Modern WisdomWhy Do Western People Hate Themselves? - Douglas Murray
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,019 words- 0:00 – 0:52
Intro
- DMDouglas Murray
If you said, "There is no good form of Blackness, none, and don't ever try to stop being Black because you can't, you can't get out of it," we'd go, "Wow! That's a racist."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
"That's a big racist right there." Well, it's racist when they do it about white people as well. If you took what is now said about white people in America, Britain, and elsewhere, and said it about any other group, you would be regarded, rightly, as a racist.
- CWChris Williamson
Douglas Murray, welcome to the show.
- DMDouglas Murray
Great to be with you, and great to be with you in person for the first time.
- CWChris Williamson
It's been too long since you've been on the show, but this is-
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... our first time in person.
- DMDouglas Murray
When was I last on? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Two years ago-ish, paperback of Madness of Crowds.
- DMDouglas Murray
That's right, and the world's only got better.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, it's so much better. So we've got a couple of hours today, and hopefully we'll go through some stuff that maybe you haven't spoken about before at the end. But
- 0:52 – 7:21
Dumbledore Can't Be Gay In China
- CWChris Williamson
first, there is some more pressing news. As you are aware, Dumbledore is a proud member of the LGBT community.
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
But as you may not be aware, he is not allowed to be his true self in China. Did you see this?
- DMDouglas Murray
No.
- CWChris Williamson
Let me tell you about this.
- DMDouglas Murray
I mean, Dumbledore kept coming out -I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
It's, it, it was-
- DMDouglas Murray
He came out more times than Sam Smith.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) So references to a gay relationship were edited out of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore by Warner Bros. for the film's release in China. "As a studio, we're committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to the circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors," Warner Bros. said in a statement to Variety. "Our hope is to release the features worldwide as released by their creators, but historically, we have faced small edits made in local markets."
- DMDouglas Murray
How gay was Dumbledore in ... let's see.
- CWChris Williamson
Six seconds of dialogue.
- DMDouglas Murray
What, is it, like ... It's dialogue?
- CWChris Williamson
It's dialogue.
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, it's dialogue, not-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, you know, it's not a-
- DMDouglas Murray
... not actual-
- CWChris Williamson
... full frontal scene. Come on.
- DMDouglas Murray
It's not.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a film for children.
- DMDouglas Murray
Okay. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
But my point is that, uh, he said something to this guy about how, "I used to love you," or something like that, uh, and it's been cut from -
- DMDouglas Murray
Wasn't there ... Now we saw Harry Potter on stage in New York with Jordan and Tammy Peterson only a couple months ago, and if I remember rightly, there was some very slight allusion to gayness there.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Whole thing was homoerotic.
- DMDouglas Murray
I wouldn't agree with you there.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
I, I thought there were lots of it. It was just charming. But the, the, uh, no, there was some reference to it. Uh, didn't... 'Cause, uh, I mean we don't need... I know this is Potterology, but I thought J.K. Rowling only said that Dumbledore was gay long after the whole franchise had been done.
- CWChris Williamson
2009, she posthumously brought Dumbledore ou-
- DMDouglas Murray
Posthumously outed him.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
Um, yeah, so Richard Harris, who did it, had no idea he was playing a gay character.
- 7:21 – 11:24
Douglas' Gay Privilege Card
- CWChris Williamson
used your gay privilege card?
- DMDouglas Murray
Well, on other gay men, probably, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
I mean, I just, uh-
- DMDouglas Murray
How much do you wanna know? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
That's kind of an intrusive question. Uh, um, uh, wh- what do you mean? I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I d- is, is there not some sort of privilege, like, a free extra shot at Starbucks or whatever? What do you get?
- DMDouglas Murray
Never, n- no, never that. Um, uh, y- I think I know what you're getting at. Uh, as it were, are there things I'm able to say and do that a straight person wouldn't?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- DMDouglas Murray
No. Uh, that would be the case if I was very left wing, or remotely left wing, for sure. Um, but, uh, since I'm, I've not got the correct views.
- CWChris Williamson
So you're basically straight.
- DMDouglas Murray
I'm, I'm an honorary straight, if not worse.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
I'm even worse-
- CWChris Williamson
A straight traitor.
- DMDouglas Murray
... than a heterosexual.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
It's that bad, Chris. It's that disgusting and reprehensible that my views have un-gayed me, uh, and I don't have a minority card. Uh, that is actually the case. Uh, uh, it honestly is. It's the same with women. Right-wing women are not really women. They have their woman card taken away. Uh, anyone who's right wing and gay isn't actually gay. They had their gay card taken away and so on. Um, uh, and I just, there occasionally I hear people saying, "Oh, well, Douglas only gets away with saying something himself he's saying because he's gay," and I, I think they, they don't really understand that's not the case. Um, I say what I think and I defend it pretty vigorously, I think, usually. And, uh, I've never felt that I've had any extra leeway because I happen to be gay. Partly because it's something I don't talk about very much, because I don't think it's very interesting, um, and I don't wanna bang on about uninteresting things. But, um, but also because I, I just, I, I, I don't believe in, and I may have said this to you before in private or in public, but I don't believe in the speaking as a pre- prefix. I mean, I, I just don't believe in that. And even before I could identify what I didn't like about it, I didn't like it. I didn't like the sort of person who stood up and said, "Um, so my parents were from Peru and Honduras, and I am a bisexual." I don't care. Get to the point. You know, doesn't matter to me. Stop it. Um, and people only ever did it if they had traits that they thought meant that they should grab the microphone.
- CWChris Williamson
Is there not some validity to the experience that everybody has which gives them a unique perspective on the world?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, but that's endless. But everyone has that. Everyone's got a unique perspective. God damn it, I mean, ev- ev- every person in the world has a unique perspective. Even identical twins each have unique perspectives from each other. That's another interesting observation. I mean, it's, we, we all have a unique perspective.
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat)
- DMDouglas Murray
Now, now is a person who has been oppressed in some way, have they got a particularly int- interesting perspective? Well, on their oppression, sure, and on subjects relating to it, but not on anything else. Um, and-
- CWChris Williamson
So I shouldn't take your advice on accounting or macroeconomics or something?
- DMDouglas Murray
D- d- definitely not. Woah. Run, run a million miles and I'm trying to give you financial advice.
- CWChris Williamson
Speaking as a gay man.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, speaking as a gay man, you need to invest in ISIS.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
I mean like, um, no, it's, it's just, I, all that sort of ridiculous validity seeking, uh, I'm not in favor of. But no, I suppose there are some people who th- who, who, who think that I get away with cer- saying certain of the things I do about highly contentious issues for some... They try to find some reason for it. But it's definitely not because of the fact that I happen to be gay, because as I say, in my own experience, it's never been a, um, anything I've benefited from, uh, career-wise. Certainly hasn't. Occasionally it's been something I've suffered for in a cert- to a certain extent, although I don't really like to think in those terms. I certainly don't like to moan, uh, which makes me an unusual figure in this era, of course.
- 11:24 – 19:17
Libs of TikTok Doxxed
- DMDouglas Murray
- CWChris Williamson
Did you see that the Libs of TikTok creator got doxxed by Taylor Lorenz?
