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#1002 - Andrew Doyle - Political Violence & the Lunatics of Your Own Side

Modern Wisdom

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  • Mainstream Must Disavow Extremists
    • Distancing mainstream politics from extremists is essential to avoid conflation in public imagination.
    • Andrew Doyle urges mainstream left and right to explicitly repudiate celebratory violence to protect free speech. Transcript: Andrew Doyle Well, there’s a problem, isn’t there, at the moment, which is that there seems to be more of an overlap between the left and the hard left which doesn’t exist to the same degree it does Exist on the right but not to the same degree so i think i mean i’ve i’ve made the case that i think the left has to really disavow the lunatics within its own house that’s something they Really really need to do because i’ve been really shocked since this horrific murder of charlie kirk seeing the extent of left-wing, mainstream left-wing voices attempting to justify It. And I know that always happens. You know, if you go back to the Brighton bombing at the Tory party conference back in the early 80s, if you go back to the death of Margaret Thatcher, there were some people who were rejoicing In death and celebrating death. So you always get a bit of that. And it’s always grotesquely unpleasant whenever you see it. That track was number one, right? I don’t think it quite got to number one. Oh, maybe it did. The Witch is Dead. Yeah, yeah. Not Hi-Ho, it was Ding Dong. You’re confusing Wizard of Oz with the dwarves from Snow White. And those two should be conflated in a mashup form and remixed. I think that should happen. But it is true that there’s always that kind of thing. But I’ve never seen the extent of it. Like there’s thousands and thousands of them. Why do you think that is? Because I think there’s too much of an eroded boundary between that far left and left. You know, the mainstream left, just as the mainstream right, has a kind of responsibility to distance itself from the more egregious, crazy people on their own side, although they’re Not really on their side. But, you know, on the further extremes of the political spectrum. And if you don’t do that, in the public imagination, the two become conflated. What does distancing yourself look like? It looks like saying, I don’t agree when someone celebrates murder. Right. And who the hell is this to claim to represent my political position? It’s actually not that hard to do. And it’s been for any movement. I mean, look, there was a clip of a trans pride protest in London where an activist stood up and shouted out, if you see a turf, punch them in the fucking face. See a woman calling for violence. Now, every movement, every protest has a few bad apples, right? If I saw that, I wouldn’t really think much of it. What I reacted to was the crowd cheering and applauding that, because what that tells you is that violence and violent rhetoric has been normalized within the trans activist community, Right? Because if I was at a parade of something that I really supported, some cause I really cared about, and I was at a protest and someone stood up and called for violence, I’d be like, who’s That? Can we get him off the stage? This doesn’t represent us. I wouldn’t be cheering along and I’d be incredibly disturbed if I saw supposed allies cheering that kind of thing. You’d do something about it, wouldn’t you? So that’s all I mean by that. And I think the tweet that you quoted, I presume, is alluding to this idea that, you know, increasingly, there is a tolerance, if not support, but there’s certainly a tolerance for the Most extreme forms of violent rhetoric on the left by the mainstream left. (Time 0:00:36)
  • Identity Amplifies Political Threat
    • Identity fused to politics makes disagreement feel like a personal attack and fuels tolerance for violence.
