The Violent Suppression of Free Speech - Andrew Doyle

1. 0:00 – 9:42

   Are Liberals Becoming More Violent?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      ... the first time that we recorded, you were going from London to Edinburgh, maybe to do the Fringe?

   2. ADAndrew Doyle0:06

      Yes, it was at the Edinburgh Fringe.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:07

      You stopped off at my house-

   4. ADAndrew Doyle0:08

      Yes.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:08

      ... en route.

   6. ADAndrew Doyle0:09

      Yes, we did-

   7. CWChris Williamson0:10

      2019 or 2018?

   8. ADAndrew Doyle0:11

      It was a long time ago.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:12

      Yeah.

   10. ADAndrew Doyle0:12

       We did their podcast in your living room.

   11. CWChris Williamson0:14

       Correct.

   12. ADAndrew Doyle0:14

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson0:15

       How tough.

   14. ADAndrew Doyle0:15

       It was nice and homely.

   15. CWChris Williamson0:16

       Yeah.

   16. ADAndrew Doyle0:17

       This is a bit more minimalist.

   17. CWChris Williamson0:18

       Yeah, yeah, it's-

   18. ADAndrew Doyle0:19

       You know.

   19. CWChris Williamson0:19

       ... much, much more sterile. Um-

   20. ADAndrew Doyle0:21

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson0:21

       (laughs) I saw a, a tweet earlier on that I thought was pretty interesting. "The left's greatest enemy is not the right, but the hard left. The right's greatest enemy is not the left, but the hard right. The lunatics on your own side make you look much sillier than the opposition ever could."

   22. ADAndrew Doyle0:35

       Yeah. Well, there's a problem, isn't there, at the moment? Which is that the, uh, there seems to be more of an overlap between the left and the hard left, which doesn't exist to the, the same degree it does exist on the right, but not to the same degree. So, I think, I mean, I've, I've made the case that I think the left has to really disavow the lunatics within its own house.

   23. CWChris Williamson0:56

       Mm.

   24. ADAndrew Doyle0:56

       That's something they really, really need to do, because I've been really shocked since this horrific murder of Charlie Kirk, seeing the extent of left wing, mainstream left wing voices attempting to justify it. And I know that always happens. You know, if you go back to the Brighton Bombing, we got, at the Tory Party Conference back in the early '80s, uh, if you go back to the, the de- death of Margaret Thatcher, there were some people who were rejoicing in death and celebrating death. So you always get a bit of that, and it's always grotesquely unpleasant whenever you see it. But-

   25. CWChris Williamson1:28

       And the, Th- That Track was number one, right? S-

   26. ADAndrew Doyle1:30

       I don't think it quite got to number... Oh, well, maybe it did, The Witch Is Dead.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:32

       Hi Ho The Witch Is Dead.

   28. ADAndrew Doyle1:33

       Yeah, yeah, the one... Not Hi Ho, it was Ding Dong. You're confusing Wizard of Oz with the, with the, the dwarves from Snow White. The, uh, and those two should be conflated in a mashup form, and remixed. I, I think that should happen. But-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:48

       Go on.

   30. ADAndrew Doyle1:49

       ... th- th- but it is true that there's always that kind of thing, but I didn't, I've never seen the extent of it.
2. 9:42 – 14:44

   Why Out-of-Context Clips are So Damaging

   1. CWChris Williamson9:43

      One of the things that I saw that I'd be interested to get your take on, a lot of the, um, really well meaning, uh, apologies, I do- I don't know what you would say, like a tribute, I suppose, like a little tribute tweet or whatever, Cenk Uygur did one, you know, people from the left that did that, there was always a caveat in there. "Although I didn't agree with his positions, I c- condemn and do all of the things."

   2. ADAndrew Doyle10:08

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:08

      And you're like, "Hey, that's nice." I, I'm not sure, I'm totally open to being wrong. I don't know if the same amount of hand-wringing would need to be done if somebody on the left had been shot and people on the right were s- were giving their, uh, tribute.

   4. ADAndrew Doyle10:25

      Yes. I suppose it depends how you look at it. I mean, there, there's been a lot of criticism of that and why do you have to say that you disagreed with him? Because the point, the fundamental point is it's wrong and you should say that it's wrong, right? Mind you-

   5. CWChris Williamson10:37

      It's to protect yourself, it's to protect yourself, I think, from being seen as, uh, not having sufficient fealty to your own side because the purity spiral that exists within the left is not the same-

   6. ADAndrew Doyle10:48

      So-

   7. CWChris Williamson10:48

      ... as it is in the right.

   8. ADAndrew Doyle10:49

      ... possibly that, but in addition to that, it could be something else.

   9. CWChris Williamson10:52

      Okay.

