Transcript for #296 – Douglas Murray: Racism, Marxism, and the War on the West

I actually don't get stuck on definitions, precisely because as you know, once you get stuck on definitions as a possibility, you'll never get off of them. Yes. I'd say a few things. Firstly, obviously the Western tradition is a specific tradition, a specific tradition of ideas, culture. Well known to be perhaps easily defined by the combination of Athens and Jerusalem, the world of the Bible and the world of ancient Greece and indeed Rome. Effectively creates Western, creates European civilization, which itself spawns the rest of the Western civilizations. America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. But these are the main countries that we saw referred to as the West. So there's a specific tradition and all the things that come from it. My short-hand cheat on this answer is to say, you know when you're not in it. So, if you've ever been to Beijing, Shanghai, you know you're not in the West, somewhere else, you know you're not in the West. When you're in Tokyo, somewhere extraordinary, but you know you're not in the West. Obviously there are, let's say borderline questions like it's Russia in the West.

And I think the answer to that is not really, although massively influenced by Europe, but and times wanting to reach towards it at times, wanting to stay away. But a part of the West, possibly yes. But anyway, it's a very specific tradition. It's one of a number of major traditions in the world. And because it's hard to define, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I mean, the rule of law, probably only democracies and much more. I mean, these are, of course, things that were ended up being developed in America and then give them back to much of the rest of the West. I'd say there are other perhaps more controversial attributes, so I would give to the West. One is a ravener's interest in the rest of the world, which is not shared, of course, by every other culture. The late philosopher George Steiner, who said he could never get out of his head, the haunting fact of the boat, so he seems to go out from Europe. They did the explorers, the scholars, the linguists, the people who wanted to discover other civilizations and indeed even resurrect ancient civilizations and lost civilizations. These were scholars that were always coming from the west to discover this elsewhere by contrast. There were never boats coming from Egypt to help the Anglo-Saxons discover the origins of their language and so on. So I think there is a sort of ravenous interest in the rest of the world, which can be said to be a western. At review to load off course also has a bunch of immediately preface it, some downsides and many criticisms that can be made are some of the consequences of that interest. Because of course there's a lot of dialies lacking in self-interest.

Although that itself of course is a universal thing. No civilization I think that we know of doesn't try to gain ground from its neighbors where it can. The wisdom ability to go further faster. Um, certainly gave an advantage in that regard.

Well, the Ottomans wanted it as an awful lot and did very terribly well. For many centuries, and one shouldn't forget that. As did others. I'd also say by the way that, and again, it's a very broad one, but it's worth throwing out that I think self-criticism is an important attribute of the Western mind. One that, as you know, is not common everywhere. not all societies allow even their most faciferous critics to become rich.

And it can be what you need. You know, and in the Western system, I'd argue that one of the advantages of the System representative governance is that where there are problems in the system you can attempt to sort them out by peaceful means. We listen to arguments, most famously in America and the late 20th century. The civil rights movement achieved its aims by force of moral argument and persuaded the rest of the country that it had been wrong. That's not common in every society by any means. So I think there are certain attributes of the Western mind that you could say are, um, an entirely unique, but they are not as commonplace as well.

Well, I mean, everyone in the world is slavery, so I don't regard it as being a Western, the unique Western, a sin. It's rather hard to think of a civilization in history that didn't have slavery of some kind. One of the oddities of the Western ignorance of our day is that people seem to imagine that our societies in the West were the only ones who have engaged in any vices. Alas, this isn't true, it's a sort of resouian mistake, or at least one that's blossomed since the resou that everybody else in the world was born into sort of a dynamic innocence, and only we in the West had this sort of evil that's to do bad things as to other people. Slavery was engaged in by everyone in the ancient world, of course, and through most of the modern world as well, of course, 40 million slaves in the world today, so it's clearly not something that the species as a whole has a problem with. That's more slaves, of course, than they were in the 19th century. And I'd say on top of that, that the interesting thing about the Western mind, as regards to slavery, is that we were the civilization that did away with it. And by the way, the founding fathers of America, who today are lambasted routinely for being acquiescent in the slave trade, engaging in it, owning slaves. There's not people almost don't even bother it now to recognize the facts that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, all wanted to see this trade done away with. couldn't hold the country together at the origins if they'd have made such an effort and believed and hoped that it would be something that would be dealt with after their time.

The opening line for the Declaration of Independence set up the conditions under which slavery will be impossible. Oh, man, a creative equal. Once you've put that, that's a time bomb under the whole concept of slavery.

And sure enough, it detonated in the next century.

There are two possibilities. One is it's what people think they can do and God is not watching. Another is it's what they can do if they think the God allows it.

Well, I mean, it's pretty straightforward in a way. There are people who get to work for free. It's the economic in nature in some sense. Yes. But in order to do it, I mean, almost always, there are some examples in the ancient world where this wasn't the case. But almost always it had to be a subjugated people, or people that regard it as different. One of the things actually I've tried to sort of inject into the discussion through this book among other things is a recognition that there were very major questions still going on in the 18th and early 90th century, the one resolved, which were one of the reasons why slavery was not as morally repugnant to people then as it was to us now as it is to us now. And that's the question of polygenesis and monogenesis. At the time Thomas Jefferson, the founding fathers were thinking and working. They didn't know because nobody knew whether the human races were related or not. There were arguments that the monogenesis argument that we were all indeed from the same racial start. Polygenesis argument was that we weren't. Black Africans, Ethiopians, they're often referred to at the time, because they provided some of the first slaves were different from white Europeans, simply not related in any way. And that makes it easier, of course, that makes it easier to enslave people if you think they're not your brother. Am I my brother's keeper? No, he's not your brother. It's a very, it was a very troubling argument in the 18th, 19th century, also because there was a biblical question. It threw up a theological question, which was, I mean, people literally debating this at the time, was there also a black Adamadiv? Was there as an Indian Adamadiv, the Native American Adamadiv? I mean, this was a serious theological debate because they didn't know the answer. People say that Darwin sold this. It wasn't just Darwin, of course. But by the late 19th century, the argument that we were not all related as human beings had suffered so many blows that you had to really be very, very ignorant, deliberately, willfully ignorant to ignore it.

It was already a moral question, but it clarified. Darwin clarifies it, definitely. And then you're in this, as I say, in this situation, if you're not subjugating some other people, you're subjugating your own kin. And that becomes moral and sustainable.

That's a very complex question because it's a moral question at this point. And a moral question long after the fact. I say at one point in the war on the West that the argument for instance on a reparations now that goes on and and it's not a not a fringe argument anymore some people say you're pulling up this fringe argument it really isn't I mean every contender for the Democratic nomination for the the presidency in 2020 was willing to talk about the possibility of reparations some very eager that this country of america goes through that entirely self-destructive exercise I say that there's a lot of problems with this, but if I can refine it out of one thing, I'd say this. It's no longer about a wealth transfer from one group of people who did something wrong to another group of people who were wrong. It would have been that could have been that 200 years ago. Today, it's not even the descendants of people who did something wrong giving money to people who were the descendants of people who were wronged. It's the wealth transfer from people who look like people who did a wrong thing in the past to another group of people who resemble people who were wrong. That's impossible to do. I'm completely clear about this. There is no way in which you could organize such a wealth transfer. are moral or practical reasons. America is filled with people who have same skin color as us, for instance, who have no connection to the slave trade and should not be made to pay money to people who have some connection. And then the countries also filled with ethnic minorities who have come after slavery. who would not be do for any reimbursement as it were. The problem with this is that there are, I'm perfectly open to the possibility that there are residual inequities that exist in American life and that the consequences of slavery could be one of the factors that resulted from this. The thing is, I don't think it's a single issue answer. I think it's a multi-dimensional issue, something like Blackhunter achievement in America. It's obviously a multi-dimensional issue. Much of the left and others wish to say, it's not. It's only about racism. And they can't answer why Asians who have arrived more recently don't, for instance, get held down by white supremacy. But actually, I say white supremacy in quotes, obviously. But don't get held back by it, but actually flourish to the extent that Asian Americans have a high household earnings and higher household. I mean equity, then, home equity and so on than white Americans. Uh, so I don't think that on the merits, the evidence is there that, you know, racism is the explanation for black ongoing black under achievement in some sector and so the black community in America. Um, it's obviously a part of it. Could you say that even those things like fatherlessness and similar family breakdown issues are a long term consequence of it. possibly, but it's being awfully generous to people's ability to make bad decisions. For instance, how many generations off the Holocaust would you allow people to claim that everything that went wrong in the Jewish community was as a result of the Holocaust? I mean, is there some kind of term limit on this? I would have thought so. And I think most people probably think that's over.

