Within Reason - #39 Andrew Doyle - The New Puritans

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

Andrew Doyle is a playwright, journalist, and political satirist. He has written for the fictional character Jonathan Pie and created the character Titania McGrath. Doyle joined GB News in 2021, and hosts a weekly show titled Free Speech Nation. He is the author of The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Within Reason. My name is Alex O'Connor. Andrew Doyle is a playwright, journalist, political commentator and satirist. He's the creator of Titania McGrath, a parody of an ultra-woke militant Twitter warrior. He's also co-written for the fictional newsreader Jonathan Pye. He's the author of Free Speech and Why It Matters, and he joins me today to talk about his most recent book, The New Puritans, how the religion of social justice captured the Western world. And this episode of Within Reason is brought to you by Bart Ehrman.com forward slash Alex. Bart Ehrman is one of the world's most famous New Testament scholars. I recently had him on my podcast and it was one of my favorite episodes to date. Dr. Ehrman offers a wide variety of courses from an agnostic perspective in the New Testament with courses including, did the resurrection of Jesus really happen? Did Jesus think he was God? And unknown gospels, which is a scholarly look at the Gospels.

Who wrote them? How can we know? When were they written? Are they accurate? So if you're interested in learning about New Testament scholarship from an agnostic perspective from one of the world's leading experts, and going to bart-ehrman.com forward slash Alex or let them know that I've sent you and help out the channel if you do decide to purchase any of their courses.

With that said, here's Andrew Doyle. Andrew Doyle, thank you for coming. Alex O'Connor. Thank you for having me. It's an interesting title, The New Puritans, how the religion of social justice captured the Western world, your latest book. Yes. What are the New Puritans?

Well, when I posted the original image of the front cover of that, I got a lot of angry Christians saying, why you're slagging off the Puritans, et cetera. It's not about them. It's really not about them. The phrase, the New Puritans, is just a kind of shorthand to try and describe the adherence to this ideological movement that we're all pretty familiar with.

It comes in many guises. People colloquially call it the woke movement. I tend to favour the phrase critical social justice. But there's all sorts of ways, leftist's identitarianism, all these sort of phrase. So we all know what we're talking about. But the reason why I wanted to find a simple shorthand, like the New Puritans, is because it resonates, I think, with the kind of the moral purity that the disciples of this new faith demand of others. So it sort of encapsulates that.

On a sort of popular culture level, lots of people are familiar with, you know, elements of old comedy shows being cut out or demands for films. to be censored or for plays to be censored or for trigger warnings to be applied for books. All of that kind of feels what we would colloquially term puritanical, even though it's not really accurate historically. But it's a nice sort of shorthand. And also I kind of felt that I was okay to do this because the term Puritan predates, the way in which we use it historically anyway.

It was kind of applied to these people as a kind of term of abuse to connote this idea of demands for purity. So I think it works in that regard. but also, as you'll know, I don't know if you've managed to read the book, but you'll know that there is, that I start and end the book with Salem. And the reason for that is I find a lot of parallels between what happened in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 17th century, and what is occurring now with this ideology, which I see as a kind of form of hysteria. So it is an allusion to the Puritans of New England in that respect, but I'm quite careful in the book

to explain why they are not the same thing. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, the comparison to the Salem witch trials is interesting because of course the the Salem witch trials I don't think they're sort of maybe as dramatic as many people assumed that they were yeah I mean maybe you can give us a little bit of the of the history that's probably right because we all think of the crucible Arthur Miller's play and you know we have this images of scores of people being hanged right right in fact it was only 20 were executed I mean not that's terrible enough right 20 people executed a further five died in prison but it's not like the medieval witch hunt in Europe where thousands of people were killed.

It's a different kettle of fish. The Puritans of New England were not witch hunters. They didn't go around doing this. This was an aberration. But that's also why I think it's a good comparison to make because they were decent, God-fearing people. They all repented afterwards. They thought this was a terrible situation.

I mean, I'm speaking as though people know, but maybe they don't. But just to explain, it was late 17th century, lasted a little over a year. I think it was from February 1692 to May 1693. All of a sudden, the girls in the village of Salem started saying that they could see witches or that they'd seen people within the village with witches or signing the devil's book or doing that kind of thing. It was instigated by a girl called Abigail Williams.

And soon there were a kind of cohort of young girls screaming witch. And there were trials and there were magistrates and there were ministers descending on the town. And these girls suddenly accrued incredible power. They had the power of life and death all of a sudden over anyone in the village. And anyone who challenged them or said, this isn't really happening, they accused them next. A very good example is a woman called Rebecca Nurse, whose house is still extant in Salem, one of the few that is. And she was one of the most upstanding, you know, popular, deeply religious women of the town. But she cast aspersions on what they were doing.

She was suggesting this is a silly season, which I think is the phrase that Arthur Miller uses in the crucible. And so they said she was a witch, and they hanged her. Now, the reason why I compare that to what's happening now is, and draw comparisons with what we colloquially call council culture, is that I think it is largely maintained. I mean, no one's getting hanged, right? But they are having their reputations ruined, their jobs destroyed. You know, there's a lot at stake because of accusations that are not evidence-based.

So whereas the girls would shout, which, a modern-day equivalent would shout turf, or racist, homophobe, fascist, Nazi, all of these slurs that we see endlessly bandy, about and we've reached a point where the accusation is taken as proof. That's similar as to what happened in Salem. Similarly, all of the prosecutions in Salem were secured on what they called spectral evidence. Now I talk about this in the book because I see a clear comparison between spectral evidence. In other words, I, the accuser, see this thing and interpret it in this way and therefore that is evidence of what I am saying. We call that lived experience. You hear that phrase lived experience all the time. This is my lived experience. This is how I've perceived this

event. I have perceived that the way that you have interacted with me comes from a homophobic stance and therefore that is sufficient evidence for something to occur as a result or for you to be penalized in some way. So I was trying to draw those sorts of comparisons, but chiefly, sorry, I know I'm rambly, but just chiefly, I think the reason why it bears and merits a sort of analogy is that Salem only really happened because of the people in authority, the magistrates and the ministers capitulating to what the girls were saying. You know, had all of those people in authority said, no, this isn't real, you're not seeing the devil, this is all either hysterical fantasy or some sort of retributive measure that

you're taking, then it would have gone away. It wouldn't have mattered how much the girls screamed which. And I see that very much today. I don't care about all the activists online who scream at me. and call me a Nazi and fascist and all the rest of it and and make accusations against people it's the people in authority the politicians the commentariat the police etc who truckle to their bidding and say we're going to believe this right so all of these screaming activists would go away but they have somehow over the past 12 years maximum cultivated incredible clout within our society

they occupy major positions of influence in all of our major institutions civic institutions public institutions, the law, the judiciary, the police, schools certainly, higher education most definitely, that's where a lot of it comes from. And they can be vicious, and they can seek to attack and demean anyone who dissents from their point of view, or more importantly, anyone who challenges their worldview. And if the people in authority just said, come on, this is hysteria, we're not going along with it, I think it would dissipate, but they don't. And in Salem, the consequences of that were 20. dead. Today, the consequences of that are a climate of generalized fear amongst the population

about what should or should not be said or how things will be interpreted and what we call council culture, which for all I hear that it doesn't exist, it has managed to pile up a hell of a lot of casualties, which would suggest that it does. Yeah, there's obviously a lot to unpack there. I think the council culture thing is interesting in that a lot of people have, I remember once doing a debate for the Oxford Union about council. culture and it was this house would cancel cancel culture or similarly cliche and uh there was this point made that well look yeah look at the people who were supposedly canceled someone like jk rolling for example you know she's doing okay she's still making money she's still publishing books you know like

no problem like council culture isn't that bad of a thing and and my observation was to say i'm less worried about council culture in terms of how much success it's had but what people want to it to do. That is, if the forerunners of the people who wanted to cancel J.K. Rowling got their way, would she be publishing books? Would she be making money from this material? I think the answer might be no. And I think the intention is potentially more important there in terms of what there is to be worried about when we talk about this nebulous cancel culture. Is it what's actually happening? Or is it about the motivations of the people? I mean, we already know the answer to your theoretical or your hypothetical question because there is the example of Gillian Philip, who is the

children's author who merely tweeted in favor of jk rolling just to put a hashtag you know i stand with jk rolling lost was dropped by her publisher by her agent had to retrain as a truck driver had to leave the children's book industry entirely because of the extent of abuse and probation she received and of course that's because she's not an established author in the way that jk rolling us not that she wasn't established she was doing pretty well right but she wasn't quite at that status you're absolutely right you cannot cancel the likes of J.K. Rowling and Ricky J.K. J.K. J.K. Roling's books, as far as I understand it, are selling better than ever. Now, so, but people will point to that and say, well, that's evidence

that cancel culture doesn't exist, but it isn't because no one has made the claim that J.K. Rowling has been cancelled. The attacks on J.K. Rowling, the continual death threats and rape threats that come daily, to the extent that she says she could pay for the house with them. This is, I suppose, possibly a kind of signal to others to say, don't stray out of line because this is what we do to her. We can't cancel her. But look at the way that we treat other people, right? So there are so many examples, and you'll know from the book that I provide numerous examples of people who have been what we call cancelled, people who have lost their livelihoods and their jobs. And the key shared characteristic is they are not very famous or