   10. ADAndrew Doyle10:52

       Ezra Klein, for example, writes this article saying that he's grieving for, mourning for Charlie Kirk. He gets piled on by the left. Then he writes another article and doubles down and says, "No, you're wrong. And you're wrong to pile on me. I am mourning for him as a human being as well." You know, and he makes the point that he disagreed with virtually everything, uh, that Charlie Kirk said. But I don't think that is an attempt to appease his side. I mean, that shows he wasn't interested in appeasing his side. He- he's saying what he believes.

   11. CWChris Williamson11:17

       Yeah.

   12. ADAndrew Doyle11:18

       It could be, and maybe this is a positive, it could be someone trying to say that, uh, trying to critique, I suppose, the very idea that it should make a difference if you agree or not. You know, if someone, if someone who disagrees-

   13. CWChris Williamson11:29

       Very meta way to look at it, but yeah, I guess.

   14. ADAndrew Doyle11:31

       Well, it does make sense, doesn't it? If, you know, you're standing up for the liberal principle, which is that nobody should be silenced with violence according to their point of view. And it's very easy the, you know, people who agree with what he said to say that, but actually it's quite powerful when someone who doesn't, uh, comes out. It- it's more powerful when someone from the left says it.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:49

       Mm-hmm.

   16. ADAndrew Doyle11:49

       And so in order to do that, you have to make clear that you don't agree. So it depends. I mean, look, there could be all sorts of motivations. I don't know. I don't want to bombard people too much or, or be too harsh on them for making the point that they disagreed.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:59

       Mm-hmm.

   18. ADAndrew Doyle12:00

       Um, I think it can have a positive effect. What I do take ex- exception to is the people who either misrepresent what he said in order to attack him-

   19. CWChris Williamson12:11

       Mm.

   20. ADAndrew Doyle12:11

       ... which has been happening an awful lot, out of context clips like you said, or not doing the basic research. I mean, one of the big issues is, we're dealing with a folk devil. It isn't really, it isn't really Charlie Kirk they hate because they haven't watched anything that he's ever said and they haven't really engaged. They've seen a few out of context clips.

   21. CWChris Williamson12:28

       Mm.

   22. ADAndrew Doyle12:29

       It's the monster of their imagination that they've collectively, uh, created. And that's why out of context clips work, because of course it acts as confirmation bias. They see it, they think, "Oh yeah, that, that tallies with the monster in my head, so that's great." Um, and you see, you see it all along, you know.... people like Alastair Campbell, who went online and said that Charlie Kirk supported stoning gay people to death. Now, I tweeted that clip out and said, "This is categorically wrong." And he did apologize. I must be the only person ever to get an apology out of Alastair Campbell. That- that- that is an achievement.

   23. CWChris Williamson12:57

       (laughs)

   24. ADAndrew Doyle12:58

       But he should have taken the effort to- to look into that, 'cause it's an incredibly severe accusation, y- and he should know better. You should be damn sure, uh, that- that someone's actually said something like that before you say it. And of course, what he was saying, what Charlie Kirk was saying in the original clip, is he was critiquing an organizer of a Pride event who had quoted a book from the Old Testament in support of Pride, about love and about compassion. And he was making the point that the same book of the Bible also says that you should stone gay people to death. So, he was critiquing the idea of cherry picking scripture for your own political agenda. That was the point. You know, similarly, we've had this thing about, "Oh, well, he supported the Second Amendment." He- he said that, uh- uh, some deaths, because of any- any country that has guns will have some deaths, that that was a price worth paying for the Second Amendment. That wasn't, that doesn't mean he was saying that everyone who is killed by guns, that's justifiable. I mean, that's an incredible leap. And in the same clip, he makes the clear point, he says, "Look, 50,000 people a year die from car accidents, and we all collectively accept that as a cost for the convenience of getting to our destination quicker." So, anyone who has a car implicitly supports Charlie Kirk's view on the Second Amendment. It makes them an incredible hypocrite if they have a car but they're saying, because actually, we could all abandon our cars and save 50,000 lives a year.

   25. CWChris Williamson14:21

       Mm-hmm.

   26. ADAndrew Doyle14:21

       We don't. I actually think we should all move to Waymos and driverless cars, 'cause that would reduce the, uh, that fatality rate by 95% or something like that. But nevertheless, um, you know, that- so that's an example of someone taking something he said, out of context, using it to justify the murder. I mean, this stuff is, it's hobgoblin-like behavior. It is incredibly low.

   27. CWChris Williamson14:43

       You

3. 14:44 – 18:50

   Was Charlie Kirk a Future President?

   1. CWChris Williamson14:44

      seem pretty let up by the- the response to the Charlie thing.

   2. ADAndrew Doyle14:46

      It's bothered me, yeah. It's really bothered me, 'cause it's been relentless and it's just inhumane. I have this naïve faith in humanity, and I always think the best of people. And I always assume that if you present the arguments, people are gonna come round t- to it or... I also assume that people who disagree with me aren't doing so from a place of malevolence. But this is malevolence, and it's explicit malevolence. And that's sort of shaken me a bit, yeah. It's bothered me.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:14

      I-

   4. ADAndrew Doyle15:14

      You're very good at detecting that. You're like a psychotherapist, you've worked it out.

