Why The Culture War Matters | Matthew Goodwin

unless we give people a sense that their values uh that their voice is being respected and represented in the institutions and what we've seen across the West over the last 20 30 years and I've been studying you know politics for a long time what we see in Britain and France with Marine Le Pen or Italy with Georgia Maloney or the Sweden Democrats or Donald Trump or Vox in Spain or chager in Portugal Victor Orban in Hungary Law And Justice in Poland what we what we've seen over the last 20 years I think is just going to accelerate as this new Elite shows itself unable to really compromise with many voters in their own countries and deliver the changes these people want to [Music] see baa Goodwin is Professor of politics at the University of Kent I think he's a fantastic thinker I think you're going to enjoy this conversation uh can I say at the outset he's the author of multiple books on populism his latest book is values voice and virtue the new British politics Matthew welcome it's terrific to have you uh and let's start with an overview of your uh your most recent book uh you effectively argue that Britain's undergone a revolution that which was on top is now at the bottom that which was on the bottom is now at the top uh you talk about populism Nigel farage people didn't say it coming then Johnson and the red wall um sorry brexit in the middle and Johnson and the red wall extraordinary times can you tell us a little about the book and what you're driving at yeah thanks John I think for anybody who's uh been watching British politics closely or from a distance will know that we've had these three big revolts in our country over the last uh 13 years or so we we've had the rise of Nigel farage who is obviously similar to other politicians in Europe Europe who's tapped into a sense of frustration among millions of Voters with the political consensus we've had the vote for brexit which shocked much of the same establishment and then we had the rise of Boris Johnson uh and the realignment John of our politics which obviously lots of Australians uh and Americans will will recognize we had lots of workingclass Voters lots of Voters who haven't passed through University lots of older voters moving to the conservatives lots of graduates lots of younger voters lots of social liberals moving to the left and the labor party and so really what I'm trying to do with this book is explain what on Earth is going on and and the answer in short is that all of these events really reflect a growing Rebellion among voters uh a growing s sense of frustration at a new Elite in British Society an elite that is very different from the old Elite and I'm sure we'll get into what those differences are but a new Elite that is essentially imposing uh its values on the rest of the country is denying many people a voice in the National conversation uh and is losing touch John with uh many voters in wider societies so my argument is unless we really look at the people who are dominating the institutions in not just Britain but Western democracies and unless we reform those institutions and give people more of a stake in the direction of their societies especially on these big cult Cal issues like immigration and identity and belonging then we're going to see a lot more rebellions in the years to come can I pick up um you mentioned the three events Nigel farage populism people didn't see that coming uh and then um a brexit itself uh a rebellion as you say against Elites uh and then then Johnson and the red War um I guess a lot of people would have thought well surely things will settled now but there's been something of a revolution uh and Boris Johnson's become the Prime Minister he's Rewritten politics in a lot of ways that's what the red war was about um but it didn't happen people assumed he'd bed down brexit he was an author of it he was a driver of it he he passionate he argued for it and I guess people thought well he'll now make it work and that's not what happened to what extent would you say the Prime Minister Johnson was his if you like himself was the problem and to what extent would you say it was for what Frank fudi might call the exper tocy the New Elites determined to frustrated that led really effectively to failure it hasn't it didn't work yeah I think there were two things that essentially were going on the first is that in the aftermath of Boris Johnson's victory in 2019 uh the conservative party didn't really understand and the extent to which the country's politics were being realigned uh the party uh was given this unique alexora this unique Coalition of workingclass non-graduate older voters cultural conservative voters they wanted less immigration they wanted regions outside of London invested in they were skeptical of what I call hyper globalization they were skeptical of the constant prioritization of big business over national interests uh and they were very anxious about the rise of radical woke progressivism uh the erosion of free speech the rise of cancel culture uh the erosion of boundaries between uh men and women and and the constant rewriting of Our National History now the conservatives could have leaned into that realignment John they could have reshaped their electorate for the long term which is what I actually suggested to Boris Johnson on two occasions when I presented my research to to people in and around number 10 that that that they should do that conservatism needed to reinvent itself it needed to stay committed to this new electorate what happened however is they didn't do that and they didn't do that partly because Boris Johnson was always a Bohemian he was a Cosmopolitan he was essentially a liberal he wasn't really a conservative and you can see that in the policy decisions he took he liberalized immigration from outside of Europe uh he even John removed a requirement for British companies to advertise British jobs in Britain first uh this was not somebody who understood the general direction of travel out there in the country so that was one part of the story about how the conservatives lost touch with this electorate the other part as you say really was the way in which many of the people who dominate the institutions in this country and I'm not just talking about politics I'm talking about media creative Industries cultural institutions universities School rules the people who determine the shape of our national conversation who determine what is acceptable to discuss and what is not who determine what issues dominate the conversation you know they had very little interest in changing the broken status quo they didn't want to challenge globalization they didn't