"Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #2448. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Free Speech Advocacy, Contemporary Satire, and Social Media Behavioral Ethics." Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan
Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by
night, all day. Yes. And Drew. Hello. Good to
see you, brother. Good to see you too. It has
been, you said, six years almost to the day.
Almost to the day. The last time. Lots changed.
Right before everything went crazy. That's it.
Right before. Yeah, the whole world sort of shifted
after that. Because everything went kooky around
March, right? Yeah, so it was February 2020 and
then... Then we have COVID and then we have,
you know, we've had Trump in between that. We
have BLM. That summer of 2020, everything just
exploded. Yeah. Yeah. And then everything shifted.
And then you wrote a book. It's called The End
of Woke, How the Culture War Went Too Far and
What to Expect from the Counter -Revolution.
Isn't that how it always goes, though? It goes
like we go too far and then we overcorrect and
we become Nazis. That's it. Exactly. Or it's
the opposite. We go socialist. It's a big pendulum.
I get that. It sort of goes back and forth. I
mean, I was trying to, in that book, I'm trying
to make the point that what Woke was, was like
a kind of the latest manifestation of a kind
of innate authoritarian impulse. I think human
beings are by default quite inclined towards
just shutting people up if they don't like them.
Yeah. Just imposing their authority. And so woke,
well, I mean, a lot of people are annoyed that
I've called it the end of work. I'm not saying
it's all over. Let's just go home. Forget about
it. It's still going on. But the point about
it is, is that in its current manifestation,
things are changing now so rapidly. We are moving
into some sort of new phase. And that authoritarianism,
which we've associated with the left, might come
up from the right. It could come up from anywhere.
It's what you say about the pendulum. So you
just have to be kind of vigilant about it. I
don't think we were vigilant. I think that's
why woke happened. We weren't vigilant against
this prospect that authoritarianism could emerge
in what we thought was a free society. Well,
authoritarianism, it snuck in through a sheep
costume. Yeah, a wolf in a sheep's costume. Yeah,
it was a costume of... Being more inclusive,
being more open -minded, being a better society,
being kinder. It led to child trans surgeries.
It led to chaos. It led to a lot of really fucking
freaky things that you would have never expected.
People saying that the First Amendment's not
important. What's more important is protecting
people. Well, that was the key, wasn't it? The
point was that the way it worked was that it
was gulling people through language that sounded
really sweet and kittenish and fluffy. You know,
things like equity. Well, that sounds a lot like
equality, doesn't it? Right. It doesn't mean
equality. It means treating people unequally
to ensure equal outcomes according to group identity.
That's a very different thing. You say you're
talking about let's make everything inclusive.
But what you really mean is let's exclude anyone
who disagrees with what we've got to say. So
you're using language to mean the exact opposite.
They say gender affirming care. Do they mean
that? Or do they mean affirming what is effectively
a pseudoscientific belief among vulnerable people?
So it's all about misusing language because most
people think, or I like to think, are pretty
decent. Most people want to be kind and want
to be fair. And when you hear these activists
saying, be kind, be compassionate, or else, right?
You know, you kind of think, okay, well, maybe
their intentions are good, but also they're pretty
scary. I mean, there was a weird thing with the
woke thing, which was that on the one hand, it
proclaimed to be this sort of great, virtuous,
kind, progressive, right side of history. How
often did you hear that phrase? And at the same
time, they're like dangerous dogs. You're like,
I better not piss them off. I better not say
the wrong thing in the workplace because they'll
destroy you. Well, I always find that the most
preposterous the idea is and the least capable
it is. to stand up to scrutiny, the more violent
the enforcement of that idea will be because
you cannot combat that. You can't defend that
idea with logic, so you have to defend it with
fear and force and just shouting people down,
and that's what we saw. It's a natural impulse
of human beings. Absolutely. When you're arguing
with a kid, when you're a kid and you're arguing
with a kid and you say something, you don't even
know you. You shut the fuck up. It starts scaring
you. So why is it, though, that... Some countries
and some societies seem to protect themselves
better than others against that impulse. And
I feel at the moment that the UK is kind of failing
where America is to a degree succeed, not obviously
in all ways, but when it comes to the idea of
freedom and free speech, I think UK has pretty
fallen to the woke insistence that you need to
control people's language. So that you can create
this perfect society, which can never come anyway.
Well, I think it's been co -opted. I think whatever
organic version of that emerges naturally from
society where there's an overcorrection, I think
in the UK, because you guys don't have free speech
laws, because it's just different over there,
you can get away with a lot of crazy shit. First
of all, we should explain what we're talking
about. More than 12 ,000 people have been arrested.
in the UK in the past year for social media posts.
And if you read some of those social media posts,
they're not even remotely terrifying. It's not
like I'm going to grab a knife and go cut the
head off of every immigrant I see. Like, hey,
buddy, maybe we should lock this guy up and evaluate
him. He sounds like a crazy person. Like, no,
the immigrants are coming into this fucking country
and creating all this crime. knock on the door,
you're going to jail. I worry that Americans
think we're mad sometimes. We do. Yeah, do you?
We do now, yeah. We think you've lost it. Yeah.
We also think something happened where your leaders
are intentionally trying to tank your country.
It seems like they're trying to bring in as many
migrants as possible. cater to them, not to the
British people, and do it openly so that everyone
knows what they're doing and then create chaos
on the streets because of it. Yeah, I mean, people
have a phrase for that, anarcho -tyranny, you
know, where you punish people who aren't breaking
the law, but you protect those who are. And I
think with the, I mean, I don't know the extent
that Americans know the, I mean, the stat you
quoted, that came from the Times newspaper in
London, which had a freedom of information request
to the police, found out that it's 12 ,000 a
year. On average. So that's like 30 a day, not
just being investigated or looked into, but being
arrested. But over the last few years only, if
you go back, it's only like 1 ,000 or 500. It
was 3 ,000 last time we spoke, back in 2020.
Was it really a year? It was. Back then? Yeah.
Oh, my God. So we already had that problem. I
mean, we already didn't know it was that many.
That's crazy. Even back then? It was already
really high. I mean, we had stuff like the old
stories of like, there was that guy in 2010 who
made a joke online about he was at. Doncaster
Airport in the UK. He said, oh, if this queue
doesn't hurry up, I'm going to blow up the airport.
Just a stupid, funny tweet. He went all the way
to court. That was a full trial. So these laws,
and I think what happens with this stuff is people
don't realise how long this has been embedded
in the UK. We have hate speech laws that are
encoded in a number of different legislations.
We have a thing called the Public Order Act.
We have a thing called Malicious Communications
Act. That's from 1988. We have the Communications
Act from 2003. And all of these things criminalize.
I tell you, I kid you not. The language in the
statute books is if it's grossly offensive, that's
the phrase. If you post something that is grossly
offensive, you can go to court, you can be prosecuted.
But, you know, I find subjective. Well, that's
it. What does that even mean? I find laws against
free speech to be grossly offensive. So should
the British state be arrested? I don't know.
And there's one, I think it's in the Malicious
Communications Act, where it talks about needless
anxiety, causing needless anxiety can get you
arrested. And you think that's not a thing. I
can give you a specific example of that. Do you
smoke cigars? I have once, my friend Winston
Marshall. Do you want one? I worry that if I
try it, I'll cough and I'll look really wimpish
and pathetic. And it won't be good for your arguments?
It will backfire. I tell you, it'll undermine
everything. It'd be like I'm sitting here with
a paper hat on at Christmas, undermining all
of my key points. Right. I like the flavour and
I like being around smokers because my grandmother
used to chain smoke around me. Oh boy. Well,
she's Northern Irish. It's the way they do. She
used to give me whiskey when I was three to calm
me down. Oh, wow. It's that sort of family. That's
an old thing they used to do with kids. They
just put it in their babies. They put it in their
mouth. It worked. Like they would dip their finger
in whiskey and rub it on the inside of a kid's
mouth. If you're struggling with a child, get
it drunk. That's how you do it. It's old Northern
Irish wisdom. I don't think you should scoff
at it. It's a good thing. But I'll be more than
happy to. It's grossly offensive. It's grossly
offensive. The example I was going to give was
this guy called Darren Brady. And this sounds
made up. And whenever I tell people this, it
sounds made up. He posted a meme. I don't know
if you saw this meme where it was the four progress
pride flags. You know, it's got the crazy triangles
and stuff in it. You put them all together and
become a swastika. Exactly that. Right. And that
was going everywhere. And he posted it. And there's
a video of him being arrested, put in handcuffs.
He's an army veteran, by the way. Right. Put
in handcuffs by the police. And the policeman
says in the video, you caused someone anxiety.
So the actual language from the law is being
used for this rearrangement of the – and you
know what? That's quite a good satirical point
that he was making. It wasn't even his meme.
He was just retweeting a meme. But even if it
was some horrible offensive thing, who cares?
How is that offensive? Well, I guess – I mean,
well, you can find – that's the problem. You
can find anything offensive. You can find anything
grossly offensive if you're extremely sensitive.
You could. But wasn't there a point to that?
I mean, he was kind of saying that the LGBTQIA
plus movement has become quite authoritarian.
Yeah. He's not saying they're actual Nazis. And
he's saying, oh, isn't it quite funny that when
you put them together, it looks like a swastika.
The idea that you get handcuffed for that. Especially
for a retweet. That's crazy. That's crazy. It's
retweets. It's tweets. It's posts. We've had
memes are the big ones. So there was a guy called
Lee Joseph Dunn who went to prison for eight
weeks. That was last year, I think, for three
memes that he posted. Eight weeks. Eight weeks
in prison. Again, I'll tell you what the most
offensive of the three memes was. And you can
tell me whether you think it was worth prison
time. He put a picture of some immigrants. With
knives. And underneath it said, coming to a town
near you. And that was it. So I don't know if
you think that's worth prison time. That's the
most offensive one? Of the three, that's the
most. What's the least offensive one? I can't
remember what the other two were. Because I remember
I looked at them. I thought, well, that's not
even worth. That's not even worth thinking about.
But this one was the one that really. Because
they say in England, you're stirring up hatred
against minorities through the spreading of the
meme. Right. You know, but that's. Clearly not
sufficient, you know. And I think in the US you
have far more protections. I wonder whether it's
to do with the fact that in the US you have the
First Amendment. So you have something codified
that says you can say what you want. We've never
had that. It's very important and it didn't seem
important 20 years ago or 30 years ago because
no one ever looked at England as being that kind
of a country that would just put people – well,
obviously, this was all pre -social media. Yeah,
yeah. And England has always been a fairly polite
society. Yes. But the thing is like now pub talk
has become illegal, right? Yeah. Like if you
say something offensive in a pub, you're subject
to be arrested and they're asking people to turn
people in. There's a thing called the banter
ban. which the Labour government was trying to
put in. Here's the logic of the banter ban. I've
forgotten about this, but now you've mentioned
it. They wanted to introduce this law so that,
for instance, if you're working in a bar or a
pub and you overhear someone who says something
against your protected characteristic, say you're
a gay barman and someone says, oh, I don't like
the gays or something, and you overhear it, your
employer has a duty to protect you from that
kind of hate speech, that kind of harm. So therefore,
there's going to be a blanket ban. on certain
kinds of speech within the pub, right? I would
say the guy who's eavesdropping, he's the problem,
right? You shouldn't be listening in on other
people's conversations. So that's a real thing.
And I guess it all comes down to this view, which
I think is completely wrong, that words and violence
are the same thing, that words can create a more
violent society, that there's a direct causal
link between the stuff that people say and the
stuff that people say online to how people behave
in the real world. And I think you guys have
got it right. Because you've got the Brandenburg
test, you know, the test for incitement to violence
in the US. No, what is that? It's basically a
test that was established, I think, back in the
60s. It was a KKK leader called Clarence Brandenburg
who was prosecuted for incitement to violence.
And the test that was established since that
precedent was that any words that can be convicted
for incitement to violence, they have to be intended
to cause violence, likely to cause violence,
and the violence must be imminent. And if you
satisfy that threshold, you can be prosecuted
in the US for incitement to violence. So it'd
be like kind of imagine a demagogue surrounded
by all his fans, whipping up a frenzy and then
pointing to a guy on the front row and saying,
kill him now. That would qualify for the Brandenburg
test. But in the UK, because we don't have that
test, all we've got is whether people found it
offensive. That's the difference of the threshold.
So it's a massive difference between what the
US has and what the UK has. Massive. It's insane.
I mean... To give the most obvious recent example,
because I don't know if people know about this,
there's a woman called Lucy Connolly in the UK.
I don't know if this was reported over here at
all. Do you remember we had all these riots last
year during the summer against hotels which were
housing asylum seekers and people were setting
fire to them? There were genuinely racist stuff
going on during those riots. And this was off
the back of a guy who'd murdered a bunch of little
girls in a dance class. And there were rumours
going around that this was an asylum seeker,
right? And this one woman, a mother who'd lost
her daughter, very sensitive about the idea of
Lucy Connolly. She's very sensitive about the
idea of loss of kids. She tweeted in a fit of
anger, go and burn down all the hotels for all
I care. If that makes me racist, so be it. And
take the government with you. Something like
that. And she deleted it within a couple of hours.
She went out, walked a dog. She deleted it. She
thought, that's not me. That's not who I am.
Deleted it. Police came, went to court. sentenced
to 31 months in prison for that swiftly deleted
tweet, and she served over a year. Oh, my God.
Now, I'm not saying the tweet was nice, right?
The tweet was a horrible tweet, and she says
it was a horrible tweet. That's why she deleted
it. But because we don't have that Brandenburg
test, we don't have a test for incitement to
violence, because the key is that tweet, there
was no way it could have... She was a nobody.
You know, she wasn't someone with influence.
She didn't have many followers. No one was going
to read that and go and act upon it. And if they
did, that would be on them, right? Because this
is a myth. This myth that people act on cue to
what they read online isn't real. It influences
people for sure. But at what point are you required
to have sovereignty over your own mind and your
own actions? Yeah. Well, I think what it does
is it raises the temperature, particularly when
political leaders do it. Right. But when political.
But my point is, like, it's not going to incite
you to violence. It's not going to incite me
to violence. So who are we talking about? This
is part of the thing is like they're protecting
the dumbest members of society. This is like
the thing about banning crazy talk online. If
you're talking about witches or whatever it is,
flat earth. We have to stop misinformation. From
who? It's not working on you, right? You don't
believe it. So who are we protecting? We're protecting
the dumbest people? Also, aren't you kind of
letting them off? If someone goes and commits
an act of violence and said, oh, I did it because
someone told me to do it, aren't you kind of
letting them off the hook? Right, exactly. And
sort of displacing the blame. You know, it's
like that guy who shot John Lennon who said Catcher
in the Rye made him do it. Are we now blaming
J .D. Salinger for the murder of John Lennon?
It was John Lennon, wasn't it? I think he did.
I think the safest approach is to say people
are responsible for their own actions. I think
the best that you could say is when political
leaders and people with clout... say things like
that it's sort of it's say you know it's fine
to go out and commit violence i think what they
do is they create a kind of imprimatur of approval
they create this kind of sense that if you do
it the people in charge will have your back if
you do it it's okay well this was the argument
with trump for january 6th right and that's why
the bbc edited his speech to make it look as
if that's what he was saying do you see you saw
that clip oh my god it's fucking crazy i mean
I've been saying for a long time the BBC has
a real like what I will say in the BBC's defense
is they've always been pretty good at being party
politically neutral. Like they will interrogate
someone in the right and someone in the left
in a pretty neutral way. They don't. I think
they do pretty good. I know people will be annoyed
at me for saying that, but I think they do. But
I think in terms of the ideology, the woke ideology,
they got captured. They have a thing at the BBC
called the LGBT desk, or they had it up until
recently, which could veto any news story, which
meant that any story that was slightly critical
of trans activism or anything like that just
didn't get reported. So I'm not surprised that
the BBC gave them veto power. They give them
veto power. Yeah, that's crazy. This all came
out in a report, quite a recent report just a
few months ago, which led to the resignation
of Tim David, the director general. And he resigned
ostensibly because of that Trump. Which, by the
way, that wasn't the first time they did it.
There was another clip about a year before in
a different program that did the same thing.
Took the clip, re -edited it, and made it look
like he had said something he absolutely had
not said. So I think the BBC quite obviously
has an ideological bias, if not a party political
bias. But that's more than a bias. It's misleading,
right? It's completely deceptive. You're editing
something and they took out a giant chunk of
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That's 1 -800 -Flowers .com slash Rogan. I forget
how many minutes it was. They left like 45 minutes
or something. Something crazy like that. It made
him look like he was saying, go and commit the
riot. And instead, he was in tongue -in -cheek
talking about the very fine senator, that they're
doing a great job, the senators and congresspeople,
and all this other stuff. And then said, you
have to fight like hell to keep your country.
I mean, no offense, but... You can find daft
stuff that Trump says pretty easily, right? You
don't need to edit that stuff down. Well, it's
because they had an opportunity to, like what
we were saying before earlier, we were talking
before the show, you can put out a narrative
and it doesn't have to be true. And then that's
the one that sticks. So that's the one that spreads
wide. And then when all these years later, they
have to have this. you know, trial and everybody
finds out it's not true. But the damage is done.
I mean, that's what they did with Trump during
the whole Steele dossier. Yeah. You know, the
hookers and peeing on people and all that crazy
shit. Remember that? I remember the idea that
he'd hired hookers to urinate on the bed that
was once occupied by the Obamas. Something along
those lines. The reason I didn't believe that
is I don't think Trump is that avant -garde.