very established. The true victims of cancel culture are normal people, aren't celebrities. The problem with it is, of course, is that we largely hear about the celebrities because those are the examples that make the media. You know, so it's actually, it's so much more common than people realize. Helen Pluckrow set up a group called counterweight in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. And the purpose of this group was that there were so many people sort of saying,

oh my goodness, at work all of a sudden I'm having to attend unconscious bias training sessions. I've been told that I'm racist when I'm not. I'm being told to confess my whiteness and my prejudice, et cetera. And I've pushed back at it and now I'm about to lose my job. Now I'm about to be fired. Not exclusively white people, either, by the way. There were ethnic minority people coming to Helen saying,

you know, my boss dragged me in the office and said, you know, tell me how you're oppressed. And I've said, I'm not oppressed. And they've said, well, that's a sign of your oppression. And almost penalized the people of making that point. Now, none of these stories will come out. It would be disadvantageous to the people themselves for it to come out. Helen set up this group, which unfortunately has now fallen by the wayside,

but it was there to help them, guide them through this to support them legally. The Free Speech Union does a similar thing. there have been, I mean, when the free speech union started, they were subject to all kinds of scoffing, I'd call it, just people saying there's no need for this. This is an imaginary enemy you're fighting. But they've been vindicated again and again, and they've saved so many people's careers. And again, it's not celebrities. It's not Hollywood stars. Those aren't the people I'm worried about. Not that I'm saying it's right to send a horrible threat to a Hollywood star. They're still a human being. But the point is they can't be cancelled in the way that most of us can. If I was still a teacher, I would almost certainly not be able to do that anymore, right? So that's, I think there's a, I think there's a misunderstanding about what cancel culture is. And when people say it's not really cancelling anyone, it's just, we call it accountability culture, well, then you're into the realm of, well, what do you mean? What is deserving of accountability? Is the statement, men and women are different, and we have to organize society with

the recognition of those differences? Is it, therefore, justifiable to send that individual death and rape threats? Is that sufficient accountability? Or to have contact their employer and demand that they be fired, to make, their life hell, to bombard them on social media, to monster them publicly, to make their life's hell for no other reason than you disagree with their point of view. That to me is the opposite of accountability. Yeah, I mean, the golden rule of accountability, the golden rule of punishment is that the punishment must be proportionate to the crime. That's the key thing

of cancer culture. It's largely disproportionate. In the vast majority of case, it isn't just horrible people saying horrible things and getting their comeuppance. I mean, I'm all for that. If I go online and say some horrible racist thing, I deserve to be robustly criticized, you know, even to become the subject of abuse, I think. But that's different from me making an innocuous comment, expressing an opinion that 99% of the country believe in, and then having people attack me for it. Well, not just that, but even if you say something genuinely horrendous, the punishment still needs to be proportionate. It does. And the power of social media is essentially unchecked and unexplored. But I mean, we have, I've described it before as something like the ability to take a nuclear bomb and drop it on a single individual.

Right. And we've made precisely no effort to figure out how to manage that. I think the most difficult thing to answer for a person in our broad position of being pro-free speech and sort of suspicious of this whole cancel culture, whatever that may be, is to talk about social media companies. It's to say it's quite straightforward with governments when we say that governments aren't able to intervene with free speech. I mean, there's still some things to iron out there. Even in principle, it's difficult to know exactly what that means. I spoke to Constantine Kissin

on this podcast about libel laws and copyright laws and in principle what the justifications for those are that don't also apply to things like hate speech laws. Actually, I'd be interested to hear your views on that. I mean, your previous book was free speech and why it matters. You wrote an entire book about free speech and you're known for being very pro-free speech, but presumably there are some instances in which you would be in. in favor of curtailing speech? No, there would be instances in which I would be in favor of punishing people for committing crimes

using the mechanism of speech, which is not quite the same thing. If you commit espionage, say, or perjury, perjury is a good example. Yeah, now, when you are imprisoned for perjury, you're not being imprisoned for your choices, the speech choices that you've made. You're being in prison for committing perjury.

Just so happens that it has been enacted through the means of speech. And that's the distinction I would make. And the same could be said of libel. The same could be said of blackmail. Yes. You know, so that's a distinction that I think should be very clearly drawn.

When free speech advocates are saying, we are absolutists, they're not saying, we believe, therefore, you should be able to commit crime that involves speech. That's not the same thing. Yeah, presumably in a situation

where somebody were about to commit liable and you had the ability to prevent that or the government had the ability to prevent that, then there might be some justification in essentially preventing speech. I mean, I like the way that you've put it, that you don't want to prevent speech. You want to punish criminal behavior through the mechanism of speech. But surely in at least some cases, this manifests as curtailing a person's ability to say particular things.

Well, it depends. I mean, libel is a very specific example because in order to prove libel, you'd have to prove intent. That's right. You would have to prove that this person maliciously said something false about you in order that there be some ramifications, a loss of income, say, a shattering of one's reputation. and of course if that is achieved lives can be ruined and it's perfectly fair for the victim of that to seek recompense maybe libel is one of those examples

where it should go through civil action rather than through law courts you know I'm interested in this distinction you've made between curtailing speech and punishing crimes committed through the mechanism of speech I mean suppose someone were to say to you well I'm pro free speech but hate speech is something else I'm not in favour of curtailing people's speech

But I'm in favor of punishing people who commit hate through the mechanism of speech. This is exactly why I'm against hate speech laws full stop. Because the problem is once they're on the statute books, it's impossible to define what they mean by that. I mean, there's a book by, I'm going to get this wrong. Paul Coleman, I think. It's called Sensored, where he, most of the book is actually just a facsimile of the various hate speech laws throughout Europe. So you can see how every country defines it. And what is absolutely striking and clear is that no one knows how to define it.

Right. Every single country defines it differently. UNESCO have made the point that it's impossible to define. We've recently had the Irish hate bill, hate crime bill go through. And I think the, I think Helen McAteer even said that if we define the word hate, the legislation would be useless. So now, I'm saying that that's something I've been told on Twitter, so I would just caveat that, right? But if that's true, it wouldn't surprise me.

I mean, the Scottish hate crime bill, for instance, has a similar thing, similarly draconian, when that was instigated by Humza Yusuf, who was then Justice Secretary, you know, he said that he wanted to criminalize hateful speech or speech that was intended to stir up hatred, that's the phrase that is used, even within the confines of one's own home. He also had a section on the public performance of a play.

He was asked about it in Holyrood, and he said, yes, I could envisage a situation where neo-Nazis would put on a play to stir up hatred. I can't envisage that situation, but maybe he knows more neo-Nazis than I do. I don't know any as it happens. So the reason, why I'm against hate speech laws is if you have that, because I am against, I am for the notion

of punishing people who break the law, right? So if you have a hate speech law in place, then I suppose theoretically I have to be in favor of trusting the courts and the judgment there. Yeah. I can still be critical of the law. Well, where does your allegiance lie there if the government enacts a hate speech law? Yeah. And you've got these two competing notions. One is you don't think hate speech laws are legitimate, morally speaking, but another that if some If somebody commits a crime, they ought to be punished, otherwise the criminal justice system goes to bunk. What do you prioritise there in that situation? I don't think you need to prioritise one or the other.

I think what you can do is campaign to have a law repealed. Would you be in favour of the person being prosecuted if they had committed a crime against a hate speech law that you thought was morally illegitimate? I would say I think I disagree with this decision and I'd say that it is a miscarriage of justice. And I would reserve my right to criticise, as I did in the case of the Marcus Meekin hate speech conviction, where he, you know the story about the nazi pug that's uh count dangular that's count dangular right so um but the point and that's why i continually make a noise about that kind of thing because i do want section uh one two seven of the communications act to be repealed but do you think it was right to find him if he did actually uh if he did actually break the law even if you don't agree with the law in that case

no because the prosecution failed to prove precisely what they claim they proved which was that he was that he deliberately intended to stir up hatred by, and for people who are unfamiliar, this was a man who made a video training his girlfriend's pug to do a Nazi salute. I mean, when you say it's even funnier, because you say it's so straight-faced, because it's so silly, isn't it?

Yes. He even explained the context at the start of the video. He said, my girlfriend is always going on about how cute and adorable her wee pug is, so I thought I'd turn it into the most awful thing I could imagine, which is a Nazi. So he's explained that the joke is predicated on the notion that there is nothing worse than a Nazi.

In other words, it's an anti-Nazi joke. It's a joke at the expense of Nazis. But apparently, according to the Scottish government, you can't mock Nazis there. They like to look out for them, apparently. Yeah, in this case, they sort of trawled through his sort of internet history and all kinds of things to try and find out if he had any Nazi tendencies. Their cybercrime intelligence looked through every text it ever sent,

every email, and by their own admission found absolutely no allegiance to any far right group or any racist comments or anything. So by the prosecution's own conceding, they had no evidence. The evidence they said was what the video in of itself. So in other words, it was their interpretation of the joke that was sufficient to see him prosecuted. So I think that is a miscarriage of justice. I don't think it even fulfills the criteria set out in the legislation. So that would be an example.

