Is Social Justice A Religion? - Andrew Doyle

Andrew Doyle 0:00 There are all these crazy activists online with anime avatars and "Everyone's a fascist, a homophobic Nazi," whatever. They see it everywhere and they probably believe it. But then you have the politicians, the civil servants, the journos, the people who, when you ask them, "What is a woman?" they go, "Uh, um, well, you know, it's complicated." And, "Uh, uh..." And you see the fear in their eyes. They know that all of this is bullshit, but they're gonna go along with it because they think they will preserve themselves by doing so.

Chris Williamson 0:24 Andrew Doyle, welcome to the show.

Andrew Doyle 0:25 Thanks for having me.

Chris Williamson 0:27 As a man who has dedicated his life to thinking about fashion and style, I'm sure that you're familiar with the recent New York Times article, "Redefining what 'hotness' means," saying that, "'Hotness' is no longer in the eye of the beholder. It's a mood. It's a vibe. A social media movement inspired by the rapper Megan Thee Stallion strikes back at the gatekeepers of beauty." Do you see this?

Andrew Doyle 0:48 I am not familiar with this at all, but maybe it's because I don't go out of my way to find fashion articles.

Chris Williamson 0:52 Wow, that surprises me.

Andrew Doyle 0:53 I have no read this.

Chris Williamson 0:53 So, many people, many people are expanding the definition of hotness, taking it beyond its former association with old notions of attractiveness. These days, being hot no longer pertains to only your physical appearance, but includes how you move through the world and how you see yourself. Many of those pushing for a broader understanding of the term are also pushing back against the idea that you need to wait for confirmation from someone else before feeling justified in calling yourself hot. To them, hotness is a self-declaration, and that's that. "Hotness" is no longer in the eye of the beholder. It's a mood. It's a vibe. Emily Sundberg, 28-year-old editor and filmmaker in Brooklyn, was eating spaghetti when she had a realization. She was hot. There was nothing glamorous about it.

Andrew Doyle 1:32 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:32 It was just a solo weeknight dinner in the kitchen counter, and Ms. Sundberg was wearing workout clothes and glasses, but she felt moved to make a video of herself as she twirled pasta strands on a fork and succeeded-

Andrew Doyle 1:43 For God's sake.

Chris Williamson 1:43 ... succeeded in getting most of them all the way into her mouth. As she chewed with Kanye West's "Jail" blaring in the background, she stared into the lens with a blank expression. So this is hotness in Zoomer generation.

Andrew Doyle 1:56 What's the sexuality, the sexual orientation, where you're attracted to people because of w- the way they think, their brain? Is this one of-

Chris Williamson 2:01 Oh.

Andrew Doyle 2:02 It's something like sco- scopiosexual or sc-

Chris Williamson 2:05 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Doyle 2:06 Some-

Chris Williamson 2:06 Sapiosexual.

Andrew Doyle 2:07 Sapiosexual, there we go. Sapiosexual. Oh my god. Um, yeah, I d- I wasn't familiar with this article, but, you know, e- e- it's, I, I guess it's fitting into this, this whole movement's obsession with the way that b- beauty is a, is not a thing. Beauty is a sort of a, a, a patriarchal Western construct, and, um, therefore anything can be beautiful. But the thing is, some things just aren't. (laughs) Right?

Chris Williamson 2:30 I've seen the video of her twirling her s- noodles, or pasta, or whatever it is-

Andrew Doyle 2:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:35 ... into her mouth. Uh, I've seen it done better. It's, ff- first off, it's not the thing that I think of in the top echelons of hotness. And I've seen it-

Andrew Doyle 2:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:43 ... done better. But, "You don't have to ask for permission to be hot online," Ms. Sundberg said. "There's not one thing that defines what hot is. It's confidence. It's the way you dress, it's the way you present yourself to other people."

Andrew Doyle 2:54 But you don't, you don't get to decide whether you're hot. Well, for one thing, it is subjective. Let's be honest. People are attracted to different types, you know? Some people are attracted to, m- you know, skinny people, some people are attracted to fat people, some peo- You know, that, you know, blondes, brunettes, whatever, it, that's true. Um, but you don't get to decide that you're attractive as a kind of label, right? I can't (laughs) can't say that I'm-

Chris Williamson 3:14 Can I not self-identify as hot?

Andrew Doyle 3:15 Well, that... Uh, I wouldn't have thought so, because to whom? Pfft, you know, doesn't it depend? What if someone's... You know, oh, someone who's a... Like, you won't be hot to a lesbian, will you?

Chris Williamson 3:28 Well, maybe that's their prejudice showing.

Andrew Doyle 3:31 Well, if you were the head of Stonewall, that's exactly what you would think.

Chris Williamson 3:34 Ah, yeah, you had a run-in with them. You're not, you're not-

Andrew Doyle 3:37 Have I?

Chris Williamson 3:37 Well, d- I mean, just generally, you're always unhappy with them.

Andrew Doyle 3:40 No, it's not... I'm not unh- Well, no, I am unhappy with them because I think, you know, it's, it's such a shame that an important gay rights group in the UK is now, uh, promoting anti-gay ideas. So yeah, that makes me a bit sad. Um, Nancy Kelly, the CEO of Stonewall, described wom- women, lesbians who want, who don't want to have sex with people with penises, who identify as women but are male, she described them as sexual racists. I think that's a problem. She compared them to anti-Semites. Uh, I think we used to call that kind of phrase, uh, homophobic, didn't we? So yeah, I do... And, and my issue with Stonewall, you know, quite apart from all the other things, is that I invite them onto my show constantly, all the time, and they just never say yes, 'cause they say, "We don't have debate." But I wanna ask them about their policies. I wanna ask them why they changed the def- the definition of homosexual on their website and their promotional materials to same gender attracted, which is not what it means. It means same sex attracted, because gay men aren't attracted to people who identify as men, they're attracted to men, and uh-

Chris Williamson 4:38 It's very much about the penis with gay men. In my sort of tangential understanding of what gay men like, it's very much about the penis.

Andrew Doyle 4:46 Don't pretend that's, don't pretend that's tangential. You've done some research.

Chris Williamson 4:48 (laughs)

Andrew Doyle 4:50 (laughs) Clearly you've done some research.

Chris Williamson 4:50 It's about the penis, and not just the penisplasty. It's about the...

Andrew Doyle 4:56 Yeah. I mean, that, well, that's clearly an e- an element. And y- the i- the... You know, I get that, that there's more to, uh, same sex attraction than genitals. That's absolutely true. But it, but you're, you can't feign sexual attraction and you can't relearn, uh, your innate sexual orientation, which is what they're kind of implying. What Nancy Kelly is saying in Stonewall is what the homophobes used to say to gay men, you know, "You haven't, you just haven't found the right girl yet." You know, "You need to open your mind a little bit more," or, "You need to..." You know, all of that stuff. It's just recycled ancient tropes. It's really, it's really sad.

Chris Williamson 5:30 So are they, are they saying you haven't found the right trans man yet?

Andrew Doyle 5:34 Uh, well, they're suggesting that if you, if you close off certain demographics from your dating pool, then that's the result of bigotry. But of course, everyone does that. Everyone does that in one way or another, because everyone has a, a type, uh, someone that they are, types of people that they are attracted to. And sure, sometimes there can be people from other categories that surprise you or what, whatever. Sexuality is complicated. But the idea that if you're not attracted to a certain type of person, you need to relearn that and examine your own bigotry and prejudice is just, it's just homophobia dressed up as something else, that's all.

Chris Williamson 6:06 Well, it's also happening elsewhere, right? So if you can-

Andrew Doyle 6:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:08 ... see how this hotness discussion would slowly encroach onto some sort of bigotry-

Andrew Doyle 6:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:15 ... men that don't date...... bigger women would be sizeism.

Andrew Doyle 6:17 Right.

Chris Williamson 6:17 Interestingly, you don't see as much about women dating short men. There's not really as much criticism for women for doing that.

Andrew Doyle 6:24 No.

Chris Williamson 6:24 If you've got some five-foot-five guy and he's saying, "Well, why is it that women shouldn't date me if I have to date fat girls?" Doesn't seem-

Andrew Doyle 6:32 Yeah. The, I mean, this idea that you, you have a right to be, to be attractive, to be considered attractive, and you have a right to go out with someone. Like, if someone says no, isn't that the end of the conversation (laughs) ?

Chris Williamson 6:44 Uh, I don't know, maybe not anymore. So this Sundberg lady finished up here and she said, "That doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that you have to be the most symmetrically, physically perfect human being. I feel like that isn't even as desirable anymore. Our definition of attraction and attractiveness has expanded so much." Well, your publicly stated preferences have, but your revealed preferences, something would tell me, is going to end up with you not sleeping with the homeless guy on the street that doesn't have a job and only has, like, two teeth.

Andrew Doyle 7:13 Yeah. Yeah. Quite. Exactly. This person's a hypocrite, right? I, I, I missed this article, I don't know how I missed it. Did this go viral? I normally get sent this nonsense. 'Cause when (laughs) I normally... 'Cause m- my job now, every day, you know, I get up in the morning and I, I, uh, I search for this stuff. Or people send me this stuff, because I obviously have to collect material for my show on the Sunday. Um, so I don't normally miss stuff.

Chris Williamson 7:33 This one snuck underneath the radar. Well, I've got-

Andrew Doyle 7:35 Wow.