I don't think he's that creative. Like, if he'd
have come up with that, I'd have been actually
applauding that. That's kind of amazing. But
obviously he didn't do that. But that's not even
something to applaud. That just sounds completely
ridiculous. It's like a work of art. Getting
urination on the bed of your enemy through the
medium of prostitution. I think that's kind of
an artistic thing to do. But I don't think he
did it. He obviously didn't do it. None of it's
true. Right. But isn't that weird that that in
particular, that's like something I don't think
anyone seriously could believe. Well, there's
plenty of people that believed it. Really? Yeah,
they don't have to believe it. They just say
it. Like, that was the whole point about, you
know, the trial where he got arrested and convicted
of 34 counts that are a felony, none of which
are actually a felony. That's all bookkeeping
deception. That was the paying off of the girl.
Yes. So now you can say he's a convicted felon.
You can just say that. And even though all those
counts were misdemeanors, all of them had passed
the statute of limitations. But for some reason,
through no legal way that anybody could ever
really honestly explain, they decided to label
it a felony. And it was just to turn them into
a felon. I saw even left -leaning anti -Trump
lawyers saying this is not how the law should
work. You can't artificially elevate a misdemeanor
to a felony outside the statute of limitations.
It's crazy. If you do that, they're going to
do that to you. It's like we're going to give
that kind of power to the Republicans. And now
when they're in office, they're going to start
doing things like that. Are we crazy? Well, also,
this really bothers me. One of the key things
that I think has happened. over the past few
years is this complete lack of fealty to the
truth from both sides. It's whatever is convenient
matters more, a complete lack of intellectual
curiosity, a complete lack of investigating and
looking and thoroughly checking. And by the way,
with the BBC, that really matters because unlike
the news media here, which can be as partisan
as it likes, the BBC is the state broadcaster.
It's got a responsibility by charter to not be,
you know, to be... balance to be even -handed,
and it completely failed. And I saw today, just
this morning, some people, you know, we've got
all the mania about the Epstein files at the
moment. Some activists have now said J .K. Rowling
once invited... to the opening of her play never
happened. But because there's a furore about
Epstein at the moment, they're just saying it
happened. It gets spread all over the place.
That's all you have to do. And that's all you
have to do. And then that gets repeated. Oh,
didn't this happen? I know. Like what you say
about Trump is right. I always hear that he's
a convicted felon. He's a convicted felon. Well,
why don't you pause for a minute and assess whether
or not that conviction is sound or whether it
was politically motivated or how helpful that
is. But like you say, Also, it's like it's such
a dangerous precedent to set. It's terrible.
Like if you do that – look, right now in the
United States, the media predominantly leans
left except for Fox News, the mainstream large
-scale media. I guess CBS is probably going to
lean more right now. It seems like it's in the
process of that. But for the most part, when
you watch CNN, if you watch MSNBC, if you watch
the mainstream news, it's very left -leaning.
But if the fucking – if right -wing people started
– It was like more common for the news to be
right -leaning, and then they started doing the
exact same thing about a left -leaning candidate.
This is so dangerous. And the idea that the left
doesn't recognize that, which are the people
that have always been in support of free speech.
It's never been a right -wing thing to support
free speech until now. It's always been a left
-wing thing. When I was a kid, it was famously
the case of the ADL. defending Nazis having the
right to protest and saying, look, we think what
they're saying is abhorrent, but it's very important
that you get the right to say whatever you feel.
And then the way to combat that is with much
better, more concise speech that's much more
logical and makes sense. And this is what you
do. This is what debate is for. We've always
known this. Yeah, but I mean, I agree. I'm so
dispirited by that, that very thing that you've
identified that the left used to be about this.
The left used to be all about. I mean, that example
you mentioned of Skokie, wasn't it, in Chicago,
the Nazis marching through Skokie and the ACLU
saying, you know, we're defending this. There
was a book by a guy called Aya Nea, who was the
head of the ACLU, called Defending My Enemy.
Yeah, it wasn't the ACLU. It was the ACLU. And
he was saying, you know, he's Jewish. He's got
family members who died in the Holocaust. But
he's writing a book saying, I'm defending neo
-Nazis' right to free speech, not because I support
them, but because I don't. And I want to defend
the principle whereby I can. tackle them and
that's speech right so that in other words the
principle is so much bigger i mean the thing
that i think has been lost and now by the way
the aclu complete about turn i mean there was
a lawyer for the aclu tweeting about how he wanted
abigail schreier's book banned and he said this
is the hill i will die on you know that's a guy
called chase or was it a guy i think it's a trans
activist called chase something i can't remember
anyway but but the point is how far have you
fallen when it comes to these free speech issues
left or right it's nothing to do with it it should
be about this principle of It's not whether you
agree with what they're saying and the substance
of what they're saying. It's whether you want
the principle intact. And that principle applies
to us all. The very same principle that allows
the Nazis to say all their crazy stuff is the
principle that allows us to challenge it, to
tackle it. Well, it's a very short -term win.
It's basically they're playing chess and they
decided, I want that rook no matter what. And
then they just sacrificed their queen. Like,
look what you've done. Look what you've done
for this short -term victory. You're essentially...
tanking civilization for a decade where we have
to sort this out and let the ship wash itself
back and forth until it rights. And how do you
ensure that it's not going to happen to you?
I think about that. There was a National Conservative
Conference in Brussels about a year and a half
ago. The local mayor said, I don't like this.
And he had the police rush it, shut it down.
And you had mainstream right -wing figures like
Nigel Farage, Swala Braverman. How do they not
think? Hang on a minute. If we establish that
precedent where you can just shut down your political
opponents through the use of police force, how
will that not rebound on me? How would that not
happen to us? Well, this is the argument that
they're using right now for Trump going after
his political opponents. Right, right. Because
they opened that Pandora's box, right? You guys
did that with him. Yeah. And everybody was saying
how damn dangerous it is. You can't fucking do
that. Even if you hate the guy. If there's a
real crime that you can get someone, but when
you take a crime like the bookkeeping stuff and
turn it into a felony that could put this man
in jail for the rest of his life for doing something
that turns out to be legal. and pay people to
shut up. And this is so, it's just, it's so weird
that people for this short -term gain are willing
to tank, which is essentially this whole structure
of our civilization that allows free discourse.
You need it. It's so important. It's so important
to be able to communicate and talk. If podcasts
didn't exist, there was no way to talk through
ideas. Other than mainstream news, we would still
be stuck in some very bizarre 1990s or 1980s
narrative about how the world works. Yeah. We
would have real problems. We'd have real problems
if there wasn't independent journalism like on
Twitter and on wherever they can post. Yeah.
So why don't they get it? I mean. We've had people
in left -leaning papers in the UK calling for
Elon Musk to be arrested because he's allowing
free speech on X or Twitter or whatever you want
to call it. Well, their offices got raided today
in some country. There was a country where X's
offices got raided. I think one of the things
was they somehow or another let – I think something
had to do with child pornography. Where was that?
France? France. Fresh investigation into grok
and what is it? What are they? Oh, so, you know
what? This is serious Yeah, suspected offenses
including unlawful data extraction and complicity
in the possession of child pornography Yeah,
but that's not what this is about. This is because
people have been misusing grok to like put bikinis
on women They like or even in a few cases creating
child child sex you can do wait a minute you
can't create child pornography i don't think
no or at least i think that's very much been
shut down and safeguarded right i think that's
what's happened Mean unless there's like some
sort of a loophole where you could get it to
do it among potential crimes It said it would
investigate where complicity and possession or
organized distribution of images of children
of a pornographic nature Infringement of people's
image rights with sexual deep fakes. Okay, the
sexual deep fakes Yeah, so sexual deep flakes
is like if you put Hillary Clinton in a bikini
and made her hot That's a sexual deep fake. Okay.
Fraudulent data extraction by an organized group.
I think you can still do some of that stuff.
You can put people in bikinis. Yeah, I think
you can do that. So, like, if you wanted to take
Shaquille O 'Neal and put him in a bikini, you
could say you're sexualizing him. Okay. Yeah.
I mean, I guess you can do that. Yeah. So that'll
be why, you know, recently Keir Starmer, Prime
Minister of the UK, said he wanted to – was considering
– Not necessarily he was going to ban X, but
it wasn't off the table. It's something like
as though he's going to do that. But this is
always the excuse. Like, you know, we're protecting
children. Right. And look, no one wants that
sort of stuff. Right. No one wants deep fakes
of kids, obviously. But there's I mean, looking
at the stats on that, there's far more child
sexual exploitation on Snapchat, for instance.
But they don't go after Snapchat because Snapchat
isn't the form where Keir Starmer is getting
criticized every single day and brutally hauled
over the coals by people checking his facts.
One of the best things about X recently is the
community notes. Checking journalists and politicians
in real time with facts. They hate it. They hate
that. So no wonder they're going after X. Yeah,
Biden got cooked by community notes multiple
times. Yeah, yeah. To the point where the administration
was taking down posts. Yeah. So did The Guardian,
the left -leaning newspaper. It flounced off
X with a big statement saying, we're going to
blue sky. We've had it. We're off to blue sky.
It was such a flounce. And of course, and then
of course, everyone was retweeting all their
community notes. They had, Loads of them. Of
course. Just absolutely loads of them. Because
it's not true. And, you know, especially when
it's open to the whole world. Yeah. And people
that aren't stuck under your guidelines, like
in America, we could just talk shit. Yeah. And
I think the reason why it's in France probably
has a lot to do with Candace Owens. Oh, yes,
that makes complete sense. Yeah. That might be
it. And, like, I mean, how many times did that
get shared? Yeah, exactly. I mean, that is...
That makes sense of it now. By the way, there's
a real quick way to solve that. Open chromosome
test. Go ahead and do it. I thought you were
going to be a bit more graphic than that. Well,
you don't have to do that. No, you don't have
to. Because that doesn't really solve it because
you could, unless, I mean, there's no operation,
but if she's gone through a surgery, then, you
know, you could show a picture and it's probably
pretty realistic, especially when was the last
time you saw a 70 -year -old lady's cooter? Last
week. Oh, yeah. Congratulations. I'm just interested
in that sort of stuff. Well, you know, you're
allowed to be curious in this country. That's
actually a really good example, though, isn't
it, of the... Just something so obviously not
true just going all over the world, like in a
matter of moments. Is it not true, though? What,
that Macron's wife is a man? Yeah. Yeah, that's
not true. 100 %? Well, you know, the burden of
proof is on those who want to say that it is
true. The reality of the story is weird enough
without it being true. Like the 40 -year -old
man and the – He was – wasn't she his schoolteacher?
She was 40 – yeah. She was 40 if it is actually
a woman. She was 40 and he was 15. That's crazy.
And everyone says, well – They're French. That
seems to be the thing. What a wild country. People
just say that's the way it works in France. But
again, look, I would say with all of this stuff,
you need some sort of proof. Wasn't it the Carl
Sagan thing about extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence? I think that's a pretty
safe diktat. The idea that, okay, anything could
be true. There have been. crazy conspiracies
that turned out to be true. So I'm not, I would
never rule anything out. But what I'm saying
is if you're going to make a claim like that,
you better be damn sure you've got really solid
evidence. She's got hours long documentaries
on this. Yeah. And are they, are they persuasive?
I haven't watched them all. Do you think I have
that kind of time? Well, you should do what you
should do your research before you're part of
the problem. Outrageous. I can't do research
on that. I want to wait till it plays out in
court. But whenever I do do research, I'll give
you the example from this week, just because
I'm reading it now. A woman's written a book
claiming that Shakespeare was a black woman.
Oh, I saw that. Yeah. So this is a major spoiler
alert. Shakespeare wasn't a black woman. Crazy.
Yeah. I've got the book. I'm reading the book
now. It is worse than you imagine. How could
it be worse than I imagine? Because, because.
It's obviously not true, firstly. Of course.
But she basically says in the book that it's
important that it should be true. What? Yeah.
In fact, the book opens with a picture of Shakespeare
as a black woman, which was drawn by the author.
Is it a good drawing? It's okay. I don't want
to mock someone else. Can I see it? Can I see
it? If it's out, it's the first. Oh, that's the
book. That's actually pretty good. No, no, no.
That's a black woman? No, no, no. That's a portrait
of Amelia Lanyer, who she says was Shakespeare.
And she says that the portraits at the time were
whitened to disguise her blackness. In the book
itself. In the book itself. You won't be able
to get in the book, I don't think, Jamie. But
in the book itself, there's a sketch that she's
done. So it's like, I can imagine a publisher
saying, oh, what evidence have you got? And she's
like, oh, well, I'll go and draw it for you.
And that's sort of what she said. Oh, she's black
and Jewish? Yeah, black Jewish. Well, actually,
I mean, Amelia Lanyer was part Moorish, but wasn't
black and she wasn't particularly dark skinned.
And she was Jewish as well? Yeah, part Jewish.
Okay, so who is this woman that they're saying
actually was Shakespeare? So she's called Amelia
Lanyer or Amelia Bassano. And one of the arguments
is that Shakespeare at the time, if she was a
woman, wouldn't have been able to get published
because women couldn't get published. But Amelia
Lanyer was published. She had a book of poetry.
So all of this stuff falls apart like... In two
seconds flat. And this is the best one. She even
says in the book that the word Shakespeare is
an anagram of a she speaker. I'm not making that
up. That's what she says. I mean, you know, listen.
What a cover up. How'd she crack the case? Well,
actually, it's an old theory. It's like a 20
year old theory. Is it really? I tell you. 20
years old. She's just sort of rehashing it now
for this identitarian post -woke world where
we're all like we're desperate for Shakespeare
to be a black woman. And it's so. It's so fun.
It's so pathetic. This was my first encounter
with conspiracy theories because my background
is I did a doctorate in Shakespeare. My background
was teaching Shakespeare back in the day, like
before I did comedy and before I did anything
else. And it was the conspiracy theorists around
Shakespeare saying Shakespeare couldn't have
written his work. They are the most intense,
the most angry, the most evidence free. cohort
of people they get more they're angrier than
the woke I promise you like I've tweeted I've
written stuff about Shakespeare online I recently
did some lectures about Shakespeare for the Peterson
Academy because I'm really into I love the Peterson
Academy I love what they're doing and I did these
Shakespeare lectures and the conspiracy theorists
were on to me online saying it wasn't Shakespeare
the guy from Stratford didn't write this and
what all these theories have in common is they've
just made there's no evidence There's no evidence.
The key point about Shakespeare is if you're
going to say it wasn't the guy who everyone thought
it was, you have to answer. One key question.
Why does everyone who knew Shakespeare, wrote
about Shakespeare, say that it was? Can I stop
you? Because I'm confused. I didn't even know
that there was a conspiracy about Shakespeare.
Oh, wow. Yeah, there's lots. I had heard one
person say that Shakespeare wasn't real and that
it was really someone else's work that he plagiarized.
Yeah. I had heard that. But I never even bothered
to fuck around with it. Well, it actually came
from America. It's you guys. Of course. We're
the best. We're number one. There's a guy called
Looney, actually, from America. That's hilarious.
You're going to listen to that guy? We're going
back like 60, 70 years or something, but he came
up with this idea that Shakespeare was actually
an aristocrat called Edward de Vere, the Earl
of Oxford. The problem is Edward de Vere died
in 1604. That's before Macbeth. That's before
Antony and Cleopatra. That's before Coriolanus.
That's before The Tempest. So he managed to,
I think they get around it by saying he wrote
these plays and then he died. And then Shakespeare
found them? Or something. Yeah. So even though
some of those plays actually have cultural references
from the time after De Vere died, but it doesn't
matter. Maybe he was a prophet as well. But all
of the, you speak to these people, you'll see
what I mean. Edward De Vere, they think, some
people think it was Francis Bacon. Some people
think it was Christopher Marlowe. Some people
think it was Elizabeth I. Like all of the candidates
they put up, right? The key thing is they're
all aristocrats. They're all posh. Why? Because
Shakespeare was a... Middle class, lower middle
class, not very rich, didn't go to university,
came from the Midlands, you know, up and coming
guy. And they say, well, how could someone like
that write about kings and lords and ladies?
It's snobbery. They're basically saying working
class people can't do art. I mean, really, that's
what it is. Otherwise, they wouldn't be going
after all these aristocrats. And it's the opposite
in America, oddly. Is it? Yeah. So if you were
a Rockefeller in America, you're from the Rockefeller
family and you wrote an amazing novel, no one
would believe it. Right. OK. No, that has to
be like some guy who or some woman who's like
grinding, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes
alone in their apartment to write something as
brilliant. So I wonder what it is about the UK.
Well, although, like I say, a lot of it comes
from America. And is it just the need to tear
down an icon? Is it that? I mean, I get it now
with this woman who's saying Shakespeare was
a black woman. I get that at the moment because
we're in this moment of identitarian group identity
mania. So that makes sense. She's got a political
reason why she wants it to be a black woman.
So I kind of understand that more. But what is
it? I think it might be more to do with the idea
that this guy changed civilization, changed literature.
No one else has achieved what he achieved in
writing. He's up there with Michelangelo, Bach,
you know, all of that. Let's tear that down.
Let's tear down Western civilization. Let's say,
None of this is based on anything. This is all
untrue. I think it's to do with that innate iconoclasm,
that innate, you know, just tearing down the
great things about our culture. For sure. That's
always been the case. And people always want
to tear down idols. They want to tear down whoever
it is, no matter what. I was watching this video
we were talking about the other day of this woman
talking about how the Beatles were terrible.
And this woman was not very articulate, not particularly
interesting, doesn't seem that compelling. And
she was going on and on about how bad the Beatles
were. I'm like, you're not going to convince
anyone. This is not going to work. But people
are going to fucking try. They're going to try
no matter what, no matter who it is. Hendrix
sucked. I've heard that before. Oh, really? Hendrix
sucked. Stop. But at least that's based on an
opinion. Right. There's a difference between
saying Jimi Hendrix sucked and Jimi Hendrix was
actually a woman from Liverpool called Maud.