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, yeah, it's so disgusting, wasn't it? I love T- Libs of TikTok. I mean, we wouldn't know about these maniacs, uh, I think otherwise. I mean, I wouldn't sit on TikTok watching what a teacher from Minnesota was saying about, you know, their gender pronouns otherwise. There's not quite enough time in the day. And, uh, and so Libs of TikTok did a great service. Um, and, uh, yeah, Taylor Lorenz of, uh, The Washington Post, that's just such a disgusting behavior.
- CWChris Williamson
Long article. Do you read it?
- DMDouglas Murray
No, I didn't read the whole article.
- CWChris Williamson
Long article, serious.
- DMDouglas Murray
Right. Yeah, I wish they'd have, um, looked at Hunter Biden's laptop story at similar length. Um, I mean, corruption in the first family, um, would strike me as being a much more interesting subject than who runs Libs of TikTok.But then, you know, Washington Post has its own priorities.
- CWChris Williamson
But Taylor Lorenz is someone who broke down crying on MSNBC not long ago, talking about online harassment.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, well, all these people are bullies, who whenever they've finished bullying people, uh, pretend to be a victim, uh, and whenever they get caught out, they cry. Um, the Cathy Newman phenomenon, you know? Bully somebody, and then when you're caught out behaving badly, present yourself as the victim. Nice, nice, uh, turnaround there. Very, very common. I think it was Julie Burchill who coined the term crybullies for these people. Uh, crybullies is a great term for our era, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What do you mean by that?
- DMDouglas Murray
Crybullies are b- are people who, who go around bullying everyone, and then, um, when they're caught or in any way criticized, cry, um, uh, just immediately turn themselves into the victim. Everyone knows this from children. I mean, there's a certain type of child who does that and they should be slapped or, you know, in a country you're allowed to slap a child, um, uh, or, you know, otherwise, you know, disciplined to not behave like that. Uh, you know, the- these are sort of grown up Eric Cartmans. Uh, maybe not even grown up. They're sort of Eric Cartman-like figures, they are horrible bullies and nasty people who when it's not going for them go, "Wah, wah."
- CWChris Williamson
What do you think is the problem with Libs of TikTok as a, as a channel? Is it because it's just bringing attention to things that the left would rather people not see?
- DMDouglas Murray
Well, it's not that it's just the left in particular, it's j- it's just, this is what... I mean, I don't look at TikTok. Um, and by the way, I think it's a highly unstable platform. Obviously there's Chinese Communist Party directing-
- CWChris Williamson
Brainwashing us slowly-
- DMDouglas Murray
... so, you know, it is.
- CWChris Williamson
... one video at a time, yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
All those things. And, um, uh, so, so yeah, obviously, um, you know, these teachers and others who say these ridiculous, outlandish things. There was one who even said she was a witch. Did you see that one?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- DMDouglas Murray
There were some teacher that was like, "You know, I'm a witch," and told her students and they had questions, and that was, that was fine. I say, make it a bit harder for us, I mean, you know, to actually say, "I also practice witchcraft" or something, describe me as being... No.
- CWChris Williamson
It seems to me like it's a, a warning shot to any future potential people that would consider doing the same sort of thing.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Because, you know, someone posts something on TikTok, you're not not doing it to get attention.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, you, the whole reason that you're doing it is to get attention, but maybe not by 600,000 people on a Twitter account.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah. Yeah, they don't, they want to be famous, they don't want to be infamous. Um, and, uh, once something highlights it to a group they would never have got to otherwise, who don't see it favorably, uh, it becomes a different thing, of course. Um, I mean, it's a form of that, that thing in the era, the context collapse phenomenon that occurs with, um, social media all the time, you know? Context collapse being when an, uh, an out-group discovers an in-group's discussion and doesn't view it.
- CWChris Williamson
What's an example of that?
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, uh, um, banter between friends on texts, for instance, where a group of guys banter about stuff and including bad taste stuff, joking about girls or whatever. Somebody leaks it, and an out-group discovers it and thinks, "How disgusting the way these men talk about women."
- CWChris Williamson
Durham University got popped for this a couple of years ago.
- DMDouglas Murray
Uh, for, there's, I mean, people sort of wise up to now be, yeah, um, right, rugby teams quite often, you know, get done over for it. Um, uh, some- an out-group discovers an in-group discussion, and, you know, it's understandable that, that, um, that that happens in our era, because everybody has access at the click of a few buttons to expose a- an in-groups discussion. And it's really hard sometimes to discover what the context will be of a particular discussion. Um, so I mean, that is something that goes on all the time at the moment, but, uh, but Libs of TikTok is simply exposing what an in-group was hoping to be able to say to, to itself, and it's been discovered by an out-group. But the out-group really doesn't like it, because it's teachers, you know, and things like that. It's like i- if it's just we, um, there's one person on Libs of TikTok I've seen several times who's a totally deranged individual, a man who dresses as a woman and says he's trans and, uh, and has lipstick and like a hairy chest, and, like, says, you know, um, he can't understand why people don't think he's a woman, and call him sir and things. Well, I guess it's the fact he's got a hairy chest and, you know, look like a dude, um, that's the problem, I'd have thought, you know. And, uh, but, uh, this, this particular guy, he like comes at it repeatedly, like, on one of them he's like, "You will respect us. You will respect us." And you go, "I don't want that person anywhere near-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- 19:17 – 33:23
The War on the West
- DMDouglas Murray
Indeed.
- CWChris Williamson
War on the West, hiding a can of Diet Dr. Pepper, who we both want to be sponsored by if there's a...
- DMDouglas Murray
If there's any chance we're sponsored by from Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, I would welcome it. Be my first sponsorship deal. I promise to carry it around all the time.
- CWChris Williamson
We know that it's a, a legitimate love. But new book, very good. Congratulations.
- DMDouglas Murray
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
I know you've worked hard on it. Uh, how has the West been coaxed into hating itself?
