The New Puritans: How the religion of social justice captured the western world

foreign [Music] welcome to this final session uh the new Puritans how the religion of social justice captured the Western World my name is Tiffany Jenkins and I'm going to be chairing the session it's going to run slightly different to ones you've been at earlier in that as you can probably guess Andrew Doyle's book is the title of the session he's here to talk about it he's going to talk a little bit longer than our usual panel sessions after Andrew does a we're calling it a short lecture but it's not really a lecture is it um an elaboration uh I've thought Professor Frank Frady here to respond now his most recent book is the road to Ukraine How the West lost its way but I found a different book probably most useful for this session and I think they work quite well together and that's the one prior to Ukraine it's 100 Years of identity crisis culture War over socialization and I think what's quite interesting and helpful about both books really is that um this thing that we're involved in whether it's a culture wars or the rise of the new Puritans is something that thus far hasn't really been named it's been very difficult to name and perhaps we'll talk about a little bit about why that is um it's something that we've experienced but it's been quite difficult to get a handle on it where does it come from why is it happening now what form does it take and these two books together give us a little bit more of a historical context that also helps us grapple with the specificities of now so Andrew I'll ask you to bring in and then we'll we'll talk thank you very much I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the book I should say as well that Frank wrote an excellent book on moral Panic a while ago so that also I think fits into some of the things that we're going to be talking about um so I thought that I would just give you a sort of overview of why I wrote the book and and what I was hoping to achieve through it um it's called the new Puritans how the religion of social justice captured the Western World and when I talk about religion in that context I'm of course using an analogy and I'm not suggesting uh that it is a religion in an authentic sense it is a means to make uh this development over the past 12 years in our culture accessible I think one of the major problems that we face is that a lot of people don't really understand what's going on and they don't necessarily understand how to describe what is going on because really the more work I've done on on this area The more I've realized that this is really the culture War of the present is a battle about language and about who gets to control the meaning of words and people are very confused you know know they there's this movement that has suddenly risen and accelerated at Great Pace that uses very Progressive sounding language such as uh anti-racism Equity uh they call themselves progressives uh they talk about being on the right side of history and and all of this kind of thing and and uh tolerance compassion Etc and of course and social justice itself I mean that term as well and uh these are kind of Trojan Horse terms and often the uh implications of the policies that they pursue are actually uh the antithesis of what the language sounds like so people are obviously very confused because we all want to say well we're all Against Racism so we are all anti-racist that's fine but of course the activists who use the term don't mean what we mean by anti-racism if you read Ibrahim X Kennedy's Book how to be an anti-racist he makes this explicitly clear anti-racism in their discourse is this notion of being proactive in the discovery of racism and that is predicated on the notion that there are these latent power structures that run throughout society and and that only if you are qualified in areas such as whiteness studies or critical race Theory are you able to detect them uh it starts from the premise that all human interaction is underpinned in some way by white supremacy and so therefore it has to be detected uh in this sort of uh sort of pseudo-religious way it's sort of like a magical things like the Holy Spirit or something like that um so in other words we've reached a position whereby and Theological endpoint by the way of critical race theory is racial segregation this is why at the American School in London we had uh young children segregated by skin color for after-school activities that by the way is the most expensive Day School in in the UK uh there's a real correlation between um the upper middle classes and this movement uh in in California we had the Brentwood School which was segregating parents by skin color for after school uh discussion sessions with teachers about their kids so white white parents would go in one room uh and um ethnic minority parents would go in another room it doesn't say where the where the mixed couples would go um that wasn't made clear um and I don't know how they even assessed this uh it's it's I mean look it's obviously very regressive uh and it's obviously a repudiation of all that the great civil rights luminaries from the 60s onwards were attempting to achieve it's a repudiation of Martin Luther King's beautiful dream of color blindness um which is now often misunderstood and it you know it doesn't mean that we don't see color it means that we don't treat people differently on the basis of color and it's it's a beautiful ideal that is now being destroyed in fact Robin D'Angelo in her book White fragility problematizes this notion and and says that it is a form of white supremacy to say to pursue color blindness she's effectively saying that Martin Luther King is a white supremacist now when a a white woman is saying that there's a problem in this discourse I think so um and of course so we are at the point where if you want to be opposed to racism as I would like to think everyone in this room would be if you want to be opposed to racism you have to be opposed to anti-racism now that's very very confusing and then there are terms such as woke now this movement has come along and what I try to outline in the book is how it is a a uh it's a kind of concatenation of various strands of academic thought derived largely from the French post-modernists of the 1960s uh with an element of the the Frankfurt School various ideas uh intermingling but these are interdependent strands uh that often are influenced by each other so queer Theory would be one strand of this movement critical race Theory another um gender identity ideology Etc um but there it works like a hydro with many heads um this we could say it's intersectionality um and this is why um when there these things often become interdependent so for instance at the at the Tavistock Clinic uh members of staff were uh invited at the end of emails we invited to put this Black Fist the BLM symbol against the backdrop of a rainbow progress pride flag uh the all of these things are connected and this is why whenever someone uh uses the the Lexicon of critical social justice what I call critical social justice in the book um once they've said one thing such as a phrase like trans women are women or something about white privilege you will be able to predict their opinion on every single subject right there's no deviation there and I've never been proven wrong with this because this is an ideology these are not people who are thinking for themselves these are people who are following a set of rules um and of course I'm making the case in the book for the project of social liberalism which has been dismissed as an ideology in of itself but of course it's not the same thing it doesn't provide you a set of rules for how you need to behave and think it tells you that you can think and behave in however whatever way you want so long as you're not infringing on the rights of others so it's not the same thing um so the question comes down to how do we tackle this illiberal movement that calls itself liberal this regressive movement that calls itself Progressive uh this woke movement that is as far as I am aware uh half asleep how how do we do these things when the language that describes it is so it's so difficult to penetrate so the book is an attempt to make it accessible Above All Else and to sort of talk through uh the various issues and that's why I've drawn the analogy of religion I'm very specific because I think we understand that idea I think we understand the idea of a belief system uh that is largely grounded in faith or power structures um uh that uh a belief system whose practitioners will excommunicate those who who disbelieve that seeks out heresy and punishes it in the most brutal way that can behave in the most dehumanizing and and uh ferocious way but claim to be on the side of the Angels this is very reminiscent of the The Men Who Would strap women to the rack back in the day the inquisitors uh who thought they were doing God's work so it is very similar any of you who have had any run-ins with a identitarian activist online will know that they are some of the most just people in the world and they will wish death and pain and misery on their detractors and then write the hashtag be kind afterwards so you know we are dealing with you know so I think it's kind of unprecedented but I was trying to find a precedent for this and it's not original to me or particularly imaginative but it is instructive I think to