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Lessons for the silenced majority, with Katherine Brodsky
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Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations.
We as a society are self-censoring at record rates. Say the wrong thing at the wrong moment to the wrong person and the consequences can be dire.
When the truth is no defense and nuance is seen as an attack, self-censorship is a rational choice. Yet, our silence comes with a price. When we are too fearful to speak openly and honestly, we deprive ourselves of the ability to build genuine relationships, we yield all cultural and political power to those with opposing views, and we lose our ability to challenge ideas or change minds, even our own.
Katherine Brodsky thinks it's time for principled individuals to hit the unmute button and resist the authoritarians among us who name, shame, and punish. Her new book is titled 'No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage—Lessons for the Silenced Majority'.
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Transcript
Australiana's Cancel Culture Interviews
00:00:14
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia. I'm Will Kingston. Regular listeners will know that we have an affinity for victims of cancel culture on Australiana. The conversations that I've had with, among others, Winston Marshall, Peter Bogosian, Lawrence Fox, and Jay Bhattacharya have been infuriating, confusing, sad, and inspiring.
Expressing Opinions Safely
00:00:39
Speaker
The same question always pops up in these interviews.
00:00:43
Speaker
What advice would you give to someone listening to this podcast who wants to express a heterodox opinion but is afraid of the very real threat of being fired or being publicly shamed on social media or being ostracized by their friends? In the age in which we live, it's a very difficult question to answer.
00:01:04
Speaker
This is why my ears pricked up when I heard about the release of a new book, No Apologies, How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage, Lessons for the Silenced Majority.
Introduction to Catherine Brodsky and 'No Apologies'
00:01:16
Speaker
It is a book for our times and I am delighted to be joined by its author, Catherine Brodsky. Catherine, welcome to Australia. Thanks for having me. I'm not quite, you know, I wish I could be in Australia right now, maybe, but it's too far.
00:01:31
Speaker
you were in Australia, you would unfortunately recognise many of the cancel culture attitudes that have infected the US. So this is, this is a conversation which is just as recognisable to an Australian audience as it is to a, an American audience.
The Spread of Cancel Culture
00:01:46
Speaker
That's actually something which I hadn't actually considered until this moment. Why do you think this is a universal trend? How has it managed to hop across the world?
00:01:57
Speaker
That's an interesting question. I don't think every country is, let's say, as infected with this as the next, but I think this dominates more so Western countries that have, I guess when I really think about it, I think a lot of this cancel culture comes out of a sense of victimhood by a certain group of people.
00:02:18
Speaker
Once a group of people who might have historically considered themselves victims or were in fact victims, because I think there's some legitimacy there, there's certainly been things like discrimination, and all sorts of other things, I think that ultimately once a group gains power, they use that power
00:02:39
Speaker
to go after other people.
Victimhood as Social Currency
00:02:41
Speaker
And it's just something psychological, something inherently there. And it's something that I've really noticed in a lot of these people, they do see themselves as victims, the people that go after others to try and cancel them. They see themselves as victims who are now somewhat empowered. And because they have this power,
00:03:02
Speaker
either power of the mob or the power of the institution, they can then use that on others. And I think that's really where it comes from. And in many cases, I think the reason why it's traveled to places like Australia or, you know,
00:03:17
Speaker
the UK and many other places, I think it is that idea that the victim group has regained power and now has the power and the teeth to go after those that they don't like, that they feel somewhat threatened by perhaps.
00:03:33
Speaker
Speaking to British academic Matt Goodwin last week, and he took it a step further. He said that in this day and age, victimhood actually confers status. So in times gone by, it was a sports car or a holiday home that you would use to project your status in society. But as society overall has become relatively more affluent, victimhood has taken on that role, which is an interesting way of looking at it.
00:03:58
Speaker
It's true. I think I see that in a lot of types of, whether it's a victimhood based on something like race or it's a victimhood that's based on, you know, one's, you know, disability even.
Brodsky's Background: Soviet Union and Israel
00:04:11
Speaker
It's kind of a strange thing because certainly I don't think people who have say disabilities should feel lesser than somebody else, but
00:04:22
Speaker
there's a difference between empowerment and actually playing on the victimhood status that you might have because you've had some unfortunate incident or something that has robbed you of the same opportunity, perhaps.
00:04:38
Speaker
We'll return to that, but I want to circle back to your upbringing and your formative years. So, you were born in the Soviet Union in what is now Ukraine? Ukraine, yeah, now Ukraine, yeah. And you studied in Israel?
00:04:56
Speaker
So I moved, I was fairly young still when I moved to Israel, I was still a child. So I was only, I grew up there up to my teenage hood years, basically. And when I arrived there, I was in the middle of the Gulf War. So I just kind of, we escaped the Soviet Union to go to another place that was pretty fragile at the time.
Appreciation for Free Speech
00:05:16
Speaker
Well, yeah, and of course. And still, yeah. Now I have the Ukraine war and then the Israel situation as well. So that's great.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, you are ticking off 2024's worst geopolitical bingo card. How did those formative years influence how you think about freedom of speech and the issues that you write about today?
