Resisting Wokeness: Andrew Doyle and Douglas Murray in conversation

True, thank you very much for joining us. I'm Andrew Doyle, this is Douglas Murray and together we are, no, that's not funny, we're here to talk about

resisting

wokeness

and yes, it's going to be more of a

conversation

rather than a

conversation

. In an interview, we are going to talk to each other about our approaches to this topic and then we will talk to you and you can come back with your comments, complaints, abuse, the usual, so with the reason why I thought. It would be good for us to chat is that we have approached this in a very different way, so I wrote a book, a satirical book about the character of Titania McGrath to try to address and criticize what we call "woke us and Douglass." I have also written a book which has just come out and is available in all good bookstores.

Do you want to tell us what a difficult initial question? Thanks Andrew, it's a pleasure to be with you and a great pleasure to be in the battle of ideas. Maybe I should also say in the opening that I apologize for the extraordinary lack of diversity in panel V V the leader of the sexual community is not represented at all, so it needs to be worked on, although people have said I'm a fake gay oh yeah oh oh That's one of my favorite accusations. Yes, I actually know someone to whom that accusation was made. It was made about a young, very intelligent and slightly conservative figure, who when he was at university in the National Union of Students was denounced as a fake gay and they said he was faking it. being gay to smuggle conservative politics and I said it over time I said sir, there's a real commitment there, I think if you're willing to do that, it should be fair, yes, absolutely, there's a lot of effort, it's exhausting, I mean particularly to the way I do it.

I heard you know you don't and anyway, but that provides a past. Yes, please ask, yes. I just wrote a book that came out last month that looks at a lot of the same themes that you've been looking at in my books called the madness of crowds gender race and identity and very kind and and essentially what I wanted to do was directly attack all the mines terrestrials of our time and that is because I believe that we cannot live in a society so stupid that we cannot talk about anything important for fear of being offended and I believe that there are two particular consequences of that: we start to do very bad things because we pretend that we know. more than we pretend to be much more sure than we have a right to be and the second thing is that we end up living in this society that pretends that we don't know things that everyone knew until yesterday and that if you combine these two things that cover the most of the social issues that are becoming difficult and ugly that's why I do them chapter by chapter gay women trans race I'm sure there are other painful issues that I haven't danced about, but those are the four that caught my attention that in The last few years it had become a weapon, it was more impossible to talk about it, we had become unable to think out loud, so yes, I decided to run to all of them and also explain why I think this has happened, why, because.

It should have been in our own lives in the last few years, I think, in the last decade, and then become weaponized in the last five years. Why do we think this position has accelerated? Why will you reflect on the fact that news, politics and much more continue? have these same problems underneath, so the only point of the political debate is to hope that you come across someone in the studio who you can expect to dishonestly claim is sexist, homophobic, racist or transphobic and that that should end up being the concern for the politics, yeah, I really hope that people on the woke side read your book, I mean, I really do because I think it might be, it's a great book, it's very methodical and thorough, and I think you know that.

You and I both want people to reflect on what they are doing. You know, I think so. I mean your main focus is to laugh at them. Yes. They really don't like how unbelievable they had no sense of humor. Yes. My approach is to laugh at them a little bit, but also take it very seriously because these things, this is a movement that brings people out all the time. Yeah, you know, I was doing an event the other night with Lionel Shriver and she made the very important point, she said we're here doing this because a lot of other people aren't, yeah, and I don't underestimate the difficulty for a lot of people stepping into this terrain or the revenge and vilification that comes their way. they accidentally or otherwise find themselves on top of one of these landmine problems, so I try to explain where I think it's coming from why it's been particularly a thing of the last decade to try to take it apart to prove that it doesn't work.

By your own estimate of yourself, even if we all tried to align ourselves with the claims that are being made, it still couldn't work because it's totally contradictory, so that's the first thing, but the second thing is to say. For the love of God, let's not spend any lives doing this, yes, this is not a fair representation of a society, it is not a fair interpretation of a society and it is not a fair estimate of ourselves as human beings because we are not fair. a black or a white, straight, gay, a man or a woman, said that it is an unfair estimation of our own experience as human beings and that it is also enormously degrading.

I mean, we saw this the other day when Barack Obama pointed out that we had to do it. ask for nuance, weren't you saying that you know that humanity is messy, people make mistakes and this expectation of the awakened crowd that there is always ideological purity and that you have to review the things that people have said and then, in response to that, has he been? has been labeled anti-woke a boomer a boomer that's what he is he's old he's just made the fundamental mistake of getting older yes and none of his critics will ever find themselves in this unfortunate position I know that's true in the New York Times he said this was just a Boomer opinion just goes to show that there is absolutely nothing you know you can be, you can be the first black president, yeah, it matters, it doesn't matter, you got older, yeah, but also deal with it, he too It's a let's not forget that it's half white and that's it. the problematic part, that's where it comes in sometimes, this is the way to take it down too.

