Jimmy Carr: Why the Working Class Moved Right (And the Left Doesn’t Get It)

From my full conversation with Jimmy Carr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3liKk-xC87E Affiliate Neutonic - get money off the world's first productivity drink - https://www.neutonic.com?sca_ref=10212353.vP3Eab049B&utm_source=uppromote&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=263773 Code “David” #jimmycarr

Jimmy CarrguestDavid McIntosh Jrhost

Dec 30, 20255mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

5 min read · 1,063 words

0:00 – 0:30
Fourth Turning framework: crises repeat and we’re in the ‘crisis phase’
1. JCJimmy Carr
  So there's a, there's a writer that I very much like called Neil Howe. He's a demographer. He wrote this thing called The Fourth Turning, which is about the era that we live in, and his theory is that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. There are certain things that- motifs that you can see. So 1929 is 2008. Two huge financial crises. We're still living with the financial crisis of 2008. 1929 led to World War
0:30 – 1:00
Revolution as elite replacement: party systems breaking down
1. JCJimmy Carr
  II. We're in that now. We're in the crisis phase. You can see that there's a revolution going on. When you think about what a revolution is, it's the replacement of elites, right? So the, the... Who are the elites here? It's the po- in politics, it's the conservatives and labor. I can't see either of those parties winning another election. That's a, that's a political revolution. In America, it's the Democrats and the Republicans. Well, the Republicans are unrecognizable now. They're, they're sort of a cult of personality. They've become Trump's party, and
1:00 – 1:30
Working-class realignment: why the left lost its historic base
1. JCJimmy Carr
  the Democrats have not learnt the lesson of the last election, I think. I don't think they're gonna put up a winning candidate. I, I don't think. So that's a huge change. That something shifted in our politics, which is very interesting. It's unprecedented in our lifetimes, in my lifetime certainly. The idea that you go the, the party of the left was always the party of the working classes, and Hillary's deplorable speech and what's happened over here, the Labor Party
1:30 – 2:01
From boring to volatile: hopes for deliberation over fracture
1. JCJimmy Carr
  is no longer the party of the working man. They don't wanna talk to those people. They have become the party of the urban elite, and the working class have gone to the right. It's, it's a, it's a very uncertain situation. We- th- Politics was very boring for many, many years, and I think it's gonna get very interesting. I hope it's... I hope it is, um, I hope there's more deliberation and less debate, and I hope it doesn't fracture totally. But you even look at something like mainstream media, right? That's another revolutionary
2:01 – 2:09
Media revolution: mainstream institutions replaced by independent channels
1. JCJimmy Carr
  thing, where you go, "That was mainstream media. It was mainstream media for a very long time." And now it's podcasts, and it's people, independent media, and people get their news where they get their news.
2:09 – 2:22
Trust isn’t gone forever: new institutions will emerge
1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  Institutional trust is changing forever.
2. JCJimmy Carr
  Hmm? The what, sorry? The-
3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  Institutional trust.
4. JCJimmy Carr
  I, I don't think it's changing forever. I don't think institutions will no longer be trusted. I think we will build new institutions.
5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  Mm.
2:22 – 2:56
Culture follows the rules: institutions shape outcomes (Korea/Germany examples)
1. JCJimmy Carr
  That we can't live without institutions, and if you think about our culture, it doesn't seem this way, but I think culture is downstream of institutions. So the, the best example I could give you is really North and South Korea and East and West Germany. You take exactly the same people, and you ha- put different rules, different institutions in place. Vastly different results, right? The, the, the technology of the, the system that you set up has, you know, second, third, fourth order effects. So I think we're... I mean, we're living in- we're cursed to live in very interesting times.
2:56 – 3:18
Working-class disillusionment: systemic failure and loss of agency
1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  When I speak to a lot of my working class peers, they have a sense of systemic failure, or they blame politics or the educational system, and they seem to have lost a lot of agency.
2. JCJimmy Carr
  Uh, yeah, I think it's been taken from them.
3. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  You think so?
4. JCJimmy Carr
  Yeah. Um-
5. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  What advice would you have to a, a young working-class man or woman-
6. JCJimmy Carr
  Um-
7. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  ... who feels like their agency is stripped from them?
3:18 – 3:49
Carr’s advice: radical responsibility and ‘be of service’
1. JCJimmy Carr
  No one else cares. Okay? It, it's, I would say no one else cares enough. No one, no one cares about you more than you do, and agency. What if you're in charge? What if you're in charge of everything? Your own destiny, and if you can take control of that and take care of yourself, then maybe find someone else you could take care of, and then maybe start a family and take care of them, and then maybe try and do something for your local community and try and do more. Be of service. Be of service, be, be- have agency, and do
3:49 – 4:19
Why ‘stacked against you’ empathy can backfire
1. JCJimmy Carr
  something. You know, you... I think that idea of, like, going, "Oh, well, it's all stacked against you," is like, it's empathy, and it doesn't... It doesn't work. I don't think it works. So that idea of going, "You can do... You, you're as good as anyone," you know, the, uh... But it's, it's having that, I suppose, feeling empowered would be the way to kind of say it. Sounds a bit kind of wishy-washy. Um, but the failing system, I mean, the, the system has failed, hasn't it? It's not delivering. I mean, what, what is...
4:19 – 4:50
Woke as ‘American Marxism’: shift from wealth redistribution to status redistribution
1. JCJimmy Carr
  You think about what woke is. What, what's woke, right? What caused it? Um, it's... A woke i- Woke is better thought of, I think, as, um, American Marxism. Okay? So the original Marxism was about the redistribution of wealth, which I think is very valid, right? Uh, American Marxism, or woke, is about the redistribution of status and saying there are different status hierarchies, and at the very bottom of that pile are young
4:50 – 5:50
Elite overproduction and ‘suicidal empathy’: the backlash cycle
1. JCJimmy Carr
  white men, right? So it, they're being told they're, they're not valid anymore. So the most interesting thing about you has become the, the color of your skin. It used- It should be that that is the irrelevance, and the c- the quality of your character is what matters. That should be the thing. The, um... I know, it's a, it's a, it's very complicated. You know, it's all very airy-fairy and academic, but I think if you produce lots of... You know, the reason woke arose is because we sent loads and loads of people to university, and they did Mickey Mouse degrees in cultural studies, and they came out, and, "Where's the life I was promised?"
2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  Mm.
3. JCJimmy Carr
  "Where's my, where's my interesting life? Where, where's, where's, where's the money? Where's the house? Where's, where's my family? Where's, where is it, where is everything?" So the overproduction of elites leads to this kind of, um, I mean, what Gad Saad calls, uh, suicidal empathy.
4. DJDavid McIntosh Jr
  Suicidal empathy, I like that.
5. JCJimmy Carr
  Where a society is so empathetic that it no longer, um, acknowledges what it is. It hates itself.