Chris Williamson 7:35 I, I went to, uh, the Heterodox Academy Conference, uh, Jonathan Haidt thing out in Denver.

Andrew Doyle 7:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 7:41 And, um, I was sat around the table with a bunch of different people and we were all sharing our favorite resources for where we go for interesting news articles. And, uh, I'll send them over to you once we're done, but there's one called Clown World Today that has a Telegram chat.

Andrew Doyle 7:53 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 7:53 They have a Telegram chat where they send out one news story each day. And that is... Just if you're short on things to talk about, that will be a, a godsend.

Andrew Doyle 8:01 Oh, that's great. No, send me that, that's brilliant. Although, look, to be honest, I'm not short of stuff.

Chris Williamson 8:04 (laughs)

Andrew Doyle 8:05 Like, it is, you know-

Chris Williamson 8:06 Yeah, you said, um, before you started the show, you were worried that you were gonna run out of stuff to talk about if you had to do a, a regular segment-

Andrew Doyle 8:11 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:11 ... on culture wars, and you're killing babies on a daily wa- a daily basis.

Andrew Doyle 8:15 Hilarious. 'Cause when I started at GB News, I was appearing every night on the Andrew Neil show in a segment called Woke Watch. And, uh... Well, most nights, it, um... And there was concern, "Yeah, you're, you're not gonna be able to appear every night, 'cause there won't be a story every day." There's m- always a few stories every day. And then, certainly from my Sunday show, which I go through everything that's happened in the week, I mean, I always have to leave a lot out. Um, yeah. Well, it's mad, I mean, it's g- and it's got, it's escalated a lot worse since I saw you last.

Chris Williamson 8:42 Sadly, yeah. Well, I mean, speaking of that, uh, Ben

Chris Williamson 8:45 Shapiro's presence is a terror.

Andrew Doyle 8:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:47 "Organizers of a podcast conference in Dallas, Texas drew backlash Thursday after they took responsibility for 'harm' caused by The Daily Wire podcast host Ben Shapiro's presence at the conference. Podcast Movement, a major annual conference for the podcast industry, issued a profuse apology on Thursday after attendees complained that Shapiro was spotted at the event near The Daily Wire booth." Re- remember that Ben Shapiro is one of the two founders of The Daily Wire.

Andrew Doyle 9:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:09 "Daily Wire sponsored this year's conference, and Shapiro, host of the massi- massively successful The Ben Shapiro Show podcast, was seen pictured walking around the expo arena." Did you see the first tweet-

Andrew Doyle 9:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:19 ... that someone responded, "As a trans person, as a queer person, as someone with a uterus, this does not make me feel welcome. This does not make me feel safe," one of the conference attendees posted on Twitter after sharing a picture of Shapiro standing by The Daily Wire booth. Does Ben Shapiro make you feel... You know, you know Ben, like, quick-speaking, little hat him.

Andrew Doyle 9:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:39 Does he make you feel unsafe?

Andrew Doyle 9:41 (laughs) Um, I, we have to get beyond this unsafe nonsense. We have to stop taking it seriously when anyone says it. It's the go-to thing, isn't it? Ca- Ben Shapiro is not a threat to anyone. He's just maybe has a different opinion than you. Like, just, this is, it's so childish. Um, but it's happening all the time. Thi- this phrase unsafe, it's been used against me, of course. I've had the same thing. I lost a job because someone claimed that my presence made them unsafe, because of a joke I'd told. Uh, this sort of thing happens all the time. Um, when Jerry Sadowitz, the, the Scottish comedian, he had his show pulled at the Edinburgh Fringe, uh, last week. Um, b- and the, the venue said that his material was making people feel unsafe. So even now, comedy promoters are claiming that words are violence. Uh, it's, I mean, it's something you and I have discussed before. It's something that we've been warning about for a long time. But look, we just need to start laughing in people's faces when they say this stuff. It's absolutely ridiculous. Words are not hurting you. If you're offended, then, then that's fair enough. Everyone gets offended from time to time, that's being human. But you're not physically harmed.

Chris Williamson 10:43 The groveling apology from Podcast Movement said, "Hi folks, we owe you an apology before sessions kick off for the day. Yesterday afternoon, Ben Shapiro briefly visited the PM22 expo area near The Daily Wire booth. Though he was not registered or expected, we take full responsibility for the harm done by his presence."

Andrew Doyle 11:00 That's amazing.

Chris Williamson 11:00 "There's no way around it. We agreed to sell The Daily Wire a first-time booth based on the company's large presence in podcasting." Let's not forget that they've got probably two or three of the top 10 podcasts in the world at any one time.

Andrew Doyle 11:14 Right.

Chris Williamson 11:14 Matt Walsh will be up there. Uh, Ben Shapiro will be up there. The Morning Wire is unbelievably huge. It's this 15-minute thing that's now making movies-

Andrew Doyle 11:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:22 ... and blah, blah, blah. "The weight of that decision is now painfully clear. Shapiro is a co-founder. A drop-in, however unlikely, should have been considered a possibility. Those of you who call this unacceptable are right. In nine wonderful years growing and celebrating this medium, PM has made mistakes. The pain caused by this one will always stick with us. We promise that sponsors will be more carefully considered moving forward."

Andrew Doyle 11:43 The pain, the pain. It was a brief visit, right? He said here Ben Shapiro briefly visited. If that's all it takes to, to, to, eh, eh, you know, reduce you to conniptions, then you really need to see a doctor about that. Because that means (laughs) , it... I mean, I don't know what to do about this sort of stuff. I, uh, you know, I've been railing against it while, you know, I've written a book now about it. I'm, I'm, uh, I, I think we need to stop tolerating it. I think we need to laugh it out of existence, to be honest.

Chris Williamson 12:11 I think, I, I think that there is a very real place for ridicule to be used here-

Andrew Doyle 12:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:16 ... as one of the most important, uh, pushback mechanisms. Because w-... the game that's being played a lot of the time is this sort of faux intellectual, lexical overload, semantic game, f- Brazilian jujitsu fuckery that's going on.

Andrew Doyle 12:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:31 And, uh, uh, trying to engage with it on a serious level kind of legitimates the position that the other side has. Whereas if you see what happened-

Andrew Doyle 12:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 12:42 ... with, uh, PC and then with the word woke, how quickly it became, you can't use the word woke, unironically anymore. It's not a serious term. And the reason that that happened is because people like yourself and other comedians and online commentators very quickly made it a caricature of itself. And-

Andrew Doyle 12:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:00 ... you can try and mandate something or, um, how do you say, logically reduce it down so that people don't want to be associated with it, but if you just make it so uncool and socially toxic to be associated with that no one wants to use it anymore, that's it, dead in the water.

Andrew Doyle 13:15 Yeah, well, I've tried that. I mean, I've done a lot of the comedy stuff and the satire stuff, and I've, uh, written two satirical books mocking this thing. My new book is not that. My new book is trying to get to grips with it. However, what I would say, in my defense there, is I get what you're saying about, you know, you can't really reason, but the, but the, the new book I've written isn't aimed at the woke, it is about the woke. And it's therefore an attempt to, uh... because most of the people who support, who think that they support woke, the woke movement, or whatever we wanna call them, the critical social justice movement, whatever, they don't really fully grasp what they're about. And so this is a book where we talk through what, where I try and explain what it is that their objectives are, how really the culture war is a, uh, a battle over language and who gets to define language. I mean, you've raised it yourself there, political correctness, woke. I've got a whole section of the book about the evolution of the word woke and how it was a form of self-identification for activists at one point, and then because people like me started mock, uh, using the word to describe them, sometimes in a mocking way, they then started to pretend that it was a right wing term that people like me had invented as an insult, uh, which isn't true, because, you know, we can check that on Google. Just go back, people used to, uh, self-identify as woke all the time. There are, I've got screenshots of loads of Guardian articles talking unironically about being woke. So that's not true. So, um, but, but that's what they do, is that because this is a culture war about language, uh, these people who I call the new Puritans in my book, w- continually redefine language and then they will tell you that they haven't done so. So, you're using words that you always used to use but now they're telling you they mean something different. So you used to think the word racism meant prejudice or hate against someone due to the, the color of their skin, and now you're told, no, it doesn't mean that. It means an equation, prejudice plus power, and it's to do with power structures in society, and therefore, white people, uh, non-white people can't be racist and et cetera, et cetera. Um, and you're told, no, the definition's changed now. Even though no one really uses it in this way, you h- we're telling you it's, it's done this way now. So, um, yeah, so I think there are two prongs in, in, in the pushback, and I think one is humor and one is satire. Mm-hmm. And, and we can keep doing that, but I think you need the other prong as well, because I think you need to persuade the unpersuaded. And there's a whole army of decent liberal-minded people who are probably quite humorless, a lot of them. They're not gonna respond to the satirical approach, they might even think it's mean. Uh, and particularly because they don't, they th- they have fallen for the lexicon, they have fallen for the, the linguistic trick, right? They hear phrases like social justice, anti-racism, equity, and they're like, "This sounds great. I'm opposed to racism, I'm for justice and equality. That's brilliant, so I will support this. And if you don't support this, then surely you're a nasty reactionary." And they've fallen for that basic trick, and that's part of the point, of course. So what I'm trying to do in the book is sort of talk through what these phrases actually mean, what the implications actually are, and how this movement is against liberalism. If I, I, you know, I say that, um, I make the point that I think the closest synonym to the word woke is anti-liberal. And I think that's what this is, is an, an explicitly anti-liberal movement. If you read the early critical race theorists like Richard Delgado, he explicitly says, "We are against liberalism. Uh, liberalism fails us because, because prejudice is built into the liberal system." So, uh, you know, it, it's, um... yeah, it's about, it's about language. That's my, that's my take home.

