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"Maoism In The West" with Prof. David Martin Jones · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a human, this episode is a part of the Permission to Think series, which is a collaboration
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  that I do with the University of Technology Sydney, whose Dean of Social Sciences, Alan
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  Davison, Professor, Alan Davison, is a breath of fresh air and Australian education. He's
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  trying to create something unique at UTS, which is a space for genuine inquiry and intellectual
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  fearlessness and the kinds of values of debate and consideration of other opinions, even
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  if they're weird or even if they're outside the mainstream, even if they're currently
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  politically or culturally unfashionable. He wants UTS to be the place where people who
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  are actually interested in the vibrant exchange of ideas can go and not feel like they're
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  just going to go and learn the way that they're supposed to think in the, given the cultural
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  climate that we happen to live in in Western liberal democracies in 2022. Therefore, he and
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  I are collaborating on this series, a Permission to Think. And today's guest is another academic,
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  Professor David Martin Jones, who has a PhD in political thought from the London School
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  of Economics. He now teaches at King's College, London, those two shabby places. Never heard
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  of him, have you? King's College, London School of Economics. He's particularly interesting
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  because he has some experience and specialty and understanding of Asia. He was a political
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  science lecturer at the National University of Singapore. He is an associate editor of the
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  University of Malaya's Southeast Asian Studies Journal. And the reason why this is important
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  is because he's developed a thesis where he sees echoes of Maoism, of Mao's cultural revolution
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  in the West today. You know, you hear sometimes people, the Jordan Peterson of the world will
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  talk about Marxism in universities and so on, which is always a little bit of an awkward fit. It's
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  not quite right that these people are being Marxist materialists, but maybe the kinds of people who
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  are enforcing speech codes and who are very up on trigger warnings and canceling people for saying
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  the wrong thing and enforcing a certain doctrine way of understanding the world as a group of power
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  struggles between identity groups, maybe their intellectual descendants or ancestors, rather.
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  A more the sort of Maoist thinkers who tried to impose a cultural revolution on a population
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  rather than Marxist ones who were fermenting a literal economic revolution. Anyway,
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  I have a listen to David's ideas. If you find them dull or uninteresting then towards the second
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  half of the conversation we talk about all kinds of other things as well. He's certainly an
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  interesting mind. He was just in Australia visiting and I was glad to be able to grab a little bit of his
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  his time. I hope you enjoy Professor David Martin Jones for this installment of UTS's permission to
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  do something. What is a happening in the West that is reminiscent of terrorism? Well, quite a lot.
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  Basically, the interesting thing about Maoism in its cultural revolutionary version in the 60s
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  was that it saw culture as the weak points that needed rectification. So the influence of the
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  cultural revolution in the West in the 60s was hugely important for a generation of thinkers and
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  writers, particularly in France. So from from the mid 60s those who had previously become increasingly
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  disillusioned both with Moscow style communism Marxism and become increasingly dissatisfied with U.S.
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  led democracy because of the Vietnam war and other wars. A generation found the Maoist experiment
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  particularly appealing and it was in Paris particularly that a generation of thinkers and writers
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  Zhong Godor and then the whole deconstructionist group of thinkers like Michelle Foucault,
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  Alan Badgear, Philippe Solet and Julia Christopher all became enthusiasts for cultural
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  evolution, the activities of the red guards in assaulting culture or seeing culture as the basis
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  for a complete revolution, a complete new spirit. And those thinkers of course were hugely
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  influential on left academic thinking going forwards from the influence that deconstruction has
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  subsequently hard on both British American or Australian universities. And Maoism versus Marxism
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  because the focus in Maoism is about reshaping culture rather than politics. That's right. I mean
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  it's quite interesting Mao was a very original thinker in many ways. Although the embraced Marxist
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  Leninism Stalinism he was particularly uncomfortable with the idea that, or chemically uncomfortable
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  with the idea that it's the economic base that determines the ideological superstructure.
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  So although initially he followed a pretty Stalinist model of collectivization
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  by the 60s he decided that the party had kind of calcified and required reanimation through
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  an internal rebellion or revolution that he orchestrated that would remove all the cultural
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  attributes that still remain despite the revolution. So interestingly the way that's taken up
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  in Western thinking going forward is to see not the economic base as the basis for revolution
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  but the cultural superstructure. And this is the beginning of course of what Rudy Deutschka
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  following you know Mao himself coined the long march through the institutions and the long
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  marches of course a reference to Mao's long march to the Yanan case in the late 20s.
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  And Mao's conclusion about this is this because by the 60s it becomes apparent that in the Soviet
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  Union they're required to continue using these gray, stale, brutal techniques of repression in
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  order to entrench the control of the Communist Party in Russia and Mao wants to
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  what a reinvigoration of public allegiance to those ideals that he thinks can only happen
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  through through culture. Is it from learning from the Soviets that he's taking this or is it
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  internal to China? I think it's internal to China because Chinese communism becomes increasingly
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  dissolutioned with post-Solunist Soviet politics. It sees as it's too soft. The Christoph is a
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  weaker diluted version of what Mao likes which is a hardcore Stalinist approach but it's also the
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  idea that the failings of the party in its economic programs is less relevant than its reanimation
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  of the spirit. So it's it's almost like a spiritual movement to obliterate the past in order to
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  build the new persona, the new Communist persona. So in Maoism it's always an emphasis on the will.
