EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,006 words- 0:02 – 3:39
YouTube strikes for “hate speech” just for sharing a conversation
- JRJoe Rogan
Keep this about a fist away.
- DMDouglas Murray
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
(clears throat) And we're live. Douglas, first of all, thanks for joining me. Appreciate it.
- DMDouglas Murray
Great pleasure to be with you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Looking forward to talking to you.
- DMDouglas Murray
Likewise.
- JRJoe Rogan
You've become, uh, an example to me ... or your conversation with Sam Harris has become an example to me of how squirrelly things have gotten lately with the way people interpret conversations about ideas.
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because of this. Jamie, pull that thing up. This is, uh, a tweet that someone sent out, and he got a strike, a community guideline strike-
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... just for listening, just for putting you on his playlist, a conversation between Sam Harris and you, and, uh-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... he, this man, um ... or I don't know if it's a man. I'm b- I'm, uh ... I just assumed. I'm, I'm a problem. I'm part of the problem, part of the patriarchy. P-T-R-K-C-C-X on Twitter. Uh, that is his screen name, his, or her, or zir screen name on Twitter. And got a community guideline strike-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for just putting this. Now I brought this up to ... uh, I was having dinner with some friends, one of them who used to work at Google, and someone who was there was a, uh, you know, highly ranked person at YouTube. I brought this up. And the exact quote was, uh, "That was because it's hate speech."
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I said, "You said that so flippantly." I go, "Please tell me the contents of the conversation." Do you know what they talked about?" I go, "How did you say that?" She goes, "Well, I'm sure if someone m- marked it as a community guideline ..."
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"That ... Or, or as a c- strike, a community strike ..." What is it called? A community guideline strike? Yeah. "That they must be hate speech."
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm like, "Do you, do you understand this is Douglas Murray and Sam Harris?"
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I, I, I bet, I bet that's not what the conversation was about."
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs) I, I, I bet it wasn't too.
- JRJoe Rogan
S-
- DMDouglas Murray
I'm try- I'm trying to think what we did talk about now. It's making me nervous. I mean, but I know that ... I know it definitely wasn't hate speech, by any sane definition of those words. Um, but th- the, you ... this is, this sorta thing is very disturbing to me-
- JRJoe Rogan
Very disturbing.
- DMDouglas Murray
... because, um, you ... and you noticed it happening with other people, of course.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DMDouglas Murray
And that's disturbing enough. It's more disturbing, of course, when it happens to you, but slightly surreal. Uh, uh, I mean, I know Sam Harris a bit. Um, not a hateful person, uh, uh, my most sorta yogic, calm, blissed-out, West Coast of America friend. And I'm, um, pretty amazed that anyone at Google or anyone else would think that anything that could come out of his mouth was hate streetch- uh, hate speech, unless you decided that hate speech is just anything you personally don't like or that words don't matter anymore.
- 3:39 – 4:28
From “troublemaker” labels to incentive structures that create extremists
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, I had ... uh, another thing that I talked about with this, uh, same person, I brought up Jordan Peterson and, you know, that there's, there's issues with every time he's on podcasts, the podcasts get flagged-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for demonetization, and, and-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the exact words were, "He's a troublemaker."
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs) Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I'm like, "What in the fuck are you talking about?"
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, do ... are you listening to his conversations? He is very articulate, and he's extremely careful-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... going over these ideas-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that I think we should all be discussing. So, to call this hate speech or to call someone a troublemaker, it ... to me, it's symbl- simplify- or symbolizes what we're, what we're dealing with today. This is a very strange time when it comes to communication and the people that regulate and distribute our communication.