Chris Williamson 16:41 Is this a new phenomenon? Because to me it seems like the semantic fuckery that we've got that's going on is happening-

Andrew Doyle 16:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:47 ... at a quicker pace.

Andrew Doyle 16:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 16:49 Maybe it's simply that we have a record of it that's b- uh, kind of, uh, kept i- online for everybody to see at all times, and, uh, the Wayback Machine and archive.org and stuff helps you to be able to compare what was and what wouldn't be. Whereas, I guess 1984 in a world where you can actually get rid of the history of things is a little bit different. Is, is this a new phenomenon? Have words been being reinvented to be used to manipulate impressions for a long time? How does all that work?

Andrew Doyle 17:16 Um, well, I mean, it's a- there have always been people, and particularly ty- tyrannies have always, um, redefined words or limited the, the words that can be used, um, in any given situation. Or they've, uh, you know, I mean, you just have to read 1984 to understand how, how that's working. But people have always done this. I mean, phrases such as, um, when the CII- CIA started calling torture enhanced interrogation, for instance, uh, that would be an example. There've, there've been all... In, um, in The Gulag Archipelago, there's an example of this, uh, where Solzhenitsyn talks about, and I can't remember what he says. I can check it actually. He says, um, he's talking about people who are sentenced, sentenced, and they don't use the phrase sentencing. They use something else. I can't remember what it is. I'll, I'll have to find it for you at some point. Um, but they, you know, tyrants have always done this. They've always played word games to try and create a false reality that you have to subscribe to. I think though there's something going on at the moment where what the social justice activists do is maddening, because they don't just modify meanings and modify definitions. Often, the things that they say are the direct opposite of what they mean.... um, and that is, a-a-a-a- and it leaves you unmoored and confused, and of course, they-

Chris Williamson 18:30 What's an ex- what's an example of that?

Andrew Doyle 18:32 Sorry?

Chris Williamson 18:33 What's an example of that, where they say something that's the opposite of what they mean?

Andrew Doyle 18:36 Okay, so they have, uh, convinced most people that trans conversion therapy is the equivalent to gay conversion therapy. And so you had a lot of Labour MPs standing there with placards saying, "We want a ban on trans conversion therapy." What trans conversion therapy means is a young person who has feelings of gender dysphoria goes to an expert, a specialist, and the specialist talks to them about it, but doesn't just affirm the gender they think they are. Uh, doesn't just fast track them onto puberty blockers, but says to them, "Let's investigate this a bit through therapeutic means. Let's discuss, maybe it's to do with maybe you're gay and you're, you're, you're struggling with that. Maybe it's autism, because there's a high preponderance of autistic people that fall into that category, et cetera." And trans activists have called that trans conversion therapy. So now, Labour... But what that means, of course, is you are affirming gender dysphoria among predominantly gay kids, and fast-tracking them on puberty blockers that will essentially heterosexualize and fix those gay kids. So you actually have... And that is a form of conversion therapy. So, when a Labour MP holds a placard saying, "Ban conversion therapy," the placard actually means, "I support conversion therapy." It's tough, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 19:46 Yeah. Well, it is for

Chris Williamson 19:47 you. So you, in the new book, you say that we're living through a frenzy of conformity.

Andrew Doyle 19:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:51 What's that mean?

Andrew Doyle 19:54 What I mean by that is that, uh, we are expected to go along with the rubric. Uh, that everyone is, um, effectively... The Overton window is shrinking to such a degree, and if you dare to stray outside of it, if you dare to challenge some of the, the norms of the, or the, the ideas of the social justice movement, uh, they'll come after you. They'll consider you a pariah. Even the slightest point of disagreement and they will, they will devastate your life and they won't hesitate to bully you, trash your reputation, target your employer. What we call cancel culture, uh, in other words. And so, people are, uh, conforming. People are taking the, the path of least resistance. Now, in the, in my book, I talk about Salem a lot, and I draw, I draw comparisons between what happened with the witch trials of Salem at the end of the 17th century and what we're living through now. Because what interests me about that is Salem, it, this was not a typical thing that would happen among the Puritan community in New En- New England. This was, they were not witch hunters. This wasn't who they were. They weren't like the witch hunters of Europe who killed, burned thousands of people. Uh, this was an aberration, this was, this was odd, and it only lasted a year. It started very quickly, and then it died off very quickly, and afterwards, everyone said, "We got that wrong." Everyone repented, you know? They knew it was wrong, they just got caught up in this hysteria. But the reason why it happened is because the elites, the magistrates and the ministers, went along with it, uh, and I think, the more I've read about it, I've read a number of books about it now. The more I've read about it, I've realized that that is large- that was largely due to self-preservation, for reasons of self-preservation. It's per-

Chris Williamson 21:29 Give us, give us the... I want, I want the full understanding of the Salem witch trials and why it came about, 'cause I've heard it, it get bandied about as a, a thing that, uh, happens in popular culture, but I don't understand what went on.

Andrew Doyle 21:41 Well, okay, I will tell you what went on, and, and I talk about it extensively in my book because I think it c- I think, as an analogy, it helps us, it helps to explain a lot of what we're living through now. But also, I think it holds the key for how we're going to escape it, and that's why I wanted to draw this connection. So, this was, uh, 1692, there's a, a small community, Salem Village, um, and there are, uh, it's a Puritan community, it's a very God-fearing community, cr- uh, very devout. Uh, the Reverend Samuel Parris, uh, has a, a daughter, Betty Parris, and also has a niece, Abigail Williams, and they, they are young girls and they live with him, along with two slaves that he has. Uh, one of the slaves is called Tituba, and she, uh, spent some time in Barbados, and she has all these sort of voodoo-style spells and things which are perfectly harmless. Clearly, she plays these games with the kids and she teaches them these spells, and it's, it's, it's not, they, it's not meant to be taken too seriously. Then Betty Parris starts, uh, acting in a funny way, uh, is bed-ridden and has visions and thinks she can fly, and all sorts of things like this, and, and, um, and a local physician thinks she's been possessed by the devil. Then Abigail Williams has a similar reaction and says that she has seen witches in the community. And before long, other girls, friends of theirs, people who have associated with them start saying, uh, you know, "The, this woman's a witch, that woman's a witch." Startin' ch- startin' accusing people. Often, the targets are quite obvious. People, uh, people like, uh, Bridget Bishop, who was the first to be hanged. You know, she was known for being, wearing ostentatious, showy clothes, which was unusual in a Puritan community. She ran two taverns where people would get drunk and have, well, not to get drunk, but have fun and carousing, late-night carousing, you know. And, um, and, and so she's an obvious target to accuse. Uh, also, there were rumors that she'd taken a lover out of wedlock. And suddenly, all these people start getting accused. But it mounts and it grows, and then when people start being skeptical and saying, "Look, maybe this isn't real, maybe the girls are just hysterical, maybe the girls are just going through a, a silly season," you know, those people get accused as well. And it soon becomes clear that anyone who casts doubt onto the girls' testimonies will themselves be accused and, and hauled into court. And some of the most devout people in the community, Rebecca Nurse was one of the m- most devout Christian women of that community, an upstanding, hugely respected member of the community, and she was accused of being a witch as well. She goes to court. In the courtroom, these girls point at the, the accused, scream that that, that woman is sending th- her spirit out to pinch them, choke them, attack them. Sometimes they see the spirit fly up onto the beam as a, as a, as a, uh, a yellow bird, or they can s- or, you know, so they see all this and they describe it, and they're screaming and writhing.They mimic the actions of the accused. So when Bridget Bishop is standing at the- at the, uh, on the stand, and she rolls her eyes because of what the girls are doing, all of the girls then simultaneously roll their eyes, and it gives the impression that they're possessed. And- and this is taken as proof, uh, that these women are in fact witches in con- in consort with the devil. They called it spectral evidence. And in my book, I compare that to lived experience, because the girls say, "This is our truth, this is our perception, and we don't need any other evidence than that." And then they start being sentenced to death and hanged. Uh, anyone who was accused who confessed to witchcraft wasn't hanged, because the Puritans believed in mercy, and they were very lenient if you confessed. So the ones that hanged, and in the end 20 were executed, they would have been the most devout of- of- of- of the Puritans, the most- the most God-fearing, because they're not gonna damn their soul by lying in a court of law. Um, so, th- there's a few reasons I wanted to make the connection with Salem. Firstly, there's the- the sheer hysteria of what happened there. Uh, th- this idea of- of the human susceptibility for group think, going along with false narratives, because it explains something that's quite difficult to understand. But most importantly, it's the fear that it inspired. It's the fact that, um, people conformed. You see, I think the hysteria may have been real among the girls. There's all sorts of theories about why they were experiencing, uh, th- these panics. Maybe they thought they were seeing witches, we don't know. Um, but what is for sure is that, uh, some of the judges didn't. Because whenever they accused a local dignitary, someone who meant something... So they accused the governor- th- they accused the, uh, colony- colony's governor's wife. So th- the go- the governor of the colony was a man called William Phips. The girls accused his wife, and the magistrates in court said, "You're wrong. You've made a mistake. Move on." Right? That suggests to me they didn't believe it. Reverend Hale, one of the reverends, they accused his wife. They said there's nothing happened. She wasn't arrested either. Um, all sorts of examples like this. Um, they accused a man called Reverend Samuel Willard who was, um, at the time, the acting president of Harvard. So a very powerful man. Very God-fearing, godly man. And they accused him, and the magistrates said, "No, you must be thinking of Constable John Willard, who has the same surname, but he's already- you've already accused him and he's in prison, so we can move on now." So there's all these examples where we can tell that the elites didn't really believe it. There was one moment in court where a girl pulled out a small, broken off bit of a knife, a little bit of a blade with some blood, and said, "Oh, this woman's just sent her spirit out and stabbed me with this." And a man in the court said, "That's from my knife. It broke off yesterday, and you saw it, and you picked it up." And the court just said, "Okay, well, we'll ignore that and move on," even though h- she was just outed as a liar. So why that's important for what we're going through now is there are all these crazy activists online with a- avatar, an- anime avatars, and th- they will scream all their nonsense. They see fascists everywhere. Everyone's a fascist, a homophobic, Nazis, whatever. They see it everywhere, and they probably believe it. And they're the equivalent of the girls who are pointing the finger and charging people. But then you have the politicians, the civil servants, the journos, the people who when you ask them, "What is a woman?" they go, "Ah, um, well, yeah, yeah, it's complicated and uh, uh," and you see the fear in their eyes. Um, they know that all of this is bullshit. Um, but they're gonna go along with it because they think they will preserve themselves by doing so. That's what the elites in Salem did. That's why it went on for as long as it did. It went on for a year, just over a year. Um, so I think those comparisons are really- are really important because I think the problem isn't the activists. The problem is capitulation to the activists. We, you know, we- we see it again and again. They are so powerful now among all of our major institutions, the civil service, they're in the NHS. The day that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, the Ministry of Defense on that day put out a tweet talking about how their LGBT+ coffee morning had been such a success, and we got to talk about pansexuality. You know, which seems frivolous, but a- it's the Ministry of, of Defense, you know? On the same day, the- the Daily Mail reported that MI6 and MI5 were urging their spies to acknowledge their white privilege. Now, it wouldn't matter if it was just activists. It matters because it's the powerful people. Last year in Ontario, a school board, uh, which is in charge of 30 schools, removed 5,000 books from the school libraries because they considered them to be offensive and harmful because they create- contained outdated stereotypes of ethnic groups. They burned a number of the books on a f- on a pyre, and they used the ashes to fertilize a- a tree, a beautiful gesture, and they called this a flame purification ceremony. Now, this is, uh, straight out of the Nazi playbook. You can't- I mean, you can't- I mean, th- the burning of books, you're thinking of the Opernplatz in, in Berlin. You're thinking- you know, the- it- you can't evade that, and you're certainly calling it something as Orwellian as a flame purification ceremony. That wouldn't matter if it was a bunch of idiot activists burning Harry Potter books, as they sometimes do, and posting it on Instagram, as they sometimes do. This matters because it is a school board, a district, people in authority, and they, although they may not be caught up in the hysteria, they know that they should go along with it for their own good. The, um... Arthur Miller, when he wrote The Crucible, which is his dramatization of the witch trials in Salem, it was written in the early 50s, I think 1952, 1953, uh, he wrote that because of McCarthyism and he was so stimulated. Not... Mostly, he said, he said this in an interview with The New Yorker, he said that mostly he was int- he was- he was upset about the people in power who were going along with lies for self- you know, for self-preservation. So it's something that happens again and again. And, uh, so I- I've- I've tried in my book to draw this comparison with Salem, because like I say, I think- I think it reveals something about what we're experiencing now, uh, and I also think it reveals how we might escape from it. But maybe we'll talk about that later on. I don't know. I've b- I've been blathering on for a while now.

