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The end of woke, with Andrew Doyle
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On the one hand, the worst excesses of the woke era appear to be behind us. On the other, the institutions have been so ideologically corrupted, over such a long period, that perhaps the battle is only just beginning. Have we reached the end of woke?
To answer that question, Will is joined by author, satirist and journalist, Andrew Doyle. Andrew's latest book is titled, 'The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution'.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome Back
00:00:19
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will. I'm Will Kingston, back after a lazy break over the summer.
Has Society Moved Past 2020-2021 Cultural Shifts?
00:00:27
Speaker
Have we reached the end of work? It is a question that I often get asked on TV or joining podcasts.
00:00:34
Speaker
And on the one hand, I don't see people kneeling for Black Lives Matter anymore. I don't see as much of the crazy trans lunacy as we did in those awful months over 2020 2021.
00:00:48
Speaker
But at the same time, the institution, from education to the corporates to media to politics, have been so indoctrinated for such a long period of time. This goes back decades, not just years.
00:01:00
Speaker
that I do wonder if we have been perhaps a tad quick to embrace the cultural vibe shift and leave those awful memories in the past.
Guest Introduction: Andrew Doyle and "The End of Woke"
00:01:09
Speaker
To help me answer that question, there's perhaps no one better than satirist, journalist, and author of the recent book, The End of Woke, Andrew Doyle.
00:01:20
Speaker
Andrew, welcome to Fire at Will. Thank you very much for having me You are now happily settled in Arizona. When I asked you how you're finding it, you said it's a strange place. Why?
00:01:32
Speaker
Well, people are more polite here and I'm not used to it. ah there's There's an odd thing about the way you can go into a shop here and people make eye contact and ask you how you are and things like that. And I'm not used to it because, you know, I spent so much time in London where that doesn't really happen.
00:01:47
Speaker
And I don't know what the politeness is all about. I don't know if it's because everyone has guns And there's this is kind of forced politeness. I don't know if that's what's going on. I think there is a kind of weird Western tradition of decorum because, you know, you knew you could get to get into a ah gunfight if you weren't didn't have those basic standards of decency. But I don't know what it is. But that's the truth, is that, or particularly where I am, I'm in Scottsdale.
00:02:10
Speaker
And just everyone here is is is very friendly. And I don't know what's going on there. it took It took me a while to adjust.
The Decline of Wokeness and Its Impact
00:02:17
Speaker
At least historically, the British have been known for their manners.
00:02:21
Speaker
Do you think that that is a reflection of the changing face of the United Kingdom or is that just a an incorrect historical stereotype? Well, I think it depends where you are. I remember I i lived in New York for a year and that sort of blew my mind because I was there for my master's degree and Again, you would people would' you'd walk down the street, someone would say hello, you'd go into a shop. I mean, i've lit you know we all know when you're in London at a shop, you can have ah an entire transaction without the person even acknowledging your existence, really.
00:02:52
Speaker
And so it's not the same elsewhere around the country. But certainly there is a mistrust, a deep-seated mistrust in certainly the biggest cities like London and Birmingham, where People just are scared of everyone else.
00:03:06
Speaker
You can see it if you're on the tube. and But to be to be fair, that's been the case for a long time, I think since since I was a child. Yeah, we can move on to the multicultural mass migration elephants in that room a bit later. up But to start, I do like to start by asking any author who has written a book the simple question, which I know they want to answer, which is, what's the book about?
00:03:29
Speaker
Well, the title, The End of Woke, isn't really some kind of prognostication or a prediction or anything like that, or even ah a declaration. What it is, is it is it is exploring what the end of Woke might look like.
00:03:42
Speaker
It's asking a question, whether we are now on the final track towards its demise.
Is Wokeness Authoritarian?
00:03:49
Speaker
And the key argument that I suppose I make in the book is that woke as it once was, in other words, it's past its peak. And I think there is enough evidence to to prove that. And I go in ah quite length about the various things that have happened over the past few years since the peak in 2020, which signal that we are not going to go back to where we were, the the level of insanity. And there's all sorts of things that have happened.
00:04:13
Speaker
such as the cast review and into puberty blockers, such as the Supreme Court ruling regarding sex in the Equality Act, such as the election of Donald Trump, such as the rolling back of DEI in all sorts of major corporations, Elon Musk acquiring Twitter, which of course meant that you have the the de facto public square of the digital world now more open to conversation about issues that were considered absolutely off the table. All of these things have happened.
00:04:41
Speaker
And i in the book, I write and about all of these various things and i explore these various things. But really, the argument I'm making is that wokeness was simply the latest manifestation of an inherent human impulse towards authoritarianism and that, therefore, it won't ever go away in that regard. In the other words, authoritarianism, I argue, is the default of human of he of the human condition.
00:05:05
Speaker
And therefore you have to continually restate the case for liberty all the time in every successive generation.
Criticisms of Liberalism and Its Future
00:05:11
Speaker
And so I'm not saying it's all over, let's go home and forget about it.
00:05:16
Speaker
Actually quite the reverse. What I'm saying is if we want woke to end, which is which we we all do, ah something else might... come in its place, which will share elements of its DNA because elements of its DNA appear in all authoritarian movements throughout history.
00:05:31
Speaker
That will never go away. All that we can do is to keep restating that case for for liberalism. And in order to make that case, we have to understand what it is. And so I spend a lot of time in the book.
00:05:42
Speaker
going into what exactly do we mean by liberalism? How ah how might we cultivate it? That is the key argument there. So if you're expecting a book that says, woke is over, let's have a party, forget about it, it's all fine. What will we be worried about?
00:05:56
Speaker
That's not what this book is meant to, it doesn't argue that at all. So I think people will be disappointed if that's what they want. But if they want a book that looks into you why wokeness emerged in the context of a broader history of authoritarian movements,
00:06:10
Speaker
and how we might defend ourselves from its re-emergence in one form or another, then that's what the book is for. couple of strands to pull on there. And I want to start with liberalism. I would have traditionally labeled myself as a classical liberal.
00:06:25
Speaker
There are now many people on the right. Someone like a Carl Benjamin comes to mind. basically goes this sort of you know weak, limp-wristed liberalism is why we have got to this position that we are now in.
00:06:36
Speaker
We need something more muscular, I guess, to take it its place. It is this reaction to left-wing authoritarianism that we've seen in across the Western world. How do you feel about, i guess, liberalism as a concept? And do you think it is still the right a model to champion, despite the fact that some of the weaker elements of liberalism may have actually got us to the point that we are in the United Kingdom and maybe to lesser degrees across the West.
