Latest / The Vance Crowe Podcast / Clashing Perspectives: Race Riots, Immigration, and Free Speech in the UK With Claire Fox
Transcript
- 00:00:21:06 - 00:00:24:12 Speaker 1 And if the government is then going after people in social media 00:00:24:12 - 00:00:30:14 Speaker 1 that like, you're like. What in the world are you doing? These. These are actual physical crimes that people are committing. 00:00:55:05 - 00:01:01:08 Speaker 1 I'm Danica Clews, a grad student living in Fort Collins, Colorado, and you are listening to the Vance Crowe podcast. 00:01:01:08 - 00:01:20:01 Speaker 1 Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Baroness Claire Fox returns to the podcast today. Long time listeners know that I invite Claire on whenever I want to know what's going on with either Free Speech or the UK. It just so happens this week that that is all in chaos right now. Are there race riots going on in the UK? 00:01:20:03 - 00:01:39:08 Speaker 1 Are there two tiered police systems? What's going on with the government clampdown on social media? We're going to get to all that in this fascinating conversation that may blow your mind, and you're going to get to see me be humbled when my understanding of the situation gets flipped upside down by Claire. We're going to get to that interview in just a moment. 00:01:39:08 - 00:02:04:01 Speaker 1 But I had three housekeeping items I wanted to talk about first. If you have ever wanted to see a field day where somebody is doing modern agriculture in this very innovative and different way, then you should consider coming on August 24th to Buffalo Center, Iowa, where the stock cropper system, this is that system where they raise pastured animals in between rows of crops is going to be showing his system. 00:02:04:03 - 00:02:27:01 Speaker 1 The best part about this is not just seeing Zach's whole system and his farm and how he does it, but it's that there are some of the most interesting characters in all of agriculture. Show up to talk with one another and share their ideas and really push the envelope of this concept they call farm weird. If you're interested to learn more, go to scrapper.com and fill out the Eventbrite so he knows you're coming. 00:02:27:06 - 00:02:47:11 Speaker 1 I'll be there and I would love to see you there. Item number two that I want to talk about is the AG Tribes report. Listeners of the podcast may know that for the last few weeks, we've been, recording and actually live streaming a podcast where we talk about what's going on in agriculture based on what are the different tribes think. 00:02:47:15 - 00:03:19:08 Speaker 1 So we bring up a new host that tells me about this is the news that matters to my ag tribe, whether they're dairy or cattle or grain farmers. And I have been astounded by the growth of this podcast. Thursday night we run it live. The guests have told me over and over again that it is very intense to be on this show because we do four stories bang bang, bang, and then we go through and talk about who is a worthy adversary that they listen to on social media and what is an idea that they have been kicking around that not everybody agrees with them on. 00:03:19:13 - 00:03:41:03 Speaker 1 So check out the AG Tribes Report live on Friday at 6 p.m. central. Or you can get the recording of it on Friday morning. Finally, I want to touch on legacy interviews. If you have ever thought about having your family record their life stories so that future generations can know their family history, consider getting them a legacy interview. 00:03:41:05 - 00:04:04:14 Speaker 1 I've had a chance to interview hundreds of people telling their stories, and when we're done, people are so grateful that they have these. I know that for me personally, I got a chance to record my mentor telling his life stories, and after he passed away, it was so comforting to know that I had this recording, to know that I could hear his voice, that I could listen to these stories. 00:04:04:14 - 00:04:25:14 Speaker 1 And probably most importantly, I'm going to be able to share them with my children when I want them to know about the person that shaped me. So if you've ever thought about doing this, go to Legacy interviews.com and consider booking one for your family members. It will give you tremendous peace of mind, and one day, it may be one of the most valuable things that you own. 00:04:25:16 - 00:04:30:08 Speaker 1 All right, without further ado, let's head to the interview with Baroness Clare Fox. 00:04:30:08 - 00:04:37:10 Speaker 1 Claire Fox, welcome to the podcast. 00:04:37:12 - 00:05:05:13 Speaker 1 Well, we are in a wild time all around the world. I know in the United States we're going through crazy stuff with our elections and what's going to happen in the future. And this is drowning out what I think is maybe an even more important story, which is what is going on in the UK. So what I thought I could do is maybe kind of summarize the way that I think things are going on in the UK, and then you can give me an update as to where I got it wrong, where the facts are, and we can go from there. 00:05:05:13 - 00:05:28:08 Speaker 1 Because this is a huge story that when I ask people in the US about it, they don't know anything about it. So, a couple of weeks ago, a man that I believe was an illegal immigrant from Rwanda came into a little girl's dance studio and starts a bunch of little girls in a poor, working class white neighborhood in, London. 00:05:28:10 - 00:05:57:06 Speaker 1 And as a result of this, the families and the people living in that community, went out and held anti-immigration rallies saying, this is crazy. Why do we have, somebody in here that would do this to us? And as a result of that, there were backlash, protests. So, Muslim protesters, which there are many Muslim, specifically young men living in, in, in the, in London came back and they started having real clashes. 