TRIGGERnometry - Tom Slater on Free Speech, Brexit, Immigration & Communism

Episode Date: September 4, 2018

Deputy Editor of Spiked, Tom Slater (@Tom_Slater_) discusses free speech, censorship, campus culture, Brexit, immigration, democracy, Twitter mobs, public shaming, intersectionality, identity politics, communism and a lot more with the guys at TRIGGERnometry. Find us 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

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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kitten. And this is a show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. We ask the experts.

Our fantastic guest this week is the deputy editor of Spike magazine. Tom Slater, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks so much. I'm having me. It's great to have you here. The first question we always, always ask, is tell us a little bit about how you got to be where you are today. Yeah, sure.

So I found out about Spiked, where I currently work quite young actually. So when I was about 17, I was involved in a program that Spike set up to give state school kids in London a leg up into journalism. So I met a lot of them through doing that. And basically just kind of kept in contact. Originally I got into cultural journalism, things like that, but slowly over the years got more and more interest in politics,

got more and more radicalised. And I think especially my kind of experience at university as far as looking around for what sort of politics I'd like to sign up for and not really finding much of interest on either left or right, spiked increasingly seemed to make a lot of sense to me and seem to be something I wanted to be part of, basically. And for those people who don't know, spikes who haven't encountered it, what is spiked and how could you sum up there politically? So I think our political bent is really, we come out of the left and yet increasingly find ourselves raging against the left, which I think actually a lot of people increasingly are finding themselves insofar as some of our kind of foundational principles are things like freedom of speech,

which I know we'll be talking about, democracy, the idea that society, society, that are constantly striving to produce more and to produce a kind of higher standard of living. For everyone it's something that's something that should be the main goal, and yet increasingly it feels like the left are incredibly censorious, incredibly anti-democratic, incredibly environmentalist in the worst kind of way, which seems to be mainly about kind of dampening down production,

saying that people's lifestyles have gone too far, etc. And I think really what that whole kind of process tells us that increasingly feels like the left-right divide doesn't give you very much, very much. It doesn't explain very much about where you come from because these terms have become so distorted. But the way I was to describe it is that effectively we're kind of for freedom, democracy and plenty. And I think that's really what our guiding principles are, wherever you want to label that, however you choose, basically. And why do you think it is? Not because I say to people, oh, you know, we're doing a YouTube channel, we've got so-and-so-and-on

from spite. And there tends to be a sort of distrust of the magazine. Occasionally, even mumblings or rumourings, it's sort of alt-right or alt-right link. This is something that I find pretty disgraceful actually because we've had that tag kind of thrown at us a couple of times. And the one thing, the first thing is that every single thing we've ever written about the alt-right has been absolutely scathing. You know, we abhor identity politics of all forms, whether that's kind of white identitarianism or any of the other forms you see on a university campus, for instance.

And we've been denouncing that movement in null on certain terms for a very long time. And I can't work out whether the way in which that label was thrown around is just willfully malicious, or it's just incredibly ignorant because historically we've always been pro-immigration, pro-universalism, the idea that racial boundaries, gender boundaries, all these things should kind of melt away. And I think that it can only be someone who either just wants to try and smear us or someone who has never actually read anything that we have possibly said. But it is interesting.

I think it says something about the times that we're in that that label seems to be being thrown about so liberally, unfortunately. I think it's both, isn't it? It's both people who haven't read a single thing you've written and want to smear you. I think that's where that combination comes from. You mentioned university campuses. One of the things we really wanted to talk to you about is the Unsafe Space Tour, which you did, I think it was last year. Yes.

Yeah. And tell us a little bit about that, what that involved, how that went. So the Unsafe Space Tool was a project that we did in US. We've been doing a lot of work on the issue of free speech on campus in the UK, but we really wanted to kind of take it to the heart of where it was happening. Because as much of these debates are really raging on UK campuses, things are even more intense over there, even though it's a country where, obviously, you have this true. tradition of the First Amendment and it's seen as kind of more of a foundational principle than it might be here. So we put together this tour. We went to Harvard University, we were at American University, although we got kicked out. There's a story in that a second.

We went to Rutgers University in New Jersey and I'm probably forgetting some others. But the aim of it was first of all to take head on the issue of free speech on campus what that was all about, what does the rise of identity politics mean in relation to this? What does the rise of a new, increasing illiberal form of feminism playing to this? All these kind of different touchstones. But I think the other thing we wanted to do, kind of leading off on your question on the alt-right actually, was to try and reclaim the free speech argument from people who were using it to incredibly cynical and self-promoting ends. You know, this was the time in which you had a lot of these kind of right-wing trolls, wind-up merchants, going to university

campuses, upsetting students and then making hay out of it. And one of the really unfortunate things that was going on, particularly in the US, was that the debate about freedom of speech just became a left-right cultural war. And if you were in favour of freedom of speech, it's because you wanted to basically shout obscenities and minorities, as one phrase took it, and that the left were entirely just these kind of snowflakes who had no idea what free speech was. It's not really like that. So we got together this series of speakers who we felt really excelled at kind of putting

the kind of liberal to libertarians, even progressive case for freedom of speech. So along with our own Brendan O'Neill, who spoke at a couple of events. Stephen Pinker from Harvard spoke, a guy called Camille Foster, spoke on our identity politics panel, Mark Lilla, a few others. And so the whole aim of it really was to try and be upfront in sort of tackling this problem of censorship, of protests against speakers, people dislike, identity politics, etc. But to do it in such a way that drew out what we think is some of the more important arguments for it, which I think are classically liberal and even progressive, which at that particular time seemed to be almost entirely absent from the debate it felt right. I mean, why is it, do you think that the right wing, you know, the moment you talk about freedom of speech, everybody goes, well, you know that's just you know that's just right-wing people when you know and

people a lot of people would say that there's no problem with freedom of speech particularly in this country when you compare it with I don't know Venezuela or China or whatever else why do you think people associate freedom of speech with the right wing I think the first thing is to say that it feels like broadly speaking the kind of censorship on a kind of state level as well as the sort of censorship you see on a university campus just because of the way things are at the moment it tends to be people either on a campus could just be anyone who's kind of you know to the right of centre

effectively fighting themselves being censored because of the political culture on most university campuses. And then I think broadly speaking, I think people think of censorship ultimately is something which is reserved for far right nut cases and racist. And that is, there's some truth in that. But nevertheless, I think the other aspect to it is there has been this profound kind of confusion as to, first of all, the fact that if you censor anyone in any circumstance, there is a point in which that will be used against people you happen to agree with. And I think we're seeing that play out in relation to some kind of old feminist finding themselves on the receiving end of censorship, etc. But the other thing I think is the kind of the sort of historical illiteracy of it, really.

