number of dinner tables, almost every dinner table he sat down to an America if there were people from both different parties where they just couldn't converse anymore, and they just couldn't talk to each other. And I kept wondering why it wasn't, as it were, my steel man version of it was,

and I think it's fairly actually. my Democrat friends in America couldn't forgive the Republicans for allowing Donald Trump to happen. And I think there's obviously a fair amount in that. And I think it's something the Republican Party had been thinking about. I mean, it's not like he was the preferred candidate of the party in 2016. I also think that, to an enormous extent, people did see some of this coming. I don't think people saw exactly what was going to happen.

But take this one, for instance. And again, I read about this recently. Why was it always the case that although there were some good people who worked for Donald Trump, particularly foreign policy areas, and trade negotiations and much more, why was it that he did seem always to have such trouble filling positions? Why from the get-go? I mean, and I say this, having friends in previous administrations, Democrat and Republican,

why did my Republican friends, so many of them, not accept jobs with Donald Trump's administration from the get-go? And it was always pretty much the same reason, which was that people just didn't trust that he wasn't going to pull some crap at some point that was going to sally everyone who'd been anywhere near it. And I think that is, that has been a serious consideration. I think that there have been, there were, of course, there were the Never Trump movement. I wrote not long ago that the question that will always, or even for recent events, that will haunt the Never Trump movement will be whether there were things that they could have done in the administration that would be effective. I think of people like Elliot Abrams, who was Venezuela representative,

of the president and latterly represented the administration on Iran policy, a very distinguished foreign policy figure, did a lot of good in his work on Venezuela and in Iran. And if more people have gone in, would there have been more good? Yes, possibly. But now we all see even more clearly what the downside would have been, which was that people would be contaminated with the president whose exit from office makes that of Richard Nixon look positively graceful. And that is the problem. But I mean, I think that the questions around Donald Trump were pretty much all answered in 2016 for the right, which was, you know, could they keep him out?

No. Did some of the right want to, obviously? others made their peace with him. Better, you know, better to have this person than the alternative. And that's something I think everybody is going to be continuing to weigh up. I myself could never understand. I mean, I've on a number of occasions written about aspects of his policy. I think that peace deals in the Middle East that he negotiated his overall.

of praise. I think that he's, he was the first major figure in the democratic world to recognize the threat that in the 21st century poses and to try to do something about that. But again, you know, you weigh that up against the rest of the legacy. And it is, it's possible that all of that and much more will be forgotten amid these scenes. And I'd add people, particularly on the activist left, who will want everything else to be forgotten. and will use the horrible events of the other day as a demonstration that there's nothing good to be said about not just Donald Trump, the Republican Party, the conservative side, the right, and so on.

But Douglas, let me just follow up quickly before Francis jumps in. The counter argument to my counter argument, which I asked you about the right responsibility, would be that in 2016, only a non-concernel. system candidate like Donald Trump could have won. Only someone who promised to quote-unquote drain the swamp. Only someone who addressed the issues that the Republican, the standard discourse in the Republican Party ignored. Only a man or a woman like that could have broken that deadlock, could have got through the concerns of ordinary voters. And for that reasons, for those reasons, even this price was worth paying. Yes, there will be people.

who will say that. This is a very tricky one, isn't it? Because it's impossible not to reinterpret events in light of what's happened since. The Republican Party, by 26, become a worryingly, among other things, hereditary party. By the way, American politics does have this tendency in it in it.

both major parties, but the prospect of being offered another member of the Bush family, even for those of us who thought that there were things that George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush did that were laudable. Great about this family, they have to provide a quarter of American presidents in the last half a century. I mean, these questions hovered, as you could say they did to some extent in democratic politics with the Kennedys, you know, you could say that with the Clintons and more. But it's obviously a tendency. The Republican Party, I think, by 2016, did look like it was perfectly happy yet again

to sort of shoe in somebody from a relatively small number of candidates, relatively small number of families who might fit the bill. And then along comes Donald Trump. And yes, I mean, famously sort of, in. insults and abuses and amuses his way to the top of the ticket. And I think there's a lot to be, you know, still gone over about that. There's an awful lot that's been said about it. But yes, I mean, when it's quite hard, I think, for non-Americans to recognize that the

level of distrust and indeed content that is felt towards Washington from outside the political beltway. The only thing I can think of as being analogous to it in the UK is the way in which Nicholas Sturgeon and other national populists in Scotland talk about Westminster, you know, everything that Westminster is sort of uniquely terrible and everything that comes out from it, you know, and this is the way in which people are both sides of the aisle in America, but particularly America side, the Republican side, have talked about Washington. And yes, I think that to that and this new candidate who came along and sort of said to hell with them all, had something going for him.

One of the obvious things from very early on was that whatever Donald Trump said, what he actually managed to follow through on was tiny in proportion to the claims he made. You know, I mean, that have, again, it's about magnanimity and victory, probably shouldn't have said the other day that Trump was the most disastrous, so I think he said incompetent president in American history. Again, I mean, I'm not sure it's certainly true that to a great extent, Donald Trump, when he had the levers of power, and this was one of the main critiques of him from the right, had sort of knew absolutely no idea of how to control the dashboard as a whole.

And yes, to that extent, and that was one of the reasons why he lost quite a lot of his supporters on the ride. And, Douglas, we've seen his actions, we've seen the speeches. how much do you think his actions and his speeches have undermined American democracy? I think we have to be very careful to avoid overstatement on this. You know, to one extent, the whole thing is enormous embarrassment for America and for friends of America. And I think what's more that there is a lot of. to pick over and that should be picked over and what led to the events, the capital on the 6th of January. That said, I do also think it's important that people don't play up things like saying,

this shows that America isn't a democracy or anything like this. I think there's a lot of chatter like that, which I can't help. Again, I restate the extent to which the, the organ. of American democracy succeeded and worked in recent months. You know, the stress test has been almost inauguration, but the stress tests has been almost completed, and American democracy passed it. I referred in a column a couple days ago

to the fact that when I was in Central East and Europe recently, I was worried going around, but a joke for me going around that part of the world and Russia that the problem with America was that it has spent so much time exporting democracy in years. In recent years, it forgot to keep any for itself at home. But I worry about those sort of things because I worry about what people who would make those sorts of jokes would be hoping to get away. You know, we've seen in recent days President Edouan of, Turkey condemning the scenes on the capital.

This is a man who 12 hours after a possible alleged coup against him happened to have the names of 2,000 judges to hand to make sure he got rid of. So we won't be hearing lessons in American democracy from President Edouan, thank you very much. The same goes the Chinese Communist Party. are careful in this. America is, has been for many years, I think it remains so. I think that the people who would like to overstate event in a way demonstrate some failing in democracy or much more are trying to do something else or are too pleased for my taste with what they've seen and what they think they can get away with in their own countries as a result of it. So I just, I just, I feel

level heads on this as always. And I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I've said in recent years, there are so many different things. The number one priority is do not be driven mad. Do not be driven mad. And it's, it's a very good point to make. I mean, the people who do seem to be driven and somewhat mad. Are the people celebrating his removal from Twitter? Well, let's just, I want to get to the big tech, but I had another question for Douglass just on the politics. And maybe better coming from you,

because we've sort of asked a lot of questions about the right, the rights responsibility, but actually there's been a role for the left in enabling what's happened to. Right, so I guess the question that we, you know, that we want to ask on, on behalf of the left is this constant demonization of the right, this constant attacking of the right and painting as if they're,

you know, they're evil, they're wrong, they don't care about the world, painting them into a corner. Didn't that just emboldened people to support Trump and people for people to think, look, this is where you put me. I'm going to behave badly because in your eyes, I'm a bad person. And also add to that, of course, the riots that we've seen in the whole of 2020, where political violence was essentially endorsed by the main players on the left. Oh, yes. I mean, I didn't see condemnation from anything like that of recent days or claims that everybody on the Democrat side dial should take equal responsibility or anything like that when, I don't know, protesters were allowed to assail federal building. in Seattle in the summer, for instance, or have been besieging state property for months

as it happens. So I do think there's something in that. But again, I mean, I think people have to avoid, I've always thought, I saw it as a tendency among some Trump supporters. I think the tendency always has to be avoided to say, I'd like my enemies to suffer. And that seemed to be something which had crept into American politics. politics and which Donald Trump was a sort of answer for for a part of the right was, you know, look at a famous example of the problem was what Bill Maher said ahead of Trump's election

in 2016, when Bill Maher had the decency and the honesty to say. No, we said John McCain was a racist and xenophobe when he ran for a president in 2008. but he wasn't. We were just saying and I know we said that Mitt Romney was a misogynist and a racist and a homophore when he ran for office in 2012. We didn't really mean that. What we just wanted was for our

guy to get in. And then he said, but you see here in 2016 it actually is the case. Racist and a misogynist and a homophote. And the thing was that a bunch of people said, but that isn't, that's something you kept telling us. You kept telling us that all candidates from the

Republican Party were racists and homophobes and xenophobes and misogynists and hated women and homony over. He didn't view women as people. Endless, endless claims like this were made about everybody who was running from the right. So then you get Donald Trump, who, as I say, insults his way to the top of the ticket. And Donald Trump, um, Whatever the negative, and I've said this many times in recent years, it was not why America didn't know about Donald Trump's character or much more. It was why they knew it and they voted for him anyway. That was the question for 2016 to be considered.