go back to Salem um the book is called the new Puritans I make very clear in the book that I'm not dissing puritanism per se in fact there are significant differences between the Puritans of all the Puritans of New England and the Puritans of today I mean the Puritans of old had a continual awareness of their own fallibility of their own unworthiness before God well if you've ever encountered the new Puritans they they've never doubted their own certainties and never will um so it's a very different thing but I think it's instructive because when we look about what happened in Salem and I don't know how much people know people know the gist don't they but uh you know we've all seen The Crucible um which is a fairly accurate account they were like you know he took a lot of liberties with the truth but you know he's an artist um but the broadly speaking it's accurate a group of girls in Salem Village uh began seeing witches in every shadow and crying witch on uh various God-fearing and and decent people in the town uh they were saying they saw them sign the devil's book and this went to court and these girls would have fits in court and conniptions and fainting fits and and they would point and scream and they would say that they could see This Woman's Spirit flying out to pinch them and choke them and turning into a bird and flying up to the beam and all of this stuff it didn't really cross the Magistrate's mind though why a witch that was attempting to Hoodwink the court and the village would be uh attacking the girls in front of the court in the village but you know this wasn't a moment of logic and what it was was um the girls all of the prosecution there were 20 executions in the end of five perished in prison and these were men and women and um all of the convictions were secured on this notion of of what they called spectral evidence and spectral evidence is basically the girl saw it and claimed it to be true we call this lived experience this is the the common discourse of today is this notion of lived experience someone says I perceive that this uh this misdemeanor was motivated by race or I perceive homophobia or transphobia in this situation and that is the evidence the accusation becomes the evidence and that was identical then so that's something that we have to address this notion of of lived experience we used to call it anecdotal evidence of course and we didn't used to draw major conclusions on the basis but that's all changed of course when um uh eventually in Salem and of course this is the other reason I wanted to compare it because this was a short burst of Hysteria I mean it only lasted from February 1692 to May 1693 so a little over a year uh and these were decent intelligent good people who suddenly became complicit in this Mass hysteria the more I read about it that the more I realized that a lot of the people involved probably didn't believe it but of course um I'm pretty sure that a lot of the girls did believe it not all of them I don't think but people understood that when they stood up people like Rebecca nurse when she stood up and said the girls aren't telling the truth this isn't real she was then accused and this is of course why Arthur Miller wrote the play in the 1950s because he was drawing parallels with McCarthyism and that's why he was he he said in an interview for the New Yorker that one of the reasons he wanted to write the play what terrified him most of all was the people who were protecting themselves by going along with the delusion and that's similar with what happened in Salem there were lots of examples of when the girls started crying witch on someone who was a bit too powerful you know they they cried which on William Phipps who was the governor of the colony on his wife for instance the Reverend Hale who becomes a character in The Crucible they accused his wife and in all of these cases the magistrates just said you've made a mistake um and that is very very revealing I think when they said that the Reverend Samuel Willard was indulging in Witchcraft and he was the acting president of Harvard they said no you must be mistaken you mean Constable Willard who you've already accused and he's in prison and of course you know if they really genuinely authentically believed that the girls were were that these people were in consult with Satan and the girls were identifying it that would never have happened um there was even a case in Andover when it spread Beyond Salem town and went to Topsfield and Andover in Andover they accused a local dignitary who was very powerful and he said well I'm going to sue you for defamation and then they shut up so you know that's not the way the devil works so there's all sorts of reason he's not frightened of litigation he's just not um and so all you know there's all sorts of reasons for us to understand why this was not real and that people didn't believe it was real and I like to think of the activists today you know the sort of crazy anime avatars online who are crying and screaming about white privilege and toxic masculines and all the rest of it I'd like to compare them with the girls they're the girls right they might be a lot of them I think they believe it a lot of them genuinely think that there are fascists in every shadow I think they do believe that um a lot of them you know it's also a movement that will attract bullies because it gives you a dis a cloak for your vicious behavior and you can you can behave in the most inhumane way and be applauded for it so obviously there's that combination of those two impulses um but they are like the girls insofar as they are crying witch and screaming Etc had that have happened in Salem and the elites not gone along with it no one would have died it was the because the magistrates and the ministers and the people in charge said yes the girls are authentic and that's why people died and I think we have a similar situation now and so far as the activists make a lot of noise and make a lot of Demands but it wouldn't matter if we ignored them but we don't and people in major positions of power capitulate to their bidding uh they the people who do so are now uh predominant in all of our major cultural academic and artistic institutions they dominate in the NHS in the police force in the Civil Service in all of those quangos the College of policing which trains police and um they are impervious to this this is why you often see police in viral videos doing the Macarena in Rainbow flags and things like that but it's a bit more Insidious than that of course I mean those things are easy to mock but you know when you you know when when you have the police investigating people for non-crime as they do routinely and when the home office in pretty Patel the Home Secretary says to them you have to stop doing that and they ignore it and carry on and then the high court rules that it's unlawful and they ignore that as well and they carry on they're out of control they're in the grip of an ideology because the evidence of this absolutely everywhere but it's a minority so the more in common initiative around a study and they discovered that 13 they estimate around 13 of people would fall into what we call the woke bracket or that sort of progressive you know faux Progressive bracket uh but they dominate everywhere so it's a minority dominating and they're particularly dominating in upper middle class circles and in in the among the elites and that's why the comparison with Salem I think works well uh and and can be quite Illuminating uh because the way that we will defeat this is for people will stop uh you know capitulating people in power need to stop capitulating I mean you see it all the time you know you ask kyostarma what is a woman and you can see the fear in his eyes and you can see he panics obfuscate uh well I don't know um well maybe it's a bit more complicated a bit more new it's not nuanced it's not complicated it's easier 10 year old could tell you right but the thing about that is you know those politicians this is what I think is a great question it's not a gotcha it's it's a it's a means to test the honesty of the ruling class if you can't answer what is a woman well we all know you know what a woman is it means you're too cowardly to do so you're intimidated and these people are terrifying you know you these activists are really scary they can and do ruin lives they've developed and cultivated this system of public shaming harassment uh called cancel culture we just call we call it cancer culture some people claim it's not real and yet it has built up built up an impressive list of casualties for a phenomenon that doesn't exist and and I would say that that this is comparable to those cancellations of the past in terms and of course the stakes are different no one's going to get hanged or burnt as a witch but you can have everything taken away from you and it's and that's that's very severe um so that was the reason why I wanted to draw that comparison between Salem and also to a broader analogy uh in terms of religion uh and that's what I've attempted to do in the book and also to try and explain or account for some of its Origins and also to talk about how we escape from it and I think the lessons of Salem will teach us that that actually there comes a Tipping Point where you know I mean look all of us here probably get emails from when we when we criticize the critical social justice movement we're often people will email in