TRIGGERnometry - How I Left the Social Justice Cult - Keri Smith

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

Former SJW and co-host of Unsafe Space podcast Ker Smith joins us! Join our exclusive community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/  OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVanish. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kitten. And this is a show for you, if you want, honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a former social justice warrior and she's also the co-host of the unsafe space, which I've had the privilege of being on. Kerry Smith, welcome to Trigonometry. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. It's so great to have you. Listen, tell everybody who are you, how are you where you are, what has been the journey.

that leads you to being here talking to us? So I currently host the unsafe space podcast with my friend Carter Laren, and we are more, we're not a political podcast. We're more of a, I would say we're a cultural podcast, a bit like you guys. I just, I think that we necessarily end up talking about politics, sometimes more than others.

I mean, with the elections recently, we're talking a little more about politics. So it's sometimes necessary. But most of what we focus on, our ideas and philosophy. And on the show, we do interviews, we do a live show on Mondays and Fridays. And then we do a deep dive show called Deep Programmed,

which is more of an examination into my old ideology, which I most often call social justice. Right. And you talk about being deprogrammed. It's called deprogrammed. Tell us, first of all, how you got programmed. So, yeah, I was indoctrinated, is the way I view it, into social justice ideology. I know some people call it identitarianism.

Helen Pluckers has called it that. But it's basically this sort of mutated form of Marxism that's based around identity and power rather than around wealth and class. So I was indoctrinated into that in college over two. 20 years ago. I went to Duke University. I was a biological anthropology and anatomy major, but my minor was women's studies, which is, I don't think exists anymore. It's now called gender studies. Women's studies was problematic. Through my minor in women's studies, I took a lot of the critical race theory, queer theory classes. And the way that kind of, I look back on it now is

it sort of moved in. For me, it became a kind of religion. And I think it operates that way for a lot of people who are in it. So it's a way of feeling like you were doing good in the world. And it gives you a moral plan for how to operate in the world. Now, it contradicts itself a lot. And it's not, I would say it's not internally consistent. But it is, I think for a lot of people, it functions in the place where religion might be. So, yeah, I was indoctrinated about 20 years ago and then...

Kerry, how do you, when you say you were indoctrinated, did some guy or girl or someone gender, non-specific come up to you and go, shh, come over here, I'm going to give you a little taste of this. Don't ever do that again, mate, that's awful. If it were that easy. I mean, the one thing that, the reason I think it's sometimes hard to talk about this belief system, especially with new people who are getting into it, when I say, yeah, I was in it for 20 years. And I think it operates like a cult.

And I try to explain what it really is versus what it says it is. It sounds a bit like, oh, conspiracy. Someone had doctinated you. And that makes it a little harder to criticize. It meets a lot of the cult characteristics with the exception of having one charismatic leader. So that's a bit more, you know, you can't point to that person. But you can look at all the other characters because of a cult and see that it lines up with a lot of those. I mean, you're not allowed to question dogma.

There is a pressure to isolate yourself from people who are non-believers to cut people out of your life if they're not in the ideology. So it meets a lot of those characteristics. But no, there's no, there's no shadowy room. I wasn't pulled into a gender study, women's studies office and force-fed stuff. It just, it sort of happens over time. It happened to me over a period of years. So what starts off as something that I think, I think there are some really. good things about studying race and gender and studying racism and sexism and different kinds of

bigotry. What happens is that a lot of people who get into it, they sort of start to adopt some of the tenets of the belief system slowly. It's not all at once. So one of the things they're very concerned with, for example, they're very concerned with language. And we were talking about Orwell before the show. And he knew this. I mean, you can control people if you can control their thought, and you can control their thought if you can control language. And so one of the early things they get you to do is they redefine words like racism and sexism. So they say racism and sexism are prejudice plus power. And they say they're doing this so you can talk about structural and institutionalized racism and sexism separately from simple prejudice, what they call simply prejudice.

But the outcome of doing that is that you now are saying that it's impossible to be racist towards a particular race or sexist towards a particular sex. And you're also, you're basically taking people, many of whom have good intent who are in it because they're trying to end racism and sex. That's what they think they're doing. And you're telling them, well, the way to do that is to judge people and treat them differently on the basis of race and sex. Well, how do you get well-intentioned people to do that?

You redefine those words. So then they don't, they're not as concerned about, like I can treat you differently, Francis, as a white man. And it won't be called, I can judge you. I can even point to your race and to your sex. And I can use slurs about, you know, I can use words like, I'm not going to. justice. And I can even do those things and I can have this race-based hatred of you and I can have this sex-based hatred of you.

And that's okay because they've said that's not real racism. That's not real sexism. I didn't know I was a social justice for a minute. But now you do. And one of the questions I wanted to ask, Carrie, were these theories presented as facts or were they presented as theories? That's a good question. I think it was presented more as far. fact because it was and it was presented as this sort of undiscovered knowledge that if only we had, if only people would read these authors, if only people would read Kimberly Crenshaw or, you know, Robin DeAngelo who came along later and did white fragility. If only people would read Peggy McIntosh. You know, these people have it figured out. And it felt a bit like discovering. I guess it's akin to someone discovering a religion or any other kind of faith for the first time and thinking, oh, this has

all the answers. And you talk about it being a religion. Now, one of the things religion gives you is it gives you a structure in a way that you see the world. How did this particular religion, how did it get you to see the world? What did it do when, how did it influence your life? So that's another great question. It basically says, so this is the way I try to explain it. for people who are new to it and are telling me what they think it is. Marxism of old told us that the best way to look at the world was as a struggle between class groups for wealth.

