Satire in the Age of Murdoch and Trump | The Problem With Jon Stewart Podcast

I mean, that doesn't help. We know, you don't defeat populist arguments by telling people they are stupid. And we had this, particularly with respect to Brexit, which is Britain leaving the EU, which I thought at the time and I still think, and now the opinion polls have come to our point that it was a terrible, terrible mistake. . It was an outbreak of a kind of Trumpian Little England isolationism nationalism of the kind that, you know, is pretty much in effect around the world right now. And we thought we were above that and we found out we weren't.

It arrived in Britain in the same way as other places. And they were kind of people who thought, "You don't care about us, you don't care about the working class." You are extremely elitist and the mainstream media is allied with you. Now I have made several documentaries about fake news. And what interests me is that the first person to use the phrase "traditional media" was Joseph Goebbels. - That is not like that. No! -It is. And he, in one of his propaganda sheets, said “It is very important that you do not read the mainstream media because they will tell you lies.” You have to read the truth from the ramblings of his boss and his work associate.

And you have to see this. This is a very, very well-established technique of fascists: to tell them: don't read these things, read ours. It's a very complicated combination because of this movement towards populism, which is now taking hold and is now seen in France and Italy. – in France and Italy and all these other places. In some ways, it's hard not to connect it to the actions of the United States and, first of all, the destabilization of globalization and corporations moving from, you know, Britain and the United States and moving to places where they don't. I can pay people nothing.

And it's a kind of light colonialism where we try to establish supply lines without having to use the military. Yes. And the destabilization of the Middle East and the push for that refugee migration and all that. And do we have our desire to spread democracy? I don't know if you know this, but America is a shining city on a hill. Yes. Yes. No, no, I read it somewhere. Yes. I mean, you know, and we're still willing to believe it, but we're aware of their foreign policy failures, as well as our own. But I think the United States may want to punish itself, but Europe may also do the same.

In ten or twenty years of globalization and internationalism there has been a failure to not consider the most disadvantaged sectors of the population itself. So everything looks great. This is good. We all believe in ideas, in an ever-growing union. All our

problem

s must be solved collectively. No one is going to solve global warming through nationalism. It's not going to happen, you know, small part of the nation. - But it's in the search for cheap t-shirts and... - Yes. All of this, but also in the search for a kind of attempt to gain some kind of control over the small fragments of your life that you have left.

So in Britain the whole Brexit movement was “let's take back control”. Almost nostalgia. - Whatever that means. - Good. I mean, it was a desire to control. Make Britain Great Again. Yeah. I mean, again, we didn't get that far because we really can't deal with that kind of hype. We leave that to the United States. - The humble nature of your country is what saves it. - Yes. It is humble in its desire to be, you know, the most modest nation in the world. We are very proud of our humility. But yes, I accept that there is responsibility in this outbreak of populism.

But when it comes, simply accepting it and not resisting it seems like a double defect to me. - You have to resist it. - So for the elites, I would just say "for us, it's terrible." - That's how it is. Right: "We should have done it, we should have done it sooner." Well, you have to do it now. Are you seeing it now, since its results are not the flowering of what they remembered as the time of greatness? Is that what has taken away some of the steam? What took the edge off Brexit is that it was a terrible idea and... it was poorly executed.

No. And it's not an idea you can execute well. It is very simple. Good. And Rishi Sunak, hasn't he sorted it out now? I was under the impression that the new Prime Minister and, by the way, the idea of ​​just rotating them every three months I think is something that will catch on everywhere else. Yes. As long as during the three months they are in charge, they don't lose £30 billion. Now we have tied up the total free market lunatic. - That didn't go very well. - Yeah, I thought my favorite thing was when Liz Truss came in and said, "I think inflation is terrible, so we're going to go for austerity and we're going to cut taxes for the rich." I thought, well, that's like taking Ambien and cocaine and thinking, "It's going to be..." "It's all going to balance out, right?" "This will be fine." I mean, and it was a case of literally I mean, so it was a really good time for us.