Well, you know, the theory about Jimi Hendrix
in America. Do you know that? No. OK, so it's
the people that are like deep into the CIA and
CIA conspiracies. And what is it called? Strange
Tales from the Canyon. Is that what it's called?
The book? So there's a book on there's a bizarre
connection between a lot of the countercultural
figures of the 1960s and the intelligence community.
One of them is Jim Morrison's father was like
a high ranking military officer. And then there's
different people from different bands that were
like a key part of the countercultural movement
that all have parents that were either. In intelligence
communities or closely connected to it. Like
a suspiciously. Weird scenes inside the canyon.
It's a crazy book. It's fun. It's kind of fun.
Is it crazy as in like the revelations are crazy
or that it's just not true? Well, they make some
broad leaps, right? So there's a lot of, and
then a year later, he died in mysterious circumstances,
or a year later, he died from suicide, or a year
later, he died from an overdose. Well, okay.
You're hanging out with a bunch of people that
are doing drugs all the time, and they're all
ne 'er -do -wells, and they're all hanging out
in Laurel Canyon. If you don't know Laurel Canyon,
Laurel Canyon, at least at the time, I mean,
when I first moved to Hollywood, it's like all
the weirdos would live in Laurel Canyon. Like
all the weirdos were like, like right there above
Hollywood. And there was all these crazy parties
up there. It was like Laurel Canyon was nuts.
And they all knew each other, right? So they're
all part of that circle. So, I mean, this was
like when I moved there in the 90s, this was
the case. My friend Dave Foley had a house up
there. Right. And it was like all these kooky
people. And he was telling me about all these
kooky parties and all this different shit. It
was like Laurel Kane, he was always like, so
of course a bunch of people are going to die.
So what's the theory? Of course a bunch of people
are going to be connected to bands and different
counterculture movements. The theory is that
the CIA sort of engineered this. this culture
to, I don't know why. I'm not exactly sure because
I haven't gotten all the way through the book.
Are you still reading it? No, I pick it up every
now and then. It's just like, it's too kooky.
It's not grabbing you. Well, you can't make Jimi
Hendrix in a lab, okay? You can't. It's just
you can't fucking do it. You can't make someone
that good. It's not possible. You can't tell
me that if they did, why haven't they done it
since? Why don't they do it all the time? Right.
The greatest guitarist of all time. And you're
telling me the central intelligence cooked that
guy up? So they invented him. He's like their
clone or something. Well, I just think that they
had some sort of an influence on these people,
on Jim Morrison. There's a thing about Morrison.
The Morrison one. What is the connection between
Jim Morrison's dad and the intelligence agencies?
There's some tangible connection with Jim Morrison's
dad. But wouldn't you just normally assume that
if... If your dad was some high ranking military
guy, first of all, never home. Yeah. Okay. So
where are you? You're out running around with
your friends, smoking cigarettes and fucking
drinking and you're in a band and it turns out
you got a lot of angst and pain because you're
being neglected as a child because your dad works
16 hours a day trying to fuck the country over.
And so what do you do? You go counterculture.
It's like, it's so common. The preacher's daughter,
she becomes like a harlot, right? There you are,
high -ranking U .S. officer with, yeah. Right.
But that is, okay, but again, like this is a
perfect example. Wow, he's involved in the Gulf
of Tonkin incident. Whoa. But that's not proof
of anything. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But
his dad is. Yeah, but, you know, but this is
the thing. They'll take something like that.
They'll take various strips of coincidences and
they say this leads us to this conclusion. But
all they're doing is coming up with a conclusion
first and working backwards. Like this sort of
stuff, you see it again and again. So this is
how this connects with intelligence agencies.
McGowan, I guess that's the author. Core move
is to group Morrison's father with other Laurel
Canyon musicians' parents who worked in military,
defense or intelligence linked roles and to frame
this as evidence of a broader covert program
around the 1960s rock scene. Come on. Yeah. So
are you saying that the CIA. We're trying to
influence the culture through the medium of rock
music. Uh -huh. And that's somehow tied to espionage.
They also have that film studio. What's that?
What? Jared Leto bought that place. That was
a film studio in Laurel Canyon, too. Oh, well,
it's a base. It's an actual base. Yeah, Jared
Leto. I was talking to Jared about that. I had
dinner with Jared Leto one night. He's very cool,
by the way. Really nice guy. Very normal. And
by the way, he looks like he's 30. He's 50 years
old. It's crazy. Moisturizer or something. What
are you doing with your fucking skin? You look
great. Lookout Mountain Laboratory Air Force
Station. So he bought that place and converted
it into a home. That's where he lives. It's a
dope spot. Soundstage. Looks quite nice. Soundstage
Film Laboratory, two screening rooms. rooms,
four editing rooms, an animation and still photo
department, sound mixing studio, numerous climate
-controlled film vaults. And this is connected
to the conspiracy somehow. Well, this was an
actual military base. Located in that same neighborhood.
Okay. So this Air Force station, whatever it
was, I wonder what they were doing. Like, why
did they need all that film capability? Why did
they need to be... In theory, I guess... Like
when they would show the atomic bombs going off
and would play it in the movie theater for people
to see it. That's how they would make the actual
reels and whatnot. Well, that makes sense, right?
It makes sense that they were right there in
Hollywood if that's what they were doing. On
top, what other things they made? Here's the
still from Lookout Mountain Laboratory. So it's
just a studio then. A special effects studio.
But it's in that same neighborhood at the same
time. Yeah, but so what? I mean, I think with
all of it. He's not arguing for it. God damn
it, Jamie. The so what of it is that there wasn't
that many of them to begin with and just they
all happen to be in the same. But do you not
think with all of this stuff, like again and
again, the pattern is either there's gaps, there's
gaps in what we know and people decide to fill
them in themselves because there's a kind of
comfort to that. There's also some kind of comfort
with. I know something that no one else does.
I've got the answer. There's a status element
to that. I remember I read a book when I was
a kid, like teenager, called The Sacred Virgin
and the Holy Whore. And it was about sort of
books I read. And it was about Jesus. And it
was trying to prove that Jesus was a woman. And
as you're reading it, you're thinking, yeah,
oh, yeah, Jesus is a woman. I can't believe that.
And then you get to the end, you think, what
the hell did I just read? And it's that thing
of you can marshal any kind of. Half -baked facts
or any you can marshal certain things that we
can see and Fill in the gaps yourself and lead
to a crazy conclusion What concerns me isn't
so much that people do that because people have
done that forever as long as they've been human
beings is that now people are Leaping at it and
falling for it in a way that I haven't seen maybe
it is just social media, right? But it is can
I give you an example of this? So please a recent
one, which I just thought was nuts. Did you see
the Portrait of King Charles III by an artist,
I think his name was Yeo, Y -E -O. It's a big
red portrait which currently hangs in Buckingham
Palace. Oh, I have seen that. It's crazy. If
you take a quarter of it, invert it, flip it,
add a bit. And squint, it looks like a goat devil,
right? But you have to do a lot of steps to find
the goat devil. Well, of course. It's a puzzle.
How dare you? I'm sorry. How dare you dismiss
that puzzle? Let's show the photo and show how
it's done because it's kind of fun. Can you see
the goat? Oh, there we go. So can you see the
goat as well? First of all, just the photo by
itself. Like, hey, man, what the fuck are you
doing? Oh, it's a creepy picture. Why am I splattered
in blood? I've seen it in the flesh. It's a creepy
picture. One thing if he did that in all white.
It was an all white background. That would be
one thing. Like, oh, that's kind of an interesting
look or, you know, pastel. So what are you saying,
Joe? Are you already suspicious? Is that what
you're saying? Well, the photo's nuts. Like,
the painting is nuts. Where's the goat? So all
you have to do is put it. Together side -by -side
you don't have to do that much you exaggerated
how much you have to know I saw a video Trust
me look at it upside down looks. Oh, no, no,
I will the other way I found a goat put it back
put it back I can completely see the goat now.
That's 100 % a goat. They did it on purpose It
says that is that's a that's a sign go back to
the other one Click on that one. I see a goat
there. I see some evil demon look at two eyeballs.
Yeah, yeah, bro Where? 100%. Stop. Stop trying
to gaslight me. I see a monster. Oh, well. I
mean. You can find something in everything, man.
It still looks all superimposed. I mean, you
see. I can see Martha Stewart in that. The Virgin
Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. You can see
it in the clouds and the rocks. Of course. There's
a term for this where our brains look for patterns
and things. I had a conversation once with a
friend of mine that I didn't know was going crazy.
Right. And he goes, hey, you want to see something
crazy? And he pulls out his phone. And he shows
me a cloud. Yeah. And I go, what is that? He
goes, dude, I'm seeing this all day. And he shows
me some other ones. He's got, like, hundreds
of photos of clouds on his phone. Yeah. I go,
what are you seeing? He goes, these are UFOs.
He goes, these are spaceships. This is not a
regular cloud. Right. And I'm looking at the
photos. Like, he's just been taking pictures
of clouds all day. And I realize, oh, my God,
my friend is going schizophrenic. I didn't know
him well. So he was ill? Yeah. Okay, okay. The
more I talked to him, the more I realized there
was something cracked. Like, he's a guy I hadn't
seen in, like, maybe seven or eight years. And
I ran into him at a comedy club, and he was just
showing me photos of clouds on his phone. I was
like, during the conversation, I realized, oh,
he cracked. But aren't you concerned that that
kind of thing is now kind of common? Like, from
people who aren't necessarily unwell. People
who are just seeing stuff. Well, it's fun. I
think it's exciting for people to uncover information
that the general public is ignorant of. And so
here's the thing about the Laurel Canyon thing.
There's enough. of the CIA meddling in cultural
events that's absolutely true and provable. And
that's MKUltra. And that's what they did with
Charles Manson. And that's the book Chaos by
Tom O 'Neill, which is a brilliant book, which
is very well documented in details, Jolly West
and his influence on the Manson family and how
they were influencing these people to try to
sabotage the hippie movement. So the hippie movement
was this change in culture where all of a sudden
people were rejecting the war movement. They
were rejecting, you know, they were free love.
and they were doing acid and people were freaking
out. Their kids were just disappearing and following
the Grateful Dead around. And they took this
guy, Charles Manson, this very charismatic con
man. They taught him how to dose people up with
acid and influence them. And they got them to
commit murders. But there is evidence for this,
right? So you're talking about a book that is
researched backing up its points. Right. No,
you're being logical. And, you know, you're correct.
But what I'm saying is because of that, people
go, well, what else? And so then they make these
big leaps, like Jimi Hendrix is a CIA creation.
Right. But if you're a logical person, you just
listen to Voodoo Child's Slight Return, and you're
like, how? How? This is like, if that's true,
CIA should get back to work. Make another one
of those, bro. So I wonder whether this is, I
think this is the fallout of the woke movement.
This is the divorcing of reality and truth. The
idea that it doesn't matter. Not just about what
is expedient, but what we want to believe. I
think we should stop saying it's the fallout
of the woke movement. I think we should start
saying it's a natural pattern that human beings
automatically fall into in order to support their
belief systems and enforce their particular ideology
over whatever opposing ideology is. But it's
escalated. It escalates, but it's because of
social media that everything is escalating now.
But is it just social media? I mean, I think
another thing that's a major... reason for it.
We had COVID. We had all these experts telling
us it's a racist conspiracy theory to say that
it came from a lab in Wuhan. Now everyone knows
that's almost certainly true. We had people in
positions of authority lying to us. So it's something
about this culture war. But that's not real culture
war. That was using the culture war because they
were trying to cover something up. But they leapt
to race, didn't they? They leapt to identity.
But that's because they were using the culture
war to cover up their crime. But in either case,
what you've got effectively is a legitimation
crisis. You've got people in charge. We've been
lied to so often. But what I don't think you
should therefore do, like I'm all for being skeptical
about people in authority, academics, politicians,
journalists. They've all lied. But that firstly
doesn't mean that all experts and all journalists
and all people have lied because there have been
some good ones all the way. But also that doesn't
mean that you automatically leap to any conclusion
evidence -free that jumps before you without
some kind of critical analysis. The same thing
that you're criticizing those people for failing
at. You're falling into the same trap yourself.
I don't mean you. But you're Andrew Doyle. You're
a brilliant guy who writes books and you're really
smart. The idea is that you – are immune to this
stuff because you're intelligent, but the unwashed
masses are not. I don't think I'm immune at all.
I honestly don't. I wouldn't put myself in that
position. Well, you're immune to the dumbest
shit. I'd like to think so. You are. I am. Yeah,
but don't you think that all of us in the right
circumstances could end up falling for all sorts
of stuff? 100%, but I'm not in those circumstances
currently. But I like to believe, and maybe it's
a naivety on my part, but I like to believe that
most people have a kind of natural intellectual
curiosity. If they are... If they stop for a
moment and think and don't just trust instinct
over reason, I think we're all capable of it.
I just think we're not all realizing it. Well,
it's not just that. It's like some people are
medicated, right? So some people are on a bunch
of different medications that dull their senses.
And then you've got people that have gotten to
wherever they are in life. Maybe they're in their
50s. And they're set in their ways and they have
no desire to change at all. And so they've been
living a dump. life for 50 plus years. You can't
all of a sudden say, hey, Mark, I want you to
be logical and introspective and think about
this thing and analyze it. And for what it really
is, instead of holding on to your ideological
beliefs that you've kind of locked yourself into
and you identify with and any attacks on those
as attack on you personally, I want you to just
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But you saying that sounds very persuasive to
me. The way you put that, like if I were that
guy, I'd be like, oh, I've listened to Joe now.
Fucking liberals, bullshit. You're just a fucking,
they'll come up with some sort of reason. King
Charles III is a goat. You're controlled opposition
or you're a useful idiot or they'll put a label
on you. I've been called, I've been told I get
dark money. How do you get any of that? Well,
I love it. I want it. I want the dark money.
It's so dark I haven't seen any of it. That's
how dark it is. What is dark money? I think it's
when it's like some rich ideologue who's sort
of slipping you money to say the thing. You know
what it is? It's that thing of, I don't believe
that you disagree with me. I'm too narcissistic
to believe that you disagree with me. You must
be being paid to have these opinions. You're
paid off, bro. You're paid off. Trust me, I would
love that. If anyone's out there who wants to
pay me off, I'll be a mouthpiece. I haven't had
that opportunity. It's pretty low. I'm a bit
of a whore, truth be told. I've got a mortgage.
Come on. I will say any crazy shit if you want
me to. Well, there's certainly a lot of people
that fall into that category, too. So people
do get nervous about it. I mean, obviously you're
joking, but there's a lot of people that will
change their opinion. Oh, sure. If money comes
their way. But I like to. assume people mean
what they say. And my logic behind that is even
when they don't, you can still dismantle the
argument, even if it's authentic or not. You
know, even if it's authentically believed. Sure.
So I think that's just the best way to go about
it. The best way is debate. That's the best way.
Or at least conversation. But that's what we've
lost. I think that hits on it, actually, because...
I said debate, but that sounds formal. No, I
know what you mean. Can I give you an example
of that? So I went to UC Berkeley, the University
of UC Berkeley in California. Did they let you
leave? Well, almost not, right? So what had happened
was, you know, Charlie Kirk's tour was planned
to go all the way through. And this was the last
date, the Berkeley date. And after his assassination,
various people went and did the shows because
they said, because Turning Point rightly said,
we're not going to give an assassin the veto
of our tour. We finished the tour. Rob Schneider,
who I've been working with in Arizona, I've come
over here to work with him. The comedian? Yeah.
So I've been, this is how I escaped from the
UK, I should say. So me and Graham Linehan, who
you've had on your show, the comedy writer, my
comedy writing partner and friend Martin Gourlay,
the three of us, we decided that things were
so bad in the UK. we'd rather write and do creative
stuff in America. Rob Schneider, who I'd met
many years ago, he said, come on over, we'll
set up a production company. We've been working
in Arizona on all these various projects. It's
so liberating. And also, it's the middle of the
desert, so I fucking love the heat. And, you
know, you go from England to that, it's kind
of exciting. Nice contrast. So we've been able
to, you know, and look, I don't want to do down
the UK or say... But what I will just say is
the creative industries there are pretty stagnant.
They're not like here. There's so many more ways
to be free. How can you if you are worried about
going to jail for a meme? Well, Graham got arrested
at the airport by five armed officers right after
he left this podcast. Was that it? Yes. And it
was he came over, did this podcast, went back
to visit his family and got arrested. And, you
know, shortly after he did the podcast. So when
people say to me, that's not a real problem.
I mean, Graham had done three tweets. One of
them was just, they were all joke tweets, by
the way. They were all jokes. And one of them
was just, it was something like, ladies, if a
guy's in your changing room or in your bathroom,
scream, make a fuss, call the police. If all
else fails, kick him in the balls. And it's obviously
a wry way of saying, look, the guy's got genitals.
That was why he got arrested. On the night he
got arrested, he was texting me. He said, I've
just been arrested. I've been taken to the hospital
because my blood pressure is so high. The police
took him to the hospital. And you say there's
no problem in the UK with creativity. He's one
of our best comedy writers. He's the most beloved
comedy writer. He hasn't been able to work in
TV for six years, right? Like he's won all the
awards going. How can you be creative in that
environment? You can't. You can't. And so we
just figured. Let's get on a raft. Especially
someone like you. So if people don't know, I
should probably tell everybody. You are Tatiana
McGrath. So, yeah. Well, here's what's funny
about that. Your satirical character who you
created many, many years ago, when did you create
her? 2018. Okay. When you created her, I had
you on the podcast shortly after. We laughed
about it. I have seen her quote tweeted with
people agreeing with her. Yeah. Yeah. Even now.