I was wondering if that would happen when people start calling it half white and you know, I mean, but it's really a downer, I wonder. where does this come from and I think in a way I blame the academy a little bit, you know you were also why a little bit well so if you go back to the Foucault daeun kind of stuff that was very popular back then in the 80s and '90s and there was a book by someone called Kate Millett called sexual politics that actually just trawled through all the classics and said this is sexist, this is homophobic, etc., which literature problematizes and which now seems to be a dominant tactic. is what you described when people come to interviews and all they try to do is figure out where you are being sexist and you work and this is and when you do that to literature, an art that is a form of, I think it is a form of cultural vandalism if all you can do is look to see if something is sending the right popular message then what good is it?

Again, I mean it's your incredibly proactive form of laziness, isn't it? Because if all these texts from the past are not worth reading because they made a mistake or the author is the wrong guy, then you don't need to deal with it, yeah, you don't really need to read. I realized that this is the kind of permanent revelation I had recently when a young student told me that he thought Immanuel Kant had used the n-word and I told him I don't think he did at least it doesn't seem likely to me oh now it's possible I have to investigate it is possible in you, but if I had, what would that mean that we should, therefore, my God, what I realized, what I realized, was, of course, that it meant that this young man had no need to read the manual?

She's really helpful because he's difficult, you know? I saw that, so you know this dart Donna Schwartz and not a novelist based in the United States, she tweeted the other day, she published an article saying why we need to destroy the Western Canon. I say buy her book, but buy her book. It was labeled in her book. and she was saying you know we have to do it because everything is white and male and therefore racist and patriarchal and it seems to me this kind of idea of ​​crabs in a bucket it's people who aren't very good you know she's not a good writer but now she can say, but don't read Hemingway, she doesn't have to compete with that, you know big, you know, then she can bring everyone to her level, you know, it's that too.

This is all so reductive and offensive again. In its own terms, I mean, one of the things I mentioned at one point, the crowd issues, is this whole studio thing. I mean largely, since we all know anything with studies in the title, we shouldn't be taught or Elise shouldn't be taught. It was not funded by taxpayers and the studies, however, made sense at one time. One could argue that there are some that might make sense in the future, but the way black studies began, for example, is quite plausible and attempts to highlight writers and other figures. that perhaps they haven't received enough attention and that they needed to be brought out of a certain obscurity, that through circumstances in the past they found themselves in the same situation with the case studies to a certain extent, well, now it's quite difficult to pretend that they don't there is.

There are many well-known gay writers in history, but these things had a, you could argue they had a utility. Where does it go wrong? It goes wrong very clearly when you get into whiteness studies because then whiteness studies is the only one that has the intention of problematizing not in taking people out of history to try to highlight them, study them and reflect on them, but simply slamming everyone who has a particular skin pigmentation, well here's the problem, among others, of this is that no, no A reasonable human person wants any minority writer to be trapped in that silo that wants Jamie if you said James Baldwin, he's one of my favorite black writers, no, James Baldwin, one of my favorite writers, that works, that works.

It used to totally bother me to be called a gay comic I thought what I mean is pretty annoying, but it is, but you know, you don't do the work, you don't even tie it to your identity in that way or whatever, that richness. okay, but here you put your finger on one of the key things with what if there are people who are told that they should yes, who are told exactly this is dogma this is this is indoctrination yes, I suspect that, as me, very little to none of your sense of identity or worth depends on the fact that you happen to be gay, none of that right now, there are other people who are told that that's the only sign that means a fact about you and there's an agenda after, so once this is what I described as a queer gay divide, you know that gays just happen to be attracted to sex, while queries that you're attracted to sex is just the beginning to attack patriarchy and capitalism and tear down your life, why didn't you get that memo?

But the same argument is made in each of these others: being a woman is not only about being a woman, it is about following a series of political demands, yes, this is the politicization of everything, but there are people for whom this is Whether we like it or not, it is a fundamental question, it is about your identity. and that's why this ends up being fought, among other reasons, in such a bitter way because if you're attacking something or seem to be attacking something that's at the root of someone's sense of self then, of course, they react like a manic, yes, but I mean I'm not suggesting that those things are not important to your life?

You know, Gail is a woman or whatever, but to tie it into your whole worldview that you see everything through that prism, to me I feel the opposite of what we do. I used to think you know like we used to talk about we were born this way you know this isn't you know now it's now it's not now it's about choice it's about you you choose your identity you know this is something you should be able to do. I don't think there's any harm in the sense that I see that being gay is being left-handed, being five foot six or whatever, it's some kind of vital statistic, it's something that's neither here nor there.

As you know, one of the reasons I argue that this is a particularly insane era is because the contradictions that we don't focus on, we don't analyze enough, but they're just there and we feel them and one of the contradictions This raises precisely this question of whether you can choose things or not and we tell ourselves two things simultaneously so that those who have read the massive multitudes know, but I will do it very quickly, but all the claims for rights in the last decades have tried to integrate and defend themselves by arguing that they are hardware problems, that is, there is something fundamentalwhich cannot be done with respect to the nature of the program and then there are other problems that are software problems and, in general, in our societies in a A country like Great Britain is a bit like the United States to a certain extent, if you want get sympathy or support, you argue that your hardware, for example, when a religious cleric says you have to choose a lifestyle, gays say they are not born this way and trans people are born this way right now. and the problem is that it is understandable, as I show, it is debatable, but it is impossible to do it simultaneously with the demand that being a woman is a choice, but one of the most distinctive things about the hardware of our species, the sex chromosomes, is simply a performative issue because that means the only people who are really born.

