TRIGGERnometry - Is Mass Immigration Making Women Less Safe? - Alex Phillips

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

Alex Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster, and former politician. From 2019 to 2020 she served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party’s South East England constituency. Alex was head of media at the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which she left in September 2016, later joining Reform UK. She was a GB News presenter between June 2021 and September 2022 and joined Talk in July 2023. Follow Alex on X: https://twitter.com/ThatAlexWoman SPONSOR: Express VPN. Go to https://www.expressvpn.com/trigger/ and get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package! SPONSOR: Shopify - sign up for a £1 per month trial at https://www.shopify.co.uk/trigger/ Join our Premium Membership for early access, extended and ad-free content: https://triggernometry.supercast.com OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube: @xentricapc  Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/#mailinglist 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

You know, a lot of women increasingly feel very unsafe, particularly in the centres of our cities. A man is going to not see it, because if you're with a man, it's a blocking factor. You don't get the street harassment. There is a direct correlation between migratory flows from certain nations and the uptick in sexual harassment, rape and assault. I'm listening to this, and I'm thinking to myself, right,

well, why aren't the feminists on the case? There just doesn't seem the willingness to tackle very thorny issues. anymore. Is it a lack of willingness? Are they scared? Alex, thanks for coming on. It's great to have you on finally. There's lots of stuff you've been talking about in recent days. And actually, we've had you booked before all of these riots have happened. And what we wanted to talk to you about is something that you've been talking about, which needs to be talked about, which is the fact that, you know, a lot of women increasingly feel very unsafe, particularly in the centres of our cities. Yeah, I feel like we've got a pre and post-riot Britain, don't we?

It's almost like now I feel I've got to self-censor and really monitor everything I'm saying when it comes to this debate, which is kind of a sort of horrible anxiety-inducing dystopian feeling. Well, don't censor yourself because... No, that's what this is all about. No, I think, look, it's very obvious, okay? When you look around the world at various other countries, their cultural morays and normatives are different to ours. I don't think we need to make a pretense of that because that's part of the reason people would argue

that people flee these countries, that people come to the UK for refuge. And particularly when we look at North African, Middle Eastern countries or countries across Africa, actually, but parts of the world where you might have an Orthodox Muslim element to society, women's rights aren't exactly top of their list. And so men living in those cultures

I have a very different idea of how women should behave, first of all, and then how they should behave towards women. I think, you know, this isn't just about you come from this country and you're going to have views that are incompatible with our own. There is built into this, I think, a class element as well. If you get a sort of Afghan physicist, for example, someone who's university educated, who has probably had a lot of exposure to the Western world, they're probably going to have a very different view of,

liberties and rights, perhaps a far more progressive framework to their internalized morality than someone who's lower down the pecking order. And so when it comes to immigration, it's about both quality and quantity. And I think what the West has seen a lot of over recent years has been an influx of men coming from countries where they have been brought up to have a very different viewpoint towards women. And their exposure has been very different to that of a Western male, both in terms of how women dress, whether or not women are visible in society. But as well as those simple things, you've also got an underlying current of the pornification of society. So, you know,

actually most Islamic countries have ways to ban, especially user-generated porn content. People have VPNs and so on and so forth. But when this material does read, them, men from other cultures, they're probably more likely to be seeing women in those videos who are Western. And then of course we can start talking about the sort of content that's in those videos. And that affects all men who are sort of regular and, you know, consumers of most online pornography today. It isn't sort of shaped in the whole 1970s way. Can I repair your washing machine and sort of, you know, filtered light. That's not quite far away from, um, um, the sort of content being mass produced today.

So you put all these factors together. And then you put these men into a country where there are women going out in miniskirts and getting drunk. And then you add on top of that another layer of complexity, which is women are being told that your body is your own to do what you want with. And pop culture has itself been hypersexualized. And you've created a cocktail where, you know,

something's going to go very well. And it is. One of the things I found interesting is you are actually somebody's incredibly well-traveled. You've lived in many different parts of the world. How does that inform your particular willingness to speak out about this? Hugely, because, you know, one thing I've found from living in, not all countries, but Ghana, for instance, and Kenya, is that this idea of woke, this idea of taboo and you can't talk about the difficult subjects doesn't exist. They are not constrained by some of the things, the straitjackets, that we have self-imposed on our societies in the Western world. That actually, it's not just the subject of this sort of huge cultural clash going on with the safety of women.

There are so many other subjects which are being not discussed fully or hidden from view or not taken seriously, which are having devastating consequences. And where taboos in other cultures, their religious cultures, the religious taboos and cultural taboos, ours are largely built around language and the sharing of information. And that is something that I think is incredibly perilous if we want to progress a society and deal with some of the massive issues we're facing. Alex, there's going to be a lot of people who are watching this interview. Blokes, shall we just call them, who?

Are you like to do that in the 20? Brookes, men. But they're not really aware of the challenges that a woman might face. So can you just explain to us the challenges that are facing women at the moment from this particular issue? And also, how has it got worse over the years? Okay. I mean, it's interesting because, you know, I often think a man is going to not see it. Because if you're with a man, it's a blocking factor.

You don't get the street harassment. When I'm walking down the street with my boyfriend, men aren't coming up to me, trying to, you know, get in my personal space, follow me, chat me up. So that is weird. It's sort of like, you know, doubles the potential for men not having this visible in front of them. But, you know, I'm not the sort of woman who goes, oh, you know, someone who looks at me or tries to chat me up or wolf whistles, that's awful. You know, I think that's sort of hyperfeminism, if you want to call it that.