And one of the answers of why they did it anyway was and decided that Donald Trump seemed to first. frankly, to use a Britishism on it, piss off the opposition so much that this was a kind of virtue. The problem is vulnerable to that tendency. It's a very ignoble tendency. It's one that it's worth avoiding. This character really makes my opponent's froth. Therefore, I will... democratic process. But it's definitely there. And I think there was obviously

huge amount of upset and disdain and much more on the right. But, you know, people have to take responsibility for their own action. Absolutely. And Douglas, you know, we see, you know, people on the left, they now have, they've got their man and they believe

that everything is over, everything is solved. We're going to now move forward. Do you know it's going to be the case? Is racism completely finished with Joe Biden? Sexism as well. I mean, I think that sexism, racism and stuff, I really do. I'm not, I think that a binary had been set up in recent years. We've talked about a bit about this before.

And obviously, I write about it a bit in the matters of crowd. If you didn't submit to a certain type of politics and all of the same things, and you were therefore beyond the pale. and unfortunately left on occasions majority populations allegedly beyond the pale, which is obviously not a sustainable position. And I mean, we'll see, but what I've heard so far from President Alec's office does not suggest much in the way of actual reconciliation, I think. And obviously Donald Trump's actions don't.

he's announced that he won't go to the inauguration, which is a perhaps characteristically ineligent and indecent thing for him to decide to do. But to that extent, yeah, there will be no reconciliation from this. And if I can just quickly say so, one of the things, again, that I picked up from my travels in America, I was a travel in seven or eight, seven or eight states, I think. a fairish idea of what was going on in the country. One of the things I picked up very strongly, and I wrote about the spectator afterwards, was my concern that America had got to this stage,

not because it interpreted events differently, but because it saw the same thing and came to different conclusions about what it had just seen. And I can't stress enough the worry I think we should all have about this and the amount of thought that everybody from every political side should put into this. There were, again, in 2016, very significant senior members of the Democrat Party who said that Donald Trump had only got into office because of the Russians. And it was incumbent upon them to prove that claim.

And they, first of all, claimed that there were actual votes manipulation and voting machine manipulation done by the Russians. And then that didn't stack up. And it went on and on down to a few Russian bots. And so they were willing, the Democrats were willing to play with this very nasty thing of, no, we don't really accept that this is a legitimate president. They were willing to do that in 2016. Donald Trump was willing, as always, to go a step further than anyone else.

And in 2020, actually says, no, I didn't lose. I won. And here's the thing. Again, any friend of America, any Americans should be thinking about, the polls seem to show in recent weeks nine out of ten Trump voters agree with the president's claim that he won the election. But that's a disaster, and you've got to find a way to mend that. One of the great geniuses of the democratic system is not just that it allows the victor to know that they have won, but it allows the loser to know that they've lost.

And I said quite often in recent years, if the Democrats had actually spent four years trying to work out why Donald Trump had won in 2016, they could have done an awful lot of good for their own party as well as for the country. If they hadn't have spent their time and wasted their time on Russia conspiracies and much more, and just work out, as I say,

why the American people knew what they knew about Donald Trump and voted for him anyway in 2016, in such large numbers. That's the task worth immersing yourself in. But here's the kicker to it, is that that is also something that the Republican right in America is going to have to do now. And my worry is that Donald Trump has led them and misled them in such a strong way that they aren't, again, like the Democrats, like so many of the Democrats after 2016, they're not going to work out why they lost. And they haven't just lost the presidency. They've lost the Senate.

They've lost the Congress. It's their worst case scenario. And that should be, when you've lost, as the Republicans have, should be the moment when you start to work out why you have lost. And the problem, if so many Republicans don't think they did lose, is that again, they will waste their time and they will waste everybody else's time, not mending things they could and should mend because they haven't got through the first stage of accepting. the reality. And that's one of the many things about this that worries me. We've seen the left spiral into conspiracy theory and much more, violence and routine violence and much more. And I would not be at all surprised if this motif of the vote having been stolen and it's everyone against the people and all this.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if we don't see a degeneration on the right that mirrors the degeneration that's happened in recent years on the left. I think it's a source of enormous concern. Douglas, I know Francis, you were keen to get to the Twitter point, and that's super important for us to talk about. But let me ask you about this, because you talk about the Republicans working out why they've lost. And as you know, some Republicans made the claim that it was Venezuela.

that interfered. So between the two of us, we've basically been responsible for the last two elections in America. Yeah, yeah. A dead Venezuelan leader. That was one of the least plausible claims. That's how powerful is. Even in the grave, Venezuelans can achieve these things. Absolutely. But I would argue, and I don't think it's unreasonable to do so, that had it not been for the coronavirus, Donald Trump would still be present. And if you take that into consideration, while I agree with you, it's important for the right to work out where the right lost on this occasion and lost, as you say, spectacularly. I also think that a Biden victory is papering over not just cracks, but chasms that are existent in the left.

And frankly, I would say they got once in a century lucky. And, I mean, how are they going to deal with that? Yeah, this is a very important area of this. I do think that the left America will see this as a, well, apart from the thing else, because of events of recent days, we'll see this as a total vindication of everything they claimed. You can already see it in this sort of stop fascism sort of stuff. They really are going to dig down on this, that 2021 was actually the year they, they, they, were personally like French resistance fighters in the 1940s. And, you know, I think that there's an enormous amount of hubris that will be occurring at the moment. And as you say, we come back to this question of, in a way, what the trajectory might have been if 2020 had been like a normal year.

Somebody fairly close to the Trump team said to me a couple of years ago, I interviewed them, that there were only two things they needed, that were really needed for Donald Trump to be re-elected. This was about 18 months ahead of the election. There were only two things really that they were needed. One was that the president, that the economy needed to keep growing in America. And the second was, and the president mustn't get us into any unwinnable foreign. He seemed to be, if that was true, and I think there was certainly a serious ring of truth about If that was a case, you know, employment kept growing, American public kept feeling the president and some happy luck as well, then he could float back into office. I think that was certainly possible. I thought quite frequently in 2020 that that was the case.

And of course, you know, by the time he went to the poll, it was disastrous year. for all of our economies, where public borrowing, state borrowing, went soaring up. GDP crashed. The economy was basically shut down. It was hard for any president to return to the public. That famous crucial question, you know, are you better off than you were four years ago? You know, it doesn't really matter if the answer is, we'll know, but that's partly because, or largely because of a, virus that came from Wuhan and has shut down the economies of every major country in the world.

It didn't really matter if that was the sort of small print when the main thing is, no, I'm not better off now than I was four years ago. I can't leave my house. I've lost my job. I've got a $1,000 check from the government that's meant to see me through months. I can't socialize and much more. I mean, it's not an optimal situation to go back to the public in, is it? And so, yeah, I'm sure.