But in that case, of course, he doesn't fulfill the criteria. But suppose that he did, you might still disagree with this law being in place. Yes. Do you think it would be right to find somebody who breaks, No, I think it would be absolutely wrong. And I would say it was wrong. And if it were me, I would refuse to pay the fine. If it were me, I would go to prison rather than concede that I'd done anything wrong. But I can't demand that of other people. Now, the main problem that you've identified with hate speech laws is the difficulty in determining what counts as hate.

The problem I see with this is that I've made the analogy before, again, to constant him with copyright law. Yeah. Look at the cases of like Ed Sheeran being sued for his his song that sounds a little bit like another song. Was he? I didn't know about that. Well, somebody tried to try to sue him. I think it was let's get it on. It's not a song I'm familiar with it. Let's get it on. As in that's Marvin Gaye's song, let's get it on. Okay.

And Ed Sheeran's thinking out loud, which sounds like a ridiculous comparison to make. But they do have the same core progression and a similar beat. So this is reminiscent of the Robin Thick case. Yeah, that's another example. The Robin Thick case and that was, I can't remember the song that it sounded like. No, neither can be. But at any rate, these

these cases go to court. Yeah. And there's this big argument about, well, of course, if I just like re-recorded thinking out loud by Ed Sheeran, then I'm breaking the law there. I've, I've, you know, I've broken a copyright law. But what if I write something a little bit similar? What counts? And the difficulty is it's impossible to define. But because it's impossible to sort of draw a line about what counts as copyright infringement and every country is going to have a different interpretation, I don't think that would be sufficient to say, therefore copyright laws are legitimate and I wouldn't pay the fine in protest because I think this is a

this is a terrible law like are you saying that that is therefore an infringement on free speech the fact that you cannot by law simply record an edge here in song and release it the point that I made to constant in was that I think it's possible to conceive of it in that way to say that copyright law is actually an infringement on free speech but it's a legitimate one I don't think it is though I don't see how it is because it is The problem with what happened in that case, I assume, I don't know about that particular song, is taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own, as opposed to simply free expression. I think that it's a separate thing.

It's like what I go back to with espionage and blackmail, et cetera. It's not, it's something that is adjacent to it, but it's not quite the same thing. Yeah. So it's a deception, I suppose, within that. The deception, or I suppose you could say it's fraudulent. Well, somebody could also do this, as it were, accidentally. Yeah. especially in something like musical art you know you hear a song once and you kind of it's in the

back of your mind somewhere and when you're writing a song for yourself this wonderful melody strikes you and you kind of don't realize that it's actually come from somewhere else happens all the time and then okay so then this goes to court and so he says you stole my song and it causes this great news item that it's so and and such a huge debate because nobody can quite determine what counts as copying and what doesn't it's so hard because you know in um in particularly music you know there's a limited number of chords there's a limited number of chord sequences a limited number of notes chord sequences can't be copyrighted of course which is why there's that there's that chord sequence that always gets you a number one hit oh yeah it's the one that black eye

was used for where is the love and natalie and brulio used for torn and let it be and yeah it's recurs again and again and again it's a nice sort of uh shortcut um i mean but then when bill drummond when when the klf started and he was pioneering sampling and uh abba took them to cord and they had to together all of their records and burn them, which they did in a pile, and they used that as the front cover image of their next album. It's like, you know the song, uh, uh, bittersweet symphony by the verve? All of the royalties from that song go to the Rolling Stones. Yeah, of course. Because it sounds identical to an orchestral version of this could be the last time by the Rolling Stones. But was that deliberate, do we think? Well, it does, if you listen to the, so it's a bit complicated

because you have the Rolling Stone song and then there's this orchestral version which sounds quite different yeah and then the verve song sounds almost identical yeah and there's a there's a joe satriani has a song called if i could fly which cole plays viva levida yeah sounds very similar to i think that's inevitable i like that of course john lennon prosecuted not john lennon george harrison was prosecuted for might sweet lord which someone said was a rip-off of another song i think it's inevitable because of the nature of music that that's going to happen from time to send that's not the same as someone taking a sample and passing it off as the fugues did with enya for their song ready or not, and they took a sample from one of Enya's track called Bodicea,

and they didn't credit her. So you then found that on the singles, they would write, oh, we're very great because she didn't sue, you know, so that's not the same as if you accidentally hit upon the same melody as someone else. And like you say, you know, these melodies are going through. We have these earworms all the time. I would hate to be a composer, because I'm pretty sure I would think, oh, that's a great song, and I'd write it down, and I've probably heard it many years ago. But the same happens in comedy, you know. Like, so it's very easy to reach a similar comedic conclusion on the basis of a news story as someone else.

Now, I've had instances where I've seen a famous comedian on stage do a joke that I wrote, but I've realized he hasn't stolen it from me. He's just reached the same conclusion, and that's the way it goes. And when that happens, I always drop the joke because I'm not famous. So if I were to carry on,

people would assume it was the other way around. On the other hand, I've also had, I remember doing a set where an open mic act went on before me and did about two or three minutes of my set. And it couldn't have been accidental because it was in the same sequence, even the same phraseology.

And because I'm such a coward, I just didn't say anything afterwards. All I did was just think, okay, well, I won't do that bit then, which is probably, it doesn't reflect well on me. But nevertheless, it can be the case, and I've seen it happen all the time. I did a joke at the stand in Edinburgh once in a set,

the head of the stand came up to me after and said, oh, that's a bit like what this Irish comic does. It was a comic I'd never heard of. And so I just dropped it because I just don't think it's worth it. But I think that's, when it comes to artistic creation, it's inevitably going to be the case that you end up in the same point. I don't think it's a free speech issue unless it can be proven that you've gone out of your way to pass off someone else's work as your own. Okay, but imagine from the position of a court here in terms of like who gets the money for this song. Right. And they have to decide this. It makes sense. It makes sense. that if somebody has clearly ripped off somebody else

and they're getting royalties from that song, that that money should go to the original artist. Yeah, sure. Now, somebody could sit in the position of a legal theorist and say, but like, it's impossible to clearly define what counts as copying. I mean, there are levels to this. If you listen to some of the examples that I've spoken about,

some of them are a bit similar, some of them are almost identical. And the analogy that I'm trying to draw is specifically to your point. This doesn't mean that hate speech laws are legitimate, but specifically to this rebuttal that a problem with hate speech laws is that it's impossible to define what counts as hate.

Isn't that kind of the case with any law? It's always impossible to precisely define what counts. Well, I guess murder. I don't know what the actual legal definition is. It's probably something like the sort of intentional killing of a person not in self-defense or ex-wise. But presumably, like, there are going to be cases where it's difficult to know exactly sort of what counts

like were they acting in self-defense or were they not that's why we have a court system that's why we we thrash this out in front of a jury so can't the same thing be said in cases where it's unclear whether something's hateful that's why we have a jury of peers to decide whether it was or not because hate is too nebulous I mean it's not even in the same category the idea of hate what I perceive to be hate I can guarantee will be different from what any other individual perceives to be hate so there can be no shared definition is this a difference in degree or kind when talking about the difficulty with the defining what counts as copying in copyright law and what counts as murder in murder cases, which I think this is a good continuum, like copyright probably sits

somewhere in the middle in terms of being like quite nebulous, but a little bit easier to spot. Hate is like is, is much, much more difficult. I think copyright is is has its own sort of tricky elements to it. I think it might be made easier. For instance, if you, you discovered an email from a musician to his friend saying, I love this song, I'm going to rip it off. Yeah. Then it becomes an easier case. Well, Ed Sheeran once a few years ago was doing his song Thinking Out Loud and as part of the medley broke in to Let's Get It On. Oh, right. And sang it over the same chords.

But even that, even that was a situation because it's interesting, you say there, well, look, if you had that, then that would make it more obvious. But even then, it's not clear because Ed Sheeran mixes up lots of different songs. And so that was his position in court as well. I mean, that's almost a whole other discussion about the nature of art and the way in which artists borrow from each other. Which I, you know, I don't think is a bad thing. But are we talking about a continuum here? But yeah, yeah, so let's go back to this point of faith. Or is it like, you know, the concept of a hate speech law is just like a categorically different kind of thing.

It just is. It just is because it is like a myasma. You know, if you, if I can't, I cannot define what hate means, really. I cannot define it. The people who write the legislation can't define it. And if what I've heard recently is true, the people implementing the legislation don't want to define it. So, I mean, it's quite obviously something that if you put that, If you put, I mean, look, the law is continually being reinterpreted and tested, and it works on the basis of precedent.

