The corruption of political language

[Music] good morning my name is Jacob Freddie and I'm a trainee reporter at the Daily Mail and welcome to the corruption of political language bursts in a strand of debates focusing on a crisis of political language this strand is paired with living freedom the reason we've set up this strand and in particular this kind of starting session is because it's pretty clear that the political sphere is a bit of a mess at the moment we're undergoing serious change whether it's political language expressed through brexit or on a more micro level on university campuses where again we're seeing a new form of politics being laid bare using a new language so we've got these traditional political terms such as left wing and right wing which once meant something very different you know in the 1940s 1950s 1960s as opposed to now in the 21st century and we suggest that you know we might be using language in a completely different way we're also you know hearing new words political words the whole time if I'd asked my grandma when she was my age what a lever or remainer was she'd had no bloody clue at the same time we're hearing completely new words who ever heard of the word cysts or their gender pronouns z20 years ago we're constantly being faced with a new political language so I think it's really important that we kind of get to grips with what this political language is is it a good thing is it you know maybe not such a good thing do we even have a new political language what we're going to do is are going to have a short mini lecture but followed by some very incisive comments from a stellar panel of respondents and then we're gonna come straight out to you as per usual and so first of all we're gonna hear from a little mini lecture from Brendan O'Neill who's sitting over here Brendan is a long-standing contributor to the battle of ideas he's the editor of spiked online The Guardian cause and the Danny Dyer of journalism well Andrew bowl of the Aussie Daily Telegraph says he is one of the world's funniest fiercest critics of groupthink Brendon himself is clearly a victim to a certain new political language just a couple weeks ago it was named in lbc house in Dale's the top hundred most influential people on the right despite the fact that he himself positions himself on the left does clear that you know there's much to be discussed there we're then gonna hear off let many lecture to some short comments from my fellow panelists we're going to go straight to Rachel Halliburton sitting on my immediate left who is a journalist novelist her book the optical illusion a very eighteenth-century scandal will be out early next year after Rachel we're going to hear from dr. Paul Taylor who's a senior lecturer in communications and cultural theory at the University of Leeds he's also a bit of a radio Titan on the BBC so I'm sure you've heard them many of time and then lastly but not least we've got Nick Hilton sat on my immediate right who's the broadcast editor at The Spectator so if you've seen any of the spectators videos or podcasts there's a good chance of the brainchild of Nick so just get straight into it Brendan could you kick yourself [Applause] if you want to see what a mess both politics and language are in at the moment you just have to consider the fact that last week Downing Street issued a statement saying it was okay to use the phrase pregnant women so this is the seat of political power in Britain informing the populace that it is acceptable to say that women get pregnant it is acceptable to say that pregnancy is something that happens to a woman not to a man and basically Downing Street is saying it's okay for you to express and give voice to biological facts which the vast majority of people around the country will have thought was a very strange thing for Downing Street to have to remind us of now of course this was in response to a controversy involving the Foreign Office the Foreign Office had to give advice to the United Nations on the wording of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and that covenant contains a line which says pregnant women should not be given the death penalty and the Foreign Office said we have a bit of a problem with the phrase pregnant women because it might be offensive to I don't know the 17p Poole who have given birth while claiming or identifying as men and so it said to the UN please say pregnant people to avoid giving offence and it caused such a stink that eventually Downing Street had to come out and say look it's okay to say pregnant women this is an incredibly bizarre situation that we have to try and get our heads around firstly the fact that the Foreign Office has gone even the Foreign Office even the kind of stuffy foreign office which extends Britain's influence around the world full of suits and civil servants and probably quite boring people even the Foreign Office has gone down the rabbit hole of postmodernist trans speech where even the words men and women are being called into question and the second bizarre thing of course is that Downing Street has to tell us has to give us a green light that it's okay to say pregnant women a phrase that people use every single day and that's how they understand the world they live in and I think what that story really points to is that we face something really worrying today a crisis of political language that is actually quite profound and disturbing a crisis of political language that I think expresses a crisis of politics more broadly and beyond that the crisis of meaning a collapse of meaning a collapse of the basic categories through which people have traditionally understood politics the world and their place in the world a collapse of the ideas and substance and meaning of everyday life in essence so I think the the unanchored of political language the confusions of political language today both express and intensify a crisis of public life and even a crisis of common sense so we we actually face something more than what all well wrote about in his famous essay which is not just the the misuse of political language not just the use of political language to miss rather than clarify in to disguise rather than enlighten we still have that of course we still have the propagandistic misuse of language but we have something else to something even worse a situation where political language has become disconnected from reality and has increasingly become this very crude tool for the expression of narrow contradictory mystifying and even unhinged ideas so I just want to look at three ways in which I think political language is in crisis today the first is that thing Orwell and others wrote about their ongoing often quite conscious and sometimes quite sinister misuse of political language - in all Welles words make murder look respectable we still got that we still have that we still have people who very consciously misuse language to hide what they're really doing or to hide what they really think so this is an error in which peacekeeping is presented to us as something that the United Nations does something that the British military does when we know that what they're really doing is war war is increasingly presented to us as peacekeeping the United Nations will intervene in a foreign normally already war ravaged country it will often support one side demonize another it might even get involved in arming certain groups it might get involved in raping women as has happened in certain places where the UN has posted troops it will inevitably end up entrenching the divisions in that country intensifying the conflict deepening the bloodshed and it calls it a peacekeeping operation war is now peace all peace is war this is an era in which Western governments the British government and the American government will bomb other countries and refer to it as humanitarian intervention that shockingly Orwellian political phrase that was invented by the likes of Tony Blair and much of the Labour Party of the time which supported him and also the liberal prayer which presented the bombing of Yugoslavia in particular in 1999 as humanitarian intervention they used the language of caring saving humanitarianism protection while they were killing hundreds of people including hundreds of refugees on more than one occasion they bombed columns of refugees who were fleeing Yugoslavia and killed them women pregnant women children all blown to bits all of it referred to as humanitarian intervention a deeply sinister misuse of of language barbarism disguised as humanitarianism destruction describe disguised as construction as rescue and then on the domestic front I think one of the misuses of political language that I find most intriguing and concerning is around the word incapacity particularly in relation of course to incapacity benefit which is a thing that was introduced in the 1970s really took off in the 1980s it's in that decade where the number of people receiving incapacity benefit goes up exponentially and eventually reaches around a million and then in more recent times in capacity has been reimagined as disability or incapability in other words get attached to this idea but that's also incredibly deceitful language that is the presentation of societal failure in this instance the Society's failure to provide people with gainful employment the presentation of societal failure as individual incapacity the presentation of the the limitations of capitalist society and its inability to provide everyone with work as a failing on the part of the individual it's his or her incapacity that is the problem and of course if you look at the 1980s what happens hundreds of thousands of people are thrown out of work particularly in the areas of manufacturing and mining and other traditional forms of industry and they're redefined as incapable and they come to think of themselves tragically and inevitably as incapable and so what we have in those instances and there are numerous other instances is the misuse of language the very sinister misuse of language to disguise what's really going on politically and to cover up war destruction unemployment