The hardware in the right body is trans people, yes, but that's why I think it's funny, ultimately it's funny if you have a movement that tells you that gender is a complete social consciousness and at the same time tells you that trans people are born in the wrong body, so you can't, you can't be a social constructionist and a biological essentialist at the same time and trying to do both simultaneously makes me laugh. I think that's it, I mean, it's a movement. that is so full of contradictions but in reality it rebels in those contradictions. He does not see contradictions as a problem.

I mean, I think this is a little glimpse of the Marxist substructure of some of this, which is that the contradictions must be accepted in a way, of course, there are contradictions that we will have to accept, overcome them well, the Enlightenment was just a product of the white men, yes, and I give examples of people who say not only that, but, for example, The idea of ​​truth is a white construct and that's a tariff, it's just terrifying and that's why in the race chapter in this book is like it's a warning, but this is a warning, just say if you want to play this. hardware/software game you want to wait until you start running with it and you're in a whole world of nightmares it's very serious it's very serious and I guess I don't want people to think I'm being flippant by making fun of it but actually, in a way , I think Tamaki is essential because it's not that you'll never convert the fanatics, you'll never really convert the extreme identitarians, but what you can do is sow the seeds of doubt in those who doubt or you know.

We are all ingesting these media day by day, most of us think: can this be right? Can this be real? and if we make those things fun, then hopefully more people will have the courage to say: you know it's like that and also, of course, if you can, you laugh, the best of humor, what you do and what you do , dad, Tania is the laughter of recognition, it is the people, people can be very easily intimidated into new orthodoxies and dogmas that they know must exist. There must be something like that, yes, but if you make them laugh, then that's the safest way to start.

There's only one thing I would add to that, which is the deadly seriousness of this in people's lives. I mean, I think I'm like you in a position for once. I'm happy to play the privileged game if, like me, you're a writer, you're accountable to your readers to some extent and to your editors to some extent. Most people are in a much more difficult position in their lives. Anyone who works in the public sector Anyone who works in government Anyone who works increasingly in large waves of the private sector knows that these things are coming for them and that they are asked to believe things that they find incredibly difficult to believe, but to Unless there are people who laugh at this by pointing out the absurdity and so on, there will be endless agreement and agreeing with things that are not true and the reason I care about this is because I know and we know from the fact that I am not saying this. as a totalitarian system yet, but we know from the stories of totalitarianism that total Arianism requires people to believe things and agree with things that they know are not true, why demoralize them, demoralize them and I have no doubt that if as a society People are bullied into accepting things they do not and cannot believe and told to say things that are patently absurd.

It's what happens after that that matters to me, so what do we call this because I think it's really important to draw a distinction between politically correct? movement of the '80s and '90s, which was kind of a haphazard attempt to reach some sort of socially agreed upon discourse about the way we were going to talk to each other in public, in the workplace, in education, and everything else and , generally speaking, that had very good results, what you just described is that it veers towards a kind of authoritarianism, there is a different thing and I think a lot of the reasons why people attack those of us who criticize whoa culture is that they say, well, you're one of these PCs who've gone crazy, brigade people, you know, you're making a big deal about nothing and they combine the two movements.

In fact, I think they are quite different and I don't know what to call this now. I don't call him. political correctness personally, no, I say woke movement or woke culture, but now of course the strategy is to claim that that's just a right-wing insult against social justice, how about we see the whole thing as a form of overcorrection ? I'm trying to be as benign as possible, yes, reading here, but let's say that because this is all very complex, we know that there has been racism in the past, yes, of course, there has been homophobia on the bus, yes, of course, women are equal to men. past and no, of course they haven't, there is a trend now, it seems to me that if you want to correct an injustice, including a particularly historical injustice, you may want to go beyond the same for a time that you may want to go, for example, better or You may not be satisfied with exactly the same, but let's say, let's make up for lost time, let's make them squeal a little, it's a very understandable human emotion, the retributive emotion.

I think that's almost certainly one of the things that's happening right now. It was always there It was always there Can we settle for equality? Do we have to get better? Well, I like your metaphor in the book when you talk about the train in the station, about the trains coming to a station and slowing down and then right at the last second, the driver dumps all the coal and speeds off. beyond his destiny because he feels that way. I think you and I are a similar age, so you know you can remember when we were little, right?

We were reaching a kind of color blindness that we didn't notice when there was a movie with a black actor or a movie with a woman as a prominent protagonist. No, it was not a problem in itself, it was not something notable. You know, and I feel like the impulse was in that, that's not to say that there wasn't racism and sexism for the rest of us and there's a criticism, you know, the criticism from the office is that we wouldn't have noticed it as much, okay? ? but my friends didn't notice it either, you know, and that's what I mean, it wasn't a big deal about Sigourney Weaver being a major female action hero, it wasn't commented on.