    • Doyle highlights campus studies showing increasing willingness among youth to justify political violence. Transcript: Andrew Doyle There was a study by FIRE, the free speech organization in America, which only came out four or five days ago. And I think this is from September 10. So I think it’s even worse than you think. The statistics quoted in that are really chilling. It suggests a high propensity towards the tolerance or, I suppose, excuse making for violence. The idea that a speaker on campus who is espousing views you don’t agree with is making you unsafe and therefore they deserve some kind of physical intervention, either a punch or, God Forbid, even further, an act of assassination. What’s very disturbing, though, about that study is that the trend seems to be increasing on the right as well among young conservatives. They’re catching up. Now, it’s always been the case, according to the FIRE studies, that the left… Is FIRE? It’s the Foundation for Individual… Well, it used to be the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and they changed the meaning of the acronym so that it’s more… They kept the acronym. They kept the acronym, but changed now… It doesn’t. Well, Greg Lukianoff, who’s in charge of it, is going to hate me for not knowing the new words. But it’s still a free speech organization. But it’s more… I think what they realized is it’s not just about campus. We have to be there to protect free speech for everyone. They’re non-partisan. They’re not left or right. They’re just free speech for absolutely everyone. And the last study was saying that, you know, whereas you’ve had leftist tolerance on university campus forever, it’s always been the case that there’s been more of a tolerance for Violence, but the right is catching up. In other words, this idea that we are becoming so tribal now that if someone disagrees with you, it is now widely taken to be a kind of attack. And I know I’ve looked into studies on this. Apparently, it’s fairly natural for people when you disagree with them to take it. Your instinct is to take it as an attack. But that is amplified when your sense of identity is connected to a political viewpoint. (Time 0:04:50)
  • Out-Of-Context Clips Create Monsters
    • Doyle recounts misrepresentations of Charlie Kirk’s quotes and how out-of-context clips create a ‘folk devil.’
    • He corrected false claims and secured an apology from Alastair Campbell for a severe misquote. Transcript: Andrew Doyle What I do take exception to is the people who either misrepresent what he said in order to attack him, which has been happening an awful lot, out of context clips, like you said, or not Doing the basic research. I mean, one of the big issues is we’re dealing with a folk devil. It isn’t really Charlie Kirk they hate because they haven’t watched anything that he’s ever said and they haven’t really engaged. They’ve seen a few out-of clips. It’s the monster of their imagination that they’ve collectively created. And that’s why out-of clips work because, of course, it acts as confirmation bias. They see it, they think, oh yeah, that tallies with the monster in my head, so that’s great. And you see it all along. People like Alistair Campbell, who went online and said that Charlie Kirk supported stoning gay people to death. Now, I tweeted that clip out and said, this is categorically wrong. And he did apologize. I must be the only person ever to get an apology out of Alistair Campbell. That is an achievement. But he should have taken the effort to look into that because it’s an incredibly severe accusation. And he should know better. You should be damn sure that someone’s actually said something like that before you say it. And of course, what he was saying, what Charlie Kirk was saying in the original clip, is he was critiquing an organizer of a pride event who had quoted a book from the Old Testament in support Of pride about love and about compassion. And he was making the point that the same book of the Bible also says that you should stone gay people to death. So he was critiquing the idea of cherry picking scripture for your own political agenda. That was the point. You know, similarly, we’ve had this thing about, oh, well, he supported the Second Amendment. He said that some deaths, because of any country that has guns will have some deaths, that that was a price worth paying for the Second Amendment. That doesn’t mean he was saying that everyone who is killed by guns, that’s justifiable. I mean, that’s an incredible leap. And in the same clip, he makes the clear point. He says, look, 50,000 people a year die from car accidents. And we all collectively accept that as a cost for the convenience of getting to our destination quicker. So anyone who has a car implicitly supports Charlie Kirk’s view on the Second Amendment. It makes them an incredible hypocrite if they have a car, but they’re saying, because actually we could all abandon our cars and save 50,000 lives a year. We don’t. I actually think we should all move to Waymo’s and driverless cars because that would reduce that fatality rate by 95% or something like that. But nevertheless, you know, so that’s an example of someone taking something he said out of context, using it to justify the murder. (Time 0:12:04)
  • Wokeness Is Declining, Not Dead
    • Wokeness has declined from its 2020 peak but may die slowly and morph into other authoritarian movements.
