TRIGGERnometry - Journalist CANCELLED From Women’s Group For… - Katherine Brodsky

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

Katherine Brodsky is a commentator and writer who has contributed to publications such as Newsweek, Variety, WIRED, Washington Post, Guardian, Esquire, CNN.com, Vulture and Playboy. She is the author of No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage—Lessons for the Silenced Majority, available on Amazon and elsewhere from January 30th: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1634312503 Katherine’s Substack: katherinebrodsky.substack.com Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.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

Somebody basically posted a job opening at Fox, which turned out to be absolutely sacrilegious. So I put out what I thought was sort of a kumbaya post saying, hey, let's stay away from politics. I'm sure it worked out very well, Catherine. Everybody sort of went, ah, yes, kumbaya. So people called me a white supremacist, a Nazi adjacent, you know. I just collaborate with the Nazis and the KKKKKlan. And it just got so extreme. How do we fix this, Catherine?

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply.

Catherine Brodsky, tell us your cancellation story. It's a question we ask all our guests at this point. His every guess has been canceled. That's the qualification. that's it. Qualification. Okay. Well, my cancel story, which is now about two years ago, and, you know, are you checking your watch

to make sure it's for two years? No, no, no, no. Okay. That, sorry. You know, it's something that, it's funny kind of to talk about it now in some ways because at the time it was so intense what was going on for me because I've never encountered that sort of thing before in a personal way. So what happened was I used to.

well, I still kind of do, I had a group for women, journalists, and it was a job board, and it was a job group on Facebook. And what we did was basically, you know, it was a spinoff of another group that was called kind of binders for women. It was a joke sort of, off of that. Reference to Mitt Romney's binders full of women. Exactly. Although there's some debate as whether it was or wasn't now.

Anyways, I decided, well, what does everyone want jobs? I started this group. It grew to being about 30,000 members. And it was just people posting jobs. We didn't have any, like, personal discussions, nothing like that, just jobs. And one day, somebody basically posted a job opening at Fox, which turned out to be, you know, absolutely sacrilegious. And even the way she posted it was sort of apologetic. We're trying to diversify the newsroom.

We're changing things. But people just went and attacked us for a woman. And I thought, you know, that was not right. So I put out what I thought was sort of a kumbaya post saying, hey, let's stay away from politics. We've had so much coming apart. Let's come together. I did not expect what sort of... I'm sure it worked out very well, Catherine.

Everybody sort of went, ah, yes, kumbaya. When I tell this story, everybody knows what's going to happen next. Yeah. But I really truly did not see it coming. I really didn't. So people called me a white supremacist, a Nazi adjacent, you know, and I just collaborate with the Nazis and the KKK clan. It just got so extreme.

And after that, I was also somebody who's always had believed in freedom of speech. I mean, I still do. But I did learn a lot from that because there, is a difference between engaging with all speech and a difference between engaging in bad fave, good faith speech. So at a certain point, I realized, okay, this is not very helpful. And there were like 666 comments at the time where I sort of decided, okay, that's enough. And everybody was attacking me. And they said that inherently you can't take politics out of a group that's for women.

Because by nature, that makes it political. And I said, okay, I did think about this for a little while, and I said, well, I'll make it open to everyone. I'll give a month's notice. You can remove your content if you want. If you want to start your own group, you can do that. But that actually went even worse. And that's when I started getting doxed.

I had people emailing editors saying, you know, so that they would never hire me again since I'm a journalist. And also people sending me like I would get images of people mobs with tiki torches, just vile kind of messages all around. People would attack me, you know, and if I'd be on a panel or something, it would suddenly come up and people would sort of harass me. And now I kind of feel about it, you know, sort of okay about it. Not okay, but I think I've gone through that process and I've come on the other side. But at the time, as somebody who is actually pretty much kind of a people pleaser in many ways, I'm not, and like I think we talked about this at some point, you're much more. I'm in the top one percentile for disagreeable. Yeah, you're disagreeable.

