Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Would 'The Satanic Verses' Be Published Today?" with Sami Shah

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"Would 'The Satanic Verses' Be Published Today?" with Sami Shah · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  I'm proud of myself this week and ashamed, last month, the Tabestock gender clinic in
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  the UK.
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  One of the biggest, most visible, most controversial, most influential centers of youth gender
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  care was shut down after an inquiry found that it was not serving the interests of young
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  people who had gender dysphoria, who believed that they were trans or were indeed trans.
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  And now there's a lawsuit from many families against the Tabestock gender clinic and this
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  has had ripple effects around the world, including in Australia.
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  When I saw that news, I thought I'd pitch it on my radio show, I do a three hour radio
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  show on ABC Radio Sydney every weekday and we sort of came up and we couldn't quite
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  find a place for it on the day that it happened and I felt a bit weird because nobody else
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  was doing the story and nobody else even seemed to be mentioning the story.
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  Maybe I was crazy, maybe I thought this was more important than it was, maybe I'm just
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  too online, maybe I'll be perceived as being sort of interested in ginning up hatred against
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  trans people or something, but I betrayed that little part of my intellectual curiosity,
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  that little part of my creative soul that called me to do the story and that said, look,
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  don't worry about the culture war critics and don't worry about whether there are woke
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  masters or whether they're across the old conservatives who actually are transphobes,
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  just get your hands dirty by actually wrestling with this because it is reasonably important.
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  We're a juncture in culture where we're re-evaluating what gender means, we're re-evaluating
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  whether or not there's any connection between sex and gender.
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  If so, is that connection inextrable?
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  Does the things that are between your legs really turn you into a boy or a girl or a
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  man or a woman, or is that just a probabilistic thing?
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  Is it just that mostly that's the case?
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  What exactly are we dealing with when we're dealing with a 14-year-old girl who claims
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  that she's a boy is that different from the two-year-old who insists that they are
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  the opposite sex and they always have been.
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  It seems clear to me that there's something going on in the sort of gender non-binary
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  space where university students are terribly interested in playing around with performative
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  aspects of expressing themselves in gender creative ways that is different from traditional
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  transgenderism where clearly from the youngest possible age you have an infant who identifies
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  as being born into the wrong body.
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  That strikes me as a clear cut case of a medical condition that we need to support and we
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  need to affirm their new identity and anyone who denies that, I think, basically is a
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  transphobia.
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  Although phobia isn't quite right, it's not that they're afraid of them, but you understand
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  what I mean.
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  That's just become the shorthand way of saying somebody who doesn't believe that transgender
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  people should have the same rights as the rest of us.
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  But I do think there's something interesting at the edges clearly where we're playing around
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  with performative non-binary gender roles and what had been happening in the UK was that
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  anything that wasn't considered gender-affirming care was pretty much forbidden.
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  And gender-affirming care means that a physician or a therapist is essentially required to
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  affirm the new gender or the claimed gender of the young person.
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  And if they start to interrogate whether or not there are other things going on, whether
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  they might be anxiety or depression or social isolation, whether this person might be
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  on the spectrum, whether there might be other needs that this infant has or this adolescent
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  has, that is considered to be a form of deaffirming care, a way of denying the young person's
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  true gender identity and is likened to sort of gay conversion therapy from the bad old days
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  of the 1970s or 50s or, well, for some people even 80s or 90s or more recent, where people
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  would be discouraged from being gay.
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  I mean, there are a few things that are wrong with that analogy.
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  Firstly, being gay is completely as far as we are aware in age.
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  There's not a great deal that a really flaming gay person can do to change who their
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  loins and their hearts are attracted to, whereas, and that maybe that clearly is true for
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  some cohort of transgender people, but it can't be true of every single person who claims
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  to be non-binary or who claims to be playing in the gender-fluid space.
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  There is more control there, and so there probably is more nudging that can be going on,
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  and transgender ideas are also more frequently correlated with other psychological conditions.
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  It's clear that people who are on the spectrum, people living with autism are much more likely
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  to be trans, is this something that's connected to their condition, to their mind, or is
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  it possible that if you're an adolescent girl who has internalized sexism and feels bad
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  about herself and maybe is queer, maybe is in the closet, maybe is a lesbian, and you're
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  not very popular at school because you don't have all the, you're not charming, you don't
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  have all the social cues, and being on the spectrum makes it difficult for you and
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  you're undiagnosed on the spectrum, so you're not getting all the help that you might
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  need, is it conceivable that if transgender is the cool thing that maybe you might be
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  more likely to present as non-binary or to present as a trans boy, I don't know, but if
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  that's a conceivable option, then it's presumably an option that a therapist or a physician
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  should be able to gently explore without being pilloried as being a conversion therapist.
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  So anyway, these were all the things going through my mind as I'm thinking, do we talk
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  about this?
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  How do we talk about it?
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  Who do we talk to that doesn't make us doing the Tabestock story seem like we're jumping
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  on some kind of cultural bandwagon, and I kick myself in not having the guts to actually
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  push for it and figure it out.
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  Anyway, a couple of weeks like go by, and this show called Media Watch, which is basically
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  an auditor show of all of the media in Australia, it's only 15 minutes a week, but they pick
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  out some of the most egregious examples of media misdeeds in a very academic and professorial
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  sort of way, and they highlight them.
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  They did a bit of an audit of the ABC, the public broadcaster for which I work, the Australian
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  Broadcasting Corporation, and as far as they could tell, not a single radio show or
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  news article or TV show or news bulletin covered the closure of one of the world's biggest
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  and most important youth gender care clinics.
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  And when they put in a question, when they questioned ABC news about this, they got
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  back a statement saying, well, that's in the UK.
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  And so when we think that there's something of relevance to the Australian situation,
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  we'll report on that.
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  And Paul Barry, who is the host of Media Watch, I think quite rightly said, if you don't
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  think that it has any relevance to the Australian conversation, then surely it deserves one
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  article out of the many hundreds or thousands that the ABC is writing, one article explaining
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  why, explaining why, okay, this is happening over there, but it's not relevant here because
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  our standards are different.
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  So this is the way that it works here and that's the way that it worked over there.
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  And this is what was wrong with it.
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  And I completely shared that critique.
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  And it made me come back to the story.
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  And so during the most listened to half hour of my show, which is between three and three
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  and 30 in the afternoon, as Sydney sideers are picking up their kids and beginning the
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  early commute home from work.
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  I did speak with the head of the Australian psychological psychologist's body, excuse me,
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  that believes that we need a more holistic approach towards treating transgenderism and
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  genitals for our young people, that we need to be able to explore all avenues of possible
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  psychological conditions that they might be going through.
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  And this is a person who is regarded as needless to say, a transfer by some of the more
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  extreme members of the transgender lobby.
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  And I did this whole half hour and yes, I got pushed back on social media.
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  Yes, I was called all of the usual names.
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  Yes, the segment was poured over with a fine toothed comb and the most minuscule errors
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  or emissions or whatever were highlighted and thrown back in my face in a way that no
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  other segment I've ever done gets that kind of scrutiny.
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  But you know what, the sky didn't fall in and I'm not fired yet.
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  So it's an encouragement and it's a reminder and it's a check, check yourself, check
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  a privilege, Josh.
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  It's a check that if I have an instinct to do something, if you have an instinct to do
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  something, if you have an instinct that something's important and something's worth saying,
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  if someone says something in a social environment and you think that's not quite right, but
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  it's probably not worth pursuing, maybe it is.
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  Don't be dogged, don't be unpleasant, be generous to them, but maybe it is.
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  Maybe it is worth having a conversation about a conversation that might be tricky, a conversation
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  that might be sensitive, a conversation that might need to be handled gently, but a conversation
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  that because you know in your gut needs to be said, maybe is important and maybe will
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  lead somewhere fruitful, even if that conversation is, as the best one's always up, uncomfortable.
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  Today on the show, Sammy Shah, one of Australia's most interesting and celebrated comedians and
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  writers.
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  He's been profiled abroad in places like the New York Times.
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  He's had an Australian story made about him, which is an iconic Australian documentary
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  profile television show in which they pick one extremely interesting Australian profile
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  on each week.
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  He was the host, the radio host of ABC Radio Melbourne, which is the Melbourne counterpart
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  of the station that I work for in Sydney for a couple of years.
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  You'll hear him talking about one unpleasant experience he found that to be.
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  His show was somewhat elfated and he was, he was, he was booted, but not through any
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  fault of his own, really.
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  I mean, he's quite a thoughtful, insightful and funny bloke.
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  He's been heard on ABC Radio 4 in the UK, in the UK, he's been a panelist on QI, that
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  wonderful, Steve and Fry hosts, he's, he's got an autobiography, which is called I
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  Migrant, Get It, Immigrant, which has been nominated for a couple of awards in New South
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  Wales, Premier's Literary Award, The Russell Prize for Human Writing.
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  He does a weekly podcast called Sammy Says, and the reason this conversation came about
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  is because of the tragedy of Salmon Rushdie being attacked.
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  And I was despondent about that and despondent about much of the response to it.
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  There were a few heartening glimmers, the French president did a great Twitter thread, which
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  I thought put it in the appropriate context of standing up for free speech and not just
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  saying, oh, this was a cowardly attack and we condemn violence, but really articulating
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  why it's important to cherish people who buck the trend.
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  I mean, my basic sense about people like Rushdie is I really just don't want to live
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  in a world where people can't push boundaries, where people can't be audacious and mock things
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  and test the limits and push against boundaries and play with ideas in a free intellectual
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  space.
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  I mean, the idea that someone who is taking all of these strands of beautiful fiber from
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  around the world, from all of these different cultures that he's come from, that he's experienced
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  from South Asia and from the UK and that he can weave these into narratives and create
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  imaginative castles in the sky and explore them and walk through them and push through
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  the edges of his imagination that that experience would have to be curtailed because some people
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  are going to get offended, so offended about the book that was written thousands of years
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  ago by their special invisible cosmic God friend that they're going to kill him, they're
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  going to kill him for being imaginative in ways that create them, that create a fence
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  for them.