want to challenge Mass immigration they didn't want to give more of a voice to the rest of the country we saw this time and time again in how they tried to essentially dilute brexit to the point of it being meaningless how they didn't reform the institutions and let other uh voices into those institutions we also partly saw it during covid where anybody who voiced a dissenting view was was stigmatized and silenced as being a crank or a lunatic and and this is really the second part of of the story and and what I'm saying in this book John is unless we give people a sense that their values uh that their voice is being respected and represented in the institutions and what we've seen across the West over the last 20 30 years and I've been studying you know politics for a long time what we see in Britain and France with Marine Le Pen or Italy with Georgia Maloney or the Sweden Democrats or Donald Trump or vo in Spain or chager in Portugal Victor Orban in Hungary Law And Justice in Poland what we what we've seen over the last 20 years I think is just going to accelerate as this new Elite shows itself unable to really compromise with many voters in their own country and deliver the changes these people want to see it seems to me that there were plenty of warnings so were plenty of people unpacking what had happened David good heart's idea of the anywhere and the somewes the elites believing they knew better than the ordinary people in the street it seems to me that what the elites have done we'll come to who the elites are because people roll their eyes when you talk about Elites in a moment but what they've actually done let's assume we we know you'd know an elite if you fell over one so to speak um they've hardened down in their position that the the plebs if you like the Ordinary People the deplorables really are deplorable and shouldn't be listened to rather than having the humility to say uh well actually it is a democracy and they do have a say and they should be respected for it do you expect as I watch it as a former political figure that that in many ways they're making the absolute worst mistake they're hardening in their position against Ordinary People and I think the evidence shows that quite clearly John look if you look at what's happened since the rise of Donald Trump and the vote for brexit those two seismic moments in 2016 what we've seen very clearly in the evidence the Americans would refer to it as the great awokening um I would refer to it as the elites and the masses drifting further apart uh the evidence is clear many of the people who dominate the institutions um who are often you know Elite graduates who are not just socially liberal but have embraced radical uh woke progressivism uh they've been drifting sharply to the cultural left on questions to do with culture identity and belonging uh this is an empirical fact we can see it very clearly in the data and as they moved left as they've embraced things like you know support for immigration um believing that rights for minorities haven't gone uh far enough uh believing that we cannot move on as a society unless we revisit what they see as historic injustices that happened 200 or 300 years ago uh in their views of wanting to prioritize social justice over things like free speech um they've been moving further away from the average voter and we see this in politics too in Britain um both conservative and labor MPS are closer together on these cultural issues uh than they are um close to the average voter they they've they've moved sharply to the cultural left and so that's really exacerbated the problems in Western socities because many voters rightly are now looking at the corridors of power and they're not really seeing leaders who are reflecting their views on issues um to do with sex and gender to do with migration and borders uh to do with um our relationship with supranational institutions like the European Union uh to do with how we think about history and our culture and so um the only way I think we can really move forward constructively is by uh trying to close this void uh between voters uh and and rulers and as you say John so far we've seen very little evidence that that they're willing to do that and unless they do as we discovered and we're still discovering around much of Europe at the moment unless they do meet voters on these existential questions like solving the illegal migration crisis which is engulfing Italy as we speak uh today in in September 2023 unless they meet voters concerns over islamist terrorism over uh the rise of of a an anti-western woke uh world view uh then they will they will come under growing political pressure from new insurgents from new parties from new social movements so I I don't think this is beyond dispute when my book came out many people in the new elite were very critical they hadn't had the mirror held up to them in this way but their reaction spoke volumes because the reaction was very dismissive it was very derogatory it was very uh it was very elitist um and for another half of the country the book connected very strongly because they live their lives watching uh the this new Elite and having to live with the consequences of their decisions of their luxury beliefs of their Embrace of things that they're never going to feel the direct con consequences of like Mass migration like the erosion of of family uh like the like the uh rise of uh gender identity Theory and so on so I I I think you're right they have doubled down um they've entrenched their power they still dominate the institutions and that is why I am absolutely convinced we will have more political turbulence in the years ahead I must say I it it concerns me enormously I think you have a right and it concerns me even in this country when you look at the collapse in the primary vote of the major political parties in a sense it tells you the same breaking of trust in in of confidence in um the traditional parties to if you like represent the people that they used to represent um it does strike me that you made very interes in comment a moment ago the conservatives failed to um be like find a new conservatism and new approach and lean into the opportunities they had after the so-called red War all the larger reversal of politics of course where much of the country in Britain that and we see this in America and Australia this sort of re massive realignment so people at electrics would never have voted lab swept Johnson to power they failed to lean into it isn't part of the problem though that I think you just alluded to it really um no one knows what the great political philosophies are anymore so consider don't know what conservatism is well