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  So even if the crops aren't growing if you wills hard enough and quote enough quotations from
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  the little red book then things will improve. And I mean that was not alien to the Soviet Union either
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  when you think about Lysenko and like the Soviet Stalin. That's true but I think the other aspect
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  that becomes quite important for Mao is that it's Marxism with Chinese characteristics. So it's both
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  about the complete renovation of the spirit through techniques of what you know early on an
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  American commentator T.H. White who was a journalist for a time or newsweek in China in the 40s
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  said the Yanan caves which was the commune from which the Maoist movement was born in the 40s
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  term the process is one of mindwashing or later translate it. Its later translation was
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  consciousness raising you know which then becomes the hallmark of that leftist radicalization
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  you know that anybody falls away from the the line whether it's the Trotsky-Eit line or a
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  Maoist line has to have their consciousness rebooted. With great things of course that is
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  great, gratefully, gratefully having their own themselves rebooted. So what does that look like
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  the culture test rebooting? How does Mao do it? Well it's through processes of rectification
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  during the cultural revolution during the 60s when the the other feature of Maoism is he emphasizes
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  early on the peasant as the basis of the revolution not the industrial worker because the peasant is
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  poor and blank. By the time you get to the cultural revolution of the 60s it's the young the young
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  are the carrier of the new message so it's the high schools and the students it's at Beijing
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  University Beidar that the first Garbeats are the huge character posters appear denouncing the old
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  guard in the Communist Party and calling for renewal. So the process is one of you know it goes
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  classically Chinese thinking in Confucianism and in Taoism there's the idea of rectification of
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  names to make names and things match. So the idea of rectification is to remodel the self
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  to fulfill the party's desired objectives and what should be the true party members are allegiance
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  and those who have fallen away from the party objectives in usually the universities you know
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  the university lectures and teachers were the first objects of rectification during the early
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  years of the cultural revolution from that 64 onwards and this involved not only public humiliation
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  but also you had to write essays rectifying yourself you know showing how you'd be misguided
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  apologizing and requiring punishment for your misdeeds which if you're lucky meant being sent
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  off to the high-long jian to work in the fields you know and if it was worse than that you had
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  denounced as a cow demon were made to war a dunce's hat a cow demon like a bovine
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  yeah well cow demons were particularly obviously nasty creatures.
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  cows are great some demons are even worse so I suppose a cow demon is worthy of name
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  so what you know when you talk about you'd have to write an apology and say that you were wrong
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  and demonstrate your allegiance to a different way of thinking that doesn't sound wholly unfamiliar
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  on a tiniere level I suppose today in the sense that we every week see someone
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  issuing a groveling PR statement about how they didn't realize that what they said was
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  offensive towards certain people and that they're going away to think hard about themselves
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  and to do some work on them themselves and now is not the time to form it a speak but to listen
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  and to be educated and so on nonetheless they're not being sent out to slave camps and they're not
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  being called cow demons so is it a stretch? I think the processes have been obviously modified in the
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  West you know I think the development in malism is not so much to say that techniques of
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  public denunciation were followed in a rigorously malist method but the influence of the idea of
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  rectification or self rectification the idea that particularly malice was very aware that
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  malism as a doctrine not just within China but globally exported relied on sympathetic or
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  gullible western interlocutors so from early on western liberals like Edgar Snow went to China
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  wrote glowingly about what was going on amongst the communists he just derived a mal as a lean
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  gaunt Lincoln-esque figure you know so it wasn't that the whole methodology of malism was copied
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  but the thinking behind malism about the need to see culture as the vehicle for transformation
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  of the society to undermine liberalism really so his early writings from the 1930s on contradiction
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  combat liberalism are all about pointing out that liberalism is weak it tolerates different
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  viewpoints it seeks to manage disagreements malism is all about pushing liberalism using liberalism
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  to undermine liberalism and then imposing the orthodoxy in through a sort of command and control
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  structure so it's it's quite interesting you know the the new left in the West became less interested
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  in violent revolution from the late 60s onwards but much more interested in cult capturing the
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  cultural centers of western thought and ideology really you know you're in Australia at a time when
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  there has been an ongoing simmering controversy over one of Sydney's most notorious and famous
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  radio presenters named Kyle Sandelunds who had a big spray against the management of his own
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  radio station a few weeks ago in which he said their idiots and their stupid and he called them
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  spazes figure-woying to spazes not a very polite thing to say now the spastic society and the
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  disability council have denounced him advertisers are saying they're reviewing that one of his
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  and I saw one of his colleagues or competitors Abby Chapfield come out recently saying that she
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  can't believe that he's still on the air everyone's awaiting the apology that may never come because
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  he's he's an option that time who doesn't doesn't play those sorts of games that example in my
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  example of sort of issuing the apology when you cross to a trip wire of using the wrong language
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  about a disadvantaged group whether that's a you know people living with disabilities or whether
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  there's transgender people or whatever that's one example that you might draw a link to to this