It doesn't really take much for a political culture to change. And if you kind of create the means through which what are deemed to be extreme views can be snuffed out either by the state or by campaigns or by university administrations or whatever, it won't be long until those same tools are used against you. And I think what's kind of interesting about kind of even characters on the kind of US alt-right or at least alt-light is they're increasingly kind of getting people shut down. You know, James Gunn, this guy who was directing the Guardians of the Galaxy series, effectively a bunch of kind of alt-like journalist dug up his old tweets and got him sacked. Because this dynamic, say, on social media, where things you might have said, jokes you might have made in the past that were offensive can be used to effectively get you sacked. That cudgel can be swung by the other side just as easily.

So I think it's, it tends to be, it does, I think it's a combination of where the political culture is at. at the moment, but also unfortunately just an incredible kind of short-sightedness on behalf of a lot of left-wingers these days, if it was like. Well, that's why I always say on that issue is like once you invent this weapon of destroying people's lives and livelihoods because they made some joke or whatever, you don't get to control who uses it. And I think a lot of people on the left are finding it being used against them, and I don't agree with it being used in either direction.

But I think once you make it legitimate to discredit somebody on the basis of a tweet, they posted at three o'clock in the morning or whatever. That's that's then becomes the norm. That that becomes the way that war, the culture was waged. No, exactly. I think we're really starting to see that that's going on both sides now. You know, if you kind of compare the Roseanne situation in the US where she obviously tweets this kind of pretty racist stuff effectively and then instantly there's this very concerted effort to get a sack. You saw the flip side of that with the James Gunn thing. Now we could argue who are those two people we find more amiable, who we might agree with more. And I'm sure

where all of us would stand on that to be honest. But nevertheless, it's quite clear that as soon as you create this dynamic, it will be exploited by the other side. And what's, I think, the most irritating thing about all of this is the fact that it's a lot, often people who claim to be very radical, who claim to be about kind of really challenging the consensus, etc., who are very keen on censorship, which to me is insane. If you go about branding everyone, you dislike an extremist and insisting they be shut down, then if you are someone who's trying to further radical ideas, that's something which is an incredible threat. to yourself. And I think what it actually shows is that vast sections of the left today,

even though they like to pose as very radical, I think the fact that they're so comfortable with censorship speaks to the fact that deep down, whether they realize it or not, they're not actually saying very much that's actually that challenging to the status quo and to those in power. More often than not, they seem to be on the side of people who want to bolster state power to do things and to crush people they disagree with. So I think it's quite revealing on that level of some extent. And do you think students have become more censorious? It's a tricky one because the last thing I want to, want to do is smear all students and I think this kind of...

I'll do it. I mean, fucking stay up with... You don't do any work, and then... Anyway, sorry, go on. They're lazy, they're... They're breaking out as we do the show. Yeah, I know. The UKIP, mate.

I think it's definitely, the kind of extremes of student politics are becoming more extreme and they're becoming more vocal. And I think the one thing that has really been the difference is the fact that where there was always other people in the room could be student, politics could be people within a university administration who would kind of stick up for themselves, who would say, look, we've invited this speaker, but you can't just on the basis of a small group of you who are protesting this, shut this down, because there are other people who want to hear this perspective,

challenge this perspective, etc. You know, university administrations would previously, you know, consider free speech to be a kind of guiding value and would resist attempts to kind of censor. You know, even up until about 10, 15 years ago, there would always be these arguments in these battles, but the extent to which these small groups of campaigners could, was always somewhat more limited because there were at least enough people willing to stick up for freedom of speech. I think the big problem is that a lot of these student protesters, these kind of intense identitarians, people who are really thin-skinned, they've been given the moral authority in these situations. People even are really concerned about disagreeing with them because they know the abuse that could be held with them, etc.

So there's an element, I think, of kind of cowardice on behalf of a lot of university administration, say. say. And I think in relation to students more broadly, I think there's a very strong conformist climate which makes them more likely to either just keep their mouth shut or just kind of leave them to it. So I think that whilst these people have always kind of existed, I think the big change now is unfortunately there's just so little push back against them. And I think that has allowed them to kind of chalk up more wins insofar as censoring people. But also for their ideas to become more and more strange and more and more extreme because there's no one really in the room to kind of temper and challenge them. So what you're saying really is not the students who have become more.

censorious it's that the silent majority has become increasingly more silent. I think so. I mean you do start to see those things changing. I mean because a lot of the work that we've been doing particularly in the UK has been directly with students. We've run kind of tours of universities working with students to set up debates before. We've worked with them on developing our university rankings which we've done over the last four years which looks at free speech policies, etc. And there is a growing number of them of left, right and neither who are increasingly appalled

by this and they kind of recognise that a lot of this really holds them in contempt in particular because if you're going around saying that we can't have this speaker on campus because it will hurt you, it will effectively either hurt you psychologically or you might be stupid enough to be won over by it. People are really reacting to that in a kind of visceral way. And I also think because of the fact that the bar for censorship on campus has been getting lower and lower. I mean up until about 10 years ago it was really only about kind of far right nutcases that this debate was had out. But as of a few years ago, the stories you're seeing in the newspaper is Birmingham University banning sombreros. And I think this has created a kind of visual kickback.

Because it's cultural appropriation? Because it's cultural appropriation. Let's play this oppression bingo. What are some other examples of things that have happened? I'm trying to think. So there's a lot around fancy dress, which is quite interesting. Also cultural appropriation? It's a strange mixture of cultural appropriation and cultural insensitivity, I guess.

So just telling people they can't dress up as gangsters, telling people... Because that's offensive to gangsters. That's offensive to gangsters, etc. I mean, they're never quite sure. minority group. There needs a lot of protection. No, exactly. No one's really speaking up on their behalf.

What's interesting about a lot of these calls to censorship, I mean, I don't know who they've got in mind when they say that. It's almost like, in the thing about when people are obsessed with this cultural appropriation issue, is that they actually reaffirm stereotypes in a strange kind of way. They're suggesting this will be offensive to X, Y, Z group.