   5. CWChris Williamson15:18

      (laughs) Well, I wasn't-

   6. ADAndrew Doyle15:18

      You kinda tease it out of me.

   7. CWChris Williamson15:19

      You weren't- you weren't exactly subtle, but-

   8. ADAndrew Doyle15:21

      No, that's true.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:22

      ... um, I- I was talking to a friend the day after it happened. I saw- I saw the two videos-

   10. ADAndrew Doyle15:29

       (sniffs) Mm.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:29

       ... uh, about it, and one of them is seared into my fucking hippocampus for the rest of time. Like, I'm just never going to be able to forget that scene.

   12. ADAndrew Doyle15:40

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson15:41

       Uh, and I spoke to a friend, and I was like, "Mate, can you tell me, uh, how easy or difficult this shot would be to take from this place?" You know, he's a military guy and he's got expertise and stuff, and he's been in and around the administration for a while. And I just texted him, and he rang me, and, uh, he gave me a- a sort of five-minute breakdown. Interesting bit of info that I don't know if it's come out yet, still now, uh, according to him, Charlie wasn't shot in the neck. Charlie was shot in the chest. He was wearing a steel plate and the bullet hit him in the chest and ricochets up into his throat.

   14. ADAndrew Doyle16:22

       Right.

   15. CWChris Williamson16:23

       So, the reason that you wear steel, as opposed to like a big puffy thing, is that you can wear it underneath a shirt.

   16. ADAndrew Doyle16:28

       Okay.

   17. CWChris Williamson16:29

       And you can't tell that you're wearing it. The disadvantage is that it doesn't absorb bullets, it pings them off.

   18. ADAndrew Doyle16:34

       Right.

   19. CWChris Williamson16:34

       And his- the justification for that is, well, if you take the 360 degrees that it could come off at, uh, or whatever it is, 180 degrees, um, there's only, 96.5% of them are non-fatal.

   20. ADAndrew Doyle16:49

       Okay.

   21. CWChris Williamson16:49

       So, if it hits you in the leg, if it hits you in the arm, if it hits you in the hand, it's like, you're okay, but at least it didn't go through your chest.

   22. ADAndrew Doyle16:54

       Yes.

   23. CWChris Williamson16:55

       Um, but yeah, he- he first made that point and then immediately followed it up by saying that guy was probably gonna be the future president of the United States. The highest following among young conservative, you know, I- I don't know whether you saw, I don't know if this is true, Stephen Crowder changed his bio on X from the day before to the day after, saying he was the number two conservative show in America to the number one conservative show in America.

   24. ADAndrew Doyle17:19

       Is that right?

   25. CWChris Williamson17:20

       This was either a doctored image, in which case I've done gone and fallen for it-

   26. ADAndrew Doyle17:24

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson17:25

       ... uh, or i- some timely bio updating, which we're probably gonna get onto in- in-

   28. ADAndrew Doyle17:31

       Mm.

   29. CWChris Williamson17:31

       ... other regards later on as well. Um, but even if it wasn't the current president of the United States, maybe it was someone that was gonna shape the sort of future of American politics.

   30. ADAndrew Doyle17:41

       No doubt. I mean, he was, if you watch those videos of him engaging with people, I mean, he is brilliant at it. And he didn't always used to be. I mean, I remember seeing videos of him, in fact, seeing him live, uh, uh, many, many years ago. And, you know, he- he wasn't as accomplished a- a debater. He was getting better and better and better. You know, and he, the- the thing that he'd learned brilliantly was to hear people out, to- to let them speak, to let them make their point, not to keep interjecting and getting angry at them. To sort of, to- to take the emotion out of it as best as he could, even though, obviously, he was very passionate about what he believed.
4. 18:50 – 35:28

   Wokeness is Dying

   1. CWChris Williamson18:50

      the last few months, there seems to have been sort of an increase in conversations around trans ideology, progressivism, woke stuff, uh, ratcheting up how real world the implications of, uh, that being more inflammatory-

   2. ADAndrew Doyle19:08

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:08

      ... has been, um, shooters, shell casings. It seems like the guy that shot Charlie Kirk was in a relationship with a trans person, trans roommate, and had said that hateful comments, dad was MAGA, had brought it up to the dad over the dinner table-

   4. ADAndrew Doyle19:25

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:25

      ... that he was hateful and that his comments about blah, blah, blah. Uh, does this comport with your perspective that woke is dying?