00:05:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, in particular, I would say the biggest influence would have been the Soviet Union. Now, I was still fairly young when I lived there, so I wouldn't necessarily have had my speech suppressed. I was a little young. I mean, people probably told me, be quiet because I was an annoying child. But I did grow up in the household of my parents, who very much grew up in the middle of
00:06:00
Speaker
communism and knowing how sensitive speech was. There was a lot of subversion going on at the time in terms of authors trying to figure out how to skirt the censors. You didn't know who to trust with what. You could definitely be facing political prosecution at any given moment just for saying something quite slight.
00:06:23
Speaker
So everyone had to sort of keep their own thoughts to themselves because there was that very real risk of not just, you know, losing your job, but also potentially losing your life.
Subtle Erosion of Liberties
00:06:34
Speaker
So it was a very dangerous time for speech. And yet there were little slivers of freedom and speech coming in, and particularly through, you know, fire at radio stations and things like that. So people were thinking these
00:06:50
Speaker
thoughts that were outside of the government regulated group think, but they didn't know who it would be okay to share that with. And so as I was growing up, you know, in the West, predominantly, I did enjoy a great degree of freedom. And I always valued freedom of speech, it was such a
00:07:08
Speaker
liberal value that I really cared about. And my parents were saying, look, you're not seeing certain things in the West, especially as they were starting to kind of crack down on freedom of speech in some ways. And you knew that certain things can be said. If you said them, you might lose your job, your community wasn't like you could say something. People disagree with you and you have an argument and, you know, either you change your mind, they change their mind or you just
00:07:40
Speaker
started feeling that you couldn't share perspectives and couldn't have open discourse.
Importance of Open Discourse
00:07:46
Speaker
And early on, when my parents started pointing to some of the things that they were saying, I disagreed with them. I said, there's no way this could happen in the West. There's no way. But later on, I realized that I owe them quite an apology because certainly this can and has happened in the West. And you can even see historically, if you look at something like Germany,
00:08:02
Speaker
you know, walk away. You really...
00:08:10
Speaker
It was a very, before World War II, it was a pretty open society. A lot of people flocked there because of the openness and yet didn't take very long for it to become, you know, a Nazi state. So these things don't necessarily take as much time as we think and we're not as safe as we think and which is a lesson that I definitely learned.
00:08:33
Speaker
That's interesting because I feel that one of the reasons why I say potentially at first you didn't agree with your parents and why some people in society don't see this as being a problem is that there is a bit of a Chinese water torture aspect to this and that individual liberties can just be chipped away at very gradually and isolated incidents or isolated regulations in and of themselves, no big deal. But in aggregate, before you know it, they create this stifling culture. Whereas say the Soviet Union is
00:09:02
Speaker
authoritarian, it's in your face. You can see the restriction, whereas here it's more subversive and it's more subtle, perhaps. Yeah. And I think the difference in the Soviet Union, you know, if you were born there during that time period and to this day, I mean, in Russia, it's not like free speech is that free. But, you know, if you grew up in that time, that's all you knew. So that was also, I would say there was a normalcy to it. Right.
00:09:31
Speaker
And I think that's the key is to make it feel like it's normal. And when you chip away at things gradually, like you've mentioned, it feels normal because you OK, it's just a little word here, just a little word there. OK, you have to adjust this. And a lot of it is done in the name of being kind and who wants to be mean and who wants to not be kind.
00:09:51
Speaker
And then I think you notice things more perhaps if you're, you know, my views are fairly moderate, and therefore I wasn't necessarily crossing that those boundaries as much. And it was actually an observing the treatment that others were having, even though I have obviously my own history with this, I started first noticing it when I was seeing other people's speech being suppressed.
00:10:15
Speaker
and thinking, look, not all these people have bad intentions, they're, I might disagree with what they're saying, sometimes I'll agree with what they're saying, but it doesn't really matter.
Decline in Defending Free Speech Principles
00:10:27
Speaker
They're, they're thinking things through and we should be able to do that as a society and we should be able to talk things through including things that you might find like really bad ideas or bad thoughts, you know, which is obviously subjective, but
00:10:41
Speaker
to be able to even voice that I think is so important for me to voice that I think is important too because if I have a thought that's sort of based on perhaps not all the correct facts and then I talk to you and we have a conversation you say Catherine you're a little off here because this this and this it allows me an opportunity to correct my thinking.
00:11:04
Speaker
But when you don't do that, then people's thoughts actually become more extreme. And this is what I've noticed. And I've noticed that on all sort of political aisles as well, right? That people get more radicalized because they're not speaking with each other, which you need that moderating force in the conversation, particularly when it comes to disagreements.
00:11:24
Speaker
That's very much a John Stuart Mill view of free speech. It's better to have dangerous views out there or incorrect views out there so they can be corrected, so the debate can lead to truth. It feels to me that there aren't many John Stuart Mills out there now. As a society, we are not nearly as good as we once were at arguing for free speech on first principles.