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  I mean, it's so obviously noxious to me, it's so obviously runs counter to everything
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  that we should cherish in flourishing liberal democratic societies, it should be so obvious
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  that the way that you create a vibrant pluralistic society is the moment someone says they're offended,
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  you go, okay, well, I'm still waiting for an argument, I'm still waiting for you to make
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  a point.
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  So what, I can be offended, we're going to be offended, whoop, did you do?
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  Go on, go on your way, go off and be offended, put the fucking knife down and go and be offended
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  by yourself or bring me something constructive, you know, tell me why you're offended or tell
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  me why it's wrong, why there's these are these are ideas that we shouldn't count and use
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  an argument, not a knife.
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  And so anyway, I was sort of fending about some of this on Twitter and I came across one
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  interesting conversation on BBC's News Night, in which Ken and Malik, who's a writer,
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  a thinker, he's a South Asian descent himself, was saying that you wouldn't even get a publisher
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  to publish the satanic verses today.
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  We've come so far since that controversy, we've been so cald by jihadism and so confused
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  about in the conversation around Islamophobia, not wanting to seem like we're Islamophobes
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  by being critical of Islam at all, to religion of peace, to religion of peace, to religion
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  of peace, we keep saying to ourselves.
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  And anyway, take a listen, I'll actually play this for you, instead of describing what
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  this is, I'll just let you hear it, the first voice you hear is the BBC interviewer,
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  the second voice is the writer, lecturer, broadcaster, columnist, Ken and Malik.
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  He surely had no idea what he would unleash by publishing that book, Ken and do you think
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  that book would be published today?
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  No, it wouldn't.
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  Hanif Kureshi, the novelist, a friend of Salman Rushdiez, he's made the point that he wouldn't
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  even be written today, let alone be published.
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  And I think the boundaries, the boundaries of which we've switched, the boundaries of restrictions
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  on offense, on blasphemy have gone much tighter over the past 30, 35 years, partly as a
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  response to the Rushdie affair.
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  And it's ironic that, in some ways, the critics of Rushdie, they won the battle, they lost
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  the battle, but they won the war, in a sense, they lost the battle because the novel, the
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  talent versus continues to be published, but they won the war in the sense that the argument
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  at the heart of their claim, that it is wrong to give offense to certain people, certain
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  groups, certain religions and so on, has become much more mainstream.
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  And to a degree, you could say that many societies have internalised their fatwa and introduced
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  a form of self-centre-ship in the way we talk about each other.
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  So I saw that, and that rang true to me, and I also saw some articles written about
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  the attack on Rushdie, one of which was from the BBC, and it said that the suspect in
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  his stabbing, Hardy Matar, had no known motive, no known motive, the BBC said.
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  So I tweeted, the BBC reports that the suspect in Salma Rushdie stabbing Hardy Matar had
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  no known motive, it had no mainstream publisher would touch the Satanic verses today, and
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  worse, 33 years on, we're more timid than ever in speaking plainly about jihadism, the
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  Ayatollah would be pleased, I tweeted.
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  Sammy Shah tweeted back to me and said, I don't know if that's true at all, I think there's
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  a lot to be said for the caustic influence of the fatwa and extremism, but you might
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  be seeing political correctness go on mad ghosts where there aren't any, lots of books
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  by all kinds of authors still get published.
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  Sammy tweeted, and I said, I'm mainly parroting Ken and Malek on this, I don't know enough
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  about the contemporary publishing industry to be sure, but in the fields I do know, like
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  broadcasting, the cowardice around having honest conversations about Islam is staggering,
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  and I said, you're one of the few in Australia who does, pointing to Sammy, and I then tweeted,
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  of course, there's plenty of ignorant anti-Muslim nonsense on the populist right, but
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  that's not what I'm suggesting we need more of, and it's partly fueled, I strongly suspect
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  by a frustration with the obfuscations of the mainstream media elite.
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  So then I sent a DM to Sammy and said, why don't we flesh this out on a podcast, and this
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  is that podcast.
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  I should say that Sammy has one of the best explorations of cancel culture that I've ever heard.
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  He did it for earshot, which is a show on Radio National, or as it's called now, ABC
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  R.N.
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  In 2019, it's called Shut Up, a free speech investigation, and to multi-part podcast, if
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  you just Google Shut Up, a free speech investigation or shut up earshot, R.N.
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  Sammy Shah, you will get it.
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  It's absolutely fantastic, and it's precisely because Sammy is so clearheaded with one foot
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  in Pakistan and one foot in the West in Australia, but I wanted to talk to him about this.
• 19:01
  Please enjoy this conversation with the one and only, Sammy Shah.
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  And what's the balance between academia and other pursue its peer?
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  I mean, it's basically, the academia is just to pay the bills.
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  It's not something that I'm in love with.
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  I love teaching.
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  I only started doing it two years ago and I really enjoyed that.
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  I briefly tried a PhD and I dropped out right away.
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  I remembered very quickly that I always hated studying.
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  I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea.
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  But yeah, so I teach for days a week, and then the idea is that I spend the rest of
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  the time writing or doing comedy, but sometimes it gets so tired you really don't get
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  around to that part.
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  Yeah.
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  Did you enjoy Radio?
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  OK, I mean, looking for the ABC was, I think I can safely say the worst professional
• 20:04
  experience of my entire life.
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  And I'm someone who's worked in Pakistan extensively in advertising and news.
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  So to notorious, the hard feels to survive in, some of my honestly got like I've never
• 20:17
  been treated as unprofessionally or as poorly as I was by ABC management.
• 20:22
  So that didn't leave a good taste in my mouth.
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  I enjoyed doing radio because I enjoyed talking to people.
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  Like I really like that part of it.
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  So yeah, I enjoyed that, but I also hate waking up early in the morning.
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  And I didn't like it.
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  You have to be on the air at 5.30 or 6.
• 20:39
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  It's too brutal to wake up at like 4.
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  I think 3.30 a.m. was when I had my alarm would go off and I'd question my life choices
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  quite strongly.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, that's pretty light for a breakfast radio host.
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  I mean, 3.30 is leisurely.
• 20:53
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Absolutely.
• 20:55
  Alan Jones would have been up at 2.45 or something.
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  Yeah.
• 20:59
  And you kind of understand why Alan Jones is as angry the world as he is.
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  Another year of breakfast radio and I'd be ranting about immigrants and Lebanese people
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  as well.
• 21:09
  I see it in your future, Sammy.
• 21:11
  Yeah, this is a shop, a shop, a shop, an anti-COVID vaccine shop.
• 21:16
  I look forward to it.
• 21:18
  Yeah, that's interesting.
• 21:20
  What are you most interested in if not ranting against the world?
• 21:23
  What are the pursuits that most fasten that you?
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  Honestly, for me, it comes out of two things, which is writing and comedy.
• 21:31
  And comedy is basically something that I've always loved doing.
• 21:35
  And I can't even stand up comedy all the time.
• 21:37
  My career as a stand up comedian kind of took a massive hit because of the blasphemy stuff
• 21:43
  a few years ago.
• 21:45
  What was that?
• 21:47
  So basically in 2016, I think 2016, in 2016, I wrote a book called The Islamic Republic
• 21:56
  of Australia.
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  It was based off a documentary series I had done for ABC Radio National.
• 22:01
  It was a five-part series scope with the same name.
• 22:04
  And it was basically me kind of exploring what the Muslim communities in Australia is like.
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  And the different nuances of that and trying to navigate my own place as a person from Pakistan,
• 22:16
  which is a Muslim country, grew up in a Muslim environment, came to Australia too.
• 22:20
  In some ways get away from a lot of the more oppressive aspects of religion and Islam in particular.
• 22:26
  And then, you know, over here while identifying as an atheist,
• 22:31
  still want to have some understanding of what the world around me is like when it comes to Muslims
• 22:37
  and Islam and Islamophobia and where I stand on those issues.
• 22:42
  So it's like the way I kind of do these documentaries for Radio National every few years is I pick a topic that I won't explore
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  and then I convince the taxpayer money to be spent on that.
• 22:52
  And so I kind of turn that into a book and in it, you know, I talk about my atheism, my apostasy,
• 22:59
  which is when you leave Islam, you become an atheist and an apostate and Muslims largely frown on that.
• 23:06
  By frown on that, I mean, like, you know, they'll kill you for it.
• 23:09
  But not all Muslims, not all Muslims.
• 23:13
  Look, I mean, here's the thing.
• 23:15
  Even though what religion a person could be, they might be able to be a religion of peace.
• 23:19
  Of course, there's something.
• 23:22
  No such thing as a religion of peace, there is no religion of peace.
• 23:25
  Maybe behind you, I don't know, I have no idea.
• 23:28
  I've written a poem.
• 23:30
  But the book came out and when the book came out,
• 23:35
  I was promoting the book.
• 23:37
  Here's the thing, no one reads books.
• 23:39
  So I figured no one cares.
• 23:40
  No one's ever going to find out about this.
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  But the press release went out and the daily mail picked up the press release.
• 23:47
  And the daily mail does what the daily mail does,
• 23:49
  which is take all the nuance and subtlety out of this big exegesis that I had written on this subject
• 23:54
  and smooshed it into a headline that said, like,
• 23:56
  Sammy Shaheits Islam and left it to move to Australia, some shit like that.
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  And that made its way to Pakistan and all of a sudden,
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  and to the rest of the Muslim world, and all of a sudden,
• 24:07
  the joke I used to do is it turns out Muslims believe in three things,
• 24:11
  the Quran, which is the word of Allah,
• 24:14
  the Hadith, which is the life and the words of the Holy Prophet and the daily mail.
• 24:19
  And so I basically started getting death threats like you wouldn't believe,
• 24:25
  just horrific kind of abuse.
• 24:27
  And my family, at one point, you know, I was worried about their safety.
• 24:31
  My own safety as well.
• 24:33
  I had five relatives who disowned me.
• 24:35
  A few days later, I was supposed to record my first ever, you know,
• 24:39
  four ABC TV comedy show.
• 24:42
  I had booked a studio.
• 24:43
  ABC gave me a budget.
• 24:44
  There's going to be a live audience.
• 24:45
  It's going to be amazing.
• 24:46
  I had to cancel that because security threats.
• 24:48
  I basically stopped doing comedy for six months.
