TRIGGERnometry - Douglas Murray Opens Up on America, AI and LGBTQ

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

Douglas Murray is a British writer and political commentator. He is an associate editor of the Spectator and a columnist at the Telegraph and the New York Post among others. He is the author of many best-selling books including The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017), The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019), and The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason (2022).  SPONSORED BY: The Tired Moderate - get his brilliant new satire 'Danielle's Passion' here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BYGKX8NM/ SPONSORED BY: Manscaped. Get 20% off and free shipping when you use the code TRIGGER20 at https://www.manscaped.com/ Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ 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. 00:00 Intro  01:23 Sponsor Message: The Tired Moderate 02:58 Douglas Murray’s Background 04:12 The Need for a Positive Vision of the Future  09:31 The State of Liberalism 13:34 Why Victimhood is Such an Issue  16:15 LGBTQIA2+ 19:57 Why Douglas Tackles Issues that Others Wouldn’t Go Near  25:01 Sponsor message: Manscaped 26:34 Richard Dawkins & Religion 29:24 What Does AI Mean for Humanity? 36:42 Will AI Art Make Artists Obsolete? 38:34 Was the Conflict in Northern Ireland Necessary? 42:28 The Slow Death of the US 46:59 What the West Needs to Thrive 51:45 The Right to Bear Arms  55:44 What’s the One Thing We’re Not Talking About? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People who have the means to move around used to talk about moving abroad. If things go South America, you know, we'll go to New Zealand. But I do notice that that has disappeared pretty much as a subject of conversation. So I think there's a sort of recognition now of that. If you don't save it here, it's not saved anyone. I do think that it's obviously running, the treadmill is running faster than humans can run. I'm worried about what happens if America does put a pause on this, because America might put a pause on it,

Britain might put a pause on it, but other countries won't. But in the end, you know, you can't actually hold back learning, it is the truth of it. The entire thing, the LGBTIQIA plus, the fact that there's more and more people who are coming under this particular... It's not a real thing. It's bullshit. Total horseshit. My view has always been there's no such thing as a gay community anyway.

That's just the gays. There is no bigger chasm in the world than gay men and asexuals. None. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the road from the USA. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kitten. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a prolific author and just.

journalist who returns to the show for the hundredth time in about a year. Douglas Murray, welcome back to Trigonometry. It's a little while since we spoke. It is, but you are one of our beloved guests. Oh, well, you're some my beloved hosts. Thank you very much. I actually told the story on one of our raw shows the other day about tricking you into our first interview. How did that happen?

Well, we were at the small conference in Oxford. Oh, yeah, of course. And you went out to the toilet and I was like, oh, it's Douglas Murray. I want to get Douglas on the show. So I went on... Now is the time. How's the time? He's in the toilet. He's vulnerable.

He's vulnerable. So I went outside and I was sort of on my phone. And when you came out, I was like, oh, Douglas, by the way. And that's actually how we did our first interview. And we have interviewed you many times since. So we've talked about the standard culture and all of that issue. And you, of course, have written about it extensively last book, The Madness of Crowds and the War in the West, your last two books.

And, of course, The Strange Death of Europe before that. What are you thinking now, Douglas? What are you thinking about? What are you seeing other than all the stuff that we all already know? I think the main thing that's preoccupying me at the moment is what we should be doing. I'm working away on something at the moment, but the thing that started to really preoccupy me is what would we be doing if this crap wasn't in our way? Yes. Mainly in the hope that I know you both share that we can get it out of the way.

You know, what would we be creating? What would we be thinking about? What are the things that are out there that should be bothering us? That we can address, that we can make progress on. That's really what's sort of on my mind most at the moment. Because I just see this great clutter in front of particularly young people. That's what really strikes me, particularly in the US, but it's the same in Britain and everywhere else in the developed world.

You just have this clutter when you're growing up now. You always did, but there's just additional clutter. And I think for a lot of young people I speak to, a lot of them just are checking out the whole thing as a result of that. And I think that we're at an enormous risk of losing the talent of the next generation. if we don't start to think really hard about how the adults can clear the path. And what are you thinking there?

Because I've talked about the need for a positive vision of the future. And as you say, moving beyond woke and anti-woke, because they're both destructive forces in terms of the energy that they're right. So what is the constructive path? What is that thing that we could be doing if we weren't doing all of this? Well, I mean, it's obviously different for everybody. I mean, you know, if you're a comedian, you make people laugh. If you're a writer, you write the things you need to write.

I actually try very consciously. I've tried throughout my career to do this to roughly balance what I write as doing, like, stuff that I hate and I'm attacking and stuff that I love, and I want to actually defend and write about and do something with. it's very hard to get the proportions right. And we all get caught on that first one a bit too much, I think. But, you know, writers should write. You know, coders should code.