exactly if you look for example at at Westminster and Australians and Americans might recognize this point um the first thing to say is over 90% of our MPS now belong to the graduate class and half of them pass through the elite institutions uh so Oxbridge or a Russell group University there's nothing wrong with that per se but in politics we used to have a much greater diversity of of viewpoints in the institutions so that's gone the largest single tribe of politicians in Westminster are what we might call political careerists people who have only ever spent their lives in politics um the trade unionist the working-class politician the person with you know what we might call relatively ordinary life experience is gone and that's also true in the media by the way where local and Regional media have broken down so now much of our media class goes straight from uh you know a degree ISM at Oxbridge into the newsrooms and and and don't really have much experience outside of that so so I think within all of that their understanding of political philosophy has broken down most MPS in Britain are not very knowledgeable when it comes to politics and political Theory I think the conservatives have a specific problem John in Britain in that they are absolutely still consumed by thatcherism and the 1980s which in my mind was only ever a blip in the long conservative tradition that we have in this country but I think there is a big part of the conservative parliamentary party and the donor class that surrounds the party which still thinks 1988 is the answer to today's problems and as we discovered with the list trust Premiership that is not the case um the most successful conservatives around the world are the conservatives who have understood that the foundations of politics have increasingly moved away from debates about economic freedom to debates about cultural freedom and the conservatives who have embraced that and understood that uh have been the conservatives that have broken through with new electorates and unfortunately in Britain the Tories you know there are two things going on one is they instinctively look to Margaret Thatcher for the answers and you know she had a lot of compelling answers but they were answers to a different set of questions um and and they haven't moved on intellectually there were there are no serious intellectual heavyweights in the conservative movement today in Britain you know if you looked at who was around Boris Johnson there was nobody of substance if you looked at who was around previous Prime Ministers you know there there were people who had a grasp of of history of of of theory of uh you know uh of of of intellectual substance let's say and that has not been the case but the second thing is the British Tories are notoriously stat a strien you know they view these cultural questions as being beneath them they don't want to get into a debate about legal migration they don't want to get into a debate about birth rates and the future demographic crisis they don't want to discuss gender identity Theory and how we're indoctrinating children in ideas that have no basis in science they view these cultural questions um as beneath them as ones they don't want to get into and the fact that we've allowed history identity the rights of women the rights of children to be defined as cultural questions itself reflects the weakness of contemporary conservatism you know they have essentially allowed a large sthe of their own territory to be redefined as something that is seen to be toxic and socially unacceptable to discuss so I I agree with your point there is a lack of intellectual rigor uh among today's conservatives but there is also a general lack of Courage uh and and I look at the generation of conservatives who to be honest are very weak and and and often quite cowardly in how they approach these big political battles of our time but ch's a great ARA in that you make the point that there's a lack of intellectual rigor on the part of conservatives but as those as if they're really confronted by Elites who are rigorous in their intellectualism I would have thought uh firstly they are uh incredibly given to emotionalism that shows in the way they patronized their fellow human beings they've not learned themselves the lessons of History which is are that you know you break democracy you'll end up in an ugly place in a totalitarian Ros where the first people at risk probably are the intellectuals so you've almost got High emotionalism versus high emotionalism going on here rather than clear thinking at a time when quite frankly the West is in grve danger we we're we're totally incoherent now as ities so how are we ever going to progress well first You' been tested the thesis is this High emotion versus high emotion because it seems to me you talk of intellectual rigor it's not coming out of Academia and spilling into all of these other cultural movements that you're talking about they're intellectually very flimsy and and they're pushed with enormous Vigor but the central feature of that V to me seems to this patronizing idea that if you dare to disagree you're a deplorable oh I think there's a lot of a lot of Truth to that I think if you take the universities for example where where I work um they're a good example of how the institutions have been steadily politicized and have become more interested in pushing an ideological agenda than doing what they're supposed to do which is searching for truth and exposing students to a diverse range of ideas and to give you one stat from the book in the 1960s uh for every one conservative in the University ities there were three uh there were three academics on the left today for every one conservative there are nine uh academics on the left so you know the ratio is not not too far off 10 to one and and we can look at the Civil Service we can look at the public sector institutions we can look at the media as I say and I think what might otherwise have been a testing ground for ideas for serious discussion is no longer that you can see that in much of our political debate here in Britain um you know we we do not have long form substantive discussions on mainstream television about politics uh one of the most interesting and revealing statistics is that ever since the vote for brexit one of our flagship radio programs Radio 4 uh today which much of Westminster used to wake up in the morning and listen to has lost two million listeners since the brexit referendum public trust in established media has declined public confidence in the universities uh has declined sharply in the US it's never being uh as low um public cynicism is up sharply uh the number of Voters who now say