TRIGGERnometry - Fraser Myers on the Yellow Vest Protests and Internet Censorship

Episode Date: June 16, 2019

We sat with the brilliant Fraser Myers (@frasermyers) to discuss: - The Crackdown on the Yellow Vests/Gilets Jaunes - Censorship: Do We Need to Regulate the Internet? Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissman. And this is the show for you if you're bored with people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, you don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts. Our brilliant guest this week is a staff writer at Spiked Online and the host of the Spiked podcast. Fraser Myers, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me. It's good to have you here. We've been meaning to get you on for a while and we're glad that you're here. For anyone who doesn't know you, just tell us very quickly, who are you, what's your background, how are you, where you are?

So I write for Spikes, which I think is the best magazine in the world, probably the only magazine standing up today for, you know, absolute free speech, democracy, no ifs, no buts, and for, you know, a very humanist, pro-human-centered outlet. Have you read The Guardian? Yeah, we've had a few run-ins with them, you know. And I guess, I mean, you know, it's, I have kind of a funny journey, I guess. I mean, I'm a massive, massive Brexit supporter, so I might as well get that out now. Well, when you said democracy, no, if no, buts, I think everybody's under the hidden message.

Well, you'd hope so. But I guess I'm not a typical, well, I didn't have the typical journey to being a brexit here. You know, I speak to foreign languages. I speak French and German. I studied them at university. And it was, it's funny because it was actually, while I was. was on my year abroad doing the Erasmus thing that is supposed to turn me into the, you know, perfect EU citizen, Remainer type. That was also the year where things were, you know,

really hitting the fan in Europe. And that was when, you know, certain doubts about this wonderful European Union started to creep in. Yeah, the French will do that to you, one. Well, I was like, yeah, and it was really, it was really funny because it was actually a lot of, a lot of it as well as in Germany. and nothing bad was really happening there. But lots of bad things were happening in Greece. And you could see that, you know, not only had a referendum been ignored over the proposed bailouts, but there was going to be austerity for the next 70 years proposed by the European Union. So, you know, these kind of things are like, oh, maybe this isn't what I thought it is.

You know, I'd always been a sort of maybe back then, I was a bit wet, but, you know, I've always been a kind of lefty type and I could start to see that that was not really fitting in with my ideals. And then we kind of get fast forward to 2016, didn't think about it that much. And then suddenly we have this referendum on the EU question. And it just suddenly becomes really obvious, you know, what am I going to vote for? Well, I'm going to vote to leave because it's, you know, what else would you do? You know, where I live with my friends, you know, from all well-educated, living in London, you stick out a bit like a sore thumb, but, you know, all pro-remain, even if they kind of understood my arguments, they'd say, oh, you know, you're different,

you have different argument, you know, that's not why other people are voting. But actually, if you talk to people across the country who vote for Brexit, the same things keep coming up. And the main things are, you know, democracy and sovereignty. A few people are interested in immigration, but actually that's bound up in the democracy question, because that's something that's been taken off the table. for so long in this country. You know, you cannot have an open debate about immigration. And even if you did, you can't change the policy anyway. So what would be the point? That makes a lot of sense.

And we started with Brexit. We want to stay away from that as much as we can. Sure. But there is something that it's part of a bigger thing. Yeah. And one of the things about you speak in French and German is you've done a lot of great reporting on the Gilles-Jean de yellow vests in France. And we really wanted to talk to you at length about that. So for anyone who, who, who just watched the BBC News one time a couple of months ago and so some French people don't want to work again. Yeah. Is that accurate? That pretty much is accurate. Is it just that or is there a bit more to it? I think, you know, obviously it's part of a wider European populist revolt and, you know, Brexit is one part of that. There's things going on in Italy,

things, even in countries like Sweden, where we don't even expect there to be populist revolts. I mean, this is the French reaction. This is their version of it, I suppose. It is extraordinary. I mean, it's not just a handful of people turning up protesting. This has been going on at the time recording for 26 weeks every weekend. People have gone out in, you know, whatever the weather, including the winter, it started in November, and stood there and tried to make themselves visible. That's one of the exciting things about the Gilles-Jean's that you cannot ignore these people anymore. They're there. These are people who have been ignored in politics for a very long time.

They don't live in the cities, so they're not connected into either the global economy or democratic politics. They live in the kind of peripheries. As I often say, just because they're peripheral to the cities, that means they've also become peripheral to politics in many ways. they're not listened to. They're living standards are either stagnating or in decline and nobody cares or nobody cared until

they started to make their voices heard. And now this is going to sound flippant but there's a more serious point behind this. The French have always liked kicking off, haven't we? Yeah. They always have. They've always liked a bit of a row they've always loved a strike, you know. This episode of the podcast is just

going to be me and you being racist against French people. But that's acceptable. You can do that. The French like onions and yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it's a flippant comment, but there's a certain amount of truth to it. And how much is it that they do like, you know, getting upset? Yeah. Throwing a strike. And how much of this is actually a genuine working class revolt against the, you know, the upper classes? Well, I think you have to think about the scale of it. I mean, yes, you're right. French people do protest. a lot more than we do, for instance. They do go on strike a lot more than we do, and I think that's good on them personally.

Why should they put up with anything less than what they deserve? But the scale of it, I mean, this is the biggest revolt since 1968, you know, since the Les Evernment, as they call them, which changed French society, you know, enormously. It changed, basically ushered in the kind of modern era of, you know, how we think of France today. And this is, and this is actually bigger potentially, you know, you're talking, it started off with 200,000 people, you had hundreds of thousands of people after that, still tens of thousands of people going out, week in, week in, week out. It's been going on

for over five months. And what's extraordinary to me is, is the way that it just doesn't really get the kind of coverage you expect. You know, you mentioned the BBC earlier. You know, you, you, If this were Venezuela or something, it would be on television every day. And it's only happening across the channel. It's not difficult for a journalist to go over there like I did. I spent £35 to get on a coach, to go to Paris, to go talk to people. It's not hard. But that's not really happening.

