TRIGGERnometry - "Political Correctness Hurts the Left": Eric Kaufmann

Episode Date: January 26, 2020

Eric Kaufmann joins for the second time. Eric is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) 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

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest this week is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College at the University of London. And the author of Whitechift, which is as he tells me now out in paperback, Eric Kaufman, welcome back to Trigonometry. Delighted to be here again. First in the new year, apparently. Yes, you are. The first interview we're recording since the new year. And since not the first since the election, but the election was very recently. And before we dive into that, and some of the, I mean, one of the reasons we wanted to have you back is some of the stuff you've been talking

about for quite a while was predictive in terms of what's happened recently and what may happen in the future. But just before we get into that, remind everybody, who are you, how are you where you are, what has been your journey through life. Yeah, so I'm a professor of politics at Birkbeck University of London. I've studied questions of nationalism, particularly majority ethnic groups. So when we talk about white majorities, that's the kind of thing that I've been studying for over 20 years. And I think that sort of politics has become increasingly important, and particularly with the post-2014 populist wave. So a lot of the elections since 2014, I think have been characterized by the rise of this new form of populism and also by

polarization. So both of these phenomena, populism and polarization, are important. The other thing I would say is I've also done a lot of work on the history of the cultural left going back into the 19th century. And I think that's another part of this story, which is really important, which is how the cultural left has changed over time and become now a dominant force in the culture and what that's doing to our politics. So I'm kind of interested in the intersection of the, if you like, the cultural left and this new majority group nationalism and how these two things are interacting. And the polarization that comes from that. Absolutely, yeah. And so they feed off each other, right? So the populism is in some ways caused by the success of the cultural left, which then in turn reacts to the success of populism and you get this polarization in the culture and also increasingly in electoral politics.

Sounds like a justification for Nazism. Anyway, Eric. So we mentioned about the election. So let's start there. What do you think happened? And why is it that the left still? all can't admit that they lost. Well, exactly. So I think this election is a perfect example in Britain of what I'm talking about, which is the rise of cultural conflicts to prominence instead of the old left versus right economic. I'm not saying that's gone, but that issue of redistribution versus free markets, which was so big with Reagan and Thatcher, is increasingly being superseded by questions around identity, immigration, Brexit, and so forth. And we saw in this election that the conservative party was able to consolidate that sort of Brexit vote around itself, including a lot of Brexit voters who were to the left economically, historically come from

labor voting families. They happen to live in the kind of constituencies you need to win in order to swing because most of the constituencies in England and Wales are leave voting constituencies. So in a way, the rise of this cultural politics, the way the conservatives were able to speak to that Brexit voting group allowed them to win this election. Since then, of course, as you mentioned, yeah, what has been the left reaction? Has it been reflective, right? Because in a way, the proper reaction would be to say, given the electoral map, given the seats, the fact most seats are leave voting seats, the fact that we can pile up votes in the college towns and in London, and we're never going to win an election.

So the reality is we should be focusing on winning back those seats in the North and Midlands, which means we have to at least make some pitch to the culturally conservative left-wing. voter. That hasn't happened. Instead, what there's been is this kind of doubling down and there's belief that somehow, well, now that Brexit has gone, that issues out of the way, we can get back to our same old message and then we'll get these people back. Because, yeah, okay, Brexit was an anomaly. It was a Brexit election. With that out of the way, you heard John McDonald after the election. That was his sort of post-mortem. My view is that's wrongheaded, that what's happened is much deeper than this, that what has occurred. I mean, if we take a step back and we go to the Brexit vote,

what you could see is that a lot of longtime labor voters who voted Brexit were a specific kind of voter. They didn't tend to vote very often. They had low interest in politics. Very often are less educated. That is a key group of voters. They're kind of less educated, less participatory labor voter for the Brexit vote. So a lot of them voted leave.

What's happened, I think, in the last, in 2017, Corbans was still able to to do reasonably well because these low information voters had not yet twigged to make the association between labor and kind of anti-Brexit and kind of pro-immigration and some of these things which they reflexively opposed. But now by 2019, the penny had dropped and they came to view them as, oh, they're trying to stop Brexit and the other guys actually want to get Brexit done. So I think that it takes longer for the low-information voter to kind of, to make a little information voter to make this equation. We're in the kind of political sphere. We're on Twitter, whatever, so we think, how could anybody not make the association between labor and being sort of anti-Brexit? However,

it does take longer for low-information voters. The same thing happened in the U.S. Obama's presidency actually was an important symbol for a certain kind of low-information, white voter, often, you know, in many cases a racist voter who didn't realize where the Democrats were on these issues. And I'm not saying that's, I don't endorse that by any means. But for some voters, the cues, the kind of ordinary party cues, which are sophisticated, et cetera, will go over their heads. And I think what's happened now is these voters have turned and it's going to be very hard for them to go back into the labor column, unless labor makes an offer like the Danish social Democrats, which is more conservative on the issues these voters care about culturally.

Which would be Brexit, which would be immigration in particular. identity issues, national identity, patriotism. So these sorts of questions, perhaps security, but those sorts of questions I think labor is very uncomfortable with. I think David Goodhart, and I know Matt Goodwin's mentioned this, has mentioned that a lot of social democratic parties or left parties are very uncomfortable moving to the right on culture, whereas a lot of conservative parties are more comfortable moving left on economics. That's more true, especially if you look at Johnson, moved left in terms of the minimum wage and spending on the NHS and a number of these issues, deficit, etc., he's really broken with Thatcheride orthodoxy,

relatively easily, and that's been accepted. It's been a little bit harder going in the United States. Trump has done some of that on Social Security and the deficit. He hasn't gone the full distance in terms of infrastructure spending and minimum wage, but he's gone part of the way. that sort of gets to that point that it's easier for the right to move left on economics than the left to move right on culture which was Goodhart's point and that kind of

I think also speaks to these questions of wokeness and political correctness which are caging in the left preventing it perhaps from moving to an area where in terms of their own self-interest they probably do need to move which is to a more conservative position on culture

sorry I was just going to say because that is a point David Goodhart raised it, Matt Goodwin raised it, saying that it's very difficult for the left as they are now to move to a more socially conservative point of view. And I just would like to know why do you think that is? Well, it's mainly because these sort of activist cadres are influenced by the intellectual currents in the universities where there's been something called the cultural turn of the left since the 60s, which is away from class and away from this idea of the working class and historical materialism and these sort of Marxist ideas, towards the new identity politics, race, gender, more recently, sexuality, that these kinds of tropes have become more important.