- 4:28 – 10:06
How “hate speech” inflation backfires: cynicism, gate collapse, and history repeating
- DMDouglas Murray
It, it, it is, and, uh, whenever I've had a chance to speak with people in that kind of world, who ... in that sort of role, the question I always want to ask them, among other things, is, "Do you know where this is gonna lead? Um, do you know what it's gonna do if you keep breaking down definitions, and terms, and words? Do you know what happens, for instance, down the road, if, if you keep on saying that Sam Harris and Douglas Murray having a conversation about something is hate speech? Do you know what relief that's going to give other people down the road about what they're gonna be able to get away with?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- DMDouglas Murray
This is what's being created all the time at the moment, it seems to me, this, this idea that you, you police the discussion along incredibly narrow lines to- uh, that happen to surround your own comfort zone, um, a- and call everything outside it ... not just stuff I don't agree with or things that I would argue with or debate with, but hate speech. Uh, it's just, I think, very, very dangerous down the road. You can see exactly the trail that bit of gunpowder goes to.
- JRJoe Rogan
(smacks lips) I can. Where do you think it goes?
- DMDouglas Murray
I think it goes to a point where people become cynical about any, any claims made about anyone. And the likelihood is that if 99 times you've seen Sam Harris, Douglas Murray, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, whoever called hate speech, then the hundredth time that somebody uses the term hate speech might be on somebody who is engaging in hate speech, and all your defenses are gonna be down. You've got nothing ... you're, you're very likely to become ... uh, very unlikely, sorry, to become skeptical-... um, and think I'm really gonna dig down. Most of us don't have time. We don't have time to, to find out every single thought and word that someone has uttered or thought. And so it seems very likely to me that down the road, very, very bad people are able to get through the gates because we kept on making erroneous claims frivolously for our own short-term gain and for our own short-term comfort and will end up basically bringing the gates down completely.
- JRJoe Rogan
I agree with you, and I, I think there's been a lot of discussion lately as well that I agree with where when you make these ridiculous claims about conversations-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... you, you empower, you actually empower radical people who oppose left-wing ideology.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
They get more extreme. You empower the extremists because they know that you are incorrect. They have evidence of it, they see your ridiculous behavior. And the other really disturbing aspect of it is these are the people that are distributing speech in-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... I mean, I, I mean, think about how many discussions are viewed daily on YouTube. It's stunning.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, th- there, um, y- there's so much. I mean, we're at the beginning of this, aren't we? Because, I mean, there's a long way for this to run-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DMDouglas Murray
... a long way for the censorship to run, a long... You can't help thinking, among other things, that the people trying to make the rules at the moment have no idea of the fact that these debates have happened before-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
... or have not bothered to look into them and seem to think that history started with them. And, and I just wish that among other things with social media, people realize we, we, we have been through this several times before at least and, and the lessons are pretty clear. Uh, they are not that you can limit speech in order to attain political nirvana, for instance. Uh, nor are they that you can simply use, as I say, for short-term gain, accusations you know to be wrong-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
... in order to further a short-term political goal. Uh, uh, we, we know all this. We, we've been through it. Printing press, we went through it with John Stuart Mill, we went through it with Milton. I just wish these people had any idea of the fact that history started before their parents conceived them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's such... The, the, the whole culture of, uh, tech today is such a progressive thought bubble. It's, it's an echo chamber and it's very, very-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, like I said, it's better that they're really progressive and open-minded and left-wing than radical right-wing. I think it's better.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, uh, no, I agree. I mean, if, if, if by radical right-wing you mean, you know, kind of neo-Nazi-
- JRJoe Rogan
Racists.
- DMDouglas Murray
... racists or something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, of course. Um, although these people have all, as I say, all the ability to create those people.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
Um, which is-
- JRJoe Rogan
And empower.
- 10:06 – 12:58
Cancellation dynamics: fear, permanent records, and the internet’s unforgiving memory
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah. And, but it's not surprising that more people don't want to stick their heads above that parapet-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
... because, I mean, if you had a normal job, uh, you worked in a normal office or shop or something, you, you really would don't want this coming towards you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
Um, I, I mean, this, this can tear apart and tear down people who spend a lifetime demonstrating they are not the thing-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
... that they're being accused of. So if nobody knows anything about you, you have no particular persona out there, you have no particular back record, uh, you don't want this thing coming to tear your life down.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, because r- recovering from that accusation is almost impossible and would take forever.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes. It is basically impossible, and all that you do along the way is to, to keep reminding people of the charge. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's true. Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
And, and if you were to ever win on a technicality, like everyone would have forgotten, you know. Oh yeah, that's the, uh, that's the racist.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the rapist. Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
That's... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean...