And it's quite funny because there are these kind of rumours going around the internet. And people have asked me, you know, there's a rumour in Britain that there's a denotice on the Gilles-Lijon. The government has banned, you know, newspapers from reporting. reporting on it and people have asked me about that. Completely untrue. The truth is much sadder. People are just not interested. People in our establishment are not interested. People in the French establishment have to be interested because they're afraid of them and they're afraid of what might happen next. But, you know, there is a recognition that these are the kind of wrong kind of people. These are the famous deplorables, you know, the French deplorables, if you like.

And so their needs, their interests, their demands do just sort of fall on deaf ears in a way. And what is it all about? Is it like a French Brexit where these are people who are against the EU? Or is it much more about, you know, as you said, the kind of people who've lost out through globalization, just wanting to, you know, have a job, have a house, have a secure, stable future for themselves and their children, maybe opposed to immigration. Just tell us a little bit about what is their kind of, what is, the core of their concerns? Yeah, I think it's, I mean, you know, the EU plays into it and the EU has played a role in the diminishing of their living standards, and certainly the euro in the last,

you know, 10 years has made it very difficult for, you know, the French economy and the French government to adapt to various changes, and that has had a real serious problem. You know, there are serious economic causes. Lots of people are, not only is their high unemployment, but people sort of know that if they lose their job now, that's it. These are people who have quite stagnant careers. Sorry, they don't even have careers at all. They have jobs, not careers. You know, there's no advancement.

And a lot of them feel, some of them are, you know, nearing retirement age. And they have a sense that things aren't going to be better for the next generation. And that's intolerable. And we need to do something about it. And, you know, in my view, I don't think that the problems of the French economy can be fixed within the European Union. There are some people in the Gilles-Loges who are explicitly anti-EU. There is a big crossover as well in the people who are protesting against the Gilles-Lijons. And those who voted in 2015, in 2015, the French were asked to ratify the European Constitution. And most of them

said no. They voted against it. It was then repackaged as the Lisbon Treaty and forced through onto them anyway. And there is a crossover between many of the people who are the liegeons who will have voted against that European constitution. But things are a lot less clear-cut because they, you know, it's a leaderless movement. It doesn't have an official manifesto. So it's hard to say that there is any specific demands other than the more general demand for greater living standards and a greater say in politics. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world.

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Well, I think it's interesting because the far-right slur came out, you know, from basically from the French government within hours of people turning up on the streets. These people, as I said before, you know, these are the deplorables. These people don't have to open their mouth before someone has decided that they're far right. And actually, you know, if you look at the police reports, there's no significant far-right influence. There's the far-left have started to get a bit more interested in the Gilles-Jeanes, which, you know, fine. And there's also been, you know, some attempts by the trade union movement to do, to make links with the Gilles-Ozance. But the idea that these people are far-right is ludicrous.

I mean, some of them will have voted for the National Front in the past, you know. But then what other options did they, did they have? you know, it's like many people who have voted for UKIP. I don't think it's because they're necessarily racist or anything like that, but they have, you know, concerns that are not being addressed or, you know, they want an alternative to the part or the other parties that are all exactly the same. And when I went out there, it was interesting. You know, I asked, I tried not to put ideas into anyone's heads. So I just asked people what they were there for. And it wasn't even that nobody even mentioned immigration, right? So it's not even like,

I agree, it's not racist to discuss immigration or even want immigration controls. I take a different view, but I don't think it's racist. They didn't even mention it. So I don't really see where this far right idea comes from other than as a kind of slur to dismiss these people as irrelevant and people that don't need to be listened to. It has become a bit of a slur. It's interesting, Francis and I talk a lot about the working class on the show as well. I wrote an article where I think you read and a spectator about far right being used

there's a slur. This will be a few weeks ago now. And one of the comments on it was, far right is now a label that people used to describe the working class. And I thought that was quite an interesting way of looking at it, because whenever, you know, if a member of the elite rebels against the mainstream narrative, it's handled one way. But if you have a large populist uprising of people who don't agree with the mainstream narrative, they are automatically far right. Yeah, I think that's absolutely accurate. And I think, you know, a good example of that might be the Football Ladd's Alliance in Britain. You know, nobody really knew what they're about, but they were declared far right straight away.

You know, what were they against? They were against terrorism. I mean, I think we're all against terrorism. I don't know. I didn't know. I mean, I don't know. Do you need to, yeah. I mean, you know, but in fairness, you know, they want to make their voices heard because they don't think the issue's being taken seriously.

But, you know, it's, it's very strange that to be opposed to Islamists blowing children to bits in a, pop concert is a far right position. I mean, it's bizarre. It's just, I think what it represents is the way that the working class, I mean, not only have, you know, they lost out economically over the last 30 years or whatever, but their status culturally has really been diminished, you know, and I think this is very true of, this is true of the Gilles-Jealésons, it's true of the Brexiteers, it's like these people are, these people are gammon, they're scum, they're uneducated, They don't understand the world. They don't understand how things should be.

I think, yeah, far right, the slur far right just embodies the way that these people are just not seen as important or worth listening to. What I find dangerous about that is that there are people who are far right. Of course, yeah. And then you get those two confused and suddenly no one knows what far right means anymore because we do need the label of far right for people who are far right. Yeah. We have to be able to go, no, these people believe in white supremacy or,

killing Jews or whatever, and they're different. But when you start to label massive groups of people, then that's a problem. It absolutely is a problem. And the problem is, I think, with the Gilles-Jones and with Brexit in this country, is a lot of it, it's like you said, it's because people don't feel that they're represented. Nobody cares about them.

And that the only way that they've got in order to make their voices heard is to literally go out on the streets, make themselves as visible as possible in order to have their voices heard And that's a really dangerous situation politically to be in. That's right. And it's true that across Europe, the mainstream parties have been getting, becoming more and more distant from the public. And in particular, the people they're supposed to represent. So this is a particular problem for the left for the Labour.