So those issues are there sacred issues now for the intellectuals and who are influential at the upper layers and amongst activists, right? So that then, if that's what's motivating these people to work for the party, to come into the party, the last, you know, they will die on this hill before they kind of give up those aims. And so that simply locks the party in. and prevents it from essentially backing off on those issues. So it's really there.

This is an example of where people always say, well, wokeness, political correctness, it's a storm in a teacup on campus. Actually, it has very far-reaching effects when it percolates down into outside the campus. So one of the examples is left-wing parties. If it constrains their ability, right, to move rationally in a political marketing space

towards where the market is, then you've got a problem, and I think that it's very hard for parties to overcome. The Scandinavian left has been able to do it better, partly because I think because those are smaller societies where the polarization is less extreme, and I think there's more of a sense that, well, actually, we have to listen to our base a little bit more and so on. But I think in Anglo-American societies, there is much more of a disconnect between the kind of elite metropolitan group on the left who are influenced by these intellectual currents, the new left, etc. And what the voters want. What you're really saying is they've been captured by this activist fringe. And it's not just captured by activists who have an agenda, but it's also what's really important about the wokeness is that the ability to intimidate.

So it's not just that a whole bunch of people believe these ideas. It's also that they can enforce a code, a taboo, that if you decide to challenge that taboo, I mean, Len McCluskey did this a little bit talking about immigration just prior to the election, the union leader here. And that is something that you're going to get hauled over the coals for, attacked as a racist for. Well, do you want to take that risk? It's very unpleasant. So again, this ability to wield taboos is a kind of force multiplier for the new left.

And so it's not just the power of their ideas, but it's the power they hold over reputations and over public morality that allows them to expand their power. But what that does is it sort of locks in the left. And so I think Matt Goodwin tweeted a whole series of countries in Western Europe where the main left-wing party has had its worst result ever. ever since the 30s. I mean, the same results that we see for labor occurring in a whole range of European countries. And that's again, as a result of this, I think, anyway, inability to move right, if you like, on culture.

The left-wing agenda economically is reasonably popular. That's not the problem. It's more the fact that they are locked in by these taboos or by the new left belief in some of these new left shibbolists. They're just unable to adapt. And where that goes will be very interesting. Before we dive into that, which is a political correctness, which is an era that you've been researching. I wanted to pick up a couple of things. Like, I mean, in terms of moving the right, moving left on economics, I looked at the news websites this morning,

and there's something, there's a government minister talking about how some kind of rail company will be nationalized immediately. And I literally thought I'd woken up in a great-bratbury novel and someone stepped on a butterfly. You know what I mean? Like, it seems a very smooth process. for the right to move left on economics. That seems to, they don't seem to have a problem losing their base because their base is now the socially conservative,

largely working class people, you might say. Yeah, and I think the difference is that there isn't, you know, for the right to move left on economics doesn't break a taboo as much. You know, it doesn't mean you're going to be attacked as a morally deficient, a monster, you know. And so that makes a difference, right? You're not going to be shamed.

and it's this whole sort of shaming enforcement of policing of virtue, policing of language, all these sorts of things which are identified with that left side of the ledger which don't exist as much on the right. Now, of course, there are entrenched interests so that in the United States, for example, in the Congress, there are still a lot of members who grew up on Reagan

and Rand and believe in free money. So it's harder to, for example, to raise taxes or to redistribute would be a harder road to hoe, I think there because of these sort of libertarian ideas probably are more entrenched. But I do think moving away from that doesn't quite carry the same stigma, I guess, that someone on the left moving right on culture would. And before Francis takes us into the political correctness, I just wanted to clarify, because it's a very triggering term for some people when you talk about low information voters. Of course. You are not using that in a derogatory sense. And by this point, all the people who've been offended by a switch stop.

So we can just talk to the rest of them. But you're not saying there's a bad people. No, no. What you're saying is these are people who are politically not very active. They may not read the times every single day and whatever. Yes. Doesn't necessarily mean their opinions are any less. No, their opinions are equally valid, but maybe they pay less attention to the warp and wharf of politics.

They're not in the Westminster bubble. So, I mean, in a way, that's a good thing. It is correlated with not having a degree, for example, but it's not a hard and fast. So there are people with degrees who are not interested in politics and vice versa. And I think what's occurred, you know, if we, there's a long U.S. political science literature on this that, you know, essentially, if you looked in the 1970s and 80s at the states and you categorize them by how liberal or conservative their electorates were on one axis and then whether they voted Democrat or Republican on the United States. the other, there was no relationship at all. Really? Most people were conservative and they were Democrat bipartisanship.

There just wasn't this link between ideology and party, which we think of so automatically because we, again, we think in these ideological terms, a lot of voters don't. The party is one thing. It's something you get maybe from your parents or friends. And then the ideology is just an in Kuwait bunch of views that you've kind of come to. What's occurred in the U.S., of course, is now if you take state ideology and partisanship, it's like a straight line, you know, 0.9 correlation. So it just dramatically changed, and that's why you get this polarization.