But by the way, I mean, we also see in this the roots of some of what the Trump team might be trying to do in the coming months and years, which is, as well, to claim that only, if it only hadn't been for the virus, he'd be back in. And once I think it's obviously a fact, I think it would be a mistake to focus only on that because I think they should also focus on the many other things that we could all reel off in our sleep

of the negative things about Donald Trump that would mean the American voter might not vote for him. I mean, by the way, I still find the most interesting stat on it to raise in Republican under Trump but the fall off of white males voting Republican under Trump, which tells you exactly the opposite thing from the thing that the left would like to pretend about the Trump years. But as I say, yes, I think it would be a mistake because it might let Team Trump off

other parts of the self-examination they and the GOP will need. Isn't a real problem as well, the fact that Biden isn't going to address the problems that the Trump base want addressed? He's a neoliberal, he's more of the same, he's a neoliberal, he's more of the same, the Hillary Clinton mold, it's not going to address America's problems. No, maybe no individual can, though. I mean, maybe that's something that sort of rely on a figure that combines the moral and virtues of Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, and, you know, and on and on.

I mean, it may not be the right perception that you've got to, wait around for that person to come along. The reforms that are needed are literally in the hearts of every American rather than in one person who has a fortune to be in the Oval Office. I think there's an enormous amount of criticism that can be made of Biden. It's that there was going to be something he would achieve in his sixth decade in policy achieved in the previous half century. I think that that's certainly a problem. But in a way, again, maybe that was one of the reasons why people voted for him, as Peggy Noonan said, in the Wall Street Journal ahead of the election after the Corona week when the president got Corona. And they sort of saw Biden as

normal. And that's a, that's a perfectly, I mean, it's a perfectly reasonable instinct. But I agree with you. I think that there are, I think there are serious, I put it this way, there are serious interpretation of the world and interpretation of America questions, which I don't see Joe Biden and Kamala Harris addressing. And I think, if I can say so, one of them is the same one we're all struggling with in our countries, which is the extent to which people have the right to be, basically proud of their past, of their country, of its achievements, and not want to change it too much.

I mean, it basically comes down to that for a lot of small, conservative is just they love their country, think it's a force for good in the world, broadly speaking, this speaks to patriotism almost everywhere. Broadly speaking, you think your country's been a force for good. You love it, you like it, you'd like it to continue and continue in the way it has been with small modifications, but nothing vast. And I think a lot of Americans in recent years have seen a part of the left-wing project, which is fundamentally rewriting American history, which is rewriting it in a totally negative light, which seems to have very big plans for the country that do not seem to have the endorsement of the majority of the population,

but seem to really know what they want to do. And this worries people. And I personally think it's a perfectly reasonable instinct to be worried when the when people come along with a very clear project that would fundamentally change part of the nature of a country which you like. Now, I think that it's been over-egged, deeply, deeply over-egged, particularly by Trump, the extent to which the American left does plan to change this. The rally of Trump's, I reported from Pensacola, Florida in late October, you know, I mean, he said to the crowd there, you know, if the Democrats get in, you know, know, you won't have your gums. That's very contestable. I mean, obviously, the worst thing that can

happen is to a person who's British to talk about America's Second Amendment. But I, the Democrats may change some of the laws around it, but the idea that they will disarm the citizenry seems to me highly implausible. And much more implausible was Trump's claim that, that if the Democrats get in, you won't be allowed your religion. I couldn't ever see how that was a reasonable interpretation of Democrat policy. So it can be over-egged and had been over-egged, particularly by Trump for obvious electoral reasons. But yes, I think one of the central points come back to is this question of just decent, reasonable people who are patriotic, I think their country is forced with good in the world, don't want it very dramatically changed,

and should not, in that process, be decried as racist, homophob, sexist, misogynists, and all the rest of it. And I think those people have been very freely insulted. They have been one of the only groups who are allowed to completely freely insult in society. And this point is either a point where that could start to men, or it could be the point where everybody digs down, where the people who claim that everybody who's ever voted Republican in America is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, sexist, fascist who wants to storm the capital.

There will be people who will double down on that claim, and there will be Republicans, Trump supporters, who will be more and more embittered, by the total lack of sympathy for their concerns and reasonable concerns of that and will double down in ways of their own which we can only at present imagine. So how do we bridge this divide, then, Douglas, because as mentioned before, I don't think Joe Biden is a man to do that. He's not the man to unite America.

Well, he has to be. I mean, it comes out that. He has to try. he and Vice President let Harris have to try, and I just, I hope they do. I did suggest immediately after the election that the world really, let alone America, couldn't really cope with having election after election, which the results weren't agreed upon. Yeah. And that one very good place to start, to heal, to stop this thing I describe of the seeing the same event, but coming away believing you've seen different things, a very good way to deal with that would be.

I said whoever wins presidency to set up a commission of inquiry into electoral practice in America, including mail-in ballots. And I don't know exactly how you would do it. You'd have to have eminently non-partisan figures, respected individuals. I can think of very many in America of left and right as it happens. I don't think there's a shortage of them. I think it would be incumbent upon anyone who cares about the democratic process in America to do something like that, get a group of people together,

to look at how we can make sure that next time there is an election in the United States for America, the world's leading democracy, the most powerful and important nation on earth, that next time there is an election, the winners know that they've won and the losers know they've lost. And if that happens, if America could just agree on one thing, like the outcome of an election once, that would be a start. Otherwise, it is just the thing of running down your own rabbit hole, your own interpretation of events. Well, speaking of running down rabbit holes, Francis has been trying to get this question in for about 30 minutes. So why don't we get to it? And, you know, you talked earlier in the interview about not becoming overly dramatic about events, not talking about the end of democracy.

But I will put it to you, Douglas. I will put this to you because it's how I feel that what we have seen in the last 24 hours with not Donald Trump being suspended for a particular tweet unless he deletes it, but actually being permanently removed from the main way that he used to communicate with the public, followed by. Tens of thousands of accounts being removed. You and I and Francis and all the rest of us have seen this happening. This big tech censorship now represents, I don't personally believe, if this continues, we're ever going to have a free or fair election ever again. And if that is the case, that is the end of democracy.

Would you agree with that? Would you disagree with that? I don't think it's the end of democracy, but I think we have to start to speak very plainly about big tech. I think a big tech is the enemy of free expression, free inquiry, free thought, and yes, possibly at some level of democracy itself. I've actually written about this for the mail on Sunday tomorrow. This in recent years, the more that I've immersed myself in learning what exactly it is that Silicon Valley is doing. Let's be under no pretense about this. Donald Trump. Trump would not be president, were it not for Twitter, Donald Trump, because it's had its use of him.

Now, here we get to the absolutely foundational truth that I think all of us have to say more often, even when we already know it, and that is this. The business involves the total hollowing out of every other institution in society other than themselves. They feed off the entire corpse, eat the whole thing for their own enrichment, and then move on. They've done it with everything. Everybody is now helping these big tech companies and the big tech companies and the big tech companies. companies are using it happened with all sorts it happened with musicians it happened with writers it happened with jitter after sector and people just sort of it said well we've got to accept it it's a seneck has done to journalism i mean it's hollowed it out i mean thank goodness there are still some

papers but look at who wins the war each time it comes on now there was a period where the papers thought that it was useful to have big tech to increase their own platforms. But look at what happens, like ahead of the U.S. election in November, when the New York Post, America's oldest among the most venerable media institutions, has its Twitter and Facebook account suspended because it runs a story that is negative about Joe Biden and the companies by then decide they want Biden to win. That was an astonishing, dangerous standoff. And that America's oldest newspaper could be silenced by the big tech

was one of the many, many signs we've had that something very dangerous was going on. That the financial model of big tech, has always been that it relies on the citizenry to correct each other's behavior or attempt to correct each other's behavior for free in their spare time. And this enriches the platforms, this enriches Twitter, this enriches Google, it's enriches Facebook and so on. And we've known that this was the model for a long time. And the question has been, well, how do we avoid it?

I mean, we're on one such platform at the moment. You and I, we all know the extent to which YouTube is a totally dishonest player in this, that it doesn't. It pretends to be one thing and is another, just like Twitter, just like Facebook, just like Google. Whenever YouTube is caught, for instance, as it did recently, taking down talk radio's channel in the UK because some talk radio presenters has had been questioning government lockdown policy. I mean, again, you've either got a free society or you haven't.

