TRIGGERnometry - Douglas Murray: The War on the West

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Douglas Murray joins us again to discuss the subject of his latest book *The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason* available from 28 April 2022. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 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. - Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:20 Western Anti-Westerners 04:07 Inversion of American Patriotism 08:41 Why We Fear Nationalism 14:55 Anti-Western Historical Revisionism 17:01 The Costs of Attempting Nuance 22:13 Western Masochism Is a Gift to Its Enemies 27:01 We Do This to Ourselves: Erosion of Our Culture 32:05 'White Guilt', 'White Tears', 'White Fragility' 35:24 Identity Politics Era: Product of Our Own Success 40:31 Force-fed Misconceptions and Moral Meltdowns 47:54 How COVID Masks Became an Identity Issue  49:48 Emergence Of - "The Truth is the Opposite of Mainstream Narrative" 59:41 The Right Has Absorbed Its Own Criticism - a Leftist Idea 01:05:46 'Her Penis' and Hunter Biden's Laptop 01:08:52 Victim Culture 01:11:57 Current Era of Unique Permissible Racism 01:15:40 "Opinions From People Who Are On Only Play, Not Listen" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is all being pushed on us by wild ideologues, who want us to see our countries in this remorselessly negative light, who want to turn all of the things that were good in our societies to bad, who want to take all of our heroes and just throw them down, sometimes quite literally, and smash them on the floor, to say, look, there's nothing good about you. What have you got to celebrate? Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry.

I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. We're delighted to say that our brilliant and returning guest is journalist and author and the author of the upcoming book, The War on the West, Douglas Murray. Welcome back to Trigonometry for the nth time. Great to be back with you both. It's a real pleasure. It's been too long. It has been too long. And we, of course, look forward to having you back in the studio

where we've had many of our previous conversations. But you have a new book, about to come out, which is called The War on the West. You got there ahead of me by a couple of months because I have a book coming out called An Immigrants Love Letter to the West. So I'm trying to talk about what I think is valuable and what we don't appreciate enough in the UK and America and elsewhere in the Anglosphere. Who is fighting a war in the West? Why is the West under attack, Douglas, in your opinion? Well, my view, actually, it probably ties in with what I think you're describing in your book. I mean, there's a sort of wild underestimating of of our own societies in countries like Britain, United States, and so on.

There's been this ravenous self-criticism that sort of ended up being a form of self-hatred. There are lots of forms of anti-Westernism in the world. There's Russian anti-Westernism, Chinese anti-Westernism, Middle Eastern anti-Westernism, all types. But the one I'm really interested in is the Western anti-Westernism. the people who just say these terrible and crucially untrue things about our societies and have been doing so for a very long time and have just been getting away with it. I think they've just had a, for various reasons, they've had a free run at us,

almost uncontested, so that people in the West say things about the West, which are just not true. at the very least, very much not fair. And I think they've just left this field wide open. I think a lot of people in the West have been cowed by this, have been just sort of scared of the things they've been called, of the names they've been called, of the implications of pushing back in any way. But I think it's high time that people push back.

I think we've got our own estimation of ourselves wildly, out of sorts. And sometimes it needs somebody, I mean, Constantine, as I understand you're doing, somebody who has come from outside a democracy like Britain to say, actually, hang on a moment, guys, most of the world isn't like this, you know. Whilst you're talking about the rights of IVF

for lesbian couples or whatever, you know, much of the rest of the world's, you know, hacking their neighbours to death. I mean, I mean, don't get your estimation of yourselves to so wrong. And sometimes it needs an outsider as a word to say that. Somebody who's come into a country and

it says, look, you've got yourselves really out of proportion. I think there's no country in the world. That's more the case with than America where, for all sorts of reasons, which I go into in the book, American citizens just

have a misunderstanding, not just about their own country and its history, but a misunderstanding about what the world is like, what the rest of the world is like now, and what most of the world has been like historically. Douglas, when I was a kid, we're from the sort of the same generation, when we looked at America, it was always a stereotype. The Americans were fiercely nationalistic,

overly proud the criticism would be of their own country. Why has it suddenly shifted so dramatically in recent years with this attitude? Yeah, that's right. I think all of us who weren't born in America, sort of had this view of America as being, as you say, fiercely nationalistic, patriotic, you know, swearing allegiance to the flag. Lots of things that say British patriotism didn't want to do, you know, flying the flag in your front yard. Find a person in Britain who'd, you know, do that without cringing, as it were. You know, we sort of prided ourselves in Britain on having a quiet form of patriotism and thought of Americans as having a noisy form.

In our own lifetimes, this is completely flipped. There are, of course, many patriotic people in America who still have the same estimation of their society that they once had. But a vast swath of the country now has a totally different understanding. The story of America used to be a story of heroism, of individualism, of freeing from tyranny, a much more book I've got behind me of Paul Johnson's History of, the American people, published only just over 20 years ago, opens with a sentence such as something like, America is the greatest invention of human species to date.

You could say that sort of thing, even as a non-American, not much more than 20 years ago. Today, you'd be derided if you said anything like that, because the whole history has been reframed. Essentially, it's been reframed, for the same reason the rest of the history of the West has been reframed through the prism of original sin. case of America through the prism of slavery, where everything is seen remorselessly through

the prism of slavery. We have the 1619 project of the New York Times, not a French project, that set out, when it was founded a couple of years ago now, set out and stated that its aim was to reframe the founding date of America, to move it to 1619 in order to commemorate the date when slaves were first brought in to the American continent. Now, I mean, this is a deliberate attempt, of course, to say our nation started in slavery, we can't get away from it. With a follow-on suggestion, we sort of never should. We're stuck with it.