I think it's, the thing that really makes not so much laugh, but worry, I guess, is the fact that you've even had, it seems like so many kind of people in student unions who obviously do the lion share of this kind of censorship on campus. They almost have so little self-awareness that you have ridiculous situations like no gangster costumes or things that we've been seeing recently over the last couple of years, which is free speech societies, for instance, being blocked from being set up.

And I think my favourite example was a couple of years ago at the University of Oxford, where a bunch of students got together in response to the kind of censorious climate on campus and wanted to start a free speech magazine called No Offense. And it was banned from the Fresh's Fair and reported to the police. And I think that's just, I think goes to shows the fact that so much that we see on campus, it's so ridiculous that it's often tempting. I think whether you're a student there or actually just looking on to think why does it matter. But I think actually it speaks to how unchecked a lot of this is gone

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I mean, how much of this is students, you know, overreacting? And let's be fair, we were all 18, 19 at one time. None of us would ever probably, if I ever want to have a conversation with ourselves at 1819. and how much of this is something more sinister? I think in one sense I think it's important to say that of course students are always going to be, I like to think the kind of sharp end of a lot of what's going on in politics at the moment. They tend to like to be radical, they're idealistic.

They, you know, you could say kind of take things to a kind of just a slightly further extreme. They haven't been beaten down by life. To a realistic submission to the vicissitudes of fake. Do some temping dickheads. Do some temping dickheads. Tell me how life's life. All right, you can vote for Youkub, you just don't need to go on the show. Not that there's anything wrong with voting for UKIP, by the...

I think that's definitely part of it, and I think the issue is that, of course, there's a generational element to this. It's quite clear that there is a cohort, you could see it from kind of millennials onwards down to the kind of younger generations, who have been socialized into a climate which is very hostile to freedom of speech. Hate speech laws, for instance, in this country

have been tightened up over the last 50s. in 20 years, intensively. Whether you agree or disagree with them, I think that sets a kind of precedent in people's minds, that there is certain opinions, certain views, certain statements which are so abhorrent that they shouldn't be heard. I think that's one thing which is quite clear. I think there's also the question of kind of multiculturalism as a kind of policy of government in so far as not multiculturalism in relation to diversity that everyone enjoys and everyone is most people have relaxed about, but the kind of idea that there are very distinct cultural and even racial groups who have certain ideas and that it's kind of rude to,

discuss them, to challenge them, or to kind of assume that we might, through talking with each other, develop a kind of common forum. That's been an idea that I think a lot of young people have been fed, and I think makes people very nervous and more likely to cry Islamophobia when there's a discussion about religion, etc. And I think the other thing is that there is a kind of culture of sort of almost self-esteem management that seems to be driven into young people from a young age, insofar as the idea that words really hurt, the kind of ramping up of various kind of anti-bullying policies, etc, things that Claire Fox, a previous guest on your show

has written a lot about. And I think that feeds the very, in some cases, kind of narcissistic character of a lot of campus censorship, which is like, this offends me personally. It harms me as an individual, and therefore no one should be allowed to hear it. So I think there's different factors. But I think the common thing to all of those things

is the fact that these are things that they were socialised into. They're not entirely of their making. I mean, if people are going around assuming that this generation just kind of emerged out of the womb with kind of blue hair and crazy opinions. I think that's a big kind of dereliction of juicy. They didn't spring out of nowhere. And I think you can really perceive the cultural trends

which have fed into a situation in which a small but quite vocal minority of students think it's entirely acceptable to basically crush opinions they dislike. I think the kind of progression of that is becoming more and more clear. Well, Claire Fox made that point, actually, that if there is an element of snowflakey around,

it's not the fault of them, of the students, of the young people. It's the fault of the parents, the education system who've made them that way. And I don't know when you talk about sensitivity and trigger warnings, I don't know if you saw there was an article recently about a study that came out, which basically shows that if you convince people that something they're about to read is going to hurt them, they then become more prone to being hurt by that thing.

So trigger warnings are actually counterproductive in that they essentially brainwash people into thinking that the material that they might have been triggered by will definitely trigger them. and then they become much more fragile and much less resilient. So do you think this culture is going to have long-term repercussions for our society? I think it will insofar as I think it just poisons politics, I think, in some different ways. Because I think if you're going around with this kind of intense sense of sensitivity, as well as the identity politics, which I think really attaches itself very firmly to the question of censorship, the number one reason cited most times for why a certain speaker on campus should be banned

is that they offend X, Y, Z, religious, cultural or social, sexual orientation group, etc. That's the main justification for these two things. And I think the consequences of that, even though we should be careful about being too alarmist and suggesting that everyone's going to be marching around crushing anyone who doesn't tow the party line in five years' time, is that I think that breeds a certain level of fragility on behalf of people, as you say. It basically encourages people to feel aggrieved, upset by things that wouldn't even bother people 10, 15 years ago. But I think the other byproduct of it is that because of the identity politics itself and feeds it, is that it's serving, I think, to really reify a lot of

the kind of racial divisions that a lot of people struggle so far to get over. I mean, if you're constantly suggesting that certain particular groups are incredibly fragile and it's all the, also all the thought of a different group over here, that's only going to foster the kind of tensions that mercifully have been kind of fading away over the last 10 years. So I think that, even though we shouldn't be too alarmist about this. I think the consequences of that for politics, for free debate, and also just for how people feel around each other in a social situation

at university or wherever, I can see that having quite damaging effect. But surely, you do need to draw the line somewhere, because could you really have like a Richard Spencer coming and doing a speech? I know, I think he's banned from the UK anyway. But certainly in America going to do a speech at Harvard, I mean, there has to be free speech,

but certainly aren't there limits to it? And don't we have to know platform certain people? Well, I think the thing about free speech is it is for all or it's for none at all, because as soon as you make qualifications on it, as soon as you say some people are so extreme that they shouldn't be allowed to heard, then what is deemed to be extreme will be something which is up, which will become a political football, which can be expanded, which can be applied to people on the other end of the spectrum or whatever.