    • Doyle warns replacement ideologies could be equally authoritarian even as ‘woke’ loses mainstream power. Transcript: Andrew Doyle But as you know, I think you’ve read it, you know that I’m not saying it’s all over, let’s have a party and go home. What I’m saying is that too much has happened at this point for it to ever have the power that it once had. And in other words, the process of its decline has very much begun. We know this from the stats. The Economist did a report into support for wokeness was at its height in 2020, around the summer of George Floyd, and has been declining ever since. We’ve had some major seismic changes in the world that can never be reversed. We’ve had the Cass Review in the UK, which is a study into gender-affirming care for children, which has exposed this idea that that is in any way appropriate or effective, and that puberty Blockers are potentially very dangerous and unevidenced. That’s changed everything because you’ve had the Tavistock Clinic closed as a result of that. So the very notion of gender identity ideology has been damaged and dented in a way that it won’t be able to recover from. Similarly, you’ve had the Supreme Court in the UK ruling that biological sex is a thing and is protected in equality law. That’s been absolutely huge as well. You’ve had DEI programs in various companies and corporations rolled back, even in things like McDonald’s and Walmart and Facebook meta, you know. So these big, big names, they’re just getting rid of it because they know that it doesn’t, well, actually, it’s not only not effective, it can actually ramp up racism in the workplace, According to studies. So it’s a really bad idea and always was, but that’s all been stripped away. So all of this stuff is happening. You’ve got Trump’s election, you’ve got various sporting bodies talking about, basically saying men cannot compete in women’s sports. Now, what happens then? I mean, I make the case in the book that wokeness was simply the latest manifestation of authoritarianism, which is a natural impulse to humankind. And it emerges from the left and the right and everywhere in between throughout history in various forms, in various guises. This is just the latest form, right? And it will emerge again. And so the point I’m making is, yes, wokeness is on its way out, but what replaces it could be just as bad. We’re bound to get another form of authoritarianism at some point. (Time 0:20:50)
  • Compassion Masks Aggression
    • Woke activism attracts bullies and sociopaths because it masks aggression as compassion.
    • Doyle argues the movement’s moral cover enables harmful behavior while appearing virtuous. Transcript: Andrew Doyle You’ve hit on something really interesting there. Because I think it is a combination of the… Well, you do. And successfully. There is an element of the, how can we put it, the intimidatory. It’s a movement that attracts bullies and sociopaths, right? Because if you are a sociopath or a psychopath even, and you want to inflict as much pain on other people, this is the perfect movement for you. Because you can do it, but you do it under the guise of compassion and love. Perfect, right? Of course you do it. They’re like a modern-day clergy. They can do whatever they want. I mean, it’s a bit like if you were a psychopath in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, you would join a paramilitary group, and there you can kill and maim and be lauded for it. There’s a good example of a guy called Murphy, who was the leader of the Shankill Butchers, who if you go and visit his grave, it says, here lies a soldier. This man was a serial killer. He tortured people, cut them up, murdered. He’s Jack the Ripper. It’s like saying, here lies a soldier on Jack the Ripper’s grave, although we don’t know who Jack the Ripper was. But you get my point. A psychopath can, and he was lauded by that community. They thought he was a hero, right? That’s what this movement does. It allows the worst in society, the most, the bullies, the bullies to do whatever they want and be praised for it, right? So there’s that. (Time 0:29:40)
  • Violence Statistics Mislead Easily
    • Political violence is statistically rare and small sample windows can flip perceived trends.
    • Doyle cautions against overgeneralizing from isolated violent incidents when assessing left vs right. Transcript: Chris Williamson Just plays better right it does play better in sort of modern like secular meritocratic equality culture like it does at least on the surface it does even if it doesn’t deliver the promises That it keeps making the concern is if you keep pushing and keep pushing and keep pushing what’s the response well i’ve no doubt you’re right i mean a lot of right-wingers have guns don’t Andrew Doyle They a lot of right-wingers you know as you say it is like the big brother phenomenon um the truth is that well firstly i think the caveat should be that political violence is extremely Rare so therefore looking at statistics of which side is committed to more acts of violence is is always going to be tricky because i mean there was a um i saw a post about the degree of far Right versus far left violence in america through a certain period of time and and the right vastly was overrepresented within that. Glad I caveated what I said. Yes. But on the other hand, there was an article in Reason magazine analyzing the figures and showing that if you just extend the parameters by a year, it flips, or at least the difference Dissipates entirely. Chris Williamson You bring it up to the present day. Because political violence is so rare. Right. You’re talking with such tiny numbers that a couple of incidents can flip it. Yeah, exactly. Andrew Doyle It’s like those studies that talk about the prevalence of far-right violence against Islamist violence in America that tend to start after 2001. Because if you go back a year, you suddenly get an extra 3,000 deaths on the other side. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So it’s a rare thing yeah so what happened the other day in utah is a rare rare thing and you shouldn’t say that that is reflective of a of a political affiliation right my point was that Those extremes are becoming more tolerated what you can clearly see is a greater toleration for that kind of thing in leftist discourse you’ve also, of course, seen the riots, you know, In 2020. There were a lot of peaceful protests, by the way, but a lot of them flipped over into riots that actually ended up with people being killed. Okay. Now, it is true and observably true that we’re not seeing that on the right in that way. There isn’t that tendency, I suppose. (Time 0:40:50)
  • Refocus Left On Class And Economics
    • Left-wing movements should refocus on economic and class issues rather than identity politics.