So those sorts of processes, I think, were occurring here too, where the kind of more, you know, less participatory voter who didn't necessarily understand which ideology went with which party, that equation is starting to be made more and more, particularly on these kind of cultural issues. And as that happens, actually it locks in a sort of more deeply rooted partisanship amongst conservative voters. Or if you're liberal-minded moving towards the left, although the liberal-minded voters, because they tend of higher education, are more likely to have already made that move, right? So to be able to identify which party represents which ideology. Basic stuff, but that alignment of ideology and voting is very important.

explaining some of the patterns we see, particularly the polarization. And it's very interesting. And you're talking about polarization, and one of the factors that has really contributed to polarization is political correctness. Now, I suppose a counter argument to that would be, Eric, what's wrong with political correctness? Doesn't it mean that I just not allowed anymore

to hold racial epithets of people outside in my white van? You know, isn't that what... Your comedy career is over there. Isn't that what political correctness is? Well, I think as you and I probably know, the devil is always in the details, that if political correctness means don't call a black person the N-word, you know, we're all for political correctness. It's when you define racism in an expansive way, right? So it's when you say, if you're in class reading from a 19th century text where someone used the N-word that you are essentially the same thing as using the N-word yourself. I mean, that's kind of ridiculousness of expanding. Or when you say if you're against affirmative action, you are as bad as someone in the N-word. the Jim Crow's self. So that's sort of, so that's really, I think, what we mean by political correctness is expanding. Overreach is what you're talking about.

Yeah, overreach, sort of this elasticity and bending of what Orwell said, you know, 2 plus 2 equals 5, and not only will you agree to that, but you will be made to believe. I mean, this is essential when the meaning of words becomes political and not what ordinary people, how they categorize things in a social scientific way, which is based on, you know, the scientific method, which is to do with measurement and clusters of differences. And that's how we categorize the world if instead is about no, this is, racism is what I say it is. Right. But what this then means is the expansion of concepts like harm and racism and sexism and so on means that more and more people are, you know,

we could talk about British politics, for example, if you say that this whole issue about the wind which was about essentially administrative error and not mess-ups at the home office, which was not racially motivated, but which subsequently people like Clive Lewis and Afwa Hirsch and none of these commentators are very quick to try and identify that as racism, right? So this broad brush approach, but what that does actually is it there's been about four experiments which show quite clearly. And there's, you know, I've actually done one of these studies myself, whereas if you take the

statement and you call it racist, you will get a blowback in public opinion. People react negatively to that, particularly conservative type voters. We know from the public opinion research, for example, that most white Trump voters are actually fairly warm towards African Americans and Hispanics. It's not that they are particularly, they're not cool towards those groups. They're just not as cool towards white people as white liberals are. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality,

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cancel the interviews. Done. So what, but what, this is fascinating because this is a reason we love talking to you and Matt and other people because you've actually done work on this. You're not just talking about it on Twitter. You've actually done

the research. And what you're really saying is that if you expand these concepts of harm done by words, what that creates is pushback from people who go, fuck you, I'm not racist. You know what I mean? And that then creates the polarization that we see, which then leads to election results that we see.

Is that what you're saying? Yes, yeah. So you get two things. Like in the Trump case, hostility to political correctness was second. I mean, in the work I've done on both the primary, Republican primary vote, but also that switchers in the general election, that this hostility to political correctness next to views next to wanting immigration controlled and reduced, that seemed to be the second most important factor. Just pause there. I mean, that's incredible. It is a massive.

That is incredible. People care about restriction of speech. Right. And being mislabeled as something they're not, almost as much enough for that to be the primary issue in their choice for the leader of the free world, as they say. That is quite an incredible thing. Yeah, it is an incredible thing. And it has, you know, and there's been a number of experiments where I think in one case, they were talking about taking down Confederate statues or something, and they said that this is a bad policy.

And then the next time they said, well, this is, we don't want this policy because it's racist. Or maybe the wall was the example. And in all these cases, you could see that when they threw the term racist in there, there was a lot more resistance to the statement. Right. So a number of these experiments have kind of found that there's this direct reaction. amongst a chunk of voters. Another paper that I'm involved in now

with some other people, they've done most of the world. Yeah, don't give them any credit. They've done most of the world. We'll just call them other people. But it was really about this. It was a sort of an example where, you know,

Kirsten Gillibrand, the kind of very woke U.S. Democratic candidate, and we had this statement saying, you know, if my kid wore a hoodie and was black, he would be, you know, arrested, and it's only in fact my kid is white skin that he...

So we had this sort of paragraph in there. And you can see the support for Gillibrand amongst people who read that paragraph simply drops, you know, quite dramatically compared to when they didn't have that same wording. And again, it's an example of this reactivity that this sort of expanded use of the term racism invokes in people. Now in the, in the election here, again, I don't have any, I'm not going to, I always want to see the data in the research, so I can't say this for sure, but there is a certainly a perception that there was among some voters, this idea that the Labor Party in some ways looked down on them and thought of them as being

a bit racist for voting for Brexit. Again, we need to see the data. I don't want to jump ahead of the data. But if that was the case, that would be another example of this phenomenon where there is this blowback effect from political correctness. Of course, what happens is if populists then are successful, you get a sort of reaction on the other side, which is like, oh my God, these people, Trump is so awful and so I'm going to, you know, I'm going to be even more opposed to these people and vilify this government or Trump or Johnson or somebody as a monster. And so you actually get this back and forth. So in the last European elections, the 2019 European elections, you could see both the populist right parties increasing, but also some

of the kind of more cultural left doing well. The green. Now, of course, green also involves obviously the environment, which is a somewhat separate question. But there is also a kind of, I think, a reaction to the rise of the populist right on the cultural left as well, in the college towns and some of the larger cities that have larger professional populations. So you're kind of seeing this dialectic going on, which is sort of polarizing. But another example of particularly this question of political correctness impacting on populism really has to do with the question of immigration, right? So if restricting immigration is defined as racism, or if, for example, deporting people, who are in the country illegal is defined as racism, then all of a sudden that is a massive shift.

So a voter, you know, a party cannot go, like the Democratic Party could not talk about enforcing the border anymore if that is now seen as a racist thing. What does that do? Will it emboldens of, you know, it allows market share for somebody who is going to talk about this problem. So in the case of Sweden, for example, the only, that the two main parties were kind of agreed

that we're not going to talk about reducing immigration levels because that would be kind of racist. And this is an example of the power of politically correct norms to constrain the discourse, what we call the Everton window of acceptable debate, and to take certain questions off the table of democratic contestation. Well, what that does is it's, I think I may have used this metaphor last time of the Soviet department store where it's one pair of pants. We're only going to sell this style and that's it. Okay, well then people. people want actually a range of other things, they want genes, etc. And so the black market will pop up to provide what the mainstream won't provide.