   6. ADAndrew Doyle19:34

      Well, I know why you're saying this 'cause I wrote a book called The End of Woke. But the, as you know, I think you've read it, you know that I'm not saying, "It's all over, let's have a party and go home." What I'm saying is that too much has happened at this point, uh, for it to ever have the power that it once had, and in other words, the process of its decline has very much begun. We know this from the stats, the, The Economist did a report into wokeness. Support for wokeness was at its height in 2020, around the summer of George Floyd, and has been declining ever since. We've had some major seismic changes in the world that, that can never be reversed. We've had the Cass Review in the UK, which is a study into, uh, gender affirming care for children, which has, uh, exposed this idea that, that that is in any way appropriate or effective, and that puberty blockers are potentially very dangerous and, and unevidenced. Uh, that's changed everything because you've had the Tavistock Clinic closed as a result of that. Um, uh, so the, the very notion of gender identity ideology has been damaged and dented in a way that it, that it won't be able to recover from. Similarly, you've had the Supreme Court in the UK ruling that, uh, biological sex is a thing and is protected in equality law. That's been absolutely huge as well. You've had, uh, DEI, uh, programs in various companies and corporations rolled back, even in things like McDonald's and Walmart and, and Facebook, Meta, you know. So these big, big names, they're just getting rid of it because they know that it doesn't... Well, actually, it's not only not effective, it can actually ramp up racism in the workplace according to studies. So, it's a really bad idea and always was, but that's all been stripped away. So all of this stuff is happening, you've got Trump's election, you've got various sporting bodies talking about h- uh, uh, se- basically saying men cannot compete in women's sports. Uh, now what happens then? I mean, I make the case in, in the book that wokeness was simply the latest manifestation of authoritarianism, which is a natural impulse to humankind, and it emerges from the left and the right and everywhere in between throughout history in various forms, in various guises. This is just the latest form, right? And it will emerge again. And so the, the point I'm making is, yes, wokeness is on its way out, but what replaces it could be just as bad. We're bound to get another form of authoritarianism at some point. But I think absolutely what we call wokeness is dying. But it could be a long death, and it could be years and years and years before it dissipates because it has such a stranglehold, particularly in universities, uh, and particular- less so now in corporations because it's been rolled back, but in gov- in government departments, in quangos, in the UK we have, uh, a quango called the College of Policing-

   7. CWChris Williamson22:08

      What's a quango?

   8. ADAndrew Doyle22:09

      A quango is a non-governmental organization that effectively takes... The government entrusts to run an aspect of society.

   9. CWChris Williamson22:16

      Okay.

   10. ADAndrew Doyle22:16

       So, so for instance, uh, the, the College of Policing is a quango because it directs and trains police in England and Wales, writes the guidelines for them, but it's not an elected body, right? It's, it, it, it comes up with this sort of stuff itself. Um, and they are activist-captured, they are captured by gender identity ideology, which is why police in the UK tend to turn up at your door if you say that men and women are different. And so m- my point, just to finish my point about the, the, the, the decline of woke is that I think what will also happen is that the ideologues, 'cause it's a kind of pseudo-religion, they will become more defensive and more aggressive and more extreme in the way that a cornered rat lashes out more ex- in a more extreme way than it ever has before. Hence, the extreme violence that we're seeing.

   11. CWChris Williamson23:03

       Do you think that these two things are correlated? The decline of sort of widespread acceptance and this sort of pullback in terms of, uh, the trajectory going in the right direction for people who believe this thing and the increased sort of kinetic real world implications of it?

   12. ADAndrew Doyle23:20

       Well, I don't know for sure. Uh, I think what I could always... Uh, you know, we know that the genderist movement has always endorsed violence. Uh, violence and violent rhetoric has been completely normalized in that movement. Uh, there's a website called Turf is a Slur which collects thousands of screenshots of activists basically saying they want to kill, rape, and, uh, torture, uh, women who believe that, um, there are two sexes. Uh, it's very, very normalized, which is why JK Rowling is continually, uh, uh, inundated with rape and death threats. She said she gets so many she could paper the house with them. And that's a big house, that's JK's home.

   13. CWChris Williamson23:54

       (laughs)

   14. ADAndrew Doyle23:54

       All right? So this is... It's a real, it's a real problem, but... So in a way, if this mur- latest murder is connected to genderist ideology, which I suspect it might be but I don't know, if it is connected to that, uh, that just makes sense, that is, uh, a continuation of, uh, what that, what that community of activists have created. But on the other hand, it's also the most extreme reaction, isn't it? And I th- I suspect that, I mean, violence comes about when you've lost the debate. Violence comes about when language doesn't work anymore. And so therefore, you know, as wokeness... Because wokeness can never work. It was only ever, I mean, what, the More in Common study into this says that, uh, the woke belief system was only ever endorsed by between 8 and 10% of the population, even at its height, which means it was always a minority view and it, it was imposed on society from a, from the top down. It was never accepted by people, people just went along with it because they were terrified...... of the key players. It was actually, uh, predominantly an upper middle class movement. It was pushed by the elites, it never caught on in working class communities. Working class people don't care about what your pronouns are, they care about feeding their kids.

   15. CWChris Williamson24:59

       Mm-hmm.

   16. ADAndrew Doyle25:00

       Now, that means that this is... From the start, it was always an authoritarian movement. It was always an imposition of values that people didn't accept or believe in, right? You saw recently, what was it, Malcolm Gladwell talking about how he was on a panel and he lied about his position on gender ideology. Uh, now I don't think he should've lied. I think if more of us had said the truth-

   17. CWChris Williamson25:19

       Mm-hmm.