- DMDouglas Murray
That's the guy who was pro-rape, isn't it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. (laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, I remember him. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's so simple, but it's... I feel like we're in some strange adolescent stage of communication, and there's been, uh, a bunch of talk lately, uh, there's, there were some... Something that I tweeted earlier today, some new technology that they believe where AI is gonna allow people to literally see other people's thoughts.
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I, I am... I, I mean, I am-
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... forever optimistic but also terrified. And my feeling is that our transition from language... Here it is, new AI system can see what you are thinking-
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, yeah, yeah. So it is.
- JRJoe Rogan
... which is just, what the hell does that mean? I'm, I'm concerned but also optimistic. I feel like we're in this transitionary period from regular communication to written communication, to written communication online-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to speech online, video online, where there's this instant access to all this and these ideas are being debated and tossed around like beach balls in real time.
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And ideas are being distorted. Uh, people's positions are being distorted-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for, for other people's gains, and that there is this willful...... misuse of the truth.
- 12:58 – 24:48
Social media as addiction and “idea sport”: outrage, points, and constant conflict
- DMDouglas Murray
It is about that at the moment is, um, how can we make sure that- that the other side trips up on this side? I've- I've thought this, I've written this all- all through the Me Too, uh, era that, uh, in- in your country and in mine, people basically are willing to go for somebody who is a political opponent who does something very minimal, and they're willing to defend somebody on their own side who does something bigger.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DMDouglas Murray
And- and you can see it all the time. It just, there are different standards that apply to your own side than apply to the other, and people don't seem to be hiding it very much anymore.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not at all.
- DMDouglas Murray
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
They really don't have the ability to hide it.
- DMDouglas Murray
No. We had a case recently in the UK where, um, somebody who was a great, uh, hero to the left, for all sorts of complicated reasons, um, was- is accused of some fairly um- fairly serious groping accusations, among others. And exactly the left-wing MPs who had been claiming that somebody who had sent out a tweet about a woman's breasts in 2009 should never hold any role in public, said that this person, who just happened to be a friend and an icon of theirs, was a changed man and we have to recognize it's 18 months ago now.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
And you know, it's ...
- JRJoe Rogan
My favorite video on this was, uh, there was a guy who is, uh, some relig- religious Christian man on television and he was talking about Trump. And he was talking about who Trump was before he became president. He goes, "But I don't know about you, but I found Jesus and I did not have a past."
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Put praise Jesus. And he's- he's saying this at everyone's chair-
- DMDouglas Murray
Wow.
- JRJoe Rogan
He, whoever he was before he found Jesus, like-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... as if Trump got into office-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and was like, "You know what? I'm a new man."
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"I found Jesus."
- DMDouglas Murray
I got the Jesus pass.
- JRJoe Rogan
All that stuff that I did the last 70 years ...
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
Well, some people- some people do think that it was- it was a- a journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, a very distinguished figure in the media, um, some years ago. But who, it was often noted that his, he converted to Catholicism and he, uh, uh, a mutual friend once said that it was noticeable that Malcolm Muggeridge always attacked a vice immediately after he had become incapable of it himself.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs) When it was clear that Muggeridge didn't have as much sex as he'd did fairly often in his youth, sex was a big problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's a giant problem.
- DMDouglas Murray
And, uh (...)
- JRJoe Rogan
Needs to let everybody know.
- 24:48 – 29:50
Trolling, threats, and the Erdogan poem stunt (plus the “donkey porn” saga)
- DMDouglas Murray
... I do sometimes read what people s- say, send to me. Um, and I've never blocked anyone, because I sort of think you should might as well ... If you put your ideas out there, you might as well be as open as possible to receiving them back. Uh, some time ago when I got into a row with a, a, with the, uh, Turkish president about, uh, about something, uh, uh, I got all these Turkish, uh, uh, sort of accounts sending me stuff. There's one guy who just repeatedly sent me, uh, pornography of animals having sex with-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
So (laughs) I don't know. It, it was very, it was very hard core. And, um, and so, I used to go down the feed and there were ... That guy ... And I didn't even block him, actually, because I sort of thought, "Well, somewhere in Turkey (laughs) is, is a really angry man, desperately finding horse pornography to send to me."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
And in a way, I felt so sorry for him that that was how his life had come a ... You know, the end his life had come to at this stage, that I, I couldn't even block him. And also, he'd be like, "I'm the donkey porn guy who got blocked by donkey."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
Now, he, he'd get a certain fame. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
What was his motivation for sending you this stuff?