00:05:57:08 - 00:06:23:19 Speaker 1 I understand from a long distance away that there were a bunch of men housed in a Holiday Inn, and a bunch of people surrounded these, refugees and made threatening comments and threw rocks through windows. And now now the UK government, specifically the government of London, is pointing the finger at the the, people that were upset about the, immigration and saying, you're saying hateful things. 00:06:23:19 - 00:18:52:22 Speaker 1 So we're going to clamp down on free speech because we think that is one of the primary drivers of this. So from all the way across the ocean, how much of that story did I get? Right? What what should people know in order to understand what's really going on in the UK? 00:18:53:00 - 00:19:16:17 Speaker 1 You know, I'm so glad I asked. I thought that I had done a pretty good job of kind of listening to different podcasts about this and watching it on Twitter, but I'm always open to the idea that you can get a story, you know, totally wrong without context. And I saw it when I was living here in Saint Louis, Missouri, and the Ferguson riots were going on, and you'd hear other people talk about it from the outside and you'd say, no, no, no. 00:19:16:17 - 00:23:00:06 Speaker 1 Like you're missing key important things. You're switching around details. when you think about the average Londoner or the average person in the UK, do they have the same narrative that you have? What are they telling themselves about what's going on in the UK and how bad is it? What are they really worried? Is this something that people think will just blow over at the end of the summer? 00:23:00:08 - 00:23:30:23 Speaker 1 I want to actually, I'm going to pause you for a second, because I think that people in the United States that are not following this don't have any idea when you say that the government is clamping down on social media. Maybe I take this chance to read, something that I saw on Twitter just the other day. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, said the offense, or incitement of racial hatred, involves publishing or distributing materials which is insulting or abusive, which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred. 00:23:31:05 - 00:23:52:08 Speaker 1 So if you retweet that, then you are republishing that and you are committing an offense. We have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media. Their job is to look for this material and then follow up with identifications and arrests. Now I can understand somebody saying, if you try and incite people to violence, we're going to track that down. 00:23:52:10 - 00:26:14:17 Speaker 1 But a lot of that has to do with interpretation and what you, you know, whether whether or not it's abusive is determined by the eye of the beholder. So too, in an American like me, this is an extreme overreach that you would show up based on what somebody said on Facebook to their house and arrest them. Is that what's going on right now? 00:26:14:19 - 00:27:14:19 Speaker 1 And if the government is then going after people in social media that like, you're like. What in the world are you doing? These. These are actual physical crimes that people are committing. 00:27:14:21 - 00:27:46:15 Speaker 1 Oh, the U.S. has no. Right now. I would I would push back on that. Like the video I have seen from the UK of the size of the demonstration, and the level of aggressiveness was so strong that it is like, it makes you gulp, it makes you say like, oh, that's going on in a Western civilization where there are people that are talking in a completely different language with flags that some of them you recognize and some of them you don't even know what they mean, and they're marching down the streets. 00:27:46:15 - 00:30:04:03 Speaker 1 It's a whole bunch of young men. and I mean, that is it's one of the most intimidating things I've seen in Western culture. Full stop. And the fact that you have all these other things going on, it it's, I mean, incredibly confusing to somebody like me how it seems like the UK is burning. 00:30:04:05 - 00:30:28:17 Speaker 1 Well. In what? Oakland. Well, I was going to say the the intimidation that you're talking about. And I am completely comfortable saying what I see on Twitter is not accurate. Right. But what I'm watching is they're saying, look at these knife wielding, machete wielding groups of people with bats. They are chasing down people that went to the, anti immigration, rallies. 00:30:28:19 - 00:30:46:16 Speaker 1 And so you have this sense that what's going on is there's one group of people that they have such a large mob that they're able to show up, shout their slogans, advocate for their point of view. And then the other group that's saying, hey, this is making me uncomfortable. I'm going to show up to an anti-immigration protest. 00:30:46:17 - 00:39:14:17 Speaker 1 They get chased down by by mobs of people with bats and machetes. Is this going on? 00:39:14:19 - 00:39:34:09 Speaker 1 So, Claire, you have been on the forefront of free speech, running the battle of ideas. We've talked about this many times on the podcast before, but there's something that, you know, a chilling effect where you talk about people that may have their social media monitored, somebody show up at their door and arrest them when somebody's civil liberties are at threat. 00:39:34:09 - 00:40:05:02 Speaker 1 Our kind of model here in the US is, oh, will you push back on that? And then, you know, you maybe do some civil disobedience and maybe you go to jail for a little while, but eventually the the right righteous path prevails, and then you get out of jail and you were the hero. But if you're actually staring down at a culture that seems to be going down the authoritarian wing now, civil disobedience might not just get you locked up for an evening, it might get you labeled the way that you're describing. 