Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / JUST JOSH: Free Speech, Incitement & Elon Musk

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JUST JOSH: Free Speech, Incitement & Elon Musk · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and dangerous ideas are the topic
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of today's conversation I want to help you wrestle with them I want you to help me wrestle
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with them because I've been being asked my opinion about them quite a lot over the past
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week or two and I thought I would invite you into the hall of mirrors that is my mind as
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I think about free speech, hate speech, race riots, offensive speech, insulting speech,
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big tech, Twitter, Elon Musk, online harms, algorithms, social media. This is all coming
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about because I was invited onto a television show called Kill and Day, which is a long
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running Australian show where panelists answer questions from the audience about either
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the news or some big issue and I was sitting next to Australia's e-safety commissioner which
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is a very accomplished woman whom Elon Musk calls Australia's censorship commissar because
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Elon doesn't like her. He doesn't like people meddling in his definition of what Twitter's
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rules should be or meddling in his definition of what free speech ought to be and she and I had
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something of a back and forth, a little stash about Elon and about online hate speech and context
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in the context of the UK race riots, it went like this. Because we have a broad set of tools
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that do both, we were able to take action when wakely happened. If you contrast that with what
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just happened with the UK riots where the chief tweet was not only insulting the Prime Minister
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but saying civil war is inevitable and fomenting online hate and disinformation that was
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already violent, they had no recourse because they didn't have similar tools. They had to
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send an open letter rather than send a formal removal notice. Wait a second, things like fomenting
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online hate. This is where you start getting into, I think what the questioner is pointing to,
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which is you're talking about litigating ideas essentially. We're not talking about
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incitement, we're not talking about, hey everybody, I post something in a sort of media. It was
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incitement. No, it was not incitement. It is not incitement. Civil war is inevitable and people
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should rise up. So you don't feel incitement? No, I don't think it's incitement. Because a lot of
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people don't agree with you. Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of people on the left in particular
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who seem to believe that they've got a monopoly on the truth and who feel quite unruffled about
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insisting that ideas that they disagree with are beyond the pale. I would simply remind
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us all that at every point in time, in every place, the majority and the elite always think they're
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right by definition. So I walked away from that exchange feeling like I had not said all the things
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that I wish that I had been able to say. The French have a term which they call less plea des
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ga ye meaning like stairwell wit, meaning the great smart clever funny thing that you think of
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when you're in the stairwell leaving the apartment or the office where you should have said it,
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I had a bit of that after this. So then I put pen to paper for the Sydney Morning Herald which is
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Sydney's biggest selling Broadsheet newspaper and I published that as a follow-up. And in the process
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of kind of whittling down my ideas into the small bonnemose that can be squeezed into shredded
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up pieces of trees, I had to discard quite a lot of good ideas which I hope will be useful to
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flesh out here. The reason this is important of course is because the whole question of whether
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or not we have a landscape that is conducive to solving the problems of the 21st century hinges
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on our understanding of how ideas can be transmitted. And I don't think it's immediately obvious that
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the best way to transmit ideas is for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg to design algorithms or
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employ people to design algorithms that are maximally sticky and prioritize ideas that inflame us
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the most and that that is the correct or optimal terrain of idea sharing. Nor is it obvious to me
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that having an e-safety commissioner decide what ideas are appropriate to share and what ones aren't
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appropriate to share is the best tack either. I mean obviously in most places most in most times
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for most people the problem has not been that they're too free to share their bad or
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hateful ideas. I mean the problem has been that they're not free enough to share ideas which
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powerful people thought were bad or hateful. So how do you juggle that noble small or liberal
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pursuit for free speech with the need to presumably figure out what on earth to do about this
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tsunami of nonsense that is being amplified by social media algorithms. The first thing to say
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here is that I actually agree with the e-safety commissioner that Elon Musk's sort of championing
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of free speech is cynical. Here is a man who is suing advertisers for pulling their money from
