TRIGGERnometry - Laurence Fox: Is the Right Going Woke?

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Laurence Fox is an actor, broadcaster and political activist. His best known acting role is James Hathaway in the drama series Lewis (2006–2015). In 2020, Fox founded the political party Reclaim, and stood unsuccessfully in the 2021 London mayoral election. He currently hosts a show on GB News and is involved with the BadLawProject. Our first conversation: https://youtu.be/rXgvv6EXfc0 Our second conversation: https://youtu.be/LgyYluoDhAs Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I started to notice weird things happening with my kids. I said, give me a kiss, good night. And he went, no, you need to ask my consent. And I was like, he said, yeah, at school, they said, you've got to ask consent. And I said, I'm your dad. And he said, yeah, but you still have to ask consent. And I went, okay, we're going to have a little lesson on consent here. How do people who are trying to raise awareness of certain issues have a conversation and what is the best way to approach it?

You know, if you give ground to sort of things like non-binary and stuff like that, if you don't just ridicule it immediately, 10 years down the line it's going to be, you will have given the ground and we'll be dealing with something else. The Bible that says love your enemies. Because I think just as a philosophical and emotional exercise, it is absolutely where your brain should be. How can we find love for them? If I can love them, then I can listen to them.

I see the same tactics now starting to be used. And that I think should worry us, actually. Well, no, I couldn't agree with you more because there's an appetite. for revenge that comes when those tactics are used. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kition. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

Our returning guest today is an actor-presenter politician. He's a man of many times. Lawrence Fox, welcome back. Hi, guys. How are you doing? It's been a while. It has been a while and you've been up to quite a lot in the time that we haven't spoken. So first time we spoke, you were an actor. Was I still an... Oh, yeah.

You were. You were my... I broke my cancellation virginity with you. You did. You did. We had nothing to do with that just for the record. You did it all by yourself, Lawrence. I know.

And then we spoke to you after all of... After you went on question time and et cetera. And since that time, as I said, you've stood for London mayor. You're now a presenter on GBA News. You've started the bad law project and the reclaim party. So you've been up to quite a lot. I have, indeed. It's been a pretty busy time.

And it seems to get busier and busier all the time as well. But it's good. I think it's a, I think it's, I was thinking the other day whether I missed acting, which I sort of do, because it's my heart and soul and I love it. But I was also thinking, what happened? Could I go on a film set anymore? Would people run screaming away? Probably not the sparks and the chippies in your average people,

but the close you get to the camera, how much it go like, No, fascist, run! So, yeah, it's certainly been quite a substantial change. Yeah. Well, once you get involved in politics, these things inevitably happen, don't they? Yeah. But I don't really want to be involved in politics. I want to be involved in culture.

So the politics side of it, I'm less interested in. Oh, you are? Yeah. Because, I mean, you stood for London May and you started a party. I know. It's difficult to. It's kind of hard to. Well, no, but I think, you know,

You know, the standing for London Mayor thing was I was so, I'm still so fed up with the way Cidic Khan treats people. And I'm, you know, I'm fed up with the way a lot of people are treated. You know, the Oxford thing, I was there the other day at the March when they'd surveyed all their local residents as to whether they wanted their sort of 15-minute city. And being able to travel 100 times. And 90% of them said, no, we don't. And they said, well, we're putting it in anyway. So I was, you know, my ticket for the London Mayor with my PR people at the time.

I said, I'm going to stand for London mayor, and they went, you're going to get 2%. And I went, no, I'm not. It's locked down. Get ready for power. I got 1.9%. Listen to UPR people. You're fired. But, Lawrence, if you're interested in culture, then why have you gone down the political

route? Because you do have to have that threat at the end of the day. I mean, I don't think it is ever going to be a substantial threat. But you've got to have, you've got to have, you've got to have, got to go, you can't be all bark and no bite. But actually, the biggest changes that we've managed to achieve have been cultural and on the ground sort of activism stuff, you know, the Hampshire Police thing with the pride flag swastika, which got me, as Neil Oliver described it. Us like a, us like a Vecian bar, transphorb and anti-Semitic at the same time.

So, but we did get the Chief Constable of Hampshire Police removed and actually she, She dropped up a uniform this morning. That was her last day in office. And let's go into that. So the people who don't know, what actually happened around that story? So I posted the mean, apparently it had been around for a while,

but I hadn't seen it during Pride Month, of the four progressive Pride flags. I think it's even got even more progressive now. There's a ring, there's a circle in it. It's even more migraine-inducing, which happens to form the shape of Zostika, as making the point that there is only one flag, one cannot criticise, and that is the holy pride flag.

And I did it because I thought, I bet you this will get me in trouble for criticising the pride fragment. And, you know, adding in the fact that it was, you know, you couldn't also criticise the, the only other fact that it was illegal to criticise, I believe, was the order to face in any way was the Nazi fag. So I thought, it's double bubble. And true to form, you know, social media went mental and I had to remove it for a hateful content.

content. But what then happened is someone else shared it on their Facebook. You getting in trouble is very interesting. But let's be fair, it's not a unique incident. It's not all about me. Yeah, so a guy called Darren Brady, who is their ex-green jacket, posted it, and he posted it on Facebook and just went, what are your thoughts? So he wasn't saying he was actually just trying to get a debate started. Anyway, he got visited by the police on a Sunday morning, three of them, came and knocking on his door. He lives on a quiet road. And it's, you know, wise three people, you know, neighbours looking out, curtain twitching.

And he got visited by the coppers. He said, I'm, you know, I'm not available to talk now. And then he called the Bad War Project. And we went down with the ever tactful Harry Miller. And myself went down with Alex to film them, the police as they rearranged the appointment. And the police being the police weren't expecting that. and instead of de-escalating, they upscaled. So we ended up, I think, with about 11 coppers by that time.

And Darren was arrested. Harry was arrested. I was walking around going, I was the one that blew it in the first place, arrest me. But they refused to arrest me. And at the end of the day, it went a bit mental around the internet. And it cost the chief constable her job. Do you know what?

When I was watching it, my initial thought was, this is the weirdest version of Beatles of Beedles of Beech. I've ever seen in my life. Imagine police turning up somewhere and then Lawrence Fox comes in. Well, that's what we did. We literally walked out of the kitchen and we're like, I mean, Harry would go straight in because

his bug bear is the police. And I think he's really correct in that. You don't want the political police force. Not a good sign of where society's going if you've got political police force. So, yeah, but what was so strange is they couldn't de-escalate it. All they did was they got it more and more wound up. And

yeah, it was wasn't good for them. It was a bad day for the police. And it put in people's minds the fact that, you know, are you dealing with an impartial policeman who's policing their fear or favor? Or are you dealing with a political police force that police is one set of people different from another, which is what we've got in this country? Well, so I'm curious about the approach then because changing the culture. Yeah. I mean, and there's been a lot of conversation about the smaller parties in the UK, sort of right-of-center parties like reform, your party reclaim. There's others that, you know, they don't all roll off the tongue as easily. But the heritage, there's always conversation

about how they should come together, UKIP, whatever is left of that, whatever, you know, coming together and orchestrating some sort of actual rebellion. But you don't think that's really the way to change anything. Well, my thing is, again, you know, in the fact that I don't really like being political, I would much rather we return to a semblance of a,