Academia's Shift Towards Moral Correctness
00:11:46
Speaker
There are very few people with either the intellect or the courage to do it.
00:11:50
Speaker
Why as a society perhaps is there not that same depth of intellectual argument for free speech as perhaps there maybe once was?
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I imagine that a lot of it happens on the academia level, at least to some extent, and not just academia, I mean, it's media, it's culture, there is this kind of way of there's this sense of that you have to get things right. There's this moral correctness that is aimed for and virtue that has to be sort of signaled and included. So if you even if you look at movies, for example,
00:12:24
Speaker
It's not that for movies in the past didn't have some kind of a moral lesson or something that the creator wanted to push through, but there was subtext, right? And these days, it's like hitting you over the head, you know, you can't be, you know, mean, you can't be racist, don't bully, right, instead of you sort of arriving on your own. And so there's this kind of demification that's going on with the audience as well. And you're seeing that far fewer people are reading books and
00:12:53
Speaker
You know, it's interesting because I've always had this kind of view that you have to read classics and you have to have a good core and you have to read, you know, philosophers. And I've even read religious texts and I'm not religious, but I feel like there's so much references to them that you have to sort of understand them. And you don't see a lot of people doing that anymore. And it's not a value that's being pushed through. And people are getting little sound bites of things. I think social media has contributed to this as well.
00:13:22
Speaker
And then the same thing in schools. I have been out of school for a while, so part of that I'm basing what I've heard. But I know that my experience was, and I went to the most, you know,
00:13:33
Speaker
left-leaning faculty you could have, very liberal. But freedom of speech was very much a value that my professors upheld, and just rigorous thoughts. And I remember I took one course that everybody referred to as the communist course, because the guy who taught it, favorite communism, but he taught other kinds of philosophies as well, or ideologies, and he taught them all really well. He taught them all equally well, I would say. And that's not something that's happening anymore.
Brodsky's Cancel Culture Experience
00:14:02
Speaker
We're a similar age and I had the same experience when I went to university. There has been a dramatic acceleration in a relatively short historical period in the last decade. And I want to return to academia specifically and the arts actually, because you've spoken to academics and you've spoken to creative artists like Winston Marshall for your book before we do. And I've got no doubt you're sick of this story, but I'd be remiss not to ask about your own personal experience with cancel culture. Can you give.
00:14:32
Speaker
the listeners perhaps the high-level story of how you had a personal touch with with this sorry phenomena
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, sure. It is definitely a story I've talked about a lot. It's funny because my feelings, if you had asked me to recall it a few years ago, I would have a very different feeling with which I would tell it than I do now. I think there's a lot more detachment today than there was then. In retrospect, I realized how traumatic it was, but I think I'm OK now. But essentially, what had happened to me,
00:15:06
Speaker
you know, at that time period, there was a lot of cancellations that I was observing, and I was talking to people have been really brutally canceled. So I was quite aware of that, of that. I don't think I was quite aware of the full scale of it at the time, but I definitely was aware that it was going on. And in my case, I ran a job board for women journalists.
00:15:27
Speaker
It was an offshoot of another group. And my group was about 30,000 members, so quite a large number of women who were all in media. And, you know, it was focused strictly on job opportunities, some mentorship, I had a mentorship program in it, and some resources. It was not, you know, really a forum for discussion or anything like that.
00:15:51
Speaker
And one day, a person had posted a job opportunity at Fox News and people went really rabid crazy and started attacking her. And they were just quite vicious. And I thought, well, that's not OK. So I made a post saying, you know, since it was my group, I felt that responsibility. And I made a post saying, listen, let's not let's stay away from personal attacks.
00:16:19
Speaker
and let's stay away from politics in the group. We've all come apart for so long, let's come together. And I did not predict the outcome of that post. I thought it was a pretty innocent post that I've described previously as kumbaya, but people didn't think so.
00:16:36
Speaker
And as a result, you know, there was this big pylon. They started calling me white supremacist. They said that I was just as soon higher from the KKK. And it just it was it was an onslaught. And I was getting DMS. And it went a little wilder from there because they said that I can't take politics out of the group because it's a group for women. And so it's inherently political.
00:16:59
Speaker
So I said, well, okay, then I don't want politics in there. So let's just open it up to men as well. And anybody wants to join, which really took that a few notches up. And as a result, people were harassing me on social media, trying to dox me sending, apparently trying to reach out to my editors to make sure that I'd never work again. And they would send me threats like you'd never
00:17:22
Speaker
work again, we have long memories. You're talking about 30,000 members in a group and they were writing articles. So it just kind of, it spiraled quite a bit more than I ever imagined. And in the end I ended up, so at the same time I was getting a lot of messages from people and some messages, obviously a lot of hate messages, you know, people sending me Tiki torches and mobs and things like that.