I don't think it's feminism at all. actually sort of breeds distrust between the sexes, which has a very sort of negative outcome. But if a man is being persistent, if they're following you, if they're trying to touch you, if there's an element of sort of intimidation there, then all of a sudden,

a situation that's an innocent conversation suddenly becomes extremely anxiety-inducing for a start. And then, look, we know, don't we, from the grooming gangs that we have had across the United Kingdom, that these are culturally dominated by men from the sort of countries and backgrounds with the same morays that I'm talking about. So this isn't some sort of brand new information.

It's something we all know still feel afraid to talk about and there's still loath to address. But in the last week, the last week alone, okay, so I've had my friend call me up talking to me about how, men who she believed to be Arabic men, were intimidating her, blocking her, pushing her towards the wall, you know, preventing her from passing. She actually reported it to the police. And when the policeman came, she said to me that she had a sense that it wasn't being taken seriously. And the policeman kept saying, do you know, I'm a Muslim? I'm a Muslim. And that kind of made her feel

even sort of less able to talk about what had happened. And just yesterday, I was told by a girl that I'm working with at present, that she got off the tube to walk home after the show, and she lives in the same neighborhood as me. And there was a half-dressed man who was sort of kneeling, doing prayers on the side of the street, with a Quran next to him, and people were sort of walking past. This must have been about, let's say, half 10, 11 at night, people walking past. And she walked and sort of, you know, looked and, you know, across the other side of, and he sort of caught her, I saw her, and started running after.

after her brandishing a knife. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's terrifying. I said, what did you do? I reported it to the police and the police turned up and they said, you know, he's got mental health issues. And I was like, are you feeling fine? And she was like, yeah, it's normal now, isn't it? I mean, how crazy is that?

That these things have become so normalized. I mean, I personally have had, sometimes, you know, just it happens regularly. I'd say almost every day that I walk down the street that I live, there will be groups of men who leer. And there's a difference, I think, between men who sort of go, oi, oi, check her out. And that feeling that you are being quietly and silently and sort of persistently tracked with eyes. I've had people come up to me in the supermarket, oh, I, you know,

actually it's not the accent that they have. But they're like, you know, I like you. You're beautiful. You're beautiful. What is your name? I want to get to know you. Will you be my friend? What is your name. I've been followed, this is in board daylight, down to the front door of my house, and I had to pretend that wasn't my street and sort of do a little U-turn. And my next door neighbor's son happened to be walking down the road, thank goodness, because I just sort of gave an imploring look and followed him into the house. And he'd in there, and he went and checked. And this guy was outside for like half an hour or something before I felt safe to go into my home. And he had sort of followed me down the street, this guy at very close quarters, chuntering away.

And he had, I think it's a coal pot hat, those ones from Afghanistan that fold up. And I remember talking to someone about this and they said, well, he sounds like a nutter. And I'm like, well, great, because, you know, the people most likely to act on impulses without any sort of, you know, filter or any sort of blocking mechanism are likely to have mental health conditions. I was walking up the street the other day and I had the, oh, smile, love, you know, that to me is a bit different. So there is a, you know, the difference between or smile love as you walk past someone and then the following you to your front door, it's, you know, it's chilling. It's chilling, quite frankly. And I think if we look at statistics in other countries where they do keep a record of these things, it is plain to see if you look at the statistics from Denmark, if you look at the statistics from Sweden. It is plain to see in those countries that there is a direct correlation between migratory flows from certain nations and the uptick in sexual harassment, rape and assault. I mean, you can have sort of league tables in these countries where they record by nationality and the domination of predominantly Muslim countries in those statistics

is eye-watering. And I think we, you know, it's amazing, isn't it? How quickly we allow ourselves to forget things that made massive news headlines that should have been the trigger. It should have been the catalyst for having a conversation about these things. One that springs to mind is the mass sexual assault and even rapes that happens New Year's Eve in Cologne. I think it's 2016 when people are gathered in the main square. And women were being surrounded by groups of men. And within this structure, they protected each other and themselves to enable themselves to target women and physically assault them. And 1,250 assaults and rapes were recorded that night, and all of them were perpetrated by men of North African or Middle Eastern origin.

I mean, that's been reported widely in the BBC. You open news websites now. You've had a couple of really horrific cases lately, one in Belgium, one in France, of very young girls who have been gang raped. There have been lots of reports lately of women who have been raped basically in board daylight near the Eiffel Tower, the Australian tourist, just before she was going to go home. And every single time there is a pattern, there is a trend with who are the perpetrators. Now, this is not to say that rape exclusively occurs within these scenarios of people from particular countries and cultures, nor is it to say that people from these countries or cultures are predominantly that way inclined. And this is the problem. We've had such a sort of reductive argument about everything

that we're not having a constructive argument. When it's quite clear to me, if you put all of that together, we have a big problem. And women, women right now are really, really at risk. And so I'm listening to this and I'm thinking to myself, well, why aren't the feminists on the case? Because where you... Where are they?

Do they exist? Well, it's interesting, isn't it? I don't understand. We have spent, sorry to interrupt you, I mean, such a good point. Like, I remember when we started the show in 2018, the entire conversation about women's, women's safety, it was about, like, sexist air conditioning in offices. It was the pay gap. Firefighters' uniforms.