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  sort of purification of culture but what well I'd say more in other areas particularly in
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  university in the UK and the US I'm not sure if something's in Australia and academia for a while
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  but you have to make before you even apply for a job in states or in in the UK now
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  you have to sign up to various statements about diversity about anti-racism about a plethora
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  of politically correct behaviors and attitudes that are really very little to do with say
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  what your scholarship might be about whether it's you know sort of medical research or you know
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  historical research before your application is even looked at as a scholar you have to you know
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  write a letter adhering to a set of what we would now call woke guidelines you know and so if you
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  don't submit subscribe to that and and have questions about it for whatever reasons then
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  there's no chance of you getting a job and increasingly you know through various programs at
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  the university requires you to do for instance you know when you go on study leave I think you have
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  to fill in human resource forms you know showing that you've done various anti-racist anti-sexist
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  training you know that you are aware of workplace difference et cetera well this this is all part
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  of a a micro management of the cell that goes straight back on frame to chairman matter
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  so the skeptic to to that analysis will say look we've always had some form of gatekeeping
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  for such positions sometimes they're explicit like this sometimes they're hidden they're de facto
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  they're they're sort of baked into the structure of things it probably would have been very
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  difficult for a transgender woman to be accepted in those positions because should have been ruled
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  out of the gate in the 1950s there were you know obviously impediments for people of color to get
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  to get adequate representation in these places so what's wrong with sort of making explicit
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  the rejoinder to biases that were more tacit well I think that's a reasonable you know sort of
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  statement but on the other hand I think what we have a problem with it is that it seems then
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  to turn into not the consideration of your adequate qualification from the job in a sort of a
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  culture blind or you know color blind application process that the tendency to overcompensate
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  for minorities creates divisions within society that it's seeking presumably to heal it seems
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  to be doing the exact opposite seems to me and I suppose the other the other criticism could
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  be along the lines of maybe a slippery slope type thinking that look you know you wouldn't allow
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  you might require somebody to to disavow Nazism if we were in the 1940s and so if we've if we've
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  communally and collectively established that certain things would be on the panel like racism
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  in 2022 or sexism then where's the harm in ensuring that everybody is on the same page as a
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  but technique or a strategy to eliminate hate speech well here's a whole problem with you know
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  that's a hate speech you know immediately sort of evokes a number go on go let's start it let's
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  start it because it's an easy I mean I think this is a there's an easy one to knock down I think in
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  the sense that there's been hate speech inflation yeah a bigotry inflation such that even you
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  know to question whether or not one should be performatively announcing that it's deeply important
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  to us that we're standing on the land that was traditionally inhabited by the owners
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  yeah what be considered hate speech yes but it also seems to be a ritualistic performance now like
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  taking the knee at you know football matches I mean it's sort of it becomes a kind of banal
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  gestural politics I might you know the the idea that you know a minority populations might have
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  been discriminated against in various ways particularly say in the 60s and 70s there's been a
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  huge transformation you know I mean you see minority communities being well represented at every
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  level of public services in the private sector and you know the more society has you know in
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  its sort of performances has become less and less racist there seems to be an elite preoccupation
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  of making an awareness of discrimination in the past something that you you've got to be
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  feel guilty about if you're part of the dominant you know kind of culture I have heard someone say
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  that there's a supply and demand problem that people who want to have us constantly thinking about
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  hate speech which is that there's just not not enough real flagrant racists wondering around
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  anymore so we have to accuse everybody of being right and then it has to be not all exactly the same
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  well it's the the K&D Andrews you know line Birmingham sociology the sociologist who for
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  argues that if you're not actively anti-racist then you must be a racist well that doesn't seem to
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  be to be logical at all you know that you can be perfectly tolerant of anybody from various
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  backgrounds that if you have to be positively anti-racist this seems to be another form of this
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  Maoist you know enthusiasm that doesn't I think the area that's become increasingly worrying from
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  this sort of Western that there's a simulation of this cultural revolution remodel is as with Mao
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  it goes it doesn't allow for discrimination between the public and the private you know so
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  one of the things about hate speech regulation you know the college of policing in the UK have
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  even you know followed up is people making private remarks on social media between say family members
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  and this becomes an issue for the state this is um you know the basis of totalitarianism one
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  or one really yeah is there a risk oh well let's talk about the cultural aspect of that before
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  we talk about the legal or political aspect of that what is the importance of having a private why is
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  it why is someone who's listening to this and goes well I don't really think it's ever okay to be
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  flagrantly racist and sexist so why should I respect the right of somebody to be privately racist
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  and sexist anymore than I would respect their right to be publicly racist and sexist like don't
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  go around killing babies in public or private well there's been killing babies and saying you