Well, it's emerging as a problem for the Labour Party. The centre-left parties in Europe have been absolutely massacred over the past couple of years. You see the Socialist Party in France goes from being in government to winning only, you know, around 10% or something in the elections. Similar things happening in Greece with their centre-left party. And in the Netherlands and in Italy, the Democratic Party, again, sort of center-left, their right party, completely massacred in the polls. And there is this enormous distance between, you know, especially the centre-left parties in there and now, who are now sort of representing a more middle-class, urban, intelligentsia rather than a kind of working class base. And it's really interesting that they almost, they wish that they didn't have to represent these working class people actually. It's not,

it's not that they're fretting about losing them particularly. Maybe some people are, but they almost feel morally tainted by having to represent these horrible working class people who are far right and hate immigrants and homophobic, whatever, which they're not, of course. And you can really see that actually is really crystal clear in America with the Democrats. And if you listen to Democratic pollsters, there's this big argument between them as to whether they should even bother to represent the white working class. And there are people that say, we don't need them to win. We should just focus on these people. And there are obviously other more sensible people who say, you know, we should be representing in any way because they're working class people, that's what

we're for, by the way. But they're genuinely people making arguments that, oh, the demographics are going to deliver us, you know, election victory after election victory anyway. Why do we need to bother with these deplorable people? And it's like they don't want their votes. It's like if those people vote for them, they're evil and tainted. It's completely bizarre. It's weird in this country as well, isn't it? Because Jeremy Corbyn, that's exactly the direction that Labor has gone under Corbin. And Corbyn is an old trade union. Yeah. Well, you know, it's a trade union. Yeah. Well, the labour has become more middle, the acceleration of, you know, Labour becoming a bourgeois party has happened faster under Corbyn than under Blair, which is extraordinary. Extraordinary. Because, you know, there are many, the way that Corby is, is like, he's kind of an old lefty, you know, that could, you know, I think with the right policies, with the right attitudes, could really have won back a lot of, you know, the Labor, Heartlands, you know, working class people in the North. But they're just not interested.

They're much more interested in satisfying their kind of Remainer, London, educated. I think one of the worst things about Corbyn is the fact that he's not honest about who he is, in that he's pro-Brexit. And everybody knows he's pro-Brexit. It's not when Barry Manila was like, hey, I'm straight, everybody was like, no. But it's that same thing. I think he is the, yeah, he has performed the biggest betrayal in a way of the two party leaders. Theresa May was a Remainer, still a Remainer, still wants to deliver a Remain.

But Corbyn has completely sold out his principles. And there are other people in the top Corbyn team who are Brexiteers too. You know, they come from the Tony Benn School of Euroscepticism, which I think is, you know, really, that's kind of my view on it, you know, where you'd rather have a bad parliament than a good king. his view was that we only lend politicians the vote and they shouldn't give, sorry, we lend politicians their power and for them to give it up to someone else who's unaccountable is unacceptable. So Corbyn kind of comes from that tradition, but I just don't think he's that interested in it. I think he just has other priorities and is quite happy to abandon that particular principle.

Well, yeah, he's got to crack down on the Jews. No. But let's come back to the Gilles-Lijon for a moment just because I thought... I thought you were going to say let's come back to the Jews. Oh, definitely. We can come back to the Jews every day, man. The Gilles-Jean, one of the things that I think most people may have seen on the news when it happened

was the reaction from the government. Yes. Because those were some troubling images that we were seeing. This was physical force being used against people who were out there essentially protesting. So tell us a little. about how the French government responded to these people amassing in the streets of Paris and other major cities and, you know, speaking up for what they were concerned about?

Yeah, well, the response to the Gilles-Jealjean has been incredibly authoritarian. And, you know, the numbers of police on the streets on some weekends would actually match the number of protesters. So you'd have 80,000 protesters and 80,000 police. So one policeman for a protester. And the police have been on the... the whole, incredibly aggressive. They have been, you know, they've caused a number of injuries. They're firing tear gas grenades. They have these weapons called flashballs, which are banned

everywhere in Europe apart from France. And these are kind of rubber bullets. And they're supposed to be fired, you know, almost below the waist kind of thing, just that they're supposed to stun people. But the police have been firing them at people's heads and people have been losing their eyes. scores of people have lost their eyes and will never recover from that. People have been losing their hands. There's a really good journalist called David Dufresne on Twitter and he has been collating all of the police aggressions that he can verify. And when I last checked, it was over 780 incidents of police aggression that could be verified. And I mean, this is extraordinary. If this were happening in some dictatorship, it would be roundly condemned. It wouldn't

be off the television screens, but because it's Macron, you know, who is well liked by, you know, the British establishment, by the establishments in other countries, it's not really talked about. And it's certainly, you know, I'm not aware of the British government having issued any kind of condemnation in a way that they would if it were, you know, some far-flung part. of the world. And it's also important to recognize it's not just the physical authoritarianism. It's not just that people are being beaten up in the streets by police. There has also been the crackdowns on social media. There's new laws against so-called fake news. Fake news just means news that the government doesn't like. It's quite interesting that within weeks of that

law coming out, a campaign by the French government was banned by Twitter. as fake news. So, you know, the subjective nature of fake news is obviously there for all to see. You know, they've been Twitter, for instance, have been under pressure from the government been banning certain activists. The government have also raided the offices of a newspaper called Media Par. It's a left-wing newspaper, one of the few to stand up for the Gillesgéjean. And they've been issued with a court order to raid their offices. to basically retrieve the sources of all of these journalists, which is a big no-no in the supposedly free world.

Marine Le Pen could go to jail for tweeting about ISIS. What did she say? I'm trying to think, what does she say? She tweeted some graphic images of ISIS beheadings to say, look, this is what ISIS are up to. She could go to jail for that. And she's a, you know, I don't like Marine Le Pen well, but I assume she wasn't.

like, yeah, let's have more of this, right? No, she was very much against them. Yeah, of course. I'd imagine. Yeah. And, you know, Marine Le Pen, unpleasant politician, but, you know, she could go to jail. Jean-Mélein-Melchon, the leftist leader. His offices have been raided by the police.

So there is an extreme authoritarianism, you know, coming over France, under the rule of Emmanuel Macron, supposedly the liberal strong man, the person who we were promised. was going to stand up against populism and authoritarianism and save Europe and European values. And it makes me incredibly sad to see what's going on over there. Do you think this is the death throes of the EU project in many ways? I think it's the last gasp of that kind of, not necessarily the EU project.

