TRIGGERnometry - Douglas Murray on Roger Scruton, Intersectionality and the Trans Debate

Episode Date: May 26, 2019

Here's a fascinating conversation we recorded with Douglas Murray (@douglaskmurray) on location in Oxford. In this episode we discuss: 01:45 Roger Scruton, Smear Tactics and Competitive Victimhood 22:06 Taboo Subjects, Gender and the Trans Debate 39:08 Campus Censorship, Intersectionality and Islam Support TRIGGERnometry: 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 (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Choice Hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort in, it's calling your name, save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim. Book direct at Soysotails.com. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is the show for, well, this is slightly different.

So what we're doing today is we've got this amazing interview with Douglas Murray, which in a few minutes you'll be able to enjoy a few of you. However, you might notice that it's actually a little bit shorter than our other interviews. And the reason for this is because we got interrupted by a wave of social justice warriors who came down, broke down the door, started being... Come on, Francis. Why don't you just tell them what actually happened? The room was double-booked. Yeah. So what actually happened is we got the chance to speak to Douglas at a secret conference,

as you'll hear in the interview. And we only had the room for a certain amount of time. So if you feel like the interview gets cut off at the point where it starts to get really interesting, we agree with you. Nonetheless, it's a brilliant interview. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. And when you see it, you'll see that we didn't quite get into everything that we wanted to talk about. But we're very grateful to Douglas for coming on the show and hopefully you'll come back and we can explore some of those other things in detail. So with that in mind, enjoy the interview. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.

I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissing. And this is a show for you, if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects, they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our brilliant guest this week is a writer, journalist and social commentator. Douglas Murray, welcome to Trigonometry. Good to be with you both.

Before we get into interview, I just have to say to our viewers, you can see we're on location. We were a secret conference here in Oxford, and we've had the great opportunity to speak with Douglas. So thank you for coming on the show. That's a great pleasure. You have a lot of kind of hobby subjects that you often get asked about and we're going to try and stay away from them as much as we can But let's start with the Roger Scruton affair because it's something that's quite recent It's something you've written about you were heavily involved in the fact For anyone who didn't follow it just tell us what happened

Oh yeah the long and shorter is that The very distinguished British philosopher Roger Scruton now in his mid-70s author of more than 40 books on a range of subjects aesthetics, philosophy, architecture, music, gave an interview to a magazine in the UK called The New Statesman, and the deputy editor of the New Statesman, one George Eaton, misrepresented what had been said in the interview,

lied about what had been said in the interview, and caused Roger Scruton to be fired within five hours from the position he held, a non-cipendary, an unpaid position, advising a British government, Kwango, and this may seem all like why I suppose a lot of people people are not familiar with Scruton or government quango may think, well,

so what? So what is that I hold this very old-fashioned view which is you shouldn't be allowed to just lie about people and get away with it. And this was one of the most blatant, flagrant examples of somebody doing that. In journalism, it can happen in other fields,

trades as well, but one of the most flagrant examples I've seen, seen in my life in journalism of somebody doing that. And I knew from the moment I read the alleged quotes that they were untrue, because I've been fortunate enough to know Roger Scruton for almost 20 years now.

And I know that he doesn't think that the Chinese are people made up of weird robot automatums or something. I knew that it was wrong that this hack had said this. I looked into it, sure enough, Roger Scruton hadn't said that. He'd said that the

Chinese Communist Party is trying to make the Chinese people into automatums. That's just a lie. And we are all, I think, sadly, for all sorts of political and other reasons, becoming used to a low standard of truth in public as in private

life. But sometimes that comes right up to your door and you've just got to stop it. So I have worked quite hard every recent weeks to expose this scandal and to try to reverse it. And although Roger Scruton remains sacked from that government,

role. It's now known and recognized widely that the New Statesman's deputy editor, George Eaton, lied, misrepresented the contents of the interview, and that this was dishonest journalism at its worst. And so, yes, we turned it around a bit. And one of the things in this affair that struck me particularly was that I think the journalist in question had tweeted or put something on his Instagram, which was a picture of himself swigging champagne for having achieved the firing of somebody by lying about them. Yeah, that's this particularly ugly thing to do after getting somebody fired from their job. He had, he had, George Eaton had posted this photograph on Instagram, subsequently removed it,

but of him, swinging champagne saying the feeling you get when you get a racist and homophobe, Roger Scruton, fired for his government position. By the way, the homophobe claim was particularly interesting because the tape of the interview, which I subsequently acquired, showed that George Eaton himself said something which, by his own lights, would be homophobic. The question he put to Roger Scruton was, you've been criticized in the past for saying that homosexuality is not normal, but that's just a statement of the obvious. That's what George Eaton says. Roger Scruton then says, oh, no, when I say not normal, I mean it's not the norm in the same way they're having ginger hair isn't the norm. So this journalist says something that is homophobic and then attributes the homophobia to the person who didn't say something homophobic who's the target of his smear campaigns.

