Welcome. Thank you. This is thrilling. First of all, for me, it's
thrilling to be here. We're in the offices of Private Eye,
which is legendary, a legendary satirical magazine. Don't-- I see the look on your face. The look on Ian Hislop’s face is one
that says, - “Please, sir, do not praise me
- Yeah for I shall not accept your praise,”
but accept it. You, my friend, it's
such an honor to meet you. Such a pleasure to meet you. And comedian, satirist, cultural commentator, prize fighter,
which I was surprised to find out, - middleweight champion of the world.
- Yeah, good, - Didn't realize that was in there.
- Yup. Brain surgeon. First violinist. What? Ian? Thank you for-- - Yeah, that’s better. I prefer the jokes.
- Yeah. We are in the Private Eye offices in London. And I apologize to you because
my brain is not quite functioning. I flew in last night. Do you take melatonin to sleep ever? No. What do you take? Usually legal action. Works a treat. Speaking of legal action, sir, you're the key. So, I know that Rupert Murdoch
has tried desperately to ruin your country, and he's ruining ours - at present.
- Yeah. How do we legally stop him? And I mean, legally. - Yeah. I don't think you can.
- Really? I mean, there are Monopoly laws, which
I don't know whether they work in the US. They didn't really work here. We tried a bit of that. There was cross-party support. It didn't really work under
our Prime Minister, Tony Blair. In the end, he decided
it was better to sup with the devil, - so he went and met Murdoch
- Mhm. and he ended up in a compromise. I think it's up to the rest of us
just to challenge it. I mean, Murdoch is trying to set up. At the moment, he has a new television
station in Britain, which is meant to be like Fox News. Really? Yeah, which is called,
I think it's called Talk TV and it stars, and again, “stars” is the word, Piers Morgan. No, I'm not familiar with that name. No and nor with the use of the word “star.” So, he's the lead on this. But I mean, happily, for all of us
here, it's a terrific flop. And no one's watching. Now, this is--
so that's how they start. But, as a little bit of background, so there was a scandal in 2010/2011, where-- and it's hard to even fathom sort of the depths of
human depravity that they went to. But ultimately
it was the News of the World and they hacked into
the phones of people - who had died.
- Yeah. And the revelation that came out of
it was obviously the closeness of Rupert Murdoch
to Conservative MP and - to the Tories.
- Yeah. The same thing is happening again with-- are you familiar
with this Dominion lawsuit? Yeah. Yeah I mean this is--
I mean, from our point of view, this is a continuation of the Trump
assault on reality, which is essentially things
that are quite obviously true you say aren't true and things that are
quite obviously not true you say are true. I mean, it is an attempt to stop people
having any connection to the real world. -And when we watch from here,
-Right. Fox News or mainstream news with those people on it, it's difficult to believe. And often in Britain, we feel
we're about five years behind the states. - So you got Trump,
-Okay. - then we got Boris Johnson.
- Yes. You know, it's a diminished version,
but it's the same playbook. Wow. And we get worried that we will end up
in a world where it doesn't matter if you're found out. Literally where you can come on, and Boris Johnson has a,
I mean, he has been found out he was removed from office,
which is very good news. But they got Capone on taxes. I mean, he was removed from office
from having parties, you know, for having-- he wasn't actually, he--
again, this is part of the narrative - everyone must remember.
- Yeah. He was removed from office
because all his government resigned after he appointed a man who was a known
groper of young male assistants, and he appointed him to
a post in government. And then he sent out his ministers to say,
“No, no, I had no idea about it.” - But actually he did.
- He did. His name was Pincher and he called
him “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature.” You see, that's knowledge. He did know about him
and he appointed him. So everybody in his cabinet,
you know, more or less from the top down, but apart from the lunatics,
sent letters saying, “I can't work with you. You don't tell the truth. You have no moral compass,
you have no ethics.” Yeah, that's never been, but can I tell you what a pleasure it is that British
corruption is so still clever. I mean “pincher by name, pincher
by nature.” At least it's a joke. At least it's-- You have to respect the witticisms of the corruption. Yeah, I mean, trouble is about Boris Johnson, we lost our sense of humor a while back. It's no longer the the wild hair, and the ziplining,
and getting stuck in the middle, - that doesn't,
- No that doesn't thrill in the way that it used to? No, it’s him coming up and saying, “Look, I told you, you could visit
your grandmother in the care home when she's dying. But me, I was pissed as a party. It's great. You do what I say, but me, - don’t apply to me.”