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, by all sorts of means. Um, but the first thing is just to establish that i- that it has, that... I call it the War on the West because it seems to me that, that everything that's Western, everything that's of the West, is, is in the process of being assaulted, and, uh, insulted, and demeaned, and diminished. And, um, the rest of the world does not put itself through this. Um, there are lots of forms of anti-Westernism which are foreign, you know. There's Russian anti-Westernism, there's Chinese anti-Westernism, Middle Eastern anti-Westernism. All of these are interesting, but the, the most interesting one is, um, Western anti-Westernism, and that's really what I'm writing about. The way in which the West has done itself over by demeaning and diminishing itself, and attacking its own history, attacking its own heroes, bringing down its own heroes, destroying its own path, past, carrying out iconoclastic attacks on its heroes and founders, um, insulting the majority population, the white population. So there is this strange war on white people in our day, which a lot of people even just hearing that phrase go, you know, worry, but it's absolutely the case. Racism in our day is rightly redeemed to be totally impermissible i- in the public square with one exception, which is white people about whom you can say absolutely anything now, and people do. And I give a remorseless number of examples in the book. I mean, if, if any group of peop- if, if, if you took what is now said about white people in America, Britain, and elsewhere, and said it about any other group, you would be regarded rightly as a racist. Uh, in some, a lot of countries, you'd be locked up for hate speech. Uh, but this is now not just normal rhetoric, but instilled and installed in every area of government in countries including Britain and the United States. It's instilled through the media, um, through academics, through the military, through absolutely every level of our societies. Uh, white people are seen as being a problem, and a, and a problem, uh, for whom a remedy must be found. Now, of course, some of the maniacs who have been pushing this, like Robin DiAngelo, who herself is white, and is of course, the author of White Fragility, which sold about half a million copies after the death of George Floyd, um, c- says, "There is no good form of being white. No good form of being white." And there's a rider. You also can't escape it. You can't escape it. So you can't, like, shift to another racial group. You can't identify as not being white if you're white. She doesn't know what it is, and I don't think anyone really does. It's a very weird category to even talk about people in these contexts, you know? But i- if you said that about any other group of people, if you said there is no good form of Blackness, none, and don't ever try to stop being Black 'cause you can't, you can't get out of it, we'd go, "Wow, that's a racist."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- DMDouglas Murray
"That's a big racist right there." Well, it's racist when they do it about white people as well. Uh, the talk of white privilege has become a racist trope, quite clearly. Uh, the talk of white tears, white female tears. Try that any other way. Black tears, Black female tears. "Oh, she's just crying Black tears." Whoa, you'd say, "That's a, that's a racist." Uh, so it is when they say white tears, or about white rage, one of the ones that they've, um, in, in this attempt to pathologize being white, uh, they've come up with most recently, particularly in the wake of January the 6th, white rage. Uh, no less a figure than General Milley, th- the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the US testifying before Congress, uh, uh, uh, de- uh, addressed the issue of so-called white rage. He said, "I want to learn about white rage. I wanna find out what it is." Let's try the other way around one more time. Black rage. Let's look into it. "Ooh," you'd say, "That doesn't sound like a very nice thing to do. Why don't we just talk about rage in general?" White rage, Black rage, only one of those is a permissible thing to talk about, only one of those you'd catch the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff using before Congress.
- CWChris Williamson
Where does this asymmetry come from, then? Is it because white people are seen to ... It's always punching up toward white people? Is it this-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... current trend that we have toward anti-Westernism, colonialist, imperialists, reparations need to come from the past-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... and that white people are a- a- and, and that skin color is a representation of that as an ideology or as a, a like the modern day, um, tip of the spear of, uh, uh, of that history?
- DMDouglas Murray
I think it's an attempt t- to, um, rectify a historic wrong and a wildly misguided attempt at it. So, I mean, I think we talked about this when we talked about the manners of crowds. We talked about the fact that there's a, there's a, there's such a thing as an over-correction in social issues, you know. Nobody denies that women historically were not able to make the same life choices as men were able to make. They didn't have as much freedom, in, i- in general. Um, they didn't, and so if you wanna make up for that historic wrong, the obvious thing to do is just make everyone equal. A certain type of person says, "No. We, we, we can make up for it faster by punishing men for a time." Uh, nobody can deny that gay people historically were not treated equally as straight people. Uh, there's a type of person who says, "Let's, uh, attack the heterosexuals for a bit," um, instead of saying, "Why don't we just have equality?" Um, in the same way, nobody with any sense would be able to deny that historically racism has existed in countries of the West, as it has in all countries. It's a very, very ugly human instinct, one of the worst. Uh, and it exists in, it, it exists in particular in American society. It exists still. There is, uh, there are still pockets of racism in America. Not in, not l- legitimate or, or in any way mainstream but, but there are, there are some people who hold racist views and, um, but they're all on the margins. Uh, nevertheless you can't deny that historically America has been a, a white-dominated country in which Black people were oppressed for a very long time and until not that long ago. What do you want to do to make up for that? Again, you have the same options as you have with women and other minority issues. You can decide to g- go for equality or you can decide to overdo it for a bit, uh, over-correct. And the over-correction in race is let's beat up on the white people for a bit. So one of the great race hustlers of our day in America is a man who calls himself Ibram X. Kendi, partly to give himself a sort of Malcolm X vibe, and, um, uh, he wrote a book called, uh, How to Be an Antiracist, uh, which is a very, very popular book in America. It's flooded everywhere. Uh, there's also a very slightly less grown-up version called Antiracist Baby, uh, which he explains among other things for two-year-olds, that you should talk to your two-year-olds about the fact that policy is not people are the problem. I don't know if you ever met a two-year-old but they very rarely talk policy issues in my view, my experience. Um, anyhow, Ibram X. Kendi, as he calls himself, says completely openly in How to Be an Antiracist, and I quote it in the book, he says that, uh, uh, "The answer to past, um, uh, prejudice is, is present prejudice. The answer to past inequalities is present inequalities. You must, you must, you must rectify historic wrongs by committing wrongs in the present," is, is, is his message. One-
- CWChris Williamson
What's wrong with that? What's wrong with that message?
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs) Well, um, first of all, I mean, it's, uh, you punish people who look like people who did a bad thing in the past on behalf of people who look like people to whom a bad thing was done. You're not even dealing with victim and, uh, uh, and oppressor.
- CWChris Williamson
Perpetrator.
- DMDouglas Murray
You're, you're, you're, you're dealing with people who look like perpetrators of the past and people who look like victims of the past. So that's the first thing. Second thing is it's not gonna work. And I'll tell you one reason why it's not gonna work in particular, which is that, um, that, that this would be very hard to do if you were dealing with a minority group. I, I think if you said to any minority, "You're, you're really scummy and worthless, and historically you're the only people who've ever done anything wrong and, and no one else has," and you know, so on. "And you should think badly of yourself, and you should be locked in this bad identity forever and never get out of it." I think if you did that to a minority group, it'd be unlikely you could persuade them into this mindset. Try doing that with a majority group. You, you, I think you're doomed to failure. I hope they're doomed to failure. I think they're pretty confident they're doomed to failure. Um, I don't think it'll, it'll work. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
But it seems like it's being pretty widely accepted at the moment.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
There doesn't seem to be a massive amount of pushback.
- DMDouglas Murray
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I certainly get, you know, when, when you were using examples earlier on of flipping the language round to talk about Black rage or Black tears-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... or, uh, Blackness that you can't get rid of-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that makes me cringe inside in a way that whiteness doesn't because I feel-
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... like it's, I, I've just become so used to hearing that terminology-
- 33:23 – 41:25
The Second Worst Book Ever
- CWChris Williamson
uh, called the second-worst book he's ever read, r- read.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes. It was the f- was the...
- CWChris Williamson
The first worst book was, I wanted to say it's like a, some fan fiction book about something, like something completely catastrophic.
- DMDouglas Murray
Right, okay.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, but he said it was the second-worst book, but would be useful to, um, fix the leg of a, a wobbly coffee table.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, yeah. I, I think it is up there as among the, the worst tomes I've ever had to delve through. I mean, every page is a... No, the, the, the, the autobiography of Rudolf Höss, the camp commandant of Auschwitz, was also deeply... I mean, every page, 'cause he, he, among... As well as being a war criminal, he couldn't write, and every page of his memoirs is absolutely disgusting.
- CWChris Williamson
Apart from being disgusting and brutal-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a- a- and gleeful, it was-
- DMDouglas Murray
It was also-
- CWChris Williamson
... illegible.