And the reason for that is that it can never be definitive. So all of these cases are ongoing in that respect and our understanding of what these terms mean. But if you have legislation on the statute books that is, from the very outset, completely vague, to the extent that no one can tell you what any of it means, that is surely opening the pathway to tyranny. It's bound to be exploited by people who want to silence other people. But then there's a supplementary issue to that, beyond the definitional issues of the term hate, there is the ethical issue of, should the state be auditing our emotions anyway? Why is it wrong to hate? Why shouldn't we be able to do so legally? That's another issue as well. So I think, and in a sense, that might be more pressing when it comes to my objection to hate speech. So I don't, I still want to reserve the right to hate if I want to. It's got nothing to do with the police. when people talk about hate speech, although as you say, it's quite difficult to define and sometimes there's a resistance to defining it perhaps for that reason. But when people talk about hate speech in the context of things they want to criminalise, I don't think

they're just talking about an emotion of hatred towards something and that being police. I think they're talking about the expression of a hateful attitude with the intention of bringing about, you know, upset or anger or misery in another person. That's why they use the phrase stir up hatred in the legislation. That's why that recurs again and again. I think that's absolutely right. That's what people, that's the defense that people use. And what's the problem with this? Well, the exploitative element. In the vast majority

of cases, as you will have noted, when people complain about hate speech or report people for hate speech, they are doing so not because of what you just described, not because they have a fear of stirring up a hatred, but because they find something offensive. That has even been said explicitly. It's even been said explicitly by the police. The police who visited

Harry Miller in that famous case, you know, where they said, we need to check your thinking. They said, you have caused offence to someone or the other the recent case where they said you have caused anxiety by posting a meme so that that is I think proof sufficient proof that it is open to exploitation tell us tell us about those two cases okay well the Harry Miller one I actually opened my book on free speech with that example because I thought it was so egregious was that Harry Miller who's a former police officer by the way the police contacted him because he retweeted a poem that was deemed

to be transphobic by one member of the public that member of the public that member of the public complained, said, I'm offended by this. The police visited him, and the phrase that the officer started lecturing him about gender identity for a start, started sort of peddling all of the pseudoscience about people being born with half a brain, female, half a brain. There's absolute nonsense, which they'd obviously heard in some training session, probably orchestrated by the College of Policing. And then they used the phrase, we need to check your thinking.

Because he was saying, have I committed a crime? They said, no. And he said, well, if I haven't committed a crime, why are you here? and they said we need to check your thinking and of course that's you know if you were writing a play about a state descending into an Orwellian version of itself that's the kind of phrase

That would be too on the nose You wouldn't believe it would you right So that's why it became so well known But also because this happens all the time You know we know that between What was it between It was over a five year period up to 2022 There were over 120,000

Recorded non-crime hate incidents By police in England and Wales The Scottish police have a database of jokes that they've seen online. They don't tell the people that they're recording it. They just write down the name of the person

who's said the joke and they keep a watch on them. So all of this, these are non-crimes, right? Now, I've always made the case that the police have no business investigating non-crime.

I don't think that requires any further justification than the statement in of itself, but I don't think they do. And in the case of Harry Miller, they sort of messed with the wrong guy because he is a former police officer himself. But he, of course,

comes from a time before the College of Policing got its stranglehold over the police force. It's a quango. It's a group that is responsible for teaching the police how to be police effectively. And they were sort of ideologically captured probably about 12, 13 years ago. They introduced the notion of non-crime hate incidents, which do matter, by the way, because if I perceive that something you said to me today was motivated by homophobia and I phoned the police and said, that's my perception, according to the Crown Prosecution

Service guidelines, they would have to record that. And the College of Policing Guidelines, they would have to record that as a non-crime hate incident irrespective of any malicious intent from you. Because it's about the perception of the person who receives it. Right. And then if you wanted to apply for a job teaching school kids, it would show up on a disclosure and barring service check. And you probably wouldn't get the job.

So it does actually have consequences. It's not just that the police are recording these big long lists of people for wrong thing, which would be bad enough in of itself in terms of living in a liberal democracy. But there are the actual consequences that come about as a result of that. So that's what happened with Harry Miller, but then he took them to court. And this was a long protracted back and forth over a couple of years. And because the College of Policing are so ideologically captured, they were resistant to any kind of criticism. So first you had Pretty Patel, who was then Home Secretary saying, you've got to drop this.

It's not in your remit to record non-crime. And they just ignored her. That's their home office. They just ignored it, right? Then the High Court comes down and says, this is unlawful. And they ignored that. And then it happened again, and they said, well, we're going to fudge the language. and we're going to come back again.

And then the current Home Secretary says, you absolutely can't do this. And so eventually, by degrees, inchmeal, we're getting there by the College of Policing, but it's like trying to tell a group of high priests, you can't do your religious ritual anymore. You know, they are resistant to it because they believe they are on the side of the angels.

This is why I compare it to a religion in the book. And therefore, it doesn't matter who you are. You can be the Home Secretary. You can be the highest court in the land, and they'll just ignore you. So that's why. happen in the Harry Miller case and I think it's very instructive and I think it's an example of where of why we need to keep an eye on the cops right if if they they can't serve without fear

or favor if they are partisan you don't just compare it to a religion you call it a religion yes what do you mean by this so and you're talking here about something like wokeism social justice movements yeah political correctness this kind of thing yeah it's well it's I don't think it is a religion. I'm using an analogy there. So to call it the religion of social justice is to be figurative. On the other hand, because, you know, it doesn't have...

I mean, I do make the point that there are religious movements that aren't necessarily supernatural in bases that don't have a deity at the helm, Confucianism, et cetera. But isn't it? Yeah, so that you could argue that that's not a necessary component of religious belief. Fair enough. I'm actually not delving into the weeds there.

I'm using it as an analogy. for the specific purpose that I want to make this movement accessible. The big problem with this movement is people don't know how to describe it because it describes itself in terms that are opposed to its intentions and objectives. So to give you an example, this is a movement that describes itself as progressive when I see it very clearly as regressive, and most people do. They describe themselves as liberal. The people behind this movement explicitly, in fact,

to say that they are opposed to liberal. So to describe it as liberal is wrong even in their own terms. It's actually an anti-liberal movement. They talk about anti-racism, which is a doctrine that hyper-racializes society and increases racial division. You know, I wrote an article about the spectator of this. I think I make the point in the book

that really, in order to be opposed to racism, you have to be against anti-racism. And this sounds very, very confusing. And because the culture war is largely about language and is about people redefining terms whilst denying that they are doing so, people are baffled. They're really, really confused.

And I wanted to write a book that made this movement comprehensible. I think that's really important because it succeeds, largely, I think, on the basis of the good nature of the general public.

Because if a movement comes along and says, hey, you know, we're for social justice. We're for equality. They actually use the word equity. For people here, equality. We're for, you know, tackling racism.

Well, who isn't? Right. So, of course, there's going to be a lot of fellow travelers. But I think if people understood what the actual mechanisms of this movement and what it stands for, very few would support it. Because really it comes down to the conflict between liberalism, liberty and authority, which is what John Stuart Mill talks about in On Liberty. It's what George Orwell wrote about. This is a perennial debate. It's not about left and right. A good synonym for woke is anti-liberal. A good synonym. for anti-woke is liberal. But of course, that's not the way that this has been largely comprehended in the general public. To call it a religion, therefore, does, I've noticed, have the effect. I mean, I started calling it that about five years ago. And I realized that it hit home immediately. People got it.

They understand that there's a belief system here that has incredible clout, that enforces that clout largely on the basis of intimidation, but also from a kind of top-down authority. It says, you know, we have all the answers and you must follow our decrees. It punishes heresy. It excommunicates even, those who step out of line. People can see all these parallels very, very clearly. Its presuppositions are largely faith-based.

For instance, the idea that there are these power structures within society that undergird every situation, that racism is at the heart of any human interaction, the belief that we all have a gendered soul. So there are all these unevidence presuppositions baked into the movement. And therefore, if you call it a reliance, religion, people get it. All of a sudden, it's like what Stephen Weinberg said about, you know,

in a world where you had good people and bad people, the good people to be doing good things, bad people have been doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, that takes religion. And then it makes sense. Wow, why am, why do I see online all these people who have be kind and love wins in their bio threatening death and saying we wish you would die in a grease fire? And, you know, I hope your children get diseased and perish of cancer. How do you square that? You can suddenly square that when you see it as a religion. Suddenly, yeah, of course.

They think they're doing God's work. They think they're completely in the right. And by being this cruel and by demonizing people in this way, they are doing so in the way that the inquisitors of old, you know, could strap people to the rack and yet think, and yet go home at night and say their prayers, it makes sense of it. Because otherwise, how do you make sense of the sheer cruel?

of social justice activists how do you make sense of that kind of legitimized bullying unless it's a belief system you see because i don't think i don't bind to this idea that they're all as horrible as they seem i just don't i i kind of think that level of cruelty for the most part can only really come out of a sense that you're doing something for the good i think but aren't you just sort of seeing the worst of it here i mean that there's there's a lot to talk about in what you've just said, I mean, the faith-based aspect for a start, do you think this is always faith-based? Do you not think there are any good arguments in favor of the sort of fundamental assumptions? I mean, I think the ones you mentioned were you said something like racism at the

basis of all human interactions or something like this. Now, I don't know if everybody who we might label as woke or as part of the new Puritans would say that racism is at the basis of every human interaction. No, but the originators of critical. race theory would the idea that it's sort of it's always subtly there somewhere yes exactly it's it's being um there's a couple of books that could be read on this there's a delgado's book on critical race there's a very good introduction in fact i think it's aimed at um teenage readers so like it's it's not as though this stuff is inaccessible is this but is this like in your view complete hocus pocus or is there well i don't think it some legitimate i mean surely surely there are there are people who who put forward

arguments that this is the case. I mean, you described as entirely faith-based, and faith is something like the belief in the absence of, or, you know, despite the absence of evidence. Well, as you know, you can't prove a negative, right? So, for instance, this conversation we're having now, if I were to say to you, at the heart of this conversation is white supremacy being enacted, surely the burden of proof is on me right there, right? It has to be, right? And that's the problem with this movement. Now, a critical race theorist would say that society is organized by white people for the benefit of white people. It would say that I suppose I could use the way

that Helen Pluckroes and James Lindsay put it in their book, cynical theories. The question that you ask is not how did racism take place in this situation, but how did racism manifest in this situation. Now that to me is precisely what I've just described. That is someone making a claim. The burden of proof should be on them, but they disoblige themselves of providing that evidence

because the theory takes care of it, if you will. Actually, your question about, is there no merit within this? Well, there is. I mean, because the question at the heart of critical race theory is a good one. The question at the heart of it is, how can it be that we live in a society with equal legal protections for all ethnic groups and racism still lingers? That's really the question, because its origins are in law.