But the main thing is in innovation and in thinking and then coming up with new ideas, you know, is there so much time spent on this unwinnable game that we've spoken about before, the unwinnable game of hierarchies, of intersectionism and all this sort of thing? And it hasn't yet got anyone anywhere. But imagine if that amazing amount of energy and insight and ability was actually directed on something.

And people have their own answers, as I say. I mean, Elon Musk's answer is, you know, we should go to Mars. And if you say to Elon, well, why, you'll say, you know, I think we should have a reason to get up in the morning. Mine is that I'd like to go to Mars. That's not particularly my thing when I get up in the morning. I mean, like Philip Larkin said about going to China, I wouldn't mind as long as I could come back the same day. But I just admire him, for instance.

One of the reasons I admire him is I admire somebody who realizes that. You've got to have a reason to get up in the morning. There has to be a vision. There has to be something you're going to do, something you're going to conquer. And the other thing to say about that is that the great temptation is to say, well, the conditions aren't optimal. You know, there's this in my way, there's that, there's the other. And I'm not discounting for a moment that there are problems.

There are problems of young people of crowing capital. That's a big one. We've talked about before getting on the housing ladder, owning property, all sorts of things, rewarding investment, rewarding savings, rewarding prudence, all sorts of things that, definitely could be addressed better. But I've become very fond of a sermon that C.S. Lewis gave at the University Church in Oxford in the autumn of 1939.

And I've quoted quite a lot recently in speeches. He said there, he says the conditions at the moment aren't optimal. A great example of British understatement. But he says the conditions at the moment are not optimal. But they never were. He says human life was always lived, on the edge of a precipice. And if our ancestors had put off the search for truth

or beauty until such a time as conditions were optimal, the search would never have begun. And that is a very important thing. For anyone who's watching, particularly who's young and starting, that's a very important thing to realize. It wasn't always precisely like this, but in some general way, it's always been like this. There's always been things in your way.

The question is whether or not or not you can get over them. Douglas, isn't there another thing here that all of us who are attempting to chart a sane path through this are coming up against, which is part of the idea of liberalism was throwing off the shackles of the shoulds and the aughts, right? And we've now come to a point where people like you and people like us want to say there are some things that you can do that will generally speaking, on average, make your life better, But we've lost the vocabulary to be able to say it in a way that works.

And so we are now in a position where we're afraid to say, like, it's hard to say, you know, generally speaking, for most people, family will be a good thing. Right? But the moment you say that, then you're demonizing people who can't. What about people who don't have families? What about women who can't have babies? And so on. And any area of life where you look at, that is the position we're now in.

And that's why I think we're struggling to articulate that positive vision, because we're now in a position where we can't really say, here's 10 things you can do to make your life better and to contribute to society. Because we're all worried about being seen and being attacked for saying, you know, this is what you should do. Oh, you want women back in the kitchen or you want, you know, the gays back wherever the gays were. All of that. In the bathroom. Where they belong.

No. Yeah. I mean, two observations. Firstly, what you described about the state of liberalism is, you know, something which, John Gray, who I'm a sort of sometime admirer of, but he did write very fine essay some years ago. He's sort of one of the students of Isaiah Berlin, maybe a successor even to Berlin, if Berlin had one. He wrote a very important essay some years ago now called Modus Vivendi about the two different types of liberalism. It's a slight play on Isaiah's

two concepts of liberty, but the two ideas of liberalism was firstly the idea of liberalism as an organizing principle, which organized and then left people alone. The second form of liberalism is the sort of rampaging, always wanting to go forward liberalism, always seeking fights, always seeking a campaign, as it were.

And this is one of the problems of describing liberalism, apart from the fact that it's a shape-shift of time. Many of us, I certainly believe in that first form of liberalism. Liberalism as a way to construct the social order, and then you let people do their thing.

The second form is the more prevalent form at the moment, is always the noisier form, and it's the one that's most tempting, particularly to young people, because it says here's meaning, here's purpose. So that's the first observation. The second one, I think people just got to be a lot less scared. I mean, I don't mind saying, you know, look, for instance, all the data shows you're going to be much happier in your life if you're religious and a believer. I'm not able to be a believer, a little believer in religion, but I don't mind acknowledging that all the data shows that the religious are more likely to be happy, why does that bother me?