Firefighters uniforms. All of that. And I remember there were people adamant screaming on Good Morning Britain and everywhere about the need to improve. And I'm going, now people are getting raped and you're nowhere. Like, how did that happen? We banned page three and then allowed boo-h-h-hacky to be watched by eight-year-olds, make it make sense. Progress.

It's ridiculous. And, you know, we can go on a really strange tangent here. I'm sure you love a strange tangent. But one thing that I can't get my head around is the cultural phenomenon of the Kardashians. What is going on there, okay? This family sort of came out of nowhere via the medium of a sex tape and basically, you know, obligation on the internet. They don't have discernible talents.

You know, they don't sing. They don't act. They're not sports women. They have been made on a surgical table for the male gaze, right? And from this one family, but there's a very simple answer to your point. Not all males gays, but when you look at the industry, right, that's come out of that brand, okay, all the pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, the lip fillers, the boob jobs, all rest of it. And when you look again at some of the other things we're connected to Silicon Valley that have come out of that one family, filters and all the rest of it, when you look at how

ubiquitous this is internationally, you know, you can go to an Arab nation and women have lip-fills, you can go to, you know, they have a sort of almost racially ambiguousness about them, ambiguity. But I'm like, what is this phenomenon? You know, are they a phenomenon Or is there something going on here? I don't know. Oh, it's very simple. We spend a lot of time. The reason is Americans don't have royals.

So they have to make ones. The things you're talking about, no discernible talent, nobody knows what they're for, nobody knows how they got there. Nobody knows what their purpose is. That's royals. Well, no, I've often said that aristocracy. I've often said that that is definitely a parallel to draw. Yeah.

But it is to me, there's something sort of strangely cynical about this family. There's something odd to me that, and, And sort of a lot of the cultural things that concern us now, whether it be pornification, as I call it, hypersexualization, the various dysphoria is that are going on. Don't forget, of course, you know, on top of what you've got is the general sort of body and facial dysphoria coming from the avatarization of young girls wanting to look a certain way online. Up pops. Caitlin Jenner! Hurrah! The first sort of trans person to be on the front of Time magazine.

Exactly. And then, oh, that's now a new. cultural thing that it is sort of, you know, riddling the world with mental illness. So, you know, the Kardashian family conveniently seem to start all sorts of trends that we're now finding, in retrospect, quite problematic. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg. I'm curious why you think it's the male gaze, though, that's driving some of this, because

this is a conversation I've always wanted to have, because a lot of people say that, but then I'm going, well, who buys the, like, I don't know many men who are saying to their misses, I think you should get some lip fillers. It's not, it's not the male gaze that's driving it. It's what I said is these people are made on a surgical table for the male gaze. I'm not saying men are actually asking for that, because I think you're right. Interestingly, a great number of men don't want a woman who looks like Picasso's made her in a fit of rage. You know, but it's weird that with this is almost coming this sort of indoctrination that men should want that, that these are the sort of things that they should desire

in the opposite sex. And actually standards of beauty are often driven by commercial elements. So, you know, it wasn't fashionable to have a sun tank because that means you worked in a farm and were, you know, part of the agricultural lower classes. until Coco Chanel, you know, went on holiday and stepped off a yacht with a tan, and all of a sudden that was a sign of wealth. So, you know, the standards of beauty in the aesthetics and sort of indoctrination culturally of what that should mean is often driven commercially.

So no, I'm not saying men have gone like, we want big lips, we want big lips. But there is this phenomenon that that is definitely what's happening. It's such a good point because if you think back to the 90s, when it was heroin chic, it was Cape Moss, it was all of these other. models who were horrifically thin and to the point that they looked unwell, hence the term heroin chic, I don't know any man who would look at that bag of bones and go, right, and in the 90s, what was one of the biggest industries? It was the weight loss industry. It was have margarine, not butter, it was slim fast, it was weight watchers. Like I said, the sort of relationship

between commerce and cultural aesthetics is really closely bound. And in both directions, you know, there's a causal factor in both directions, I'd imagine. But in the 21st century, the Kardashians are the pinnacle of this relationship. And I think that to being incredibly destructive to women's mental health. And frankly, to just, you know, it feeds into as well the concept of reducing people down to the components of their body rather than having a whole relationship. on an emotional basis or valuing people by the content of their character, which again, it's sort of stripping people of humanity and adds to that avatarisation we're

finding in society. Is that where the big ass purses? I've been talking about this for a long. Where did these big asses come from? When did that become a thing? The Kardashians. And also, like I said, you know, the interesting thing about this. And a commercial, if you were someone commercial going, okay, we need to make an aesthetic

that's going to appeal to as many people as possible. We've now got a far more obese society for a start. So a lot more white women have bigger bombs than they might have done a while ago. But also, like I said, there's a sort of racial ambiguity. It's sort of flattening out what are the most attractive aesthetic elements that anyone from any race can say, I've got some of that. I've got, you know, a particular shape of body, a particular frame of body. Or I don't have that, but I can have some boobs put on and some, you know, lips done. And it is sort of homogenising, let's say.

say across all races. What used to be aesthetic variation when it came to beauty is now being churned into something that can be a one-size-fits-all. And again, that's represented by the Kardashians. Yeah, it's because if you look at, for instance, hip-hop culture, the girls who appeared in those kind of hip-hop magazines and hip-hop videos look very different to the girls who appeared or the women that appeared in Vogue in the 90s

and the same with Latin magazines. Whereas now, because all of these cultures have come together, and you actually see it really interestingly in models, there is a thing for all models now. Like you just see, they tend, the ones that are really successful look racially ambiguous. Yeah, of course. Well, no, actually what's increasingly happening is the ones that are really successful, look gender ambiguous, don't they?