and other deeply problematic things that happen in modern society the second way in which political language is in crisis is the way in which some political terms and phrases and descriptions have become so emptied of substance that they now mean the opposite of what they once meant and there are a few examples of this that I want to give the first is the word progressive whenever I hear someone described themselves as progressive now I know that they are not progressive it's the easiest way to work out if someone's progressive you can see this all the time almost everyone who describe themselves as progressive is actually opposed to progress is actually largely very uncomfortable with the ideas of the Enlightenment and with the ideas of a future orientated humanist desire to expand man's influence over nature to develop the forces of production to move forward and progress even environmentalists call themselves progressive and you just know they're taking the mick I've heard people say we are progressives opposed to fracking and you just want to shape them by their collars and say that means you're not progressive you are opposing a progressive step a new form of Industry something that could give people employment and create more energy that's not progressive the other word that has utterly changed me is anti-racist to be anti-racist now is to be hyper conscious about race to be anti-racist now is to think racially all the time it is to say to people you're white you're black you're this you're that it is to behave in the way racist people used to behave although it's done in a very politically correct way so be anti-racist now as to go and see him movie in the cinema and count the number of black faces and then write a tumblr post later about how terrible it is that Hollywood won't employ enough black people it is to be myopically racial obsessively racial that to me is the opposite of what anti-racist used to mean which was to get rid of the whole nonsense idea of race free speech now means the opposite of what it used to mean free speech used to mean you wanted free speech now very often people will argue for censorship under the guise of freedom of speech one example of that is event Cooper who is pushing this thing called reclaim the internet which wants new rules and regulations on the internet so people can't say certain things and she says this is not about limiting free speech this is about expanding it because if we allow trolls to speak online other people feel that they can't speak so in calling for the regulation of speech she says she is defending freedom of speech uh turley Orwellian censorship is freedom the other two words that now are emptied of meaning is conservative and labor the Conservative Party is no longer interested in conserving things and the Labour Party no longer knows anyone who Labor's for a living the Conservative Party if you just look at their gender identity Act which would allow anyone to claim to be any gender regardless of reality looks to me like a complete and utter embrace of post-modernism a destruction of tradition at its very core that is the end of any suggestion that the Conservative Party is the Conservative Party labor increasingly looks to me like a movement against ordinary people rather than for ordinary people a movement that wants to police and control what people see and eat and how often they can gamble and which sees them as a problem to be solved rather than a people to be represented the left increasingly means being against ordinary people rather than for them and the brexit debate proves that two and then the third and final way in which political language is corroded today is I think the most important which is that political language has increasingly surrendered to the culture wars it is increasingly political language is increasingly a tool of identity and validation rather than of description and the expression of convictions and it's really interesting I think that the two of the most common political terms today that are used to describe people are very rarely used by people themselves to describe themselves and those two phrases are politically correct and neoliberal I find it fascinating that we see those phrases bandied around all the time you're politically correct you're a neoliberal but it's incredibly incredibly rare that anyone describes themselves as politically correct or anyone describes themselves as neoliberal because that is political language that is not used to describe something accurately it's used to brand it's used to other people it's used in the culture wars in the identity wars to say I'm good you're evil it's a marker rather than a tool of description and you see that again and again today particularly in the misuse of terms like fascist and communist so people on the Left will call anyone who even remotely disagrees with Angola Merkel's welcoming of 800,000 migrants into Germany you're a fascists if you have any issue with that whatsoever you're instantly a fascist they're like Rick from The Young Ones everyone is a fascist and then on the right anyone who likes the NHS and wants to expand it and think certain things should be done by the government rather than by the free market is a Marxist a communist a firebrand they keep saying this about Korbin esters and of course it's not true someone recently said Corbyn ism is basically just microwaved Miliband ISM it's not Marxism that's the key problem I think with political language right now which is that it is increasingly used within the culture wars not to accurately describe yourself or to accurately describe your enemies but simply to puff up yourself and demonize others and that gives rise to a situation where it can be very difficult to work out the truth of politics and the truth of where people stand the one word that is most demonized in which I we should reclaim is the word populist that's the word that is the most demonic were today everyone who opposes the European Union a deeply authoritarian bureaucratic backward institution is branded a populist and in relation to that I say bring it on populist means being interested in and wanting to engage with the popular will and I think the more that we can reorient politics around doing that the more we can move away from the dishonest destructive self-interested misuse of political language thank you thanks very much that Brendon lots to mull over Rachel any thoughts on that when I was asked to join this debate I I just saw straight away it's it's it contains infinite topics so Brendon has already brought up about kind of nine or ten massive topics each of which which we could spend the next one and a half hours talking about I'm going to respond to a couple of days but I'm also going to introduce a few new ones of my own the first thing that I was thinking about the crisis of political language that we have right now is you know I started to look at what's happened over the last thirty years and it is immense we are living in such a time of flux internationally we have seen the fall of the Berlin Wall we have seen history end and begin again there has been an Arab Spring that then turned to an Arab winter and we've also obviously got this the global balance of power tipping away from the West and towards Asia that's internationally nationally we have seen the whole breakdown of the class system ironically beginning with Thatcher's promotion of the self-determination of the individual we have then seen centigram politics come to dominate England for 20 years until about two years ago and it start to become more polarized again and on top of that technologically we have seen the communications revolution in form of the internet which has gone from simply speeding up the transference of ideas which is always has a massive effect to being able to manipulate and bring down regimes no wonder political language is in crisis now one of the things that you raised in your proposal was you talked about brexit you've you addressed this I think we have rather different thing that's what you've been saying one of the things that strikes me is the coin in need of new words in itself like brexit er brexit livre remainer is not a problem all these words serve a necessary process I'm very happy to be told that I'm a Ramona or indeed a centrist mum both of which are true is the manipulating of old words and phrases to distorts debate and create dubious narratives that I think is a problem here now for me one of the problems is the use of the phrase metropolitan elite a strong narrative and when I suspect you use is is that breaks it was a people's revolt against an elite who fails to understand how they had been dispossessed by globalization and immigration now the thing is there are sprinters of truth in this but they are only splinters the moment you starts looking detail at the facts this narrative starts to dissolve now take the campaign did it work because it told the truth to those who have been left behind or was it in fact because of the backing of a wealthy elite that was happy to break all the electoral rules to get what it wanted for instance one of the big stories much reported in several respects will press outlets is that a lot of the funding for practice of propaganda came from five of Britain's richest businessman these included the notorious Farish Ally Erin banks Peter Hargreaves James Hosking rod Robert Abbott stone and Crispin OD who channeled fourteen point nine million pounds to different probe exit groups now it's often said the super-rich want to stay in Europe but the super super rich do not Europe allows a can of free flow business but it implies a regulation and capital controls which these people do not want they want a situation of free trading which can only happen completely for them outside the EU so they put their energy into making sure it wouldn't happen more important than this is the fact that offshore companies put huge amounts of money into databases breaking all rules of election funding and making absolutely the most of the latest techniques and digital campaigning now the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer part owner of Breitbart who also owns big data firm Cambridge analytical he allegedly I think we're meant to see allegedly at the moment aren't we but he provided free services and advice worth millions of pounds to Farage about harvesting data from Facebook and targeting social media they then disseminated to me information to the people who are left behind reinforcing the message that it was basically Europe and immigration that that was a problem when leave one arron banks himself tweeted that it was artificial intelligence that swung it okay you may argue there might be some truth in this but you can't deny the connection between those who felt they were left behind and a vote there is a huge problem with the division of wealth in this country and that is true and yes urban liberals should be getting to grips with that but it's one thing to acknowledge that truth quite another to say Europe is the reason that they were left behind on the most basic level the year before the vote European immigrants contributed 20 billion pounds more to the economy than they received in benefits 20 billion pounds more beyond this the EU itself this founded on the back of it of a Europe that was on its knees it's made one of its main aims is to reduce regional wealth disparities is key spending priorities agriculture because we're all poverty was a prime factor leading to fascism and alleviating poverty in the regions it's added ten point nine billion euros to Britain for the period from 2014 to 2020 precisely the purpose of alleviating poverty the remain campaign was stupid not to point this out but it is a fad and it is one of the reasons why I'm passion is about nearly you pull any thoughts yeah I'd like to pick on a couple of things but just immediately to Rachel's point about the EU I'll talk about this in a second but to me a lot of the debates about the EU was a squabble and Islington dinner party and it didn't represent the people that Brendan was talking about that's one of the problems and when the EU meets the popular will it's manifested in women being pulled through the streets of Catalonia by their hair I think that needs to be recognized no I'm sorry the EU stood by and did nothing and it's in supporting the Spanish government but more generally this theme about brendan talked about disconnection and respectability and I've been give you just a few examples about the concept of disconnection I totally I was behind nearly everything Brendan said but what aspect that's slightly different but related is not so much the language spoken but the form in which language is spoken and who gets to speak so I always find it fascinating with that an accent like mine you never hear in the national media or incredibly seldom the issue of class being discussed with the flat vowel so me and my people have to sit back and hear it discussed by other people now you may think you know boohoo but little specific examples Luciana Berger was parachuted into the Wavertree constituency in Liverpool Tristram hunt was parachuted in to stoke central now if you're from the north of England the idea that in both of those great cities Stoke and Liverpool you haven't got people who can represent your own people and to exacerbate the problem Channel 4 News which I think prides itself on its inclusivity and liberal values they there was an item about and northern death rates being off the scale compared to where I am now the capital of Romania and as if you know so by the way if you're being annoyed by my northern ship eNOS guy was described as that in a previous talk I've given in London if the death rates are correct I won't be along around that much longer anyway so you won't have to put up with me but they were discussing these northern death rates which actually a thing is a social it's an absolute abomination and they interviewed Luciana Berger down the line and Jacobs now working in Liverpool just for those who aren't familiar Luciana is not a name you hear very often in a waiver tree poem so they're interviewing her about death rates in the north of England and I'm thinking well perhaps the fact you're interviewing a fellow metropolitan elite member about death rates in the north of England has something to do with it this whole sways of the country and I can pick from a Liverpool accident that's my particular gripe but if you're from Glasgow if you're from Birmingham the only chance you have of hearing that type of voice speaking any type of political language is mostly if you're a trade union leader who else a sports person oh and a comedian they're about the only acceptable act those accents and I noticed recently there was a bit of a kickback in social media and in the popular press because of Paul Hollywoods who's probably the exception to the rule the most powerful Liverpudlian at the moment I'm the Great British Bake Off I like most people is really sad to see Liam go and there's the accusation that Kate only got through because she'd done a really bad version of the life of building and but that's one of the few examples I can think of were nor the northern power base actually has had any effect one of the examples I'll give you is there's I spend more time reading a lot of dusty philosophical tomes and those the famous philosopher from Birmingham Jasper Carrott and he once told a joke about focus Gallants idea of the Metropole knowledge there's an Islington dinner party going on and very very posh everyone's on their best behavior and in the middle of its the family dog barges into the dining room and I don't know Islington very well I'm guessing it would be a golden retriever or a Labrador and it's old its flatulent it breaks wind starts licking its own scrotum and the embarrassment across the dinner party so one of the hosts and one of the guests pipes up as the dogs licking its private parts he said the wish I could do that and the host SR actually says give them a biscuit and you can now the point is quite a few it was quite a while ago but on question time Baroness Chakrabarti and the whole panel was asked but it was a question about privilege and in the question time panel she was the only person it wasn't just a question about Oxbridge she was the only person on the panel who hadn't been to public school and there's a question from the audience saying you know could you discuss this and she made excuses she said it doesn't matter where you come from it's you know what you mean and what you say etc well I'm sorry someone like that's what she's trying to do is the guests at the dinner party she's trying to ratchet down the sense of embarrassment and I think you need people like the host who actually pointedly try and embarrass and on rare occasions the curtain falls down and you sometimes see the truth so Grenville actually showed people the disparity in the disconnection hillsborough would be another one but the amount of that fell of a tragedy that it takes for people to see who does control political language is disgraceful there's some really good points that is really important directly you know realize that I'm talking about political language that we're not just talking about language or who also got to talk about the mouths where it's spouted from so some really good comment circle okay well I'm working the spectator I have lost countless hours to practice it already so and and I do think any discussion about breaks it you and nervously forget what you're supposed to be talking about which I guess is a crisis in political language as outlined by by Brendon and it's misleading that I work the spectator and I'm actually the kind of the soft liberal voice and I in addition to doing the podcast and the videos and stuff I also I'm sort of the sounding board for all discussions about identity politics and sort of a degree staunch defender of identity politics which I guess will be my role here so I mean the the central the catalyst for Brendan's mini lecture was this question of pregnant women pregnant people as I recall the story it was actually the language changes actually from expectant mothers to pregnant people which is again and this is a kind of question again about semantics for me pregnant people is more precisely definition than expectant mothers there are various questions about expectation about mothering about whether that you know the saunas prank is gonna carry the child to term a surgery surgery and you know it's a sensitive issue and pregnant people seems to me in this circumstance the actual little more precise scientific definition which comes to misuse I mean I don't know if Brendon was trying to say that that that prank did st. Nick being pregnant people is a misuse of language or a sight misrepresentation but if you constantly reject identity politics constantly reject kind of agenda discussions they've been happening and I'm gonna have to use quote marks a liberal I'm told I'm not allowed to say liberal a spectator I mean these different things on the right and the left but the most demonstrable misuse of language that I heard in Brendan's mini lecture will stay cool everything you don't understand postmodern as though you know I don't understand it's happening with young students it doesn't make sense to me it's postmodern yada-yada-yada it so identity politics is not postmodern it's a very real discussion that should be had and should be debated you know people are very keen on free speech but don't actually want to debate the issue just want to call it postmodern labeling a post one and so I guess we're going to get dug into identity politics they don't know Rachel says she wants to scale onto it but you know just touch upon the next one the the next point that Brendan raised kind of the emptying of substance of these terms you know he doesn't like anyone who anyone who describes herself as a progressive is not progressive but the I'm slightly baffled by the idea that auntie fracking is cannot be progressive because it is not as though progress is somehow linear errands you know if we develop a nuclear weapon and not dropping that nuclear weapon is not progressive you know nuclear disarmament it's not progressive