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Twitter. I mean even like libertarians find this gawling. There's an op-ed by a libertarian
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super pro free speech lawyer in the Kato Institute website. Hardly known for a 30 free speech
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walkeness. Kato is the libertarian think tank and allow me to quote this person says,
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Musk's theory of free speech is those he agrees with should be free to speak their minds but nobody
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else should be allowed to criticize or disassociate from them in response. So yeah, I think this is
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all posturing and show boating, you know, when Lindy Acarino who is Twitter slash X's CEO released a
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video explaining this lawsuit that they were undertaking against advertisers who were boycotting
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them. She literally wore a pendant around her neck that said free speech like literally
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draping herself in the rhetoric of freedom at the same time as the company is attacking the
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freedom of others to do what they want to with their money. I mean if my definition of free speech
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was big corporations have to give me money, then sure I'm on I'm on I'm definitely down with
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that version of free speech. I don't think it I just don't think it passes much into lecture
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master and the other area in which I'm very supportive of the safety commissioner and if some
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of the digital rights activists who are pushing back against big tech and Elon Musk is it's important
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not to think that a free for an algorithmic for an algorithmically sort of amplified free for all
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is the same as free speech. You know how free is speech when the speech that you're looking at the
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posts that you're looking at the social media feed that you're looking at is intentionally curated
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to be biased towards whatever is going to keep you on that app or website the longest. I mean there's
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nothing there's nothing sort of neutral about the landscape that to remain the playing field of
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conversation on social media we know what these things favor we know that they want you to
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spend as much time on the website as you possibly can that's how they maximize their advertising
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revenue and by definition you're going to do that when you engage with content engaging meaning
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you know either hovering over it for longer and watching it if it's a video instead of swiping
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past it or liking it or commenting on it or sharing it and those activities are by definition almost
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done towards content that either reinforces what you already believe or demonizes what you don't
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believe I mean it's not content that you're going to feel neutral about right which means that
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content that pushes sort of nuance or empathy or understanding is less likely to please the algorithm
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than content that has you punching you fist in the air and going yeah right on or I can't believe
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that they said that or this is ridiculous or this is an outrage so as I've said many times before
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the problem with social media it's not that it only shows things shows you things that you
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like I mean there's obviously a lot of stuff on there that you see which you disagree with
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dead gars and babies for example not something that most people like not even Jews believe it or not
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but the problem is that it will show caricatured cartoon versions of things that you don't like
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and it will show the most generous version of the things that you do like which creates these silos
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and these echo chambers that are very difficult to escape from I'm as subject to this as anybody
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it just so happens that my entire career and life is guided towards ruthlessly trying to extract
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those biases from myself or at least recognize them so that I can proactively act against them and
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that is not something there's not a calling that most other people share um so yes I mean if I were
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you know I was asked on this television show what would I do if I were the grand pubar of the
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world about social media and in some ways I'm far more radical even than the most radical
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anti free speeches in the sense that I just don't think that we should have invisible black
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boxes in this space I mean that when it comes to artificial intelligence and algorithmically
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selected content and recommendations and that sort of thing uh we should require the governments
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of the world the people of the world should require tech companies to open up the hood and let us
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look inside and understand what the algorithms are doing um so that digital activists and journalists
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not necessarily regulators and bureaucrats but certainly digital activists and journalists can
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understand better what the algorithms are selecting for what the social media companies know about
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the effect of the algorithms on tweaking our attention and captivating us and getting us to engage
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and therefore how we might be able to use the free market and the values of small
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liberalism and capitalism to counteract those impediments and maybe yes even to regulate them
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and maybe we should have panels of wise experts I know that this sends a chill up libertarian