I mean, the EU, I think, will carry on. But certainly within nations, States and within in national politics, I think Macron was the last hurrah for, you know, the technocratic third way of doing politics. Whether populists in various countries are going to outright win elections is yet to be seen, but about one in three people, one in four people, depending on each election, are voting for populist parties in Europe now. And it'll be interesting to see what happens in the European elections coming up, because that could be a real bloodbath. Well, we'll see because by the time this interview comes out, they probably would have happened.

So the blood may well be flowing at this point as people are watching this. But it's true, I mean, when you were talking about the injuries and all that stuff, I didn't know anything about this. Yeah. To be honest with you, I can't say I followed it that closely. But it's not like it was there in your face either. Do you know what I'm saying? If you watch the news, if you read the news, if you try and keep abreast of all the stuff, you don't come across all this information. And what you're describing sounds a lot more like Russia than a Western Europe. European country, to me. Yeah. Better food.

I think that, you know, there's... You never tried a good Borsch, man. I mean, there's two sides to it. I mean, one is the indifference. Just people are not, you know, in the media, not particularly interested. But two is that there are, you know, a lot of Macron fanboys in the British media,

including, you know, people who write about France. I won't name them, but, you know, they're there. And they will say... I thought he was about to name them. I'm not. And they will try out the lines that these people are far right, that these people are all violent, that they're all thugs,

and that actually the police have never started anything. It was really interesting. Most recently, the government had to actually admit that it lied about one Gilejean story. So there was video footage of a load of yellow vests running into a hospital. So the government says, of course, look at these violent, vile, horrible people storming a hospital. How low can you get?

It turns out that other footage shows that they were being chased into the hospital by police. And the government actually had to admit that, yeah, we got that. You know, that wasn't true. We accept that version of events. Before we touch on, we're going to talk about internet censorship, how much of this, and I see it reflected in this country as a comedian, you go up and down this country and you play up north and wherever else in town and country, How much is this a clash between the metropolitan elite and the people outside who essentially

have been left behind by globalisation and it's a backlash and they feel the elite don't care about them and they're right because they don't? I think it's exactly that. I think that's, you know, I think that you can draw in outcome I'm nervous about drawing parallels. I wouldn't draw. For instance, I wouldn't draw. I think there's a lot of similarity.

between the kind of people who voted for Brexit, the kind of people who voted for Trump, the kind of people who are voting five-star in Italy, the kind of people who are, you know, marching in the streets of Paris in their yellow vests. The outcomes are obviously very different. So, you know, the comparison is there, certainly. And yes, they are, you know, these are the people who are ignored. And I don't really like the phrase left behind for whatever reason. It's something about it that...

because they're right behind. Yeah, I think they were pushed behind. Yeah. You know, I think that they've been quite deliberately cut out from politics, not just, you know, anyway, sorry. No, we let you, we pause there because we wanted you to say something

even more provocative, so. What do you want me to say? Well, the point I guess you're making is that it was much easier to have these working class voices that were often concerned about immigration, let's say. Yeah. Rather than have the debate about immigration, you just go, no, no, you're all a bunch of racist.

And that's much easier. Yeah. And I think that the liberal establishment have found this fantastic way of preserving their interests. You know, it's absolutely genius because you only have to criticize any aspect of the setup. And immediately you're derided as far right, racist, whatever. You know, the Gilles-Logne is an example of that. You know, there's nothing to do with immigration, but it has to be about immigration in order to, you know, silence it, I guess. If you are, if you criticize the European Union, you know, this is a

classic example, you're a racist. But European Union is, in my view, quite a racist construct. The fact is that if you look at the external borders of Europe, they're, you know, some of the strongest in the world, some of the, you know, the longest fences and things like that, it's It's much worse than Trump's war, what is happening in Europe. Thousands and thousands of people have died trying to get into Europe because the border is so militarised. In North Africa, they are basically, the European Union is paying militia to put people in camps or to basically round them up and some people are being sold into slavery. That seems pretty racist to me. But if you do that and you support the European Union, you're immune from the charge of racism.

Whereas a working class person who is concerned about immigration is a racist. Or Nigel Farage puts up a poster with a load of refugees on it, that's racist and that needs to be outright condemned. But if you either support or preside over one of the most brutal borders in the entire world, well, you're not racist because you're supporting this wonderful project. So there's an entirely, there's an entirely selective use of words like racist and far right. And I think it's to the benefit of basically, yeah, the liberal elites. They've created a moral force shield for their ideas and for their way of life and for their setup. Reading that article you wrote in spite, what actually I found,

quite affecting was you talking about the poverty the Gilles Gilles Gilles live in and then how much money Macron spent at this time

I think in order to refurbish his offices That was what everyone was annoyed about the week one of the weeks that I went Everyone was saying Macron had spent

hundreds and hundreds of thousands of euros refitting his carpet and it you know it played it played into this image of Macron which I think is quite real

of him as a kind of almost monarchical figure They call him the president for the rich which I think is quite true. But he doesn't help himself because he has this haughty attitude and he thinks that he deserves

to be able to refit his carpet for hundreds of thousands of euros at the taxpayer's expense. He thinks that you know, he basically wants to transform France into a kind of nation of startups where, you know, we're all just sitting in Paris with on our laptops.

And I mean, it has no connection to real people's lives. He's very rude to poor people. You know, he can't even have a normal conversation with an ordinary person. He, you know, he slagged off a bunch of factory workers as illiterate. He was talking to a young unemployed farmer and just says, well, I can get your job. Why don't you just walk down the street? He once described the people that are left behind, so to speak, as people who are nothing. And that was when he was trying to be nice about them.

So it's good to see some of the Gio-John saying, you know, weird than nothing people. It sounds like the Russian former president, now prime minister, Dmitem. He went to Crimea and he was surrounded by all these old ladies. And they were all saying, look, we have no money. Can you raise our pension? And he went, sorry, there's no money left and got in his helicopter. A similar thing. A similar thing happened with Macron. There was pensioners, you know, pensioners are sailing Macron. on and he's like, well, I don't understand what you're complaining about.