- DMDouglas Murray
It was also just, like, turgidly, badly written as well. I remember when I read that, I thought, "That's a terrible, that's a terrible book." And, uh, and Robin DiAngelo's book is, is probably, for me, the second worst-
- CWChris Williamson
Impressive.
- DMDouglas Murray
... after that. Um, but yes. Um, the point is, is if you're in a place in your life where you're told to do these things, you're told to talk about white privilege and, and, and contemplate that, and you said, "I'm not doing that, not doing that, don't have privilege," uh, you're very likely to be in s- serious trouble. And there's, there's lots of people who have been. There's a, uh, there was a partner at the firm, firm KPMG who lost his job just because he said that he thought implicit bias training was crap. He lost his job. He was a partner at a big firm, you know? Uh, so let alone if you're one of the poor underlings who has to be put through this rubbish. Um, so, so yeah, and anyhow, it's, it's time that this is stopped is my view, and, um, uh, not enough people are willing to say it and I am, but it- it's time to stop. I'm not willing to allow people to keep talking about white people as being innately privileged. Uh, they don't know a damn thing about most people. You cannot work out somebody's life, their experiences, their privileges, or their sufferings because of their skin color. It's a gross generalization. It would be against Black people. It is against white people. And I think also we have to call time on this ridiculous notion that there are racial groupings who have something to apologize for, for historic reasons. Uh, you and I are both fr- uh, both brought, born and brought up in the United Kingdom. Uh, we are told now that we have some hereditary, um, responsibility for slavery, and... I mean, Americans only have responsibility for slavery. You and I have responsibility not only for slavery, but colonialism. Well, Chris, neither you nor I did anything in the slave era. Neither you nor I did anything in the colonial era. Long before our time, the British Navy policed the high seas two centuries before we were born, uh, in order to stop the slave trade, not just in Britain, but across the world. Uh, the colonies fell apart decades before we were born. So-... no hereditary guilt from me, and I have none from you. I have none from anybody. There's no such thing. It's a vile idea. It's a vile idea that cert- uh, uh, uh, it would be a, it would be permissible in a way as an idea if you agreed that everybody bore some responsibility for things that their societies had done in the past that were bad.
- CWChris Williamson
Do they not?
- DMDouglas Murray
But they don't. It's one directional. It's only a Western thing. And I explain in the book, I mean, like, other societies do not do this, and they just don't do this. Uh, China-
- CWChris Williamson
What, like-
- DMDouglas Murray
China is not currently, um, trying to work out what it did historically wrong in the slave era. China, um, uh, did as much slaving as, as anyone, and still is, uh, actually. Um, um, we have, um, effective... We have 40 million slaves in the world today, which is more than there were in the 19th Century.
- CWChris Williamson
More slaves alive today?
- DMDouglas Murray
Than there were in the 19th Century during the slave trade.
- CWChris Williamson
40 million you said alive today?
- DMDouglas Murray
40 million, yeah. I've met slaves. I've met former slaves in Africa and elsewhere. People who were born as slaves and managed to escape it. Uh, this is not an abstr- abstract point I'm making. I think for us, um, beating ourselves up over, over a trade which our own country got rid of two centuries ago, um, and if anything we should be proud that we got rid of, and, um, uh, and so on. The, th- there is, uh, a significant likelihood we are not dealing with, for instance, slavery today, because we're so obsessed with going over again an issue that was closed two centuries ago. And, you know, it brings to mind a phrase, uh, of Nietzsche's in The Genealogy of Morals, that these are people who... There's a type of person who, who, who tears at wounds long closed, and then shrieks about the pain they feel. Um, we're dealing with a lot of those people at the moment. They do not themselves feel pain from the slave trade. They do not feel pain from colonialism. They have decided to rip at a long-closed wound, and then cry in order to win something, whether it's pity, or money, or reparations, or something. Everybody would have their own view on it. But, um, I, I, I refuse to go along with this idea that, as I say, if everybody decided to take upon themselves exactly the amount of... As I say, it's a horrible idea, hereditary sin, but exactly the proportion of hereditary sin that their own society was accorded, then that would be one thing. It's quite another thing when only one group of people, and that, white Westerners, are expected to be responsible for everything that anyone who looked even remotely like them in the past did. Uh, big, uh, uh, um, and everybody else is not. I mean, the obvious example to give is-
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat)
- DMDouglas Murray
... is a point that Voltaire made in the, in the, um, 18th Century that he says, um, said somewhere. The only thing, um... By the way, Voltaire now is one of the many figures who's been torn down literally in Paris. His statue has been now removed by the authorities in Paris, one of the great rationalist thinkers of French s- society. His su- statue was attacked so many times by people throwing red paint at it that it's now removed and you can't find it in Paris. Nobody knows quite where Voltaire is today. Um, but now, part of the allegation is him, that he profited through shares in some slave companies. They forgot- forget, by the way, that Voltaire also wrote in Candide, one of the great, great, um, um, a- attacks on slavery. But Voltaire says in his own day, he says, "Well, the only thing, the only thing worse than what the Europeans have done, uh, to the Africans is what Africans have done to their fellow Africans, is what Africans have done to their brothers and sisters." We know, uh, from, uh, the f- the few memoirs we had, have of, uh, people who were slaves in this period, people like Equiano, Olaudah Equiano, the most amazing man who was, uh, ended up sort of British, and, uh, was baptized in Westminster, became a free man, uh, had the most extraordinary life. Uh, memoirs well worth reading. We know from him, for ins- and many, many others of course that, uh, he, he was, he was stolen by his neighbors in Africa, uh, in the 1700s. They, um... A neighboring village, they, they came and they snatched them at night. That's what they were, people snatchers they're called. And these Africans, uh, stole their neighbors and, um, and sold them. And, um, now, um, what is the moral responsibility of the descendants of the people stealers? Um, if white Westerners take some guilt, then I would like guilt, uh, from Africans as well. Uh, what do you do about African-Americans who are descended both from slavers and slaves? Um, what's their guilt hereditary-wise?
- CWChris Williamson
They cash out at zero.
- DMDouglas Murray
They would, they would come out at... Yes, exactly, the balance sheet you end up there. Um,
- 41:25 – 47:22
The History Of Slave Trades
- DMDouglas Murray
uh, if you, uh, uh, one... When I was researching the slavery section of this book, um, I got into the very interesting story of the other sla- well, the other major slave trade of the ti- of the time, whilst the transatlantic slave trade was going on, which was the Arab slave trade. Uh, and the Arabs had a huge slave trade that went on for much longer than the Western one, the transatlantic one. It's thought that maybe 10, 11th- uh, 10, 10 or 11 million people were transported across the Atlantic during the height of- uh, during the whole of the period of the slave trade. It's an appalling thing. It was, uh, it was, it was a- a- unbelievably horrible, uh, trade, which w- people at the time, most people at the time didn't think was wrong, because people in the past thought differently from us, and almost, well al- all civilizations sadly at that point, they'd all engaged in slavery. Everyone did slave labor. How were the pyramids built? You know, the, the pharaohs didn't do it themselves. They didn't pay a fair day's wor- uh, labor wages to the people who, who hauled the stones for miles. Uh, the Acropolis in Athens was not...... built by stones dragged up there by Alcibiades.