And like I said, it's sort of driving us forward increasingly into a world where, which is strips of identity and humanity. We're made to recognize ourselves through the prisms of identity, not through what we are in reality. And it's sort of creating this sort of virtual plane upon which everyone's being increasingly driven. And that's having so many effects on people's psychology across the board, particularly young people,

but it's affecting all of humanity right now. So let's go back to the feminism point, because I actually think this is really important. And I think it talks about hypocrisy from that particular movement where they would want to talk about things like rape culture, for instance, and they say, you know, a male society

is a society that has rape culture within it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but then you think that they would be the ones talking about this. Why do you think that they haven't and they want? Well, look, it's very easy, isn't it? If you just look at the sort of language taboo surrounding our culture

of prisons through which we're supposed to see things there is a hierarchy there is a hierarchy when it comes to victimhood there's a hierarchy when it comes to protected characteristics and at the top of all of this is somebody's race skin color comes top and then second is the concept of um oppressor oppressor and when you put that into a religious context over in the west it's religious minorities but at the moment, particularly Islam, I think, because it would be the religion which would suffer the most backlash from the native population just due to events that have taken place over the course of, well, not just even recent history, but history in general. And so there is this layering system. And so, you know, what do you do when you have a middle-class white girl who has been

sexually assaulted by a 14-year-old male refugee from a Middle East and kind of, you know, that the West had happened to invade. You know, who gets to win in that? Who gets the most amount of sympathy? You know, this is, it's so cynical and it's so distorting. And increasingly, like I said, my feeling is that when you look at all these cultural phenomenons, taken as one, the end user who is at the highest risk of all of them, of all of them are girls. Even if you look at gender dysphoria, that was largely a very rare

male psychological condition, which is why when you see most of the trans activists out there of a certain generation, it's men who want to wear dresses. Actually, what you've seen now is complete flip-perverse of that, and 75% of people presenting at gender clinics are girls. There's multiple reasons for that, okay? There's the hyper-sexualization elements where they feel like they cannot live up to standards and therefore they feel ostracized and depressed. They are also more likely biologically the way they're wired to have a sort of mass hysteria, to be influenced by peer groups. And they're increasingly the ones, I think, being targeted with algorithms saying have mastectomies,

get breast binders. So, like I said, it's not a condition that's ever been prevalent in women. You know, tomboy is by all means, not saying women can't sort of enjoy masculine things or connecting with a sort of what might be defined as a masculine side to themselves. But the idea that women suffer from the actual psychological condition of gender dysphoria. In history, it's been almost non-existent. And yet it's the dominant part now. Yeah. And some of the points you're making are very interesting because if,

I think we can all agree in 2017, when the Me Too movement first started, a lot of the people who they target at the beginning were wrongans, the Weinsteins, etc. Yeah. And then it reached a point of overreach where it said, believe all women, and then the movement became discredited, and then there was a backlash. And now it just feels that the things that we actually should talk about when it comes to women, we're not having these conversations.

Yeah. And it's created a vacuum which needs to be filled, really. And you look at these, like, you know, big-name feminists, and there just doesn't seem the willingness to tackle very thorny issues anymore. Is it a lack of willingness? Are they scared? I think something else that has happened in society. I don't like singling out individuals when I talk about things.

But I think in the context of Jess Phillips, it's quite an interesting one, because she actually right now holds that portfolio in cabinets, okay? And she has suffered enormously during her election campaign of, you know, threatening behavior, intimidation. To the point it looked at on election nights, she looks tarrowed by it all. And I think everyone has a idea of who would probably have been behind that, given a lot of Labour MPs suffered,

and Conservative MPs, suffered a backlash about, or based on Gaza. And yet, she blamed it on men. It's the fault of men. Well, that, it's not men doing this. This is a cultural decision based upon a foreign war, okay? This isn't men at large. And you ask yourself, well, why are people like her

who have campaigned so hard when it comes to domestic violence? why are they not really grabbing this issue? Because we know that within certain communities there are things like child marriages and FGM and Sharia law preventing people getting divorces and so on and so forth. There are radical clerics out there who will be preaching to the people

who turn up in the mosque that a man can have concubines and multiple wives and a woman must always give her body to the man and so on and so forth. So why is she Lily Livered about talking to it? Well, one can only assume it is for political experience,

because she'd worry about losing her seat. The other element is that, you know, a genuine concern about a backlash, right? That, you know, there is this problem we have in society, but if we talk about it, it's actually going to make it worse. Or the other thing, which I'm beginning to realize with certain people, and I don't know, I don't want to sort of say about Jess, I don't know, and I don't want to criticize her particularly personally, but she is a sort of an interesting subject matter in this instance. I think something else that's happened within the middle classes is because they have known the rules of the game to get to where they wanted to get to, right?