And it was all about who's in the oppressor group and the oppressed group. And they believed in redistributing wealth to make things equal. So this is sort of similar, but it says the best way to look at the world is as a struggle for power. Power is what's at the center of this belief system. So they say the world is a struggle for power between identity groups and we need to redistribute power. And because you're doing that, because you're being told to do that, I would say the way that it operates in an individual person is that you go into interactions. I used to go into interactions just looking for the sexism and the racism.

It's like putting on glasses every day and you're trying to find it in everything. That's why when people have, as it's become more mainstream, in the past few years, become more culturally dominant, I would say people have started to bump up into this ideology, people who didn't learn about it in school, weren't indoctrinated or whatever. They're starting to come into contact with it in different ways. And so it might seem like some silly thing at first, the way in which they're introduced to it, like the song, Baby, it's cold outside, the Christmas song, right? Oh, that's so offensive.

And to women and it's patriarchal and it's about rape culture. And for a normie who's hearing that, they may not understand why is everyone attacking this song, but WAP is being lauded. Like one of these is offensive. The other's fine. And it's because it's part of something much bigger. And so we're starting to see these little, there's always something in the media these days. There's several things a day to be outraged about. And they might seem silly if you're just taking them in isolation, but they're all a part of this belief system.

that tells people you need to find the hidden racism and sexism and homophobia and everything. And it also, I would say, when you start to do that over a long period of time, it affects your self-confidence, especially if you are a person who's in one of these so-called marginalized groups. I used to go into rooms in the entertainment world. So after I graduated, I moved into entertainment. I had my own company, my partner and I managed comedians and musicians. And she wasn't indoctrinated the way that I was. And I was always really, I would look at her and say, wow, like, I remember saying to her,

you walk into a room with the confidence of a straight white man, you know, and I couldn't figure it out. But that was because she walked into the room just as herself. And I walked into the room more as this oppressed. this member of an oppressed group who I was automatically expecting everyone to treat, like all the men in the room to treat me differently because I'm a woman. And I was expecting the sexism. And was there sexism in some of these rooms with, you know, network executives or agents and what have you?

Yes, sure. But there were also people who were not, who did not have that opinion of me just because I'm a woman. And sort of you walk in with that chip on your shoulder and then you set up. the interaction to unfold that way because you're already in this weird defensive place and you're not self-confident and you're not you're not really operating with authenticity in a way because you're coming in just assuming what people are thinking of you and do you think part of the reason that it's so pervasive and dare I say addictive is because it's a very very narcissistic way of looking at the world well it's all about you you don't look outside you look inside you

make yourself the focus? I would say that's that's right in one regard is that it is narcissistic and that it's all about you basically portioning up your identity and putting yourself in all the different groups. So it encourages you to say, you know, I am straight. And in that way, I'm an oppressor, but I'm a woman. In that way, I'm oppressed. And I'm white. And that way, I'm an oppressor. And it's in this, in this belief system, it's a form of social currency almost to have more of the oppressor groups because then you get more of voice. So that's why you started seeing all these people like on Twitter now and stuff.

They've moved into other areas of identity like mental health issues. So people will put in their Twitter bio is like, I'm depressed and I have anxiety and I'm BPD. And they view that as an oppressed identity, which think about that. for a second, I think it almost, it encourages people to stay in whatever mental health problems they might have, or it encourages them to develop mental health issues because now they have this other oppressed identity they get to claim. It's moved into weight, you know, so colleges are now teaching fat studies. So if you're fat, you're oppressed, if you're not fat, you're an oppressor. So people will put that in their bios. And it just continually, it's just this very navel gazing,

like, what are all of my multiple different kinds of identities? So in that way, it's narcissistic. But in another way, I think it's the opposite, for instance, is that it tells you that the solution to all of your problems are outside of you. That is not about like working on yourself or figuring out what you have control over in your life and what you can take responsibility for and what things can you actually fix. It's not about that at all. It's about saying all of your problems stem from this oppressive,

systemically unjust culture that you grew up in, that all of your problems come from the patriarchy and white supremacy. And the problem is with all of these other people who haven't adopted the belief system yet. And if only all of these people would get on board with this, we could have a utopia. But it's not about fixing yourself. So in that way, it's, I think, yeah, it's very much about looking outside of you. Carrie, and one of the questions I imagine you've probably thought about quite a bit is what was it about you that made you susceptible to this sort of indocturnation as you described it? What makes somebody susceptible to becoming a social justice warrior? Well, I'm a woman. I'm just kidding.

Immediately I went, holy fuck. Well, I'm kind of joking. Women, I think, are a little more. susceptible to it because women on average tend to be, I think it's in the big five. Women are a bit more higher on the openness scale and also I think it's the neuroticism scale. Yes. You're allowed to say that we're not. But yes. Yeah. But yeah. My lived experience tells me this, Kerry. Mate, you're a straight white man. No one cares about your lived experience. Show your trap. I'm going to play my Latino card soon. But seriously, I mean, you're more open-minded. On average.

I think women, yes, and women are concerned with, this is something I've heard Jordan Peterson talk about with Camille Paglia. I think I'm saying the name right. I heard them do a conversation once. And it was really interesting because they were talking about women and there seems to be maybe something of the innate drive to protect children that might be being transferred into this belief system a bit because it's about, you know, it's sold to you as protecting and defending these, you know,

defenseless, marginalized groups of people. It's about protecting the underdog and speaking for the underdog. And I think that women on average, not all women, women on average might be more drawn to this belief system because of that because they are interested in people. I mean, and that's another thing. Women, on average, self-report that they're more interested in working with people than with things and this is sold as a way to help people and especially and to help people who are discriminated against and who are suffering a kind of injustice. So I think that's one thing, but that's just a small part of it. I think the other thing is that I had, this is just in my particular case, but there was a hole in my life. I had, I was raised Southern Baptist. I was