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spines but you know there are areas like of public health where in Australia or in any country where
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you have a socialized medicine and difficult decisions have to be made about the value of certain
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drugs or certain procedures over another and you're not necessarily going to spend 20 million
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dollars on a life-saving procedure because to do so for one person would be to jeopardize the
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lives of a hundred other people who could avail themselves of a a procedure that is a hundred times
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cheaper you know all those kinds of calculations are going on in the background all the time
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insurance companies are putting values on lives you know we we do have a need for experts on
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boards to look at things and assess the risk rewards of them and without wanting to wait into
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the territory of selecting for or against good or bad ideas I do think that the people through
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regulators and governments should be able to select for or against good or bad algorithms good or
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bad sort of meta conversations about how we have conversations so the point that I basically want
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to make and that I wanted to make on the television show and subsequently did make in in pair to
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down form in the city morning held by the way I'll put a link to the article in the city morning
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held in the show notes so go and click on that I think it is paywall but I might ask them to
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unpay wallets so take a look the other thing that was published this week that you might be
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interested in was a big feature profile of me in the week in Australian the week in Australia is
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the national the big national broadsheet having a profile there is something of a nice and flattering
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thing it's sort of like being profiled in the New York Times magazine on the you know Sunday New
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York Times or something like that and I think they did a good job at encapsulating what I'm trying
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to be up to and what I'm trying to do so I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well for your
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reading pleasure later on but the points the point that I was basically trying to make there was
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we don't want to get into a game of whack a mole where we're where we're empowering regulators
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and e-safety commissioners and basically sensors to decide what ideas are good and what ideas are
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bad but it's perfectly legitimate for us to wield our democratic power to decide the ways in which
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social media companies tweak what they regard as being good or bad or worthy of showing us or
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or not worthy of showing us if that sounds like maybe a dangerous distinction or a slippery slope
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let me give an example because this is the example that just came up the UK race riots right
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many of the powerful people in the UK who want to protect us all from offensive speech are
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using these race riots as a justification for criminalizing incitement while actually
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incitement is already criminal but expanding the definition of what constitutes incitement
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as we just heard in my exchange on television there I believe that incitement means
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tomorrow at 3 p.m. let's all gather in Piccadilly Circus and bash some heads in and then you go
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and do that then in hindsight that tweet was incitement to say civil war is coming and by the way
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the e-safety commissioner then also if you listen carefully implies that Elon said you know get out
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there and riot or something which he did not say she may be confusing something that he tweeted
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in the past about San Francisco or something but anyway she's putting words in his mouth in terms
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of that particular quote what he said was civil war is inevitable now Jonathan Friedland in the
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in the Guardian and one of the Guardians most prized left wing columnists and most respected
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columnists in the UK wrote a piece about this entitled you know who else should be on trial for
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the UK's far right riots Elon Musk subtitled direct guilt sits with those who brought violence to
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our streets but their hatred was inflamed by lies spread on X similarly another gentleman named
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Alistair Campbell who was Tony Blair's former communications director and he's a man who's
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dissembling and misinformation helped kill a million Iraqis he is now a popular jocular left wing
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figure he hosts this this wildly popular podcast in the UK called the rest is politics he co-hosts
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it and he posted to Twitter a video of Douglas Murray my the my journalist friend conservative
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provocateur um warning that exactly this kind of race violence would happen and really been
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moaning uh the fact that it is happening take a look at the the video clip that Alistair Campbell shared
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with Douglas Murray we have seen recently with things like the atrocity of this terrible young man
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when it stabbed these young girls with the Taylor Swift dance class the little girls uh just
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beyond belief and the public mood is feverier and they're going to demonstrate things of you know
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we do not see often in person burning up police stations by very angry mobs I've just seen it today