And that's exactly what the Sweden Democrats were. They were kind of a black market party. They provided the opposition to immigration. And lo and behold, they sort of shot up to 25%. I don't know where they're at now. They're very high again. But that's an example of how this political correctness, the downstream effect of it was to create a marketplace for the populist right

by shutting out the mainstream parties because they couldn't cross the red lines, right? Or another example would be Tommy Robinson in the English Defense League. You know, if the local authorities had dealt with the Asian grooming scandal as normal local authorities should, would never have expanded into this big issue.

But because of political correctness, because it happened to be Asians, which is, you know, most Asians were not involved. And we're talking about a very small number of people here. But the fact that they happened to be Muslim Asians was something that made this very difficult to address by these local authorities, which then meant the problem kind of metastasized out of control and then opened up space for Robinson and others to exploit, right? So again, if you were going to explain the rise of Tommy Robinson, it's very hard to do that, I believe,

without political correctness. Political correctness is really oxygen to that kind of a figure. So if we're going to, we can't just think of political correctness as something that happens on campus and restricts somebody from speaking on the campus. It has these very important kind of downstream effects which are leading to populism and polarization. And I think that's kind of one of the key messages of my book too is to say, well, we have to look at how these things interact in the round. Yeah, it's a great book. And you've talked about a lot of the stuff that since happened, which is why we're delighted to have you on. So I just want to make it clear. And I'm a little bit slower than everybody else in the room.

True. Yep. I just want to. So calling someone racist doesn't persuade you to vote for them. Is that, is that correct? Something like that, yeah. Okay, lovely to know. And so what you're essentially saying is that the issues of freedom of speech and political correctness are linked.

And what you have with political correctness once it sort of grows out of control is it affects people's ability. to express themselves, which doesn't it sort of give credence and emboldened, unpleasant views, because it gives them a certain glamour that they never had before? Yeah, absolutely. I think once you kind of debase the currency of racism, then somebody who generally is a racist can say, well, you know, they're calling you racist for wearing a Chinese prom dress, and they're calling me racist, well, hey, we're the same. And so it kind of makes it impossible to make what are actually very important distinctions, right?

because there really are nasty racists out there that we need to be able to call out. And even within an individual like Donald Trump, some of the things he says really are, you know, something like insinuating that Mexicans are rapists is an awful racist thing to say, whereas talking about a wall is not. And yet those two things are completely meshed together in this narrative of, you know, like the wall is racist and deporting people is right. Well, no, actually it isn't. But saying Mexicans are racist is, we have to be able to kind of make the,

those fine distinctions and that becomes impossible when this charge is being lobbied, being lobbed time and time again. So just, yeah, and yeah. So the free speech question of course is, you know, that is a sort of separate arm. So all of these kind of effects, one is that polarization is a result of political correctness. But another effect of course is, you know, the effect on free speech, say in universities or in comedy, as you guys are probably familiar with. And how do you tackle this for this?

issue of free speech on campus. Because it seems to have been, so going back to when we were at university, which was the turn of the century, which makes us sound incredibly old, I don't remember that being as much of an issue. But it seems to, in your own words, metastasized and it's got worse. How do we tackle that? So we have balance. So we have two sides of people discussing, debating.

Well, I mean, I actually, and I, you know, people have different views on this. I think this is not as new as people think that in the, when I was at the university, this kind of shows my age. This is kind of in the early 90s, late 80s period, that a lot of the same kind of things were going on. Perhaps at a smaller scale, there wasn't social media, but there was speech codes, there was political correctness, there was a lot of these. It's just, I think what's happening now is to some degree, to some degree there is more of a challenge to these things. and that's bringing out more of a reaction. To some degree the social media, I think there was some good work by Zach Goldberg,

who is in the United States, who shows that the rise of online news services like BuzzFeed and Vox, but also... Quality journalism, America. But also social media, it doesn't explain the rise of the populist right, but it does a pretty good job in terms of the great awokening to use, Matthew Iglesias' term, this kind of sudden emergence of this very radical cultural level. left sensibility. Now, how do you address that on campus?

Right? Okay, so the question is, you have the heterodox academy, you have people on the internet, the Jordan Peterson's of this world, and they are creating a counterculture, which I think is very important. But ultimately, I don't think that's going to be able to penetrate these institutions, because the institutions are actually captured. Now, speaking in terms of the universities, which I know well, you know, most people are perfectly nice and rational normal. You have a small group of very committed, very highly networked, radical

authoritarian leftists. And they are very important because they also know how to exploit the procedures and the policies of the university to their advantage to, say, shut down speakers, to get people fired. And I've locked horns with these

people on a number of occasions. I've had sort of, I think I'm on my third internal investigation. So, yeah, I mean, what they try and do is to hit you with a trumped-up charge, let's say racism or sexism. And in the policy, it says, you know, we want an environment that is safe for people and no one's going to be discriminated against on the basis of race and sex. And they say, you know, he, whatever, maybe he read out from a paragraph that had the N-word on it. and therefore he is in the same category as the racist that you mentioned in your policies, and therefore he must be removed from the university.

Or maybe there's a speaker who shouldn't be allowed in, right? So it's that twisting of the meaning of words. Increasingly, my view is that the only way to tackle this is going to be to actually have more government regulation of these sectors in terms of specifying in very, very fine detail what the meaning of words is. what the meaning of racism is. So if someone actually does call somebody the N-word in class, then yes, that is an offense, and there's no way free speech trumps that.