00:17:46
Speaker
or rather mobs holding tiki torches to be more accurate. And then I was getting messages from people saying, hey, you know, we really, you know, I feel really, I see that this is not right, what's happening to you. But I feel very ashamed that I, I don't have the courage to stand up, but wanted to let you know that I support you. And then I was also getting messages from people telling me
00:18:10
Speaker
about their own experiences, both within similar groups, as well as just experiences outside of that with being targeted, having their livelihoods lost, their communities broken, like just really horrible stories. And I felt a certain responsibility that I had to speak up about this. And so I wrote a piece for Newsweek thinking that my whole career would be over, honestly, because I thought that
00:18:34
Speaker
Now I'm putting even a greater spotlight on this, but I felt like I had to do that. And so I did that and actually the opposite I would say happened. Well, I don't know about my career necessarily, but the mob stopped going after me. And instead I found a lot of people who related to my words, you know, and I advocated in that piece really
00:18:58
Speaker
for more tolerance in terms of being able to speak with each other and the value of that.
Coping with Cancellation
00:19:03
Speaker
And then I wrote this book because I really wanted to reach people to share with them the vastness of the problem and some of the ways that they might be able to address it if they themselves might be inclined to use their voices, which of course I was encouraging them to do, and the ways that they feel like they can.
00:19:22
Speaker
And that's where I think this book plugs a gap in the public debate because it is very practical in giving people advice of how to navigate this treacherous environment we're in. I had a similar first thought hearing about your story as I did when I heard about Winston Marshall's cancellation storm.
00:19:39
Speaker
in that the trigger is so small and uncontroversial to any rational, reasonable person. I want to understand, how do you feel in that moment? Like try and, I hope people listen, no one listening to this has had a large scale cancellation storm they've had to deal with. So they wouldn't understand the emotional response. Take me through the feelings that as you're going through this and as it's actually, the storm is gathering around you.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You mentioned that it's a small trigger. And I think at the time, because I was going through a lot of confusion, because part of me was like, well, am I wrong if so many people are going against you? And so many people seem to think you're like the most evil person ever. Maybe there is some sense to that. Maybe I'm getting something wrong. So I think that was really much more my first reaction.
00:20:33
Speaker
I'll tell you in a second what kind of turned it around for me. But in terms of just the feelings, there was a lot of self-doubt, a lot of talking to other people and making sure I told them every single fact of the story so that I can get a fair and honest evaluation that I wasn't misrepresenting anything. And I tried to make myself look worse just to get a semblance of reality. And so I had a lot of confusion at the time.
00:20:59
Speaker
And who do I listen to? And what had really turned it around for me was looking at people's behavior. And I thought, look, if I disagreed with myself, how would I behave in that situation?
00:21:15
Speaker
you know, I might say something, I might write like a little note of disagreement, but would I try to destroy somebody? Would I try to downrate their contents and them threatening DMs, like all of the things that these people were doing? No, I would never do any of these things. So what does that say about these people? And that really changed it around for me because at a certain point, it's like, why would I care?
00:21:41
Speaker
about the opinions of people who would behave in these ways.
The Dishonesty of Apologizing
00:21:45
Speaker
I do care about the opinions of people I respect who wouldn't do that, and I did listen to them. But when it comes to these people, that completely turned it around for me. But at the time, emotionally,
00:21:59
Speaker
I felt under attack. I felt like everybody hated me. I felt completely fragile. I felt like my whole world was over. I was at the top of my career, hopefully, maybe not at the top, because I'd like to go higher.
00:22:14
Speaker
you know i was doing quite well and suddenly it felt like everything is going to be pulled away so i was worried about the future that i remember thinking even with that news week story i'm like what am i gonna do now that my career is completely over you know i never published this like maybe i'll start a coffee shop take my savings like that's been my go to this whole time but really i did
00:22:37
Speaker
think that everything was going to be awful. I didn't see a way out. I was worried about any of my family or anybody I was connected to because people were completely stalking every social media platform I had and I had to close things down. It's interesting, I haven't used these words before, but now that I kind of reflect on it, I would say it felt like I was being under attack.
00:23:01
Speaker
And everything was, you know, everything, there was this attempt to just destroy me. And emotionally, I'm a pretty emotional person. I'm not this like invincible human being. And I didn't know if there was a way to recover. And I noticed my way of dealing with this, by the way, was I was trying to fix the world.
00:23:20
Speaker
Like after I realized the scale of the problem, after what had happened to me, I was like, okay, I need to fix journalism and I need to solve media literacy issues for kids and I need to do this and that. And I was trying to create all these different things at the time. And I realized now there's just my way of dealing with like a stressful situation. I mean, it's not the worst way I could be like, you know, getting drunk.
00:23:44
Speaker
But it was something that I now realize was quite a trauma. And I remember for a long time thinking, anytime I'd meet a new person, they need to know my backstory. I need them to know what they're getting into because they like me. And what if they don't like me if they know this? So they need to have all the details. That went on for a while. And I think to some extent, it still goes on.