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wasn't in group check you know sort of doing it like a boundary policing thing in their area of
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chanting hello akabar and I defend the mosque the worst thing for me is exactly what has said
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would happen under the recent I wrote with the strangest death of the open and he's like
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hanged on about this for years beforehand well that said it is so obvious what is going to happen
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I'm so angry watching it when it could have been stopped yeah it's just to be right about something
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so bad and I should emphasize if you're listening to the podcast version of this you can see all of
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these if you go to the youtube channel uh many people aren't even aware that we have a youtube
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channel it's only reasonably recent and it doesn't have very many followers so do us a solid and
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go and subscribe to the youtube channel if you want to pull that out and you can see my beautiful
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visage uh at the same time nonetheless so Alice air Campbell uh sends out this this tweet
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and he says that London's Metropolitan Police Service and he tags them in this tweet should take a
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look at Douglas Murray and Alice air Campbell's 1.1 million followers pile on if you don't understand
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quite how or well in that is then you don't understand the status of free speech in the UK at the
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moment which is basically that the UK doesn't have any um I mean it does of course with limits but
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everywhere has free speech with limits I mean Vladimir Putin claims that Russia has free speech too
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you know according to Vladimir Putin it just doesn't have free speech towards people who question
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the integrity of the good men and women on the Russian side who are fighting in Ukraine as my
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colleague Marsha Gessen found out in July when they were sentenced in absentia by a Russian court
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to eight years in prison for questioning Russia's military lies in Ukraine and military campaign war
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in campaign in Ukraine um you know Russia claims to have free speech but you know there are
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limits to free speech we hear people say I mean of course everyone claims to want free speech
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you know supporting free speech is like supporting kittens and rainbows you know who would say
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that they're not for free speech the devil's in the details the devil is in where you say as the
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safety commissioner did sitting right next to me on television and on the television panel of course
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we support free speech but and what matters is what comes after the bat but you can't use free speech
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to denigrate or insight or offend what traditionally disadvantaged minorities uh the national good
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the common good of the people you know insert the thing that you care about at the moment or
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rather that the elite majority opinion cares about right now and that's the thing that free speech
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should not trample on it's a trick as tired and old as Stalin's moustache um so England's director
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of public prosecutions is quite aggressive about speech that's bad on Twitter of course he doesn't
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say that he's against speech that's bad on Twitter well he says is well let's let's quote him
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directly shall we he said he boasts that you can be arrested in England for tweeting something
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which quote is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred
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okay insulting insulting according to herm recently the London Metropolitan police
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prevented a Londoner who was dressed in a business suit wearing a yamlka on his head a kippa
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Jewish skull cap from crossing the street in London during a gaza protest under threat of arrest
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because his quote unquote openly Jewish appearance was considered a provocation to the crowd right
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does that fall under the director of public prosecutions uh a definition of insulting
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or offensive or inciting does it so the police who can't control a mob of angry
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anti-zionists and prevent them from being violent are threatening with arrest a person wearing a
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yamlka because that's a provocation that's incitement to the mob concurrently bobby's your friendly
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English cops show up at the doors of people's houses in the UK to arrest them or threaten them
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with arrest for posting things on social media that are inciting or offensive um or racially
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demeaning um the british government itself literally posts on twitter like seemingly without any
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kind of sense of all wellian irony about this a warning and i quote think before you post
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and underneath the tweet it says content that incites violence or hatred isn't just harmful
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it can be illegal thank you very much i mean that must come as a great consolation to the victims
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of the roughly 2.3 million crimes that go unsolved in the UK each year to know that
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Britain's dedicated police force are scouring the internet to make sure that Nana can no longer
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misgender people on facebook uh not all heroes wear capes good for them um so this brings us back
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to Douglas Murray you know Douglas and i have a lot of disagreements i mean i disagree with Douglas
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about a lot i think he has a huge blind spots on the question of uh you know a Palestinian