all these things can't be progressive for not moving inexorably forward yeah and then and then you know labor versus concern I'm conservative so I mean and not to you know bring out my you know card-carrying labor member thing this early but the idea that a pot is not in touch with people who actually labor is again just this willful misrepresentation of the Labor Party the trade union and movement you know I mean I don't know if brendan has actually been to local CLP s in you know in the region and actually spoken to people there and I think they would be frankly baffled by the idea they that what the work they do is not labor and it just seems so odd to me in a discussion about political language where you are starting by saying people myth and misusing critical language people emptying a substance so then make these wild claims that's injury backed up by absolutely nothing to focus entirely on these kind of weird semantic detours rather than the actual issues about like binaries and polarizations political language the discourse we had and I thought like a minute so just so one word on brexit I mean the problem with the political language and breaks it for me started at the ballot box with the way that question was worded I mean very literally at actually I should have researched this but it was something like should we exit the European Union yes or no and you were given a yes or no answer so of course the arguments there were going to be completely polarized because you had just a yes or no answer if you had yes but we want ei rough T or yes when a canadian-style deal yes we want to go on WTO terms etc etc or no you know no it's kind of simple but you know it was it was an onion square phrased on the ballot paper and obviously it produced an unknowns discussion and that's so true of of our political discourse if we if we narrow it down to these simple binary it's Orphic saying you know you're either progressive or you're not progressive you're a liberal you're not pretty liberal then of course then we end up with these arguments which is kind of like knife fights rather than kind of the new yorks discussions I assume I'm gonna have now Jacob hopefully fingers crossed thanks very much Nick before welcome out to the audience Brendan I'm locked there to pick up on responses to your speech just pick up um maybe just one point so clear we've got and whether you know brexit was a result of the corruption a political language brexit I could talk about brexit for the rest of my life breaks is the best thing that's happened in British politics 50 years I think just one one point I would make which might become two really quick points the first one is an if we are having knife fights as Nick says over issues of Liberty and democracy and so on which is the substance of the question of what it means to be liberal the question of what breaks it means and so on that's good that's great I'm all for binary conflicts of interest and discussion and debate over those matters of substance they're incredibly important matters the problem with identity politics is that it is it's the intense politicization of personal life and lifestyle and skin color and gender and all those things which means that the debates become incredibly poisonous and destructive and then the binary becomes really really dangerous I think because it becomes I'm a good person you're a bad person I will dehumanize you you don't count then it becomes really really problematic if we got politics back - its substance substantial ground of Liberty and democracy in the future then the debates can be as intense as you like and they'd still be fruitful just on labour quickly the labor is a joke labour is a joke if you just look at the membership in particular the membership is increasingly from social classes a and B I think Paul is absolutely right that you cannot switch on the TV these days without seeing a posh Corvina star talking about the issues of class they never really mean class politics in any progressive revolutionary sense they mean looking after the vulnerable which is another modern political phrase I really dislike the vulnerable which they by which they mean poor people and working class people it's an incredibly paternalistic movement it's it's the social makeup of its membership in its leadership has changed dramatically over the past few decades and reflected that is both reflects and also intensifies the policy decisions it makes which increasingly are about looking after the vulnerable rather than liberating people from poverty providing people with gainful employment and so on which the labor movement used to be about so Rachel I wanted to quickly come back on and you know the identity politics after Nick come back and labor so yeah I'm not gonna bang on about brakes anymore so gender I I have to admit I was I was slightly it at sea on there tonight I decided I do some research on economic and social conditions that perhaps promote a greater fluid notions of greater fluidity in in gender and I realize it is it is so far from being a postmodern condition in fact this notion of completely binary genders is something that susan has been a force by christian culture for centuries if you look around the world in india famousy you got the hydras males who take on traditional female roles and expectations but they occupy their own territory as a third gender they have suffered huge amounts of discrimination but in 2014 India recognized them as a third gender by law Native Americans have always recognized a third gender called two-spirited they can be men he dresses women women who dress as men or androgynous individuals they're revered as healers and care givers there's even the people of Sulawesi in Indonesia they recognize four genders and a fifth message and the Bisou these are neither male nor female they are born hermaphrodite um also just generally if he reads historical accounts you know they're right there there are so many examples of kind of gender fluidity and what my favorite one recently was the story of okay well Mae Morris the incredibly talented daughter of William Morris who some nothing responsible for some of his designs now earlier in her life she had a relationship with George Bernard Shaw but towards the end she spent her life with a woman called Mary lob a lange girl who looked who looked and dressed like a man they lived together as a married couple this was in the 1920s and 1930s gender has always been a complex thing you know our culture how tried to make it simple and I think you know the fact is it is more complex than we narratives have allowed for and finally it's breaking out the one final thing I would say pregnant you've got to say I do you think you had to say pregnant women though okay I'm sort of handicapped immediately by the fact that the moment I defend Jeremy call when I become the sort of posh Corbyn Easter that decrying so I'm not I'm not gonna do that well I would says that if you do think the Labour Party's just possible Denise is just James Knight and Seamus Milne and all the kind of Westminster crew then you're not engaged in the labor movement and it's grassroots and and I do think and it's boring cliche to say about this election but this election was the election was not it was not won the election was better than it should have been by the fact that young people were getting out working-class people were getting out and actually I mean it just if it was just kind of you know people who went to Westminster some polls it would have been a much smaller group of people voting you think it I mean do you have demographic breakdown with men yeah it's all probably know there's something deeply ironic about people who say oh you know it'd be so terrible that we have divisive politics nowadays and if you were to any point say that you're against gay marriage I believe that the standard response was shut the up so is the you have to remember that an actually I don't mind being told to shut the up you fight if you disagree with me about whether or not there should be gay marriage so let's not kid ourselves that politics and things that you believe in and not important and not going to divide opinion just to add salt to the wound of the politically correct language I'm wondering at what point we're not allowed to say pregnant since it implies that a woman or whoever has been impregnated through the act of a man penetrating her vagina so you know it's a very it's a very slippery of course but a very slippery slope that you get into when you start trying to unpick these sorts of things and guess what they turn into screaming matches between you and between people who say that you're not to say pregnant this or pregnant that actually my question was about your point about representation so my personal opinion would be that I haven't ever seen a politician that really represents anybody that I can think of I think politicians represent themselves and they're best at putting forward their own self-interest for political gain Brendan I'm just that I was very struck by the the stance that you you took and a lot I really enjoy I love your work could you always present an important kind of radical or revolutionary voice a progressive voice and I think the positive sense in which you would use it but what I was struck by was by how conservative your position actually is the the idea that our language is corrupt or that we live in a time where our language is uniquely corrupt is I think just historically false that the beginning of philosophy is reflected in Socrates been accused of corrupting the youth corrupting language the Sophists were accused by Plato of using of using false or corrupt language the idea that language is stable or persists over time or endures is always a it's always an argument that's used by oligarchs conservatives those who are afraid of change now yes there we must be worried of abuse or misuse of language but language itself is ambiguous rather than corrupt it reflects the fact that politics or the human condition is itself inherently conflict ridden and our language reflects that fact that's not a sign of corruption