Likewise, I don't have kids, but I'm not at all offended by the data that shows that, you know, having children is, for most people, the single most important thing that will happen to them in their lives, as you know. Why does that, why should, why is that any skin of minors? Why should that, why should that, I mean, I mean, I'm not going to construct the whole damn world around my own feelings. And that's what people are trying to do. And I think we should be much less bothered by them. So what, I'm not screwing up reality or altering it or pretending to alter it just because you might, you know, be my own

upset about something. So what? I'm mildly upset all the time. Very angry, irritable, and much more, lots. But I don't think the answer to it is to pretend that the world is not what it is. Douglas, one thing that I found very interesting recently is, so for example, when I was growing up, my mother is Latin American, we have a lot of gay men in our family. And when I think about those men, they were tough. They faced a a lot of prejudice, they live through the AIDS epidemic, they lost a lot of their friends and their lovers. And I'm looking at this new movement coming in,

which is trying to turn gay men into victims. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's the absolute worst way to live and to identify us. Sure, of course. Well, living as a victim is always disastrous. I mean, I wrote about that in the war on the West, using Nietzsche carefully. As I always say, you have to. It's strong stuff, that. I mean, Nietzsche's great on the victimhood problem.

The problem of victimhood is, I mean, it's basically a life that's not lived. And it also encourages people to cry about wounds they don't actually feel. I think you're right about that there is a generational thing on this. You're right, I can think of a lot of gay men older than me, who, you know, tough as nails, because they had to be. emotionally and sometimes physically as well. I think something like David Stark, as he himself has said, was sort of created by the feeling of, you know, being thrown into the back of a police van

if you were at a gay coffee shop on the King's Road, you know. My generation was a bit more fortunate than that, but the one that's underneath me is a bit more whiny for sure. I mean, you can always complain about people younger than you. It's a perennial human pleasure. But I just say that I think some of those people should have a bit more down respect for their elders. But that's the case everywhere in the Western societies.

We've become very weird societies in not respecting our elders in any community or walk of life. And that's very strange because it means you're left only respecting youth. Young people don't know anything. Why respect youth? I mean, it's worth recognizing the virtues of youth, but not of worshipping them. I mean, why would you worship ignorance?

Why not look to older people in your society to help convey wisdom? It just doesn't seem to be something that much bothers our society. We say, oh, look, here's somebody new and young and hot. Let's see what they have to say. Well, that's like saying, you know, here's this old guy who knows a lot.

Let's get him to do a photo shoot. But this movie, movement has, and I don't think people make this observation enough, and it's something that I have started to say more and more. It's deeply weird. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, of course it's weird. You just noticed. But the entire thing, the LGBTIA plus, the fact that there's more and more people who are coming under this particular... It's not a real thing. It's bullshit. It's total horse shit. And I'm just one of the things that's very annoying in this era is that there are these steaming piles of horseshit in front of us all. And we're all meant to sort of shovel

our way through them. I just don't have time. And I might pay somebody else to shovel the horse shit for me. But like I just don't have time for this crap. I don't have time for people to keep adding letters to, I don't, my view has always been there's no such thing as a gay community anyway. And that's just the gays. Lesbians and gays don't get on famously. very little in common. Both are very suspicious and bisexuals. Have nothing to do with transgender. There is no bigger chasm in the world than gay men and asexuals. None. Like the idea that in a bar, in a gay bar, you know, you're like, hey, you're hot, I'm asexual.

I don't know, they have their own hookup apps where they don't meet. There's just nothing in common. It's a map that keeps you as far away from other people as possible. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And keeps people's clothes on. And then there's just, then there's one that's like the queer one. Well, queer as far as I can see, is only, I did a bit of this in manners of crowds, but it only means either, ooh, look at me, I'm fascinating.

No, you're not. You dyed your hair purple, you're boring. Or it's, I'm straight, but I want a bit of the intersectional pie, so I'll go like, oh, I'm queer. There was a guy at Oxford who was teaching who said that, and he was like, oh, one of my students came over and said, it's so nice to see myself represented, you know, by a lecturer. And I think this guy, like, painted his nails or some crap like that.

And he's a straight guy, he's married to a woman. You're talking about queer. And queer used to be an insult to gay people. It still is an insult to gay people. And then it's appropriated by some straight guys and girls because they think it'll make them interesting. Find another way to be interesting. It's sort of grotesqueness.

The alphabet people stuff doesn't really interest me. I just, you know, get on with their lives. They've bored me enough, you know. But there's also the fact as well that do you not, and I've spoken to quite a lot of gay men about this, and they all mutter under their breasts, that they actually find it profoundly irritating with the queer thing, where they go,

if you do blackface, that is seen as the most keenest form of racism. Unless you're Justin Trude. Unless you're Justin Trude. Unless you're Justin Trudeau, in which case it's method. But that being the case, if I come out and go I'm queer and, you know, I've never even had any form of sexual interaction with a man, that's fine. Yeah, queer face is fine.

Yeah, it's like, it's like woman face, it's fine. Yeah. You can pretend to be a woman and it's not insulting to women. You know, I don't agree. I think it's very insulting. But I can't spend any more. in my life being upset by morons. Yeah.