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statehood um i think his tone can sometimes be overly aggressive when it comes to immigration
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and the integration of minority communities um yeah there's a lot that we disagree about i think he
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is you know insanely uh cavalier about the downsides of uh of a trump of the the threat that
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trump poses to american democracy but um i've traveled with the man i've had many dinners with the man
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i've shared many stages with the man and a world in which that man is guilty of a crime for being
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as articulate and really perspicacious as he's been and insightful and um prescient as he's been
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is extraordinary i mean i mean it is extraordinary to think that Tony Blair's former communications
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director who's complicit in selling the british people and the world misinformation that led
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to at a minimum hundreds of thousands of deaths that that man thinks it's appropriate to
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not just denigrate but criminally implicate uh one of his rivals for being prescient about the
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underlying causes of racial violence is absolutely extraordinary in 2024 is chilling in 2024 and
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it's something that in 1984 we would have hoped that we'd gotten over by 2024 but these are stressful
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and these are trying times and the algorithms and the social medias are deranging everybody a little
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bit and one easy response to that is to think that bad people should just stop saying bad things
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on the interwebs and when they do we should tag the police in tweets and encourage them to
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take a look at them now i should just note that i too wrestle with the question of
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how much just asking questions does one need to do before you're no longer just asking questions
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but you're actually pushing a sinister barrow right you know how much banging on does Nigel Farage
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have to do about like the people just won't stand for this level of immigration you know the people
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a lot of people are expressing to me their concerns before you go well hang on are a lot of people
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expressing to you these concerns or are you just concerned like you're just using that as a
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fudge like as a broadcaster myself i know the horrid old trick of saying a lot of people are saying
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that blah blah blah no a lot of people aren't saying that or if they are that's not the relevant
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point the point is that you want to ask that question or you want to make that statement it's a
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it's a slide of hand um so i don't know you know i i'm not saying that there is no there there when
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someone feels discomfort about a person like Douglas Murray uh making such hay for so long
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about the demographic anxiety that will be churned up by Britain's rates of immigration and it's
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failure to integrate its migrant communities in particular Muslim minorities um i appreciate
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that it can sound unseemly and can sound a bit xenophobic uh and that it sounds like a bit of a
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cheat for people who are banging on about this to say look i'm just asking questions and i'm merely
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prognosticating i'm just saying what might happen um you know there's some line between that
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and incitement uh to violence you know there would come a point at which you would be talking in
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such a way that you are actually stirring up the very feelings that you say that you're merely
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reporting upon however what i know for sure is that wherever that line is it is not a line
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that i want a government bureaucrat deciding for me or for you or for Douglas Murray with the threat
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of throwing him in jail or somehow other punishing him for having transgress this imaginary line
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between merely warning about civil war or racial violence uh and uh inciting it um you know
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let's just look at the background to all this because if you're not familiar with Britain's
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rates of immigration you might just think well i don't quite understand what they're all banging
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on about so i hadn't realized until i researched this and unfortunately i wasn't able to include
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some of these statistics in uh in my article for time considerations but listen to this
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in up until 1994 the UK basically had no immigration in fact in most years they had net
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immigration so you know in where if you balance the number of people coming in the number of
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people going out their population was actually shrinking in terms of exits and entries
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that all changed in 1994 um with a new uh a new policy but even up into the late 90s you had like
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you know sort of about maybe 40,000 60,000 people arriving in Britain every year by 2012
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immigration had gone from 0 15 20 years beforehand to 160,000 a year that was in 2012
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by last year it was almost 700,000 so it's gone from 0 or negative up to 160,000 in 2012 to almost
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700,000 last year and it was over 700,000 the year before that the undocumented arrivals by boat
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alone just people arriving you know i want to say illegally because technically you are allowed
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to arrive unannounced and seek asylum but let's just say illegally because they could have
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sought asylum in France they're coming from France right the people who arrive in boat on boat