raised with the belief in God and I had walked away from that over a period of about three years starting when I was a I went to a science of math high school and so starting about the age of 16 I started questioning those beliefs and questioning if I actually believe there's God and over about a three year period I pretty much walked away from God and for me I'm not saying this is true of everyone but for me this looking back it absolutely filled that hole it gave me a way of interpreting the world and saying, just like a religion does, this is the way to view the world, we're going to view the world as a struggle between identity groups for power, and the way to be a good person in the world is to try to redistribute that power. And, you know,

and then there's all the many rules that come with it after that. And you start, like I said, it's sort of a slow boil. You're accepting, okay, here's the new definition of racism. Here's the definition of sexism and then and then you know fast forward 20 years later you're suddenly being asked to apologize for and try to justify censorship or violence and and that was those were the things that started to wake me up if if at the very beginning I felt like I was being asked to do all of ever all of that stuff at once I might not have fallen into it so quickly but um it was a slow boil and I think that's the way, I think that's the way they get people into it. And was there one particular moment where you thought, hang on a minute? Well, yeah, so 2016, during the presidential election,

I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube of videos of people on the left who were attacking Trump supporters. And I don't remember what got me to the first video, but once I watched one, this is back when YouTube's algorithm actually recommended things that were similar to what you're watching. And, you know, I watched video after video. And I had, I didn't know that these things were happening. I mean, I saw videos of guys being bloody. They were hitting people with bricks. There was a girl being pelted with eggs. It was just mobs of people surrounding these Trump supporters as they were coming out of rallies. And it was in more than one city. And it really emotionally affected me for a while. And I didn't wake up and, you know, you know, I didn't become a Trump supporter that day and I didn't leave my belief system that day.

But it was the first thing that made me start to question the narrative that I had believed before. And also, like, who are these people on my side, supposedly? This is my side that's doing this. That's attacking people physically. And at the same time, I was seeing, I was seeing people in my echo chambers. So my echo chambers that I had, I had constructed of my own choice, were almost exclusively. exclusively social justice and then comedy related. And...

Same as me, until a few weeks ago, whereby I was somehow erroneously ejected. But anyway, carry on. And well deserved to. But Carrie, before we get too far into your sort of what we might call it detransition, jokingly. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world.

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that you built up for yourself. So you leave, you leave university. Yeah. You go into comedy, entertainment, And what was that like? Because I know you managed a lot of quite high-level acts, comedians. What was that like? Yeah, so I moved into comedy sort of by accident. I started working for Margaret Cho's old manager pretty soon after I left school. And I was attracted to Margaret's comedy because I felt she's a comedian who's addressing issues, all these issues I care about.

now that I'm coming out of Duke and I've got this idea on how to like change the world and be a force for good. And here's a comedian who's doing subjects. Her material was about race and sex and sexuality. And you can actually, you can change people's minds with comedy because you're getting them to laugh. You can introduce new ideas with comedy. And it's a really good vehicle for that. And her first special, the first one that I watch was I'm the one that I want, which is still. one of my favorite specials. And I really wanted to, I fell into it because I wanted to work with

comedians, people who were pushing the ideology, but doing it with laughter is the way I viewed it. And so I started working for her old manager. And then we moved to another company. And then a few years after that, we left together. And my partner, Emily White and I started White Smith Entertainment, which we're a very small boutique company. We got to pick our own artists. So she managed musicians. I managed comics. So I worked with Margaret Cho.

I worked with Debbie Kamau Bell, who's now on, yeah, we sold a show together, Kamau and I called Totally Bias on FX. I was very proud of the show. I felt like it was one of the first explicitly social justice-based late-night shows. And I thought it was doing, we were doing great work in the world. You know, we had pieces on rape culture and whether it was okay for men to tell jokes about rape. We had Hari Kandibolu on doing jokes about Apu and how Apu was a racist caricature. And, you know, we can see, fast forward to what's happened to Apu now. RIP.

It's all your fault. But it was really a different kind of late night show. We had, Chris Walk was one of our other executive. producers, and Chris is really not from the social justice world. And then one of the other EPs in particular was not from the social justice world. And so there was a lot of headbutting happening because most of the writers, the other comedians we were able to bring on as writers were squarely, you know, in the same belief system. And, you know, it felt like we were doing, we were having to fight very hard to do something

very different and revolutionary and, you know, not to make the easy, you know, I remember remember there was an argument, for example, once about whether or not we're going to do a fat joke about Governor Chris Christie and, you know, taking a stand and saying, even when it's a Republican, we're not going to engage in fat phobia. It was that kind of a show behind the scenes. It was interesting. But that must have presented real challenges because, I mean, that's very, very difficult to do comedically because, because. Any element of comedy involves something with punching down, does it know? I'm not sure about that question, because as you probably know, people on the social justice left use that line a lot. They say you have to always punch up and not punch down.

Well, I guess I would agree with that, except it depends on who's holding the dictionary of which direction is up and which direction is down. Right. Because, yeah, how do you define up and down? They do a lot. Social justice comics do a lot. But in my opinion, a lot of punching down.