But on the other hand, if somebody is in a nuanced way reading a passage or if they are expressing a view on Brexit or whatever in class, then that cannot be interpreted and stretched into meaning they violated college policy. So this is going to require very kind of targeted forensic policies from governments, actually, I think, in order to keep... What this is about is, it is not about... And of course, I know some liberals who would say, you know, some real liberals who would say, well, you know, institutions have to have autonomy. Isn't it a liberal when we get the government involved? The problem with that reasoning is that if you have a kind of a vigilante or a kind of a spontaneous form of,

of authoritarianism that is kind of emerges in a sort of not disorganized but sort of peer to peer way. It's not an official institution that marches in and takes over the university but it might be a network that self organizes and is able to exert

power that way over who gets invited in, over the content of the curriculum, etc. and can essentially lobby and pressure and coerce the university into doing its bidding. So what you then actually need to do is you have to deal with this spontaneous authoritarianism that's taken root and you have to

actually marginalize it. And that's actually going to create a free or more liberal university. So it is actually about increasingly furthering the aims of liberalism. You're not actually constricting liberalism through government action. We're not there yet, but I think that is increasingly going to have to happen because I don't think that simply setting up an association of people who support free speech and so on is going to do it. Because when you have to the institutions that are essentially control, not control, but where the red lines of what you're allowed to talk about and are essentially policed by a self-organizing network. You have to find a way of actually getting at that very small but very influential network

and to minimize their influence. So I think we're kind of going to need more intelligent targeted strategies that are kind of within institutions and not just general debates, which are important. The culture is still important, but we're not going to get the change we need unless we are actually able to apply more targeted policy tools. And actually on that very subject, the question I was going to ask you is I was hopeful, maybe just because it was Christmas and New Year. And I thought it's a new year, maybe things will change. But now that, you know, the Boris Johnson government has an incredibly strong mandate from the public, the huge majority for a party. that's been in power for nine years now,

10 years almost. Is there any evidence that, you know, the overwhelming victory of his party and the platform that he's stood on is going to get people to go, okay, well, you know, like with Brexit, most people now accept the Brexit's going to happen, right? Right.

Is there a sense in which elections like that, election of results like that, will actually potentially reduce polarization as people are given a kind of wake-up call that going so far off the deep end isn't going to work. Is there any evidence for that? Because I was kind of hopeful that might happen. Well, it's certainly no.

No. I don't think this... It's cool Christmas sherry that you've been drinking. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't think it's leading to any rethink on the other side. Really? And no, I really don't think it has. I think that, and certainly not, I mean,

if you take the intellectual heart of, you know, the cultural left, which is in the culture industry, including university, there's not going to be much, you know, that election is not going to change many minds. Now, there are, well, there are certainly a lot of center-left people in academia who didn't like Corbyn, and they, of course, are saying, well, look, you know, we've been vindicated, and they're right. So they might say, well, what we need to do is move in a Blair right direction. Some might say that. But of course, there are also a lot of kind of Corbyn's. You can't invade Iraq every 10 years, man. Come on. No, no. But you can't blow up in a room.

No, I think, however, what might be an opportunity is that there are figures in the government. You know, near Amirza might be one. Former guests of Chicanumption. Absolutely. Who do get this issue. They get the importance of kind of having a readjustment in the culture, right? And sort of reining in this excess that's been going on. The problem in a way is that the senior, I think there is a generational divide so that the senior Tory, people in the conservative government are still in the old kind of Thatcherite mold and they're still mainly concerned about things like Brexit and, you know, economic free trade and things like that.

So their focus is very much still on high politics and economics. It's the younger people within the party who I think get the issue much more. And you can actually see that in survey data on, if you look at people under 30 or particularly under 25, you know, political correctness is a much bigger concern for them than it is for people who are kind of over 55. You know, I mean, yes, the over 55s are against political correctness, but they don't really care that much about it as an issue. It's not a major thing. Whereas amongst the younger people who are against political correctness, it's a very, very, it's like one of their most highest issues. I think that kind of shows you where this culture conflict is much more salient to the kind of under 30 population. Maybe because they're online more, maybe because they see it more in their institutions.

And I think the question in this government will be whether those younger voices actually have an influence or not in setting policy. And it's really individual. Some people, they really get the issue and some, it just completely goes over their head. When they think of universities, all they think about is, oh, we've got to reduce the number of people going to university, and it's costing a lot of money. I mean, that's the extent of their worldview, rather than maybe we can actually enact some reforms to improve some of the quality of some of the issues that people are concerned about. And, Eric, aren't we actually in quite a dangerous situation? Because we've got these two polarised camps. Most people are with, you know, sort of the Boris Johnson model, anti-PC.

We've got the left who are sort of digging down and not really engaging or listening. And effectively, what we've got is an opposition that are useless and provide no real opposition. And isn't that a dangerous place to be in politically? It is a dangerous place because what happens if the conservatives bungle things? You know, they mess up on the NHS or they aren't, you know, maybe economically they're pursuing austerity or whatever it is. You do need to have an opposition that is able to credibly threaten them in power. So, yeah, I think this is another casualty, really, of political correctness, that if that hamstrings the Labor Party and makes them unelectable for a generation, then some very real policy concerns which they bring to the table are going to go unaddressed. And there's just isn't going to be, you know, the Tory's feet isn't going to be held to the fire on some of these questions as effectively.

So that's, again, another of the downstream effects of this quite pernicious ideology. Well, that's why people always talk to us about why are you constantly going on about what's wrong with the left is because we like Francis is old school lefty. I'm very much in the center. We need a strong opposition. That's right. We need an opposition that can challenge this government and potentially once this government gets old and tired and whatever to replace them, right, and have a sensible platform which they offer to the public. But it worries me what you're saying because, you know, as I said, I was very hopeful that people might start to wake up. I really was. I thought, you know, hey, this 2020, the election's over, people might go. So, right. Well, it'll be really interesting to see the U.S. election in 2020. This is what I was going to take it to.