I think it's the slippery slope in aspects. And I think the other point in that is that it's a really important progressive argument for freedom of speech throughout the years, is that free speech is the best means through which you challenge and uproot bigotry. I mean, this is a point that Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist made in the US, in this speech, or this article, rather,

it was called a plea for free speech in Boston. Well, he makes this very powerful point that if free speech in the US was allowed to exist because it was very tampered by various kind of mobs who would shut down abolitionist meetings, et cetera, he said that if free speech was allowed to flourish in the US, then it would break every chain in the South and banish the auction block.

That was always a foundational point. And I think it's kind of common sense. I mean, you can't tackle a bigotry that you are effectively pretending doesn't exist by refusing to engage with it. But I think the problem that we're in now is actually something a little bit more complicated because the thing about characters like Richard Spencer

is that they're ultimately incredibly marginal, strange, odd and very unrepresentative people. But because there is this culture of censorship and of wanting to shut these people down and also wanting to constantly kind of point to them as proof that society is still as toxic as it might have been in any other era, you make them far more prominent than they need be. And I think he's an interesting example,

because he was trying to give a speech at a university in Florida, about a year or so ago, I think. And the response was so ridiculous. They spent about half a million dollars or something on protecting this event. There was police all in the streets. There were people being turned away. And about just over a dozen of his supporters showed up, completely surrounded by protesters who were kind of shouting him down. Part of me that things, whilst, of course, whenever you come across views that disgusting, you want to rail against them, you want to protest, and people should, that's how you really, that's how you really uproot and challenge bigotry.

But at the same time, I think there's a byproduct which we're kind of creating folk devils who don't need to be puffed up at the moment. And I do think when you look at the likes of Richard Spencer, when you look at these kind of outright lunatics, it seems like a more fitting response would just be allowed them to kind of like Z-carver to each other in drafty rooms by themselves. There's a kind of question of proportion here, I think. But I think, yeah, the moment at which you draw the line, the more you make these problems worse, i.e. someone like Richard Spencer, rather than better at field rights. Let me imagine for a second if I was a progressive censorious student. The counter-argument that I might put to you would be,

over the last 20 years, the kind of things that it's acceptable to say to somebody have changed, right? And that has coincided with the period of time when there's been political correctness, there's been an increasing sensitivity, we've all had this, all had a little bit of extra awareness of other people. Isn't the fact that we're now less willing to insult minorities and women and other people? Isn't that a reflection of the fact that this movement has been a positive thing for society? Well, I think the thing about political correctness is that people often attribute it to things

that have kind of nothing to do with. First of all, they kind of conflate it with manners. And no one's against manners. No one is against the fact that people don't address each other in kind of horrendous ways. But also political correctness is a kind of broadly speaking. how you define it, it becomes a bit of a bloated term, it's thrown around a lot, but broadly speaking, a kind of move, particularly in academia, to suggest that if you effectively demonise certain words and try to snuff them out, that that would have the knock-on effect of making

society more harmonious, you know, in some sort of way. I think it effectively tries to take credit for a process of integration, of anti-racist activism, of society slowly becoming more at ease with itself, and kind of give it to people in the ivory tower. You know, the fact of the matter is the reason people don't shout racial obscenities down the streets of people is not because of the fact that some academic went around shushing them. You know, it's because views have changed. Certain groups have been considered, we've been considered beyond the pale for a long time, but nevertheless have been successfully shown to be as toxic as they really are.

And people are more integrated, people are more relaxed around one each, one another, etc. So I think the thing about the political correctness thing is it is trying to basically claim credit for a process of change and anti-racist activism and just society becoming more and more integrated, which I think it really had nothing to do with. And in its current form, I think, is actually driving more division than it is actually kind of alleviating it insofar as making things so hypersensitive, so over the top, microaggressions, etc.

That actually, I think, have the opposite effect, which is to make people feel more nervous around engaging people who aren't like them, rather than more relaxed about it. What's a microaggression? So a microaggression, for those who might not know. I feel really old. It's easy to go.

No, I don't know. No, it's like if I ask you where you're from, when we first meet. Yeah. Right, that's implying that you're foreign. Okay. Therefore, it's implying that you are other. Yeah.

Therefore, it's me trying to undermine your self-esteem and make you feel bad about yourself. All right, okay, so they're just behaving really like they've just smoked too much weed and they're just getting paranoid. There's a huge element of paranoid. Is it? I mean, it's the sort of thing where, to me, if you were being really cynical about it, you would say it's the problem where it feels like the increasingly,

it becomes more kind of egalitarian. You have to find more and more small things to be upset about. I mean, some people refer to it. It's like the kind of St. George in retirement syndrome where he slayed the dragon now he's gonna go around slaying smaller and smaller animals. Mice and other rodents.

Lizards. There is a bit of that to it, but effectively it kind of comes down to this question of, you know, some universities in America have even kind of drawn up lists of things that you shouldn't say to an ethnic minority person, where you're from being one of them. Some of it is things that you could say are kind of like clumsy with a kind of racial tinge to them,

telling someone who's black that they're very articulate, things like this, which we could also be awkward, a bit unpleasant, not always said with the malice that some people would like to attach to them, but also things that I think broadly speaking people can kind of challenge and deal with in a sort of friendly situation, but then in the US in particular, there's been some universities which have drawn up list to them.

I think they're quite corrosive, first of all, because of the fact that what it's effectively preaching is a strange kind of racial etiquette, that you should treat people not naturally as that you would treat any human being, but that you would adjust your behaviour in order to treat them in a particular way and with kid gloves and I think that's pretty patronising and kind of strange. But I think the other thing it does is that it's kind of, it microaggression is actually a pretty useful example of how identity politics actually reifies racial differences. Because on one university campus, I think it was the University of California, which campus