• 24:50
  And that was at the point my career was just, you know,
• 24:53
  when you kind of hit that moment,
• 24:55
  it happens to all of us in these fields where you hit the tipping point,
• 24:59
  we just break through into the big mainstream.
• 25:02
  I had to pull away from that.
• 25:04
  I had to pull away from that very, very sharply.
• 25:06
  And so, and then the momentum kind of passes you by.
• 25:09
  It's very hard to kind of rebuild that again.
• 25:11
  And so, yeah, I've never really recovered from that in my comedy career in terms of having,
• 25:15
  like, you know, being a more prominent comedian.
• 25:18
  But I still love doing comedy for itself.
• 25:20
  So I've kind of, I just do it now because I love doing it,
• 25:23
  but I don't think, you know, you're not going to see a Netflix special ever.
• 25:27
  I don't think.
• 25:28
  Does it change what you can joke about?
• 25:32
  No, not really, because for me, the thing was, I'm obscure.
• 25:38
  Like, honestly, that, that bookstuff in the daily mail.
• 25:41
  When the book happened as well, like, you know,
• 25:44
  right.
• 25:45
  Security has ever prevented someone from blowing up into a controversy.
• 25:50
  I'm blowing up, I think it's a very, very apt word.
• 25:53
  I mean, around the time that the book came out,
• 25:56
  because the book had come out, I think the World Atheist Association or something like that,
• 26:00
  they were having an event in Melbourne,
• 26:02
  where it was going to be me and Salman British, the in conversation.
• 26:05
  It was going to be something that I was so excited about because I worship his writing.
• 26:10
  And it was going to be a big thing for me.
• 26:13
  And they had to cancel the event because we were getting so many death threats between him and myself
• 26:17
  that they would like, yeah, let's just not do it.
• 26:20
  You know, so that kind of stuff really was strange to me to have to live through it.
• 26:24
  But also, I'm kind of used to getting attacked.
• 26:28
  And don't say this in any, any way that makes it, I'm not, I don't enjoy it.
• 26:32
  But I do tend to stay stupid things and put my foot in my mouth all the time.
• 26:36
  Sometimes my, you're quite on, on purpose.
• 26:40
  But I'm, you know, I, when I was in Pakistan,
• 26:43
  I'd pissed off the wrong people many times, I'd get threats over there.
• 26:47
  And in Australia, I've gotten, you know, you don't get really dead threats.
• 26:50
  But you get a lot of abuse when you're, you know, a brown man on ABC radio
• 26:55
  or when you, you know, when you piss off one nation or the liberal party or whoever.
• 27:00
  Or, you know, or people on the left as well.
• 27:02
  So it's something you kind of get used to after a while.
• 27:05
  And one of the tactics you learn is, I don't care.
• 27:07
  I'm just talking about, I don't, you know, I'm going to get in trouble no matter what.
• 27:12
  No point.
• 27:13
  Yeah, but there's getting in trouble and then there's fearing for your life, isn't there?
• 27:16
  Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 27:17
  I mean, look, I think the, there was a very telling moment when I was kind of,
• 27:22
  I had to make a decision about this.
• 27:24
  I have family still in Pakistan, you know, my parents still live there and stuff.
• 27:28
  And I had to decide, look, this is something I can spin into and own.
• 27:32
  I mean, there are many ex-Muslims who do that as well.
• 27:34
  Sarah Heather, who are, who's working really like it.
• 27:37
  There's one and many others who talk about this quite openly and fight this fight quite well.
• 27:44
  And I wanted to do it, but I had a decision to make.
• 27:47
  If I do that, my parents are no longer safe in Pakistan.
• 27:50
  And this isn't something they asked for.
• 27:53
  So I figured at that moment, you know what?
• 27:56
  Not everything needs me to voice my opinion on it.
• 27:59
  It's fine to step back and let other people who are more willing to sacrifice or are more capable of the sacrifice.
• 28:05
  So right, in my situation, it's not, if it is just me, I'm fine with it, but not my parents.
• 28:10
  So I had to kind of pull back away from some of that stuff.
• 28:13
  I still do it my stand up, but also nobody's watching me in a nightclub in Melbourne, you know,
• 28:19
  where you get five dollar bills to come and watch comedy.
• 28:23
  And no one's going to be able to do it.
• 28:25
  So, Sammy, there are smartphones these days.
• 28:27
  Anything can go viral online.
• 28:29
  I know, I know.
• 28:30
  Absolutely.
• 28:31
  That's it.
• 28:32
  The dollar bills into your jockstrap.
• 28:34
  Is that what you just said happens?
• 28:36
  What kind of a comedy routine are you doing here, Sammy?
• 28:39
  Some people got it.
• 28:40
  Comedy, some people got it.
• 28:41
  You know, yeah.
• 28:42
  It's fair.
• 28:43
  Yeah.
• 28:44
  I have to behold us, surely.
• 28:45
  I mean, this is interesting because there's a, it's so difficult to unpick all this.
• 28:50
  There's clearly a drum beat on the right that a council culture has gone crazy and people can't say anything honest anymore.
• 28:57
  And this is often coming from people who themselves are among the most sensorious people in our society and the most been skinned whenever anybody says anything, you know, about about their sacred cows.
• 29:07
  And we can all think of examples where right wing nationalists have totally freaked out and accused people of being apostates of their own kind by being
• 29:17
  necessarily going insufficient fealty to, I don't know, patriotism or to the army or to whatever to Western culture.
• 29:25
  On the other hand, that doesn't mean that everything that they say is unreasonable and that some of the problems that they're talking about aren't real.
• 29:32
  And yet I do feel that when one raises the problem of that I perceive if they're being a curtailing of what we're allowed to talk about in polite company and the way that we're allowed to talk about it.
• 29:44
  This covers a whole bunch of culture war issues of which Islam is but one that has come to the fore recently because of Salman Rushdie, Rushdie's stabbing.
• 29:55
  A large way that the left says that to claim that there is any chilling of the conversation is to co-opt the talking points of these right wing hypocrites.
• 30:06
  And that to me just blocks the conversation off and prevents us from actually articulating what the problem is.
• 30:13
  And so we're having this conversation because you and I disagreed on Twitter about that.
• 30:18
  What is wrong in the claim that there is a chilling about things like this?
• 30:24
  So here's what I think I think part of it is I think both the left and the right on this issue are largely disingenuous.
• 30:32
  Or at least the culture commentators I think most people the average person you know doesn't really give it as much focus as we like to think they do but I think the culture commentators on this are are either
• 30:44
  grifters and conmen or are just misunderstanding the reality of things.
• 30:51
  So here's where I sit on this.
• 30:53
  I do think that yes, cancelled culture is real definitely as a problem.
• 30:58
  And I think the way it works and the reason why it's a problem is because when the left does it for example when the left says hey, you know, this thing is racist or ableist or or any of the different isms or ists that the left ends through.
• 31:13
  Apply on things to suddenly decide that it should no longer be part of the public discourse or the or the wider world.
• 31:23
  If if the person that they're attacking is someone with means, you know, like an Andrew Bolt like a Louis CK or someone like that they can largely survive that they might.
• 31:35
  There might be some things that they might have to lose like in Louis CK's case, for example, it he lost a few years of his career.
• 31:42
  Andrew Bolt for example has and having to be Andrew Bolt myself for a document which he's I did, you know, his public safety is a major issue for him.
• 31:51
  He can't go out in public very often.
• 31:53
  And he worries about his being assaulted which has happened more than once.
• 31:57
  But they do survive, they still have the careers, they still make work, they still get paid lots of money, all of these things.
• 32:03
  The people who don't get that luxury are people on the lower down the realm.
• 32:07
  And they're the ones with the actual victims of cancel culture, you know, someone like if someone tomorrow tries to cancel me, like let's say they call up the university that I work at and they say oh, samishar is, you know, dash ableist or racist or whatever.
• 32:23
  I lose my job, I don't have any other recourse, I barely make ends meet as it is, I'm done.
• 32:29
  And you see that for many other people who get canceled as well, the ones who are less economically capable of surviving it are the ones who actually suffer its consequences on an unfair level.
• 32:41
  It reminds me a lot of from, you know, in Finland and stuff decide doing the thing with the speeding fines where it became proportionate to your income as opposed to everyone gets hit by a $250 speeding fine, a poor person has a trouble paying it a rich person doesn't.
• 32:57
  I think on the same time on the right you've got the other side which is, you know, you've got, they've got a long history of being sensorialist as much.
• 33:04
  And you see it sometimes in America, for example, you're seeing it right now with all the stuff they're doing in libraries where, and school curriculums where they're trying to get books out of them and things like that.
• 33:13
  And not enough people I think in the center talk about that, for example, but, you know, you've got other people saying that cancel culture and the left is destroying the world.
• 33:25
  And, you know, to quote, for example, one of your previous guests, Douglas Murray, there's a war on the West and stuff.
• 33:30
  It's all hyperbolic nonsense, which is kind of built up to sell his own products.
• 33:34
  And other people are just as guilty of that as well.
• 33:38
  I think it's both sides. That's what I mean.
• 33:40
  I do think so, for example, the argument you and I got into on Twitter, I mean, I wouldn't even go on argument.
• 33:46
  I just wanted to point it out so I should be doing it was you said that, you know, a book like a midnight or satanic verses wouldn't get published today.
• 33:55
  There actually are many, many other books on similar topics or just as, you know, I suppose transgressive that do still get published.
• 34:06
  Sometimes, yes, there's also a whole lot of, you know, walkism, for example, in the publishing industry where people will say, oh, Jordan Peterson book is coming out and our publishing house shouldn't publish it.
• 34:16
  And then they'll all leave.
• 34:18
  But they're also at the same time work for his shed, which is owned by, you know, Northrop Graham or some, you know, massive weapons of manufacture.
• 34:26
  So there's a lot of, yeah, exactly.
• 34:29
  So there's a lot of like that kind of hypocrisy in their own actions.
• 34:33
  Overall, yeah.
• 34:35
  Well, let me just jump in. As I said on Twitter, I don't think that I know the publishing industry well enough to know whether or not they would publish the satanic verses.
• 34:42
  Many people who do know the publishing industry better than I do say that there, there's no way that it would be published.