or crisis or degradation it's a reflection of the reality of being human where this is all this line come from right factors and what is fascism its Marxism song internationalism Stalin said it in his politics was socialism in one country less been lying but less been lying about things way before that spreading those I'm going to say now identity politics it began with Central European intellectuals couldn't work out why the Western workers weren't rising up when they had in Russia right they use a totally non-scientific idea from Freud repression they capitalism repressed the workers so that head of the household male you impressed his wife and kids there and he talked about what he got with ideas from angles and got this idea that that the big problem is is not class he's when women write they all those intellectuals went across the film a university doll further down to the states then you got the new left running with the Eider in 68 and 69 that there was sort of these sort of sort of pseudo market revolutions to do with the civil rights and under stone wall and it's from 1970 onwards II got this idea of the triumvirate at the fixing classes of you know non-male the ethnics etc the left have consistently completely lied about this and this is why in this we are in a moment just about what you were saying about it being the tool of the oligarch you've only written you've only read part of the history book limit when anybody is bent on totalitarianism from whichever part of the political spectrum it comes this is the first tool the take out the box censorship you can't say that because it's a hop step and a jump from you can't say that just because I disagree to you can't think that in the first place I'm gonna come by link between those two things it's the first tool any totalitarian takes out of the box it does matter who they are where they come from or what flag we have so it's a very dangerous thing to say that you can't see that risk of developing a bromance with Brendan but very quickly the points about binary options if you're going to start saying it was a binary referendum we didn't get asked to go in and in nineteen seventies referendum was a binary should we stay in or should we go so please all I wanted some intellectual consistency again I repeat the stuff about the argument is labor isn't disconnected my alma maters Edinburgh if you just said to me in my lifetime labor could become irrelevant in Scotland I'd be absolutely shocked I wouldn't have believed you but they have because they've become completely disconnected from their roots and the point about self self-interest um I'm not so sure so you can make such an easy distinction my point would be the clear segue between self-interest in class interest back to my Maitre stream hunt he parachuted into Stoke central didn't like it when the Labour Party became a bit more like what the Labour Party was always supposed to be guess where he went off to direct to the Victoria and Albert Museum well his self-interest is very similar to the class interest that allowed in to get that job I couldn't get that job most people in this room couldn't complete fix-up and that's the type of thing that just never gets spoken about Britain and no no yeah the first guy who talked said that I should tend to shut the up which is my default response at a lot of questions but no I actually I thought it was an odd point to raise because I don't think anyone on the panel actually said we shouldn't be having divisive arguments and we shouldn't you know we should be kind of telling people to you know and this I guess the broader point about censorship is that it seems so odd fixation of people like Brendan and people who are on the right people very critical of students to be like fixated with the idea that students are censoring as though students have the power to censor as though you know there's anyone but the stake and censor you know they can reject remove a platform they can say to people you can't come speak to us I could say to you you're welcome to your view that you know you should have gay marriage but you know you'd have to come and come and say it to me and my friends our eyes LinkedIn dinner parties so so I mean I just I guess that's a broader point about censorship is often actually again its misuse of language things are not actually being censored things are just being rejected by certain communities because a community has no interest in that view and that's not a bad thing that's that every community does that Rachel joke about just one point yes I just don't speak up actually tangentially on the point made by the gentleman up here about about ironic about that but the link between censorship and totalitarianism because obviously kind of one of the other things he won't be raised it was about fascism what what you call fascist and you know something I was just kind of noticing looking out over Europe I mean you obviously you have your vertically fascist groups such that the Reich's Berg of fascism in Germany or Golden Dawn in Greece but you know fascism does start subtly and often it is to do with saying that certain opinions cannot be held you have you know some Viktor Orban in Hungary various I mean you know debate is split on him but one of the first things he's done is to clamp down on journalists they've been attached trying to cover the refugee crisis newspapers and blogs have been closed down we find it's very easy to condemn this in other countries but I think we need to cut ourselves just as hard about what can be said and what cannot be Brendan didn't pick up on one point yeah I think Nick just gave a very good example of Orwellian misuse of political language we're not censoring we're just removing your platform base which basically means that in that particular place where you were invited to speak to a particular group of people you can no longer do it and that's happened to me on a couple of occasions and I felt censored because I couldn't speak to the hundred or so people who wanted to hear me speak just I want to just make a point about the elite because Rachael was suggesting earlier that and a lot of people say this now that even the use of the word early is misleading and whenever I say the word alena people think you're a fascist people think the only people we've ever thought about elites in the past are fascists if you talk about the elite and the people that's immediately suspect they overlook the fact that so many radical movements in the past and revolutionary movements have also used the same language but the thing that I find interesting is who creates a lot of the language that gets used today it's not created by ordinary people it doesn't come from everyday conversation words like post truth sis as someone said earlier gender fluid these aren't normal everyday words you will not hear these words in the pub you will not hear them at bus stops these are the inventions of an elite and they are words that are created their language that created to control not only how we express things but fundamentally how we think about things and then fundamentally on from that how we behave and how we act in the world I think someone said that the control of language is a very authoritarian instinct I think it's absolutely right and it's the control of language with the end of controlling thought we should always be immediately suspicious when words are censored or when new words are invented one of my favorites is the word smoke freedom which was actually turned into one word which was very new speak which so the ban on smoking in public places was presented to us as an extension of freedom where is anyone who's honest with themselves will know that it was a limitation on freedom it limited people's right to choose whether to smoke in whether to go to a smoking establishment or a non-smoking establishment but then we have this creation of this one squash together Newspeak words smoke freedom a word no-one uses but was created by the elite to present authoritarianism as Liberty we should always be very critical of that and and in question who's creating this language why are they using it and why are they pressuring us to use as well it's a question to Brendon and it'd be useful to get a sense of what you think the mechanism would be to have a more precise language so the reason I say that is in the democracy that I live in and I've lived in an political sort of language meaning is often been so contested and I agree that there's more of a drive that's top-down about what language people use and I think part of the problem seems to be to me that in terms of working class sort of politics coming to what Paul was sort of commenting on I don't have a strong sense of the agency of what we would have called the working class so when we talk about the 17.5 million I don't see them revolting I agree that it was a historic thing I don't see them reacting to what's going on around them so I think that's a bit of a problem what one thing that is a question it usefully could be precise Brendon about what would be an anti-racist sort of position now Kerry didn't go from the education charity world right I really like your last point Brendan and surely within that new political language is the assumption particularly in relation to gender that the massive us are stupid contemptible awful and that a lot of that language is about the sort of virtue signaling which separates you off from the deviant mass whose behavior must be reformed or kept out of politics and that would seem very evident to me but I wanted to ask you you entered your point with saying we should and can and must reclaim the real meaning of populism as supporting and popularizing the popular will but do you think within political language giving given so many words have now been so degraded in meaning that we can reclaim and make something of them so for example class which would seem to me to now be a categorization of you as you know disadvantage stupid weak and vulnerable is it there for use when a lot of people use class that's what they mean when people talk about equality they don't mean it as I've always