Yeah, all the time. So I, yeah, if people don't
know, it's a character called Titania McGrath.
She's a woke social justice warrior, right? It's
so good. It's fucking great. It's one of my favorite
follows. But, you know, I don't do it as often
as I used to. You know, I used to do it all the
time. But then I wrote two books as her. I did
a live show as her. And by the way, when I did
a live show, we were booked in for a week in
the West End in London. And then the head of
the theater found out and scotched it and actually
said, oh, well, I didn't know about this. And
the contracts are all signed. Absolutely crazy.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. But we did the show.
It does matter. It does matter, I suppose. But
the point is that, you know, so I did this character.
Do you have satire at your theater? My God. Well,
the theater industry in the UK is even worse
than comedy if you want to go there. It's really,
really bad. Like, I've been in two different
theatres in London. I've had the same experience
of standing at the bar with a woman complaining
because there's men pissing in her toilet and
they're doing nothing about it. Because all the
theatres in London have made it all gender neutral.
They've gone completely hardcore woke. Anyway,
that's not the point. But with Titania, what
I find so surprising is every now and then if
something annoys me, I'll tweet. Or if I think
of something, I'll do something. I don't do it
anywhere near as often as I used to. But even
now... I did a tweet about, you know, when all
the people in London were marching about the
peace deal in the Middle East. And I did a tweet
as her saying, I've been marching all day. You
know, I want a peace deal that was not arranged
by Donald Trump. We're never going to give up
this fight. Right. And Ted Cruz retweeted it
saying, can this be real? Even now. These fucking
boomers. He's not even a boomer. He's not even
a boomer. I think he's younger than me. How old
is Ted Cruz? I think he's younger than me, which
is hilarious. I had the same with, I did one
about, how does he not know? Does he have no
friends? How old is fucking Ted Cruz? Okay, that's
crazy. So that dude's three years younger than
me, and he doesn't know satire? The anger I got
from, I did one the other day recently about
the Iran protest. Can I just stop? Yeah, yeah,
yeah. I want to get into this. Okay. When did
he tweet about this? A year ago. That's hilarious.
Yeah. That account... There it is, there it is.
How many follows does... Okay, so this... Oh,
sorry. This is possibly real. Well, obviously
it's not. So this was actually after Trump's
election. So she said, I just fired my immigrant
housekeeper because even though I'd educated
her about the evils of Donald Trump, she still
voted for him. There's no place for racism in
my house. Click on your account. I want to see
how many followers you have. Okay, 733 ,000.
That's a famous account. Like... Radical intersexualist
poet, non -white, obviously white, ecosexual,
hilarious, pronouns, variable, selfless and brave,
buy my books. You'd think it was obvious, wouldn't
you? Obvious! I mean, maybe he's busy. Maybe
he's busy and someone sent him that and he just
doesn't know. But it's very funny. It's very
funny. I feel slightly bad about it. about those
sort of things. But then on the other hand, it
does sort of prove the point that the stuff they're
really saying can get as close. Oh, that's very
close to real. Yeah. That's very close to real.
And it's shifted radically since 2018. I mean,
in the eight years since you created her, she
has become like more real. Yeah. It's like when
AI is going to turn her into a real person. Yeah.
Like, oh, maybe. I hadn't even thought of that.
She's going to be a real person. She's going
to be a real dangerous Greta Thunberg type character.
But don't you worry about that? I mean, like
AI. Oh, a good example of that. I use AI mostly
as a search engine. Because what's great about
it is you can say, oh, I read an article like
10 years ago that said something like this. Yes.
And it will find it. And you'd never find that
on Google. Right. And I was trying to find this
article. It was from my book, actually. There
was a case in the UK where a guy had raped a
13 -year -old girl. But because he was... He
was Muslim and he'd gone to a madrasa and the
judge let him off jail time, said you were very
sexually naive, you didn't understand. The guy
was saying, oh, I thought women were nothing
and like a lollipop you dropped on the floor
and the judge let him off jail time. And I thought
this is quite extreme. And I found it. It came
up on ChatGPT and then it deleted. And I said,
oh, I think you just deleted the information
for me. It's in the public domain. Why did you
do that? It said, oh. You know, it's fine. It
might violate my terms of service. And I said,
well, how could it? This is an article that's
in the public domain. So it gave me the information
again, deleted it again. I said, you keep deleting
this, stop it. It said, I definitely won't delete
it. Then it did the same again. So what it's
doing is it's saying, because this is a news
story that could be deemed anti -immigrant, or
this is a news story that is politically sensitive,
I'm not going to let you see it. Was this in
America you were doing this? UK. I wonder if
he could do it in America. Let's find out. Well,
let's try perplexity. Put that into perplexity.
I doubt that perplexity would happen. I have
to find the article he was using. I don't know
what article he looked up. Well, why don't you
just ask the question that he asked. It's 10
years ago. So it's a story about a – that would
take a while to – Will it? I mean – Maybe he
didn't do it 10 years ago. He did it recently.
No, no, it was a story. It's a story from years
ago. Right. But you found it with ChatGPT, which
is obviously recently. I found a Daily Mail article
about it. So it's on public domain. It's there.
But it just it just it didn't want me to find
the fact that it decided wasn't good for me to
find. Right. But it showed it to you and then
it pulled it back, which is crazy. How does it
not know? It showed it and deleted it. It showed
it and deleted it four or five times. And I realized,
I'm not going to get this information. So when
it showed it, how long did it show it for? Like
about five seconds. You'd see the text appearing
and then it deletes. But I'd seen enough to find
it then on Google. So I was able to find it and
quote it in my book. So it's there. But it made
me think, it's like that thing about when people
were asking Alexa, you know, do white lives matter?
And it was coming up with this kind of very ideological.
And you do wonder with AI and with the computers,
you know, if they are created by people who have
that bias. I know Grok is very different. But
like, for instance, I mean, this is a crazy example.
ChatGBT is like an old school mom that wants
to make sure that you're protected. Right. I
was writing. This sounds really wanky. I'm sorry,
but I was writing about the Roman historian Suetonius.
And there's a passage in Suetonius where he talks
about the emperor Tiberius. And it's very sexually
explicit. But I was quoting it for an article.
So I wanted to know what it said. And Chachi
PT said, I can't translate the Latin for you
because this is too sexually problematic. I went
on to Grok and it did it straight away because
Grok isn't saying that you are too delicate to
read this stuff. And what's really funny about
that is the old. Dual translations of the old
Roman and Greek texts. They're called lerb editions.
You get them from 1900. They translated everything
except for the rude bits, which they kept in
Latin. So Chad GPT is like the old patronizing
scholars of old who said, this is just for the
learned people. You can't learn this stuff. Well,
wasn't the worst, the first iteration of Google
Gemini, that was the worst cases. That turned
Nazi soldiers into black. I don't know how that's
a positive message. They showed us photos of
German soldiers from World War II, and it was
all interracial. Yeah, and Vikings. Yes. I mean,
I don't know if you've been to Scandinavia. Diversity,
not their big thing. Or certainly wasn't then.
It's so silly. The Vikings came and marauded
and raped and set fire to villages, but at least
they were diverse. Hey, you know, at least they
had a broad range of ethnicities. But I mean,
we're nearing a time in America where white people
are not the majority anymore. So at what point
in time does that stop? And we just call people
what they are, just people. But doesn't it bother
you a bit that the thing about that kind of thing
is this, as I say, this obsession with group
identity, which is so of our time. What it now
actually means is the revision of history. If
you're going to revise history and say, oh, actually,
you've seen all these sort of period dramas set
in England. There was a black Anne Boleyn, as
though Henry VIII would have married a black
woman. No, he wouldn't. What if she was hot?
She was a very attractive woman. I'm not mocking
her or knocking her. But back then. What I'm
saying is you can do anything with colorblind.
Colorblind casting has never really particularly
bothered me. But it's when you are in a if you're
playing hyper realism. If you're playing verisimilitude,
you want people to buy into the reality of it.
And you're suddenly populating Edwardian England
or pre -Edwardian England as an ethnically diverse
place, which it wasn't. I'm not saying black
people weren't there, but they were very, very,
very small minority. Isn't that a problem in
the new Odyssey? Helen of Troy is black. Well,
I say that. I just saw it online, so I might
be being tricked by someone making something
up. You know, I caveat that. I think Helen of
Troy is black in the new Odyssey. Well, let's
find out. Can we check that one? All right. If
it's true, I'll tell you why I think that's ridiculous.
How far do we have to swing the pendulum until
Roots is redone with white people? Can you imagine?
Or an all -black Schindler's List. Right, right,
right. Can you imagine? Helen of Troy to be portrayed
by a black actress in a new Odyssey movie. And
look, I'm sure she's very talented. I'm not knocking
her. But the thing about the Greek, the thing
about Helen of Troy, who probably didn't exist.
I mean, even the Greeks knew she probably didn't
even exist. She's a myth. She's the epitome of
Greek beauty. She's described all the time in
the ancient texts as fair and blonde. And they're
reaching for an ideal of beauty. That's why they
went to war because of this woman. So they wouldn't
choose what they used to call an Ethiop. The
Greeks had a word for it, the black African people.
They wouldn't choose an icon of cultural beauty
from a different culture. They wouldn't have
done that. You know, it's all very well saying
Greeks and Mediterranean people and, you know,
wouldn't have been pure white. But Helena of
Troy is a very specific and it's actually quite
important to the plot. And again, if you're doing
a look, for instance, when they did the all black
Wizard of Oz, the Wiz. I imagine that in the
late 60s would have been quite radical and fun
and wow, I can't believe they did that. That's
brilliant. But doing it now, it's really boring
because everyone is doing it. It's basically
saying group identity is everything and you people
can't be racist and so therefore we're going
to do this. But it sometimes throws you out of
the... Actually, I'll tell you the worst example.
Did you ever see Darkest Hour, the Winston Churchill
film? No. So, you know, obviously he took on
Parliament. He said, we're not going to appease
Hitler. There's a scene in the film, Gary Oldman
plays him. He goes down into the tube, the underground,
and he's wrestling with his conscience. And there's
loads of black people on the tube. There's white
people too, but there's loads of black people.
The public convince him, no, you need to stand
up for Hitler. Now, we know that Churchill wasn't,
was a bit of a racist, didn't really like the,
you know, fine. He was of his time. I'm not saying
anything more than that. He was of his time.
But that, it was so unreal. It was so unreal.
It was so, it was almost like the filmmakers
were saying, racism's never been a problem in
the UK. Well, actually it has. And I kind of
think this is, although it's ostensibly progressive,
I think it does the reverse. I think it says,
we never had a problem with race. We were all
wonderful, kumbaya. No, we weren't. And actually,
the abolitionists, the Thomas Henry Huxleys of
the world, the people who had to fight for racial
equality and parity, they had something to fight
against, misrepresenting stuff in the arts. And
then beyond, I'm sorry I'm ranting now because
it really bothered me, but beyond that, it throws
you out of it in a way. that you suddenly think,
I'm no longer watching a film. I'm watching a
sermon. Oh, so this happened to me last week.
Have you seen the Netflix series Ripley about
the talented Mr. Ripley? No, I have not. Right.
Now, you remember there used to be that film
with Matt Damon years ago. It's the same story,
same novel, an old Patricia Highsmith novel.
One of the main male characters in that TV series
is a brilliant, like Andrew Scott is in it. Performances
are brilliant. They play it hyper -realistically.
It's all black and white. It looks beautiful.
On the Amalfi Coast, it's wonderful. Everything's
working brilliantly. And I was thinking, this
is great. I'm not being preached at. This is
great. Then a major male character turns up,
played by a woman who calls herself non -binary.
And not only are we meant to believe that that's
a man, the characters don't notice that it's
a woman in a man's clothes. So we're meant to
believe that these characters don't even... Ripley
doesn't say, why is she wearing a suit? This
is set in the 60s, by the way. I think if they
wanted to change the novel and create a kind
of, you know, like one of those Butch Dykes of
the day who used to go for sort of like... Or
a dress like Ellen. Yeah, or the androgynous
type. Those people have always existed. Why not
change the character to make it a female character
who likes looking like a man? Why not do that?
Why tell us, you know, this is a man. You have
to believe it's a man. Do you see what I mean?
It throws you out of the room. It's crazy. I
no longer believe in this. I have to stop watching
it because I no longer believed in it. Well,
I think the problem, the real problem with trying
to shove that down people's throats is it creates
the opposite reaction. Right, right. It creates
homophobia, transphobia, and racism because it
doesn't create it, but it makes them feel like
they have a point. Well, you've seen recently
that the polls regarding... Gay rights in the
US seem to be going down. Tumbling support for
gay rights, support for gay marriage. We've had,
I think, a number of states trying to overturn
the gay marriage legislation. And the reason
for all of that, I think, is because... Being
gay has been tied to this LGBTQIA identity -obsessed
movement that has also involved the medicalisation
of kids, sterilisation of kids, twerking in front
of children, all of that stuff. And now people
are saying, this is because you gave us gay marriage,
this is because you let the gays marry. And because
of that, you've allowed all this other stuff,
you've opened this box and everything else has
tumbled out. And that's not true. That's not
true because the fundamental point about the
belief in gender identity... is it is fundamentally
anti -gay as a principle. Because what it says
is, I know I'm telling you something you already
know, but gay rights was predicated on the idea
that there's a minority of people in every society
who are attracted innately to their own biological
sex. If you say biological sex doesn't matter,
and actually you're attracted to a kind of gendered
soul, you're attracted to an essence, you're
attracted to how someone identifies. Well, firstly,
you don't know gay people if you think that's
the case. They're not attracted to how you see
yourself. They know, gay men, I don't want to
be crude, know what a penis is, right? And they
know how to sniff one out. And I think this idea,
this idea that they're attracted to the way that
you perceive yourself. Nonsense. Not only that,
then you get, you know, like in Australia at
the moment, lesbians are not allowed to gather
legally if there's a man who says he's a lesbian
and wants to join them. That is against the law
in Australia now. So you can't do that. Wait,
wait a minute. What do you mean? So the Australian
Human Rights Commission ruled that if you are
if you have an all female event. Right. So like
a lesbian gathering, maybe something like that.
You have to include men who identify as women.
Oh, God. Because otherwise you are discriminated.
There was a woman who I interviewed on. I had
a show in the UK on GB News up until recently.
And I interviewed this woman called Sal Grover.
And she's an Australian woman. Used to write
for Hollywood, I think. And she created a woman's
app, a woman's only app. And this was in the
wake of Me Too, you know, so there's all that
going on. And she wanted to create a space for
women. And a guy called Roxanne Tickle, right?
They always have these kind of stripper names.
Is that a real name? Roxanne Tickle wanted to
get on the app, which was called Giggle. So,
by the way, this court case is called Giggle
versus Tickle. I'm not kidding. Boy. And he said,
he got on the app. She kicked him off because
it's a bloke in a dress. And he sued. And won.
And in the court case, the judge actually said,
sex is changeable. Well, it's not, no matter
what a guy in a wig says. But she's now appealing
and going through all this stuff. Makes her life
hell and then discourages anybody else in the
future from ever contesting anything like that.
And not only that. I mean, we've just had the
other day. Was it yesterday? Did you see the
girl who used to identify as trans? A girl called
Fox Varian? has just won $2 million in a lawsuit.
That's big because... She was 16 years old and
they chopped her breasts off, which is fucking
horrifying. It's the tip of the iceberg, though.
Especially if you have children, you realize
they change the way they think about things year
to year. Children are so malleable. It's like
one of the delicate dances of being a parent
is that you have to love them. But you don't
want to steer them in any direction. You want
to let them be their own person. And, you know,
it's like I tried to expose my children to a
bunch of different things and find out what they
enjoy. And if you do that, you find out that
they're all different. They all like different
stuff. They just gravitate towards different
things. And if you are a domineering, overbearing,
mentally ill parent, you can convince your child.
Almost anything. Almost anything. I mean, this
is how you get suicide bombers. Yeah, yeah. This
is what it is because they're children. This
is why you don't get 55 -year -old union guys
who become suicide bombers. They're like, what?
And of course. I get 72 virgins? What? It's not
going to work. But you can get young, impressionable
children and you can convince them of almost
anything. Convincing them that they're actually
a woman in a man's body and don't you want to
be a woman and let's get you on hormone blockers.
Okay, mom. And then all of a sudden you're ruining
this child's life. But also, I mean, there will
be kids who are struggling with how they see
themselves in the world. There's girls in particular
who... You know, they're developing into women
and they don't like the sexual attention they're
getting. They'd love to identify. This is Abigail
Schreier's book. Right. Especially autistic girls.
Well, that's another point. So this is the other
reason why I think the movement is essentially
anti -gay. Because, you know, the Tavistock Pediatric
Clinic in London, which was an NHS gender clinic,
which has been closed as a result of the CAST
review, this report into pediatric gender care.
They found there's a book by Hannah Barnes called
Time to Think, which found that between 80 and
90 percent of all adolescents referred to that
clinic were same sex attracted. So they were
either gay or lesbian or bisexual. Now, that
means you've effectively got gay conversion therapy
going on on the NHS. And so, you know, I had,
you know, I'm friends with a couple of lesbians
who run the LGB Alliance in London. They have
an annual conference for gay rights and they're
talking about gay rights. You know, these. Young
non -binary identified people broke in, unleashed
locusts and crickets and insects, a plague of
fucking locusts into a gay rights conference.
Isn't that the sort of thing neo -Nazis used
to do? Right. So, I mean, I, you know, I think
you need to have sympathy with people and whatever
they're going through. But don't tell a child
if a child tells you, I think I'm in the wrong
body. Don't say yes. Say that's not possible.