• 34:48
  I can certainly say that when you look at the own voices movement in publishing, for example, which has, has been caught up in huge controversies.
• 34:58
  Like there was that book that Oprah promoted about the experience of a Mexican illegal immigrant.
• 35:04
  I shouldn't even call them illegal immigrant undocumented immigrant.
• 35:07
  I'll just call them illegal because they're technically illegal.
• 35:09
  It's not a, you know, it's not a not not saying that there were worse people in the world crossing without without authorization.
• 35:16
  And then it came out that this this this experience, this book was written by a white woman.
• 35:22
  And so there was huge controversy and that ended up getting pulled.
• 35:25
  And even if you look into the young adult cat Rosenfield has done a lot of reporting on this.
• 35:30
  If you look into the young adult literature space, then there really is almost a total prohibition on people imagining worlds in the skin of other people who they aren't.
• 35:42
  And you really allowed to write a novel anymore on it in.
• 35:46
  You have to, you have to remember that versus was written by a South Asian man about the South Asian experience.
• 35:54
  And at the time we didn't know whether he was an atheist or Muslim.
• 35:57
  It seemed to be a self identifying 18 Indian man writing.
• 36:00
  So Indian Muslim man writing about that is not only conceivable that he could use that as a get out of jail free card today and say that because his skin is the right color and he comes from the right country.
• 36:10
  And he's circumcised or something that that gives him the right to be able to talk about people who are like him.
• 36:16
  I doubt that it would cut it, but I don't know publishing well enough to know I find it highly improbable that any of the big publishing houses would take on that kind of risk in the in a post Charlie Hebdo, you like post someone rusty climate.
• 36:32
  It may be true that they would or like and say is that in the industries that I do know very well on a daily basis like broadcasting.
• 36:40
  You can be and you can be a right wing rat bag who says that Muslims are destroying the country and that they don't share our values if you want to and you'll probably get a job in the conservative press or writing columns in a murder tabloid somewhere.
• 36:55
  And you can be a left winger who insists that there is no problem with Islam at all and that Muslims are people who subscribe to a religion of peace.
• 37:05
  But it's almost impossible to actually have an honest conversation which says that Muslims as people are just like any other people and we should welcome them with open arms and understand them.
• 37:15
  And at the same time they tend to have more culturally conservative outlooks they tend to be more homophobic and more sexist in their arrangements.
• 37:24
  I mean, even that, even the fact that I've said that I could almost lose my job for stating a simple fact that one can demonstrate through opinion polls, you can look at the gay marriage vote in Australia, which was held in a popular referendum.
• 37:40
  And after the vote we were all expected to be surprised and really mystified that many of the areas that voted no against gay marriage most vociferously were not these right wing rural and regional white Australian areas.
• 37:56
  But they were out of western suburbs of the big cities which were migrant heavy areas.
• 38:02
  Everyone was tiptoeing and dancing and treading on eggshells so carefully because you couldn't simply state the plain fact that people who have migrated from China or the Middle East are much more likely to be antithetical towards gay marriage than the rest of the population.
• 38:18
  The boogie man on the left is supposed to be the white straight dinosaur who rules everything.
• 38:25
  And so in our conversations on radio and in the things that we write in the in columns in newspapers if you want to be except a light society in this country.
• 38:35
  Then I take issue with your criticism of Douglas Murray as just being a Huckster he may go overboard for a rhetorical reasons.
• 38:42
  But he's making a point that it is very difficult to defend the West at the moment without coming across as a western chauvinist and a defender of sexism and colonialism.
• 38:50
  It's hard to say that western countries are worth respecting, revering, cherishing that they've accomplished something because the retort will always be yeah but but but but what about what about what about colonialism indigenous peoples and so on.
• 39:05
  And there's only so much qualifying and throat clearing that you can do about all of that before you just get exhausted and you both and you don't bother having the conversation at all.
• 39:14
  So on questions of you know my concern you mentioned Sarah Hader there are you know I've done work with a lot of ex Muslim women when I was in the United States and their voices are thoroughly drowned out by most of the mainstream press because they're too complicated.
• 39:32
  They're talking about the ridiculousness of blasphemy they are citing with the 15 year old girl who might not want to wear the headscarf in the western suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne or Toronto or wherever she might be or Paris.
• 39:47
  And we have a tendency in the media and in elite institutions to listen to her father who might be an imam or who might go to mosque and who claims to represent the Muslim community.
• 40:00
  But that person might quite a sexist homophobic guy and he's speaking on behalf of this community and we're so terrified it's that we might sound like Islamophobes that we have to put him on a pedestal and in at the same time we're essentially betraying the individuals who are oppressed by this minority community and it's very hard to defend the rights of that.
• 40:23
  As I say either the 15 year old girl who wants to be a feminist or the 14 year old boy who's gay and wants to come out but lives in an incredibly homophobic sub community sub culture Muslim Arab sub culture.
• 40:35
  And it's hard to defend him without implicitly denigrating his religion and his you know authorities in that community which then paints the target on your back as being an Islamophob.
• 40:47
  So I don't know you know what well you're living in in which it would be unproblematic for the satanic verses to be published today but the world that I live in is one in which not only can you not publish a book like that but you can't even really have a conversation about that without triggering so many trip wires that it's not worth the hassle.
• 41:05
  Well okay so here's what I'd say to that first is I mean that's what Islamic Republic of Australia was trying right it was talking about these exactly these highlighted issues that you're you're addressing and and you know in in a great deal of depth and detail about like how Islamic communities have their own problems.
• 41:23
  How nuanced they are how the the representation in media is not accurate to how they actually are how it difficulties to be gay person in a Muslim community how we did it for this be a woman in a Muslim community the controversies around his job and all these things these are all things that I put in documentary which went out on ABC radio national.
• 41:42
  These are all things I put in a book which was published by Harper Collins it is a very like in and of itself it is a very controversial book.
• 41:51
  At no point did I ever have any push back from the publishers the only time we had to pull it off the shelves relatively was because of Islamic extremists sending threats and everything so in that case for example you know it becomes a thing of it's not the the sensory is left quote and quote it's not the far right quote and quote it is a whole other group which we all
• 42:11
  kind of live under the threat of which is Islamic extremist sensors kind of you know threatening lives and everything like that so I'm seeing the point of that.
• 42:23
  They're they're they're serving similar masters aren't they I mean part of the you know part of the part of the problem here is that I mean look at the original response to the fat wire you know to someone rush to his fat wire the time the Prime Minister of the UK Margaret that you know expressed sympathy for Muslims who are offended by the book John look at it.
• 42:43
  People said you know said there's no law of nature that says great religions may be insulted with impunity the the review in the independent by the associate editor said that the static versus is no better than racist graffiti on a bus stop like there was a deafening.
• 42:56
  Yeah there was also there was also you know when when pen international gave the award to Charlie Hebdo there was all of these writers you know you know Diaz and everyone like that who.
• 43:09
  To protest it and and at the time also as someone who was prayerfully prefer really involved with then I thought that they were making a big mistake they were coming down on the wrong side of history Charlie Hebdo was heroic and should have been celebrated exactly as that always they're not the they're not the perpetrators in this they were the victims.
• 43:31
  So I don't disagree with all of those things here's what I will say I will say that yes I do still think a book like.
• 43:40
  The satanic verses would have been published because in the end it wasn't seen as controversial until the and if you look at a lot of the stuff that happened around the time when it came out the stuff that led to it becoming controversial seeing it as a blasphemous book was largely down to certain sociopolitical elements in England at the time to do with the British Pakistani community and their issues that they were having.
• 44:05
  Them seeing that this is an attack on them and them using this and then taking it to Iran Iran's government then using this as a way of getting attention on themselves because that's what they love doing through all these kinds of things you know it there's a lot of social critical stuff that kind of happens around those there's other books right now that don't get published for the same complicated reasons you know books that for example in especially in the YA space which you mentioned this all kinds of ridiculous example the censorship happening all of those things.
• 44:32
  My problem with the way we talk about a lot of this stuff is and look you you work in media I've worked in media in the past and I you know we have a fairly solid understanding of what you can and cannot say.
• 44:44
  There's many things in what you said for example that we can go off branch off into different details on so firstly for example I would say that that is why idiots like me have been hopping on for so long about having diversity in Australian media and when people say it should be diversity of opinion.
• 45:01
  Absolutely I would argue racial diversity does provide the diversity opinion culture backgrounds to that provide the diversity opinion when the ABC let me go and they said the last thing the ABC management said to me was it was too much diversity too soon because I was the only brown guy and all of the cap city is doing radio.
• 45:18
  One of the things they tossed out on was I may be leftist but I've also someone who can talk about Islamic issues Muslim communities all these topics migration right now you're having so many Indian migrants coming to Australia what does that mean for cultural changes within Australia all of these things.
• 45:35
  People like me would have been qualified to have those conversations and be allowed to have those conversations in a way that sometimes people get a little bit too trepidatious or a little worried about when you know quote unquote a white guy has those conversations there is also.
• 45:50
  That's why I'm sorry not this white guy say me right I mean like look if one of the reasons.
• 45:59
  Exactly and but you do them with nuance and I think that's the difference as the reason why for example you now at this point in society and this point in your career and have for a while now have the credibility of with the audience that they will trust you when you talk on issues because they know you well enough to know that your place your your your questions come from a place of inquisitiveness and they come from a place of empathetic understanding.
• 46:27
  Right it's not what most of the times people end up doing these things you know it.
• 46:32
  One of the problems I have for example the left is when you shot if the left shots you down from having these conversations then all the only people left to have these are you know Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt and then it's not a new one situation anymore that's a huge problem as well.
• 46:48
  Now within that there's many other things as well yes the media is bad at having a lot of nuance conversations that's always been the case we keep looking towards the media particularly the media the way we understand it as a place for nuance it never was it never will be newspapers aren't a place for nuance never have been radio broadcast radio is not I did SBS insight very recently as a show.
• 47:12
  I love SBS I like I like the people inside it was it was an interminable experience because what happens is they get you there the pre interview you ten times they make sure there's no surprises.
• 47:24
  Everything is pre planned everyone says their lines again and again to make sure the conversation looks real if something unscripted or unplanned happens that edited out meanwhile you and I can have this conversation for two and a half hours on YouTube or in the podcast with nuance with depth with understand.