And in a free society, if the citizenry are all locked in their houses and then are told they can't even talk about it, you're in trouble, aren't you? But here is YouTube taking it upon itself to take down Talk Radio's channel because of that. And then once there is the blue ha-ha, YouTube does the usual thing of pretending that it was all a mistake. It's what it always does when it's caught out. It's what it always does when it's caught out. It's the same with Twitter.

Look at the extraordinary evil of Twitter as a platform. I can do it at the moment, as can you. You should just check whether Ayatollah Khomeini's account. Yeah. The Ayatollah is still on Twitter. The Ayatollah is still on Twitter. He's got very progressive views, Douglas. Especially, especially on Israel.

Yeah, yeah. All those people, all those people who spent recent years trying to pretend that Donald Trump was an anti-Semite, of all the things you could say about him, that he was an anti-Semite. Here's a man, Khomeini, who has repeatedly called for the total eradication of the Jewish state. Fine with Twitter. Fine with Twitter. No problem. The Communist Party of China's Twitter accounts. Are they still up? We can check now. Yep. Yep. The Communist Party of China's Twitter accounts. China's still going strong on Twitter. President of the United States, not allowed. Communist Party of China tick. Verification tick. Hold on. Well, let me push back on that then. So I've just asked you if this is the end of democracy.

You've said, no, it's not. And then proceeded to give me about 20 reasons why I would argue it is. So what are you seeing that I'm not seeing? I'm saying that I don't think we're there yet. We're a very, very dangerous position. I don't think we're there yet. But the platforms are certainly of these platforms in recent years. And this has been such a difficult, we've all seen it ourselves.

I think everybody with our platforms. For instance, oh, you know, Twitter or something decides to chuck off some sort of right. One really minds all that much because they don't much like the person. And they've said some stupid things and some wicked things over the years. and so everyone sort of just goes along with it. But before you know it, here in 2021, where the outgoing president of the United States is now in that group as well.

And I've pointed this out for some years, but one of my favorite examples of the malevolence of the platform of Twitter was at the same time it was making a huge show of its bravery in, I think, maybe it was Katie Hopkins or something had been chucked off the platform. There was still Twitter accounts for Lash Kari Taiba,

the terrorist group who carried out the Mumbai massacre in 2008. Lash Karatiba were happily tweeting away. Jack Dorsey had no problem with Lash Karatiba. So when you come back to this question is, do they not have a problem with it, or do they not know, are they ignorant or are they malevolent? And I think that there's a bit of both going on. You know, when the tech companies started, they didn't know they were going to be in the position that we are all in now.

I think they didn't know. Conversations I've had at people at Google, Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere suggest this, that, you know, they end up with a tool that makes Gutenberg look small. and they end up having to confront the questions that grown-ups in the free press, apart from anything else, which, by the way, always gets a terrible ride. Everyone loves to attack the free press, the newspapers, proprietors, writers, editorials and so on.

But the free press had been thinking about all of the questions that Twitter and Facebook have been fumbling over for centuries. So watching the text, platforms struggle with this is not just like, well, it was originally it was just like watching the slowest kid in the class. But increasingly it's become something else. I said somewhere that watching Twitter and Google and Facebook and YouTube talking about free speech was to steal a quote from Evelyn War, like watching a severa viz.

in the hands of a chimpanzee. They don't, they just no idea what they're dealing with. They talk about free speech and they've no idea what this thing is. And they're all starting from scratch. And in America, of course, after 2016, the tech platforms were flooded with Obama and ex-abama appointees. And then, of course, when Nick Clegg loses his seat in 2017, he goes into the senior a position of Facebook and drags a load of unemployable Lib Dems in his wake into the otherwise

unemployable Lib Dems, I should say, in his wake. So that these people are now deciding what you and I and everyone else in the world can know and hear and say. And they are at the very least not up to the job, at the very least not up to the job. But in actual fact, are all. constantly demonstrating themselves, as with the examples I just gave, to be malevolent actors. You've seen the tweets that the Chinese Communist Party sent out this week about re-inductination of Uyghur women. I mean, this is properly propaganda that Twitter allows to go out. And I worry, as I know both of you do, and I know all of the people with us at the moment do,

I worry deeply about this, not least because of the highly unusual situation we are in in regards to corona and lockdowns and much more. And the attempts by the platforms to, as if they're starting free speech 101 course in their first semester at the third rate university, you know, they are to watch that being done at this time in our history with the amount of brewing discontentering. there is, is deeply, deeply troubling. And, Douglas, you've explained it all very, very, very well as is your star. But why is it that more people don't understand this? Why don't people get it? I try and explain to my friends who are very intelligent people, very good careers, you know, go to good universities, and you explain this to them.

They say, well, no one's got the right to a Twitter account. What's your problem? He was behaving like an idiot. He got kicked off Twitter. Grow up. Yeah. Well, a lot of people don't realize the extent to which they are being manipulated by the platforms, and I think that that is something you just have to hope person by person changes.

I mean, take any of the news feeds that come up with the various platforms like Google, what comes up on Google news? What comes up on Yahoo News? It's the same weird outlets. It's a mixture of grievance-mongering. far left wingery and Hello magazine. So people have to just sign out of that. They have to say, I'm not, I'm not having,

that's not, that's not the world I'm going to live in. I'm not going to be forced fed, like some chimp. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to be misled like this. I'm not going to have my life derailed like this. You know, the, who is it, the Comtesseigneur, valet was said to have been asked to wake him up every morning with the with the call what was it a rise count you have great things to achieve today I don't think everyone can be

woken up with that we we all have great things we can achieve in our lives and the tech platforms have decided to feed us pat total pap and they hope that it'll satisfy us and unfortunately they've got away with it for a very long time. And they've even got away with using our rage. Yeah, sorry, Douglas, to jump in. I want to come back to the tech issue, but we've done about an hour, and I want to get to everybody's questions.

So we really appreciate your time, guys, so stick around. We'll be back in a couple of minutes, and we have a thank you to say to all the people who make the show possible. So we'll see in a couple of minutes with questions. Send yours now using Superchats on PayPal. and we'll get to them straight after this. Have you ever been abroad and felt out of place

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Douglas, I am ashamed to have had you watch that, but nonetheless it was necessary. It was a great pleasure. Listen, before we get to, we've got a question from Hannah here, which I really appreciate and I want to get to. I actually wanted to ask you, and it's very unusual both for us and for you to talk about individuals, but such as his calibre, I would say, and the relevance to the conversation we were having

just before we finished the interview, that I do want to bring it up. What did you make of Sam Harris and his quite continuous demand for Donald Trump to be banned from Twitter and yesterday thanking Jack Dorsey for doing that? I always imagined that Sam would be very much on the freedom of speech side of things. So I was very surprised.

What do you make of that? I mean, Sam's a friend. His views on Trump are very well known. He's made no secret of them. I just myself would say that I still think it's the wrong decision for Twitter. I think that it is what's more. pathetic timing for them. I mean, it's just, it's amazing that,

and I think there are no thanks that should be given or need to be given to Jack Dorsey for dumping the person he created after he's been of use to him and his platform and his money-making machine. Fair enough. I just disagree with Sam on that, but, you know, in my experience,

you can have an awful lot. disagreement with people and still be friends. Absolutely. Hannah says, Douglas, do you think the UK or the US will reach a breaking point with draconian COVID-19 measures and begin not complying in 2021? She says, in my opinion, we can win by peaceful non-compliance when people wake up to the show and social engineering afoot. What are your thoughts?

Well, I don't agree that it's simply social engineering. I think the virus is a real thing and people should take it. seriously and should be very careful and cautious. I think that there has been throughout the whole of this period a very difficult balance, which we by no means have always got right. And that balance is between public health and the economy. And the public health has been given priority consistently. And the economy has been put into a second order of priority. And at some point, that is, I think, with the vaccine news, it seems others, that we get out of this and are able to sort of get back to normal life by the summer and that the economic hit we take is able to be managed

almost certainly just by means of inflation. And this is a sort of bad, like a bad dream within a year or so. I don't know if that'll be the case. I've been rather surprised how pliant, in a way, the public's have been, how is a less loaded term. They have been of the advice. But I think I said to you at the beginning of the whole virus when we spoke, I am worried, one of which is that science is perhaps the last, remaining magisterium in our society, and that seems to be fracturing and splintering. It seems to have been last year, as people have questioned elements of the science, and particularly have been questioning whether the scientists should have precedence

over the economists, to put it in one format. I think the – I'm not one of those who think that the government is going to – I don't think that Boris Johnson is secretly using the virus in order to – I think there will be examples of that. I think there will be politicians and public sector workers and others who will be very happy with the powers that have accrued to them. Governor Cuomo in New York strikes me as one such candidate, one such character, who rather enjoys the extraordinary newfound powers he has.