What worries me is how great her performance was. I mean, I didn't see the proto-identity political movement just rejoicing in Margaret Thatcher's femininity, well she was a lady, at least she's a woman, no, but she was masculine, but that's what they would say. It was good that she was okay, that she was representing masculinity. He is so recent about UM. There was an attack. Yes, there was an attack in the United States. It was an attack from him. I think he was a Latino person attacking a black person, but they said. that this was someone representing whiteness to make rape okay, so it's not like that, it's all performative, you know, there are cases of Hispanic white supremacy.

Oh, shouldn't there be quite a few? Quite a few of those claims have been made in In the United States recently it's quite surprising, so this is not the same as political correctness. These are people who are actually divorcing the reality of their skin color, gender, sexuality, from their skin color, gender, and sexuality, as you know. I mean, III, I'm obsessed with these cases, you know it because they happen in each of the topics I write about, it happened with what you would have done a while ago but you mentioned that the facts are an example but it happened in what happened you can see it very clearly. in recent years with Germaine Greer's famous career path, where some people throw her out of the Church of Feminism and just say that Germaine Greer is not an interesting feminist, but then it happens to other people, Peter Thiel, that the tech billionaire of Silicon Valley defends Trump.

In 2016, as the main gay magazine in the United States reported, he is not gay, they say he can sleep with men, but in no way is he gay again. I mean, that's laying the groundwork, but they say, but you can't be if you're gay, you have one set of political views, now this starts to get very dark for Kanye West when he first comes out in support of Candis Owens, then he has tan ZEE coats and the Atlantic puts together a piece that says Kanye is not black. And this is a very worrying topic. There is an example that I give in Thomas Soul's book.

Those of you who are fans of academic humiliation, like I am a connoisseur of academic humiliation, will enjoy the fact that the example I set. From the London School of Economics book review site a few years ago, they reviewed a book by Thomas quite late, about three years after its publication, but the reviewer tried to be as personal as possible, a little-known Welsh academic in a different discipline. reviewed this book and criticized it, said Thomas Soul was using, you know what the dog whistles, they love dogs, I love the dog, I always forget that if you hear the whistle, you're the dog, but anyway, But they do it, he does it. he does all the things with dog whistles, he's making dog whistles, you can read between the lines, we'd see Thomas' souls actually say it, but he has the big typo throughout at the end of the article to his enormous credit throughout this whole thing. time. economics has as a deletion an earlier version of this argument about this article that included the easy words for a rich white man to say, maybe I hadn't even seen the book jacket, yeah, but this is fascinating because again we get to This part absolutely crucial is an attempt and that's why I'm just saying like you, whoa, yeah, don't do this, listen, this is an attempt to claim that everything in our lives is dictated by characteristics that we have no say over.

It's scary where that's going because what this means is black is synonymous with radical left woman synonymous with radical left gay synonym with radical left trans we'll get back to you, but for the moment synonymous with radical left - oh, no one sees a problem with this, a backlash on the way to this, among many other things, it's about the erasure of the individual and kind of the idea that we should be supposed to believe certain things based on something we can't control. I find it really scary and I also find it quite patronizing. I find it quite condescending, you know, when you hear people complain about certain types of jokes because they might offend gay people, for example, well, maybe I can handle myself. and I don't need someone to police that and also, as we know, just because something is offensive doesn't mean it's not possible, in fact very often things that are offensive are offensive because you're censoring a whiff of truth. in that and you'd rather skip it and that's fine if it's just about politeness, but the problem is, of course, that they are elements in this that you somehow override politeness, that's the reason I did it, I was trans last time and I try and that's why I hope that people who generally disagree with what I'm saying will at least take into account what I'm arguing in that particular chapter, which is that one of my editors says which is a very good and useful rule of thumb says that all ears in human history have done things that we remember and are crazy about.

Because they did that? Sometimes they are social issues. You already know. Why did the Victorians put children in chimneys? Exactly. Why don't they know it could be bad? the boy is sometimes much bigger world historical things why did he fall in the war in 1914? things that we look back on and, oh, we just assume, unless we've become incredibly virtuous and intelligent and full of foresight over the last few years, we assume that we're also doing some things and we try to figure out what they are now. Now I present that one of these things is at least somewhere within the trans argument and I explained what I think is a plausible claim for reasonable human rights within trans people, but I also say that I don't think it's obvious what that entails. experiment with children and assume that successive generations after us will do it.

Don't look back and think, wow, wow. WannaI mean, just look at that bit of footage the other day from the LGBT community to the Democrats' town hall, when a mother is standing next to a child and the child introduces himself to Elizabeth Warren and says: a nine-year-old trans girl and Lizabeth Warren and everyone else in the room just wow! I think we can, we can continue to be educated where and when we can, but this is where the unwillingness to really interrogate complex, difficult, complicated terrain takes you. you to the situation of everyone applauding as an idea we didn't have a few years ago and needs to be properly interrogated.

I wonder if I think where the Park Company site might be. I think instead of looking back and seeing where I think we know this is wrong overall as a society. I think we know that at this point. I think we have a strange situation where the minority of social justice activists, all those with that mentality, seem to have as much power and ability to dominate as the media. narrative that we are with, we are in this kind of losing world where we think This is the norm, I think the vast majority of people and this is what I really wanted to ask you about because I think we are, I think we are winning, I think there is something about which to be very optimistic, oh, sure, I guess not.