The critical race theorists were legal. scholars similarly with intersectionality. Intersectionality is another example. The fundamental premise is a good one. The idea that the way that Kimberly Crenshaw put it originally, she's the person who invented it, is that you can imagine an intersection like a road and that you probably know this and that there are people in the road who can be hit from different directions based on their multiple identity groups, you know. Yeah, the example she gives is black women trying to be, I think there was some kind of employment issue where there was some black women who thought

they were not being hired on the basis of being black women and this was sort of disproven in court by showing that the company hired black men and also hired white women. Right, exactly, that was General Motors. And the idea is that they would basically be able to say, well, look, hey, we're not racist, we have loads of black guys at the office

and we're not sexist because we've got loads of white women but of course, where are the black women? That requires intersectionality. She's right. And the good thing about that is she proved it. So you can see, from the evidence she provided in that original article, how black women fall through the cracks.

Yeah. Right. And there's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Someone's made a claim, and they provided evidence, and they're right. And so this is my point about, now, what intersectionality became is like a perverted religious version of it, something that is, doesn't really bear much of a resemblance to the original conception of intersectionality, as Kimberly Crenshaw herself has complained, and she's right to complain.

Because it's not just, what she envisaged originally was not just a hierarchy of grievances where you put people in these sort of these tallies what has become colloquially known as the oppression Olympics you know it's not what she was talking about but that is the way it's often implemented now so that's my trouble with it is I think with all of these theories I'm all for theorizing and I love the sort of abstract conversations that you delight in right all of this stuff is is great but once you start applying these uncontested theories in the realm of public policy even school policy or employment policy or whatever that's a real problem that's the equivalent to me of of you know imposing religious dogma in these areas as well i saw a story in the times

yesterday it was i think the headline was the school with extra lessons for black pupils only the message sent from the inclusion and anti-racism group to all year four parents at cold full primary school in north london invited quote black and black heritage children to join the two hour online sessions on saturday mornings white children were not invited Apparently, the aim was to accelerate the progress in reading and writing, whilst also developing children's knowledge of black history and culture, again, not offered to white students. And there was a response from one of the parents in the Times who said, why is this the case when it's actually white children who are falling behind? And it turns out that the school's own statistics and freedom of information requests, again, according to the Times, prove his point. In the final year, they show seven times more white pupils than black pupils failed to reach the expected standard in national reading test.

11 times more white pupils than black pupils fell short for writing at Coldfall. And yet there's a situation in which reading and writing extra classes are being offered only to black students and not to white students. And that's the logical end point of applying critical race theory in the classroom. Why does this kind of thing come about? Because critical race theory can only exist with what they call praxis, with the actual application of its terms. The whole point of, you know, since the sort of applied postmodernism era of the late 1980s,

you know prior to that you would have theorists talking about their theories but no one was suggesting the implementation of these theories and then the activists stroke academics decided they would be applied and helen pluckers actually dates this very specifically to 1989 because that is the year that most of these activist articles from academic sources came out and you end up with this result where where here we are now what 30 or 35 years down the line and you have a school segregating kids effectively by skin color happened at the american school in london as well where they segregated kids by skin color for after school that activities. This is the logical endpoint of this, what we could call misapplied critical race theory, if you like. But what they're saying there is that those kids have to be seen through the lens of their group identity first and foremost. And actually, the obvious point is if you're going to offer extra classes for kids, offer it to the ones who are struggling irrespective of their skin color. I mean, it's a kind of basic point. And some may want to say that, I mean, it's also written that it's a progress in reading and writing, well, it's also developing the children's knowledge of black history and culture.

So people might want to say, well, that's why it's aimed at black students rather my students, but why can't white kids learn about it too? It's incredibly racist. Now, what I'm interested in hearing you try to do, given that you've written an entire book talking about this kind of stuff and these kinds of people promoting these kinds of ideas, is steel man it. Like, what is the position here? Not in the way that you would describe it, but we spoke a moment ago about sort of racism

at the basis of all human interactions, even if we don't realize it. society built by white people for white people. What is the strongest version of that argument? What is the best form? Incontestably, there's been a history of racism in this country and it doesn't go back that long. I mean, when I was a kid, racism, you would hear racist comments pretty commonly

in a way that you just don't now anymore. We saw what happened with the Theresa May's hostile environment with the Windrush generation. Those people were treated appallingly. No, racism still lingers in society and there is evidence for it. Do you think, do you think, in the way you say, where you wouldn't hear these kinds of racist statements these days, I agree with you that you'd probably hear it less explicitly, but do you think that that's because people are less racism has shifted? And now people who are still racist are just less willing to be so openly and in public.

I couldn't possibly say about the thoughts of people. I mean, the study, what I can say is that the studies repeatedly show that ours is probably the most tolerant country in the world racially. and is more tolerant than any country has ever been. You know, time after time, the polls come out. There was one recently, wasn't there? Britain comes up on top of Europe in terms of racial tolerance. Yeah, I do hear that quite commonly pointed to the idea that Britain is, you know, the least racist country in the world.

I mean, fine, but the sort of historical standard isn't particularly high. Right, so this is what I'm going to say is that, well, firstly, I can't tell you whether the people, the respondents to those polls are simply lying because they know that they should keep their racism secret. But frankly, even if that is the case, I think it's a positive thing, right? Because I think it's great that we've reached this kind of societal consensus that making racist statements is abhorrent. I don't want to hear them in public discourse.

I believe in civility. So that, I think, is a good thing. In a way, I don't care what people's private thought. In fact, I don't. But what I would say is, to your question of steel manning that point, yes, perhaps it could be argued that there has been neglect when it comes to the teaching of our history. I don't think, by the way, that the activists of today are helping this because they are revisionists and often completely misrepresent history for political aims.

So I don't really want them in charge of it either. I don't want them applying the specific context of Jim Crow and American slavery to Britain, as has been, as has happened again and again. I want people to learn about the history impartially, openly. This is what happened, warts and all. And that does include Britain's complicity in the slave trade. It also, of course, includes the British, the Royal Navy's obliteration of the transatlantic slave trade over a period of more than 100 years. But all of these things have to be taught. So the best argument, I think, is there is a history of racism in this country.

Although it is now a minority thing, it does still linger in certain areas. People from ethnic minority groups will, from time to time, face prejudice or will experience something. That's very, I can't say definitely, but it's likely to happen. and so therefore those things need to be addressed. That would be the best thing I could think of in terms of steel manning. The problem is racial segregation isn't the solution to that. And I sort of can't believe I have to say that. Yeah, there's something to be said for the idea that even if they're right,

the solution that they've got an offer here is not the correct one. And asking the questions is a good one. So, for instance, why is it the case that children from Caribbean backgrounds underperform in schools and they perform much worse than white students. Why is that the case? It's worth looking into that, isn't it? So that you can help those individuals.

But then by the same token, if you then simply interpret that data as being to do with racism lingering society, then you have to explain why people from African backgrounds outperform white students. Because if it is a form of racism built into the educational system, it's a particularly targeted form. Yeah, quite. I wanted to pick up on something you said a moment ago, which is about this

racism now being a minority position. Now, a moment ago you said that you can't know the thoughts of people. So it's difficult, I think, to say that with confidence. No, it's not difficult to say that the polling data that I described. I mean, that's Oh, sure. But again, I mean, of course people are not going to say that they're racist for two reasons. Firstly, if they are, they're likely to lie about it. Secondly, because one of the arguments that we're talking about here is the idea that a lot of racial prejudice is essentially unregistered by people. Yeah, I'm making the point that I cannot know people's private thoughts, but I would also make the point that it is unhelpful for me to presuppose the worst about the

population. It doesn't get us anything. But it might not be a presupposition, right? Somebody might say, look at this sort of, look at this as a theoretical explanation of people's lived experience. Yes. Again, I know you've already spoken about why you don't like the idea of referring to live experience but in in the case of still manning here what the position actually is somebody says look i have this this theory that look at the way that people describe their experiences growing up living through life experiencing racial discrimination from people who ostensibly are not racist and what they mean by that is that they're not going to go around saying that they believe in racial discrimination or something like this but that they have some

kind of implicit bias when it comes to hiring i mean it's been shown that if you take the names off of CVs, it changes who people are willing to hire because the names sound foreign, for example. Like, we know that this kind of stuff does exist. And if you took somebody, if you took an employer and you found that they were much less likely to hire somebody if they had a foreign sounding name, but if they were anonymized, then they hired them equally. Somebody might want to say that that man, perhaps be putting it too strongly to say, you know, you're a racist. Yes. But to say that there is racism sort of at the basis of that particular interaction wouldn't be unfair you would have to prove it I mean I think you're right that it's wouldn't that wouldn't that count as

proof that that example of the as soon as you make the names obvious as soon as you de-anonymize the applications the foreign sounding names perform worse no I mean that'll be evidence the stronger evidence for that or the stronger explanation for that is that people tend to favor uh candidates who are more similar to themselves, to the extent that if an applicant comes in with the same birthday, you are more likely to favour that applicant. Is that true? Yeah. I didn't know that was the case.