I can be disagreeable in things that have very strong feelings about. that are strong convictions, but I'm not generally trying to be disagreeable with people. So it was just a very sort of, at the time, now I can use the word traumatic, because I remember for a while, I talked to people and I felt like I had to give them, I wonder what they knew about me, what they Googled, what they thought. And it's been kind of a long journey. And as a result of all of this happening, though, because I was already sort of sort of struggling with my own sort of free speech and being able to articulate what I was thinking on in my head. And I little by little started, you know, doing that more. And I think that opened

the watershed for it. And I got to know a lot of interesting people. And that's where I'm now. Catherine, what do you think it says about our society that a post as innocuous as yours that was designed to be, in your words, kumbaya, can open the door to all this vitriol? Well, I think there is, I think there's a few things going on, because I think now that I look at it, a lot of it was really mobs and bullying. That's, at the essence, that's what it is. It's a mob, and it's big enough that they're all sort of bullying people, and they all sort of align with each other.

and therefore they confirm and reaffirm every thought that they have, so they're not really able to think outside of the mob. And it's that very human instinct that people have had throughout history. But that's what I was seeing, because people talk about, you know, cancel culture and they say, well, it's accountability culture. And you know what, I agree. Sometimes it is. Sometimes there do need to be repercussions for certain things. the problem that I have with it is that a post that is, I do think is quite innocent, was intended to sort of do the right thing, gets this disproportionate reaction where there is no

conversation, there's no way out. And the punishment that's being doled out is kind of the same, no matter what the crime is, if there even was a crime. And there obviously was no crime. You were allowed to watch Fox News. You're allowed to work for Fox News, but not in the eyes of a certain segment of society who you seem to royally piss off. Right. And the thing is, it's not like I'm a big Fox News supporter myself. I don't watch the Fox News. I don't like a lot of it.

But if somebody wants to work for an organization, like why am I in the shoes of deciding who should apply for a job where? Like if you go to LinkedIn, in LinkedIn, you know, you can post a job at any organization and nobody really has an issue with it as long as they're within the bounds of the law. And for me, you know, when I, you know, when I was being attacked, it's hard not to think, okay, maybe people have a point because so many people are going against you so aggressively. And in my case, again, because I am somebody who's kind of a people pleaser in some ways, you know, I didn't want people to be mad at me. And so I did think a lot about, you know,

where they might have a point, where they might not. And where I, realized I drew the line is I asked myself the question, if I were in their shoes and I disagreed with myself very strongly, how would I behave? And one thing I would never do is try to ruin somebody's career, write them atrocious messages, you know, send tiki torches, call them names, all those kinds of things were not ways I'd engage. So even if they had some sort of a point, you don't, I realized for myself, you don't engage with those kinds of people. If somebody sent me thoughtful messages that were not trying to destroy my life and were in good faith, I'm fine. I will absolutely listen to that.

I think it's important to. But in that case, that's not what was happening. And that completely changed my thinking on it. And actually, what I ended up doing is I also wrote my first op-ed at the time. It was for Newsweek. And it was about this particular thing that happened to me. And at the time, people thought that if I published that, I would be completely destroyed. And I thought that too.

I didn't know for sure, right? And but I thought, if I couldn't speak out on this issue that I'm saying, that wasn't affecting just me. Because in all of this, people were sending me messages of saying, you know, I see what's happening to you. It's not right. And I feel so ashamed because I'm too afraid to speak out. I was getting a lot of those messages. And then on top of it, I was getting messages saying, you know, this has happened to me and this is my story. And, you know, some people have lost their livelihood completely.

Some people just can't do anything. So, you know, it wasn't just my story uniquely. This was happening all around. I just happened to walk into it myself as well. But because I did, I was suddenly really exposed to all the people have gone through this. And when I wrote the story, you know, which I think it was called the rise of the righteous bullies or something like that. And I, that is something that I completely, while I was scared, I felt like I had to do it. And when it came out, I actually had a lot more support.

And the people who were bullying me stopped. And I think that was sort of because if they continued to do that directly to me, well, that would just reinforce. what I just said about them. Well, bullies always pick on people who don't fight back. Yes. That's how they operate. I'm curious to tease out the point you made about accountability culture, because you said that there are situations where you kind of agree with it.

What kind of situations are you talking about? Well, if somebody has committed a certain crime that hurt people, if someone, I think you really have to judge it on such a situational basis, and I think that's what's not happening. We are taking like anybody does anything a little bit wrong and it's treated equally wrong. So there are certainly people who might have, you know, let's say they abuse their employees, I think, or they said some, you know, really atrocious things that I don't want to say it on there. But there's certainly some things that I think would qualify to having some sort of repercussion, even if that red percussion is like, oh, I won't work with you, right? I think you're kind of an abhorrent human being.

Maybe you're praising terrorists or something like that. But, and that is up to each individual to decide because we do have freedom of association as well. And I think that's important to remember. Nobody should be forced to spend time with people they don't like. but I do like to encourage people to spend time with people they might have some disagreements with. Well, there's a difference between those two things. And I think the point you're talking about, I've made this point a lot, which is like what happened to Harvey Weinstein, I fully support that. Me too. What happened to Aziz Ansari was an abomination. And that's the issue is that we tie everybody with the same brush.

and there's no difference in people's heads between someone who's actually like a rapist or a terrorist or whatever and somebody who just happens to be on a similar, you know, the same concept is involved, but like sex is involved, let's say, but nothing else is similar, but yet people get treated very, very similarly.