You know, their pensions are nothing. It's like people are living on, pensioners especially living on, you know, a few hundred euros a month. And he's saying, well, what do you want me to do about it? Right, let's move on, but let's pause because I realized I set an alarm instead of the timer. Do you see what I'm working with, my highly skilled professional. So we've got about 25 minutes left. Okay.

So we'll go into it. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to do it? Yeah, I'll do it. Okay, cool. Are we ready to start rolling, Anton? Right, you touched on earlier about the fact that, you know, fake news and internet censorship. And before, I think there's been a little bit of a sea change now and that more and more people are seeing the way certain posts get censored. How big of this is a problem at the moment and is it going to get worse, do you think?

I think it's a massive problem at the moment. I mean, we've already seen Facebook in the week that we're recording this or maybe it was not. week before, have banned a number of people who they've called dangerous individuals. People like Paul Joseph Watson, Lewis Farrakhan, the preacher, and who else? I mean, Alex Jones has already banned, but now you can't even praise Alex Jones. I don't know who'd want to praise Alex Jones, but you're not allowed to do it. I find him so funny. He's hilarious.

He's ridiculous. Who could find him dangerous? Who could find a man that rants about, you know, water. to turning the frogs gay and say, that man is dangerous. I think it's funny. So there's that, I mean, Twitter has banned a number of people from Tommy Robinson to

Carl Benjamin and all these, and you might say, oh, we don't like these people, whatever, who cares? But what I find really worrying is that these, you know, mega companies in Silicon Valley are now seem to have taken on

the role of the censor. And they can now decide what is acceptable speech and what is unacceptable speech. And they have absolutely no accountability to us. You know, we can, you know, put pressure on them, I guess. We can write lots of tweets about it. Until you get banned. Until you get banned. Yeah. I find that really dystopian. And what what is most bizarre is that actually people have been arguing for this to happen for a very long time. You know, lots of people from across the political spectrum have said the problem with Facebook and Twitter is that there's so much fake news, there's so many, you know, there's too many Russian trolls,

there's too much racism, too much hate speech, and what are they going to do about it? And now they're doing something about it, and it actually is incredibly dystopian and scary. And it's going to get worse, because the government's going to get involved too. and Britain has set out a white paper called the online harms white paper and basically it's setting out proposals to have some of the most highly regulated internet access in the so-called free world.

Actually, it's probably even worse than China because at least in China, you can go on a VPN and you can access what you like. Don't tell the Chinese authorities, I told you that. But in Britain, They want to have the power to, you know, find websites if they don't remove posts and even take down some websites entirely. And, you know, I can sympathise with people who say, oh, well, you know, who cares? Who cares if Facebook gets a big fine? Who cares to Twitter gets a big fine?

They're just, you know, big tech, whatever. It's been posed as this war on big tech. But really, you know, it's a war on us because, you know, social media, it's not Mark Zuckerberg mouthing off. It's me and you and people we know and your friends and family who are, you know, who occupy social media and who use it to speak their mind. So it's always a war on the user at the end of the day. Well, shit rolls downhill, right? So if they crack down on Zuckerberg, he's going to crack down on all of us. Yeah. And if he's going to have to try and protect himself against the consequences of Fraser saying the wrong thing on Facebook. Exactly. So, so what it's going to do is it will make those platforms more

censorious because they'll want to avoid getting fined. And now they've tried similar things in other countries. So Germany has a law called the Netsdegu which is the first of It sounds so funny. It does sound funny. All German words sound funny.

And it's an anti-hate speech kind of law and it could fine companies you know tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands of euros if they host hate speech And so the effect that it has had is that Facebook is now just taking down posts

left right and centre trying to cover its ass and one really funny outcome we shouldn't laugh but maybe we can take some joy in this is that the minister who came up with the law and who was promoting the law had one of his tweets taken down because they didn't want to get fined

he'd called an opponent an idiot this was deemed to be hate speech it was taken down. Oh, God. Right, okay. So I agree with what you're saying. I'm going to put forward the counter argument now, which is if we look at the Christchurch massacre,

which was obviously awful, there was allegations, and I think it's widely accepted that he was, you know, radicalized online with certain, you know, numbers of far-right websites and all the rest of it. And 4chan, I think, was involved as well. Surely do people not need to be, protected from these types of hateful far-right groups, especially vulnerable young people?

Well, if these groups are out there, I want to know about them and I want to know how we can counter them. And actually, it's better potentially if they're on Facebook and Twitter where other people are than if they're shunted off to 4chan where no normal people are on, you know, these kind of, well, maybe I'm going to get in trouble now with those people. They're going to hate me. But it's funny, it's like when a lot of the people were banned from Twitter and Facebook, they started moving to Gab, which is like this kind of free speech social network. But if you go on Gab, it's only these people. Yeah. You know, so it's full of, you know, it's not, I mean, it's not entirely just hate speech or anti-Semitism or whatever, but there's quite a lot of it.

But there's none of us around that could ever challenge it. You know, so it just happens underground. and that makes the problem worse inevitably. That's what I did. I went on Gab, I checked it out, and after like 10 minutes, I was like, no, no, I don't want to be here. Yeah, because it is full of genuine racism

and all people saying the most horrible shit that they can think of. And like you say, no one is there to challenge them. But let's explore another counter argument, which comes up a lot, which is we love freedom, don't we, Fraser? Yeah, we love freedom, don't you, Francis? I love freedom, don't I?