It's a really interesting lesson. I think this happens sometimes in journalism. there are times when you can just see how the whole wretched hit job is done and that's what I wanted to do that's why I wrote a big cover piece in The Spectator a few weeks ago now called The Anatomy of a Hit Job because you know I'm fortunate enough in this position because I knew the person who the accusations were being made about but I mean I've been overwhelmed by messier since as you can imagine by more people than usual saying look what happened to me and I've this has been said about me and so on and so on and so in a way I think it's resonated with a slightly wider number of people and would

normally be the case because I think we are all we've all been becoming familiar in recent years with the fact that the media is not honest with very basic thing I'm not saying all the media I'm not saying all journalists I'm some fine journalists but as as the model of funding in journalism dies or at least stumbles very severely it's sort of hollowed out. And I say this as a journalist myself, it's being hollowed out.

And in the space of reporting and having to really stick very carefully to facts, there's been this melding. Something's been happening whereby an activist like this guy, George Eaton, can go in to try to take out an interview subject. And the aim of the interview is therefore not an interview. It's to do something else.

And I think that a lot of people have noticed in recent years a tendency in television and imprint journalism to move from doing the thing that you hold yourself out as doing and to do something else. And once you work out what that something else is, it's very, apart from the other, it's a scales from eyes moment, because after that people don't trust the media again.

And do you think this is a problem that arises mainly from the left or the right, or is it both ends of the political spectrum? I think that can happen from any end of this political spectrum. I mean, if you're a fool to pretend, that the right-wing press hasn't been able to make a run of things in the past. I mean, I suppose one thing that is happening is that because of the age of social media and easier access to things that we now have the opportunity, doesn't always work,

but you have the opportunity to unravel the thing in public. So it's not just the case that somebody can stitch somebody up and then there's no recourse. You know, there is now a possibility of showing people how it's done, which is what I did with the scrutin tapes.

And I think that an old style hit job from some decades ago, people didn't have the sort of recourse and you couldn't explain you couldn't work out how it had happened. But I think it's more prevalent now. It's faster, but this is a good side because there is always a good side to this stuff.

You can unpack it in public. And do you think that's why there's this widespread distrust of the media amongst the ordinary person? Because I've been quite shocked. I talk to people doing comedy a lot, and a lot of people go, yeah, I don't watch a BBC anymore. I don't watch Sky News. I can't trust them.

I can't trust this person and whatever else. there's lots of reasons for that and I think it's not just a trust thing television news is a very bad way to absorb news I mean if you agree I stopped doing it quite a long time ago because

rolling news is a very bad way to get information it's repetitious it takes far too long to unravel the information it's trying to give to you whereas if you click down on the website and just absorb the headlines

It could be the front page as a BBC website. You can just see, okay, what are the five things that have happened? You can do that in that's 15 seconds. Whereas if you're watching a rolling news report, you've got minutes and minutes. You're wasting. So part of this is just that we are finding better ways to discover news and to keep up with things. So I think there's that as well. I'm struck by the fall off in viewing figures.

And obviously one of the big developments of our time is the fact that you can do what used to be a very prominent news program and get very few people watching. You can do a podcast, maybe even this one. With very few people watching as well. But they're the right people. The right people are not watching, you mean? Thank you for watching.

What do you make of this, it seems to me like in recent years, the idea that rather than addressing people's arguments, we must just attack them as individuals, seems to have taken on a whole new level. And racist, xenophobia, all this stuff, gets thrown around so much now. It almost feels like half the country are now racist and xenophobic, according to the media.

Which, of course, has a danger, doesn't it? Because it means that maybe nobody is, or nobody can be plausibly accused of it, which will be a problem down the line, I would submit. You mean down the line when there are genuine racist that label won't stick because people will go with what you called everyone are racist. Yeah, I think that's already happening, by the way. I don't see it having the societal consequences it once had.

It's like if everybody's a misogynist. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers. You're spending a third of your life on the thing, and most people have no idea what's actually in it.

Avocado green mattress is different. Their mattresses are certified organic, built from natural materials, designed to actually support your body properly rather than just hold you in one position until morning. The craftsmanship is real. These are mass-produced objects. Someone has put thought into them. I'll be honest. I'm not the person who thinks carefully about where he sleeps.

My dating history will tell you that. I'm the person who's been on the same mattress for eight years and called it fine. But the older I get, the more I notice that fine isn't actually fine. Your body tells you, if you're going to invest in anything for your home, your bed is the one that pays you back every single night. Avocado products are made, not manufactured, and thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. Go to avocado green mattress.com slash jrothed.

Trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's Avacardogreenmatress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. It's quite hard then to unravel or to discover somebody who actually is, you know. So yeah, we've been having a sort of era of hyperinflation in terminology. There's no doubt about that. And it's noise and I don't take too much, much of that. very seriously and I think increasingly people are taking that less seriously. The noise

is so deafening that in the end you just have to step away from it and that's what I do. I don't think people should seek it out at any rate and I think they should try not to add to it. There's always been an aspiration, certainly ever since the rise of the net, that we would be able to have serious conversations across political lines and And I've been struck by what a failure it has been. Actually, when I first met Roger Scruton, it was because when I was just out of university, I'd written my first book, which was on literature, and I was taking a turn towards politics. And one of my first job, my first internship, which then the lowest rung of the paid ladder

of paid journalism was at a website that was aiming to bring right and left together, this is 18 years ago or so now, aiming to bring right and left together. where we could argue out our views, not on personalities or on, you know, the usual way in which these things go, but on their most serious grounds, to take each other's arguments as seriously as possible. And, of course, it was, well, the first problem was that,

I remember as Roger Scruton, who had identified that I was not of the left, said to me, it's about 40,000 leftists versus us. And I remember him saying, so it is actually a fair fight. But make of that what you will. But I remember that was the case then. They couldn't resist. I'm not saying the right can do this as well.

There's not a left-right point, but on that occasion, the left, they couldn't resist. They just wanted to keep throwing people at, like we've got to not allow that argument to get out. We've got to trample that down. And that just is the trend, I'm afraid. And I understand it, because why, One way to win is to pretend that you're not really playing the game and then play the game.

You know. And that's been happening a lot in the years since. But yes, I mean, we were always, the whole point of the optimism some people felt in the era of the internet was, you know, we can have face-to-face interactions and we can respect each other more. Yeah. You laugh, rightly. Yes, well, we've all experienced Twitter, haven't we?

But do you think this is an intimidatory tactic? Is this a way just to shut down debate and therefore make sure that you have your own views to be heard without opposition from anybody else? Possibly, yeah, just to win. I'm surprised, by the way, that it works so well. There's an odd thing in our time where people are, people seek virtue points by suffering. It's a very strange thing in our society. People used to admire people for heroism,

Now they admire them for suffering. So the more you can claim to have suffered, the more admiration you'll get and the more you'll be allowed to do. It's very strange inversion. There's all sorts of reasons for it. But it means that in the social media wars and in the political wars, there's this fascinating thing where people now boast about the offence they get. They boast about the online abuse.

You know, every day. Oh, I get so much abuse. So. First of all, it doesn't mean you're right. That's a very important thing to bear in mind. Just because you've got a lot of people being really rude about you does not mean you're right. It doesn't mean they're right either.

So there's this strange auditioning for respect by being the most insulted person in the village. It's odd. It's very hard. And it's also very misrepresentative. You take the example of David Lammy, who called the ERG and Tories you didn't agree with it. He said they were worse than Nazis.

Worse than Nazis. Not just Nazis, worse than Nazis. They haven't killed six million Jews. They've killed more, the ERG. Clearly, in David Lammy's view. Yeah, exactly. And he said that. Then he got a bunch of stuff on Twitter.

Some of it was horrific and racist. And he then, as you say, used 10 messages on Twitter from some idiots as a way of legitimizing the point of view that he made and said, well, look, look, this is what I'm talking about. Everyone's doing that now. Yeah. I'm incredibly bored of it. Everybody goes in public and says,

oh, look about the abuse I got. Well, first of all, by the way, I mean, I don't seek to find how abused I am on any day. It has no interest to me at all. If I started self-googling and checking what people have said on Twitter, well, first of all, I wouldn't get any writing done, I wouldn't get any reading done,

I wouldn't see my friends, and I wouldn't have a meaningful life. So I'd rather do those things among many others than be writing Douglas Murray into Twitter and reading what somebody is said from their mother's basement. But I could do, I just, I wouldn't, because it's, it doesn't mean you've won the argument. And this appeal, by the way, there's another thing which is it makes people, first of all, it makes people imbibe some of the attitudes of their aggressors, which I think is, you know,

you see it, people have a bit put upon, that some people, you, some people, you, you, some people, you know, again, it's not what you read about me online. I'm not reading about you online, you know. We're not as absorbed about you as you are about yourself. And there's all sorts of personality defects. You can see it causes. And I just, I also think that people should be stronger. I think actually mentioned you yesterday at this conference.