Well, I know a writer I've been talking to recently, he got in trouble and lost his job because, you know, the comparison that he made between Hitler and Stalin in terms of impact on lives. And, you know, I actually didn't necessarily agree with the way he framed it, but he doesn't deserve to be canceled for it

for something he's just thinking through and maybe stated it not in the most proper way, I suppose. So you hear stories like that all the time, and obviously I've been exposed to hearing a lot of people's stories, and that's the problem that I have. It's not that there is some sort of an account, accountability culture is that there is this disproportionate way of punishing people and weaponizing it

and that it is applied sometimes to people who don't deserve it at all, like quite often, actually, but also to people who, you know, might have committed a small little sin, you know, and don't need to be punished in a way that takes away and destroys their whole life. And I think a lot of the times it comes out of this sort of psychological gleeful bully mentality and people gang up. Some of the people that I've talked to, one of the people that I talked to when researching for a book that I wrote, he was saying how when he got canceled, some of the people who were fiercely attacking him didn't even remember it later on. So can you imagine, like, what is the psychology of that where someone was

participating in a mob essentially. It's an online mob, but it's a mob and doesn't remember. So that happens a lot too. And I think a lot of times people are not thinking through what. That's such a good point, Katyn. I guess what you've got your finger on there is online communication makes bullying much easier. So if you were to go and physically bully people, you'd struggle to not remember that. But online, It's like, oh, yeah, done. Yeah. And then you move on to, you know, what's in the news, what's for breakfast, et cetera.

It makes it easy. And therefore, you can see why these dynamics that have always existed in human society, as you say, become more prominent because it's like, well, it's right there. You know, take your phone out, bully somebody, go to work, you know. Well, it's easy. And it's also, you don't have to face somebody, right? And I think that's a colossal difference. I, you know, even I speak about pretty contentious things with people in real life all the time, people with all sorts of perspectives on these things, people who strongly disagree sometimes.

And I've never had any incidents that were like this or even really having bad experience, you know, because you see each other's reactions, you're face-to-face, you understand that this person is maybe thinking something through, exploring, or, you know, comes in good faith and has their heart in the right place. But you don't see that online because it takes out your whole humanity and makes you a cartoon character to people. So even when they attack you, they don't really see you as a human being. They see you as some sort of a descriptor of what they've decided to kind of imprint on you. And it's also that the difference in perspective, which Constantine touched on, but I

I think sometimes people aren't even aware. Do you see what I mean? You're not even aware of what you're doing because you're so disengaged from the process. Like, you could even be just making a joke about it. But it appears to the person who's at the receiving end, if you are on the receiving end of literally six million jokes or whatever it is, you're like, this is awful.

That is a good point. I've been told not to read comments on... appearances I do and I am bad at listening. So I've read this a lot and sometimes they're so, so terrible. But in particular, if it was just one, you shrug it off. But then when there's so many, you use... Quantity has a quality all of its own, as Joseph Stalin says. It does. It's true. It kind of does.

Yeah. And what I'm interested in particular is, how this culture has affected the media because you've been a journalist for a long, long time and a writer. So how have you seen this affect journalism in the media from when you started to now? Yeah, I mean, the biggest change is, I would say,

there is this, a lot of young people go into journalism with the state of mind that they want to be activists. The people that I worked with who are, you know, old school, they don't have, I mean, the same mindset. I mean, all of us want to make a difference in the world. We choose which stories we report on because we might be more interested in them or maybe want to bring attention to certain issues. But there was a structure that promoted a different quality of journalism. And now it's like it is opinion journalism in many, many publications.

But the other thing I see, I see a lot of friction between the old generation, new generation. I know specific cases and some of those big kind of mainstream news. rooms too where they are fighting it out. And, you know, the fight, the people who fight to be activists are more vicious. So, so people lose their jobs or become very, it becomes very difficult for them to speak. And, you know, there's a lot of opinions in the world, you know, and people on the left have a lot of opinions. Like, there's a tremendous diversity of opinions. and different issues that we're grappling with. And I worked in journalism and I worked in film.