My deeper worry in a way is the question that remains after this, which is this virus could have been an awful lot worse. it isn't as bad, I think, as we thought it was at the very beginning. It's the third such virus that has come out of China in just over a decade. And I don't think that there's any significant likelihood that it's not going to happen again quite soon. Because I don't forget, sorry to harp on about this, but the Chinese Communist Party, who I hold totally responsible for this,

knew what was happening, knew about the virus and didn't tell the rest of the world, by contrast the British government the other week when it thought it had found a new strain immediately announced it to the world, did exactly the right thing, paid a certain price, EU countries and others shut their borders to the UK for a period. But that was the responsible thing to do. Chinese communist authorities didn't do that. And what's more have just again last week, Zhang Zan, a female Chinese journalist was imprisoned for five years to investigate in the sources of the virus.

So they're going to keep doing that. So if we've had the year we've just had, what is the chance that it isn't going to happen again quite soon? And the precedent has now been set that once a virus that is deadly to a certain portion of people, albeit not to the vast majority of people, what are the chances that the next time any virus comes out, we aren't going to have the calls to do this all again? This is why I'm not as skeptic on it. I am deeply troubled by the lack of attention to the fact that the economy cannot cope with being put through strictures like this again and again.

We've emiserated whole sectors of the economy. And my concern is that we have set a precedent, which means the next time that there is something like this, we'll do it again. And we can't afford to. And at some point, the economics simply assert themselves. And Douglas, that rather nicely leads us on to a question with Feinstein. You've answered two of the questions. But the third part of their question was, do you think China will be held accountable for this?

No, not all. No, not at all. Excellent. I mean, we've our friends in Australia and the Australian government asking for an official inquiry. into the source of the virus some months ago, immediately led to, in the most insulting strictures from the Chinese authorities, immediate backlash from the Chinese government investment in Australia and more. We saw that in the UK. We saw that in the UK, what, seven, eight years ago in the Dalai Lama affair. The David Cameron government, David Cameron met

the Dalai Lama, pissed off the Chinese authorities obviously by doing so. China meetings to do with the UK government. And within a certain number of months, I think it was probably about six months or so they held out. The British government apologized to Beijing and promised never to meet the Dalai Lama again. Now, what that shows at a governmental level is what we also see at the tech level.

Sorry to return to that. But again, Google will do things to us that it won't do to China. Facebook and Twitter have standards they apply to Americans that they do not apply to totalitarian regimes. So we know what they can get away with because we know the people in the Silicon Valley who have become rich and intend to cash out before the consequences of this become clearer. And they have, I think that they should be held responsible. of course I think that the Chinese authorities should be held responsible. Of course I think we should find out what happened and how this happened

and prevent it from happening again. But I think there's zero likelihood of it happening because too many people have decided that although the long-term threat has always been Chinese dominance, that it's worth sucking on that teet for a little while and seeing yourself through. And that is some nation's views, some government's views, and that is some individuals' views and some company's views.

And anyone who wants to learn more about this, I very strong about what the Chinese Communist Party has been doing in recent decades internationally as well as nationally. It's a very, very rigorous scholarly and factual book. Douglas, we had a big tech censorship moment there where we were. We lost you for a second just as you made the recommendation. What is it that you recommend before I'm asking the next question? It's called The Hidden Hand. The Hidden Hand.

And it's on the CCP's actions in recent years. Let me ask you this. It's a very interesting question to me because I think if you'd asked me this 10 years ago, I would have laughed at even the mere question being posed. But as you and I have discussed in the past, such as the nature of the pipeline of ideas from the United States to the rest of the West, that I actually think this question is becoming quite relevant, which is Olli, who says, is the US cultural influence in the West a positive or a negative?

You know, that's a very interesting you say that, Constantine. I think my own view on that has probably changed in recent years as well. Well, the thing is that no nation's exports remain the same, and that includes no nation's cultural exports. Right. If you said we could do with more French culture, you would have to say, which aspects exactly are you talking about?

I can think of an awful lot of good ones, and I can think of a few bad ones. I don't want the world's films to look a lot more like French cinema, which I find fairly unwatchable myself. But there are vast aspects of French culture more around the world and to be able to absorb more myself. I think it's the same with American culture. I think there are periods have been.

periods historically, where American culture has given an enormous amount to the world. I think that that has stopped. I think the positive part. And I think we've been onto the negative for some time now. And then the most negative was. I wrote this in the New York Post actually last year. The Twitter censored New York Post. I said, you know, I, among others, I think, am beginning to resent the exporting of America's

culture wars to my own country. I deeply resent seeing these sort of fake Black Panther figures in Britain sort of saying, you know, F the police, as if there's some gangster from the hood in Brooklyn. They all grew up in Wimbledon. These these these, these, these, these, these, these, these culture war exports from America really have been very troubling and unpleasant for some time. I could do without that. But obviously, again, I mean, it comes back to which bits of the culture. Obviously, there remain good things. I think that it does remain one of the most extraordinary questions. And this is a very conservative point to make,

but it does remain one of the extraordinary questions of our era that the most important power in the world, the globally dominant culture should have... produced so relatively little of high quality, I think is an obvious question. I mean, an art market that is dominated by Jeff Coons, for instance, would seem to me to demonstrate a significant degree of cultural degeneration. I think you can say exactly the same thing in American universities. So significant aspects of American culture, I think you would have to say,

have seriously degenerated in our own lifetimes. But I'm never willing to write the whole thing off, just as I was, every culture, it seems to me, has something interesting to give. It's what you select and what you're fed is what matters. This is from Dennis Moore. Douglas, regardless or not of fraud, the changes to the election laws were of such magnitude

that don't you agree we now have a democratic crisis. Well, I think I come back to what I said before. Sorry to repeat myself, but if that is the case, then it must be proved. And believe me, my inbox has had enough people sending me what they regard as being comprehensive evidence of electoral fraud in the US. I could immerse myself in the whole thing. I could do what a lot of people do and cherry pick small circumstances

and extrapolate them out onto a national level. I'm just not willing to do that. I am willing to trust the Supreme Court and other bodies in the United States. And personally, as I say, again, I reiterate, anyone who does care about American democracy should certainly make sure that it is not the case next time, that the election is disputable.

Which is what happened after Florida, by the way, in 2000? They realized there was a big problem and looked into it. It did happen, exactly. And of course, there were many people who didn't believe that George W. Bush was a legitimate president until the 2004 election, some not even then. And in fact, George W. Bush only, sort of became, in my recollection, only became sort of at all accepted as a president,

around the time at 9-11 when the nations had a moment of coming together. Yeah, absolutely. And we've talked about that early in the interview. So again, if people want to look at that particular aspect of the conversation, they can go back. Donald Jones is asking you to make a prediction about the future, which I know you love doing, Douglas. He says, what are the prospects that the anglosphere remains intact and later reemerges against the wokeery and a triumph of China? Here's hoping, he says. Well, I think it's possible.

I think everything is possible. I mean, as I'm rather fond of saying, I don't like predicting the future because if we'd been speaking one year ago, I don't think any of us would have predicted the circumstances would be in 2020. And if you tried to predict what's happening now, people would have put you in a mental institution and probably would have been quite right to do so. Absolutely. If we'd be speaking in January of last year and you said, almost everybody will spend a year forced to remain in their houses and be celibate if they're not in a relationship. That would be a tricky one to believe. You would regard the person saying that as being in the fruitcake brigade. Yeah. So, and I take from that the necessity of a certain humility about predicting the course of events.