    • Doyle advises jettisoning ‘woke’ cultural turns and prioritizing workers’ material concerns. Transcript: Andrew Doyle Jettison woke politics because wokeness is not authentically left-wing. Because to be authentically left-wing, as the entire history of left-wing writing and thought tells us, is to be interested in class inequality, economic inequality. And they have completely jettisoned that. They have substituted money for identity, group identity. And that’s where the problem starts. That’s where the problem started, what you call the cultural turn of Marxism. What genuinely, authentically left-wing people want to do, I mean, they recognize that pronouns and multiple gender identity, this is a bourgeois luxury. This is a middle-class luxury. The woke movement, calling itself left-wing, created cancel culture. The only people who were able to resist cancel culture were the uncancellable billionaires, millionaires. It also arranged a system whereby uh workers working class people were told that they were all racist whether they believed it or not and they had to undertake unconscious bias sessions Uh retraining reprogramming and if they objected uh they would probably be fired or disciplined and the woke would side with the multi-billion dollar corporations over the workers Any any movement that arranges things so that only the super rich get to say what they think cannot be said to be authentically left-wing. Now, I understand why I get criticism for saying that, because people say, oh, you’re saying wokeness isn’t left. I understand that its origins are in the left. I completely get that, philosophically speaking. I understand. But it’s a perversion of Marxism. It’s a perversion of those original ideas. Um, so if I were a left-wing campaign, a socialist campaigner, I would say, let’s get back to the concept of the means of production of what socialist writers have said for generations And not waste our time with the politics of group identity, which ultimately, above all, attacks the working class. (Time 0:51:30)
  • Policing Speech Through Non-Crime Records
    • The UK enforces ‘non-crime hate incidents’ and broad hate speech laws that chill expression.
    • Doyle criticizes quangos like the College of Policing for expanding policing of speech without accountability. Transcript: Andrew Doyle And that’s because of the College of Policing. College of Policing introduced non-crime hate incidents by itself. The government didn’t tell them to do it. In fact, the government told them to stop doing it twice. The home secretary, two different home secretaries said, you can’t do that. You’re police. You’re meant to be investigating crime, not non-crime. I mean, that should be obvious, shouldn’t it? And by the way, they ignored them. They’re like, no, no, we’re the police. We want to investigate non-crime, right? This would be like your doctor phoning up and saying, oh, I hear you’re really healthy. We need to talk about that. It’s absolutely insane. And that’s been going on for since 2014. Two Home Secretaries say you have to stop it. The High Court says it’s not lawful. The High Court says this is plainly an interference with freedom of expression. And the College of Policing, because they’re a quango with no accountability, ignore them. And then the head of the College of Policing says, well, maybe the problem is we need to change the name. Let’s not call it non-crime haters. Let’s call it something else, but keep it as if a rebranding can sort this out. This is what I mean by activists. They don’t care about the law because they’ve created their own framework for morality and law. That’s why since the Supreme Court judgment saying that you have to provide single sex, or if you do provide, if you do claim you’re providing single sex spaces, they have to be single Sex. You can’t let men who identify as women into women’s spaces. That’s the law. And it’s always been the law. And the Supreme Court has clarified that. You still have the Scottish government ignoring it. The Scottish government. You’ve still got various bodies and charities and institutions and schools saying we are going to break the law. We’ve had them posting online saying we’re going to break the law. We’re going to do it. Good luck, by the way. They posted it online for all to see. The receipts are there. So thanks for that. When those go to court, they’ll lose, quite obviously. So to come back to your question, which I think was about i went off on one then authoritarianism authoritarianism yeah how authoritarian is it very and it’s and you know you’ve had a Vet cooper who’s you know in the labor government saying that she wants to ramp up non-crime hate incidents uh they’re not interested no one in the labor government is trying to or has Even suggested repealing hate speech laws why do we have hate speech laws doesn’t make any sense. (Time 1:31:55)
  • Writer Arrested Over Tweets
    • Graham Linehan was arrested on return to the UK over tweets, taken to hospital for high blood pressure during custody.