We're stuck with our legacy. Well, who isn't stuck with our legacy, first of all? I mean, what the hell of people meant to do about that now? But everyone's got a version of this. Obviously, in Britain, we have empire. And you could say, as a fair estimation, to say, well, slavery and empire was sort of the sins of these things were slightly glossed over in the past, maybe massively glossed over at one point a few generations ago, and that we're

going through a period of churn because we're looking at the downsides, where people used to talk about upsides and so on, and it's possible. But I think if that is what's been going on, it's just gone on uncontested for far too long. so that people haven't just corrected basic untruths. It's not the case that American schoolchildren aren't taught about slavery. It's not the case that British schoolchildren are not taught about the colonial era, or are taught that the colonial era was some sort of grand, wonderful thing we should return to. It's just not the case, and I've gone through all the textbooks of the schools in both countries,

just to shoot this down once and for all. You know, American and British school children are brought up with a lot of teaching about the original sins of their societies. We've got quite enough of that. But it does reframe the country. And I don't understand why we can't look at all of this in the round, except for the fact that this is all being pushed on us by wild ideologues, who want us to see our countries in this remorselessly negative light,

who want to turn all of the things that were good in our societies to bad, who want to take all of our heroes and just throw them down, sometimes quite literally, and smash them on the floor, to say, look, there's nothing good about you. What have you got to celebrate? Douglas, and one of the things that I find very disconcerting about the events of the last few years in particular is, I don't really know what a healthy patriotism looks like anymore.

When I came to this country in the mid-90s, I remember people in this country, in the UK, would say something like, well, this is the British way, or this is un-British, or an American, particularly, people would say, this is America, and that meant certain things. It meant that people are free to have different opinions or whatever. And also, if someone said something is un-American, we all universally knew what that meant.

And yet now we're stuck in a position when Francis brought up the idea of patriotism itself. It was even in the way that he described it was inextricably linked to nationalism. And we've kind of got to this point where I don't even, if someone asked me, I would struggle to define how we can be proud of ourselves in our country and our history and our heritage without then becoming these evil gammon, you know, bigots with maga hats. And whatever is the caricature that we are being presented with. And I know that you think about these things carefully. As do we, we don't want to go off one deep end in order to oppose another one.

We want to find a healthy course in the middle. What does that look like? I think it's having pride in the things that you've done well, having pride in the things that are remarkable about your country. My late friend Roger Scruton used to say that the nation state was the one. widest possible application of the first person plural. That is that you could say we about them. So we say, when we did this, that it was, I mean, of course there are versions of that

with, I don't know, football teams, people say, we won last week. What the hell would you do? I stood on the terrace and you drank beer and you shouted at a guy a lot fiddler than you to run. You know, that's not exactly we. But, of course, people do do that with football teams, with, with sports. They think of a collective,

even if they themselves have had almost nothing or nothing to do with the success of that collective. Now, nevertheless, they're part of it. Now, that should be the case with the nation state. When we did that, I remember some years ago in a conversation with Trevor Phillips being very struck and very moved when he said at one point in our conversation,

when we did this, referring to something in Elizabeth in England, and I remember thinking, that's great. You know, like, that's great for a black, British child of immigrants to Britain, to say we about the Elizabethan era was just like, that to me seemed like almost the ideal

that you were so integrated that you would, that you would feel like that, you would say that. Now, of course, it's easier to teach the opposite in a way. And it's fairly easy to teach people, a jingoistic, nationalistic, simplistic view of their own past. And that has been done at times in the past, I think. In most countries, the late Peter Ustinoff used to joke about being, when he was a schoolboy, being, you know, having a poster in his classroom, I think, of Jesus, you know,

sort of signaling to a map where, you know, most of the world was, was colored of the color of British Empire, you know. He thought as a schoolboy, you know, maybe Jesus wasn't necessarily. entirely, you know, involved in the creation of the British Empire, but he'd look into it. You know, the point is, is, maybe there was a time when that was the case, but you're right that patriotism and nationalism, particularly in Britain, we worry about, we worry about one going into the other. I didn't have any particular problem with nationalism per se. I wouldn't call myself a nationalist. I don't think of myself as a nationalist. I'm slightly nervous about the term, and I've said this quite often. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but,

The reason why we don't like nationalism, let's be frank about it. And I said this in Berlin a couple of years ago to significantly not much applause. Just like one of our gigs, Douglas. Right. Yeah, I said, let's be frank about this. It's not that we don't trust, I don't know, countries in the Far East to be able to be nationalist or in the Middle East or, I mean, there's sort of forms of nationalism in San America or Africa. It's not that we don't trust that.

I mean, like, nationalistic movements are kind of accepted around the world. It's that we don't trust Europeans with nationalism. Let's go a layer forward. It's that we don't trust Germans with nationalism for a very good reason. So my belief is basically the justifiable fear of German nationalism and spilt out into a European fear of nationalism in general in Europe, and then into a fear of nationalism across the West, which has now come to America as well.

And I think that is a shame because patriotism is inside of nationalism. But how you feel it? I don't know. I don't like to overanalyze these things because they're both obvious and hard to describe. It's one of those things, you know, you know it when you see. it. I mean, I'm not nationalistic, but I think myself is very pretty patriotic because I, and I said this in a book some years ago that was edited by Gordon Brown and therefore read by nobody. But I said there, my attitude towards my own country has always been one of gratitude. I feel very grateful for it, partly because I know

what the options, the alternatives might have been. And I find myself, I know, I'm not a great flag wave or anything, but I'm, I move, I've moved by my nation by what it's done well. And I'm so and I don't like hearing it talked

down. I don't like people talking about heroes of the past in this incredibly negative light. I mind it. I don't, I really resent ideological extremists. for instance, trying to attack Winston Churchill

on the most specious, spurious grounds. I mind because I know that what they're doing is they're attacking one of the holy places of Britishness and they're saying it's nothing. You guys, even Winston Churchill wasn't anybody. In America, there's a version of this. They attack Thomas Jefferson. They attack Abraham Lincoln.

You know, and it's like, if you haven't got Lincoln, then you've not really got America. You see what I'm and and a patriot recognizes that and dislikes it and says no, that's not fair. That's just not a fair estimation of us. And I think that's what we are in at the moment. It's one of the things I'm trying to push back against is to say what they're doing is not fair. What they have said about British history, these ideologues in recent year, is not fair. It's not fair what they've said about America.

It's not the case that slavery is a unique evil of America. Every damn society in world history did slavery in some form and many for a lot longer. It's not fair to pretend that some societies have original sins like Britain, America. Okay, what's the original sin of Nigeria? Tell me that. What's the original sin of Uganda? Tell me that. What's the original sin of Iraq?