- CWChris Williamson
Willing-
- DMDouglas Murray
They would, they would, it-
- CWChris Williamson
... employees, yeah.
- DMDouglas Murray
It was, it's- (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I went to a church in Florence that was nearly 2,000 years old, and it overlooks downtown Florence.
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And the tour guide was explaining to us... I'm, like, thinking, "Th- this building's nearly 2,000 year..." And it's been built up over time, but still, the foundations are 2,000 years old, and a lot of the, the frontage of it is over 1,000 years old. And I said, "Well, how is it that people from so long ago were able to make a building which has stood the test of time?" He said, "Well, you don't have the cost of labor."
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes. Yes, that's right. That's right. Well, uh, come on then, the second, 'cause it's a very, that's a very i- important point. Um, but just to finish that thought on the, the, the Arab slave trade, it was, was about, um, 50% more people in total, uh, during the same period. So if, if, if 10 to 11 million or so were taken across the Atlantic in the transatlantic slave trade, uh, it's thought that maybe as many as 18 million-
- CWChris Williamson
From where to where?
- DMDouglas Murray
... were taken from Africa to what we could now call the Middle East, uh, uh, Arab countries.
- CWChris Williamson
By who?
- DMDouglas Murray
Arabia. Uh, uh, by the Arabs. Uh, the Arabs traded, as the Europeans did, in slaves from Africa. Now, you may wonder, "Why, uh, therefore, are there not, um, n- more Black people in the Middle East?" And there's an answer, which was that this was actually a genocide. Uh, they, um, the Arabs, uh, deliberately castr- or castrated every single male. So any A- any African male they took, uh, to the Arab countries was castrated, in order there would be no more Black people. Um, now, does that have a legacy today? Be sure it does. If you go to, uh, Qatar, various of the Gulf States, you'll find, um, that they basically have a slave labor class today. Uh, Filipinos and others who are brought in and have effectively slave conditions. I've seen it myself.
- CWChris Williamson
Dubai is the same.
- DMDouglas Murray
Uh, Dubai, uh, nobody like FIFA cares about this. Uh, but this is the case today. Uh, in, um, in, uh, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, the word for, uh, a Black person, Abid, uh, or Abid, is slave. They still call Black people slaves. My friend Ayan, uh, who was b- born in Somalia, spent a bit of time in, uh, in Saudi Arabia when she was growing up, and they were Black, 'cause they were from Somalia, and they were certainly blacker than the people in Saudi Arabia, and they were always called Abid, uh, slaves. So, so, th- my point, my point is not in any way to, uh, at all diminish what the European slave trade was or what the transatlantic slave trade was. But it is very, very strange to live in an era where it is presumed that only the West was engaged in such a thing, and only we, for the rest of time, must repay a debt which it appears can never be paid down. Um, and that brings me to wha- what you were just saying about, uh, what was going on in, uh, countries like Britain-
- CWChris Williamson
Florence.
- DMDouglas Murray
... at the time, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, didn't you say that the life expectancy of a worker in Lancashire-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... England was exactly half of that of a slave-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... working at the time?
- DMDouglas Murray
The average, the average man in, uh, the north of England working in a, in a mill or, you know, a mine, they died in their late 30s. So, I'm sorry, but yes, this is different from being a slave. But it's not so wildly different that we are able to talk about those people in the north of England as benefiting from privilege. These were not privileged people. These were not privileged people. These d- these people did not have very many life choices of themselves. And here's, here's one of the main points (laughs) to make about all this, is the past was pretty much hell for pretty much everyone. I mean, even kings died, and princes died of diseases which you'd now cure by a shot of penicillin. Um, but the poor, who was almost everyone, they were not privileged people. And the idea that we have to recast all the ancestors of people who happen to be white as oppressors and the ancestors of everyone who happens to be Black solely as oppressed is an incredibly simplistic game, and it's unfair. And th- that's one of the main problems about it, is that it's just deeply unfair. And, uh, when you find an unfair game like that, you should ask yourself, "Why are we allowing this game to be played like this, by people who literally
- 47:22 – 52:38
Why Revise History?
- DMDouglas Murray
declare themselves sheriff?"
- CWChris Williamson
Well, what's the goal of revising history? Why do it?
- DMDouglas Murray
Well, we revise history all the time, and we should. I'm not trying to stop anyone carrying out historical investigations. Far from it. I say in the book, uh, I, I, I'm not against historical revisionism. I think the revisionists need to be revised in turn, because I think they've had too fast and full a run. Uh, I'm not, I'm not against understanding any of this in the round. What I'm against is trying to understand it through a very narrow. Ideological lens. And here, here's the thing. Um, I mean, if we'd have been born, like, 50 years earlier than we were, we would almost certainly have had an education in the UK where there would've been a map on the school room wall of, uh, the, uh, globe- the globe and the great pink of the British Empire. And we'd have been brought up to say, "Good God, what a great amount of the Earth that we own. Isn't that terrific?" And, uh, "We're a tiny country but
- NANarrator
know, we've got all of that. That's just grand." And the teacher would have told us about these great heroic people who went out and made this possible. Now-
- DMDouglas Murray
That was not history in the round. That was a very narrow, um, ideological view of empire. Well, unfortunately, it's also a narrow and highly ideological view of empire to do what we're currently doing, which is to say, you must only look at empire by, for instance, equating it with the worst actions of the Third Reich. You know, the, the, you can only compare it with Nazism. You can't say, "Well, it's a complex thing. Uh, some benefits for some countries, a lot of negatives for a lot of countries." Um, and the only people who tried to add any co- any context and make any of the necessary corrections to the overreach have been just destroyed. Uh, people like Professor Nigel Biggar from Oxford University. In the wake of the Cecil Rhodes affair at Oxford when there was an attempt to pull down this statue of, uh, an undoubted colonialist, Cecil Rhodes, who also endowed his former colle- co- uh, college at Oxford, Oriel. There was an attempt to pull down his statue and this professor at Oxford, Regius Professor at Oxford, uh, in ethics, Nigel Biggar, a very fine man, um, objects to this and says, "Why don't we, since we're a university, uh, we shouldn't allow these lies to be told about Cecil Rhodes." Which is what people were doing. They were making up quotes of things he said when what he'd said was quite bad enough. But they invented quotes and said he'd used the N-word in contexts he hadn't and all that sort of thing. And Nigel Biggar, this professor said, "Why don't we try to set up a course at Oxford where we study the ethics of empire in the round?" You know, try to work out a moral calculus, as it were, of what, what it meant. Now that would be a really good and reasonable project. He wasn't allowed to do it. Fellow academics by the hundreds denounced him. Um, uh, "How can you even think of trying to put this into context?" They all said. Um, and one of the main arguments they used repeatedly was, "You- you- you- you can't excuse empire because to excuse empire would be a, be to excuse, for instance the Amritsar Massacre." Uh, which was the time, uh, when, uh, British troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd of protestors in Amritsar, in India. Not to be confused with the time when Indira Gandhi ordered the massacre of far more Indians on the same spot. Those are two things not to be confused at all. But the time when, uh, the British opened fire, and Winston Churchill in the House of Commons denounces it as a- as a- as- as, um, one of the greatest crimes of the era. He says, he says, "It's a great stain on the British empire that such a thing should have happened." And it was. And, uh, uh, the, um, uh, colonel, Colonel Dyer who ordered th- the soldiers to open fire on this unarmed crowd, um, he, uh, was put into retirement immediately. Um, you might say worse should've happened to him, but that's not what happened. Um, and there was an incredible outcry. Now, um, so hundreds of people were killed at Amritsar. Uh, but again, is it, is it impossible to work out what the benefits were for certain countries of, um, British presence? Um, is it wrong to think that Hong Kong benefited from British presence? Or Singapore? Uh, societies which have flourished or didn't flourish, in the case of Hong Kong until quite recently. Is it wrong to try to work out why the places succeeded, succeeded, and why the places that failed, failed, and what went right and what went wrong, and whether you could find a ledger? That seems to me to be a very good, reasonable enterprise.