private and say I agree with you you know I I understand that you're right about this but I can't say it publicly we are the majority on this and it would just take the majority of people to say it's not real there are no witches there aren't fascists everywhere JK Rowling isn't a transphobe how do we know because she's never said anything transphobic that's the first clue you know stop indulging in fantasies and hysteria and not be frightened of being the next to be accused that's that's that's really our way out and just on the final I know I've been rambling but just on a final point about that ultimately Salem collapsed because uh the Deputy Governor it was decided after a lot of people have been killed decided to write to the senior clergyman in the country and ask the question is spectral evidence admissible in court and they all said by no means and then all of the cases collapsed and we have to say lived experience is not enough your perception is not enough but it is so ingrained now I mean if you look at the crown prosecution Service website if you look at the Police website it will say that hate crime is recorded based on the perception of the victim firstly it uses the word victim which bypasses due process entirely should be complainant that's a legacy of Kia stamas uh time as director of public prosecutions but it will also say that the perception is what matters and that is now pretty much across across the board uh in all of these major institutions so I think challenge the note we need to challenge the notion of lived experience we all need to be a bit braver in saying what we know to be true and I think this is an assault on Truth this is a hysteria like any other and Truth matters ultimately and we need to re-engage with those Enlightenment values of Reason evidence-led epistemology and and not just simply uh chuckle to the bidding of screaming pink haired loons and that I think is all I need to say about that thank you Andrew [Applause] well I think we can assume that the people in the room think this thing exists so we're not here to try and um defend that what I'd like to do and I'll come to you Frank first for your for your thoughts is just to separate this out into what is it let's pin it down where has it come from um and what are the ways out you've given us some ideas but let's try and unpack that a little bit so Frank I wonder if you can start yeah I mean I read the book and I I thought it was unusually well written which is a good thing but also because books on the subjects written by opponents of what we call cancel culture tend to be you know cheap in the way they make they trivialize the opposition the way they kind of laugh at them the way they kind of attack their weak points rather than their strong points and I thought Andrew avoided all that he had it's a serious contribution to the discussion which is often lacking and I also thought you you work on language is really quite important the attempt to kind of control language is really critically important and it seems to me that we have we still got a problem here and the problem is uh was in a sense articulated by Andrew just now earlier on when you said you know if if we know what they see on toxic masculinity we know what they will see on a number of other things so there's something invisible that binds together a number of different views which isn't explicit it's a it's a hidden ideology I call it an ideology without a name but it's so powerful that it's marriage to capture the language and and the language itself is really important here because um the language that they use is self-consciously opaque and if you look at the most important words in the work vocabulary it's like I feel uncomfortable you know what does that mean uncomfortable I feel uncomfortable man sitting on a piece of ice or something like that but what they're getting is like a mood or they don't say right or wrong they say this is inappropriate or when you look at some of the other words this you know this is problematic I mean you look at every single word it's it's a euphemism it's opaque and it's like a bar of soap a verbal bar of soap in your hand that goes right through it and uh it seems to me that you know sort of that makes it so difficult to nail it down and indicate you know what it is that we're talking about I think that uh I'm in a very privileged position because I'm the oldest person in the room and I lived through every single phase of this development and it actually begins a little bit earlier because I remember when the Gay Liberation movement and I was actively supporting The Liberation movement at a certain point stop talking about being a homosexual and stop talking about who you slept with and became a kind of identity and that that identity itself then became much more important than who you slept with or you know what you were inclined to do and with the fasting of time you have this continuous ratcheting off of the subjective identity element of that now the one thing that you might not know of is that over the last 30 years almost every year somebody has said when is this going to stop you know and people say it's a fad it's going to go away uh you know don't worry about it PC is emit you know this is just going to go away well it's not stopping and I think the reason why it's not stopping is is because of what Andrew is focused on where the problem is not the what people call Snowflakes which is a horrible term or you know what people call these young kids the younger Generations but the very fact that is the elite itself that has made it its own if you look at what's been happening in the United States there was a time when there were sectors of elite institutions that were immune from this pressure I remember debating in New York with people and and I was it's going to spread everywhere and it's Iran Frank business is never going to accept these values well you know what business is like now it's like the Ben and Jerry's of this world that are not just a minority every single big Corporation has taken that on board and people actually say that they're just doing it because they want to make money but actually when you talk to the executives of these companies they read the Harvard Business Review that's what they were brought up on and what are the values of the Harvard Business Review it's it's precisely the same so it's it's not a temporary kind of phenomenon and then they said oh it will never go into sports you know Sports will be totally immune from these horrible work values but today every every sport is taking the knee with monotonous regularity I mean taking the knee has become a sport itself you know sort of who does the longest and and who does it most often so you have a kind of problem here I think the the problem that I'm trying to get at and this is precisely I would love the Avengers views on this I don't think that unlike uh the Puritan experience where as you said there's a Tipping Point there's a Tipping Point to this you don't I don't and I think the reason for that is because although some of the peoples in the elites are doing it because they feel pressure they're too scared to open their mouths it's now become the sister that you described as not become institutionalized and there are laws that have been passed a lot of laws have been passed to kind of protect this and there's a veritable industry that kind of has built itself upon perpetuating and reproducing this and we're still this is my biggest worry the younger Generations you know the the kids that are now in school are being indoctrinated in this and for them this is normal you know if for them it's normal for example uh that you know there is no such thing as a man and a woman yeah I mean only an idiot would say something like that that's what they learn in school and when you have generation after generation deeply and you know thinking that this is the norm plus it being institutionalized we have a a bigger problem here than than we suspect and that basically means that the kind of things you were calling for courage standing up being brave is all the more important because I I do think that this can be fought I mean you know we can't demonstrate that the emperor has got no clothes but it's not going to go away by itself it's not going to go away until there's a cohort of individuals and we nowhere near that yet who are prepared to unite together and just make fun of this humor is very important in this uh are prepared to be counted in difficult circumstances and and even countenance the possibility you will lose your job you will lose your reputation and these are really scary but really important accomplishments that we go to normalize because the the enemy is much more uh deeply entrenched I think than a lot of people imagine can I just ask before I ask you Andrew Frank you said um there's a key moment when great gay rights move from being I suppose a political demand to almost uh personal affirmation is that is that right can you can you talk about that a little bit more what that means how it showed itself I I think the way you can sit it's even clearer in feminism feminism begins as a woman's Liberation movement which again our whole wholeheartedly support it was about liberating women giving them Freedom giving them you know recognizing that they're equal human beings and that demands the first five demands of the women's Liberation movement are totally support but at a certain