Chris Williamson 30:38 What is it? I, I, I understand the dynamic. I can see the, the parallels between the two. Why do the elites, the people who have the power, decide to comply with a group of people that don't-

Andrew Doyle 30:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:55 ... have any power? Was it, was it important in Salem, the fact that the two girls were the niece and the daughter of somebody that wasn't super low prestige? For instance, had it have been the lowest of the low, would they have been given the same degree of, uh, room to speak?

Andrew Doyle 31:11 Possibly. We don't know that. I mean, possibly, it was considered particularly horrifying that this was happening in a, in a reverend's house, in, in, the clergyman's house. But, uh, the girls were relatively powerless. But this was the thing, is that, that, and s- the girls suddenly became powerful through victimhood. All of a sudden, and this is another major parallel, I think, all of a sudden, these girls had found a way to be the most powerful people in the community. They, they could sentence you to death. They could have you killed. And, and they were, but they were also able to put, say they were on the side of the angels. Right? Well, who does that remind you of? You know, the, the incredible power that the social justice ideologues have, uh, uh, the power to destroy someone's life and career, if they just choose to do so, if they deliberately misinterpret or misrepresent what someone says. Uh, and they can do it by saying that they're the good guys, they're the virtuous. #LoveWins, guys. You know? That's, that's them. So I, um, whether it would have happened if it were different girls, whether it would have started, there are a lot of sort of specific reasons why it, it happened early on, why it started the way it did, but once it had exploded, they could have been anyone, really. But, you know, there are... The, the downside to that, of course, is, and the other, the other parallel is, uh, they, the girls were powerful, but no one wanted to be around them. They were also, uh, people were scared of them. And after all this ended, they, a lot of them had very d- great difficulty in maintaining any kind of relationships of any kind, marriages or friendships. Uh, so, and you notice that with the extreme social justice activists, if you're in that group, you're safe, but these aren't people you would wanna be friends with. They turn on each other so viciously sometimes as well. They're scary people. And when all of this ends, I c- I can't imagine, uh, this working out well for them particularly, but it's that, it's that dynamic of people using victimhood as a means to bludgeon others. And I think that's where the, the, the parallel is absolutely

Andrew Doyle 33:14 clear.

Chris Williamson 33:15 If you start to use weakness or victimhood as a, as something to be upheld, as something to be pe- pedestalized, that seems like a very dangerous position to get yourself into, because there is no limit. There is a limit to how competent you can be. Your competence is limited by your competence, right? But your ability to pretend that you are a victim is basically limitless. The, the, the-

Andrew Doyle 33:39 Right.

Chris Williamson 33:39 ... hole continues to go down as much as you want.

Andrew Doyle 33:42 Well, particularly if it's just based on lived experience-

Chris Williamson 33:45 Well, precisely.

Andrew Doyle 33:46 ... what you fe- what you feel. I mean, I could say that anything has traumatized me, and therefore, that's my lived experience, and therefore, I can decide that the, the, the innocuous thing that you said to me the other day-

Chris Williamson 33:56 Yep.

Andrew Doyle 33:56 ... was a homophobic hate crime. I've decided it was homophobic. And that, by the way, is, is, is current police practice. You know, the r-

Chris Williamson 34:03 So a, a precise part of this or a, a, a really important part of this is the spectral evidence thing.

Andrew Doyle 34:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:08 It's the fact that interpretation and, uh, a low barrier for what constitutes verifiable-

Andrew Doyle 34:20 (thumps desk)

Chris Williamson 34:20 ... usable evidence, that facilitates all of this. Because without-

Andrew Doyle 34:25 100%, yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:26 ... w- without that, you actually end up crashing up against rigor and scrutiny.

Andrew Doyle 34:32 The reality.

Chris Williamson 34:32 Yes.

Andrew Doyle 34:32 And reali- uh, you know. Exactly right, and that's gonna be the way out. At the moment, we have a police force that records hate crime on the basis of the perception of the victim alone. In other words, if someone decides that what somebo- something that someone else did was homophobic, it's recorded as a hate crime, even if that person didn't mean it that way. It doesn't matter. It's the lived experience alone. The police say it explicitly on the College of Policing website, "Perception of the victim." By the way, they call them the victim, rather than complainant, because, of course, it's about lived experience, so we don't need a, a trial. We can bypass due process. Um, similarly with spectral evidence, same thing. But the great thing about Salem, uh, and what eventually happened is, uh, the deputy governor wrote to ... and he should have done this straightaway. I don't know why he didn't. He wrote to the leading clergymen in the country and said, "Oh, by the way, is spectral evidence admissible in court?" And they all replied and said, "No. By no means. It's not, it's not admissible. It's not, you can't use it, uh, to prosecute." And all of the cases collapsed. So all those dead people, they, they were, they were prosecuted for nothing. And, and that was it, done, overnight, done. And if the police and the authority figures of today, and the Guardian and all the others that uphold this nonsense, if they were to say, "Look, you've come to me with your lived experience, but your lived experience is not evidence of anything beyond your own experience, and it cannot be extrapolated to be used as such," I can't say, based on my own experience of being gay, th- the times that I've been, uh, you know, homophobically abused or whatever, and I can't then say, "Oh, well, that means we live in a deeply homophobic country." No, it means I've experienced homophobia a few times. It's, uh, like, so that, my lived experience isn't invalid. It, you know, and, and I'm not, uh, it's not to suggest that you can't learn from other people's personal experiences. I'm not saying any of that. But it can't be used as the basis to formulate national policy. Uh, uh, and so that's where I think the fact that Salem fell apart because of the spectral evidence was deemed inadmissible, what if we all just decided tomorrow lived experience, we can't, we can't do anything with that, we can't draw anything from that? Then this stuff ends, doesn't it?