I don't think we're living in this oppressive matrix world that they think we are and I believe that, therefore, it's doomed to die. I agree, but there may be a lot of pain to overcome first. I come back to this if you're working in government or a large number of companies, a growing number of companies and elsewhere, you're already stuck in the matrix of not being able to make competency-based employment decisions, but at least significantly dominated by characteristic discussions and once that is integrated the truth is that we can laugh at it all we want, but if they decide to continue with the dogma, we are screwed, so that is my question is how do we change that when they were already so rooted in our world? powerful institutions when we have quangos that decide what adverts are good for us to watch and you know all that kind of stuff, it's so common, yeah, and we don't have people in Parliament who are willing to do it.

I make an argument against

wokeness

. The problem is that it's a cost-benefit analysis, right? I mean, you're right, there are very good reasons to be positive. By the way, it's just that the title of your um, your book woke up a few years ago. woke was used as a term of approval or less, if I may correct myself, a few years ago when it first started sneaking around there were people of quality but who would like to be considered woke, oh yes the term was positive, yes , and then at some point, not oblivious to your own fury of a creation that was aimed directly at the general public like an avenging angel, people did not want to be considered awake, it took on other connotations, it was a pejorative and I think which in itself is positive because it shows that these things can turn against people and that maybe you don't want to be seen like that.

My favorite was P. Hirsch in The Guardian, he wrote an article saying that the word "woke" is just a word that right-wingers use to describe: denigrate social justice and I responded to that tweet with a series of screenshots from The Guardian . We're Awake was in the headline Yes, how to find Mr Wake so you know that maybe The Guardian is Right, I think they believe, maybe they believe something and then pretend it's a figment of their imagination, yes, that's it, and always They're talking about gaslighting, but they seem to do it more than anyone else. The amount of terms that are now being thrown around gaslighting, yes.

Still, there are reasons to be positive about it. I just come back to this. If you're not in the fortunate position of being an independent-minded person and, generally speaking, a freelancer, there's a lot going on. more pain to keep going through and I, but I come back to this, why did you mention politicians, why is it so difficult for a politician to endure this and I think there are reasons that are reasonable, I mean, none of them. I want to be caught in the wrong quote, since many of them, for example, referred to homosexual issues in the past.

They think again this could be trans. They may simply have gotten too caught up in the overcorrection about gays. I think that's what's happening, but nobody wants to get caught on the wrong side of what could turn out to be the wrong side of history and so, but here's another thing that's just a cost-benefit analysis and I have had to spend a lot. I've spent much of my life with politicians of all different stripes, raving about them, fighting with them, and occasionally agreeing with them, but one thing I've noticed and always underestimated is the extent to which cost analysis in politics -benefit continues much longer than I ever recognized.

I could never understand where there are certain things that politicians wouldn't say and it always comes down to the fact that there is very little to gain from it and a disproportionate amount to potentially lose if they want out they just weigh it up and every time there is a crowd stampede over one of these issues they weigh I could say something that everyone knew until yesterday I could say it today and my career could end tomorrow if I did, the opposite position is we all know we used to believe that yesterday, we all know that most people don't believe that today, but today they are bullying us into saying it and therefore to survive until tomorrow, I will join that, I have that idea.

Give an example. I think most of us know that if we want to live in a free society, the price we will pay is that some people will say bad things, say offensive things, but what would the politician have to gain to stand in Parliament? Say we have to do it. repeal our hate speech laws because of course the inevitable attack on that will be that you are therefore siding with the races towards horrible, it wouldn't even be like that, you must be racist, but you must be trying commit racism again, but in principle given that we live in a country where 3,000 people are arrested every year for things they have said online that are considered offensive, then this is something we should address shortly.

Knows? I don't think this country cares about freedom. talks a lot I don't think it's like that I hope you're wrong I'm just saying I just don't think it's like that I think we kind of pretend that we do it in a small group of weirdos of us, but I'm in them in general, yeah, yeah, you two, but outside of that weirdo brigade, recent history suggests that people are very happy to be questioned and would rather live a quiet life than uphold this kind of principle. I come back to this. I am always comparing this country negatively to France in these aspects, but you know when the two things started and everyone knew it, but by giving these some serious accusations are made and criminal charges were needed to correct them, but when, as you could see from the beginning that the whole thing was starting to overreach and you had cases like the Ansari case in America where comedians basically had a very unfortunate date, but that doesn't mean you should never be allowed to leave the house again when these things happen.

In Britain people basically kept their heads down, we had nothing like the 100 prominent French women from all walks of life, including several friends of mine. Martha's, there were people like Catherine Deneuve, very prominent actresses, philosophers and thinkers, in fact, a hundred French intellectuals and cultural people. the figures sign a letter saying no, the sexes must get along, we cannot criminalize flirting, this has gone too far, a hundred women could not be found in this country to do that, sorry, you can't, not all They have that level of prominence. In this country they keep their heads down about these things.