00:24:09
Speaker
Some people who are opposed to this cancel culture will see a story like yours and they'll see someone reactively apologize and you're looking at this and you go, why are you doing this? But when you frame it that way and you hear about the way that these people make you second guess your own beliefs and the way that you think, it suddenly makes complete sense why you would have that reactive response, which is also why I really like the title of the book being No Apologies.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I think somebody like Winston Marshall, that's probably why he chose to apologize, right? And I think when he had time to reflect on it more, I mean, in his case, it was more complicated, too, because there were other people involved. But I think once you reflect on it, you realize, well, I have nothing to apologize for. Why should I apologize? And one thing I am, as much as I am a people pleaser, I also can be quite stubborn when it comes to
00:25:05
Speaker
principles. And to me, the principle of no apologies, right, is the idea like, it's dishonest. It's inherently dishonest to apologize for something that you don't feel like you've done wrong. I have no problem apologizing for something that I feel like I've done wrong. I think people should apologize if they have made a mistake or have acted in a way that, you know, they didn't intend to, that hurt somebody. But it's a completely different thing when
00:25:33
Speaker
you know people when you don't agree with it now other people might disagree with my assessment of the situation and say that i should apologize because i'm wrong but i don't believe that i was wrong in that situation and therefore no apologies.
Cancel Culture's Impact on the Arts
00:25:49
Speaker
Use winston marshall is a segue into the arts what are your reflections on how cancel culture influences the arts and perhaps more specifically.
00:26:00
Speaker
Does cancel culture inevitably diminish the quality of art? And I use the word art in its broader sense. Yeah, I thought that was a very important aspect of the book for me to tackle because it massively affects the arts. And I've worked in film industry for a long time, worked in theater a little bit as well. I love.
00:26:21
Speaker
I love film, I love culture, I love all of those things. And what I've noticed in conversations with friends of mine, including very successful friends of mine in the industry, is that it's affecting this cancel culture, I refer to it as silencing culture because it's essentially what it's doing and has this chilling effect is it's destroying art.
00:26:42
Speaker
Because art is inherently about being able to express something, some ideas, some emotion. And if you can't play it safe, you have to express what you're feeling. I mean, good art isn't usually safe. And what I'm seeing happening, for example, in TV writers rooms, and from some of the conversations that I've had with friends, they're afraid of playing around.
00:27:05
Speaker
They are afraid because there is real consequence to that, which they witnessed and experienced themselves. They've seen people, you know, somebody said something that was offensive to another writer in the room while playing around, not trying to offend. And that person reported them.
00:27:20
Speaker
And now not only does that person suffer the consequences of that action, but everyone in the room now is afraid of expressing the wrong thing. And that completely robs us of art, of real expression. I talk to so many people in film and television and theater.
00:27:43
Speaker
are completely crippled by all of this they don't feel like they can express at all what they really want to and that's why we end up with products in my opinion i mean there's a few other aspects that that lead to this but a lot of
00:27:58
Speaker
why culture has deteriorated, in my opinion, is because
Shift Towards Open Discussion
00:28:03
Speaker
of this. I mean, you should be able to offend. Think of some of the shows, some of the things that the characters say. It doesn't mean you agree with what they're saying, but they need to be able to say that and have some impact on the audience. And you can't have honest conversations either. And art is in some ways a conversation.
00:28:21
Speaker
You can't have that if you're afraid of offending someone so you're watching your every word. That's not authentic. So art has lost that authenticity.
00:28:30
Speaker
I often think about James Bond as an interesting example here. When you said that you don't have to agree with a character or a character doesn't have to be good, the whole point of James Bond is that he's a misogynist. The point is that he's a deeply flawed person. It's interesting how whenever the conversation comes up about casting or the next James Bond movie, it's how can this character reflect the kind of changing notions of masculinity. And what makes that character interesting is that he's representative of a very particular, and I think most people would agree, a very outdated view of masculinity.
00:29:00
Speaker
But you can still put that on a screen and then allow people to come to their own conclusions about that and draw particular lessons from that.
00:29:07
Speaker
It's like you're not trusting the audience, right? That's a big part of it. And they've started, I know they've changed some of the word language in the James Bond books as well, which is, you know, I think it's sacrilegious. But you're right. Part of the point of James Bond, he is a misogynist. He's not like the nicest guy in the world. And that's OK. And also we need to be able to look back sometimes at characters with
00:29:30
Speaker
you know, because because a lot of the labeling issues, you know, they started putting trigger warnings and contextual information about, you know, film or something historically. Now, that tells me that they don't trust the audience to derive their own conclusions. Like, I don't watch Gone with the Wind and think this is like 100% an accurate reflection of everything that went on during that time period.
00:29:55
Speaker
you know, I'm going to look into it, it might be a springboard for me to do a little bit more research, learn about the history, but also tells me this is how they portrayed people at that time. So it gives me a very important historical lesson as well. And if you start changing that and playing around with that, now you're you're also taking away that historical record, including hey, people may be thought in more bigoted ways during certain time periods, we need to know that.