It's an unquantifiable argument. And I'd like to apply some shortcuts to some of this, to the following. Our, for instance, all, let's take the, the one that's most often, often cited. If a white person is walking down a street in America, and they see a group of young black men coming towards them, it's late at night, and they cross the road. Is it because of slavery? Is it because of institutional racism? No. It's because they've made a calculus based not entirely unfounded beliefs that given crime rates, it's possible that this group of people might be a group of people they don't want to meet later tonight. That's an ugly fact, but crime statistics in American cities are from American cities bare out. It's not an entirely unreasonable one. It's not reasonable every time, obviously, obviously. But is it attributable to slavery? That's a stretch. If you're in a city like Chicago where the homicide rates shot up in the last two years, albeit again, as always has to be remembered, mainly black on black. a gun violence and knife violence. Nevertheless, if you're in a city like Chicago and you make that calculus, I've just suggested that the cliched one, the street late at night, there are other factors other than a memory of slavery, the kick-in. And I've afraid it's something which people don't want to particularly acknowledge in America for obvious reasons because it's the ugliest damn debate in the world. But I was actually just writing in the what in my column in Europe posts a day about a very interesting case that was similar, which is the question of obesity in the US. As you know, America's the most overweight country in the world. America has I think 40% of the population is obese. In medical ways and the nearest next country is the long way down that's New Zealand to 30% of the population. So America is a long way. Why during the coronavirus era when we know that obesity is the one clearest factors likely to lead to your hospitalization if you also get the virus? Why did almost no public health information America focus on obesity? 80% of the people who ended up hospitalized in America from with coronavirus were obese. We locked the schools when there was no evidence that the coronavirus was deadly for children. We all wore cloth masks when there was a very little evidence. This was much use in stopping the spread of the virus. We had massive evidence about obesity being a problem. And we never addressed it. Why? Is it just because we wide about fat people? No, it's actually because about fat shaming. No, it's also because it's a great extent. It's a racial issue in America as well. And actually, I quoted this new publication from the University of Chicago as an happens, which makes that claim explicit. It says, the reasons why people are have views at a negative about obesity is because of racism and slavery. This is what everything is drawn back to in America. Anything you want to stop, you say it's because of racism, it's because of slavery. How about it's actually because you mind the hospitals getting clogged up, you mind people dying, you mind ethnic minorities disproportionately dying, and you'd like to say something about it. Once again, as is in everything in America, it's cut off by some poorly educated academic saying it's about slavery. So we're really not, I mean, this requires a kind of form of brain surgery to perform it on a society. Probably one that's not possible without killing the patient. And it's being done by people who wearing like mittens.

And I really enjoy the absolute zoo of an app of the father I can see.

The best of all fuck that.

I know what this is for ironing is. Um, I really resent that form of argumentation. Sure. I really resent it. I have the right to talk about whatever the hell I want. And no one's going to stop me or try to intimidate me or tell me that I can't simply because of my skin color. And I think that if I said to somebody else the other way around, it would be pretty reprehensible. If I said shut up, you have no right to criticize anything that Douglas Murray says because you've not got my skin color. Okay, it's not an exact comparison, but seriously, is that a reasonable form of argument, you haven't been through everything I've been through my life there for you can't comment. No, in that case nobody can talk about anything. We might as well pack up, go home and isolate ourselves.

We're physically in trouble.

Well, first of all, again, when even deeper water is now, but in terms of wanting to listen to another person who has experienced something, yes, yes, but not endlessly, not endlessly. I mean, there are some people who've written about, I mean, there are people who've written about the Holocaust who didn't experience the Holocaust and have written about it better than people who did. It's not this idea that the lived experience to use this terrible modern jargon. as if there's another type. This idea that the lived experience has to triumph over everything else is not always correct. It can be correct in some circumstances. If you are sitting in a room with a Holocaust survivor and somebody who'd never heard about the Holocaust and wanted to kind of shoot out their views on it, yeah, one of those people should be heard more than the other obvious, obviously. If there's somebody who's experienced racism firsthand and there's somebody else who has never experienced it, then obviously you'd want to hear from the person who has experienced it firsthand, if that is the discussion underway. I don't think that it's the case that that is endlessly the case. I'm also highly reluctant to concede that there are groups of people who by dint of their skin color or anything else. get to dominate the microphone. Now, of course, we're literally both speaking to microphones at the moment, so there's an irony to this, but let's skate over the irony. What I mean is, people saying, you don't have the right to speak. I have the right to take the microphone from you and speak because I know best. Fine, if you know best, we'll argue it out. And someone will win, long or short term. But the, is that the almost aggressive tone in which this is now leveled, I don't like the sound of. Nobody's experience is completely understandable by another human being, nobody's. And what many people are asking us to do at the moment, us collectively is to fall for that thing, I think it was Camille Foster who said it first. But I've done the doctor in recent years, is to say, you must spend an inordinate amount of your life trying to understand me personally. My lived experience, everything about me, you should dedicate your life to trying to do that. Simultaneously, you'll never understand me. This is not an attractive invitation. This is an unwinnable game. So if somebody has a legitimate and important point to make, they should make it and they'll win through whatever their character is or whatever their race. And by the way, there are plenty of white people who experience racism as well. There are plenty of white people who do and have done and increasingly so, which is one of the things I write about from the war on the West. I mean, I would argue that today in America, the only group who are actually allowed to be consistently vitally racist against the white people. If you say disgusting things about black people in America in 2022, you will be over. You will be over. If you decide to talk about people's white tears, their white female tears, their white guilt, their white privilege, their white rage, and all these other pseudo-perfologizing terms, you'll be just fine. You can be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You can let you at Yale University absolutely fine and the white people have to suck that up as if that's fine because there was racism in another direction in the past. So white people can have racism as well. Does that mean that I think that I have a right or other white people have a right to dominate the discourse by talking about their feelings of having been victim victims of racism, no not particularly because what does that get us? It gets us into a endless cycle of competitive victimhood. Am I saying that white people who've experienced violence have experienced historically anything like the violence that was perpetrated against black people in America historically, obviously not. But, you know, what kind of competition do we want to enter here? And this is very, very important to rain now in America because there's one other thing I have to throw in that which is, how do you work out the sincerity of the claim? How do you work out the sincerity of the claim being made? At one point in this latest book, I referred to very useful bit in the niche and genealogy of morals, where, as you know, Nietzsche always has to be treated carefully, you know, and people say, I love Nietzsche, you know, which bits. What exactly do you love about him? But he had a lot, and a lot can be learned from the answer. But there are moments in January, tomorrow that were very useful for this book. One of them was the moment when Nietzsche uses a phrase that I've now stolen myself or appropriated, you might say, where he refers to people who tear at wounds long since clothes and then cry about the pain they feel. Now, how do you know? How do you know whether the pain is real? How do you know? I'm not saying you can never know. But it's hard. So when somebody says, I feel that my life hasn't gone that well and it's because of something that was done to my ancestors 200 years ago. Maybe they do feel that. Maybe they're right to feel that. Maybe they're making it up. Maybe they're using it as their reason for failure in life. Maybe they're using it as a reason to not even try. Maybe they're using it as a reason to smoke weed all day. I don't know. And who doesn't know? How can you work that out? And that's why I come back to this thing of who are we to constantly judge in this society? Other people who we don't know and attribute motives to them based on racial or other characteristics.

And I didn't cancel Nietzsche. Well, I can't cancel Nietzsche.

I think when you meet people who do man and suit man a bit too much.

It can be any of the above. First of all, private everybody has resentment. I use it as a result of marriage is sort very similar to resentment, let's take with resentment. So we don't sound too pretentious. Let me give you a quick example of somebody who has a form of resentment, Vladimir Putin. Did you seem to have known these documentary Putin's palace? Yes. You remember the stuff about Putin as a young KGB officer in Germany? From the stuff about Putin, his first wife's resentment of one of his KGB colleagues who had an apartment that was a few meters bigger than the Putin's apartment. It's very interesting. And by the way, I'm not saying that You know, Vladimir Putin became the man he has become and invaded Ukraine because he didn't have an apartment, he liked him, but in Berlin or Munich or whatever, what is this distinct possibility? My point is, my point is that resentment is a factor in all human lives and we all feel it in our lives and it's something has to be struggled against. The resentment is in political terms can be a deadly. I mean, it's incredibly deep thing to draw upon. I mean, you mentioned Hitler. Obviously, one of the things that Hitler played on was resentment. Obviously, almost every revolution he does. I mean, the French Revolution he did as well. And we're not without cause. The good reason to feel that Versailles was not listening to Paris in the 1780s. And feel resentment for Marianne Trenett and her palace within the palace, ignoring the bread shortages in Paris. So resentment is a very, it's a very understandable thing and sometimes it's justifiable and it's also deadly to the person as it is to the society. It's an incredibly deep sentiment. Somebody else has got something that you should have. And the problem about it is that it has a potential to be endless. You can do it your whole life. And one of the ways I've sort of found myself explained this to people is to say, It's also important to recognise that resentment is something that can cross absolutely every boundary. So, for instance, it crosses all racial boundaries, obviously, and it goes that same. More interesting is it crosses all class boundaries, and so it's your economic boundaries. And if I sort of simplify this thought, I would say, I guess that you and I, and everybody watching, knows or has known somebody in their lives, who has almost nothing in worldly terms, and is a generous person, a kindly person, a giving person, a happy person, even a cheerful person. And I think we probably have also, or many of us will have met people who seem to have everything, and who have filled with resentment. filled with resentment. Somebody else has held them back from something, their sister once did something, she got this, and I should have got that. And on and on and on. It's a human trait. And one of the things that suggests to me is that we therefore have a choice in our lives about this, this is something which we can do something about not limitlessly. But for instance, I mean, there are very good reasons that some people in their lives might feel resentment. Let's say you're involved in a car crash and a friend fell asleep at the wheel and that's why you are spending your life in a wheelchair. It's a personal example of this American politics at the moment. You would be justified in feeling resentment and at some point you have to make a decision which is am I going to be that person or a different person?