These are companies, private companies, pursuing their free will to have people on the platform that they want. You know, if you ran a shop, well, actually, if you ran a shop, you would be forced to do things. But, I mean, their companies doing what they are free to do

with their own subscriber base. What's your issue with that? God, this is the dreaded libertarian argument. I can't stand these people. I have a lot of, I have a lot of libertarian leanings, but I'm getting increasingly irritated by, quote, unquote, libertarians these days. No, I think, I think that there is a point at which

Facebook and Twitter and YouTube or whatever, and that point is now that they get so large that they are the new public square in a sense. You know, you cannot get by in politics, a lot of businesses. You can't really have a normal social life sometimes if you are not on one of these platforms. And so to deny someone the platform to be on there,

it's like you're casting them out of public life entirely these days. So I don't think that, you know, I don't really care. I don't care about the property rights of Mark Zuckerberg anyway. But even if you were concerned about that, I think the, it's as much bigger, you know, the problem for public debate is a much bigger issue. So what you're then saying inevitably is we need regulation of the internet. No, I'm not saying that either. So that's an interesting, but I think that because I know that, you know, when we have regulation, it's not going to be in a free speech direction and it's never going to happen. The governments are only interested in regulating to clamp down on free speech

and I simply cannot see, you know, there's no way that you could have like a, you couldn't really have an internet First Amendment or anything like that. I don't think it would work. But I think it's up to us to really, you know, put pressure on these companies to say that there is an alternate view to the Twitter mob who just wants everyone to be shut down to say that, you know, we value all voices, even the ones we hate, because we believe in free speech, and for that to be a kind of competing idea. I think, touching on what you're saying, I think the problem is, is the illiberalness of the sort of the liberal elite who we talk about, and you see it in cancel culture.

And we saw it in particular, the case of Michael Jackson, of course, there were all those allegations that came out about him and all the rest of it, and people were up in arms. And then they were saying, right, we need to cancel it. We need to get rid of Jackson, we need to everything. And it was just, you know, if you don't want to listen to Michael Jackson's music, that is entirely up to you. But how dare you say to every other person you are not allowed to listen to it? And I am going to be the moral arbiter of whether you have the choice or not. Well, that's the thing.

I mean, we have these self-appointed moral arbiters, these kind of the new Mary White House is in a way. It's the book burning mentality, essentially. It's the idea that we're all so stupid and vile that not only do I not have to listen to this because it will upset my mental health. I couldn't care less if people think that, whatever, do your own thing, don't listen to it. But it's that other people need to be shielded from it because they will, you know, either it will hurt their feelings or it will, you know, give them bad ideas and that everyone else is unthinking, unable to. to challenge the things that they see and read, unable to do anything other than simply absorb and agree with it and become this internet troll over time because there's so much hate out there and we're all going to just turn into walking Pepe the Frogs unless this stuff is banned and we put a

stop to it right now. And the danger is that we actually, we lose our ability to argue and that's what I'm quite worried about. I'm not confident that a 18-year-old now today could make actually a coherent argument against racism because they never have to do it. Never heard one, right? It's just ban, ban, ban. And that, you know, that is what is making us, it's going to make us stupid in the long term. It's going to make us unable to respond to much more serious political challenges. Because in the end, you know, we can't just pull the plug on if, you know, if a far right movement were to emerge, we're not just to be able to pull the plug on it. It doesn't work like that. You can't just ban it into existence. I mean, my favourite analogy, I guess, is hate to make Nazi

analogies, but it is true that there were laws against hate speech in Weimar, Germany. These politicians were constantly getting banned, you know, banned for their views on X, Y, Z. It didn't stop it. It didn't help. In fact, it made it worse because they were able to pose as defenders of the truth. You know, think about Tommy Robinson, right? The fact that he is persecuted by the British state, which he is. I'm not a fan of his, but I think that's true. Gives him more credence because it says, you know, these are the things, I'm saying what they don't want you to hear. And, you know, therefore I'm the person telling the truth and they are the liars. So, you know, we have to be. really, really careful with censorship. Censorship is more dangerous than free speech. I always take it back to about six or seven years ago, maybe eight years ago, when they had Nick Griffin on question time.

Yeah. And he was just destroyed. It was fantastic moment. Yeah, it was destroyed. And any chance of him being a credible political force evaporated, because if you were a sound mind, you just looked at him and you went, oh, you're clueless and out of your depth. Yeah. And yeah, no, and you need to be, you need to be able to expose wrongness in order to tackle it. You know, you can't just assert that something is bad and, you know, shunt it away. The Nick Griffin episode is, you know, is exactly that, I think. But I'm curious about your point about not needing regulation and being worried about it, because obviously I understand a mistrust of government 100%. On the one hand, on other hand, I think this idea that, you know, trigonometry and spiked and, you know, a few other people who care

about free speech, just going to get together and put pressure on Twitter and Facebook and Google. Well, we've got to make with Zuckerberg on Fahe, aren't we? Yeah, yeah, yes. Yes, we have about our future upcoming bans, about how we're going to get banned from everything.

But I think this idea that there's going to be enough of us putting that pressure, I don't see that as a credible way to deal with. I mean, look at, as you know, I'm not a big fan of Donald Trump, but if you look at that leaked Google meeting video. Did you ever see that?

Was that the kindly sent someone or something like that? I don't remember, but basically the day after, they had a massive meeting after Trump's election in 2016, and they were all in tears crying and going on about how we must never let this happen again. Yeah. Right? This is people at Google. Because they think that they did it.

Yeah. They think that much. Yeah. No, but they honestly think that highly of themselves that they, you know, created this monster or whatever. I mean, it's nothing to do with them. So I don't, but my point is, I don't think that people respond to incentives, right? I don't think you and me and a few other people complaining about the need for free speech

is ever going to be a strong enough incentive for a huge tech company to allow people the freedom to speak, which is why I think we will eventually have to have some kind of First Amendment for the Internet of some kind. Well, I think what we need is, you know, you're right, a few of us talking about it is not going to change. change the world, but what we need is a broader cultural shift. You know, we, we, the problem is that culturally free speech is not valued. And there's no reason why it couldn't be in future. I mean, the thing, you know, the First Amendment is a good example because, you know, obviously there is a First Amendment in America, but it's not as if, you know, you go on a college

campus or whatever and they have free speech, far from it. There's a real, there's a hostility to free speech among a lot of, um, among a lot of, um, you know, you go of young politically active people. And you know, you can't tackle that through legal means. That requires cultural change. And, you know, it's going to be a hell of a lot of work. It's not going to, you know, come easy at all. I'm not sure I agree with you there because we had Jeffrey Miller on the show, who you may know, and he was talking about free speech on campuses in America. And one of the things he was talking about is actually Donald Trump has put in, he's put in threats and he's made threats