00:30:20
Speaker
Shane Gillis is an intriguing case study when it comes to the arts for anyone who doesn't know. He's a comedian. He had very, very briefly, I think for a three hour period was signed up for Saturday Night Live before they found an old podcast interview where he made jokes about gay people and Chinese people. And that was enough to have that contract terminated. Subsequently been on Rogan subsequently had a Netflix special and only about a week ago, he was invited back to do the Saturday Night Live.
00:30:47
Speaker
Monologue can we draw anything from this is this a sign that perhaps there is a changing of the tides or is that just an isolated example. So i am feeling like that's a subjective feeling but i am feeling like there is a changing of the tide a little bit because i think people are so fed up at this point i mean i talked to people who are absolutely.
00:31:13
Speaker
They find it refreshing to be able to speak about these things, first of all, because I do tend to bring them up or they understand that they can come to me and talk to me about these things. So what people are expressing to me privately is that they're fed up. In public settings, they'll express it too if enough people are
Courage Culture as a Remedy
00:31:32
Speaker
talking about it. And that's what I've noticed. Even when I started talking more openly about different things is that
00:31:38
Speaker
people then saw that as an opening for them to express their own opinions because they didn't feel so alone. I think it's very hard to know what other people are thinking if everyone is self-censoring and silencing themselves. And so you have this like weird consensus culture that's based on just the rule of like a small number of people who are very vocal and often very aggressive about their views. When you're in a room or in conversation with someone who's just like very passionate and aggressive, people tend to be quiet and not express their views.
00:32:07
Speaker
even when they disagree or they'll politely nod along. And I think that's what's been happening for so long in the culture. So when people start breaking the ice in that way, and they start being able to express themselves, and particularly when they see fairly reasonable people doing it, not just like extremists.
00:32:25
Speaker
then it gives them that opportunity to also express their thoughts. And suddenly we realize that most people in the room actually agree that some of these things are ridiculous, but everyone, you know, it's like that emperor, um, that naked emperor story in a way, right? Nobody is willing to say the truth. And then until that boy does, and then suddenly everyone's whispering about the emperor, hopefully.
00:32:49
Speaker
I spoke to former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, John Anderson, and he's got a lovely line in this regard. He said that the only cure for cancel culture is courage culture, is the courage to actually have that conversation in the room and have the courage to know that in all likelihood, you won't be alone there. I want to turn to academia. We said that since we were at university years ago, there has been this step change, this acceleration. My question would be,
00:33:18
Speaker
Is the ideological capture of, say, the American elite universities so advanced that these universities are almost beyond reform? Or is there any hope of some sort of turnaround towards free speech and towards more open debate on campus?
00:33:36
Speaker
Well, you know, I mentioned that I'm somewhat of a Pollyanna, right? So I'm a little bit more of an optimist than some others. Like I know Peter Bogosian, who's in the book, I know he thinks that that's it. They're doomed. There's no return. And you just need to build new institutions. I'm a little bit more in the middle on this personally. So I think
00:33:56
Speaker
I think you have to get these institutions to compete with each other. So when the population says, no, I'm not going to go to this university because it allows some speech and not other speech and so on, where it's got this chilling effect, but we'll go to this other school that has freer speech policies, that sends a message to those schools.
00:34:20
Speaker
And then they have to sort of adjust. And then also if you build new institutions, which I think you should do, I think that's a good thing. That's another point of pressure. So now they're competing. So I guess in my philosophy, I think that we can achieve a place where there's sufficient competition for these schools that have been more captured ideologically or in terms of silencing speech.
00:34:46
Speaker
they would have no choice but to change their ways in order to compete especially when you're talking about say these ivy league schools which are very expensive and do rely on things like donations they rely on tuition all of that i think that will play a pretty significant role so i do see a place where we can sort of
00:35:07
Speaker
return but like the quotes that you've mentioned i do think that courage is required and it is required of faculty you know especially if there's faculty that's got a really solid reputation i mean some of these schools. You don't go there for just some random professor you know you go because you're supposed to get the top.
00:35:28
Speaker
tier, whether you do or not is another question. But some of the professors at these schools probably hold inherent value to the school, because maybe they're more famous, more have have achievements awards, if those people start taking more of a stand, I think, and especially if they do that collectively, I think there's more power there. And then, you know, you can do campaigns like the Chicago
00:35:51
Speaker
Freedom, I forget what it's called, but they have their own sort of policy on on freedom of speech and some other schools have adapted that as well. So I see that spreading potentially because it has been spreading to some schools. And ultimately, you know, what's the goal of going to
00:36:08
Speaker
academic institution. Well, you know, of course, people want the degree so they can get a job, but employers will then have a say in that too, right? If people are coming out of schools that have a reputation for suppressing speech and they might not be looked at as favorably. So that creates a competition element as well.