00:40:05:02 - 00:46:55:21 Speaker 1 You know, your your ultra right wing or you're some kind of hate monger. If people throw you away into a jail and now you're there, and who knows what can happen to you while you're there, or for how long? So in your free speech experience, what should people be doing to push back on this? Is civil disobedience not the right path? 00:46:55:23 - 00:47:20:16 Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that it's. It's, Saul Alinsky wrote that book, you know, rules for radicals, where it's all about the. The most important thing is to split people up and just do not allow them to reform in into a cohesive group. And the more you can keep them fractionated. And I remember when I was living in Kenya and you saw when they would have elections come up, people would become totally inflamed about your tribal affiliation. 00:47:20:16 - 00:47:45:16 Speaker 1 That was really the only thing that mattered. And what you realize by being an outsider is this tension can never be resolved. There are so many tribes. They all have their own interests. If you back them all into a corner, they're going to fight for themselves. And so people didn't view themselves as Kenyans. They viewed themselves as Luo or you know, any of the other tribes and like to see that happen in a Western culture. 00:47:45:22 - 00:51:36:11 Speaker 1 It was unthinkable ten years ago, probably even five years ago, that you could get people to be so divided on, on racial lines. Where do you think this goes over the next two years or five years? 00:51:36:13 - 00:51:57:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that you. It's. It's easy for us to see that on college campuses. The ideas of free speech are not. They're not as anywhere near what they were when I was in college. But something I think that's more insidious or more hidden, is that there are people that are my age or even older that are starting to deeply question democracy itself. 00:51:57:08 - 00:52:23:13 Speaker 1 I mean, I have have had conversations with people that say, you know, maybe the only way you can rule people is by having a monarchy. You know, maybe the only way we can do this is to have an authoritarian dictator in order to be able to get our, you know, our freedoms. And it's because even the people that lived in a world that was supported by things like free speech and they just they aren't they don't believe in it anymore. 00:52:23:13 - 00:52:47:14 Speaker 1 And so I think it's going to be very difficult, to bring young people into this. And I think even, you know, you mentioned that people not really even knowing, what does it mean to be British? What does it mean to be somebody that's a member of the UK that's going on in the United States right now? I mean, there's very few people that if you themselves, you know, first, second or third as an American, and if they do, they mean something very, very specifically by being American. 00:52:47:14 - 00:58:36:22 Speaker 1 And they and they don't include those people over there. 00:58:36:23 - 00:59:01:20 Speaker 1 Well, you. You might chuckle at this because it's something. Every few months, I poke you, on your DM's about this. But to me, I do not think you can bring the government, to heel and and to actually represent the people if you don't control their ability to print money. Because as long as they don't actually have to go to the citizens and say, we're going to, you know, we made these decisions and you elected us. 00:59:01:20 - 00:59:16:04 Speaker 1 So now we're going to extract taxes to cover all of this as long as they can just say, well, we're just going to print more money, and that's going to devalue your money. but that's going to enable us to be able to put migrants up in hotels and be able to offer social services that we're not offering you. 00:59:16:08 - 00:59:36:18 Speaker 1 So to me, the only way out of this is to stop the printing of money, which is the use, of course, from my perspective, is of of Bitcoin. It is to create a Bitcoin standard and to make it so that our money is not tied to our government, and then our government is not allowed to do that. They're not allowed to say, oh, well, we'll just go to the printers and, and issue more money. 00:59:36:19 - 01:04:43:09 Speaker 1 So that way we can do these things, because once they're brought to bear that, that the citizens actually have to pay the taxes to cover the bills, they're going to start behaving differently. And without it, I think almost every other measure we take won't work. What do you think of that? 01:04:43:11 - 01:04:48:09 Speaker 1 Yeah. Because if. 01:04:48:11 - 01:05:05:14 Speaker 1 Because. If you don't win with hearts and minds. The. The only other response to mobs of people will be to form up in your own mobs. And I think that this is what I see going on in the future. And when you describe bad faith actors, you know, I don't know Tommy Robinson or Candace Owens, whether they're bad or good faith actors. 01:05:05:14 - 01:05:29:01 Speaker 1 But I can say they frighten me because they have the ability to garner the, the intense emotions of people and like, they could get people on the side that feel like, hey, we're being targeted. Hey, this is unfair. We need to to get ourselves a, you know, worked into a mob. And once mob start fighting, there's no telling what will come out of it. 01:05:29:01 - 01:10:31:03 Speaker 1 And good will not necessarily prevail. It will be violence everywhere. And the only thing that that comes up after that is what didn't get killed. As the mob tramples over everything, burns down buildings, destroys economies, breaks off into civil war, and the the only way to stop mob action is why I'm such a big supporter of you and what you what you do with the battle of ideas is to have people talk, and to have people that talk that vociferously disagree, but have them talk as opposed to show up on the streets and fight. 01:10:31:05 - 01:11:01:07 Speaker 1 Well, clear. As we've been talking, I, just came up with, I think, a new question I'm going to start asking guests for for the foreseeable future, which is on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the the world is on fire. How close is the UK to a civil war where there's actual battling in the streets over the next government? 01:11:01:09 - 01:12:01:12 Speaker 1 A three okay. 01:12:01:14 - 01:12:09:22 Speaker 1 Well, Baroness Claire Fox, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.