If you wanted to go to editorial level at the BBC, if you want to become the, you know, on the executive board of a particular company, and actually those thresholds have come lower where these expectations are in place, you've had to do your mandatory unconscious bias training. Whatever you do, don't tell anyone you voted for Brexit because they're not going to talk. talk to you in the staff room. You know, all of these things have been grumbed into people so much to get to where they've gotten to that I think that they've actually got to the point that they gaslight themselves, that they genuinely believe it. They can't take those glasses off now. And it's funny, because the lower classes, the working classes have far less exposure to

that sort of nonsense that's built into corporations. And they're less likely to read, you know, things like the Guardian. newspaper, they've been far less exposed to that sort of the dominant cultural narratives, which I think really need to be unpicked and thrown in the bin. They've been far less exposed to it. They have this sort of, they've been inoculated against it because they've not really had to encounter that much of that. And at the same time, they're also more likely to be living in the communities at the sharp end of the impacts of all the things we're not allowed to talk about. So, I guess the question is, where do we go from here?

How do we make this situation better? Because from what you're saying, it sounds unsustainable. Of course it is. Do you know, there's another, just this morning, okay, I was listening to Radio 4, listening to the news of the day, and there's a big discussion about psychosis, having, we've seen in recent years, in Valdo Calicane, that was the issue particularly being discussed,

that this young man had psychosis, has schizophrenia. there were no checks and balances when it comes to making sure he was being treated properly, making sure that he was protected against himself. And society was protected against him. And he went out and stabbed three people. And one of the questions that Justin Web asked, of course, is a highly reputable journalist is, you know, is it true that there's been a lot of finger wagging in the profession,

that when reports have been made about the fact that when it comes to care with people, for people with these conditions, that there's been a lot of, you can't say that because of stigma. And the answer was, well, yes, especially, you know, a lot of people in profession said, you can't say this because it could be considered racist. Now, I went on to the UK government's own website this morning, okay?

So while I'm putting up my makeup, I'm doing my Googling, and it's UK government's own website with statistics. And the prevalence of schizophrenia as a condition within the white society, is 0.3%. That's both white Brits and Caucasian foreigners. The prevalence of schizophrenia within the Afro-Caribbean Black society is 3%.

So this is a huge factor, right? 3% is not loads of people, but it's a huge factor. You're talking about a factor of a thousand, I think, a thousand times more. And at the same time, when we've got a huge influx of drugs on our street, You know, drugs that actually compound problems, if someone has a predisposure to something like schizophrenia and they're smoking cannabis or spice or whatever. And yet, what I'm hearing is why has that not been dealt with? Because it's racist.

I mean, we can't go on like this. We cannot go on trying desperately not to offend. And on one hand, blocking conversations we need to be had. need to be had for protection of all in society, those who suffer schizophrenia and those who've ended up on the very wrong side of what a, you know, a schizophrenic attack might look like. But also the sort of fetishization of race, on the other hand, so it's one thing we're not allowed to talk about when it's necessary to talk about. And when it's completely unnecessary to talk about, we have to see everything through its prism, at which point you end up with,

you know, everything being based on colour of skin, which, to me, it's sort of engenders racism. It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre that when we need to talk about it, we're not allowed to, and when we really don't need to talk about it and it shouldn't come into anything, we're being forced to. That's a really good point. And I think the thread that runs through everything you're talking about

is because of how sensitive we've become about race as an issue, it means that we're essentially unable to recognize that, cultures, religions, have their own differences. People are not the same. Of course that's true, because otherwise, the whole basis upon which people claim asylum no longer makes sense anymore, does it? You know, I can't be a gay man in the country where I come from. So this is a thing. Nothing makes sense anymore. If you look at social media, for example, there's now a huge outcry to, you know, censor, to ban, to regulate Twitter, X. If you imagine social media is the real world, not the virtual world, then that is conversation.

That is the thing they're worried about. Conversation. The one they're going after is the platform. It's the fora. It's the marketplace. And actually by and large, it's where people like us get together. Okay. It's largely, not always, but that's where journalists, politicians, intellectuals, commentators get together and share their information and discuss things in the open. that's the thing that they're worried about right now. Meanwhile, the websites that have the algorithms that are making kids self-harm, you know, making them do daring videos to commit suicide, or radicalising people online to John Colts,

or selling weapons or selling drugs, or advertising putting people in dinghies across the channel, all of that, which is like the sort of nefarious high street of criminal intent, that's fine. No need to talk about that. I mean, surely that's where you begin. You begin with your TikToks and your... If you're trying to solve the problem. You don't actually shut down the conversation about it. Yeah. If you're trying to solve the problem, that's where you begin. Whereas if what you're trying to do, and I may sound cynical here, but what you're trying to do is narrative control, if what you're trying to do is virtue signal, if what you're trying to do is say

something that gets you a lot of positive attention but doesn't cost you anything, then it's very easy if you're a guardian columnist to write articles like this moron did about how the person who should be held responsible for riot is actually Elon Musk, right? Like the, and because it costs you nothing. Yeah. And it gives you everything within your peer group. If you are in that clique, you write that article, everyone's going to give you a round of applause, and that's it. Whereas if you start talking about crime in certain areas, if you start talking about the fact that not all cultures are the same, if you start talking about those issues, then you become evil, racist, you know, and all the rest of it, and that costs you something.