It rocks you. It rocks you because the best you can do is to e-count your days on fulfilled.

gratitude is certainly the answer to resentment. I quote in the war on the West. When I read it at the first time a few years ago, it's absolutely flawed by the brothers, kramas of not everything in it by the way, but I had some very big structural criticisms of the novel.

Oh, okay. Well, we could get into what I see as being the structural flaws in the brothers' kind of.

Yeah, no, I mean, this is coming out of my bathroom saying, and I didn't think it was much good.

Yeah, I thought the ending sank. Yeah, middle wasn't very good. No. When I read that, that Noel, I was flawed by a couple of things. One is, one is, of course, at the moment, where we realize the devil appears. The moment the event says to his brother, you know, he visits me and he realized that he's talking about the devil, whole novel goes into this, totally different space. He realized it's even more than you've already realized the novel's about. And then when the conversation occurs between the van and the devil, who I remember Dray then he says describes him as dressed as a French, the French, the dressed in the French style. of the early part of the 90th century, very strange, the devil would be dressed like that. And if you remember that he's sort of cross-legged and rather a bane figure. But the devil mentions impassing to Iran that he says I don't know why gratitude is not an interesting thing that's been given to me.

And you think, and of course, only a genius of Dostoevsky's statue could, I mean, a lesser genius would have made a whole novel out of that insight. Only Dostoevsky can just throw it away because there's such an abundance of riches that he still has to get through.

a little knife fight. But the reason I mentioned is because of course, when I saw this, this is such a brilliant insight by Dosteus because why would, why would gratitude not be a sentiment that the devil was capable of? The answer is of course, that if the devil was capable of gratitude, he wouldn't be the devil. He'd be somebody else. He has to be incapable of gratitude.

Yes, I think it was one of the just endless things that he saw in us. And the way I put it is that, I also think it in terms of the era of deconstruction, which is one of the things I'd like us to call the era that's now ending. The era of deconstruction was the era that started, let's say, from the 60s onwards, and was originally an academic game that then spilled out into the wider culture, which was, let's take everything apart, let's put it all apart. There are lots of problems with it, one is it's quite boring. You don't get an awful lot from it. You also have the problem of what children find when they try to do this with bicycles, which is they can take it apart quite easily, but they can't put it back together. And the era of taking things apart as a game is one we've lived through and it's been highly destructive, but you can do it for quite a long time. I'm going to look at this society and I'm going to take it apart by showing systemic problems. I'm going to... At the end of that, what have you got? What have you done? What have you achieved? We need to interrogate this. Okay, interrogate. By all these ask questions, but interrogate as a deliberate hostility to this. I'm going to interrogate this thing and take it apart and again, at the end of it, what have you got? whether you're interrogating a text, or a piece of music, or an idea, or a society, fine. Question, endlessly question, yes, interrogate assumes it's all a criminal in a cell, and it's guilty, and therefore it must be taken apart. And that's what we've been doing for decades in the West. And that's resentment. That's one by product of resentment. You can't build the thing, but you know how to take it apart.

Depends what poison is and it depends if you know not to have another drink. Well, I'd be the case. You find out that some alcoholics through that one was too many and ten is not enough.

Well, you'd have to win yourself off. It can try to start creating again. You'd have to start trying to put things together again. Something, I think, might be the throws of starting as it happens.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool. Yes, people in the STEM subjects thought it's not coming for us. It can't come to us at Bang.

Engineering is more safe than others.

It is a tradition. Is a history is a school of thought. It started in the law roughly in the 1970s and some of the American Academy. It's spilled out. It always aimed to be an activist philosophy. People deny that now, but as I've said in the war on the West, the foundational texts say as much. This is an activist academic study. We're not just looking at the law. We seek to change the law. and it spilled out into all of the other disciplines. I think there's a reason for that, by the way, which has had happened at the time that the humanities and others in America were increasingly weak and didn't know what to do, and they needed more games to play on new games to play.

Yeah, I mean, well, they needed tenure, and they needed something to do. And I mean, it's not an original observation, plenty of people have made this, but I mean, Neil Ferguson said to some time ago, for instance, that in the last 50 years in American academia, certainly in humanities departments. When somebody dies out, who's a great scholar and something, that's just not replaced by somebody of equal stature. They were placed by somebody who does theory or critical race theory. They're replaced by somebody who does the modern games. Somebody dies out, who's a great historian of, say, I don't know it's the ones on my mind, Russian history or Russian literature, and they're not replaced by a similar

No, partly it's partly it's no, it's just stress that partly isn't this is in the weeks, but partly is a result of the hyper specialization in academia. You know, if you if you said you'd like to write your dissertation on Hobbes. If you wanted to, if you something central to cancer, thought, or hay, or something. I mean, that's not popular. That what's popular is to take somebody way down the line from that because there's a feeling that that's all being done. So you take something way way way down the line from that that's much less important and then you sort of play with that. And I think most people, anyone who's watching, who's being in a philosophy department or any other thing recently, as we'll know that, tendency. By the way, there's a very practical consequence of this. I saw the end of my friend Roger Scouton's life when he would occasionally, he didn't get tenure at universities, but he would occasionally be flown in even by his enemies to teach courses in various universities in basics of philosophy, because there was no one in the department able to do it. He would go in and teach for a semester. Hegel and Kant and Chopin Haar and others because there was no one to do it because they were all playing with the things way, way, way down the road from this. So that had already happened and people were searching for new games to play and the critical race theory stuff forced its way in. partly in the way that all of this that's now known as anti-racism does, which isn't in a sort of bullying tone of saying if you don't follow this. It's the same way that all the things that are called studies, I think everything called studies and the humanities should be shut down.

It's an element. They're all activism. Gay studies and queer studies. Nothing good has ever come from it. Nothing good.

So isn't it the sign of the death of the discipline? Is the sign that disciplines over?

I mean, not. Why is science in ideology and then set out to find disciplines that have weakly put together to try to back up your political ideology?

You could decide to go in and be wildly right-wing about something and only do things that prove your right-wing ideas. Be fantastically anti-academic, fantastically anti-science. It's an absurd way to mix up activism and and academia, and it's absolutely right, and critical ratio is one of the ones that completely polluted the academy.

Yes. I mean, for instance, also, let's face about this in science, as in everything else, there are dark, difficult things. It's much better we know about them and face up them and try to find a way socially to deal with them than that you leave them in the hands of some activist who wants to do stuff with them.

Okay. None of my best friends are activists. That's how it should be.

So to return to your clubhouse friend. Screaming away like to range maniacs. Now I've got anti-clubhouse by the way, because at the end of the time I heard it was that Brett Weinstein won when he did that, and I didn't if you heard that when I heard it, I was invited to clubhouse by various people, who said, this is a really great civilized way to hang out and talk with interesting people, and I downloaded the app, and I got on a one night, because Brett Weinstein said, doing this conversation, and I listened and it was The madest damn discussion I've ever heard was just something about biology something about Was it covered times all that at some point Brett said I'm an I'm an evolutionary biologist and Somebody else that is saying you're a eugenicist and he said no I'm an evolutionary evolution. I only said something that's the same thing And it just went on like that and Brett desperately tried to explain that's not the same thing as being a new genesis and he lost the clubhouse room. They thought that was the same thing. He'd come. It horribly reminded me of a time some years ago in a British newspaper. ran a sort of realising that the only thing you can unite people on in sexual ethics is revolting against pedophilia, ran an antipido campaign, and shortly after a pediatrician's office was torched in north of England by a mob who hadn't read the whole sign.

Anyhow, sorry, I interrupt you with flattering you with that people on clubhouse.

Yeah, it's an attempt to look at everything among all things through the lens of race and to add race into things where it may not be as a way of adding, I'm trying to give the most generous estimation. To add race in as a conversation in a place where it may not have been in the conversation. That means history to the history of racism. All history. And to look at it through these particular lenses. There's a certain logic. Like with feminist studies or something, I mean, is there a utility and looking back through undoubtedly male-dominated histories and asking whether the more silent female voice was, yes, very interesting, not endlessly interesting and can't be put exactly on the same par as, but it has a utility.

Yeah. Well, because of this thing of where do you stop? And that's, that's, that's, that's always a, I looked at, talk about this in my last book in the man as a crowd. It's one of the big conundrums in activist movements and particularly an activist academia where would you stop? It's not clear because you've got a job in it. You've got a pension in it. You've got your only esteem in society is in keeping this gig going. I mean, is there any likelihood? Have you ever, there's the old academic joke, isn't it? You know, the end of every conference, the only thing everyone agrees on is that we must have another conference like this one. So one thing they always agree with. This conference is so great, we must have another one.

Well, so at the very least, you need to keep the bridges off.

It assumes all the time that we are living on the cusp of the return of the KKK, right, which is totally wrong.

We can't always predict the future, and you can always say you should be careful, but. You've also got to be careful of people who've got that timing like totally totally wrong or the estimation of society there.

If only it was that easy.