Tell me that. What's the original sin of Singapore? Tell me that. Don't tell me that only Western societies have original sins and that we're stuck with them for all time, which is what people like the Huxter dominatrix of so-called anti-racism. Robin DiAngelo pretends that we're stuck with this stuff and we can't escape it. Oh, but the rest of the world doesn't have it. I've had enough of these people. Douglas, don't you think that what this is, what we're really talking about, about here is the death of nuance. We don't see that nothing has nuance anymore. Everything's binary. Everything is. You know, Trump or Biden, Brexit remain. And now with this, you know, the British were evil, colonizing, Nazi, racist, blah, blah, blah. Nobody ever talks and nobody

ever takes the time to analyze the subject to look at the good, the bad, and then come to their own informed decision. We just interested in reflex reactions. Well, it's worse than that, isn't it, Francis? I mean, they actually come for people who try new ones. Somebody who's been a guest on your show, Nigel Bigger, experienced this himself. I mentioned him in the War on the West. He, a couple of years ago at Oxford University,

after the Cecil Rhodes debate about whether or not the statue of Cecil Rhodes should be torn from the edifice of Oriel College, looked into Cecil Rhodes in a way that other people didn't, read the entry about him in the dictionary of national biography and said, oh, actually, people are making stuff up, which they are. I've proven the book that the Rhodes must fall campaign just made up things that Cecil Rhodes said. They put the N-word into his mouth in quotes that didn't have it. I mean, it's a sort of weird thing to do to make somebody more racist or to seek

to make somebody more racist historically to fit your own pattern. Nigel Biggren, among others, pointed this out and was just subjected to a slurry of abuse from his peers, I mean, other historians. And he said, you know, tried to at Oxford, set up a course in the ethics of empire to say, we should look into how to discern. If we are going through this post-colonial post-emper phase, let's try to work out how we think about it. Now, Nigel Bigger isn't some weird whack-job extremist. He's the regious professor of ethics at Oxford University. You know? He's not somebody shooting his mouth off.

And he was mauled for this. His people withdrew from his orbit. They withdrew from involvement in the course. Other academics, not least one particular fool at Cambridge University, just defamed him in the most unbelievable. way. And so that's, so the problem is slightly worse than you say, France. It's not just, it's not just that, as it were, there's a, there's a reward for taking an extreme stance and sticking with it. There's, there's a cost to trying to introduce nuance as Nigel Bigger did. There's a cost to that.

And I mean, one of the, one of the points I would make on this and do in the book is, you know, somebody said to me recently, you know, what's, what's the best thing that? that can be said about the British Empire. And I said Amritsa. And I can see a slight, you know, a worry on the face of the questioner. So now, the Amritsa massacre was a terrible thing. In 1919, it was a terrible thing.

British troops opened fire on a crowd of unarmed Indians. Winston Churchill decried it in the House of Commons, along with many others immediately afterwards. The reason I said Amritsa is because in any other empire in history, I would submit, we wouldn't know the name of Amritsa. If it was the Belgian Empire, we wouldn't know the name. If it was Russian troops that had carried out that massacre, we wouldn't know the name of it.

If it was German troops, it would be too small an event to register on the radar. But we remember it because it was. the British Empire that did it. So, and then that comes back to a point actually all well made about Gandhi. It's sort of impossible to improve on points in almost any other scenario. Mr. Gandhi would not have been heard of because Mr. Gandhi would have been disappeared. He'd have gone into some prison system. So let's have some perspective on this.

Let's have some understanding of this. And I try among other things to arm people with the facts on this. I think the facts have basically got lost in the last generation because people decided that things like Slavian Empire were sort of,

they weren't so much in vogue to study and so only ideological obsessives who hated Western societies decided to focus on them and effectively the field was left vacant so that things were said about our societies that were untrue, and people basically got away with it.

For the reason that you give, which is anyone who attempted to introduce some measure of facts, Inter would immediately be destroyed, smeared, et cetera. And Douglas, I know that you're not a conspiratorial person, but how do you see, is this a war that the West is waging on itself, or are the people in our societies who are minded to do this getting help? Oh, that's a very interesting question. Several things. One, I think to a great extent it has happened organically.

As I say, it's a sort of response. But there is obviously a huge interest in the rest of the world, or certainly countries that dislike the Western democracies, whipping this along. I have a chapter, as you know, I do these. I do in the book, each chapter is the, The first one is essentially the war on white people, which I think is an extraordinarily dangerous thing that is going on at the moment,

where only white people are allowed to be spoken about in the most derogatory racializing terms, which we would rightly deplore if it was used against anybody else. So the first chapter is basically the war on white people, then the war on Western history, but then the war on Western religion and ideas, including its philosophy, and then the war on Western culture, which is, you know, where we see this remorseless movement, just take everything in our past apart and everything we've inherited that's good.

But in between, like in the Madden's of Crowds, I do these interlude chapters, as you know, and one of the interludes chapters is, you know, what's the rest of the world doing whilst we do this? And an example of something that I give there, which is much of my mind, I mean, first of all, like, I mean, you don't, but I mean, does anybody serious think that China cares about,

racism. Anybody honestly think that. Because if so, they are totally deluded. But at the United Nations a year ago, in the opening months of the Biden administration, Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the UN, gave a speech on one of these sorts of international racism

awareness days. One of these days it always does a lot of good. and she gave a speech at the UN where she talked about how racist America is and she talked about George Floyd and she talked about oh the Asians the spa incident where this

that guy a year ago it was guy maniac shot up a massage parlor and because a number of the women were of Asian origin, it was put down as an anti-Asian hate crime by some friends. It turned out that actually that didn't seem to be the man's motivation. He was just a maniac.

He also seemed to have a sex addiction and seemed to be attacking the massage parlor because the fact of the massage parlor, not because the women were Asian. I go into this, why? Because Linda Thomas Gwinchel, before the facts were out, gave that as an example of ongoing racism in America. So she's on the floor of the United Nations telling the world that America is racist because of something that was not a racist incident. Oh, and at the end of the speech, Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield of the United States remembers to say also there is racism going on. The rest of the world after all the Uighur concentration camps in China and also the treatment of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

And the next speaker up on the floor of the United Nations is the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations who says, have no right. America has no right to talk about China because it has done, this is what the representatives from China said, it has done something, America has done something unprecedented in the history of the United Nations, it has come here and confess to its racism and its guilt. So we will not listen to them. Wow. I'm like, what an own goal. So this is one of the problems is that bad actors like the Chinese Communist Party, certainly government in Moscow, and other just governments who are hostile to the West,

seem quite understandably. They think, well, they want a gift. These people seem to think that they're guilty of everything that's wrong in the world and so on. And we happen to be able to pretend that we agree with. with them for cynical reasons and sometimes push that along. But I think that it is a self-inflicted wound, first and foremost. You know, we've allowed people to say these things about ourselves from our own societies.