I'm worried by this thing, for instance, of people who say that they're say that they're opposing anti-Semitism, doing it and boasting about how much abuse they get online for saying that they're against anti-Semitism. And then you have examples. They don't want to single anyone out, but this appeal to victimhood catches on. You get things like there was a Labour MP called Ruth Smith, is it?

who, anyhow, she was at a meeting with Corbyn about anti-Semitism a couple of years ago, and there was some low-grade trade union guy who's a notorious nutter who stands up at some point in the thing and she says something and he says something about her that's rude

and she says it's anti-Semitic and she leaves the meeting in tears. And then everyone writes these pieces saying, brave Labour MP forced to leave meeting in tears after anti-Semitism instant, I think. No. No, that is not the way to respond to that.

If you're sitting at a meeting and I say, okay, she's a woman. I don't know why that should mean she can't do this or why anyone can't do this. It doesn't matter. If a man to a woman, woman to a man, woman to a woman, man to a man, if somebody's going to go at you for being Jewish and say something anti-Semitic, don't leave a meeting in tears,

turn right round to that person and give that bastard what he deserves. But it's like everybody has imbibed this idea To win would be to visibly suffer in public. No, to win would be to turn it round on the aggressor and make them lose. That would be the way. Do you not think that it's the easy option that what we're going for now. It's far easier to claim that you're a victim, to cry, to walk out, to be in tears, than to actually go toe-to-to-to-metaphorically speaking and win an argument.

Sure. Very much so. Well, because also if you go to toe-to-to-you might have to change your mind. I mean, that's another thing. That's the really important thing about actual dialogue, is the possibility that you'll change your mind. I think there's something, by the way, there's something very interesting in this.

Brett Weinstein was with us in recent days, and Brett and his brother Eric, both of him I'm very fond of, and admire hugely, both of the political left. You can have a discussion with them about anything, and you know they're not going to try to pull a fast one on you ideologically and suddenly make you vote Hillary Clinton. So he's like, I'm very confident.

I'm very confident. So, and so often when I meet friends like that, friends of the left and others, you know, I just sort of think, I always think, I wish all conversations could be like this. I wish we could just talk about what the situation is. I wish the adults could actually get together in a room. And the interesting thing is, though,

is that if there's even one person in the room trying to do something else, nobody can do it. That's the thing. One of the things I've learned in recent years has been, let me put it this way. Like if you were having a discussion about the theory of evolution and you were pointing to problems in the theory of evolution, like things we still don't know how it works, you could have that conversation really fascinatingly with a load of people at a really high level. But if there was one person there who was trying to do intelligent design on you when you weren't looking, you wouldn't be able to have that conversation because you'd know somebody else had something. other intent. And I think it's become like that on almost every issue in our culture.

There are lots of things we could really do with talking about. But we can't do it because there's always one person in the room, maybe not on this occasion, but there's always one person in the room whose real aim is when you're not looking to smuggle in some left or right wing politics or some religion. or anti-religion or whatever. And if there's just one person playing a different game, the whole game can't be played. Well, the game we try and play on this show

is actually just to have our guests and give them an opportunity to say whatever is that they find interesting and we find interesting unfiltered. And obviously, the major issues that you have talked about your book and generally that you're known to many people for is...

Books, by the way, I'm sensitive about this. Yes. Occasionally people say, I've got another book coming up next in September and some people say your second book and anything like six we authors mind that

I know exactly why but I think it's fair to say that the strange death of Europe has been a particular big one of yours. It sold more than my book on Northern Ireland. Surprisingly to everybody yeah and before I ask you about that actually the thing I wanted to ask you is I remember

watching you probably on question time seven or eight years ago, it would have been now. Probably the last time I was invited on. And I'll be honest with you. I don't know whether you have changed or I have changed, but at the time I remember thinking, who is this angry right-winger

that they've got on the show? And you strike me as the opposite of that. And maybe I've moved away from the left to the centre so much that you don't strike me as quite that right-win. But you also seem to be quite mellow and you have a sense of humor now. What's changed for you?

Well, I've always had a sense of humour haven't always shown it maybe you probably have moved and I probably have moved I mean it would be very boring if we just assume positions in our life and stuck them until the grave I think one of the things

I mean I'm 39 now and that's not very old but it means because I started my career very early I mean I had some kind of public profile for 20 years or more. And there are certain things you learn along the way. There are certainly edges that get knocked off you along the way. I have a friend who once said to me, do you must get less nervous with time, with public appearances and television. I don't know it gets worse all the time, infinitely worse.

And she said, but why? I said, well, because the more you do it, the more you know how many things can go wrong and how many ways they can go wrong. And I have this stand-up comedian friends and others tell me the same thing. Actors tell me the same thing. You start off thinking, go on a stage and just do my bit. And then, you know, there are all these things that go wrong. The curtain doesn't come up or, you know, the prop isn't there. And then you start to get nervous about that all the thing.