a solid left, which was a traditional left, not a mad woke left that we've got at the moment, and a sort of solid-ish right. And so I would always much rather put pressure on the Conservatives to be Conservative than I would make 600 votes or whatever, you know, these little parties are going to do, which is to which is to lay the government in, which might be a problem. So I'm more interested in Project Make Conservatives Conservative again than I am in Mate Lawrence in charge of anything, because, you know, as my funder said, primary funder said, when I ran for London Mayor, he said, no one would want you in charge of the tube. No one. So I think it's more, you know, culturally, you can, you can create a bigger

change. And also it's waking people up to stuff, you know, because my, my passion, and Harry's passion is policing. My passion is education because, obviously, I've got two kids in school. And I start to notice weird things happening with my kids. So the first one was, as my eldest son, a few years ago, I said, give me a kiss good night or a hug, good night, whatever. And he went, no, you need to ask my consent. And I was like, do I? And he said, yeah, at school they say, you've got to ask consent. And I said, I'm your dad. And he said, yeah, but you still have to ask consent. And I went, okay, we're going to have a little lesson on consent here. Consent is don't touch your stranger's private parts, right? That's consent. Don't touch,

invade someone's base in that. I'm your friend. father. So anyway, I wrote to school and I said, what's going on here? Because he's obviously not understood consent. And they said, well, we don't really get to the sexual part of it until later. And I said, well, you can take it from me. I've just taught both of my children consent, lesson one in about five minutes. And then I noticed that, you know, I start going, okay, well, where is this stuff coming from? So it comes out of relationships, education classes and PSHG and stuff like that. So I got some lesson plans from another school and found out. And what was on it, which is privilege, skin colour privilege, gender ideology, diversity

between inclusion, all of the things that you just don't want kids being taught at a young age when they're confused as it is. And so I thought we got to change that. So we're going to do that as well. That's what we're, we're, our next sort of cultural project, which is going to be called bad education. We decide to put bad in front of everything. But I just feel it's a better idea. So that being the case, although your children are in private school. And I think, and this is anecdotally, but it's far worse in private school than it is in state school because I've got friends who children are in private schools and they say exactly the same thing as you. Yeah, I think that the guilt, well, you know, is it true?

I was reading this the other day that all sort of revolutionary movements start in the upper middle privilege middle class, you know. And I think that's it. There's a lot of guilt in that school. And they, you know, there's a lot of, they do talks about, how do I talk to my kid about race and stuff like that. And I'm like, don't have that chat, because they're all, obviously, these kids are all a multitude of different ethnicities.

And you should go, how do I talk to my kid about the fact that he's a fucking millionaire? And it's going to bump into a load of people that aren't in life. So it's, there's a huge amount of guilt in private schools. And I also wonder whether you'd find, you know, what the ratio of, you know, young trans children would be in inner city poverty-ridden schools as well. I don't imagine it would be as high as it is in posh, woke schools. And the problem is as well is that they infuse this ideology into the curriculum, whilst at the same time ignoring what the school should actually be there for,

which is to educate and teach. Yeah, well, it also leaks out of it as well. So you'll have Pride Month or something like that, but people won't take the flags down. So it's always there, or Black History Month. It's always, you know, things remain. And I think it's really divisive and I don't like it. And as you say, kids need to be taught,

to be taught to be confident to speak their minds. That's the most important thing you can give a child to do. And they don't really need to be sort of brainwashed into being good little comrades, which is essentially what they, what school can be about a lot. Fortunately, my kids have got me, which is probably quite a pain for them in a lot of ways. and a lot of the parents do part like the Red Sea when I walk into school, except one black dad who goes, all right, racist!

And I'd go over and give him a hug, so it's quite fun. But it's strange. The education system is strange. Well, you joke about it, Lawrence, but you've obviously, since you first came on our show, you've attracted a lot of negative attention and criticism and column inches. And you, as your friend, I will say,

you put your foot in it regularly yourself. And sometimes I open to it and go, mate did you really you had to say like that like how i mean are you okay like you i saw you tweet something saying you know it's the first time i've not been anxious for a long time and whatever yeah how has this been experienced the whole thing has been for you as a person well it's interesting i was thinking about this and i was thinking about you and i and you know when we just walked around ruskin park with my dad do you remember it's like in this desire to try and get a conversation going

You need different sorts of activators. And my activation technique is to go bang. That's one of my ways doing it on social media. And obviously in this experience, you've got more time to express it. But you need to go, look, I'm standing against you so strongly. And you've taken a different approach, which is to, you know, is to make sure, you know, I read your thread this morning about Putin's speech. You take your time to get it down there and you have your substack and all this sort of stuff.

I'm just using Twitter to go, by the way, guys, there's a wall here that you don't get to cross and I will defend with, you know, not with sort of word violence. You know what I mean? So in terms of, am I okay? Yeah. No, I am okay. I'm like, I had a difficult end for the last year personally. So that was when I got anxious. And then I got, I have got put on these anti-anxiety pills and I couldn't get off them.

So I had to start running and I managed to run myself out of anti-anxiety. You ran away from the anxiety. Well, I just, it was the only thing that could do it. And who would have thought that there was an anti-anxiety tool right there in front of you? And all you had to do was put on a pair of trainers. Right. Well, that's good to hear. But I'm curious about it.

Because we're, as we sit here right now and this video will go out later. But we're in a similar debate with Matt Walsh about how do people who are trying to raise awareness of certain issues, have a conversation and what is the best way to approach it. And him and you would say, you know, you come out and you're as fighting and as strong as you can be and you articulate the truth without, you know, being overly nice and whatever. And as you say, we've done that in the past ourselves. But now we're thinking about what is the most effective way to make an impact. So I'm open to be persuaded that sort of going out and punching you. is the right way.

But what do you think is achieved by doing that versus the approach that perhaps we look at? Well, it's a variety. What you need is a broad church in resistance to the suppression of free expression. So I think there's room for both approaches. And I think actually you need both approaches. I think Matt Walsh and what he's saying,

if you think about it, you know, if you don't draw a line at some point and his line, he's very firmly chosen, which is that he would kill. I mean, I think he almost said he'd kill somebody who tried to indoctrinate his child into gender ideology. He's really hardcore about it, and that's his belief, and he has every right to it.

If you give ground, you'll get, you know, if you give ground to sort of things like non-binary and stuff like that, if you don't just ridicule it immediately, you're, 10 years down the line, it's going to be, you will have given the ground, and we'll be dealing with something else.

You know, so my position is hold the line. over stuff that really, really matters to you. Now, yeah, there's a debate to be had about how one holds the line. But I think actually it's quite a broad church. So you can have the more complex way of expressing it. And then you can have to, you know, here you go, mate, in one sentence, this is what I feel. You know, because you see how things are starting to seep into our culture

that haven't been in our culture particularly. Certainly, like when I was in Oxford on the weekend, Antioville were there. And I haven't seen them. I haven't seen them at any other protests that have been to. So, you know, and we've got lots of other debates coming in which has never been a problem in the UK. Abortion is now suddenly a big deal in the UK. It's never been a problem in the UK.

Well, we import all this crap from America, obviously. But I suppose the reason I'm asking is, like, you are a hate figure to a lot of people now. Because I'm a posh white bloke who doesn't mind talking about anything. I think that's why people like you as well. Yeah. And I've said this about you, whether you and I have agreed about stuff or not, like, of all the people, we've ever had on the show, you actually have probably as much cut through as anybody with the ordinary person in this country, in my experience.