00:07:04
Speaker
I would argue that liberalism need not be weak. I'm arguing for a robust form of liberalism. And I think when liberalism is weak, it ceases to be liberalism. I mean, ah perhaps to clarify, if you could could you give me an an example of what you mean by the weaker aspects of liberalism? So someone like Carl Benjamin would say that multiculturalism is a direct byproduct of liberalism in that We should, you know, it allows tolerance of and an individual freedom, which means that we should therefore tolerate particular cultures or beliefs which may be antithetical to our historical values.
00:07:44
Speaker
I see. Okay. Well, we can talk about, i mean, that's a good example. I mean, I haven't spoken to Carl specifically about this, but I've been on his podcast before and, you know, I'd be very much up for a discussion about this.
00:07:55
Speaker
But I don't want to put words into his mouth. He's not here. So I don't know quite what he said about multiculturalism. Forget Carl specifically, but I know there's several people on the right who actually in their own way are arguing for something which would be, who have basically said that liberalism has failed.
00:08:09
Speaker
Well, multiculturalism is an illiberal phenomenon. So what multiculturalism does is it sets up ah parallel societies within any given nation and says that we should apply the rule of law differently according to cultural differences.
00:08:23
Speaker
It patronizes people from different cultures by saying that your particular culture needs to be ring-fenced from either criticism or the law. And that, you know, we've seen that in the UK where there are in excess of 80 Sharia courts at the moment.
00:08:36
Speaker
That is not a liberal measure. ah We saw this with the grooming gang scandal, where we we know from the reports now, in the J report into this, has been absolutely clear that that the law was not applied equally because people were afraid of being called racist.
00:08:51
Speaker
Again, that is not a liberal thing. So I don't really take seriously the argument that illiberal things are evidence of liberalism's failure. They're the opposite.
00:09:02
Speaker
You can't cite multiculturalism say, look, that's an example of liberalism being weak, when it is, in fact, the antithesis of liberalism. you understand what I'm saying there? Yeah, I do. ah do I do. What I would ask is, for all of those critics who are saying liberalism has led us to this point, I've yet to hear an example of where an authentically liberal measure has caused wokeness, has caused where we're at.
00:09:28
Speaker
All I ever hear is examples of illiberal measures. In other words, people failing to be liberal that has caused this. So I would really be interested, and I'm in this quite genuinely and not in a spirit of antagonism, I would really be interested to hear anyone tell me or give an example of a genuinely liberal measure that has led to this this this this mess that we find ourselves in because I don't think it's there.
Understanding Liberalism and Educational Challenges
00:09:52
Speaker
I think part of it is also a just a linguistic challenge in that the word liberal means different things to different people across different cultures. yeah you know you're You're speaking in a country where liberal is just a by is a synonym for left-wing, effectively.
00:10:08
Speaker
that's an absolute That's absolutely right. And there is a huge problem there definitionally, which is why I spend a lot of time talking about, firstly, I spend a lot of time in the book talking about the various ways that liberal has been defined. You mentioned yourself that in Australia, the Liberal Party is the equivalent of the Conservative Party.
00:10:23
Speaker
ah In America, liberal is seen as synonymous for for left wing. I mean, I saw the other day, my friend Stephen Knight put a tweet out about how he is a liberal, but he's fed up with ah the extent of illegal migration.
00:10:35
Speaker
And there there were, I think, hundreds and hundreds of American accounts saying, you cause this, you liberal. And and they thought he just meant I'm a left-wing voter. yeah hugh Obviously, fundamentally, that's just not what he meant.
00:10:48
Speaker
So there's the problem of the word liberal and of itself. and We have a party in the UK called the Liberal Democrats, who are by no means liberal. So of course, it's going to get complicated. But I think the way that I've done it in the book is I've basically tried to tease out the key strands that every great liberal thinker has shared throughout history.
00:11:05
Speaker
And the key points are, I would say, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, freedom of belief. I would say individual autonomy right up to the point at which you encroach upon the rights of somebody else.
00:11:18
Speaker
I would also add into that social responsibility, the idea of looking out for everyone else, the idea of meritocracy, democracy, All of these things to me, and um above all, I would have to say the rule of law.
00:11:31
Speaker
there's no real There's no great liberal thinker who doesn't believe that the rule of law is a key aspect to the preservation of a liberal system. This is, I think, one of the major misunderstandings of liberalism is that it's this idea that liberals believe that humans human beings are innately good that if you let us all back to our state of nature, we would all live in some kind of utopia.
00:11:53
Speaker
I mean, you can trace that in a thinker like Rousseau. You won't trace it in a thinker like Hobbes. You know, that we we have complete, you know... you Most of the key liberal thinkers will acknowledge that humankind is essentially an imperfect creature, that we tend towards anarchy and we tend towards authoritarianism.
00:12:15
Speaker
And so therefore, you need to cultivate a liberal system over a long time. And it takes an age. It takes generations to I mean, think about it. What countries have freedom of speech?
00:12:27
Speaker
That's such a rare, magical thing. And it's happened not overnight. It's happened because a lot of people struggled for it over many, many centuries. And we now have it in the UK up to a point, although, of course, now inevitably it's being threatened again.
00:12:41
Speaker
So what I would say is and also a liberal system requires ah strong educational system. it It requires ah trust in authority insofar as It requires experts who actually tell the truth rather than peddle an ideology.
00:12:55
Speaker
It requires cooperation. And all of these things, it requires a high social level of social trust, a high trust society. These things are easily demolished, but they're not easily cultivated.
00:13:07
Speaker
So I suppose my argument is that Rather than seeing liberalism as some kind of utopian easy fix, I'm saying it's actually one of the hardest. It's the hardest thing to pursue, but it also has the the greatest rewards if it is actuated.
00:13:24
Speaker
But it's not easy. It's not easy. And we're seeing at the moment, and the woke movement tried its best to demolish the liberal consensus that we built up. And it's done a pretty good job. I mean, do you take issue with any aspects of my definition there? I mean, what I do in the book is um I'm explaining what I mean by liberalism by drawing on great liberal thinkers, much greater minds than mine, who have very, very carefully and meticulously outlined what is meant here.
00:13:51
Speaker
And those core aspects of If we can agree that those are the things, I mean, maybe you might want to say, well, I don't want to call that liberalism. Well, that's fine. You know, that's, that's, then we get back into that definitional quagmire. But if we all agree that those are the sort of key values that we want, then maybe we can get somewhere rather than squabbling over, you know, whether my definition of liberalism is better than yours.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, i think I think that's reasonable and I think we're ideologically aligned. I'm i'm just, I'm nodding to that sort of, I guess it's it's that the the phenomena of almost and the right wing woke, which I know you've spoken about with people like Brendan O'Neill and and on several podcasts now, which is almost the ah pendulum swinging too far back the other way, which which which we have seen in in recent years.
00:14:35
Speaker
But I do, to use the parlance of our time, I was a tad triggered when you talked about those three pillars that underpin liberalism or that liberalism relies upon. And I think you said education, a trust in authority, and cohesion or cooperation.