Just particularly attention-seeking morons. Look at me, look at me. Yeah, I've got other things to do. There's books I haven't read. I mean, that is a very profound point. But one of the things that I really wanted to ask you, Douglas, is you tackle some of the most contentious issues, the ones that a lot of people simply won't go near.

Why do you do that? Well, it's fun. And it's necessary. and I've probably got a predilection for it. I probably always was one of those people who say, don't look at that. A that type of child. Don't read that, I'll read it.

Don't say that, I'll say it. That's probably just a habit thing. But also, the more you do it, the more you realize, it's fine. It's not scary. I don't like the whininess, even of like the people. who might be in agreement with a lot of what I or you say. I don't know the whininess, this sort of self-pity of, oh, you should see what I get on social media.

Shut up, it's boring. Oh, I got so much blowback from this article. Go and spend time with your family, friends, and stop reading people you don't know on Twitter. It's just a general sort of boring self-pity in the culture. And part of it comes from this sort of idea that if you transgress certain, you know, I don't know, certain dogmas of the time that you'll be put under a lot of pressure. Some people are, and I've noted quite often that I seem to have some inexplicable ability to get away with things,

that a lot of people don't. And I notice that my female friends in the UK, for instance, who have tackled certain issues I've tackled, get a horrible amount of blowback. And some of them are not as cut out for it as, you know, as say I am or some others, including some female writers are. But, well, you know, okay, each to their own. Everyone knows their own limits. But I don't have any, I don't have any, you know, complaints about my life or, you know, moaning to be done. I have a great life by say everything I think is true

and enjoy it. But surely when you were writing about the strange depth of Europe and when you were commenting on Islam, you must have known this. I mean, this is the most hot button out of all the hot button issues. Yeah, and it's not all about Twitter blowback. Yeah.

That's true. That's true. That one is the one, yeah, I'm being slightly flipping because of the stuff I've done more recently as well. I mean, I think my chances of being beheaded by a trans person. quite small. I mean, famous last words,

if I leave this studio constant in and a purple-haired woman with a dick decapitates me, please don't send that bit out. We'll keep that, we'll hold that back. But I think chances are low, basically.

I think the chances of a non-binary person. Even being able to lift a sword. Exactly. Even making a run at me. I think that's unlikely. The other than one is always was much harder. I sort of feel like I said everything I have to say about that subject. But that was definitely tricky for quite a number of years in my life. Yeah, I mean, it certainly made my movements much restricted. And, you know, a lot of my friends were shot. So it wasn't great. But nevertheless, I think broadly speaking, the point that a small group of us in Europe wanted to make,

which was that we still had the right to blaspheme any religion, I think we actually sort of, we didn't entirely win it, but we held some kind of line. It certainly could have been a lot worse, I think. And certain societies are more cowardly than others. I mean, Britain is really cowardly on the Islam one. you know, like the teacher in Batley, you know. I mean, the whole damn government should have come out for that guy, everyone, the police and so on. And the same with, you know, these intermittent, you know, appearances of sort of people who appear in places like Bradford and stop films by thuggish protests.

You know, I don't think that should be allowed. And I have very strong views on that. I mean, I simply think, if you don't understand our society, get out of it. Leave. Like, we're not going to, we're not losing anything. Not going to lose anything. I think you should just go. If you don't like a liberal, modern society, leave it. Just go. We don't want you. I think that's what government should say. I think that's what people should say. You don't get the point of being here. Fine, scram. Find somewhere where they don't show films. So I have no time for that, but I'm very struck by how weak the British authorities are again and again. They're stronger in France. And they're stronger in certain other countries.

They're a weird holdout. They're stronger in Denmark for other reasons. But it differs from country to country. The thing that really brought it home to me, I don't know if you would have seen the interview Richard Dawkins did with Pierce Morgan. And Richard Dawkins is a man, I think, irrespective of his views on religion. Some people really like them.

Some people don't. If you're like me, you really like them. And now less so over time, you change your mind. But he is a man who's been willing to speak up and be controversial and say things that people don't like. And then you watch that and you, I mean, look, who knows? But I think the assumption for many of us is like this is a very principal, decent man who, as he's getting on in life, doesn't want the hassle.

I thought that was a very sad thing. I know Richard Little. I enormously admire him. I mean, he really is a man of principle. And sometimes you don't have to agree with everyone's principle just to admire the principle they're sticking to. He's a man of science. So if he's asked to agree

that there are people with multiple genders and sexual sexes or whatever, he'll just say, no, I'm a biologist. There are two sexes. He doesn't mind doing that, quite rightly. But I was struck by the fact that he didn't want to talk about Islam. And I've seen Richard at that cliff face.