Chris Williamson 36:44 ... do you believe, on balance, that if you were to get rid of lived experience that it would be a net positive? There will be some people out there for whom the law or the way that, uh, pains and issues are recognized doesn't fit within existing paradigms of justifiable things. And they, you know, there will be some people out there who do have a lived experience that doesn't have a pre- a precedent for them, and they go, "Well, look, like, n- n- I'm now no longer protected. People are no longer standing up for me." Isn't that a bad thing?

Andrew Doyle 37:13 Well, like I say, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't listen to people's experiences and we shouldn't take them seriously. Uh, w- you know, what I'm suggesting is that they shouldn't be used to damn and condemn others, because it's insufficient. Um, I, I think that's a, I think that's a fairly fair, uh, way of looking at it. I think, you know, anecdotal evidence, we all, all know is can be useful and illuminating, but it can't be anything that we base broad conclusions on. And I think that's, uh, I don't think that's a controversial thing to say, personally (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 37:46 One of the other elements here is that it seems like the Salem witch trials were, uh, based around a legislative process, right?

Andrew Doyle 37:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:54 This was happening in court, and everything hinged around the, the lived experience stuff. What you have now, it seems to me that the situation in the modern world is a little bit more complex, because a lot of the enforcement isn't necessarily coming from the powers that be.

Andrew Doyle 38:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:07 A lot of this enforcement is coming along the sides, and it's, you know, bottom-up, right? It's emergent, not, uh, dictated. How do you-

Andrew Doyle 38:15 Well, it's a bit of-

Chris Williamson 38:15 ... how are you gonna deal with that?

Andrew Doyle 38:16 Well, it's a bit of both though, isn't it? Because those at the top are c- as I say, capitulating to these pressures from below, and laws are changing, and, and things are, you know ... Th- we, bec- because it's capturing so many institutions, it's captured a number of... We've had a number of, um, near miscarriages of justice as a result of this, because this stuff has seeped into the legal system as well. Thankfully, it would appear at the moment that the High Courts are not captured, so what tends to happen is you'll get a terrible decision in the court, and it will be reversed on appeal by the Higher Courts. Uh, so this, this is, uh, one of the ways in which people like Maya Forstater, uh, eventually won her case for har-

Chris Williamson 38:52 What was that?

Andrew Doyle 38:53 Maya Forstater was a tax expert, is a tax expert, sorry, who, who was, uh, dismissed from her job because she, uh, she, um ... How can I say? Well, she acknowledged the biological reality of sex differences, uh, because she has gender critical views. Um, and as a result of that, she was, um, she lost her job, or her contract wasn't renewed, and she took them to tribunal because she said, "Well, look, this is just because of my personal beliefs." Uh, they made up all sorts of lies. They claimed she'd misgendered someone at work or harassed someone, and none of that was true, and that's all now on record, but ... So she took them to the tribunal, but the tribu- it found in the employer's favor. The tribunal found in the employer's favor and said that her opinions about biological sex differences were not worthy of respect in a civilized society. And I can't remember the exact phrase. It's a legal phrase, but it's, it's, it's something of that kind. So then she had to appeal, and on the appeal, it was ... And it was a, it's a great thing that Maya Forstater won that appeal because what that means is there is now a precedent in law, it is now established in law that to believe that there are two sexes and that sex is immutable, that is now a protected belief by law. So now, whenever any feminist gets fired for making that statement, uh, the employer has broken the law, and it will be reversed. So what I'm saying is we, we can still rely on the courts to resolve a lot of this at the moment, but what if we don't stem this momentum and when the High Courts get captured, then we're screwed, because then you're in a situation like, you know, some of these medical journals that are now completely ideologically captured, where you get a major medical journal, massively reputable, uh, magazine talking about how sex is a, a spectrum. And, you know, and they know it's not, and I know it's not, and I barely scraped my biology GCSE and I know it's not. Um, but you've got the, the top minds in the world in this field saying something that even I know is not true, so ... And that's really scary. So then you get that legitimation crisis where figures in authority can no longer be trusted. At the moment, we can't fully trust the police, we can't fully trust the, uh, the, the journalists, we can't fully trust politicians. But the High Courts seem to be pretty sound at the moment.

Chris Williamson 41:03 Social media platforms as well, I suppose-

Andrew Doyle 41:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:05 ... are a huge contributor here. What about, um

Chris Williamson 41:10 ... I, I read a, a post from Andrew Sullivan a little while ago, earlier on this year, where he thinks that we've passed peak woke.

Andrew Doyle 41:16 Huh.

Chris Williamson 41:16 He said, he said that peak woke was June, July 2020, and ... I, I don't really know, I don't understand the burblings, but I'm gonna try and bring him on to have a discussion about this, but I, I don't really understand the burblings below the surface. But it definitely does seem to me, at least a little bit, like the very extreme held social justice-y sort of views are kind of becoming a meme of themselves now, but I don't know if that's just my echo chamber.

Andrew Doyle 41:45 Well, I thought that before (laughs) . I thought they were always a bit ridiculous, um, uh, and I thought that we would just, you know, laugh them off because so many of them are really stupid. You know, when you get, I don't know, like, like the Wi- the, the William Hogarth exhibition in London recently where the curators had put up all these really weird notices next to all the pictures problematizing them, and talking about slavery and things that weren't necessarily relevant to the, the pictures. And so there was one even, there was a, uh, a self-portrait of William Hogarth sitting on a chair, and the note said, "The chair's made of wood, and that wood probably came from some plantation."

Chris Williamson 42:23 (laughs)

Andrew Doyle 42:24 So, you know, maybe we should ... It was really, really weird. So that stuff's quite funny, or when, like, when they put trigger warnings on major works of literature in, in universities like, um, The Old Man & the Sea, the Hemingway book, which had a trigger warning that said, warned about that this book contains scenes of graphic fishing, you know?

Chris Williamson 42:41 (laughs)

Andrew Doyle 42:42 And so stuff like that is, is funny. And, and-... but it's still being- that was applied by a major university, by academics in a major university. We're not talking about these mad, pink-haired activists. We're talking about people in figures of authority. I would like to think, I, I mean, Andrew Sullivan, I'm a big admirer of, and I hope, I hope he's right.

Chris Williamson 43:04 Prescient, yeah. That would be nice if he was the Cassandra.

Andrew Doyle 43:06 I hope he's right.

Chris Williamson 43:06 Yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, uh, part of me thinks... I can't work out whether it's an intellectual ghetto to throw these people into higher academia, where they basically get, uh, at least they're not looking after sending rockets to Mars and stuff. But then when you tell me that on the day that Russia invades Ukraine, that MI6 is concerned about their equity coffee morning, or whatever it was that they did-

Andrew Doyle 43:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:31 ... that, that makes me feel like maybe, maybe this has started to creep into it. So, maybe we're not past peak woke. Maybe it is continuing to-

Andrew Doyle 43:38 Well, uh-

Chris Williamson 43:39 ... ascend.

Andrew Doyle 43:39 Well, the thing is, you know, all of this started, obviously, in the humanities. Uh, um, uh, but now it is actually seeping into the sciences. So, you know, when we say it's... The problem is, the next step of this is going to be, I think, I mean, I don't know, I'm not a prophet. I, I think the next step of this is gonna be, how do we now rid the sciences of it? We already had people like, uh, what's her name, uh, Professor Gutierrez talking about how mathematics itself operates as whiteness. And, and, and we've had academics problematizing the notion that two plus two equals four. Which almost feels like they're trolling us, like they, they've picked up 1984 and they're gonna troll us with that. But they, they mean it. Um, but there's a really good example, which I mentioned in the book, which is in New Zealand, where, um, the government in New Zealand has tried to incorporate Maori origin stories into the science curricula of, of schools, because they, these are alternative ways of knowing. And this is a belief system that thinks that the g- that the human race was created by the god of the forest, and that raindrops are the tears of another goddess. And that is now being taught next to, you know, osmosis and peristalsis and whatever. Whate- like, whatever. Photosynthesis. Like... Oh, and by the way, when it rains, that's a goddess crying. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:00 Maybe.

Andrew Doyle 45:00 Maybe. 'Cause it's alternative ways of kno- of... And, and what was worse about that is that a professor of the Royal Society of New Zealand actually, uh, signed a letter, was one of these people that signed a letter saying, you know, whilst it's great to respect indigenous cultures, and bi-, you know, really, really placating that and not being at all, uh, belligerent, they just said, "Look, it's not, w- science is about the discovery of empirical truths. And so, therefore, we, it's not appropriate to bring these kind of belief systems in, in." Uh, and then he got absolutely nailed and attacked, and all of the signatories of that letter were denounced by the vice chancellor of the university, by, um, the Royal Society, uh, by all of these major figures. Um, and then, and they've been told that, they were told they'd caused hurt and harm, and that was the thing. Uh, so if scientists are being attacked and punished for defending science, if leading science journals and magazines are, you know, publishing things that they know not to be true because it satisfies an, an ideological, uh, perspective, uh, w- then that's actually gonna have a, a major knock-on effect, because it's not like... It's all very well in an English department. If I, if I think that Shakespeare's sonnets are a problematic, um, you know, hetero-patriarchal, cis-normative text, uh, that we'd be better off without, well, who cares, right? Because i- it's, it's the sonnets, and, uh, you know, that... We know I wouldn't wanna live without the sonnets, but we could. But could we live without medicine? (laughs) Could we, sanitation? Um, I think when it comes to the sciences, things either work or they don't, you know? I, I, I just, I think that might be the next battleground that maybe some people aren't quite see- we're seeing it creeping in. Wasn't there a tweet today, actually, uh, where someone, uh, I think, uh, it was the Scientific American? Is that right? Is that a magazine?