- 52:38 – 1:02:17
Winston Churchill vs Karl Marx
- CWChris Williamson
Why is it that Winston Churchill has been seen as a racist, but Karl Marx has been seen as a hero?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that 'cause that's one of my favorite bugbears. Um, uh, yeah. Well, here's my short answer. Uh, there is an attempt to take down all of our heroes.
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat)
- DMDouglas Murray
All of our heroes. Winston Churchill for the British is our hero, our national hero. Only 20 years ago when we were allowed an opportunity to vote on who the greatest Briton was, BBC had this BBC documentary. Uh, 10 people were, in the end up being short-listed, I think, I think people presented a program on each. And the, um, and the- the person who won hands down as the greatest Briton of all time was Winston Churchill, of course. Um, now in 2022, uh, even the- the BBC whenever it runs a piece about Winston Churchill has to run like the case for the d- for the, um, prosecution. Like 10 terrible things Winston Churchill did. Um, they've deci- uh, it's been decided to recast him in a different light, and again, a very unfair light. He's accused of a lot of things he didn't do, uh, such as gassing, uh, Iraqis. In fact he, and this is a Noam Chomsky lie, he actually used, uh, not to get too much into the weeds, but Churchill ordered the use of what we would now call tear gas.
- CWChris Williamson
Tear gas.
- DMDouglas Murray
Not mustard gas. And, uh, Chomsky and others have pretended that he used mustard gas on the Iraqis. That- that lie has gone round repeatedly. There are other- other, all sorts of other accusations against Churchill, but basically it's because, um, the British, uh, uh, um, love and admire Winston Churchill still. N- n- not everybody. There are some critics. Um, but by and large he is our biggest national hero.
- CWChris Williamson
(clears throat)
- DMDouglas Murray
And, um, you know, when the film Finest Hour came out, you know, there were lots of stories of, um, people in cinemas at the end getting to their feets and- feet and doing standing ovations. Um, and, uh, I mean, I don't know if you feel this, but I feel it very strongly that, uh, Churchill is- it's- it's not just about him.Um, i- uh, eh, in Britain, there's a view that, um, I think is correct, that the world would certainly have, um, allowed Nazism to flood across Europe and possibly to Britain if Churchill hadn't had been in place at that time.
- CWChris Williamson
Who was it that said, "This is the one time I've seen the hand of God at work in the real world"?
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, yeah. Lord Hailsham said, "It's the one time I've seen the hand of God in, um, operate in politics." He felt like it just the mo- the- the- the- the bit... Churchill being put into place at that moment was- was just a godsend. And it was. And the other thing is, of course, he- he... For all of our families in Britain, I mean, he was the rallying figure along with the King and the Queen, um, who showed the British people the resilience necessary to sacrifice their sons a second time within a few decades.
- CWChris Williamson
'Cause he'd done what? Fought on six continents or something, or five continents.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes. Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
He'd put himself forward for World War I.
- DMDouglas Murray
He volunteered to fight in World War I. He didn't need to.
- CWChris Williamson
Great hats. Fantastic hats. Smoked a lot.
- DMDouglas Murray
He smoked, drank a lot. Um, but he represented, and represents still for a lot of us in Britain, this... a sense of what our spirit is, which is, um, uh, difficult, belligerent, unbowed, um, uh, dogged, um, not self-pitying, um, and much more. And so why have they come for Churchill? Uh, I explain the ways in which they've come for him, but my answer as to why is because they know that it will demoralize us.
- CWChris Williamson
Who's they?
- DMDouglas Murray
The people who hate the West in general, who hate Britain, who hate America. If you take down... They hate people like Churchill being admired. Th- they can't bear it because they know that it's something so deep within us. Now, what is that deep thing? For me and I think for a lot of other British people, it is the sense that we're a good country, that we did something good, that France may have given in, that... with the only shots fired being against French soldiers by French soldiers, but that's good as a crossover, that. Uh, you know, the Dutch rolled over. Eh, a lot of other countries didn't have a choice, and so on and so forth. But the British wouldn't, and this is because we were a good country, and we faced up to bad people when we saw them. That is a very, very important feeling nationally, but if you want to stop the British feeling pride in themselves, you gotta take out Winston Churchill. In the same way, in America, if you hate America, you not only hate the fact the Founding Fathers are revered, and they've been... My God, there's I say, say in the chapter on history, they've really come for the Founding Fathers in recent years. Uh, you might say, again, there's a historical revisionism that was needed. Uh, 60 years ago, people in America who revered l- l- Jefferson, say, didn't necessarily know he was a slave owner. Uh, we know today. It'd be nice to know something other than the fact he was a slave owner. Um, but the point is, if you attack the Founding Fathers, you attack an idea of America. If you take down Lincoln, the victor of the Civil War... and that's also happening. Literally, there's, and I've seen this ourselves, there's statues of Lincoln torn down in America. If you tear down Lincoln, you go in a similar way to attack the foundation of America, 'cause if you don't have Lincoln, you basically don't have America. And again, not just because he was a m- a good man who won the Civil War and- and- and did this extraordinary thing. Eh, not just because of that, but also because hi- his whole story was a story of coming from nothing and becoming president. I mean, he grew up in abs- absolute poverty, Lincoln. Probably had one year of formal education. Everything else, he was self-taught. He taught himself to read books. He was a remarkable man who imbued a spirit of America which many Americans still feel, but if you take down Lincoln, you've taken down the idea of America. Now, sorry, one other point, quick point on that. Why don't they do it to Marx? Ah. Well, the same remorseless battle is... The same remorseless attack is made on every historical figure in the West, on every philosopher of the West, every cultural hero of the West, and it's always done the same way. They lived in a time of slavery and did something to endorse it or didn't work against it enough. They lived in a time of colonialism and didn't attack it enough or benefited from it in some way. They were racist by modern standards. This is done against everybody, everybody in American history and in British history and Western history, except for Karl Marx. What a coincidence is this. Um, I- I took great delight researching the book and finding out the me- the many, many racist things that Karl Marx said. In his private letters, private letters to Engels, he constantly uses the N-word, often, uh, linked to Jew. Profoundly anti-Semitic, of course. Um, uh, e- extraordinarily bad views on slavery, on, uh, colonialism, uh, everything else. Um, uh, h- he said much more racist things than any of the people that we've discussed, discussed so far, uh, including Churchill. Uh, and, um, yet, weirdly, he doesn't get the same treatment. So if you take out every thinker other than Karl Marx, why would that be? Other than that you're not really just... You're not really carrying out a fair critique. You're carrying out a deliberately unfair critique in order to advance an existing cause.... the existing cause in this case is anything but Westernism, and Marxism is one of the answers. And I'm afraid that anti-Westernism has always been, um, whipped along by Marxism ever since the benighted birth of Karl Marx. Um, he, uh, even in the post-colonial era, as I say in the books, but one of the great ironies of the post-colonial era is that anti-colonialists like Fanon, who I write about, all said, "We've got to get rid of Western rule in Africa." Now you could say, "Well, at this point we must return Africa to a precolonial time, a kind of native tradition," which would have included all sorts of traditions which would also not look very nice in the light of modern thought. Um, the Oba of Benin was not a liberal democrat, and much more. Anyway, but the point you, you, they didn't say that. They, people like Fanon said, "We must get the Europeans out of Africa and stop the European colonialism and capitalism in order that we can institute Western Marxism." Well, this is an oddity at the very least. But as I say, I think it's one of these things, the fact that people don't apply this standard to certain people and do to others is a demonstration that we're, that they are engaging in a bad faith argument.