And I know that there's people who have, who are very sort of high level, very successful, who have very strong opinions about things, including stronger opinions than I do. And they're so afraid to say anything. That is the key. And when you're afraid to say anything, then we don't have a world that makes sense.

because we don't have the back and forth that we really, really need to make sure that we understand the different perspectives, that we understand what's actually going on when people are afraid to speak. That's the big issue for me. And people get more radicalized, whether it's the left or the right, because they're now only talking to people in their little orbit. And those people are just confirming their views. So it causes the centers to sort of collapse because I do believe a lot. of people have pretty reasonable points of views, but they're the people who are quiet. And the people who are loudest are the people with radical thoughts. And so that's all we end

appearing. And then the world becomes shaped by these radical thinkers. And I would say as well, there is another... Hey, sweetie, your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm going to give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an office. I'm an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check. Anyway, Carvana. Give it a whirl. Love you. So good, you'll want to leave a voicemail about it. Sell your car today on. Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. The radicalization vector that's going on as well. And we've seen it. We're recording this a couple of weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel.

you see in the West, for example, the conversation about illegal immigration and mass immigration in general has been very, it's been very curtailed by the fact that certain opinions, which are quite widely shared in society about restricting immigration, about restricting immigration, particularly from certain parts of the world, where you are bringing people in where there's a much higher risk of them being a danger to the society into which they're coming. all of that was kept under a lid. And then suddenly people see in the streets of Western capitals massive, this is even before Israel responded, massive, effectively pro-terrorism rallies.

Yes. And people are like, whoa, how did this happen? And now they're being radicalized by that experience, as I think everybody is actually to some extent, certainly in our space. because the consequences of not being able to talk about those things for two decades are now showing up in your streets and now people probably are going to overreact. I certainly think that is one of the possible outcomes of this. No, absolutely.

I think so too. And I would say that, I mean, that happens a lot, the overreaction, right? A lot of the sort of counter movements that are not so great do happen. But I don't blame normal people for overreaction. reacting in the situation because they're finally aware of the scale of the problem. Yeah. You see what I'm seeing? Yeah, I do.

But I think that when it comes to immigration in particular, and both you and I are immigrants to probably have some understanding and some sympathy, I think the problem is because there's a difference talking about something and being politically correct versus, you know, being a complete jerk about it and having, you know, maybe bigoted racist views. those are not the same things. You want to be able to be honest about the facts of anything. And you have to also understand the different perspectives. Like, you know, you take a country like Japan, for example,

which people rarely criticize for their immigration policies. But people love Japan. Why do they love Japan? They love it because the culture is Japanese. Yeah, because it's Japanese, exactly. And Japan has a deeply restrictive immigration policy. And but it's sort of necessary for the culture not to be destroyed. And, you know, if we're talking about countries like America or Canada where they're all immigrants, essentially, it's a little bit different.

And I think you have to look at different countries in different contexts and the context of how most people want to live there as well. But that's not happening. It's like the same lens is applied everywhere. and you can't be honest about the things that aren't working. Because if we can talk about the things that aren't working, and we can all talk about it together, by the way, that's how we can come up with solutions to these problems, and maybe those solutions are not going to be so extreme,

or maybe not discriminatory because you'll have a balance of points of views. But people are afraid to talk to each other who disagree. We're not afraid, but they don't want to. Sorry, Francis, I know you want to jump in and you should, but I just want to finish on this point. Is that what's happening? Is it that people are afraid to talk to each other? Because I would argue, I mean, yes, I personally would argue.

I'm not even playing devil's advocate. That it's not that people are afraid to talk to each other. It's that the expression of concerns from people of a particular view on one side of the political spectrum has been consistently demonized. So those phrases you used about bigoted, racist, etc., they have been back. misapplied in order to maintain the lies that people on the left want to maintain in the public space. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I think there is a reaction that is coming from the right, that it's a direct response to the left, you know, calling them racist and not listening to them and demonizing them. At the same time, I think it's about who has the power at any given

moment. So if the right now the left clearly has more at least institutional power, when the right has more institutional power, they'll do the same thing. The reactions I think are, I understand them, but they're not really healthy and helpful. So you have people who really vilify each other from both sides. And one is, I think the right is feeling sort of victimized. and victims lash out. And we saw that, again, the left did the same, when they didn't have power, they also lashed out. And interestingly enough, they were much more periphrie speech.

You know, I grew up with that being a very inherent quality, right? Like a very important value. And now, because the left has that power, suddenly, well, we want to control it. This speech is okay, but not this speech. And I constantly meet people. and they say, yeah, no, I totally support free speech, but, you know, there should be limits. Well, outside of that limit of, you know, let's not incite violence, then you don't actually believe in free speech.

You believe in limited speech. But I think what I'm seeing on the right, unfortunately, because when I first, you know, started this journey, my allies were often people on the right because they, you know, were proponents of free speech. They didn't like what was going on with the culture. But as time kind of went on, I feel like people have gotten much more radicalized, including the people who are sort of fighting this anti-woke, or sort of rather the wokeness, right? So the anti-woke warriors, as I would call them, because they start employing the same techniques as the people they've criticized. And that's something that I'm seeing in the culture that's been disturbing me.