• 47:43
  And it's something you'll never see or hear on TV on radio or in any of the more traditional media it's why Joe Rogan people never understand that that's why Joe Rogan is popular where else would you get a two and a half hour chat with Joe and you know for example David Joe who's one of my favorite artists just talking about suicide for two and a half hours you'd never get down TV radio any of these things.
• 48:07
  So the new conversation happening they moved into a place where they can happen media was never good at it it was always sensational it was always about top line commentary.
• 48:18
  It's a very shallow understanding and poor representation of facts and I mean I'm not sure what the media was I was as bad as it is now is it what what's my blind spot here because I think back to I don't know an era when Dick Cavett would be smoking a cigarette on a talk show and having an hour and a half conversation I mean not with the same person but you know he'd have writers on and he'd have you know there be someone.
• 48:41
  He's on a piano on the stage and they talk about all kinds of ideas and sure the pace of the of media has grown so much faster that there is a drive towards sensationalism but even over the course of my own career I I feel like there is more.
• 48:59
  Judgment people are quicker to judge people are less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt on a specifically on a certain number of issues these hot button culture war issues.
• 49:11
  I see lots of people can talk about am I just missing a whole other area that was previously.
• 49:17
  Have you read have you read much Philip Roth.
• 49:22
  No I'm sad to say that he's his giant tomes still sit on red on my book show okay one of the first Philip Roth books that I ever read I'm trying to recall the name now and they made a movie a human stain was the book and the book is about a Anthony often play is in the movie but the idea was it was a black man who had such light skin that he got into a university.
• 49:47
  Pretending to be a white man his whole life and then it gets found out that he's a black man that's one element but the whole book itself was a angry pain like a rant of Philip Roth against political correctness and and the act and the and the way that it had now infiltrated campuses and stuff in the opening scene of the book is basically.
• 50:07
  Where the lecturer says there's two students from his class who are missing they're never in the 10th class they never come to any of the lectures so he goes out what are the ghosts are they spooks and then it turns out that those two students are black.
• 50:20
  And they say well spooks is a racist term against black people this through the lecture he has to get fired university kicks him out this was early 90s this was when I was just in college myself the book had just come out we were talking about political correctness going mad then.
• 50:35
  If you listen to some of the stuff that was happening around the Nixon era they were talking about the same issues then if you look at the what's his name.
• 50:45
  Mark Merrin the comedian he had to comedy historians on recently who talked about how these exact same conversations were happening in comedy in the 20s and 30s in America around the time that people are still doing black face.
• 50:59
  Where they were saying it's political correctness gone mad or you can't say anything anymore you know we're pushing the boundaries all of these different things these conversations on new the thing that frustrates me I think I find is is the lack of sense of history we have around how so much of this is cyclical.
• 51:17
  So much of this is normal and this is how conversations actually happen you have people on once on both sides pushing the extremes of it you have people on the on both sides also kind of compressing all of it and you have the people in the middle figuring out where the nuances lie and how they can have actual conversations of merit and things like that.
• 51:36
  And these things are always the same I think in the end 10 years from now 30 years from now we'll be having the exact same discussions about whatever the normalized conversation is then and we do the same thing 100 years from now.
• 51:53
  Yeah, I mean to yes you're right that this isn't new and you're right that there are always middle aged people whining about the things that they can't say and you know if you went back in time you'd be able to hear people saying you can't even slap a woman on the ass in the office anymore you can't call the tuts you can't wear black face anymore whatever it might be.
• 52:11
  But the fact that people have always been complaining doesn't mean that every complaint now is invalid in the same way I'm not saying that at all I want to make that very clear.
• 52:22
  Yeah, let me just finish the thought like I hear this this often when I talk about the dangers of social media and what it's doing to our brains people will say are people are frightened when newspapers started being printed people said that radio was going to rot people's brains people said that television was going to rot our brains this is no different.
• 52:39
  That doesn't whole carry water for me. I mean each of these technologies has to be assessed on its own basis and it's possible that a new technology of media could come along that would be egregiously bad for us and it wouldn't be rational to say it can't be bad because people thought all these other things were bad and they're not you know this one actually might be.
• 52:58
  So for me in the this has always you know this isn't new argument I try to put myself in the shoes of okay well then let me just try to get back to basics and what are the principles that I believe in and who are the people who are my heroes on those principles and what would they say about each of the these examples people who I regard as being somewhat timeless Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi Mandela.
• 53:22
  What would they say about the people back in the 50s who were saying oh it's political correctness gone mad that I can't be casually racist anymore they would say no actually you shouldn't denigrate other races or all people are equal let's treat them on the basis of the character that's not true.
• 53:39
  Even if there's even that is now I think we're getting now I think we're getting to the point where it's not that it's not that you're saying something that another person finds retrograde and therefore they are presenting an argument with you about why that should no longer be acceptable.
• 53:59
  It's that you're saying something which is actually an appeal to truth and equality and the modern left is given up on the idea of equality and once instead identitarian tribal politics where only people who come from a particular group are allowed to talk about that group only people who have stand you know the only people who have standing to make a criticism of a minority of people within that minority.
• 54:23
  And everybody else is excluded and has to kind of think of themselves as either straight gay black white religious not and whatever.
• 54:33
  And those that is a distinction that is antithetical to those heroes who I was talking about it's not something the model Luther King would recognize as being an aspiration that should be sought.
• 54:44
  And secondly the response is not to counteract to mount arguments against the position but to try to be punitive towards the person and either have them fired or have the book not not published.
• 54:56
  Those are the things that I object to so I just think what would MLK do and how is the person responding are they responding with arguments or they responding with essentially violence and trying to exclude the person those would be the two characteristics of the modern moment that I would separate as being different from those those past eras what do you say to those.
• 55:17
  Okay so a bunch of different things on that so I'm going to try to take them step by step so the first is some of the like Martin Luther King Gandhi Nelson Mandela we're also sanitize what they said and what they believe.
• 55:34
  Like for example one of my favorite heroes obviously being comedian George Colin right and one of the big debates has been happening the comedy community recently because of George Colin documentary came out was people trying to decide what side he would sit on.
• 55:49
  Yes and things like that because one side was there was calling saying things like be kind be forgiving you know be understanding and and and stop saying you know things to hurt other people for the sake of hurting other people and then on the other side him saying stop policing language stop you know being.
• 56:08
  Sensory something that so there's a debate about where where he would sit and similarly like with Martin Luther King we have a habit of forgetting that a lot of what he said was also very radical at the time not liked by a lot of the white people are there right in 1967 he said white Americans must recognize.
• 56:25
  That justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society he wasn't a person who was saying less gently may massage change he often spoke against moderate whites for example as he called them as being massive part of the problem you know where it's very recognizable to ex muslims when we talk about moderate Muslims being a massive part of the problem of.
• 56:47
  Sanitizing Islam's you know excesses so that's one thing for example Gandhi's got his own problems you know other than the fact that he was basically half the times that you know sleeping in rooms with underage girls in the way to test himself and Nelson Mandela despite all of those other things was best friends with more my goddafi and was honestly overlooking goddafi's you know human rights abuses yeah we're not all these things right.
• 57:10
  I'm talking about what were they aspiring towards in their advocacy and and you said denies that they are absolutely but equality rather than the modern day vision of identity and equity I would argue I would argue that and I don't I'm not this isn't me condoning.
• 57:28
  Identitarian politics but I would argue that the motivation behind identity in politics in the reason why it has a certain level of sympathy in my heart at least is is also equality and fairness the way they might be going about it is wrong and the way they might be going about it is a reaction to what came before.
• 57:47
  These things aren't easy and they're clumsy and also we do tend to you and myself for example in the media it's easier for us to focus on those fools on Twitter and social media and you know in in the public space who who who are saying things like you know only black people should be able to talk about black things only brown people should be talking about brown things which if you for example go to Pakistan most Pakistan is most Indians won't agree with but it'll be seven people in Australia.
• 58:17
  In media who was South Asian but also are you know self-promoting who might say that and they'll get all the attention so there's a lot to talk about their ideas are the ones that influence publishers not to publish books and influence.
• 58:30
  I would also think not higher particular presenters I also think that there has been already a swing away from that I think I'm at least in my experience and what I've seen and observed it was definitely a problem no denying the influence that they had on.
• 58:47
  Some corporations on all of these things up until maybe even two years ago I think the more recent stuff for example Dave Chappelle and the and you know his push back against some of the stuff I you know and how he's done it I have issues with but overall his push back against being quote and quote cancelled has been quite a relief for a lot of people we're seeing the and Netflix taking a gamble and going actually we're not going to take him off the platform and saying oh we actually didn't lose money.
• 59:16
  So Spotify for example gained listeners and ton of income from all those people yelling about Joe Rogan so a lot of corporations are now saying that okay we gave 1500 people on Twitter an outsized level of influence on our bottom line that's ridiculous because it turns out that it's not worth it and it wasn't a value and I think you're seeing it as shift away from that now I think.
• 59:40
  pendulum swings we're now at that point hopefully where the pendulum is more towards the middle than the far left of the far right it will again swing to the far right then again swing to the far left but I do also think that some of the panic we have around this stuff is more is outsized compared to the problem this actual size the problem.
• 59:59
  Well I agree that it'll swing to the right but my concern is that that the left is doing it's down to to embolden the right and to make the right more attractive to the right who are so dissatisfied with what the left is offering which is no longer a bread and butter vision of uplifting working people.
• 1:00:19
  But is now a sort of Talmudic reading of the tea leaves between university educated elites about exactly how they should be talking about very sensitive issues and how they should be punishing people who who blaspheme against their new orthodoxies that's just off putting to people in middle Australia and middle America.
• 1:00:40
  Okay there's two different things middle Australia middle America very different and I think we saw that in the last election I think America at this point I this is my estimation sitting all over here in Australia looking out is batch it fucking crazy and everyone over there has completely and utterly lost their minds in the extremes of where they exist.
• 1:01:00
  Australia seems to have done a very different thing.
• 1:01:03
  Not all Americans.