on the big issues of the day like uh the economy uh or immigration uh that none of the parties have the answers to these problems uh has been steadily Rising uh and and often it's majorities who hold that view so I'm I I think many voters are looking at the political class today and are not just disagreeing with what they're saying I think they just simply know no longer have confidence in the capacity of our leaders to answer the longer term challenges facing the country whether that's low economic growth whether it's a lack of productivity whether it's defending the national interest whether it's strengthening borders I mean if you look John at the UK from Australia you know the flagship promise of the brexit Revolt which many Australians and Americans and others around the world will remember was Take Back Control Take Back Control three words that defined that Grassroots rebellion and here we are approaching 2024 and voters are looking at a country that cannot control inflation that cannot control the illegal migration crisis on the channel That seemingly cannot control the constant spread and creeping influence of radical woke progressivism in the institutions which cannot seem to control legal migration which cannot seem to deal with crime uh and I I'm a poster John I mean I spend a lot of my time polling voters sitting in focus groups with voters and the apathy the sense of apathy and disillusionment is is is palpable so I'm deeply concerned about where we Are My Hope with the events of the last decade was this you know they would have forced the political class to to move closer to the people and to begin to think about um uh addressing some of these weaknesses but unfortunately they've moved in the opposite direction and and essentially uh denigrated and dismissed much of the rest of the country and that's a very unfortunate thing to see indeed the um it seems to me that it could be said that the elites don't believe in Britain in my case they don't believe in Australia or in America they don't believe in America they don't believe in the west but my more pointed issue here is they don't believe in Britain uh where many Britain want to believe in Britain it raises the question doesn't it nationalism and is there a place for a sound uh nationalism or is it always a dirty word because they you know one group would have you believe it's a dirty word uh and and and only racists and narrow-minded bigots and people who are locked in the past and have never explored the world could believe in Britain strike Australia strike America whatever um whereas people who live in those places often have a deeper attachment the country and can see that it can be valuable well I think there's a lot of Truth to that I've just been revisiting uh some of the work of Daniel Bell uh very prominent American academic who who wrote a number of great books in the postwar period and and one of those was was the cultural contradictions of capitalis capitalism in the early 1970s and and what bell pointed out even then was the rise of what he called a new adversary class uh essentially a the way in which the elite were changing and he noticed that they were deriving their status increasingly not by being proud members of the national Community but but essentially by disparaging and denigrating the national community in order to win status and esteem and honor from other members of the elite and this really was the foundation of much of the work that followed think about the work of Christopher lash in the US in the early 1990s think about the work of David goodart his discussion of anywhere and somewhere you think about David Brooks his discussion of the Bourgeois Bohemians and I think what's happened today you know lots of people ask me what's the difference between the new Elite and the old Elite well one of the key differences I think is that the old Elite in Britain the old money Tory elite were always disconnected from the rest of the country they were economically disconnected um they were insula I mean there was a an old boys club Henry Fairley the journalist first term used the term the establishment in 1955 um but when it came to culture when it came to the nation when it came to institutions um they respected them and they supported them uh and that included the old left by the way it included The Clement Atley it included the Peter shaes it included the Tony Benz you know the old left socialists were were we we would go back now and read their speeches and consider them to be nationalists in the way that they talked about Empire in the way that they talked about the need for Britain to avoid integration with Europe the defense of a thousand years of history and uh a long uh tradition of continuity in our democracy um what's what's happened today however is whereas the old Elite derive their status more from money and property and titles the new Elite increasingly derive their status by embracing radical progressivism by uh critiquing um dismissing undermining uh laughing at the nation at identity at history at culture and they're simultaneously doing that while repackaging britishness and englishness around these Notions of um diversity of universal liberalism of multiculturalism so they're redefining the national project around an international thee which chimes with their values um at the same time denigrating that National Community which is leaving many people who do view that as a critical source of of status and esteem feeling uh as though they're not being taken uh seriously at all and I think if you look at the new Elite in Britain America and elsewhere I think you know I talk about this in the book but what we're seeing is the rise of what some academics have called asymmetrical multiculturalism whereby in the world of the new Elite you can celebrate every identity every history every culture around the world so long as it is not your own uh and when it comes to britishness and englishness you must be instin inly skeptical you must be in some cases openly hostile and you must repackage those National identities around these Universal themes and many voters find this incredibly difficult to digest and deal with because John to say that a country is welcoming of diversity is fine but that cannot be the basis of an entire national identity because it's like saying you don't have an identity of your own and for many Brits and Australians and Americans you know they they are fiercely proud of their distinctive identity their distinctive history their distinctive culture their distinctive ways of life and they feel that those things are being rapidly eroded by globalization and by a distant Elite which is why these these populist