The other thing that's been disturbing me, actually, is seeing the media reflect these practices. So you read a media article, a newspaper article from a publication you thought was once reputable. And you're going, am I just reading someone's Facebook post? Is that what this is? You probably are. You know, there's only so much time in the day you have to make do. So you have to post it everywhere. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many articles where I would catch them and they would say, you know, it would say news, but it's clearly in every objective metric, it's an opinion piece. And this is the problem. Like, as a writer, you know that certain publications are captured and it will never, if, in fact, if I pitch certain stories to them, they're going to, you know, put me on a blacklist, but in, you know, in their heads, I don't think there is not yet. So there is not a blacklist. But at the same time, because because I've been so much more vocal with my criticism and with my voice, A lot of people reach out to me, often very discreetly and privately, and they all, they see the issues. And some of them are in very top positions, too, at some of these publications, which I find sort of baffling, because while I believe, like, anybody should be able to make their own decisions how they want to, you know, tackle this or not, it's the silence. It's the deafening silence

that is actually allowing for a lot of this to thrive. Because if these people push back right away, and they have a lot of power, they're not all people at the bottom who don't have any power or control, but they really are scared. And that's depressing. Because if you look at the media from 20, 30 years ago,

or 40 years ago, you can name so many journalists who were firebrands, who were out there, who said outrageous things, but were interesting and had a unique perspective. Is that all gone? Well, and I think it's really important to highlight the importance of being wrong and allowing people to be wrong. Because if you're never wrong, you never get corrected.

And you continue thinking that wrong thing in your head, too. So I think there is this kind of Puritan culture almost where you have to adhere to these very specific things. You can never say anything a little bit off, a little bit wrong. But, you know, if you're hanging out with your friends and, you know, a friend made a joke and it's like, dude, that's a little bit much. It's a little over the line, right? Okay, you say that, you move on.

And A, it gives them feedback. And B, you understand that your friend is a good person that may have accidentally uttered something that maybe wasn't quite appropriate. We don't destroy the friendship over this. We don't go and destroy that person over this. But somehow it's become okay to destroy people just because they misspoke. People who are strangers. Because you don't understand what the whole context of it is, who they are, what they really mean, what they're thinking. I'm sure we all say inappropriate things at times. Sometimes it's purely an accident. It's not malicious a lot of the time, but you're being held. to this standard. I had somebody go after me for mispronouncing her name. Really? Yeah. And that was, because that was a microaggression. So, and, and, and, and caused it to, you know, that ended up being a whole campaign against me because suddenly I am a racist person because I mispronounce the name. And, you know, that, another day, I mispronounced a person

from my own background's name nine times repeatedly. because I'm not very good at pronouncing certain words. And the thing that I want to touch on is that you talked about destroying friendships. We are now destroying friendships. We're destroying relationships. We're destroying working relationships. And the thing that's really sad is we have a loneliness crisis. People are talking about being more lonely than ever.

Men in particular are lonelier than ever. There's a horrifying stat. I can't remember exactly what the percentage. of men who have got no friends, zero friends. These are the things that keep you going when times are tough. And we're just throwing it on the metaphorical fire because people say things that we disagree with. And to me, that seems tragic.

Yeah, and I think a lot of it is also social media because I did a survey, for example, amongst my followers, but also Elon Musk amplified it. So I got quite a few responses, and I thought it was interesting because I had a hunch already about this. But I asked how many people are currently in a relationship or have been dating, you know, in the last year. And then the second category was, you know, people who've been dating between, you know, somebody have dated somebody within the last year or two. And then the last category was, you know, two plus years. It was about, I think it was like 45%, something like that.

haven't gone on a single date in over two years. So you've got a massive in-cell audience, that's what you're saying. I don't even think it's my audience, but I, it's something, no, I understand, but it's something that in a lot of, because a lot of discussions that I've sort of said, and it was quite a surprising thing, because you're saying, it's a, this pandemic of loneliness is very true. A lot of times people write to me about their loneliness and they want someone to talk to, And it's very, you know, I think we don't really have communities in the same way anymore.

And I think that's a major contributing factor to this. But also, you know, COVID didn't help matters, right? Dating apps. People aren't used to meeting each other and just in real life. And, hey, let's go out. I don't know how you do it. I've never picked anybody up. But it's like that isn't happening.