that universities or colleges that don't uphold. the First Amendment principles will lose funding and stuff like that. So the law, if it's correctly calibrated, can be used to mandate freedom. It can be used to do that. If you have a law, for example, that says that you can't murder me for what I say, that allows me to speak freely in a way that I otherwise might not. I mean, my view is that a free speech crackdown is kind of a contradiction in terms. And it's something we tried in Britain, actually. I remember talking about it a couple of years ago. You know, the government put out this thing. You know, we're going to promote free speech on campus. It didn't go anywhere. It's not going to change. It's not going

to win hearts and minds. And it's not going to, it's not going to stop people from thinking, you know, the underlying ideas, the underlying ideas, which are the problem, which are that today people think that speech is violence or, you know, that hurt feelings at the end of the world, that, you know, speech inevitably leads to disaster, bad speech, inevitably. leads to disastrous outcomes. People also just seem to think that speech can't be countered with more speech. So I think

it's a more fundamental battle than anything that could be solved by the, you know, the flick of the pen. And why do you think free speech, we talk about it a lot? And immediately, again, the far right slur comes up. And then, you know,

they always joke about it. People make slurs about, you know, trigonometry go, oh, they're right wing, they're obsessed with free speech. Why is wanting a freedom of speech right wing? It's because of your voice, man. I do have a racist voice. I don't think there's anything right wing about it. I mean, it's an incredibly, it's actually a really radical idea.

You know, the idea that everyone should be allowed to speak, that should be permitted to speak and should, you know, should be trusted to listen to everyone. Right? I mean, it's traditionally, it has been the right that has sought to clamp down on free speech, you know, whether that's through censorship of the theatre or, you know, we had Mary White House in the 80s complaining about sex and all that stuff. It's only, I suppose, there's always been censorious elements in the left, of course, I mean, we had Stalin, Edison for Christ's sake, it's not, you know. But it's interesting that in the 60s in America,

you know, you had a lot of radicals and kind of hippie types who were very pro-free speech. And they recognised that free speech was a tool for them to, affect social change and to, you know, make the changes that they wanted. There would be no civil rights movement without free speech. There'd be no feminist movement without free speech because... Let's ban it. Sorry. Sorry, that's Constantine's Russian side coming out.

But, I mean, it's... So it's a recent shift, I guess, that... I think at the moment, I think, you know, to be honest, I think there are a lot of people on the right who are maybe bad faith defenders of free speech. And, you know, it's politically convenient at the moment for them to defend free speech because they are the ones being censored. In a different time, maybe would it be the left standing up for free speech because they're being censored? It's interesting. I mean, to talk about the one instance where I've heard someone from the Labour Party in the last few years talk about free speech was in relation to, the anti-Semitism scandal where they say,

but why can't we say what we like about Israel and, you know, Zionism and stuff like that? And you're right, yeah, why shouldn't they say what they like? But they wouldn't defend free speech in any other circumstance. So, you know, there are, there are, there are, the free speech is not so much a left-right issue, but I think who supports it, who's against it, depends very much on where we are, you know, in a period of time.

And at the moment, you know, culturally the right are on. the back foot. And so it's their speech that's being suppressed and we need to defend their free speech. And that's what happens is we seem to be in this world now where we play this association game all the time. It's like, oh, you believe in free speech. Who else believes in free speech? Let's ignore the people in the middle. Let's go to the far right. Oh, you and this guy believes in the free. And it's always about like who can you associate with this particular view. We're constantly playing this like six degrees of white supremacy like how do you connect this person that'd be a great board game six six six degrees of white supremacy but what i particularly wanted to ask you about is

this culture of fear that is now started which i've seen a lot and you know i work in comedy where it's ultra liberal and then you do the classic over the shoulder bar blah blah i was in uh last week i was in a burger restaurant with my girlfriend and a chap sat down next to me recognized me from trigonometry, looked over his shoulder and said, thank you for what you're doing, and then went, almost whispered,

but you know you're going to get banned like everyone else. And we do live in this culture of fear where we worry about, you know, things being said or misinterpreted, and saying things which aren't controversial in any shape or form,

but worrying that it's going to get overheard and people are going to lose jobs, our careers, our reputations are going to get damaged. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think that what is really interesting, what's been really interesting over the last few years is that free speech did seem a bit of, you know, I've always been a fan of free speech, but it was once a bit of a niche issue. It's like what people would say to me, you know, when I'm actually a bit bored about talking about college campuses now because it's like, no, this is the real world now. But when I was talking about that years ago, people were saying, why do you care? I was like, well, because there are going to be real consequences if we let this happen. And now, ordinary people, you know, who have very normal average opinions, sometimes in the majority opinion, feel as if they cannot speak. You know, feel as if they cannot speak their minds normally and just say what they think. And that's really, really scary. And that's really, really troubling.

I was doing some research for my Edinburgh show, which I'm doing about this whole SOAS behavioral agreement form contract. And last year in Russia, because I want to contrast what's happening in the UK with what's happening in Russia, 400 people were arrested. for things they said online. Yeah. Right. Do you know how many people were arrested in this country

for things they said online last year? No, I know. Well, it's 3,300. Yeah. Wow. Nine people per day. Yeah. When I tell people this,

they can't, there is not a single person that I've said this to. Left liberal, right wing, center, whatever. There's not a single person who's not gone,

what the fuck? Yeah. But people don't know this, right? So I think a lot of people say to you, well, why do you care about free speech?

they don't really understand the scale of what's happening. Yeah. And I think it, you know, but I think because of the scale of it, and when you, you know, when you point these things out to people, I think people realize that it is actually something that affects you and you and me and your mum and your, you know, your grand. Well, definitely affects my mum. Yeah.