I always say that I mean, what? Very often is these two scenes shave and chaps, but I say one of the problems with everybody knowing a little bit about narcissism is that they think that they know where evil comes from and that it comes from like a German with a small moustache, getting people to go step, for instance, and that's not correct. a much better understanding of it is, it can come from all number of directions and keep your antennae as good as you can. But once you end up in this society, which I would argue certainly parts of America, where you're always in 1938, that's not healthy for a society either, where people are so primed and think they're so well trained because they spend a term in school learning about the Second World War and the Holocaust. Think they're so well-trained and Hitler-spotting that they can do it all the time. Look at all these phrases we now have in our societies, like dog whistle. You know, as I always say, if you hear the whistle, you're the dog, but people say, that that's a dog whistle. As if they're highly trained anti-nartsis. I mean, you know, there should be some humility. We should be careful. We should be wary for sure. And we should all be slightly humble in our inability to spot everything.

Well, let's it's a good thing to try to define. I'd say that Racism is the belief that other people are inferior to you. You could say, you could see a form where you thought people were superior to you. That could also happen. But more common is, you see a group of people as being inferior to you simply by the end of the fact that they have a different racial background. And that's the easiest way to define racism. As I say, I mean, there are types of racism, mainly anti-Semitism actually, perhaps it's the only one, which weirdly relies on a hatred of people who a certain type of person thinks things are better than them. And that's a particular peculiarity, one of the peculiarities of anti-Semitism.

Yes. Well, one of the eternal fascinating things about anti-Semitism is it can do. It does everything at the same time.

You know that you know, um, vastly gross was life and fate. So in the middle of life and fate, um, which a Persian friend, my, we said was one of only two great novels of the 20th century. She was very harsh literally could take. Well, the other one. The leopard, obviously. Thought I bird the leopard, you said if you'd land produce a, yeah, okay. She definitely write on that one. Life and fate is learning so much today. Life and fate is a, is an extraordinary book. Mainly about, we know Garthman was a, of the Jewish himself, but he, he saw almost everything, whether he could have done it in a second or more ways, he saw Stalin grad, you know, the journalist, and he, He wrote, first hand, the count is starting to grab him. He was also the first journalist in the literature of Blinker. When he's a counter, you can read him on the collections of his journalism. He's the counter of walking in the literature of Blinker. He's just one of his devastating haunting pieces of journalism or prose you can read. And he, I mentioned him, because Grossman at the middle of life and fate, which is about a 900 page novel, in the middle of it, which is about the dark axis around Starling grad. He way at one point, he amazing me, sort of goes into the minds of Earth, it runs Stalin. He says Stalin in his study, feels his counterpart in Berlin, and he says he feels very close to him at this moment. Wow, around Stalin growing, like leading up to our back. After Stalin grad, when the James is lost, he says he feels the closeness of Hitler. But Grossman, in the middle of life and feats, all that bang at the worst hours of the 20th century, suddenly dedicates a chapter to anti-Semitism. And I've seen anti-Semitism suddenly I've always been very interested in, because I've always had the instinctive utter revulsion of it. And all the partly because I've seen bits of it in the Middle East and elsewhere. I mentioned this because Grossman in the middle of life has it takes time out and does it's like three-page explanation. The three-page description of antisemitism and it's extraordinary. The only thing I can think of that's equally good is the Gregor von Rett's story, who wrote a literally titled, but probably in a certain novelist called Confessions of an Anti-Semite. about pre-first world war anti-Semitism in Eastern and Central Europe. Anyway, Grossman says in the middle of life and faith that one of the extraordinary things about anti-Semitism is that he does everything at the same time. That his Jews get condemned in one place for being rich and in another for being poor. Condemned in one place for assimilating in another for not assimilating. for simulating too much and assimilating too little, for being too successful for not being successful enough. So it's, I think it's the only racism that includes within it, a detestation for the real anti-Samite, a detestation of people that the person may perceive to be better than them, correctly or otherwise.

I think you'll, I think you'll really get a lot from it. One of the other things, but one of the other things he does is that he has this extraordinary ability to talk about the absolute highest levels of the conflict. And then Zoom in is rather like the camera work they use and things like Lord of the Rings, where he zooms down then gets one person in the midst of all this and you get on that.

There's a lot of cruelty throughout, but he doesn't get to... Well, one of the things is of course he lost the war because of anti-Semitism. I mean, that's one of the kind of important ways to view it this hour and to rob it, so that is the only end. The Nazis lost the war because they were Nazis. It sounds almost too neat, but it's worth remembering that you know, At the end of the war, when the Germans need to be transporting troops and they need to be transporting very basic supplies, I can make sure he gets the trains to transport the Jews right up to the end.

But to go back to racism in general. Racism in general, apart from antisemitism, relies on the boom. perception that another group of people, a racial group, other than your own, are inferior to you. That's what I'd say is that it's easiest, short-handed racism. And of course, it's one of the stupidest things that our species is capable of. I mean, one of the stupidest that you can look at a person and guess them in their entirety, in fact, because of their skin color. I mean, it's like, what a stupid idea that is, as well as being an evil one. But the, I would say that one of the, I think it's a dangerous thing in our era that there are bits of it coming back. That's why I say we do need sort of, we need our antennae working, we just don't need them to be overactive or underactive, you know.

I'd say that the white people in the United States are the only people who are told that they have a registry sin. And that's a big one, just to start with. Basically, he started his game color. I mean, I would find it so repugnant if and I hope everybody would join me into feeling this. I would feel it's so repugnant if there were any school of thoughts in America today that had any grasp on the public attention that said that black people were born into evil because of something their ancestors had done. like they had the mark of cane upon them. I mean, I think it would be such a vicious way to try to demoralize a group of people and to tell them that the things they would be able to achieve in their lives are much lessened because they should spend significant portions of their lives trying to return for something they didn't do. Is there a difference And then the obvious point, let's say it, nobody in the public square says that, I mean, there are the maniacs and the far fringes, but nobody in the mainstream would dare to say that, or I think even think that about any group of people, other than white people. Does this mean that white people are more disadvantaged than black people know? And again, let's not make this a competition. But let's not get into, I just desperately urge people not to get into the idea of hereditary sin according to racial background.

Well, it's a dangerous game to play, isn't it?

Well, yeah, everything's dangerous. But it's a very dangerous game to play that. I write about this bit in the matter of crowds when I was saying, like, gay rights people, the ones that still exist, the ones who don't have homes to go to, who want to beat up on straight people in a way. Or want to make straight people feel like they're kind of unremarkable, uncool, you know, boring straights. So boring. So not like the magical pixie fairy dust gaze. Um, that's a bad idea to push that one. That's a bad idea and some gaze pushed that. Highly on wise, given the fact that about two to three percent of population actually gay, although now there's an additional 20% who think they're like two spirit or something and all that bullshit, but they're just attention seekers. So let's not spend too much time on that. But equally, as I've said, I said in the man as a crowd with the feminist movement, very unwise for half of the species to say that the other half of the species isn't needed. And there were always third and fourth by feminists willing to make that nuts argument. Not first by feminists, you didn't hear it in first by feminists. You didn't hear suffragette tended not to say, we'd like the vote and men scum. And it would be hard to have one ever on over their side, not least the men they need to win over their side. But you do get third and fourth wave feminists who say like, you know, do we need men or men or all X? Again, it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea. It's tactically.

But who says you need to get rid of violence in society?

Well, that's the sort of thing, as I can say, so the Sunday, we cast academic decides to do because he thinks that his area of Boston would be nicer or whatever. He might decide it's useful if he was living a Kiev today to have violent men. I mean, it might, if, if, if, if, if New York was invaded right now, I need some violent men around here.

Well, as they are caused argument, there's there's also at least there's some level of threat that you want to exude that puts people off. If I was in, You know, I'm very glad that the men and women of Ukraine are capable of and more than capable of fighting for their country and for their names and their families and much more, but it's better that there was violence ready to unleash when violence was unleashed upon them than that the whole society had been told that they should identify as non-binary.

Okay, but it's just funny to have that thought. It's very unwise for women to war against men. As it would be for men to war against women. It's highly, highly unwise to war in a majority population. And in America, Britain and other Western countries, white people are still a majority. And so why would you tell the majority of their evil by the end of their skin colour? And think that that would be a good way to keep them in check. I mean, I'm not guilty of anything because my skin colour. I'm not guilty of anything. My answer is, didn't do anything wrong. And even if they had, why would I be held responsible for it?

That's certainly one, the desire to grab is, let me see if I find a quote for you on that. The desire to grab that which we think we're owed and to do it often in the guys of justice. I mean, the justice is one of the great terms of our age and one of the great bogus terms of our age. People forever talk about their search for justice and it's amazing how violent they can often be in their search for justice and how many rules they're willing to break so long as they can say that after justice and how many norms they can trample so long as they can say it's in the name of justice, you can burn down buildings in the name of justice.

One of the, one of the quotes of a, of a niche that I liked and I quoted in this.

Yeah, of course. Nietzsche says that one of the dangers of men of resentment is that they'll achieve their ultimate form of revenge, which is to turn happy people into unhappy people like themselves. To shove their misery in the faces of the happy, so that in due course the happy, and this is quoting Nietzsche, start to be ashamed of their happiness. And perhaps say to one another, it's a disgrace to be happy. There is too much misery. This is something to be averted for the six as Nietzsche must not make the healthy sick to or make the healthy confuse themselves with the sick. Well, I think they're again. There's a lot of that going on. How could I be happy when there is unhappiness in the world? Why should I not join the ranks of the unhappy?

This has been very rationed, but Russian focus. I'm very pleased with another times, but the rest of the asking Grossman and others have come in.