You know, the problem is it's our institutions have gone rotten in countries like Britain. You know, it's the mayor of London who's set up after the madness of the post-Jorge Floyd moment, who set up a commission for, what's it, for statuary in the public realm or something like that, had some crazily Robespierre-esque title. And this commission to investigate what needs to come down in London and what needs to come up. First of all, who the hell do you think you are

to have the right to decide that? Who the hell could you appoint to such a committee to decide that? you know, even if Nigel Bigger was the chair of that committee. I think, no, I don't think any committee has the right to just decide what should and shouldn't be allowed from our past and our inheritance in our capital city in London to remain on display. But they didn't appoint any kind of fentany. They appointed a bunch of radicals to decide what our past should be. They employed people like that nutter black activist who abused the queen in Westminster Abbey and had to be escorted out a few years ago and threatened to punch a black security guard at Westminster Abbey. They got him to be one of the members of this Roves-Diarian committee to decide what our past was.

You know, it's the same thing, institution across institution. The National Trust, you know, what's the national? a multi-million member organization where people, you know, decent, you know, mainly middle-class people pay money to be members of an organization where they can, at the weekend, go to a nice house and enjoy a cup of tea. The heads of that organization believe in something called the green unpleasant land. This is one of the documents they published about Britain, the green unpleasant land, that everything to do

with Britain is racist. I mean, of course, as ever I have great fun with some of these people. I mean, one of my favorite bits of my book, if I can say so myself, is the chapter on racist gardening. Everything is racist. Gardening is racist.

The lawns are racist. Order is racist. to hell with these people. They've taken over institution after institution in our own country. It didn't need the Kremlin to appoint these people. The National Trust did it to itself. The mayor of London did it to us. You know, consecutive politicians did it to us.

It's the Labour Party that commissioned a report and published it talking about reparations. Britain paid reparations. We've paid down our reparations. We don't owe anyone any reparations. We don't. But it was a British Labour Party that commissioned a report that claimed that we do. We do this to ourselves.

It's conservative politicians who can't stand up for our own country's culture. You know, it's our own MPs who don't know our past. That didn't need the CCP to teach us that. They just piggyback off the back of this horrible, horrible, masochistic society that we've been created. This episode is brought to you by. Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality.

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and I said to him, why do you think this is all happening? He was like, oh, it's just monetising white guilt. Yes, I think that's greatly true. So let me say something that needs to be said. I don't feel any white guilt. I don't feel any guilt, hereditary guilt. I feel guilt for things I've done in my own life that have been wrong. I feel guilt sometimes to my actions towards other people,

which are not as generous as they could have been. I feel guilt about my own life. I feel no hereditary guilt and nobody else should either. Nobody else should either. You are not guilty because you are born white any more than you are guilty because you are born black. It is a totally neutral thing. It is the place that you start from. Nothing is built into it.

So what had happened is that two few people have been willing in recent years to say what I just said, it's a straightforward thing. No, there is no such thing as white guilt. We will not have you pretending that there is. We will not have you pretending that they're... I mean, what's the latest pathologizing terms? We've had white tears. We've had white women's tears.

We've had missing white woman syndrome given to us by MSNBC when a woman was killed by her boyfriend, both of them white, and this unbelievable racist, huckster in America, said this is missing white woman syndrome. No, no, people actually just, you know, are kind of against people being murdered by their boyfriends. They don't like it.

There's no racialization of it. But we have all that, what's all of, white rage? White rage, remember that one? And this isn't one of the things I keep trying to bring across, I hope I do, is that this isn't some fringe movement. This isn't just Ibrahim X. Kendi not, you know, talking in some silo. this is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Millie, saying to Senate and Congress that he wants to look into white rage. There's no such thing as white rage.

There's no such thing. Just that there's no such thing as white tears or white guilt or anything else. No such thing. And if you do think there's such a thing, then play it the other way around. Say you're interested in black rage. Say you're interested in black tears and that you want to taunt people. when they're black and they cry. How dare people talk like this?

They would never do it about anybody else. And it's high time they stop doing it about white people. It's absolutely reprehensible and disgusting. And you're quite right, Francis. It's people taking advantage of basically scared and cowed white people who are fearful that these things actually exist, that they should feel some guilt or historical responsibility. And then the race hucksters come along, the Robben D'Angelo's, the Abramix, Kendi's, and so on.

And my God, are they coining it? So I'm one of my self-appointed roles is to put an end to that racket. And Douglas, the fact that this racket has been effective or as effective as it has been, is that a product of our success? are we that comfortable? Are we that rich? Do we have that much spare time now that we can engage in this navel-gazing because we're no longer scrapping to survive to put food on the table? Is that where it's coming from? Well, I would have thought that and I would have hoped it in a way. And I think that actually when we spoke at one point during the pandemic, at the beginning of the

pandemic, I think we might even have said that maybe the pandemic was going to do away with the of identity politics era. I have a natural predisposition to hoping that anything, something, anything, does away with the woke shit at some point. I've got a natural predisposition because I just don't want to talk about it a moment longer than I have to. I don't want my brain cells to be clogged up with this detritus. And so, of course, I wish it was the case.

I just see that the same games being played. I suppose my my short, more my, my prediction such as, I mean, it's obviously stupid to make predictions at any time, particularly now, my prediction in a way of that at the moment is this. I think that I think the people who do that are going to double down, but the rest of society is going to have less tolerance for it. And I think that's because, and Lionel Shriver said this recently as well, that, you know, the woke stuff was always a rich time and a rich people's obsession.

I mean, it happened because of a society that didn't have enough problems. You know, we didn't have enough of the things that were being complained about. You know, it's only if you've got a society that doesn't tolerate aggression, that you can decide to go to the layer below that and decide to police microaggressions. No society in history before ours would have given a damn about so-called microaggressions. So it's a product of wealth, boredom,

bad education, illiteracy and much more. But I'm pretty confident that as, sadly, that as we're all up for, we already are suffering economically. Many, many people have lost their jobs, don't see how they're going to be able to keep their finances together. I just expect that those people are going to care, or even less than they already did, if Sam Smith claims that somebody misgendered him

according to what he claims to be this fortnight. And I think that's fine. I think that would be a healthy thing. I think we have, as I say, we've all had our minds clogged up by too much nonsense. But as I say, I mean, both of these things can happen simultaneously, people doubling down and the wider population saying, no, we've had enough of that. We've got real problems now, so we don't have time for your imaginary ones.