- DMDouglas Murray
He ... I had ... Um, it was because, uh, uh ... Well, the, the short story is, uh, a couple years ago, uh, the, the Turkish president tried to get the German chancellor to imprison a German comic for a very rude poem he'd read on air on German television that was insulting about the Ge- the Turkish president. And the German authorities actually started a case against the comedian-
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- DMDouglas Murray
... for insulting the Turkish president, Erdoğan. And, uh, I, uh, decided to launch a, uh, uh, an offensive poetry competition to offend the Turkish president.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
And there was a £1,000 cash prize, and it sort of took off and in the end, the now Foreign Secretary entered and won. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- DMDouglas Murray
That was great. Yes. It was really good because at, at, at the same time that the Germans were looking at imprisoning a, a comedian, uh, the, the now Foreign Secretary of the UK was guilty of precisely the same alleged crime, i.e. meaning it wasn't a crime, it couldn't be a crime. A, a couple of other people did. A wonderful, uh, Dutch comedian friend, Hans Jansson, uh, sort of did a similar thing at the time. He, he decided to do an interview live on Dutch television, explaining how much he hated Erdoğan because he still owed him money from the blowjob he'd given Erdoğan in a sauna.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
And (laughs) , and ... It was live, live on Dutch television.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ugh. Oh.
- DMDouglas Murray
And the Dutch authorities were looking at ... Actually, were looking. They were asked if they would prosecute him. But anyhow, but the, but this was, this was ... I had a great time with this, of course, and I wrote a limerick explaining how, um, abusive I wanted people to be about Erdoğan, that it was necessary to be highly defamatory and you, you wouldn't get away with it if you just called him a wanker or something. So, I wrote the opening verse and invited the world to contribute, which they did.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
And it became, among other things, the highest-paid poetry competition in the world,'cause if, if like me, you wrote a limerick, j- just five lines, this is £200 a line. I mean, no, no, uh, poetry, uh, uh, magazine could pay you for such, uh, uh, such, um, such work. So anyhow, on the basis of that, I became very, very unpopular in Turkey, and, uh, there were many, um, many, uh, pieces talking about how this gay, atheist, terrible Erdoğan hater in Britain was exactly what we were up against, so-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
... him and his poems ... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh my God.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, the German, uh, government was a- actually considering-
- 29:50 – 42:47
Charlie Hebdo, narrative reframing, and the “internalization of the fatwa”
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Well, obviously, the worst case of retaliation for humor is probably Charlie Hebdo, right?
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, which is a, a-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... terrible and-... unfortunately, many people, um, weren't defending the murder but were talking, the murderers, I mean, I think-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... how many... I think it was 11 people-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that were murdered.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah and, and a policeman also.
- JRJoe Rogan
And a police officer. Um, they, but they were saying that instead of concentrating on the murder, which was done completely out of this reinforcing their rules of their ideology-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and, and retaliation for any mocking of that ideology. Instead of that, they were talking about how racist Charlie Hebdo was.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
There was a lot of that. In fact, my friend Jamie Kilstein was a part of that.
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
He was on television d- back in his super social justice warrior days talking about that.