• 1:01:05
  I know a lot of I have friends who are Americans and I do think it's a country pays.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah exactly but I do think Australia had a very different thing we we had a I don't even know if it's right wing government we had a conservative government for the last nine years and at a time when you might say that America has a trickle down influence on the world.
• 1:01:30
  Australia chose a labor government and we chose a labor government at a time when inflation is just hitting now we're going to be in some really bad and die situations and I think even the greens did well and I think in the end it's because the average Australian has gone the things I care about are still.
• 1:01:50
  Basically the economy are still basically you know the clean water are our environment and these issues and these critical parties have also seen that's what voters care about and I do think that in the end for example the idea that the left is this thing that only cares about it in politics I think the fall left is that thing but I think the left has gotten painted as all being about this by people like Rita Panahi and.
• 1:02:17
  Sky News offered up present presenters who would like to discredit an entire side of politics by the extremes which is no different from saying you know all Muslims are terrorists or all you know white people are racist or whatever.
• 1:02:32
  I'll take a point on that you're absolutely right that that that is a caricature and so I suppose when I'm talking about the left in conversations about cancel culture I am really talking about that particular wing of extremely agitated activists who are the noisiest on social media and who it's power over corporations and and you know and over I think political advisers I think you're right that the Labor Party the the center left party in Australia has been wise to sidelines such as.
• 1:03:02
  People and the current Prime Minister when he was running as opposition leader ran a very bread and butter campaign and a very small target campaign and then didn't get involved in any of that stuff he was actually asked a got your question by a journalist on the campaign trail who said how do you define a woman to try to get him tangled up in transgender.
• 1:03:20
  You know word salads and he said as an adult female which is you know very straightforward and kind of just quarterized the possibility of that becoming an issue for him so that was a very non woke.
• 1:03:34
  Response but I do think that there was huge exhaustion in the country towards a a government that had been in power for almost 10 years and was saved as out of touch and a bit slimy you can't miss and you can't read too much you know Americans are much more.
• 1:03:51
  Extremified at the moment then the Australian political climate is for a whole host of reasons I would just be careful you know I would just say these are we're playing with gunpowder and just because our gunpowder hasn't blown up in our faces the way that the American gunpowder has doesn't mean that it's not gunpowder we shouldn't be careful of it.
• 1:04:10
  I would say that one place is actively playing with gunpowder and I think in our case we've got the gunpowder stored away relatively safely and it could blow up still but if it blows up it will be something that we can't really control you know like a spark being caused by the heat anyway this is going to be a metaphor way to literally.
• 1:04:33
  But look here's like I just want to say like what with regards to social media and its influence you're 100% right I'm not disagreeing with you on the fact that social media is not like TV it's not like newspapers I would argue and I'm not the only one for example many people have argued this is a social media's impact on our society is the kind of thing we haven't seen since the printing presses impact on society.
• 1:04:58
  I mean the printing press goes the Protestant reformation it goes all kinds of revolutions and now social media is doing the same thing and we saw that in the Arab Spring we're seeing that in America right now we're seeing that around the world in different ways so yes the impact and influence it has is humongous and horrific and future generations will be looking back at this time as us trying to figure how we allow this toxic thing to exist amongst us absolutely.
• 1:05:25
  But I do also think that part of the one of you know like you were saying that we're pushing the left is pushing people towards the right I don't know about that I think one of the reasons why for example this identity stuff ended up striking a chord with so many people briefly I do think it's over its influence is very limited now I do think that those golden days of you know woke left is on social media being able to just cancel people because you got a hashtag going is largely in our review mirror.
• 1:05:55
  I think the reason being because people do want to in at least Western societies and Western democratic societies they want fairness they do want equality and they weren't finding anything else being offered that was that was striving towards that I do think that the left the far left took what was.
• 1:06:15
  It's an equality and tinge to too much with things like revenge but they were trying to offer a solution to a problem that we still haven't figured out a solve but you know it was just a bad solution I mean one reason why you may be right I mean you're more optimistic than I am that this is in the right.
• 1:06:35
  One reason if it is true that it's in the in our review mirror this level of sensoriousness and cancel cancellation I mean I fear that one reason may be because it succeeded in cowing us and that there's just less to talk about now in terms of people who should be canceled because people aren't having the conversations that would get them canceled quite so much when you said earlier that you know the people who get canceled.
• 1:07:01
  By the the left tend to be powerful and tend to be able to withstand it they're the Louis CKs in the nature else and the people who get canceled by the right are people who are less able to withstand the cancellation.
• 1:07:14
  No, I think people on the left have also canceled people who got to withstand it.
• 1:07:18
  So yeah absolutely I'm not saying that either way to forget about light and right and I would just say that my concern is not that is not so much about the people who get canceled.
• 1:07:29
  Those people are in a minority and there will be cases of injustice will always be able to hear about the university professor who wrote a paper about how peaceful protest is better than violent protest and then that was regarded as being a racist on Black Lives Matter riots and therefore he was fired.
• 1:07:46
  He's going to be able to hear the story about the the academic who was in an elevator with another woman and cracked a joke that was an old 1950s sexist joke about when she asked what floria going to he said women's lingerie as if he was in an old times.
• 1:08:02
  Old timey department store and was then hauled before HR for being sexist and was put on probation we're always going to be be able to hear these it's basically the fodder as you say for the right wing machine right which tries to tie on the left with with this you know as being this crazy.
• 1:08:21
  My concern is not about those particular examples my concern is about what those examples do to the willingness that we all have to have honest open rambunctious conversations with each other in a big boy stress public square.
• 1:08:35
  No, no way towards the truth by speaking fearlessly and if we feel to count about these things then our concerns faster people in middle Australia as well as middle America.
• 1:08:48
  I feel like if at the barbie they're not really allowed to talk about their concerns about this or that if you know for fear of just getting into a blinding argument with somebody who's going to willfully misrepresent them and then shout at them on social media about it and de-friend them that if you're turning up the volume on all these things people just cut off certain areas of their mind and their soul and their heart from communication and they become more unreachable and maybe that's a reason.
• 1:09:18
  Why people get canceled less so okay here's what I will say that the key there is I think you said the public sphere right the public space and that's where they want to have those conversations because I would argue that those conversations are still happening in in the place where they've always happened which is being friends and family get together or.
• 1:09:39
  Colleagues and everyone and you discuss these things I mean there's there's an age old adage which is you know you don't discuss politics and religion at the dinner table and that exists for reason is because people always discuss politics and religion at the dinner table always turns ugly that's always been there it is still happening the public sphere which I'm going to put on like the real academic loser bullshit nonsense right now.
• 1:10:00
  But it's basically yeah exactly goes back to the Habermassian thing right and the Habermassian public sphere was basically coffee houses when it was cool because you'd go there and you'd sit down and you'd have an intellectual debate and you'd fight over ideas and then you'd go your separate ways and if those the good ideas or the more popular ideas would end up you know affecting society.
• 1:10:22
  The one thing that Habermass didn't have to deal with was Twitter was Facebook was Instagram so the public sphere is still there's two public spheres now one is a public sphere which is where you and I right now having this conversation.
• 1:10:37
  It is an active exchange of ideas it's a debate and it is exactly the way humanity has always done these things the other element on top of this unfortunately that neither you and I can now control is someone can transcribe this whole thing take both.
• 1:10:52
  There are questions out of context and bang them on Twitter and I'll get fired from my job when you get fired from your job there in lies the problem right and so I would argue that the conversation to still happening this is happening in the public sphere as it used to be which is coffee shops and cafes and you know like I still do with all my friends like comedians and everything like that we're always having all these ridiculous debates and arguments and things like that the only differences that we also feel like hey why can't I say this on social media.
• 1:11:22
  Why can't I say this on Twitter I would argue that you probably shouldn't say anything on Twitter and on social media.
• 1:11:28
  Some would active there all the time way too much already is the public sphere still working there's a whole other sphere which we still don't know how to contend with unfortunately right.
• 1:11:40
  Yeah then there's this up so I think that's a good insight in the sense that perhaps there is still a robust private sphere let's call the public sphere that is the cafe or the salon.
• 1:11:52
  I love the idea that you're still going to Salons and tea houses like an 18th century dandy.
• 1:11:59
  So let's allow you to be puffing on a hooker.
• 1:12:02
  Yeah exactly.
• 1:12:03
  You can imagine anything better.
• 1:12:05
  You need to bring it back.
• 1:12:07
  Yeah with all of your colleagues and debating the hadith.
• 1:12:13
  So there's that and then there's this new weird thing which is social media which I mean you know I've spoken at length already on this podcast in numerous episodes about my concerns about that and the
• 1:12:26
  the the error that we make in thinking that these platforms are neutral spaces for conversation with that they're not at all exactly tweaked toward they are extremification machines that reward the most provocative content the content that gets the most engagement that gets the most shares likes comments and so on.
• 1:12:45
  So if you're perfect example of how damaging social media is right so for example I was getting death threats like crazy on Twitter and Facebook when when Islamic Republic came out and everything.
• 1:12:56
  And I reported all of them hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of death threats and actual like very detailed death threats in English in Arabic in Urdu all these things.
• 1:13:06
  I reported all of them not one of them not one of them resulted in a block for any of the right because the people who moderate this stuff over on Twitter who are those minimum wage employees who have been high to moderate this don't know the context for those threats.
• 1:13:23
  They don't know when someone calls me a morthid what exactly it is that they're accusing me off or or any of those things.
• 1:13:29
  That's a result why you have someone like Donald Trump is booted off Twitter but I don't know how many is not right it's because these are in the end private corporations that do not have anything but their own American Silicon Valley kind of identity like you to what's it called Libertarian politics in mind and and we fooled ourselves into thinking they're on our side they're not they're on the shareholder side.
• 1:13:55
  Yes exactly and the other spear that I would just add to your characterization of the private conversation and then the new public sphere on social media is the media the old school media and public and I guess government I would you could lump governance and public speech from bureaucrats and and elected officials into perhaps the same basket.
• 1:14:20
  One of my big concerns is the is the impact that social media and that the atomization of society is having on our faith in institutions and the inability of those old institutions to actually keep up with the demands of the 21st century and the requirement to be honest and frank with a populist that is increasingly difficult and is scattering in a million different directions and the fearfulness of those institutions.