00:14:51
Speaker
The reason why I was triggered is my mind instantly went, these are three things which are under severe attack in the United Kingdom. You think about the police and you think about how policing by consent is almost a thing of the past now. There is no longer that trust in authority.
00:15:08
Speaker
We're speaking, yes, after ah days after Lucy Connolly was released from prison and it reflects a broader mistrust in the judiciary now. multiculturalism, I think, has fractured to the cohesion of of society.
00:15:20
Speaker
And this isn't even getting to education and how educational systems have been hijacked. yeah I guess when you think about your your country of birth and you think about those three pillars that hold liberalism up, how do you reflect on where the country is today?
00:15:37
Speaker
think it's very sad. I was in Salisbury Cathedral not long ago looking at the ah the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta. Because, you know, from 1215, when, you know, King John was forced by the barons to sign this document that said that the king was subject to the rule of law.
00:15:53
Speaker
You know, that that that it was it's it's the seedbed of many later freedoms that we had. And it is quite powerful to see this thing in person and and to think this is our history, your common law, our history of common law, you know, free speech being enshrined within our common law, the did the the Bill of Rights from what was it, 1689, which effectively guaranteed parliamentary debate. All of these things that we have in our history We have the great thinkers, the three Johns, you know Milton, Mill, and Locke.
00:16:25
Speaker
We have um our parliament, you know where we we have the tradition of debate, discussion, disagreement, and and progress as a result of those advantages. And it's all fallen apart. And like I said earlier, it is something that is easily demolished.
00:16:41
Speaker
And I think that's what
Wokeness in Institutions: Police and Legal Systems
00:16:42
Speaker
we've seen. So I'm very depressed about the state the situation. the the reason why woke is a particular concern of mine is that it has the habit of acting like a virus and infecting all that is necessary within society to preserve a liberal system.
00:16:57
Speaker
That's what it does. I mean, if we take the police, then we have a very serious example of that and one which is quite measurable, actually. I mean, I've got a chapter in the book about free speech and law and order and and and I've spoken at length about what happened with the College of Policing. And the College of Policing is a quango that is responsible for training the police in England and Wales, but it is also an activist body.
00:17:20
Speaker
And it is not subject to the decrees of government, of an elected government. It does what the hell it wants. And, you know, I do make the point without confirming causality, but I do make the point that the head of the College of Policing at the time when they introduced non-crime hate incidents, which is something the College of Policing introduced without a mandate from the government,
00:17:41
Speaker
When that was done, the head of the College of Policing had just, the year before, won Stonewall's top award, was an LGBT envoy. This is an activist.
00:17:52
Speaker
Now, that might be coincidence? Probably not. I mean, when I've spoken to Police officers themselves, they tell me that for a long time now, the police force has been dragged along by ideological thinking. We know from whistleblowers that they are told to police differently according to the demographic of those who are breaking the law.
00:18:11
Speaker
We've all seen two-tier policing. It's now beyond dispute. The fact that people are still disputing it in spite of these these mountains of evidence is another depressing aspect of the culture war, which is that truth has become irrelevant.
00:18:24
Speaker
We're seeing the rise of narrative. What matters now is who can tell the best story about what's happening, not what's actually happening. That's a very disturbing development that I see on both the right and the left.
00:18:35
Speaker
Just who can who can weave the best narrative? I'm not interested in narrative. I'm interested in what the hell is going on. And what's happening with the College of Policing is a very good example. They had two successive home secretaries tell them to stop recording non-crime because that's not their job.
00:18:50
Speaker
And they ignored the Home Office twice. A High Court ruled that it was plainly an interference with freedom of expression. They ignored the High Court because activists don't obey the law. They don't care about the law. The law is just another narrative.
00:19:03
Speaker
We've seen since the Supreme Court ruling, I mean, how many days is it since the Supreme Court ruling? 150 We still have men in female prisons, don't we? We still have various corporations and even ah public bodies openly saying that they will flout the law.
00:19:21
Speaker
The law couldn't be clearer on this. The Supreme Court clarified what was always the law, right? And yet we still have people saying we we will work around it. We will fudge it. That's the way that activists work. And that's how you know an institution is activist captured.
How Ideological Capture Happens
00:19:35
Speaker
So that's very disturbing. and you know can i pick Can I pick up on that, though, please, Andrew? Because yeah despite however many conversations that I have on topics like this, I can see that so many institutions like the police have been ideologically captured.
00:19:50
Speaker
but I still can't fully grasp how it happens. If you look at policing, for example, traditionally male-dominated, pretty blokey, no-nonsense, I'm thinking in stereotypes, but how does that type of institution go to being concerned with unconscious bias and racial identity politics and all of these sorts of things which you would expect more from a second-year undergraduate sociology experience student?
00:20:16
Speaker
How does that process happen? It's very difficult. It's a concatenation of things. it is There's a lot of good intentions within this. In the case of the police, a lot of this can be traced back to the Stephen Lawrence case, a tragic racist murder, and you know a feeling that something ought to be done about that.
00:20:33
Speaker
In the book, I trace the evolution of that, that there were various police reports and documents that started talking about the idea of non-crime incidents and the need to report racist incidents, irrespective of, you know, firstly, whether whether it could be proven, but there there was no evidential threshold for this.
00:20:51
Speaker
But also that shift into what about the perception? I mean, look, If you go back long enough, it is true. i mean, there were failings in that case because of racist police officers. We have had people ah not being believed when they have been the the victims of crime many decades ago now, of course. But it was the case that there were problems. And the the the desire to rectify that is is a just one.
00:21:17
Speaker
But of course, this came about 20 years too late. It was a sledgehammer to fix a problem that at that point no longer really existed. So I think that's part of it.
00:21:29
Speaker
I think there's also, I think we shouldn't underestimate fashion. and just trends and wanting to be seen to be on point. I think that that accounts for an awful lot of of this kind of thinking.
00:21:43
Speaker
And then you also have the sociopathy sociopathy of certain activists, the power-hungry element of activism. this is a very This is a way to accrue a great deal of power. Anyone who has worked in any kind of public body or corporation with a woke activist will know how scary they are.
00:22:00
Speaker
And you start behaving as though this person is a dangerous dog. And you don't want to say the wrong thing because they will fixate on you and make your life hell, if not get you know have you fired. So that's another reason. So it's a combination, I think, of of good intentions, of fear, of fashion.
00:22:16
Speaker
And all of these trends together create a situation where where debate is stifled and there's only one potential route. Now, so obviously that's not a comprehensive evaluation of how we got into this mess, because I don't think such a thing is actually possible.
00:22:33
Speaker
But I think what we can do is identify the problem now and do something about it.