Is it because humanity, Western societies have realized that we can't ever put anything back in the box? There are no solving of the problems at this point. I mean, I don't know. Is it that we've suddenly gone, we're going to have a huge change with a demographic time when we look at birth rates and things like that, that this is now a run of the world. train that we haven't got answers to. And so best we just actually stop talking about it because that might make it worse. Are we in sort of like the hospice right now, if you will, the Western World's hospice and we're just waiting for our demise and being, you know, mopped on the brow and fed grapes instead? I think that is one option. That is definitely one option. And I worry that

that's the direction that we're heading. And I also at the same time think that actually many of the problems that we face are quite solvable if we're prepared to be honest. This is why we do the show. This is why it says honest conversations. But how long are you going to get to do your show for? There's something funny going on, isn't there, that you think, like I said, they're not dealing with actual criminality. They're dealing more with the conversations about what's happening. Look, you're making very cogent points. And I don't disagree with those points. But I think you have to take it in the round. And what I would say on the other flip, of this is our show is bigger than it's ever been. There are many other channels who are doing

similar things. There are many other TV stations now, radio stations, etc., who are presenting a different point of view. And for example, last week I was on the moral maze, right? Putting these points across and that's something that will continue. So as the voice, look, in the end of the day, capitalism always wins, right? Numbers talk. If people who make the points that we make, get bigger, have a bigger audience, in some cases bigger than the mainstream media. I think over time that will have its impact. And that's where the opportunity lies. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm personally very optimistic, generally very pessimistic for the direction of our society. But the hope is that if enough people are saying things without being

shouted down, which is now no longer possible, right? This conversation didn't happen five years ago and could not have happened. But what we do know is you're right. And actually, you are a very interesting symptom if you don't mind me saying to look at because one of the reasons you are, we're like the war you get when you have. Yeah, yeah. You're like a fungal infection. Yeah, you're like the boil. The new system was broken down and that's why you have emerged. Yeah, and your thrush. Thanks Alex. Yeah. I appreciate it. Cheers. But actually, kind of. Yeah. I love you guys. But yeah, because actually one of the reasons you're so important and why you're going from strength to strength is because this is not been allowed, you know, this is, this is sort of like, wow,

this is needed, okay? Right. So, and I just hope that in that respect, if it's needed, and you are also the medicine that we're allowed to take it, because you talk about capitalism winning out, well, that's okay, but there are huge supernational, supernational structures to control capitalism, right? Everything from how you, you know, trade deals and all the rest of it. And I'm afraid the digital sphere now lives within a marketplace. I don't know if you saw the communique from Tieri Breton, the Information Commission of the European Union to Elon Musk, because Elon Musk had Donald Trump on his channel.

And they're like, well, we don't like that. We might pull the plug on you. So, yes, capitalism in theory should out. That's the way it's always been. But actually, I mean, we saw during COVID, where people were locked up and businesses ceased to function. that when governments and supernational organizations want to step in, when they want to intervene,

they can. You know what? I want them to. I would love to see them try. I would like to see the European Union and the Labour government of this country try to prevent people in this country and in Europe from using their voices.

The voices in the public discussion. I'd like to see them try. I would like to see how that works out for them because I don't think it will work out very well. I really don't. Well, we know prohibition of alcohol didn't really end well, so, you know. I don't even think we're going to get to the point of prohibit. I just, I don't think that is a viable option. And I think they will find quite quickly, if they try to censor things at that level, they're going to have a rebellion on that. I think you're right. And look, I'm not a tinfall hat conspiracy theorist.

What I do is look at situations objectively and try and look at patterns and trends based upon empirical evidence and things that I've seen happen. So when I see the communicate from the EU to Elon Musk, that goes straight into the evidence file. And therefore, when you say, well, I think the EU wants to censor X, people are you mad, aren't you? Oh, no, they've just said that they do. So, you know, I think that we've just got to be alive and alert. And I think all of us at the moment have a feeling that, you know, something that was building over the past few decades when it comes to the sort of concretization of taboo. seems to me to be increasing now at a faster pace, perhaps because the information landscape is

hugely diverse where it's been technologised. And so that's increased to the, you know, at an incredible rate. I don't know. But there is definitely something going on. Or you wouldn't have this show and I wouldn't be talking to you about things that aren't being spoken about. I also think there's another part of the issue, which I think we have a bravery crisis in the West. And you see it time and time again.

The example I always use as a murder of Sir David Amos. And then literally the day afterwards, people are talking out the problem of online hate. And I'm like, really? Because people think their jobs depend on it. This is what I'm saying. People think it, but they think they can't say it because they think what will happen to me personally.

I might lose my livelihood and my income. People might stop wanting to come over to my house for a dinner party. But there comes a point where you, courage is a muscle. I don't really believe in courageous people, but I believe in people who do courageous things. And the more you exercise that muscle, the more courageous you will become and the braver you will be. The problem is, is that we've let the muscle grow weak

and atrophy to the point we no longer use it so that we feel that we can't do it, when actually you can do it. Okay, and what happens to those who try? Okay, let's look at France as an example politically, because when you need courageous voices, you need them to be your political leaders, because at the end of the day, they're the ones who can affect politics.

policy and real world change. Are they? Sorry. Sorry, sorry to derail it. Are they? Well, no, actually, it's interesting. If you'd give you an example, you ran for, you stood, right? We don't run in this country.

You stood. You were in politics at one point. Do you have more influence being on your show? Actually, you're about to sort of make the point that I was going to make. I do that all the time. Sorry for the man's eruptions. So I said, look at what happened in France. In theory, you do get the courageous types come.

to try and lead us, to try and make a breakthrough. And look at what happened in France. Look at what happened in the Netherlands. Netherlands are slightly different a situation, but look at what happened in France where all of a sudden that SNAP elections called and the von Nationale are going to be the biggest party, not have a majority necessary, but the biggest party.