Orlorn hope. You know, within no seconds, you've got the racialization. of the pandemic. What's her name? Athua Hirsch, sort of one of the British race hucksters who, you know, the only achievement

had been to write a memoir about growing up in the wild hoods of Wimbledon. But, and then to describe her appalling oppression of winning a place at Oxford University, Afro Hirsch used to be an it girl before she became

an aggrieved campaigner for social justice. So that's what can happen in our era, by the way. The canny people of all types spot where it's going and they adjust their stories appropriately. And they present the most successful societies as being the least successful.

They present the most racially diverse and harmonious societies as the least racially harmonious and diverse. And I'm afraid at this point, it's sometimes quite hard to disentangle the reality. And it's one of the things I tried to do in the book. But by the way, before I do say what I'm about to say, let me also add,

I think that you and I, if we're talking at the beginning of the Ukraine war, after Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, might have said, oh, maybe this crap is going to stop in the West. Again, sorry, forlorn hope. And nothing seems to wake us up to the fact that we're doing these mad things. But we are misrepresenting ourselves to ourselves.

And it's provable. Let me give you a quick example. There was a poll in 2020 which asked Americans how many unarmed black Americans they think are shot every year by the American police. And among people who described themselves as liberal, a very significant number thought that the figure was somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000. Among people who described themselves as very liberal, a significant portion, I think about 40%, said the number was over 10,000.

That is that more than 10,000 unarmed black men are killed every year by the American police. Do you know what the figure was that year? 10. 10. 10. So they're off by several orders of magnitude. Now, and by the way, 10 is less than the number of American police officers killed by armed black men in the same period. So put that aside for a second.

America has many, many problems like every country, but it's provable that the American public have a totally distorted view of their own country now, because the press and the media and race huxes and others have given them a distorted view. So it becomes quite hard for people to work out what is real and what is not. I think most of us, because we were locked in our isolation during the post-George Floyd period, had a moment of thinking on seeing the news about his death, thinking, crikey, can you do that in America? Is it the case that policemen can just kill black people with impunity? And the answer is, of course, of course not.

Of course not. But there was a moment because everyone had lost their social antennae and much more, where I think a lot of people thought, maybe that is the case. There's this song. It actually happened to John Peterson and I, the other week, a show in New York where there was a by David Burns. And there was a song during a show where he said, I've asked to borrow this song, which is the same.

her name song, say their name. Totally banal. It's not really a song, it's just a sort of chant. And David Burns, his Scottish-born pop star said, you know, I asked if I could sing this, despite the fact that I'm a white male, and do I have the right and all this sort of shit?

And I said to Jordan after his God, it just feels like you can never escape, doesn't it? You can't go to matinate at the theater without having this crap forced down our throat. It's just so demoralizing. Anyhow, but the point, That song is a total crock. We can all say the names of every single person

who was shot by the American police in recent years. In the last decade, in debatable circumstances, everybody knows the name of Brianna Taylor. You know, everyone knows the name of Freddie Gray. It's not like these are hidden names. We pretend these are hidden cases of secret oppression. by the American state.

Horrible things were done in the American past, like every country. But, I mean, it is not the case that today this is permissible and goes on. Yet the American people have been told it has. I give the examples in the book of just, I mean, ludicrous examples. American campuses that keep having these weird moral stampedes.

In the last decade, I have great fun with it. But in the last decade, they've been, oh, I mean, American campuses where one was put into lockdown because there was a claimed sighting of a member of the KKK walking around campus with a whip. Guys, what do you think is the likelihood that solitary members of the KKK wand around liberal arts colleges in America holding wits? What do you think the chances are? Zero.

Nada. Okay. The campus goes into lockdown. It turns out that the alleged member of the KKK is a Dominican monk who is walking across campus carrying a rosary. You have examples of campuses going into meltdown because there have been alleged sightings of a noose as if there's a lynching about to happen. Okay. And it turns out it's the plastic wrap of a refuse sack that was. was lying on the floor. On another occasion, a campus goes into meltdown in America because a

girl says that a noose has been hung outside the dorm room, and the KKK, therefore, were clearly present that day. And it turns out that somebody put a spare shoelace on a hook. So this is a society in America in particular that is, is deranged and has a deranged and wrong-headed view of itself. It's why when I was in America before the 2020 election, in like Seattle, the Whole Foods had a great big sign, bigger than the sign, but the whole thing was boarded up, of course, but there was a sign that said Whole Foods, just so you knew which boarded up, hell, whole shop you were going into. But a much bigger sign said, racists are not welcome here. Well, who the hell thought they were? Who the hell thought

that the KKK gather in the fruit and nut aisle of the whole foods in Seattle. Uber hired the whole side of a building to say that racists, if you're a racist, don't download our app. We don't want you. Where's the evidence of so much racism that Uber has to take out an entire side of a building to say this? Americans have been force-fed of false interpretation of their present

and to the enormous detriment of the rest of us in the West we've all been made to imbibe a version of it ourselves as well and it is partly a product of our well-to-do-ness our boredom, our lack of causes, our desire to be part of a great cause our loss of meaning and much more, and just our comfort. Of course, it has much to do with that.

We wouldn't be doing this if, as you say, that we had to worry about putting food on the table. And my worry is that what we're actually doing is, basically we're killing the goose that laid the golden egg, you know, that at the end of all of this, at the end of the systems most likely to set up harmonious societies where people can get on and get on not just with each other,

but get on in their lives. We decide these are just the most oppressive societies, the most original sin-ridden societies, and just best to do away with it. Douglas, we're talking about racism and the perception of race, But it mirrors exactly what happened with COVID. My girlfriend's from New York when she went back to New York

to see the organization that she worked in, the people she knew, the people she went to college with. They're absolutely terrified about COVID. They refused to hug her in Central Park. Still. Still, well, this was a couple of months ago. And some of them were wearing two masks. And these were intelligent people who went to Ivy League colleges.