Like, I remember in our old studio that you came to, I used to park my car in this underground garage run by a very normal woman, just, you know, she just runs this garage. That's all that she does. She's not an intellectual who's interested in, you know, queer theory or whatever. And with the moment she found out we'd interviewed you, that was it. She thought, I could park there any time for free. She'd pay me to park there. That's what it was like.

So you have that cut through, I think. I guess what I'm just genuinely trying to explore this with you. He was like, if you express things in a way that makes it easy for people to paint you as hateful, which I don't think you are. But people can paint you that way. Then it sort of gives ammunition to the antifas of the world, I suppose, would be an argument. They would do it anyway, though. You know, like I was painted as hateful the minute I open my mouth on question time.

The problem we've got with this is that Megas, has agreed to be Harry's wife and then the press have torn her two pieces and let's be really clear about what this is let's call it by its name it's racism she's a black woman and she has been torn to pieces you can't she has been torn to pieces it's not racism it absolutely is the most tolerant lovely country in Europe let's celebrate our business it's more racism it's what I'm using to stray the charge of racism at everybody and it's really starting to get boring. What worries me about your comment is you are a white privileged male who has no

to be doing family. I can't help what I am. I was born like this. It's an immutable characteristic. So to call me a white privileged male is to be racist. Unfortunately. You're being racist. You cannot just to me.

Okay. Okay. So I was called to be denounced the next morning. I was, you know, I was already a figure and I knew that I was never going to stop saying, what needed, what I felt needed to be said. So at the end of the day, when I walk down the street, I get stopped frequently and people just say thank you very much. And weirdly, disproportionately, by people of colour who go, thank you for talking about us like we're equals and we don't need to be patronised by the white middle class. And I think in terms of my hate figure, my hate figure

status is assured by the fact that I'm straight, white and male. And the fact that I'm posh doesn't help either. And I don't mind talking about race. I don't mind talking about gender stuff. I don't mind talking about anything. And they're like, hang on, you're the enemy. Shut up. And I'm like, no. 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 usaa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. But isn't it also as well, Lawrence, to be fair, it's some of the language that you use in the tweets where you go, I know what he's saying. I agree with what he's

saying, but this could be done in a manner that is less inflammatory. Yeah, but you want the conversation. I mean, I don't want the conversation. I want other people to have the conversation. You know, that's what I want to have. So I mean, give me a tweet and I'll explain it to you. Right. Okay. We don't do this though, right? We don't sit. Like, we're not, you know, we're not the mainstream media. We didn't come and hear of a bunch of hit pieces to do it. I know, no, no, no, I know. I think you probably know what we mean, though, right? Yeah, yeah, 100%, but I do that deliberately. But this is why I'm not sitting here in Francis and goes, or Lawrence Foxx, as you know.

No, I know, you not. I know you not. You do it deliberately, and we're trying to understand the strategy, I suppose. Well, I think the strategy is you immediately attract the huge amount of interest into what you're saying. And people start debating each other very hard over a certain issue. And also what you're doing is you're, as I said, you're holding a line. So you're saying, instead of going, I want to have a conversation about whether I think it's all right to transition children. It's like it's evil and satanic. That's what I think of it.

So I just go, well, why dither around get to the point and just say it? I do think that there are some, you know, I've probably tweeted about 10 times tweets that I've regretted. But, you know, because I could have, I don't regret the point I was trying to make. I just regret the way I expressed it. But, you know, Twitter's Twitter. That's what it is. It's a sort of fantasy land of mad people. Doesn't bring out the best than anyone.

Well, also, you know, and I suppose I was, I was interested to know whether there was an effect of the fact that the amount of abuse you get, then sort of transmogrifies its way into the amount of the way you present. You know, because if you are under that level of sustained assaults, you like get your maces out and your nunchucks and you're wearing them around your word weapons to go back at them because you just go, I am impregnable, which is hard because human beings aren't impregnable. You know, we're all, we all have feelings, even if you're an all right, fascist, Nazi like me. You know, we still have feelings. So I had to explain this to a woman the other day who was interviewing myself for their GB and she sat down and she just character

assassinated me. And, you know, she got the point where she was saying that my mother was a coward. And my mum's dead. She just died two years ago. And after about 15 minutes of it, and my hand was just going, I just had to stand up and I just had to go, no one has upset me that much in years. I'm a human being. You have no right to speak to me like that.

You have no argument to make if you can't remember that the person you're speaking to is a human being. So I suppose Twitter is not really, you're not speaking to human beings. you're broadcasting. It's a sort of, you know, it's a broadcast medium for me. You were also saying in your Twitter yesterday, you were saying,

not that I obsessively stalked your Twitter, but weirdly since... It's good to know someone reads it. Weirdly, since Elon Musk took over yours now appears in my feed, which you never did before. And you were saying, I want to engage with people,

then I miss it. And as you're following grades... It's very difficult, you just can't sift around. And I really miss it, man, because the thing about Twitter is it gives people, like all of us, an opportunity to connect with that person on the street who's walking along and doing whatever.

But once you get to a point where your audience is big enough, you've acquired so many hate followers, you end up having to sift through all of it. And as you change, and this is why I am pushing myself to try and be more, and I'm not denigrating another approach, but to be more, quote, unquote, constructive in the way that I conceive of it, because I can see in my own brain the temptation, which is I get a lot of hey, I can, I, look, I'm smart and I can be cutting and funny and whatever. I can, I can make fun of people and I can destroy them. But I don't want to follow that instinct for me more than anything.

Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. And that's why I've, that's why we're having this conversation with you. And that's why we're having this argument with Matt Walsh. Because I'm trying to work out what the right way forward is. It's not like I've come in and gone, Lawrence Fox must do this or Matt Walsh must do this. Just got questions more.

Well, the interesting, to say there is an interesting thing. I would have said it at the end, but we might as well say it now, that they're on our side. It's not our side. This is the whole problem. You know, we've got to be the humanity's side. But on the side of loving and respecting people as individuals, you have to also allow them that piece to go about their business.

Matt Walsh. If that's his position on transgenderism, it's very entrenched. You kind of have to go, okay, because what happens if you don't, I mean, I'm not saying that you guys do this, I'm saying that a lot of people do do this, is you develop what I would say is the right-wing version

of what wokeery is, which is the same sense of moral probity and purity and demands for absolute consistency and adherence to a certain set of values and ideals. So that does sort of weigh in my head as well to go, you know, you don't want to be guilt, of attacking other people because they're not quite adhering to your version of how one should and shouldn't communicate. I would say on the freedom of expression side, you need the

broadest possible church. And that involves a few punches, a few Matt Walshys, who I don't agree with about a lot of things, but I agree with him on some of the sound of stuff that he says. And it involves, you know, the more reasoned. I mean, even Lex Friedman, who doesn't really sort of, And Joe Rogan, those sort of people who just sort of are reaching out for information. I suppose what you guys do because you've spoken so much to so many people is you naturally are absorbing and storing a great amount of information and energy from the people that you speak to. And so you're probably in a stage of evolution that one gets to

when one listens to a multitude of opinions and stuff like that. I think part of the problem as well with Twitter is because it's text-based. you remove 90% of communication because it's literally just reading something and when people talk about you to me they're like he's this, he's out and I'm like he's none of those things but you just go on Twitter

he's not a nice guy at all terrible human beings and they just show that like and they talk about Twitter but the problem is you remove 90% of the communication now as a person you're very warm You're very open, you're very playful.