    • Doyle uses the arrest to illustrate UK policing of online speech and its international embarrassment. Transcript: Andrew Doyle We’ve been working with this company in America. I’ve set up a company called Friendly Fire Studios with Rob Schneider, who’s an actor-comedian over here. Done it in Arizona, in Scottsdale. And we’re having a great time. And it’s great because I feel so creative again. I’ve spent so long… Exactly what we were talking about earlier. Defensive. I’ve been commenting all the time now i’m creating now i’m creating i’m doing what i used to do what i always used to do and it’s been great and um and you know graham he he gets a flight back To the uk and uh you make a joke i did i sure I joked to him in the days before about getting arrested when he goes back to the UK. And then I’m with Martin. Martin Gawler, who’s a producer. I used to work with at GB News who’s now working with us at Friendly Fire Studios. And we’re sitting together. And we start getting texts from Graham, messages from Graham. I’ve been arrested. I’m the hospital because of blood high blood pressure um and we’re like this is absolutely crazy what happened was he flew back to he throw he thought something was amiss because because They when he checked in they said oh we got to move your seat and he thought something was amiss but anyway he landed so he’s the first to get out police meet him, five armed police, five Police with guns. At the jet bridge from the plane. I think that’s where it is. Yes. And he sits down and they tell him that they’re arresting him for three tweets that he posted earlier in the year. Perhaps I should clarify what the tweets were. One of them was an image of a trans rights protest. And he said something like you can smell it from ear or something like that something to do with the smell not illegal right not illegal uh another one was um he was talking about uh women You know because because since the supreme court ruling a lot of men who identify as women are still going into women’s toilets and he’s saying he said uh you, if a man is in your space and Won’t get out, make a fuss, you know, call the police. And if all else fails, kick him in the balls. And of course, that’s a joke. It’s making the point that if you can kick someone in the balls, they shouldn’t be in a woman’s toilet, right? There’s that joke element. But it’s also the kind of advice that every father gives his daughter, right? Again, not incitement to violence, nowhere close to incitement to violence. And I can’t remember what the third one was. It was something to do with it. It was something even more innocuous than that. That one, the punch them in the balls one was the most extreme, apparently. Tweets ended up he was in a cell he was taken off arrested one of the police officers or someone took his blood pressure realized it was dangerously high as it would be if you’ve just been Chris Williamson Apprehended by five men with guns uh or if you’ve recently moved to america and started eating the standard american diet i think graham’s eating quite well actually he’s doing all Andrew Doyle Right um but and and so his blood pressure is into stroke risk territory jesus christ so they had to take him to the hospital and uh yeah and then of course the next day you know we got these Texts and we were like contact toby young contact the free speech union this is absolutely crazy uh free speech union did get involved as they always do thank god for what toby’s done By the way i mean that it’s been a lifeline for so many people. He saved so many people from losing their jobs. The fact we even need a free speech union in the UK is a sad indictment. And then it’s everywhere. It’s all over the front cover of every paper, even in America. Everyone’s talking about it. The president’s talking about it. Nigel Farage is talking to Congress about it. It’s absolutely everywhere. Again, this is the export. Well, it’s embarrassing, isn’t it? A comedy writer, the guy who created Father Ted, is arrested for tweets. Doesn’t look good. (Time 1:42:50)
  • Law Clarified: Sex Means Biological Sex
    • UK Supreme Court ruled ‘sex’ in law means biological sex, protecting single-sex spaces and gay rights.