So, but the point is that's not only a negative. There's also lots of things you just learn because you've done it a lot. And it's one of the great things of experience. I think I've, among other things, learned what fights are worth having and which are not, or at least to choose your fights, choose them wisely, have meaningful ones, don't get unnecessarily bogged down in ones that aren't worth going in for. I think on some things I'm probably slightly more mellow because I've accepted the catastrophe of where we are.

And I think that's worth considering. This is what I was going to ask because I was worried that that would be your answer. Because the book, the Strangely of Europe, it is a book that struck me simultaneously has been very accurate and incredibly depressing at the full time. Yes, sure. Should have tried writing it. And so I suspect that one of the reasons that maybe you come across as more humorous and mellow is that you've accepted that there's not much though we're going to be able to do

about some of the problems you've identified yeah some things you can do but you also have to work out at some point for your own well-being what it's worth hitting your head against the wall for and what it isn't and to some extent also if you've done what you can I don't feel like I mean I'm not moving away from, you know, it's not like I'm never going to write or speak about any of the things I've written about in recent years, but I do feel that, you know, once you said it enough, you think, I don't want to just keep saying that, and maybe I've said what I can and issued whatever warnings I can and analyzed it as well as I can, explain it as well as I can,

and if that hasn't done the job, then okay. And how do you come to that decision about what to speak about because when I look at you from the outside, you come across someone who's actually quite fearless with the way you address certain topics, especially there's certain things people will even talk about, even amongst their friends, when they know there's no one around. Those are the ones that are really worth doing. But you see, but of course they are and they're really important. How do you make that decision of this needs to be discussed? and we're not doing it and I'm going to be the person to do it. Well, I don't do it particularly strategically.

I think there's several things. One is, I don't know, you may have this yourselves, but there are some things you just get under your skin and you can't quite see how it happens or the order in which they come in. The Scruton one, the way started, got under my skin because this was a terrible lie and it was being said about a friend

and something I admire. So there's no way I was going to have that. But that can happen in funny ways. I think that a good instinct in general, if anyone who wants to be a writer, is to have an aversion to lies. And you may say, that's an awfully target-rich environment you're talking about there.

But there will be some that will get under your skin more than others. You won't be able to know, you won't be able to, or at least you're in a very bad position yourself to analyze what it is that particularly gets under your skin. but there just are things that you can tolerate more than other things so you know horoscopes

don't thrill me but I don't feel like they're strong enough and doing enough harm that I need to campaign against them very much things that do come across your path and start to cause harm to things

you care about and lies that affect things you care about you will So we all let some lies go by. But there will be some which, for instance, you know more about than most other people or maybe anyone else, and you're going, no, no, I've got to correct that. And other things will just be ones you particularly care about. And we all have different orders of priority on that. So I don't think it's strategically chosen or anything. But it is interesting always to notice what are, I mean, most writers are in some.

way interested in dogma, what are the dogmas? There's no point in just being a writer and firming up dogmas. One of the points of writing is to get to truth, the main point. And that means identifying accidentally or deliberately the things of your day that you're not meant to do and doing them, or at least looking at them and saying, what is it about this thing that makes it so sacred? Now, I'm very fond of a quote from H. L. Mankin, who said at some point in the 20s somewhere that you know human progress was only ever achieved I'm not myself a great fan of the idea of human progress

but spark that for now that it was only ever achieved by he says jolly fellows heaving dead cats into sanctuaries and going roistering along the highways of the world and I've always wanted to to encourage dead cat heaving into sanctuaries and it's so funny because every era has taboos

and every era has dogmas and religions and it's so funny when people don't realize that they are the dogmatists and the ultra-religious and indeed as we now have the Puritans and they didn't realize they're the Puritans absolutely not and what do you think is one of the great lies of our age that we haven't addressed yet or maybe we just simply too scared to

I think there's whole slews of them I don't know where to start I mean there's so many I think there's so many presumptions of our age that I don't accept myself and would run against I I think there are ones that are causing us enormous pain and it's very interesting if you look at the tick list

of what are the issues which whenever anyone treads on them they blow they're blown up They all have the same thing in common, which is the society is demanding you agree to something. That is, it's not possible to agree to and keep your self-esteem, or at least be able to look at yourself in the mirror. So the most obvious one is everything to do with gender and sex. that's why trans keeps tripping people up such a small issue such a small issue such a minority of a minority issue

but it keeps tripping people up because they just don't want to say the thing they're being told to say which is that there is no difference to men and women and that we can migrate between the sexes and that our bodies are like pieces of Lego you can just stick bits onto and then if you don't like it you can take it off again

and people, there's, you know, there's something, because there's something demoralizing about agreeing to lies. This is different, by the way, from just custom or politeness of being decent to people, because we all should aspire to being polite and decent to people, but being invited to engage in a lie ends up demoralizing you. I don't know if you've ever, you know, communist countries,

that was one of the things I've often thought, I've only been to a couple of countries still trying that wretched experiment, but those who traveled a lot behind the Iron Curtain or lived behind it often commented on the needless things they were persuaded to agree to lie about.