And I certainly, obviously, as your question asked, I certainly hope that people are able to, first of all, resist the totalitarianism of our time wherever it comes from, whether it comes from the right or from the left, whether it comes from tech platforms or, you know, anti-democratic governments. Obviously, I hope people will resist that and will do everything I could urge them to do so. I think that there is a particular problem with what I would describe as a disentanglement with China, which is a very big problem. And as I said recently, I'm particularly worried because China is the only country that came out of 2020 with growth figures reported. I think it reported growth of, I mean, you can never really believe them, but 1.8, 2.3% growth or something in 2020, everyone else's economy tanked in that year. So I'm

worried about the fact that China might, well, does find itself in 2021 in a buyer's market. And this, this is a temptation that all our governments will have and many companies will have to get out of this, which is to basically sell to China who can buy rock bottom prices. And I just strongly urge everyone absolutely not to allow us to fall into that situation. It is an unfashionable thing to say, but nevertheless still true, that the Anglosphere has given the world an unprecedented amount. I make no apology for saying that. I think it's demonstrable, provable.

And I think it would be to the world's detriment if the motif continued that somehow the anglosphere was nothing other than a sort of organ of racism and colonialism and all of the rest of the rewriting that everyone has done. But unfortunately, for all of us, a generation of people, arguably, certainly a portion of a generation, have been persuaded that the only bad things that have ever happened in history have come from dead white men. and that if, for instance, the Chinese had discovered America and decided to stay, that America would have had a flowering relationship between the incoming Chinese and the indigenous Americans, and that they would have got on with huge equanimity,

and the presentation of all slavery as if it was only something that white men engaged in, and was unheard of in Africa. And much more means that actually there is a deep hostility in our time to the notion of the West, to the notion that the English-speaking countries gave the world extraordinarily important inheritances. And I think that there is a total failure at having a reasonable estimation

or even a fair estimation of the pluses and minuses. of that whole tradition. A tradition I would like to hold on to, and many people in our time would like to burn down, but I'm just not among them. And David has asked, is part of the problem due to people losing faith in the nation's establishments and the political process?

Are loyalties becoming more personal and tribal? Yes, that's... Well, clearly in America, this is the case, and I think it's a case in most of the other democracies as well. We certainly see it in the UK, failure of trust in institutions. The problem is that, again, people lament the failure of trust in institutions, and then the institutions behave in a way that makes it perfectly obvious why you should distrust them.

I mean, there have been a look at very basic arguments over the last year. look at the World Health Organization. We might have really hoped that the World Health Organization would do what it says on the tin, would do what it says in the name, that it would stand above politics, that it wouldn't be able to be infiltrated, used, utilized, politicized by China, among others. But the more you look into it, the clear it is that the World Health Organization is not what it says it is. and the problem is that that happens in institution after institution. And I do think that the problem of decrying the lack of belief in institutions

is that to a great extent the public should have what I would simply describe as a skepticism of institutions. The problem is when it's distrust. And then we do find ourselves all the drift. A very fine definition of how a society like Britain thrives is that it thrives on institutions that reflect the people and that the people are reflected back to themselves within the institutions and that the courts and the education system and the law and parliament and everything else

is in this reciprocal arrangement, a reflective arrangement. And of course, if one, lets down the other, then that's also reciprocated. I think there's an enormous task to do in the next generation of actually legitimately building up trust of people in institutions, but not just because they're institutions, but building up the trust because the institutions are deserving of the trust. I mean, it's not enough to say, you know, people don't trust the media. If the media doesn't earn trust, it's not enough to say people

don't trust the tech platforms if the tech platforms don't earn trust. So it's an enormous job. But I think it has to be done because we're tempted at every level because without it, we are all going to be fumbling in our solitudes through totally different paths with totally different information. And I fear we will not be able to speak across these divides. it'll be what I described earlier in the American case on international scale. Douglas, speaking of divides, changing tack radically here, and I can't tell you why I have to ask you this question of what I do.

One of the biggest issues that's been dividing our chat here at Trigonometry for the last few days is what is your favorite type of biscuit? I hope I didn't sound to you appreciate you. I didn't really like biscuits. Yes, Douglas is one of ours. Perfect. Douglas, you're on my side in this debate. I'm out. You're out. Good. I'm out. I can't take part in this.

We'll get Douglas to co-host this. He doesn't like biscuits. He doesn't like biscuits because he's a real man like me. Now, Douglas, a more serious question. Richard says, as a fellow Aldertonian, what are your thoughts on the Will Nolan's situation and promises to decolonize the curriculum? I think the decolonize the curriculum we've covered pretty solidly already.

Do you think these moves are being driven by Simon Henderson, or is there evidence of a broader problem at the college? Golly, this is kind of inside baseball, as they say, in America for some people. Yeah, I was very lucky to be there and regard it as having given me an awful lot and got me started in many ways. School could be as good. and I suppose this case, I mean, I suppose gave a speech where as far as I could see what he said,

first of all, he gave it in a series which was aimed at provoking the students to think differently about issues of the day. As I see it, what Will Nolan did was to challenge the presiding claims about the one of the era, which is that you sort of, that all, all sex differences can be attributed to societal factors. He, I think, as far as I can see, in his speech, pushed back against that and said, no, they're also biological factors, you know, as a way. However much Sam

Smith wants to be a mummy, he won't be, which is not an example. Well, Nolan gave, that's one of my favourites. He seemed to be just pushing back against this rather silly, childish claim of the day that everything in sex differences has to do with societal factors. And I think it's ridiculous, pathetic, much to Eaton's disgrace. I think that, you know, it was always my view at the beginning of the woke thing, but what would happen would be that it would be something, which would be basically imbibed by second and third rate institutions. That is that the sort of the solutions would go for this because it was an easy thing to do.

And that the cleverer ones, the smarter ones, would not play these games. And that, I was wrong on that, you know, as Cambridge University and other places have shown, they're able, the top, what used to be the top institution, are capable of playing these silly games as well. I don't think there's, I think, I don't know, overstated it, I think any educational institution

loses its vitality here and discuss, and more importantly, it significantly loses its vitality when it doesn't allow things that are true to be said. And that's what seems to me to be the case with Eaton. Douglas, I put it to you that So you say that it's a question of intelligence For me, it's something more fundamental than that Isn't it a question of character

To stand up and say, I disagree, you're wrong And you're objectively wrong But for some reason we just have Introduition after institution falling to this nonsense And to piggyback on that, Alice Knight is literally Just asked a question saying What is the number one thing that you're at? to people who are concerned about these issues, you know, and who want to support the ability

for free speech and free discussion and free exchange of ideas. How do people stand up if they see what's happening? Well, this is a very important question, and it's partly tactical one as well as a moral one. I do think in the UK we have a particular part of a problem, which is a problem, which is a that our elite institutions are in some way ashamed of themselves. They're in some way embarrassed by themselves. They've spent some years trying not to be,

but you see it in things like the attempts Cambridge University, Edinburgh University and elsewhere to audit themselves and find out whether they ever benefited from slavery, for instance. It seems to me that all of these things start to nibble away at their own legitimacy. Maybe when some of these institutions were founded in the 15th and 16th centuries, for instance, maybe their founders didn't have exactly 21st century views on certain things. How amazing would that be?

And having done that, there then becomes this endless legitimacy problem. I mean, I see where it comes from. I simply don't share it. I think that I'm slightly bemused that within my own lifetime, almost every elite institution has become embarrassed of its elitism. Because, I mean, for instance, the great universities and the great schools are meant to be great institutions. and are meant to argue for themselves on that basis, not that they are exactly like everything else, but that they are not. And of course, when you come into the issue of private schooling in the UK, that a particular set of landmines are treading on.

But as I say, I think you see the same thing in the universities. I think you see the same thing in vast ways of the public sector. you see it in the churches. They seem to be embarrassed of their own inheritance. And I would like to see people encouraged out of that. And they obviously can be because they were encouraged into it. It didn't come about naturally. It came about because they were pushed into that direction

to be embarrassed of their past, to be embarrassed of being good. And as for how people can resist it, I mean, I have a very straightforward one that you may have heard him say before, which is just begin by standing up for your friends. That's just the very first one. When it happens to somebody close to you, when somebody close to you is misrepresented, stand up for them. I don't know what the situation is among other teachers at Eaton with the Will Noland affair. I'd like to think that lots of other teachers made their voices heard about this. perhaps they did, perhaps they didn't.

I don't know enough about it, actually, to my shame. But I know, for instance, with Brett, with Brett Weinstein, I know that no colleague of his at Evergreen stood up for him when he and his wife were introduced. And I see this ever, I think that one of the things we are all struggling with at the moment is that it comes back to the tech conversation. There are versions of ourselves that have been put out online by people that are totally misrepresenting.