• 1:14:48
  Of the slings and arrows that that populist can throw at it from its most extreme quarters and my concern is that it's not enough for you to have your hooker bar conversation and just not beyond Twitter for a demos to hold together for a country and a culture to succeed and flourish it has to have a minimum level of faith in the conversations that are taking place.
• 1:15:11
  On its radio stations and television stations and talk shows and amongst its parliamentarians and in that area of the media as well and my concern is the the more bullshit we talk not even bullshit we talk the more we just avoid talking about these whole areas of public life because there to I mean it's like I don't know if you saw that you know media watch which is a show on the ABC in Australia that the public broadcaster that criticizes the media.
• 1:15:41
  And takes sort of complaints against it made the point that when the the Tava stock gender clinic closed in.
• 1:15:47
  Absolutely.
• 1:15:48
  Last all that you know the public broadcaster had didn't cover it at all at all and it made me feel bad because I'd pitched it on my show and it just sort of slipped through the cracks and we hadn't quite found a hole in the show to do it.
• 1:16:03
  But I did it subsequently as a half hour conversation just about how that might impact gender gender affirming care in Australia and it made me feel terrible to have been complicit in what can only be described as a kind of a tepid group think.
• 1:16:22
  Where you know you don't have a conversation that is obviously newsworthy and intellectually interesting because you know that you are reliably as I was taken out of context accused of being you know and trans bigot.
• 1:16:37
  Just for for broaching the the subject so you know yeah it's great that we can still argue around the barbie and it's terrible that we hate each other so much on Twitter and get it more extreme on Twitter.
• 1:16:51
  But until journalists and politicians can also talk in a fair income way which means like a blunt and open and almost way using Aussie slang.
• 1:17:01
  About some of these things you're going to keep the moat between elite discourse and public opinion is going to drift ever wider and it's hard to stitch together a society.
• 1:17:12
  So this is why I kind of get this is why my where my frustration with our focus on cancer culture left versus right all of that stuff comes from and and and I'm guilty of it because we just spent the last hour debating it and no point did I try bailing on the debate right so.
• 1:17:32
  But I think what's happening is we are getting caught up in the distraction we are getting caught up in the convenient distraction so for example the.
• 1:17:42
  You know where I read down this marie's book about your world war the stranger Europe and then the more recent one the war in the west and and and you know and and people on the left as well have read so many of their books like we.
• 1:17:56
  I think what's happening is if you look at the institutions right so you mentioned media the problems with media in the end aren't this the real problems with media are this social media is rise.
• 1:18:12
  As something that affected the bottom line because the classified section it disappeared when the internet came along they fired all the qualified people all the train staff all the regional reporters all those court reporters all of these people who did real investigative journalism quality journalism.
• 1:18:28
  Because they all of a sudden decided we draw the chase after clicks and do and click made headlines and and do you know where the ABC and yet somehow they focus on on ratings as if they're going after addressing dollars even though they aren't things like that and as a result they became institutions that lack credibility because they did a bad job they weren't good at the one thing we asked them to do which is report on the news.
• 1:18:54
  The same thing ended up happening in politicians politics has lost credibility politicians used to be people who would career politicians.
• 1:19:02
  They were a look i'm obviously looking back with rose color glasses the reality is probably messier but overall you know people who went into politics that's where the deals are done so well this time it's because they are people who who aren't career politicians and therefore have a level of credibility that career politicians lack now because we've seen them fail and lie fail and lie again and again again.
• 1:19:23
  The issues with universities absolutely universities are full of batched crazy 21 year old students who are trying to get their lecturers fired because the lecturer said something of the university student the woke university students was deeply offended by why do they have that power though they have that power because universities around the world are no longer institutions of high learning they are real estate managers they care about the bottom line when it comes to real estate they don't want any controversy because they have a board of people who need to get shared.
• 1:19:52
  People who need to get shareholders basically they run like private corporations their whole modus operandi now has to do with profit gaining profit sharing profit motive and you're seeing these things happening it's more to do with just the overall destruction of institutions destruction you know as a result of chasing the bottom line as a result of bad decision making when confronted with you know should we cut people's jobs to make more money for the shareholders or should we keep people's
• 1:20:22
  jobs to make more less money for the shareholders but hold on to our credibility there are places out there that held on to the credibility and you still see them largely surviving for that reason but overall the things that we think are the problem in society wokeism far rightism whatever I don't think I think those are those are exaggerated problems which has been my thesis kind of throughout and I think the real problem is this stuff.
• 1:20:46
  It's harder to talk about because it's more institutionalized it's not a simple solution and also there's no face you can paint that you can hate you know at the end of the day you can hate Murdoch but all of them press and media around the world has done the same thing so it's easy to make a video.
• 1:21:07
  Yeah I mean this is obviously a multifaceted thing right so there can't be a single a single explanation but yeah maybe we should perceive wokeism then and right wing rat rat baggery as excellence of the factors that you're talking about you know they're there a way of twisting the dial or you know twisting the nail in the thumb of the of the of institutions that are already vulnerable because of these structural reasons that you're talking about and.
• 1:21:37
  And capitalizing on that vulnerability by backing the people who work in those institutions into a corner and forcing them to par at certain scripts which further erodes their credibility I mean it can be both yeah exactly it can definitely be both I think it's yeah you're right look it's in the eye of the beholder it's the way I see it versus the way you see and both of us have to do largely with our own perspectives on this you are right I do tend to make take a more optimistic view on this stuff which is strange when if you know me at all and you know I'm not an optimistic person.
• 1:22:06
  But I think I do have that kind of it's a migrants view I come from a place which is so much worse and I come to a place which is so much better and I can see I like to think the cracks in a system that make it become worse and the places where those cracks would appear I don't think have appeared still here
• 1:22:25
  and I think overall where still had in the right direction and all of these things are contributing almost to us heading in the right direction rather than putting us away from that.
• 1:22:38
  So to loop back and close with then with the subject that we started out with which is Islam and blasphemy and whether Rushdie would get published maybe this is a way of of tying together the optimism versus pessimism claim.
• 1:22:53
  There was a film made by Ashia Muslim called the Lady of Heaven have you heard about this it was released and it was pulled by British cinema chains earlier this year as being blasphemous so these Muslim filmmakers had their film cancelled in the name of protecting Muslims.
• 1:23:14
  The idea of creating laws against blasphemy this was big in the late 80s basically especially in the UK and it tied in with the anti-Rushji movement extending blasphemy laws to protect Islam.
• 1:23:27
  So no longer would it just be against the law to to you know vilify and speak hate speech against individuals but it would be hate speech if you vilified a religion if you blasphemed against a religion that was narrowly narrowly defeated in the UK.
• 1:23:45
  There have been multiple cases of especially in the UK you know a teacher showed his religious studies pupils cartoons of Muhammad and you know that teacher is now still in hiding particularly Muslims protested there was that case in France that the school teacher being killed for showing pictures of Muhammad.
• 1:24:04
  These are things that yes they're not the same obviously we can't hold this at the feet of the of the limp tepid a feet left wingers who insist that Islam is a religion of peace and there's nothing to see because they're buying into a narrative that's being sold to them and and they're buying it into into it for the right reasons even though it's a bad narrative.
• 1:24:27
  Well the hey Hitler was buying into Nazism for the right reasons.
• 1:24:31
  Oh no his reasons are bad his reasons are good.
• 1:24:34
  He's right.
• 1:24:37
  If you're if you're a leftist and you see a minority community that's being attacked and yelled at and abused then you'll go well I'll defend them and then it's a minority community says actually religions religion peace.
• 1:24:48
  You'll go well okay I can kind of see why you know it's since your minority community is being attacked that's something that I can also parrot that's where the problem lies is that you know the nuance isn't there because we don't know enough now people know more and I think people buy into that less but sorry continue.
• 1:25:04
  Yeah well I mean yes my only point about to invoke Hitler and I've just obviously lost the bad because you're not.
• 1:25:12
  My point is simply that the person who's doing the bad thing always is always motivated from their own perspective by good reasons that just doesn't mean they're good reasons.
• 1:25:22
  Right of course agree.
• 1:25:25
  So I guess my yeah my question is these things haven't gone away they're still simmering along in the background.
• 1:25:30
  There's still things that we find it very difficult to to talk about you know without being branded as as big as and so what what gives you optimism that over the next 20 or 30 years I mean you optimistic that over the 20 or 30 years for example specifically those kinds of incidents will decrease because I think our conception of hate speech of like
• 1:25:53
  taking care about people's feelings making sure that people are defended making sure that we're not triggering people making sure that we're not.
• 1:26:00
  Imposing a you know colonialist white heteronormative standard on everybody I think that is growing that is still growing in popularity I don't think we've seen the end of the.
• 1:26:14
  I think okay I think we have to in the end of that right yeah being what what we regard as being bullies and I think it was Muslims who were who are protesting regard themselves as protesting bullies as protesting representatives of blasphemous white colonial patriarchal.
• 1:26:34
  Struct superstructures that have dominated the world for centuries and that are raping and pillaging minority people all over the world and treating with impunity people's most sacred and cherished beliefs and it's time for that to stop I think that world view is not that dissimilar from the work world view that is sensorious and.
• 1:26:56
  Yeah and punitive towards people who represent.
• 1:27:01
  What they regard as being the dominant orthodoxy I mean look there you can always have a person with a right idea and a person with the wrong idea ending up inadvertently in the same side briefly or you know the broken clock is right twice a day kind of a thing.
• 1:27:16
  There's a few things okay so for example when you're talking about blasphemy laws in Australia we still have blasphemy laws unfortunately we need to get rid of them there they're lying dormant but they are there.
• 1:27:26
  The last case in the UK that was done on blasphemy wasn't against Salam al-Rizdi and it was against Stuart Lee the comedian who wrote Jerry Springer the opera and it was brought against him by Christians because they thought that was offensive so after that the blasphemy law was done away with.
• 1:27:42
  That humorous that that's right your case yeah but you know and that's largely why they kind of lost credibility and we had that case kind of done away with look I had.
• 1:27:51
  My friends in Pakistan right who are who are disappointing like they they're so intelligent they're one of them's an economist one of them something else.