- DMDouglas Murray
Don't you wish, among other things, that people said, "No, I'm not talking about something if they don't know about it"?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
You know, my guess was that until, until the murders, I mean, an infinitely small number of people knew about Charlie Hebdo outside of France.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
I, I found myself in the wake of that, uh, in studios with people who I know had just Googled Charlie Hebdo the day before. I know that they'd just gone to Wikipedia and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
... and read an English version of a claim about what that magazine was about. It goes back to that thing about, my point about the journalist and the Holocaust denial thing that just, just root around, a bunch of people have been killed, this doesn't seem to vindicate my side's ideology, therefore, let me find what I can do to defame them. And oh good, somebody at Charlie Hebdo once did this cartoon that was off color and I can't understand what the, the words are beneath it, but I'll, I'll claim it's racist. I mean, people were actually doing that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
They're actually, there were, there was a, um, there was one cartoon that was used against Charlie Hebdo after the massacre, uh, that was a joke against the Front National and the claims they were making about a Black woman in Sarkozy government. But because they, the joke and the, the j- if you didn't speak French, it wasn't clear apparently, but it, and if you knew nothing about recent French history, you knew nothing about the soc- the Sarkozy administration and the, and the, and the minister in question, these people just went to it and said, "Racist cartoon."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- DMDouglas Murray
Not noticing that the cartoon was actually a joke about racists, but they didn't, they didn't bother to find that out. And I thought that, I thought that whole thing, among many, many other things, was deeply worrying from that point of view, because it means that in the immediate aftermath of something that should be so damn clear, a bunch of people can just try to reframe the narrative.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
And re- and change the history of a publication. (laughs)
- 42:47 – 51:43
Escalation chain: from cartoons to texts—BBC self-censorship and clerical veto power
- JRJoe Rogan
One of the more uniquely American responses to the Charlie Hebdo attack was they had a Draw Mohammed contest in Texas.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes, I followed that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that was fascinating. And some guys-
- DMDouglas Murray
In Garland.
- JRJoe Rogan
... showed up and started shooting at the building.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they were killed almost immediately.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is because they're in Texas and-
- DMDouglas Murray
(sighs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... that's just not the place to fuck around. (laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
Uh, true, although, I mean, it's, it's worth mentioning that, I mean, the, the, the, uh, editor at Charlie Hebdo had police protection-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DMDouglas Murray
... in Paris and they just, I mean, I suppose they, it's not worth dwelling on, but I mean, they, uh, the, the, the battle-trained, uh, people who were sent from Yemen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
To carry out that operation, which just were better prepared than, than-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
... the French authorities realized. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, but n- very few people are, uh, really ready to militarize cartoonist offices.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, and that's really almost what you would have to do. You would have-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to have, you know, Navy SEALs with bulletproof vests.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes, and then-
- JRJoe Rogan
Locked and loaded.
- DMDouglas Murray
And then let's face it, I mean, the whole thing, then you do start to question, you know, like, well, is this cartoon that funny-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. (laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
And so on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
And that, that's what they actually have done at Charlie Hebdo. They have, um, they did it a while ago, say, "Look, we're, we're not gonna keep doing this."
- 51:43 – 1:00:58
Religious literacy gaps, mythic perfection, and radicalization/deradicalization
- JRJoe Rogan
How many people do you think read it? How many people do you think read the Bible? Like, if you had to, like, guess-
- DMDouglas Murray
There are those-
- JRJoe Rogan
... the number of Christians in this country is probably-
- DMDouglas Murray
There are those tests, aren't there? They sometimes do, the Humanist Society in UK-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
... did a few years ago asking very basic questions-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DMDouglas Murray
... of self-professed Christians about their knowledge of the texts and very few, like, I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
My favorite is self-professed Christians with religious tattoos. Like, "Hey, man, you gotta read the whole book."
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Like, you, you are literally showing-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... on your skin-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that you didn't read the whole book.
- DMDouglas Murray
Right. Didn't pay attention in the early bits.
- JRJoe Rogan
It says don't do that.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
This is Leviticus. Is it, is it Leviticus that's, uh, that's got the implications against writing on skin, I think?
- JRJoe Rogan
I believe so. I believe so.
- DMDouglas Murray
I think if you read Leviticus, there's a heck of a lot you can't do if you, if you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
... if you go down Leviticus, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
I can't wear two pieces of different cloth.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes. Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
Leviticus.
- JRJoe Rogan
Leviticus is a wonderful book.
- DMDouglas Murray
It's got be... It's very good for the mohawks, yeah.