Those are some of the best qualities of human being can have in my opinion. I love watching you on GB News where you bring on a person who, should we just say, is woke or progressive or whatever you want to say. And you have a discussion with them. I find those interviews riveting.

Every time they come out, I will sit down and watch it because I think they're genuinely brilliant. Yeah, I love those people. I say to the GB News people, never get me on someone I agree with. Yeah. Because I'm only interested in people I don't agree with. Yeah, and it's brilliant. and you're fantastic with them.

The thing that sometimes when you see the Twitter aspect, I don't think it represents who you are as a person, if I'm honest. It doesn't marry the Lawrence that I know with this digital avatar, should we just say.

I think that is my issue with it. I mean, people do say that about me as well. I know, I think it's totally fair enough. I suppose, I wonder, you know, I reckon there's probably an element of the actor. Yeah. in the performance

you go, Twitter is like your little stage where you've sort of performed so you know, you've put on your armour and you go out there and you deal with it. Yeah, it is interesting,

you're not the only people that say this to me. Yeah. I've had a conversation from my brother once in a while. He's like, he just phones up and I get WhatsApp in the morning and he goes, really?

Really? Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I think, yeah, but also a better mind that I'm quite, a substantial and dramatic shift in life, you know, and I'm just coming to terms with what it is that I want to achieve. It takes time. So Twitter for me is a battering round to work out just to go,

right, these are the places that need defending. This is a major, major problem. You know, so if you get the, and also, I'm a sort of a counterbalance to the fact that if you turn on the mainstream media, they're constantly inviting the same. same people on all the time. So you'll have Yasmin Alibi Brown who called me a racist on television, live television. You know, and I'm like, what? Where's your evidence of this? And then, you know, what's that lady, Dr. Shola, who's sitting there going, white,

Bafters, it's all white, white, white, and it's just like, calm down, darling. So I just take the piss at them. Yeah. By putting up a picture of the African Oscars and going, there's a huge lack of diversity. But it's hit a mess. I asked me an alibi bribe, funny story. Do you remember when I turned down that contract all this many years ago? She was on a show to discuss this and she said, oh yeah, I've seen this comedian and it's

really not very nice. And then they played a clip of my stand-up and they just cut to her going, oh, that was quite funny, actually. She's never seen any of my stuff, but she was quite happy to say stuff. You know, one of the interesting points you bring up, which I totally agree with, and And I think it's actually important for us ourselves and for everyone watching to remember is every person is going through some kind of process, you know, and we're all on some kind of journey. Like you didn't, you didn't, you know, you didn't plan to be here five years ago and neither did

we, frankly, you know. So we're all constantly trying to work out. And by the way, all of this stuff is like when I was, how many of us got educated at university about like transgenderism? You know what I mean? I did do a drama together. Well, it's pretty much... Even at Radda, they didn't...

Yeah, yeah, no, it was a joke. It didn't go near it. It was never an issue. And suddenly there's like a big societal issue and we're all supposed to have exactly the right opinion. And if you are woke, you were supposed to go, yes, everyone's transgender and non-binary and fluid and whatever. And increasingly on the rise,

it's like you must use this language and not that language. And that purity you're talking about we're all to some extent susceptible to it. And that's why I think conversation is important. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And as I said, I only really want to, on the GB thing, because it's, you know, it's an hour and you don't really get. I just want people who I don't agree with. Because I also, I'm very open to being persuaded of the grey area. No man's land.

I will negotiate no man's land with anybody. But what I can't negotiate is my own border, my own personal border. And that is the meaning of words. I don't like words when they're shifted around and really find it appalling that, you know, you know, poor old Roald Dahl's having his books rewritten, when he was deliberately trying to wind up kids and make them rebellious against their parents by using these sort of quite extreme, you know,

what nowadays is seem an extreme and potentially offensive language. And that, for me, is a border. And that, we need borders. Everybody needs a border. Because, you know, as Muskie said the other day, he said, if you've got one world government with one civilization and that falls, then what's going to replace it? You know, civilizations have to come,

and civilizations have to go. And, you know, I think we've, as you say, we have this sort of leaky border, leaky cultural border where things come into this country, which has never really been an issue. And actually, I don't think we're, you know, since the last time we spoke, I think it's got infinitely worse. And I think I said, last time when we spoke, I said, it's going to get infinitely worse. And it's not even, we're not even anywhere near the peak of it yet. I mean, I think Sturgeon was a marker in the sand that even,

insane people would turn around and go, it's definitely not good idea to lock up a rapist with a bunch of women. That's probably a bad idea. And I think the backlash to that was good. But I don't think we've reached peak. You don't? I mean, on the trans thing in the UK, at least, it seems like we're making good progress. You know, Tavistock being shut down and investigated and so on. But you don't think this is...

The transgender thing is just a vector for it. It's not... It's never been about transgender rights or gay and lesbian rights, Otherwise, why do you have to lump them all in together? Because everyone's an individual. So why gay, gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender people in a group with a plus plus on the end of it?

It's about, you know, it's about power and control, the whole thing, isn't it? It's about authoritarian kind of, you know, communist socialist style, dragging everyone down to being exactly the same sort of thing. And it just uses these vectors to work its way into society. So it started off with, you know, all the media.

and the racism and Black Lives Matter and transgenderism and it's going to move pretty swiftly onto mental health now, which is going to be so impossible to, which is why I'd try and start to talk about it a bit more because I think it's important that we remind everybody that we're human beings, because that's what's most dangerous, is that the woke thing, whatever it is,

very difficult to quantify it, is going to go into mental health, primarily, I'd imagine, and you won't be able to say anything because of the damage it will actually physically do to someone's mental health. So you think that's going to become the next battlefield where people are going to say you can't say that I have depression? You can't say that I have depression

or what you've just said has given me depression or has damaged my brain in some way and it's hurt me in a way which is medical. But it's obviously unquantifiable because it's unquantifiable. And then that's really bad because if you sort of medicalize it and it's actually doing someone's actual health because they'll make it,

they'll, you know, they'll sort of cross-pollinate it with your physical health as well. And it'll be like, you just can't say anything because you're actually really injuring someone. I know the words of violence thing exists already, but it hasn't been properly,

that rich seam of wokeness is yet to be mined, I don't think. And you're talking about a grey area, don't it? What are the grey areas for you that are up for debate? Abortion I mean is one up for debate The consequences of freedom of speech Stuff like can language be violent Can language be hateful

All of these sorts of areas I'm happy to talk about What else is a grey area Sexual politics I'm happy to be persuaded about I'm happy to talk about privilege I'm not that interested in talking about skin kind of

privilege because I don't think it's relevant because I think, yeah, there are lots of different privilege to these. I'd say that those are sorts of areas. Let's talk about privilege because to an outsider and maybe it's objectively true, you were like literally the most privileged person they've ever seen on TV. You know, you're a posh white guy, went to Harrow,

Rada, actor, you know, from an acting dynasty, blah, blah, blah. Right? And that is actual privilege, isn't it? Real genuine class A privilege, that is. Yeah. It's uncut privilege. It's, yeah, absolutely 100%. There's a couple of things that go with it, though.