   18. ADAndrew Doyle25:19

       ... we would've got out of this sooner. But he was probably terrified. I mean, you've seen what, the way the activists behave. They're terrifying. And that's why any organization or corporation or body which goes woke, it doesn't take many. It takes one or two, a handful of activists within that corporation t- to shift it. And once a, a, a, a body becomes woke, it forgets about its key point and becomes merely a conduit for the ideology.

   19. CWChris Williamson25:46

       Have you tried to, or have you managed to break down what makes it such a effective, effectively reproducing meme? Like, what was it, what are the component parts of this that allowed a single individual within a department to...

   20. ADAndrew Doyle26:03

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson26:04

       Um...

   22. ADAndrew Doyle26:04

       Uh, well it's not to do with the ideas being robust, is it? I mean, they, it's all based on fantasy. We don't have a gendered soul that can be misaligned with our body. That's not a thing. And if you want to reorganize society on the basis of that pseudo-religious belief system, you'd better find some evidence for it, hadn't you? I mean, isn't it crazy that Jacqui Smith, who's the, uh, uh, government's representative, spokesperson for equalities in the House of Lords, is asked, "What is the government's working definition of gender identity?" And she can't answer the question. She doesn't know what it is, but the government imposes various policies on the basis of something they cannot define. So, this is not something that can be sustained through debate, and they know that, and that's why you get violence. That's why Stonewall, which w- used to be the foremost gay rights charity in the country, pivoted into gender ideology and suddenly said, "No debate." That was their mantra. "No debate. We don't discuss this anymore, you just go along with it." Because there is no situation where the woke ideas could be debated and come out on top. It's not possible, because they're all based on absolute nonsense.

   23. CWChris Williamson27:06

       Okay.

   24. ADAndrew Doyle27:06

       So, it was nev- so it was never gonna be able to be sustained. So then your question is, well why is it then that a nonsensical view can become the mainstream? That, again, happens throughout history when-

   25. CWChris Williamson27:17

       Give me some examples.

   26. ADAndrew Doyle27:19

       ... well, the Inquisition did pretty well. I would say that if you're, if you're going to be strapped to a rack and tortured if you don't accept the creed, you might do it. Now, I don't think the, uh, the woke are, they don't, they're not strapping people to the rack. But, uh, if they could burn people at the stake, I think they would. They certainly express the rhetoric to imply that they want to commit physical harm. And they certainly can ruin and destroy your lives. They've got a pretty good reputation of that. They developed this system of cancel culture, they can destroy everything that you've ever built, for, for no other reason than they disagree with you. And they've done it many, many times. I mean, the, the number, the list of casualties of cancel culture are now mountainous. They're Himalayan. And yet, they still, the practitioners, the practitioners of it will still say it doesn't exist. Well, that's convenient, isn't it? Um, yeah, it happens all the time. It's intimidation. The large, the, the k- I mean, it's not about... Some ideas spread because they're good ideas. Some ideas spread because people are too scared to disagree. That's what's happened here, I think.

   27. CWChris Williamson28:14

       So is it the enforcement mechanism is a big part of it?

   28. ADAndrew Doyle28:16

       Yeah, huge.

   29. CWChris Williamson28:17

       It seems like something to do with sort of weaponized empathy, this sort of lifting up of a, of a maligned underprivileged group. Uh-

   30. ADAndrew Doyle28:27

       Okay, you've hit on something really interesting there.
5. 35:28 – 45:40

   The Dangers of Pushing Too Hard

   1. ADAndrew Doyle35:28

      principle.

   2. CWChris Williamson35:28

      Have there been... many or any instances that you're aware of of right of center student supporters barricading the doors to stop people from hearing a Hasan Piker lecture or whatever?

   3. ADAndrew Doyle35:49

      I fear it might be coming, but I haven't seen it yet.

   4. CWChris Williamson35:52

      Right, okay. So I mean, this is, this has sort of always been the, one of the big concerns, that, um... it does feel at least a little bit... and I- I'm s- hesitant of personifying political movements too much, uh, especially not with, uh, school playground dynamics, so I'm gonna try and see if I can get-

   5. ADAndrew Doyle36:12

      Okay.

   6. CWChris Williamson36:12

      ... through this in one piece. It feels a little bit to me like the right has always been seen as sort of the big bully.

   7. ADAndrew Doyle36:18

      Yes.

   8. CWChris Williamson36:18

      They're the one, they're the ones who have the muscle. They've got guns. We know there's a history of them using them. They tend to sort of just be more militant or militaristic, like in-

   9. ADAndrew Doyle36:30

      Yes.

   10. CWChris Williamson36:30

       ... their presentation, in the, uh, composition of the members of this group. Uh, and you kind of just sort of expect it from them-

   11. ADAndrew Doyle36:38

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson36:38

       ... a little bit.