understood it as we want everyone to be rich they mean we don't like rich people wealth consumption and we don't like poor people because they drink smoke and eat too much so can those words ever have a progressive meaning again or lastly can we reclaim the idea of Europe from the idea of the EU which are so wrongly and badly equated one being wholly reactionary and one being a lot of citizens with much in common yeah I think I'd like to hear it a bit more from the panel about how words are being used to create a certain political approach so it seems to me that lots of words are used to not project an idea but to suppress the discussion of that idea so just just two examples so we hear a lot of people being called out if you call somebody out you're assuming that you're right to start off with and that you have the authority and the only appropriate response to somebody else is to feel shame so that takes out the context of a discussion you're not you're not criticizing an idea you're you're calling somebody out and and expecting them to feel shame so you're you're not projecting your idea you're you're denigrating your opponent and you're shutting down the opportunity to discuss those ideas and there are lots there's lots of languages being used in that very politically aggressive way that doesn't sound politically aggressive another another great one is denier so anyone who's a denier for example a climate denier is avoiding something if you're denied and you're avoiding facts or the truth or some yeah you you're also a failure you're psychologically flawed and and therefore your ideas can be ignored so a lot of language is being used in a way not to reject something not even to project the concept that you're trying to put forward but to shut down free speech and shut down an opponent and it eventually I'd like to hear a bit more from the panel apart from unit one where the Labour Party and brexit let's talk more about language and how language is actually being used I actually want to try and return this discussion to something that Brendon began with which I don't think people are interrogating enough which is this point about the crisis of meaning because I think all of this stems from that very fact that we do have a crisis of meaning in particular the historic position we're in is where the elite have lost faith in their system in everything that they stood for in the past and in the belief and all this other stuff that's happening all this discussion about identity Oliver is just filling the vacuum that has now been vacated by them and the problem with this is whether you you know believe any of this unhinged thinking about men can have children and you know it's like it's like what we're living in a Monty Python film that's really irrelevant to me because the critical thing is that the crisis of meaning in the language that we now use and we are being forced increasingly to adopt is actually closing down the human imagination because if all that's left is that we can talk about things that are natural and naturalized identities or our assumed identities or whatever we're actually closing down what we think of ourselves and our potential and of our ability to shape the world around us so we're closing down the human imagination and the problem I've got with this is that there's a lot of very positive impulses around we see it in brexit we see it across Europe in terms of some of the elections the results where people are saying they've had enough and it's not just because they simply see themselves as victims I think there's an aspiration for change the problem is that there's no language that can give shape to that it can actually inspire more and more people and cohere this into a proper political opposition to what exists and so when we talk about the the the political language for me it's about what political language can we discover invent that can actually actually give shape to real aspiration that can bring about real change I returned briefly to see what Brendan said a very goofy little grey briefing thank you very briefly my god if you're invited to speak somewhere that 99.9% the population would not be invited to speak at and then that invitation is withdrawn that is not the same as censorship and to think it is conflate that with like style in a censorship is this you know you could call someone else a snowflake for that for their hurt feelings I mean that would be this is a sort of coddling that I don't understand and just to quickly go to the crisis of meaning I mean you talk a lot about these nonsense ideas that men can have whatever whatever and and we've brought up cysts and you know pronouns non gendered pronouns cetera no one has ever been forced to use these pronouns no one is saying you need to use these pronouns got a compelling response that it's likely the UN the UN document which is it's a UN UN document it's not saying that you cannot say pregnant woman it's not saying pregnant mother it's just saying that official UN documentation should say pregnant people rather than expectant mother and the same is true I mean if you meet someone who would prefer that you use non gendered pronouns you should use non gender pronouns but equally there is no one going around policing your use of pronouns and if you think there is you I mean you're wildly deluded because you know the vajura majority people do not even have never heard the word sis I mean at the battle of ideas we've all heard the word since we actually will understand the word says but the majority people have never heard it and it is not imposed on people at all and to act like there's some sort of crisis of meaning is to is to just be like I am uncomfortable with the the content the ideas that sister nodes the word itself is you know you we understand the meaning of it and no one is forcing you to use it in the elbows there is a bit of a quite as a political language that was very interesting and Rachel Jenna come back on just one point yes I get to come back actually I'm gonna come full-circle I started by picking up on the notion of Elise and obviously that's where this has come up a huge amount in this discussion and I actually just want to kind of throw the question back well to you and you we the elite has been described as everything from the people who design the word smoke freedom which is an absurd word I agree to to those who kind of debate Europe at Islington dinner parties Elite is just kind of used as this kind of block for people we resent I just like you to ask you to break down what exactly you mean by elite people who have power for example the BBC I've had dealings with is more incestuous than a 15th century Norwich the points about the crisis of meaning I think is an interesting one but I politely just disagree in the sense that as was made that since Plato and the English language is one of the most agile languages it borrows from everywhere it's not about language it's who gets to speak and also Soviet have used the phrase safe space ironically this is a safe space for obnoxious views and it's civility is an underestimate it's the concrete that keeps the edifice together it's about basic cultural civility can people speak listen to each other and disagree and the problem with meaning star crisis of meaning is just that the people who have access to speech are in an echo chamber talking to each other in my local pub if someone's acting krisily the phrase users have a chat with yourself and then the conversation moves on you don't get these meta philosophical debates about the crisis of meaning it's not that complicated there is a crisis of meaning I think the way I understand it is in relation to the question of identity politics and the new identity language is that there was a time not that long ago when people would derive their identity from very concrete solid usually public forms of life you know you would define yourself through politics you were left or right socialist whatever you would define yourself through your work you know whatever work you did you would that would be your definition of yourself and your engagement of the world all through religion through your church through some form of public life that's how people understood their place in the world and and really understood themselves it wasn't the only thing of course people had a private life as well but that was an incredibly important part of identity formation and with the corrosion of all those things with the the nding out of politics so it all seems very say me to us now the corrosion of public institutions the decline of trade unions the decline of work as a good or useful thing the decline of all those kind of old public institutions which used to give us meaning means the identity politics becomes a far more introverted navel-gazing thing and so then you get the obsession with the body and the obsession with genitals and these young people looking at where they are precisely on the gender ruler am i here am i there and it can change from one day to the next that's where you get the idea of fluidity gender fluidity the fluidity expresses the lack of any concrete means through which you might define yourself in relation to public life so there is a crisis of meaning it does give rise directly to this confusion of who we are and what words we can use you know it's I I really am fascinated by the phrase I identify as which sounds so contingent and changeable and flabby you know the past you would say I am I am a Catholic I am a shoemaker you know you were confident of who you were you knew who you were now I identify as a woman or I identify as disabled or I identify as someone who's a student whatever is its its suggests a lack of confidence in what you are you identifies it today but you might change your mind tomorrow so that I think really sums up the crisis of meaning and I think that's why this has got to be about more than pulling people up on the words they use although you know I'm all in favor I agree with the person who said calling out culture is really problematic but I do think we need to think about where language is coming from and why