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  don't like babies isn't it and the the idea that in in the private realm you you might be in a pub
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  with a bunch of blokes and make an off-color joke that you you know that doesn't mean you are a racist
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  or a sexist it just means that people have never been as pure as puritanism always wanted them
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  to be you know and there is an element you know not in the amountism but um kaltish puritanical
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  thinking that informs the that the current um woke ideology I think so in addition to
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  these kinds of statements of agreement with anti-racist policies that academics might have to sign
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  and uh in addition to uh what one like broadly called cancel culture which we can uh we come
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  back to are there any other specific examples that you can think of that real alarm bells for you
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  well I tell you where I think it's gone quite interestingly airshade at the moment is if you think
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  that the idea of animating malism is the assault on the cultural foundations or say western
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  liberalism basically so that now um you know uh Shakespeare or um any major um thinker or writer
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  has to have a you know trigger warning attached to his views and obviously you know they're
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  they're writing in context that are very different from from the contemporary world and you read
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  into them an anachronistic kind of hatred that wasn't really there you know I mean they were writing
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  in a in a historical context that is very different from our own and and to judge them by contemporary
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  standards is is an act of flavor and advocacy rather than scholarship um so so there's that issue
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  but I think the the further evolution of the whole assault on culture and the privileging of
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  positions around promoting people on grounds of ethnic marginalization rather than say talent
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  together with the idea that the whole of western society has to be governed by not only these
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  kind of governance criteria but environmental and social governance criteria and the way that
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  has now fed into the business sector into corporates policy and particularly into the the way in
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  which investment funds and pension funds invest in products that have the um ESG in from in
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  premature is actually ESG meaning environmental social governance criteria which are laid down
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  through united nations approved regulations you know so as as one recent American writer calls it
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  the triumph of work capitalism is actually undermining the performance of of western market economies
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  whereas in say China or well China particularly there's there's no none of these governance criteria
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  apply so ironically you know that it's almost a reverse of the Marxist dialectic you start with
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  instead of starting with the economic base and radicalizing the proletariat to overtake the
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  means of production to defeat the capitalist class it's kind of the other way round in the
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  Maoist cultural revolution modality that has spread into the west whereby you assault the cultural
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  foundations and through that you impose criteria on your own capitalist infrastructure that renders
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  it increasingly incompetent because it's so overwhelmed with this kind of new cool bureaucratic
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  regulation that it has to pass through before it makes a widget or constructor you know a micro
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  processor and the and those conditions may not only hobble your companies they may actually
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  hobble the cultural conversation about the ideas that the their proponents want to see discussed
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  in the sense that those ideas then become co-opted by giant corporations with easy slogans
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  instead of actually getting your hands dirty and addressing racism or sexism or whatever it is
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  that you want to address you know that that's right there's a whole rhetoric here that in many ways
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  advertises these these kinds of statements there's almost they're almost fashion statements really
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  you know and again it's not surprising that Hollywood and you know advertising agencies and banks
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  you know find the image repertoire that it embraces through these kind of virtue signaling gestures
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  doesn't actually mean that they're addressing the real problems that people are facing in an
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  increasingly tough recessionary you know energy light in environment which Europe the most sort
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  of workplace on the planet has has embraced you know why is Europe the most workplace on the planet
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  well I think Europe and particularly the UK have become you know so over governed by an elite
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  what so David good at heart there's called an anywhere class that sees itself as
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  beyond any kind of cultural attachment to anywhere but anywhere that is approved of by a kind
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  of Davos community where they go and have their regular meetings to say how environmentally
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  pure and green and moral they all are despite being you know in the top two percent of the
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  population whilst the you know the struggling masses are increasingly rendered voiceless and
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  the EU is is a particularly good example of that kind of new class thinking that you know runs
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  in a elite association of global connections and particularly European connections whilst the
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  communities that who haven't even voted for the EU you know they voted for the national governments
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  now face massive energy price rises because of the failure to invest in gas and nuclear you know
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  when Europe is low on all those basic energy needs that you it sounds to me like you're coming
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  back to the Marxist economic or political question and destroying from the most cultural one because
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  well it may be the case that one can make that critique of Europe if I was going to name the most
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  workplace in the world it would probably be the US or at least Silicon Valley or California or
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  or Brooklyn in the sense that in which part of the world are you most likely to see someone with
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  their pronouns in their signatures in their email in which part of the world are you most likely
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  to get fired for telling a joke that was sexist I mean a French person is less likely to get hauled
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  before HR for making a sexist show that's that's fair point the way I put it in the book on the
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  strategy of Maoism in the West is that you know Maoism as a doctrine you know came out of you
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  Yunnan caves was hot house in Paris by the deconstructionist movement and then found its natural