I would get. Some of their microaggressions, including saying things like America is a melting pot and I don't believe in race. Because that was deemed to be incredibly insensitive to someone who might be still experiencing oppression, et cetera. So I think it is. ridiculous and thankfully it's not quite as widespread particularly in the UK as it is in other parts of campus life but I think it's actually quite a useful example of how racial differences racial tensions on some sort of level that's kind of being jinned up again by people who claim to be in favour of the opposite I feel like

so far we've basically certainly I don't have any cause to disagree with anything that you said one thing I wanted to ask about because a lot of our audience I know from experience of people who are concerned about the level of immigration into this country, people who might be aligned with everything that Spiked writes about and talks about it. But on that issue, I think there might be quite a fundamental difference. So why don't you give us your best defense of mass immigration and almost, I don't know if you're pro-open borders quite, but your view on immigration anyway. I think the point that Spites always made historically in relation to immigration is a kind of question of freedom, and it's the ability of people to kind of

flourish wherever they are around the world and to be able to be on the mood. and it's also a kind of question of so many of the arguments against immigration historically, and particularly in the current period, have often had to do with the kind of low horizons of that particular society, one of which is the idea that there's some people who just can't be integrated. You know, that's a kind of classic, you know, almost like Powell-like kind of idea that it's kind of existed. There's also the kind of broader idea that there's only so much of a nation can produce, you know, that some place is kind of full. An argument that used to be made by outright racialists and is increasingly made by kind of green people these days

in relation to the question of immigration. But I think the thing that's actually complicated the argument of immigration more broadly is the question of citizenship, because a lot of the mass immigration that we've experienced has not only never been done with the say-so of the electorate, European free movement, this was never something that there was a referendum on,

that people knew that they were signing up to. This was always a kind of elite process through which that was introduced. And similarly, I think it's come hand in hand with a process by which what it means to be a citizen in a sort of democratic country has been increasingly undermined. And the idea that a nation should have a particular political culture and a centre which people from various different origins and roots

can kind of meet in the middle and understand themselves as part of one entity has increasingly been painted as something suspect, the idea that there should just be diversity for its own sake rather than some sort of common culture. So I think actually a lot of the anxieties around immigration, I think they've been entirely decoupled in the large part from the kind of racist arguments of the same. past, I think that's quite clear in many respects.

You know, concern about immigration has maintained, largely speaking, over the last few years, even as racial animus continue to tumble. That's exactly it, isn't it? Yeah. Actually, people's hostility towards immigrants has been dropping rapidly at the same time as concerns about immigration levels

have been rising quite quickly. And to me, that's a fascinating argument which brings us straight onto Brexit, which is something that, because this will go out a few weeks from now, we have no idea who is who's going to be the prime minister of this country who's going to be the foreign secretary Is there going to be a Brexit is it not going to be a Brexit but one of the things and we've talked about it so much on the show is that How for as an immigrant myself to this country how frustrating I find that the argument about Brexit has been confused as an argument about xenophobia racism When I think it really is very little to do with that. Yeah, but one of the so we don't want to get too much into Brexit into the nuance of it but

We talked before we started about the idea that Brexit is a good indicator of the fact that mainstream opinions or the majority opinions in society are becoming unpalatable in polite society. Tell us what you think about that. I think that's one of the things that was most revealing and kind of shocking about the Brexit vote. I think the comedian Jeff Norcoats made this point or at least this joke before is that you're in a situation where the majority position is the one that's demonised. That's really weird. Because again, the whole idea of say free speech, for example, is kind of prefaced on the idea of the fact that the mainstream can look after itself. What most people think, what is broadly speaking a consensus,

is not something that needs the protection of free speech. It's all about the batty ideas on the edges, which need that protection because they're always going to be the ones which are demonised. But I think what we've seen recently is, again, the majority of the electorate in a particular referendum vote for something in numbers that we haven't seen for any other vote in British political history,

and yet it's treated as something aberrant, strange, vicious, racist, racist, and something which must be kind of crushed at all costs. And I think whilst on the one hand it shows the fact that we're in this bizarre position that the majority position is demonised, but really that is born of the fact that the gap between the electorate and the people they elect has become so wide that not only do they not agree on something, but also the elite has a tendency to assume the worst about those people in every single situation. And just the simple fact that 52% in the referendum voted leave, whilst about 75% of MPs voted remain,

I think tells you everything about that. And what's been even more shocking about the kind of post-Brexit vote situation is the fact that you would think that given there was this huge blow to the political class as authority, all of the main parties advocating remain the country voting leave, that that would force some kind of reassessment for them to think, maybe we're not in touch with the people who vote for us, maybe there's something that we're missing about people,

wanting more control over their own lives and their own societies, the sneering actually got worse and it got more explicit and it got more extreme and it's been going on like that for over two years now. So I think what that bizarre situation we find ourselves in where the majority position is demonised is largely a product of the fact that the elites have been becoming ever more distant it feels like from the public and increasingly not caring about that fact. And I think that's really aside from the question of how and if and when Brexit is actually implemented is the broader issue for our democracy that we need to try and bring

back together because I think that's really what the next story is in the fact. I mean one of the things that was interesting with the Brexit campaign was where you had people like Katie Hopkins. I mean looking back because you're a staunched Brexiteer, do you think that that was actually a mistake by the Leave campaign because then it was very very easy for people in the Remain campaign to go well it's obviously racist, you know look at the fact that Katie is going to going to on TV and saying frankly intolerant things. No, I mean, there's definitely the case that there's going to be people on the side of something good who do it for bad reasons.

I mean, there's always going to be examples of that. And I think it's important not to smear the majority of a particular position on the basis of what some, you know, people with ill intent actually want to want to do with that kind of thing. I think in relation to the Brexit question, the thing that made that more potent was the fact that the left had completely abandoned the cause of your scepticism. I mean, spite broadly speaking, comes out of a left-wing Eurosceptic tradition. And even at the time of the referendum, the Labour Party, was being led by someone, Jeremy Corbyn, who spent his entire political life being a staunch Eurosceptic, a hard Brexiteer in the current kind of language.

And the fact that even various kind of commentators, people who write for newspapers who had previously been of that kind of left-wing Eurosceptic hue, abandoned it because they effectively lost their bottle. And I think they gave in to this very, argument that just because you so happen to agree with someone like Katie Hopkins on this one particular issue does not mean you're tainted by that. But I think, unfortunately, just by dint of their own kind of cowardice, they effectively abandoned the field. And that made it so much easier for

people to say, well, look, who's on that side. That's what that side is all about. But I think again, with the referendum campaign, one of the best things to come out of it is that people in voting leave, and even people who voted remain, given you see the number of people who still think it's something that should be implemented and, you know, whilst they might be concerned about it, know that that must be done, is that I don't think they've bought into that kind of, that kind of guilt by association. And I think the result can approves how the attempts to do that really don't wash with most people. I think they see right through it.