Which I did. I'm told it's a 10-year language-based, it'll learn from scratch. My friends who have done it,

Oh, I said, if we had a moment, I'd tell you my story about Stalin's birthplace. I don't know. No. I wanted to gore who Stalin was born. Have you been? No, that's been it. I was just after the Georgia War. I went to the, no man's land, it's how the set year, and of Cazia. And I said, I really got to go to Gauri, also here because the shell had landed in Gauri, rather weirdly from the Russian side, and Gauri is where the sun was born. And of course, Gauri is in Georgia. And I really had that the Museum of Stalin's birthplace, they've been trying to change for some years, because it had been Unadult ratedly pro-style in, for years. And the George and the authorities, this is in, uh, which I guess really is time. We're trying to make it into a museum of style in Nizla. And it was really tough. The only place I've seen, which is similar as the House in Mexico City, where Trotsky was killed. That also is that they're not quite sure to do. They don't want to say he's a bad guy because they think that people won't come any year. Stalin's hasn't got a change from the museum of Stalin to the museum of Stalinism. There was this large Georgian woman with a pink pencil who just had clearly been doing the tour for like 50 years. and just point it all the fastest. She did that classic thing. I've also sort of once in North Korea where they sort of that sort of communist thing where they say, here is a this is 147 feet high by 13 feet deep like give you lots of fascinating. I don't care. It doesn't matter. It will give you facts. Yeah. This is Stalin's suit case. It is 13 inches wide by another. Anyhow, and this one did all of this, and it was all just wildly pro, not pro science, just explaining the science I've do, it was just a very local boy done good. They didn't mention that he killed more Georgians, but gathered than anyone else. What could one done good? And we get to the end, and before being taken to the gift shop, where they sell red wine with silence, face on it, and among other things, and a lighter over Stalin on it, They, uh, they took you to a little room under the stairs and they said this is a replica of interrogation cell to show, uh, uh, represent horror of what happened in Stalin time. Uh, now gift shop. As I just just, there's no, no kind of night at the woman's side. Yeah, and I scoured she'd said this to rather tell us and visited before I took her to tell us. I said, well, what do you think about comments, Stalin? And she said, um, this is actually obviously done this during communist times. She said, it's not my, I'm a place to judge. You know, sort of thing. Are we as an interesting comment in itself? I said, yeah, but he killed more Georgians than anyone. You know, and all that sort of thing. And she didn't, it's not my place to judge or to give my views. And the event says, but what do you think about it? And she said, um, it was like a hurricane. It happened.

What is that still? Silicase and life's press of Russia. Yeah, I mean keep some styling keeps on winning greatest Russian of all time.

I mean, think of the number of people we talk about as historical heroes, Napoleon. I mean, British people don't talk about Napoleon as a hero, but they're French.

Yeah, it's a tricky ground. But like the French are enormous in Poland and there had many al-Morass, which he was also a unbelievable brute and killed many people unnecessarily. And there are lots of figures from history that we sort of cover that over with.

Well, I hope this isn't the representative fair summation of your friend in London's views.

But he still explained dry him.

The real criticisms. I mean, yeah, that's why you're drinking. The real difference of Churchill quite easy to sum up, and I do so in the war on the West, I say, these are the things that they now use against him. I didn't do enough to revert the Bengal famine in 1943, for instance. That's been shot down by numerous historians, including Indian historians. In the middle of the war, in the middle of a world war Churchill did what he could to get grain supplies diverted from Australia to Bengal. The famine was appalling. It was caused by a typhoon. It was not caused by Winston Churchill. And the idea that some, basically in the Indian Nationalist historians have pumped out in recent years and just anti Churchill figures that he actually wanted in the insidious. He's just a total column there. And when people claim, some people claim that, I mean, there was a few very ignorant scholars, nevertheless, with some credentials, who claim that Churchill wanted the Indian population to basically be genocide. And it's complete nonsense, not least, but the fact that during the period, which in question the Indian population boomed, so that's one of the main ones. Another one is that he had some views that we now had regardless of races. He definitely regarded races as being of different characters, and that there were superior races, and as it were, the white European was a superior culture. He was born in Victorian England, so he had some Victorian attitudes. These are things in the negative side of the ledger and as with all history you should have a negative and a positive side of the ledger. Positive side of the ledger includes a humorist certainly didn't more than anyone human being to save the world from narcissism. So that's your count as something. And one of the reasons I talk about Churchill and it's regardless this is to stress that if you get I'm not trying to stop anyone doing history at all. I don't think the revisionism of recent years about Churchill or the founding fathers of America or anyone else is anything I want to stop. I find it interesting. I find interesting not least because it's so sloppy on occasions, but I find it interesting and it's important and we should be able to see people in the round. But that includes recognizing the positive side of the ledger. And if you can't recognize that side, You're doing something else. You're doing something else. It's not history. It's some form of politicking of a very particular kind. And I think it's the same thing with the founding fathers. There are some people, friends, and studies, it's the 90s who have pushed the Sally Heming's Thomas Jefferson story to show that Thomas Jefferson was some kind of brute. As a result, you know, we see Jefferson's statue being removed from the council table and the city was sitting in. Last November by Council members who said the Thomas Jefferson no longer represents our values. If you can't recognize greatness of Thomas Jefferson and that he had flaws. I mean, that's not a grown-up debate.

Sure. Sure. I mean, I, I, I have a section in the one of the West's, you know, where I go for car marks with some glee.

I mean, he's had a resurgence recently.

Well, that's because whenever things are seen to go wrong, people reach for other options. And when, for instance, it's very hard for people to accumulate capital. It's not obvious that they're going to become capitalists. And so one thing that happens is people say, let's look at the Marxism thing again, see if that's a viable go. And my argument would simply be point me to one place that's worked.

But let's just quickly say, how did all these experiments go?

They did, but they failed. We should stress so grossly failed. So grossly failed, but they threw millions and millions of people into completely thwarted lives that were much shorter than they should have been.

If I'm finally might get to Marx's dream of what the average day would look like. Yes. Well, it's going to be an awful lot of literary criticism. If you remember, Mark said that we would be doing a me evening. It was the labor and evening.

So he would he would change other things we could learn for Mark's plausibly possibly. I can't think of anything myself of him. to have a critique of capitalism isn't by any means a bad thing in the society. I'd rather that it was a critique of capitalism that showed how you improved capitalism, a critique of free market that showed how people could get better access to the free market, how you could ensure for instance that young people get on to the property ladder things like that. Those are constructive things. So people who say we must have Marxism, I mean don't know what the hell they're talking about, because that never leased any of those things. Having learned in the past. It's never led in the past and at some point you've got to just, you've got to try to work out how many attempts you make at this damn philosophy before you realize that every attempt always leads to the same thing. I would say we could pretend that fascism has never been properly tried. and that it was unfortunate what happened in Nazi Germany. But you know, that wasn't real fascism. And in Mussolini's fascism, you know, didn't go all that well, but it was, you know, a bit better. And maybe we could try a bit more Franco fascism. Nobody would have any time for this crap. Nor should they. The people who try that are reviled and quite rightly. So why do we tolerate it with the Marxism thing? And it's a great mystery to me the way that people do tolerate it. Always, always in this stupid way of saying, we haven't done it yet. And if you keep trying the same recipe and every time it comes out as shit, It's the recipes shit.

Sure. You know, the famous George Orwell comment on the solid with an argument with the solidist. Do you know this? That's one of my favorite quotes. George Orwell in the early 40s gets into an argument with a astonist. He's obviously a Marxist. And this is after the show throws 37. This is when it's very clear what Marxism in the Russian form is. and this all well is in the discussion with this this Marxist and it goes on and on and eventually all well says well you know what about the show trials and what about what's happened in Ukraine and and and the famines and much more and the purges and the purges and Eventually the Stalinist says all well what all knows he's going to say all along which is he says you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs and all well says where's the omelet?

Look at this by this stage. Okay. How many? Where's my damn armor? How many just messy big bloody eggy piles have the Marxists created by now in country after country? Yeah. Always next time they're going to produce the great omelet. But they never have and they never will because the whole thing is rotten from the start. But let me just also say one thing about, because God's Mark isn't as nice as he sounds. And that's one of the things that I tried to highlight in the book is, if we're going to do this reductive thing of people in history and saying, well, they had views or of their time. And we must therefore condemn them for them. So you'd find, let's do the same thing with Marx. And there were things I quoted in this book for Marxist letters, not least letters to Engels. And indeed, in his published writings, in peace, he was writing for the American press in the end 50s. He has horrible views on slavery and colonialism and much more. But the main thing is, I mean, the horrible things he says about black people and the constant use of the N word. In fact, when I was doing your audiobook for the one of us, I had to decide, will I read out the quotes from Marx or not? If I had read them out, I'd have been cancelled because people would have just said, you've been using the N word so much in this passage. And I slightly thought of doing it so that I could say I was only quoting Marx to try to hit the point home. And the end of course, those sense points I did not do, but Marx's letters are disgusting on these terms. Since I highlighted this in this book and some of the media picked it up, and have popularized this thing, I'm trying to put into the system, which is if you're going to accuse church of racism, you're going to accuse Jefferson of racism, Washington of racism and so on. What about Marx? The two things that Marxists have said since this came out has been first of all, why are you saying this about Marx? He was a man of his time. Like everyone else. And the second thing they say is, we don't go to Marx for his horrible, of Holland views on race. So talking about mixed race people with gorillas and so on. We don't go to him for that. We go to him for his economic theories. I say, OK, well, we don't go to Thomas Jefferson for his views on slaves. We don't go to Churchill for his the precise language he used at points in the 1910s about Indians or his health advice or his health advice. I do get him.