- CWChris Williamson
The thing that I keep
- 1:02:17 – 1:13:22
The Root of Anti-Westernism
- CWChris Williamson
coming back to is the why, right? What the end goal is of this. I don't deny that, you know, that I was kind of shocked when we saw statues of people that I thought probably shouldn't have been torn down, like Winston Churchill seemed like a bit of a stupid idea to tear down. What was it, Abraham Lincoln setting free a slave that got-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... torn down at one point? I was like, well, that kind of seems like symbolically kind of beautiful rather than-
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, racist or imperial or whatever to me. Um, so I don't disagree that the things that you're bringing up seem to have happened. What I'm, the leap that I'm struggling to make is like what's the agenda? Why is this?
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, dissolving the West's love for itself, the attachment of whiteness with Westernness because Westernness had some baggage that came along from the past, and then by attaching the two you make the, the personal part of the ideological part of the historical part of the oppres-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Why? Like what's the end goal? Are you suggesting that this is a, a slow march of Marxism? Is that who's pushing this? Like...
- DMDouglas Murray
I think one of the people is pushing it. First thing to say is there is a totally, as I, as I try to say, there is a totally reasonable genesis to it, which is there are things from our past we have not looked at enough, and perhaps we ought to understand more fully in the round. There is also a totally legitimate understandable sense of, you know, were we always the good guys? That's a pretty good question to ask. Um, and, uh, and, and, you know, by the way, only the West engages in this sort of self-criticism, but fine. Doesn't need to be something everyone does. So that, that's one thing, is a perfectly reasonable attempt to get ourselves in the round. Um, uh, my own belief is, is that there is, there are se- several other things going on. And just to limit them to a couple, one is internationally this is also pushed on us. Uh, just the day before we were speaking, uh, I saw that the China Daily News, which is one of the Communist Party of China's propaganda organs, put out on Twitter a cartoon of Uncle Sam behind the Oval Office desk, uh, um, surrounded by bodies and a sort of, you know, Uncle Sam... America has always, you know, been racist and so on. It said, you know, George Floyd and separation of families at the border. Just went on like this, like... I mean, does anyone really think the Communist Party of China minds about separating families? Does it mind that with the Uyghurs? Does it mind the fact it's carrying out currently probably the worst human rights abuse currently occurring anywhere on the globe? And that's saying something. Um, do you honestly think the Chinese care about the death of George Floyd? We don't know the names of the people killed in China. Of course they don't care about it, but they push it on us because they know that we're, that a certain number of us are res- are receptive to that. Same thing with Russia. Russia and others have for years encouraged this sense of self-loathing in the West because they have a different sense of themselves. Uh, so our, our foes and our competitors take advantage of this self-criticism because it is not something that they share, and they... And then we have this thing of total self-abnegation.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that mean?
- DMDouglas Murray
Self-abnegation is the desire to rid yourself basically of everything that you have, uh, for a culture to get rid of everything because it's all bad. And that's what I try to write about in the culture chapter, is to show that, you know, we're even doing this throughout our culture. I mean, phrases like dead white men suddenly took, got currency in recent years. Dead white men. And people could talk about people in these terms. I mean, it's, it's... Again, dead Black men. "Oh, that was just dead Black men." Who would say that? Who would say that? "Oh, that's just the legacy of dead white men."Um, this, this became a, um, um, a process of self-scourging in recent years, and, um, I'm afraid that a lot of it is done by bad actors, bad faith actors, and a lot of done, of it is done by ignoramuses, I'm afraid. Um, one of the easiest w- ways to make yourself look clever in the modern era is just to be anti-Western, to blame us for everything.
- CWChris Williamson
Call it, uh, what is it? Reflexive anti-Westernism.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes. I mean, but, but let's put it the other way around. I mean, that, it's a sort of easy way to, to, to put it like that. Let's put it the harder way. F- um, how easy is it today for anyone in, in the modern West to stand up in a public forum on television, say, and list the accomplishments of the West? Who would do it? Well, it's not like we don't have accomplishments we could talk about. Simply in the political arena, we could just mention the evolution of representative democracy, the concept of one man, one vote. One woman, one vote. A lot of the world's got nowhere near that. The concept of the peaceful transfer of power, the maintaining of political order, the rule of law. Okay, th- this is a very small number of things, but everything I've just listed is pretty big. Most of Africa, historically, the Middle East, historically, the Far East, historically, does not have this, th- the peaceful transfer of power. It's one group oppressing another group and taking their stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
I think Russia hasn't had a, a peaceful transfer of power through the actual, uh, appropriate-
- DMDouglas Murray
No.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, mechanism, maybe ever.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yes, I mean, you, you could-
- CWChris Williamson
Or maybe back to the '60s or something.
- DMDouglas Murray
... you, you could say that it was... Well, no. You ... Well, well, it'd depend how you interpreted the Communist Party in the Cold War era transferring power from leader to leader, which was sort of peaceful on their terms, um, uh, but under a system which the people have no say in. I mean, you know, uh, none at all even.
- CWChris Williamson
You had this quote, I think, that relates to what you were just mentioning there. Uh, "When you are speaking into a great vacuum of ignorance, people with malign intent can run an awfully long way awfully fast."