So, I mean, to say it is because of racism, it's a very, in a way, comforting solution because it's like it explains it. Sure. But there might be other factors there. But it might be, and there might certainly be implicit bias. And even if it is the case that someone is favoring candidates whose names are very, are similar to their own or ethnically similar. Then, yes, that is an example, I suppose, of implicit bias along the lines of race.

Well, that's it. I was going to say the corollary of the position that actually what we're seeing here is people more likely to hire people like themselves. This is in so many ways why people think something like implicit racism exists. So then you've got the question of, well, firstly, you have to acknowledge that implicit bias is that we have unconscious biases. We've got thousands of them, right? Yes. So we know that to be the case. What we also know, however, is that unconscious bias training never works and does nothing. In fact, if anything, it makes things worse according to the studies.

So therefore, then you add the liberal position, which is that actually employers have no right to be delving around in your mind anyway, in your secret thoughts. So all of these things would suggest to us that actually we've got to find a solution to what you've just described without simply taking a sledgehammer to it and saying this is racism, this is something we need to cast out.

And the solution, I think in that case, would quite obviously be anonymized applications rather than demonising the people involved. However, it could also be the case that the person processing the applications is a racist, right? But in order to make that claim, you'd have to have some evidence for it. And the scenario that you've described doesn't qualify there. I think it does in the sense that we'd need it to for this position to make sense.

Because again, this isn't somebody saying you are specifically a racist. Like there's something about you, like maybe you're sort of not a sexist, but you just have sort of a racial prejudice. Yeah, but the idea is that everyone does. So I mean, if you were someone from an ethnic minority, you would maybe apply the same prejudice according to the names that come in onto the application. it's just that we're in a white majority country. So it feels more pronounced the other way. Sure, but isn't that basically the position that you're arguing against, the idea that, yeah, everybody has racial prejudices

that are essentially unregistered a lot of the time by them. We live in a white majority country, therefore, our society is predominantly affected by... I don't even know that everyone has racial prejudices. Anti-white racial prejudice. I think everyone has unconscious biases, that's what I said. I'm not qualified to say whether everybody, I don't have insight to everybody's mind.

It doesn't seem like the kind of like, insane, crazy view that a lot of people might make it out to be like, it seems like a perfectly plausible worldview. Yeah, it's perfectly plausible and it's unhelpful. But that that is one of the, I mean, I agree with you that there might be sort of a problem of solution because let's say we're just trying to diagnose here. Maybe we might decide that there is nothing we can do about this, but we're just making a theoretical observation that this is the case. This was one of the things that you gave me as an example when saying that, you know, well, the reason I'm describing this as a religious movement is because it has these faith-based principles like the idea that racism

is the basis of all social interactions. If it turns out this is actually a sort of a plausible theoretical outlook on the world, and sure, there might be problems with responding to that in the ways that people do, that seems to be sort of, that seems to undermine at least one of the cases that you gave me to describe this movement of this sort of dogmatic religious movement. Well, it's not a problem of plausibility, though. It's a problem of, to what extent can you rectify that and how helpful is it to do it? And furthermore, that the remedies that are being proffered. If they, as the evidence seems to suggest, hyperracialize society, make society more racist, then really why implement them? What's the point? So it's all, I agree with you that having

the theoretical conversation is great and I'm all for that. Acknowledging the problem is also great and trying to find the solution is also great. But implementing policy on the basis of wild theories that are unproven, which is I think what you're implying we should do, or not you, but you know, suggesting it as a sort of devil's advocate thing. That just clearly is damaging. So I think it is very helpful to recognize the stronger points that the theorists are making. But once you start going along with their solutions, we are in a spiral to hell. But we were talking about the religious element here. Is the religious dogmatic element then only in the way that people are trying to respond to perceived injustices? No, no, no. I think to say that every human interaction is

underpinned by racism is a faith-based position. despite by its definition because you would have you haven't proven any of it well for example when we spoke a moment ago again about these anonymized job applications I said well this might be evidence of of racial prejudice and you said well no that that's just evidence that people sort of hire people who I didn't say that that's the the common view that seems to be evidence in favor of that proposition it might not be enough of course that like this one example alone is not enough to establish the conclusion that like everybody's race But it seems to be evidence that counts in favor of this proposition that that people have racial prejudices that they might not even be aware of and if you have enough of those kinds of evidences

But you don't I mean that's a that's a singular example that has proven something that we all know to be true anyway So if it were true that something like what these people claim is the case that every human interaction Every human is somehow tainted by racism or we could we could even take a weakly claim that every interracial interaction that people have so any time you know a white person and non-white person interact there is racism present yes what would you expect to see well what would you expect that world to look like what kind of evidence is do you think we would would do you think would manifest that we could very much like the UK looked 50 years ago I think that at the time of the windrush generation I mean those people faced racism on a

daily basis it was the kind of society where racism was normalized but if the thesis is that the the racial prejudice we're talking about here is implicit and unrecognized oh well that's a different thing you see but that's the argument they make because yeah because they say that because we have taken such strides in terms of legislation equality legislation that kind of thing that what has happened effectively is that those racist impulses have been subsumed into society and if that is the case so that you can't see them anymore what evidence would you expect to find in a society like that well i well that's my point is that that needs to be proven from the people making the claim right so So when Robin DiAngelo says that today's racism is worse than Jim Crow, because we can't

see it and you need a special degree to detect it, right? She's putting itself in the position of a high priest there saying, you know, I've got I've got the, I can see your aura and other people can't. That requires, there has to be some kind of evidential threshold there. You can't, we can't just take that on trust that what this woman says is true. You know, we need to, I need to see some evidence. What kind of evidence do you think would sway you in that direction? Oh, I'm always swayed by evidence of racism.

If there's, you know, the problem is, if it is, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's easy enough to say if people are overt racists, then we can look at the evidence of that and we can prove it. Yes. But the claim that's being made here that we've got implicit racial prejudices that are hard to recognize even by the person who possesses them. Yes. and you're like, well, show me the evidence. What if it's the kind of thing that is, that is true, or that the kind of evidence is always going to be a little bit murky, or it's going to be something in the form of something like lived experience,

which we're obviously never going to be able to have access to. In a liberal society, you obviously can't do anything with it. I mean, I would say to you, for instance, let's give an analogy, if I say that you, I detect in you a virulent homophobia, and therefore you shouldn't be employed, and I want to enact that, I want that to actually be enacted. And you say to me,

but you surely have to, that's going to affect my life. I need some evidence. And I say, no, I've made that decision. Now it has to be done. You wouldn't be happy with that being enacted in real life. And it's just an equivalent thing. Now, it might be true. You might be a rabid homophote.

But I can't simply make that claim and change your life and change society on the basis of an evidence claim. And we all know this to be true. And I think that's, I think that's a given. I don't think society can operate on theories applied on intuition. Who do you find to be the most compelling on the other side, as it were, in terms of writers or speakers or authors that argue in favor of these kinds of positions? It's so difficult because they never talk, they never debate.

In terms of their writings, their books that you must have studied quite a lot. is the better writer as in his book on how to be an anti-racist is a readable book and partly that's because he focuses so much on personal anecdotes which are very interesting it's when he starts getting into these sort of assertions that he makes about about anti-racism you know that there's a dichotomy of not racist and racist is false that sort of thing which leads to the point where other theorists like alana lent him will say that to be not racist is a form of racist violence I think she describes it as discursive racist violence because you have to be proactive in the discovery of races.

That sort of stuff is nonsense. It's a readable book because he focuses on him as a human being and I'm interested in human beings. Is there any point during this sort of research for your book reading the materials that you wish to oppose where you have a sort of a pause and think, you know what? Always. Yeah, always.

There might be a kernel of truth. Yeah, of course. It happens all the time. So, you know, and even in Robin DiAngelo's book, fragility. There's every now and then I come across, I think, oh, that's a good point. I usually mark it in the margin because it's, you know, it doesn't happen very often. Can you think of any examples? I don't need to put you on the spot. I'd have to have my copy with me. I just wonder what kind of, I mean, we spoke earlier a little bit about what legitimacy there might be to this movement.