And then on top of it, you know, you'd have these communities, you know, and they'd get, and you think you belong, whether it's women writers, or there's a lot of controversy for some reason in the knitting circles, which you would think. But you become part of a group, and that becomes your identity. And then your identity is completely shattered when the group turns on you because you, because you become part of a group. you somehow straight from the orthodoxy. And that's the thing that people are really scared of, really scared of, and understandably so, because we're programmed to want to be in the group. So I guess can you really blame people for not wanting to speak up? Yes. Yes. Man up, you cowards. Yeah. That's right. Well, look, I had a bit of a different perspective starting out with this, and it's shifted.

was a lot more forgiving of people not speaking up because, you know, I understood their fears. I felt it myself. So I get where they're coming from. But I think there's a point at which you are contributing to this. And also, if you cannot stand up for a friend, for example, or if you can't stand up for something that is absolutely the right thing to do, that isn't, that's it's very difficult to live with yourself. That's why people expressed feelings of shame. And I did, I reassured them at the time. I said, please don't feel this way. It's, you know, your support, even like this means a lot. And it did. It was sincere. But it is contributing. That is how we got here. I think people really do need to find their voices and speak up, especially, you don't have

to do it for everything. You know, there's things where it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter enough to you. But the things that really matter that you believe really matter, you need to find the courage to do that. And a lot of the people that I've talked to who have sort of found the courage, it's not even courage. It's just the sense of I can't do it any other way. I can't live with myself if I don't stand up for a friend

or I don't stand up against this thing that is wrong and how somebody's being treated, if somebody's being prosecuted. And you see it in so many areas too. So, you know, people are so afraid to dissent. Well, whether it's art or it's science, in a lot of scientific communities, that has become very controversial. But science is based to some extent on dissenting. And if there is a false sense of consensus, when sometimes there isn't consensus on particular things, you know, the whole. science is settled aspect. It's not always settled, but people are under the impression that it is because other people are afraid of what is going to happen to them. At the same time, you do have to recognize, like, you hear all these stories of people who stood up and they are so successful now and they're famous. There's so, so, so many stories that are not told of people who've lost

everything, have lost their jobs, they're not successful. That happens a lot more often. And, you know, when you make a choice, that's why I can't just say, hey, you have to do this, because that person does have to make that choice for themselves because they could lose everything. Well, right. And I was joking when I was like, my man up you cow is to some extent, because you're right, it's not something that's easy for everybody. There is an argument to be had about whether, you know, speaking up for something that really matters, like a friend being destroyed and paying the price for it is a bad thing to do. I mean, sometimes it's okay to pay a price for doing the right thing. If that weren't the case, it would be easier and everybody would

do it, right? But I'm curious because it is a lot to ask of people, whether we can spend a few is talking about how you think some of this gets addressed because in your upcoming book you talk about this. How do we fix this, Catherine? Yeah, I mean, that's a really great question. And I find that it doesn't get asked very much. I think we have a lot of grievances, but we don't know. Yeah, both sides and everybody who's not on the side like us is very tempted to talk about victimhood and we don't spend enough time talking about how to do things constructively. I agree. Yeah. So let's do that. Let's do that. So, I mean, in my book, I really dive into some of this through the stories themselves of the different people who have experienced cancellations. Not everyone in the book has, but, you know, there's a few things that people can do.

What's the book called? It's called No Apologies. Ah, very good. And, you know, it's about this sort of phenomenon where people are silenced, essentially. I didn't even want to call it cancel culture because I think a lot of it is actually just even self-silencing. And when we self-silence, we don't know what is actually going on in the world when anybody's thinking. Sometimes we're thinking the same things and we think we're not on the same team. So one way, I know for me the way that I first started using my voice is it's just in small ways.

You know, I started having open conversations with people in person. and because it's in person, it's a different experience. That gave, I notice, other people permissions to discuss these same kinds of things and sometimes even more, sometimes controversial things. My views are, by the way, not the most controversial, I would say. But there's a lot of topics that are hot-button topics even today. And so I noticed that once I started doing it, it had sort of an effect on other people. I mean, the whole reason I wrote this book was because I wanted to encourage the people that I call, you know, the silence majority.

I wanted to empower them to use their own voice because the only way to kind of deal with these things is to push back in some way. And I don't like the idea of pushing back in, you know, aggressive ways, vilifying people and just mocking everybody. You can mock ideas. I don't think, I don't believe in mocking people. There's some religions that would disagree with you on that one, Catherine. Oh, yes, I'm sure they will. But, you know, I'll take them on. I'll be disagreeable on that one.