    • Doyle warns activist judges could have reversed this and stresses need for legal challenges against ideology-driven policy. Transcript: Andrew Doyle UK Supreme Court has ruled that sex in the… Chris Williamson There’s a Supreme Court in the UK. Andrew Doyle Yes, it was instituted by Tony Blair. Okay. It shouldn’t be there, really. Okay. But thank God it has clarified the law on this point. Chris Williamson Right, but that seems to be… Or is the Supreme Court outside of much of the sphere of influence of some of the fuckery that’s going on at the moment? Well, this is the point. Andrew Doyle The law works up until the point where activists get involved. The judiciary is not immune to activist judges. Chris Williamson Can you clarify what the ruling was of the UK Supreme Court? Andrew Doyle Okay. So we’ve got a thing called the Equality Act, which protects all sorts of protected characteristics, sex, race, etc., and also beliefs. Now, for a long time, groups like Stonewall and activist groups have been going into corporations and charities and things and saying, if someone wants to use a toilet that aligns with Their gender, you have to let them by law because of the Equality Act protection for gender reassignment, which is one of the characteristics. But that overrides the protection for sex. And they’re saying that’s the law. That was never the law. For Women Scotland, which is a group of feminist campaigners, it’s really just three women who just weren’t having it. And they took on the Scottish government because the Scottish government had misinterpreted the law in this way. And they won. The Supreme Court said to the Scottish government, you’ve got this wrong. Sex in the Equality Act means biological sex, because activists were interpreting it as meaning gender identity. It means sex. Now, what would you do, though, if an activist judge had made that decision? It would have been flipped. How do we know this? The former president of the Supreme Court was a woman called Baroness Hale. And she said recently that she disagrees with the Supreme Court ruling. She thinks they’ve got it wrong. And she’s been talking to some doctors who’ve told her that biological sex doesn’t exist, actually. That’s an activist. Now, that’s dangerous. The head of the Supreme Court doesn’t believe biological sex exists because some doctors, who also you would think should know what biological sex is, also claim that it doesn’t exist. This is the pernicious nature of the woke movement, is that it makes intelligent people in positions of power say things that even a six-year could tell you wasn’t true. Now, that’s what’s happened. I’m getting all head up, aren’t I? Is this drink? Is this energy drink you’ve given me? Yeah, good, good. It’s nice. Is that the plan? Chris Williamson To get me all hopped up and angry? Yes. Clickbait. How dare you? I won’t be used in this way. Well, look, I think we can go back to before that product existed and see that you’ve got the same demeanor whenever you get head up. No, I know that’s true. No, I’m not blaming you. So my point here is, that seems like, okay, good flag planted in the ground. Yes. Yes. Andrew Doyle Is that not coming into contact with reality? That’s my point. People keep denying the law. The Scottish government, now people are having to take the Scottish government to court because it’s ignoring or overruling what the Supreme Court says. And various other people are doing the same thing. That’s what they do. They just ignore the law. If the law doesn’t fit their ideology, their ideology matters more than the law in a way that Islamism, same thing, the ideology matters more than the law of the land. And that can’t be the case in a liberal society, in a liberal democracy. So I’m afraid when it comes to these activists, it is going to have to be lawfare. Like it is going to be the case that they’re going to have to be challenged in the courts and they will lose. It’s just going to take a hell of a lot, a long time. Um, when it comes to genderism, it really matters. One of the interesting things about the Supreme court ruling is it really, really flagged up the significance for gay rights. That if you go along with this genderist interpretation of the world, gay rights are obliterated. (Time 1:48:30)
  • Evaluate Context Before Calling Cancel Culture
    • Distinguish cancel culture from legitimate job consequences: assess role relevance before calling censorship.