Reforming American Universities
00:36:27
Speaker
And then the other part of it is, of course, you're meant to explore ideas. You're meant to bounce things around. That's the place where you should be the freest, if anything, right? Because that's what it should be all about. And whether your ideas are terrible or great, that's where you play around with them and get feedback. And if you can't do that, then you've got a terrible institution that has failed to really educate or provide a setting for academic pursuits and intellect, intellectual pursuits, I mean.
00:36:56
Speaker
Is this chilling of speech on campus top-down or a bottom-up phenomenon? By which I mean, do you think that the drive is coming from, say, young people, from students to say, we want safe spaces, we don't want to have our feelings? Or do you think it's top-down and coming from particularly ideological academics, pushing a worldview?
00:37:15
Speaker
I see it as a little bit of both. I see it more bottom up. I think the students hold tremendous power, which really they shouldn't be holding. They're students. Not to say, I mean, when I was a student, I thought I was the smartest, deepest, new everything kind of person, and maybe I did, hey.
00:37:35
Speaker
But most people are not like that when they're that age. And school is where they go to learn not to teach, right? So why are they setting the tone for everything? There should be some level of humility and a desire to learn. So that's not what's happening. So I think the professor seemed to be, and from what I've heard and from some of the people I talked to for the book as well, there's a student in there called Christopher Wells. He said that teachers are scared.
00:38:05
Speaker
of the professors are scared of the students. That is not usually, I don't like to be afraid of the professor, but you know, it makes a little more sense to be afraid of the professor than the other way around. And then I think the bottom top down side of it is the policies that the school set the DEI kind of, you know, committees and all of that that has appeared
00:38:28
Speaker
I didn't experience that when I went to school, so it's hard for me to know the extent of that. But again, talking to people who have been affected by that, it has like a massive chilling effect because you feel like you say the wrong thing, you're going to be reported. And it's sort of like having an HR department that's overzealous, but on campus is not setting a tone for free exchange of ideas. And these
00:38:54
Speaker
commit you know these work groups have ridiculous power so they can destroy your your academic career they can take away your if you're a professor you know they can take that away from you so especially if you're an instructor so
00:39:11
Speaker
They hold a lot of power. Now, who are they influenced by? Are they more influenced by students? I think there is an extent to which they are. But it's sort of like corporations are also part of that. And I think those things just started appearing because groups of people advocated for them. And how do you say no to something that's, oh, we're going to fight racism? Well, you don't want to appear like a racist.
00:39:41
Speaker
So you just go along with it. Yeah, I think so much of this comes down to really effective branding. You know, if you don't listen to spectator podcasts every week or you don't follow the culture wars and you hear diversity, equity, and inclusion, for example, they're all words that prima facie are very positive. The branding is good.
00:40:06
Speaker
Of course, many people would argue that the underlying messaging that sits on the layer below is a problem, but unless you actually are engaging in these conversations, I can very easily see how a lot of these forces or concepts that stifle debate are so readily adopted because they seem to be positive and they seem to be well-meaning.
00:40:30
Speaker
And if you don't look into it very much, right? And that's the thing. I think a lot of people don't. It just sounds good. And there's no benefit to looking into it to understand what it really means. Because, well, if you go along with it, then, well, you're a good person, essentially, right? You're not a racist. You're not a bigot, all these things. Because you support these policies. You want to go along with it.
00:40:53
Speaker
And hey, I certainly don't want to be any of these things. But at the same time, once you start looking into it, there's no benefit to doing so because now you've discovered the belly of beast and hey, it's not quite what it's us proclaiming it is. But if I know that now I can't go along with it in the same way, or at least I'm lying to myself or I'm lying to others.
The Missteps of DEI Policies
00:41:16
Speaker
So I think a lot of times people just prefer to look away. I find that sort of the same thing with journalism at times where it's not that journalists are like lying when they're covering certain stories or not covering certain things. It's just that they don't see a benefit. There's something very human about that. It's easier to kind of close your eyes. It's like if you go to a country that's a dictatorship and you have a really beautiful experience there and you're wine and dined and everything is great. Well,
00:41:45
Speaker
You don't even want to look at, oh, well, how does the average person live? Like, what's it like if you have this kind of salary? Oh, what happens to political dissidents? So it's the same thing. Let's take the tangible recent example of that, which was Tucker Carlson going to Russia. What were your reflections watching both that interview and then the subsequent video clips of his Russia tour?
00:42:14
Speaker
Well, you know, it's funny. Some people talk about Trump derangement syndrome. I probably have a little bit of a Tucker derangement syndrome. I'll admit to it. Um, I'm so critical of him, but I was, I was more worried about him doing the interview before I saw it because I thought he'd do his Tucker narrative spin that he often does an interview. So he doesn't just, you know, not challenge people.
00:42:36
Speaker
but he'll actually like actively create a narrative around to serve his narrative and so and reinforce what they're saying. And so that's the problem that I have with him in a lot of the content that I've watched. And I was afraid he was going to do that with Putin.