So it's not just about racism. It's also something to me far. deeper where we, many ways, we live a life that's so safe that we can't properly assess risk without completely losing our minds. Oh, that's certainly true. That's certainly true. I personally resign myself to the fact that there would be a portion of the public who will triple mask for the rest of time. Well, farewell to them. Farewell to them. You know, shame not to see their faces, but there we go. We lost them. there are people for whom, particularly in America, that's just an identity issue, and largely

created by the absurd way in which everything American politics is just totally binary. If Donald Trump had been pro-mask, Republicans would have been pro-mask, and Democrats would be flaunting their noses and their chins in public, they would be congregating in public, they would be congregating in public places inside. without masks. It's only because the Republicans, Donald Trump, went one way that they went so far, the other. That's how American politics works now, and you've just got to try to step away from being too deranged by yourself. Well, Douglas, let me interrupt you there, because this is something I wanted to ask you

very much about, which is the derangement that seems to be happening. And, of course, your last book was called The Madness of Crowds. Yeah. And you talked largely about the madness of crowds that is coming from the very people we've been talking about today. But in recent times, I think both you and I and some other people have also noticed that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And there is an equal and opposite derangement that seems to me emerging on the other side

of the political spectrum. Talk to us about that. Well, this is very interesting. I'm so glad you bring this up. Yes, you're completely right. Some years ago, Jordan and I had a conversation about where the left goes wrong. and we had it on the presumption that we

recognized both of us and perhaps wider people recognize where the right goes wrong and therefore it was more fruitful to have a discussion about where the left goes wrong because people haven't really worked that out and still haven't. Today, I mean, I would say

we also need to have that discussion about where the right goes wrong because there are clearly elements of the American right and and European right and others who are going wrong. And as somebody who's more identified with that side than the ideological left, you know, that is a concern to me and is terrain that worries me. I'm not interested in not critiquing people who are, you know,

vaguely allied with me or on my own side. And I think that, I think, well, if I just say, I want your view on this. I mean, I think basically what's happened in the last few years, we've had a succession of things that's essentially isolated all of us from each other. I mean, the COVID debate was highly, highly divisive because it was something most of us had not thought about, and suddenly everybody had extremely strong views about.

Very few people thought about pandemics. Suddenly, you had to have very strong views. And that was totally unconnected with all the existing, well, aside from the politicization over the end of it, America was largely unconnected, I should say, with most pre-existing ideological divides. So the COVID thing came down, it split people, even among each other, even around families, among people who pretty much agreed. Then you had things like the masking thing, that did more of it.

Then you had things like the Ivermectin debate. I mean, there are people who've fallen out with each other over whether or not Ivermectin is, A, the miracle cure for COVID, or B, not. with no permitted terrain in the middle for, I don't know, we don't seem to know quite enough, maybe it has something, but it's not the wonder drug that you, you know. That's divided people.

Then you come across, then Russia, I don't know, fast forward to a whole succession of other crazy events, Russia invades Ukraine, and then that suddenly divides people as well. My point is, is that on the sort of family tree of events that have occurred in recent years,

very few of us have traveled exactly the same path and ended up in exactly the same place. You know, they'll... And so I think we've probably all had the experience of feeling like we've lost friends to some corner of this and finding it hard to bring them back. And in a way, I don't want to say bring them back

because that sounds that sounds like there's a correct position and just set of obviously incorrect ones. I don't want to suggest that. Maybe I could put it better by saying, keeping them in the fold of the reasonable discussion, something like that. The one thing I would say, Douglas,

that you mentioned, you know, having our input on it, that maybe is worth adding to the mix of the things that you've talked about is the deep, deep alienation. many, many people feel with the mainstream media. Yeah, absolutely. And the product of that is, I think when you talk about Russia and Ukraine,

and you've written recently about a fringe of the right in America seeming to like Putin and be obsessed with him and think he's doing the right thing. I think a lot of that is... Not that much for a fringe either. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that in a sec. Because I think for me, where part of that comes from is there are a lot of people who, who now believe that the truth is the opposite

of whatever the mainstream media says. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's where it's coming from to a large extent. Absolutely. You can see it in the people who are like bored with President Zelensky being presented as a hero. I'm bored of him being presented as a hero. Therefore, I'll find out other stuff about him. I'll decide he's a Nazi.

Yes, you're right. To a great extent it is And again, people are on to something about the suspicion of the narrative they're given. I agree with that. I mean, I'm pretty fed up with the way in which, you know, I mean, obviously for most of us, for many people, the moment of transition that was sharpest and most obvious was the movement between stay at home, isolate, and then get onto the streets and protests about racism. Okay. The movement, I had a lot of readers who said this to me,

that was one where the whiplash was clear enough that people noticed it. Definitely. That suddenly the pandemic was replaced by another pandemic, which was racism, and the answers to that were totally the opposite of the answers to the other pandemic. So I think a lot of people had that. So we have good reasons to be rightly suspicious of media narratives and of political narratives.

However, that does not mean that, as you say, that the opposite of everything is true. And I think there is, on the Russia thing, there are a set of things. But the most interesting to me is, well, two things I may very quickly. Let's talk again, historical ignorance. We are dealing very significantly with people who know, and we've discussed this before, know nothing about communism, no nothing about the communist era,

no nothing about the Cold War, no nothing about Russia in the 20th century, know nothing about the Kremlin, and are discovering, have been discovering it for the first time. I mean, imagine somebody who has grown up, born in 2002 say a complete sentient adult they're now 20 years of age they were born after 9-11

they were born more than a decade after the end of the cold war the breakup of the Soviet Union and suddenly they're told about Russia and Ukraine and what do they know they just learn fast they learn something fast what's the best way to do that just grab an opinion off the shelf and you can do it on any subject

but this is this is one of them So that's one thing is we are very often talking in this space with people who genuinely seem to find it surprising that, for instance, there is such a thing as Russian disinformation. Well, but again, you can't entirely blame them because on the one hand, they never knew anything about Russia. They never knew anything about the Kremlin or its tactics. And on the other hand, they've been force-fed lies about... Kremlin disinformation in recent years. And everybody who voted Brexit was told that they'd done it because the Kremlin told them to do it. And everyone who voted Trump was told that it was the Kremlin that made them do it.

So to hell with your Kremlin's stories, I'm going to watch Russia today. Get the real story. So that's one thing. The second thing, which is in a way is even more interesting to me, is let's start to admit something which nobody has yet, which is that the right has been going wrong recently because it's, It's absorbed a form of the criticism of its own society that was previously the preserve of the ideological left. So, since the war in Ukraine started, there are people on the right saying things like, who are we to stop Vladimir Putin?