You know what troubles me with this whole Brexit conversation? Is the fact you're going home, mate. Ross is not in the EU, mate. It's as far as I'm concerned, mate. Goodbye. You know what troubles me? me with this whole Brexit thing is we actually had a meeting with some I'm not going to name names but we had a meeting with someone who I really respect who both Francis and I voted Remain and she voted leave and we were talking about you know what we're doing the show whatever and

she was like well you guys are Remainers I'm a I'm a Brexiteer and I didn't say anything at the time but I actually thought that is an incredibly unhelpful way that we talk about each other because I'm not a Remainer I voted to remain but that doesn't make me an identity of a person who's remained, I'm not out there campaigning to reverse the referendum or whatever, whatever people put to that label, I just voted to remain. You know,

maybe I had no clue which way to vote. Maybe I flipped a coin on the day. You know, how do you know that I'm a Remainer? What does it mean that you're a Brexiteer? You know, we've got these rigid identities. Now, what if I changed my mind? What if I'd suddenly go, yeah, no,

what Brexit is a great idea? We'll send Francis back to Venezuela. Right? So that's what troubles me is this rigidity of identities almost. We've become like different tribes. And there is not the kind of, like, you know, you voted to leave, we wanted to determine, we can still have a conversation. We don't need to think about each other as different species of animal.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it's kind of interesting because I think the big divide now, broadly speaking, is between Democrats and anti-democrats. I think whether you're a remainder or a reliever cease to mean much on the 24th of June 2016. I mean, it's, I think the reason that people's... speak so much about the idea that there's these two tribes still, that the country is more divided than it's ever been,

which I think you just can't substantiate, is driven by the fact that they're trying to effectively use people who voted Remain as a kind of stage army against implementing the results. Whereas if you look at polling, if you look at the electoral failures of saying the Liberal Democrats, who've kind of paid themselves of we can hoover up this 48%

and got one of their worst results in recent years. I think just speaks to the fact that most people cease to be Remainers or Leaveers on that question. Most people know that when a referendum of this magnitude is taken, that of course the thing has to be implemented. And I think a lot of this talk about division. I just don't really see it. Most people who voted Leave know a lot of people

who voted Remain and vice versa. We're not beating each other up in the streets. And it's just, I think often that kind of all of that question about division and the idea that, yes, there are these kind of two tribes. I think it's only really in elite circles that that's kind of talked about, mainly because they don't have much experience

outside of those quite rarefied circles. Oh, come on. Do you not be naive that, Tom? Are you not being naive in saying that people aren't divided? I mean, I know lots of people who don't speak to their parents or don't speak to their sister or their brother or other. Some people got divorced over this. I hear anecdotes about this, but I just don't see it personally. Now, that's anecdote versus anecdote, I suppose.

But then the only thing I would stack up next to that is, again, if you look at the kind of the polling for all of this, and as far as, seven out of ten people, think that the vote should be implemented. That's much higher than the 52%. And that can't just be Remainers who suddenly think leave is a great idea either. and I just feel like there's a tendency, particularly on the kind of continuity remain campaign side,

to present what is effectively a very slim part of the population as actually far big than it actually is. And I think this calls for this talk about division just plays into that too neatly. I'm not saying that people didn't have these issues over Brexit. I'm sure it did happen in certain circles, but on the extent it's being talked about, I just don't really buy it, I guess.

Why is Brexit such a good idea? I mean, like, everybody goes, you know, I hear so much about it. I voted Remain because on all honesty, I'm quite conservative and I'm quite an anxious person. I'm like, well, we're doing pretty well within the EU. You see you're quite conservative? I always knew you were at Tory.

But, you know, it finally comes out. Yeah, it finally comes out. Yeah, crush a poor. Tori scum. Yeah, Tory scum, hashtag. No, I just thought that why change your winning formula? This country was doing well under the EU, I thought, anyway. I think there's various different arguments kind of, involved in it. So I guess I'll just pick out one and that is the democratic argument insofar as in myriad ways the European Union limits democracy, you know, from everything we've talked about from, effectively from many positions of left or right. If you just want simply to control your borders, which isn't necessarily even a right win position, but one that a lot of people on the right are concerned about, you can't do that as a member of the European Union. And that's a policy which we have adopted irreversibly by dint of being EU members that we cannot have any control over whilst we're still members. Similarly, if you take even something like some of the policies,

like social democratic policies that someone like Jeremy Corbyn wants to implement, state aid, etc. You couldn't implement that whilst being a member of the European Union. And that the entirety of the kind of structure is designed to limit the scope of politics within member states and also becomes very helpful for our elected politicians to effectively outsource responsibility for various things that they used to have to do in relation to a country, decisions they have to take ideas they had to think about, to this distant bureaucracy who would effectively do it for them. And I think the main thing is, it's a question of democracy control self-determination.

That comes with risks, because who knows what might be around the corner. But at the same time, considering how the European project has been panning out over the past 10 years, I don't think we can say that Brexit is the only risky option either. But I think it all comes down to a point that, again, as we were talking about, the strange death of left-year of scepticism, but, you know, Jeremy Corbyn's great hero, Tony Benn said, was that he'd rather have a bad parliament than a good king. And I think that's a crucial argument in relation to Brexit, and why despite who knows what will happen next,

that's the main reason why I think we were right to vote to leave, and that's the ultimate promise of it. It's just more control of ordinary people over the people who govern them. But, I mean, doesn't it feel at the moment? And maybe, again, I'm buying to mainstream media. It just feels that there's chaos. I mean, there's the issue with the border in Northern Ireland. Nobody really knows what's going on with that.

The fact that I was reading an article about, you know, Kent, with Dover, with the port, there's going to be massive issues. talking about the army coming in with supplies, we're gonna run out of insulin, do you know what I mean? Is it worth it? I mean, first of all, I think we have to take some of these prognostications of a bit of pinch of sort. I mean, some of the things that are being talked about

in the moment were things that we actually heard during the Remain campaign itself about what would happen immediately after a Brexit vote, you know, the idea that would be instant recession, that there would be problems in relation to bringing things into the country. These are things that we have heard before. And the fact that people are effectively saying

that people will die if this happens. Whenever someone makes that kind of a claim in politics and they're not actually talking about a war, actually if they're not talking about a war, then you've got a question those kinds of arguments. It's just classic fear-mongering. But I think in relation to how chaotic things are, I think a lot of that speaks to the fact that, first of all, Brexit was never going to be an easy process because of the fact that the European Union does not want this to be a success for us. Their main concern is not even their own economic self-interest. It's holding the project together.