- “I don't have to do it.” That's right. We've got the same thing
working in the States with, you know, when they were doing the lockdowns,
you know, - the sort of famous one is,
-Yeah. Gavin Newsom going to French Laundry,
which is this beautiful restaurant - in the middle of everything.
- Yeah. And it gets people really angry. - And people are still angry here.
- Right. If you-- we've got a scandal
blowing up at the moment. The then health secretary was, he literally was caught on a CCTV camera in his office
snogging his assistant. He was married, obviously.
Conservative. - You know, tradition in this country
- No, it is-- So he was snogging his assistant
and in fact, groping her bum. He was caught on CCTV. This is when we were meant to be observing
social distancing. Six foot. Like, he wasn't six foot away. He had his tongue down her throat. - and he'd appointed this woman.
- Now-- I hate to interrupt you,
but I just, you know, I'm on a roll. - He appointed this woman,
- Please. because he'd fancied her
when they were at college and she’d always thought
he was a bit of a geek. But when he became in the government,
he appointed her to his own team and then got off with her. And the rest of us are thinking, we're wondering whether we can go outside
and have a cup of tea or whether we have to say
we're exercising, or whether the police will move us on. And you're just
groping people in your office? Yes, now-- It does get you quite annoyed. - But to be fair,
- I don't want to be fair for a minute. in the early days of COVID, that was how they tested. - Before they could swab,
- Yeah. you had to use your tongue. Yeah, it was an oral test. And there had--
that's exactly right. So they would just look, if you can
collect from the back of the tonsil. Yeah. - Through the tongue.
- Yeah. I'm sure he was-- Yeah, none of-- It's all on the up and up. Everyone was learning as they went along. I want to ask you about this
because, as somebody who's fought this for your adult life,
this idea of public piety and private perversity and corruption
and all these different elements, I think the most difficult thing
for me to understand as someone who got into the
business of comedy, the idea was always the fable of
The Emperor Has No Clothes. Yeah. And you always thought,
you know what, to be that child who sees things
that are obvious that the grown ups are pretending
isn't there and to call it out. Yeah. And you always imagine in the calling out,
that the crowd says, - “My God, the veil has been lifted.”
- Yeah. And what you never thought is that you would call it out
and then just everyone would con-- So then everyone would just
continue the farce naked. The emperor has no clothes
and they go like, - “Yeah, but yeah, it's okay.”
- Yeah, or worse. Half the crowd’s saying
“no, he's got clothes on,” - “He's got clothes on.”
- “I can see the clothes.” Or, “He’s got clothes on
and you’re a pedophile.” - You know, it’s now--
- Yeah, and “it's a conspiracy.” - “I mean, if you knew what I knew,
- That’s right, “if you'd sat in your bedroom and read this blog, which isn't true,
you would know what I know as a person who sits in his bedroom
and reads drivel on the internet, you would know
that he has actually got clothes on.” But he hasn't. He really hasn't got clothes on. So that's the worst
bit of getting to this stage is small boy, you, me, childish sense of humor
thinking, “He’s got no clothes on. I'll point him out.” The emperor, in the fable, realizes
that he's made a fool of himself - and he doesn't have any clothes on
- Right. Nowadays, the Emperor's Trump,
the Emperor is Boris. He says,
“No, I have got clothes on. And these machines that you're seeing through
have made the clothes invalid.” - I mean, it's just, it is mad.
- It’s madness. And the only thing that seems to work,
and it worked here, was repetition. Being as tenacious as that side. - If you say it often enough,
- Right. At a certain, point for us, Boris Johnson, he'd always been a liar,
but he became a liability and at that point,
his own party thought, - “No, we've had enough of you now.”
- Mhm. I think there was a moment when there was elements
in the Republican Party that began to think
we might do better with someone else. Now, I don't know if someone else
is going to be worse, Right. But you can tell me that. But at least there is-- - I’ve got some bad news.
- Okay. How many years behind us are you? - About five.