Because it's not, it's, honestly, it isn't just about far-right agitators anymore. It's about completely normal opinion. I mean, you know, think about the way that people might suppress their views on Breck's which most people are in favor of. Think about the way that people might express, might, you know, suppress their views on the trans issue, right? Most people in, if you look at polling, don't think that men can become women overnight. They're not bigots for thinking that, they just think that. And, you know, but you can't express that view because it's hate speech or whatever. You know, perfectly normal opinions.

But is it, is it phrasing, hold on, the counter argument might be, well, look, you're free to express your opinion about Brexit. Yeah. And the fact that, that your neighbor might not like you and throw a dog poo over the garden wall, doesn't mean that you are being censored. Well, I think if there, a, it is possible to be censored. I mean, there, censorship doesn't just come from, you know, the state slamming its boot on your face. There are, there are many ways that people can be, you know, silenced, whether it's just through, you know, through fear, through, you know, feeling that you can't express

a certain view. There is also, you know, low level kind of low level policing of these things as well with around hate incidents. So technically someone has been reported to the police for voting for Brexit and the police have recorded that as a hate incident. So it can happen. There's no consequences to that for you legally, but that's pretty scary, right? Or, you know, there was a guy who posted a limerick about transgenderism on his Twitter. And he gets a, a phone call from the police. They're not going to arrest him. But that's still pretty scary. They find out where he works. So there is a kind of creeping authoritarianism that I think that people should, you know, people are right to be a bit wary of, right to be afraid of, whether

people are being censored directly is, you know, by the by, I guess. But the point I've made to people as well is, look, even if someone got arrested and then didn't get prosecuted, Yeah. If you arrest 3,000 people a year for saying something and you don't then prosecute them, that is still the government intimidating citizens into not doing something. Because if you were to do something and got arrested for it five times and never prosecuted, you'd still be worried about it. Yeah. Right. Well, you'd be worried. I mean, it's, you know, you could be arrested, you could be sacked. You could be at the end of a Twitter storm, right? It doesn't even involve the government or your employer. But you would feel so much, you know, the pressure on you to. to shut up and to stop saying what it is you're saying or to recant for what you've said is so great that it does, you know, amount to a form of censorship. We've got 10 for one more question. We have, we've got, and it's a question we always end on,

which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be talking about as a society? Bloody hell, that's the big one. I haven't thought of one. Yeah, that's all right. Can I have a second? Yeah, have a second. Oh, by the way, I realised we talked about Brexit

and we, yeah, we write to Remain because we're good people. We needed to get it in there. We always do that. We're actually going to bring out a range of T-shirts. We voted Remain with good people. Yeah, because we're good people. Yeah, so we display our virtue wherever we go. Because that is the selling point of Remain, isn't it?

You're a good person. Yeah, no, that's it. Yeah, that's what they're all there for. Yeah. I go, you know, I went to the Remain March and it's scary how many good people there are. The one thing that people aren't talking about is, I think, class. And it's interesting that in an age of identity where we are and of intersectionality, I suppose, the thing, we're obsessed with dividing people into these little boxes of race, sexuality, gender.

We'll even invent new boxes for, you know, people who fancy it. But what we really ignore is class. And I think it's really important because it's not just an identity, actually. And if it was an identity, I wouldn't care about it. It's about your position in society. And I think that, you know, one thing that the kind of identity politics of the elite has really done successfully is to mask those divisions. You know, I think that's the real dividing line. And they've managed to almost paper over the cracks ever so nicely.

And if you obviously speak up about these things, then you're in trouble because you're a bigot because you're questioning, you know. As I said before, you know, they have this moral force field around around them and you can't question them. And yeah, so class is the one thing that I think that people should be talking about, be thinking about a lot more. and, you know, it should inform how people see the world. Oh, God, France is going to keep banging on about his working class roots. I've taught in Croydon, mate. What time are you setting? What time are my setting?

The working class. Yeah. Oh, I've got three seconds. I'm working class again. Yeah. Is that what you're going to be? I'm not. I'm not a middle class, actually, but there we go.

Oh, I see banging on about class again. Yeah. You can't win. No, I can't win. I don't know about it anyway. That's a lot of chance. All right, Fraser, thanks so much for coming on. It's been a brilliant interview.

Follow Fraser on Twitter. Remind us your Twitter handle. At Fraser Myers. At Fraser Myers. On Twitter, readers articles and spiked. And you write for Medium as well, don't you? You don't. Okay, we'll come up.

Fantastic. Also, as well, you've got a Spiked podcast, if you want to promote it. Yeah, it's called The Spike Podcast. And we do that every Friday. We talk about three different, you know, exciting and spicy topics. the news, so check it out. Yeah, check it out. Absolutely. As always, follow us on all the social media at TriggerPod, subscribe to the YouTube channel, click the bell button next to a subscribe button to make sure you get notified when a video comes out. And as Francis always likes to remind us,

a lot of people are getting randomly unsubscribe from our channel. So if that is you, please, please, please comment on the YouTube video or send us a tweet if you're a listener and we'll complain to YouTube and they will do absolutely nothing. Absolutely. And I thought about doing this actually is a social experiment. We got a brilliant clip we had was of Andrew Doyle talking about woke comedy. And it got, it refused to get promoted by Facebook, right? And they would just say because it contravened their terms and conditions. And I'm going to do something. I'm going to do. Let's see if we can try and make that clip go viral. So with our fact, like if you listen to, if you listen to trigonometry or you watch it, you've got a Twitter account, you've got a Facebook.

tomorrow I'm going to put it up we're going to tag lots of people let's see if we can make it go viral against those bastards's best wishes sounds great speaking of woke comedy I'm doing a show in Edinburgh Francis yes you are you are absolutely

yep this is where you say something nice about it yeah yeah it's going to be great okay you bastard but yeah where is it and it's called Orwell that ends well it's about freedom of speech

and it's going to be a 7pm at the Guild of Balloon Tickets are already on Nadenbrough fringe website. So grab yourself a ticket. Yeah, we'll see if I can get Francis to squeeze in the Joker. Okay, right, absolutely. Yeah, it's going to need something. No, it's not. It's going to be brilliant.

Go and watch it. But guys, thank you so much, and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye. See you in a week. Bye-bye.