And if Brexit or leaving the European Union begins to look like something which is, you know, a bit of a rocky road, but something which isn't necessarily going to be too difficult. And of course there's going to be many countries, many places on the continent are far more Euro-Sceptic than Britain even is, to start considering it as a viable option. But I actually think the fact that it was always going to be difficult, and it's been exacerbated by the fact that it's being negotiated by the political class we rejected in voting for Brexit. most people not only in this government but in Parliament don't actually agree with it and at the very worst even if at the very best rather even if they know that it has to be implemented are terrified of actually implementing it so I think the sense of which there is a lot of chaos and uncertainty I think it speaks to the fact that there has been this very fearful uncertain and often quite botched approach to actually

implementing it so we should take a lot with this from a pinch of salt but also just recognise that this is the battle that we have on our hands by being of trying to actually force through something and get our politicians to implement something that none of them actually wanted in the first blow. See, if you want Brexit to happen, you need a real Brexiteer. Yeah, you need to get elected to Jeremy Corbyn. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there you go.

There's one question I've got to ask you. What does everyone who gets involved in Brexit get fired? It feels like a cheap horror movie. Somebody the character turns up, they're dead. The next one turns up, they're dead. It just keeps going on. What's going on? So you're talking about people in cabinet or people kind of in the...

David, David. Loads of them just seemed to turn up for a couple of weeks and then just leave again. I mean, right now, I mean, this might change, as you say, a matter of days, but all of the main offices of state are held by people who voted Remain, some which campaign quite peacefully for Remain. And I think it just gets to the point of, first of all, the fact that there's been this assumption that the Tory party is kind of the party of Brexit, but it never has been.

A majority of Tory MPs voted for Remain, and even though the party membership is, broadly speaking, quite Eurosceptic, it's certainly not that way on the higher level. And I think it just speaks to the fact on the one hand, I think the kind of inability of a lot of people who, even though they presented themselves as the kind of heroes and the leaders of Brexit, people like Boris Johnson,

failed really to kind of stand up for it when it really mattered, were too likely to kind of capitulate in so many situations, which made their positions increasingly untenable. But it also just speaks to the fact that, again, the core contradiction, you make a vote against a political class, it's now left for a political class to implement, And I think the fact that people are dropping like flies, I think it speaks to the fact that they're increasingly proved themselves

either unwilling or unable, actually, to kind of implement this as much as people want it to be. And can we make a success of hard Brexit? Because everything I've read about it, apparently, it's going to be the end of the world. I mean, this is what's so strange about it, because the idea that it's going to be kind of economic Armageddon for all times. I mean, the proportion of trade that we did with the European Union has been decreasing over the past, you know, 15, 20 years,

as trade with the rest of the world is increasing. Obviously, the process of leaving quite abruptly would have, have effects, no one saying that there wouldn't be. But at the same time, the one thing, the main, first of all, I think the kind of Armageddon claims just don't fully stack up. And I think that can be slightly ludicrous. But also, I think actually Brexit voters in particular had no illusions when they voted.

I mean, there's various bits of research which suggests that most Brexit is when they voted for, that particularly in the short term, it would make the economy about as good or maybe a little bit worse. Because we're separating ourselves out of this entire legal and trading order that we've been intertwined with for decades. But nevertheless, I think what the vote showed

was the fact that short-term economic instability, a little trouble at the ports, certain things being things that we have to kind of contingency plan for, et cetera, is a pretty small price to play for self-determination. And I think it's pretty upsetting that it feels like that pretty basic democratic principle is something that so many people in the elite feel uncomfortable with and think is so strange and reckless.

All right, well, let's move on a little bit. I wanted to ask you, you've debated, Ash, is it Sarkar? Sarkar. Sarkar. Who recently made headlines because she went on the Piers Morgan, Susanna Ritchell, and talked about how she is literally a communist. What do you make of the rise of this kind of new socialism in the world where, you know,

for me coming from Russia, I mean, I personally see no difference between someone saying, I'm literally a communist and saying I'm literally a Nazi. To me, there is no difference between those two ideologies are responsible for a similar number deaths in the world. Communism probably has claimed more lives actually, certainly in my country, you know. What do you make of the fact that it's perfectly normal now for people to go on TV and go, yeah, I'm a communist. It's luxury communism. Luxury communism. Yeah, that's what they call it these things. Yeah, yeah. Which is a new rebroad. I think it actually speaks to the, I think the fact that people

are selling T-shirts with I'm literally a communist on them, people are going on, what was it Good Morning Britain and declaring themselves communists, it effectively underscores the death of communism. just because of the fact that it's become an incredibly safe and meaningless category for, you know, self-styled radicals in the West. I mean, first of all, because a lot of people in this kind of fully automated luxury communism crew, they're openly campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn. And it was always a kind of principle of the kind of, you know, the far left that it was almost worse to support the Labour Party because they were holding back, you know, the kind of glorious revolution that was to succumb. So a lot of these people calling themselves communists are spending their entire days advocating for a pretty milk-toe social Democrats.

So I think there's an element of posturing and projection in a lot of this, to be honest. But at the same time, I think there's a tendency, especially in the kind of right wing reaction to a lot of those statements, to give them a little more credit than they actually have, to paint them as more radical, more dangerous, more serious than they actually are. When, broadly speaking, I think the way in which Marxism and communism have kind of become just poses that people strike, it's something that gets written up in Teen Vogue, as happened with the Ash Sarka thing, I think speaks to the fact that it's just become... Lenin's favourite publication. It's incredible.

So you don't think she wants to organise a system of gulags in the UK? I don't think so, no. And I don't think any of the people saying this stuff would be capable of such a thing in the first place. I think it's just, unfortunately, I think a lot of left-wing labels, whether it's communism, Marxism or whatever, have been stripped of a lot of their content. They've just been fashion accessories that I think a lot of people don.