point that feminism turned into what's called cultural feminism and that was the same time that uh you know people who were involved in Gay Liberation began to look upon uh sort of their experience in a slightly more subjective identity related basis so What mattered now you know you're defined uh by your sexuality not the fact that you report you were an artist you were a novelist which is what I was a homosexual artist I was a homosexual pianist but now you were you were like that being gay was more important because that was your identity than what you did in the external world and I think that happened in every single in in the in the Black Liberation movement happened at the same time around it began to kick in around 7 8 79 and it was it was fought back is this a sort of personal is political all do you say that that kind of Catchphrase becomes the first first usage of the term personal is political in a book is in 1971 and at that point people make fun of it they think this is a joke by the time you get to the end of the 1970s people they go deadly seriously and from that point onwards it becomes you know sort of you know completely you know taken for granted view in certain quarters and that yeah I think that's the key moment I'm sorry would you and then would you say because Andrew writes a lot about uh the Foucault and the critical queer Theory and everything which is obviously it becomes sort of institutionalized around the same time and it strikes me that the two the kind of the political movements are happening at the same time really as the sort of institutionalization of it in Academia so you get sort of two yeah I mean the way I look at it and is that and that could be wrong is that the reason why these academic reviews take off and flourish is because the cultural terrain has been created where they could you know where they could be easily cultivated in other words the mood the Zeitgeist has been established in the 70s and therefore all these you know outwardly idiotic ideas begin to take over again over the over the Academia and not today if you challenge it then you're seen as like you know they always will use the Expression Frank you don't get it you know where I get a as could say I get it but you're wrong is what I usually I usually tell them yeah so when did because a lot of that earlier stuff is certainly in the language of liberation um those political movements from the 70s they are talking about Liberation and freedom um are we seeing what Douglas Murray has suggested which is just it just went too far so Douglas Murray's book am I thinking of the right yeah the over correction the over correction so is it just progressivism gone mad no so why not I I think Douglas a lot of people think that they kind of continuity in the sense that these were because they really assumed that these were bad ideas to begin with and therefore these bad ideas were all right when they were moderate and temperate but at a certain point they acquired this more nefarious quality I think we need to make a distinction between the positives aspiration for Liberation for being an equal person in society which is entirely positive that can never go too far at the very idea that you imagine that wanting to be equal and taken seriously can go too far means you don't understand the origins of that aspiration so I think a lot of people read history backwards and develop a teleology or walkness that somehow is imbuilt into the system and was gradually moving in that direction Andrew do you have any thoughts okay let's have let's have them there's quite a lot to know about there um we're thinking about Origins and tipping I know the fact that there isn't a particular Tipping Point but how we got here and then we will go out to the audience and talk about how we get out of here I mean that's I have to say I mean that's a really scary thing that Frank said which is that that Tipping Point thing may not happen um and you know I have good days and bad days on this I'm not sure which way it will go but I think you might be right I think this is a crucial time at the moment because at the moment there are ways to fight it in so far as a lot of the courts have been captured but the high courts generally haven't so what normally happens is you'll have a case uh for the Maya for starter case is a very good example or the Harry Miller case where something goes the wrong way and then when it goes to the high court it is overturned but what happens when the very highest uh elements of these cultural bodies become captured that's what I if they get captured there probably is no way back so for instance we are now starting you know we for a long time I'm sure you'll agree from for a long time people thought this was going to be confined to the humanities I mean my background's in English literature and when I was studying English literature at University Foucault was a deity was considered a complete a God and I mean that I mean there was even a book by my man called David M Halperin called Saint Foucault towards a gay hagiography so he was you know you couldn't really I mean people just didn't question uh that what he was talking about it would it was seen as baffling um to do so um so but then what happens when it ex it leaks out of the humanities and into the Sciences say so we always used to think that mathematics and science would be impervious uh to this kind of stuff right we did I think most people did and then now you know I cite this in my book there was a uh a case recently in New Zealand uh where the New Zealand government decided that in science classes they ought to teach not just Evolution but alongside that the creation myths of indigenous tribes including One Creation myth that says that uh the rain that falls from the sky are the teardrops of a certain goddess and that will be taught along this is another way of knowing and this will be taught alongside the truth so and what we taught with equal Merit um now that's scary when one academic a number of academics wrote an open letter saying look of course we respect cultural Traditions they did all the usual stuff they had to say and it was you know and that you know people are entitled to their beliefs all the rest but this has no place in a science classroom and that they were then demonized and attacked I think someone lost their job for defending science in a science class what happens when medical journals leading medical journals are now writing articles about how sex is a spectrum well I even I know that it's not and I barely scrape to GCSE in biology and yet I know more about biology than the leading biologist in the world on this particular issue that should never happen right and and that's so it's when it's leaked into those top tiers yeah you have this legitimation crisis at that point because we we you can't roll that back or challenge that if the leading experts in the world are telling you are disseminating a fantasy on the grounded in ideology which leads us to the question of so why and what does what the institutions benefit and why do disciplines rigorous disciplines science maths why do they Embrace this okay just say something small here which is Andrew just said that at the moment the courts you know are problematic but there are some areas where you can get a good result but what happens at the highest section of the courts get corrupted that's what I'm saying exactly so if you look at you know the judges in the courts where did they get trained what's the curriculum that they were brought up on and you'll find that in almost every every legal scholar these days every Law School in the country including the most prestigious ones in Britain and the United States are promoting critical legal studies where they push these kind of ideas as as today's modern version of what the law should be and it's interesting because for example if you want to be a police officer at the highest level uh and you want to be a commissioner for example or even an inspector you get sent on these courses run by these people where they get imbued by precisely the same kind of ideals so the top police people are likely to be more corrupted by this than the ordinary guys on the beat and when it comes to the legal system you're not getting this new generation of lawyers and there are a few now in the Supreme Court in the United States who were brought up on this and this is their notion about the law so we do need to understand that this is not going to get better in the legal system just simply because people are coming in who have been brought up on these well um Jackson the latest appointee to the Supreme Court was asked what is a woman she wasn't sure she said I'm not a biologist yeah exactly so it is so it is creeping into the higher levels that's that's that's my fear is and I think maybe one of the strategies might be I mean I don't know I don't know the answers but but one of the strategies might well it might be through the government you know all of this has happened in our country at least under Tory rule over the last 12 years they've done nothing they they spoke about things like a war on woke which never materialized it's just it's just empty empty rhetoric and you know so let's take the College of policing I think this would be a very good example now and I think anyone in this room if you'd have said to you 15 years ago if you imagine what you were like 15 years because someone said to you oh in in by 