we're pressured to use it but more but beyond that we have to think very carefully about how to inject greater meaning into public life and how to recover that sense of public through which people might cultivate a more substantial identity rather than the sometimes brittle quite bitter quite censorious identities that people are creating at the moment mmm thanks very useful point if we're gonna accept that there is a corruption of political language and there is a crisis in particular I'd be good to hear from people they've got any solutions you know how can we go about saving it if that's possible I think the shift has been from whether we think we are fundamentally equal but within that we can celebrate our differences or whether we see ourselves as fundamentally different if you're fundamentally different there is no necessity for equality and so actually identity politics becomes a dead end because it does not imply equality whereas in quality can allow difference and I think that's where you know the problem arises I was just going to ask about language in relation to action because if somebody said dropping nuclear bombs is not unprogressive but actually nuclear power was progressive and then what you did was you attached nuclear power to the action of dropping a nuclear bomb and then it just struck me that one of the issues they exists at the moment is that you're only allowed to act within certain language so if you're working class and you live on the grünfeld estate you are a victim and you have to use the language of victimhood in order to get something done the same with Hillsborough and the same in most working-class areas you need to show that you're a victim of something as opposed to somebody positive and I just wondered what people thought about that idea that actually I mean the the one that really struck me was when the Labour Party lost the election and the Twitterati spent their whole time telling everyone to vote but they didn't mean vote they meant vote for the Labour Party but they just did and then they were shocked when and the language they'd used vote meant that people actually voted in the way that they wanted to vote so I think the language that's used is usually a an order to a particular type of action Nik sorry okay two things I want we up on won't government's policing pronouns maybe not in this country but look up Canada bill c16 and compelled speech if you're not aware of that look it up there's a bike professor Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto who's gone just looking up YouTube second thing correct me if I'm wrong but you tried to play down the link between post-modernism and identity politics right you did okay okay I have a reasonably welded bet I have a reasonably well-developed counter-argument to that but rather than hope the mic has my own mini lecture I like I'd like you to expand on that and we can talk later if you want very ominous one thing I think not really come out to the debate quite yet is kind of the way in which politicians talk to or give speeches not necessarily in the way that they say you can't say this and you can't say that it's more of the way we've kind of this like clickbait some but some both politics and when you look at like some of the academic analysis that's going around they think so on there's at least someone to brought Abraham Lincoln when he gave this speech is he was given them to a reading age of like 16 or something like that and when George Bush was doing it he was given to read major base and people done similar things with Trump I don't know I don't have any UK examples but I'd be interested in hearing why the panel thing star the you know not just that politicians tell us what saying one not say but why they talk down to was in the way that they do when we talk about students you always talk about students who like talk about identity politics and they tell everyone to shut up and like they don't let people come in being on a campus way too often in the week I just don't see there's like I just we always have this conversation about students doing their students doing that like person never find identity politics really interesting I'm not gonna talk to shut up I'm not gonna be like that is such a small minority of people and I do think they are a problem but like we never have a deep discussion about freedom of speech on campus like for me if I wanted to talk about identity politics my issue of freedom have spent isn't like censoring others its back prevent and things like that that scent to me that is legislated censorship in campus but we always talk about students who tell you oh stop talking that and I agree I don't really think that censorship like you're doing for example when Nick made that comment and everyone heckled I don't mean like heckled a thing you haven't ago you're like who if you went to a room of students and the students went oh that would be an article of oh my goodness these students blah blah I said sis and I know I didn't say system them who and that affected my freedom of speech but this is what everyone does people are human people get emotive people get angry and people say things but when you're a young person I feel like if you're like who everyone's like oh my goodness look at them I cannot talk I cannot say what I want like this is such a minority of people and I don't understand why that has to dominate a whole discussion about race about gender because somebody somewhere in the counter stupidly said can you stop talking or I don't want that speaker to come and this is so rare like there are so many other bigger issues all right then I'm not saying it's not an issue or trying to downplay it but I think that we focus and fixate so much on a small group and we've brought all students with it so everything that comes out of a campus and things like prevent and things like that get completely overlooked it's one of the rare occasions I really want to agree with with with Brendon in terms of what's causing this crisis that you know as I also said the beginning we are we are a society and massive flux this breakdown in the notion of how we define ourselves to class jobs and religion is never to be going to create some kind of you know language is going to scrabble to keep up with that however I don't think that this is only this is a bad situation now Paul you say you you leave through lots of dusty philosophical tones so you'll be more than familiar with the concept of a pariah state of confusion and it's something as new digitally comes up to him in Plato and the idea is many of you will probably know that when Socrates has had a lengthy debate with his interlocutor that person is then isn't confused about the original ideas a Poirier literally means without resources this is not so a negative thing this is a dynamic condition and what happens as it was a as a result of the state of confusion if you then look for a better way of defending what your ideas are what your sense of who you are so I'm not seeing a crisis in language here I mean we have a roomful of people who are very energized about all these terms what they are in fact doing is provoking further debate and that's the kind of society I want to live in very quickly I want to go out against a community yeah one very immediate point is that the issue about people not being allowed to speak whatever I'm just slightly confused because nothing Germaine Greer was recently no platformed people are being forbidden to speak and the young students are at least partially responsible you can't deny no platforming takes place and one very quick point a rare defense of politicians but I think journalists have been let off the hook the number of times politicians are criticized may bot they're being criticized for robotic language the minute they say anything non technocratic there's this gotcha aspect of journalists where they go after them and make a huge big scandal out of very little you know actually allowed to have binary thoughts anymore because the journalists will spin it well I think it's interesting that we could have railing against elites you know I mean if Brendon isn't an elite I mean brenda's has I think three cover features of spectator since I arrived at Canadian months ago and and if Paul isn't an elite you know as a university a top university professor and radio Titan I don't know what I relate to but a relation didn't get me the job I mean that is that a prerequisite of being them it's it's one definition of not being part of an elite by the way either way you know there's this idea that you're rejecting nearly what they lee is rejecting Lee I mean I mean Rachel touched upon it when she said brexit I don't agree on brexit but but I just think that there's a kind of just a real I think the left is obsessively hostile and and I see this when I book Brendan onto my podcast and I cannot find anyone to debate him and it's just really frustrating because you know it should be a good debate and no one wants to do it because they are all not know platforming which i think is completely self-destructive but on the right is this weird hypocrisy to say like oh calling out culture is bad but Brendan's entire journalistic career is about calling people out for behavior he doesn't like and that's fine I mean it's you don't like the name been given by the left but you know the act is the same and it's just different labels that we're kind of debating here and I think those are kind of two positions that I think could be resolved shyly but I don't think it's a crisis I agree with Rachel the crisis and doubt and confusion are not necessarily bad things and they can you know crisis is an opportunity in many ways that's kind of what the word means you can go one way or another and and they can give rise to dynamism and discussion but the problem today is that that's not so what what is happening it might be happening in this room which is why the battle of ideas is so cool but I don't see that dynamism in terms of ideas I see the attempt to shut down ideas I see the attempt to overturn Democratic votes I see the constant demonization and other of people who