Well, the reason is because they're coming from the same place as me. Really. Like the reason, the, the, the point is that both me and Ibrahim X Kennedy and Robin and Robin Daniel and all these people would like racism to be eliminated from society. And given that we're all coming from that position, we're bound to have points of agreement. White fragility is a terrible book. It is entertaining for the wrong reasons. It is, but there are, even within that book, glimpse, I mean, look, the central premise, have you read white virginity?

I actually haven't, no. The central premise, I can, I don't think I'm being unfair in categorizing it in this way, is that all white people are racist and those who deny the accusation of racism are displaying what she calls white fragility, which is proof of racism. So this is, this is the Kafka trap. This is, you know, if someone denies there a witch, that's evidence of witchcraft, right? You know, anyone in the realm of thought and philosophy, and you will know, that, that has, we can reject that outright. The book is also quite badly written. The other thing that she does continually is she talks about her own racism, she talks about quite openly. I'm not being liable,

as she calls herself, she says that she has racist thoughts. But the, the mistake she then makes is to say, and this is an example of how white people think about black people. And an example of that is where she describes, in the book, she describes going to a party, a street party. And she says she sees, there's a predominantly black party on one side of the road and a predominantly white party on the other side. And she seized with a panic, what if I've been invited to the black party? I would hate that.

And then she's like, oh, that's because I'm a white person and I'm racist. And you see, this is the way white people react when they're surrounded by black people. It's like, well, I wouldn't have. speak for yourself like and so she and I'm not going to do any kind of cod psychology but there is a sense in which she absolves herself of her racist thoughts

by saying everyone has it yeah or that's what definitely comes across but anyway in terms of your question about who do I admire like I said I can read I'm ex-Kendi Yasmin Alibi Brown I find very readable and I think she's a nice person

in conversations I've had with her although we fundamentally disagree on basically everything um who else is i think who i think is quite good i can name a lot of the ones that are very bad um that's not really what you want that was in fact the exact opposite of what i asked for so the problem with this literature and i spend more time reading it than i do stuff i agree with is that it blends into one people start speaking in slogans and and almost like as substitutes for thought they have the same mantras. shibolets recur again and again so that they almost become interchangeable, you know,

and, you know, there's some passages in Robert DeAngelo, I'm like, am I reading Laurie Penny here? You know, like, it's, it's that kind of, and so therefore, there's a blandness to that. I mean, I had someone tweet at me today, trans rights are human rights. I don't know why. I don't know who this person is. That's just a slogan. It's a mindless slogan. And when people are speaking like that, they're not thinking for themselves.

And, you know, I don't know what she was saying to me there, you know, because I think everyone should have equal rights irrespective of who they are, whether they're trans or not trans or whatever. And I've never said anything differently. But because they're not thinking in those terms, I mean, a lot of these people appear to be anyway, dividing humanity into good and evil, those on the right side of history and the wrong side of history to use the phrase that they like, and deploying these what Lyfton called thought terminating cliches, you know, just just trans women are women. trans rights are human rights, et cetera, and just putting them out there and throwing them towards the people that they recognize as being on the wrong side of this, the evil people. And that's why it disturbs me when I read the books and I continually get the sense of someone almost adhering to a program, of someone reading, reciting from a script. And that's why, whenever I do come across a good point, I mark it and I write it down. I've even quoted some of them in the books. I think I've quoted approvingly, I can't remember a few of them.

you know and and I do so because I want to be fair to them as well but I would love the opportunity to sit and talk because I think when you when you sit and talk to people you actually get beyond the slogans you know you actually get to the point where people have to defend their positions and have to explain to you what they mean and that's much more fruitful the problem is that at the heart of this movement is a belief is the postmodernist belief that our understanding of reality is constructed wholly through language and that therefore even to platform or to enable that discussion to even hear the other side of the argument is is detrimental to society because it

drags us all down so by that by that's why that there's that book is free speech racist i think it's Gavin titley wrote that he makes that case as well that effectively you know that by the way is not fair i don't think the title is a fair representation of what the book is but nevertheless the idea of uh enabling certain i mean it goes back to what you were talking about before about hate speech the theory behind a lot of this appears to be that ideas as expressed through language are like toxins and if they are unleashed on society they poison us all that seems to be the idea that again i would add as an unevidenced faith-based claim by the way that particular view in fact particularly

so because for all the activists claims that we need to cut out scenes from films we need to rewrite pg woodhouse we need to rewrite agatha christi etc because we need to republish Huckleberry Finn without the racial epithets because if those words are out there, it makes society more racist, is flatly contradicted by all the evidence, by all the six decades of research intermediate effects theory. So not only is it a faith-based assertion, it's one that is contradicted by all of the studies that have gone into this. You said to our mutual friend, Chris Williamson, on a podcast that you did with him, is this going to be a gotcha? I hope not. the problem isn't the activists the problem is capitulation to the activists yes do you remember

what you meant by that i think it goes back to what i was talking about to you earlier with salem in that i don't begrudge people who are behind a cause who sincerely believe in their cause and want to change society for the good as they see it i think that's quite a noble thing um the problem is that they are so wrongheaded in their approach and because i don't like bullies fundamentally i really don't and also because i believe in liberal values and i see those as being under threat and they are a direct threat because they are as i say anti-liberal quite quite quite fundamentally authoritarian that i feel i have to but but i don't think they're the problem as i say because i don't i think i think we can work around them i don't think i don't think

schools and governments, et cetera, should be implementing the ideas of the shrillist and most unreasonable factions of society, particularly when they are a very small minority of society. What do you make of just stop oil as a movement? Well, I'm struck by how posh they all are. I mean, that always makes me laugh. Well, I always find it funny when people who are incredibly privileged start berating other people about privilege. That to me is just quite funny.

And I just wish, like one time when one of these activists comes onto a TV show to talk, they didn't sound like a PG Woodhouse caricature. It'd be great. I mean, they have names like Sage Willoughby and Mike Ponsford. I mean, it is like someone's... I write characters like that. And I give them names like that, right? So, I mean, look, that's just ad hominin, I know. But the, however, or is it, there's an interesting correlation between social justice activism and eco-activism between that and very, and, and, and, uh, financial privilege. There's a really interesting correlation there. There's an interesting correlation in the the rapidity with which critical race theory and queer theory is coming into the poshist schools first. Similarly with the universities, the ones in the Russell group, the ones in the Ivy League, they seem to be more susceptible to the critical social justice movement. Perhaps it's because the critical social justice movement is quite antagonistic towards class, towards a working class people. And it's in a sense, this is why I say I don't believe it's a left-wing movement in any authentic sense, even though it describes itself.

as such. You describe yourself as left wing. It does describe yourself. You describe yourself as left wing. Yes. I mean, I would say if your definition of left wing is the traditional definition of left wing, then yes, I would be left wing. Have we, do we, are we in need of just abandoning? I'm sorry, I steered you away from the just of boy already, but I should I should just add to that by the way that I don't know enough about about them. Well, I wanted because we've got a, we got a movement here of people who I think a lot of people's gripe with justop oil is not so much that they're blocking the roads but that the police are sort of not doing anything about it and it reminded me of the way you're talking about your problem not so much being with people who you think who genuinely believe

in a cause that they think is right and I understand others who just sort of just as you say capitulate no absolutely I totally get what I totally get the comparison you're making there because yes you're right I think you need to apply the law right and there's a real danger of the police not dealing with these activists in the way that they should because now you have the Tory government pushing through all kinds of draconian anti-protest measures including the crime sentencing bill yeah what is it the policing crime and sentencing bill or the recent one they tried to smuggle through when the House of Lords pushed it back the one they did just a couple of days before the coronation like all of this sort of stuff it's like we have to have the right

to free protest which will be inconvenient to some people it's really important that we sustain that right And so when the police allow activists to commit acts of vandalism, criminal acts, and do nothing about it, then that gives a kind of justification for the government to push through draconian measures. So I wish they wouldn't do that because I think for the preservation of all our liberties, just apply the law. And that doesn't mean that the activist can't be loud and annoying because I think they should be. That's what activism in many ways is about. But I think when they break the law, apply the law. And then we wouldn't have this problem of a Tory government that keeps wanting to suppress our liberty. but you were going on to the point so left right is this is this sort of an idea we need to

abandon because i mean i've i've seen so much confusion over this and i i constantly hear the phrase sort of somebody says something like well look you know i'm i'm from the left but yeah well that's because because everything appears to have been reduced in these munichian terms to good versus evil as i was describing earlier i think that's the way that the world is now perceived, so that the slightest point of political disagreement is interpreted as evidence that you're on the wrong side, that you're kind of one of the evil ones. It's a very simplistic disnified understanding of the world. And it just so happens that this notion has been transposed onto the concepts of left and right, this hangover from the French Revolution, which I probably

think has been killed off by the culture war ultimately. And the reason I think that is because I don't think you can make a coherent argument that the critical social justice movement is left-wing for a number of reasons. Firstly, as I say, it appears to be hostile and mistrustful of the working class. It appears to think that they're all racists in waiting, just waiting to, you know, if they go and see a comedian who tells certain jokes or watch a film, that they'll all go out and commit racial pogroms or something, right? There's this active kind of, when they talk about intersectionality too often, they leave off class and nepotism and money. They appear to have no interest in redressing economic inequality, perhaps because, as I say, most of them have double-barreled