Look at the millions of people we killed in Iraq. Now, that, apart from being untrue about the millions of people killed, the people killed in Iraq, and like in Afghanistan, were primarily killed by Islamists and various other militia. That is not to override any of the mistakes made. But my point is, that is a claim and a figure that used to only come from the Chomskyite left. You never heard that from patriotic Americans of the right. They didn't do that stuff. There was a sort of Buchananite fringe of the right who played with some of that stuff,

an isolationist fringe of the right. But you didn't hear those left-wing stories of who are we because we did this bad thing in Vietnam or something. And therefore, we don't have the right to do this now or to criticize people now. That used to be the left that did that. Now a segment of the right is doing it. Let me give you another example. My close enemy, Julian Assange, used to be a hero only to parts of the left. He's become a hero to parts of the right.

Edward Snowden, the sniveling little grot bag, used to be a hero only to the American left and he's become a hero to the American right. Part of the right has gone into the same place that part of the left used to be in, and I desperately want them to come back in from it. you know, Edward Snowden decided to mass steal American national security secrets and expose the intelligence gathering secrets of America and her allies, including Britain, sought sanctuary, it seems, first of all, in China

and ended up plumping to have sanctuary in Putin's Russia. Does anyone think that there's something completely kosher about that? Okay? You may deplore some of the things that were discovered in the Snowden files, but you have to be an idiot to think that Edward Snowden is some kind of whiter than white hero in this. But a part of the right now does, just like a part of the left used to. And, I mean, I've remained filled with hatred of both of these people consistently for the last decade,

because I think if you did have concerns, for instance, about the way in which you work for the intelligence community and you had concerns about how it's operating, there are many better ways to address that I should have thought than handing over all of those secrets to Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Communist Party. So, yeah, I'm sort of amazed to watch a part of the right to do this. It's ended up, and it's so unparallens.

patriotic. And then they go into other conspiracy theories. I mean, there are people on the right in America who now sort of say things like, you know, I'm starting to doubt whether we actually landed on the moon. But you're even taking away your extraordinary accomplishments. Like, you can answer this constant. I mean, you know, Russia managed to land on the moon. Is there anyone in Russia who would consider themselves as ordinarily patriotic who would doubt that they did or would think the whole thing was made up? No, I don't imagine. No. I mean, can you imagine anyone doing that?

Douglas, let me posit a theory for you and see what you think about this. My working theory on why there are elements of the right doing this is that because of the media lies and because of the political lies we have had for a period of time and because of the intensity of those lies and the consistency of those lies, there is a portion of, so the The far left always hated the West. They hate the West in general, and they support the West enemies, and that's par for the course, and we expect that. But on the right, what I think is happening is there are sections of the right

that are so disillusioned with what has been happening, as frankly you and I and Francis all are, really. But their response to that is to hate the Western elites as much as the far left hate the West. And so they now feel some kind of affinity with people who are attacking what they think are the Western elite. They think of Vladimir Putin, this Christian Christian. Yeah, that's one of the best.

Totally uncynically adopted the Christian faith, Vladimir Putin. Yeah, the KGB Colonel. Head of the KGB, massive Christian, is all about turning the other cheek and forgiveness. Yeah, absolutely. They think that he is a beacon of some kind of pushback against this anti-Christian, anti-you know, he's pushing back against the trans, which they think Vladimir Putin really cares about trans, Douglas.

I think that, what do you think of, what do you make of that idea? Yeah, I think that's true. I think there's a segment of the right that mistakenly thinks of right, the criminal inference as being a bulwark against the craziness of our own side. And this is one of the reasons why this needs to be addressed. Yeah. It's where the whole damn thing needs to be addressed, why we need to get our past in correct order, for instance, or in some correct approximation. It's why we need to, in the present, not derange ourselves with absolutely ludicrous stories.

I mean, you know, obviously I wrote about that stuff in the manners of crowds, but, you know, I just wrote about recently this story of, it's just too much fun not to mention. but that one of the the the the the woman who used a wheelie bin as a sex toy in public exposing her penis and he's go oh for god's sake first of all how do you use a wheelie bin as a sex toy but that's a very strange or any form of bin anyhow but then that's not what's wrong with the the headline i mean that's comparatively minor in the headline of anything like her penis what now of course there was a type of person and i know some. I mean, my friend Sorab Amari would be one, who

just, who says, I confess, I've had enough of it. I've, I've had enough of this liberal madness. I've had enough of her penis. I've had enough of all this stuff.

Western liberalism is the problem. It's the same thing with, I mean, I think actually again, Surab felt that over the silencing of the New York Post by Twitter and Facebook. That was a total scandal, an unbelievable scandal. I'm a columnist in New York Post.

I love the paper. I think it was an absolute scandal what happened, where the Post got the Hunter Biden files, tried to run them before the election with really important information, which now the rest of the media is admitted was true and wasn't Russian disinformation, despite the fact, again,

that dozens of members of senior former members of the intelligence community claimed that it was Russian disinformation, You know, Soravet was one of his things was You know, basically I'm out You know, Twitter can censor America's oldest newspaper and silence it And stop a story getting out there

Because they want their guy, Joe Biden in office. Like the whole thing's corrupt, I'm out. You know, I understand it. I do because we probably all have moments where we think that. But in my view, the alternatives are all at least as bad and almost certainly much, much worse. Much, much worse. If you mind internet domination by a few tech overlords in Silicon Valley,

then your answer is not, does not lie in Russia. It doesn't lie in Eastern Europe. It's, it's, this is, this is, this is to, this, you know, there are examples of places you can from there are small examples you can take. But that's what I think is happening, is people have, people have got so sick of the stuff I'm describing, that they're basically calling time.

They want out. And I wish they wouldn't because I think we need them. Douglas, don't you think part of it as well is that we're all being encouraged to see ourselves as victims? And once you see yourself as being a victim, whether you're right and you're left, you start to feel put upon. and once you start to feel put upon

and things are happening to you, then you become innately suspicious and you start seeing patterns where they don't exist. I agree. I agree. Well, our era obviously prioritises victimhood over heroism. I don't go along with this. It's one of the many things I say, you don't have to go along with that.