2022 the police will be routinely investigating people for non-crime and recording this against their name no one would have believed it no one and now it's really really normal and commonplace but look what happened there as I say they were instructed to stop and they didn't by the government and the government just let them go why didn't they just abolish the College of policing right I mean that's really what would have to happen you'd have to have people you know Kenny bad enough would have been a good step forward because Cami stood up in in Parliament and made the made it clear that the teaching of critical race Theory as uncontested fact in schools is illegal it's against the Education Act so still going on you know we had the Royal Borough of Greenwich recently disseminating an inclusive language guide to schools which said that we should avoid words such as he and him and she and her and it even went so far as to explicitly misrepresent the equality act by saying that when the equality act talks about sex as a protected characteristic it really means gender identity such as lying about the law and that's now gone to teachers it's gone to parents that's why it's become come back in the news now so if they're just going to ignore what the government says we need a stronger government basically I think that might be it well good luck with that I'm going to come out to the audience I just want to say one thing from my perspective I do a lot of work on cultural institutions and I have done for many many years and they have over decades taken on some of these ideas and there is that kind of generational shift but what really struck me about it is those defending principles of sort of research dissemination education have become very weakened and quiet um and in a way their kind of incorporation of these new values is a way to the for the institution to prove its worth to show that it's purposeful to give it some sort of legitimacy so I think that's one reason why they take these things on but also why one reason is to go back to First principles and the values what you talk about in either liberalism or Enlightenment principles because you have to sort of strengthen those as well as fight this I mean it's to go back to this idea of the universities as being a a forum for the production of knowledge and and and and stepping towards the truth I mean Peter pogosian talks about this idea of idea laundering uh and it can be careerist as well I think so for instance the the one of the examples he gives is the example of uh fat studies which sounds like a joke sounds like I've just made that up but it's not as a real discipline and and at the core of this discipline is that obesity is not connected to poor health um what it is is a sort of a CIS heteropatriarchal white uh discourse which has come out of science which is there to oppress people of a different body shape in order to reach that conclusion you have to deny decades and Decades of research into the subject of obesity in its link to diabetes and and cancer Etc um but the way it works through ideal laundry is you get a group of academics they have this idea they create a journal called fat studies monthly and then they publish they publish these speculations in this journal and then these people start quoting each other and they give this illusion of incontroversibility and by the end of it you've got a new a new truth which is backed up by academic journals and is now supported uh by the people at the top of University so and that is what he means by idea laundering at the end you come out with this lies as truth through the academic system uh so what do you do with that I don't know how you do how you deal with that but that is what's happening well one of the I think you're absolutely right and the conclusion that allowed you on is that when I read a newspaper article that begins with research shows yeah you know I basically make the point that research shows nothing you know we have to interpret what that research is not assume that there is a a fact an incontrovertible fact that comes out of this and we just need to popularize the idea of skepticism which is you know which is got a very bad name at the moment being in denial and skeptical is seen as being very very bad but that's from the enlightenment World being skeptical and promoting skepticism is one of the best things that we can do yeah because you know because it's especially for young people if you're idealistic being skeptical comes naturally and instead of sitting on it I think we should just have the idea let it flourish let us question everything particularly the stuff they learn in universities but wise if I could just ask Frank I'm sorry if I can do why is it that people in universities academics are so susceptible to this idea of having holding these certain orthodoxies that they can't challenge when I was at University and I was doing a lot about queer Theory and gender and sexuality in the Renaissance period and it was a shibboleth it was just accepted as a fact because Foucault or the the people who came in in the wake of Foucault had decided that the notion of homosexuality did not exist before the word came into being in the late 19th century medical discourses so until you had this word homosexual there were no homosexuals which is not true but it was just deciding and accepted and then they would all quote each other and and no one sort of stopped to say hang on a minute um why was Richard Barnfield writing love poems from one man to another uh back in the 16th century why was Shakespeare writing love poems one man to another for that matter at that time um maybe he was gay right so but but they just said no he can't be gay because there was no work because they see the world as you know they see our understanding of reality is wholly constructed through the language that describes it that's the core of that post-modernist idea well I think what you say is important because for the very same reason that that happened in the humanities is also the same reason why you know hardcore mathematicians and hardcore scientists in physics are now rolling over and are are looking at decolonizing the uh physics curriculum and and looking into Newtonian laws as having a racist component to it and you think that either they're they are just they just become Schmucks they took a schmuck talent and and kind of uh become like that or alternatively you you realize that there's a intellectual cowardice that that kind of masquerades as being sensitive yeah and I think that has become so deeply ingrained in academic culture you know you know amongst my students and I'm just leaving that entirely the university system about 35 to 40 percent of them will tell you can I say this they come up to Frank can I say that and when you think about it I don't know about what you would like on your University student you said what you wanted the idea that you have to ask permission to say something yeah it was Unthinkable where it's not for them you know self-censorship just comes you know it just comes with the territory I think it's cowardice which has become uh acceptable as this is the way academics behave this is our culture without trying to um go cycle become like a psychologist do you not do you think that they know they're falsifying no they're being untrue no this is the this is the disturbing thing many of them I mean this goes back to the Puritan uh business many of them have actually do believe that they've seen devils and horrible things uh they actually think that you know being masculine toxic masculinity is a is a real phenomenon they actually believe that there are a hundred different genders and even you ask them well can't you know well okay you mentioned three what's another 97 right they struggle to give you an answer to it but actually but they still believe that there are countless genders and that's because the power of uh of conformism the the pressure the institutional pressure is such that either you become a liar which is very difficult for most people to live with yourself or you become like them and they've really changed and I know colleagues used to have a lot of brains a lot of brain cells they kind of sound like something out of an aurelian you know sort of theater plot and the lack of discussion affirms that because they're not under under any any energy we don't become like them I think it's quite important like in this room we obviously agree but we shouldn't flatter ourselves that that this is the end of the matter because we have got to be questioning are we good enough in terms of argument to take them on or rather than just letting rip you have got to be much more demanding on ourselves to come up with better ideas and better ways of of fighting against them okay I'm going to go out to the audience hi I'm I'm so glad I'm being here and listen so many interesting opinions but I'm thinking about the religion of social justice it doesn't mean all the religion of social justice is not so good but consider of the dark side because when I was young I remember I read the book it's very classic it talk about how to define this woman is a witch or not he said put a fire on her if she's what if she's true not not to reach the fire is representative of God and God will protect her not be burned but if she's been burned she's a witch so when I read these books anything it's ridiculous but at that time people really believe it