Some years ago, he had a slightly unfortunate fallout. Unfortunately, I wish it hadn't happened, but he did an interview on Algeism. and I wrote a piece slightly teasing him because he had slightly stepped back from criticizing Islam, particularly Muhammad. And I knew exactly what was happening.

But I made a joke at his expense. And it was quite a good joke, if I say so myself. But it was a bit of a cheap shot because I knew the chasm which he was looking into at that moment. It happened to be on Al Jazeera. and I sort of, I felt that I'd made my point, but I also should have been more sympathetic to Richard's own position at that time,

which is that he didn't want his life to be completely thrown into disarray by becoming a public hate figure number one for the world's Muslims. And the fact that he now just said, I don't want to do that. was a loss, definitely, definitely. But other people must pick up that baton, you know? Other younger people must. There'll be new young atheists coming along, you know, smart. They'll have been inspired by Richard Dawkins and things he said before.

And it's time, you know, I don't see why 80 or whatever Richard now is. He should continue to have to carry such a load. I don't think he should. I think people need to come along and share the damn burden. That makes sense. Douglas, let's move on a little bit because an issue I've never heard you comment on, and you may have nothing to say, which is fine. I'll tell you if I don't.

I know you will, which is why I'm asking. A lot of people are starting to talk about AI. And you, I mean, people will say you're a political commentator, but I think of you more as a philosopher to a large extent. You think about society and the ways that it's changing and where it's going. Do you have thoughts on what AI may mean for humanity? Not many. I mean, as you say, I sort of straddle both of those divides that you just described.

I've looked into a certain amount. I do think that it's obviously running, the treadmill is running faster than humans can run. And that's a problem. The recent letter signed by Elon and others was a sign of that. The one I'm worried about, frankly, is I'm worried about what happens if America does put a pause on this, because America might put a pause on it, Britain might put a pause on it, but other countries won't. I think there's a risk that it'll become like stem cells, you know? Like America ends up stopping certain research here for profound and, you know, important moral reasons.

But go to Central America and that's happening all over the place. So my worry with the AI one is that America and advanced democracies say, whoa. But, you know, China doesn't. That seems to me to be the worst of all worlds, is that the technology is developed by countries that are already not free, to say the least. But I don't know what to do about this. that. I don't know what the answer to that is other than continuing carefully to do it in our own societies. But in the end, you know, you can't actually hold back learning, is the truth

of it, you know. I mean, it's like Gutsenberg. Once it's out, you just can't hold it back. You can't stop the printing presses once they start rolling. You can't start the internet once it's turned on. And again, it's probably always been like this, you know. It probably felt the same when gunpowder was first discovered. Do you feel there's a certain futility to thinking about these things? Well, not a futility because it's very interesting, But I think people are misguided if they think that thinking about things like AI and being able to control them are the same thing.

I mean, as I say, I mean, you can think about gunpowder, but it doesn't win you any battles. You can think about the discovery of the cannon or the invention of the automatic rifle. doesn't win you any battle. We could think endlessly about the nature of AI, but I think the likelihood that you'll be able to stop it is highly unlikely. I think the one thing that does worry me about it, and it's something which, you know,

various philosophers have talked about in recent decades, is there is a sort of moment when, I mean, arguably you could trace the moment that we're currently in back to that moment in, what was it, 1994, when Gary Kasparov played the computer chess and lost. And the notes that Kasparov was making as he went along, there was a very striking note. One of his notes himself was, he said, the machine isn't calculating its thinking. There's a very important moment in the development of what we now call AI. There's another observation on that which Tom Stoppard wrote in his play, the hard problem about the consciousness problem.

It's a very interesting, profound play. He mentions that the only time he says, well, one of the characters says in the play, something I've always been fond of, which is that the machines only really beat the humans when the machine's mind losing. because minding losing is such a huge human drive, wanting to win, wanting to come back. I think at this point the machines do mind losing or very close to it. The one that alarms me more is the issue of memory and human memory, because human memory and machine memory are clearly different things. I mean, I know this from our own lifespans already,

as a sort of weird gap from before the internet era. It was recently actually shown when Jerry Adams of Sinn Féin IRA was back in the news. And somebody mentioned that on the Wikipedia website for Jerry Adams, the only controversy under controversies is when he used the N-word some years ago in passing and got a lot of flack for it. I mean, it's an explosive issue, Douglas. It's well said. But he's been involved in more explosive issues in his time.