But they believe they're punching up. So I don't really, I would have to ask who's defining up. How are you defining it? And so, yeah, it's hard for me to answer that one. So you go into this world, you're the feminist manager, I think, as you put it. Yeah, I was known as the feminist manager. What does that mean? That means sort of I had a reputation for being the manager who,

first of all, worked with these comics who at the time, social justice was not a huge thing in comedy. So I was working with acts who were talking about things that seemed a bit more intellectual or academic and maybe not what was being sold at the time. And I also worked with a lot of social justice nonprofits. I was on the board of several nonprofits like Women Action and the Media. I worked with others to promote their causes and for them to promote my comedian. So we would do, like with Margaret's tours, for example, we would do ticket giveaways, we would do VIP packages. We would do all these different kind of add-ons for organizations like the HRC, now,

Planned Parenthood, Race Forward, the Color of Change, or orgs like that, ACLU. And what's funny is that when I started, leaving the ideology and the nature of my post started changing. I did get a funny phone call at one point from a comedy promoter I hadn't heard from in a year or two. And he wanted to talk to me because he worked at Live Nation and they were considering they were about to bring on Jordan Peterson. And they were thinking about taking him out for some dates. And he's like, I would like to talk to you because you're the feminist manager. But you seem to really love Jerry Peterson. You're sharing lots of his stuff lately. And we're getting all this pushback at

Live Nation internally. They're saying he's a sexist and a misogynist and we can't work with him. So can I just can I talk to the feminist manager about it? And I was like, okay. I don't know if I'm going to be very helpful. I'm kind of a pariah now. But we did have that call. That's what I was going to ask you. So you, you're managing comedians as an agent or as a representative? As a manager. As a manager, right? So you're always potentially. as an agency, you're on the lookout for new talent, right? That would be part of what you do, correct? Right, correct.

So what would happen if Francis walks through the door? And, like, you know he's a funny guy, but he's maybe not got quite the same views as what you want, and, you know, he happens not to be from a minority background. What would old Kerry have done in that situation? I, I, this is embarrassing, I'll be honest, I probably would not have worked with you. Because I felt like my niche was racial justice comics, like feminist comics, comics who were talking about all the social justice stuff. And honestly, even if I'd wanted to, there were some straight white male comedians I liked, but I didn't know. Their comedy wasn't about the same issues.

And so I didn't know how to even promote them. I knew how to promote the social justice comedians, but I didn't think I would have even been useful. So it's kind of interesting because social justice says, right, like as a woman, I don't have the power to be sexist. I can only be prejudiced. I can't be sick. I don't have the power. Well, look at my career. I had the power to say yes to certain comics and the power to say no to others. And my roster, oh gosh, I think I only had one straight white male comedian. I had, you know, it was all people of color, women. Jesus Christ, that dude must have been so fucking progressive. Well, he dressed as a woman. He did a lot of comedy and drag. But yeah, I worked with trans comics.

I worked with LGBT. But, yeah, like, there weren't a lot of stereotyped white guys. And did you see in the industry, Kerry, a lot of people go, I have to jump on board this particular narrative and way of looking at things. Otherwise, I'm not going to get ahead. I'm not going to get to where I want to be. Yes, but it didn't happen for a while.

So I was doing my thing for a long time, kind of struggling to promote comedians who were not in the mainstream. And then, well, social justice became more popular and became more mainstream. It started over time. And so when we sold the show, bias, for example, that was a new sort of, I still, I view that as a new sort of thing.

I mean, the late night comedy shows were always leftist, but they weren't explicitly social justice. And I think our show, you could look at that now and even now, that was, that was an explicitly social justice thing comedy show. And then slowly after this, that was around 2011 or 2012. And then after that, I started to see a lot of comics who had never really done social justice comedy before or really had not made it the majority of their material, were suddenly doing it.

I mean, you've got Jim Jeffries doing social justice thing comedy. That's the rape joke in chief. Suddenly's woke, is he? Yes, suddenly he's woke. Moshe Kassar did the show problematic. There were all these social justice theme comedy shows that were coming out. And at the

time that I kind of came out as a wrong thinker, which took me a while because we haven't really talked about the transition yet. But there was a period of time there, about six months where I was really, my beliefs had been changing. I had written a letter to Jordan Peterson right before the election in October of, I think it was October of 2016, and sort of about some of my changing beliefs. And it was called a liberal feminist's point of view or something like that.

And he read it on his YouTube channel and then emailed me afterwards to say, I read this. I was so scared. He's like, I changed some identifying factors. But I was still scared. I'm like, it mentioned that I worked in comedy. I was thinking, I'm going to lose all my clients. Somehow people find out this is me. And I told him, I was scared.

And he said, you have to figure out how to get over your fear. And I knew he was right, but you don't. That's why when I talk to people now who are afraid, I'm, I told. understand why people are afraid. There's a real reason. People are afraid of losing their job, they're afraid of losing their whole social circle. They're afraid of losing

friends and family, their reputation. In some cases, their safety, their anonymity. So there were a lot of fearful, you know, fearful things going through me. And I, it took me about six months after that, six months of time before

I finally, I wrote a essay called leaving the social justice cult. And that was sort of, this was my way of explaining to my friends, all my colleagues and entertainment, all my social justice friends, what was happening to me. They had been meeting. They had been, my, my best friends had been getting calls about me for months, you know, what's going on with Carrie. Why is the kind of stuff she's sharing, changing, you know, she's sharing Jordan Peterson video or she's doing, you know, whatever, whatever it is she's sharing. She's trying to figure out why Trump won. and instead of just accepting that it's racism and sexism.