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into the UK the people who are arriving illegally by boat across the english channel 40,000 a year
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now that is about the same number as the total number of net migrants who came into the UK in 1997
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so think about how that feels if you're a Brit right and this is a leap of imagination for an
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Australian or even an American but especially an Australian because more than half of our population
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has arrived since the second world war um so we're a much more multi-ethnic country and nobody
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here was around for very long unless you're a First Nations Australian but in the UK people were
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people were here for a long time and if you're a 40 year old person in the UK then when you were
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13 years old the total number of legal migrants was the same as merely the number of illegal people
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arriving by boat today the total number of legal migrants was the same as just the number arriving by
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boat and the current number of legal migrants is 15 times what it was when you were a teenager
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if you're 40 in the UK now it would be one thing if this immigration level was associated with an
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aggressive government policy to integrate communities and to you know get people living in
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around their neighborhoods with traditionally British people so there was some capacity to
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learn English and to integrate at the same schools and to form bombs and friendships between
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communities and between individuals but what has happened in the UK to an extent that it hasn't
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happened in the US and Australia is that you've you've established essentially little fiefdoms
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of different nationalities um I spoke recently with the Australian High Commissioner the former
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Australian High Commissioner to the UK that's just a fancy name for the ambassador for some reason
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between commonwealth countries ambassadors are called high commissioners so he was the Australian
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ambassador to the UK it's a very interesting um episode actually it's an episode of this
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podcast that you should listen to um in which he and I he's also he also happens to be the diplomat
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who uh instigated the mala investigation into Donald Trump because he was the guy who George
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Papadopoulos that Trump aid mentioned uh over drinks in London that uh the Russians had dirt on
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Hillary Clinton and then um Alexander down at this uh former Australian foreign minister and former
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Australian ambassador to London uh tipped off the FBI that he just had this old conversation and the
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FBI interviewed him and that and that began rush a gate um nonetheless that's a really interesting
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episode as well but he was so he knows something about British you know society British culture
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and I interviewed him and he wrote in uh the Australian newspaper that you now have entire
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English suburbs which are Bengali you have whole villages that are Polish you have whole council
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areas that are Kashmiri um I personally quite like that like I quite like it because I find it
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interesting I find it unusual I'm a bit of a xenophile I'm a ruthless cosmopolitan globalist
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elitist who likes swanning around the world and eating interesting foods and bumping into
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interesting different communities but if I was a traditionalist just living in my English suburb
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and it had gone from being basically the same demography as it had for centuries and then
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in the past decade or two had just completely changed overnight and all of the signs when
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now in Kashmiri well yeah I might find that a little bit disconcerting and if then when people
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tried to talk about that and raise questions about that or express some kind of demographic anxiety
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about that they were called racists and if a bipartisan consensus was imposed between all political
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parties the immigration rates were going to remain high and flows of people from the European
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Union and from the continent we're going to remain uncontrolled essentially and there wasn't
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really anything you could do because to complain about it was to be a bit of xenophobic tabloid
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reading um Nazi then of course you're creating conditions in which racial violence can flourish
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because racial resentment is not being addressed um this is not to say you know do we need to really
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do the whole throat clearing thing where you know I make the point that of course the violence
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is still the fault of the people who are being violent and that there is no excuse for violence
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and there is no excuse for racial violence in particular and there is no excuse for burning down
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shops blah blah blah of course don't be in a mob and don't be violent um that goes without saying
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but it shouldn't also go without saying that there has been an elite consensus about the things
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that you're supposed to talk about in Britain that has sidelined any real or honest bullshit
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for a conversation about this particular issue and that has exacerbated the tensions that gave rise
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to the race riots so into this fray blunders the great Elon Musk with this tweet that I argued
32:33