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  home in the Ivy League schools of America when they you know sort of impressed the deconstructed
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  deconstructive methodology to undermine the traditional perception of the arts and social sciences
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  so you're quite right you know the in some sense is the America is the the center of this kind
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  of speech regulating control of thought and attitude particularly you know the the left coast of
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  America on the other hand America still has a vigorous press and independent colleges that
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  they're able to you know mountain alternative viewpoint in Europe there is less of the you know
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  pronoun identification phenomenon and other aspects of wokeness yet at the same time you know
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  if you look to practices of the EU it is far more of our exercises far more regularity of capacity
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  than the American government can in you know it's various because of the very nature of the
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  federal constitution in the states so the EU has created a particularly bureaucratic structure
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  perhaps you know less evidently woke than what's coming out of the left coast but nevertheless
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  on a very similar trajectory and you know out of Brussels comes lots of regulation on gender
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  race migration issues that is creating a far more virulent populism in Europe at the moment
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  than maybe in in the states you know obviously you know the QAnon demonstrations are still
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  animating the Democrats in in Washington America I mean I am coming back to the fair and
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  Marxist line America is not suffering you know I mean it's it's not going to have the kind of
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  deep recession that that Europe is currently facing and and that is in turn it's not that it's
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  feeding anything work it's feeding the reactions of wokeness you know through these rising populist
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  movements that interestingly China and Russia are quite keen on manipulating you know so various times
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  Putin has pointed out that you know obviously he wants to unite his Slavic world which is not going
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  too well but in his defense he's saying I am fighting for the rights of a man to be a man and a
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  woman to be a woman and I approve of you know the the idea that the basic family unit is is a male
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  female construction you know for he's also kicking in their heads of gay people on the streets of
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  yeah yeah absolutely he's you know not exactly tolerant kind of but he he does express a conservative
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  traditional view that has been you know completely smashed by wokeness in say the UK or
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  northern Europe but there is also this you know sort of sense of a disenfranchised precarious class
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  looking for some form of reassertion of what it saw as you know traditional values so I mean
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  just to continue on with with Marxist or materialist explanations of all this the question that's
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  floating in the background is like why now why you know if malism happened the cultural revolution
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  happened in the sixties then why have we waited a half century oh I take a seat yeah
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  down and one possible explanation that sometimes gets a penny to bat and perhaps one explanation
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  why it's worse on some levels in the in the states than it is in Europe is that there are underlying
• 33:30
  economic reasons for a mass dissolution linked with the established way of doing things and maybe
• 33:36
  the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 and then the pandemic supercharged it and turned into the
• 33:44
  George Floyd protests so on it that people are clutching for explanations
• 33:49
  for cultural explanations fundamentally I think you know if we can slightly we cast that
• 33:56
  in a different book I've written you know in 2020 called history's fools the pursuit of idealism
• 34:02
  and the revenge of politics it it argues that not all Maoist lines but along similarly ideological
• 34:09
  lines that the end of history moment that sort of captured the elites in the west and the idea of
• 34:17
  a borderless world that was fashionable from the 1990s onwards which was you know the whole world
• 34:24
  economic forum vision and that would create both endless growth greater you know global integration
• 34:32
  through both regional and international bodies and that it was only a matter of time before
• 34:40
  you know China became a democracy Russia would inexorably democratize because liberalism had
• 34:47
  had shown itself to be the only doctrine that was sustainable at the end of the Cold War now
• 34:53
  that held you know almost for a decade I suppose under you know the third way thinking of
• 34:59
  Tony Giddens you know Tony Blair's intellectual guru the Lord Giddens and was vice
• 35:07
  charter or director of the LSE the broadly this Blair I to Clinton I yeah that's right that's
• 35:14
  sort of the same sense that that was the and that was becoming already increasingly woke in
• 35:20
  its sort of understandings of integrating minorities etc but at the same time it was a seamless
• 35:28
  movement towards global integration and the disintegration of states so regions became the
• 35:36
  the new unit of you know identity plus you know you get people like Jungkars the former president
• 35:44
  of the European Commission saying borders were the worst things ever invented you know so and he
• 35:51
  says that in 2015 when migrants so when Angela Merkel has basically opened Europe to as many
• 36:00
  migrants who let this one to come there so the the limit was that liberal vision that end of history
• 36:06
  vision that's still kicking around in elite circles that came catastrophically apart both economically
• 36:15
  from the financial crisis of from the layman brothers fall and then the euro crisis but also in
• 36:22
  terms of its liberal wars of intervention in both Iraq and Afghanistan which proved so catastrophic
• 36:29
  really just to pick up on one point when you say that Blair and Clinton were sort of the
• 36:35
  were sort of woke in I don't think we may have work inflation here in this in the well I just
• 36:46
  want you to explain what you mean by work because is it the case that any attempt to redress historical
• 36:51
  injustice by increasing the representation of historically marginalized communities is
• 36:57
  prime facie woke I wouldn't say prime facie woke I think that worry is about
• 37:02
  rationally instrumentalizing that democracy should should have direct representation for minorities
• 37:12
  on the basis that they are a percentage of the population rather than seeing everybody as a
• 37:18
  member of a polity and you know but didn't we get to a point at which it was clear that there were
• 37:24
  some kind of there were various kinds of ineffable structural impediments that weren't moving
• 37:29
  fast enough and so the people in those communities felt like well it's all very well to be sort of
• 37:33
  color blind and gender blind and ethnicity blind about all this but something's holding us back and
• 37:39
  so we need some sort of well there was all this argument effect I suppose but I mean yeah initially
• 37:46
  came out of the second wave feminist movement saying that you know women are being marginalized
• 37:53
  into the family rather than into jobs but that was an argument and the argument became increasingly
• 37:58
  persuasive I don't know whether you actually needed targets together targeting seems to me to be
• 38:05
  a rationalist device that that promotes discord rather than accord I mean over time one would say
• 38:14
  you know as the argument was made about say women's rights you know sort of John Stuart Millard
• 38:22
  Harriet Taylor you know arguing that women were underrepresented in the 1860s movements of
• 38:28
  second wave you know like a second wave feminism in the 60s arguing for far more female representation
• 38:36
  the argument was made you know intellectually and women were already you know taking more and
• 38:44
  more but Robert isn't at the point David it is not much of a consolation to the women who