And so that was sort of my coming out essay. And then after that, pretty shortly after that, I think we folded the company. But before that, so during that six months of fear, I was flying back. I had moved to Texas by then, but I was flying back to L.A. to film a social justice comedy pilot with one of my comics that I, had we had worked on. We had been writing it like a year or two prior. You know, it's a long process to get, we've gotten a production company involved, and then we'd finally sold a pilot to network, and then they greenlit the pilot, we're going to go make it, and it was up against a lot of other pilots,

and a lot of those were also social justice thing. I knew some of the other comics we were up against, and, you know, I'm out here, I was out there in LA shooting that, and I was feeling so conflicted because by the time we were actually working on it, I was thinking, I don't believe in this stuff anymore. And so I don't even know, like, if the show gets picked up, I'm excited for the comedian I work with. I'm excited for her. But I don't know if I want to work on this. You know, it would be good money, but I don't believe in this anymore. And fortunately, the universe didn't make, I didn't make that decision. It was made for me. It didn't get picked up. And so pretty soon after that, I was like, I guess I'm out. I'm going to just, I'm going to,

Because I would rather, like, say what I think, be able to say what I think and not work in entertainment anymore and work gig jobs, but be able to say what I believe. It's so, it's so much better. Like anyone who is, we get people on our show occasionally, as I'm sure you do, people who are afraid, afraid of saying what they believe to be true. and I hear from people in the entertainment industry still all the time, especially since the summer when social justice kind of went really big. I hear from people in entertainment and academia and the media and people who feel like they're in this kind of self-censorship like I was in. And I know it's hard to believe when you're in it,

but I always say to them, whenever, however long it takes you to get out of it, on the other side of it, it doesn't matter. Like all the things that you're going to lose, and you will lose things and you will lose people, but the things that you get out of it are so much more meaningful.

Like, I don't know. It's hard to explain. Well, being able to be honest and authentic, I think is what you're talking about. And piss people off on Twitter and delighting in doing so, which I do every single day. Well, with facts and logic.

No, I'm joking. But Kerry, what do you think the landscape is like now in entertainment. So you left entertainment 2012, 2013. Sorry, my apology is 2016. And then obviously, you know, then they had Me Too and then BLM. What is it like now? Do you think in entertainment? Yeah, well, I don't, as you know, I don't work in it now, but just as an observer, as someone looking at what's happened since June, it's become the predominant belief system in entertainment. And I think that it's, that offers a unique opportunity because

things move in cycles in entertainment. You remember when Anthony Burd, everybody was looking for an Anthony Burdain style show. Everything, every pitch we were doing was like, oh, this is a great pitch, but could you make it more like Anthony Burdain? And it's like, could make it more like what he's doing? And so right now, everyone's looking for social justice themes. shows, I think. But at some point, they're going to get tired of that cycle. And there's going to have to be, there's going to be something that's a breakout show that's totally different. That's

not woke. That's a hit. And that will change things, I think, because then they'll start to say, oh, can we get something kind of like that show? You know, can you put just something like that? And I think it's an opportunity for people who are courageous enough to continue working on their craft, their comedy, their series ideas, whatever, without regard for where we're at culturally right now, without regard for what's currently popular. Are you tired of using bulky old wallets that give you a bulge where you don't want it to be? If you are, Ridge wallets are an incredible solution. This is mine. Sleak. Look at the industrial look at the industrial look as well. It's great. You can have 12 cards in it and cash on the back with a clip or strap. They're incredible. We've got one for the whole team. Francis has one. I have one.

We even got Anton one. But Anton's from Liverpool. He flogged out in the black market. Absolutely, he did. And it also gives you a lifetime guarantee, which means that you will probably, if you won't only have one wallet for the rest of your life. The amazing thing about Ridge wallets, they are so confident in their product and rightly so that they will give you 45 days. to test drive their product. That means you get the wallet, you use it, and if you don't like it, you can return it within 45 days. And because Ridge is such great guys, they're going to give you 10% off

and free worldwide shipping and returns. To take advantage of this fantastic offer, go to ridge.com forward slash trigger. That's ridge.com forward slash trigger and use our code, which it will not surprise you, is also Trigger. I wonder what it's like in America, because here in the UK,

one of the things that you immediately are confronted by, if you are in the entertainment world, if you are in comedy, is that there is a tiny number of gatekeepers who control all the points of access to television, to radio, to whatever. And so if your brand of art or comedy or whatever it might be doesn't fit what that Anthony Bourdain or SJW or BLM or whatever in the current moment, well, you can play the clubs, maybe, but really you're not going to advance anyway.

Is that also the case in the US or is a bigger market there and therefore you do have more opportunity? There are, it's like the UK. There are gatekeepers. Brilliant. But those gatekeepers are, the people at the networks are,

I think a lot of them, they're just jumping on this bandwagon because it's the popular thing that's selling right now. Like I think back to a lot of the kind of douche male. Here's some of my social justice coming out. But some of these sort of the classic stereotype of douche network executives I worked with at FX, there were some gross ones. There were some good ones too, but there were some real gross ones,

like use car salesmen kind of guys. If they're speaking social justice now, which they probably are, it's completely only cravenly because it's what's popular. And as soon as they see the potential for something that's not woke, I think those guys will be buying that thing next, you know? So it's just a matter of something breaking out despite all the gatekeepers, whether it's on the internet or, you know, getting someone high profile enough. You know, we tried various routes to sell totally bias. You know, you're always pitching in different ways. And we were pitching to different networks.

And it could have happened a different way. possibly, but the way that it happened was we attached Chris Rock. So, you know, if there's a big enough name that attaches to something that's really different and out of the box, and there are some names now. I've been watching John Cleese get more based, I guess you would put it on Twitter. He's a bit more, it looks like his patience is running thin for wokeness, which I really appreciate. He's always been one of my favorite comics. Ricky Jervais, he's not bowing to the belief system.

there are some bigger names who are refusing to do it. And then there are the ones who are having their come-to-Jesus Social Justice moment and confessing all their privileged sins. And Sarah Silverman, Sarah Silverman came on our show totally biased. And I consider that episode that we did with her. That was her Come to Social Jesus moment. Social Justice Jesus. Yeah.

She had a, because she had done the host of our show, Kamau, back before back before really anyone knew who he was, he had done a blog entry about her and how she was a racist, called her out, you know, fellow comedian, she's a racist,

these jokes are racist, etc. So then fast forward several years, we get the show, and social justice has also progressed a bit. And she came on the show and they had like a reconciliation where she sort of,

I felt like it was sort of, this is where you come and confess your white privilege. and you get, you know, anointed in the social justice faith. And I look at, there are some comics now who I used to just really enjoy their material. And I can't really watch their stuff anymore because I feel like it's become so tainted with this. And it's, this has become primary.