politicians and others are still as strong as they've ever been because they are tapping into this growing sense of frustration with this new ruling class so the old Elites which uh you know might be seen as Britain's Archilles hill by many its class system uh is perhaps Kinder than the new Elite do you think I'm not I'm not sure I would say it was kind of I mean obviously if you go went back to the 1950s and 60s you know I mean the reality is social Mobility was very low lots of people in British Society at the time didn't have rights lots of women minorities and so on were not equal members of of society at that time but there was a consensus a cultural consensus if you like that people were part of a national community and that sense of belonging was critical to holding the social fabric together and I think what we can see today increasingly is um a ruling class an elite that no longer really shares that consensus with voters and is not really interested Ed in upholding uh that that consensus and we can see this most clearly with the issue of of migration and and and how um people in Westminster have responded to that question since brexit because the reason we voted to leave was not just about becoming an independent Sovereign Nation state it was about wanting to lower migration and slow the pace of change so that we can preserve the national community that uh we all belong to and and what has happened in Westminster since then is the very opposite uh the new Elite put the pedal down on both legal and illegal migration uh have refused to uh entertain any radical solutions that would uh meet voters in the middle on those questions uh and have exposed the country to a pace of change and churn that makes the pre-brexit era look relatively tame by comparison uh and this is why the politics of migration are now back with a vengeance uh because many voters really do feel strongly betrayed on that question it's why I keep talking about it in our public debate jump because I feel also a sense of responsibility to the large majority of Voters out there who who really thought they were going to get a different political settlement over the last seven years and were just given more of the same on steroids uh and this is not a healthy place for any democracy uh to be the mystery to me and I don't say this lightly the mystery to me is that highly intelligent Highly Educated people can't see this and how have the universities because they're pretty proud places most of them they defend their role in modern society they insist that they be publicly funded they insist that they can provide the answers in a complex world and yet more often than not they seem to be compounding the problems that's what we're talking about here Academia is leading the way on some of these absurd ideas that are so roundly rejected uh why is Academia in your view why have the universi so badly lost a plot so badly lost the capacity to understand how to move a society in a positive direction I think the universities are in deep crisis I've worked in the universities since 20 2 I and I've worked in universities in different countries and both Elite and non- Elite universities um the higher education model has completely broken down uh in Britain the universities have become deeply politicized um as they've moved sharply to the left as the number of Administrators and bureaucrats has grown um and I think as um a very militant activist minority has not been confronted um and so one of the things that I've been working on with other academics here in Britain has been a a piece of legislation the higher education Free Speech act which is the first piece of legislation in the Western World to actively uh promote and protect academic freedom the freedom of academics to say what they think without fear of consequence uh to defend academics from harassment and persecution from other academics on campus now why on Earth did we need that piece of legislation because many non-conformists gendercritical scholars Pro brexit Scholars conservative Scholars historians who might not agree that that Britain's Empire was 100% negative and made no contribution to the world whatsoever um those people have been harassed and stigmatized on campus we have a quarter of all University students in Britain who now say they self- censor in universities and lectures because they are scared of saying what they really think we've had prominent academics like Kathleen stock essentially chased out of their jobs by militant radical Progressive academics administrators Vice chancellors and so I think universities have essentially given up on the idea that on the founding idea that they're here to search for truth that they're here to expose students to a wide range of ideas and I do think they've morphed into highly political uh projects because they started as being very religious institutions but but in particular since the 1980s they they've gradually become very openly political to the point and I'll give you an example John where as an academic I can no longer apply for a research Grant and I can no longer apply for a for an academic job unless I submit what is called a diversity statement unless I pledge my allegiance to to diversity equity and inclusion unless I explain all of the ways in which my teaching and research supports uh Dei now whatever your views about diversity equity and inclusion and I I tend to be more more skeptical than most um in universities should not be subjecting academics and students to ideological litmus tests to determine who should and who should not be working in them that is not the job of a university but I don't hear many emics at all speaking out about that because obviously they're entirely comfortable with many of those things happening because it reflects their their ideological worldview so just to be clear I don't think there is any conspiracy going on here all I what I think is that as these institutions have been filled with with often very privileged members of the graduate class and as those people have drifted left in recent years they've taken the institutions with them and in the case of universities they've undermined their very purpose I can't help but wonder how long it'll be before people realize that this constant talk about inclusion equity and and and diversity is just simply producing more fractured societies than ever uh because they are if you like so highly misleading diversity turns means you know you won't have a variety of opinions it might mean if in the in the ABC in Australia frankly it seems to you'll have people with different cultural backgrounds but not of viewpoint diversity at all uh inclusion only applies if you accept the