with the safety commissioner about civil war is inevitable okay I understand how she sees that
32:42
as incitement but let me ask this suppose civil war were inevitable just hypothetically
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would there be any way to warn about it on Twitter the Australia's e-safety commissioner
32:59
would not regard as incitement how would you say it how would you warn about a dire future
33:09
consequence without being guilty of instigating or inciting or inflaming the possibility of that
33:16
future negative consequence coming to pass like the rule seems to be if you warn about something
33:26
that implicates the elites in having caused it if you say there will be racial civil war because
33:34
the elites have been ignoring the voice of the people on the integration and pace of immigration
33:41
then that is incitement and you can presumably be prosecuted or at least kicked off social media
33:48
for saying that even if it were true one would imagine this is bonkers like you have to be able to
33:58
it because I don't think the claim is merely that it's not true that civil war is inevitable that's
34:03
not the claim of the people who think that it's incitement like it's no justification to say well
34:08
hang on I correctly predicted race riots no Alistair Campbell is still going to want to see Douglas
34:13
Murray locked up if for the correct prognostication it's the prognostication itself it's the statement
34:22
of openly announcing what you see in front of your own eyes that they regard as the crime because
34:27
they don't want to take responsibility for having any involvement in the violence in the first
34:33
place through the policies that they've supported and imposed and the speech codes that they've
34:38
supported and imposed on Monday of last week at the time of recording the British government
34:47
announced that it is reclassifying misogyny as a form of extremism which will make it more
34:54
easy to prosecute under these anti incitement anti offensive speech anti insulting denigrating
35:01
being a mean person laws it's funny I actually saw this news on the scroll I's always banner on
35:08
the news on the television news while I was at the airport catching my flight to go to be on Q&A
35:14
in Melbourne so it was highly apropos because it made me think so whose version of misogyny
35:23
prevails then when you're prosecuting misogyny is it misogynistic to insist that biological males
35:31
who identify as women should compete in all female sporting events some feminists say it is
35:41
and other activists say that those feminists are turfs and in fact in the pre-Elon Musk era of
35:48
Twitter people were kicked off Twitter and had their accounts suspended or banned for tweeting
35:55
things like women aren't men this is a point I made on Q&A platforms make decisions about content
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every single day thousands of decisions and that is to use a sort of an overused metaphor somewhat
36:08
black boxed and surely wouldn't you say Josh that transparency over all those decisions platforms
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make about speech is a win for freedom it's the first thing that I said yeah I mean that I think
36:19
there should be radical transparency and I think you're I think the misconstruing that right today
36:23
remember that and we have transparency powers that we've used to great effect that no other country
36:30
has been able to expose what come what companies are and are not doing with cell album algorithms
36:36
around sex dorshan around child sexual abuse material around online hate and yes there are
36:42
definitions that the parliament develops for us I enforce the laws but I you think this should
36:49
be a free for all that there shouldn't be any safety net for children who are being merciless
36:55
children look this is nuanced so you know it's a case by case basis on what you're saying we
36:59
should do it on a case by case basis no no the issue is a case by case you shouldn't be
37:04
prosecuting people on a case by case basis on the basis of what they post you know I was just
37:09
on a basis of what they're post it's on a basis of what they're on the previous regime at Twitter
37:13
before Elon Musk there were people who were suspended on Twitter for posting men aren't women
37:19
that's an idea that is involved in the trans debate for example it was considered to be hate speech
37:23
there are all kinds of things that you can say about immigration race multiculturalism trans gender
37:28
sex well that's some people will regard as they're saying it now aren't they so if we're going to
37:33
start getting enthusiastic about banning people from saying offensive or insulting things we'd
37:39
better be bloody certain that we know exactly and we all agree on what is offensive and what is
37:44
insulting you know is it offensive to say that importing half a million people into Australia
37:51
every year puts pressure on property prices because that's something that the opposition leader
37:57
of Australia said when announcing a policy to a planned you know proposal to reduce immigration
38:04
in Australia and after he said it one of Australia's most prominent journalists said that anyone
38:09
who says that is racist or rather that he's being racist for pointing out that importing half a
38:15
million people every year might put upward pressure on property prices well is it offensive to say
38:20
what he said or is it offensive to say that someone who says that is racist I can see a case either
38:25
way is it offensive to say that Zionists are killing Palestinian babies or is it offensive to say
38:33
that garsons elected a jihadist death cult is it offensive to say that masculinity is toxic
38:40
or is it offensive to say that hashtag not all men are violent is it offensive to say that
38:48
Islam oppresses women or is it offensive to say that women should submit to Islam like
38:56
the simple answer is all of those things are offensive to somebody and which one is deemed
39:04
offensive enough to get you punished by the state is going to depend on who holds the reins of
39:09
power um you know back in the 1950s arguing for communism got you criminally sanctioned
39:18
in the First World War arguing for pacifism got you criminally sanctioned in the 1960s marching
39:25
with the black panthers got you criminally sanctioned every era has its elite majority consensus
39:34
and inside the elite majority consensus it does not appear to be a consensus it appears to
39:39
be the truth it appears to be what's right it appears to be what's just I always pull out this old
39:47
you know gag it's not even a gag I suppose it's some kind of a metaphor or a parable about the two
39:53
young fish swimming through the ocean I'm sure you've heard it before if you're a regular listener
39:58
and an older fish swims past them and says how's the water today guys and as the old fish swims
40:03
away the young fish one of the young fish looks to the other one goes what's water we don't know
40:08
the water when we're inside it you know it seems self-evident to the majority that the majority
40:15
opinion is the correct one and that ones that transgress it ideas that transgress it opinions that
40:22
undermine the ability of the majority to enact its will are somehow kind of contaminating
40:29
they're not just incorrect they're actually bad they're flawed they're contrary to the common good
40:36
and so when I ask you know who who gets to say what's misogynistic or who gets to say what's
40:41