   13. ADAndrew Doyle36:38

       I know what you mean.

   14. CWChris Williamson36:39

       And with that in mind, there's always been a little bit of, well, yeah, sure, you know, the left are, eh, uh, squawking and making these no- and not the left actually, like progressives, I think-

   15. ADAndrew Doyle36:50

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson36:51

       ... the left, the left now, at least as far as I can see, uh, the Kyle Kulinskis of the world, the sort of populist left are very much trying to distance themselves, trying to bifurcate off, whatever it is, the lunatics of your own side versus the blah, blah, blah.

   17. ADAndrew Doyle37:01

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson37:02

       Um, eh- m- how good of a job they're doing with that, I'm not sure. But still, like, it...... the right has always been big bully. The left has always been a little bit like, "Well, like, what are you gonna do? The- the fucking trans guy." Like, the trans guy is the one that you're worried, "Oh, he's gonna p- come up and punch you in the street." No, it's the hairy biker man. That sort of asymmetry-

   19. ADAndrew Doyle37:19

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson37:19

       ... in terms of, like, kinetic power, and it seems to me, this is like old hat now from five years ago when we would have first started speaking, that the real concern was if you light sufficient fires underneath the asses of the people, of the big bully-

   21. ADAndrew Doyle37:37

       Yeah, yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson37:37

       ... as the younger brother, right?

   23. ADAndrew Doyle37:38

       Yes.

   24. CWChris Williamson37:38

       If the younger brother keeps on sort of...

   25. ADAndrew Doyle37:41

       Yeah, yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson37:42

       Over and over, and you go, if you do that a few too many times, the retaliation in response. Like, because what you're asking for is with, uh, restraint on one side, where there is a lack of restraint on another.

   27. ADAndrew Doyle37:58

       Yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson37:59

       And this is because of, uh, sort of a history of expectation, and I certainly, I have to assume as well that people on the right know that this is the case as well, that they're almost expected that this is the kind of response that they're going to have-

   29. ADAndrew Doyle38:10

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson38:10

       ... that it is going to be a militaristic sort of response in that way. Now, I might be totally wrong. I'm totally open to somebody saying, "No, there is just as much political violence coming from the right or on the right," or the- that the bigger threat that is right of center or whatever it might be. Maybe that's t- the case, maybe it's not. But, uh, at least in terms of, like, how I'm seeing it, that personification seems to be true, that there's been more... There has been a- a- a type of leeway given to the left. Maybe some of it's top down because it's more toxically empathetic.
6. 45:40 – 55:22

   Andrew’s Stance on the Wokeness

   1. CWChris Williamson45:40

   2. ADAndrew Doyle45:40

      ... which is-

   3. CWChris Williamson45:40

      Okay, I, I wanna do, uh, take a slightly different tact than we've had in previous conversations. Can you give me, first off-

   4. ADAndrew Doyle45:50

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson45:50

      ... the steel man case, the strongest case, fairest case that you can for what the progressive movement, what the woke movement, uh, either was or is trying to achieve-

   6. ADAndrew Doyle46:01

      Yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson46:01

      ... at the moment?

   8. ADAndrew Doyle46:02

      Society, uh, has made great progress since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and there are laws to protect people from discrimination due to protected characteristics, for instance race, sex, sexual orientation. And yet, racism, sexism, homophobia, et cetera, uh, does still linger in society. The question is, why? And this is the key question of critical race theory. It's, you know, which obviously as you know started as a legal, uh, discipline. We have all these laws in place, we have a society where we have progressed sufficiently to understand that the consensus is that racism is wrong. Why does it still exist? And it still exists, I'm speaking as a critical race theorist here, it still exists because society is organized around the, uh, the dominance of white people for the benefit of white people. And therefore, there are power structures that are embedded within society that we cannot necessarily easily see. And therefore, it is up to people, uh, like me and my voice as a critical race theorist, to study these various degree. You need queer theorists, you need people like Robin DiAngelo studying whiteness so that we have-

   9. CWChris Williamson47:05

      Is this the steel man?

   10. ADAndrew Doyle47:07

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson47:07

       Is this the strongest-

   12. ADAndrew Doyle47:08

       This is what they, this is their argument.

   13. CWChris Williamson47:09

       But is this the strongest way that you could put forward that case on their behalf? Like, what, what are they trying to achieve if you strip away the, the, um-

   14. ADAndrew Doyle47:19

       But that's what they say. They say that they are, uh, detecting these p- and, and resisting and interrupting, which is a phrase they use, these power structures that are embedded, so deeply embedded in society that we, we can no longer see them. This is why Robin DiAngelo in, in White Fragility t- makes the case that racism today is, in a way, worse than Jim Crow, because Jim Crow was an overt racist system that you could see. The current racist system is invisible, except for white women like her who can see it. Right? Now, look, I'm obviously mocking at the same time, but it is their case, right? So that is the, the... And, and, you know, I don't disagree with them that racism still lingers and needs to be tackled, right? So that is why I believe that is the steel man case, because I do agree on that point. But I don't think detecting racism where it doesn't exist, detecting it where the evidence quite clearly shows it doesn't exist, in fact, the opposite is true, uh, that's not helpful. That's not the way you tackle racism. You tackle racism in the liberal way-

   15. CWChris Williamson48:14

       Mm-hmm.