Chris Williamson 46:59 Yeah.

Andrew Doyle 46:59 The, the-

Chris Williamson 46:59 Scientific American, I think.

Andrew Doyle 47:00 Yeah, they tw- they tweeted out a thing about the myth of binary sex, the m- like, the, this really unscientific thing that human beings before the 18th century thought, understood human sex as being there's only one sex. Now we believe there's two sexes. But actually, it's all wrong. There's many, many, many, multiple sexes, which there aren't, and no (laughs) no expert believes that. And that-

Chris Williamson 47:21 I saw, I saw in The Economist the other day, "Gay people are reclaiming an Islamic heritage. In the old days, Muslims were quite tolerant of homosexuality. History is complicated, and prejudice has ancient roots. Nonetheless, activists can point to periods of the Islamic past where Arab rulers were more liberal about sex. They relate to how Caliph Amin in the 9th century Baghdad had a male lover and feted gay poets."

Andrew Doyle 47:46 That's, that's true.

Chris Williamson 47:47 Wow.

Andrew Doyle 47:47 I mean, there, there were, there were moments in Islamic history when homosexuality was more tolerated. That, that's not a lie. Um, but, but to suggest that gay Muslims don't have it hard these days, (laughs) which I imagine is the implication there, right?

Chris Williamson 48:00 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Doyle 48:01 I mean, fuck me. That, like, that's not helpful to gay Muslim people, right? That kinda (laughs) kinda thing.

Chris Williamson 48:08 So, you can reclaim it. I mean, I-

Andrew Doyle 48:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:09 Anyone who decides to reclaim their gay Muslim heritage in modern-day Baghdad, I fear, would-

Andrew Doyle 48:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:16 ... if they, if they took the advice of The Economist, would be coming up again. But I, I think that shows as well just how narrowly bound these discussions are. Like, it is-

Andrew Doyle 48:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:24 ... very much, uh, b- for all the talk of the bourgeois, white, cis-heteronormative people sat in their ivory tower talk- like, it, th- that's you. Those are the people that are proselytizing about this. This is literally, like, how blinkered can your worldview be-

Andrew Doyle 48:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:40 ... for you to not realize that there is genuine harm out there? And this is, you know-

Andrew Doyle 48:44 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:45 It, it does feel a little bit like banging my head against a wall talking about this stuff, 'cause you're like, look-... there are genuine problems that are occurring. Many of them are occurring to people that are in minorities or groups that are genuinely oppressed. And the more that you take up people's reserve tank of fucks-

Andrew Doyle 49:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:06 ... to be spent on something which does not justify spending it on-

Andrew Doyle 49:09 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:09 ... that means that they do not get, it's the boy that cried wolf all over again.

Andrew Doyle 49:13 Yeah. Oh, absolutely. What was that quote from, uh, I quoted it in another book I wrote, but, um, from Muslim Girl magazine, I think, where it was talking about the Prophet Mohammed was an intersectional feminist.

Chris Williamson 49:23 (laughs)

Andrew Doyle 49:24 This is-

Chris Williamson 49:25 (laughs)

Andrew Doyle 49:25 This was an ac- an actual... I didn't make that up. Um, you know, you have to... Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it goes back to this point, we have to acknowledge reality as it is, and we have to stop pit-... I mean, this intersectional stuff, because we end up pitting the most reactionary elements within Islam at the very top of this pile. It's so weird to me why you would

Chris Williamson 49:42 I told... Uh, did you see... Me and Douglas spoke about this, did you see that, uh, white gay privilege is now a thing?

Andrew Doyle 49:48 Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. Yeah. I- I mean, th- the, the gays are not oppressed anymore.

Chris Williamson 49:53 Yeah, you are basically straight now.

Andrew Doyle 49:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:55 ... because of your skin color.

Andrew Doyle 49:57 Yep.

Chris Williamson 49:57 You're a, a honorary straight again.

Andrew Doyle 50:00 Basically.

Chris Williamson 50:01 Yeah.

Andrew Doyle 50:01 Basically.

Chris Williamson 50:01 And so,

Chris Williamson 50:02 uh, Helen Lewis just released a BBC Four podcast called The Church of Social Justice.

Andrew Doyle 50:10 Okay.

Chris Williamson 50:11 What's your view on whether or not social, critical social justice is a religion? 'Cause people often-

Andrew Doyle 50:16 Well, a-

Chris Williamson 50:16 ... sort of bandy this about. Is that true?

Andrew Doyle 50:19 Well, that's my whole book, isn't it? (laughs) So, you know.

Chris Williamson 50:20 Well, but, like, how, just how similar do you, d- do you draw the, the parallels in terms of religion, you know, like the, the, um, sacred texts, the idols, the-

Andrew Doyle 50:31 Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, there's lo- look, it's, it's a way that you can understand it, if you, if you perceive it as a religion. Because look, it's a, it's a, it's a belief system, albeit of a secular kind, which, uh, which is largely faith-based, so they believe in these invisible power structures, uh, they believed in lived experience, they believed in all this stuff that you have to just take on trust. And the people who u- are uniquely qualified to detect these power structures are those who have studied Whiteness studies or what- whatever, whatever it might be. Um, so there's that element to it, but also it, it bears all the hallmarks of, of fundamentalist religion, insofar as it, uh, will not tolerate any dissent, it attacks heretics, it roots them out, it, uh, it excommunicates anyone who strays from it. It has its own lit- liturgical cant, doesn't it? Phrases that you're expected to repeat, like trans women are women, trans men are men, et cetera. Uh, it has its own esoteric language, religious, pseudo-religious language. Uh, it, it has its own gods. Uh, Judith Butler, Kimberle Crenshaw, Michel Foucault. Its own saints, at least. Uh, it has its foundational holy texts. Uh, it has all sorts of things in common, uh, with religion. Um, so yeah, I think it's a really helpful way to understand it. But also, the main thing, I think, is that, as Steven Weinberg, the phy- the, uh, physicist said, uh, you know, without religion, you have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. For good people to do bad things, that takes religion. And it makes sense of things for us, because the Inquisitors who, who, uh, burned people at the stake, strapped people to the rack, thought they were doing God's work, thought they were the good guys. The, uh, social justice activists who have this incredible unmitigated rage and ferocity, who will happily destroy your life, they will end you, they are merciless and, and, and brutal, but they think they're doing good. And s- and that, I think, is the m-... That's why it makes sense to think of it as a religion. That's, that's why i- i- it, it helps us to comprehend why... Look, a lot of the people in this movement will be bullies and will be the s- sadists. It attracts people of that kind, because they get to do what they want to do and look like the good guys and they get away with it. But most of them will be really decent people who think that they are upholding social justice and that, who will think that they are combating racism, combating fascists. They probably believe that fascists are everywhere, even though all the studies tell us that they're not. So that's why I think the comparison with religion is important to understand, because I don't want to just dismiss these people as all... You know, if you just judged them on their actions, you'd think, "God, these people are psychotic. They have no human empathy. Just none." But it can't be that, can it? 'Cause I have a, I have a fundamental belief in humanity and I think some people, some people are sociopaths, some people have no empathy, and some of them will be part of the social justice movement, sure. But I think most of them are pretty good people who just, they've just got it very wrong.

Chris Williamson 53:34 Yeah, so there has to be, uh, an explaining principle, if you have a faith in human nature. You've got a quote from C. S. Lewis that says, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." Seems like that relates to what you were just talking about there.

Andrew Doyle 53:52 Yeah. Yes, exactly. Because, I think, as he goes on to say, because you've got the, your own conscience is on your, is on your side, you know? Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. The, the... It's, it's worse, it's more brutal, because, because they think... Well, it's partly because they think any dissenters are, you know, anyone who disagrees with them, has the slightest point of political disagreement, is not just wrong or naive or ill-informed, but evil.

Chris Williamson 54:21 Yeah, heretical.

Andrew Doyle 54:21 And so they're... Yeah. And so therefore, they monster you. And, you know, the, you know, I get a lot of people objecting to the things I believe. 99% of them don't ever ref- faithfully reflect what I believe. It's always things they've assumed I believe. It's always things that the monster version of me that they've created believes. Um, there is a parallel universe with a monster Andrew Doyle who is a fascist, evil, wants all gay people to die, et cetera. All the stuff I'm accused of believing. But I don't believe any of that. And not, not only that, it's on record. Everything I think is really, really out there. So a little basic research would disabuse them of their, of their, uh, views.... uh, J.K. Rowling is another example. The idea that, the idea that J.K. Rowling, someone who is so sort of left-wing and empathetic and gives so much of her money away to good causes, uh, is now routinely smeared as far-right, fascist, evil, witch. Uh, you know, even in the mainstream commentariat, she's called hateful and transphobic, and she's never ever said anything publicly that is hateful or transphobic. So, you're, you're dealing with a complete fantasy world. And, and that's why I wanted to write the book. I wanna try and make sense of, how have we reached this point where people like me, who just u- hold liberal values and free speech and equality and are opposed to racism and discrimination, even that, someone like me can be monstered as far-right and Nazi. That's why I open my book with the, the, uh, the story of my friend who started screaming at me that I'm a Nazi. Because I can't make sense of that wor- What is that world? Wha- That's a world in which reason, uh, uh, and, and logic and rationality has just... It's gone. It can't... That... It's, it's not there. It's a fantasy world now, and I think we need to get back to reality. Let's ditch, let's jettison this fantasy perspective. Most disputes that I see online, or even in the mainstream media, are f- uh, figments of, of someone's imagination. They are two people arguing against specters that they've c- conjured. They're not really listening and they're not really talking about the issues, and I think it's really sad, actually.