offensive or who gets to say what's insulting obviously that's a bit of a rhetorical trick because
40:45
we know who gets to decide who gets to decide are the elites who control things now I'm not being
40:53
like all kind of arm wavy and kind of rustle brandy here about elites controlling the world I'm
40:58
talking about a group of people which includes myself who are a largely university educated kind
41:04
of left wing clique of middle class mostly white kind of colonial guilty social justice types
41:14
now obviously because I'm inside that group I find myself questioning that a lot because I'm
41:18
a contrarian but as you'll note I don't spend all of my time on the like Jordan Peterson Ben Shapiro
41:26
right banging on about workness I only bang on about it as much as is absolutely necessary
41:34
so you know at the moment the elite that is getting to decide what's offensive and what's not
41:39
offensive is an elite that the elite by definition likes because it's them so all the all the bad
41:44
things you know the things that code as bad things like you know hate against transgender people
41:50
or you know being against immigration or being unseemly towards migrants or you know not being
41:57
sufficiently on board with gay rights these are all the things that code as impure but
42:04
it is entirely possible that there will be a populist right wing uprising in the UK or in
42:11
Australia it's possible we will get our Donald Trump it's possible we will get our Georgia
42:15
Maloney it's possible we will get our Marine Le Pen you know this has happened in Italy already
42:21
it almost happened in France Brexit happened Trump happened it is the height of arrogance to assume
42:28
that the elite that is currently deciding what is appropriate speech and what is not appropriate speech
42:33
what is insulting and what is offensive and what isn't is going to be in power in perpetuity
42:38
even if our conclusions were correct I mean you know there are two levels of arrogance going
42:44
on here one is the kind of epistemological arrogance that we have finally settled on the correct ideas
42:51
that we and we are the first people in the history of the world to correctly distinguish between
42:56
ideas that are good and ones that are hateful offensive inciting or insulting you know obviously in
43:03
20 years 30 years 50 years people are going to look back on our norms and our taboos and think
43:09
that many of them were misguided every single past civilization of people have always thought that
43:15
they had finally settled on what was right and wrong as well um you know it's highly unlikely
43:20
that we're the we're the ones who finally nailed it so there's that level of arrogance but then
43:25
even if it were the case that we had nailed it there's an extra level of arrogance in thinking
43:30
that we're going to be able to retain our sensorious reigns of power indefinitely like decide
43:36
what rules you want people in power to abide by and then stick by those bloody rules don't try to
43:41
have a bob each way and say like oh well I wouldn't want right wingers to be enforcing their idea
43:46
of what hate speech is but I do want to enforce mine because mine is right even if yours were right
43:52
you're not going to be in power for the rest of time you're bloody idiot you know you can
43:56
you can fully imagine a populist right wing government deciding that hate speech or offensive
44:02
speech or insulting speech is in a victor orbony type way speech that denigrates the history of
44:08
this great country or of Vladimir Putin anyway if you want to you know history it claims that
44:13
undermine the sanctity of the family um claims that uh call into question the nobility of the
44:21
Australian historical experience meaning the white Australian historical experience you can
44:26
absolutely imagine them saying that anyone who pedals a black armed band view of history
44:31
and focuses too much on the injustices towards first nations people is undermining the Australian
44:38
common good you can spin it a million ways from Sunday you can imagine that whatever clique is in
44:43
power is going to impose their version of what is impure uh and what needs to be excised from the
44:49
public square don't play that game the sensoriousness and arm waving snowflake ability of the left
44:57
is precisely what gives the populist right its power so even if it weren't the case that it is
45:04
morally and strategically wise to uh take a to err on the side of free speech it would just be
45:10
tactically savvy to do so because that way you actually drain the right of much of its power you
45:17
know much of the appeal of the right to people who are winnable I know there are a lot of people
45:20
on the left who just think that the populist right are all just a bunch of fascist Nazis who were
45:24
born that way and they're kind of you know they don't even require any further explanation it's just
45:28
a primacy situation of white supremacists are going to be white supremacists so we just have to
45:32
fight them well how's that working out so far you know what what is actually happening is that there
45:37
is an extremification dynamic where the hysteria of the left is goosing the hysteria of the right
45:43
and people who are in the middle who are otherwise winnable see the crazies on both sides and you
45:49
know the best way to win them over and the best way to create a a quorum of saying people who can
45:55
defend the what I call the radical center is to be radically centrist and to be sense sense making
46:02
and to be I suppose morally empathic towards other people and have the moral imagination to
46:08
understand your own fallibility and your men to show a bit of humility that's the way to attract
46:14
people you know if the left can be the bigger party then it deprives the right of a fair bit of
46:19
oxygen tactically speaking um so the final point I would just make is when we're talking about
46:25
incitement we're talking about offense just remember we're talking about ideas unless we're saying
46:31
meet me at 3 p.m. tomorrow uh you know in this time and place in order to do this we're talking
46:37
about ideas right multiculturalism is an idea immigration is an idea biological males being
46:47
women is an idea Zionism is an idea Palestinian statehood is an idea men and women being
46:54
equally suited to being corporate CEOs or childcare workers or oil rig engineers is an idea
47:06
right it like if I'm physically violent then lock me up but do not dare use the states monopoly
47:13
on the force of violence to punish me for criticizing or proposing an idea if you make it hazardous
47:24
for reasonable people to discuss controversial ideas then only unreasonable people will discuss
47:31
those ideas if you say it's racist to discuss the integration of migrants only racists will discuss it
47:42
to solve the challenges of the 21st century from artificial intelligence to climate chaos to
47:47
the threats to liberal democracy we need the widest possible public square we need the most
47:52
rambunctious possible terrain we need the widest scope of conversation we need a population
47:58
that feels heard that doesn't feel like it's being betrayed by elites that doesn't feel like
48:03
taboos are being imposed by an elite consensus that isn't listening to them um we need a proper
48:11
public square that is not solid by either algorithms or by bureaucrats um I disagree with Elon
48:19
Musk and I disagree with Douglas Murray about a lot but in an open society the disagreement is the
48:27
point take care I'll see you next one