Every effort was made to prevent that from happening. Every effort was made to stop it. Okay? So what is interesting is when you have got these, leaders who, regardless of what one might think of Marine Le Pen and the entire policies of National, their origin, her uncle and all the rest of it, I'm not going to go down that ridiculous wormhole and tie myself in the gaudy and not of political correctness. But just as a sort of phenomena, there are very few countries where these people, who a lot of people are now

listening to them wanting to vote for, who are flexing their sort of courage muscle, are being allowed to do so. The system that moves against them, the might of the machine that then tries to block them. So yeah, you are right. Okay, my voice probably is stronger and more cut through and more influential doing this than sitting on a green bench, actually. So, and that's kind of sad because that's, you know, that's an erosion of democracy. But it's also as well, I was talking about ordinary people, the everyday person, because that's how change is enacted. You know, politicians might think that they have power, but the moment when, you know, the moment when push comes to shove, and if it goes against what people really want,

then they have to wake up because they know that they don't have that power. And I believe that, look, I'm going to give you an example. My grandfather, my grandfather was born in the 1920s. 1930s, he left school to a Great Depression. He was working in a factory making mosquitoes because he was a master joiner up in Wiggin in the north of England. A part of the United, or the United Kingdom, that was, so deprived that George Orwell wrote a book about it called The Road to Wigan Pitt. One of my favorite books.

Yeah. He then volunteered to join the army. He didn't have to because he was already a significant part of the war effort. But he volunteered to join the army, kissed his baby daughter and his wife goodbye to go and fight in the Battle of El Alamein as a desert rat in the deserts of North Africa to fight Nazis in the heat of summer. And when we talk about bravery, it's not quite that level. It's not quite Jack Foster level.

Do you know what I mean? If you're saying that, you know, at some point people themselves, ordinary people, I mean, that's insurrection, isn't it then? But if you're saying, what do people do, write a petition, send a letter to their MPs? I mean, what, to take to the streets? Well, people have sort of started to do it. No, no, Francis is saying, look, Solzion Hitson wrote about this.

Everything begins with truth. The first step is just being honest. And it doesn't mean being angry, it doesn't mean being upset. The first step is true. We were two comedians in a woke comedy industry, and then we were just like, we don't like this. We're going to start saying something. And it cost us quite a lot at the time.

So there you go. This is the thing for other people. That is, like we said earlier, that is the difficulty. Even if people, I think, like I said, there's two categories. Those who have just swallowed the whole lot, full on and cannot see the wood from the trees. They're wearing their wog goggles,

and they just can't take them off right now. Those things are sort of surgically spliced to their corneers. And even if when you try and say to this, these people, but hold on, not all immigration is good. They just go, well, they have a meltdown because they have been so programmed to not understand that that's even a possibility. Then you've got the people who get that, but they do want to speak words of truth. And yet they think that there's, the sacrifice for doing so is too great to them personally. It's so difficult. You know, it is like, it is a straitjacket. It's a societal straitjacket. But you have a duty, to be

honest. I mean, I'm looking over your shoulder. There's a book by Hannah Barnes, which is about the transition. She used to be a news night editor, right? It costs her quite a lot, I think, to write that book. I don't know. She never said that to us, but that's what I assume. It just people are just going to have to start being honest. And if they don't, then that won't be reflected in the political parties we have. And then that means that when it comes to election time, you don't have a choice to vote for the thing that you actually believe in. Because nobody is informed that whole body that this is actually where the country is at. So yes, it's going to cost people something, it's going to cost everybody something, but ultimately people have to start being

truthful. Yeah. No, I agree. That's what you're doing. That's why you're on the show. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think people would, especially, look, frankly, I think one of the biggest letdowns of the 21st century in this country is our journalism industry. To me, they're of the worst when it comes to actually investigating the things that need to be investigated, speaking to the people that really do know what they're talking about and addressing the issues that are being forgotten. That is what journalism was supposed to be about. That was the light we were supposed to shine into the darkness and journalism doesn't do that at all. Journalism actually is the shroud around reality these days. And that is a huge tragedy. It's one of the reasons

I actually respect like Aaron Bastani from Navarra. We had him on the show a while ago or Ash Sarka, who I just did them all amaze with. I don't agree with their views, but you can tell they believe what they're saying. Yeah. And there's nothing more, um, disgusting, frankly, is when you talk to someone and you know that they think something other than what they're saying. I agree. But also they have an inbuilt advantage, don't they? Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarker. They totally

believe what they're saying, because what they're saying is still acceptable to public ears. True. It does it. It's not, it's not, it's not the taboo breaking stuff. They have conviction. I'm not denying that they don't, but they're, they're not putting themselves in danger by doing this. I don't know. I reckon she probably is putting herself in more physical danger than you or not, frankly. Perhaps. Again, I don't agree with many of the things that she says. But I guess what I'm saying is I would, the question is if the choice we have is to live in a society where everyone tells comforting lies or everybody says what they actually believe and we disagree about the things we actually believe, I feel like that would be a lot of better place for us to live in.