have different views to you so the dynamism is absent in my view and even the creation of new words in the creation of new language is very often it can appear dynamic but is ever very often an elite project that is fundamentally designed to control what other people can say and fundamentally how they can think about things very very quickly on the elite because that's come up a few times the question of what's the elite there's a lot of confusion around that as well people think the elite is Donald Trump and Nigel Farraj standing in a golden lift or people who write for The Spectator or lecturer at universities the elite is a question of who has power and control over your life so for ordinary people the elite isn't necessarily bankers who are exceptionally wealthy it can be the social worker who doesn't get paid very much but has the power to take your children away from you or it can be the pen pushers who will refuse to empty your rubbish if it isn't perfectly separated which means you have disgusting rubbish outside your house these are people who have control over your daily life your family life your home life that can be an elite of its people even if those people want to get paid 60 thousand pounds a year or something so the question of what the elite is for most people and the thing that people are currently revolting against it's a layer of society that has bureaucratic influence over your life that you would prefer they didn't have I was going to say that their names hadn't been mentioned but I'm Brendan just picked me to it the last thing he said I really liked you desire to reclaim populism I mean that's that's a great great challenge great idea two of the most successful people who are accused of populist Sartre Trump and Faraj arguably to the most successful politicians of their generation at the moment obviously I have to make very clear to everybody whom I do not agree with the politics and the ideas of Donald Trump and Nigel Faraj but one of the things I have enjoyed as their their rise over the last few years is their way their use of a political language to take on the established political language and cut through it now some of that is to do with their arguments and their ideas and their policy positions but partly is also an out a total irreverence for often the established where you talk about politics so is there anything there that how do you develop our own irreverence for the established way the politics is discussed and is there anything we can learn from the Trump Faraj approach to political language very quickly I just wanted to sort of pick up on this point that's made about whether Brendan's sort being a little reactionary I share your distaste for the sort banality of talking about your body parts but in a moment like now where everything seems to be in flux that's when and it's always historically at moments of flux when you have these debates about the crisis language and your point about um Socrates is like is very well made but isn't it the essentially reactionary thing to say in a moment of flux no a man has to be this thing or populism has to mean this thing this isn't it essentially reactionary trying to fix things in place when actually now should be the moment where we could push things in a new direction trans people exist why shouldn't we have a linguistic framework to deal with that even if the word says is sometimes used for virtue signaling or witch hunting or it was created supposedly by an elite we still need it to be able to have discussions about trans issues and we shouldn't get rid of it altogether [Applause] then die found I mean it was rich pickings but I found the thing most difficult that you said about about race and I think they liked it would be good I think you're actually quite clear on what you thought was wrong with anti-racists and anti racism as a term it would be good if you could maybe just read that really short passage from your speech and we could debate exits deeply flawed didn't really ignorant okay no I'm not gonna ask Brennan to reread his speech right we're gonna come back to us for some concluding comments so I think what we're finding is the crisis isn't in individual words at all it's it's narratives that are attached to them and I think that it's our ongoing job as dynamic engaged individuals to continue questioning exactly what those those words mean the word has come up again again I would frankly like to ask for a ban on the word elite and ask every time somebody uses it to actually specify exactly who they're meaning at that point in time brilliant thanks Rachel I think I offered various definitions of elite so they they all hold I think the elite don't like being called out very quick points about Trump I'd finish my comments by saying and remember the dog at the dinner party and disliking the man intensely but I remember there was an EU summit not a year I think there's a European summit I related to NATO and Trump in front of Merkel and macron basically said Germany and France haven't paid their fair share of defense spending for decades which is true and they look visibly uncomfortable so there is within the existing political system even a stopped clock is Right twice a day and even Donald Trump can be right but these things need to be spoken out loud yes sorry sorry to break Rachel's ban on Elysee but I mean the definition of elite that we've offered they're just so broad it becomes basically meaningless and I think I mean this dissipate really the closest we've come to Ashley discussing political language is when we talk about identity politics and as has been pointed out these neologisms are responding to a new moment and and we do need aware discussing them because it's very difficult for people even if they disagree with the idea of like trans identity which is you know is a is a tape I guess they need a way of use that without the word trans we can't discuss trans people and without you know the word sis we can't understand and engage in those arguments so these are just new words that are emerging to fill new kind of concepts in our ideas about gender and stuff and obviously we can have this discussion about post-modernism out by the fountain later but but but you know these are real kind of debates that are happening not just in universities but in people's lives and finding linguistic roots to actually like describe them is so important yeah and isn't it isn't in crisis it's a good thing as a positive thing I find this and people's discomfort or their willingness to censor the use of the word elite which I hear all the time now absolutely fascinating because what's actually happened over the past 18 months or so the elite has been exposed in a way that it hasn't happened in decades a particularly by brexit but also by other electoral events around the world where they've been exposed not only as being utterly disconnected from ordinary people so you have a situation where 80 percent of MPs wanted to stay in the European Union but 17.4 million the largest number of voters in history wanted to leave and the disconnect is is gaping it's it's historic it's it's unprecedented they've been exposed in that sense but they're also they've been exposed the the shallowness of their commitment to ideas like democracy the shallowness of their commitment to the ideas of wanting to hit listen to people that whole focus group culture they went through over the past decade utterly utterly exploded by their reaction to brexit which they despise and which they want to either over overthrow or dilute so they've been exposed in a way that it hasn't happened for a long time I think that's wonderful but I can see that that's precisely why they now say oh we're not the elite stop saying the elite if you say elite you must be like the fascists who also talked about an elite that's a that's an example of the deeply censorious language you have which is trying to mystify what's currently going on which is that the people sorry to use the phrase the people but the people have confronted the elite and people feel uncomfortable with that the final thing I wanted to say is the the the key problem I think we face at the moment and I bang my head against a brick wall about this all the time is the emptying out the hollowing out of very important words and ideas like progressive and Democrat and radical those words now mean the opposite of what they used to mean and that is a problem people say to me all the time how can you call yourself left-wing when you are anti environmentalist and and so obsessed with Liberty but Trotsky's definition of being a revolutionary was that you wanted to expand man's power over nature and decrease man's power over man that is the definition of a properly progressive politics and if you say that now you're borderline fascist this is how disorganized political language has become and it does reflect a crisis of meaning it does reflect a crisis of politics I think we need a new language we need new ideas we need new substance and to that end going ahead I think it's very difficult to call ourselves right or left because they mean the opposite of what they used to mean we need new words and I'm very happy to call myself a brexit ear very happy to call myself a populist a very happy to call myself a lever these are the new words and I'm willing to run with them and try to give them as much meaning as possible [Applause] [Music]

Channel: worldwrite

Views: 10,566

Rating: 4.8913045 out of 5

Keywords: WORLDwrite, WORLDbytes, Battle of Ideas, Politics, Debate, Video, Volunteers, Barbican, Citizen TV, Rachel Halliburton, Nick Hilton, Brendan O’Neill, Dr. Paul A. Taylor, Jacob Furedi, Corruption, Brexit, Democracy, EU, liberalism, fascism, humanitarian intervention, George Orwell, transgender, cisgender, pregnant people, UN, newspeak, language, war, peace

Id: mfAM1CfFlWI

Length: 82min 32sec (4952 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

What in the world? She hit the nail on the head when she said Brexit was about globalism and immigration but then uses cognitive dissonance to try to explain it away. Sorry but this is a bunch yapping.