- Okay. Well, about 200, really. So you’ve got about
3 and a half more years left, and then it all is
going to fall through. I want to, you know, - Trump is such an outsized figure.
- Yeah. But, the groundwork for Trump is really been laid in our country
for the past 40 or 50 years. - And it is that the right wing
- Yeah. very explicitly decided,
and this is in the ‘70s and ’80s after Nixon was taken down
and Roger Ailes, who ran Fox News for a long
time, was Nixon's advisor. They explicitly stated, “We need to control the narrative, so that this, what happened in Nixon could never happen again
to another Republican.” And they built parallel structures
of authority in news, in institutions like universities, and think tanks, almost to shift to this other track,
this kind of Potemkin village, a facade that they could
build on the side. But you don't have that here. No, they’re attempts to set it up,
but we don't have it yet. We do have the very right
wing press at the moment. I mean, more so,
they have shifted to the right and they've become less representative,
I think, of the electorate. Right. But more representative of this rump of the
Conservative Party, which we have left. Right. But we do have the BBC,
which obviously our government hates. I mean, all the governments hate the BBC. The BBC is a sort of national broadcaster. It's independent
but funded by the license fee. So all governments say
“the BBC is biased against us,” which they aren't,
but they are critical of them. Right. And criticism, as you know,
governments don't want that. No, it's a terrible thing. And, but this lot, and again,
following the Trumpian model, you know, they have done it
fairly explicitly, have said “we must get rid of the BBC, because it’s not allowing you real news.” Right. And by real, they mean fake, obviously. Right. “They're not allowing us
to peddle a narrative which isn't true." And it was certainly true during lockdown. And there are a number of, you know,
the anti-vaxxers were out that there's a sort of group
of lunatic conspiracy theories which used to be on the fringe
of the party. That's right. And then, now, in the middle of the party and the Daily Mail
and The Daily Telegraph in particular, have taken up a very extreme position. - Which is new for us.
- Right. So the controlling of the sensible
narrative is getting more difficult. And they're just indications that,
with the GB news, which is another attempt to be
Fox News and they've employed most of the people
who are thrown out of the last government. So you've got Jacob Rees-Mogg
on there, and Nadine Dorries,
these names may not mean anything-- So you're beginning
now that cycle of government to media and that revolving door where they go
into government to ruin everybody's lives and then get a pretty nice pay day
at a media institution or media network Yeah. And then they go live on television
and say, “I was right, all along.” Right. And you're thinking, “No, I do remember
the bit where you weren’t right at all.” - “We’re very right wing--”
- Right. “And we’ve got it on tape - and we’re going to show it to you.”
- Yeah. - And that's still not going to do it.
- No. The difficulty sometimes
is that the legacy media, - or the mainstream media, as they call it,
- Yeah. don't do themselves any favors by also falling prey to sensationalism
or groupthink or reacting. What happened in the United States was the media finally met an entity as narcissistic as they are,
and that's Trump. And so they found in him
this natural enemy and they took the bait. And so their behavior during
the Trump years really was one of
“Okay, we are your enemy, we are your foe, and we're going to behave in that manner.” And they lost some perspective which gives fuel to those - conspiracy theories.
- Yeah, you say “you haven’t got any." - Yeah, I mean--
- Because all you need is a little bit of a window opening. Yeah. I mean, and that is
the time to be cautious. And I think Trump's gift was
he managed to suggest that criticizing him - was criticizing the general public,
- Yes. - was criticizing ordinary Americans.
- Yes. And in this country,
it's for people like myself to say, “well, you would think that
because you are very badly educated and you haven't thought about it
as much as I have.” I mean, that won't do. We know that. You don't defeat populist arguments by telling people they're stupid. And we had this, particularly over Brexit, which is Britain leaving the EU,
which I thought at the time and still think and now opinion polls have come around to our point
that that was a terrible, terrible error. It was an outbreak of sort of Trumpian nationalism of little England isolationism of the type that, you know, is pretty current throughout the world at the moment. And we thought we were above that and we found we weren't. It came in Britain in just the same way as it hit elsewhere. And this was sort of people thinking, you don't care about us, you don't care about working class. You're extremely elite and the mainstream media is in league with you. Now, I've made a number of documentaries about fake news. And what interests me is the first person to use the phrase
mainstream media was Joseph Goebbels. - That's not so. No!