    • Doyle urges proportionality: firing for incompetence differs from destroying a person’s livelihood for a transient mistake. Transcript: Andrew Doyle But the reason why I’m hesitant on this particular case is there are so many complications and I don’t know the full facts. So I can’t make a call on it. But for instance, let’s give another example. So if someone makes a joke about Charlie Kirk’s horrific death, some idiot online working minimum wage in Walmart or something like that. Should they be fired? No, I don’t think they should. I think it’s unpleasant, grotesque. I think, you know, I would describe it as evil to cheer on someone’s death. But I don’t think someone should have their life ruined because of a stupid comment online. What if you’re a health worker? What if you work for a hospital and you say people who have different political views than you ought to be killed? Well, I think you’ve disqualified yourself from your job. Let’s take the example of the president-elect of the Oxford Union, the most famous debating society in the world, who gloated about Charlie Kirk’s death, even though he debated him In person months before. And he gloated about it online. He mock it. He thought it was funny. Now, if you’re going to be the head of an institution which is devoted, has free speech at the heart of its charter, you’ve just disqualified yourself from the role. It is untenable for you to run that institution. What’s happened to that guy? Oh, he’s doubled down and said he’s staying. And, you know, there’s also a clip circulating of him saying his political opponent should be taken out by any means necessary. All of this stuff. Here’s what I say about that. He is entitled to those views and he’s entitled to express those views. That doesn’t mean he’s qualified to run the Oxford Union. This is so weird to me that people think that failing to fulfill basic job requirements and being fired for it is cancel culture. When I was a teacher, if I’d have looked at the national curriculum, what I’ve signed up voluntarily, contractually obliged to teach, if I’d have said, screw that, I’m going to stand In my classroom and swear at the kids and say, your parents are all prostitutes. And let’s not talk about English literature. I just want to talk about hens or something. I don’t know. And then they call me and said, we’re going to fire you because you’re not doing your job. I can’t then scream free speech. This is my free speech. You’d be an idiot. So I think when it comes to cancer culture, you have to understand that it depends on the position that the person is in. Part of your job implicitly when you sign up to be a doctor is not to go online and say that you want people to die. Right? So that’s not, of course you should be fired. (Time 2:03:27)
  • Purity Spirals Destroy Debate
    • Purity spirals and ideological thinking drive vicious treatment of in-group dissenters.
    • Doyle laments lost culture of robust debate and warns that demonizing disagreement infantilizes public discourse. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s the point. Oh, my God. It’s the point you’ve been conned by me. Andrew Doyle The both sides fucking spit roasting human centipede of why are people pointing the finger you’re talking there about purity spirals and this growing tendency to conceive that if Anyone disagrees with you in one slight point it means that they have exposed themselves as being some evil individual, irredeemable. And that’s a product of ideological thinking. You know, from the Gulag Archipelago, the Solzhenitsyn text, talks about how good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And it would be so easy, wouldn’t it, if you could just put all the bad people in one place and all the good people in another place, and then get rid of all the bad people. But that’s not how humanity works. What he identifies there and what the whole book is about is the human susceptibility to evil, irrespective of who or what you are. And that is something that needs to be acknowledged. But if you’re an ideologue and you believe that you should perceive the world through a set of preordained rules, any deviation from those rules is the worst betrayal. I mean, I think it’s why I’ve had a particular nasty backlash from the left, because they perceive me as someone who came from their own tribe. It’s why, to go back to Northern Ireland, it’s why touts, informers, people from their own side were always more viciously treated. The worst thing you can be is a rat. More than the UDA or the other side of the UVF or whatever. Because there’s something more offensive to people about someone on their own team deviating. I’ve been dogpiled by people on the left, by gender critical feminists even, who I’ve supported for many, many years and been very vocal in my support. But because of a minor disagreement, they’ve dogpiled me all night. I wrote about it in the book. It was absolutely intense until it got to the point where there were people talking about how they wanted to murder gay men and all the rest. And I thought, I’m not doing this. And then I turned the phone off. But I think that’s the purity spiral is something we should resist. The expectation that someone on your side, quote unquote side, should, should, should agree with every last point. That terrifies me. I mean, there’s a moment in the book where I talk about, rather nostalgically, about my time at university, where we would sit up all night arguing, getting drunk, arguing robustly About politics, and still being friends