But I think you should, humor is the best way to mock bad ideas. The best, most effective thing is if you can make somebody laugh at their own bad idea, that's a superpower. And that would be a fantastic tool in your toolkit. I think supporting people when they're being attacked is a, or standing out for, for something, that's a really important thing to do as well. And people don't do it enough, even if it is just sending them a message of support. Because often they think they're alone. So they don't even know people are on their side.

So even if you're not willing to, you know, go out publicly, send them a message of support. So I think supporting and rallying up behind people is big. I think that building communities, alternative communities is really important thing. and that's something that comes up in the book. There's a lot of people who, after having had these experiences, sort of grew their own communities of people who have good faith individuals, people who don't just judge people for no reason. And so they were able to build these alternative communities.

And even within businesses, you know, they're able to sort of appeal to an audience that's more willing to engage with them as opposed to appealing to everyone. I think those are kind of basic things, but at the same time important things to do in order to sort of solve. I mean, the other issues that are going to be

much more difficult to overcome are institutions. And when it comes to institutional sort of issues, I think it's important to, again, voice things, whether it's writing letters to politicians, because I know that politicians, when they get a letter, it counts as if it's 100 people because they know people don't send letters, letting people know that they're not alone when things go, you know, happen. Really, the solution is to speak.

Not only, I would also add to that. I think it's really important that if you see somebody who's writing about these issues in a way that you don't feel able or empowered to do or host a video channel like ours or whatever it might be, people who are resisting this way of doing business, I think if you can't speak up yourself, send that person some money or give them a monthly subscription or whatever. Like, if you can't, if you are so afraid because you're going to lose your job for speaking and you can't speak, well, support people who do speak. You know, I know it's a self-serving point from my position, but I actually, I've- Send all your money to Constantine. Absolutely. I'll put the link in the

description. But I, you know, when I, when I was in comedy and I wasn't yet ready to actually say what I think and host a show like this or anything, I used to do this. And I didn't have a lot of money. I used to support YouTube channels that talked about it and send money to people because I thought it was like, well, I can't speak. But this person is, let's give them support and encourage them to do it. Because from our perspective, I can just tell you, like, the more people support us, the more we know we're doing the right thing. Yeah. And the more empowered we are. And also the more resources we have. Or the more radical followers you have. Well, you know, it's interesting actually because with our followers, we have monthly calls with like our top supporters.

Other than one exception, they're really not very radical people at all, actually. They're very grateful that moderate people are doing this. There are, of course, other people who have a more radical position, who are more extreme. I'm sure they get plenty of support as well. But it's sort of, I feel what you're putting out there is what comes back. So if you're radical, you're going to attract radical people. If you're moderate, like the three of us, you're going to attract moderate people who nonetheless feel that these conversations are important. I sometimes will get a few radical followers, which comes out quite quickly.

But they'll leave very quickly when they realize you're not radical. But sometimes they self-reflect. So it's kind of an interesting process. It's hard to do it one on one in this way, but sometimes they do self-reflect and sort of change a bit because they're now entering a more moderate arena where people's, you know, if you read people's comments, they're quite thoughtful and nuanced. And so it does sort of force them sometimes to go into that as well. You're not going to catch a lot of that, a lot of change, but sometimes it does. I mean, I don't know if you've had Daryl Davis on your show.

As a guy who converts KKK into, yeah, no, we haven't yet. But I'm sure. we will at some point. He's just to me, and he's in the book, but he to me is such a, he's, since I've heard his background, he's been sort of an, I don't want to use the word idol, I don't worship anyone, but definitely somebody who I hold in high regard and inspired by his work because it aligns with my own philosophy. It's like, look, some people are going to, and he says this in the book, because like some people are going to go to the grave, you know, believing the racist things that they do. But some people won't. Some people will change. And I remember watching a news segment and there was a former member of the KKK on there. And you know, you think like,

that's as vile as it gets or one of. And he actually was now getting people out. So somebody had made that transformation from being an active member of the KKK doing illegal things. to being someone who now battles them. People change, not all people, but sometimes they do. And you can't have that if you don't have some sort of conversation to begin with, give them some entry point and understand why they're the way you are. Absolutely. And it's not just that as well. It's also redemption.

Because that's the thing that this stuff lacks, this whole movement, whatever you want to call it, lacks, is a possibility for people to redeem themselves? Well, you know what's interesting, actually? I kind of tackle this in the book because there is a chapter about false accusations, true accusations, but this whole idea that everything is arbitrated

in the court of public opinion versus actual court. And how do we balance these things? So the person that I feature in the book is Stephen Elliott, and he is somebody who was accused. He was put on this list of, am I allowed to say shitty? Shitty medium men. Yes. Shitty medium men. And, you know, there was an anonymous accusation of rape.