You haven't had the states. - So I think we might be ahead of you here. - Yes. We had someone who literally did student politics and came to power, firing everyone. She dismissed the Treasury officials, who are usually the adults who say, "You can't really do this, it's going to be terrible." - The railings had disappeared. - Yes, everything is gone. And she did and this is and then she said, "I was defeated by the left-wing economic establishment." Now, I don't know if she's met any left-wing hedge funders or any deeply socialist stock traders. - We don't have any in this country. - Yes.

The financial markets, the people she loved, the people who loved the Conservative Party, said: "You're crazy." "We are going to bankrupt the country." And literally the Treasurer ended up saying: “We can't borrow money because no one will lend it to us.” I don't know if anyone has ever told you that governments have to borrow money for these people. - But isn't that what Russian oligarchs are for? - Yes. And when your country doesn't have money to lend, won't they come and say, "How about we do this?" "We'll just buy Portobello Road." Yes. "And that should get you enough to get you through the next three months." - No.

It's just that not even the oligarchs were very clever. - They didn't even want to invest in it. You have a

problem

with the government: if people think you are governed by crazy people, they won't lend you money. - Good. - And that becomes a problem anyway. Who knows what will happen to interest rates. Yeah, well, anyway, I mean, she was replaced. I mean, removed from the inside, you know. We have a newspaper here called The Daily Star, which had a wonderful time, they bought some lettuce and said, "Will the lettuce last longer than Liz Truss?" which was a very, very good joke and the lettuce was good. - She was outside. - In the end everything went well.

Yes. Lettuce is now Prime Minister. Anyway, we got an adult who immediately reversed everything he had done. And then the market stabilized and then we got back to where we were. But minus 30 billion pounds, which is quite a lot of money. Then they even said I think we were looking at the IMF, they said the economy in Britain will shrink or perform worse than Russia even this year. Yes. And then have you thought about invading someone? Have you thought about... Is there something you know, someone you've had your eye on? Cornwall? No, we lack options. We really are.

That's the end. I wonder if you've spent your entire life observing the difference between what these public figures say and what happens behind the scenes. Yes. And now we are starting to see from this Dominion lawsuit in the United States the backroom emails. And it's explicitly exactly what you thought it was. And the way you probably found it during News of the World. Yes. And also, I mean, a cache of WhatsApp group messages exchanged during the government has recently been made public. - Oh really? -There has been a leak. The health secretary and the then prime minister during lockdown and Private Eye: about what they were doing?

Yes. Literally, their WhatsApp group about why they were taking certain actions, what they were saying about each other. Yeah, I mean, there's literally a WhatsApp group where various attendees are telling each other this story about the Prime Minister that's posting, it's got some holes in it. Literally, they say he has some holes. And you're thinking that means he's lying, which is what we said all along. Good. But Private Eye, every week we have a fake WhatsApp group as Prime Minister. And I've been looking at it recently thinking we didn't go far enough. Good. You know, we literally don't dwell on jokes because they're worse than you think.

Boris Johnson, well, as you know, his chief scientific advisor is trying to explain to him the difference between percentage and probability. Oh dear sir. This is during a COVID outbreak and he doesn't understand it. I mean, you know, I read classics, you know. He wanted to talk to Homer. He didn't really want to talk about the possibilities... But the basic math is good. I think with your leader. It may be useful. It may be useful. At certain moments, but it's when you're faced with the idea that he's as explicitly corrupt as you thought he was: Do we... is there any, is there any responsibility? - I think what is so missing in American life, certainly... - Yes.

It is the feeling that when there is corruption it is so explicit that a certain responsibility can be assumed. Yes. Which is what has been so difficult to deal with. Yes. Well, I think it's even better here. I mean yes, we had a public inquiry. We have another one on the way. The Prime Minister was censured, he was dismissed. We have another standards committee coming up. There are still some mechanisms. I mean, the terrible corruption around PPE equipment contracts, which I don't know if it was equally big in the United States, but who got the contracts and how pointless all of this was.

We have, we are very good at overlooking stories of corruption and moving on. He's the, you know, the dog from 'Up.' It's a squirrel and someone moves on to the next distraction. But it seems to us that the United States always has many lawyers. You just think, what are they doing? We're... Surely everyone should sue each other in anger. We are a lawyer-based economy. And with the Dominion scandal. I mean, is that slander? - Correct. - I mean. Good. - That's why this comes to light. - That's how it is. - It's the only reason he goes out. - Yes.