00:42:51
Speaker
However, I would say he didn't really do that. Now, did he challenge him in the areas that I feel like he should have? No, I don't know whether he has the knowledge to either. And also, I do want to acknowledge that it's really difficult to be sitting next to that particular representative of a country and knowing how he is. And he was very adversarial to Tucker, which is maybe
00:43:19
Speaker
Either he doesn't understand that Tucker's really on his side or he or rather his audience is or maybe he. He does, but he wants to play a tough guy. So I don't know. I think he enjoys the mind games. I think he was enjoying toying with him, like the little line.
00:43:37
Speaker
know, where he brought up casually being rejected from the CIA and just that little hint of a smirk on his face. What about being an entertainer? You know, is this a serious interview? He was definitely going after him. And I will say one moment of bravery on Tucker's part is when he asked about the Wall Street Journal journalist.
Critique of Tucker Carlson's Interview
00:43:57
Speaker
I did appreciate that. So I'll give him credit for it. Now, the Tucker supermarket tour and subway station
00:44:07
Speaker
Wow. The fact that he's impressed with returnable carts, which we have everywhere in most places, the fact that the grocery store prices, this is this is such an example of what I was talking about. I mean, he so he was spending less than he would spend in the US, but people in Russia don't make a lot of money. Also, he's hanging out in Moscow, which is a rich people's city. This is not
00:44:35
Speaker
an honest journalistic coverage. I really struggled with this because I don't think he's an unintelligent guy and yet it was remarkably stupid some of the stuff that he was saying, like the cost of groceries in a poor country.
00:44:55
Speaker
the shopping carts, when if you go to an Aldi in kind of most parts of the US, you'll see the same thing. I haven't actually been able to come up with an answer in my mind because, and I don't think it is stupidity, but I don't have an alternative theory.
00:45:08
Speaker
Well, it can be either intentional because he's spinning a sort of narrative. Look, that country has it together and you criticize it so much. And meanwhile in the U.S., look at our crime rates and look at how it's falling apart, etc., etc., which I think it was. But then I have met people who are fairly smart people who
00:45:32
Speaker
are also able to be willfully blind so it's a possibility that the two combined were happening at the same time because i don't think he's outright stupid i don't i think he knows exactly what he's doing in many cases was he impressed by these
00:45:52
Speaker
you know, returnable. Maybe he was because he doesn't have, you know, he doesn't maybe go shopping so much for himself, right on his own. So I don't know. Yeah. I was listening to another podcast and they said, well, this is just a rich guy doing poor guy things. And they kind of surprised and curious about it because he's never done it before.
00:46:09
Speaker
That's how it came across. But I do think he was definitely trying to paint this narrative of look how everything is so beautiful and organized. And meanwhile, you know, in Russia, which we're supposedly sanctioning, and they should be, you know, and we think it's so bad there. And we think it's so good in the US. But look at the US. I mean, that was the story he was telling. But he was missing the part where, well, most people in Russia did not live
Finding Personal Convictions
00:46:33
Speaker
well.
00:46:33
Speaker
If he goes outside of Moscow, it's not like that at all. It's pretty broken down. Crime is high. It's not a great place. But also, even if you had this kind of level of Moscow living, at what cost, right? He doesn't talk about, well, there is elements, you know, people get jailed for certain... Well, he would compare that. He would say, well, look, you know, say in Canada, look, Trudeau jailed the truckers. And yes, there's bad things that are happening. There's truths to that.
00:47:03
Speaker
But to compare it to a country like Russia in terms of scale and how terrible it is in due process is not a truth.
00:47:12
Speaker
No, it's a false equivalence. Absolutely. We are running short of time, Catherine. I would be remiss not to pose the same question that I posed in my introduction, which was, what advice would you give to someone listening to this podcast who wants to express a heterodox opinion but is afraid? Now, and I will put as a caveat, obviously, number one, go out and buy your book. But above and beyond that, what is your in short answer to that question?
00:47:39
Speaker
I would say find the things that you deeply care about, whether it's something that is a fundamental principle or it's another person that you want to stand up for. And you don't have to risk everything for everything, but risk for the things that you really care about that you don't mind sacrificing something for.
00:48:04
Speaker
You can start small. Your voice can be a whimper like mine was in the beginning, and then it can grow, and it will grow. And you'll find that it's a muscle that gets stronger the more you do it. And then try to protect yourself to set yourself up for the best success, whether that's financials, having your own business, or having some other way of supporting yourself if you're risking your income stream. Put yourself in the best position. When people gain cancels, they don't often have the choice.
00:48:33
Speaker
because they haven't really planned on it. But if you're just using your voice, you will find that you're able to plan a little bit better. And you're also going to learn who your friends are and who they're not and who is not. And you'll find that you'll have more authentic relationships both with other people and yourself.
00:48:50
Speaker
And the other thing you can do is even if you're not quite ready yourself is try to support people who are using their voice and are taking a risk. If they're saying something that you agree with or maybe you don't even agree with, but just support their right to speak, I think that's something that is valuable as well as you work your muscle. Catherine, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming on Australiano. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.
00:49:20
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.