names and the system seems to work in their favor, who knows. But so there's all of that. On top of that, this is now embedded in all major multibillion dollar corporations. It's a movement that sides with the CEOs over the workers. You know, whenever there's this kind of conflict between, you know, people getting fired for unconscious bias or whatever it might be, it sides with the CEOs. It goes back to, I think, that year 2016, where you had Brexit and Trump at the same time and that I think from what I can see I'm not I don't know but it looks very much to me that that's when everyone went a bit crazy and this notion of a good versus evil world became fermented I mean that's when I started to really at least that's when I started to notice it because all

of a sudden all of my friends who were always all of my friends back then were left wing labor voters none of them had ever expressed any interest in the EU none of them knew what it how it worked how it operated they couldn't name someone on the commission they didn't know what the commission did, and all of a sudden they're painting their faces in EU flag. It became like a tribal symbol. And because I voted leave, I was considered some kind of pariah. I had an old comedian friend of mine saying, but I thought you were intelligent. It was suddenly you're either on the right side of history or the wrong side of history, similarly with Donald Trump. And all of this sort of happened. And within that, there's the added problem that I think it's incoherent

to be in favour of the EU, an international trading bloc that has capitalism at the heart of its constitution, and call yourself left wing. It doesn't make, it's actually incoherent, right? So everything has been divided and shattered, and it might just be that 2016 was the year that left and right became redundant, because now I hear the kind of values that I espouse as being far right. So when I talk about free speech, that's now bracketed within the right-wing far-right idea. If that's the case, if traditional liberal values are now suddenly far-right, there may be the concept of right and left has no further utility at this. point. Yeah, especially because, I mean, you might want to say that they've sort of, they've

swapped. We've got a situation where free speech, which is traditionally a left-wing issue, now is seen by many as a right-wing issue. But it should be non-partisan, shouldn't it? I mean, it's, sure. But, but I mean, I think it's fair to say that free speech has traditionally been a left-wing, a left-wing preoccupation. It's certainly not Stalin. I think, yeah, I guess it's, I mean, was Stalin left-wing? I think, those who call themselves communists now will tell you that they're left. Yeah, but also, I mean, I mean, you write in the book that the rise of the new Puritans and the success of their culture war has effectively sabotaged the class struggle of the

traditional left. You brought to my attention actually reading this book. I noticed, as you said it, that for all of this talk about justice, I mean, people do talk about poverty and class, but it always seems like a bit of an add-on. It doesn't seem to be at the center, whereas a class used to, really be the defining factor of right and left-wing politics. Right, exactly. The left-wing of politics was about the economically disadvantage.

And now, if anything, that might seem to have swapped. But in the way that, like, we describe traditionally left-wing ideas as being seen as right or, as you say, you know, free speech being seen, it's like far-right, which I don't think is always the case. But I know what you mean. It's not like the same has happened in reverse. It's not like traditionally right-wing notions are now seen as left-wing. No, it's, it's, something is just, something weird has happened where the words just seem to have fallen out of favor.

But then it comes back to this moral purity idea, doesn't it? Because, because it's only shifting in one direction. Colin Wright did that illustration that became well known when Elon Muskry tweeted it of a sort of political spectrum. And suddenly the whole thing has shifted and he's, he's on the far right. Right, right, right. He starts out on the left. Do you know the one I mean? Yeah, I'm sure I've seen it became a well-known meme. And that, it does appear that that has happened. I find it very distressing, and you're right, and particularly the attacks on the working class. I mean, even the notion of white privilege, for instance, I mean, there's evidence to suggest that that has negatively affected working class people because it's muddied policy thinking, because you start thinking, well, if there's a poor white kid who's on the poverty line, he doesn't matter so much because he's got this privilege, you know, this thing.

None of this. That's something you talk about. I know because people will listen to that and be like, what are you talking about? But you say that there's evidence for this, which... One thing I do in the book, it's in the book i think you can't accuse me missing out is i do extensively footnote this yes and it's well cited because i wanted to be sure that you couldn't come back and say you're

making all this up because that seems to be the standard approaches to deny so every reference can be chased stephen bernel who's a streamer called destiny on on i think he's mainly on youtube now he made the point i think it was him that it's not about left and right so much anymore in terms of defining people's political allegiances but about uh i think he's use the terms establishment, pro-establishment and anti-establishment. For him, that has sort of become

the new defining divide. I'm wondering, presumably, you don't think that good and evil are actually a good descriptor of the divide between people, but there is something that divides them. What do you think it is? If it's not left and right anymore,

is it something like establishment, anti-establishment? So good and evil, I think, are theological terms, really. And I don't think they're useful because they're useful in terms of struggles within individuals, within the heart of every human, as Solzhenitson says, that the line of good and evil cuts through the heart. It's useful when you're talking about Shakespeare,

where all of his principal characters are struggling with good and evil. There are interior struggles which are then, well, let's not get on to that. But although I think that's fascinating, I think establishment and anti-establishment comes with its own stack of problems insofar as. One of the reasons why people claim that I am on the right is because I am focusing on culture, war issues, issues which they say, why are you focusing on all of this when the Tories are in power, when there's a right-wing government, and that means that the establishment is seen as connected to right-wing politics, right? So then you have to talk about what you mean by

the establishment. You see, I think the woke or whatever you want to call them are the establishment because they have so much clout within our major institutions, because you can't vote them out. They're there in the Tory party and the Labor Party. In fact, the Tory party has presided over all of this over the last 12 years. Well, this is the interesting thing is that people will want to listen to what you're saying and say, okay, you're talking about the political clout of woke culture, but we've got a conservative government. Exactly. And that's the mistake they think. We saw Ben Bradshaw the other day. I tweeted about this because I'm sure he's a lovely human being. I'm not having a go at him, but he makes a very common error, which is that he described

it as the Tory's culture war. The Tories have presided over all of these cultural shifts and nothing to prevent them. They've enabled them. Now, I'm not saying labor would be any better. In fact, I know they would be a whole lot worse. But the point is, if you vote labor, if you vote Tory, you still get the identitarians. You can't get rid of them. They're too firmly embedded in the civil service in the machinery of government. They're too firmly embedded in all the NGOs and the quangos, right? So you, in the NHS, in the army, in the police, could go on. So you can't get, so that's where establishment power seems to me to lie. However, when you deploy terms like establishment and anti-establishment people are going to say or think that you're talking about

the government that's in power and the party that is not in power or something along those lines I don't think it's that's why I don't think it's helpful because what I found in writing the book as well like is part of the reason I wanted to write the book is to define all of the terms right so that people understand who I'm talking about and even a term like woke I mean I've got a full chapter on this yeah the term woke was used by the activist to describe themselves. Then they do their revisionist trick of saying, we never use that term to describe ourselves. It was a snarl word invented by the right. Now some of them are reclaiming the word again, et cetera. But what they do is that when you get a term that's, that's, that's, is a successful

shorthand to describe what it is there about. They problematize the shorthand and blame you for applying it, which means that you can't defeat an enemy if you can't name the enemy. It's, it's that idea. So when we talk about establishment and anti-establishment, if I were then start talking in those terms, I'd probably have to write another book explaining precisely what I mean by establishment and anti-establishment. So what might be more helpful, I feel, is the dichotomy of liberty and authority that I go back to earlier that Mill talk so eloquently about. Because that, I think, is something that is difficult to problematize. I think we all understand what we mean by that. Liberals come from the left and the right. There are libertarians

who are liberals. Liberal values are great because they are a kind of, they cross those lines of left and right. They transcend it. And so, and they are values that we all, we can, we can point to the last 60 years of progress in civil liberties and say it works, you know. And so that's why I think, forget about left and right. I'll call myself a liberal now because that's the only way I, because it's, because it's, because it's, because it's, because it's, because it's, because it's, talking in terms of the culture, or less about left and right, because it's incoherent, because there are, there are woke people on the left and the right, and anti-woke people on the left and the right. So what does it mean?

Let's talk about those who value liberty against those who value authoritarianism. And because there appears to be, throughout history and literature, a kind of enduring appeal, there's something about the human spirit that inclines us towards authoritarianism, something we have to guard against. Because of that, it's something that's never going to go away. But also because of that, the best remedy for it is the ongoing process of social liberalism, which, by its own admission, is not a utopian thing. It is, it recognizes the imperfectibility of humankind in society.

It's not saying, you know, I mean, the critical race there is explicitly say, because we haven't reached a society where racism has been eradicated, that points to the failure of liberalism or proves that liberalism does not work. But it's quite the opposite, because liberalism recognizes itself as this ongoing project. And it does make huge gains. And it does work. And I think that's where we should. That's, to me, I mean, if people would get any takeaway from the book, I think to me, that's the most useful way to understand what we've now called the culture war. That dichotomy. there liberty and authority rather than establishment and anti-establishment left and right even woke and anti-woke because that too has become too muddied with multiple meanings well the book is the new puritans i'll make sure that it is linked in the description and show notes for those who are listening andrew doyle thanks to coming on the podcast thanks for having me Thank you.