And it's the only reason why. And they were so comfortable with the idea that none of their private communications would ever come out, so it's so explicit to the point of saying these people are crazy about their election, the stolen election narrative in the way they think it's stolen. . . They are crazy. But if we say that, we will lose our audience. It's a fascinating look at something like, you know, the ouroboros, the kind of thing we call the snake sucking its own dick as if America had become a snake sucking its own dick. And it's that they create this rage through AM radio, which is just populism and nativism instilled at a young age, a news network that is reinforcing that, that is selecting stories that only reinforce their fear of the other or, you know, to black or trans people. or anything that could be considered different.

They speed them up to that point and then it becomes waterproof. Yes. - And if you present something and they were aware of it. - Yes. And they felt that they could no longer The Frankenstein they created, they could no longer say "fire really isn't that bad." Yes. Yes. "You'll be fine." But isn't there a point at which, and this is what we despair about when it doesn't happen here, is when shame sets in? If you are a national broadcasting figure and you like your audience, you have deliberately told them things that are not true. And this is revealed when you get home and think “I should resign.

I should go." Shame is shamelessness and this is something and I'm curious to know what you think. That's why I think so many on the right are siding with Russia over Ukraine, because no one can look at those two countries and say , you know, one is, you know, a shining beacon of democracy fighting against autocracy. But I think Putin represents for them, in some ways, this Western civilization that they would also like to protect. It's not very democratic, it's anti-. gay, is mostly singular in terms of his ethnicity. And so they see that as a political alignment, that the right in the United States and maybe even the right in Britain do not see Putin as an enemy, but as an ideological ally.

Yes, but this is real echo chamber nonsense, isn't it? I mean, any basic look at Russian history would suggest that this isn't true. But what I'm saying is that shame won't do. effect because they have a larger ideal that they are pursuing and they will do anything by any means necessary to return to that type of more authoritarian situation. ideal of what the country was. But it was not like that. And how authoritarian it was in Russia because, you know, it has a pretty simple history: of authoritarianism. - Good. But he is not a natural ally for them.

As we know, after the fall of the wall, it is a country that has returned to a modeltsarist. Good. He has abandoned the ideology of communist days and has maintained repression. So Putin is essentially Stalin, who, you know, he admires and reveres. - That's how it is. - But without any belief. What if he believes that Stalin believed even1% and that it was simply a Georgian thug who took power. You know, you can read the history books, but essentially Putin doesn't believe in any of this and does it anyway. And, you know, the latest thing is that Putin has been criticized, investing large amounts of property in companies that represent the woman, the gymnast with whom he had children. - Well well.

You know, then there is nothing, there is nothing admirable. There is nothing ideological. There is no crusade. I mean, I figure that, you know, the religious right in America should maybe take a look at the Russian Orthodox Church and see if they're natural allies. Are they? - None of this makes sense. - None of this makes sense. But if you look at alliances, we have this group in the United States called CPAC, and they are these conservative conferences and it's very political. And Trump just talked about it and all that. They held his last conference in Hungary and Orban is presented as a “this is where democracy should be heading” figure.

And he is, and he is just one degree of difficulty away from a Putin-type figure. - But this is where... - Everyone is lining up in a way that says, "And we have no shame because we don't care how we do it, we're going to do it." -Yes, I think he is very generous. - And Farage and all those guys. - They're all lined up. - Yes. - But I think they are all cynical and without ideology or morals. - Yes. - Yes. - and morality is a fig leaf. I'm still a little kid who says, "The reason you say this phrase is that to defend democracy we must ally ourselves with many people who are tyrants." - Now, that seems to be - Right.

You know what we used to call nonsense. But have they flipped that here? Because what they are doing now in the United States is awakening true tyranny. Tyranny awakened. In fact, if you listen to Putin's speeches. - Yes, no, he talks about it. -He has begun to adopt that phraseology. - Yes. - What they are suggesting is: "No, no, no diversity is tyranny, democracy..." They have begun to say in the United States: "You know, we are not a democracy, we are actually a constitutional republic." And you want to say, I don't know if you read it, it proposes a representative democracy. - Yes, yes, no. - But that's for another day. - Do you have that? - I'm sure you've been through that.

