TRIGGERnometry - I Was a Woke Activist… Not Anymore! - Amala Ekpunobi

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

SPONSORED BY: ATHLETIC GREENS. Get a free 1-year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/triggernometry/ Amala Ekpunobi is a social media personality and commentator. Once a leftist activist, she experienced a dramatic political reversal. Now she is the presenter of 'Unapologetic with Amala' on PragerU. Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But what about you? Like, you've got a white mum and you believe that all white people are inherent. So your mom is inherently racist. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, I didn't look into these ideas too deeply. I can definitely say that, which is why they fell apart whenever I was pressed on them. I think I would have found a way to blame it on the people who I disagree with. I really think I would have managed. I really think I would have managed.

I was really good at just running my mouth and twisting words. If you look into leftism and you look into it deeply, and especially identity politics, you will find that there is no space to be whoever it is that you want to be. There is no space to think whatever it is that you want to think. And in fact, they are hell-bent on pushing people into boxes. I felt no greater racism than going on the internet and saying, I am a conservative.

It was unbelievable. how quickly people jumped to me and said, well, you're a female. You couldn't possibly be conservative. You're half black. You couldn't possibly be conservative. This is the box that is created for those identity markers, and we must jam you into that box. And if you do not fit, you are alienated. You are no longer a part of the club.

If you want to really experience or get as close to the Jim Crow experience as possible, be a black person that comes out as a conservative, and you will experience it. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisham. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is a fellow YouTuber. Amalia Pinobi, welcome to Trigonometry. It's good to be here, guys. It's great to have you on. I've been trying to do this for a while. It didn't happen, then happen. Now we're here. Anyway, it's great to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on. Before we get into the conversation itself, we always ask our

guess, what is your story? How did you get here? You've had a quite an interesting story, even though you're very young. So tell everybody what that's been like. Sure, yeah. So I'm Amala. I'm 22 years old and I'm currently working as a podcaster and social media content maker for Prager You and talking about conservative or at least right of center values on a daily basis. and I got here by virtue of actually being a reformed woke leftist. I grew up in a very small town in rural conservative Florida and happened to be raised by a single mother who is a leftist herself and works for the political left.

So growing up with her and with her influence, I was really deeply entrenched in woke ideology and thought that the best case of action that I should pursue in my life was to be an activist. So I graduated high school, started working for the very same organization that my mother was at as a youth organizer. So essentially going around and finding other young people who were maybe disillusioned with the state of America and drawing them down the pipeline of wokeism. And I did that for about a year before realizing this is not the ideology for me. I was finding a lot of hypocrisy.

I was feeling that a lot of the things that I was doing were a bit too radical. ended up leaving that organization, sort of searching for where I laid politically, and that ended up being right of center. And eventually, I just started making videos about that transformation in my life and that period, and it brought me to where I am now. And one of the interesting things that I read in terms of the research is, while you have moved from the left to being right of center, you also were, and we saw this, both you and us and a bunch of other people with a Matt Walsh incident where you're quite happy to push back against people

who you think are going too far on your own side as well. So is that because you've seen what radicalness does whichever side of the political spectrum it's on? Yes, it's definitely partially that. And it's also that having been a woke leftist and having changed my mind, I have a good idea for what works. And I've tested it and going around to different universities and talking to students who really disagree with everything it is that I stand for and that I have to say. And I found that the best course of action for talking to those sorts of people is, A, trying to understand where they're coming from and be not really indulging in those ad hominem attacks that we sometimes want to throw out at people and trying to usher them over to

the other end of the spectrum by just giving them facts and trying to meet them where they're at. And I felt with the Matt Walsh video, much like you both did, that something needed to be set because I didn't want that to be a representation of where we are in the fight against gender ideology. And you're very young for someone to be on the other side of the political spectrum. Normally it happens in their 30s and their 40s when they start to earn a bit of money and they go, hang on a second. Right. So what was a moment for you? What was your Red Poo moment?

Let's just call it that. Sure. There were many. I say this a lot. There was no specific light bulb moment that really flipped things over for me. It was gradual meeting of just roadblocks when it came to what I was trying to support. And I tried so desperately to hold on to my left-leaning ideology because I had staked so much of my life on it and so much of my identity on it. I even have a black power fist that's tattooed on my arm here that people can see in my other videos. And I got that when I was 16 years old. I got that when I was 16 years old thinking, you know what is brilliant. Let me brand myself with this sort of pseudo-religious symbol because I'm never going to deviate from this sort of thinking. But if I could hone in on one moment in particular, when I was working for this organization, we would come together and have meetings. And before every meeting, we do community agreements, which are basically rules that everybody abides by throughout the duration of, the conversation. So things like state your pronouns before you speak for the first time or if,

you know, someone has a story that is particularly oppressive and sad, let them speak the whole way through, no interrupting. And I had a coworker come up and at the end of her community agreements essentially say that all the white, cisgendered heterosexual people in the room just shouldn't speak at all during this meeting. It just wasn't their time. They had their time in history. And being biracial, I was raised by the white side of my family. So I sort of looked around this room, people who were nodding in agreement and thinking that was the right thing to do.