But let's have some standards on this. And that's why I'm very suspicious of the fact that the people don't do this with Marx because I think what they're trying to do and this isn't this may sound conspiratorial but I really don't think it is. I think that some people are deliberately trying to completely clear the cultural landscape of our past. in order to say, there's nothing good. Nothing you can hold on to. No one you should reveal. You've got no heroes. The whole thing comes down. Who's left standing? Oh, we've also got this idea from the 20th centuries to about Marxism. Well, the 19th and 20th centuries. And no. No. You will not have the entire landscape de-rassinated. And then the worst ideas tried again.

Well, and the thing is there are always some people with pre-prepared ideas. And I mentioned this also with the post-colonialists. The post-colonialists are really interesting. Because when the European powers were moving from Africa and the Far East, Post-colonial movements had one obvious move they could have done, which was to say, since the European powers of the left we will return to a pretty colonial life. which in some of their places would have been returning to slave markets and slave ownership and slave selling and much more. But put that aside for a second. They could have said we have an indigenous culture which we will return to. Almost uniformly in the post-colonial era. You had figures like France, Fanon, European intellectuals like Sartre who said the Western powers are retreating from these countries and therefore we should institute in these countries what but Western Marxism.

When you erase history, and you leave some ideas deliberately uninterrogated. I mean, as I say, find me one in a hundred American students who've heard of any of the communist despots of the 20th century. I mean, the name recognition, there was a poll down a few years ago in the UK, and like name recognition among children, school children for Stalin, let alone Mao. I mean, Mao, who kills more people than anyone, 65 million Chinese, perhaps. How many students in America know what Mao was, who he was? where he was. Nothing.

Where the atrocities were committed? Oh, I worry about that, because it means that we might have learned one of the two lessons of the 20th century. We think we've learned one of the two lessons of the 20th century. We're actually haven't learned that lesson. We've learned a little bit of it. And we've not learned the other one at all. Because that's why we still have people in American politics, and else we're actually talking about collectivization and things. as if there's no problem with that and as if it's perfectly obvious and they could run it and they'd know exactly where to stop.

Fascism and communism.

No, it's not clear. The letters were very clear. They would be better at it.

Yes. Be very suspicious of crowd.

A lot of kinetics are very good on that crowds and power. And Eric Hoffer, who was a sort of self-taught, amazing, not the autodidactic writer, the true believer. And so on, he was extremely good on that. But the reason I mentioned the two thing, though, I mean, we should have realized that the two nightmares of the 20th century fascism and communism. that we should know how they came about. And we're interested in learning how one of them came about fascism. And we know some of the lessons like, don't treat other people as less than you because of their race. That's one lesson. But when we've done some good at learning that, but the second one, not to do communism again, not to do socialism. I think we're way away from knowing, because we don't know how it happened and the little temptations are still there always. Look at people saying, I'm going to expropriate your property. If people do things they don't like, they will get, we can't wait to take your property.

So you want to do get a fraction of that, but yes.

Well, yeah, I mean, fairness is, I like fairness as a judge. No, I much prefer fairness because it's a much easier thing to try to work out it's quite amorphous itself for the concept, but everyone can recognize it. So for instance, should the boss of the company a million times that of the lowest paid employee doesn't seem fair? Should they maybe five or ten times the salary of the lowest, right? Yeah, possibly. That could be fair. There are certain sort of multiples which are within the bounds of, you know, reasonableness. I think actually that's the, that's the much bigger problem in capitalism at the moment as I see it is, is the, is the not untrue perception that a tiny number of people get a lot of the, a crew a lot of the benefits and that the, that the bit in the middle has become increasingly squeezed and is danger always affalling all the way down to the bottom. I mean, I think in the snakes and ladders of American capitalism, for instance, it's a correct perception to say that the snakes go down awfully far. If you tread on the snake, you can plummet an awfully long way in America. And the deal in the game was that the ladders took you high and there's a perception and again it's not entirely wrong that the latter's system on the board is kind of broken.

I get to that get practice when the way to critique capitalism, if it's gone bad, is to get better capitalism. Yes, free markets where they're not fair should be made fair. Never decide that the answer is the thing that has never produced any human flourishing. I.e. Marxism.

I forget what the crowd decided, but I'm proud to split on that when it's safe to have one opinion either way.

Michael Jackson.

The man in question is dead, but I think most people who were not just die hard fans would concede that Michael Jackson had a strange relationship with children. Yes. And uh... was almost certainly a beautiful.

No, the crowd hasn't agreed because he's too famous and we all love thriller.

I'm a fan of Michael Jackson, but I think he was almost certainly a beautiful. And I've been nobody wants to give up dancing to bad at weddings. So they just kind of added in. It's fine. You're a lot.

Well, he wasn't, he was, of course, one of the most famous people in America. But maybe he wasn't regarded as talented.

Oh, yeah. There's a genius opt out in all cultures. There's a genius optatical code. Look at Lord Byron. Lord Byron checked his sister. Doesn't affect his reputation. Try to do anything you kind of add it to it.

Or, well, yes, because if you haven't done anything remarkable, no, you'll come looking for you, Paul. I guess. Yeah.

Okay. Side or through life, nobody noticing. Be totally harmless. And then die and hope you haven't used any carbon. But you were asking about, you were asking about how to survive the era of social media as it were and the crowds. Yeah. And there's a very simple answer to that. don't don't overrate the significance of the unreal world.

Yeah, that's, that's what I do. Well, I mean, I actually like most people and it isn't a general thing. I don't have detestation for most people. I do all. I mostly like, I can't really enjoy speaking with and being with. But in terms of storing your sense of self-worth and absolute strangers, big mistake.

I mean, I have some of the challenges of it.

I put it this way. If you became very old Mara, Would any of them help? On the internet?

No. Good. That's a good test. Yeah, that's a good test.

You can't store, you can't store significant amounts of trust or faith or belief or self worth in places which will not return it to you.

No, no. I'm very, I love Sam.

Um, I think if he pleased when he flat is me, but I mean, I'm, and it's nice about me, but no, I don't just rely on Sam.

I don't know, why would I mind? I mean, maybe it's self-selecting. If I didn't have the view I had about that or whatever armory it is that I have on that, I wouldn't do what I did, maybe.

Like, significant self-doubt, just kind of... I can't say I've been unaffected by everything in my life. By any means, that would make me an automated or something. There's definitely times I've got things wrong and regretted that. There's times I've, there was a period around the time I wrote, my book has changed the death of Europe, which was a very, very dark time. And it wasn't because I was having a dark time in my life, but because of the book I was writing.

And while I was contemplating the end of a civilisation, so occasionally, now I have maybe slightly too pat at this stage, but sometimes readers come up from the street or whatever and say, you know, I love the strange death of Europe, and we'll say, you know, it's a very depressing book to read, however. And I would say, you should have tried writing it. But it was because it has chunks of it which I'm very proud of in particular about the death of religion, the deathguard, the loss of meaning and the void. And that's difficult stuff to write about and to grapple with. And there is a sort of, I haven't reread that book since it came out. But I think there are passages in it which reveal what I was thinking very clearly in the poetry of it as it were as well as the detail. But yeah, I can't say, I'm used to saying what I think and what I see And if there's any pushback I've got from that, I'm completely consoled that I'm saying what I see with my own eyes.

Well, I can't agree to go along with a lie if I've seen something with my own eyes.

Now get a certain thrill from the friction.

Could do. Could do for sure. I try to keep alive for that. Early in my career I realized that, for instance, I didn't want to make enemies unnecessarily. any more than strictly necessary, because there was a very large number of already necessary enemies. And I remember one, so I went into the details, but I already had one sort of thing I'd done that we end in another thing, and I just thought, I can't, I can't do. And I remember thinking, don't be the sort of person who's forever creating storms. And I'm trying to make sure I wasn't. And I think I pretty much stuck to that. But to answer your question, Well, the first thing is I'm as confident I can be that I wouldn't fall into a trap you described for two reasons. I mean, one is that I don't think of myself as a wildly intelligent person, partly because I'm very, very aware of things I know nothing about. I mean, for instance, I have almost no knowledge of the details of finance or economic theory. I mean, the real details, I don't mean the big picture of the kind that we were just discussing earlier, but I have, if you put the periodic table in front of me, I would struggle to do more than Handful. I am very conscious of huge gaps in my knowledge. And where I have gaps or chasms, I tend to find I have a disproportionate admiration for the people who know that stuff. Like I'm wildly impressed by people who understand money, really understand it. You know what I think? I have hell that you do that. and the same thing with biologists, medics, stuff I just know very little about.