This has become more important than making people laugh, which is what a fundamentalist faith, that's how it operates. no matter if it's moving into your art or if it's moving into your company or your hobby group or your church or wherever, it's going to become the primary, the primary objective is pushing the belief system. I mean, I had, go ahead. No, no, I was going to say, Kerry, are you not fearful that we're going to go so down this path that essentially companies are going to bankrupt themselves almost because they progress so far down this path? Nobody's going to want to watch it. Nobody wants to watch a one-hour tedious lecture. I mean, that's the Edinburgh Festival, but nobody else. That's a very small section of people. That was a very niche joke. Carrie didn't get it. Well done.

Yeah. Don't worry. It's just Francis letting out his existential angst about the Edinburgh Festival. Don't worry about it. Hatred is the word, mate. Well, you're making me think of, I just talked with a friend yesterday. We got to interview, I was telling you beforehand this actor. And it hasn't aired yet, but we're going to put it out. soon. Anyway, in that conversation, we were talking about what's happening with DC and Marvel and how there are all these independent comic book creators now who are filling the gap and who are crowdfunding and they're making beautiful work and people are supporting it because, yes, I do believe not all, but a lot of companies are going to put this ideology ahead of profits.

and as long as you have a large enough number of social justice diehards in your company, they don't care about, I think that's hard for people to wrap their head around. They may care about profits, but profits are secondary to being ideologically correct and ideologically pure. And so I think we will see some kind of shift happening. The question for me is it's easier, not that it's easy, but it's easier to make an independent comic book

than it is to make an independent Game of Thrones or, you know, a television show or a movie. So I haven't really seen a lot of people filling the gap yet and doing anti- or unwoke series and movies yet. This is where the internet is interesting because, yeah, you're right,

you can't make an unwoke, massive budget thing. But what you can do with, comedy, for example, is short sketches or things like that, which, you know, we're going to start to do some of that. And you just see that on the internet, what works is what works, as opposed to what is in demand according to three people and a dog who's barking in the background. You're getting heckled by a dog, mate. Reminds you of your comedy career. It reminds me of my open mic comedy career, exactly. Three men and a dog, and only the dog is paying attention. But yeah, so I guess my point is I think with the internet, there is also an

opportunity. And I think I can certainly speak for myself. I think maybe a year and a half, two years ago, I was quite bitter and resentful about how things were going more broadly, not even in terms of my own career, because I was progressing, everything was going pretty well. But in terms of the industry as a whole, I kind of felt like you have to tow the line in order to get anywhere. Whereas now I feel like these people who are the gatekeepers, they're very much dinosaurs, they're trying to hold on to something that's very much a dying model. And what you have with the internet is the opportunity to circumvent all of that, to go around all of that, and to go straight to people, the people who watch the show, who enjoy non-woke stuff. So I think there's that there's maybe

a reason to be optimistic there in my view. But I want to come back to what you. You're you were talking about how in 2016 you start to watch videos of Trump supporters being assaulted. How do you go from that to like, I'm leaving? It was a long transition. So just like getting into it is slow. Getting out of it was slow for me. It's not something that happens overnight. If anyone tells you they leave this ideology like that, I just don't, I don't buy that.

It's, that was one of the first things. I remember sort of changing, cracking, cracking my belief in how the world works or what the truth is. That really put a crack in my belief that I knew how, you know, what was really happening. And then after that, or maybe it was right before that, there was another significant thing. There were the shootings of the cops at the BLM rally in Dallas. and in my echo chamber, my social justice echo chamber online, I saw a lot of people almost not really celebrating it, but making excuses for it.

And in some ways sort of saying, well, I remember one comedian even saying a lot of white men are going to have to die. And, you know, trying to excuse that sort of sentiment is like, I'm just half joking, guys, like I was half joking early about being a woman. I don't know. It just felt like I didn't I didn't sign up for this is not progressivism for murder of, you know, to support some guy just taking a rifle and shooting a bunch of people. And it's okay because they're cops somehow. So that really stuck with me.

And then I discovered who I've mentioned a few times in this interview. I saw a video of Jordan Peterson. Someone had sent me a video saying he was transphobic, and I clicked on the video fully expecting to hate on him. I was still in the social justice world, you know, and I watched the video, and I really listened to what he was saying, and I didn't find him to be transphobic at all.

I thought he was making a really great point about compelled speech being codified in law. And the more I listened to him, I listened to a lecture he gave about, it was an old lecture. about tragedy versus evil was what it was called. And he talked about the Kane and Abel's story in the Bible. And he talked about how you can view that story as an allegory for how to be in the world.

And so there are these two different ways of being in that story. You can be like Kane and you can refuse to make necessary sacrifices for what you want and you can be resentful. And you can blame God and blame your brother, blame others. And that is a path towards murderous rage. He's like, or you can be like able in this story and you can make the necessary sacrifices and you can be humble and full of gratitude and you can be blessed. And I started thinking about that a lot and about how my ideology was really about it's a way of being like Kane. It's very resentful.

People in social justice, especially ones who are like, living it every day, waking up, putting those glasses on, where's the sexism and racism? You know, they're very resentful people. And I started questioning almost every choice I was making, even little choices throughout the day. Is this like Kane or is this like Abel? And trying to root out the cane in me. I'll put it that way. So, yeah, he was really, he helped me see, he helped me put a words to what I was seeing in my belief system. So, you know, when you first start, if you're in a cult-like belief system or ideology, and you first start questioning it, well, everything in the belief system is set up to make you

think you're crazy if you're questioning it or you're raised. You have some deep-seated racism and internal misogyny against yourself or something, you know. And so to be able to say, wow, this person is perfectly articulating the problems that I'm finding in my system of belief. That was really helpful for me. So yeah, and like I said, it wasn't a short thing. Even after the six months, it took me to get over my fear and have my sort of coming out essay, I still believed in a lot of the tenets of social justice.