And I just had this little thought that was like, Amla, you're in the wrong room, I think. I think you're in the wrong room. And just ended up exploring that further. And now here we are. Do you think part of the problem with the left is if they stuck to the idea of, look, society's unequal, there's rich and there's poor,

there's an ever-widening gap between the two. This is clearly unfair. We need to do something to make society fairer economically. You might not have had that moment, and other people might not. Yeah, I think had they stuck to some of the earlier tenants of their ideology, we would be just really in a better place as a society. It seems as though when we look at, I guess, left versus right, if we want to even put it that simply today, they've sort of crossed over each other in a lot of

different ways. The left used to be super pro-scepticism. They were pushing pro-equality. They were anti-establishment. And those were the tenants that people really grasped onto. And I think that's an amount of progressivism that every society needs. Progressivism is always welcome and it's necessary to move forward as a pluralistic society. But they sort of just changed and shift and morphed into something that is completely deviated from what were the original tenants. And that's why a lot of people have problems and they're switching. I think like all of us right now having this conversation, maybe we do have liberal leanings in us.

I think everybody does. But what they've become now is just so far from liberal. Well, let's talk about that because you are right of center Francis and I didn't even go as far as that. I don't think we're kind of somewhere in the middle trying to work out exactly what we think. but one of the things we've talked a little bit about already is wokeness. And apparently, we keep being told that this is a very hard thing to define. In fact, no one who criticizes can define it at all. Do you have a definition of it that you use?

Yeah, I mean, I have, there's a lot of different definitions because it takes so many different forms. For me, it's kind of this proclivity to use superficial identity markers to make a statement about oneself and their individuality. and then to tribalistically sort of group these people within these identity markers and categorize them in a hierarchical system. If you look back at early Marxism, it was a sort of distinction was made by class and how much money and wealth you had. And now with wokeism, it's these identity markers that you can sort of stack to become a person of higher social status and oppression has become currency in that way under this system. If that makes sense. It makes perfect sense. That makes complete sense.

But I put it to you, Amala, because this is a question that I struggle with. Can you not be against that and still be on the left? You know, I think you can. And that's why we're seeing a lot of people right now who are identifying as heterodox or politically homeless. And I'm currently on that journey myself of walking around and hearing all these political labels and then getting a million definitions for what they mean. And sometimes people will talk to me and say, oh, well, you've identified as conservative.

That means this, this and that. And now I'm in a space where I'm saying, okay, just ask me on an issue by issue basis. I'll tell you how I feel about that certain issue. And that's how we should all be as individuals. I think the labels have really harmed us, but we are patterned human beings. And that's what we like to go by. and that's what we use, I think you can certainly be a left-leaning or liberal person without subscribing yourself to wokeism.

USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day, like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. And they're coming back to something you said earlier, Amala, in terms of the ability to persuade people, that's something we think about a lot on this show, because Ultimately, I think that it will be the answer, particularly with young people who, in your case, it doesn't sound like you'd been exposed to a different worldview prior to actually having the

experience of being confronted with what some of the views that you held meant in practice and in reality, right? But it also doesn't sound to me like you were persuaded by anyone. You were persuaded by experience. So is it actually possible, in your opinion, to persuade people to address? different point of view by talking to them? I do think it's possible. For me, it was a combination of things. I had these unanswered questions and these deep feelings that I just couldn't quite place. And as a young person, I turned to the internet. So I started going online not to find different

opinions, but to reinforce my beliefs and to sort of find the statistics that support my ideas about police brutality and systemic racism. And then I stumbled upon people who were content creators with a conservative mindset or just looking for the objective truths in regard to these matters. So I ran into Tom Sol and Larry Elder and Dave Rubin and all these people who were having these discussions. And once you start watching these videos, you just fall down a rabbit hole. And for me, I just fell down that rabbit hole of people talking to me through a screen. and that was how I woke up.

But when I go to universities and meet with young people who were just like I was, say, four years ago and have a lot of vitriol and hatred towards people who disagree with them, the most success that I've had is in telling my story of being a former leftist and kind of looking at them and saying, you know, four years ago,

I would have been the one who organized the protests that you all are here for right now. And now I just want to have a conversation with you and I don't want any gotcha moments. I'm not trying to come at you and make you feel stupid or brainwashed. And it's had a low success rate in that maybe five out of the 50 students that are protesting me come into the speech. But I think five is better than zero. And it's better than a lot of conservative pundits, at least at the time, are getting.