- It is. And he, in one of his propaganda sheets, said “It's very important that you don't read the mainstream media
because they'll tell you lies.” You must read the truth by the ramblings of his boss and his associated work. And you do have to watch this. This is a very, very well-established technique of fascists, is to tell you, don't read this stuff, read our stuff. It's such a complicated mix because this move to populism, which is so now taking hold in and you see it now in — in France and Italy. — in France and Italy and all these other places. In some ways it's hard not to connect it to the actions of the United States and the destabilizing, first of all, of globalization and corporations
sort of manufacturing bases moving out of, you know, Britain and the United States
and moving to places where they can pay people nothing. And it's sort of a colonialism lite where we trying to establish supply lines
without having to use the army. Yeah. And the destabilization of the Middle East and sort of driving that refugee migration and all that. And have we in our desire to spread democracy in light I don't know if you know this,
but the United States is a shining city on a hill. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I did read that somewhere. Yeah. I mean, you know, and we remain desirous to believe that, but we're aware of its foreign policy faults
as well as our own. But there is I think, you know, the United States may well want to beat itself up but Europe can equally do the same. There was a failure in ten, twenty years of globalization and internationalism, of failing to consider the worst off sections of your own population. So everything look great. This is good. We all believe in the ideas, ever greater union. All our problems need to be solved collectively. No one's going to solve, you know, global warming through nationalism. It isn't going to happen, you know, small of the nation. - But it's in the pursuit of cheap T-shirts and —
- Yeah All of this, but also in pursuit of a sort of an attempt to get some sort of control over the little bits of your life left. So in Britain, the entire Brexit movement was "let's get back control." A nostalgia almost. - Whatever that means.
- Right. I mean, it was a desire to control. Make Britain Great Again. Yeah. I mean, again, we didn't go that far because we can't really face that sort of overstatement. We leave that to America. - The humble nature of your country is what saves it.
- Yeah. It's humble in its desire to be,
you know, the most modest nation on earth. We're very proud of our humbleness. But — yes, I accept there is a responsibility for this outbreak of populism. But when it arrives - to merely go with it and not to resist it seems to me a double failing.
- You have to resist it. - So for the elites, I would just [unintelligible] "for us, it's terrible."
- That’s right. Right "We should have, we should have done this earlier." Well, you've got to do it now. Are you seeing it now, as the results of it are not the blossoming of the what they remembered to be the time of greatness? Is that what has taken some of the steam out of it? What's taken the steam out of Brexit is
it was a terrible idea and it's — Executed badly. No. And it's not an idea you can execute well. It's very simple. Right. And Rishi Sunak, hasn't he now fixed it? I was under the impression that the new Prime Minister and by the way, the idea to just rotate them every three months
I think is something that will catch on everywhere else. Yeah. As long as during the three months where they're in charge,
they don't lose you £30 billion. Now we've tied up the total free market lunatic. - That didn't go so well.
- Yes, I thought that was my favorite thing ever was when Liz Truss came in and said, “I believe inflation is terrible, so we're going to go with austerity and we're going to cut taxes for the rich.” I thought, well,
that's like taking Ambien and cocaine and thinking - It's going to go —
- “It’s all gonna even out, right?” “This will be fine.” I mean, and it was a case of literally
I mean, this is why it was a very good moment for us. You haven't had the states. - So I think we might be ahead of you here.
- Yes. We had someone who literally did student politics and got into power, sacked everyone. She sacked the civil servants at the Treasury who normally the adults who say, "you really can't do this, this will be terrible." - The guardrails were gone.
- Yeah, everything gone. And she did it and this is and then she said “I was defeated by the left wing economic establishment.” Now I don't know if you've met any left
wing hedge funders or deeply socialist equity traders. - We don't have any in this country.
- Yes. The financial markets, the people she loved, the people that the Conservative Party worshipped, said, “You're mad.” “We're going to bankrupt the country.” And literally the Treasurer ended up saying “We can't borrow any money because no one will lend it to us.” I don't know if anyone's ever said this to you
that governments have to borrow money for these people. - But isn’t that what Russian oligarchs are for?