One is it's immutable, so you have no say in it. I didn't get any say to how I was born. And B, it's a socio-economic thing and an educational thing. Way ahead of the fact that it's a skin colour thing. Of course. Yeah. So on that level, yeah, I'm very, almost one of the reasons why I do what I do is because I realize how privileged I am.

And unless you get into politics because you want to get into politics because you want to have power and control over other people, or if you're really interested in trade deals and you're going to affect that, I'm only in it to represent the voice of your average Joe, whose voice never gets represented. You're Darren Brady who just goes, what are your thoughts on this transgender thing? So, yeah, I think privilege is real, but also you can... Well, the question is, what do you do with the...

that like Jordan Peterson interviewed me recently, and we talked about this, which was privilege exists. Different. And it's primarily, as you say, socioeconomic, particularly in this country and class-based to some extent, which is slightly different, but almost the same. But the question is, okay, well, your privilege. Like, what are you supposed to do? Jump off a bridge now? I mean, that's what they want.

They would like it. Yeah. But actually, you know, I mean, this is why the conversation we have about privilege is so stupid, because rather than one side pretending that no one's ever privileged, than the other side pretending that privilege is given to you by virtue of pigmentation in your skin, actually you go, well, people grow up in different circumstances. Now what? Now what?

What do we do with this now? Now that we've established that different people don't have the same chance in life, which they never ever in history have done and never will in the future ever because it's impossible. What do we do now? What do we do with it? And I think part of the answer is you do something that you think, is constructive, particularly for people who don't have as much as you.

I didn't have the same style in life, isn't it? And also, but we've got genetic privilege. Oh, absolutely. Some more than others. You're tall and handsome. Darling. I am, you know, I've had a very, very rich friend who got diagnosed with to catch on his 20th birthday and died 20 years later of in absolute uncontrollable agony,

having lived in agony for 20 years. But he was minted. Really nice house and lovely cars and everything. Well done, mate. But his life was not privileged in any way whatsoever. So privilege is a very subtle thing. And I think I'm really, you know, you're talking about trying to be constructive. I care about that bit in the Bible that says love your enemies.

Because I think just as a philosophical and emotional exercise, it is absolutely where your brain should be. How can I find love for them? Because if I can love them, then I can listen to them. but at the same time it's very, very, very hard when you are being goaded relentlessly by the other side or not the other side

it's so difficult but it does feel like another side because, you know, especially someone like me who had their career just ripped away I was removed, wasn't I? You know, surgically removed very quickly from culture

for not having the right opinion. So it does feel like there is a bit you know these we're being goaded a lot you know and and it's it's difficult not to retaliate to that yeah but we should actually focus more on trying to love them well this is why this is why we were having the conversation about twitter early because i suppose from their perspectives they would say that you are goading them yeah and they are reacting to you and that's why we get into this which i am which you are yeah because i'm using the same i'm using exactly the same tool back at them. I'm pointing out the utter absurdity of what they stand for and how unbelievably dangerous

what they're playing with is. It's extremely dangerous to do what is being attempted, you know, by not even in a democratically elected way. Certainly, you know, Oxford being, example, or what they're filling kids said within schools and, you know. Or immigration policy, nobody voted for the policies that we currently have. Exactly. Why don't you, why can't you take article 8 and 10 out of the ECHR and just, you know, why doesn't this happen? And you start to realise that actually this is, you know, there's an established, there's an establishment which protects itself and no one's really going to take these cultural problems on, you know, because it's too scared of them. But actually, I mean, Lee Anderson said that the Tories will go after

the cultural issues, didn't he? Because he said that will have to, that will be one of the things that will get them elected. So even if they do, do that, the Tories, my job will have been worthwhile because I will have played some part in that. Because, you know, I've stoked those culture wars and I brought them right to the front of attention and I suppose if you're asking why why I do it was such a mallet and a baseball bat because I don't think there's that much time for this to to stop it we polled the other day a load of teachers sorry loaded parents about what their kids were being taught in school so we we gave them options about what being taught in school and 70% of the parents of this generation 39 to 54 or whatever it is were absolutely against

what was being taught to their kids, kids in school, certainly in regards to DIE, gender ideology, skin color privilege, that sort of thing. They were totally against it. But the generation down, 50% of them think it's a brilliant idea. So 50% of them want socialism. That's what they want. They're keen for it.

They want the state to be in charge. They don't want any personal autonomy. And that's worrying. So, you know, that's why they say, look, There's a war on the suppression of free expression, which is where democracy dies anyway. And in that war, you're going to need idiots like me who jump out the trench and go whirling towards the enemies

and you go, blah, blah, blot it. So that the generals and the careful strategists can go, right, well, let's not attack from that side next time. It's an interesting metaphor. Yeah. So we were talking about freedom and expression and GB News have come on. underfire, particularly with the case of Mark Stein.

You had a very interesting point of view on it. What was it? It was one of the few times I was sensible. I think that, I mean, I think offcom as an idea, okay, actually what you're asking me a question, let me assume that people don't know what happened. Anyway, Mark Stein was offered a contract for, that said, because he's a supplier to the channel,

he's not an employee. So they said, right, if you're a supplier to, channel and you mess up and you get fined by offcom because you misread a bit of data or you don't represent the other side of the argument or whatever you're going to be liable for those fines. That was a negotiation number one. Stephen Crowder did the same thing with the Daily Wire. It's like don't publicise contract negotiations straight away. I think that's a slightly crass thing to do and it's a sign of weakness.

They did treat him appallingly in my view based on the fact that he had just had two heart attacks and it was really bad. Anyway, my take on it is you should have the other side of the argument. If Ofcom demand that you have the other side of the argument, that's good. And Offcom are going after this poor, you know, ITV and BBC, who after this poor, is it Nicola bully? Yes. So I don't think Offcom, I think Offcom are the enemy.

But I think if we care about free expression, then we should absolutely represent the other side in DeBect. and Mark made two, had two problems with offcom and GB News, I can understand it. If they're going to find a percentage of their annual turnover when they've already got, hope not, hey, campaigning 24 hours a day to stop them getting any advertisers,

then I think that, you know, Mark should go, should have maybe just held his hands up and said, okay, let's negotiate this contract. And for that, I was vilified. by the right-wing wokeists who demand absolute moral probity and you if you don't agree with us on vaccines on this, on this,

and it's like you're playing into their hands, guys. The one thing that we celebrate is the fact that all of us are different and that we encourage that. It also means that we can... Not anymore, get in line. But it's exactly, it's what happens. It's, you know, history is replete with this stuff.

So, yeah, everyone got very... very upset with me about that. But I stand by it. I think, you know, I think Mark Stein is a great ballcaster. I think he made it. He misread some data on TV and it will have affected people's lives. That's why I stay the hell away from data because I don't know. I don't do data. You give me, you know, an easy sum and I would get in trouble with it. So, you know, he chose to do it. They defended him, but they're renegotiating his contract. They have every right. Lawrence, do you think also that's such a good point about the data aspect of it? Because I see a lot of commentators, and this is not GB News, this is commentators across the board.

They'll go on to talk about one week, they'll talk about vaccines. The next week, they'll talk about Ukraine. The next week they're talking about NHS, then they're talking about the migrant crisis, and the week after that, the economy. And I'm like, either you are some next-level genius who has a fundamental understanding of each of these subjects brought about by years of discipline, intellectual rigor and study, or more likely.