And people often wondered why am I being made to agree to this next implausible thing? And the answer really was because it'll demoralize you further and it'll make you less willing even than you were before to think of yourself as an individual with any worth.

So that's the plan. And I don't say that that's organized. I just think that it's subtle that people slip into it. And I think in our own society we have to be really careful. I like heretics. I like dissidents. I like the people who say the thing that no one else will say. I admire it.

And I think that. I think we have to be very careful as society we don't slip into on that issue, on gender, on sex, sexuality indeed. We don't slip into a sort of a load of untruths which basically will just demoralize us. Because the truth is energizing. You know, that's one of the things. Oh, such a relief. Such a relief not to have to lie. No, it's true.

That's why when you go on to watch a comedy show, when somebody's honest about a particular, you can feel there's an electricity in the audience. Yes. People lean in, they crave it. And that's obviously, comedy is one of the best tools for this, because you can't not the laugh, the laugh of recognition, you can't stop.

I mean, I like that thing when audiences laugh and then try, I shouldn't have laughed at that. I'll be honest, as comedians, we don't like it. When it's stuff on their laughter. Yeah, you're sitting looking at it. I have certain lines I use which I know are going to cause an audience to laugh and then do an intake of breath and try to pretend they didn't laugh. It's a wonderful feeling. It's like you've laid a trap for them.

Exactly. Absolutely. So sex and gender, what else? What else are we refusing to talk about honestly? Oh, wow. We don't have any basis for our morality. How about that? It's a biggie.

Our whole metaphysical system is in serious flux, and we're pretending it isn't. Because we no longer have God? Going from belief in God to non-belief in God, as a society, is one of the biggest changes that can happen. I'm a non-believer myself, but I think it's very unwise of non-believers to pretend that it's all just business as usual. Very unwise. I mean, obviously, there's an attempt to have business as usual by doing human rights. rights so many rights look at all my rights I want more rights and these people should have even more that's what are they based on where they come from who gives them to you who can take them away

what's the idea of equality and rights really does that work I mean there's so much there's so much in this and we have I think we've been sort of the subject of my next book in part. I think we've been trying to put a new metaphysics underneath the society in order to reassure ourselves that it's business as usual when it isn't. But you know there's just a whole load of questions you have to ask down the road from that. I come across it in occasionally in social issues. There's one I've written about a few times of euthanasia, which I'm always interested in the because it's a very ugly difficult unpleasant subject and people have pretty strong views about it and you can very easily show them this

problem of what happens if you don't have fixed values even as aspirations or when for instance you turn everything into a right and one of the rights becomes your right to kill yourself. Like, that's a new right, a final right, last right. And you go, right, okay. And then you have people, as I've come across, in the Netherlands and Belgium, who are campaigning for the right of children to have euthanasia, or people who are mentally ill to have euthanasia, which happens, of course, on the continent, happens in Belgium and in the Netherlands. So it's a right to say you're mentally ill

and we completely respect you and indeed we think that mental illness is exactly on a par with physical illness as the British government currently says it wants to regard this as being and one of the great things that we're going to fight for is that you can kill yourself with the state's help at any time

wow I mean my editor at the spectator Fraser Nelson has a really interesting challenge which I sort of pass off because I think it's he says since every era has its taboos and no since every era is doing things since every era has always done things that had just historically look back and you think that is nuts why did they do that assume we're doing some things like that ourselves rather than the first group of people in human history to do nothing nuts and like but

But identify them. Try to identify what they might be now that like us thinking, why did Victorians use children as chimney sweep? They're very small. They're very small. Perfectly not. It's perfect.

That's amazing. We don't start again. And, you know, what are the things? We must be doing things. I'm very sure we're doing things. And I can tell you, I mean, the one I've just given you is one. Of course we're doing things

that people are going to look back on. We might look back on in our lifetimes. I think, what were we thinking? To me one of the things, and this is from an outsider's point of view, is this a situation at universities where essentially we're censoring people for their ideas, you know, and then you see academics attacking one another, you know. That's not new. Is that not new?

Academics attacking each other. Stop the press. I'm a little wary of the campus was, for lots of reasons. One is it can often seem to be a rather rarefied issue. most people still don't go to university, most people, you know, are not, you know, their lives go on without reference to the campuses of our countries.