- 1:00:58 – 1:08:51
Dawkins, Al Jazeera, and the real boundaries of criticism
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales) One of the weirdest conversations that I ever saw anybody have with someone who was a believer, um, was, uh, Dawkins, I think it was-
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... was, uh, having a conversation with someone and he asked him point-blank whether or not he believed that Muhammad split the moon.
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, yes. I think I know this was with a, a very close enemy of mine called Mehdi Hasan, who, uh, worked for Al Jazeera and who Richard Dawkins did a interview with, and I think he... That's right, he fluffed something earlier on, uh, Dawkins, he, that he didn't take him on then, he took him on on this. That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- DMDouglas Murray
And I think that Hasan said yes-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- DMDouglas Murray
... didn't he?
- JRJoe Rogan
He said yes.
- DMDouglas Murray
And then... And then it led to this terrible problem, which is, uh, really interesting, interesting problem of our era, which is that then Dawkins said, "I can't believe that somebody..." Or said afterwards, "I can't believe that somebody could be a working journalist and believe that, you know, Muhammad flew to the moon on a half-human horse."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. (laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
Um, (laughs) and, uh, of course, I mean, there's a, there's a, uh, interesting point there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
But of course, we do, quite rightly, allow people to believe bizarre and insane things-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, sure-
- DMDouglas Murray
... of that ilk.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in Christianity. It's filled with bizarre things.
- DMDouglas Murray
And... Exactly. And if we started saying you can't have public office or work in journalism if you profess to be of this particular faith, then, well, we wouldn't get anywhere, we wouldn't have anyone left, and so...
- JRJoe Rogan
How does the story go? Muhammad flew to the moon on a half-human horse?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And split the moon with a sword? Is that what he did?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, I can't remember. He could've then been attacked by female bears, but I can't remember. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
No, I can't... Yes, he... It's the night journey which is, uh, uh, central.
- JRJoe Rogan
And how did the moon get glued back together again?
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, I don't... Is it glued back together?
- JRJoe Rogan
It looks like it is. I haven't looked close.
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Maybe I need to pay more attention.
- DMDouglas Murray
(exhales) Yeah.
- 1:08:51 – 1:17:23
Terror attacks, media responsibility, and Europe’s accumulating trauma
- DMDouglas Murray
I, uh, I have a, I, I, I second to no one in my gloominess about some of the things that we're gonna go through in Britain and Europe in the coming years, but, um, I recently had a reason to be even more gloomy about one aspect of it relating to this, which is this. We had, uh, three big bad terrorist attacks last year in, uh, in the UK, including the Manchester Arena bomb, where 22 young people were blown up on a Monday night for going to hear Ariana Grande. Um, and a- after the third of those attacks, which was on London Bridge when, uh, three people who were actually known to the authorities, as they generally are, uh, slashed people's throats on the street and ran to Borough Market as people were drinking, and, like, stabbed people while shouting, "This is for Allah." After the third of those attacks, it was, it felt like, "Oh, God, is this, is this really just gonna keep happening? What are we gonna do about it and what can we do?" And after the Manchester one in particular, there was this kind of thing of everyone sang, apart from John Lennon's Imagine, there was Oasis hit, Don't Look, Don't Look Back in Anger. And these themes, I was like, we weren't meant to think anything other than that. We weren't meant to be angry in any way. And, uh, then, then just a terrible thing happened from another direction. Uh, outside Finsbury Park Mosque, which is a mosque with a very troubled and bad history, um, in London. Uh, um, a guy from Wales in a van drives into the crowds as they're milling around outside the mosque, kills one man and injures a number of others. Uh, that guy, by the way, just to show how complex all this can get, is, uh, he was tried and found guilty last month in the courts in the UK. Uh, he, uh, he had been... He was obviously very mentally deranged and he had a history of mental illness and all that sort of thing, as very often people do in these situations, but he, uh, he had watched a BBC drama called Three Girls, which is the first time that the BBC had really addressed the issue of the Rotherham, uh, Rochdale rape gangs that happened in the last decade in the UK, which is still a sore that's going on, where about 1,500 girls in one town alone were basically, uh, abused by, uh, gangs of Muslim, mainly Pakistani men. And it's a very, very ugly business, partly because it was so awful that nobody, that nobody at the state or the police level or anything else wanted to look into it, and they are now. The government inquiry said that