Yes, I mean, I think, well, I'm going to get that stuff, but I don't know, Jesus, if you got me on the general knowledge, I say that thing, some years ago, there's a thing in the UK called University Challenge, I don't know. And my I was asked some years ago on to there's a sort of psych celebrity one of former students of the university's or colleges asked to go back fight the Christmas special and and I was asked to be one of the people from my old college to go back and compete in the sort of celebrity alumni one and the only thing I actually wanted to do it was go to discover the Louis Thuru had been to my college before my time and he was on he agreed to be on the team and I thought I'd love to meet Louis through that would be great fun and Anyhow, and I said why I really don't want to do it and they said come on you'd be great I said I wouldn't I'd show myself up with your total asshole and they can arrange this and as it was I sat down My friend, I watched some past episodes for university challenge. I did just sat in mute for the whole hour. I just could not do anything. The first question was about physics and the second one was about, as it was, I watched the the one. And I could answer the first two or three questions of the one that actually went out because they made it a bit simpler. But I mean, I'm terribly conscious. And I said to the producers, I said, I can't go on because I mean, I just couldn't answer the questions. These unbelievably smart students seem to be able to answer and hold range of things. So I'm perfectly aware of my limitations. And you can't to plate your limitations. Yeah, and they're forever before me, you know, not hard to find in every day. And then on top of that, I suppose, it's, you know, in a way, you know, that line from Rudd odd kiptings, alternately brilliant and slightly nauseating poem, if.

Well, no, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's a good piece of advice. If you can learn to meet triumph and disaster and meet these, create these two imposteres just the same. That's a good line. It's a good line. It's keeping often an amazing turn of the line. But I do think that it's a very sensible thing to try to create triumph and disaster and regard them as imposteres and greet them just the same. And actually anyone who knows me knows that I never Partly it's because I have a sort of belief in the old gods, and at the moment that I thought that I was at the moment of triumph, the fates would hitch up their skirts and run at me at a million miles an hour. But it's also because anyone who knows me knows, I never have a moment when I say, Um, that's just great. I feel totally filled and Victoria's. I mean, it happened to me recently when I was in the war on the western strait in a number one in the best cell of this.

When I first saw that it was selling, I had that moment of relation. I thought, good. I've done it. It's out. And I did have a moment of relation then, definitely. But it doesn't last, partly because I tell myself it must have last.

I sort of avoided this for years.

Do you think the Trump, just sorry, and a small tangent? Do you think the Trump story is over? We just don't volume one. I have no idea the people I know who said he's running. And I think that in general Republicans have to do have a choice in front of them. And one friend put it to me recently said, you've got to go in with your toughest fighter. And I understand that instinct. And I also think it's very dangerous instinct because what if your toughest fighter is also your biggest liability? What's the best way to get a Democrat vote in 2024 than no Donald Trump running?

They are. And I'm cautious about this because I know every way I tread its dangerous. But let me just just be trained gracefully. Donald Trump is graceful as I can, so in my Wellington boots, I, in my golishers. I, here's, here's a thing. I think everybody knows what Trump is. I think we all knew for years. And I feel sorry for the conservatives who had to pretend that he was something he wasn't. I felt sorry for the ones who had to pretend that, for instance, he was at some devout Christian, or a man of faith, or a man of great integrity, or all of these sorts of things, because I'm not in the public eye for years, I mean, obviously that wasn't the case. But he has something extraordinary. One thing is a method of communication that you've just got to say is, was unbelievable.

Can't look away. I mean, I've been watching him clear every one out of the way in 2016. It was thrilling because those people needed clearing away. You know, Sam is just horrified. What? America's going to give us another bush. What's so great about this family? America's going to give us another. Clinton, we're going to get chooser in Clinton and a bush. Mark Stein said, whatever, just wait for the day, the Clintons and the bushes into Mary and then we can really have a monarchy again. So I was very pleased to see him clear them away. I was very pleased to see him sort of raised some of the issues that needed raising. I thought it was a sort of breath of fresh air and I wished it wasn't him doing it. And then there was a question of him governing and it was just perfectly clear. He didn't know how to govern. He what he did have, however, what he does have is an incredible ability to fight. And some of the forces he was arranged against were arranged against him. My gosh, they would have taken down anyone else. If they'd have probably done some similar BS against Ted Cruz, if he, you know, or Marco Rubio, you know, they'd have said some of some people admit that they'd have accused all these people of racism and besides anything else as well, just so they didn't make Romney just so they did John McCain. But Trump was the one ugly enough and bruising enough to fight.

But so Trump has the extraordinary quality, but I just, you know, look, he screwed up during his time on office because he didn't achieve as much as he should have done. And you could say about every president, but I refused to ignore these two years when he had both houses in the first beginning. He just didn't know what leave is to pull. You know, I mean, he was sitting in the office behind me over office tweeting, watching the news. Sorry, that's not a president. And he couldn't feel and didn't feel positions because people knew. I mean, people who were very loyal to him, he would just, you know, he'd get them do something loyal and then destroy them. And I think, and then we get on to the thing about, and here we get on to the, you know, what, of course, is very, very fractures terrain, but, you know, I covered the 2020 election and I was traveling all around the states and I went to Trump rally and, and all sorts of stuff. And I, I, I, I was in DC on election night and, um, when, and it got very ugly at one point, um, in so called Black Lives Matter Plaza. But when it looked like Trump, I'd win, what Florida came in. I got really, I could feel the air. Well, very, very heated. And like, Samantha, first people started getting into black block and this sort of stuff. And I thought, this time it's going to burn, you know, if Trump wins. And in the aftermath of the vote, I was willing to hang around and watching for a bit. And then I saw it was going to drag on. And I saw some of his people and others and people told me they had great evidence of voting and all this sort of thing. And I'm afraid I'm one of those people who doesn't believe that the evidence that they've presented is good enough to justify the claim that he won the election. And I, and people say, have you seen 2000 meals and have you seen it? Look, the evidence isn't there, that the election was won by Donald Trump. And I think that what he did on January the 6th was unbelievably dangerous. And, you know, here, it is possible for us to hold two ideas on our head at the same time. January the 6th was not nothing. Nor was it an insurrection and an attempt to stage a coup. And there's a vanishing number of people in the US, or as Eric Weinstein said, like, this is the roof that you have to walk along. And like the sides are very steep if you fall off either side.

Since I wrote in this book, there are two things in particular that I've been really pleased that a specific type of specialist is approached me on to say that things I've written about actually have more application than I realized. One is the gratitude issue, a number of people have approached me who have gone through AA, more of how colleagues anonymous. They sometimes say, have you ever been to AA and that's a bit personal question. But they say, but the reason they ask it is because they say, well, because if you go to drug rehabilitation or alcohol anonymous, you know, normal, it doesn't sound very anonymous. You stand up in a room, you say your name, you drive on the worst things you've ever done. That's the opposite of anonymous. Anyhow, but they say, look, because if you go to these things, apparently, you're asked to as part of your recovery. say what you're grateful for, like list what you're grateful for. I didn't know that by the way until it's still the book was out and so it turned out to have more application than I knew. The other thing though is that I say that it's absolutely crucial in America that we try to find things that we agree on and a couple of times since the book came out I've been approached by people who marriage counselors Um, but he also said, I mean, we have been through marriage counselling again. That's very personal question. Some questions. No, but this is one of the things that we do in couples therapy is trying to find things you agree on. And I think this is very important in America. And it's made much harder by the fact, and I said, it's made times, but Forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but it's made much harder by the fact that having different opinions is very last century. Now we all have different facts, or at least the two sides have different facts. One half of the country roughly, or let's say 40%, 30%, whatever you want to put it, with a tired minority in the middle. One segment of the country believes that Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election, and that the Russians interfered and got Donald Trump in power. Another half of the country believes that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. If you can't agree on who wins elections, it's very hard to see who you agree on as a country. That's one of the reasons I mind the war on the American history and Western history is one of the things you have to agree on is at least some attitude towards your past. You don't have to go and everything. But like the public square has to have public heroes who are agreed to be heroes to some extent. What's in all? If you don't have that, if actually you think friends like half country thinks founding fathers were pretty good, the other half thinks they were absolutely rotten racist and so on. If half the country basically thinks it would have been better if Columbus had taken a different turn, never found America, gone back home and said, I don't know, nothing out there. That would have been better. And the other half's pretty glad in the end that we've got America. You know, you've got to agree on something. And I just see an American, so I do think we've got to try to find things to agree on. Like a reasonable afternoon towards the past. That's why that matters. And again, I stress, I'm not trying to say that everything in the American past was good. God knows that wouldn't stand out for a second and scrutiny or so scrutiny. But nor was it all bad. This wasn't a country formed in sin. and in an erraticable sin. It wasn't founded in 1619 in order to make the country wicked and incapable of escaping that wickedness. These are things that will matter enormously in the years ahead because if you can't agree on anything including who your heroes are. Like the whole thing is just one massive division and we'll see what I think we're already seeing which is people basically going to states where it's more like the life they want to live. And some people say to me, well that's okay and the genius of the founding is that it allows for that. That's possible but it's also it eradicates part of what has been American public life which is your ability to look at each other and discuss face to face. And I see things like this bomb place on America, the other week with the Supreme Court League, the draft League, as being just a further example of that. I'm very, very worried about it in America, and because if America screws up everything, everything else in the world goes.

And with with the desire to improve, yeah, constant and imperfect union.

But we need to find reasonable attitudes towards these things. And that's why I say like, it matters how you and by feedback on social media because we're all going through it to some extent. We're learning and we're learning and we've got to learn how to do this without going mad. You know, I say this as my minimalist call to friends in this era was the main job is not to go insane.

So a broad question, but of course, I mean, I can give specific advice for people who want to be writers and so on, but that's a bit niche, maybe.