Oh Jesus. Is it that kind of explicit repudiation of democracy, or using diversity as the true tyranny that has been adopted here? - No. Because we are not in a position where we say that we still do not believe in democracy. Good. And we also had a good audience: five years. Oh, come on. But we had a good bit of public shaming for our kind of middle class in our professional classes, who were taking huge amounts of Russian money, lawyers, bankers, whatever. And Britain was for about ten years. There is a very, very good book called "The Butler of the World." We were basically going around the world fawning and saying, "Whatever service we can offer you, sir, we do very good defamation." “We do a marvelous thing…” We are starting golf tournaments for the Saudis, I don't know what we are doing.

I mean, and this has been a terrible time. And the Chinese again, Britain has fully woken up to the fact that their refrigerator is now reporting. If you mention it, you already know: every Tik Tok dance we do provides other information. But, you know, Britain had literally said, "We must get the Chinese to build nuclear reactors." It is a good idea. That's a very good idea. Put them in charge of the nuclear material at the heart of the reactor. I mean, we made some incredibly naive decisions as a country because we were sucking up to anyone who had money.

And it was the Russians, it was the Chinese, they came to London in particular, they came in with a huge washing machine, they put their money in and they threw it away. - And the EU, which was, you know, the single market and all that, was what everyone was upset about. But no one was bothered by the money of the autocracies. No, and they said that the EU was a tyranny because it implied. That's the change that's been happening with everything. - Joint sovereignty. It involved small amounts of cooperation and anyone who looks at the world and doesn't spend their time fighting culture wars, you know, in his bedroom, on his laptop, would think that these are pretty big problems.

And most of them have to be resolved through compromise, negotiations and coordinated efforts. I mean, none of this is rocket science. They are not going to be solved by saying: "The big problem with climate change is that it has woken up." - But that's it, it's exactly... - Is it? Is it like that? Is that the argument? Unfortunately it is. At this point one might think that pronouns have taken over Ukraine and are bombing it. Yes. Any of these things, any cultural thing, I would say, is an attempt at distraction. - It's cynicism. - Yes, it's worse than that.

I mean, there are so many problems, right, that the idea of ​​the Conservative party saying, "We will win the election." It is like saying: “We will dedicate ourselves as politicians to things that are not politics. “We are going to unite on some other issue.” Do you think they ultimately really care or do they just see it as a path to power? - No, I don't think they care at all. - Good. - That's the feeling I have. - I mean, if you look at someone like Russia, you know, they have a kind of residual emperor in the tsarist era full of non-diverse people.

Correct. And let's say that in a place like Chechnya, they didn't do as well because they weren't diverse. So the idea that Russia is somehow like that. - Defender of Western civilization and values. - Yes. It is not and Putin was before Trump. and Putin literally appointed a man who was a kind of theatrical impresario to say to him, "How do I present what is not true as truth?" Good. -He is the first to arrive... yes. - It's explicit. And what I find very interesting is the explicit nature of that type of propaganda in an authoritarian regime.

Yes. It is revealed in the emails from the Dominion lawsuit because what you see is what Rupert Murdoch says in the emails to the director of Fox News: "We must do everything we can to help the Republican right control the Senate." Now this is explicit. - Yes. - And then you realize that this has nothing to do with a point of view. It has nothing to do with a perhaps slightly different worldview and everything to do with an organization that has been built explicitly as a propaganda arm for the political movement. Yes. And you think that if you want to be in politics, do it.

Doing it behind the scenes is simply corrupt. That's exactly right. You know, if you want to test yourself, stand up and say you're a party. The idea that behind the scenes you influence what's happening without ever being tested just by the power of money, you know. And what's embarrassing is that one family that can be embarrassed is that he is a man now, and I have no illusions that if he wasn't Murdoch, he would be someone else. - Because, you know, power will find a way to exercise itself. -He has been very astute about this on many continents, including ours, over the years.

So it's not entirely accidental. - It's Murdoch. I mean, he's an evil genius. - Good. In terms of appealing to the worst. -What about the dynasty of that family? It's his, his heirs will continue his work or there will be in some way when he passes away, and I think definitely within the next 50 years that will happen. You are so optimistic. 50 to 60. I'm giving you a window. I think he will marry another model around the year 2045. He has many wives left. He has many wives left. He's barely started. And Succession needs a couple more series. What do you think will ever be a reckoning where they say, "You know, I actually think we're destroying just that?" - We like. - Good. - I hope it doesn't come.