group think uh and equality tends out turns out to be all about quotas and a drift towards totalitarian uh you know you will be equal rather than equality of opportunity the outcomes of you like the fruit of all of this we've been at it for quite a while now it just becomes more and more and more distressing more and more OB obvious that uh it's not working and there's an old saying in this country that you know sometimes you want need to quit stop digging while you're behind you know give up but it's as though there's a lack of humility as well as honesty on the part of those who are if you like in a position to try and open up things for debate to be honest to try and say let's have a fair in can look sorry another Australian ism a real look at what's happening they're just not prepared to do it and perhaps the smugness of tenure is part of the problem I think perhaps perhaps it's it's partly to do with tenure I think also many of these ideas have morphed into a new religion for U the ruling class as John mwater and others have pointed out there is a religious quality to this ideological worldview of of radical progressivism that for its true believers it really does give the them a sense of meaning and purpose even if it's not empirically valid and you can see that for example in the extent to which organizations Embrace things like anti-racism training or teaching in white privilege you know many of the the measures that have been used in those training uh sessions have been shown to be empirically flawed um and have been shown to be to be worthless but but yet we continue to spend Millions if not billions in pushing a lot of this stuff I mean there is if you read the the literature on diversity training in the social sciences is pretty clear in in in saying it it either has no effect at all uh or it can make people even more prejudiced towards other groups uh there was a recent comprehensive review in in the annual uh review of psychology a prominent prestigious Journal which basically concluded by saying it wasn't sure that the amount of money we're spending on all of this stuff was justifiable because of the lack of effect it was having um but yet we don't seem to be able to talk talk about any of that and I noticed this most most visibly in Britain when when we had a report that was uh published a government report on on uh inequalities and and social mobility in Britain which concluded that the main cause of disparities between different groups was not institutional racism uh but was to do with things like entrenched economic deprivation family breakdown um different and cultural values uh and that report that led by a man called Tony Su um who was himself uh black uh was was widely criticized and dismissed by the ruling class as being um uh you know illegitimate unacceptable because he had challenged the central claim among the new Elite which is that all Western socities are institutionally racist and all disparities among groups are therefore based around prejudice and discrimination when in fact the reality as I think we know quite clearly from the evidence is it's a lot more complicated than that it's it's a multivariate explanation and that things like very high rates of family breakdown particularly in the black British Caribbean Community where 63% of children are in single parent uh households um you know those things really matter but we we we can't seem to have a mature conversation about about the role of those factors in in these inequality so what we're left with is a stifling boring unproductive um very um narrow Orthodoxy that reflects the view of this new Elite but doesn't take us very far in actually dealing with society's problems GK chesteron made the observation that when we stop believing in God it's not that we believe in nothing it's that we come to believe in almost anything and that seems to be the pattern today uh you know you've got as many belief systems almost as there are citizens with a lack of sort of glue to hold them together so given that people always thought that U particularly in Britain the middle classes were the strength of the nation it seems to me there's a lot of individual uncertainty and loneliness anxiety if you like uh that must feed into that sense of dissatisfaction that that lack of direction do you think well I think all the the the big narratives that we once had to hold the nation together have essentially broken down religion has broken down only 1% of Generation Z uh who are in my University classes who were born after 1996 only 1% identify with the church of England uh social class has has increasingly broken down and become much more blurred uh as as a as a framework in society um National identity is broken down for all the reasons that we've discussed it's broken down because we have a ruling class that is reshaping that around International themes uh and it's broken down because the institutions now put much less of an emphasis upon that and so where we are as we are simultaneously bombarded by ongoing globalization Mass migration um what what we're left with is is a lack of social trust um a lack of glue holds communities and and societies together a sense of constant churn constant change um that nobody's really settled uh or has an anchor uh and if you look at the nation as as a home um you know and and and you view it through that lens um then then your home is increasingly feeling like chaos and is increasingly fragile and unpredictable and volatile nobody wants to live in a home like that people want stability security peace uh and I think that's um that's something I hear time and time again in in focus groups with voters the sense of bewilderment sense that everything is moving so fast uh and that nobody seems to be in control of these big issues or if anything uh they're invested in keeping the pedal down uh as as as as hard as possible um so it's it it comes back to that notion of control and it comes back to the the very real policy decisions that that have been taken I mean and and the policy decisions that have been taken over the last seven years eight years I would argue are are pretty disastrous in terms of trying to give people a sense of security and belonging tell me you do a lot of focus group work you say uh you might be able to throw some light on something that's a mystery to me um we have seen this extra extraordinary explosion of critical theory out of Academia how it ever grew in Academia I don't know because it doesn't stand any scrutiny but out into the streets into the entertainment industry into politics everywhere um a critical race Theory critical gender Theory critical quear theory critical fact Theory I mean it's extraordinary