I've discarded most of those now. There's still probably a few I could agree on with social justice people. And the few who have not unfriended me, I'm still friends with some. I'm still friends with the comedian whose pilot I was pitching at the time that I got out. And, you know, when she comes to Austin, we have lunch and we have completely opposing worldviews. And it's okay because I know she is in that belief system for the same reason I was. She thinks that it is the way to end racism and sexism. So if I tear down everything, you try to find like what's our base point of agreement?

and then from there we can figure out where we diverge. Well, at the very base, she and I both agree that racism and sexism are bad, and we want to end those things. It's just that her philosophy, I think, is due. I think it makes those things worse. But I know she's in it with a good heart. So if she hasn't unfriended me and she's one of the few, why would I, why would I unfriend her?

It's a really, really good point. And sadly, that's what we don't have a lot of, which is tolerance of each other's opinions and points of view. The question I really want to ask, Kerry, is do you think we've reached peak woke yet? I would like to hope so, but I don't think so. I think it's going to get a lot worse. Thanks, Carrie. Thanks, mate.

Wait, but here's the silver lining. It's the silver lining. I think we're close to hitting Pete wokeness. Unfortunately, I think things are going to have to get. bad economically too in this country. And I'm sorry, just because a lot of the younger people who have

been in, see, I was indoctrinating college. I didn't learn any of the social justice stuff in elementary school. We've since been indoctrinating kids in elementary in kindergarten in the States. I mean, kids are learning about critical race theory and they're learning these things at a younger age. And so

I think, unfortunately, you almost have to get to a place where things are really hard before people start to question it. So when people ask me, what woke you up? Here's an important part. I didn't mention, guys. I was going through a personal transformation too. I was going through a divorce.

So I was, and I was going through, it coincided with the spiritual search. Like I was going, I started going to a spiritual center for the first time in 20 years. I was open to the idea of God again. I was going to Agape in L.A., which is like this big sort of, non-denominational church.

Oprah is friend, I think it's her pastor. She's friends with him. And it was really beautiful. It was the only kind of church I would have gone to at that time in my life. And so I was trying to figure out who I was, like what I wanted out of life. I got to a very dark place personally when all these things were happening.

And so I almost, I think that can happen for a country too and for a civilization. It's almost like you have to get, you have to get to a really dark place sometimes because that's sometimes the only place you can see the light. It sounds cheesy, but I say that as something that absolutely, I know is true because it happened to me. So what if I know exactly what you mean.

I mean, it works with addiction very much like that as well. Like someone who's an addict, you can't pull them out yourself. They have to get right to the bottom. and find themselves in the gutter with a heroin addict pissing in their face. And then they go, this is a really bad place. We need to get out of here. Yeah, exactly. I see what you're saying.

Listen, you brought up something very interesting there, which I think we ought to talk about, which is the impact that viewing the world in the way that you used to view it versus the way that you view the world now on your well-being and your mental health. Because you and I have talked before, and as I look at you now, it seems to me like this is a person that is perfectly aligned. Like you've clicked. Like you come across to me as someone who's content,

who's very clear on what she thinks. And I imagine this has done a tremendous amount of good for your well-being. How much do you think this viewing of the world through the prism of victimhood and oppression and searching out actively for things that confirm that view? What sort of impact does that have on a person's mental health, do you think? That's a great question. I think it is to the detriment of people who stay in it for a long time because as I mentioned earlier, it affects your self-confidence.

It's your whole outlook is in some sense it's negative because you're going into situations looking for the hidden racism and sexism. You're going into situations in bad, expecting bad faith instead of expecting good faith. I'm in a couple of social justice groups on Facebook still because I like, I haven't gotten kicked out of some of them. And then others, I like to see what's going on. There's one here for my little town in Texas. I'm in. And I will see them talking about how don't assume good faith of people, always assume bad faith. I'm like, no, you should assume good faith in.

treat people with good faith until they give you reason to change that. But to go in, can you imagine every situation you go into in bad faith, like what that does to your psyche over time? So I truly believe, and I know, I know friends of mine who are still in it, who, like I said, it's almost like they're encouraged to celebrate their mental health issues and to hold these things up as who they are. So I have one friend who all of her posts are, you know, she's a white woman. All of her posts are white silences, violence and, you know, the t-shirts and the fists. And it's just a continuous, her stream is just a continuous virtue signal against all the evil in the world that she's not a part of. She's a virtuous one, right? And then that is interspersed

with posts about BPD, borderline personality, it's time for you guys to get acquainted with my mental illness. This sort of like, you know, like this weird, it's not just about awareness of BPD, it's more about like, I want the world to conform around my problems. And I see the way that she posts

about borderline personality disorder as being unfortunately, I think the way she views it as a part of her identity is going to keep her locked in it as like a prison forever. And you can get, if you read over some of these personality disorders or mood disorders, you can over time change some of those behaviors. You know, cognitive behavior therapy has been very helpful. But you can't do that if you look at it as like, this is who I am, you know. Like I think her bio would probably, it's like, you know, I'm quick.

and fat and white and borderline personality disorder. And, you know, and it's, well, okay, that's part of who you are. You're never going to try and change any of that, you know, like it's not very good. And a lot of the people I know who are in it have struggle with depression. And it doesn't, because it's not about fixing yourself or fixing mental health problems or weight problems or depression problems. It encourages you to stay in that. And I've, I think, I think your surroundings or sometimes a reflection, can be a reflection of your mental state.