It has been my experience throughout my life. It has been this country's experience in every major free speech war in recent years. Generally speaking, we continue to pretend that the people who point out the problems, if they would just shut up and go away, we could all have our comfortable, quiet lives again. Can I give an example of something that might counteract that bit please, just for that and this I think points to something that I think there has been a sort of cultural shift if we go back to the Blair mistake if we go back to the new job in 2005 They tried to introduce the religious discrimination law and what that would have meant is that if some comedian made a joke about a religion or made fun of someone's religion then they would now have been liable to be prosecuted, but that didn't happen, but just barely. because Tony Blair himself didn't turn on haha, although that's always a good thing and we had the power of Rowan Atkinson on our side so this was my point.

We basically had a concerted effort among prominent comedians led by Rowan Atkinson to say no, this is too much, this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, this is not something we should leave behind, fast forward to our time and there's the murderer case of the countdown. Nazi Pope case where someone makes an obvious joke on a video and is prosecuted and goes to court two year trial found guilty comedians totally silent no what I'm saying is that I think something has changed in that intervening period of time? which is where the targeting on this is so clever, the problem is that most people don't have time during the day to determine whether the Glasgow YouTube poster is a Nazi or not.

My presumption in most cases is not to assume that everyone is a Nazi. until they prove otherwise, but we live in a culture that adopts the opposite point of view, that assumes Nazism in the name of everyone, until they demonstrate absolute ideological cleansing and we don't really know how it is done, but how did they do it? wet account, how come the count doesn't thank a guy for getting out of this? He seems to be trying to bring back Nazism through his girlfriend's dog, which is strange, especially since the Gestapo arrested a man during the war for teaching his dog to teach his dog to do the Nazi salute, so even the Gestapo let it go, but the Scottish judiciary took it to the end, you know, I mean, it's so funny because the Cyber ​​Crime Intelligence Unit investigated the invention. he for two years read all his emails, all this text, they found no evidence of far-right leanings, but because the Guardians had a hunch, you know, we just assumed what, but this is a cyst, this is a built-in serious problem.

This is because the feet again, the few weirdos among us, most of whom will be here over the course of this weekend, will be defending the guy on the Glasgow poster with the Nazi pug theme in the director and because then you'll have to do some research, but Assuming most people don't have the time or energy to do it, they just think I don't know if I want to do it because otherwise, if I turn out to be a Nazi again, I don't think I'd do it. do it, but if he does it and you stay with the Nazis, some pug pigs greet the guy and then what was the point of him doing it?

He makes it seem so frivolous, doesn't he? This is all about such silly things, but actually the principle is like this. Seriously, it's not about a dog and the solute, it's about what he represents, you know, and the problem that I have and have to do it. I've talked about this a little bit recently and that's how we might look at it, because it happens a lot. It happened a lot and in my life, every time it happened to someone I know, I always go out and fight it as hard as I can. It happened recently to my friend Roger Scruton.

It happened a few years ago to my friend Ayaan Hirsi Ali and I always fight to defend them because of my friends and I know it's a lie, but here's the problem. Most people are not in that situation. Most people don't have anyone who can go out and fight on their side or they don't have anyone they can fight with. platforms to get out on their side or with credibility, so to speak, and they don't, and the person the accusations are made against doesn't have any meaningful work to do, so you just don't know. I mean, recently there was a case with the Asda supermarket worker who was fired for liking this Billy Connolly video which also demonstrates the recall.

I mean, Billy Connolly makes a joke about Islam fifteen years ago, ten years ago or something like that, and it's so unusual that it occasionally re-circulates on the Internet because people you know are so glad there's a guy who laughs at suicide bombers because no one else has the guts to do that, which is pretty amazing to begin with, but this stuff going around the internet sucks. Sometimes it goes around and a guide like him likes it, bang, he has fired well again, the Asda guide is not in a circle of writers and thinkers and does not have and then you say: Do I have time to delve into Asda?

Supermarket workers responded that Facebook said that's why I think we're prettyprivileged in the sense that we say what we want and can, but I always think about this. If he was still working as a teacher, he wouldn't make jokes. No I wouldn't tweet the way I do, well this is one way you could start, start with dresses, everyone everywhere stands up for your peers, yeah when you know they're being lied to always do that, yes, and you know if there are more people. around each of these cases that could happen and maybe we'll get somewhere. I think it's a very good time.

If we showed it to the audience, let's do it. Oh, load our hands. Okay, who do you like more? Oh, you, do it. because okay, we'll go here. Could you please stand up when you ask the question so we can receive your very suggestive? Oh, let's talk later anyway, Douglas, so I loved both of your books. I have 20 Q. I have to be honest, I'm 20 pages away from completing the crowd madness. I think I understand the gist. I'm a lady, oh my gosh, yes, no, so your first book was obviously immigrant, very much immigration. Your most recent book is about Problematic Identity Politics and Identities, so it seems like you're hitting the kind of difficult conversations with the most recent books, so I'm wondering what you're going to continue with that theme and if That's right, it will be like climate change in your ways. the next difficult thing we need to address omg let me very quickly thank you for the question ask with a right question you miss the delicate point of the author I guys have written five books, only these last two have sold particularly well and that it's me.