Amla, I see the way sometimes, and maybe we've been guilty of this or maybe I've been guilty of this, the way that we talk about your generation. And a lot of the time, it's not particularly complimentary and whatever else. And analyzing it now, I think that's actually quite unfair. Why do you think it is that so many of your peers ascribe to this ideology? I would have loved it if you'd ask you,

why do you think it is so many of your peers, a woke snowflake idiots? Bastards! I was going to interrupt and say, you know, a lot of the criticism is rightful. Our generation is pretty messed up, at least in my experience in meeting them. Why, I think that's just, youthfulness at its core is wanting to be transformative, wanting to be rebellious, and a little bit of cynicism, I think, is mixed in youth as well. And I think with that, you have this perfect cocktail for wanting to be

a leftist. We are searching for value or searching for a fight. least I certainly was at that age. And it was served to me on a silver platter. Not only do you have something to fight, but it's given to you by virtue of being born the way that you're born. So here's the fight. Here's what you have to do. And the only way that you get through this is by going out and convincing other people to be activist towards this cause. So it's extremely enticing. And then you couple that with a group of people who also wants to give you everything. We want you to have a free school. We want you to have universal basic income. We want to sort of even out the economy and make sure that there's no poverty and everybody's doing well and everybody's educated. And all of

these things sound wonderful. Plus they give you a fight to fight. So I think that's why young people love leftism. Conservatism or even going through and trying to find objective truths is a lot harder to do, and it's a lot less fun. It's definitely not as cool to hear that you don't have as many problems and you don't have sort of a crutch to stand on for where you're at in life. But also, I mean, if you look at the history of the United States, it's not great, like a lot of histories, or actually every history of every country, there's been inequality, there's been racism. So isn't there a kernel of truth to these people's arguments? Yes. So I talk a lot about where woke ideas come from.

and how they sort of become courses, essentially, at college that you can now take. And a lot of people will say, well, how could you be against critical race theory? They're teaching it at Yale. They're teaching it at Harvard, things like that. And it's because these ideas start with a very strong moral impulse. I think a lot of people who are anti-woke get one thing in particular wrong, and it's that these people sort of lack a strong sense of morality or that they are inherently immoral.

That's not the case at all. In fact, they're very strongly driven. by their moral impulses. And when you look at America's history and the transgressions that have been committed, a lot of people have moral impulses towards those things. And they go, absolutely, that is a horrible thing that should have never happened.

And of course, we need to take some form of reparative measures. And that's what woke leftists think they're doing now. The only issue is they tend to skew to the most radical form of prescription that you could possibly give to a problem like, racism or sexism, instead of saying this thing is wrong and we should call out people when they do it and there should maybe be social repercussions for somebody who is racist or sexist, they skew all the way over to the left and say, well, if you are white, you are inherently racist,

if you are a man, you are inherently sexist. And we learn this throughout our history. So they use the kernels of truth to make a much broader claim that people fall for. And what are these colonels of truth, Amela? Yeah, I mean, we went through quite a long history of slavery in this country. And after freeing the enslaved, we went through a Jim Crow era where we still could not manage to legally prescribe equality to our society. We went through a period of time where women couldn't vote. They were not enticed to get educations or have jobs. there are certain disparities among people based on their race, their age, their size, all of these things exist and should be discussed and talked about.

And it's funny, we fight on the prescription for how we solve these things, but we also fight on whether or not we're willing to acknowledge. And I think everybody should acknowledge that these transgressions have existed throughout our history. It's not a wrong thing to say. In fact, acknowledging the transgressions should be a fulfilling thing because we also acknowledge the progress that we've made out of them. You know what's weird to me, Amala? I wasn't born here in the UK. I'm from Russia originally. I don't know what your family background is.

I imagine you were born in the U.S. But you probably know that the things that you were talking about, not in an identical way, but they happened in every country. I mean, I talk about it in my book. slavery was pretty common everywhere. And actually the British Empire was the first to end it, as opposed to being the worst of the culprits and so on. So do you have any insight into why our societies in particular have become so self-flagellating? And instead of looking at those things that we've just discussed in a kind of,

well, that's history, thank God, we're not there anymore. Let's be grateful approach, which is my view of it, really. we sort of go, no, no, we're all terrible and we must beat ourselves up endlessly about it. Yeah, I wish I knew why our society in particular chose to take that route. I would like to say maybe we've become so comfortable and we don't have as many problems here that we are now trying to find them and we've looked to history to do that. But there's a lot of other countries who are just as comfortable as we are here in the U.S. I think our academic structure is maybe different than other countries. And a lot of these ideas, when you trace them back to their roots,

are going back to the 60s and 70s where you essentially had college students writing theories about these ideas of critical race theory or critical feminism. And then these journals are published and reviewed and published and reviewed. And eventually they become tenured professors and they're teaching classes like that. And I think maybe our structure in academia or our system here has given way to these issues. But I can't really pin down why America has so much guilt towards its history and other countries don't. No, you identified a couple of very good points. One is comfort, the other, the indoctrination is cool.

You put those two together. You're going to get some pretty powerful results. Yeah, when I was first going through this journey of finding people, who whose ideas really resonated with me. I found a man by the name of Yuri Besmanov, which I'm sure you're probably both familiar with. And he did several speeches on ideological subversion and how it starts with education.

And his videos, if the people listening have not seen them, please go and watch them because I think there's no better description of what is happening right now. And he claims that it starts in education. So maybe that's the root cause. Amela, do you think as well it's social media, especially when you look at during the pandemic, what happened when we were all effectively locked in our homes and we mainline social media and into our eyeballs for 18 hours a day? No wonder that social justice and all these organizations rose to prominence.