and use it as a guidebook to excuse so many innocent womens and when I think about that I I try to connect deeper link with the situation now so I think when people panic people believe rubbish and the reason people will panic because they feel and fear is like a disease they will poison people's brain and force them to believe something they shouldn't believe for example um this recently have the pandemic right the covet and because I'm from China I know some Chinese people there is some wrong medicine you know when they when they come down just think it's stupid but they still do it so what I'm thinking is how to escape from this actually we need to we need to think about how to escape from Fear as a disease so this is my question thank you oh hello um could I ask the panel if they think um sociology has Twisted people's brains and maybe it'd be a good idea to abolish sociology as a subject I think it's really uh incredible really that um the government might say you have to do this you can't do that you can't in the College of policing uh teach this and behave that way with the public yet they still do and this this kind of suggests to me that the nature and the character of where power lies and where the elites are and the character of those has changed and I wonder if part of it is just a disbelief and a a lack of belief in um in democracy and democratically elected power structures which we can hold to account and I just would like to understand more about what you guys think of that subject I was just wondering if you could sort of offer some insights as to why social justice is sort of becoming more of a middle class sort of phenomenon and I sort of say this on the background of you the sort of school girl who chucked uh to the soup at the Van Gogh uh painting last week it's now been revealed that she attends a 15 grand term sort of private school and you don't really sort of see sort of working class um sort of people doing this so why is this sort of overwhelmingly more middle class so these days I've been reading John Gray who is an English philosopher there whose work exposes uh limits and problems within liberalism and progressivism almost of a dark side of these conditions and recently he's been talking about the fact that this worker culture might be employed as a tactical Warfare in in a sense that the US is essentially a employing this culture to propagate cultural imperialism and he says that it might actually be a good thing in relation to women's Liberation let's say in the Middle East but I was wondering whether you had any comments on this please yeah just a question um there was a case recently you may have seen where uh a guy in the Navy was accused of sexual assault of a man and the description of the ACT seemed to be sexual assault um kissing someone and hugging him and stuff without consent but he the um alleged perpetrator said that he was demisexual and therefore did not feel sexual attraction without emotion and therefore he won the case and it's interesting because the argument that you said rightly Andrew at the beginning that it's all based on how the person perceives um an interaction that's usually the standard but actually in this case it didn't matter how the the victim perceived it the the perpetrator didn't deny the ACT he just said I didn't mean it in a sexual way essentially that's what he meant by saying he's demisexual and I thought I was quite shocked that the courts allowed that so it's almost like her kind of falling in on itself of this um ideology but I yeah it's one case but it could be you know interesting thanks I've been trying to figure out why these terrible ideas have got such fertile ground now and up 10 20 years ago and I'm thinking is it because is it as kind of Peter turchin points out there's too many Elites and Elite aspirants for that that can be supported by the economy so they're sort of thinking to themselves well let's turn over the whole system and then maybe we'll be running it and that these ideas are very good in terms of them gaining power the people who want to be in power and don't look as though they're ever going to be in power may get to Power by repackaging Marxism in this way and it's and if we had less Elite aspirants and a less competition to be elite then maybe this would start to subside and perhaps it will only subside when the population goes down and the economy recovers uh Frank I agree with the last Point um I think those of us who are critical or won't need to be careful not to fall into the same trap where if you hear one anti-woke uh of you you can predict all the rest and I think there's been a little bit of a risk of moments during this Festival but um Andrew you mentioned white fragility by Robin D'Angelo I read that a while back trying to be open-minded about it and and trying to think why is it that this book is hitting such you know a chord with so many people who are reading about it or being given training sessions about it at work and I came to the conclusion that it appeals to the sense that there are political injustices in the world and maybe we're not personally doing enough about them we probably all feel that um and I think you know it would be a good idea for people to be more active in politics but you might hope that instinct might translate to trying to understand about the world more read about it debate it etc etc but instead what D'Angelo does is she goes straight to saying this is why it's happening this is what you should do about it um it's basically a ready-made bundle of problem and solution and any other answer means you're part of the problem not the solution so how can we do better than D'Angelo and the her ilk appealing to that positive Instinct that's out there of wanting to engage politically I do want to one of you to answer the class point is there okay um I mean so on that I mean that footage of the uh the two girls throwing soup at the Van Gogh and then you know gluing their hands to the wall and speak and you know the first thing that strikes you is they were so plummy they were the poshest people I've ever seen uh they may as well be wearing Tiaras so uh yes it does strike us and often uh some of the most vociferous cheerleaders of this movement have double-barreled surnames in a very uh privately educated a lot of this stuff takes hold much quicker in the elite institutions it certainly has Oxford and Cambridge or in the ivy league in America there's something that connects affluence with this this uh movement in terms of what it is I think it's to do with potentially and I don't know but potentially a failure of the of the left it's the the cultural turn in left-wing thought where we go and it feeds into what Frank was saying it get where we they they replace money with identity you know when that happened this is why I don't believe the work movement is a left-wing movement in any sense at all because there is no real interest in in in redressing economic inequality or they often see the Working Class People as part of the problem in fact um I think that's really at the heart of it you know I mean if you take the example of quotas just to give a quick point you know implementing quotas at the BBC in terms of skin color what what you end up with there's a lot of uh Posh ethnic minority people doing getting the jobs right if you were to Institute a quota based on how many people go to private school which is seven percent of the country and say that no more than seven percent of the BBC's staff uh could go to could have been privately educated then you would automatically solve all of those other issues regarding race Etc because racial minorities tend to be overrepresented in poor income brackets but they're not interested in class they're not interested in in economic inequality that's where the corporate world I mean look you've got left wing supposedly left-wing activists cheering on multi-billion dollar corporations to decide the acceptable parameters of thought and speech that doesn't make it it's incoherent in fact so I think maybe because this culture War has been mischaracterized as left versus right and falsely that's a false characterization that also makes it harder to fight I think Frank in 1958 CW Wright Mills were an important book called the power elite and when I talk to the power elite he talked about three Elites one was the economic Elite the other was the political Elite and the third was the military Elite doubly right Mills did not talk about a cultural lead he didn't think it was important he talked about the medium passing but that was it now today if I was to write his book the military Elites are conspicuously Irrelevant in British Society the economic Elite is still quite important the political Elite isn't as important as before because the cultural Elites are the dominant sections of of the Elites at the moment to the point at which they can influence the behavior of the other sections of the establishment the new establishment and that relates to the question well you know why are laws broken I think the reason why the laws are broken is because the political Elite is weaker than the cultural lead I mean just you know the the media barks and then the politicians jump we have noticed that you know the media says oh look at Johnson he's not taking the log down seriously next day Johnson rolls over the media says oh list trust is is is as an ideological you know sensibility about economics a day later