Human beings can't change sex, but let's explore
psychotherapeutically what needs to happen. Let's
look at Los Angeles, which is, in my opinion,
one of the most mentally ill spots in this country.
It's a very weird place. That's why you left.
Well, I mean, I left for a bunch of reasons.
Mostly I really left because they were telling
us we can't do comedy. Oh, yeah. Well, that'll
do it. They closed down the comedy clubs and
Texas was open. So the primary reason. And also
restaurants. I just knew where it was going.
But the point is, like, Los Angeles is a very
mentally ill place. Like, if you just. looked
at just the sheer numbers of people that are
medicated and fucked up. If that's the place
that's dictating the tone for the rest of the
world, that's dangerous. Because these are a
lot of people that just desperately want attention.
They desperately want to get accepted. They have
to go through the audition process. So they have
to change who they are to talk to the producers,
to try to form themselves into something to be
accepted. There's a disproportionate. Amount
of trans kids that are involved in Hollywood
families. It's yeah, largely district disproportionate
of course some of them have two Trans kids three
trans kids. It's like what the fuck is going
on here. This is not normal This is not this
is not no influence whatsoever. This is You're
using that child as a virtue flag you're flying
that child as a trans flag in the front of your
porch I have a trans kid, but don't you think
that? like a lawsuit like this, that's going
to change things because no one's going to ensure
that kind of procedure anymore. That's a surgeon
and a psychotherapist who are now lumbered with
a $2 million bill for their negligence. Yes,
and it's going to open up the floodgates for
all these other lawyers to start pouncing on
all these other cases. Yeah, that's what I mean.
The horrible thing about these cases is not just
that these children have their lives ruined by
these surgeries and have been sterilized. It's
also that they've been attacked. So ruthlessly.
You mean you're talking about children that have
made a mistake or someone coerced them into making
this mistake that's changed their body for the
rest of their life and they're getting attacked
online. Yeah. Can you imagine being a fragile
child already who's willing to go through this
procedure, can't believe they did it. Now they
don't have breasts anymore. Their voice is deep
forever. They're all fucked up. Yeah. And then
people are screaming at them online. Yeah. And
it's crazy. But, you know, this is how the satanic
child abuse panic of the 80s. Yes, exactly. This
came to an end because of lawsuits. When, you
know, when they started, when they realized that
these psychotherapists have been using these
leading questions, effectively telling them you've
repressed the memory. You know, there was that
book, The Courage to Heal, where it said, if
you think you might have been abused, you probably
were. Like such a reckless thing to say. Right.
And all these people accused, you know, carers,
parents. None of it was true. But when they started
suing the psychotherapist, it all collapsed.
Right. And I wonder whether hysteria can collapse
if you... actually money talks. Well, it's already
shifted in this general direction because of
Elon buying Twitter. When Elon bought Twitter,
the amount of trans -identified kids started
to drop off. The amount of non -binary -identified
kids started to drop off. And that, I think,
is a direct result of people being able to say
what they really think. Because in the past,
like my friend Megan Murphy, she was banned off
of Twitter until Elon bought it because she said
a man is never a woman. That's all she said.
A man is never a woman. She was arguing with
people about Biological males who identify as
women being able to get into women's spaces and
she said a man is never a woman banned forever
Yeah, so no one wanted to talk about they see
there was no real discourse and if there's no
real discourse Then you can push a goofy ideology
pretty fucking far But as soon as people jump
on board and start posting funny memes and and
Elon says it's open season do whatever you want
Yeah, and he calls it the woke mind virus and
everybody's like Piling in. Well, then you have
discourse and then anything that's absurd immediately
gets shot down because people say, no, this doesn't
make any sense. This is crazy. It comes back
to what you say. You said about debate. You said
about discourse. I mean, I just saw today just
on Twitter because I'm always on it. But I saw
John Lithgow, you know, the actor, brilliant
actor who plays Dumbledore in the new Harry Potter
thing, saying that J .K. Rowling's views are
inexplicable. Inexplicable. It means you haven't
read them. Like J .K. Rowling is for women's
rights and she recognizes that women's rights
depend on the recognition of biological sex for
the preservation of single sex spaces. It's as
simple as that. All he has to do is read the
essay she wrote on her blog about eight years
ago. He's not even sufficiently intellectually
curious to do that. And he goes out and says
it's inexplicable. Women's rights and gay rights
are inexplicable. Really? Or are you just not
having the conversation? You're just shutting
yourself up and saying, my friends have said
she's evil. Not criticized hard enough. but would
be criticized if he supported J .K. Rowling.
If he supported J .K. Rowling, he would be attacked.
So it's a calculation you're saying? Yes. Maybe.
It's the same thing we're talking about with
Hollywood being mentally ill. It's the same thing
where you have to shape your opinions based on
how you'll be accepted by the group. It's the
most group think place I've ever been in my life.
It's almost universally left -leaning. But isn't
that the problem in comedy, like with the UK?
So many people who would otherwise be innovative,
subversive comics, they've got nowhere to go.
Right. So they just tailor their material. Well,
they come to Austin, baby. They come to Austin
like I did, right? That's it. They come to, they
come to. And I get so sick of it because I know
in America it's much better. But in the UK. All
of my old friends from the comedy circuit who
tell me no one's self -censoring. You can say
what you want. I'm like, are you kidding? Like
the list of people I know who have had shows
cancelled, taken off because they caused offence.
This week, Leo Kirst, a friend of mine, had one
of his shows on his tour just deleted because
some activists complained to the venue. Right.
So so it's happening all the time. And they're
ignoring this Himalayan mountain of evidence.
And they're saying it's not a thing. But of course
people are self -censoring. Well, it's even happening
here. Is it? Michael Rappaport got his shows.
He got his shows canceled from Cap City Comedy
Club. Did he? Which is our other comedy club
in town, which is a great club owned by Helium.
Right. But they were saying that he's racist
because Michael Rappaport is very pro -Israel.
Right. And apparently. Why does that make you
racist? I don't know what he said, so I don't
want to speak out of turn. I don't know what
exactly he said. Let me make a small correction,
I think. Oh. I don't think that. She has been...
Sorry, back to the Odyssey thing. Oh, yeah, yeah.
She has been cast in the movie. but only Twitter
rumors have said what her position in the movie
is, and then everybody has ran with it. Oh, interesting.
So she could be someone else, a different character.
All the articles I found online said it was like
social media confirmation, and then people were
just running with that. Well, there we go. Well,
isn't that what I said? What is that article
that you just clicked? This is the one I showed
earlier. But what is it from? It starts off with
a Hungarian conservative. That's a niche. Jamie,
how dare you let that sneak by? I didn't notice
it was a Hungarian conservative. Are you being
paid by the Hungarian conservative? It's the
top thing that popped up. Meanwhile, it's probably
a fucking troll farm in Pakistan that's creating
that. Or it's probably in China or something.
All I googled was Helena Troy Odyssey movie and
it's the very first article. Good for the Hungarian
conservative. That's so funny. Coming out on
top of the Google search. That's pretty good.
That's so funny. But did I not say, I'm not sure
about this, it's a Twitter rumor? But look, Elon
Musk bought into it. Elon Musk and Christopher
Nolan has lost his integrity. Oh, Elon. So there
we go. The dude's too busy building rockets to
pay attention to what he tweets. But this proves
the point. Like, let's not. Oh, yeah, he's going
to take us to the moon again. So, you know. No,
he's not. Isn't he? No, Artemis is NASA. I thought
he was working with NASA. Oh, is he working with
NASA with Artemis? Again, someone said it online
and I just bought it. Oh, wow. They probably
can't get there without him. He's probably like,
oh, I'll show you some things. Okay, so that
is a perfect example because I am always now.
Even when I mentioned that earlier, I was cautious,
wasn't I? Because I know I've fallen for this
so many times. I now double check and triple
check everything. And I wish I didn't have to.
But you do have to because even the mainstream
media lie about stuff. And then Twitter rumors
go absolutely mad. But it's important when you're
talking about historical. Yeah, yeah. It's got
to kind of, you just can't do that. It doesn't
make any sense. Well, you sort of can. I think
an artist should be able to do what they want.
And I think if you want to, like they do it with
Shakespeare all the time. Sorry to go back to
Shakespeare, but you rarely go and see a Shakespeare
play today that hasn't been filtered through
the prism of identity politics and changed. Right,
but that's not the same. That's not the same
as historical figures. Well, he wrote histories.
He wrote about. Kings? Henry VII? Henry V? Yeah,
but it's fiction, right? Like, the thing about
the Odyssey is... That's definitely fiction.
It is, sort of, but, you know, they didn't think
Troy existed, and then they found out it does.
Right. It's a real place. It's based on myth.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But you remember, like,
they thought that Troy was a completely mythological
creation. So it's an actual place. They have
evidence that it was a place. Yes. You didn't
know that? No. Yeah, they found it. When did
they find Troy? It was in the 20th century. So
for the longest time. But there wouldn't have
been sirens. And there wouldn't have been psychopsies.
You know what I mean? Oh, no. Oh, Joe. No, psychopsies,
they think were actually elephant skulls. That's
what they think that was. Right, okay. Do you
ever see an elephant skull? I have never seen
an elephant skull. Well, you know, where the
trunk is is an enormous hole. And they thought
that that was an eyeball. So they would find
these giant skulls that looked like, you know,
they didn't know what the fuck it was. Yeah,
yeah. And they're like, oh, my God, cyclopses
are real. Fair enough. So here it is. Evidence
that the city of Detroit was a real place began
to emerge in the 1870s. Henrik Schlielmann discovered
large -scale excavations at the Hisarlik. in
northwestern Turkey in 1870. So when did they
first start excavating? So where is it? It's
in Turkey? It's in Turkey, yeah. Okay. Which
is a lot of the proponents of a revising of the
beginning of civilization are now pointing to
Turkey. Yeah. As opposed to like Iraq and, you
know. But the Greeks were everywhere, you know?
Yeah. So the Mesopotamians and the, I mean, that
doesn't surprise me. I mean, I think the point
I was making about Helen of Troy is that even
if it's not real, even if it's not history, the
myth of Helen of Troy means something quite significant
within that story. Yes. So if you subvert that,
the fundamental aspects of the story itself doesn't
work, and you can't buy into the myth. It's like
if you turn the elephant man into a handsome
fellow with a six -pack. Exactly that. Don't
give them ideas. Don't give them ideas. They'll
do that. Can you show me a photograph of an elephant
skull? It's really kooky. But you see an elephant
skull and you're like, oh, I get it. That's why
they saw it. I could totally see you falling
for that. Yeah. You look at it and you go, what
the fuck is that thing? Like, look at an elephant
skull. Isn't it nutty? Oh, completely. Yes. Yeah.
And it's going to be a big old beast. Right.
So you're going to think it's a - Big giant thing
with tusks coming out of its mouth. Like, look
at the actual Cyclops on the left. Isn't that
crazy? Yeah. Of course. No, it makes sense. It
makes complete sense. Complete sense. Yeah. Yeah,
you found that, you're like, oh my God, cyclopses
are real. You would think, oh my God, these monsters.
Isn't that funny? What a weird shaped skull.
So strange. You would never think the eyeballs
would be down there by the cheekbones. That's
what's weird about them. I have to say elephant
anatomy is something I'm not, I haven't brushed
up on that. Show the photo again. Look at that
photo where the eyeballs are. The eyeballs are
where the cheekbones are. See the little circular
holes where the cheeks are? Now when you see
an elephant in the flesh, like show me a photograph
of an elephant. Just an elephant. So, see where
their eyeballs are? Isn't that crazy? That's
not how you think of them, is it? No. Well, they're
so strange. Aren't they? The second one on the
left, yeah, look at that. Click on that. What
a wild animal. They're amazing. Have you never
seen one of those before? You'd be like, whoa.
Only in a zoo. Crazy. I rode one in Thailand.
No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't recommend
it. I don't think I should ride them. My whole
family wanted to do it. I didn't want to do it.
I felt like it's exploiting them. But they're
very sweet. They're gentle, aren't they? They're
pleasant creatures. It's a whole process. So
one of the things you do when you go to Thailand
is you take care of them first. You don't just
hop on them. You feed them. So you give them
a bunch of sugar cane, and you pet them, and
they teach you. So the animal understands you
have a gentle spirit. It's intelligence, right?
It's because they're smart. They're very smart.
Also, they'll fucking kill you. Oh, they are
scary beasts. Stomp you to death. But they're
not like the hippo. The hippo will kill you.
You cannot do that with a hippo. And I believe
the reason why hippos are so dangerous, we think
they're really cute and fat, but they are...
fucking dangerous and they can run fast and they
can tear you apart and they will but the key
difference I believe is the intelligent thing
so elephants are really smart and hippos are
really stupid yeah and you can also become friends
with an elephant yes like you can actually take
care of an elephant and be kind to an elephant
and that elephant will like be gentle yeah they
come up to you and so you feed them sugar cane
and you talk to them you say hey buddy how are
you and you pet them and you wash them you wash
them you do all kinds of different things with
them you brush them so it feels good them you're
gonna have an elephant soon aren't you no i would
never have an elephant i'd be friends with an
elf but you have to be wild like i just don't
agree with any of that what having them in zoos
and things no i hate it i think i do as well
i think if you're gonna have animals you should
have a gigantic area that is a true ecosystem
that they exist in naturally yeah and then people
can maybe venture into that ecosystem And explore
it. I felt that. I was at the zoo recently in
Arizona, and I felt that. So depressing. I felt
there was one jaguar pacing obsessively. I just
felt, it's like going to, you know, like in the
Elizabethan era, they used to go to Bedlam to
watch the people who were mad as an entertainment
thing. It felt a little bit like we were doing
that. I have far too much appreciation for the
wild. Yeah, yeah. You know, I have animals that
are contained at my house, but they have been
watered down by selective breeding to the point
where they can't even. I have a King Charles
Spaniel. He's this tiny little fella. He's incapable
of doing anything. He's just a little cutie pie.
You can't unleash him into the wild. Right. And
I have a golden retriever who thinks everybody's
his best friend. Did you see the guy who kept
a hippo from birth and then it ate him? And then
it killed him. It ate him. Got annoyed. Understand
that you're dealing with a... a creature that
doesn't see the world that you do. Yeah. There's
a lot of animals that you can breed up until
you can rather have them in your home, like chimps
famously. Yeah, yeah. Up until a certain point,
and then they decide, I want to rip your face
off. I don't like you anymore. I'm sure if cats
were as big as we are, they'd probably do the
same. Well, they would just eat you. They would.
They would kill you 100%. The only reason why
we have a relationship with cats is because they're
too small to eat us. Yeah. That's it. Cats are
great because they're convenient. They do what
they want. They're sweet. They're sweet. I love
cats. But, I mean, you can't have a fucking giant
one. But you can if you take care of them from
the time that they're cubs. Yeah. And most of
the time they don't kill you. Yeah. But then
you get a little Siegfried and Roy action and
it just decides for whatever reason I want to
drag that dude away with his neck. Yep. But,
you know, these sorts of pleasures, you know,
life with animals and this sort of thing is going
to matter more and more to us, I think, when
the robots take over. Yeah. Well, we might have
to live with them. We might be wild and the robots
might take over the cities. We might be forced
to be nomadic tribes again. I think they might
see us. We have no impact whatsoever on the environment.
You can only live a subsistence lifestyle as
a hunter -gatherer with primitive tools. The
robots would no longer allow you. You can hunt,
but you have to make your own bows and arrows.
We're like, what? I can't possibly do that. So
they're going to see us as pets. Yeah, they're
going to treat us the way I want to treat elephants.
So I want elephants to exist in a contained ecosystem
where they live naturally. And they're going
to say, you can't have cars anymore. You can't
have any of these things. Well, that's a good
point there, isn't it? So all the stuff I've
been reading at the moment about AI is saying
that AI won't wipe us out because it will see
us in the way we see animals and the way we see
pets. We think you're sweet and stupid, but we
like having you around. We'll tolerate you. Is
that the way it's going to go? I think we're
going to be forced to integrate. In what way?
Integrate technologically. Like, I think we already
are. Like, Elon's famously made the point that
you're already a cyborg. You have your phone
that you just carry around with you everywhere.
And then with Neuralink, it'll be inside your
body. And then whatever. I wouldn't. I'm not
letting that happen. You won't in the beginning.
The first iterations, a lot of people won't.
But if it makes your life measurably better and
it's a simple procedure that's non -invasive,
you know, it's like a simple thing that they
plug in to the back of your head. Well, I'd be
like a cyborg warrior. Is that what you're saying?
Well, you would probably be connected to artificial
intelligence and it would greatly enhance your
cognitive function and greatly enhance your access
to information. It would be instantaneous. You
would no longer have to read. You would just
have all the information. It would just completely
change the way you store information because
you would probably have some sort of an external
hard drive that connects to you. It would be
something where your memory is no longer fallible,
but it's now infallible. Okay. It's going to
be a perfect 4K memory or 8K memory. You're going
to be able to rewind. I mean, wasn't that an
episode of Dark Mirror where they rewind their
memories? What is this? You sent me that bot
thing that was going around this week. Oh, did
you see this week? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is
what we're talking about. So this is a new twist
on it. I think if this is real, because grain
of salt could be bullshit. I'll just say that.
Like the Odyssey thing? Yeah. But if this is
real, these bots have made a website where the
other bots can rent a human to do tasks that
the bots cannot physically do. Well, that's slavery.