really but the nub of my question is we now believe we're deeply racist apparently we believe the critical the idea that the world's problem is white supremacy how do people sitting in a focus group reconcile themselves to their belief that they're not racist I don't think many people think they're racist at least they wouldn't own it with the idea that that's now our essential problem and that's why the world's in such a mess because that's what critical theory is telling us well um they're very skeptical um but they also don't want to be seen as a as a as a bad person um the power of social norms is incredibly strong uh what's happened over the last 20 30 years is that the the new Elite in my mind at least have steadily expanded Concepts they've stretched Concepts like racism and discrimination to essentially Encompass things that that are that are not racist or discriminatory at all um but which challenge the political consensus so if you look at how we talk about this sort of amorphous notion of hate uh or hate crimes um you know they they often Encompass things like questioning Mass immigration uh we even had police investigating things called non-violent hate crimes where um essentially in um the person who perceived that they had been insulted in some way that that was sufficient uh to Warrant uh police intervention uh in uh holding somebody up for for a hate crime which would then go on their record so you know we've seen the expansion of these Concepts uh when it comes to things like you know white privilege for example we've got studies in the social sciences which have found that when you teach people about white privilege which is itself a deeply flawed concept they become less sympathetic to workingclass whites so they it's actually a very divisive um concept um not only because of of of the notion but but because of how it is wiring people to look down on other members of their National Community um in in a very uh divisive way and and and this is you know we see this now increasingly in British schools where we've had a number of St studies recently that have shown um children being exposed to um critical race theory gender identity Theory um being separated in after school clubs on the basis of their race um black children being given extra classes on Sundays that are not given to their white counterparts um you know and when people say to me on Twitter or social media you know these things aren't happening um you know they really are uh and Freedom of Information requests have shown this uh to be the case and I think for the average voter who sits in my focus group you know on the one hand they're desperate not to be seen to violate any of these social norms they don't want to be seen as as as as racist as uh as as discriminatory as a bad person they want to be seen as a good person as trying to make the world a better place um but they're also slowly realizing that um many of the ideas that are being imposed upon them uh come with an alternative agenda uh and that that realization is is slowly creeping creeping in that uh I think people can sense that there is no unifying narrative here anymore if the only interesting thing about our children is what fixed group they belong to and their race not their character you know people will and are increasingly uncomfortable about that parents protesting outside of school Gates questioning why their children are being taught there are 72 genders um that will all accelerate in the years ahead um because it is so blatantly dismissive of Science and it is so detached from evidence um that I just cannot see parents going going along with that over the longer term and I can't see voters going along with it over the longer term and if you look at British politics over the last few years we have seen a number of big push backs you know when Scotland tried to allow 16 year olds to legally change their gender without any consultation with their with medical professionals or or parents uh 80% of Voters said this is a bad idea and the Scottish national party were not able to push it through the labor party has just retreated on gender self ID Kama the labor leader has come out and said you know he he now accepts it his earlier definition of of you what is a woman uh you know was inaccurate um we're beginning to see slowly I think some sense of uh uh normality or common sense descending on the political class but but it's it's taking time um it it is taking time you um I think have had a little to say about black lives matters recently many many middle class people lined up with an organization that was avowedly Marxist uh until uh it became well known uh it had on its website that it was committed to the destruction of the nuclear family that it was a pretty interesting group now they capitalized on an awful event to just ify some pretty extreme activities and a lot of people were too afraid to say this is not a good idea you know you had to appear to be supporting black lives matters and the defunding of police in the United States appears to have gone very badly I think you've said a bit about this recently that know that we can look back on it it should feed into that narrative that people are a bit suspicious of some of the uh the movements that they're being talked into uh or or that people are trying to persuade them to back yeah we just had an interesting study in the social sciences which has found that um it looked at at areas that had uh experienced BLM protests and it found that uh essentially there was a sort of mass withdrawal of policing in the aftermath of those protests and uh on the one hand as you'd imagine that led to a fall in in uh in in murders and and deaths at the hands of police um there was much less police activity but what it also did is it it led to a very sharp increase in crime so the murder rate increased by 11% which resulted in about 3,000 additional deaths that would not have happened had routine normal policing been maintained uh much fewer that for the emphasis can you just repeat that to you've had how many Americans yeah in the aftermath of of the BLM protest there was an 11% increase in in the murder rate which was equivalent to 3,000 lives lost so essentially the same number as 911 um and uh and you know this is I find that a very trauma you know troubling fact that we should be debating And discussing um there was also by the way in that study uh it points out John in the aftermath of the BLM protest voluntary redundancies among police officers increased by nearly 300% uh so you saw a kind of collapse of morale among police who clearly felt that the The Narrative around BLM was was was not was not an accurate one um but who also then