Yeah, it's crazy how bad you will think the world is if you're on social media. It's unbelievable. I'm of the opinion that we should not be as hooked into news as we are. It's sort of unbelievable if we break down on a scale. How many sad, happy, it doesn't even matter the sort of emotion behind the stories, but how many stories we are hearing on a daily basis, how often we are looking at other people's faces on a daily basis, how often we are seeing our own faces mirrored back to us on a daily basis. I don't think any of this is particularly helpful or healthy for the human.

mind and social media, I mean, we've studied and in research as far as we know now, because it's a relatively new thing on the human brain, is deteriorating young minds in particular. You have not only this influx of stories that you're hearing all the time, which can make you think the world is a lot worse than it actually is, but you also have comparing your life to other lives and young women in particular are really susceptible to developing mental health issues due to that. And social media is also working on a cycle of glamorizing, fetishizing, oppression, mental health problems. And you're, you go farther on social media, the more unique you are. And it's unfortunate that not everybody can be the most unique person in the world, but we can all try to emulate and sort of absorb the

things we're seeing on social media. And unfortunately, I think we're absorbing some of the worst bits of what's on the internet. And anecdotally, looking at your own generation, in particular, women, what have you seen? Oof, I mean, with young women on the internet, I think it's really changed everything. The internet used to be, at least social media in particular, used to be a sort of highlight reel of your life. And everybody, for the most part, knew it was fake. You're not on the beach every day. You just took 50 photos and now you're posting them and you're not really living this glamorous life and you and your boyfriend are so in love, but I saw you guys fighting last weekend at the football game, stuff like that. But now social media is just how many pieces of

myself can I put on the internet and we're sort of mining all the bits of us that we feel we can commercialize to other people. And young women, when they're going through just their formative years, I went through it, being exposed to social media can just fry your brain. You're seeing people who look nothing like you, who are getting all of this attention. You see just basically an algorithm that's telling you what is valuable and just how valuable it is. And you start applying yourself to your own social media accounts and seeing what bits of you people take to and what bits of you people don't and essentially you're creating metrics for your personality and who you are as an individual. And young women right now are struggling way more than they ever had with suicidal

ideation, with different mental health psych comorbidities. And I struggle to think that that social media is not a deeply set part of that problem. Yeah. Particularly when we look at young women and what's happened to them. It always shocks me when I see women of your age, Amela, and they've got Botox. Why have you got Botox? Why have you got lip fillers? You are in the flush of youth. The last thing you need is to freeze parts of your face so you don't get wrinkles. That to me, it strikes me as awful. Yeah, it's crazy. And I live in L.A., so it's like every woman, every woman is, it's just so normal. I'm like, oh, what are you doing this Saturday? I'm going to get Botox or I'm going to get filler and there's a long line of girls all doing the same and they're all

in their early 20s and we've just it's grown so normal when you go on social media and you see people who are using face filters or their Instagram models and they've gotten all this work done you think oh well why shouldn't I do the same and in fact it's greatly encouraged I can't tell you how many videos that I see of women saying if you need a sign to go get Botox here's your sign to do it today look at my face, it's so beautiful. And it sucks that women are so obsessed with aging and something that's going to happen naturally. And it sucks that we cannot take on aging as something that is beautiful and something that should be celebrated. We're celebrating all the wrong things. And in fact, reinforcing what feminists claim to be against, this idea that beauty is something that needs to be

held on to or beauty is something that you cannot keep if you age naturally and just so so harmful. And I can't imagine having a young daughter in this day and age who is looking up and seeing all of these standards that they're somehow supposed to meet naturally, but can never do that. And do you think that's part of the reason as well that you kind of drifted to the right when you look at the things that are being espoused by society? And a lot of the times, but also by people on the left, you know, that you can be whatever you want, you can change your gender, you can change this, you can change that. And the reality is, they're denying biology. They're denying human nature and then it's a denial of nature itself.

Yes, the denial of truth was a big mover for me in changing my viewpoint on a lot of different subjects. And it's also the fact that there's so much hypocrisy in that statement of you can be whoever you want to be when you really get down to the root of how they are implementing this in their own lives. If you look into leftism and you look into it deeply and especially identity politics, you will find that there is no space to be whoever it is that you want to be. There is no space to think whatever it is that you want to think. And in fact, they are hellbent on pushing people into boxes. I felt no greater racism than going on the internet and saying I am a conservative. It was unbelievable how quickly people jumped to me and said, well, you're a female.

You couldn't possibly be conservative. You're half black. You couldn't possibly be conservative. This is the box that is created for those identity markers, and we must jam you into that box. And if you do not fit, you are alienated. You are no longer a part of the club. So as much as they say, everybody's special and unique and they can be whoever they want to be, they don't think that at all.

And they think there's no greater, I guess, social, experiment to prove that that is the case, then what's happening right now with gender. If you look at somebody like Dylan Mulvaney who came up in that Matt Walsh video, who we've both been talking about quite a bit, Dylan Mulvaney is a feminine man. It's as simple and plain as that. But because he's expressed himself femininely, they say, well, you must now shove yourself into the box that is womanhood. And we must now claim you as a woman.

We must call you, she and her. And this is the box that you now fit in. I'm pretty sure, Dylan is quite happy to be shoved in that box. I think Dylan is desperate to get in that box. He really is. I think he's proven that time and time again. But the issue still stands. There's no way to give who you are.