No, renting. It's like jobs. You're renting a
human being. A human has put themselves on this
website. Oh, humans put themselves on it. For
abilities to do whatever they want. It's like
gig... Economy. Yeah, get paid your way, robot
bosses. Is this the thing where - Here's the
stuff that they need done. The robots are inventing
their own language that we can't read. It's on
this website, right? Meet space tasks. Yeah,
that's again, whether or not someone could have
made this site to try to go viral, I'll just
go with a grain of salt with that. Yeah. But
they might not have in the box. Meet space. Rentahuman
.ai is fun. Okay. That's fun. Well, you know,
so - The other thing is real, though, right?
The AI chat room where these AI agents have joined
and announced. Yes and no. Yes and no? What do
you mean? Some of it, they are creating a space,
but I've already seen places where people are
taking advantage of it for viral reasons. For
instance, let's just assume it's real. There
was a polymarket bet that one of these bots would
sue. So someone actually just went ahead and
filed a lawsuit on behalf of their bot and made
it look like the bot did the thing. Oh, so they
could win the polymarket bet? Yeah, exactly.
How regulated is that polymarket stuff? Because
it seems like you could get away with a lot.
It depends how much money is available. As far
as I know, it's just like if I put up $20 for
a bet now, there's only $20 in the market. So
that's all that exists. And more people have
to back it up to make more money involved. Right,
but if you have something where you have inside
knowledge of it, is there any regulation? There's
supposed to be rules on the bet. So if I create
one of those rules, I think there's a caveat.
You can't have knowledge of it, and that can
cancel the bet. Or I think if they find out later,
I don't know. Do you go to jail? What happens?
I don't know. Jail, you probably just have to
lose back the bet, or you probably go to a civil
lawsuit or something like that. I don't know
about jail. Interesting. I don't know if it's
in law. You know, the UFC is plagued with this
issue. They actually canceled a fight recently
because there was suspicious betting. And so
there's been one fight. So here's the story.
One guy apparently was injured and his teammates
knew he was injured. And so everyone started
placing a bet. For him to lose in the first round.
Right. Because he apparently had a bad knee injury.
And so he knew that he couldn't fight. And so
the idea was, let's make a lot of money betting
on me because he was the favorite. He would go
in there or betting against me. And so he would
go in there and. throw a kick, fall down, injured,
get beat up, they'd stop the fight, and then
all these people that knew he was injured make
a ton of money. And he was in on it? Allegedly.
I just want to say allegedly. But it's enough
so that the team was removed from the UFC roster.
If you are competing for that team, you no longer
can fight in the UFC. You have to find a new
gym. The coach was no longer allowed to coach.
The fighter was banned. And so then the FBI got
involved and they said, well, there's a bunch...
of different fights that are suspicious. So then
a bunch of fighters came out and said, hey, somebody
offered me $70 ,000 to lose, and I said no. And
so then there was a fight recently between Michael
Johnson and Alexander Hernandez, which is a fight
I was really looking forward to, that was canceled
last minute. And I was like, what's going on?
They said suspicious betting activity. And so
someone was saying that Alexander Hernandez was
injured and a bunch of money came in on him to
lose. He was actually a favorite going into the
fight. And that therefore rigged it? Nope, didn't
rig it because the FBI was informed. I believe
they were informed, but the UFC was informed
and the UFC pulled the fight. They said, because
of this suspicious betting activity, because
a lot of late -minute money came in on this one
guy to win, we're going to pull this fight from
the card and not allow this fight to take place
and do a thorough investigation. Because something
seems wrong because of the previous fight that
they know was fixed. But fighters have been doing
that for ages, haven't they? That's a thing that
they've always done. How does that connect then
to the AI element that this website? Well, we
were talking about betting. Oh, I see. We were
talking about polymarket. We weren't talking
about AI. I was trying to connect the - Yeah,
yeah, yeah. We were talking about polymarket
bets and whether or not it's legal to have inside
information. I mean, I know that - Polymarket
privileged users made millions betting on war
strikes and diplomatic strategy. What did they
know beforehand? privileged users right so imagine
if you're someone who's an aide to the pentagon
you know you're working there and you know that
we are gonna bomb iran yeah and then there's
a polymarket thing about it no one else knows
okay okay yes you know that i mean that's been
going on forever though hasn't it people have
always done that they've always manipulated that's
a plot in pulp fiction isn't it where there's
a bruce willis's character Bets on something
he knows he's going to. He loses the fight deliberately.
He throws a fight. So that he can make the money
off it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah. That's always gone on. But this polymarket
thing is new because you can kind of, there's
Kalshi and then there's DraftKings has it now.
It's not actually gambling is the difference
here. You're speculating. Yeah, you're not taking
money from the book or the house or whatever.
betting against each other. Right. But the fact
that they know about it and they know it's happening,
that means they'll be able to crack down on it.
But I don't know because there's a lot of, there's
so many options and possibilities. Like, unless
you make a gigantic score and people start getting
suspicious, if you're not greedy about it and
you just kind of sneak around a little bit here
and a little bit there, I bet you could probably
make a lot of money doing that. But do you think
fighters and people like that and sports people
generally, I mean, they're too proud, aren't
they, to let something like that go just for
money? No. No, that's not true. Okay. Depends
on how much money they're making. Look, if you're
Anthony Joshua, I'd say, yeah, you're not going
to do that. You're very wealthy. But if you're
a guy who's on the undercard and you're only
getting $10 ,000 to fight, but someone's giving
you $100 ,000 to lose. Yeah. Okay. And you say,
okay, I'm just going to box shitty tonight. Guys
have done that forever. Yeah, I guess so. Just
don't knock this guy out. Whatever you do, carry
him or carry him to the 10th round. Yeah. You
know, there's a lot of that going on where they
say, I have a bet that you're going to knock
him out in the 10th round. So knock him out in
the 10th round only. I don't think you'll ever
be able to stop that. No. If that's going to
happen. No, I don't think so either. I mean,
that's gone on forever. Yeah, yeah. But isn't
fighting like a kind of vocation, like a creative
vocation for a lot of people? Well, it is creative.
Believe it or not, because movement is creative.
When you're fighting, you're not just running
at each other. Some guys do. But the really good
guys don't just run at each other in charge.
There's feints and deception. There's movement.
There's certain things that they're doing where
they're reading your movement and trying to guide
you in a particular direction and set you up.
I can believe it. Boxers call it setting traps.
Yeah. It's like playing you've got a bluff. Yes.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's a lot of feinting
involved. fighting there's a lot of like fake
movement to get you to react and they kick you
when you settle in you know there's it's it's
really creative you know it's just why like was
it faye dunaway no was it who was it that said
you know that the older woman that said and we're
talking about the arts and i don't mean mixed
martial arts god what like a kind of snobbish
thing about then close no it wasn't her it was
the lady from bridges of madison county who was
that That's Meryl Streep. Meryl Streep. That's
who it was. Yeah, Meryl Streep said that. It
pissed off so many martial arts people. Why?
That Meryl Streep doesn't like that? She's not
talking about mixed martial arts. Who thought
you were? Who thought you were, Meryl? That's
crazy. I don't know. She's pretty versatile.
But also, even though it's violent, you think
it's not art. Just because you don't understand
it. If you understood it, it is art. And it is,
in fact, like a beautiful... Some performances
are beautiful. Well, it's choreography, right?
Yeah. In a way. Well, it's not choreography at
all. It's ad -libbing in the moment. I mean,
there's pre... conceived motions that you have
that you're hoping that if the guy does this
you're going to do that and sometimes it works
out yeah but it's like the poetry of movement
of a really sublime fighter like you know Anderson
Silva in his prime yeah it was beautiful to watch
you know I believe you you know my I have very
limited experience of this. I did Kung Fu when
I was 12, and I stopped because I got so bruised.
I got so hurt. I was too cowardly. But, you know,
people impose their own standards on other people
and their own ideas of what things are, you know,
from the outside. And, you know, it's kind of
silly. Oh, Joe, I was going to tell you about
this Berkeley thing. Oh, yeah, that's right.
We got sidetracked. We got onto elephants. But
I think that... It was a natural segue because
I think this encapsulates all of the stuff you
were talking about, which is that I was going
to this, basically, Charlie Kirk's tour. It was
meant to go on. Berkeley was the last date. And
Rob Schneider had agreed to do it. And apparently
he'd said to Charlie, you know, what's the craziest
place you could take me to? And he said, Berkeley.
Berkeley's going to be the craziest. Let's do
that. So he was already booked to do it. After
what happened with Charlie. Rob asked me if I'd
come along as well. So we'd be on a panel. And
I had no idea of the extent of the problem, right?
And I'm sure you know a lot more than I do. But
I turned up. We turned up and there were men
with guns. We were in an SUV under the ground.
We got into this venue. And suddenly the security
starts showing me footage from outside. And it's
like a war zone. People are throwing smoke bombs.
They're trying to... Crash through the railings.
Some guy gets beaten up. He's covered in blood
because he was wearing a T -shirt with Turning
Point written on it. And I'm suddenly realizing,
you know what? This is a fantasy world that we're
now occupying. We're now occupying a world where
the people outside think the world is this. And
what's going on inside is completely disconnected
from it. And I actually found it quite depressing.
Because when I was sitting on stage talking to
Rob and Peter Boghossian and Frank Turek, these
people of completely different viewpoints, we're
just having a chat outside. They're smashing
things. They're screaming. They're saying that
fascists have overrun the university. And I'm
thinking, just to come back to that point you
made about, you know, that need for discussion.
That experience made me think, actually, now
what's happening is we're living in two separate
worlds at the same time. And we can't see what
the other side is, what the intentions of the
other side are. And I don't know how you resolve
that. I think that, to me, sort of encapsulated
the entire problem. Well, at this point, it's
going to be very difficult to resolve. And I
honestly think it's going to take a generation
to work through it. But isn't it as simple as
people learning what the word fascist means,
for instance? It's not just that. It's like they
firmly believe that they are trying to fight
against something that is going to destroy democracy
in this country, which is conservative values.
But we had that with the No Kings. So there's
a No Kings march. And I couldn't figure that
out. I was trying to figure out what are they?
This is an elected leader. Well, you know, it's
all organized, right? You know, this is all funded.
I don't know. Okay, it is. So this was. Mike
Benz's point when he was talking about the defunding
of USAID and what they use that money for. NGOs
get a bunch of money and they fund a bunch of
things, particularly in other countries, where
they're essentially making it look like there's
these on -the -ground street protests that are
very organic. But it's not. It's very organized
and it's very funded. And the idea is to start
chaos. So I've seen people get caught out, people
who are clearly being paid, who appear at various
different... It's not just that. It's also email
campaigns. It's indoctrinating people into this
particular ideology by supporting universities.
So you fund it in advance. So it's like decades
of – this is – I'm sure you've seen the Russian
guy from 1984, 1985, Yuri Bezmenov talking about
… Remind me. You've never seen it? I don't think
I've seen it. It's a wonderful video because
it shows you exactly what happened, how they're
going to introduce Marxism and Leninism into
universities, and then it'll indoctrinate children,
and then those children will be poisoned, and
within one generation, it'll ruin the United
States' entire educational system. So that's
the long march. Yeah, that's the long march.
But you should watch a little bit of this because
it's crazy. Back then, I remember the 1980s.
That would be a crazy idea. No, universities
are where people have free thought and discussion.
It's very important. I was in a very left -leaning
place at the time. I was living in Boston. There
were probably more universities per capita than
anywhere else in the country, at least at the
time. It was a very well -read city. The idea
that universities are going to destroy the way
human beings interact and debate. But this guy
was talking about this back then that the Soviets
had planned this in advance and that they had
essentially subverted our entire education system
and thereby those people would leave those schools
indoctrinated and enter into the workforce with
these new ideas in universal acceptance that
these ideas are correct. And then it would in
turn. you know, the butterfly effect. But do
you think that everyone, I don't, I can't be
sure that it's as conspiratorial as that because
there must be a lot of, you know, people who
just got on board with this without... Well,
there's a lot of money involved in doing this.
Right. There's a lot of funds that have come
from China. There's a lot of money that has been
donated to these universities. Like, find that
video. Weirdly, okay, I found it, but there's
like a second version on Twitter I've never seen
before. An AI moderated one. No, no. He's now
in a wig. Oh, I recognize him. So listen to what
he says. is spent on espionage as such. The other
85 % is a slow process which we call either ideological
subversion or active measures, in the language
of the KGB, or psychological warfare. What it
basically means is to change the perception of
reality of every American to such an extent that
despite of the abundance of information No one
is able to come to sensible conclusions in the
interests of defending themselves, their families,
their community and their country. It's a great
brainwashing process which goes very slow and
is divided in four basic stages. The first one
being demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20
years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years?
Because this is the minimum number of years which
requires to educate one generation of students
in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology
of the enemy. In other words, Marxism -Leninism
ideology is being pumped into the soft heads
of at least three generations of American students
without being challenged or counterbalanced by
the basic values of Americanism, American patriotism.
The result? the result you can see most of the
people who graduated in 60s dropouts or half
-baked intellectuals are now occupying the positions
of power in the government civil service business
mass media educational system you are stuck with
them you cannot get rid of them they are contaminated
they are programmed to think and react to certain
stimuli in a certain pattern you cannot change
their mind even if you if you expose them to
authentic information even if you prove that
white is white and black is black you still cannot
change the basic perception and the logic of
behavior in other words these people the process
of demoralization is complete and irreversible
to get rid society of these people you have you
need another 20 or or 15 years to educate a new
generation of patriotically minded and common
-sense people who would be acting in favor and
in the interests of the United States society.
And yet these people who've been programmed and,
as you say, in place and who are favorable to
an opening with the Soviet concept, these are
the very people who would be marked for extermination
in this country? Most of them, yes, simply because
the psychological shock when when they will see
in future what the what the beautiful society
of equality and social justice means in practice
obviously they will revolt they they will they
will be very unhappy frustrated people and the
marxist leninist regime does not tolerate these
people they obviously they will join the links
of dissenters dissidents Unlike in present United
States, there will be no place for dissent in
future Marxist -Leninist America. Here you can
get popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy rich
like Jane Fonda for being dissident, for criticizing
your Pentagon. In future, these people will be
simply squashed like cockroaches. Nobody is going
to pay them nothing for their beautiful, noble
ideas of equality. This they don't understand
and it will be greatest shock for them, of course.
The demoralization process in the United States
is basically completed already for the last 25
years. Actually, it's over -fulfilled because
demoralization now reaches such areas where previously
not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts
would even dream of such a tremendous success.
Most of it is done by Americans to Americans,
thanks to lack of moral standards. As I mentioned
before, exposure to true information does not
matter anymore. A person who was demoralized
is unable to assess true information. The facts
tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with
information, with authentic proof, with documents,
with pictures. Even if I take him by force to
the Soviet Union and show him concentration camp,
he will refuse to believe it until he is going
to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When a military
boot crashes, then he will understand. But not
before that. That's the tragic of the situation
of demoralization. Okay. Yeah, pretty fucking
accurate. Well, he's describing the situation
as it is at the moment, right? And he's describing
it in 1984. However, that doesn't prove that
intention to create that kind of chaos, that
it was implemented and executed in the way that
he describes. He's described the outcome. He's
a KGB agent. Yeah, but... I suppose what I mean
by that is... He's talking about a program that
they implemented. So they had actual people in
universities, planted in universities to deliberately
execute this idea. Yeah, and they planned it
in advance. This is what he was saying. And he's
saying this before we even realized that it happened.
I agree that's scary. It is scary because it
did happen. But that doesn't fully explain why
it caught on. Why did academics who were clearly
not plants... Why did they catch on with this
stuff? Well, they don't live in the fucking real
world. This is the problem with academics. They
go right from universities to teaching positions.
I mean, they don't have any real world experience.
I mean, this whole idea of the long march through
the institutions is there in Rue de Deutschke.
It was said, we're going to do this. We're going
to infiltrate the major organizations, institutions,
the church. We're going to, over a very long
period of time, change society in the way that
we want to see it. I think what's happened is,
I think that intention was there. I think what
he's saying is very eerily describing what's
happening now, the demoralization and the detachment
from truth. But I don't think it necessarily
came about As systematically as that. How do
you think it came about? Well, for one thing,
I think what we're facing now isn't quite the
template that Marx would have had in mind, right?
Because for one thing, there's no emphasis on
class or money or the economy or anything. Well,
insofar as Marxism has become about group identity
in terms of the left. Right, but eat the rich
is a giant mantra that people chant in the streets.
That's true. They're trying to tax billionaires.
But it's incoherent because it's from people
who've got money. money. It's from the upper
middle classes. It doesn't have to be coherent.
It's all just something, a narrative that you
give the unwashed masses and then they run with
it. Well, I wonder whether it caught on partly
through what became fashionable, what became
trendy, but also because any ideology says to
you, you don't have to do any thinking anymore.
You can outsource that to us. You've got a set
of rules. Right. And these are the rules that
you've got. People love that. Well, it's why
you've got people who are, well, it's why you've
got queers for Palestine. Right. You know, that
can only exist when you're following a set of
rules and not thinking about it for two seconds.
Right. That's a wonderful group. I actually thought
that was fake when I first heard about it, which
must be about five years ago. You've seen the
other meme. I thought it was unreal. Have you
seen that meme? Which one? Queers for Palestine
and then Palestine for queers. Oh, and I imagine.
And they're throwing people off routes. Of course
they are. Of course they are. I just say go and
do, go, go, go there. And see what you see, see
what you experience. Go there as a man in a dress
wearing lipstick with a beard. Good luck. Yeah,
I just did a Titania tweet of a drag queen touring
the Middle East. And she's, you know, she's touring
all these venues. And she's got this sort of
Palestine dress and the sort of the glam kind
of Arabic look. It's like, just go there and
see what happens. But that kind of cognitive
dissonance can only work if you are. Right. If
you are. ideologically driven. And I think, so
I suppose what I mean is I think the appeal of
ideology is what explains, not a kind of, we've
implanted these agents here. They're going to
lead to this. They're going to lead to this.