there's a U-turn and I think that what has happened is that the cultural section of the elites have I have established a hegemonic position and are in a position to influence the other sections of the establishment to the point at which you know sort of they are in in the driver's seat and there's a a lot of good stuff written on this particularly in relation to language about how that has occurred and I think that's the key that's the answer so the the major Target that we have to kind of visualize is the cultural section of the establishment because they're the ones that will the most amount of influence and they're the ones that created all the stuff that Andrew writes about they're the ones I have constructed and invented it and shaped it in the way that it is experience and hopefully that answers your question about sociologists no they're not they're never more necessary they're not all smugs so yeah so we've got a lot of people who want to speak so let's try and keep it quick Yes Man uh yes could you just quickly go back to what Tiffany asked you and that is how um the kind of politics um established itself as a kind of making or your institutions um try to stay relevant and then adopted these kind of policies they don't you know they wanted to say relevant modern if you go through the academy or universities they don't know how to think about modernity or innovation they just think oh yeah it's the only thing they can think about is you know very diversity and stuff like this and I think I'm calling a worker religion is is more than analogy I think or spot on there uh Andrew it is a sociologist somehow to find it as the ultimate concern which is what Frank was saying that this is so important that it overrules legislation and politicians that's why the media as Priests of this religion had so much power and can eject Boris and may eject list trust if we like um but going back to how Andrew started looking at the the Puritans and their infallibility it made me think about the moral Gap and if we think of the highest and the lowest under the Christianity which built our culture the standard of good is right up there with God and none of us come close and then down at the bottom I mean I can look down on Joe Stalin an Adolf Hitler but actually me and Joe and Adolf are much closer together than I am to God unfortunately and so that is inherently the the humility we have in Christianity whereas with work the worker right up there and anyone who disagrees with them are right down in the basement and say that's how they can look with such divisiveness um compared to Christianity which unites us we're all humble we're all making mistakes and we just cannot look down on people in the way the woke are now looking down on those who descend so you talked at the beginning about Counter Culture and basically one of the ways to defeat he sees for people to develop the courage to fight against it and be honest about it and we've talked about institutions a lot but from an individual level why do you think people have the means to fight these two um Fighters cancer Culture by means I'm talking financial means I'm millionaires my millionaires well-known artists Etc why are why even know about the means to Forex cancer culture and live a fruitful life why are we not doing it because even if we're a cancer they could live a fruitful life there could be an island or whatnot but yet there's still following instructions so why is that okay it's on an individual level um right at the beginning you're talking about the importance of language and it it's always took me that the woke uh have a language that operates on two levels um at the most extreme there are what you might call the curse words uh racist you know it's a futuristic word that frightens people just by mere utterance uh hate bigot the the all these words follow a pattern that they're short and and just a single continent and and vowels they but but their purpose is to frighten people uh simply by by the fact of the Russians and uh the word bigger that I mentioned I actually just means it properly means someone who's so certain of their own right correctness that they refuse to argue that with anybody else it's not about the views you hold it's about the way you hold them and it's perfect description of the world mentality um and and the correct response to being called a bigger is not to say no I'm not it's to say well what's your definition of that word and what is your justification given that definition and that that is what will make uh you know people will shy away from you that is what will neutralize that word but beyond that there's what you might call the the pseudo-scientific vocabulary these people have uh which is derived I think from the old Marxist analytical worldview and and a prime example of that of course is is all the phobias they they they they have you know because the phobia is a is a technical medical term it means a fear of a physical situation or thing it's a completely uh incorrect misapplication of that term to apply it to an attitude or or or or or a belief and and with respect to Andrew um the reason you don't take things far enough because if you try to use deny the use of that word if you say this isn't transphobic this isn't islamophobic or whatever you're actually still vindicating that useful language um if I can just finish up with one sentence the reason JK Rowling is not a transphobe it's not because she's never said anything transphobic it's because there is no such thing as transphobia thank you can you pass it to the Man with lots of hair I really do want to get you in so everybody has to be quite quick behind behind behind yes sir so the the only reason I'm commenting is because my girlfriend Hannah wanted me to do so but since I'm speaking so here is my personal lift experience just to pick up on that term I recently joined an online community of investors I'm not one of them I'm a business trying to get money and then I saw everyone put their pronouns in their profile and I did so too I put he him and him or I don't even know he and him there and I don't agree with any of it I completely give most people in this room but I've still caved and done it and I don't know why my boy I want the money but yeah I I I'm pissed at myself but I've still done it um we've heard a lot of really interesting and potent poetic imagery to help us try and unpack the situation we're in and understand it more deeply I'd like to add another on to that pile if I may which comes from the late great Isaiah Berlin one of our great philosophical Minds he wrote a lot about Liberty and one of his greatest ideas I think is one of his simplest ideas is that Liberty has two Central pillars one of which is freedom and one of which is equality and the reason that we get into so many arguments concerning Liberty and what it means is because we assume that those two pillars are complementary when in fact they're contradictory so when you increase Freedom you reduce equality when you increase equality you reduce freedom and so I wonder whether finding a solution to this problem is about actually finding an appropriate balance and a compromise and I'd be interested to know what Andrew and Frank think that might look like I come from the United States and in the American context as social political ideological phenomenon has become actually deadly and so as an outsider here I find it actually quite in a way kind of cute and cuddly that the the manifestation here has been things that are annoying like vandalism with paint fortunately no permanent damage blocking streets what I saw like in my home city of Portland Oregon was literally neighborhood sat on fire people bringing knives and guns with impunity in maiming people and even killing somebody in my city all under the name of so-called social justice anti-racists and anti-fascism I'm wondering if it the way that it's manifested in the United States is unique to the US in that it's not something for example that is inherent in sort of the ideal logical conclusion in this ideology I agree with so much that Andrew and Frank said but I think it's ironic Andrew that you took Foucault a task for one of his more insightful things he said uh which is his observation that relatively recently there's been a shift in uh in homosexuality from being something that you do to being something that you are and although he may not have been quite correct the way he formulated and expressed that I think there's a profundity there that is actually related and interesting ways to Frank's observations about changes in the Gay Liberation movement in the 1970s so we should engage with Foucault seriously sometimes yeah I yeah anyway I like that point about 4K Madam yes thanks um I Ronda santis in Florida has recently uh passed the parental rights and education Bill where he's set limits and said no you cannot teach uh uh sex education before I think it's age 10. um and uh and and I I actually think it's great um and I My worry is that unless we unless we suppress the what these people are doing they will not stop but I worry because I worry about you know where is the line between asserting Authority and authoritarianism I wondered if you could comment on that okay I I teach at the Sunday Times university of the year not sure why you can look it up um but this year unusually I've got a student who joined the Civil Service fast stream he's a nice kid middle of the road 2-1 uh I wonder