• 38:48
  who want to see greater equality to say this argument was made 160 years ago they'd say well
• 38:52
  precisely it was made 160 years yeah but it was all ready we're going to straddle in parliament
• 38:56
  it's still all you know it's still overwhelmingly well not all that would be an exact right it was
• 39:02
  still it's still majority yeah and the and CEOs I mean 55 you know puts your companies and all that
• 39:09
  now they may be other reasons that one could go into Jordan Peterson would write another book
• 39:13
  about why you know you need a certain type of personality that is more commonly found
• 39:19
  among males for jolton for jobs like CEOs or presidents but they're certainly a derth of
• 39:28
  of women in areas which you know feminist still care deeply about seeing representation in
• 39:32
  yeah but I think you know it it is in a western democracy where you have a liberal pluralism
• 39:40
  that opens itself up to those kinds of criticisms that yeah there are structural factors
• 39:47
  impeding women and minorities to to a degree but the arguments are made in terms of their
• 39:56
  intellectual plausibility changes have been made you know they they have been attempts to
• 40:03
  regulate precisely you know populations that should be represented across the board in a
• 40:10
  a model arrangement but this is sort of trying to preempt it's an argument out of equality
• 40:16
  and instead of it being an equality of opportunity it becomes an equality of outcome
• 40:21
  which doesn't necessarily enhance the outcomes that are necessarily thought to be you know
• 40:28
  most effective so would you I mean would your argument just to close the the chapter on that
• 40:33
  report of the conversation be just be egalitarian about this treat people on their merits and then
• 40:40
  wait they're rather than having targets but just be patient yeah I think you know that the reforms
• 40:46
  are around equality of opportunity no you know color blindness gender blindness allow you know
• 40:54
  equal opportunities for all across the board and allow the processes of cultural connection
• 41:02
  integration in the private sphere it emerges you see you know in in communities that I know in
• 41:10
  London you know but were you know more and more or less ethnically divided in the 60s and 70s
• 41:19
  over time they're they're much more integrated you know sort of long-standing for instance
• 41:25
  West Indian populations in West or South London or you know totally integrated within our you
• 41:33
  know sort of a London South London in a kind of mentality they share the same interests they follow
• 41:42
  the same soccer teams you know they go to the same bars they like the same music it's only the
• 41:49
  sort of a middle class elite who actually probably are not that integrated with you know they live
• 41:56
  in their nimbi you know kind of areas which are almost ghetto eyes now so that they are imposing
• 42:03
  the sort of criteria against what is perhaps naturally occurring without having to have it
• 42:10
  forced down people's throats you know which is what a lot of you know working people
• 42:16
  kind of resent I think and that then leads to back lashes that can become ugly which are
• 42:22
  completely unnecessary you know I mean you know that there is a whole problem of you know
• 42:28
  allowing groups to integrate through their own a kind of natural osmosis in a liberal society
• 42:36
  that that that that was you know it was quite clearly occurring in the UK as Goodhart argues between
• 42:45
  the 60s and the 90s the problem that has caused more tensions in places like the UK is the open
• 42:53
  slather migration policies that Tony Blair allowed from 97 onwards you know there was a migration
• 43:03
  that levels of you know the size size of cities of Bristol or Cardiff a year you know and that
• 43:10
  wasn't actually necessary as part of the EU as I understand it right I mean other countries like
• 43:14
  Germany didn't do no they didn't have he actually left further than the European average and for
• 43:19
  very cynical motives you know because he thought what would be natural labor voters right you know
• 43:25
  right you know sort of you know see that it's funny yeah yeah it's a funny thing you know
• 43:31
  David from I think it was who's been I guess on this show said you know liberals don't enforce
• 43:36
  borders then fascists will yeah meaning that you have to give people this a sense of control over
• 43:43
  their own country otherwise they're gonna they're gonna act out in nasty ways and this is this is a
• 43:48
  great Australian moral conundrum that sort of stains the conscience of Australia going back
• 43:53
  since the end of the Second World War which is that we've made a bit of a fast impact with ourselves
• 43:58
  which is that we'll have the most well started in the 80s really we'll have the most horrendously
• 44:03
  inhumane policy towards people who come here in an unauthorized fashion and we'll lock them up
• 44:09
  in perpetuity in desert camps in remote Pacific islands and at the same time will be one of the
• 44:15
  most generous countries in the world to the humanitarian resettlement of refugees and have very high
• 44:19
  levels of immigration on the bed that the that the middle Australian voter will tolerate the latter
• 44:26
  because of the former and will tolerate high levels of immigration as long as they have a
• 44:30
  sense of control over who's coming into the country well I think they're you know that is a form
• 44:38
  of the social contract isn't it I mean that the thing besetting Europe at the moment is migration
• 44:44
  I mean you know the UK has generally been pre-tolerant part of the world in my experience and
• 44:52
  there was no problem with you know levels of migration that were stable in the 80s and 90s
• 45:00
  and you know that by the mid 90s you know the UK had a very stable Asian West Indian you know
• 45:08
  Afro-Caribbean population that had you know migrated since the Second World War and there was more
• 45:16
  net outflow than inflow of population you know so you had a kind of a stable evolving
• 45:22
  integrated culturally diverse but you know pretty successful arrangement that the problem comes
• 45:29
  with Blair's opening under as you say you know going beyond EU regs to allow
• 45:38
  massive migration really on the level of over 250,000 a year and then that sort of inability to
• 45:45
  control borders after that has left an incredibly you know mounting legacy of increasing dissolution
• 45:54
  and disaffection and it's going to be exacerbated of course by growing recession repressures you know
• 46:01
  once unemployment kicks in once you know energy prices is soaring through the roof and governments
• 46:08
  little relief you know that the potential for disintegrating rather than integrating communities
• 46:15
  becomes more and more cute and of course that whole that whole Blairite gambit ended up being
• 46:21
  a huge own goal in the sense that it's possible that Brexit wouldn't have happened had it not been
• 46:25
  for the disillusionment was created by that and that was precisely the sort of thing that the people
• 46:29
  who were in favor of high immigration rates would have championed Brexit I mean you know
• 46:33
  remaining in the EU that's fine and they you know they shot themselves in the foot by going too far
• 46:38
  too fast are you worried about the about populist far right in Europe to a degree yeah I think there's
• 46:47
  elements there that are concerning you know I think which concerns you more the I think the
• 46:53
  the the groups around Peguida you know the the German fascist groups some of the the white right
• 47:02
  groups that influence you know people like tenant in in Australia to do the so there's a lot of
• 47:08
  material out there that's quite um eugenically disturbing so I think we've got a distinguish between
• 47:15
  those who are populist in the sense of wanting certain traditional understandings and stability
• 47:23
  not mass migration and and wanting to to have control of their not only their own borders but
• 47:29
  their own governments not being dictated to by Europe so um certain elements of populism are
• 47:37
  completely about uh sustaining traditional understandings of say Christian conservative values
• 47:46
  they're not particularly liberal but they're not racist eugenicist extremists you know so
• 47:53
  somebody like Maloney in Italy is a rather interesting phenomenon I think because she's been
• 47:59
  tall odd as being uh you know brothers of Italy being a straight continuation of Mussolini's
• 48:04
  style fascism but actually in her you know many of her statements she's saying that she's a an
• 48:11
  admirer of conservative thinkers like Roger Scruton yeah she would like to be a Tory she said although
• 48:18
  there's no Tories there in UK that very few in Italy I don't know yes um do you think we'll see
• 48:26
  more of that then I mean can you imagine there being a another major exit from the EU a continental
• 48:32
  well a significant continental country exiting the EU what happens this winter is going to be
• 48:39
  incredibly insignificant for the EU given the potential energy crisis that will be generated
• 48:46
  by a harsh winter you know and particularly in Germany you know because Germany has been the
• 48:52
  the economic bedrock of of the EU really did you see that even Greta Tunberg came out and said