Yeah, because what you see is in the Democratic primary, the kind of wokeness has got some power. You know, some of these radical new congresspeople and some of the candidates, Gila Brand, for example, in Beto O'Rourke and some of these people, a lot of them are, are, you know, trotting out issues like white privilege and reparations and so on. So you can see a situation if all of these candidates sign up to reparations, for example, that could make the Democrats unelectable, right, if they have to tip their hat to that. Now, they have still got some moderate candidates, Joe Biden, and to some extent Bernie Sanders as well. So these, at least moderate on the culture issues, and those candidates are doing well,

one of the reasons is the African-American vote, which is actually a moderating influence because they're less politically correct and they're less likely to go for this new style of politics. So Biden may get in on the strength of that vote. And again, that gets to a lot of this survey data showing, you know, white liberals are much more likely to say that the reason blacks can't get ahead is racism. Diversity, you know, diversity. They know better than black people. Right. Right. So kind of much more than black people. So it's sort of, but there is still that old. older Democrats and black Democrats are still there to kind of more or less provide a moderating force. And so it may be that Biden squeaks through. As the nominee. As the nominee, in which case I think he's got a very good chance of beating Trump. But if, let's say they, you know, if it's Elizabeth Warren or if it were to be one of these other candidates, again, because of that politically correct pressure to be woke, that could make the Democrats unelectable.

And then you could get, again, another, you know, another four years of Trump. What does that mean? I mean, with all kinds of, you know, attendant risks of what's going to happen in foreign policy. So all I'm saying is, again, it's a version of the same problem where this, and in the context of all these left-wing European parties that are having their worst results, you know, ever. You know, and one major reason for that is that inability to shift to where the voters are

because of these artificial barriers laid down by an ideology, which is the same political correct ideology. you talk about. I'm curious that you make this point that you think Joe Biden would have a good chance because I think in terms of his platform, he's certainly, but I've been watching him. I mean, I'm not sure he's still all there. Right. Well, that's the knock against him, but it's hard to say. No, I don't mean that is an unkind thing. And the way you've laughed at it and that makes it seem really unkind. I just, I think he's kind of at that point where he needs to be with his grandkids. You know what I mean?

Well, you might be right. pretty much getting to the point where intellectually he's dribbling. Well, and I'm not, I don't have a firm view on how serious this is. People have said, well, he's had a lifelong stutter. He's always been a bit of a

bumbler in terms of, yeah. So I don't know if this is just sort of. It's not a strong salesman. I've always been to a bit of a bumble. Vote for president. When you come up against Kim Jong-un, you want a bumble. Yeah, yeah. That's where you want, right. But yeah, so maybe his, someone

mentioned that, you know, who, regardless of who wins this election, the key person to look out for is the vice presidents, because they're just like a heart attack away from taking office. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So, yeah, I don't know. Maybe it'll be the vice president then. And do you think Trump's going to win? I mean, it's a horrible question. I mean, I think if Biden gets in, I think Biden's got a very good chance to win. But I think other, the other candidates, no. I don't think they have a strong chance to win, Eric. Just because he's, he doesn't trigger the Trump base in the same way as the other candidates.

Sanders and Biden, I don't think trigger the Trump base as much as the other candidates do, who are more on that woke spectrum, right? Not all of them. Not an Andrew Yang. Not an Andrew Yang, right. Andrew Yang, but he's not,

he doesn't have a chance. Yeah, obviously, if he was the nominee, yes. But I think he could beat Trump if he was the nominee? Yang might, yeah. Yeah, because he'd have the Democrats behind him and he has appeal amongst Republicans, But, you know, he's not going to be the nominee.

Why not? He's just, he's nowhere in the polls. But I think with Biden, he is more of a kind of unifier. He's seen as more not somebody who is as hostile. He's not somebody who's likely to think that, you know, all Republican voters are a bunch of deplorables, right? So he doesn't kind of, I don't think he awakens the kind of hostility that Hillary Clinton would or that in Elizabeth Warren or,

a Beto would, you know, I think it's a different type of beast. So I think he actually has that potential to be, I won't say a unifier, but more in the Obama mold, more somebody who is going to be less offensive to that kind of voter. And that's why I think they would be well advised to select him, and they may well select him simply given the dynamics of the different primaries that, you know, particularly the more African-American heavy states like South Carolina are likely to support him. So he's very popular with African Americans. Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, he is.

And with older voters generally. So I think that, and this is partly a legacy. I mean, he was with Obama. But also, he's a longstanding fixture. And I think the African-American vote is kind of more stable in terms of party loyalties and personal loyalties. So that, but we'll see. I mean, the race has still got a lot of people in it.

And the progressive vote is sort of scattered amongst a bunch of candidates. So as that consolidates, it's always possible that it could consolidate massively behind, say, Warren or another candidate. I don't think Buttigieg is likely to make it through, even though I don't mind his policy offer. But I think that the real risk, I think, for the Democrats is if Warren, if the progressive vote swings behind Warren and she gets the nomination, I think then they're in trouble. I would then bet on Trump. Do you not think her Cherokee heritage will save it? One over 2020. I just, I just, you know what, just purely as a comedian, I would love for her to get nominated.

For Donald Trump to call her poker hontas in a presidential debate. Just destroy her. So, I mean, you talk about Joe Biden as a, not unifier, but certainly someone. Do you think this is kind of the people who are likely to be successful now? We've had maybe a period of time where, you know, you know, It took someone like Nigel Farage to break through on Brexit. It took someone like Donald Trump to break through in America on some of these issues. But now the people who are going to start to be successful are the kind of people who can do that,

let's say, you know, move left on economics and stay right on culture or move right on economics. And move right on culture and stay left on economics. Like the kind of people who can come to the middle and bring people in from both sides. Is that going to be the type of politician that? that is going to be successful going forward. Well, yeah, and we've already seen a lot of that. So the center right has really done what you've just talked about. Sebastian Kurtz in Austria, Mark Ruta in the Netherlands,

even Theresa May, I mean, you know. But essentially taking on Brexit, taking the mantle of Brexit on from the Brexit party or from UKIP, making it part of a center right offer. So the center right has been quite successful in absorbing the energies of the populist right. Now, the question of how you overcome polarization is a different one, right? So this is more the center right moving into the center of where the votes are by adopting

parts of the populist right platform and not the sort of other parts of it. But in order to overcome polarization, I think, again, we get to this problem of the stickiness of the cultural left, which is related to political correctness, which is preventing the left-wing parties from moving to the center. because if they move to the center and the right moves to the center, we're then moving into a more unified situation, right? And the politics of the center and of the swing voter becomes much more possible rather than the politics of appealing to the fringes

and the base or the activists. But there are two problems here. One is, and I mentioned this in the book, is this backdrop of demographic shifting, which I think is very important. The U.S. case, roughly 80, 85 percent non-Hispanic, white in 1960, and it's now about 60%, and it's going to be below 50% by 2050, let's say. That kind of process is well underway in, say, Canada, New Zealand, Australia.