Chris Williamson 56:33 You mentioned there about J.K. Rowling being accused of being far-right.

Andrew Doyle 56:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:37 And I'm sure that you get, you get the same accusations as well. Is it even correct, do you think, to characterize the culture war as left versus right at the moment?

Andrew Doyle 56:45 It's 100% wrong. I mean, it's, um... Y- uh, o- one of the reasons it's wrong, I think if you take the UK, uh, sh- the Labor Party, which is the traditionally left-wing party, although not very left-wing now, uh, uh, is completely, um, immersed in this ideological movement, and, and buys into a lot of it. The Tory Party, however, the, the Conservatives, have presided over most of the problems over the past 12 years. They've let it through, they've let it happen. They are also woke. They have a, the new Online Safety Bill, which uses all of the language of social justice about how words can cause harm. Uh, they are part of the problem. Their proposals to revise the Gender Recognition Act, same thing, they believe in gender identity ideology, or at least they will pay lip service to it. Um, we're starting to see pushback now with... Because th- uh, they can see how it hasn't gone down well with the voters, so now you see those, the two people who are running for the Tory leadership both coming out and saying, "No, uh, uh, uh, there's a difference between men and women." Right? They're, they're, th- they're r- they're realizing what's happening now. But this is not a right-left issue. And even if it were, you can vote in a Tory government, a Labor government. You can't vote out the civil service, you can't vote out the quangos, all of which are completely captured by this ideology. Uh, whoever is in government, you will have woke policies running the police, running the NHS. And it's really serious. You know, when, when, uh, the NHS have a policy called Annex B, which means that, uh, they house people on the basis, they accommodate people. They have single-sex wards, right? But people are accommodated according to their own gender identity, not according to biological sex. And what that means is, if I were to say, "I'm a woman," they would have to put me on a ward with women. And if one of the female patients complained about my presence, the official written policy of the NHS is that s- staff, nurses and doctors, would have to say, "No, you are mistaken. There are no men on this ward." In other words, it is written into official NHS policy that they have to gaslight their patients should they raise an objection to this. When there was a sexual assault risk, there was a rape on a ward, and when the police turned up and said, "There's been a rape on this ward," or, "There's been an allegation of a rape," the staff at the hospital said, "That cannot have happened because there are no men on this ward," knowing full well there was someone with male genitalia on that ward. Now, so the, the... It m- it matters, that sort of stuff, obviously, because there's a rape victim all of a sudden who isn't gonna get justice, because, uh, some people have decided that this is progressive somehow. Um-

Chris Williamson 59:11 There

Chris Williamson 59:12 was a story that I saw that came up yesterday. "Trans prisoner convicted of m- uh, who was convicted of manslaughter impregnated two inmates and then attempted to remove his testicles with a razor. A New Jersey inmate landed himself in hospital after he tried to remove his testicles with a razor. Demmy Minor, who identifies as transgender, engaged in self-harm after he was transferred to a men's prison because he had been im- impregnated two inmates while in women's facility. According to his blog, Justice for Demmy, Minor felt hopeless because prison officials doubted that he is transgender. 'I showed my medical records showing that I've been on hormones for years and awaiting gender-affirming surgery, which they're delaying. Started cutting again with a razor. I began making an incision to remove my testicle. In my head, I just wanted the pain to stop, I just wanted to, to get out of this. They don't know what the hell I'm going through.' More than a decade ago, Minor unleashed his, uh, hell of his own. Back in 2011, he tried to rob his former foster parents approximately nine months after he left their charge, and then he stabbed someone to death, who was 69 years old." However, one of the, at least one of the two women that he impregnated is keeping the baby. So, um, that baby is going to have two parents soon.

Andrew Doyle 1:00:15 I mean, that's obviously someone who is very disturbed, and that's obviously someone who needs help, right? But it's also a rapist who shouldn't be in a women's facility, (laughs) r- right? Clearly. And that, and that, uh, so w- w- when... Female prisoners are some of the most vulnerable people. I mean, they may have committed crime, but a lot of them have... I read some statistic about the, the number of them that have had blunt force head trauma because so many of them have been v- they've been victims of domestic abuse, and it's, it's very high. There's a lot of, a lot of troubled people there. You don't want to put an intact male wh- who is pr- who has been convicted of sexual assault. What are... That's insane. I mean, th- I think, uh, the reason why that was, that is still happening is because, I think people don't believe that's happening. I d- I don't think people believe-

Chris Williamson 1:00:57 It sounds so ludicrous, right?

Andrew Doyle 1:00:58 It sounds too impo- impossible. But, but everyone's complicit. The media is complicit. There was an article on the BBC recently about a man in, I think it was in New York-... and it sa- it said, um, so this elderly woman, 70s, late 70s, something like that, this elderly woman cut up two of her elderly female friends and put th- their heads into bags, and she'd already killed a few of her... And you're, and you're reading this and you're thinking, "Doesn't sound like an elderly woman." And you get to the bottom of the article, and, and it, almost like an aside of this person, uh, iden- uh, transition recently. It's like, that's, it's a man. It's a male serial killer. And th- and that's not journalism if you're, if you're lying to us for most of the article.

Chris Williamson 1:01:40 And then a footnote.

Andrew Doyle 1:01:41 And then a basic footnote, so I mean, it's... If you just skim the article, you'd think that, "Oh, wow, that's weird. You know, there's suddenly elderly f- female serial killers." Um, the, I, I, I mean, I... But this is why we've gotta push back on it. We, we, we've gotta restore the primacy of truth. Truth really does matter, and it has... The stakes are high when people are getting raped and attacked. That's, that's really serious. Um, anyway, sorry, we've gone very serious now, but-

Chris Williamson 1:02:08 (laughs)

Andrew Doyle 1:02:09 ... it is serious stuff, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 1:02:09 It is, it is serious stuff, man, yeah. I mean, this is the thing, uh. Part of me wants the, uh, a p- a part of me thinks that the, the best way to push back against this is to br- it's, it's almost like a real-life ad hominem. Oh, sorry, no it's not. It's like a real-life, uh, reductio ad absurdum, right? It's like, look-

Andrew Doyle 1:02:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:30 ... this is the most insane story that you could think of, and it actually happens to have happened. The white gay privilege thing is a, a, a real-world demonstration of what happens when you have intersectionality, right? When you have a hierarchy of grievance, you end up having people that are no longer... Like, this was something that was... it was almost prophetic, some of the stuff that was being talked about four or five years ago. If you have intersectionality, it means that people are going to start to climb this ladder, and there's one person-

Andrew Doyle 1:02:55 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:55 ... on the planet, and they're the most op- oppressed, and that means that they can talk down to everybody else and blah, blah, blah.

Andrew Doyle 1:03:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:00 So, part of me thinks constantly bringing up these stories is an important part of highlighting, look, this is actually happening, this is something that everybody needs to be conscious of. Then the other part thinks, well, does it give malign actors, uh, an att- attention? Does it co-opt certain people into the gr- into this movement? Do y- do you understand what I mean? Like, part of it needs to be the warning, and part of it needs to be the, "Oh, shit, well, what if this, what if this makes the problem worse?"

Andrew Doyle 1:03:28 Well, I think the implications of intersectionality have... I mean, I think the original idea behind it made sense. I mean, I, I don't know. Do you know about where it came from, and-

Chris Williamson 1:03:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Doyle 1:03:39 ... uh, yeah. So, that made sense to me. You know, Kimberlé Crenshaw was talking about a specific case where Black women were falling through the cracks because they were facing oppression for being both Black and female. There are, there's a legitimate point there, um, uh, but it's become a kind of, a religious dogma based on the idea of, of, of hierarchies of privilege, and, and it reduces people to their demographic, and it says that you are more oppressed if you have these qualities and less oppressed if you have those qualities, and it fails completely to take into account any kind of individual circumstances or who, who people are. A- a- and it often forgets about class and money, of course, as well. That's the other thing. So, it is a, it i- it is a flawed way, and it has real-life effects as well. It has very deleterious effects when, for instance, w- people talk about white privilege and the discourse of white privilege. Well, there's now, uh, reason to believe, and, and, and people have, uh, confirmed that it has muddled policy thinking when it comes to white working-class kids who are, you know, among the lowest, uh, educationally i- in the country at the moment. Uh, it, it actually has an effect on people. So, it's a, it hasn't worked. It's a bad idea, uh, and I think we should move on from it.

Chris Williamson 1:04:47 What

Chris Williamson 1:04:48 was that racism of the gaps thing that you were talking about?