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah. Yeah. It's absolutely true. They, um, uh, if, if, if you are brought up to... And I was slightly in this when I was a student. Um, you don't know the world, you don't know very much about the rest of the world, you've not been to much of the rest of the world yet, and when asked anything about it, you've only got this prism of where you come from. And, and if you're taught, "Well, it's us that's responsible for everything," then it's quite easy to just always look at everything through that lens. But it's not a correct lens. I mean, it's, it's a lens. It's not the... It's not a fair one. Uh, one of the people I critique in the book, Edward Said, who wrote the book Orientalism, which all s- almost all students still read, unfortunately, accuses Western scholars, uh, n- approaching the Middle East and looking at it through Orientalist eyes of looking at it with European eyes. And, uh, everyone since Sayid wrote this has, seems to think this is a brilliant insight. It's not a brilliant insight at all. I mean, what eyes were they meant to look at the Middle East through? Chinese eyes? Japanese eyes? Of course they looked at it through the eyes of the place they came from, and interpreted it as such, just in the same way as an Arab traveling to Europe in the 17th century would have looked at Europe through Arab eyes. Um, there's nothing particularly surprising or racist about that. Um, but in our era, we have, we have been, I think, taught that, that a, that a, um, a civilized, a, um, a p- a person who wanted to sound clever, a person who wanted to be thought well of, uh, and much more would, would, would laugh at this. Would, would, would, would, would scorn what I just said about, for instance, just some of the political gifts that the West has, ha- ha- has, has handed down. Um, George Orwell, you remember from that famous essay, The Lion and the Unicorn, says that the average, um, English, sort of English mor- or English intellectual, I think he's... It was a particular example he used, w- would sort of rather die than stand up to the national anthem, you know? That's different in America by the way, but there was always something in it. And now, and, and this, that, that observation of Orwell's has often been used to sort of show, oh, well, we have a more subtle form of patriotism, a more subtle form of national feeling and so on and so forth. But there is a form of that that can be very, very easily adapted into shame only. Shame only. There is a version of it which can be pride only, and that's ridiculous as well in a way, just, just to be... I mean, I'm not a... As you well know, I'm not a tub-thumping, flag-waving nationalist of any kind. Um, I, I love my country and I think it's been a broadly a force for good in the world, certainly more of a force for good than it has for ill. I think the same thing of America. Um, and, um, I'm much more pleased that Britain and America had global dominance in the 20th century than, say, that China or Russia had. Um, and, you know, I, I, I think that, I think that s- for some reason generationally, there's just been this rebellion against what's perceived to be sort of jingoistic and, and simply-
- CWChris Williamson
What does that mean? What's that word mean?
- DMDouglas Murray
Being jingoistic, well, to be sort of nationalists and, um, um, you know, uh, only us, you know? The rest, you know, you don't want to g- you don't want to see abroad. Abroad is awful, you know. Um, and, um, there, there has been a sort of rebellion against that.... that, that perceived trend. And, and, and it's understandable. I, I would rebel against that if I saw it all the time all over the place, you know. Um, uh, but we don't see it all the time all over the place. Quite the opposite. All of our cultural institutions are busy h- giving up our heritage, as far as I can see, and as I lay out in the book. Um, all of our cultural
- 1:13:22 – 1:21:22
BLM’s 6-Million Dollar Mansion
- DMDouglas Murray
custodians seem to me to be doing everything but looking after the culture which they're meant to be looking after. What a fortunate thing for Black people is that you have BLM and their virtuous use of donations that can- Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... keep everything on track.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, that's right.
- CWChris Williamson
You don't need to worry, Daddy's in the hot seat.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah, absolutely. How many mansions does that girl who started it, that woman who started it have now? Like five?
- CWChris Williamson
But she's left now, right? The first lady that did it left.
- DMDouglas Murray
The one who got the five mansions.
- CWChris Williamson
Silently, or very sort of quietly slipped away. I saw after the news story about the $6 million mansion came out, did you see that there was an internal memo leaked about this?
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, good. Go on.
- CWChris Williamson
So an internal memo got circulated, uh, in an effort to see how they could downplay the fact that the $6 million mansion-
- DMDouglas Murray
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... was there. Um, they got caught lying about... This is, uh-
- DMDouglas Murray
Of course they were going to downplay that.
- CWChris Williamson
They got caught lying about its purpose apparently, so it goes-
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
I think they called it, they called it, like, The Center.
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh, I see.
- CWChris Williamson
Or, Or The Hive.
- DMDouglas Murray
It's a community center. Ah.
- CWChris Williamson
Something like that, yeah, $6 million mansion. Um-
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And then they had everybody sign NDAs, and then they sent, uh, private investigators after the journalists that were looking into it. When you are a lot of donations, you're allowed to... And one of the things that was interesting, this was reported, or one of the, um, instigators for why this began becoming investigated, was because of some of the local communities that were expecting support from BLM-
- DMDouglas Murray
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
... had found that they weren't getting support. So you had people who were struggling to make rent, who were living in these sort of impoverished communities and stuff like that. Uh, and meanwhile, yeah, the original director, CEO, somebody, uh, has slipped out, but still in her wake there is a, uh, an aftershock of a $6 million mansion and-
- DMDouglas Murray
She, she has still held onto five or so properties, hasn't she?
- CWChris Williamson
Well, you need to.
- DMDouglas Murray
Yeah. I mean, you've got to go from one swimming pool to another. It's easy to get bored with one swimming pool.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- DMDouglas Murray
Uh, this is a, this is a hustle. And I mean if, if, if, if no one is-
- CWChris Williamson
Did you call it Black Lives Racket?
- 1:21:22 – 1:28:33
White Supremacists
- CWChris Williamson
about white supremacists using the pro-white narrative that you've got with this to further some pretty nasty agendas that they might have?
- DMDouglas Murray
Uh, I don't have a pro-white narrative in the book, by any means. I'm not pro-white anymore than I'm pro-Black or anything. I'm, I'm just, I'm for people not being told that they're inherently bad because of racial characteristics.
- CWChris Williamson
We've drawn a line between, uh, pro-Western and Western being associated with whiteness.
- DMDouglas Murray
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Though, so there is, you know, we're only a couple of steps away from...
- DMDouglas Murray
Well, because most people in, in, in, uh, historically in the West have been white. Um, so yes, I mean, it's hard to attack the West without attacking white people, or to attack white people without attacking the West. But I'm not making a pro-white argument 'cause I mean, it's, it's like, what, any more than, there's any point in making a pro-Black argument. I mean...
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, but let's say it's a pro-West argument.
- DMDouglas Murray
Pro-Western
- NANarrator
Sure.
- CWChris Williamson
And then that's then going to be perhaps co-opted by some slightly nasty groups.
- DMDouglas Murray
Well, the, the, the first thing is, is that as a r- uh, first thing, as a, as a writer, you have responsibility for the words you write. Um, and I've been a writer for 22 years now, all my adult life. Uh, you have responsibility for the words you write. Um, other people have responsibility for their actions and their words. Uh, I find the attempt sometimes to make writers res- responsible for their readers to be essentially unfair. Um, I think you write as carefully as you can. I certainly do. Um, and will... Can I guarantee that nobody with unpleasant views will read the book? No, I can't. Um, I have very large readership, which I'm very fortunate to have. I can't promise that, that, you know, everybody is going to be exactly of my mindset or have exactly my tolerant views. I, uh, I would hope they do. Um, but I find the sort of attempt, I'm not saying you're doing it, but the attempt by a lot of people to sort of elide the difference between author and reader to be sort of unfair. I mean, obviously Jordan gets quite a lot of that, the sort of, uh, you know, "You're read by young incels," sort of thing. So this is not, it's not really fair, as well as not provable and not the case. Um, uh, and in any case, I mean, uh, as far as I can tell, what actual racists and white supremacists still exist, and there's a little, little bit more of it i- in America than there is in the UK, I think, a little bit more. But these are tiny, tiny, uh, um, way out there, fringe figures, um, um, wouldn't and don't like me anyway because I won't speak in their terms or agree with what they think.
Episode duration: 2:11:22
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