- Yeah. And when your country won't have money to lend, won't they come in and say, “How about we do this?” “We'll just buy up Portobello Road.” Yeah. “And that should give you enough
to get you through the next three months.” - No. It’s just even the oligarchs weren't very shrewd.
- They didn’t even want to invest in it. You do have a problem with government in that if people think you're run by lunatics, they won't lend you any money. - Right.
- And that becomes a problem Anyway. Who knows what happens to interest rates. Yeah, well, anyway, I mean, she was replaced. I mean, removed within, you know. We have a newspaper here called The Daily Star,
which had a wonderful, they bought a lettuce and they said, “Will the lettuce last longer than Liz Truss?” which was a very, very good joke and the lettuce was fine. - She was out.
- It ended up being okay. Yeah. The lettuce is Prime Minister now. Anyway so we got an adult who immediately reversed everything that she'd done. And then the market stabilized and then we started back where we were. But minus 30 billion quid which is quite a lot of money. Then they've even said I think we were looking at the IMF, said that the economy in Britain will contract or perform worse than Russia even this year. Yeah. And so have you thought about invading anybody? Have you thought about — Is there anything you know, anybody who you've got your eye on? Cornwall? No, I, we're short of options. We really are. That's the end of it. I wonder if, you know, you've spent your whole life, you know, looking at the difference between what these public figures say and what's going on in the back room. Yeah. And now we're starting to see from this Dominion lawsuit in the United States
the emails from the back room. And it is explicitly exactly what you thought it was. And the way that you probably found during the News of the World. Yeah. And also, I mean, recently we are having a very a cache of WhatsApp group messages exchanged during government has been made public. - Oh, really?
-There's been a leak. The health secretary and the then prime minister during lockdown and Private Eye — About what they were doing? Yeah. Literally their WhatsApp group during why they were taking certain measures,
what they were saying about each other there’s — Yeah I mean there's literally a WhatsApp group
where various aides are saying to each other this story about the Prime Minister that he's putting out,
it's got some holes in it. Literally, they're saying it's got some holes in it. And you're thinking that means he's lying, which is what we said all along. Right. But Private Eye, every week
we run a fake WhatsApp group as the Prime Minister. And I've been looking at it recently thinking we didn't go far enough. Right. You know, we just literally didn't push the jokes because they're worse than you think. Boris Johnson, well, as you know, his chief scientific adviser is trying to explain to him the difference between a percentage and a probability. Oh dear Lord. This is during a COVID outbreak and he doesn't get it. I mean, you know, he read classics, you know. He wanted to talk Homer. He didn't really want to talk about the chances — But basic maths is good. I think with your leader. It can be useful. It can be useful. At certain times,
but it is when you are confronted with the idea that it is as explicitly corrupt as what you thought it was, Do we have — are there any, is there any accountability? - I think what's so lacking in, certainly in American life —
- Yeah. Is the sense that when there is that corruption that's so explicit that there is some measure of accountability
that can be taken. Yeah. Which is what's, which has been so difficult to get a handle on. Yeah. Well I think it's still better here. I mean we do, we had a public inquiry. We've got another one coming up. The Prime Minister was censored, he was removed. We got another standards committee coming up. There's still some mechanisms. I mean, the appalling corruption over the contracts of PPE equipment, which I don't know if that was equally big in America,
but who got the contracts and how useless this stuff was. We got, we're really good at glossing over corruption stories
and moving on. It's the you know, the dog from ‘Up’. It's a squirrel and somebody moves to the next distraction. But America always seems to us to have so many lawyers. You just think, what are they doing? We are a — Surely they should all be suing at each other furious. We are a lawyer based economy. And with the Dominion scandal. I mean, is that is that a defamation? - Correct.
- I mean to say. Right. - So that's why this stuff's coming out.
- That's right. - It's the only reason why it's coming out.
- Yeah. And it's the only reason why. And they were so comfortable with the idea that none of their private communications would ever come out, which is why it's so explicit to the point of saying these people are crazy with their election, the stolen election narrative in the ways that they think it's stolen. They're crazy. But if we say that, we'll lose our audience. It's a fascinating look at at just sort of like,
you know, the ouroboros, the sort of the thing we we call it the snake sucking its own dick
like America has become a snake sucking it’s own dick. And it's, they create this rabid through AM talk radio, which is just populism and nativism drilled at the earliest age, a news network that's reinforcing that, that's selecting stories that only reinforce their fear of the other or, you know, black or trans or anything that might be considered different. They rev them up to that point
and then it becomes impermeable. Yeah. - And if you present anything and they were aware of that.