• 48:57
  that Germany yeah that Germany was crazy for not going more nuclear yeah I did yeah she suddenly
• 49:03
  of nuclear incision yes it is very interesting and well many let many left wing climate people who
• 49:08
  are very rigorous on the science you know are coming around to that way of thinking it's just
• 49:12
  not a fashionable thing it's just yeah I saw but that is the obvious way out for both conservative
• 49:21
  and you know uh social democrat green you know ish thinking to say well nuclear is the obvious
• 49:29
  way to go the trouble is over the next you know it would take some I've been told it's only like
• 49:34
  10 years to generate the small um nuclear reactors that rolls voices developing at the moment you know
• 49:42
  they've got a you know system you know they've got a model in place that could provide for
• 49:47
  small scale nuclear reactors that are not going to lead to large you know uranium deposits
• 49:57
  so so the problem is that you know there's been a total failure of policy on energy
• 50:04
  across Europe you know in order to I mean not just your up at here as well it's really
• 50:09
  that is having totally confused as just not know what to do about the conjunction of the climate
• 50:14
  crisis with our you know reliance on fossil fuels mining with our super abundant renewable resource
• 50:21
  but also the fact that we are an athlete that nuclear is an athlete to Australians for some reason
• 50:25
  so we've not found that that right mix and the problem is the you know the renewables are not
• 50:32
  that renewable in themselves you know um you know when wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine
• 50:38
  you don't get no energy this is the problem what here we probably do have enough but you
• 50:42
  mean I mean you may need some supplemental base load power that some people say could be nuclear
• 50:46
  good to have that you would have had to be investing in nuclear 20 years ago because as you say there's
• 50:50
  still a lag and by the time we wait for nuclear to become viable here we probably will have good
• 50:54
  enough battery technology that we can tide ourselves over when the sun's not shining that wind's
• 50:58
  not blowing but these are things that need to have been wrestled with in in the year 2000 obviously
• 51:02
  it's 20.2 you know the idea that you know in Europe obviously gas is a huge problem because some
• 51:12
  they the the German economy that decided to get rid of nuclear under miracle after you know
• 51:18
  because of its reaction to Fukushima in Japan you know is it you know you think well
• 51:22
  haven't been that many earthquakes or titles so normally it's in Germany and we're lost you know
• 51:29
  a couple of decades but on the basis of that after about 2012 you know the miracle government
• 51:35
  under green influence decided to cut to remove all its nuclear reactors you know so three of
• 51:41
  well I mean they were assuming that Nord Stream and yeah and Russia was going to be the future right
• 51:46
  yeah although you know this was always to be the gas provision was always towards you know
• 51:52
  was a transitional fuel wasn't it to the to our new house yeah renewable you know net zero
• 52:00
  purity you know and the problem was you know a well you know relying on Russia seems to have
• 52:07
  gone pear shaped but three nuclear reactors closed in December 2021 in Germany yeah and
• 52:16
  that there were three more supposed to close this year but they've decided to try and you know
• 52:21
  going and nuclear in France we know France was very far-sighted on nuclear you know because
• 52:26
  it didn't have norse gas or oil in the 80s and meter on but they've they've allowed their
• 52:33
  nuclear technologies to decline so they're not as efficiently producing the amount of fuel
• 52:39
  that France France is going to have problems this year really I thought they were an exporter
• 52:43
  I mean ten years ago they were selling nuclear energy electricity to the labors you know they
• 52:47
  they've got the lack of investment in the nuclear oh even though EDF is one of the top you know
• 52:53
  nuclear power providers or you know nuclear reactor designers they still have problems at the
• 53:03
  moment with their nuclear and that was providing them with 80% of their energy only a few years back
• 53:10
  it's now dropped and you know that one of the egregious features of this coming back to work
• 53:16
  capitalism is the way in which you know you could offset your carbon you know so rather than
• 53:25
  develop you know still a viable fields in the North Sea the UK government from Blair through
• 53:33
  Brown to Cameron to you know May and Johnson we're all committed to this you know pursuit of net
• 53:41
  zero and in order to do that to get green virtuousness they offset their carbon emissions so they
• 53:49
  were using gas but rather than get it from the North Sea they get it from a Middle East or
• 53:56
  Libya in order to say well we're not using gas but you know Libya and oh I think they're not
• 54:03
  the producers shows up on a different column of the balance it's the equivalent I've argued
• 54:09
  purchasing indulgences in the 16th century you know if you think about how the Vatican was built
• 54:18
  in Rome it was built by mass sale of indulgences for people's sins in order to create the
• 54:25
  you know a very beautiful Vatican city however that process of indulgent sales you know which
• 54:33
  any religious serious faith-based thinker would find egregious like Martin Luther said well you
• 54:41
  know that the church has become infected with corruption we need to start a new church you got
• 54:47
  the reformation and you've got some religious wars going on for a hundred years this offset thing
• 54:54
  is the equivalent of the papal indulgence in the 16th century which gets a virtuous tick from
• 55:01
  environmental corporate governance investment portfolios well I suppose it depends whether it
• 55:06
  actually has a non-legrand impact if you're if you're you know if you're paying Brazil not to burn
• 55:11
  down the rainforest then maybe that's good if you're buying something to shift numbers around
• 55:15
  a little ledger maybe not but anyway let's not go down climate because yes let's come back to
• 55:19
  let's wrap by coming back to the original point here which is this impact that this sort of
• 55:25
  malice idea of cultural revolution that then bleeds into French academia is now having
• 55:32
  as ripple effects today how is academia doing today how is freedom of
• 55:40
  conversation freedom of thought exploration of ideas doing or is that too broad
• 55:46
  well no it's not too broad just isn't happening
• 55:48
  what must I was I said to you because I suspected these in some disciplines I mean maybe in the study
• 55:55
  of artificial intelligence or something oh yeah it's a wildly flourishing yeah but maybe well
• 56:01
  it's quite interesting you know from figures I've you know looked at in the UK and probably
• 56:06
  in Australia too because of the imposition of an agenda around you know platforming you know
• 56:14
  trigger warnings etc and a sort of presentation of history as a kind of a moral agatel you know
• 56:22
  where people are judged you know anachronistically on whether they were pro or anti you know
• 56:28
  feminist transgender in whatever criteria in the 16th century there's been you know a notable
• 56:36
  decline in students you know now studying English literature when I suspect increasingly
• 56:43
  history at university yeah it was actually a story out for the last week that in Australia in the
• 56:48
  past 10 years ancient history has halved a lot of students taking ancient history in Australia that
• 56:53
  university has halved in 10 years so I you know whether that's with the imposition of these kinds
• 57:00
  of you know trigger warning criteria or just growing indifference is hard to say but I think one
• 57:07
  of the points that you know maybe it hasn't been made which you know it is part of that
• 57:13
  malice dynamic is that it likes to promote indignation and rage you know rather than
• 57:20
  reasonable debates and and it feeds off what Andrew McIntyre the philosopher of beyond virtue
• 57:30
  argued in the 80s that because of the incremental ability of our ethical political you know
• 57:37
  understandings that rights, utility, justice or values but they they conflict there is no
• 57:46
  possibility you know it's like the idea around equality of opportunity and equality of outcome
• 57:50
  there is always a conflict you should appoint more you know mine was and if you don't do more
• 57:57
  then you know this is absolutely intolerable from you know that position of social justice
• 58:03
  but from a you know a pure utility economic perspective you say well no I don't agree with that
• 58:09
  that's treating one as more than one you know in terms of utility preferences so there is a complete
• 58:17
  incremental ability of values that's emerged within liberalism was always at the heart of liberalism
• 58:22
  really from the 19th century but by the 20th century it had begun because of that incremental
• 58:29
  ability and because there was a greater emphasis on feeling and emotion which was all part of the
• 58:35
  malice thinking but part of the culture itself you know the me decayed the narcissism was all
• 58:41
  around my emotions my feelings the protest and indignation became the the carriers of a kind of