   16. ADAndrew Doyle48:15

       ... which, and, and I know that's difficult in America, 'cause Americans don't know what liberal means. Uh, they think it means left wing. You tackle it in the liberal way, you identify it as and when it occurs, and engage, right? That's, I mean, isn't that a fair way to steel man th- the case?

   17. CWChris Williamson48:29

       Uh, I'm not convinced it's the strongest. I think it's maybe the most accurate of how they would put it forward themselves.

   18. ADAndrew Doyle48:35

       Sure, but you're asking me to therefore defend their case better than they have.

   19. CWChris Williamson48:39

       Yes.

   20. ADAndrew Doyle48:40

       Well, it's not a defensible case. So all I can do is replicate what they say.

   21. CWChris Williamson48:44

       Understood. Second, uh, idea here. Let's say that you were, uh, the person in charge of coordinating left of center political culture.

   22. ADAndrew Doyle48:58

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson48:58

       Uh, and that you could lay out some battle plans in order to make the future of left contribution to politics, culture, governance, all that stuff better.

   24. ADAndrew Doyle49:11

       Yes.

   25. CWChris Williamson49:12

       What would you advise people to do? What should they be focusing on? What should they be jettisoning?

   26. ADAndrew Doyle49:17

       Uh-... you would jettison woke politics because wokeness is not authentically left wing. Because to be authentically left wing, as the entire history of left wing writing and thought tells us, is to be, uh, interested in class inequality, economic inequality.

   27. CWChris Williamson49:33

       Mm-hmm.

   28. ADAndrew Doyle49:34

       And they have completely jettisoned that. They have substituted money for identity, group identity.

   29. CWChris Williamson49:40

       Mm-hmm.

   30. ADAndrew Doyle49:41

       And that's where the problem starts, that's where the problem started, what you call the cultural turn of Marxism. What genuinely, authentically left wing people want to do, I mean, they're, they recognize that pronouns and multiple gender identity, this is a bourgeois luxury, this is a middle class luxury. The woke movement, calling itself left wing, created cancel culture. The only people who were able to resist cancel culture were the uncancelable billionaires, millionaires. Uh, it also arranged a system whereby, uh, workers, working class people were told that they were all racist, whether they believed it or not, and they had to undertake unconscious bias sessions, uh, retraining, reprogramming. And if they objected, uh, they would probably be fired or disciplined, and the woke would side with the multi-billion dollar corporations over the workers. Any, any movement that arranges things so that only the super rich get to say what they think cannot be said to be authentically left wing. Now, I understand why I get criticism for saying that because people say, "Oh, you're saying wokeness isn't on the, isn't left." I understand that its origins are in the left. I completely get that, uh, and, philosophically speaking. I understand. But it's a, a perversion of Marxism, it's a perversion of those original ideas.
7. 55:22 – 1:00:48

   Does Environmentalism Fit into the Woke Movement?

   1. ADAndrew Doyle55:22

   2. CWChris Williamson55:22

      How does, uh, environmentalism fold into the woke movement?

   3. ADAndrew Doyle55:26

      Well, because I think what happens with the woke movement is that, because it's an ideology, it's an, uh, an ill thought through ideology, and it's more about, uh, displaying fealty to a set of causes that you don't need to know all that much about. If, anyway, this is why if you, if you were someone I didn't know and you said a woke thing, in support of, say, Black Lives Matter or Queers for Palestine, or something else, I would be able to tell you your opinions on every single subject under the sun.

   4. CWChris Williamson55:54

      Mm-hmm.

   5. ADAndrew Doyle55:54

      I've never been proven wrong on that, by the way. You know, I, I, you, you don't get that, that, those disagreements. You don't get... Like, it's a set of rules, it's a script.

   6. CWChris Williamson56:01

      Mm-hmm.

   7. ADAndrew Doyle56:01

      And that's why Greta Thunberg can pivot from environmental activism into pro-Palestine activism. It's easy for her. Just put on that, what, what's it called? A kefir? No, that's a drink, isn't it?

   8. CWChris Williamson56:14

      I'd like that.

   9. ADAndrew Doyle56:15

      It's a great drink.

   10. CWChris Williamson56:16

       Yeah.

   11. ADAndrew Doyle56:16

       I've only recently discovered it.

   12. CWChris Williamson56:17

       It's wonderful.

   13. ADAndrew Doyle56:18

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson56:18

       It's the best way to get, uh, what is it? What's that stuff? Um, uh, like, uh, cultured s- like, probiotics?

   15. ADAndrew Doyle56:27

       Bacteria.