Free Speech Under Threat in the UK
00:22:38
Speaker
I think when it comes to policing, one of the key things, that i mean, there's an added problem to this, isn't there? i mean i've talked about the way that the We have an activist captured body that is training the police in this country so that the police now genuinely believe it is their responsibility to monitor our emotions and our thoughts. They do genuinely believe this. and mean, we saw the other day a man was arrested for saying, we love bacon at a protest outside the site of a proposed mosque being built.
00:23:04
Speaker
Now, the police in that video clip- This was apparently as it would would stir up racial hatred. It's something along those lines. To be fair, we don't know the full circumstances of that. All I heard from the clip was the officer saying this was a public order, arresting him under a public order offense. Now, when it comes to hate speech laws, there are um three acts that, you know, we don't have a thing on the statute books called hate speech.
00:23:28
Speaker
What we have is the Malicious Communications Act, Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act. We have Section 127 of the yeah Communications Act. That's from 2003. The Malicious Communications Act from 1988. We also have the Public Order Act of 1986.
00:23:42
Speaker
Now, the the first two of those, the Malicious Communications and Communications Act, prohibit what they call grossly offensive speech. That's the term that they use. And of course, no one can define that. So we know what that means.
00:23:54
Speaker
And then the Public Order Act actually talks about insulting or abusive speech. words. So all of this very vague, nebulous stuff, that's how our hate speech laws are codified.
00:24:05
Speaker
But because they're so vague and nebulous, it means that the police just arrest first and think about it later. And that's why you get a lot of people arrested needlessly. And this is happening all the time. And we we know from the Times report that 12,000 a year in the UK are being arrested for offensive speech.
00:24:20
Speaker
That's 30 a day. Not just investigated, arrested. That's a hell of a lot. And we're seeing a lot, we will see lots of cases where once someone is wrongfully arrested, sometimes even wrongfully convicted, it takes people like the Free Speech Union.
00:24:35
Speaker
Thank God for the Free Speech Union because without them, will have lots more miscarriage of justice. I'll give you a ah very obvious example, which was the, I wrote about David Wotton, who was a man who wore a distasteful Halloween costume where he dressed up as the Manchester Arena bomber.
00:24:51
Speaker
with a t-shirt that said, I heart Ariana Grande, and a rucksack that said, boom, on it. Now, obviously, the joke at a Halloween party, you might find that distasteful and upsetting, particularly if you were related to people who died in that tragedy, of course.
00:25:04
Speaker
No one's saying the tragedy was a good thing. No one's being flippant about the tragedy. The point of those Halloween costume parties is to come up with the sickest, most bad taste costume.
00:25:15
Speaker
And there was even a prize in this case, which he won. The problem came when he posted the image online. Now, everyone knows that's meant to be a joke. You can disapprove, you can criticize, you say it wasn't funny, whatever. But everyone knows it was meant to be a joke.
00:25:26
Speaker
Now, that man, David Wotton, was not only arrested, he was prosecuted and convicted in a court of law. And he was going back for sentencing. He was going to go to jail. But the Free Speech Union defended him and it was overturned on appeal.
00:25:41
Speaker
Without the intervention of the Free Speech Union, that man would be in prison for a Halloween costume, right? So they this stuff happens all the time. It isn't just about the people who end up in prison, like Lee Joseph Dunn.
00:25:55
Speaker
Was it the man who posted three memes online? The worst of which was a group of immigrants with knives saying, coming to a town near you. That's all it was. That was the the most offensive of the three memes. Now you could say, i don't approve of that meme. I disagree with its message, et cetera.
00:26:10
Speaker
But that man spent eight weeks in prison. Now that that, that to me is absolutely astonishing. I don't care where you stand on the meme. That's not, it's not acceptable. And that's what's, and then that's what's actually, it's not just about the people that go to prison. It's also about the arrests and the process And the intimidation, I mean, that's what a police state does.
00:26:29
Speaker
It intimidates you so that people worry about what they say and what they can't say. This state of affairs is now absolutely intolerable. And the Lucy Connolly case is ah is a very stark one because I've seen people losing their minds over this. I mean, the number of commentators who are making excuses about for a system.
00:26:49
Speaker
I mean, I saw on Question Time, i remember the audience asking about this, and one of the panelists, I can't remember who it was, very high-handedly said, you should look into this because actually the judge applied a sentence completely in accordance with the law, completely missing what the person was saying. The person wasn't suggesting that the judge had acted unlawfully.
00:27:09
Speaker
The person was suggesting that the law is an ass. were suggesting that if you have a situation where, let's take the case of Philip Prescott, who was a man who participated in the riots and actually attacked and vandalized a mosque, right?
00:27:21
Speaker
Criminal activity that requires a custodial sentence. That man was given a sentence which was less time than Lucy Connolly, who just spoke about it. And if you can't look at that and say, that is a problem in the law, we shouldn't have a situation where that is going on.
00:27:37
Speaker
I've seen so many commentators making excuses, saying things like, well, she pleaded guilty, so that's the end of it. Unbelievable. I don't believe that their memory is so bad that they don't know how common it is for people to plead guilty when they are innocent in order to reduce their sentence, in order to get home quicker, which is of course what happened in the case of Lucy Connolly.
00:27:57
Speaker
Is their memory that short? Didn't they read about the post office scandal? We had lots of people there pleading guilty to charges they to things they didn't do, pleading guilty to keeping fraudulent accounts.
00:28:09
Speaker
as was famously the case. They didn't do that. They didn't steal a penny, but they did it because they were terrified of languishing in prison. You know, and that's what that's clearly what happened. Lucy Connolly was was, it was suggested that she would, she thought she could get home quicker if she pleaded guilty.
00:28:25
Speaker
So, but but people just putting that stuff out there without without stopping to think for just one moment. And also the broader point, why was she arrested to begin with? We have no serious ah basis in law for incitement to violence.
00:28:40
Speaker
We have no understanding of it. I've been pushing for a long time now for an equivalent to the Brandenburg test. In America, you have the Brandenburg test, which which dates from a 1969 Supreme Court ruling, which overturned the conviction of a KKK leader, Clarence Brandenburg.
00:28:56
Speaker
when it came to incitement to violence. And the finding was, effectively, it set a precedent in law, which applies to this day, which is that for incitement to violence to occur, the three key things are it has to be intended to incite violence. The words have to be likely to incite violence and such threat has to be imminent.
00:29:13
Speaker
Now, of course, in the case of Lucy Connolly, a mother and childminder with zero clout, deleting a tweet after an hour that didn't even call for violence, but merely expressed indifference to it,
00:29:24
Speaker
By no means does this fulfill anything close to the Brandenburg test for incitement to violence. But because so in our country, we've just accepted the woke proposition that words and violence are the same.
00:29:36
Speaker
We've also accepted the ah causality argument that words, nasty words lead to real world violence, nasty words online, which has been debunked, which isn't true.