• 1:27:59
  They're all really well educated extremely intelligent people and yet when this Ruzdi thing happened very recently one of them sent me a meme as as a ha ha argument that he thought was winning him the argument and it said if you criticize gay people it's homophobia if you criticize black people it's racism if you criticize women it's misogyny but if you criticize Islam that's free speech.
• 1:28:25
  And it's like he's like oh look at how clever this is and I was like you're criticizing people for who they are really Islam is not a thing that who they are Islam is a belief system we're not saying criticize Muslims for being Muslim but saying criticize Islam for being a belief system the same way.
• 1:28:42
  Exactly yes exactly so there is like there's they shouldn't get stabbed in the neck for doing any of those things and yeah exactly and and no point is that the punishment for any of those things and that's why that's why they realize the problem with the whole blasphemy low stuff so.
• 1:29:01
  That's their argument and the way they see it yes you're right they have managed to wrap and it's you know the the they wrapped blasphemy in with anti-colonialist stuff and that's to do with the nuances of their part of the world right or or or or place that I've come from in the past and and I understand I don't agree with it and I can see the flaws in that argument but I know how that argument happens is because colonial history is still such a massive part of the world.
• 1:29:31
  It may not be fun for a person of European ancestry or you know European descent to hear how much people in the other part of the world still hate colonial history but it is something that people in other parts of the world do contend with sometimes it's used as a scapegoat may often very often but it is definitely a thing that is active in their lives and it's present in their lives because it wasn't that long ago right my grandfather went to clubs in Karachi or in in Mumbai.
• 1:30:01
  You know no dogs and Indians allowed so that wasn't that long and so these these are some of the things now within that or in the West for example in Australia for example in America you'll have you know some people saying we're decolonizing everything and it's all everything is anti-colonialist and everything is you know white man this and white man that and and there is also those elements a lot of it is like many things these days it is the it is the the train you know it's a short hand.
• 1:30:31
  Or it is just something that people can say and they think that you know it's a it's a coded language you know you say that the next guy who agrees with the same kind of general leftist ideology says it back to you and you both know you're on the same page no one is actually spending the time to actually think about what any of those things mean it was really interesting I was at splendor in the grass recently and it's a whole news.
• 1:30:53
  Yeah the music festival here in Australia and they have a corner where instead of music they have like intellectual conversations happening because which is just ridiculous because everyone there's on drugs anyway and and there's a whole panel discussion about the voice to parliament and every white person on the on the panel was like it's unbelievable we have don't already have it and it's a long overdue and it's remarkable and I can't wait to bring it in.
• 1:31:19
  There are two indigenous parliament is a is a proposal to give in so yeah to give it to give indigenous Australians a a capacity to to comment on 200 and advisory roll a formal advisory role in parliament.
• 1:31:34
  Yes and the two indigenous people on the panel both said where very uncomfortable the voice to parliament because it's everyone makes it sound like the entire indigenous community of Australia is on one side of this we're not we're still debating it we're not even clear about what it means.
• 1:31:51
  And what it could entail to us regarding land rights and things like that so everyone saying this is something we want indigenous people aren't sure yet and the funny part for me was how everyone else on that panel who was a leftist white woke you know whatever basically ignored what these two indigenous people said because they didn't know how to deal with that.
• 1:32:12
  Yeah yeah they just they were so used to one narrative in their social circle it coming from a person who they then weren't even qualified to critique in their own heads are going to their own plus fees broke them and they just gloss over it and moved on.
• 1:32:28
  And that's why I think a lot of this stuff is superficial and doesn't hold up to scrutiny and will therefore fall apart because when you actually have diverse voices entering the debate in discussion everything changes you're going to see the same thing in Australia now with more Indians coming to Australia the largest cohort of migrants coming here from India you're going to have problems we didn't even think about like the Brahmin supremacy issue that's wrecking Silicon Valley will become an Indian Australian issue you know.
• 1:32:58
  It's interesting I mean what you're basically saying is that as we actually hear more from diverse communities will become less work towards diverse community.
• 1:33:06
  Yes because we're seeing that there are more new ones.
• 1:33:08
  It's the opinion inside yeah that it doesn't.
• 1:33:10
  Exactly.
• 1:33:11
  Exactly.
• 1:33:12
  This is the thing that I always say I mean anyone who ever accuses me of of lacking a commitment to equality and justice for minorities does not understand what I'm on about I mean what I'm on about is criticizing.
• 1:33:24
  A particularly blinkered mostly white university educated elite who speaks on behalf of minorities and who thinks that they have the right to essentially dictate what other people can can argue about that's you know this is the this is the
• 1:33:41
  thing who.
• 1:33:42
  I mean it's very similar to the gay marriage thing and we you know this keeps coming up about whether or not football players in Australia should be allowed to express their disapproval of homosexuals or homosexuals lifestyles or gay marriage or whatever.
• 1:33:55
  Well they were Muslim football players who did that and didn't get in trouble.
• 1:33:59
  Why not.
• 1:34:00
  If we're afraid of being Islamophobic right.
• 1:34:03
  Yeah.
• 1:34:04
  Like and I'm one of the few you know again just as you have have standing to talk about the about Muslim issues because of your background I'm one of the few people who are standing to talk about gay marriage because I'm married to a guy.
• 1:34:16
  And so I'm one of the few people who is able on the ABC to say hang on I want to live in a week saying that we want to live in a society that is so fragile that people aren't allowed to express the view that I shouldn't be married.
• 1:34:31
  Yeah exactly.
• 1:34:32
  I don't want to live in a society that is robust enough for you know I'm doing a standard bit these days right.
• 1:34:40
  I'm just workshopping it to find the funny part said but my basic bit is you know the idea that straight people shouldn't allow to be married because I'm straight I've been divorced twice like we're not good at it.
• 1:34:52
  You have been bad at for a look every every couple that I know that he's loving and has lost it forever is gay.
• 1:35:00
  I wish I had the straight couple gay couples away better the straight couples straight people have ruined marriage.
• 1:35:08
  I mean so there's you know yes so this this white university educated clique is the is the group of people who are who I regard as being holding the cultural
• 1:35:18
  purse strings at the moment they are in power in culture and I think when I say that they're giving rise to the right wing I think I do think that that's that is well founded I think it's a sense of resentment on the right that they are no longer invited to the cool cocktail parties because every because they're regarded as being as being bigots.
• 1:35:39
  And I mean the way that this shows up is if you if you're in the United States and you believe in securing the US border then you are racist in the eyes of these people if you believe that you know that women who grew up as girls are different from women who grew up as boys and that those that they're not exactly the same thing then you are transphobic in the eyes of these people if you believe that saying an acknowledgement of country to recognize traditional ownership of the lands before every speech is facile and infantilizing.
• 1:36:09
  And if you believe that gay marriage that marriage shouldn't be extended to people the same sex then you're a homophobic if you don't believe in high immigration into Australia then you're a racist like these are the norms that I'm talking about that are basically accepted by the cultural elite they filter down through media and public discourse they may not be
• 1:36:39
  the last time I was speaking by sounding like I was conflating workness with I don't know islamas to jihadist terrorism or something I know you were right yeah yeah I'm not saying that I guess what I'm saying is that there is a a pure tanical world view that regards blasphemers as being regards themselves as being righteous for standing up to to blasphemers.
• 1:37:01
  And that is the same motivation that is that is coming from all of these different cohorts whether it's Muslims who are offended by blasphemy or whether it's people who hold all of those ideas that I was just talking about being offended by what they regard as being bigotry you know it's I think the I want us to interrogate what the people you're protesting are actually saying.
• 1:37:23
  I think there's a degree of extremeness in the muslim side of this that we're not fully understanding which is where which is why those analogies happen right which is I mean the mobs that happen in Pakistan and Nigeria and these countries that that genuinely like you hold villages get burnt down people get ripped to death the skin gets ripped off of them they get beheaded in public all of these things it's a it's a whole other level.
• 1:37:51
  And yes on paper both things are censorship but I think you know that that's like saying on paper Ebola and a migraine are both things that affect the human body you know like there is more there is more to it than that yes the the you're absolutely right about the level of influence that you know university educated kind of you know certain elite community has there's you know Peter Turchin have you heard of Peter Turchin.
• 1:38:17
  Yeah but remind me what you would have at the art there's been a few articles about him he came up with a new field of study called Clio dynamical clear dynamical and the idea was basically looking at the at societies throughout history to see if you can come up with predictive elements as to what causes the collapse of a society right and and he kind of predicted for example that 2020 would be a really bad year 2018 would be bad year 2020 would be worse you know some many times these are you like.
• 1:38:47
  People said that he's predicting Donald Trump's presidential campaign and it's a victory way before anyone else and one of his main hypotheses which isn't that different for example from the French economy so capital what's his name Thomas Piketty yeah Piketty isn't a different from Piketty's argument as well is that the problem we have right now is we've got this whole university educated elite that are coming out of universities and they don't have any way to go.
• 1:39:14
  There's no jobs for them that justify the time to spend in universities there's no expertise there's no practical application to the expertise and so that frustration that turns inwards and then they just start using it as an intellectual weapon against society and so like you know both of these people can argue similar things about the problem there.
• 1:39:34
  And for me the answer there isn't that university students who are leftist and woke are are crazy because of course they are they always have been it's that they used to be able to get a job that paid equal to their work that they did in university that's there and there in lies the problem and that's because of labor laws that's because of union issues that's because of.
• 1:39:57
  Corporatization and the way corporatization has affected the labor market and those things less so than you know the stuff that we've been talking about yeah that's interesting yeah okay i'll I'll dial up the influence of material.
• 1:40:10
  And I suppose institutional problems in my in in the the bouillet bays of my concerns in the future semi as if i'm giving you more things to worry about is basically.
• 1:40:23
  Yeah that's how you managed to come out more optimistic than I am.
• 1:40:27
  It's a great a calamity performing us so we have to go and give my children some dinner.
• 1:40:33
  Thank you so much for being on the show it's a pleasure.
• 1:40:37
  Hey thanks for indulging me yeah you know I appreciate this a lot.
• 1:40:44
  Uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh Zeps on Twitter and Instagram for all the latest may your day be free.
• 1:40:53
  Fruitful your mind humble your enemies generous and your conversations perfectly sparklingly delectably uncomfortable.