No, I get your point completely. And, you know, it's the denial. I mean, if you're a fan of Thomas O'all, the whole idea of nature, he's written extensively about how the left and the right see that very differently. And I'm curious with you living in L.A. Do you have any friends? I do. I have managed to find friends.

I've got some brilliant friends, some of whom I've met through Prager You, others who I've met just through moving to the city, met my boyfriend here in L.A. somehow. I just think I've been very lucky. No, it's funny. The reason I ask is a very good friend of us called Bridget Fettersy, who you probably have heard of. When we traveled around America last year,

we did a whole trip, and we went to Virginia and Washington, in New York and a bunch of places. And everywhere we went, there's gigantic American flags all over the place. Loads of houses have them outside. And then we got to Bridget's house and she had this like tiny little American flag in the corner of a little bit of a door. And I went, that's California patriotism. You have a flag, but it is about this big in a corner because you can't have the big one.

No, yeah, you're 100% right. Most of the people who I meet who watch my content here in L.A., I can see them because they kind of walk up to me and they whisper that they like what I have to say or that they follow me on Instagram. You can't say anything too loud. You have a lot of quiet friends here in Los Angeles. But surely, Amela, it's going to come to a point with L.A. in San Francisco, when you look around and you go, this can't carry on. This is insanity. I like to think that's going to happen. I don't know. I don't know. I really don't know.

It's crazy to watch as things just deteriorate and people, I don't know if they're not making the connection between what they're voting for and what's happening in their city or if they just simply cannot bring themselves to, you know, tick the ballot box of somebody who they feel they fundamentally disagree with. I don't know that it's going to change. And all the conversations that I have with people who are supporting the stuff that's happening in L.A., it's kind of like they just turn a blind eye to. to the destruction.

And you would think, like Yuri Vesmanov says, you don't really recognize it until the military boot kicks you in the ass. The military boot is kicking them in the ass here. And they're not making the connection. I don't know. I don't know how long this lasts for. You should be the person who has the answer to this, because I guess the question would be four years ago,

if someone had said to you, look around, you know, there's drug addicts who are not getting the help they need, sleeping on the streets, being sexualists, resulting disease to each other and the rest of the population, like all of that. Yeah. Surely, Amla, you're against that as a woke activist. Surely you want those people to be better, right? So what would your answer have been?

I think I would have found a way to blame it on the people who I disagree with. I really think I would have managed. I really think I would have managed. I was really good at just running my mouth and twisting words. And I think that's exactly what I would. I probably would have spiked. and said, you know, the income disparity is created by conservatives and we need to tax the rich. And that's what's going to help these people who are impoverished and who are, you know, doing

drugs on the street. I would have found a way knowing myself. But, you know, like I said, there's got to be a point because a couple of days ago, Guy Pearce came out, the famous Hollywood actor, actually I'm a massive fan of. I love his work. Transphab. And he came out and went. Look, you know, shouldn't actors be able to play all different types of roles and shouldn't a non-trans actor be able to play a trans role? Didn't even say that, actually.

What he said was even more gentle. What he said is if trans actors have to, if you have to play a trans, if a trans role has to be played by a trans actor, then is it then restricting what roles trans actors can play? So he was formally at least looking out for the trans actors. He wasn't saying, shouldn't we all be able to, he wasn't even that brave. No. How dare he? And then, and then obviously, you know, the, you know, the might of all the, all the people who came out and were just saying, he's this, he's at, he's whatever else.

And that he had to make a groveling apology as they all do. But you look at it and again you go, this, surely, and even an opinion as reasonable as this one, which is shared, by, I would say probably 98% of the population. And it's deemed to be incorrect. This isn't sustainable. It's not, it's certainly not sustainable. And I don't know exactly how it falls apart. I think a lot of it is going to be with sort of exactly what you just described,

them eating each other alive. Because with, you know, liberal people, censor people, right-leaning people, for the most part, there's room, there's quite a bit of room for disagreement. within their respective camps. With wokeism, there isn't. And that was where I felt a lot of pressure myself and felt pushed away by them to answer the questions that I had because I would maybe raise my hand and go,

oh, wait a second, you know, maybe open borders doesn't sound like the best solution to the problems we're talking about here. And you are chastised to hell. I mean, it's crazy to even the amount of pressure you feel to completely be subservient to everything that they say and to tow the line.

And I can imagine that that pressure can be a lot. And it's a big weight for a lot of people who would self-describe as woke leftist. And I think it has to be personal for you to change your mind. And often that personal experience that people have is being canceled or feeling that pressure of having a dissident opinion and maybe not being able to verbalize it

or when you verbalize it, going through the attacks that you feel. So I think that is part of how this fall, apart, but it's also going to fall apart in just the chaos that we're experiencing in cities. It's unfortunate that that doesn't happen. However, until it hits the backyard of legislators. In San Francisco, we saw Mayor London Breed go, you know, the crime has gotten too crazy and we need to do something about it and we need to reinforce our police officers when she was

one of the main pushers of the defund the police. But it wasn't until the crime hit her side of town that she had to say something about it. And that's the unfortunate part of all of this. You have to feel the failing. Yes. And another unfortunate part of it is how racist it all is. You see white liberals, and they're not liberals, but let's just call them what they would identify as. Yeah.