You know, part of me would love to be there saying, "I told you so," but another part of me, which is slightly human, rather than just being satirical. Pure

satire

. You love his comedy. That is what you are looking for. I mean, with the Murdoch empire, I mean, the funny thing is that the guys are obviously useless and he won't give it to the girl because he's Murdoch. She is a girl. -How are you going to handle it? - No, then that's not right. - So, with a little luck... - I think Rebekah Brooks will finally be granted it.

She will be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She will find the golden ticket and they will give us the elevator that flies everywhere. Yeah, and again, I mean, Rebekah Brooks, there's a picture of her on the wall. - Oh I love it. - It's a Halloween special. Oh, she says, "What costume was pulled from stores?" I mean, that's not funny. Isn't that funny at all? No. How dare you, sir? Do you finally have no decency? No, it was the first day of his trial. Obviously, there was a suggestion that this coverage was taken to court, and the lawyer said, this is contempt of court.

Private Eye is trying to influence this action. - You know, private detective, you are the real tyranny, sir. How dare you? - And I was horrified. Yes, but fortunately a very, very wise judge who got very angry and said, but no, - Now you have... - It's not contempt. The defamation laws here are much more difficult than in the United States. - And people sue you... constantly. - Yes. Well, we don't have what you have. You have to prove it: malice. - malice. Yes. Here it is taken as it is obviously read. Here they just have to prove that you were bad. - Mister. - Yes.

Yes. And again we finally woke up the oligarch. It was a good ten years. I mean, can you believe the head of a Vogner group, the group of mercenaries that recruit convicts and break in? He was suing journalists for suggesting that I don't know that mercenaries operating in the middle of a war aren't very nice. . Anyway, we've had a lot of problems with those kinds of definitions. But then again, I think I'm more optimistic and I feel like we're waking up a little bit here in the right sense of waking up. , as to what this looks like.

Good. - And starting to maybe turn a corner. - Yeah. I mean, I'm certainly trying to feel like there's not just one narrative. - We don't have to go the same way. - Good. I mean, there was a headline that our former Prime Minister Boris Johnson just published: there is an interim report about his behavior during COVID and the holidays and the interim report makes it absolutely clear that he knew what was going on and that he is guilty He appeared on television and said, "I have been vindicated." - Classic, classic movement. - Classic, classic movement.

But one of the papers just said he's gone full Trump. And I thought, that's right. And if he has gone full Trump, then that may be the end of him. Then I felt, I felt it was possible. We may not have to completely follow his model. You are welcome? I think his optimism is absolutely well taken. I love the work you do and have been doing for so long. And you are right. You can never stop trying to expose that the emperor is naked. Because when you do, we've simply given up. So simply. -Yes.-He leaned towards the king and said: "It's over." You know, I always remember the United States in the 1920s, I don't know if you know this, but we had some racial problems.

You didn't miss that. Yeah, it started, I don't want to get into that, but the group, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, got really powerful and big and what, what brought them down or what at least brought them down wasn't necessarily an adjustment of accounts. racist ideology or the past of a country. It was an exposition of the peculiarities of their initiations and how foolish they were. Yes. And the exposure of that took away all of their mystique and is ultimately what led to them. And it's what I like most about the work you do.

Well, I think this is true for everyone and for the best satirists, even in the worst countries, you know the Russians, what they try to do to make Putin not only scary but ridiculous. Yes. Because that is what, in general, tyrants and dictators cannot stand. I mean, we had... they came to this office that was there during the Balkan war, there were two very, very bright young Croatians. And they set up a satirical magazine during the war. And they came in and I said, "Look, I think you guys are very, very brave." And they looked at me and said, “I don't care if you think I'm brave.

Am I funny?" And I said, "Yes, you're funny." And I think that's how it's done. Well, then I can congratulate you both. I can, I can say both. Ian Hislop, thank you very much for joining us and sitting down. - No thanks. Real pleasure. - Oh thanks.