- Yeah. And they felt that they couldn't The Frankenstein that they created, they could no longer say like “fire is actually not that bad.” Yeah. Yeah. “You’ll be Okay.” But is there not a point where and this is what we despair when it doesn't happen here is when does shame kick in? If you're a national broadcasting figure and you have, you'd like your audience,
you've told them things that are not true deliberately. And this is exposed at what point do you go home and think “I should resign. I should go.” Shame is the shamelessness is and this is something and I'm curious what you think about. It's why I think so many on the Right are aligning themselves with Russia over Ukraine, because nobody can look at those two countries and say there, you know, one is, you know, a shining beacon of democracy fighting against autocracy. But I think that Putin represents to them in some ways, this Western civilization that they would like to also protect. It's not very democratic, it's anti-gay, it's mostly singular in terms of its ethnicity. And so they see that actually as political alignment, that the Right in America and maybe even the Right in Britain don't actually view Putin as a foe, but as an ally ideologically. Yeah, but this is real echo chamber nonsense, isn't it, really? I mean, any any basic look at Russian history would suggest that this isn’t true. But don't you — What I'm saying is shame won’t kick in because they've got a larger ideal that they're pursuing that they they will do anything by any means necessary to get back to that sort of more authoritarian ideal of what the country was. But it wasn't. And the authoritarian it was in Russia because,
you know, it's got a fairly straightforward history - of authoritarianism.
- Right. But it isn't for them a natural ally. It is, you know, as we know, after the wall came down,
it is a country which has reverted to a czarist model. Right. It's dropped the ideology from the communist days and kept the repression. So Putin is essentially Stalin, who, you know, he admires and reveres. - That's right.
- But without any of the belief. And whether you think Stalin believed even 1% of it
and what was just a Georgian thug who took over. You know, you can read the history books, but essentially Putin doesn't believe any of this stuff and he does it anyway. And, you know, the latest thing is Putin's just been rumbled,
putting vast amounts of property into companies that represent the - the woman, the gymnast who he has had the children with.
- Right, right. You know, so there is nothing there is nothing admirable. There's nothing ideological. There's no crusade. I mean, I imagine that, you know, the
the religious right in America would perhaps they should have a look at the Russian Orthodox Church and see whether they're natural allies. Are they? - None of this makes sense.
- None of it makes sense. But if you look at the alliances
so we have this group in America called CPAC, and it's these conferences of conservatives and it's very political. And Trump just spoke at it and all that. They held their last conference in Hungary, and Orban is held up as a figure of “this is where democracy should be going.” And he's it's and he's just one degree of difficulty removed from a Putin type figure. - But this is where the —
- They are all aligning in a way that says “And we don't have shame because we don't care how we get it done, we're going to get it done.” - Yeah, I think that's very generous.
- And Farage and all those guys. - They're all aligned.
- Yeah. - But all of them, I think, are cynical and without any ideology and without any morals.
- Yes. - Yes.
- and the morality is a fig leaf. I'm still a little boy saying “The reason you are saying this phrase, in order to defend democracy,
we must ally ourselves with a lot of people who are tyrants.” - Now, that seems to be
- Right. You know what we used to call, nonsense. But have they flipped that here? Because what they're doing now in America is the real tyranny is woke. Woke is the tyranny. In fact, if you listen to Putin's speeches. - Yeah, no he speaks up on it.
- He’s started to take that phraseology. - Yeah.
- What they're suggesting is, “No, no, no diversity is tyranny, democracy —” They've taken to saying in America, “You know, we're not a democracy, we're actually a constitutional republic.” And you want to say, which I don't know if you read it, lays out a representative democracy. - Yeah, yeah, no.
- But that's for another day. - Has that —
- I’m sure you’ve been through it. Oh, Jesus. Has that, that sort of explicit kind of repudiation of democracy - or to use diversity as the real tyranny has that taken on here?