I'm sorry that my book about Northern Ireland didn't fall off the shelves, fell off the shelves, didn't fly, but my last two, you're right, well, if you're interested in taboos and dogmas, and if you are for any reason .programmed so you don't mind stepping on them this is a great time to be alive it's a great time to be alive and I think dogmas and orthodoxies tell you a lot about the time you're living in you it's just like archeology Like Living archaeology, you just see everything that's really happening in our society by looking at the things you shouldn't talk about.

I think the other thing is, of course, what I really want to do is no. that I think we just need to talk about them like, for example, any nonsense, that's the given. I think we should be able to interrogate and deal with difficult topics in a reasonable way and I tried to make sure there is, yes, there is. There are a few left, I'm thinking of them, just one lady, but back there, yeah, we got to the far right, not the far right, you know, that's most of the audience, I'm probably a woman, I can't be in the extreme. true, and actually that's what I was going to do, in my last session I went to the toxic culture in politics session and Cummins, who was on the platform, said that in the past the left would be on a march singing a song . we hate conservatives, we hate conservatives, we hate conservatives, conservatives, we hate you and then you would join them because you hate conservatives too, therefore you must be leftist and I really agree with your point about the fact that You know, if you're black, you're leftist, you're a radical leftist, and those black people who support the right, you know, they go against the cause, but I just wanted to ask a question.

I'm a teacher so there are a lot of things I can't say, including plastic in the ocean, it's not the big problem kids face, but I had a child. I am a primary school teacher, our teacher is six years old and I had a son last year who was LGBT and we had a difficult conversation in the summer term where we told him that we are not going to let you change your name on the registry because we have children of four years in school we need, we would have to explain everything to everyone at school, it's not a good time for you to do this, wait until you go to high school then you can explore it a little more, but I had many conversations with his mother who told him not to tell his father because they hadn't talked about it yet, but the biggest problem that I think professionals and parents face in terms of these types of problems is the issue of suicide, the worry about suicide. and concern about mental health and I was wondering if you had discovered anything about how this influences the work culture because, as a parent, if your child says if you don't let me do this, I'm going to commit suicide, where do you go with that? and as a teacher, where are you going with that? because the last thing you want to do is find out that the child has committed suicide and you feel like it's your fault and I think that's what mental health and suicide is all about.

It's where these things become quite powerful. I think Douglas will know that he has done more research. For this book I talked to a lot of people who had transitioned or had started transitioning and stopped, or and also the parents of people who had and now I meet quite regularly at events and other things people who come up to me and who They were in this position. The first thing is that I think that in the future we will discover that there is some crossover between mental illness and what we put in the role of trans and I think we are going to discover that autism in particular would not say the same thing as a mental illness, but there is an intersection of autism with trans statements in particular and I no longer do that in my own In research, I have come across too many cases of this: a child is diagnosed with autism and at some point says trans, if Elisany is separating very carefully, as for this specific thing, look through the idea in Britain and America right now. affirm that once a child says they are trans you have to affirm because everything that is not a telephone I have a quote from an American doctor who says it is very clear she says what are the what is the price of not affirming the identity of your son is not having a child agree with me or your son will commit suicide, what a thing it would be to just greet my own point of view on this.

I think the right thing is that the child at that age and the school should not decide to do a free fall. I think there is a lot more trauma in my own experience, there is a lot more trauma in that all the other children are told that at any time they can change their sex by trying to maintain that line at least during the school years and I think that we have a big problem with society if we are held hostage by people who threaten their own lives. This is really complicated. I don't need to tell you, but in most situations, if someone says: do what I want or I can kill myself.

We try to be understanding, but we are not infinitely understanding, so we are not completely blackmailed into doing anything they want us to be blackmailed. This is a hellish area. I don't envy all the teachers and other people who have to deal with that. On the front line, I think really for me the problem is that we haven't had conversations and I think, particularly when it comes to children, I saw a documentary about trans children that was on the BBC and there. It was an American couple and the man was saying, "I love looking at my son now because if I can see my little girl running around, I don't have to look at my little boy running around and what's really going on there is he's grooming a gay boy." , isn't it?

I mean, that's true and I do. I'm worried about this idea that there's a kind of rehabilitated homophobia at the bottom of this that that really tomboy could just be. What's wrong with a boy who behaves in a traditionally masculine way or a sorry boy who behaves in a traditionally feminine way or a girl who behaves in an additionally masculine way if we really tell him that we shouldn't try to fix it because in This is actually about someone saying they don't fit into a traditional gender, this is very conservative. I think that's a really conservative view of gender at the heart of trans ideology and one that we need to have, although we just haven't had discussions about that.

Trans goes against homosexuals. and it goes against women and that's why it's causing so much pain because it's the same thing with a non-binary thing that I don't believe in the non-binary thing says I'm a man but I feel a little bit You know, woman today, what? what's that? Yes, what is that? Well, we used to call it sexism. I mean, there was a video with Sam Smith saying, "I've realized there's a woman inside me" and what he's doing is pouting and dancing like he's entitled. So that's what he thinks it's like to be a woman, yeah, okay, why don't we have two?