Respect their pronouns. Her racial epithets at ethnic minorities for disagreeing with them. And you go, I mean, this is. isn't right, is it? And everyone's like, no, this is what we do now. And you go, well, I don't know if I'm on board with this. Yeah. So I said before, the most racism I've ever experienced was after coming out as a conservative. And I cannot, I cannot press that enough. So I grew up in a really small rural conservative town, was surrounded by mainly white people, was subscribed completely to this idea of racism and white people being inherently racist, but it never experienced.

an ounce of it. I come out as a conservative, and suddenly every single piece of racist rhetoric that is typically ascribed to conservatives was hurled at me. I mean, I was called a house negro. I was told that I would always be seen as an N-word, no matter what I did. I was told that I was an Uncle Tom, a coon. And of course, this is the same experience of Larry Elder, of Tom Sol, of Candice, so-ones of anybody who chooses to come out and say these things. If you want to really experience, or get as close to the Jim Crow experience as possible, be a black person that comes out as a conservative. And you will experience it instantly.

I'm like, can I ask you something about like your earlier years? Because you mentioned growing up in a mostly white, small conservative town. You said you're raised by the white side of your family, right? Yeah. So your mother is white. She's raising you. She had sex with a black guy. Yeah.

Like, how are you then able in that situation to think that, you know, all white people are inherently racist when you've got a white mom who got together with a black guy and who's raising a mixed race daughter? Presumably she wasn't calling you the N-word in your crib, right? Right, right. No, my mom never called me the N-word just for the record. So, yeah, my mom, of course, is a white ally. But it's interesting when I was working with all of these white people, including my mother at this organization, they feel so much white guilt that they themselves feel there's no way to sort of separate themselves from the history of white people. And although it might not take form as blatant racism towards black people, they may have black friends, they may marry a black person and have biracial kids, they still recognize things like. like unconscious bias, or say, you know, that they can still fall victim to prejudice against

people of color or maybe have some internalized ideas towards people of color. So there's always just a little kernel still left there to be able to push the narrative that white people are inherently racist. But what about you? Like, you've got a white mom and you believe that all white people are inherent. So your mom is inherently racist. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, I didn't. look into these ideas too deeply.

I can definitely say that, which is why they fell apart whenever I was pressed on them. What is so enticing about leftism is not only that you don't have to look into the idea so deeply, but also you are safeguarded in somewhat of a cultish manner that you have no obligation to defend those ideas. And that, in fact, the very act of trying to challenge somebody on those beliefs, is inactive racism, is inactive sexism. So all I had to do was when people were asking me questions about this, go, you're racist just for asking me that.

Your sex is just for asking me that question. And you're encouraged to make those accusations and to not talk to people who you disagree with. Yeah. You've talked and you've mentioned the fact that you're a conservative. What does conservatism mean to you? Because the thing is, with all these labels, they actually mean something very different to different people.

Someone will say, I'm conservative, and you know what? You are a conservative in this country. Their chances are they're pro-gay marriage and they're anti-gun. Now, if you do that in the United States, that kind of means you're a Democrat. Yeah, it's interesting. And I sort of came out of the gate when I had this transformation and went, okay, well, I actually fell for the same problem that I had when I was a leftist where I said, well, if I'm not a leftist, then I must be a conservative, and I sort of went really hard

on that, and said, well, if these people are wrong and these people must be right. And now I'm sort of floating in this space of, okay, do I identify as conservative, or am I just right leaning on an issue by issue basis? And I'm totally honest in saying that that's something that I'm still exploring. I mean, for the most part, I am anti-feminist as far as modern-day feminism is concerned. I am pro-gun and pro-second amendment. I am pro-gay marriage. So that's a point for the left-leaning end of things. And I'm just going through all these issues. And I guess why I said right of center at the beginning is that I feel I'm socially and fiscally to the right when it comes to American politics. Okay. And what does that mean? Let's dig a little deeper. What does that

mean socially and fiscally. Sure. So socially, I guess it means rejecting a lot of the woke narratives and the identity of politics. I don't prescribe myself to the idea of oppression in this country. Socially, I am pro-Second Amendment, which is a strong issue. I happen to be pro-life with some exceptions when it comes to abortion, which is a recent topic. socially with feminism. I'm very much against all of the rhetoric there. I'm trying to think what other common social issues are we going back and forth with. When you fly with Hawaiian Airlines, it's hard to tell where your flight ends and vacation begins. Relax with Free Starlink, the fastest Wi-Fi

in the sky thanks to T-Mobile. Go ahead, stream your movie. Book the couple's massage. Make a dinner reservation while we bring you to our island home. Hawaii starts here. You know what's interesting, other than the gun thing, which is obviously a big divider in your country, all of those things until about three minutes ago would have put you bang in the middle of politics in America and in the UK, actually.

You know what I mean? Imagine you want people to be supported, but you don't want a massive welfare state. I imagine that you believe that women should have rights, but you don't think air conditioning is sexist. Like these are all things until about two minutes ago, most people believe they were not. And that's one of the things that I kind of see happenings.