It's not taking place quite as fast in Europe, but certainly we're going to probably see ethnic majorities in the minority by the end of this century in the main immigrant receiving West European countries. So we're at the beginning of a process where these more diverse electorates, what this means is you are starting to get a kind of response from voters who say, we want this change to occur not as quickly. We want to have time to assimilate people and probably through intermarriage in a deep way versus the people who say, no, diversity is great and we want more diversity. That is becoming a fault line, and this is the cultural fault line, there's reconfiguring

Western politics taking over from the economic left, right. So this kind of idea of are you pro-diversity and change or are you in favor of slower change? Not as some people would accuse them of, not ethno-nationalism and white exclusion, but simply slower, not zero, right? So, slower change and less diversity in the sense that you want time for assimilation to take place. That is kind of the dividing line. But that's a very hard thing for if you are ideologically committed. If diversity is a sacred value to you, then you can't compromise on it. So sacred values are by definition values you cannot compromise on. And that means that it's going to be really, really, really hard for the left to compromise on these issues and

move to the center. That then means that there's going to be this response from the other side. And then especially if that's a populist response, you're then going to further get entrenchment. As we've seen with this great awakening, between 2016 and 2018 in the U.S. survey data, you can see, for example, the number of white liberals supporting higher levels of immigration shooting, like doubling, up to 60 percent, they want more immigration, right? Okay. This is at a time when border apprehensions have doubled and there's all kinds of things. So this question of one side reacting to the other and the other reacting to the other is, and how you break that cycle, the only way I can see it being broken is if, and I think really responsibility here has to lie with those who are

pushing political correctness, because that is what is preventing the system from adjusting. It's like a monkey wrench in the machinery. And it's preventing people having a rational conversation about the pace of immigration, the issue of assimilation and national identity. Because that's seen as a sacred value, you're either for it or against it. It's black and white binary. We can't have the kind of nuanced shades of gray question about, do we want slower or faster instead of zero or 100, you know, that is the way the issue is framed. So I think that until we get there, until we overcome these political correct barriers to debate, we're not going to be able to compromise on these questions and they will be cast in very kind of zero-sum.

You're a racist or you're a rootless globalist cosmopolitan. That's a very binary way, which is very unproductive. Yeah, I do like to hear, though, that the Latino are fucking their way to victory. Your people are doing well. Both your people are making. I guess we all can claim, we could both claim Latino. We are great lovers.

We are incredibly beautiful. Well, that's not where your girlfriend tells me. But anyway. But so basically what you're saying, Eric, and just to extract the theme of what you're saying, what I'm talking about is essentially a left-of-center politician who comes in and goes,

we're going to stick with our economic policies. Right. But we're going to be more sensitive to the fact that our traditional base working people up north outside the big metropolitan cities, the university towns. What they want is, you know, reduced levels of immigration for a period of time so people can come, they can settle down, they can learn the language, they can be assimilated. Someone like that, according to what you're saying, is in the current environment, could not be successful in, let's say, the Labor Party or the DHS,

Democratic Party because they would be called racist as Joe Biden has been. Right. That's what you're saying, which is that is the monkey wrench, as you put it. That is the constraining fact in the system that prevents a credible left of center alternative to what we now see as a kind of center-right politics infused with elements of right-wing populism. Yeah, exactly. And of course, immigration is the key issue, but also there are questions around national identity. I mean, is the United States defined by slavery and the sins of conquering the land from the Native Americans?

I mean, if you are going to take that approach to the American past and reparations, so it's also about the question of patriotism of national identity. Is Britain just defined by sins to do with colonialism, for example? There has to be a leader that resists that and says, yes, that is part of the past, but there are all these great things, and this is what I'm going to talk about, is more the great things. You know, that would be the kind of emphasis that you would need to break through to kind of be that unifying figure that would say, you know, of course we're going to admit the sins of the past, but that's not what we're going to focus on when we get up in the morning as a country. And that's not what defines us, right? Just that kind of a tone that would be more unifying and that would sort of speak to different groups in the population.

That would also accept that not wanting the culture to shift as quickly as a valid thing. it doesn't make you a racist. You know, that's sort of a figure. I try to imagine that kind of politics occurring very difficult, right? I mean, it's very difficult because the nature of the high culture, which through the universities, through influencing the top levels of the parties and the activists, is very powerful.

And it is all essentially about excavating these grievances and focusing on injustices of the past and essentially magnifying the meaning of terms such as racism because that gets you sort of points as being a virtuous person. Somehow we've got to break that in the high culture, move it back towards something that still calls out real racism. We're still going to be very, we are, of course, going to focus on real instances

that are evidence-based and definitionally tight, but we're not going to just broad brush. And of course, the right does this, too, to some extent with anti-Semitism, you know, where the Labor Party, you know, there are anti-Semites in the Labor Party, and perhaps at the very top there may be some anti-Semites, right? But to say that the Labor Party is anti-submitting, I just don't agree with that sort of framing. I think that's not accurate.

And I think we have to have tight definitions. We have to have evidence for the claims and we shouldn't overscope these claims. Or it just, I think, just increases polarization and reduces the quality of government that we have. Do you think what America actually needs, weirdly enough, despite his flaws, is sort of a Clinton or Obama-like figure? Someone who will come along, who will be more reasonable, who will be more reasonable, who will be. be more sort of, you know, in the center. And actually somebody who can really unifying, can talk to both sides in the way that Clinton and Obama could.

