Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Winston Marshall: Free Speech in the Age of Cancel Culture

okay are you ready yeah I think I think people have joined now it's um four minutes past the hour so welcome my name is Fleming Rose on behalf of the uh aha Foundation I want to welcome you to the second in a series of Ayan he or she Ali dialogues and today I will be your host and the topic of our of our dialogue will be free speech in the age of cancer culture and let me start by introducing our two speakers Ali is the founder of the AHA Foundation a research fellow at the Hoover foundation and the author of several books among them the challenge of Baba political Islam as ideology and movement and how to counter it Winston Marshall is the host of The Spectator podcast martial matters uh musician and former member of the band Mumford and Sons which he quit two years ago so that he in his own words could exercise free speech about politics without involving former bandmates people in the audience are welcome to forward questions in the chat section and then we'll see if there will be time to answer them towards the end of our conversation so let's start uh first I'll kindly ask Ayan and Winston to say a bit about how they got interested in free speech ion maybe you'll go first great thank you Fleming good to see you again thank you and it's always wonderful to see Winston um so my experience with free speech and say initial initiation into free speech yeah it's not at all abstracts I lived as an immigrant in the 1990s in the Netherlands and having grown up in Somalia and lived in Saudi Arabia and you know grown up as a Muslim my first uh eight or so years in the Netherlands was a place where they expanded Dutch my fellow students and friends they explained to me what Free Speech was and the value of free speech and I would tell them but what about religious sentiments and they would say well who cares about religious sentiment and then of course after 9 11 happened I commented on 9 11. and I had said you know the 19 men who attacked the Twin Towers and the other monuments in the U.S that they did it out of religious conviction and it was then that I was asked first by my very polite highly civilized fellow Dutch colleagues friends to say maybe you shouldn't put it that way maybe you shouldn't say that um and then my fellow Muslims at the time I identified as a Muslim were in fact threatening to kill me and I didn't stop there I also made a connection between the way women are treated in Islam and in particular immigrant women who lived in the Netherlands and um sort of the backwardness that the Muslim communities in the Netherlands were suffering and that's induced more people to get really enraged and very very angry and so I had Dutch white majority Community mostly Christian or atheists trying to silence me for my own sake and to keep things between the majorities and the minorities um polite and smooth and I had my fellow Muslims literally threatening to kill me and this only got worse after I had made the notorious film submission with theophongo in 2004. and for those who don't know what happened Theo was slaughtered in Amsterdam on a Tuesday morning when he was going to work he was shot he was stabbed the killer tried to behead him and then left a note for me and this was only about expression we had made a film that's all we did um and what I find I still find very difficult to cope with besides the matter itself is the response from the free Society that's Holland in which in my view it appeased the Killer and those who were committing violence and who were expressing threats in silencing they appears the film wasn't shown again ever I had to leave the country it was shown on Danish television it was shown on Danish television I have to say the Danish were very different at that time you had your own experience with cartoons and things like that but the former prime minister Andres Rasmussen a man I still admire he's still he stood his ground but for me that's my history with free speech is that I came to a free country I was educated in free speech I actually practiced it and when push came to shove I was still well it's better actually if you just you know cool it down I think in fact we learned a lot from you ion as somebody coming from the outside into a free Society about um why Free Speech matters um and Winston what about you uh I mean how did you get into um the issue of uh Free Speech why did you get interested in the issue of free speech well my personal story hails in comparisons with with Ians um and actually I I wrote all of this in in her book Infidel which which I'm sure most if not all of the viewers will have will have read as you just a very important book and not only what happened in Netherlands but what preceded in Somalia and her experience there and where there's sort of crossover with me and I think probably I know it would have been I would have read her her book before because my grandma gave it to me but in the in the uh in the creative Industries where I where I work the first hint to me of free speech being under threat was through um when when it crossed with Islam in different ways and and that's uh very obvious when it comes to let's say the Manchester Arena bombing where you had um Ariana Grande performing and this is 2015 I think if I were not mistaken uh but um and oh no that was 2017 but that when there was the bataclan as well and these were all venues that I'd been to at the Manchester Arena I played a couple of times my cousin had even worked as uh on the merch store when she when she lived in Manchester my family's from some of my family's from Manchester but uh and then of course were famously more recently with Salman rushti and his experiences in Upstate New York um that that was my sort of uh or early sort of uh appreciation for in my world that I I lived in the in the creative in the music industry Free Speech being threatened um and then without um that will I kind of got a attack from Another Side uh through an experience of tweeting about a book uh which was critical of the BLM and antifa movements of 2020 and 2021 and uh was very much shut down in in in that and um silenced through that and and found that my only way through as it was that I had to quit my ban in order that I could speak freely which for artists if they can't express themselves it completely undermines the whole Endeavor that they're committed to so there's a there's this there's a cons I'm concerned about the state of the Arts and free speech and the Arts and this and and there's free speech issues across um Society in in different uh domains which I think we'll we'll get into in this um conversation but uh but I start from the position of the Arts I guess and uh uh and uh because that's the world I come from lesbians asking a follow-up question this is you know the personal angle on this issue but why why do you think in general that free speech is important why why do we need it when speaking is thinking if you if you can't have your ideas fleshed out and challenged you can't get closer to the truth furthermore without Free Speech bad ideas run riot without Free Speech terrible thoughts go unchecked terrible ideas go unchecked and can and can evolve uh to to um terrible consequences so I think free speech is fundamental for us to have a better Society a better world what about you ion you want to chime in yeah I mean I agree with everything that's Winston said about why speech is essential I think it's the lifeblood of a free Society I think that Society actually can't call itself free unless it has and protects free speech and a free speech as you notice again if I compare you know my early childhood and teenage years when I lived in tribal Societies or societies that were religious where there was no free speech and it wasn't protected by law and then I came to freeze two societies that are free what distinguishes these societies is not only that free speech is accepted as the Anchor Point as the lifeline but as it's also protected by it is the law in the United States we have the First Amendment there are multiple people from Europe think it's very extreme and it may be extreme but I mean if you look at all the different trade-offs you know which type of speech do you think the government should silence I think you will end up generally speaking with the first amendment that it is no business of the law no business of the government to silence any kind of speech and speech uh or you know silencing attempts as I made by fellow citizens should be stopped by the government so the government not only um by law agrees not to silent citizens but also to protect citizens from other citizens when it comes to expressing themselves and then let's move on to cancer culture and one interesting thing about cancer culture is that it's quite unique in the sins that as ion indicated throughout history it's basically government that has represented the biggest threat to free speech but when it comes to cancer culture maybe not so much but we'll get into that and and talk about you know what was what is it does it represent the danger to free speech and if that is the case then why and let me just provide you with one definition of cancer culture that I found in an encyclopedia it says cancel culture is a culture in which those who are deemed to have acted are spoken in an accept in an unacceptable manner are ostracized boycotted or shunned to me that doesn't represent anything new that's the way human beings and groups have responded to opinions and speech that they don't like or disagree with so I guess my question is you know why single out pencil culture something specific if in fact it represents you know something Eternal and Universal when it comes to censorship and shutting down speech that we don't like Winston maybe you want to go I have to I have to reject that definition of uh cancer culture because that would mean let's say being being sentenced to uh prison time for murder would count as Council culture and that's simply not what it is um cancer culture I think you'll be more specific is uh is uh perhaps uh punishment or a professional or social punishment for reasonable uh and legal opinions which go against popular Orthodoxy perhaps perhaps that's closer to the a definition um who should you find what a reasonable opinion is it can humans be reasonable at all that's a good question I I don't know how to uh yeah because reasonable is of course has to do with taste maybe or norms and people can submit themselves or subscribe to different Norms it's I think it's it's the danger is that if you if you talk about reasonable reasonable um ideas then it becomes a question of taste and if you can yeah an opinion as unreasonable then it then it then then it's by definition doesn't have a right to existence yeah okay but so then maybe we can try and work out together what a definition is but we there are some great historic examples that you could take Galileo who went against the um the the church uh uh for for daring to say that the the the um the Earth wasn't the uh the center of the world and the sun was and um and he had a I can't remember exactly what happened to him but uh that's a opinion that turned out to be not only reasonable but no one alive today well very few alive today would argue with that position today at the sort of uh opinions that will give you will have you have uh uh professional social repercussions include defining a woman as an adult human female if you look at someone like Maya forstata or in the music industry Chris Potter from elbow or I mean there's there's many people and these are these are are not offensive positions they are the scientific positions uh State stating truth will actually um uh can get you into all sorts of of trouble um so uh yeah cancer culture is certainly not a new phenomenon it's it's a new name for a very ancient um uh phenomenon uh this uh Socrates obviously is a famous example if you read the tocaville in Democracy in America I think that's 1832-ish or 1830s he's describing what happens where it's it's a phenomenon where people are happy to discuss ideas and that at a certain point the mood of a group changes and those ideas become almost sacred and anyone who goes against them needs to be ostracized from the group and he calls it the tyranny of the majority um so this comes up again and again through time and uh it's it's now perhaps helping a fever pitch and a hysteric pitch perhaps for various um reasons like maybe it's the technology of social media or there's various reasons why it's happening so quickly and so so often um but it's certainly not a new phenomenon [Music] yes it's definitely an old name a new name for uh all phenomena uh all ways of doing things censorship of tribalism of um you know Collective emotion people being offended by and you just fill in the blanks and there's just yes technology is part of it where you have means tools to very quickly organize and silence the individual who's accused of being offensive and I think what's probably unique about to me unique about present-day cancer culture or present-day censorship he says it's emerging out of universities universities were supposed to be the establishments where you go and learn how to think and in fact almost all uprisings in any given Society come from universities and it's usually um you know students trying to broaden the minds of society and it's paradoxical that if you look at Council culture today in Western society and these universities it's students organizing themselves to narrow the minds of fellow students and wider society and that's what's really remarkable about cancer culture to me one planning said in Fleming in your last uh question you you said that historically it's been top down sort of governments imposing restrictions on speech but what ayan's point there is actually uh really it's it's not just in universities but across Society where it's from the ground up that free speech is is happening it's where uh it's almost it's almost like a a a a a bottom-up uh um where where it's um uh it's it it it encourages self-censorship so so it's coming from both sides and I do actually think that's because I do think that there's a whole other conversation to have about governmental censorship and and in the last six months we've been following the Twitter files this is a serious thing and iron earlier mentioned uh the Bill of Rights and First Amendment uh but that's under serious has been a serious Jeopardy over the last few years in America the government have literally been uh working with big Tech to suppress speech uh through covet Etc but but the phenomena I've experienced in my uh uh personal life and and then I think this would apply back to Ian's experiences in Somalia and the Netherlands is that it's not from authoritarians from above it's authoritarians from below Authority uh or people organizing people scaring people to in into uh saying the wrong the wrong thing and and whether it's it's it's look it doesn't compare to what happened to the director of her the film she worked with which the horrific incident but um uh but you're seeing self-censorship uh and uh for fear of people losing their friend groups losing their um uh social groups and and you can't underestimate how big that that is there's another thing you also lose your careers people have mortgages and families to support there's a lot at stake but even just if you were just to take what it is to be ostracized from a friend group that's very painful because people love their friends and um and so there's that that power is is a massive force in cell in self-censorship which is a part of the free speech um issue there's a there's a cult the culture of free speeches has been lost I think um the the culture where it's okay to disagree it's okay that that's needs to be brought back and and encouraged and and um it's I think I think in my world it's getting better I haven't really got a sense of whether it's getting better across Society more broadly though um I aren't you mentioned the universities and I think you alluded to it as well uh Winston and I think one of the strange things about this movement or whatever you want to label it is that you know usually young people are against the status quo usually young people Rebel and challenge you know dogmas and they want to criticize and um change the accepted order but but but in in the book that Greg lukanov and Jonathan height wrote some years ago about the department of the American mind what they found out was in fact the the pressure from our censorship didn't come from faculty or the teachers from but from the students and usually it has been the other way around I wonder if you have any thoughts on uh on on this uh young people today more vulnerable you know our emotions becoming an argument uh um against uh you know words that might feel offensive or what do you think I think I want to build on what Winston said earlier uh just now in trying to you know grapple with the question of you know in what ways um is cancer culture dangerous to free speech and I think the first one uh that Winston you set out was this bottom-up nature of censorship that we are seeing now that we call cancer culture and what I find uh particularly dangerous about it is that culture drives law so if you have enough people that are willing to organize and are driven enough they will especially in a democracy get majorities to change the law and we've seen attempts at changing laws in free Societies in Denmark in Scotland um I know there have been attempts in the Netherlands they failed all over the free Society you you've heard of this phenomenon called hate speech and this is a bottom-up phenomenon people claiming uh to be offended and then trying to transform that into law the second one uh Winston is when you said you know I'm not going to compare as to what happened to Theo from God that was quite something uh gruesome you're absolutely right it is gruesome and at this stage um there are no comparisons between just you know losing your job and losing your head but there is a different comparison that I think is of interest and it's this one uh very often when um a gruesome act heinous act of terrorism is carried out in the name of Islam Muslim masses are always asked why are you silent about this and so the comparison then lies here in where as we watch people being silenced in cancer culture scientists activists University professors you know people in the art world like you Winston singers artists Etc it becomes acceptable the masses get frightened and when this thing it's it's trying sooner or later that this kind of intolerance will morph into violence when it does that the masses will be silent and in fact if you look at the process of transforming this from just you know this we're at the at the emotion stage at the sentiment stage where people have a lot of very hot feelings about things and they're offended but when they start to make it to rationalize it and become active and try to change it into laws even then I fear that the masses will be silent just as University professors who are unaffected today are silent invested students who are unaffected are silent they don't agree with what's happening but they are silent because they are afraid of and then they have a whole lot of lists of things you know for students it can just be their grades I'm not going to you know defend this person's price to free speech or academic freedom because my grades might be affected a professor might think Titania might be affected so you see how this can lead to you know we started with the difference between free societies and unfree societies and how slowly we are morphing into unfree societies bottom up I'd like to add on that and just be specific about um uh what's going on in Britain because there's there's a sign for despair and there's a sign for hope so I'll start with the the more uh concerning one it's the Online safety bill which is trying to determine what speech online is is unacceptable and um and would be censored um now initially this has been designed to protect uh children that was a young girl who was bullied I think her surname was brand I've forgotten her first name um and it and it came it came from campaigning to end bullying and sense of bullying to protect children for for the the the negative sides of of that um but it would also hand over power to tech companies to decide what speech can and can't be censored and anyone as I mentioned earlier in this conversation Twitter files and you're following that self it's abundantly clear that those types of people cannot be trusted to decide what can and cannot be shared on the internet but then you get into the the murky water of defining hate speech which hate speeches that is the thing is the kind of the the Twist and the in the word games that are being played well it's hate speech needs it's sort of deemed that we're defending hate speech if we're defending Free Speech no not at all however then what is hate speech exactly like uh I hate racism uh is it okay for me to am I not allowed to express that I hate racism because that's hate speech so what is hateful and what is you get into a mess a never-ending mess of of uh defining types of of speech um but the Online safety bill is continuing is I think it's with the House of Lords at the moment um uh being battled out and um uh so that's concerning but on the on the more positive side and this there's been recently appointed a man a man actually I've I've had the pleasure to meet a few times called Arif Ahmed who's a human philosopher and if anyone paid attention to when Jordan Peterson uh was was invited uh by Cambridge University I think in 20. 20 or 2021 and then had his uh invitation rescinded because of protests from other academics and professors at the University RF along with another gentleman called James Orr and a couple of others led the fight to have him um have uh Dr Peterson come and speak and now he has been appointed as a free speech Czar and is working currently on uh defending free speech at University uh it's as part of the higher education bill uh there will be uh Provisions that if speakers are de-platformed if speech is in uh in in any way not free there will be specific repercussions so he's been appointed by the Prime Minister Rishi sunak and as another small detail only this week Kathleen stock who was formerly at the University of Sussex who was forced to quit her job there because of she was a gender critical feminist and she was tagged by student tras trans radical activists she spoke at the Oxford Union only if it I think it was two nights ago and there were she had to walk through Oxford with a sort of a huge security troop around her and even the at the union itself some young activist glued herself to the floor um in protest so it's very much like at this moment it's it's not it's not dying down in fact it's it's the it's you know it's front page news in this country that what's happening in universities but uh sorry and Rishi Rishi came out in support of Kathleen stocks right to free speech which is a significant thing so actually we talked earlier about government shut down free speech well at least here's some indication that our government despite the Online safety bill which implies that which also came under a conservative government that started under Nadine Doris and Boris Johnson it started on the conservative government yet we have a conservative prime minister who's also understands the importance of free speech so it's a very complex it's not clear exactly uh it's not black and white um where everyone is it's a it's a very messy situation legally in this country I think what is good about your country now is as I followed your country the United Kingdom um that there is an outcry against various forms of censorship and it is around these work areas of race colonization or decolonization depending on the label you choose the whole gender you know Quagmire there is an outcry against all and then of course the the pre-existing confrontations where because of radical Islam I feel like for me the conversation about Free Speech has been unfortunately uh it's still continues so in the United Kingdom other parts of Europe I feel that there is an outrage hopefully this outcry is going to become a proper Uprising and these silent majorities will come out and speak up and and in that sense yes I'm I'm hopeful I'm also hopeful when it comes to the US you know there are very small things that happen uh that could change the winds like the experience that this company is going through called Bud Light that's now become a verb to be Bud lighted so I mean it's not hopefully companies that will be Bud Light but universities can also be Bud lighted my husband and I are involved in the establishment of a university called University of Texas in Austin where we are going to it's all based on you know free speech and academic freedom which is the point of universities and I think that if people and here's where maybe the markets might help where more and more people Express their outrage through peaceful means starting other establishments protesting as you described with you know lobbying the government of the day to protect free speech um the more hope I see them I I didn't want to just paint a very dark picture but I am very very alarmed I would like to just touch on the Bud Light thing because that some detractors will say that that is cancer culture coming from the right now there is cancer culture coming from the right and I'm happy to discuss that there's a couple of cases in Britain uh but on the Bud Light thing that I think there's a distinction between Cancer culture and uh which is targeting of individuals and um boycotting of uh or companies uh on on moral grounds the slave trade was ended partly because the British people boycotted sugar and so and and to try and and undercut uh that um heinous activity and it was successful and um and Bud Light are being boycotted because of their support of uh uh I guess essentially Dylan Mulvaney who who a lot of conservatives are right Wingers are not happy with how Dylan Mulvaney is uh persuading young people into a dangerous ideology and and there and and they're I think rightly concerned with that issue but I do think boycotting something is different from cancer culture however I will just mention because it's also the the right do also cancel people and then Britain there's two examples firstly um there's a football player called Trevor Sinclair who I used to watch growing up he used to play for Queens Park Rangers also played for England and when uh the queen died he uh Proto he tweeted about his dislike of the of the monarchy as an institution and called it um uh racist and and um that endorsed slavery which I happen to disagree with um and um but he lost he was suspended from his work as a football commentator a soccer commentator um now that I think that's very unfair he has a right to free speech he can say what he wants he can't be suspended for that and and those are essentially left-wing opinions that he was punished for similarly at the um um uh coronation of King Charles III only last month or two months ago um various uh protesters were stopped and uh from protesting and um uh there were various cases of people uh having the police stopping them from uh voicing their distaste and dislike of of of the monarchy again that's a left-wing I guess you would say that that's a leveling position and that's coming from not from the bottom up from the top down and that's and so maybe that's not cancer culture but that is a threat a bit of serious threat to free speech so I I I would say watch both flanks those of you who genuinely care about Free Speech as an issue it's not one that just comes from the the woke left it's it's one that that um that when we need to defend especially for those with whom we disagree absolutely I I wholeheartedly agree with you and I don't think we undermine or rather we we don't play uh censorship that comes from the right I think historically speaking we understand it so a being very top down and uh the far right luckily in Western societies have been kept far away from government power um and their right-wing you know white supremacy ideology skinheads these types of people they're their ideology is it's a loser's ideology it's so in your face it's so you know pointlessly stupid uh that luckily for us who are defending Free Speech itself immolates and then and then there's a whole group of people this Q Anon um this information you know this conspiracy theories again it's it's more of allowing them to have their conspiracy theories rather than a fear of them taking over government and imposing their conspiracy theories and the rest of us there is that on the Bud Light issue for me that conflict the takeaway from it was that we saw a series of companies and getting mixed up in very heated political discussions that Society was having and choosing one side and I think it was good to for them I mean I'm sorry for bad lights but why should I be sorry for but like they made it it's terrible they thought of a trade-off and they made a terrible mistake but the the mistake they made is good for I think as a lesson for the other corporations to learn that you know once you step into this type of political politically volatile topics you can have a backlash if you don't account for it so for me it wasn't about really the issue itself but it was the position that corporations have been taking in the council culture wars on a sort of personal note and why I'm a little bit encouraged by is through my personal experience of uh going through uh I guess you'd say a cancellation um but there were a lot of the the sort of publicists advising saying you have to apologize you have to do all of this stuff and they're totally unaware of the repercussions for doing that and so I I hope now it's clear that you can't it's not as simple as playing along with the the woke uh types and um and and and you see this as well with uh it's particularly on the the trans gender critical stuff it's it used to be a time was like well you have to condemn JK Rowling but now we're at a point where okay you can you can go against JK Rowling but there'll be another backlash yeah and so and so actually instead of people you're so it's your face of a backlash either way so you better take the backlash that you're prepared to stand against because you actually believe in the position and that's actually that's somewhat encouraging I I mean better no backlashes but or maybe not but at least now people are forced to actually say what they think rather than than going along with the nonsense yes and I think competition going to stay with companies so sorry sorry yeah but light was swiftly punished is because there's so many they have so many competitors but then look at the monopolies like apple and um you know Google and the others were really there is no competition and so they do continue to do business with China they do continue to engage in egregious acts of censorship against other societies they may even work with China too you know somehow uh affect our own freedom of speech here so competition is another key component to the protection of free speech not just it can't only come from activists and from the government I think a competitive market Society is probably one of the greatest guarantees of free speech you're making my job very easily that's fantastic uh it's very interesting um I I just want to make one clarification I I don't think you you made that mistake but I think it's very important to distinguish between you know the fate of Teo Van Gogh and the kinds of threats on your life that you had been living with Ayan and then cancel culture and and the difference is that that you know legally there's no usually no crime involved it's about social psychology uh Power but it's very rare that it transcends uh the law and there are people uh who are saying that you know this is not about silencing people but it's about accountability you know we disagree with what Winston is saying or with what Ayan is saying and you have your right to free speech but then you also have to be accountable for what you're saying what's your reaction to that line about argumentation well I mean we've touched on it a few times because it's very subjective remember when you ask the question you know what is reasonable um and who the time is what is reasonable so that is why we have you know maximum protection of free speech I think the First Amendment uh Bill of Rights in the U.S that that is the the biggest uh and the best Grant of free speech right now in a free society and so that that's where the line lies if you if it's allowed by the First Amendment then you you have no responsibility to hold others accountable this sounds provocative but what's being described as free speech is really the right to offend um because uh offensive sorry people confuse good manners and civility with the conversation about free speech and free speech is completely different I think uh Winston when you were describing the situation that Galileo was going through the church at that time was morally offended and they must have considered his words hate speech and so if you look at the history of protecting free speech um you you can't only come to the conclusion that it is the protection of hate speech because the word hate is so subjective it's an emotion and so what is hateful to you might be you know I don't know someone else's Love Speech or someone else's art or someone else's political preference or someone else's tribal practice so that's what's protected and in this country we have a line where it's inciting violence is is illegal so there's I think it's just the sign is Discerning between what is hate speech and what is actually inciting violence um it is is a significant one and I'm actually I think that's a pretty good line I'm quite happy with that being the law on on playing on your question about accountability and yeah you're right one of the classic rejoinders for people who who actually acknowledge cancer culture exists but seems to be in favor is is that it's accountability culture well to them I say disagreeing if you hear something you disagree with you challenge it that's accountability culture accountability culture is not then sending death threats to people's doors it is not then saying uh we need to get them fired we need to have them lose their job so that their life comes apart no you chat it's the Battle of ideas you don't attack the man you don't attack their lives their families which by the way bloody well happens you attack the ideas and anyone who's prepared to speak their ideas publicly whether it's at a dinner table or on that on Twitter or in the public domain they they go into that knowing they're going to have their ideas attacked and that's fine because there should be enough good faith that we're all trying to work out together what the truth is because we all basically want the same well I like to think we all want the same thing which is human Prosperity human flourishing yes sometimes I think there are other factors play Maybe other people just want to tear things down but but and then that might be part of the so-called accountability culture but accountability's culture is challenging bad ideas it is not tearing people's lives down I said yeah Winston you you spoke hopefully about this newly appointed Free Speech saw in the UK um I mean what what what are your recommendations to him what do you see as the Paramount threats to free speech in the UK and what could the UK government do in fact to promote free speech there so our Ahmed is specifically uh concerning himself with the state of University's um and um I think is at the department of students is where he's on the board of um so that's a serious um there's a big job in itself and I'm not sure that his job would go for further than that and uh uh and as I mentioned earlier in the in the conversation I I'm very concerned about the Online safety Bill and what that uh pretends uh for online speech so um I'm not quite sure what the answer is to that I'm very surprised that that's been a conservative policy that's going through um and and it could well be taken down in the House of Lords this baroness Claire Fox is is leading the fight uh on on that particular um Bill and she really gets it and she understands what it is to do to defend the right of other people um to speak so so so the story is not over there um uh and but when it comes to the issue of culture and bottom-up uh uh a threat to free speech the only real antidote is courage it's for people to go you know what I care more about the truth I care more about my dignity I care more about my soul and uh I have a responsibility to stand by my convictions and I think if the more and more people to do that will come to a critical mass and it will break down those sort of invisible barriers having said that as soon as those are down there'll be a whole other bunch of taboo topics around the corner as long as there will be there are humans there will be taboo topics so this is it's it's not going to end anytime soon what was your recommendation be I aren't enforce the existing laws um I think I don't know UK law uh very well but I am aware of a lot of adornments that have been all sorts of you know equality laws and things like that have been put in place uh Winston just mentioned the social media protection act because of all these subsets of regulations and laws and I'm sure there's a forest of them in the UK as is in every other country and that maybe those things have to be reviewed and where they are an obstacle to free speech removed it's as simple as that and then I think right now universities get a lot of money from the government that government should be tied or that money should be tied to the respects and for free speech and not just respect but really the respect for free speech you know a professor walking on campus followed by as you said a troop of security people that's outrageous that should not be able to happen anymore and students I don't know what happened but when I was in Leiden Fleming uh it was of course the professors yes who had the authority and not the students so if you're disruptive you're disrupting others you should be able I mean the university should should have the lot I mean on its side to say uh to remove you from the class or remove you perhaps even from from the whole College if you're expressing intolerance and all you want to do is silence others I assume you made a point uh which I think is true that the first amendment in the U.S is the best legal protection in the world of free speech and every time free speech issues arrive at the Supreme Court they have a long history of solid uh defense of free speeds nevertheless when you look at the economist democracy indexed Freedom House all the car the reporters Without Borders the U.S is not at the top even though it has the best legal protection of free speech you know how to explain that and and and what can we do about it who do they put at the top then Denmark for instance quite often you have hate speech laws but uh but I I you know I think what I'm at looting at is that social norms even though you hate speech laws in the U.S you have you have more opposition against so-called hate speech in the U.S than you do than you do in Denmark no no U.S newspapers would publish the Muhammad catoons you know uh I think 17 years ago but they were they were published in many European newspapers it is true that our media especially what we call the mainstream they operate in a pack of patch the cartoons back then and if they decide to censor you or if they decide to uh you know to stalk you as they do sometimes with the objects of their dislike there is more of a Conformity but that is not um it's not it's not a law it's not coming from above it's just a corporate position that they make an editorial decision that they make it's unfortunate um the U.S is also I would say probably the most heterogeneous society in the western world if not in the entire world and so the likelihood of um you know members of society identifying themselves along all lines of groups and tribes and that's much you know it's a lot more than in a homogeneous society like U.S Fleming in Denmark or in Sweden or in any of the other northern European countries so we do have uh sex and sexuality used to be big taboo you know I remember living in the Netherlands and used to shrug our shoulders about some of the activities that in the US you can be condemned for even imprisoned for um so the US is different but I think there is the first amendment is unique and I think it should be the standard by which other countries try to seek and Achieve um the homeostasis you know the perfect balance in finding free speech between citizens which we will never find but you know dreams are free you want to chime in uh uh I I I don't think I could have said it better um then we have you know three four minutes left um I I want to ask you um about cancel culture and how it works in different societies I mean are there differences between how it is playing out in the UK and in the US I mean you have lived or you are visiting uh both parts both countries every now and then I mean do you identify any differences or maybe sort of similarities go on Winston uh there is there are some differences on specific issues I've noticed one difference uh and I brought it up a couple of times but on the issue of of uh the trans debate which which there's a lot of people have been canceled for um uh and all right there's a long list um but uh I've already mentioned JK Rowling or Craig Potter uh Maya Force data um uh there's a guy called uh in the music industry there's a guy who formed Spitfire audio and had to resign from his own company for expressing gender critical opinions online um but I've noticed in that country that there's it seems to be very split Left Right In America um whereas in this country it splits up the right and it splits up the left a bit like brexit and brexit did and so um it's kind of coming from all different directions and legally it's going in the right um Direction and being gender critical even though there's been a lot of repercussions it seems to be going in a slightly better role I don't get the impression that's the same story in in the US but perhaps that's not quite an answer to your question it's a very sort of specific um difference I I'm not sure I could speak to the differences this actually seems to be more similarities a lot of it's playing out for social media and it's a lot of it's playing out through over Progressive causes I I want to really put I'm so glad you brought up the transgender debate because hiding underneath the transgender debate is um things that are being done to children for instance underage children having parts of their bodies removed being subjected to puberty blockers and other very dramatic you know irreversible damage uh I borrowed that title from Abigail schreier who has written a book just zooming on on that alone and I think in the Free Speech debates children cannot speak for themselves and there are now adults doctors psychologists psychiatrists parents teachers all involved in having conversations about what can and can't be done and it's in my view both countries have done really poorly when it comes to putting children at the center of these conversations and doing what's best for children but the UK is slightly better in the sense that Tavistock Clinic has been reviewed um that's been dealt with and uh the conversation about protecting children is healthy at this moment in the UK than it is in the US I'd add to that actually it's a great example of the significant the importance of free speech on that topic what the science has literally been suppressed it's something like over 80 percent of gender dysphoric kids are gay and something like 80 over 85 percent of gender dysphoric kids are autistic and the majority of them so according to various studies grow out of it and they cut as they come of age but by suppressing that sort of knowledge that science if you want to call it that um what you then that then you you have as as iron has said irreversible damage the infertility for these you're ruining these lives of these children so that's a great example of why to the first question you ask why is Free Speech important free speech is important because you have this is It's it's the most horrific thing if you actually look into what's going if you look at the photographs of the surgeries oh God yeah just just heartbreaking I challenge you to look at that stuff and and keep dry eyes like and that's happening in our society on our watch it's our duty to stop to stop that it's it's evil and so it is a worse than female genital mutilation worse than anything I've ever seen and it's for children it's happening to children and we are silent and we are supposedly fast Wild free societies that exports the notion of human rights to other countries and we are really failing we're all standing by and that is because freedom of speech has been shut down anyone who asks questions about this you mentioned that they're mostly gay they grow out of it but there's been this explosion in girls it used to be the small fraction of boys like gender dysphoric and now this is all contagion among teenage girls where they're all beginning to but I'm not a girl and it's being indulged and it is a lot of money that's being made and it's taxpayers money by the way so if you don't participate it's your money that's being it's paying for this so one thing that's going to drive me to start demonstrating in front of the buildings in Washington uh it's this subject it's really horrific what is being done to children and we know about it and we're all silent because we are afraid exactly Winston as you said because we are afraid of the repercussions losing jobs and and things like that okay um unfortunately we uh we're running out of time um thanks a lot on behalf of the AHA Foundation to uh Ayan ESG Ali and to Winston Marshall for this very stimulating and interesting conversation that was the second in a series of Ayan Hiroshi Ali dialogues please stay tuned go to the website if you want to find out more my name is Fleming Rose thank you and have a good day thank you Fleming thank you Winston thank you for having me and uh but you're one of my heroes so it's it's an honor to share all the Millennials thank you bye thank you

Channel: AHA Foundation

Views: 1,455

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Id: A0AB1G6Fhi8

Length: 61min 24sec (3684 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023