You don't have to at all. I don't. I don't like whiners. I don't like people who pretend to be victims, particularly... I don't like people who... who present themselves as victims, even when they are victims. I think, broadly speaking, the world has got enough reasons to be unhappy

without you adding to the general flow of misery. So I certainly don't have any time for would-be victims or aspiring victims or want to be victims. And I have no truck with those people who use it as a way to try to browbeat me or you or anyone else, any of us. speaking as I come from ex-community so what what's your point

you know I want to tell you that my ancestors okay so what what's your point you don't we live in an era where you get to grab the mic

if you can present yourself as a victim not interested sorry you can't make me interested in you because of that if you actually have a story of actual oppression that is relevant to the discussion we're having, then, sure.

Let's discuss that. But all of this sort of, I've been diagnosed bipolar. Ha ha! You have to listen to me. Diagnose. Ooh. Oh. I've been actually prescribed to diagnose PTSD.

Ooh. Now we've got to listen to you, I guess. No, no. People have problems in their lives. We all do. But look at the people who use that stuff. Again, close enemy, Owen Jones, when he was recently hauled over the cults for his proven misogynistic bullying of female colleagues at The Guardian, when this was exposed in Private Eye, Owen Jones and his cohorts decided to present it as homophobia. I don't think privatized the greatest magazine. I don't think it's been particularly funny in about 20 years, but I don't think it's the home of homophobia. Whenever they've gone for me, as they have occasionally, I don't say, oh, it's homophobia.

There's a certain type of person does. Certain type of person wants to win and uses alleged victimhood status as the means to win. To hell with these people, not interested. have a time. But Douglas, it's the right doing it as well, because the rights say, you know, the woke are trying to destroy us, they're trying to, you know, they're trying to ruin our reputations. And look, you know, there is, does that argument, does have certain value. But then they're portraying themselves as victims as well. So before, it used to be just the left doing it,

now the right are playing the same game. And that's even more worrying. Yes, I think so. I think people, if it would be as worrying, I think that's true to some extent. And again, it depends on the extent which it's the case. I mean, I do think that people have a right to feel aggrieved if they are told that there is nothing good about themselves. You'll notice that what I said just now about victimhood. I didn't say as a result, the people are of zero value. I said, I'm not interested in people, you. using victimhood alleged or otherwise as a way to grab the microphone and browbeat other people. I didn't say, therefore, they have no right to speak, that I don't think that's the legitimate qualification to speak. If you said, by dint of the thing you are claiming, you have zero right to be heard, then that person would have a right to be aggrieved. Likewise, I believe that people of the right and mainstream are right to feel aggrieved when people come at them

and say you have nothing to be proud of. But worse than that, look, go back again to what I quote in the book, the opening chapter, of what Robin DiAngelo and Libraa, ex-Kendio and Co. say now about white people. They say, and Robin DeAngelo says, she says, she's, of course, white herself. Robin DeAngelo says,

there is no good form of whiteness okay no good form of whiteness and it cannot be escaped so you're locked you're locked in of course again she would not say about any other people she would not say there's no good form of being Indian and you can't escape or anything like that she wouldn't say there's no good form of being black plus you can't ever escape this is what they say about white people the answer that ibrahim kendi gives is yes there has been oppression in the past and the answer to oppression in the past is oppression basically in the present. So people are right to feel aggrieved about that.

They are right to be to be aggrieved when they're told, shut up, whitey. Just as they would have a right to feel aggrieved if people said, shut up, you black, whatever. Okay? That would be a horrible thing to do. So I think that there is a unique, in the current issue, again, it was different in the past. In the current era, there is a unique, permissible mistreatment of certain people. And that's what I think has to stop. And must be stopped in order among other things not to create some kind of wild backlash of itself. Quite. Well, Douglas,

one of the things that we love about having you on the show as regular as we do is you're one of the people who's attempting to chart what I think is a healthy path through all of this. And all of us will fall off the wagon every now and again in different directions. You will, we will. But in having these conversations, I think we're trying to do something productive. So thank you very much for coming back on. The book is The War on the West, which everyone, of course, should read. We're going to do a couple of questions for our local supporters, from our local supporters.

But you know that before we let you go in the main interview itself, we always have the same final question. Which is, what is the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be. Oh God, I forgot that you asked that question. Yes. Well, now you're going to have to come up with something. God, I don't think there's anything we're not talking about at the moment. It feels like we're talking about absolutely everything.

I mean, certainly I am. God, we're being, every year feels like a long year and every day feels like a long day at the moment. Anything we're not talking about that we should be. I'm going to have to think about that. Maybe we're talking too much, Douglas. Maybe that would be the title of the episode. Stop talking, Douglas Murray.

It's possible, you know. It's possible. That's not the title of the episode. The title of the episode is I've had enough of her penis. I don't want her penis forced down my throat every morning. That'll get it. Licks, guys, my God, you know how to work this algorithm. No, I actually think that might be true.

I think we might be just got to something. I don't want any more people coming at me with her. views on, their newly discovered views on, I don't, I don't want the people who've just, like, raced from being experts in epidemiology to experts in Afghan withdrawal tactics to experts in Ukrainian nationalist politics and experts in Ivermectin. And I, I don't really want to hear too much more from the people who know all of the things and don't want to listen. Just are on play but not listen.

Yeah. Douglas, it's been an absolute pleasure. When is the book released? 28th of April in the UK. So almost immediately after this interview goes out, Douglas will make sure to put the link in the description so people check it out. I'm going to say, if you can find a book shop anymore, you can go in and get it there. you can of course order it from Amazon and all competitive sites

but I really hope people benefit from this because it's for me writing the War in the West has been one of the most exciting things I've done I can't wait people to read it because it's just if I say so myself jammed full with the things that I think people should know about what's going on and the ways to answer them Douglas it's been an absolute pleasure

if people want to find you online where's the best way to do that? Oh, you can find me on Twitter for the time being at Douglas C. K. Mari. I don't know how long that'll last. And I'm on Instagram and various other places and you can always find me at The Spectator and various other

the many venues I'm writing at in my highly prolific, not to say promiscuous way. Douglas has been a pleasure to have you back on. Thank you for being on the show. Thank you all for watching and listening. We're about to ask Douglas an exclusive couple of questions from you, for you, for our locals. But in the meantime, enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you for watching. And we'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or a show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. The miserable state and fate of the French elections. What does Douglas think?