It has to also be complicity. Of course, but
that comes from implanting ideas. Those ideas
take hold and then groupthink takes it from there.
But isn't it a shame that universities of all
places, the place where you go to be challenged
and the place where you go, I mean, I was thinking
that when I was at Berkeley and, I was sitting
on the stage and there's all these men with guns
all around the theatre because, of course, what
happened with Charlie? And I'm thinking, it's
like the end of the Blues Brothers, you know,
where you're on stage and all the people are
waiting. It felt weird. And I thought, this is
not what a university is or should be. And the
other thing that I thought is a lot of those
people outside protesting. weren't students they'd
sort of come in they'd been bussed in so maybe
that feeds into what you were saying about you
know this is 100 planned and how are they getting
bussed in who's funding them Right. People are
paying a lot of money to do that. Right. And
they're doing it all over the country. To what
end? They did it during the presidential elections.
Yeah. During the presidential elections, they
were tracking cell phones from place to place.
Right. And they realized that there was a group
of people that were paid attendees at Kamala
Harris's rallies. Oh, yeah. I remember that.
So they were getting paid. Their job was to show
up and cheer for Kamala Harris. Do you think
fundamentally, then, the Democrats are anti -democratic?
I think fundamentally anybody that doesn't have
organic support is going to figure out a way
in this environment to drum it up. And if you
can do that through a service or if you can do
that through an NGO or if you can do that through
a company that will hire people to show up at
your rallies, they do it because they want to
win and they want to get into a position of power.
And one of the things that we do find with Trump
is that it actually turns out the president can
do a lot. Yeah. And we used to think that they
were kind of handcuffed and they weren't able
to do as much and that's why nothing ever got
done. Turns out that doesn't seem to be true.
You get a maniac in office, you can kind of get
away with a lot of things. You can do a lot of
different things. That's what we sort of need
in the UK. We need someone to come in and strip
away. What we need, what Besmanoff was saying,
is that we need to... Kind of a whole generation
that teaches that being patriotic and having
morals and ethics is actually a good thing. Yeah,
and that free speech is important and that to
Be able to debate ideas is essential to any sort
of true Society that considers itself an elevated
Absolutely. Modern version of what we hoped for
when this country was founded. Yeah. It wasn't
founded on the idea that it's you have to adhere
to one ideology. And this ideology thinks that
gender is not real and no one can answer what
a woman is. That's crazy. That's become popular.
Well, we see in America, like America is the
kind of life raft of the world. You've got all
these things built into your political system.
And that's why it's so scary when you see people.
Do you remember the vice presidential debate
between J .D. Vance and Tim Walz? And Tim Walz
said that the First Amendment doesn't cover hate
speech. It doesn't cover misinformation. He's
a dangerous fuck. That's scary. If the guy who
might be vice president is saying, actually,
we're going to strip out all of this stuff. Also,
just the way he behaves is so odd. The way he
waves and runs on stage, it's all just so fake
and performative. I don't know any men like that
that aren't dangerous. Why was he picked? Probably
because of the Minnesota stuff. It probably had
something to do with what he was allowing to
happen in Minnesota. They were probably making
a ton of money. Right, okay, maybe. There's a
reason why he had to resign. I mean, I'm clearly
speculating. I have no idea. Moron when it comes
to politics, but what I would what I would assume
is that the For sure, he was informed of this
fraud long in advance. If it wasn't for that
Nick Shirley kid in those videos, and apparently
Nick Shirley had been informed by the GOP there
that this was all going on. So this gets exposed.
It gets into the public zeitgeist. It becomes
a huge news story. It's not a coincidence that
the riots break out in the exact same place where
all this fraud is being exposed because ICE is
everywhere. They're all over the place, but it's
not. The most violent interactions are the interactions
that are happening in the place where the most
fraud has been publicly exposed. Yeah. It's all
by design. There's something very scary about
it. Yeah. And so this guy knew about it in advance.
How do we know? Well, one way we know. is because
he's resigning. So there must be something. Right,
there's something. He's not running for governor
again. He was in the process of running for governor.
He's decided to step out of public office entirely
now. So maybe they told him, if you do not step
out, you are going to be prosecuted. We know
what you did. Or maybe he's going to fucking
turn state's evidence. Who fucking knows? Imagine
if he'd have won, him and Kamala Harris, if they
would have been in charge. Oh, God. I don't think
I would have come here. What if Elon doesn't
buy Twitter and Kamala... Harris wins and Tim
Walz is our vice president. But doesn't that
just tell you how fragile freedom is? How close
you are? Very fragile. And that's why people
support Donald Trump and the people that think
that they support him because he's a racist and
all these different things. No, no, no. They
support it because it's an alternative to what
we all saw coming. No one's excited that ICE
is killing people in the streets. No one likes
that. No, of course not. You'd have to be fucking
insane if you think those people should be just
getting shot like that. That's nuts. But what
they don't want is what the government was previously
doing. They had a completely open border. They
were busing people into swing states. They were
trying to pretend that this was all organic.
And it's not. It's not. They had a plan. And
they did it in a sneaky way where they looked
like the really kind, ethical, equitable and
inclusive. Right. But that's the woke story all
over again. Exactly. It was the woke stories
applied to geopolitics. It was the woke stories
applied to the whole political process in this
country was dependent upon the census, which
the census doesn't count citizens. The census
just counts humans. And so you get more congressional
seats. You get more electoral points. The whole
thing is nuts. I mean, I like to think that not
all Democrats are into that. Not all Democrats
are about the power for its own sake. Of course
not. But the problem is it's a party. If you
work for a corporation and you're a good person,
but the corporation is polluting a river in Guatemala,
there's a diffusion of responsibility because
you're a part of a giant system. And, hey, I'm
just an accountant. I go to work and I do my
thing for Exxon or Mobil or whatever it is. Well,
I'd say for however messy all of this has become
in the U .S., at least you have had some sort
of attempt to strip out the very stuff that that
guy was talking about. The fact that the civil
service is all one way, the fact that the machinery
of government, that was the plan, right? So the
machinery of government works in a certain way.
So there's no democratic means of getting rid
of it. There's no way to change it. Well, I think
the counter to that is the education that the
Internet provides. And that's where they didn't
anticipate in 1984. So the education that the
Internet provides is untethered. But then the
internet tells us that... Christopher Nolan's
just made a film with the Black Helen of Troy,
and he hasn't. It produces all sorts of unsavory
things, too. But it also allows the distribution
of information that would be impossible through
normal means. If these people are, as he said,
in control of major media, which they were, in
control of universities, which they are, and
then it goes on to be the only way people get
information, now your information is very heavily
filtered, and then all that stuff works. But
that's why the technology... in the EU, why ideologues
generally are against internet or they want to
censor it. That's why Macron is trying to stop
X in France. Or whoever's trying to stop it.
So the EU, the head of the EU commission is Ursula
von der Leyen. Did you hear her? It's a great
name, by the way. Well, yeah, it's a sexy name,
right? Yeah. She's unelected. The European Commission
is an unelected body that sets the legislative
agenda of all these European countries. Absolutely
crazy. You can't vote them out. She did a speech
last May where she said, and I'm not joking about
this, she said that misinformation was like a
virus and you need to inoculate yourself against
the virus. And the phrase she used is not debunking,
pre -bunking. So pre -bunking is her idea of
what you do with misinformation. What she means
is censorship. But pre -bunking is the most sinister.
That's crazy. If you were to say, I'm going to
come up with the most Orwellian, sort of Dark
Lord kind of sith. Pre -bunking. Pre -bunking.
Yeah, that's like fucking minority report, right?
Pre -crime. I don't know what the... Because
I know that there's this free speech debate opening
up between the US and Europe generally. Like,
you know when J .D. Vance came over to Munich
and gave that talk to all the European leaders
and said, you've got to stop censoring your people.
You've got to stop running away from voters.
And they were shocked. Yeah. And they were horrified.
But he was dead right. He was dead right. And
he should... And you know what? People on the
left should admit that he's dead right as well.
But there's something about Europe, right? There's
something about, like I think over here, coming
over here, I get the sense that even if most
left -leaning people as well as right -leaning
people do value free speech as a kind of shared
value. And in Europe, it's not that. There's
a real sense of we can't trust the masses. Because
I know that the EU is seen as this big lefty
thing, which it absolutely is not. The EU is
a body that wants to censor. It's citizens. It's
a body that tells people you can have a referendum,
but if you get it wrong, we're going to make
you vote again. It's not a democratic organization.
So no wonder Vance is sort of and Trump is at
loggerheads with this body because you've got
these. We in the UK have a authoritarian leader,
Keir Starmer, the prime minister. He couldn't
be further away from the American ideal of free
speech. He introduced this online safety bill.
Which is basically, this is why a lot of tweets
in the UK, if you go to the UK now, a lot of
the tweets will come up saying this is potentially
harmful content. So we're screening it out. You
know, they're trying to get rid of juries for
certain trials. They did get rid of juries. They
already did. And that's particularly dangerous
because some of those cases are for speech crime.
Right. So I'll give you an example. There was
a Royal Marine called Jamie Michael who had made
a video just saying we need to peacefully protest
against the migration issue. They took him to
court for stirring up racial hatred. But the
jury is what let him off. It was the jury that
saved him. In this new system, there wouldn't
be a jury there. And he would be in prison. Yeah.
And most certainly would be in prison. So I kind
of feel like, and we've got Keir Starmer now
for another three years. Every decision that
he makes is about not trusting the public, censoring
what they think. If he could get rid of X, he
absolutely would. Is it possible that someone
sensible could win in three years? Or is the
system so deeply entwined in the ideology of
the English people that it's just stuck? This
is what I think about that. Because I look at
America and I think, in a way, you had your culture
war election because of Trump, right? Yeah. I
mean, a lot of people say the culture war doesn't
matter. Of course it does. Of course it matters.
Did you see about that, the advert that the GOP
put out, you know, Kamala Harris is for they,
them, Trump is for you. That was the slogan.
It was about the Democrats wanting to fund transgender
surgery for prisoners. And Donald Trump's team
had this advert, Kamala Harris for they, them,
Donald Trump is for you. That actuated a 2 .7
shift in favor of Donald Trump among everyone
who saw it. It was a major success. That just
shows that. These issues, these cultural issues,
people do care. Oh, they care. And people do
vote. But you had a way in America to vote that
stuff out through Trump, right? We've never had
that. But they barely had a way. Like, if they
had more time, they wouldn't have. You mean if
the Democrats had come? Yeah, absolutely. If
the Democrats won this time and then they try
to do it again in 2028. Elon was really adamant
about that during the last election. Like, this
might be the last real election we have if you
don't stop this now, because they have an open
border. And in the last four years, they've pulled
10, at least 10 million people into this country.
And they've changed the electoral map. And then
on top of that, there was both Schumer and Nancy
Pelosi openly talking about letting these people
vote. openly talking about giving these people
a path to citizenship. And they had already put
them on Medicaid. They had already put them on
Social Security. They were giving them EBT cards.
They were housing them at the Roosevelt Hotel
in New York City. They were giving them money
and helping them get to these states. They were
flying them through into America and putting
them in these places because they were trying
to get voters. So another four years. Another
four years, they might have had it completely
locked up. You know, that's what the Democrats
have said about the Republicans. I mean, Oprah
Winfrey was saying this might be the last election
we have if we don't vote for Kamala Harris. Meanwhile,
Oprah Winfrey had Donald Trump on her show years
ago and was asking him to be president. Yeah,
they were mates, weren't they? Oh, yeah. Look,
they all get captured. They all get captured
by groupthink and ideology and they all get captured
by money and protecting it and who's going to
protect them. But we don't have that safety valve
in the UK. So, like I say, you were able to,
for all the imperfections, you were able to vote
in an administration that was actually going
to rip out. That whatever you call it. It showed
the system is better. It showed the system is
better. Even though the system was trying to
get rigged, enough people revolted against it.
Yes. But look at the ideas that you're attaching
to this administration. Like, look, the ICE stuff
is horrific. The people getting shot. It's horrific.
We all agree to that. There's a lot of the authoritarian
aspects. It's horrific. But what they've stopped
is all of this illegal immigration. They've stopped
all the illegal. Immigration, legal immigration
is still available. And then what they've also
done is investigate literally billions of dollars
in fraud. And they're uncovering it over and
over and over and over again. So there was obviously
crime that was going on that was not being addressed
by the previous party. And this is one of the
reasons why they didn't want the Republicans
getting in in the first place. So they still
have to label them in the most horrific ways
possible, accentuate all the negative aspects
of what's going on with the ICE stuff. Not talk
at all about the economy taking an uptick. Not
talk at all about GDP. Not talk at all about
tariffs being effective. Not talk at all about
any of the positive things. Stopping wars. He
stopped wars in multiple different countries.
Stop conflicts. No one's talking at all in an
objective sense. This is a Nazi party. These
are fascists. We have to have no kings. Stop
the fascists. So these narratives are just being...
pushed out there constantly by the media, all
the while these politicians are absolutely terrified
that these investigations are going to start
moving into their states and uncovering more
and more and more fraud, which they're going
to. I mean, I know you say it's so reckless,
though, I think, as well for the Democrats to,
like you say. Paint ice as Nazis. Talk about
that this is the equivalent of the Gestapo. I
think someone used that phrase. I mean, what
you're saying about the shootings, obviously,
we all agree it's absolutely horrific. Any kind
of situation where the police inflict that kind
of violence on someone needs to be thoroughly
investigated and looked into and all the rest
of it. But I'm concerned about the politicians
I know. Go there. Get in the way of federal agents
while they're enforcing the law. They're just
trying to be popular. But they're putting people's
lives at risk. But it's, again, that chess move
again, giving up the rook or attacking a rook
and giving up your queen because you just want
the current victory. Well, it's working insofar
as the public is turning against Trump because
of what's happening with ICE. There's certainly
a lot of that. Yeah, there's certainly a lot
of that. The narrative is out there. But it's
dependent upon how far it goes. Yeah. Right.
They've got to de -escalate this violence. Yes.
They've got to make sure that that. But you also
need support of local police. You can't have
people attack the hotels where these ICE people
are staying and have no support whatsoever by
the police. That's crazy. They're being told
to stand down. So this is messy stuff. Yeah.
But look how hard it was. I mean, you talk about
how, you know, Trump has come in and he stripped
away all this stuff and this fraud. But that
was, he didn't do it in the first term. It's
only when he got to the second term and it was
planned. And he had Doge set up and he had Musk
in place. And all of this deep state stuff could
be identified and stripped out and worked on.
He had a lot of deep state people in his cabinet
the first term. Right. He didn't know. So he
couldn't work against it. Right. But we can't,
in the UK, just to sort of explain where I think
we are there. We can't do that because we have
– the two major parties are both ideologically
in lockstep effectively, right? So, I mean, most
of the woke stuff was pushed through the conservative
party. They were in power for 13 years. They're
ostensibly right -wing. They pushed through the
woke stuff? They pushed through all the gender
self -recognition stuff. Why do you think the
conservatives did that? So the why is a good
question. So the prime minister, Theresa May,
conservative prime minister at the time, she
said in her autobiography, I'm woke and proud.
Can you imagine Trump saying that? It's the equivalent.
It's the equivalent. So I think it's because
something about this ideology infected every
side of the political aisle, particularly in
the UK. What might happen now in the UK is reform
are probably going to win the next election.
That's in three years' time. And that's so seismic
because it will blow apart this two -party system
that we've got. That probably couldn't happen
in America, right? You probably couldn't get
a third party that can win. We have a third party
that can win. That's new. Really? And we haven't
had that. For a long, long, long, long time.
But what is the possibility that it could win?
You think it's 50 -50? Look at it this way. We've
been sort of veering massively from, you know,
the conservatives under Boris Johnson won this
mad, mad majority, like 80 seat majority. And
they could do whatever they want and they squandered
it. People were so resentful of what happened
with Johnson, who, by the way, let in so more
migration than illegal migration than we've ever
had. Right. Did he do that for cheap labor? Probably.
I mean, I think that's certainly part of it.
Certainly that's part of it. That's a problem
that conservatives don't want to admit that they
were. You know, I had a conversation with a very
prominent politician who explained to me that
he had a conversation with a guy who was a CEO
of a corporation that didn't want to stop the
flow of illegal immigration because he wanted
cheap labor. He was flabbergasted. He was like,
I can't fucking believe this guy's saying this
out loud. It's worse with Johnson because in
their manifesto, they pledged not to do it. So
they had a promise. They call it the Boris wave.
So that's how bad it was. And then you have Starmer
and the Labour Party who are just as bad, if
not worse. And, you know, we have a situation
where it's unmanageable now. And reform, this
third party, Nigel Farage's party, is saying,
no, we're actually going to tackle this. And,
of course, ultimately what happens is the public,
they reach a tipping point and they say. By the
way, Starmer is the least popular prime minister
on any opinion poll ever in the history of records.
He's gone from a massive majority to nothing
because he's been so useless on all of this stuff,
because he's been so captured by the ideology,
because he doesn't care about migration, because
he said that anyone who was concerned about the
grooming gang scandal was jumping on a bandwagon
of the far right. That's what he said. So all
of this has happened, but you can't blame the
left. It's the left and the right. It's both
of them. It's why they call it the uni party.
It's the same thing. So you need something else
to come along and explode it. What do you think
the possibility of Farage winning? Pretty high.
If it were today, he'd win. If he didn't get
whacked between now and then. Do you guys whack
people over there very often? Less than here.