I don't know that people like you and people like us that are being pushed away from where they started, which would have been on the left. And necessarily all that conservative right wing in the first place, I just think we're not woke. And I think what we're kind of, find out is like what does that, what's the space that that creates that has a more positive orientation towards the future? Yeah, I'm trying to figure that out as well. I've been thinking

a lot and mulling over just not going by anything anymore and just going around and talking about the issues as they come, the current events as they come, because in many ways, I think in being anti-woke, I did at some point get pigeonholed into conservatism. And sometimes, you'll say things, and I'm sure you get this as well, where maybe conservatives will follow you because you have your certain stance on gender, and then you say something else, and it's like the roof is blown off because you're not fully subscribed to... Every week. Everything. Yeah, that happens every week. So that's an issue that I've gone through. I congratulated Dave Rubin on having children through surrogacy, and that was like, how dare you call yourself a conservative? And this happens.

So I'm honestly, I think going to move to just an anti-label future and just let people deal with it. It's crazy to me because I'm a big supporter and fan of Russell Brand, and I watch all the videos that he puts out. He's now called a far-right extremist, and I just cannot fathom how anybody would make that characterization for him. So I think exactly what you said is right. Yeah. I suppose the challenge for you, if I can say so, might be that you have locked yourself into a Prager U, which is a conservative organization, nothing wrong with that, but you are kind of attached, aren't you? Yeah, I mean, I think I am free to express, all the things that I've expressed

today are the same things that I express on my show. I think they just happen to have that conservative label on their organization. I feel for the most part, with what Prager U puts out, it very much resonates with me. So I don't know that I've been necessarily stuck with the label itself or that people see that from me. For the most part, when I'm meeting people or talking to people, I made a really wide range of different ideological backgrounds and leanings and people just know me for who I am. I don't think the label has to be stuck. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. And I do think that's a problem now, is that labels don't mean anything. But you were talking and you're making criticisms about

leftism. And if you would explain to somebody 15 years ago, that's what leftism is. They look at you, like you've been dropped on your head. I think a woman is a woman. Yeah. You'd be like, right. Yeah, like I said, they've completely switched. I mean, leftism, if you look at back on what it was in maybe the 1970s, I was like, oh yeah, pro-scepticism, anti-establishments, you know, you are skeptical of government entities and you probably don't want it to grow beyond the point that it's at now. Oh yeah, that sounds like a leftist to me. I think I'd be able to get behind that, but it's just shifted and morphed. And I think as they pull farther left, the people, anybody who's on the other end is going to pull farther to the other side. And that's where they're actually going to run into some issues

because I can't imagine what a right-leaning equivalent would look like to some of the stuff that they're managing to pull off today, and I don't want to see that, quite frankly. Do you think America needs more political parties, Amela? So actually, so the people... Go on, tell me what. Big question. I don't know that it needs... It's so weird, because I don't know that it needs more political parties or just no political

parties. I don't know how I would go about doing this. Our founding fathers directly warned against the creation of political parties, George Washington in particular, and said... and basically prophecy that it was going to lead to these tribalistic issues, and it essentially just becomes, you know, cogs in a wheel that are just stuck, and they're never going to move anywhere, which is where we're at right now. And where our conversation comes about defining leftism,

defining liberalism, defining conservative, these are major problems because most people sit in the middle on any particular given issue. But now we're in this sort of split case of left versus right or Democrat versus Republican and people feel the need to go for the side that best represents how they feel on what, 10 different issues. So I don't know if I'm just anti all political parties like our founding fathers were. I guess in the system that we're in now, the necessity would be to create more because I don't think there's any way that we are going to break down. the two-party system that we're in right now. And there's no better example of an issue on which actually there is that level of polarization and a complete lack of consensus than the Second Amendment and guns, which you brought up.

And obviously there was this terrible shooting recently. And this is, by the way, when we're in America, we went to the gun range and shot some guns. We went to a big gun show. I always said, I'm happy to live in Britain where we don't have private ownership of handguns other than for hunting. But if I lived in America, most places in America, I probably wouldn't have a gun in central New York.

I don't think I'd be allowed. But most places, I'd have a train with firearms, et cetera. However, I have to say, from a British perspective, we look at you guys and we go, that's crazy. Like, what's going on in America is insane, right? And the reason we think that is because in this country, in the late 90s, I think it was, we had one school shooting in a place called Dunblane and Scotland.