And, you know, one of these friends, she basically lives like a hoarder. I know this is anecdotal. I'm just talking about one social justice warrior, but I, I think there's a type. Did you see the New York, was it the New Yorker cover recently of the woman on the laptop and her house is just going, you know, to ruin. And I'm like, you know, what does that say about your mental state? This episode sponsored by IP Vanish. IP Vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV.

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with IPVanish. And what impact is that having on your mental state in reverse? Because it's a feedback loop. If you are surrounded by chaos, then you create chaos in your life, then you have more chaos than it's a loop. And it's a loop. Yeah. I think the mental health aspect of this is something people really underappreciate because it's a defeatist ideology. It's an ideology that that never allows for personal growth, personal improvement. It never allows you to be happier than you are because the world's evil and terrible. Like, when you were a social justice warrior,

when were you allowed to be happy? That's a good question because it's funny. I just wrote down a word. I didn't want to forget to say this. I think of them as like joy eaters. They really, really don't like expressions of joy. and if you are celebrating something like at the wrong time, for example, I have a friend whose daughter is in high school and she posted some

beautiful graduation pictures with her grandma or something in June, right when social justice was going huge. She got taunted and piled on online by her fellow students for posting these joyful photos at an inappropriate time, right? You should be posting the black square of solidarity for blackout. How dare you celebrate this really momentous occasion in your life? That's your privilege. That's your white privilege.

That's your straight. Whatever. So they take any kind of joy that you're taking out of life is sort of seen as, at the very least, an expression of your privilege to have that joy. And so that encourages you to do what? well, I'm really serious about the fight, I can't be joyful. I need to always be fighting and everything has to be this sort of outrage and how, you know, me being outra, posting outrage about things that are happening and showing that I'm a good person by not having these moments of joy or frivolity.

They also do the same when people start to improve themselves. So one of the early pylines I saw in the social justice world, and this was years before I left it, was there was a huge dust up and pile on on Maria Kang. Do you remember who she is? She was called Fit Mom by the press. So Fit Mom, she did fitness classes for mothers and toddlers. For free, she was teaching moms how to work out with their kids. And she had a poster with her, you know, looking all fit with her three kids.

And it said, what's your excuse? Oh. Oh, you know, she was, they said she was fat shaming. It made it into the national news. That was one of the first social justice, like feminist pylons I saw happening in all of my, in my echo chamber and on all the feminist blogs and stuff I read that made it into the mainstream press. And she did the interview circuit. And they piled on her two or three times. And really at the root of that is they don't like.

anyone saying that you can improve yourself if you want to. They view it, you know, that was somehow fat shaming, although I mean, I don't, and at the time, I didn't believe it was either, but I was quiet because I was squarely in it. I didn't like what was happening to her, but I was one of the people who stayed quiet through cowardice. You know, I didn't push back. I saw the pylons happening to her and just was sort of, I don't think this is right, but I don't want to say anything and draw the eye or my way because it's ideologically correct to be opposed to what she's doing right and i've seen that just anecdotally with countless times with friends on social media who are in the who are in this world if a friend starts to lose weight or work out or say

you know um hey guys i saw one that's like i want to give you an update um you know back in january i made a resolution to get healthier and it's been six months and here are my progress picks. I'm so excited. And then immediately in the comments from fellow feminists, you know, how dare you? This is very triggering to see. I don't want this in my feed. Triggering. Triggerometry. But seeing your workout pictures are triggering. Really? Like, you can't take joy in your friend doing something to improve themselves that they're proud of. So that's kind of a long answer, but, but yeah, they're joy eaters. Well, Kerry, thank you so much for coming on the show.

We always end our interviews with the exact same question, which is... What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Okay, I'm going to say, we are not currently talking about all of the possible psychological effects of mask mandates. And especially on children who don't know a time before this, and I look around at four-year-olds at outdoor concerts in Austin who are more than six feet away from other groups socially distanced outside wearing a mask the whole time and I wonder does that four-year-old remember a time before seeing masks on everyone and wearing masks and what does that do to people over time collectively?

I just went, I heard a sermon, my preacher here in Texas gave the sermon about, well, it was about other things, but a portion of the sermon was about masks or veils as being a kind of ritual and a symbol. And he said, you know, I'm not here to talk about the medical application of masks. I want to talk about the symbolic and ritualistic application of masks. And I was so happy to hear someone talking about that finally. Like, we don't even know what this is doing to us collectively. And I don't see, at least here in the States, an end in sight yet. And so I wish people, instead of just reflexively saying, if you don't wear a mask everywhere, you must not care about people. I wish they could understand that, again,

take things down to our base point of agreement. We both care about people. I just might be a person who thinks it's worse for people to continue seeing this everywhere. And I think it's hard for them to wrap their head around that, that like, I don't want to wear my mask around. your four-year-old at an outdoor concert. I don't think it's healthy for your kid to see every person wearing one. But that's probably very unpopular right now. There you go. Kerry wants to kill everybody.

Well done. Particularly the four-year-olds. Yeah, the four-year-olds. No, I hear exactly what you're saying, Kerry. There's been a lot of stuff going on with that, which we could get into, but we weren't. Listen, everybody should definitely check out unsafe space because it's a great show you and Carter do. interesting interviews with all sorts of people. And as you say, it's not the usual political fair. There's a lot of culture. There's a lot of acting, theater, comedy. Obviously, you talk

about social justice as well. So there's some good red meat for the base there too. Thank you guys so much for having me. Thank you so much for coming on. And guys, thank you for watching. And we will be back with another episode or a live stream, always going out at 7pm UK time. See you soon. IP Vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the Internet, it should be protected. IPVANISH encrypts your connection and masks your IP address,

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