decided that certain crimes and and things you know simply would not be attended to in the same way that they would normally so arrests at property uh property crime plummeted um arrests at other crime scenes plummeted and and murder sword um you know so we all had this curious moment where we were watching the protests during covid you know on the one hand being told to stay at home on the other hand being told that protests were acceptable um but we can now see what the real world impact of of that really was which is why African-Americans and Latino Hispanic voters have consistently been the most strongly opposed to ideas like defund the police because they are the first people to experience elevated crime and it's another example of a luxury belief you know this idea that uh that that that that Rob Henderson at Cambridge has talked about that that the elite will often push luxury beliefs that bring no cost to them which bring them status from other Elites but which impose very high costs on other people defunding the police is a classic example of that uh and only a couple of weeks ago one of the leading Advocates of that idea was was herself attacked in the street and she promptly hit social media to say you know where were the police where was the you know law law and order um and it and it became a symbol online of of this this deep hypocrisy that runs through the new Elite but you could also point at the things we've discussed you know the constant push for Mass immigration it's not going to be the new Elite who deal with the consequences of that the constant push for more more deregulation more globalization uh more more prioritizing the interests of big business it's not going to be the new Elite who will Who will suffer the consequences of that it's going to be the working class it's going to be non-graduates in the towns outside of the cities um the the constant push for gender identity uh the constant push for denigrating the nation it's not going to be the new Elite who who worry about that they don't get their sense of status and belonging from the nation they get it from their achieved identities from their their education from their professional success is going to be the working class plumber and electrician who really does care about the nation who sees that his membership or her membership of the nation as a really important part of who they are um and so you know from you can go through the policy areas and as this ruling class drifts further and further away they are increasingly pushing ideas that that that I think uh that I think are disastrous for everybody else uh but which they won't ever really feel the consequence of when circumstances like this I think probably you and I would agree that what we need is a new class if I can put it that way of Heroes real heroes you know to rise up and and and and sort of say let's put our foundations down again we're not going to put up with this nonsense anymore but that requires engagement requires people to feel confident enough to risk cancel culture it requires them to be passionately committed to their neighbors their their Community their country how do we encourage those people to come forward in your view to to land This Plane if I can put it that way yeah I've been thinking quite a lot about this I've also written about about the need for a new little movement here in Britain and one of the things that struck me guiding through a piece of legislation in Parliament around defending free speech in in the universities was how few people that actually took there were really only about two dozen of us who who designed that law who lobbied for it campaigned for it helped politicians get it through and it reminded me that you know often you don't need you don't need a mass movement to change the dial uh often you you need you know SAS a a small highly committed um Battalion of people who are willing to put their heads above the parit provide a model to other people and that's what I would argue radical progressives have done very effectively is they have been a very committed disciplined activist minority who moderate liberals have been very scared of of taking on so you know the moderates tend to stay quiet fearing the consequence of what might happen if they speak out and I think conservatives have really not done a great job of learning the lessons of that which is we need a new counter Elite know we need to build a new counter Elite that is present in the institutions that is intellectually anchored uh that has a strong sense of History uh and philosophy uh and um is action oriented uh knows how to get things done uh and I think you can see those people emerging on the international stage you can see for example in America how one or two activists have completely changed the debate on education have completely changed the debate on on on opposing CRT but I think you can see that also in other areas you know brexit you know the way in which you know one person in the form of of Nigel frage essentially changed that political debate during the the 2000s um you can see it in parts of Europe too so I think really it is about the question how can you promote a counter Elite and keep them organized and also by the way John keep them funded I mean I'm often approached by philanthropists and donors who say look you know I'm creating this new network I'm I'm building this new movement and I always say to them you know there are people out there already doing lots of important work um but they need funding they need support they need financial insulation I remember Jordan Peterson making this point at at an event in London saying that you can't even begin to take on the culture unless you're financially insulated you know because the first thing they'll go for is your livelihood the first thing they'll go for is your career and your profession so giving people a sense of of financial insulation and security and giving them a sense of of unity and organization and accepting that we might not need a mass movement but we we might need a Vanguard uh and finding that and promoting it I think is is is really important Matthew you've been very generous with your tan you've given us a great deal to thank to think about and I want to say thank you very much thanks for having me John and um thanks for everybody who's tuned [Music] [Music] in

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 142,586

Keywords: John Anderson, John Anderson Conversation, Interview, John Anderson Interview, Policy debate, public policy, public debate, John Anderson Direct, Direct, Conversations

Id: d8tfrnpAj94

Length: 58min 55sec (3535 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2024