Well, there was an amazing clip of Obama from, I think, 2006 or eight or something, where he's talking about the border. Yes. And someone's literally put a clip of him next to a clip of Trump, and they're saying the same thing. Yeah, absolutely. So, so, yeah, Obama and Clinton were both in the center on the issue of immigration in the border.

They were both in favor of enforcement, in favor of reducing illegal immigrant, the number of people coming across the border. They're very sensible on these issues, and they were very much the unifier. I'm not saying that obviously there are some wing nuts who claim that Obama wasn't born in the United States, etc. So you're always going to get the nuts. But at the same time, I think they were effective, and you could see it in their election victories that a lot of people voted for them. What happens, however, I would say, is that in the last couple of years of the Obama administration, he sort of succumbs to pressure from the more the people who want to defy, who want to get out on the streets of protests when you deport people. And he sort of, now, you could argue that it was because the 2014 immigration reform package failed that the Republicans didn't buy into the package of stronger enforcement with path to citizenship. And then he said, okay, well, if I haven't got this, I'll just go for.

I might as well please my base. But regardless, it was the base that kind of pushed the Obama administration in the direction of lax border enforcement, which is sort of the backdrop for the rise of Trump, of course, which is post, you know, mid-2014 with the first big wave of Central American mothers and children coming to the border. Again, to, you know, and quite smartly, I would do the same thing as them, you know, that they know that the laws are such that if you come as a mother or child, you've got a much better chance of. of staying in. But essentially not addressing the loopholes in the legislation that allowed that serve as a kind of magnet for these people to come in larger and larger numbers was kind of a backdrop for allowing Trump then to exploit that issue. So the salience, the importance of the immigration issue for Republicans was at an unprecedented high level

between mid-2014 and when Trump was nominated. And also in the general election, You could see a lot of the non-voters or Obama voters who were concerned about immigration. Those were the people that switched to Trump, right? So he really drew in people on that issue. But that was only made possible, I would argue in part, because of the pressure from the, you call them woke activists or people who wanted to find border enforcement as racism or as beyond the pale. I mean, they really sort of handcuffed Obama and made it. essentially opened the field for somebody on the other side who was willing to break the taboo. Because there was a taboo on the Republican side too.

And in the right wing media on Fox News, they didn't want to talk about immigration as the central thing either. And so Trump had a wide open field. 17 candidates, he was the only one who was willing to make this the central feature of his pitch. And so that is, you know, this is the key reason why he's in power. So a lot of these things are connected to, again, these limits on public discourse. course, the Everton window of what's acceptable to talk about and not to talk about. Of course, we'd still need the Everton window, right? So there was a politician called George Wallace in the 60s who wanted segregation. You don't, you know, so there, of course, we need a, the main parties

should not go there. They shouldn't touch segregation. But something quite different with an issue like immigration and enforcement of the border, which is a perfectly reasonable thing from a liberal point of view to enforce. It's the kind of, again, the expansion. of the meaning of racism from something like segregation, which absolutely falls very clearly within the meaning of not treating people equally on the basis of race to something like immigration, which is something completely different. It has to do with the relationship of the nation to the world outside it, which is a very different relationship. Well, as someone who works with the Venezuela, I have to say, not letting Latinos, that's a great idea. So let's make sure, build the wall is what I'm saying. But Costa Ricans are okay. Yeah, Costa Ricans are okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eric, we're out of time.

And it's been a brilliant interview, as always. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. Make sure you get White Shift. Eric's book out in paper back now. It's brilliant. I remember reading it with great interest. And you talk a lot about the demography side of things, which kind of underpins a lot of the things that we've been talking about today.

But our last question always is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we ought to be talking about? Well, I think what if Trump loses is one question I haven't seen written about much. So what if he loses, what's going to happen to polarization on the right? Especially, you know, so I think that, I would like to see someone think about that question of what is the Republican opposition going to be like in a world where they're out of power. Especially if they're out of power multiple elections for demographic reasons. What does that mean? And what does that, might that mean in terms of the risk of terrorism, for example?

Now, there may be no risk of terrorism, but I think it's something that I haven't seen anyone right about and would be interesting to see. And what do you think would happen if he was to lose? I think what would happen is if he was to lose, especially if, for demographic reasons, the Republicans, and particularly the kind of border control republicanism that Trump represents, if that were to be sidelined almost permanently, then I think you've got a more risky situation. I think that what will happen is that the Senate, which is based on territory and therefore favors more white-dominated states, would become the kind of center of this kind of resistance. And then the Fox News and the right-wing media would be kind of taking it up a notch in terms of attacks. I think it would be a very unhealthy situation where I think the polarization would get even worse. Go Trump. All right.

Well, yeah. We're going to put that right, of course. Not that I want Trump in, but I'm saying that a situation where they are permanently out of the president's that agenda is potentially a dangerous one. And I think Yasha Monk, who's clearly on the left, has said something similar that it's not enough to attack this guy. You actually have to have a vision that is unifying. And that's lacking. So we're going to call this episode Eric Kaufman Make America Great again. No, but you're right.

I think that's what we need. We need people to start finding a way of coming together because this is not sustainable. And as you hint at the consequences of this polarization at some point potentially could go from conversations to actual physical confrontation. And that's very dangerous. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that, I mean, I don't want to overdraw this. I think fearmongering is not a good idea either. But I think that you've got to play the move forward, Eric.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Right. But I think, yeah, I think that the risk of, again, small scale attacks might go up. I mean, that seems to be a pattern. We know, for example, that there is an inverse relationship between how well populist right parties do and how many sort of white nationalist terror attacks there are. This is a kind of inversely related phenomenon. So we might expect there to be more such attacks when the populist isn't doing as well, which is not by any means a reason for the populist to be in power. Okay, well there we go. So thank you very much for watching. Make sure you follow Eric, get his book, Whitechips. Follow him on Twitter at E.P. Kaufman. At E.P.K.A.U.F.

Yeah, there you go. E.P.K.F. And as always, follow us at TriggerPod. We'll see you in a week with another brilliant episode. Take care. See you next week, guys. 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.

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