And you would have thought that, and Mr. Adams can sue me if he thinks I'm wrong on this, but you would have thought that a man who was high up in an organisation, which he's always denied being a member of, and an organisation that killed 1,600 people and disappeared mothers and buried their bodies after torturing and shooting him in the back of the head, should be on Wikipedia as a potential controversy. My point is, not to get onto that hobbyhorse of mine, but my point is that there is this sort of knowledge

from before the internet era, which the internet is not capable of holding. It's the same with the television archives. There are things that exist on YouTube, only because they exist on YouTube, and somebody's posted them. But there's all of this forgotten memory of what was before. Or will the machines ever be able to do the things that we have up here?

Maybe someday, but it will be different from human memory. I don't relish the world in which the machine can compete with the greatest human mind. Because to my mind, one of the things that makes humans humans is having, a sense of memory, collective, familial, and much more. And it also brings for the discussion about AI art, because I was talking with Andrew Doyle about this and he said, well, AI can't create art because art is the expression of the human soul. But you see everything that is being created over it with AI and it's already so advanced

that you think to yourself, is it going to make the artist obsolete? I don't think that will happen actually. I mean, certainly what has been produced so far doesn't fool me at any rate. Currently, AI artists, as far as I can see, it's a purely parasitic art form. It can only work off what's already there. So it can imitate, and it can imitate pretty well.

It actually is quite easy to spot, I would say, at the moment. Some people watching will disagree and will doubtless send in examples that I couldn't spot. I still think that if some, but if AI faked to Vermeer, I would be able to tell. I'd be able to tell a difference between the fake and the real, maybe partly because there were so few Vermeers that one would know. But certain artists might be easier to fake than others. It's not hard to fake a warhol, because it wasn't hard to make.

But will they be able to make advice? be able to make advances in perception of the kind that say in the 20th century, Picasso and Francis Bacon imagined? Will they be able to push forward the boundaries like that? I doubt it. I think it'll be like in music. I mean, in music, almost everything in film music, for instance, is already imitative parasitic art. AI can create more of it, but can AI create Stravinsky? I doubt it. I doubt it. Douglas, you mentioned Northern Ireland, and it's a niche question,

but I know you've written a book, you wrote a book of one of your early books about it. And every time we talk about it, I know, I'm not saying it's not an issue people shouldn't care about, but you really care about it. Yeah, I hate that. I hate murderers. It's a controversial position now, I really, I really, I hate murderers. I hate people who get away with murder. and I particularly mind, and it's a very straightforward one,

I have a residual deep dislike of the fact that the end of the conflict in Northern Ireland consisted of rewarding the people who shot people in the back of the head for 30 years and then said, maybe we shouldn't. And sidelined all the people who said from the beginning, don't shoot people in the back of the head. I really mean the way in which, I mean, on the more, on the less, actually, the loyalist side was very, very violent on the extremes itself. But I mean, like Ian Paisley, who I had no love for at all, Ian Paisley, you know, pushes out David Trumbull, a far finer man than him. Jerry Adams and Martin McGuinness push out Hume.

And that just always bothered me because I thought the people who had always said we shouldn't go down the path to hell were all left on the sidewalk whilst the people who merrily walked everyone through hell for 30 years came out at the other side pretending to be wise men of peace. That's always bothered me and always will.

I think it's just an injustice which still rankles with me And I had lots of friends involved from the conflict, and I just know how many scars and wounds are still there and unhealed. Do you think that it was a necessary injustice in order to bring peace to the region? It always depends whether or not you want to reward violence. And I think we've rewarded violence. It's a very niche view these days. Everyone just sort of celebrates what they call the men of things.

peace, who were all the people who were men of war, and then suddenly men of peace. It's in each point I would have done it another way. I would have continued to cripple the IRA and make them come to a negotiating table on their knees, which they very nearly were in the early 90s. But I'm always struck by the fact that in an era which talks about, you know, equality and kindness and all these sort of things. Fairness is a much more important, tangible thing than equality and all these sort of things. Fairness is a very important virtue, and it was totally thrown out the window in that.

And it's very, very hard for people to see the people who killed their families walking around. I once was in Central Europe and spoke to a friend who had written a book about a woman who had been tortured and... imprisoned in the communist era. And one day, she was, many years later, after the fall of the wall, she was walking back with her shopping and she saw her torturer walking towards her in the street, you know. And he apparently looked at her and recognized her and he darted into a courtyard, disappeared. But I mean, it's unimaginable, really. And that in Northern Ireland is happening, admittedly for people on all sides, for thousands

and thousands of people. I think at the very least people should have empathy for that. Absolutely. And you spend a lot of time in the United States. I do. And people are saying that the United States is ever more divided, that the country is on its way out and blah, blah, blah. How do you see this country, Douglas? Well, it's obviously divided, wildly divided. And you can't, unless you spend long periods of time here, you can't read just how bad it is. One thing I would make observation on that is, in the time I've been coming here myself, I've noticed that

people used to talk about people who had the means to move around, which is, of course, not everybody. People who have the means to move around used to talk about moving abroad. If things go South and America, you know, we'll go to New Zealand. Or Malta.