they, they didn't look into it because they were worried about being called racist and Islamophobic and so on. The press did a lot of not being interested in this as well. Eventually, after all these years, the BBC makes a documentary called Three Girls about three of the girls who suffered from these rape gangs, and then a man in Wales sees it and gets so enraged, people say at the local pub he was railing against the bloody Muslims and all this sort of thing, and then he hires a van and drives into a crowd of people outside a mosque. And you have this awful feeling that the BBC didn't want to deal with the issue that the program was about for years because it was so awful and ugly and sounded like something made up by some kind of nativist racist, you know, so it's had everything. Um, and then they do, and then it turns out a member of the public sees it and drives a van into a crowd. Yeah, I mean, you know, this, this sort of couldn't get more complex in a way. So, and I thought after that, "Okay, maybe, maybe the, maybe the BBC were right. Maybe they shouldn't, maybe they should cover up the gang rape of 1,500 girls. Maybe the public can't cope with it."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
"Maybe they will get into vans." Now, as it happens, I know the British public, I think, fairly well, and I think that that guy in Wales is a very, very unusual figure. I don't think it's very common, I don't think everyone's gonna do that. I don't think we're all like that wicked madman. But I don't know. I mean, I don't know for sure everywhere, I don't know what the, I don't know what would happen in this country or in various other countries if there were three attacks like that in quick succession. I don't know. But i- this is, this is really...This is gonna get complex.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's already complex. And th- the response to it is complex, too. Wh- how do you, how do you, if you, if you are a journalist, if you are, um, a television channel-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... how, how do you report on this?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you think about the responsibility of alerting someone-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to these actual real atrocities that's gonna force them to react on innocent people that did nothing in front of this mosque?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the fact that these people in this mosque are somehow or another connected-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to these people that did these horrible crimes just by virtue of the fact they're in the same religion-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... that's insane, too.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's all insane.
- DMDouglas Murray
It's, uh, uh, I mean, it seems to me the only, the only way through it is to say First of all, I, I, I mean, I don't... I, I read the American press all the time, and I think that it's, it's worse than the British press in, in, in that self-appointed role of believing its task is to stand between the public and the facts, you know, and sort of negotiate between the two, uh, see what they think the public can cope with or should know, and then feed them that. Um, i- i- the American press seems to me to be rife with that, that temptation, a- as ours is. But it seems to be the only way around this is, is to not, not give into that and to try just to publish the facts when they happen, because it's just obviously seems to be much wor- We, we always know in political scandal what's worse, the cover-up. It's always the cover-up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
And that, that may be the case with all this. Maybe, maybe the, the argument for just the papers explaining stuff that's happened is... maybe that's, maybe that's all they can do, and that it, one could just say to them, "It'll be a lot worse if you bottle this up, because otherwise people will get the idea that there is some conspiracy to cover over certain stories, and, and they'll be onto something."
- JRJoe Rogan
And in fact, if you think about the millions of people that must have seen that, this story on the rape of 1500-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the fact that only one person responded that way-
- DMDouglas Murray
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... is pretty extraordinary in and of itself.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes. Yes. I, I, I would've... And I would have thought on some of this... I mean, you know, I don't know. Again, I mean, there are... uh, there are lots of examples one could use, but, uh, when something bad happens like the Manchester Arena attack, uh, I'm, I'm amazed in a way that people are so decent. I mean, I'm so pleased they are. But they... we really, we don't go out looking for people to attack. You know, the, the, the public, certainly in Britain, I can happily say, and I think it's the same in America, the public... we're not really lynch mobs waiting to be got going again.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- DMDouglas Murray
But the expectation that we are is the only possibility of creating us in such a way. Um, it's only by treating us as if we can't deal with ugly things that go on that you could see the situation, it's where we began, th- to see the situation in which that all goes wrong in that different way.
Episode duration: 1:56:17
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode rBp4afbDeLk