And in his case, for various reasons, it's not even, you know, it's quite obvious that this was not true. But regardless, right, it's an anonymous accusation. that's a really big factor. I remember when that list came out, I myself sort of grappled with this a little bit because I sort of understand the idea of wanting to warn other women of, you know, somebody who might be a predator.

I get it. Well, in fact, sorry to just interject this, in almost every industry, not that I'm a woman, but I know, in almost every industry, there are like WhatsApp groups or other things where, like in comedy, there are women's WhatsApp comedy groups that are dedicated to the specific task of warning fellow female comedians about creepy people in the comedy industry. So like women helping the other women in this way without necessarily publicly damaging the reputation of people who may or may not have committed various degrees of inappropriate, you know, whatever.

They've always existed, I imagine, through word of mouth and things like that. There's a difference though when you're doing this in public and people are paying the price for anonymous allegations and so on. Yeah, and that's the thing. I mean, people are going to whisper to each other and say, hey, so and so watch out. But yeah, this was a very public list, very publicized list as well. And, you know, I'm sure some of the people on that list were guilty, some were innocent. But that sort of poses the question, do we, you know, go after the guilty and pay, and the, you know, innocent paid the price. And so that was a question I had to ask myself. And actually, in having the conversation with Stephen, I think that really helped shape my own perspective on it,

because I think I did a little bit of a change in my perspective from how I originally perceived the list and seeing what happened to him. But there were so many, I mean, kind of go into the whole me-to thing, where I think it started with some good intentions. I think it did some good things, you know, in terms of bringing that conversation to the forefront. But at the same time, then you have a lot of people who are either innocent or the crime, again, just like in any of these cancel culture things, like the crime is not so big, but the punishment is the same to everyone, no matter what they've done. You know, somebody saying something slightly inappropriate is not the same as somebody raping a woman or assaulting women or men. There's definitely been some

men who've also had predators unleashed on them. But it's it's something that you know, you have the same punishment and also it's being decided in the court of public opinion and not law. And that is a very dangerous thing. Agreed. And the problem is with these movements as they start off and that, you know, let's talk about me too. Harvey Weinstein. Great. Everybody agrees with it. Well, probably apart from Harvey. But and then and then we and then we. Even. He's probably like, you know what, fair enough. You'll come around. Yeah.

But then it goes on and on and on and it goes after. Some people, he got, okay, I can see it. But in order for the movement to keep going, it needs to find you injustices. And eventually, you're run out of injustices. So what happens is you get Anziz and Zori, who you go, well, he's behaved a bit of a dick if you take what the woman says verbatim. But you can't destroy someone for being a bit of a dick. No, you can. People are entitled to be dicks if they want to be.

You don't have to hang out with him or invite them to your party. Or go to their house. Or go to their house, correct. But also what you touched on is that they are always seeking you injustices. And we're seeing this in a lot of organizations in particular. For example, organizations that had to fight for, equal rights for gay people or marriage. Okay, now they don't really have anything because they've, you know, maybe not fully solved it, but some pretty much solved it in North America. But

instead of sort of moving on to maybe countries around the world that have similar issues that we had, they are finding other ways because they have all this money and they have an infrastructure and jobs and the monster has to sort of keep beating itself. And I think a lot of these cultural issues arise from that as well because you have all these organizations with nothing to do so they find new things. Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually it generates into a racket, Eric Hoffa. Catherine, we're going to go to locals in a second for all the people who do support us where we ask their questions to you. Before we do, though, as you know, we always end with the same question, which is what's the one thing that

we're not talking about that we really should be? That is a great. That is a great. great question. I know. And I know you always ask it. And how long does it take for your guests to solve that one? They usually all answers straight away. Yeah. So no pressure. Oh, God darn. Gosh. Okay. I think that it is, I think people aren't talking. I think there's a tendency to go into ideology. This ideology is bad. This ideology is good. And the way that I wish people would talk about it more is about how it's about behavior. It's about human behavior. And we need to stop looking at things from, you know, these polarized sides. And if there's some good ideas, it's a good idea because it helps people. It doesn't hurt too many people, you know. And then

we can't use the tactics that we criticize thinking that, oh, we're going to win the war. And then we'll make everything right and then we'll adhere to principles. And the other thing that I think people aren't talking enough about is AI and how it's going to completely reshape our sense of the world because of all the disinformation that's going to spread. So our sense of reality is already fragmented and now it's going to get even more because we won't know what to believe and whatnot. Happy news. Yeah. All right. Catherine Brodsky, thank you so much for.

coming, head on over to locals where we continue the conversation with your questions. Why is the silent majority always associated with right-wing views and degraded as being somehow non-educated and populist?