how that happened uh he does tick all the right boxes ethnic minority uh gender issues that's good and a very challenging family background I'm not sure that he played on that I suspect they thought that far more important than he did but I I'm just curious to me this guy is now going to be in the ministry of defense and the foreign office and the home office in short period of time they're the cultural Elites too we shouldn't imagine that the cultural Elite simply means the media and commentators and right you know the Civil Service are part of this cultural Elite in the sport of Cricket the role of batsman has recently been abolished and batsman are now always referred to as batters a rather unfortunate expression that always makes me think of fish being fried I wouldn't be like just wonder what's going to happen next I mean presumably the Fielding position of third man will become third person and as for the maiden over which is one from which the batsman doesn't score I guess that's just going to have to be abolished completely but my my point is that all of these woke developments whether it's the control of language or more serious developments are actually all seen as barking mad by most Ordinary People and that what really explains the development of wokery and particularly the way in which it has captured all of our public institutions and places of authority is the complete undermining of democracy because the views of ordinary people have been completely erased from this debate and silenced on the grounds of use of language like racism sexism homophobia and so on and so forth and so it's easy to state but the aren't the solution to this problem is that we just have to re-energize our democracy and ensure that actually all of these decisions are taken on the basis of consent because if they are a lot of this work nonsense will disappear okay I'm going to ask Frank and Andrew for their final quick comments obviously they can't answer everything but I really do think this has been a very helpful start your book has and the conversations here this weekend so I don't think this is by any means over but Frank for now and in qriket they also are trying to abolish sledging which is where all the fun is anyway um it it seems to me that uh the problem is more complicated than you're suggesting because uh people who resist the stupidity of this culture after a while begin to draw the conclusion that maybe maybe they should embrace it to give you an example I I go watch football every second week and when they began to take the knee people around where I sat and throughout the stadium were hissing and we're very angry and we're you know we're really pissed off about people taking their knee a year and a half on uh because it's been normalized and people they see people on TV you know sort of clapping their hands you know we're doing something virtuous and very very good the mood and the reaction to the taking of the knee has changed quite fundamentally and these are by football fans and I think that's I'm not that's that's really what you would expect given the Zeitgeist and the cultural pressure that doesn't mean to say that they're enthusiastic about it but it means that there is a kind of climate a dynamic that that exists which can influence people from all kinds of background nobody is in unfortunately nobody is really immune from it but yet there are signs of fight back so for example I'm a Spurs fan and as you probably know we had a rule that said that nobody could say either or you called use the word yet you know even though that's kind of what we are about we're all yids you know if you're a Spurs fan the the day when that rule came out from the chairman everybody used the word Army did not stop for two hours people just chanted because they wanted to fight back so they were these things are very inexpensive really kind of quite ambiguous and it's all about the context we have to think about the context what's in what context can we most effectively resist and in what context we can make the greatest possible impact I think that's really uh seems to be to be quite important I just want to end on a positive I know it's difficult on a positive note I do think there are certain values that we can promote that are much easier to get people to to turn around to get around and I think that the values that we should be promoting isn't just free speech which has been really quite important I think tolerance is far more important I think we gotta revisit the enlightenment idea of Tolerance where we basically accept that people have the right to uh to believe in accordance with their inclination they have their right to their own conscience and they have the right to you know be who they are without having to go to a consent workshop and I think that tolerance is something that we can really work on it's a way of both protecting ourselves but also it's the way calling their Bluff thank you Andrew yes okay just some final thoughts then on that just to clarify uh the gentleman mentioned Foucault uh and I was you know there are some very fascinating aspects of what food co did and I was very specific to say that actually that was an important point that he made I was talking about the way that that idea had been misappropriated by the theorist that came in his wake and because we're being filmed you can watch it back and check that I did very very specifically say that one of the things I write about in the book is the way in which Foucault's ideas have been misappropriated uh by the I think I say something along those he's not so much their deity as their dancing bear you know the early post-modernists had a real uh you know they were attempted to break down meta narratives uh you know a church establishment science you know this is a meta narrative the idea of being on the right side of History this is their meta-narrative for code of um taken the woke to par apart I think you know so I think it's really important that I'm clear on where I'm coming from in that but yes I think ultimately I mean we come back to this idea of language and I think it the way through this is to uh take away their magic spells you know their incantations that are that are Charming people or falling people into believing ideas that they wouldn't typically support most people in this country are broadly liberal-minded and they go along with these pernicious ideas thinking that they are supporting liberal values and they're not and that the gentleman raised this this thing about the Precision of the use of language is really really important they will come up you mentioned all the phobias that they have you know islamophobia transphobia uh they came up with new ones every day there's one now Vega phobia by the way if you're scared of vegans I don't know why you'd be scared of vegans I mean I know they're annoying but and then you know there's a new one which is NB phobia which is if you're afraid of um of non-binary people I'm not afraid of teenage girls with short haircuts I you know so the thing about this is they're that is an attempt to pathologize a difference of opinion and to make that opinion not worthy of addressing and it disoblages you of having to engage with people if you if you've effectively said that they're mentally ill and that's what's going on there so I think reclaiming language and precision of language is really important and and you know and to come back to the point that the other gentleman made about he used the word I can't remember it was the other guy in the jacket they use the word humility and I think that that word is so important humility the the the recognition that is there is always a kernel of Truth in what your detractors say even in Robin D'Angelo which is a terrible book White fragility but critical race theory has a good point at the heart of it which is how can it be the case that we live in a society where there are legal protections against racial discrimination but racism still lingers so that's a good point I mean the the the the intention behind white fragility and the intention to try and grapple with that is a noble one she's just wrong about everything in the way that in the way that she does it but she does get 12 Grand an hour to go and berate people in corporations about their white privilege didn't she there was a famous uh talk together Coca-Cola and the big takeaway from that was try to be less white that was her I don't know how you do that like bronzing pearls maybe I don't know but but so you know ultimately though the humility is important and that's what the Puritans of old had they never knew if they were the elect or the Damned so they they had to have humility and the activists of today the work activists don't have that so I think starting from the premise that although we need to challenge all of this stuff recognizing that there can be very good intentions within that movement is a really good start um but also understanding that when we argue when we get into these debates and discussions we always have to have a recognition that we will be wrong about certain things humility I think is a really powerful thing and hopefully that will help us get out of this thank you very much thank you to our panel [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: worldwrite

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Id: -JZ9eGyp65U

Length: 76min 36sec (4596 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2022