Or more likely, you're grifting the same circle. Yeah, yeah. And don't you think that is the problem as well? Yeah. And also I think it's a circular thing. So your list of things that they go and talk about and then they start getting the next Monday. Yeah.

Which is a real shame. Yeah, no, I think one must operate from a position of, you know, Occam's razor is probably quite a good place to start with these things. And then, yeah, stay away from data, leave data. Because data is easy. Everyone's got a bit of data. I adopt always just, I sort of adopt the which is can get me into trouble, the gun to the head philosophy.

It's like, yes or no. Bill Gates, yes or no, no. You know, pandemic, is it going to kill 750,000 people? No. You know, it's just, I just, I kind of just, I, I, kind of just, I, operate on an instinct and my instinct is quite simple and it's confined to only a few areas, really. So I don't go out there and try and bombard people with data. The only data I'm actually interested in at the moment out of all the data is the excess deaths data. That does

interest me because I'm like, hang on a minute. If there's that many excess deaths now and there were that many excess deaths during what was referred to as a pandemic, then if we'd never declared a pandemic, would there ever have been a pandemic? Do you know what I mean? So I am interested in it on a sort of philosophical level. I'm like, they declared a pandemic, but now we've got a load of excess deaths. Now, I wouldn't go into going, it's all vaccine arms, it's all this, or it's all that, because I don't know.

But I would go, that's quite interesting. And also, why is no one talking about it? I think that's such a profound point, the fact that ain't no one's talking about it, but yet as well, there are people on both left and, well, they're not left and right. the people on both sides of the argument, who purport to know what is actually going on when you talk to people who actually understand this, they're scientists, their doctors, they're epidemiologists, whatever,

and the people who actually know will go, we don't know. Multifaceted, hugely, like everything, it's hugely multifaceted and everything affects everything else, is why it's sort of easy just to fall back and go, what do I have instincts and I believe that there's, instincts have got me into all the trouble I've ever going to. Never listen to them again. But I guess what we're talking, but this is one of the reasons I generally don't do panel shows anymore because you're going to get asked questions about things you don't understand.

And there you are in front of a camera having to, you know, pretend to have an opinion about this stuff. And I found that it forced me to have opinions about things I don't have an opinion about. And it's just, so those instincts, we actually, I mean, Brett, Brett Weinstein and I had a discussion about this a long time ago, which is like, how do you know what you think? think you know. And when it comes to something like the pandemic or COVID or vaccines or whatever is basically you listen to certain people whom you trust. Why you trust them is very, do you do you see what I'm saying? I do in a way. But actually, I remember getting called by a journalist before they, it was public knowledge, you know, what was going to happen in terms of COVID.

And probably a week before it was announced and they said this is what's going on. You mean before the first lockdown? No, no, before it was even an issue. They, a journalist who I knew, well, phoned me and said, this thing's coming to the UK, it's a mega killer. Well, like in January 2020. Yeah. And I just said, no, it's not.

It's not going to be that bad. That's what I said. I said, it's just a bit of flu. Turns out I was quite wrong. Yeah. But it, you know, I don't know. It's so I think those, what, you know, how do you know what you know? I think a lot of it's experience.

So, for example, I realized the other day, that I can't watch films that don't start with a man asleep on a bed with a bottle of whiskey next to him who wakes up coughing, lights a cigarette, gets a call from his divorce wife who says that he owes her alimony and then he goes and saves the world. Those are the only films I can watch.

And Bruce Wallace, Ordenza, Washington, needs to be in there. The narrator says, I wonder why. Just like, ah, right, you're going to save the world. And, you know, everything bad that could possibly happen. Is that why you're a big fan of Hunter Biden, Lawrence? Oh, Hunter, blessing. Oh, I'm not a fan of his. I've only just got my voice back, actually, from that fake crack.

Yeah. And it's still, yeah, still, that really did. I lost a stone in weight. Did you enjoy having a stint of acting back? Was that? Loved it, but I didn't allow myself to enjoy it too much because I knew it was a fleeting fancy and a sabbatical away from the cancellation.

You really can't go back to acting? Well, I'd love to. I don't mean, like, I don't mean that as in you're not capable of acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I'd love to. No one would have you. No, God, no. Acting is like, you know, if you're talking about the crucible of all of this inclusivity,

acting is where it's at, you know, it's right. It's, you know, you're never going to break that apart. And let me ask you a question on that because one of the things we found, you know, when we started trigonometry, two comedians on the British comedy circuit, we were instantly evil, you know, right wing, all this other stuff that's just not true. about us. It's been five years. And we start to get messages now from the very people that used to have a go at us,

going, you know what? I didn't agree with you, but, you know, sort of, do you not get those messages from actors and directors going? You know what? Yeah, I didn't quite agree. But there's something to this whole, is that not happening? Oh, I get a lot of messages from actors saying I agree with everything you say. Right.

But I'm never ever going to tell anyone I do. So, you know, the censorship in show business is, it's another one of the reasons why I go, yeah, would I love to go back to acting, yeah, but would I like to stand on set going, I can't say anything? I can't, what, what, it's not, art is not conducive to that. Art is art.

Art also shouldn't be running alongside culture. Art should be smacking it on the, you know, I think that's probably where my astute comes from, which is that art is meant to expose. the ridiculousness of their current culture. And it's actually one of the greatest weapons to stop, you know, monoculturism and, you know, sort of this cultural Marxism infecting us all. So it's one of those things where you mock and ridicule it. Or you carefully attack it, you know, brilliant playwrights have done throughout the years. So it's a shame, actually.

I mean, bar a few exceptions. The artist's just on the same train track, just five feet to the side going, we're against the culture. Well, the art is actually running in front of the train. Yeah, it is. Well, whiteness has to run in front of the train because, you know, look, look at them. Unless you're the fastest sprinter towards the utopia of woken,

it's game over. Stephen Frye, poor, poor sod. Yeah, he's got in the shit for actually... What's he done now? So, yeah, so we were going to talk about it on our Raw show. So basically, he did a... I think it was a charity dinner or something like that for the MCC, the cricket,

I'm not posh enough to know, basically the cricket, whatever it is. You can do this, Ben Lawrence, come on. Cricket ball. Tell us about the cricket. He did a speech. He made a joke. You know, obviously you want to do it. He made a joke about women.

He said, there's, you know, I think it was actually pro-women. Yeah. Which was weird because someone, but again, the Jordan. What was the job? The joke was something like, there are no women here because they're all off shagging or something. No, no, no, it was. So there's, okay, it's lovely to be here.

There's no women here. So let's talk about shagging. Oh, right, exactly. There you go. So let's talk about shagic. Do you get in cancel for that? No, he then, there's a cricket team, which is called the abracadabras or something like that. Or it had a complicated name, and he called it the Aluacabas.

Anyway, someone complained. And, you know, the Jordan Peterson thing happened. You know, if you talk to a room full of 10 people, someone's going to be offended. But I think the MCC had pushed back. I sense that they push back. But Stephen Fry will now have that little taint on his hand that is difficult to remove. And, you know, if you're not running far ahead of them

with your new latest idea... You'll never be pure enough for that. No, but we've got to stop it on the other side of the argument. I couldn't agree with you more. This is why perhaps sometimes I can be oversensitive to people who are anti-woke going slightly, in my opinion, off the deep end because I worry about that part of becoming, You know, there is many ways that the right is becoming wokeified in the same way.