So I worry about sometimes about the overstating, I worry not about the overstating because it can't be overstated, but the over-focus on it because I think just a lot of people in their lives have exactly the problems that people are talking about on university campuses outside of campus

and with no reference to campus, never having been on a campus. So I think the reason why the university stuff does matter, and I mean, a second, sorry, another, second caveat, which is also students have, you know, not always, but be nuts for a long time on certain issues. Like, a national union of students, like, when did anyone think they would be a centrist, sensible body? You know, so, like, okay, there's some stupid kids, trying some stuff out, and they'll grow up

and become Labour Party MPs. like all other NUS leaders. But, you know, so in a way, it's like, it's, it's, um, dog bites man. I think that, I think that's a legitimate,

um, complaint to have, a legitimate suspicion to have. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, universities should be places for genuine free inquiry where people follow truths to whatever, the end might be, sort of the aspiration of, I think that writers should aspire to as well.

When I wrote my book on Bloody Sunday, I didn't know it would lead me to the conclusion it did, but it did because I discovered what the truth was along the way, and actually it was very uncomfortable to write at times. But, you know, if you're interested in pursuing the truth, that's what you'll do. And I think that those of us who would like to think that universities would remain places that do that. In the social sciences, as much as in sciences, it just doesn't seem like a great,

a great biopsy for a society if the places where thought is meant to be best protected from the mob turns out to be most vulnerable to the mob, or at least very vulnerable to the mob. I find that's where we should be worried about the universities, But I think that's a very simple answer to that, which is that universities should be defunded.

I see no reason whatsoever that if a university cannot stand up for academic freedom, that ordinary people in our country or any other countries should be paying any of their taxes to maintain these third-rate institutions. I think they should close. I see no point in keeping them open. I think that in reality we've probably got too many universities in this country anyway. I think they've turned into business models, particularly business models trying to get money from foreign students Who they charge huge sums of money to to enrich themselves and give very little care to quite often

That's a big thing. That's a thing everywhere But if they're institutions that cannot pursue academic freedom then fine We will not fund them and finance and there's no reason why money should go to universities forever if they can't do the one job that we would expect them to do One of the caveats you made there is about, well, these students will grow up and become labor and peace. And this was one of the arguments that was kind of thrown against me when I refused to sign the SOAS behavioral agreement form that they sent me, that why are you picking on these poor students? Students always a bit silly, they'll grow up and everything will be fine. And my worry with that kind of approach is that I am not so sure that given the kind of social justice mania that seems to have overtaken some of our universities, that when they grow up and become labor and. peace and become our judges and become our lawyers and become our journalists and authors and

writers that they won't bring intersectionality with them to a very much extent. Oh yeah, yeah, they will, but that's already come ahead of them. Yeah. I mean what is one of the most surprising discoveries for me of recent years but the discovery that the sort of intersectionality car crash is not a campus thing. It's every corporation is doing this crap. every government department is doing this crap. It's amazing.

And it's happened very fast. So that wave has already come ahead of them. Yes, I mean, I'm not by any means saying these people can't and won't do damage throughout their lives in new and inventive ways. I assume that. By the way, a friend of mine always points out that you should assume that the stupidest contemporary of yours will end up in the cabinet.

You should assume that. You should assume the person you last saw lying in a school playground will end up being in some important position in public life. The one that you've got to watch out for and his friend swears it happened to him was that somebody he last saw at primary school cheating in a test.

Turned out to be his surgeon. And he said that was a very... He said it's fine for everything other than your doctor. so yeah if the if the stupid students become doctors we've got a problem but my experience medics are among the few that have escaped the madness

anyhow no the specific one of your experience of SOAS by the way is I mean that's just that's just one of these health this is one of these health tests isn't it because it's like these things erupt in such strange ways and in such unpredictable

or sometimes like SOAS are rather predictable places, but the, the, it's just, it's just as another bad health test, you know, um, but I, I mean, I'm not one, one thing I've, I've learned in recent years has been that you, you've got to be careful what thinks it has a hold over you. So, um, when, if, if you're going to do a gig at SOAS and you were doing a charity gig, weren't you? So it's not like you had an enormous desire to go to that awful campus and amuse people for your own enormous financial gain. But I've noticed that there are institutions, universities are one of them, which when they think they have something over you, then strike like a scorpion.

They can't get you until the moment they think they've got you. that you've got a point of vulnerability. Like, he so wants to come to Soaz to amuse our incredibly unamusing students. And now we've got it. It's this sort of way it goes. Again, I think I mentioned to you yesterday, my general thought with universities is like that,

is that, you know, it's not, I take the same view of Germain Greer takes. It's not like an enormous, it's not something I enormously want or seek in my life to be invited to speak to student unions, at various universities across this country or America or anywhere else. None of my self-esteem relies upon it. None of my sense of self-worth relies upon it.