Andrew Doyle 1:04:52 Oh, well, uh, it's the, it's the, um, uh, the baseline of critical race theory, which is, uh, this, this notion that all equali- inequalities of outcome are evidence of racist practice. So, in other words, uh, i- if you can't explain why there are different, different outcomes, you just say, "Well, that must be racism," in the way that if you can't explain something, th- it's the God of the gaps phenomenon. It's the equivalent of that. If you can't e- it's, it's explain something in nature, then it's God. Y- Y- God fills that hole. Similarly with this, racism fills that hole. But of course, the charge of racism is really serious, and, and you have to be able to, uh, uh, prove it. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:32 But it's kind of becoming less serious now because of its proliferation, because of how many people are being accused of being a racist. It, it-

Andrew Doyle 1:05:38 I know. That's a real, that's a real worry, isn't it? Th- the fact that when I'm online and I hear someone called a racist, I just assume that's probably not true (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:05:46 Yeah.

Andrew Doyle 1:05:47 It's probably... You know, J.K. Rowling is called a racist sometimes or called a Nazi sometimes. You, you just think... The word does... You know, when, when it's used that promiscuously, then, then yeah, it, it becomes denuded of all meaning. So, uh, th- and it should never be the case, should it, that my default assumption is that that word doesn't, isn't, has been inaccurately applied. That's terrible.

Chris Williamson 1:06:06 It definitely doesn't help the movement. It definitely doesn't help.

Andrew Doyle 1:06:11 No.

Chris Williamson 1:06:11 It doesn't help us to communicate. Like, it's, it's just a very messy way-

Andrew Doyle 1:06:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:15 ... to communicate. So, I, I had this guy on the show, a guy called Gwindogol, and, uh, he has this concept where he says, "When intelligent people affiliate themselves to an ideology, their intellect ceases to guard them against wishful thinking and instead begins-"

Andrew Doyle 1:06:28 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:28 "... to fortify it, causing them to inadvertently mastermind their own delusion and to very cleverly become stupid." And this is, I think, what... I mean, it's fucking brilliant, but-

Andrew Doyle 1:06:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 ... it's what... I, I had a question for you, which is, why is it that this seems to be disproportionately held, these viewpoints seem to disproportionately be held by intelligent people? Why is it that their rationality hasn't been able to guard them against something which seems to be playing around up against reality? It's swimming upstream.

Andrew Doyle 1:06:56 So, I mean, such, such an important question. I wish I knew the answer to that. Um, you're absolutely right, though. It does seem to be that intelligent people are particularly susceptible to this. I mean, the fact that academics are now mostly activists (laughs) , right? And the fact that they, they, they, they bought into this stuff. Uh, yet intelligence is no prophylactic against this, uh, this belief system. You know, there have always been intelligent...... ideologues of all- of all stripes. Um, so why is that the case? I guess, because however intelligent we are, ideologies will be appealing to us, because thinking is hard, even if you are really smart. Perhaps, possibly, especially if you are really smart. And, you know, maybe... An ideology solves everything for you. It says, you know, "This is- this is the way the world works." I mean, you don't have to- you don't have to do your thinking for yourself anymore. And I- I- I think that's as true as in- of intellectuals as anything else. It's less about how intelligent you are and more about how, your capacity for critical thinking. And I don't th- I think everyone is capable of critical thought. Um-

Chris Williamson 1:07:54 I wonder whether, I wonder whether people like the idea of a predetermined framework of thinking-

Andrew Doyle 1:08:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:02 ... if you are the type of person that has vacillations about your view of the world more than the average person, because it actually, it nets you a bigger positive. If you're not somebody that is hugely inquisitive or curious or introspective and- and doesn't hold all of these different viewpoints in your mind at one time, there is less of a benefit to outsourcing your thinking to somebody else, because there isn't as much thinking going on in any case. I wonder whether it's almost like a relief to people that have a lot of big questions and can't find answers to them, to just go for something that is kind... It- it's just an answer. I don't care if it's-

Andrew Doyle 1:08:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:38 ... the right answer, it just is a answer.

Andrew Doyle 1:08:40 Well, I think, I think the social justice activists depend upon that, don't they? Because they are offering answers to complicated, difficult ideas, and they're offering very simple, appealing, soundbite-style answers to these things. Uh, and they, and they, they've already sort of problematized things because they keep redefining words, and they keep telling you, "You don't understand this." And they keep throwing jargon at people and saying, "You- you won't understand it because you haven't studied critical race theory. So just let us do the thinking for you. We'll come in and we'll tell you what's problematic and what's not, and what you should say and what you shouldn't say." Uh-

Chris Williamson 1:09:10 Going back to what you said about religion, I learned, is it, was it Thomas Blackwell? Was he the first guy to translate the Bible into English? And before that time-

Andrew Doyle 1:09:23 What, uh...

Chris Williamson 1:09:24 Who was the first-

Andrew Doyle 1:09:25 No, no.

Chris Williamson 1:09:25 Let me see. Who was the first...

Andrew Doyle 1:09:28 It's not. It's... Oh, I shouldn't have had that glass of wine. I know, it's William Tyndale. It's William Tyndale.

Chris Williamson 1:09:34 Well, if this, if Google tells me, oh, this, it's debated. The first person to complete the English language version of the Bible dates from 1382, and was credited to John Wycliffe.

Andrew Doyle 1:09:43 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:09:44 Tyndale's Bible is credited with being the first Bible in the English language to work directly from Hebrew and Greek. Yeah, maybe it's... Tyndale Bible is-

Andrew Doyle 1:09:52 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:09:52 ... is on, uh, Wikipedia, and we know how accurate that is, so, we'll- we'll- we'll give you that. But-

Andrew Doyle 1:09:56 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:09:56 ... my- my point being that previous to that, the only way that the regular person would have access to the sacred text were through, vicariously through the priests.

Andrew Doyle 1:10:07 Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Chris Williamson 1:10:08 Right? It was like, "Look, you pure plebeians, you come to me. I will tell you what God says. Not only am I the person that can convene with the divine-"

Andrew Doyle 1:10:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:19 "... and that is proselytizing about it, but I'm actually the only person that fully understands, literally fully understands, because you actually can't read the language." Which would have been Latin, I'm going to guess, at the time. "You can't read what this is."

Andrew Doyle 1:10:32 Oh, that's why they, that's why they resisted translating the Bible into- into the vernacular. Absolutely. Bec- be- (laughs) because it allows people to see the Scriptures for themselves and- and begin to interpret for themselves. Yeah, absolutely. I- I think that's really similar to what's going on now. I mean, look at the way that some of these ideologues write. Look at the way that Judith Butler writes, with this terrible, turgid, garrulous prose that is almost, it looks like it's engineered to- to- to, uh, to confuse people. It... You know, these ideas that she's expressing should be able to be expressed with elegance and clarity. And if you can't do so, uh, then you're failing. And I get that sometimes difficult concepts require difficult language. I'm not dis- dismissing that. But try reading her stuff. It's- it's, you know, it's not... It's bad writing, is what it is. So I think... But it's, but there's a- there's a point to it. If you can, if you throw all this jargon down, people do get intimidated. Look at the, look at, whenever acad- these a- academic activists get in, like, people like, um... Oh, I won't name names, actually. What's the point? Um, when- when they start getting into rows on Twitter and they start throwing down... Firstly, they sometimes throw down their qualifications. They're like, "I've got a PhD in this," or... And they do all that.

Chris Williamson 1:11:41 As a. Any sentence that begins with "As a."

Andrew Doyle 1:11:44 Yeah. As an expert in... Yeah. And then they throw down this jargon, and th- they are counting on that deterring people. The reason why, in my book, I go through critical race theory and what are the- the key tenets of critical race theory in a clear way is because I don't think it's very complicated, and I think anyone can understand it. And I think... But they- they are counting on people not understanding it. And they gaslight all the time. They say, they say things like, "Oh, yeah, you're talking about critical race theory. That's totally about law. It's a legal discipline." Yeah, that was its origins. It originated from legal scholars, um, like Derrick Bell and- and- and, uh, uh, uh, and- and Delgardo. And it starts with, it starts with law, and then it gets rolled out into education and all areas of public life. And- and so when you talk about critical race theory in schools, and you often get the... I see it all the time online, people say, "You're talking about critical race theory in education. It's not in education. It's a legal thing." And you're like, "There are literally, there are hundreds of articles about critical race theory in education. There are books called Critical Race Theory in Education." So it's, it's just, they d- they just don't want, like you say, the plebeians to- to have a seat at the table. (laughs) To have power.

Chris Williamson 1:12:57 Well, it's kind of, it's kind of a little bit like saying, "That hammer that I just hit you over the head with, that's not a weapon."

Andrew Doyle 1:13:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:03 "That's a DIY device."

Andrew Doyle 1:13:06 Right, exactly. It's- it's really paternalistic, isn't it? It- it is so elitist. That's what I, that's what really winds me up about it.

Chris Williamson 1:13:12 Very wanky.

Andrew Doyle 1:13:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:13:13 Very, very wanky.

Andrew Doyle 1:13:14 Well, it's establishment as well. Like, so, it's- it's- it's basically...It's the elite. I mean, I consider the woke to be like the, the clergy of our age, basically. And they are the elite, the elite. They are the high priests, who are saying, "You don't understand and you can never understand, so just trust me." You know? And I... Anyway, I've finished. (laughs) I don't know what more to say about that. I'm starting to get slightly grumpy about it so I'll, I'll, I'll, uh...

Chris Williamson 1:13:42 Enjoy the rest-

Andrew Doyle 1:13:43 I don't know-

Chris Williamson 1:13:43 ... of your wine. That's what you need to do. Bit more wine. More wine or less wine, I don't know which one it is.

Andrew Doyle 1:13:47 I think it's, I think it's because I've had a long day. And normally, I'm very calm and sort of measured when I talk about this stuff, but I've had a