Do you know what I mean? Oh my gosh, of course. I'd live for that. Yeah. But you're also seeing it with the political parties. So what we have are these two political parties red and blue, and they're trying to hold these broad coalitions of people together. And they can't do that anymore. The conservatives can't do it and Labor can't do it. And it's all starting to crumble because people's voices are now becoming stronger. And you've seen that, for instance, with the rise of the independent candidates, whether it's independent candidates who are overtly Muslim. and their main issue is Gaza. And they broke away from the Labour Party for that reason. Reform broke away from the Conservative Party

because they felt, and I agree with them, the Conservative Party aren't conservative and they failed in their duty. And I think what we're looking at with the Labour Party, especially getting to power, they've gotten to, how many people actually voted for Labour? And how interesting, actually, that one of his first Axis Prime Minister

is that Sakea Stama has decided to, define what he considers to be the extremes by saying far right. After basically saying, I've gotten rid of the far left than the party. I'm now going to deal with all of this. This stuff is far right. He's going to grenade into right-wingery because the conservatives are having a leadership debate and they've been fighting over how conservative they should be for the past two decades. And this is like peak fights for them right now and they have to define themselves and the right wing, if it's going to democratically beat the left wing, needs to sort itself out and get back together. And so by going like, I'm going to bowl this term far right into the middle of all of

you, that's going to be very difficult to do. And what he did, it was a spectacular misstep, because what you did is you just antagonised a lot of people. It wasn't a misstep. I think he knows that. Was it a misstep? But was it genius? I totally agree with you. It's complete genius. Genius. Stama has handled this incredibly well. Oh yeah. He's actually basically said that, you know, the rights are happening in Labor constituencies. Does he come? No, he's got a massive majority in four years, okay? And those people are never going to go back and vote for him. He knows that.

They've gone. He lost and they didn't vote for him anyway. So he doesn't care if they're antagonised. He doesn't, what he's done is called them all far right and made them feel even worse about themselves, but also made it less likely that they are going to go and do anything about it. I completely disagree with both of you. It is the stupid, it's a great short term strategy. But here's a thing.

You can only play that card once. Well, that's, yeah. You can only play that card once. He's like all politicians. He's thinking about three days ahead. That's his planning horizon. Yeah, but if there's something else happens, because we saw about the stabbing in Leicester Square that happened earlier this week. And I just felt a sense of panic because if he can only do that once, he's played that card and that card can only be used once. And if it happens again, and it's going to be bigger and it's going to be worse, what you're going to say that again, that could be real civil disorder. He is absolutely

smashed this. Sorry, Alex. I love the best man. I feel fancy is like gunning for insurrection. He's like, you know, it's not. No, no, no, he's not. He's not going to. I'm joking. I'm joking. Starmer, he's suppressed this outbreak of violence, which you had to do,

any prime minister of a country in which their riots has to crack down. Yeah. Right. So the fact that they're giving people jail terms for standing and watching one of these riots. Right. It means that people are going to be terrified of going any, Yeah, so actually, all hell can break loose and no one's going to open their front door and go on to the street at all because they're going to be like, I'm going to end up in clink if I do. And politically, what he's done is he's very cleverly associated, as you say, riots in labour areas for some reason with the right,

just because there was basically some yogs and hooligans. And actually any discussion about immigration, all the things we've been discussing today, that is now also in the category of far right. I don't know about that. I think, you know, I think actually the way people are talking about it in the mainstream now, I'm finding actually quite a... I think what is kind of interesting is how many people on Twitter sort of adopted the term and did that whole sort of hashtag, I am a far-right thug or whatever it was. You know, people have just gone fine, call me far-right, I'll just say, fine, you know, it's no skin off my teeth, just whatever, it's a term. So in that regard, but what actually, in terms of debate politically, I think he's sewn a grenade into the middle of the conservative.

party right now. And I think as you said, as the deterrent, let's say, to go out in protest with the sort of judge-judification of the legal system, the show trials, if you will, he has, I mean, that's not just a deterrent, that's a threat, isn't it? So, you know, it's, yeah. Alex, great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming. We're going to ask you some questions from our supporters in the second. Before we do, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be. Before Alex answers a final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our locals where you'll be able to see this.

What threats do you see coming out of the illegal migration coming across a channel into Britain? I identify as transgender and worry about the ideologies these migrants may bring with them. Many of these problems seem to stem from the attitudes towards women held by some migrant cultures. How likely is that after being in the West for a while, these cultures will eventually change their views. Is that a reasonable hope? Explain to us Americans why an entire continent needs a parliament. I think we need to be talking about just basically talking. I know that sounds crazy. We need to actually have an adult conversation now about censorship. And we are talking

about it, but actually it's not being spoken about really by the political classes. We had the effort to ensure free speech on campus, this government's ripped it up. But that's the only thing we've had. And like I said, there's a rich theme of censorship that weaves in through our society at every single level, causing problems at every single level. And not just our society, the whole of the West, the European Union, you know, it's a problem. So we need to talk about censorship. How do we explain to Kirstehm and Sadiq Khan that establishing Islamophobia laws will mean suppressing, denying the rights of women and undermining the government. Not loving your AT&T or T mobile bill? Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot. Good news. Bring your

AT&T or T mobile bill to Verizon and we'll give you a better deal. So get away from that unfortunate phone bill and get to Verizon. Run, ride, canoe. Whatever it takes, we'll be here. Bring your AT&T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best network. A better deal. No surprises. That's Verizon. Best Network based on Route Metrics, best overall mobile network from the U.S. second half 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person reguming me the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply.

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