00:29:47
Speaker
There is absolutely no evidence for that whatsoever. We just take it as an article of faith. So that's the problem we have
Defending Free Speech Politically
00:29:53
Speaker
in this country. And yet, do you see anyone in government trying to do anything about this? I mean, really, we have just seen Kemi Badenok posting very robustly against the conviction of Lucy Connolly. That's a start.
00:30:03
Speaker
Let's see some more pushback on this. Well, this raises a really interesting question because, and this is what is so, and I think your point before around how effective this this Speech regime assumes people are lemmings and if they hear something, they will act on it without any sort of consideration.
00:30:21
Speaker
It's so patronising, it takes away any sort of human agency. And these are all lessons that we've learnt over thousands of years of history and philosophy and thought, that unbalanced free speech is the best model, perhaps with limited carve-outs for incitement to violence or defamation, but is the best model even if words are abhorrent.
00:30:40
Speaker
Because on balance, it is still better to have them out in the public sphere as opposed to having some sort of arbitrary body making decisions on behalf of people of what is and isn't acceptable. Like all of these sorts of arguments, you're in ah a debating hall, you can say this stuff and it all makes a great deal of sense.
00:30:57
Speaker
But if you're reform or if you're conservatives and you say that, it's very easy for bad faith actors to come back and throw Lucy Connolly's tweet at them and saying, oh, so you want hotels burned down, do you? Or In the case of the KKK guy, you know, well, you support the KKK if you support someone's right to say this.
00:31:13
Speaker
It's very easy to equate bad speech with you support bad speech. Yes. So the question would be if you're Nigel Farage and Kimmy Baden-Ock and you want to make changing the speech regime and in the UK part of your platform, how do you make that argument politically in a way where you can get the average man on the street on side?
00:31:31
Speaker
It's very difficult because it goes back to what I was talking about, how the need to cultivate the conditions within which a ah liberal system can thrive. And one of those conditions is a sound education, which which it it which introduces the notion of critical thinking.
00:31:47
Speaker
Unfortunately, we don't have that anymore. That argument that you use, it that you know, it's such a ah basic misunderstanding, the idea that if you support freedom of speech, you support the content of all unpleasant speech.
00:32:00
Speaker
It's so infantile that it actually disturbs me that adults come out with it big because... and and And I would suggest that if an adult is coming out with that argument, they're not a serious adult.
00:32:12
Speaker
They're someone who shouldn't really be in political life because they haven't reached the sort basic threshold of critical ability to to to be in a position of power. So this is what I, you know, we are in that situation now. I mean, I heard the other day an interview, a discussion between Tom Slater, epi editor of Spike magazine, and Narendra Kerr, where they were talking about precisely this. And he was making a very you know, simple but persuasive argument about the necessity for freedom of speech and the necessity for consistency on this point. And straight away, she said said, that's because you're a racist, you support racists that, you know, so infantile, you know, and I think there has to be some quality control when it comes to guests.
00:32:49
Speaker
Why would you invite someone onto the BBC? I think it was the BBC. two to say something that ah that a child ah to to to propose this kind of childish fallacy. you know That's not someone who who should be a commentator. That's not someone who who understands basic ideas.
00:33:07
Speaker
Now, the problem, as you say, is that we also now have politicians who do not understand these basic arguments. We have a creche rather than a parliament. I think that is genuine problem.
00:33:19
Speaker
genuine problem That problem will be solved by many, many decades of
Education's Role in Supporting Liberalism
00:33:25
Speaker
hard work at riva at restoring our education system, at restoring public debate and the quality of public debate.
00:33:33
Speaker
But you can't do that overnight. so it So you are back to your problem, which is how does a politician today in the world that we inhabit, where infantilism runs rife, where stupid arguments seem to persuade people,
00:33:48
Speaker
What do you do there? I think it is about, at at the very least, making the argument coherently. I suppose one of the things that you probably need to do, which everyone is doing, is explaining that they don't approve of the content of the tweet.
00:34:03
Speaker
I actually haven't heard anyone defend the content of Lucy Connolly's t tweet. It's just not a thing. I mean, I suppose what you could say is when you have these prescriptions, sometimes... it feels as though the only responsible thing to do is to compound the the problem. is So, for instance, when it comes to the burning of Quran, the case of Hamit Coxon, the guy who burned the Quran outside the Turkish embassy to protest against the Erdogan regime, which he perceives as being, you know, as as fostering Islamism within its within its borders,
00:34:36
Speaker
which is a totally legitimate point of view and a totally legitimate thing to protest. I don't personally think it's ah but the burning of a Quran as a means of protest is the best means of protest. I don't think that's not an approach that I would take.
00:34:49
Speaker
I think it's it's it's needlessly provocative. On the other hand, when a man is arrested and prosecuted for doing so, I think it then becomes a responsibility to do it. Right. that's that That's the thing. At that point, it's like the state can't be arresting people for disposing of their own property as they as they sit in the form of a protest.
00:35:08
Speaker
That can't be happening. And particularly in that case where he was attacked by two passers-by, one of them with a knife, and the judge actually said that that was evidence that his actions were likely to stir up violence.
00:35:20
Speaker
And that's insane victim blaming. that's I mean, that is beyond my comprehension. It's so it's so infantile. but like you but But I think when it comes to the Lucy Connolly case, i don't I think what you will get is people saying, well, if she can serve, you know, what was it? 40% of a 31-month sentence she served, so over a year in prison, for a tweet that was deleted within an hour, then maybe we should all be tweeting horrible things because they can't arrest us all.
00:35:47
Speaker
So I can see how strategically that's something, that's a point where you could read. I still don't think it's a good idea to post things like that. but i And I think it distracts us from the key point, which is, We need to be addressing how we've reached a point where we have a system which could see her, let alone convicted, but arrested to begin with. that How could that happen? That shouldn't happen.
00:36:08
Speaker
and to And to make steps towards rectifying that. I don't know how you do that. You need the political will more than anything, I think. and And it's just not there. Let's pull it back to the to the very start of that answer, which is you start by hopefully creating more members of society that have the critical thinking skills to talk about these issues. And that comes from education.
00:36:31
Speaker
And whenever this topic, end of woke, comes up, the the instinctive response I always have is I think that this will be a battle that we will be fighting for a long time. because the educational institutions have been so corrupted.
00:36:43
Speaker
You mentioned off-air about my home country of Australia, and there is now stories of kids as young as five or six giving land acknowledgements to the Indigenous population. There are some stories, I think in the UK, I was speaking on GB News the other day, of kids who were were sending Valentine's Day cards to asylum seekers and being forced to apologize for historical wrongs and all this sort of stuff that is happening to kids that are you know younger than eight years old.