Because as we talked about, you know, when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you, and we adopt the same tactics and the same purity spirals. And to some extent, you could say we're guilty of it, but also people are like, you must use the right pronouns. Well, there are some trans people who say, I'd like to be called she, and I like that person, and I'll call them a she. Fine. You know what I can do.

Well, you say fine. There's a bunch of people on that. No, you're on that. cancelled? But I also understand their argument. I understand their argument. And I support their argument. So, because if you go, well, if you stay she and you acknowledge transgenderism, what's next? So I get what they're trying to do. That's their border. But I still have the right to choose my words. 100%. And the reason I'm sitting in this chair five years from starting trigonometry is at one point, I said, no, no, fuck you.

I'm not letting you the woke comedy industry tell me what I should say and think. And I'm going to be like that with the left, right, up, down, whatever. People like us should have the ability to choose their own words and think for themselves. And people can argue and criticize and whatever, but I'm never going to have people telling me what to think or what to do. Which is exactly the right way to do. And we must, that is one of the ways that we love one another is we say you have that right. And we protect it for other people. And ultimately, you protect it for the horrible people.

That's who you're protecting it for. Most, weirdly, for the people you hate, not hate, the people that you just, you can. cannot connect with or find any common ground with, you have to protect them. It's your job. It's loving them. And it's really hard. And I just, I don't think, I think it's probably a lifetime's work and more, which is why it exists, this idea, you know, and it just sticks up. Every morning I wake up and I think, love your enemies. What? How? But then you see someone suffer, someone you really don't agree with suffering, you start to feel a sense of real compassion

and even a warming sense of love. Like I'd hate to see someone who's any of the people that have tried to have me cancelled, I'd hate to see any of them suffer. I really wouldn't. So, you know, you were asking about how I am. I think fundamentally how I am is good. I think the building blocks of my nature

and my personality are strong and really good. But I think I'm very sensitive. And I think people don't understand. and I probably don't do myself for any of them on Twitter by going, you know what, I'm not sensitive at all. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's where the ground will be is when we can get to the point of going, I love you. No matter, as long as you're not trying to kill anybody,

you know, I love you. And I will support you. It comes back to Christ on the cross. Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do. I think so. I mean, it's not a bad, even if you don't believe in God and you don't have a faith. It's not a bad manual for living.

No. Proverbs and all this sort of stuff. It's not a bad thing, this idea that somebody else has died so that you can be a bastard to everybody. You know, and it's this modern infection of going, you know, I mean, a lot of people who go, I'm just a really good person. You know, I'm a good person.

I'm like, you're fucking deluded if you think you're a good person. Because if you, if I started spouting half the shit that went on in my head, and things that people say to you, you know you're not a good person. That's why you've got to talk all the time and you've got to express and you've got to connect with people because you've got to find how you can be a better person from the lovely made in the image of Christ that you are,

but the fundamentally pretty simple creature that we all are. And I think that's why the... See, I've been thinking about this a lot. I don't oppose wokeness even as much... because of the ideology as I do because of the tactics, right? Because if a workperson came on TV and said, you know what, I believe in intersectionality and transgenderism and all of this stuff, and I could say, well, I don't,

let's have a discussion about this, I have absolutely no problem with that conversation happening. What I have a problem with is being made to be evil in a bad person and having my life destroyed and people who are not in the position of having a big YouTube channel or whatever, for having their lives destroyed for wanting to challenge those ideas. It's the tactics that bother me as much as the ideology. And look, people have always disagreed about politics, right?

There will always be the people who are more progressive and they want change for the sake of change or they believe change is good in and of itself. And there are people who think that's less wise to an approach. And that's because people are born with different personality types and their life experiences are different. That will always happen. but the tactics that we've got to a position now where it's like you disagree with me

what the fuck is wrong with you you're an evil person that's what bothers me and that's why I am very sensitive to same things happening on the right or the anti-work or wherever it is because I see the same tactics now starting to be used and that I think should worry us actually well I couldn't agree with you more because there's an appetite for revenge yes yes when those tactics are used yeah so I suppose what I've I've been trying to do is think about what wokeness is and how what's good about it. And it's really interesting as a thought exercise because I haven't really done that. I haven't had time to do it.

I've been too busy doing my great tweets. And, you know, of course you want to make the world a better place. Of course you want to be more. You want to include people more. And you know, especially the most vulnerable in society. But as you say, that may be their agenda deep down. What drives them as a human being just as valuable and important as you and I. But those tactics, as you say, are, A, they're disingenuous.

They're intellectually corrupt as well. A lot of the ways that they do things. And B, they use the tactics that they use, a tactics you tend not to find being used up till this point, that as we're saying, you get a bit more worried. You know, that Matt Walsh video, which I saw again this morning, when he says what he says about what he would do to someone who came near his children, that is, you know, that, you know, that, you only have to,

he's got a huge following that guy, you know, and it only takes one. We'll play the mover forward. Yeah. You know. Play the mover forward. That's the worry. Yeah. That's the worry.

So we've got to, we have to just reach across to those that can be reached across to. Yes. And then we'll leave the extremes on either side to cancel each other out. That's what I think they will do. They will just cancel each other out. We can't have culture revolving and society revolving around one of these or either of these extremes at the same time. So everyone in the middle is homeless, which is what you've, you know,

you guys started doing this for, which was to have honest conversations with interesting people, which is why people care about what you do because you're not picking a side. And absolutely. Lawrence says, because I love talking to you about culture and the art, and you did a film, which is my son Hunter, with The Daily Wire. Yeah. No, not with Daily Wire. I did it with them. I did it with Bright Bart released it. Oh, Brightbart released it. Now, you've got what is starting to happen in the culture, which is inevitable really, where you've got progressive, where Main Street Mart is progressive, left wing, woke, whatever you want to call it.

And now you've got this other, so you've got art which is starting to be produced by the Daily Wire, etc. Where do you think this goes? Is this a positive thing to have art which is expressly left or right? And is there something that we can do to kind of maybe have art which is apolitical, which is what I think is better?

I'm just interested to hear your point of view. I think it's, I think that we didn't notice how political art was. You know, I didn't notice. So, you know, if you look at the films made during the Reagan era, they're very one sort of type of film, you know, and you look at the films made when I was growing up, you know, Bruce Willis, lying drunk on the bed, gets up and has saved the world. It sort of, it imprints in you.

I think that with the incredible rise in technology, we're going to see films made for a lot less money. You've got that amazing little gizmo there, which on a film set, I was there when the first slider turned up on a film set, and everyone was like, and I can buy one off Amazon. So I think we're going to see lots more of films made.

And weirdly, the Hollywood bubble will become just more of a bubble, where money is spent on films that not many people watch, and they all give each other a round of applause. So nature of balls a vacuum and there will be films that come along someone sent in the script the other day but we're still in the early stages of the other part of culture

and they're all about like, I've written a film about the vaccine. Okay, just put me out. Next one, it's like, I've written a film about a fake pandemic and I'm like, okay. So it will need to catch up. But I think

it's great that you have, you know, in the same ways we're going to have problems with money soon, aren't we? Because it's going to vanish. We're going to have the black market will start to get bigger, won't it? And people will start trading in different ways. I think culturally what we'll see is a... I think Hollywood is funded by the Chinese anyway. So they're never going to run out of money, along with sport and all of these things.