I think that if you went to any of our, all of these pages like Wikipedia and these awful wicked money-making companies that pretend to be so virtuous, if you went to any of our pages, you'd find that they're total misrepresentations of us, deeply misrepresent our lives, and these companies get away with it,

and they monetize on the back of it and ask you to give them money, to misrepresent you. And I think that in every little way possible, people should resist this wrong interpretation of people that is going on all the time around us. That's just one way. But as I say, it begins with standing up for friends. Never let the mob take one of your mates out. And this is a question from Thomas Sheldon.

How do you think it is that Labour, if elected, would fight against CRT, cancel culture, and other symptoms, sorry, of woke ideology? How do you much do you think Kier Stama gets it on these issues? I just don't know. I don't know Kirstama. I've never met him. And my observation is that he would simply do whatever was politically expedient. If he thought that he would win some political points by imbibing vast amounts of critical race theory, he'd do it. If he thought not, he probably wouldn't either. He would obviously tend towards favouring that sort of.

I mean, he obviously was one of those politicians in the summer of last year who thought that he needed to so-called take the knee. So he obviously favors that sort of gesture in politics. But I think, well, he certainly doesn't have any like her of being in office for at least four years. So it's sort of a long way down the road question. Douglas, we'll do another 10 minutes if that's good with you. Yeah. We have a question from our regular viewers. called Achille Bryan, who says, what do you think the potential effects of a Trump-owned social media platform might be? And this is something that has been touted by very serious people that we

know personally who understand some of these things. So it's not an out, it's not completely outside of the realms of possibility. Do you agree that anything of that nature would deepen polarization? Well, obviously it would. I think it is quite likely. People were talking about it in DC in December before and as being one of the things that obvious things that Trump would do. And the fact that Fox and Trump sort of fell out before the election made there, basically it made there be a larger, more obvious monetization opportunity for Trump. And I certainly worried in recent months that what Trump has been doing in denying that he lost the election, is building the base for Trump TV.

And I think that's very likely to be what he does. Of counter would be, but the polarization is already there. I mean, and I just see no, in America, I see no desire on either side to change that. Because both sides can point to the other and say, look what they've done. Look what they've done to us. And as I say, I go back to the thing,

the beginning and let's make them suffer let's own the lives let's you know that that instinct and so it's in a way as i say it's no good worrying about the polarization the polarization is here the question is how to how to ever begin to to heal it and we have a question from maffart who says the west has real problems with a lack of quality politicians especially when we have a media that is deeply interested in digging up anything and everything from a person's history to beat them with. How can we fix this? Well, it's true that we don't have the best kind of politicians. We do have some good ones. I think it's very easy to beat up on politicians, but there are a lot of people in public life in all of our countries. who have actually sacrificed a fair amount to do what they think is the right thing. And that's the case across left and right.

So I'm by no means cynical about everybody. But I do think we have had a caliber. And there are, as your question asked, there are a number of reasons for that. An unpopular one to say is that people will take what is, for some of them, a financial hit by entering politics. And that hit, and this seems ridiculous to most people, of course, because the salary of an MP is several times that of the average salary of the general population.

But the question for some people would be, is that hit, as it were, worth it for what you will be put through? And I'm, again, I go back to this thing, I'm not for waiting for the perfect person. I think to a great extent the public have to, we have to change our own anticipations of what we expect from politicians. I don't like the assumption

that a politician has to be a saint. Or Donald Trump, he might say. I mean, in the way, if you, if you, it's that old thing in the same way as if you don't allow people to speak, allow the person who gets away with saying anything. In the same way, perhaps, you know, you over-interrogate people's lives

and you get the person who just beyond any shame, again, might be something we've seen recently. I would like there to be just a more honest conversation about a whole set of things that we expect from our politicians. The media can be cruel. I'm part of the media, so I know. and some of it is warranted and some is not. I do find it strange, however.

I don't just sound like a broken record on this, but I do find it strange that there hasn't been more interrogation of people with real power in our time. You know, if Jack Dorsey were a backbench Labour MP, you know, he would have had hell by now. Personally, I would like to see there being, as I say, a greater interrogation of the people with serious power in our time. Again, sorry to sound like a broken record,

you know, it turned out, as Constantine said, you know, it was Twitter that was king this week. It was Twitter that could decide they would not platform the United States of America's president. And in that scenario, it is Twitter that is the king and therefore the one that should be interrogated. when Google decides not to host Parlor, it's Google that needs to be interrogated. And I think that that desire to interrogate people in public life, to a great extent, and I say this is a sort of failing of the media, have to a great extent being focused on people

who haven't really had much of the power. I mean, look at the Senate hearings with the social media company executives. I mean, watch any of them. Who has the power there? But these people who fly in from Silicon Valley perfectly, perfectly coached and turn off their microphone, turn it on again with perfect poise and perfectly evade every perfectly ignorant question. You know, that, those are the people jetting in to pretend that they're involved in the democratic process and deigning to appear before the Senate. Those are the people with the real power in our time.

And, you know. And add to that, Douglas, add to that the fact that we've seen it with the Biden incoming Biden administration, but it's true of senators as well. Joe Biden's cabinet is packed of Silicon Valley executive with Silicon Valley executives. The big tech companies give huge donations and campaign contributions to both parties. And add to that the point that you made much more elegantly than I could about the ignorance of the people who are asking the questions and the huge. power of the people answering them. And it's a complete, it's a crazy thing that offers absolutely

no recourse. Absolutely. Let me give a quick example. But this is a very dangerous point for me to make, given that I'm an author and that Amazon is one of the very few things that can sell books this year. But I clicked on Amazon's page recently and immediately up comes an ad about how much charity money they've donated that year or recently. Amazon has just donated. X millions of pounds. How about paying some bloody tax then? And how about that? I mean, and K-Suff case, Google, all of them.

They all boast to us. And as I say, feed us this pat and hope that we won't notice the other things they're doing. And sorry, I mean, we're a long way away from the question, but I really do feel that this all wraps up. into the same problem, which is that, you know, people don't go into politics. Good people also don't go into politics because they recognize to some extent that's not where it is.

I mean, that's a big worry, isn't it? Because, of course, it is where it is in certain ways. But at the same time, can you honestly say that an average MP has very much power compared to one censor in Silicon Valley? No, absolutely not. Hannah 89 has asked AOC telling her followers to put Trump enablers on which hunt lists cause a ripple, as well as in regard to the worry about the left getting power. Thoughts. I mean, I see AOC as a sort of perfect creation of the Trumpists.

I mean, she's almost perfectly made by any Trump supporter. She does everything in exactly the right order to whip up. a rage on the right. She clearly enjoys it. She's got a sort of troll-like instinct. I'm worried about always that people like her do actually end up having an over-exaggerated clout that is given to them by people who don't like them. But yes, I mean, she's one of quite a number of people who've tried this sort of stuff. It's been going on in recent days. I'm always interested in the way, which people want to attribute blame directly must be held accountable for, I know, for instance,

you know, what happened on the 6th of January. You'll say, okay, but if you play by those rules, if you play by those rules, then you've got to do the same thing in reverse. You've got to do the mirror. You've got to blame everybody on the other side for the riots that went on for weeks last year. And I don't think any reasonable person could blame all of the Democrats for the rioting that went on in city after city last year. And so I think, yes, it's, but AOC and others are, I mean, they're reprehensible, you know, very ugly characters who, oh, I mean, gosh,

if the gloves were off, you'd know, what people like her would do, don't you? Right. Every stage in history there have been people like her. Look at that there's somebody I won't name, but there's a British commentator of the left who did it before the last election. Somebody, again, only given a platform,

not because she's done any work, but because she's a loudmouth who's got a social media following by saying stupid things on programs. But this left-wing commentator in the UK before the last election when she was hoping Jeremy Corbyn would get in at one point, you know, tweeted of famous Jewish businessman in the UK saying, I can't wait to expropriate your stuff.

And you just, you think, okay, we're very lucky we live in the society we do, rather than the society you'd rather like us to live in. And I think the same when people like AOC talk about getting lists together of their opponents. I think the same thing. I think I'm very glad America is in a better, in a better state than it might be, so that your weird totalitarian pornography violence fantasies can't be seen through, can't be acted upon.