And I don't know that I'll gain very much myself from doing it. So I'm not likely to put myself in the situation often of them thinking that I want that, because I don't. But if they think you do, then they will find a way to punish you for it. As the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper?

If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me, and baby, I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4?

Very. Only at 711. Valley 3-226, participating stores only well supplies lastly out for full terms. And you mentioned about intersectionality being crap. Why? Why is it? Why do you disagree with it? What are the flaws in its thinking? Well, I've actually been reading a lot about this, and I think it should be taken seriously, because on its own lights, it's a pretty serious attempt to restructure everything. In brief, it's not going to work, and it's not going to work for what our,

already very evident reasons. Everything runs against everything else. That's one of the biggest ones. Why is trans so painful? It's painful because it runs against gay and women. Just for starters. Just for starters. So this idea that you have different interest groups,

all of which, you know, it's meant to lock in like this. The thing they got from the from the post-war left was that, you know, the sort of life was sort of web, which you had to unweave. But they've got this idea of the interlocking sections of society. It'll go in like that, and then we're sort of nirvana. In fact, it's all coming into this horrible angle.

And as I say, the trans one is an important one because people haven't worked this out yet, I think. But if you take what has been the presumption of recent decades about what homosexuality is. And that in itself is a bit of a presumption, which I won't go into now, but it's an interesting presumption. It is that gay people are born this way.

But the trans thing says, an effeminate young boy might not grow up to be a gay man, but may need surgical intervention and be turned into a girl. Now that is very, very destabilizing for gay men. The idea that a tomboy girl is not going to grow up to be a heterosexual girl

or a happy, healthy lesbian, but he's somebody who could be medically experimented upon to turn into a male with skin grafts from the arm to try to create something similar to a penis. That's very undermining to gay people, very, very undermining. And that's on a minority onto a minority with women. I mean,

women have fought and campaigned and argued for decades to get to the stage where they have not any equal rights but are allowed to be not conforming to what men think women ought to being. And then you get trans over. for that. What's one of the striking things about trans? That so many trans male to females behave like, dress like, look like, parodies of womanhood. That's a really big problem. It's very, very offensive to an awful lot of women who don't think that, for instance, being a woman means looking kind of like a porn star. Or, here's another example, one prominent trans-male female figure who was on a panel a little while ago sits on the panel and gets out her knitting.

Right. When did you last see a woman knit in public? Right. So it's like, gosh, gosh, women are thinking, I know, they're telling me, it's going to be that. That's what womanhood is. I thought we got past this So intersectionality was meant to mend us all

It was meant to bring all of this together And all of the injustices of the world We're going to be nicely cohereed No No, it doesn't work Because the whole thing Doesn't fit because it can't It all runs against each other

And it's a catastrophe Already And is going to get much, much worse. We saw that school I can remember it's somewhere up north in Birmingham I think it might be. It was a Muslim school that was I think they were

banning teaching about homosexuality because that's what the parents wanted and you could just see the radical leftist heads just exploding because it's an oppressed group oppressing another oppressed group. Yes, yes that's one I've pointed out a fair amount in my time

it was one of the first things in the early 2000s that I noticed that got me interested in the Islam thing which was this runs against other minorities and I'm very struck by the fact that so many people are now catching up with that but yes one minority group plus another does not equal

harmony may equal the opposite well particularly in the case of Islam where a lot their attitudes that are within that community and faith are very strongly against gay people, women, etc. Yes, all of the studies suggest that all of the studies suggest that there is not that much sympathy within the Muslim communities for homosexuality. In fact, several studies show zero tolerance, literally zero Muslims in Britain, percentage of Muslims in Britain believing that homosexuality is acceptable. I'm past, you know, pointing this out.

I've pointed out an awful lot and have had an awful lot of grief for making that observation among others. Personally, I'm in a slightly Marxist way quite pleased that other people are now meeting these contradictions. Because you've been talking about for a long time and it's vindicated.

It feels like that. And what we've run out of time, sadly, Douglas, we could have done this all afternoon. Douglas wouldn't want to do it all that. No, no, that's true. It's not that big an honour. That wasn't a joke, by the way. That was a statement of fact.

Douglas Murray destroys trigonometry. That's why you won't. Yeah, we'll put that underneath. This wasn't an honour. But, Douglas, the question that we always finish with is, what is the one thing people aren't talking about but really should be talking about? My next book.

Okay. Which is? It'll be out in September. Perfect. Fantastic. Well, as always, follow us at TriggerPod on all the social media. Douglas, you're on Twitter as well. I'm pretty active there. Just remind everybody you handle. I'm at Douglas K. Murray. Douglas K. Murray. Subscribe to YouTube channel. Click the bell button,

the next step-subs subscribe button. And thank you very much. We'll see you in a week's time. Absolutely. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye.