PETER HITCHENS | THE AUTHORITARIAN LEFT NEVER RESTS | #CLIP

at some point I mean I I'm I'm an axe specific and this does two things for me one it means that I have a lot to be guilty about and secondly it gives me insights into the politics of nature of the modern left which most people don't have I one of the things that I did when I was still a revolutionary socialist was who was trying to prevent people from exercising freedom of speech and thought it came naturally to me we came naturally sue me because I believed that what I thought and desired was so good that anybody who disagreed with me must by their nature be evil and be deserving of being silence and this is the problem the the general left-wing belief which is held by the elites of most Western countries now is is also belief in their own vert to you and if you believe very strongly you are in virtue and your virtue is basis is it's an it's also caricature of justification by faith alone you are a good person because you hold certain opinions therefore if you hold other opinions you are a bad person and I think that makes dialog pretty much impossible if you think your opponent is bad I'm just wrong that bad why should you listen to a word he says well they don't well why is it then that we can't learn the lessons of history it's not as if it's so very you lived in Soviet Russia for a long time you saw the outcomes of that sort of the latest you the Left have learned the lessons of history it's to this extent they understand that the Bolshevik attempt failed that the Soviet experiment was a disaster that doesn't there hasn't cure them of wanting to create paradise on earth they've just thought how should we do it another way which is how we come to Antonia Graham she one of the first and most intelligent communists to understand that the Soviet experiment had failed as long ago as the 1920s he realized that the the civilized working classes of Western Europe were never going to swallow this sort of thing that the hands would be a huge Cultural Revolution before they ever would and his ideas took root particularly in the big southern European communist parties his own in the final years of the Soviet empire began to spread out beyond the communist parties themselves into the left in general the ideas of cultural moral and social revolution not by violent overthrown not through dictatorship of the proletariat not through not even through seizure or sequestration of industries and banks but through the the capture by the long march through the institutions of the television studio and the university and the newspaper office and the publishing house and the school so that after 30 or 40 years of that you would control pretty much the public mind and you would be able to get pretty much what you wanted and it it's clever and you have to you have to concede to these people some admiration for their endless determination their deep belief in what they want and their their subtle and and it makers is a very clever organization to achieve it it's been very very well exercised revolution and they have learned from history what the one thing they haven't learned which I wish they would learn is that they're wrong but they have learnt how to be wrong better and that is why we have to fear them so much so two questions immediately arise for me given that the great bulk of people are surprisingly sensible when it comes to not being misled by and potentia I would completely disagree with that I think the great bother that people are incredibly easily misled I find it over and over again people I like people with who might writes me one we can say I really like what you wrote the next week we'll be sprouting some drivel about about the Russian Menace or whatever fashionable nonsense happens to be fed to them by the media that they trust it's extraordinary how gullible people are I find that a very challenging thought as as somebody in from a country where we pride ourselves on our pragmatism and our ability to see through bulldust we think we do now you've been there but one of the great things about thinking that you see through it is that people who who think that and who pride themselves are often them fantastically go people of all well it's any take some nerve not to run with the crowd I mean I I'm not given particularly to self praise I know my faults better than most people and then thanks to an awful lot of YouTube I also know what I looked like other than Verity is difficult to - one thing I will say is that I have maybe it's an instinct I've had since childhood probably a gift not given to me not a thing that I can claim any credit for but I will not run with crowds but most people will and they do and they're happier that way now as that point Jordan Peterson max to his classes in Canada you know he points out to people that statistically speaking they they they might say that they would not have joined the Hitler Youth but statistically they would have yep we were I would have probably but it does still concern me particularly my own country that you look at the work people who didn't I mean very few I confessed I think what could not me but it may anybody's father say I'm having this but it was extremely hard not to do most most people did it and just as most people wouldn't have been in the French Resistance if they appear in France in 1942 they just wouldn't have done it when well that was part one is this sort of play on behalf of people in the street they need to be more conscious of what's happening but the second part that I wanted to drill into there is no very very bright people at least we think we have we taxpayers in universities why are there not more academics you know if if wisdom is the ability to understand consequences and courage is the ability to point them out why are they not more academics pushing back against some of these ideas which I've proven not just disastrous in practice but as you point out in theory as well they don't work in theory communism doesn't work in theory either however we move on to communism in a minute if I may but you said that one of the quality you look for is the ability to understand consequences you mustn't assume that academics are so selfless that the other ultimate consequences of see perhaps after they're dead are more important to them than the immediate consequences for their careers but if I were an academic I think I would know indeed if I were in broadcasting I think I would know pretty quickly that if I didn't fit in with the general conformist view of these matters then I couldn't expect to get tenure or to rise in my profession and these things are ultimately possibly more important to people than the total coherence or indeed the ultimate consequences of the points of view they espouse anyway anybody can fool himself into believing that his own position is going to lead to paradise people do that all the time so perhaps GK Chesterton was right about about what in this case Chesterton and the others who have said some of the things then perhaps were right stop believing in God and you'll believe in anything well that's also true but it's but some people in fact many people it seems to me are repelled by the consequences of believing in God they they examine it and the implications of living in a created universe with a purpose are frightening and often don't suit people's desires as I point out in my book the rage against God lengthy quotation from some set norms autobiographical novel of Human Bondage worth Philip Carey describes with extraordinary frankness the moment to which he decides not to believe in God anymore and the personal liberation which he associates with this is very strong he's freed from all kinds of obligations and fears which he previously had if it was simply a matter of choosing one or the other and there were no there are no other implications I think a lot of people would choose it it's not surprising to me actually if people weren't brought up as they are not now if people aren't brought up to believe in the rather complicated concepts of the Christian religion they're much more likely to fall into the far more convenient and more easily understood religion and self ISM as I describe it doing pretty much what suits you and being sovereign over your own body which is what a lot of people now why wouldn't they you use the term of self ISM and I think back to your time in Australia on Q&A when a couple of times you put your views only to be sneered at and it struck me at that time that there's a remarkable capacity on the part of some people now to be unbelievably censorious at the same time as they want to say don't tell us what to do they want to tell everybody else today they retain that right for themselves but they'll get an instant cheer as one of your fellow panel members did that night when he insists that you can't tell us what to do with our bodies yes well I think that's you-you-you orden to seek necessarily consistency and most people's thought there must be people terribly inconsistent anyway and there certainly isn't an obvious consistency is the the causes which they adopt and the things which for which they demand protection from criticism all have a specific characteristics that they're hostile to the former particularly form of process and Christian societies I think that's the the every cause which they espouse is one which isn't really compatible with one of those and they then very cunningly it's a sort of sort of verbal judo where they used the strength of their opponents against them they provoke and this has been particularly important in the issue of homosexuality same-sex marriage and all the rest they provoke conservatives into attacking this idea so that they can then portray those conservatives as bigots who wish to make other people miserable and that's one of the reasons why conservatives have lost that fight over and over again why looking back on it I wish I hadn't taken part in it because it was it was and remains a very trivial side issue whether what ten twenty thousand homosexuals can or cannot get married really isn't particularly important given the almost total collapse of millions of heterosexual marriages encouraged by state policy which has been the real issue the really important moral issue of Western societies over the past 50 years thank you for watching this episode we appreciate your support if you value vital conversations like this one be sure to subscribe to the channel there and also click the notification bell to stay up to date with new releases [Music]

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 273,872

Keywords: Peter Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Black Lives Matter, Communism, Communist Russia, Left wing politics, John Anderson, Stalinism, Left wing radicals, radical socialism, socialism, peter hitchens owns

Id: tbfKBXpHNUU

Length: 11min 34sec (694 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/pablo_o_rourke]

I would love to hear commentary on the current social and political mess from his brother.

[u/AdanteHand]

"Why are there not more academics pushing back against the idea of communism?" (paraphrasing)

The answer is simply that the question confuses academic success with critical thinking skills.

[u/liberal_hr]

Submission statement: The authoritarian left, through political movements such as Black Lives Matter, is on the rise around the Western world. Peter Hitchens uses his past experience as Bolshevik during his youth to make sense of the danger it poses to what he sees as an increasingly gullible society. Peter Hitchens is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. He currently writes for the Mail on Sunday and brings a singular perspective on many issues facing contemporary society.

The full talk can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7K1A8jgF1w