00:37:11
Speaker
and then you compound that in high school and then you add university into the mix, which is the most ideologically corrupted of all. And I think it would be incredibly difficult for even the most well-adjusted child to leave 12 years of that indoctrination and come out as anything else than brainwashed.
00:37:29
Speaker
so that Yeah, that's exactly the problem. That's why, as you know, there's a chapter in my book on education. it's It's really the the solution to everything. If you have a solid educational base, if you have a good educational system, you produce adults that are capable of critical thinking, that are not ideologically brainwashed.
00:37:47
Speaker
Of course, of course, this is what we need to do. And there are real problems within schools. I think that the the way that we're going to deal with that is we have to drive ideology out of schools. Absolutely.
00:37:58
Speaker
ah You know, children, that's not education. So we need to actually have an educational system, which we currently really don't have, or not one that is fit for purpose. I think, I don't know.
00:38:10
Speaker
i mean, obviously, again, it comes down to political will. If you look at what happens with Michaela, the school run by Catherine Burblesing, which objectively, has some of the best results in the country. and And of course, it its intake is largely poorer, working class, inner city kids who don't have many opportunities.
00:38:28
Speaker
But here they're having a great opportunity because, you know, they are thinking critically. They are ah high achievers as a result of of that system. One of the arguments I make in the book is that actually but for for to be an autonomous, free-thinking adult requires...
00:38:45
Speaker
discipline in earlier life. It requires actually many, many restrictions um as a child. It's really important. we we We don't, you know, we're not strict and disciplined with children because we're trying to take their freedoms away.
00:38:59
Speaker
The reverse, we're trying cultivate the individual so they can be truly free in later life. And that's what it that's what it does. The example I give is, if you if you take the example of William Shakespeare, whose grammar school education was rote learning and rigor and drudgery, you know?
00:39:17
Speaker
He describes the drudgery of the schoolboy crawling to school like a snail with its satchel, you know? he knows He knows what this is all about. And because he had that bedrock of the the grammar school education,
00:39:30
Speaker
you know, the grammar meaning Latin grammar, you know, and he would have encountered all of those authors that repeatedly recur in his work, such as Ovid and Cicero and Plotus, etc. He had that bedrock.
00:39:42
Speaker
He didn't go to university, by the way, didn't need to. He had that bedrock to think so freely, so creatively that he revolutionized literature and has never been surpassed. So you don't need an education system that gives children total freedom What you need is the reverse to to cultivate that freedom of thought.
00:40:02
Speaker
How you get that, I think partly that that political will is going to be very difficult because, you know, Catherine Burblesseing is demonized for success. You know, it's insane. You need something akin. You know, I think other schools could learn a lot from her system.
00:40:16
Speaker
You know, I'm not here to pontificate and say I think hers is the perfect system, but they could definitely learn a lot. But for people who aren't aware of what Catherine does, you give a quick primer on that. Well, she runs a school, and the Michaela School in, I think Wembley, isn't it? I've visited the school. I've seen it for myself, where they have a policy of enforcing very strict discipline on the little things.
00:40:39
Speaker
So if you forget a pen, you'll get a detention straight away. You can't talk in the corridors as you move from class to class. they in Even in the lunch break, they're they're answering questions
Educational Reform and the Michaela School Model
00:40:49
Speaker
from a teacher and and and they're they're they're discussing the matters of the day.
00:40:54
Speaker
All of these kind of, so they they they focus on these little points. Because the theory is, and it turns out to be true, that if you are very strict in terms of the discipline of the of the little things like the uniform and the stationary, et cetera, then it spills out and you get a broader sense of discipline.
00:41:11
Speaker
And I've been in the classrooms and I've seen how focused they are. You know, whenever a question is asked, everyone puts a hand up. You know, there's no shame in doing well. Bullying is reduced massively because, precisely because you don't have talk in between the corridors.
00:41:26
Speaker
And the kids love it. Here's the key thing. The kids love it. I spoke to a number of the school children there and they love the fact that they're achieving and they love the fact that they're they're not being bullied and they love the fact that they have discipline.
00:41:38
Speaker
Because the thing that we always forget is that children might be initially resistant to discipline, but once it's instilled into their lives, they crave it and they absolutely love it and they thrive on it. So that's what she does. and gone so such an niche But it's such an interesting feature of woke that not only is that discipline removed, but there is an active effort to treat children as if their opinions akin to adults.
00:42:02
Speaker
And you look at taking their opinions on board when it comes to Gender ideology as being a good example. But even a step further, that in some interests in some instances, the woke will go a step further and instill this sort of sacral knowledge or wisdom upon the young.
00:42:18
Speaker
ah Greta Thunberg is a good example in that there are the young can understand things that somehow adults simply cannot. It's a very odd, perverse element of work culture. Yeah, treating children as adults and treating adults as children is what the work movement does.
00:42:33
Speaker
And it completely inverts the reality of it. It's like they can't remember being children. i mean, would you have trusted yourself or any opinion you had at the age of 14? mean, you know, if you if you're honest with yourself, you know that that's preposterous.
00:42:47
Speaker
And they absolutely, you're absolutely right. that that's That's where they get this very, very wrong. The Greta Thunberg a great example. You know, she was traveling the world, berating world leaders, and they were sitting there and taking it because she's a child.
00:42:58
Speaker
mean, it's hilarious, really, that that even happened. Absolutely. kids Kids don't know anything, let's be honest. And that's the point. You know, they're learning. They're learning and they they they need that guidance and they need that discipline.
00:43:10
Speaker
And if, you know, that's why the grammar school system worked so well. I mean, it also, of course, enabled social mobility. We had a we had a system where poorer kids could advance thanks to that system.
00:43:21
Speaker
Now, I'm not saying it was perfect, but it's better than what we have now. So how do you then instill something akin to what Michaela's school is doing? Well, firstly, you've seen the way that ideologues are berating her and attacking her and calling her evil and fascist. and I mean, they are. They're calling her literally words like that.
00:43:36
Speaker
If you actually go visit the school, which I would urge everyone to do, and you can set up an appointment to visit the school, they want you to see how the system works there. Then you'll see that it's absolutely none of those things at all. I remember being at the yeah the Battle of Ideas, which is ah an annual event run by Claire Fox for the Academy of Ideas.
00:43:52
Speaker
One of the best events. It's one of the highlights of my year. You go there, there's debates, all sorts of discussions on all sorts of topics by different people. And I was there one time. I was ah i had actually got lost. And I was trying to get my way to my my next event.
00:44:06
Speaker
and someone And this kid from a school, in a school uniform, saw that I was lost and approached me and said, can I help you? and And they knew the way. And they started talking to me on the way. and And this child was so confident and polite and eager to discuss. And I thought...
00:44:20
Speaker
I don't remember being like this as a kid. This is weird. I asked, which school are you at? And he said, Michaela. And then it all sort of fit into place. So it's not just the case that Michaela is creating these drones that sit in class that wrote, learn and and and spout stuff off by rote.