It was a sort of dinner party conversation, if you like. Canada was the other one. Canada. Remember that? I mean, none of these places have made themselves remotely appealing in the time since. But I do notice that that has disappeared pretty much as a subject of conversation, partly because of the

way in which countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada dealt with lockdown and COVID and showed extraordinary authoritarian tendencies, which most people hadn't expected. But it's also gone away because what's happening in America is people are moving within the country.

You know, a lot of my friends from California have been moving to Texas, particularly Austin. My friends in New York have mainly left when I came here. And they've moved to, you know, Houston and Miami. Some of the wealthy ones move to Palm Beach, or to West Palm Beach and, you know, Florida in general. And some people see this as a terrible sign, an example of the further fracturing of the society. And you can see it that way, but you can also see it as an expression of trust nevertheless in the United States of America. Or to put it another way, the recognition that if America goes south, you don't buy yourself

any time in Malta. You know, if America goes south, you don't actually buy yourself any time in one of the countries that was effectively protected as a satellite part of the American era of dominance. So I think there's a sort of recognition now of that. If you don't save it here, it's not saved anywhere. So you better make sure it works here. And there are people from the crazy extremes of the left and the right in America, most recently on the right from the lunatic Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green,

who's a sort of gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats, who called for a split up of the country. It's mad talk and frivolous talk really. But yeah, it matters enormously that people in America should be able to get along. And if they can't, you know, there are many other problems that come from that. But I think that, and I've said a lot whilst I've been here, that people say sort of what one thing can you do to fix the growing divide? And I always say, you know, just agree on one thing.

The one thing that happened. I agree when you were founded, you know, or agree on, you know, the inviolability of the Constitution or just agree on the fact the founding fathers were great men or whatever you want. Just like agree that it was a good thing that Abraham Lincoln was born, you know, whatever you want. Just like, or agree who won the last election. That's a tougher one. You know, just that would really help. America because the problem, as I said quite often, is that the problem in America in particular

is not that people have different opinions, but they have different facts. And you find very fast in any interaction in public or private which facts the person you're speaking to is God. And the moment you get into one of the ones they've got, which is one that you regard as not being true, you just get gnarled up. And you very rarely can get anywhere after that. You either have to park it. Say, okay, let's just nile. not do that now. Or you have to go all in and, you know, kind of ruin the evening. I'm a sort of past master. You know what? When you're talking about agreeing on something, all the things you listed are

important, but I sort of feel it almost goes deeper than that, which is, first and foremost, Americans and the West, people in the Western countries generally, have to agree that we want the West to survive and we want it to prosper. Yeah. And there's quite a lot of people now who don't agree on that. And I'm not just talking about the crazies on the left, although that is primarily coming from them. But your point about, you know, people saying, we need a national divorce, all of that. I mean, part of that is an idea, as you say, is crazy talk, that would make sure that America doesn't survive and doesn't prosper.

Yeah, I mean, the problem is that everyone can only see the world from the position they're standing in. and there's a limited extent to which you can say to people, you have no idea how good you've got it. I mean, you've both spoken about this before, and we've spoken about it. You can sort of tell people it's sort of hell over there, or it's hell there before, but people are just living in the lives they've found themselves in. And if things aren't always going their way, they will quite often reach for a grandiose overarching explanation for it.

I mean, the oddity, of course, is that they tend to reach back for explanations that have failed every time they've been tried. Like, I remember after the financial crisis in 2008, there was a glut of pieces by ignoramus saying things like, should we think about trying socialism? Well, I'm sorry, should we look at eating? cyanide. But that's only because of these are ignorant people who think that there's a sort of binary.

That's right. Which is like capitalism when it's gone wrong, like it did in 2008, and the only other alternative to capitalism is state-run communism. So again, I don't know how much time for those people. And maybe we should sort of just ignore them. you know, they just don't know what they're talking about.

You can't open your mouth and be that stupid, I think. You shouldn't. But this is what I'm getting at, though, is I think more broadly in society, the very idea, you know, how often do you hear on TV or in the paper someone saying what you and I have both said often, which is the West is great, and we want it to survive and thrive. But that isn't something that people say. And I feel like quite a lot of people don't actually have that concept in mind.