   16. CWChris Williamson56:27

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good for you.

   17. ADAndrew Doyle56:28

       I mean, I don't know what it's doing in there.

   18. CWChris Williamson56:29

       It's better than sauerkraut, which was the other alternative.

   19. ADAndrew Doyle56:31

       Isn't that just cabbage?

   20. CWChris Williamson56:33

       B- But it's, yeah, it's pickled. I don't want that.

   21. ADAndrew Doyle56:34

       It's pickled cabbage.

   22. CWChris Williamson56:35

       Yeah, I don't want that.

   23. ADAndrew Doyle56:36

       You don't wanna be swigging that in the morning, do you?

   24. CWChris Williamson56:37

       No, I want yogurt. I want, I wa- I want a nice tasty yogurt that says that it's good for me.

   25. ADAndrew Doyle56:40

       It has the illusion of... Uh, it's creamy, isn't it?

   26. CWChris Williamson56:42

       Yeah.

   27. ADAndrew Doyle56:43

       But it's not really that bad for you.

   28. CWChris Williamson56:44

       And this is what she's been wearing.

   29. ADAndrew Doyle56:47

       She's been wearing?

   30. CWChris Williamson56:48

       Dousing herself-
8. 1:00:48 – 1:16:09

   The Woke Movement is Homophobic

   1. ADAndrew Doyle1:00:48

   2. CWChris Williamson1:00:48

      I am interested in what's happening with the gays. I'm very interested.

   3. ADAndrew Doyle1:00:52

      Are you?

   4. CWChris Williamson1:00:52

      Yeah.

   5. ADAndrew Doyle1:00:53

      You're coming over to our side?

   6. CWChris Williamson1:00:54

      Not yet. Not yet.

   7. ADAndrew Doyle1:00:55

      Okay.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

      No. Well, just no. Although the internet has had its rumors for a while. This is a funny one. So, uh, Spotify miscaptioned a w- a sentence that I said on Rogan-

   9. ADAndrew Doyle1:01:06

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:01:07

       ... uh, a year and a half ago. And I said, um, "So, me and my housemate, sometimes on an afternoon, we watch, uh, videos of motorcross." Uh, wada-baba-baba. And it's- (laughs) it captioned it, it must have used AI and tried to u- do it in context.

   11. ADAndrew Doyle1:01:20

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:01:20

       And housemate's a very British term-

   13. ADAndrew Doyle1:01:23

       ... do people not use that in America?

   14. CWChris Williamson1:01:24

       It seems not. Like, roommate, uh-

   15. ADAndrew Doyle1:01:27

       Okay.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:01:27

       ... would, would be the equivalent. Housemate, no. So it transcribed it as husband. So, "Me and my husband watch motocross on a-"

   17. ADAndrew Doyle1:01:34

       Wow. (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson1:01:35

       ... on a, on a Sunday afternoon." And, uh, I got the number of, um, screenshots that went around of, "See, told you, I knew, knew he was always, knew he was batting for the other side. Here it is, here's the irrefutable proof."

   19. ADAndrew Doyle1:01:45

       Wow.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

       I'm like, first off, if it was irrefutable proof, I haven't exactly been hiding it very well by saying it on the biggest podcast in the world. Secondly, I was watching motocross, that's the least gay thing that we can think of. Anyway, what's happening with woke homophobia and the gays?

   21. ADAndrew Doyle1:02:00

       Well, as you know, there's a chapter in my book entitled Woke Homophobia. So, uh, thank you for teeing that up. Uh, (laughs) what I would say is, what's happening is that the genderist movement has been embraced among a lot of gay people because they've bought into this idea that there is such thing as the LGBTQIA+ community.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:02:20

       Mm-hmm.

   23. ADAndrew Doyle1:02:20

       The problem with that is after the first three letters, you have people who are... whose ideology is antagonistic to gay rights. It's the opposite. It's like trying to, uh, shoehorn two opposing phenomena into the one thing.

   24. CWChris Williamson1:02:32

       Mm-hmm.

   25. ADAndrew Doyle1:02:33

       The premise of gay rights has always been that there are a minority in any given population who are innately attracted to their own sex. If you come along and say biological sex isn't a thing, and that if you are excluding from your dating pool people of your own... uh, people of the opposite sex who happen to identify into your sex, uh, then you are, in fact, a bigot. That is... I mean, let me give you an example. Grindr. I don't know if you're familiar with Grindr. Uh, not- This is a test. ... not intimately.

   26. CWChris Williamson1:03:05

       Okay, it's a test while you're-

   27. ADAndrew Doyle1:03:06

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me and my... Well, me and my husband.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:03:07

       Your husband knows about Grindr.

   29. ADAndrew Doyle1:03:07

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:03:09

       Uh, well, you know, this is a gay hookup app. Uh, you're not allowed to filter out women who identify as men on that app, even though the people on the app are there for sex. Um, I'm not on the app, by the way. I should just emphasize that. Um-

Episode duration: 2:29:28