00:44:37
Speaker
They're creating good members of society, people, ah intellectually curious individuals, right? So that's that's very that was very interesting to me.
00:44:48
Speaker
So how do you do that? Well, firstly, you need some kind of acknowledgement that that kind of system is successful. By the way, i'm not saying it would be successful for everyone. I'm sure there are some children for whom that educational system doesn't really tally.
00:45:03
Speaker
But again, with education, you know, it comes down to the utilitarian ah approach. You have to do what's best for the the the greatest number, don't you? that There is no other option, really. But with some sort of acknowledgement that that is working, you know, if you don't have an educational system which is disciplined and and children don't actually learn anything, if you have an educational system that is decolonizing curricula so that the very best achievements of our civilization are not included I mean, really, we've seen, you know, we had a video by Sheffield University saying that the only reason we study Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf and Chaucer is because they're white.
00:45:39
Speaker
What are you talking about? We study them because they're the best. You know, and that yeah this is this is the problem. So you need to strip away ideology. We need some sort of acknowledgement of what works
Challenges within Teaching and Activism
00:45:49
Speaker
and what doesn't work. We need some sort of discussion about how we can get some kind of rigorous education educational system back.
00:45:55
Speaker
We need higher expectations of pupils. You know, one of the biggest frustrations when I was a teacher was is, a you know, I was told I can't teach Dickens to 11-year-olds because they won't understand it.
00:46:05
Speaker
They will understand it if you teach it well. you know don't You know, don't assume that kids don't get this stuff. Of course they do. Shakespeare should be there from primary school. You know, there's no reason why it shouldn't be. And all of this stuff can be, and um obviously I always speak about literature because that's my background, but the same will go for all of the other subjects as well.
00:46:21
Speaker
Instill that. Have critical thinking, not as a subject on the curricula, but as a general practice throughout the curricula. have teachers who care about that sort of stuff. Pay teachers more, make teaching a more competitive job.
00:46:35
Speaker
They should have more time off and more money. And people would, you know, I can tell you from my time as a school teacher, you're constantly playing catch up. You're constantly blagging it because by the time you've spent, you've stayed up all night marking essays and preparing the next day, you're running from class to class and you're not really there.
00:46:54
Speaker
and you and And you're not all in some, you know, I tell you, if you had a system where it was more competitive to become a teacher, there were more rewards, and you had more space to breathe in the working day, you would end up with a much, much better education system. so All of this stuff is on the table.
00:47:10
Speaker
All this stuff is up for discussion. And then in addition to that, I think we need, i mean, look, the biggest teaching union in the country is currently an activist union, the National Education Union. It's an activist body that just wants to promote its ideology.
00:47:24
Speaker
It's not fit for purpose. Teachers, I think, have to withdraw from activist unions. Teachers, I think, need to be more front-footed within their jobs in complaining about this stuff, in saying, no, we're not going to, we're not here to promote ideology, to to start those debates.
00:47:40
Speaker
I understand that a few years ago, we were at the point where a teacher would basically jeopardize their promotional prospect by by making a stink. They would, you know, effectively scupper their own career.
00:47:53
Speaker
i don't think we're there anymore. I think we're at the point where people can raise these points and these concerns and be heard out and make a difference. And, you know, most teachers are sick of it.
00:48:04
Speaker
but You know, i'm I have a number of teacher friends because obviously I used to be a teacher and they often send me these screenshots of these training sessions where where they're being told to indoctrinate children with these various things. Now, if I were in those training sessions, I'd put my hand up and say, this is nonsense.
00:48:18
Speaker
Why are you peddling this stuff to children when you should be teaching them properly? And, you know, and you might say, well, that would make you very unpopular. But once one or two people start saying it, you know, the guy I interviewed on my show, Free Speech Nation on GB News, a guy called um the Reverend Bernard Randall, the school chaplain.
00:48:36
Speaker
I can't remember where the school was now, but he was in a training session where the teachers were told to chant smash heteronormativity. And of course, you know, as a man of the cloth, smashing heteronormativity isn't really high up on his priority list.
00:48:50
Speaker
And, you know, he did a sermon to the kids saying it's important to challenge these ideas, you know, that, you know, don't feel that you can't challenge these. ah I read the sermon, very respectful, all about open debate, not even trying to shut down the the the the the opposing view, just saying we need to be able to discuss and challenge.
00:49:07
Speaker
And he was reported to prevent the anti-terrorism body that the government has set up. that's how in That's how scary the ideologues are, is that they will weaponize the state to shut you up.
00:49:19
Speaker
But I think, as I argue in the book, we're over that hill now. We're at the point where, actually, if you're and a ah teacher and you're told to chant smash heteronormativity, and you're told to convey that to kids in a tutor meeting or something, you can actually put your hand up to say, no, I don't think this is right. I don't think this is what we're here for.
00:49:37
Speaker
I think we need to have a discussion about this. And I think you will be heard. Maybe I'm being terribly naive. I mean, I sense a lot of fear still from the teachers who contact me. But I do occasionally say why don't you just say something?
00:49:48
Speaker
You know, and I think more people, I think we just have to be a little bit braver. And look, it's very easy for me to say that. The nature of my job is, i you know, and I'm not at jeopardy for saying what I think.
00:50:00
Speaker
But I would urge people to be more vocal about it because I don't think, I think there's a lot at stake. And I think things won't change unless we do speak out.
Creating Alternative Cultural Content
00:50:10
Speaker
Yeah, one of my favorite quotes is from John Anderson, who said that the only cure for cancel culture is courage culture. um And I agree with that wholeheartedly.
00:50:20
Speaker
At the very start of the conversation, Andrew, you mentioned that one of the mechanisms by which these ideologies become part of the institutions are through fashions, through trends, through the broader culture.
00:50:32
Speaker
think it's a nice place for us to end because it ties into what you're doing in America now. Help me explain. Well, actually, this is a two part question. Number one, there are two schools of thoughts here.
00:50:42
Speaker
You can either say, right, we need to try and reform the existing cultural institutions. We need to make the BBC less woke. We need to try and get Hollywood to create less woke movies.
00:50:53
Speaker
Or you say we create new cultural institutions that are more explicitly anti-woke. So someone like Ben Shapiro at The Daily Wire has said that we're going to create parallel you know movie studios that deliver that sort of content.
00:51:07
Speaker
How do you think about how you go about changing the cultural norms in a direction which you would find more palatable? And then perhaps in in your own little way, how are you doing that the U.S.? Yeah, it's ah it's a very good question. I think you can do both. I mean, you know, I think there is a case to be made that we can rescue some of these institutions. I know that some are probably too far gone, but a lot of them we can we can rescue, we can we can reform, we can work within to bring back what was good about them.