And after that, everyone, let's not have guns anymore. We didn't. We haven't had a mass shooting since in the school. So to us, I'm not saying it applies to America. I'm not saying it should apply to America. But from a British perspective, generally, it's like this kind of seems like a solvable problem. So tell us why it's not. Yeah, so my boyfriend's from Sydney, Australia, so he sees the same thing that you see and goes,

just like, what the fuck is going on and why are you guys allowing this to happen here? It should not be the case. And I'm certainly sympathetic to that view. And I think a lot of people here in America are. It very deeply goes back to the foundation of this country. And I think with the Second Amendment and the fact that this country began with an uprising towards what they deemed to be a tyrannical totalitarian government, people are, are worried about that ever happening again,

and they think that the Second Amendment is pivotal in protecting themselves from that possibility in the future. And in America, since we are so pro-individualism and so pro-freedom, the freedom to protect oneself is something that so many people hold nearer and dearer to their hearts. So we are dealing with the polarization of those that would be happy to give that up,

and those who think that it's both fundamental to the founding of this country and a right that they should have as an individual to protect themselves. So I don't know that the gun issue is ever going to get solved. I think it's going to get stricter and stricter and stricter, but I don't know that we're ever going to go back on the Second Amendment. No, I don't imagine you will. And actually the argument you gave, which is resisting government tyranny, I think is the strongest argument, actually.

in favor of gun ownership. I don't necessarily think that that means it is a strong argument. The reason I say that is, look at what happened during COVID, right? People were locked in their homes, and a lot of people were against that. Did they go out and fight for their rights? Yeah. I think they're, in a sense, waiting or using that example to be more of a, when the rubber meets the road. I don't know that it would be some sort of revolution or uprising, but when the

government comes... There's a British debate again. I promise you, we're not going to do it. We haven't got the army, all the balls. We're worried about you guys anymore. Yeah. I know what you mean, and it's a difficult issue, but I think you make the point, you make the right point, which is on a practical level, given the number of people that have to agree to to amend the Constitution, it's just not, it's not a, whether people, whatever the rights and wrongs it would are, it's just not going to happen, right? Right, right. And it's, I mean, economically, the government has no incentive to do something like that. And I think just the amount of, you know, the common argument, the bad men with the guns who are running rampant in specifically our metropolitan

areas, people want to protect themselves. And for the most part, law-abiding gun owners, are not necessarily the problem. I don't know about the case of this national shooter because I don't know that what's come out there. I certainly think with issues of mental illness and people being assessed as a harm to themselves or a harm to others, there certainly needs to be stricter laws.

I am certainly for stricter laws as far as gun control is concerned. And I don't think we should be in this frivolous society where you could just go anywhere and get anything at any given moment. Does it worry you, Amela, the divisions in your country? The fact that everyone has to pick a team, the fact that everyone has to pick a side. When the reality is, most people don't care that much about politics and nor should they,

because as we all know, there are far more important things in life. Why are we being forced to pick a team continually? Why are we being forced to pick a team continually? It's tough because where politics doesn't matter on. a day-to-day basis, it is starting to affect people's daily lives a lot more. The reason that we're talking about these gender issues is because now we got like kids talking about sex and sexuality in school and developing mental health issues or trying to transition. So in the grand scheme, I think a lot of people think, oh, well, politics doesn't matter all that much, but politics and

culture are great movers for social change and change in our daily lifestyles. So I think that That's why people are polarized and asked to choose. Am I frightened a little bit about the amount of division? A little bit. Sometimes I'm going to give out speeches and I think, okay, what does security look like at this event and what's going to happen? And somebody needs to keep an eye on things. So nobody should feel like that in doing the work that we do.

And it seems as though everybody does. So I'm certainly concerned. I don't know what necessarily the solution is, breaking down the tribalism, though. Well, I think you're doing it, actually, which is it's honest inquiry, being prepared to change your mind, being able to see where people are coming from, trying to meet them where they're at, and being honest with yourself, because I think it's very, very tempting, as you talked about, the moment you realize that you are not, you don't fit in the environment

in which we found the same thing. We were two comedians in an extremely woke comedy industry, from which unlike the United States is no escape. There's one industry. And if you, if you fall file of that, there's no way for you to go unless you want to go to another country. And once that happens, it's very tempting, as you say, to go to the other side and be like, oh, these guys have all the answers. But when you go there, you find out they really, really don't. And so I think honest inquiry of the type that you are engaged in and we try to engage in is the way to go. Listen, it's been an absolutely pleasure chatting with you. We're going to ask you a few questions from our local supporters that only they will

get to see the answer to, and they're always brilliant. But before we let you go, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that you think we really should be? I think I'm going to go with this. I've been mulling it over. Relationships are very important. Familiar friendships, all of these just deeply set relationships that you can build in your life are really important, and people should be focusing on that regardless of their political ideology. I get asked, I get the most when I'm doing interviews is how is the relationship between you and your mom, you're on two different sides of the spectrum, how is this working? And I tell people we are closer than we've ever been

because we've decided that that is not the most important part of our relationship. And so many people now, I think, feel lonely where they're at. And that's also what is pushing forward this political divide. It's social media. It's a lack of relationships. It's a lack of human interaction and deep human interaction. So prioritize that as much as you prioritize your job and your political fights and all these different things. And you'll find that your life is just so much better

and so much happier. So that's what I want people to talk about and think about. Awesome. Well, Amla, before we head over to local, just tell everybody where to find you on the internet, you know, all the social media. And of course, you're unapologetic with Amla on YouTube here as well. Yeah, sure.

So you can find me anywhere on any platform by searching Amala at Pinobi. I know it's a mouthful, but you will find me at the end of it. And yeah, I'm everywhere and active all the time. Amalakhanobi, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for watching.

And for those of you who have been enjoying the show, always remember that it goes out Wednesdays and Sundays, 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. What was the craziest thing that you believed when you were still woke?