Let's go to the backup greeting right behind with a blue blouse and white shirts. Very nice, yes, well this works, yes, I started working. about or looking at the trans issue in 2015 because I was invited to do something about gender neutral parenting here and I discovered all these things and what I discovered and what I think it is about, since I discovered that at that time all the standards of professional ethics, all kinds of laws that you already know that are now being applied to the situation, the states had already been written or had already been accepted and I think ultimately it is about replacing social norms with bureaucratically imposed norms . social norms and I think what happened in the states is that after the successful campaign for gay marriage, you have this vast infrastructure of activists who wanted to do something more and so literally, in 2015, you know, the ethical recommendations of the American Psychologists Association said that if you can't affirm your patient's gender identity you shouldn't treat that patient is just incredible, let's take one or two more.

I saw you gentlemen there with green laces just on the question of identity politics Jen in general. I mean there's a real ethical question about whether I mean some will say that mocking these trends runs the risk of ignoring reelin judges and it may be, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't mock it, but on a specific issue of identity politics. There is something that I have noticed in the rhetoric of this, which is that certain attacks, whether they are said to be transphobic, homophobic or whatever, are attacks on Who I am and it is this word that is doing the work that is being done. contraband in public discourse. for quite some time now you're attacking who I am now in a way that you can say well it's just another way of saying you're attacking something it's true in my case you're attacking what I am but it's actually the undercurrent hangover from this. is that you are opposing some kind of existential threat to me and you are actually annihilating me, so you find some people, I mean a minority of activists, but some you are denying my right to exist as if you were really being accused. of planning a murder, a conspiracy to murder, is not literally understood, but that is the idea and I think that, regardless of what we may say, regardless of the reservations we may have about some of the things that you know about some of the complexities of this issue, there is something in the rhetoric that I believe.

I find this quite worrying, should we answer one more question? So, yeah, in the end, yeah, a fantastic discussion, by the way, and Frank, food lover, I was reading Frank freely today and he says that there were 70 percent of college students who report that their stress or anxiety , so next for my colleague, my friend, about educating education, so I'm wondering if this relates to this idea that this whole notion of being awake relates to anxiety and stress in young adults, well, Why don't we just choose? at any point and just sum up what we think I am, I mean, I think you're absolutely right when you hear that language of erasing people's existence and I think it comes down to this combination of words. and violence, which is something that we really desperately need to resist because they are not the same thing because what it really is is a strategy to say we shouldn't have this discussion because what you're doing is inflicting violence against me and I think it's really dangerous. , but in terms of young people and their own anxieties, I think young people have always been anxious and I've always had these problems and I think one of the reasons I'm so optimistic is because I've been speaking at universities and I'm going to talk to students and I think most students are sick of this, you know, and you've heard this all the time about the snowflake generation and the ed generations, and they know it too. weak and they are not some of them there is a small minority there is a problem with resilience in that generation I don't know, but we, that's our generation's fault, but there are many students that you talk to they actually want to go further of this, they are fed up with this, they are simply afraid and end up capitulating to the loudest and most aggressive voices among them, so I think don't write off the young generation, that's what I would do.

Say don't do it at all. I think they agree more than you realize. I'm second, I only add one thing, which is that in crowd issues I do this typeof interlude chapters and one of them that I want. I could get people to focus more on the issue of forgiveness and I sympathize with the so-called snowflake generation because I think they are in a situation without parallel in the history of humanity, so the connectivity that we all know about The virtues have terrible disadvantages and if I could summarize it in one way it is as Hannah Arendt says in the 50s and in a conference she gave, action in the world was always terrifying because we never knew how to undo an action, which is everything, it is impossible to undo every word. that we never knew as a species there is more than one mechanism with which we had to deal with that which was forgiveness now the generation that grows now lives in a world where acting in the world has never been more dangerous you can tweet something publish something a photograph a comment be friends with something bang you're done how do you get back?

No one cares no one spends time focusing on it nothing in the culture none of the adults everyone is very interested in eliminating their enemies everyone too Happy to get some short term benefit nothing in society focuses on how to get out of this, so when a young person watches this and is terrified to act, I'm not surprised it's an adult's job. We were in that situation is to try to find a way to not only strengthen young people and help them go through this life that was never exactly easy, there was not a generation that went through life and said well, that was a piece of cake but not only for helping them get ahead, but helping them find ways out, these are the kinds of things that adults should focus on and if we didn't focus on navel-gazing at identity politics and figuring out exactly where we stand in each hierarchy of grievances and where Today they are in the chain of the privileged, perhaps that is the type of thing that we would have already solved or at least we would be thinking about, that is why I say that there is an opportunity cost, there is a huge opportunity cost, wasting the generation most privileged in history in matters of identity. when we should be doing so much more listen, thank you, thank you guys for coming, sorry for the gendered language I write, and I really urge you to read.Douglass' book, the madness of crowds, is great to read.

Thank you very much Douglas, we will be signing copies of his book on the mezzanine next to the bookstore. There are a limited number of copies available for purchase, so go there at one and a half Douglasville and sign them for yourself, but you really should read it. It's a fantastic job. Thank you so much.