So we will see a rise in independent filmmaking. They're asking good independent films. The Banshees have been a shooting was a great movie. I really enjoyed it. So, yeah, they're... You cannot kill art. You can't. But you also,

Hollywood is just going to be, I think it's just, I find it so irrelevant. Utterly irrelevant. You know, I mean, someone won an award, what's the name,

Kate Branchett, won an award for a film called TAR. I'm never going to watch this film. And she went, you know, it's, it's empowering women and it's great. And I was like,

I was in a film with you where you played Queen Elizabeth the first. I mean, is there a better part? Why are you going on about empowering women? You've had the best sodding career ever. Why can't you just go thank you and move on instead of having to politicize it about women in some way? It's boring. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with their crumudgeonly Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads

her to a life-changing discovery. Watch remarkably bright creatures with your remarkable moms this Mother's Day weekend, only on Netflix May 8th. So do you think Hollywood is ultimately doomed? I think Hollywood, no, because Hollywood's Hollywood, you know, there's always going to be the same people that go to the National Theatre. And I mean, I don't know. I'm unfamiliar with how they're going to do the production of Arthur Miller's the Crucible, but I'm fairly confident they will cross-cast it. The women will be the men and the men will be the witches and there won't be a single white person in it.

So there will always be an audience, you know, that sort of grateful national theatre audience in the same ways you'll get a grateful Hollywood audience that go, me and my highfalutin cultural experience and intelligence and, you know, gentle taste buds for fabulous culture will just carry on applauding it, like clapping seals, applauding an iceberg.

But surely, when the accountants come in, they are businesses and they go, look, this is a revenue from the latest film. Disney, though, how much did Disney lose? What was it? I don't know what exactly. It's in the billions.

They lost last year. Really? In the billions. And they're still pumping out all of that, you know, woke kids shows. I saw one the other day. It's the worst thing about Twitter, isn't it? Also, the thing about Twitter is

it completely deprives everyone of context. So, that I saw a scene, which was actually long enough at this little kid show where it's sitting there going, you only got the prince because you were white. And it's like, okay.

So Disney has lost a lot of money. But China pays for it all, doesn't it? That's why you don't get any Chinese villains in anything anymore. It's all Russian villains now. You don't get any Chinese villains. So China is subsidizing culture. Good opportunity for me.

What do you reckon? I need to ask you about this. So I was reading your Putin thing. And because that's one of the other things I sort of try and stay out of a bit is the Ukraine situation because I know all about geopolitics. I understand probably more than someone who knows nothing, but I don't understand it seriously.

Why, when I was reading through what Putin was saying, and I was watching what he was saying, he was really going at the culture, wasn't he? He knows who he's talking to. Yeah, so he's trying to talk, just explaining it to me. Well, there is a growing, And as I think all three of us would agree, fairly justified anti-elite sentiment in the West. And he recognises that that is a process that's going on in the West.

And if he can speak to the people who are anti-the-elite in the West, that means that he can secure support in the West for whatever it is that he's doing or against whatever is the elite are doing. I think that's... It's literally that. It's just a clever play. I was just interesting. I was like, why is it going after Woken?

and culture. So I thought out of all the things you could go on about. I mean, I don't think he's all that concerned about transgender clinic in Ohio or whatever it is. That that's really not what the Anglican church doing very stupid things as the Anglican church is doing. But that there isn't really his primary. But he's so he's finding it.

He's sort of like all successful people. He's trying to find the scene with which he can crack the rock of Western resistance. Yeah. I think that's it. And of all of the. criticisms that people can make of Vladimir Putin, he's not a stupid man. I have many criticisms of the things that he's doing, of course, but he's very smart. And the other thing is he's, this is the weakness of democracy for all its many huge

benefits and achievements. We have short-term leaders who have short-term thinking. Vladimir Putin has been in power since 1999, 24 years. He'll probably be in power for another eight years at least. Right. So that is a period of time when you can consolidate power. You can get rid of anyone who's a problem in various ways. It doesn't have to be violent. But you can make sure that they're not in the room.

And then you can implement the agenda that you think. And that means that you can simply out. You know that Chinese saying the best strategy in wars to sit by the river and wait for the bodies of the enemies to float by? You can do that if you've got 30 years. if you'll list trust and you've got 44 days, probably not. So that's a huge advantage. I mean, we've got to a point in the West where I think we think that, like, the values that we have are perfect.

You know, democracy tolerance, like, and they have no trade-offs. Not really. There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs, is my favorite Thomas Solt. And so dictatorship on authoritarianism has huge advantages when it comes to situations. like the ones that we find ourselves in now. And this is why quite often when countries go to war, in the Roman Empire, for example,

they quite often not have democracy or not have the system of government that they would have during wartime. And they would appoint someone who was essentially a dictator to take them through that. And so in times like these, strong leadership has massive advantages. Yeah, that's really interesting.

And also the comment about waiting for your enemy is to float by because another thing that is that I am learning and I was fortunately told it by a wise man who I, because I started to consult wise men now because I think it's probably a good idea and he said sometimes best things do is just sit in the hands and do nothing. That's hard for young people like us.

Youngish. Well yeah because I feel also I feel guilt, you know, work guilt usually like we've got to do something, what are we going to do? And I was speaking to this guy and he said sometimes just, you know, the fight comes to you man It's not like you're running around the playground looking for people to punch They're all coming

There's a cue of them lining up to punch you in the face So you don't need to chase the fight You need to, you know And that's I think actually one of the good things So I've, not any of I enjoyed talking But I've also, it is a it's a thought I will take away because it's like You don't need to be on a war footing

All the time, certainly not for cortisol levels And stress levels within you But you get quite used to them So when you get a go on summer holiday or something and it's like what we can do to say Have a few beers and go water skiing It's like yeah but but how are we going to change The way water skiing is done

It's like yeah That's what I mean about the process You know it's early in my sort of understanding About what I'm meant to be here to do Yeah Which is sort of a question that we've Should all ask ourselves all the time Yeah and the problem is when you start

Fusing conflict with your identity And that's a moment you get into somewhere dark because you start thinking, well, what I am here to do is to do X and all of a sudden when X isn't available, then what is? Yeah. And what are you faced with? And then you realise that actually what you're doing is externalising what is inside. And until you face what's inside, you're never going to be able to solve the external.

And yeah, which is true. And it's also like the, you know, exactly, it's sort of the French Revolution thing. Once you start chopping people's heads off, in order for the French Revolution to continue and the terror, we have to chop some more people's heads off. Yeah. You know, it's sort of self-perpetuating. Yeah, I think it's right. But also there is, their counter-argument to that is defense rather than attack.

You know, it's the shield versus the sword, which one is more useful, but both are required. Well, I think it's something that all of us are trying to now. So it's been a pleasure having you back, Lawrence, and talking about all of this. Before we ask questions from our supporters that only they will get to see the answers to on locals that they've already submitted, we've got one final question for you, which is always the same. What is the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Well, we just talked about it for ages. We did.

They're worrying rise in right-wing, so-called right-wing wokery and loving our enemies. Amen. Laurence, Fox, thanks for coming back on the show and guys, thank you for watching and listening. We will see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it is always available as a podcast.

Take care and see you soon, guys. Ask Lawrence if Madonna was back shipmental when he worked with her on the film, W.E. Oh my Lord. This is behind a paywall, so let her rip. Yeah. Really? Yeah.

I'm sorry.