The main thing to do is to breed. When I was a schoolboy, I've ever have a book in my pocket. The side pocket of my jacket, I've only side pocket. And would read. And that wasn't just those swatish in some way. But because I discovered, I probably at some point in my early teens, I discovered something. I wrote about this one. I discovered the books were dangerous, which was a thrilling discovery. Um, I discovered they could contain anything. And also, people didn't know what you were reading. I remember, I could fart a young age. I read the doors of perception of all this harksly. Um, and, um, I, I didn't make head or tail of it probably. But I knew that it was about something really interesting and dangerous. And I thought constantly when I read poetry or read history. I was just constantly thrilled and wanted to know more. And if you want to become a writer, you have to be a reader. You have to read the best stuff. And obviously people disagree or agree on what that is. And you'll find the people that really impress you. But I know that I just came across certain writers who just knocked me off my feet. And when you find those people to read everything, and cling on to them and find other people like that, find other writers like that with people who are connected by history or scholarship or circles or whatever.

Well, I remember that the first book that absolutely threw me was the Lord of the Flies. of William Golden, which used to be a sign text and everyone's a bit snotty about because it's so popular. But I was thrown because I think it was the first adult book I read in that I had been used to the world of children's literature of everything ends up finding in the end. The lost or get found. You know, and this was the first book I read where that's not the case. the world turns out differently. And I remember for days afterwards, I was just in a state of shock. I couldn't believe what I'd just discovered. And partly because I sort of enjoyed it, it must be true. And of course, I was not to say that the Lord of the Fire has lots of scholarship on what children do in the situation of being on the island, when they do congregate on any health. But yes, that was the sort of introduction to the adult world, and it was shocking and thrilling, and I wanted more of it.

And it was dangerous. And then, of course, when I became interested in sex, the loneliness I was gay, I read books were very, very good way to learn about what I was. And that was even more dangerous in a way.

What do you mean no? What I mean is that one of the things that gay people have when they're growing up is that you have this terribly big secret and you don't think the world will ever know, you hope the world will never know. And it's been called by one psychologist, the little boy with a big secret. And so if you discover that other people have the same secret, there's a sort of that God for that. But I mean, that's just a version of what everybody gets in reading in a way, which is the thrill of discovery that somebody else thought something you thought only you'd thought. I mean, one of the greatest thrill in all of literature is when a voice comes from across the centuries and seems to leave a handprint.

That's what he has to do with it. He says, he's said to have said, we read, no one ought to learn. But we don't only read no one ought to learn, we read to become other people. I mean, I think I saw in books a version of the life I wanted to live and then I decided to live it. And fortunate enough to have done so. I wanted to live in the world of ideas and books and debate, and I wanted to live in the debates of my time. And I remember when like a lot of people I read, I read, and when I was young. And you know, certain lines obviously stuck with me, but I'm that poem of his, which everybody knows and which he hated. September the first 1939. I remember certain lines in that, just like, whacked me. What's that one sitting on a dive for the seconds we'd to create an alone? The end of a low dishonest decade. Of course there's a problem with that line which is you kind of want to be living at the end of a low dishonest decade as well. It sounds sort of cool in a way. You know, you're the only person who sees it. But so yeah, anyhow, that's a diversion. But the point is, if you want to be a writer, you've got to be a reader. I'm part from anything else you discover the the little of language and the the things you can do and I read people who and I still do I think my god I didn't know how did you do that in fact books books for me now and articles and other things falling to two categories one is I know how you did that and the other is I don't know you did that and the and the best feeling as a writer is when you do the second one And it happens occasion in my writing life.

Yes, that's the most I've never said that before. That's the happiest thing in writing. Yeah, very occasionally it sounds, but I mean I've occasionally finished something. Funny enough it happened to some years going long piece over it about the artist's basket. I finished the piece and I gasped. I didn't know because that's also a thing with writing is you. sometimes people say you need to write in order to know what you think that's not quite true. Sometimes that's a very bad piece of advice for some writers who don't know what they think and it's not going to become clear if they just start typing. But sometimes it is true that you There's a thought that's just waiting there and the clarity that comes across and suddenly the sentence emerges in your brain. And by the time you've typed it, you just go, yes. That's the greatest feeling.

That's what the becunian says about, you know, what's the moment? It's time to stop our favorite quote about, you know, becunian's saying what happens at the moment, whether right or whether right as pen when he pauses, where does he go in that moment?

Yeah. So that was advice for writers.

No, I don't give health advice.

I'm very perilously personal. I do have a sort of rule that I don't talk about my personal life, but I'll bruise them and to be broken. Okay, I break it a little bit. One of the ways in which growing up and rising your gay differs and being straight is that it's almost inevitable that your first passions will be unrequited.

Now, that's not to say, I mean, you know, let's plenty of unrequited love among young men, young women, young women, young women, young men, that plenty of, you know, that. But it's almost inevitable if you're gay, that your first, you know, passions will be totally unrequited. Because the odds are that the person who question will not be gay.

Well, again, it comes about to the thing if you're a writer or something because you can always do something with it. That's why all writers are sort of not to be trusted. I didn't trust you the moment you walked in here. No, I mean, it's the famous problem with the writers because you always think, well, I could use the, uh, the danger, it's a dangerous thing and all writers. It's almost like a drug grade. Uh, no, it's, it's not like a drug. It's, it's the fear that all things, even the greatest suffering could be material.

You don't experience it fully and you might be using it. I had a friend wrote a poem about a friend who's a guy in the most Iraqst and sitting in the 60s. And he said, he knew the moment he was told that his friend is deaf. Tiny bit of him thought I could use this for poem. and he did in the poem is wonderful, but there's always a slight guilt for writers of am I going to use that? That's a divergent.

Don't, you know, yes, but there is a good sign made perhaps more obvious perhaps problem is reporting from war zones or bad places and wanting to find bad stories because it's useful. There is a definite guilt you get from that sort of thing like the worst situation, the more useful. Anyhow. No, so that's sort of the only difference that happens with growing up in gay and it means that most You certainly, in my generation, most gay men came to sexual or romantic maturity later. And there's lots of explanations of that maybe being one of the reasons for perceived or otherwise promiscuity among gay men, which is, I think, more easily persuaded by the fact that gay men behave like men would if women were men.

What is the nearest thing we have to find in the point?

So what's the meaning is a hard one, of course. Where is the meaning? It's slightly easier. And I said that everyone can find that. You gravitate towards the places you find meaning. Now there's a conservative answer to this which is quite useful and it's certainly more useful than any others because the conservative answer is find meaning where people have found it before. It's a very good answer. If your ancestors have found meaning in a place of worship or a particular canon of work, go there because it's been proven by time to be able to give you the words. Much more sensible than saying, hey, I don't know, discover new ways of meaning. But love is probably the nearest thing we can have to the divine on earth. And of course, the problem of what exactly what type of love we mean is an issue.

I do like definitions, I just say they need to be pinned down. But let's not go there because it's.

Well, no, because as you know, I mean, because of the different varieties of love and the fact that we have one word for it and our culture and it means an awful lot of things and we don't delineate it. Yeah. Well, but let's say human love with the greatest fulfillment in sexual fulfillment in sexual love with another person is probably the greatest information you can have of what might otherwise only be superseded by divine love. And it's the, um, the sense that all young lovers have, which is that they've just walked through the low door in the garden and found themselves in place. And that this is, there's a beautiful, beautiful perm of Can I read it to you? Yes, please. I'll try to find, there's a beautiful poem of Philip Larkins, which slightly says what I'm, I'm trying to dark your question by referring to other people, but maybe that's the best way to answer the question.

So there's a poem by Philip Larkin called High Windows, which is remarkable because he came to sexual, he had a rather unhappy sex, but he came to sexual friction of the 40s and the hell that involved. He took a regard as being a really remarkable and important view on the sexual revolution of the 60s, which is the most people who has generated all the people resented the young. They resented the freedom they had, and actually they pretended the freedom is terrible, and it was always kind of likely to. And if I can rather surprisingly, the very conservative person took a different view, and he says it in his poem, and the opening of the poem, as he says, When I see a couple of kids, and guess he's fucking her, and she's taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise. Everyone old is dreamed of all their lives. Bonds and gestures pushed to one side like an outdated combine harvester, and everyone young going down the long slide to happiness endlessly. I wonder if anyone looked at me 40 years back and thought. That will be the life, no God any more or sweating in the dark about hell and that. We're having to hide what you think of the priest. He and his lot will go down the long slide like free bloody birds. and immediately, rather than words, comes the thought of high windows, the some comprehending glass, and beyond it the deep blue air that shows nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

He found it in seeing a couple of young kids, and knowing that one of them was wearing a diaphragm. Do you see what I mean? First of all, it's very counterintuitive, but secondly, this is the point that sex has been so tied up with misery. I mean, people don't remember this now, and they talk about... the past. I mean, there's one of my favorite books, Stefan Svikes, the world of yesterday, including the descriptions of what it was like, hey, I'm trying to have sex in pre-first world war Vienna. You know, all the men ended up going to pre-mail prostitution, you know, so many of them got syphilis. And this was their first experience of sex. It was so god damn awful, and they were stuck with it all their lives. And there's lots of stuff that's conveyor in that sense. And that's one of them. But you ask about, yes, I do think that love is basically the thing that gives us the best glimpse of the divine.

No. I mean, it throws in an entirely, it threw in another set of problems.