They're so busy on the internal fight, they don't recognize that they're external fights in which we are weakening ourselves by fighting amongst each other. Yeah, I think it's partly, it goes back to the point I was making about the modus Vendi. People don't necessarily understand the settlement that they're living in and that this might all be part of it. Or at least this is the only system that allows for that. You know, free market capitalism is the only system anyone ever invented that makes even its critics rich, you know, as Mr. Chomsky and others have found out. Michael Moore is another good example. But I think a lot of people don't understand the mode in which the society is set that allows to the self-criticism, that allows for the self-flagellation, that allows, that allows, for the endless criticisms and critiques,

and my view is that that's all actually a feature of our society, which is good. The self-criticism is a definite benefit in Western societies. It's good until it turns into self-laceration, self-loathing, and then self-destruction. And it's not hard to see where those degradation occur. But I think that, yes, a lot of people don't understand the setting they're in

or they're sort of like the fish in water thing you know they just they don't realize that that's the water and the alternatives are all just being flung out into dry patched land if you're a QuickBooks customer looking to grow your business without the growing pains

you need the Intuit ERP upgrade to Intuit Enterprise Suite in a matter of hours it's the AI native ERP from the makers of QuickBooks learn more at Intuit.com slash ERP But maybe this stuff only comes up because of sort of frustrations that people are feeling and they grab for whatever there is that they think is the only other alternatives. Unfortunately, everything nearby that they grab is so much worse, as we all know. And one of the things that seems to be a really contentious issue, well, not really,

it is a very contentious issue. And we were talking about this last night, something that I think could definitely help to split this country up is the issue of guns. If the Democrats go after the right to bear arms. They won't. They weren't.

Good. There are so many guns in this country that you can ever take them away. I just don't think it'll happen. Well, that was the nature of the discussion we were having. I don't say good because I'm a massive fan of guns. I just know what would happen if they did and I hope they're smart enough not to do that.

People are, it's very funny. All societies have things about them which people from the outside just sort of can't understand. That's right. And I always say that in America, the two things that outsiders tend not to understand, particularly if they're from Europe or Britain, are abortion and guns. And like the thing that Americans don't understand about Britain is like monarchy, for instance. I was here with the Queen died, and it was very interesting. A number of news anchors and others said to me off screen as it were, you know,

I admired her, but I don't quite understand the intensity of this. I found myself explaining to them, well, the queen is like the living embodiment of the flag in America. It's something like that. And it was interesting they got that. Of course it's strange if you don't live in a country where there's a family which inherits a throne and a crown and a scepter and an orb and all this. It's sort of strange, hard to understand from outside if you're from a country. constitutional republic. But every society's got stuff like that, you know. France has oddities that are hard to explain unless you're French and all societies like that. And there's always

a slight problem when an outsider, as it were, comes in and says, I don't like this thing. It's an issue which in particular America is a problem in the South, because the South has unfinished historical issues. I was touring around the Carolinas and Virginia and other places recently and I saw much of this firsthand, there's a sort of feeling of bitterness that people from outside are coming in and telling them what they can and cannot venerate. And that's, my own view is that that's acceptable to make those criticisms of it because it's people in the same country.

But when you have somebody come from, I don't know, Britain, and say, I'm appalled at seeing this statue of general, you're not really appalled, it has nothing to do with you. That is the sort of thing that people mind, but that's the same in every country. But there is a tendency of people to come to America and blow themselves up by saying, I don't understand X about this society. And the society says, sorry, we didn't lay it on for you, you know. When I campaigned against guns in America, I was a British guy telling Americans how to lead their lives.

They have 420 million guns. We have hardly any. And so what do I really know about their gun culture? The truth is I thought I knew better than them and shouted out louder and louder to try and get them to give up guns and they sold more and more guns because of my shouting. They have the complete opposite effect to what I thought. We'd been driven out with guns to get them independence in the first place.

Who's this snoddy British guy with this British accent telling us what to do? I don't want to hear this guy and I definitely don't want to hear it from my accent. It would be like an American coming over here and saying, I want to ban cricket because, you know, people get in. And what would we do? We said, sod off, annoying American. Go back to him, you know, that's what we would think, right?

So I broke that sort of cultural rule. Douglas, we've got to let you go because you've got important things to do. But thank you for coming back on the show very quickly. Before we head to our locals for the questions from our audience that only they will get to see the answers to, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we're really should. Oh, you did. I forgot I should have prepared some wise answer.

Seems to me we're talking about most things, other than that thing I mentioned at the very beginning, which is what we should actually be doing. I'd love us to get onto that. I'd love ambition to come back. Is that what your next book is about? No, I'd love us to really focus. That's the truth of it. And work out how to unleash the real talent, not the way we talk about it at the moment,

of unleashing the talentless, but unleashing real talent, or at least not keeping it down. Yeah, what would we be doing if we weren't doing this crap, you know? Broadly speaking, what I think. Douglas Murray, thank you for coming back on Shigen Orchia.

It's a great pleasure. Join us on locals. We will ask your bonus questions. We'll see you there. Given all the problems that afflict the West, is it irresponsible to have children? This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures.

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