00:51:33
Speaker
I don't think all is lost to Oxford and Cambridge. I mean, I know they're pretty far gone, but but I think it's possible still. with the right leadership, with the right vice chancellor, with, you know, with the but the right guidance, those can become seats of learning again, rather than just seats of indoctrination.
00:51:49
Speaker
And, you know, that can happen. At the same time, it's great that we have things like Ralston College in Savannah, University of Austin in Texas. ah You know, the fact that we have people, the Peterson Academy, which is Jordan Peterson's online um educational resource where people sign up, they they enroll, they and they have access to many, many lectures. Now, of course, I'm saying that selfishly as well, because I have a series of lectures on that, on the Peterson Academy. I did a series of lectures on Shakespeare's tragedies, and actually I'm due to do another series of lectures on Shakespeare's comedies.
00:52:19
Speaker
But that, I think, is a very good idea example of What I'm trying to do is insofar as, you know, trying to push back against this by, i mean, that's a good example. that That's a ah series of lectures where I got to teach it in the way that I wanted to, assuming that I'm talking to intelligent people who may not be familiar with these texts, but they're intelligent, they want to learn, and it's not ideological.
00:52:42
Speaker
I'm not pushing my ideology. And actually, Shakespeare is a great place to start with that, precisely because Shakespeare doesn't have an ideology. Now, Shakespeare can be twisted to any ideology you like, but he doesn't have one himself.
00:52:54
Speaker
You never know where he stands on anything. And just when you think you know, in his plays, he'll twist it so you don't know anymore. You know, if like in Julius Caesar, you might think all of a sudden that he's with the mob, you know, that actually Mark Antony stirring up the mob, that they're the good guys here because they're pushing back against the el elitists.
00:53:12
Speaker
They're pushing back, you know, and but then you see the mob tear to pieces the poet sinner. And you're like, and they in and they know he's just a poet who happens to have the same name as one of the conspirators.
00:53:22
Speaker
They still murder him. And all of a sudden you're thinking, okay, so a second ago, Shakespeare was telling us we should side with the mob. And now he's telling us that the mob are unpredictable and and murderous. And what where do I stand?
00:53:34
Speaker
The truth is, you just don't know. that' That's also why people should go back and read the classics where, you know, ah a classic work of literature is not didactic. You know, I'm not saying literature can't be didactic.
00:53:46
Speaker
Dickens was very didactic. You know, Tom Brown's School Days, one of my favorite books as a kid, very much didactic. But the best, the absolute pinnacle of literature, the thing that interests me the most is when it's ah getting you to think and is not a teaching manual, is not sermonizing. The woke can produce no art that isn't sermonizing.
00:54:04
Speaker
because they don't understand art. They see art as a conduit for their message. They see it as simply propaganda, which is why they are a disaster for the arts and why no great work of art has ever been produced under the woke system and never will be, never can be.
00:54:18
Speaker
It's like, so it all looks like state approved art, doesn't it? It all looks like establishment, but it's all run by some equivalent of the clergy, you know? So I think the way to do it is to is to push back by getting people to read classics and creating work That doesn't abide by an ideology.
00:54:36
Speaker
I'm over here in Arizona. I'm working with Rob Schneider and Graham Linehan and my friend Martin Gorley, who was a producer of TV News with me. We've set up a production company, Friendly Fire Studios. We're going to be creating work here.
00:54:48
Speaker
No, it's early days. We don't know where we're going with this, but we're going try to create work that isn't beholden to an ideology. And our view is that not that we should promote a different message, which is what some people are doing. and that's fair enough.
00:54:59
Speaker
Everyone can what they want. I mean, even the woke are free to do what they want in terms of creativity. I'm not trying to establish parameters on that. What I'm saying is we're going to create work that doesn't have an ideological basis, that doesn't preach. Comedy that's just funny.
00:55:11
Speaker
How about that? That would be great. That doesn't try and, you know, tick you off or, take or you know, or berate you for having the wrong attitudes. So we're going to be doing that. And in addition to that, like I say, i'll I'll be doing more work with the Peterson Academy and, you know, just trying to, in my own small way, I suppose, help to cultivate something new. I think that's what a lot of us want to do.
Conclusion and Promotion of Andrew's Projects
00:55:34
Speaker
so we'll see where that goes. But it's kind of exciting. I think partly is because I've been spen i spent a long time commentating on stuff, talking about stuff. I felt almost dragged into it. You know, i mean, my background is stand-up comedy and, you know, stage writing and musical theater and drama and all of that.
00:55:49
Speaker
and And I think if you're in the creative industries and you so I suddenly saw it being decimated by ideology. So I kind of got dragged into it and I felt a kind of responsibility to spend a lot of my time and career commentating on it and talking about it And that's there's ah there's ah there's a space to that and I think it's very valuable.
00:56:08
Speaker
But I'd like to do some go back to creating again. And so I think that's going to be another way that we can push back against it. I think po both are valuable and i think I can do both. But I also have limited resources and life is finite.
00:56:19
Speaker
And I'd rather get back to creating some stuff. I've just written a screenplay, which I'm very excited about. Again, don't know if it'll go anywhere. Maybe not. But I'd like to say at the end of the day that I i gave it a shot.
00:56:32
Speaker
And that that's what I'm trying to do. I'm expecting VIP tickets to the premiere when it inevitably hits the big screen. Andrew, this has been a wonderful conversation. The End of Woke is already out in the UK. I believe it's coming out in Australia in December.
00:56:45
Speaker
I've had a mental blank, but we've discussed free speech a lot in this conversation. You've written a wonderful little book on free speech, and it is called... called Free Speech and Why It Matters. And it's it's interesting you you mentioned that because it relates to what we were talking about earlier is that I wrote that book specifically. I wanted it to be short, accessible. I wanted it to be the kind of book that you could give to a teenager, you know, that that that reiterates those key arguments to counter the infantilism that we are currently facing. There are so many very basic misconceptions about free speech that are peddled, like I say, by by the commentariat, but also by people in political power.
00:57:24
Speaker
And so I wanted to write this short accessible book so that there's kind of no excuse. Just read this familiar. You know, I'm not making any great claim to originality. I'm reiterating the key arguments for free speech that all of ah the great thinkers of the past knew and understood and embraced.
00:57:40
Speaker
There used to be a consensus on this. The consensus has weakened. So i've've I've written the book in the hope that people will And I would urge people who disagree with me or who have reservations about free speech or say, well, yeah, but you shouldn't say certain things.
00:57:54
Speaker
I would urge them to read the book and tell me why they think I'm wrong. I think part of the problem is that people just aren't familiar with the basic arguments. I do think that's a ah major issue here.
00:58:06
Speaker
Well said. A link to that book is in the show notes. Andrew, thank you very much for coming on. Fire it well. Thanks for having me. Really enjoyed it.