- No. Because we're not in a position
where we're saying we don't believe in democracy yet. Right. And also, we had a good public — Five years. Oh, give it. But we did have a good public shaming over our sort of middle class in our professional classes, taking vast amounts of Russian money, lawyers, bankers, whatever. And Britain became for about ten years. There's a very, very good book called “The Butler of the World.” We essentially went round the rest of the world
fawning, saying, “Any services we can offer you, sir, we do very good libel actions.” “We do a marvelous —” We're starting golf tournaments for the Saudi, I don't know what we're doing. I mean, and this it's been a terrible time. And the Chinese again,
Britain has entirely woken up to the fact that your fridge is now reporting back. If you happen to mention, you know — Every Tik Tok dance we do gives another piece of information. But, you know, Britain had literally said,
“We must get the Chinese to build on nuclear reactors.” That's a good idea. That's a really good idea. Put them in charge of the nuclear material at the heart of the reactor. I mean, we took some unbelievably naive decisions as a country because we were sucking up to anybody who had any money. And that was the Russians that was the Chinese, come in London in particular, come in with an enormous washing machine shove your money in. - and will toss it out.
- And the EU, which was your, you know, the single market
and all that, was the thing that everybody resented. But nobody resented the money from autocracies. No and they said that the EU was a tyranny because it involved. That's the flip that's been happening with everything.
- Pooling sovereignty. It involved small amounts of cooperation and anybody who looks at the world and doesn't spend their time fighting culture wars on, you know, in their bedroom, on their laptop, would think these are quite big problems. And most of them have to be solved by compromise, negotiation, coordinated effort. I mean, none of this is rocket science. They're not going to be solved by saying, “The big problem about climate change is it's woke.” - But that is, it is exactly —
- Is it? Is that it? Is that the argument? It is sadly, it is. In right now, you would think that pronouns have taken over and are bombing Ukraine. Yeah. Any of this stuff, any of this cultural stuff, I would say is an attempted diversion. - It's cynicism.
- Yeah, it's it's worse than that. I mean, there's so many problems, right, that the idea that conservative party is saying, “We will win the election.” It's like saying, “We will we will devote ourselves as politicians to things that aren't politics. We're going to join in some other matter.” Do you think ultimately they actually care
or they just view it as a path to power? - No, I don't think they care at all.
- Right. - That’s the sense I get.
- I mean you look at someone like Russia, you know, which has a sort of residual emperor by czarist days full of non-diverse people. Correct. And say in a place like Chechnya, it didn't go so well for them being non-diverse. So the idea that Russia is somehow this sort of. - Defender of Western civilization and values.
- Yeah. It isn’t and Putin was pre-Trump. and Putin literally appointed a man who was a sort of theatrical impresario to say to him, “How do I present what isn’t true as true?” Right. - He’s the first in — yeah.
- It's explicit. And what's so interesting to me is the explicit nature of that kind of propaganda in an authoritarian regime. Yeah. Is revealed in the emails of the Dominion lawsuit because what you see Rupert Murdoch says in the emails to the head of Fox News, “We must do whatever we can to help right wing Republican control of the Senate.” Now, this is explicit. - Yeah.
- And so what you realize is this has nothing to do with a point of view. It has nothing to do with a perhaps a slightly different worldview and everything to do with an organization that has been built explicitly as a propaganda arm for political movement. Yeah. And you think if you want to be in politics, go into politics. Doing it behind the scenes is just corrupt. That exactly right. You know, if you want to test yourself, stand, say your a party. The idea that you behind the scenes influence what is happening without at any point being tested just through the power of money, you know — And does shame ever, is that a family that can be shamed is that is he a man now, And I'm under no illusion
that if it wasn't Murdoch, it would be somebody else. - Because, you know, power will find a way to excersie it self.
- He's been, He's been very canny about it in a lot of continents, including ours, over the years. So it's not entirely accidental. - It is Murdoch. I mean, he is an evil genius.
- Right. In terms of appealing to the worst.
- What about the dynasty of that family? Is his, will his heirs carry on the work of their or will there be in any way when he passes, And I think definitely within the next 50 years that will happne. You're such an optimist. 50 to 60. I'm giving it a window. I think I have him marrying another model around 2045. He's got a lot of wives left. He's got a lot of wives left in him. He's barely started. And Succession needs another couple of series. What do you think they'll ever be a reckoning where they say, “You know, I actually think, oh, we're destroying the very thing —”
- We like. - Right.