Douglas, we'll take one final question. This is actually four three of us, so how about Francis and I answer it first and we'll leave you. It's not another biscuit one, is it? No, Douglas, I can tell you, the biscuit issued has been settled forever. You are on my side. I win. Everyone in the cat loses. Francis loses. There was no fraud in this election. I win.

So the question is... Right. He's picked this question for me because this person has a Sri Lankan name. Therefore, it's rather long, impossible to pronounce. And with my South London tones, I will be outed as a racist when I mispronounce it. So apologies at the start. And this is from Anirut, I think it is. Krishna Kumar, I'll do the surname with you. Right, okay, you've got the easy one. So question four three, what can anti-woke leftists do to recover their respectability as an intellectual slash political force?

And the second part of the question is what about liberals? Now, the liberal thing is a bit confusing given how differently it's used in America and in the UK. But we do have an anti-woke leftist right here, right now. What does he say to this question? I think always when dealing with this is to be honest, to be true, and to be never, never, ever resort to the tactics of the person attacking you. As difficult as it may seeming you have brought this up yourself, Douglas, is to try and meet every one of their attacks with calmness, with truth, and also as well, wherever

possible to use facts and always accept as well that their reaction is a result of of their own character and it's nothing to do with you a lot of the times people when somebody reacts they think well what did i do but all you can really control in these situations are your own actions so that is where i would go with it i think you have to destroy them with facts and logic no uh you know what i think you have to do if if you oppose the woke stuff and you are on the left as i was i'm very much in the center now, but I think what you have to do is you have to speak your mind and know that that encourages other people to do the same. I think that's something that we always massively underestimate, the amount of permission we give other people by expressing our thoughts

on something. I have found that with many, many people where I've seen somebody make a comment, and Douglas would have been one of these people for me in the past, but many others say, you know what, I don't agree with this. And I go, oh, wait, it's actually okay to disagree with this. this person that I like and respect with whom I agree on many issues is speaking up for this thing. So I think for everybody who's able to, who is in the position to speak up without losing their job, etc, I think by speaking you give other people inspiration to do the same. And that's something you should never underestimate. Douglas, over to you for the final word.

Yeah, I agree with what you just said. I'd add one other thing, which is, I mean, The political left in the West has had a very distinguished history, as the political right has. It's very easy to look only at the worst people, but one should also look at the best, and the best people on the political left, for instance, in the communist era, the anti-communist left, were absolutely crucial to the anti-communist case in the West. They probably couldn't have done it on their own, but they were absolutely vital to it.

And I suspect that today an enormous amount of the good work, the necessary work that will need to be done, the question refers to, will be done on the left and will be people speaking to people I can't reach who will listen to them because they are of the same. political tribe. I think that for all of us, by the way, a great amount could be done if we just were more honest about the nature of certain problems we need to address in our societies. As you know, I've quite often in the past said that what tends to happen is we get into discussions

where there's as it were a good thing to say and a bad thing to say, a thing you say to look good and the thing that you would only say if you're reprehensible and bad. And on issue after issue that I've written about in my life, I've kept coming across this. And I've kept thinking, why can't we have the debate we all actually know? I mean, I literally think of it in television terms as being the discussion you do have in the green room or can have in the green room, but never have on air. because you go on air

and the BBC or Sky or whatever interviewer plays the game and the game runs and then afterwards you have a bit of the discussion you should have had and the reason this happens is because we don't

we don't concede what the real discussion is and can I just very quickly I'm conscious of the time but I'll quickly give it on this No the reason that we said last question is we were keen not to take up too much of your time. Actually, before you go to where you were going to go,

I wanted just to remind you, because I think I heard you once tell a story of this very thing where you were on a program debating an MP who, do you know the one I'm talking about? I've debated too many MPs. I'm not trying to think of which case. I think it was in the context of the strange death of Europe, and you were debating the issue of Islam, I think,

And then when you went back into the green room, an MP who'd been, you know, viciously critical of you on screen said, Douglas, we're all with you. Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a Labour MP. That's right. I was on a program with my friend Amir Teheri. And, yeah, the MP spent all the time on air decrying my Iranian friend Amir and I as racist, fascists. And, yeah, off-air was laudatory.

Yes, that's right. That was an example of what you're talking about, which is why. Yes, but yes, because the thing is that it's, I mean, I said this to the immigration debate. The debate about immigration is never honest because for some reason the system can't allow the honest conversation you need. And as I said in the strange death of Europe, the honest conversation is it's a competition between competing. virtues. On that occasion, I said it was between justice and mercy. And in the case of the corona era, I said earlier in our discussion, I mean, that there are competing virtues going on, effectively, the public health and the economy. And I mean, I have heard some of that

debate, but relatively little, actually. I mean, almost scandalous. little. And I think that's odd because we all must sense by now that that is or should be where the debate would be. And I'm not sure why, and it's something that Brett, and I have discussed quite a bit of the past, I'm not sure why all of our systems for sense making keep knocking us off the discussion we should be having. And instead push us into these discussions which are too easy and are not fit for purpose. So the discussion is, oh, I see, you're supporting Trump, but therefore you're a fascist,

or you're supporting this, therefore you support looting. You can play it every way. But what if we agreed on what big issues we could be addressing? The inequality one is one I've said to you, I think, before. The inequality issue is like, oh, here's another. What about the issue of why? particularly now, the danger that lies in our system with the difficulty of young people occurring capital, that is a really, really big generational question. Why don't we see it debated?

We don't see it debated because what happens is the BBC gets on a communist and then finds a, you know, a token right-wing maniac and thinks that they've solved or they've addressed the question. And the question hasn't even been started. It's sort of been horribly lampooned. It's been satirized. It's a satire what happens. But what if what if we agreed that that is a massive problem? And how do we change it? What do we do? Here's another one. I'm sorry, it starts firing them out an hour too, but how are we going to be sure that our economies don't get out of the corona slump by selling cheap to China. Who's having the discussion? It's not happening at the White House anymore, if it was before. I'm not sure if it's happening in Downing Street. I know it's not happening

on the airwaves. I know it's a subterranean, sometimes open conversation in parts of the press. How do we address that? How do we get up? What's going to happen with our economies after this, slump in GDP, the huge soaring in borrowing that we've seen. What I worry is happening is, in the absence of that conversation, that's where we get everyone going into their weird, weird corners and conspiracies. Because we can't have the general conversation and the serious debate that we need to have about the very, very imminent and real problems, we get 4chan conspiracy theories on one side and then censor everyone conspiracies on the other. And we're not talking about the huge thing that's happening under our feet. You know, I feel like it's like being in a roomful of

people, all being distracted whilst the carpet is removed slowly from under our feet. And we don't notice. And I can only say this because we can't trust ourselves to have good faith discussions on complex issues. And the social media companies, to return to the thing I've been harping on about, have been very happy to enrich themselves, persuading us to have pointless rows that have only fueled societal instability in order to enrich themselves. They are the only people who've profited from it and the democracies have much, much been diminished for it. And our public and political culture have been much diminished for it. But we could find a way out. And I know because when we've talked, when Brett and I have talked on and off air, when good faith

people I know of the left and good faith people, the right get together and people have known political side, if they're experts, there are people who've thought deeply about things, you can solve problems. It's just that nothing in our culture is set up to solve problems. Everything, again, partly largely fueled by the social media platforms, is dedicated to creating problems that are unsolvable. And we need to find a way out of it. Well, Douglas, no one but you could have made a more persuasive sales pitch for trigonometry. So thank you for that. We do try to handle some of those conversations. and if people want to understand why the housing market, which is one thing that we've talked about with you in the past,

is such a problem. We interviewed Liam Halligan about this very issue. He's got a new book very much addressing that issue. So we will be having these conversations, and we thank you for being part of them. It's a great pleasure to be with you and with all your listeners and followers, and I hope everyone stays well.

Thank you very much, Douglas. Thanks, Douglas. We will see you soon. And for those of you watching and listening at home, thank you very much for tuning in. Yes. and please remember we have episodes going out twice a week and live streams going out four times a week and these will always be at 7pm UK time.

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