the next day. And it was all cool. And it was all part of it. There was a fun to it. I don’t know if, I those days are gone i don’t think you can do it anymore i mean certainly i have some friends i can still do that with and because i’m not party political you know they can’t Always predict where i stand on certain issues and arguments do ensue but not vicious and not just robust disagreements that’s great that’s what that’s what we should be striving for And that’s why this cherry picking of charlie kirk’s videos to show how he was an evil person because he disagreed me on this or this and this it’s so it’s infantile actually i think the Whole thing the whole culture war could be boiled down to a kind of mass infantilism you know an inability of adults to behave like adults. Tantrums, tantrumizing, which is not a word, I’ve just made it up, but mass tantrumizing. I just see it absolutely everywhere. I’m sick of it, actually. It bothers me. Disagreement is healthy. It’s something we should be encouraging. And we certainly shouldn’t feel threatened by it. Why should I feel threatened if you disagree with me on any particular point? I welcome that. Why? Because I guess, well, firstly, I might be wrong. I mean, there is a real lack of humility in all of this stuff. When someone disagrees with you, if you take offense or think that that signifies that that individual is evil, that is a narcissistic response. Because what you are saying is, my position is the default of humankind, and anyone who deviates is either lying or evil or stupid. How about maybe you’re wrong? Or maybe the topic is a bit more nuanced than that, and you can meet somewhere in the middle. Why do we argue? We argue partly to refine our own position, but also because we’re aware that we’re wrong about a lot of things at any given time and we need to be challenged. And also, there is an element of truth to every perspective, however abhorrent it might be. There’s always something in there. So why have we got into that position? Well, I think it comes back to education. I think it comes back to a failure of education and a failure of socialization. It shouldn’t be a threat to hear a plurality of ideas. It shouldn’t be threatening to acknowledge that we’re bound to be wrong about certain things. I mean, it’s an old dictum, isn’t it? But the wiser you are, the more you know how little you know. And that surely should be the baseline for limited creatures that we are. We’re not demigods. We’re not capable of omniscience. So why not just acknowledge that and stop demonizing? I mean, that’s the other thing. I think there’s a kind of pseudo-theological aspect to all of this, which is the division of the world into good and evil. It’s very simplistic. Disney’s done it for years. You can always spot a baddie in Disney because they’re ugly. It’s very convenient. Apart from Hunchback and Notre Dame, of course. But why divide the world into good and evil in that way when we know that every individual is capable of both? It’s kind of incoherent. But we do it anyway. (Time 2:18:40)
  • Rebuild Liberal Institutions, Not Authoritarianism
    • Defend liberal values: free speech, conscience, rule of law, and individual autonomy within legal limits.
    • Doyle urges building institutions and debates over decades rather than imposing authoritarian fixes. Transcript: Andrew Doyle I don’t know. But what is for certain is that authoritarianism, as the default condition of humankind, will definitely reemerge. And we probably better be vigilant about it and look out for where it might come from. And I am nervous about a backlash against woke authoritarianism that says, well, now it’s our turn. I think that’s a worry. In a way that we’ve already seen it with cancel culture. Or you know the current president of the united states donald trump who thinks that you should go to prison for burning a flag well he said that more than once uh that’s not uh a liberal Position is it i mean that’s that’s a that’s an authoritarian position and that shouldn’t happen um i think what would happen is if he did try and push that through the the Supreme Court Would overrule it. But nonetheless, that’s worrying. I don’t think, I mean, and again, the backlash against liberalism, because people have misunderstood liberalism, and they blame liberalism for what’s gone wrong with the culture War. People are now saying liberalism didn’t work. So we now need our own form of authoritarianism to deal with the problems of leftist authoritarianism. And that’s just going to exacerbate the problem. Yeah, it’s crazy. What we actually, the argument I make in the book is that we need to install actual liberal values, which say that, you know, individual autonomy and freedom, freedom of speech, freedom Of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of assembling. Chris Williamson What’s freedom of conscience? Andrew Doyle As in, you’re free to believe whatever you believe, whatever your morality within, and this is a key caveat, within the rule of law. So one of the aspects of liberalism that isn’t understood, people think it’s a free-for People think they mean you can selfishly do whatever you want and there’s no consequences. That’s the opposite of liberalism. Because every, as I trace in the book, every great liberal thinker has said and understood that the rule of law and the social contract that we develop together is an essential aspect Of the preservation of a liberal system. A liberal system can only work if you have those frameworks in place. (Time 2:26:01)