- I hope it won't come. You know, part of me would love to be there saying, “I told you so,” but another part of me, which is mildly human, as opposed to just the satirist. Just pure satire. You just love the comedy of it. That's what you're going for. I mean, with the Murdoch empire, I mean, what is funny about it is the boys are obviously useless and he won't give it to the girl for because he's Murdoch. It's a girl. - How she’s going to handle it.
- No, so that's no good. - So with any luck —
- I think Rebekah Brooks will ultimately be granted. She will be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She will find the golden ticket
and we'll be given the elevator that flies everywhere. Yes, and again, I mean, Rebekah Brooks,
there's this picture of her on the wall. - Oh, I love.
- It's a Halloween special. Oh, it says, “Which costume withdrawn from shops?” I mean, that's not funny. It’s not funny at all? No. How dare you, sir? At long last, have you no decency? No, it was the first day of her trial. Obviously, there was a suggestion that this this cover was taken into the court, and the barrister said, this is contempt of court. Private Eye is is trying to influence this action. - You know, Private Eye — you are the real tyranny sir. How dare you?
- And I was appauled. Yeah, but fortunately a very, very wise judge who got very cross and said, but no, - Now has has —
- It isn’t contempt. The libel laws here are much more difficult than they are in the United States. - And people sue you... constantly.
- Yeah. Well we don't have what you have. You have to prove, - malice.
- malice. Yeah. Here it's taken as it’s read obviously. Here they just have to prove you were being mean. - Sir.
- Yeah. Yeah. And again, we finally woken up the oligarch Spent a good ten years. I mean, can you believe that the head of a Vogner group, the group of mercenaries who recruit convicts and go in. He was suing journalists for suggesting that I don’t know mercenaries operating in the middle of a war aren't very nice. Anyway, we've had a lot of trouble with those sorts of defimations But again, I think, you know, I am more of an optimist and I feel we're we're waking up a bit here in the proper sense of wake, as to what this looks like. Right. - And starting to to maybe turn a corner.
- Yeah. I mean, certainly trying to trying to
to feel that there isn't only one narrative. - We don't have to go the same way.
- Right. I mean, there was a headline our ex-prime minister, Boris Johnson has just — there's an interim report
about his behavior during COVID and the parties and the interim report makes absolutely clear
he knew what was going on and he's guilty. He went on television and said, “I've been vindicated.” - Classic, classic move.
- Classic, classic move. But one of the newspapers just said he's gone full Trump. And I thought, that's right. And if he’s gone full Trump then that may be the end of him. So I was feeling, I was feeling it was possible. It was possible that we don't have to entirely follow your model. You're welcome? I think it's absolutely your optimism is well-taken. I love the work that you do and you've been doing for so long. And you're right. You can never stop trying to expose that the emperor has no clothes. Because when you do then, it's just, we’ve given up. Then we've just. - Yeah.
- Tilted over the king and said “It's over.” You know, I'm always reminded of in the United States in the 1920s, I don't know if you know this, but we've had some racial issues. No missed that. Yeah, it started — I don't want to get into it, but the group, the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s got really powerful and big and what, what took them down or what at least shrunk them was not necessarily a reckoning with racist ideology
or the past of a country. It was an exposé on the peculiarities of their initiations and how silly they were. Yeah. And the exposure of that took away all of their mystique and ultimately is what led to them. And it's what I love so much about the work that you do. Well, I think this is true of everyone and the the best satirists, even in the worst countries, you know the Russian ones, what they they try and make Putin not merely scary but ridiculous. Yes. Because that is the thing
that on the whole, tyrants, dictators can't bear. I mean, we had — they came into this office there was during the the Balkans war, there was two very, very brilliant young Croatians. And they set up a satirical magazine during the war. And they came in and I said to them, I said, “Look, I think you guys are really, really brave.” And they looked at me
and they said, “I don't care if you think I'm brave. Am I funny?” And I said, “Yeah, you're funny.” And that's how to do it, I think. Well then, I can give you both compliments. I can, I can say both. Ian Hislop
thank you so much for joining us and sitting down. - No, thank you. Real pleasure.
- Oh, thank you.