And I think in some respects, the kind of the reaction to it, gives them more credit than a lot of these people actually deserve. What they're pushing is far more boring than they like to allow on it. It's interesting to say it because you'll know that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortos, who was just elected in America. I listened to a few of her interviews. I'm not sure she knows a lot much about what she's talking about, many issues. But one of the questions that was asked to her,

she gave a very cogent answer, which I thought was quite relevant. She was asked why young people are increasingly going for things like social, you know, becoming social Democrats or democratic socialist, socialism, socialism. And she said that if you look at young people, say people who are in their 20s now, for example, they've never experienced the benefits of capitalism in the same way that our generation, people in their 30s or people older than that have. They came of age after the 2008 crash. So all they know really is expensive housing, economic instability, lack of jobs, lack of future. So what they're seeing is a world that doesn't work for them. They're seeing a world in

which their future is likely to be worse than their parents. And that's why they're looking at these policies and these parties that represent in their minds, at least theoretically, an opportunity for a fairer society. Do you buy into that argument? Do you think young people are persuaded by that for that reason? I think it's definitely an argument with that. I think the, for instance, take something like the housing crisis, which is a huge issue in the UK and no one ever seems to be able to grapple with. This is a big problem for the right, I think, because you can't expect people without any capital to be pro-capitalist. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. But nevertheless, I think, to be honest, to be slightly more cynical about the kind of rise of this sort of new

form of socialism, this new left-wing progressivism, not only because I think the extent of it is often a bit exaggerated, but also it feels like what it means to be a socialist, which historically is quite an important and in many, at many point, positive doctrine, has been watered down. You know, You take someone like a Casio-Cortez, what she's talking about is basically NHS free education. I mean, these are not particularly radical ideas. It speaks to how narrow the political culture in the US often is that these things are seen as such. But that's kind of quite limited. But she does say things like capitalism has had its day and stuff like that.

I know, but it's empty sloganeering. And I mean, for instance, a lot of the people who are very excitable around the Corbyn movement feel that they're effectively anti-capital. But what they would be voting for is not necessarily a kind of revolutionary program. You know, I mean, it's the sort of thing where I think there's a bit of a failure of political labels in relation to this stuff. And I also think that there's been a bit of a danger that left-wing politics and socialism or being a Corbyn Easter has kind of become its own breed of identity politics. It often feels quite shallow. It often feels like the centre of it is not entirely clear. And it often just becomes about I'm a good person and you're not.

There's an element to that which I think is really key. It often feels about posture rather than substance. And I think one perfect example about that is the fact that everyone's saying that they're really pro-corbin really pro policies. and yet a lot of them are pro-EU, something which would render those policies completely inert. So I think it just speaks to the fact that, largely speaking, what it means to be a socialist has kind of been defined down to some extent, and at the same time, I think that it's unfortunately been absorbed,

at least for young people, as a kind of another form of identity politics. So I think we should kind of temper a lot of the slightly either excitable or terrified response that a lot of these new movements have. I think they're slightly different from what people think they are. Because one thing I've seen that I've just been baffled by, it's just a backlash against centrist. And then, like, you know, they demean centrist, so it's almost like another extension of the all right.

I'm like, what? The kind of centrist ads phenomenon. Yeah. And it works the other way around. Like, we have people calling us cucks because we are not right wing, because we are centrists. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, so it kind of comes from both ways. It's like if you're not on an extreme, you are evil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, there is a lot of that going on. I think the one thing, obviously, about that is that obviously it's ridiculous and there's been this kind of attempt to by both sides to kind of just suggest that you know if you happen to be in the centre of politics that makes you complicit in x y z you know there's all this there's all these kind of things if you're on the sort

of centre of the labour party you're effectively a Tory all this kind of stuff is just a bit infantile and a bit embarrassing but I think the one thing that's important to recognise is the fact just because we live in this age where you do have kind of crazy people it feels like on the extreme shouting at each other and into the darkness all the time about things that don't really much seem important. It doesn't necessarily mean that the centre is always the position that everyone should hold. I think it's fair to say that you could have a radical left wing politics say that wasn't bat shit crazy in the same way that it is possibly,

that you can have progressive politics which is aimed at really fundamentally changing society that doesn't mean either gulags or ridiculous identity politics. You know, it just feels like the one thing that I really wouldn't want people to take away from the very strange climate for debate and discussion that we're in at the moment is the idea that splitting the difference is always the right way. because if anything, the Brexit revolt, for instance, is really a rejection of that kind of politics on some level. Not just centriism, but I think something which is always,

particularly in nature of politicians and political parties that has come with centurism, which is this new technocracy, the belief that it's better to outsource power to unaccountable bodies, etc., European Union being an example of it. So I think on the one hand, whilst it feels like so few people are being reasonable, and there's this kind of reasonable people like yourselves in the centre, That's not to say the fact that being more radical in certain ways is necessarily a dirty word. And I think in fact, in many respects, Brexit is an example of something which is radical and which could actually change society for the better,

you know, against some of the kind of slightly more centrist or technocratic trends we've been seeing in the last kind of 20, 30 years. All right. Well, thanks for speaking with us. The final question we always like to ask is, is there one thing that no one's talking about that we ought to be talking about? I think for that I would say what next. And I mean that in relation to Britain, in relation to Europe and America. Over the last couple of years, we've seen all these kind of revolts against the establishment. They've taken different forms in different places. Sometimes they've empowered people that we don't like.

Sometimes they've been something like Brexit, which was just a kind of leaderless, you know, bottom-up type of revolt. But I think the question for anyone who's interested, not just in something like Brexit, but the bigger question about how do you make societies more democratic open? How do we make sure that people are more involved in how these societies are shaped and that the terms of the debate aren't set either by a vocal minority or by the elites? I think the question is, what comes after this? How do we carve out a new politics for a new age? And it feels like all the old politics are knackered.

And I think that that at the moment is the most interesting question that anyone interested in democratic, also progressive politics should be trying to answer, as broad as that is. Great. Before you go, is there anything you'd like to plug or promote, Tom? Twitter handle. Twitter handle, or I'm at Tom underscore Slater underscore, but also people should, of course, go and check out Spiked Online.

We're spiked-online.com, and our Twitter handle is at Spiked Online. So not just for Brexit, free speech, but the whole gamut of issues, you'll find plenty to read there. Brilliant. And I'm at Constantine Kishol on Twitter. I'm at Failing Human. And if you enjoyed this episode, as always, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And most, most importantly, if you've already subscribed,

click that bell right next to the subscribe button to make sure you get notified. every time we release a video. Thank you very much for tuning in, as always, and we'll see you in a week's time. Bye.