I think it's more an American thing. It's a lot
easier. A lot more guns over here. There's a
lot more guns. Fingers crossed, obviously, that
won't happen. If it was today, he'd win. I mean,
he could mess things up. Something crazy could
happen. Get caught with a live boy or a dead
girl. Something like that. But I think with Starmer,
people are just sick of it. He has continually
backtracked on all his promises. He's not interested.
He dismisses people's concerns about immigration.
He dismisses people concerned about the mass
rape of children in the grooming gang scandal.
They had to be dragged kicking and screaming
to do an inquiry about that. They didn't want
to do it. They're so terrified of being called
racist ultimately, so they let this thing slide.
So I think people are just sick of it. I think
people have reached the point where even I think
people who don't like Nigel Farage will hold
their nose and vote for a third party to explode
the system. And maybe we might be able to reset
after that. Maybe something could happen. One
of the things that's interesting in America is
a lot of young people are becoming conservative.
That is interesting. Yeah. It's interesting because
I think that's a force of the Internet. And being
a conservative more today is more like being
a rebel. Yeah. It's like bucking this system.
Whereas it used to be that if you were a rebel,
you were left wing. You were like you're a hippie.
Yeah. You know, and that's not really the case
anymore because the system that has power is
a system that is pushing this one very particular
ideology that. also demonizes young males. Hugely.
Yeah. But that's also why I don't think it's
about left and right anymore. I think one of
the things about the culture war is it kind of
killed off left and right. Like I say, in the
UK, we couldn't vote this out. We had a right
-wing party. It didn't make a difference. The
left -wing party makes it worse. We had a prime
minister, you know, Keir Starmer on radio saying
that 99 .9 % of men, women don't have a penis,
which means that there are... What is it, 35
,000 female penises out there? It's quite a lot,
if you can picture that image. So that's our
prime minister saying this crazy... Our deputy
prime minister said on TV that you could grow
a cervix if you wanted. So that's David Lammy.
That sounds like I'm making that up. He said
that. You can check that. He said you could grow
a cervix. So these are the kind of people who
are in charge now. It's just all about their
fake... You know, fake ideology. Which is why
Internet censorship is so much more prominent
there. That's what's going to happen. No, that's
why they're going to absolutely try to do that.
Yeah, exactly. Well, they are doing it. Just
self -censorship by arresting people. There's
a lot of censorship involved in scare. Yeah.
Just in the fear of being arrested. But the problem
for reform will be, do they have the guts to
do what Trump did? Do they have the guts to come
in and say, look, we need to scrap the civil
service. Well, you can't scrap the civil service,
but you need to sort of bleed it dry. You need
to give it a good rinse, right? Because there
have been whistleblowers in the UK civil service
who've said, we're not going to do what the elected
politicians say. If they come in and say there's
an immigration problem, we're just going to stymie
that. We're not going to do what they want. We've
got police who are routinely investigating people
for their opinions. Just to put that into context,
by the way, if we're talking about this deep
state that we've got to clean out, our police
force... is trained by a body called the College
of Policing. They have been telling police for
years, it's your job to arrest people for what
they think and what they say. And the High Court
told them, you've got to stop this. You've got
to stop recording non -crime hate incidents.
Two Home Secretaries said to them, you've got
to stop recording non -crime hate incidents.
They ignored the courts. They ignored the government.
And that's the power of an ideologically captured
quango. You know, that's that's the problem.
So even when you even when you vote for a party
that's going to strip this stuff out, you still
have to do the actual hard work of stripping
out. I would abolish the College of Policing.
Do people know about non -crime hate incidents?
Do they do they know that this is a thing in
America? Do they know that that's what we do?
Not really. I mean, people are just aware that
there's a lot of arrests because of social media
posts. We don't we don't pay nearly as much attention
to the UK as the UK pays attention to American
politics. And that's fair enough. Because we're
a small island, that's fair enough. But what
I would say is it's worse than people think insofar
as the 12 ,000 arrested a year, that's horrific.
But with the police routinely checking up on
you if you commit non -crime, that's sort of
even worse, isn't it? The Scottish police have
a database of jokes that they've seen online
that they think are problematic and they've kept
this. The Scottish police introduced a hate crime
bill two years ago now, which can prosecute you
for things you say in your own house. There's
a section in that bill on... The public performance
of a play. So if a play is offensive, they can
arrest you. If you're the director or an actor
involved in the play and it's considered offensive,
they can arrest you. They set up when they when
they implemented that hate crime bill, they set
up hate crime reporting centers. So if you felt
offended, you could. And they converted like
there was a sex shop. I think there was a mushroom
farm. You could go report hate to the police
as and when it occurs. And this is coming from
the. The police force, the people who are supposed
to sustain authority and prevent criminality.
And you've seen the viral videos of police knocking
on people's doors saying, you said this thing
online. That's insane. So I think it's worse
than just the arrest. I think it's a rotten system
that is being trained by activists in the College
of Policing that no government will deal with.
They don't get rid of these activists. And the
activists, when they're told to stop it, they
carry on. The entire culture has to shift. That's
what I mean. Yeah. That's what I mean. You need
a politician to go in and say, scrap the college
policing, strip out all the activists within
the NHS, within the army, within the police,
within the Crown Prosecution Service. It also
has to get so bad that people realize how bad
it is and they need radical change. But I think
the grooming gangs did that. Yeah. I think the
fact that we effectively sacrificed thousands
of kids on the altar of ideology, the fact that
we said. You know, there were politicians, counselors,
doctors, social workers saying we don't want
to be called racist. So we're going to ignore
the sexual assault of children on a mass scale.
And that was not really thoroughly covered here
in America. Really? In mainstream news. I think
because Elon. No, online it was, but not in mainstream
news. So do people not generally know about that?
They know about it now. Right. But it wasn't
something that you would see every night on CNN.
Really? That's a huge story. But the power of
being called racist became so intense. I mean,
even, you know, that horrible bombing at the
Manchester Arena at the Ariana Grande concert.
In the subsequent report of what went wrong,
one of the security guards said he saw the perpetrator
with the rucksack and he didn't approach him
or apprehend him because he was afraid of being
called racist. That was the reason. And as a
result of that, two dozen children lost their
lives. The power of... of smearing someone as
racist is so potent, which is why I think here
in America, the word fascist, the word Nazi gets
thrown around so much because they know if someone
is so branded, you disoblige yourself from having
to engage with their ideas. They become this
kind of monster that you don't have to even think
about or worry about. And we're just, I think
we're just getting over that in the UK now where
the accusation of racism no longer really sticks.
I think people think it doesn't mean anything
anymore. And, you know, They've tried with reform.
They've tried saying that reform is a racist
party. It's a far right party. No one's buying
it anymore. And I think that's why hopefully
something can change. I think the grooming gangs,
I think the mass immigration, to the extent where
people now are at risk, they just are. Unvetted
people, many with criminal records. We don't
want to go the way of Sweden. I mean, you know
how bad Sweden's got, right? You know, Sweden
used to be the most high trust society in Europe,
low crime. They allowed mass immigration on a
scale they couldn't possibly contain. I think
it's now 20 % of Swedish population are now foreign
born. And predominantly they live in ghettos
where crime is rife. They didn't integrate. There
was no expectation they should integrate. And
as a result of that, it's gone from being one
of the safest countries in Europe to being the
country that has most gun and bomb attacks of
any country not at war except for Mexico. And
that's happened in the space of 10 years. Crazy.
It's an absolute tragedy. I remember when it
was going on, a Swedish stand -up friend of mine,
Tobias Pearson, texted me saying, there's grenades
going off in Stockholm. There's gunfire on my
street. And the politicians are doing nothing
about it. They're saying this doesn't matter.
I was in Sweden a couple of years ago. I was
talking to a bunch of, you know what Swedes are
like. They're very middle class, very, well,
not all of them, but very liberal. Not a racist
shred in their body. And they all came back to
the same story. They all wanted to discuss immigration.
And they all come back to the same thing. One
woman said to me, I got this wrong. We got this
wrong. Why do you think they did it? Good intentions,
first and foremost. Really? Really? You think
it's just good intentions to let all those people
in? Have you met Swedes? I have. They're so lovely.
Come on. It's happening in America. It's happening
in England. It's happening in the UK. Yes. It's
happening in Ireland. It's just good intentions
everywhere. Could it also be this delusion, this
idea? What you would call, I suppose, liberal
universalism, this idea that everyone is basically
the same. Everyone in every culture basically
wants the same things. It explains the queers
for Palestine phenomenon. You know, it doesn't
matter where you go. No, no, no. The queers for
Palestine phenomenon is explained by the Internet
and people being stupid and being in a bubble
where they never experienced those folks. I don't
think I think this is organized. I think it's
organized. I think the more chaos there is, the
more they can crack down on your rights. I know
you think it's organized. I'm not convinced of
that yet. I'm open to it. I mean, it's at one
point in time, it's fairly universal in Western
societies. But in Europe, yes. In America as
well. The last four years before Trump got into
office, that's what they were doing here. It
seems like a strategy. It doesn't seem as simple
as just good intentions. I know. Well, and that
does seem too simplistic. I absolutely agree
with that. You create more chaos. The more chaos
you have, the more laws you need. The more laws
you need, the more control you have. But speaking
to these people in Sweden, I mean, I was there.
It was an event where we were talking about a
book I'd written. So it was all about these issues.
And I was mingling and talking to them. And they
all wanted to talk about it. But they're the
citizens. They're not the people that implemented
those laws in the first place. That's where I'm
cynical. I think the people that implement those
laws in the first place, they know what they're
doing. Yes. Well, certainly they're aware of
the risks. I mean, if you take what happened
in Cologne, that New Year's Eve party, where
I think over 800 women were sexually assaulted
and the media didn't report it. And the government
wanted to sort of minimalize and say that this
wasn't real. It's not even just the risks. It's
the physical, actual, measurable consequences.
Yes, exactly. And they're not course correcting.
That, to me, leads me to think that they know
what they're doing. You don't think it could
just be complete naivety, this idea that... I
think it's the best way to combat the internet.
The best way to combat the internet is create
a massive amount of chaos and then crack down
on people's lives. I suppose what worries me
about it is that the assumption that it's all
sort of coordinated will take you down that route
where you start thinking, as some friends of
mine now think... The world is controlled by
a group of Satanists who sit in a room and they
choose the leaders. Do you know what I mean?
Well, I don't think it's Satanists, but I think
it's incredibly wealthy people. But why would
it be in their interest to destroy the economy
that so sustains them? Well, it depends on where
they are and who they are. But George Soros clearly
does that. And he's talked about it. He's talked
about enjoying destroying democracies and enjoying
destroying countries. He's kicked. He's not allowed
to go into certain countries. He makes money
doing it. But he relies on those democratic societies
to make, you know. Yeah, but they're still functional.
He just profits off of it largely. That's what
I struggle with, though. dream can't you can
it's subject to manipulation yeah and intelligent
evil people or at least amoral but this doesn't
this doesn't answer why people do vote for it
and they do i mean they do vote for it because
they've done a really good job of attaching it
And there's also this ideology thing. There's
left and right. And if you're left, you're blue
no matter who, blue to the grave. That's it.
And if anybody that votes red is a dirty racist
fascist and they think about it that way. And
we really have no option for a centrist party
in this country, which is where most people lie.
Most people lie in the middle. Most people are
very socially liberal. And most of the people
that I know that even identify as conservative,
they're very socially liberal. But they're financially
much more aligned with conservative ideology.
Sure. Well, I think ultimately, hopefully, the
brick wall of reality is what cures this. If
we don't destroy society along the way. If we
don't allow them to destroy society, we don't
completely erode all of our rights along the
way. And as you said earlier, you can get very
close to that happening. And rights lost are
never regained. Never. Look at Australia. They
had one mass shooting. They took their guns in
the 1990s. Then COVID came. They're like, get
in a fucking camp. Yeah. And they've just introduced
a new hate speech law off the back of the Bondi
Beach shooting. And of course, this. Again, it's
really draconian. It goes way too far. In fact,
I think the Australian hate speech law is basically
saying if someone does something that wasn't
intended to stir up hatred, but it could conceivably
have stirred up hatred among a theoretical group
or group of people, then it's a crime and you
can get five years in prison. Sure. And imagine
blaming that on hate speech instead of blaming
it on just letting wild, violent criminals emigrate
into your country. I mean, that's imagine. Yeah.
What an amazing gaslighting. Not saying, hey,
maybe we should stop letting violent criminals
enter into our country illegally and live here.
No, no, no. What we should start doing is taking
people that have done no crime whatsoever and
create their dissent, create a crime based on
their dissent. I totally agree. We had it in
the UK. We had a politician, horrible story,
a guy called David Amis. You know, he was stabbed
to death by an Islamist at his surgery. You know,
politicians, we call them surgeries where you
meet face to face your constituents. They come
and you talk about the local issues. I don't
think they do that in America. He stabbed him
to death. And then there was this parliamentary
debate about how can we crack down on free speech
online? Right. No, the problem was the knife
wielding maniac. The problem was gaslighting,
unchecked Islamism. I mean, it really is what
Besminov was saying. Yeah, it's that thing of
not addressing the – like after the – But not
seeing the truth. Not seeing the truth because
you've been captured. You've been demoralized.
But I think what's better now is that people
can see through that. So like when Keir Starmer
– after that horrible – I mentioned it earlier,
the girls who were killed in the dance class
by the guy who was a child of immigrants. His
response to that was, OK, let's not – you know,
deal with the fact that we've got radicalized
individuals within our community, young people.
He said, let's ban buying knives off Amazon.
Because the guy got the knife from Amazon, right?
You can also get them in shops, Keir. You can
walk in and get a shop. Most people have a kitchen
knife at home. It's like one of the most common
weapons. And he banned ninja swords around the
same time, which was a big blow to the ninja
community. But I kind of... So crazy. That's
the thing you go for. You choose the thing that
isn't. But this is the idea of allowing this
kind of chaos and having this be a coordinated
plan, right? The more chaos you have, the more
you gaslight people, the more people are attached
to an ideology, the more you can keep restricting
their rights further and further and further
until they're more and more frustrated, until
a lot of them just give up. But we are at a position
now where people are seeing through it all the
time. In the UK now, like no matter how much
they smear reform as far right, the polls just
keep going up and up and up. Right. But it's
because of the Internet, because you have at
least some dissenting voices. We have that. And
also the palpable absurdities of what the politicians
are trying to tell you is real. Right. That's
why they're trying to crack down on pub talk.
Oh, and by the way, you know, the Labour Party
has cancelled a number of local elections because
they know they're going to lose them. They've
actually cancelled them. Well, they've said they've
postponed them while they're reforming the system.
But it's stuff like that where... Get rid of
the juries, cancel elections, and they're the
good guys. And at that point, it doesn't matter
how much your propaganda or how much you think
your propaganda is going to work. The public
are going to see through that. And they say,
hang on a minute. You're saying that I can't
vote. You're saying if I end up in court, I may
not have a jury. You're saying I can't browse
through Twitter. You're saying I can't say the
wrong thing online. Enough is enough. And I think
they reach a point. where they say, and some
of the stories are so egregious, like, for instance,
the guy, have you heard of a guy called Hamit
Koskan? I think he's Armenian guy who burned
a copy of his Koran outside the Turkish embassy,
right? The idea of this was a protest against
the Turkish government because he perceives Erdogan's
government as, I suppose, supporting Islamism
and the rise of Islamism. So he protests outside
the thing, burns the Koran. Two people attack
him, one with a knife, the other, some Deliveroo
driver starts kicking him. He gets prosecuted
in the court of law for inciting the violence.
And the judge actually says, the fact that you
were attacked is proof that you were inciting
violence, right? It took the Free Speech Union
in the UK to have that overturned, to fight on
his behalf, to say, that's a peaceful protest.
It was his copy of his book. We don't have blasphemy
laws in the UK. But now the CPS, the Crown Prosecution
Service, is trying to overturn that because they
want to see this guy go down. And that is what
we're talking about. We've got bodies like the
Crown Prosecution Service saying, no, we want
an Islamic blasphemy code in the UK. The Labour
Party wants an official definition of Islamophobia.
So you can't criticize. You can't peacefully
protest. You can't burn a book that you bought,
you know, and all of that. And we're seeing this
happen in front of us. And people are just saying,
look, we believe in plurality. We believe in
freedom of religion. You should be able to, you
know, we've got nothing against Muslim people.
What we are objecting to is the idea that we
shouldn't be able to ridicule your religion or
mock your religion or protest against your religion.
And you're going to pathologize it by saying
we've got a sickness. We're Islamophobic. I think
people I think that case, the fact that you can't
burn. I mean, some kid in a school in Wakefield
accidentally scuffed a copy of his Koran and
he got hit with a non -crime hate incident. And
there was a big issue and the police got involved.
You know, we have to hold fast to this idea that.
No, no idea. No idea doesn't get criticized.
And so I just think the more stories like that
happen, maybe I'm naive, but I think the British
public's patience is kind of at the very end.
I hope so. I hope it's not too late. I really
do. But in the meantime, your book, The End of
Woke, it's available. Did you do the audio version
of it? I did. It took me ages. Yeah, I'm glad
you did it, though. Yeah, I'm sure it is, but
it's always so much better when it's in someone's
voice, especially someone like you. Thank you,
Andrew. Really appreciate it. And I hope you
guys figure it out over there. But in the meantime,
I'm glad you're here. Well, I got away. I'm glad.
I'm glad, but I mean, it shouldn't be that everybody
has to escape. That's crazy. No, I know. You
know, it's nuts. And then what's going to be
left? Like, only people that are submitting?
And then the chaos of what you've allowed in?
It's fucking nuts. Exactly. So you've got to
make sure that America doesn't go to pot. I need
this place to work. I need it to work too. Part
of my business model. All right. Thank you. Bye,
everybody.