• 58:50
  public moral message the more committed you were the more indignant you were the more you protested
• 58:56
  you had a if you're not angry you're not paying attention that's right as well as a slow yes yes
• 59:01
  and just to clarify the incremental ability you lost me there a bit that's the incremental ability
• 59:06
  between treating each individual as an individual on the basis of their merits and respecting the
• 59:12
  sanctity of each individual human being and the value of equality of outcome that's right that you
• 59:19
  can't have those two things be the same in an unequal well it means well if someone's being
• 59:24
  privileged you know in terms of outcomes in terms of their minority victim status if they get a
• 59:31
  special tick you know in terms of promotion or you know appointment but as opposed to someone who
• 59:39
  doesn't have you know a victim status then you're counting one is more than one and in a in a
• 59:45
  classic utilitarian you know framework going back to Bentham you know one counts for one
• 59:51
  and only one right you know I see I see yeah so egalitarianism and sort of the rights of the
• 59:58
  individual are at issue there but where is that yeah sorry well just because the you know the
• 1:00:05
  the language of discourse has become so inflamed by you know you either see my position or you
• 1:00:13
  know there's something wrong with you the basis for reasoned argument has become diminished
• 1:00:20
  as protest and indignation become the the signifiers of a commitment that shows anybody who
• 1:00:29
  doesn't have that you know it is obviously defective in some ways so the context of arguments
• 1:00:37
  and the self assertive shrillness that sort of is invoked in various protests you know
• 1:00:45
  modalities means that these protesters are often you know talking to themselves because their
• 1:00:52
  arguments you know that it merely reinforces their truth if you are against the those who sit outside
• 1:01:01
  and worryingly you know that the context of political debate has become a kind of internal civil
• 1:01:09
  war rather than source for what was classic localism compromise adjustments you know and reason
• 1:01:16
  compromise not driven by in motion of slubeneering and speaking of income insurability there's an
• 1:01:22
  income insurability inside that civil war in the sense that lived experience has now become
• 1:01:30
  you know who gets to tell whose stories and who gets to say what about what is now a sort of a
• 1:01:35
  trump card that can also be used so it's not even really possible for you to have a policy
• 1:01:41
  debate with someone from a marginalized community about a policy towards that marginalized
• 1:01:46
  community because you lack a standing essentially to a certain have an opinion about it because the
• 1:01:50
  lived experience Trump's reason that's right and then that that's that almost the complete
• 1:01:56
  antithesis of where liberal thinking began you know if you look at John Locke's to treatises you know
• 1:02:03
  the idea of the minimal stated lock was was to create the idea of an umpire who was not involved
• 1:02:12
  you know that if property owners or whatever were in conflict or you know if somebody had ripped
• 1:02:19
  you off on a contract and you took the executive power of nature into your own hands and punished them
• 1:02:26
  you know excessively because your your emotions were involved this was the reason why you created
• 1:02:34
  a legal framework a constitution that would act as a an umpire between contesting you know
• 1:02:42
  claimants to the idea was that the the law was about being a good umpire in a cricket match
• 1:02:50
  rules are not picking up you know yeah and of course those rules were I mean we we can add all
• 1:02:56
  of the usual caveats about the fact that those rules were made at a time when only white male
• 1:03:01
  property owners were able to have a say or to be to be claiming on the court at all but nonetheless
• 1:03:05
  the principle the process would imagine should extend to all people in any year or eventually it
• 1:03:10
  you're part of the demos then yeah yeah then it sort of extends you know I mean lock was writing
• 1:03:16
  what he was writing in the context of a particular you know civil you know dissent between a
• 1:03:22
  you know catholic protocathlete monarchy and a we golegarchy so you know it was you know kind of
• 1:03:31
  structured in terms of particular debate but it's broader argument which fed into the American
• 1:03:37
  constitution was all about limitation of powers and the idea that you know the law the law was
• 1:03:44
  the was a commonly shared understanding between the citizenry that it wasn't something that
• 1:03:52
  an arbitrary um authority could erect overuse you know so the the executive always fulfilled
• 1:04:00
  the requirements of a a community who who ultimately were guided by the idea that they would
• 1:04:07
  protect their property in themselves and in what they owned you know and that was the basis for
• 1:04:14
  the idea of the state not being a model purposeful organic instrument but a merely a convenient
• 1:04:22
  superstructure to facilitate autonomous individuals you know and what we're losing I think under
• 1:04:30
  workness is the idea of individual autonomy of well basic liberty really if you're right if that is
• 1:04:38
  what we're losing and there is a sort of a fork in the road in which we can either go down a path
• 1:04:46
  of greater thought control and greater thought policing and you know a greater enforcement of
• 1:04:54
  an increasingly rigid cultural vision of what's proper to believe and proper to say and then
• 1:04:59
  down the other fork in the road there is a path towards greater intellectual flourishing a more
• 1:05:05
  chaotic and ranbunctious and perhaps offensive public square in which people can express themselves
• 1:05:10
  more more freely what steps do we take now to pursue the latter well I think one of the areas that
• 1:05:20
  you know becomes you know it's very important to control social media you know social media is
• 1:05:27
  really a media platform it should be subject to the same liable criteria as um the printed media
• 1:05:36
  I think social media has been one of the most vigilant promulgators of these kinds of
• 1:05:43
  emotive intense communities that broke no tolerance of their viewpoints and the way in which the
• 1:05:53
  social media companies themselves will you know actors kind of moral arbiters which they have no
• 1:06:00
  elected responsibility for beyond that I think you know the one of the ways in which the
• 1:06:07
  state needs to back down is it is the massive expansion of the public service over the last
• 1:06:14
  you know decades and so that the majority or the you know the a large group of the citizenry
• 1:06:23
  are tied to the state through public service jobs you create the kind of natural voting
• 1:06:30
  constituency for the public bureaucratic state you know so what connection does that have to
• 1:06:36
  your concern about cultural optimism well then that cultural bureaucratic state you know tells you
• 1:06:44
  what exactly you're supposed to be thinking on areas you know and the area where it was most
• 1:06:49
  frightening which we seem to be rapidly forgetting was the massive extension in bureaucratic power
• 1:06:56
  under COVID you know and the erosion of freedoms there were beyond you know I mean some like
• 1:07:03
  lock would have been actively astonished that you know we were having to go out every night and
• 1:07:08
  clap the NHS for you know doing there what they're supposed to be doing and the idea that places
• 1:07:13
  like Victoria would you know kind of lock down for two years or New Zealand was locked down forever you
• 1:07:19
  know this is an astonishing erosion of our liberties and freedoms you know and we seem to have fallen
• 1:07:26
  into that with with very little pushback you know so the big state needs to be shown of some of its
• 1:07:36
  so bigness okay social media the public service I'll give you one more thing to amend in as emperor
• 1:07:44
  the universe before I kick you out once you're last thing leave the private sphere alone leave the
• 1:07:51
  private sphere I mean there has to be something in academia surely is there is there a it was the
• 1:07:55
  low hanging fruit is there a form that you would make to the way that we think I think I think
• 1:08:01
  you know to get rid of human rights there is a problem with human rights but human resources
• 1:08:12
  you know right the managerial nature of the campus right the massive you know growth of the
• 1:08:20
  university undergraduate population you know people like Blair wanting 50% of the population in
• 1:08:25
  education the expansion of education Australia under how it as well as under the labor governments
• 1:08:33
  has created an infantilization of the university and the education it offers plus it's massively
• 1:08:40
  enhanced the managerial class within universities but lay down the guidelines that increasingly
• 1:08:46
  erode the basis of the liberties and scholarships that you know universities used to
• 1:08:52
  are promoted are sustained really all right those are your decrees David will pass them down
• 1:08:58
  to the bureaucrats in that thank you so much thank you very much for inviting me on
• 1:09:05
  permissions too uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh
• 1:09:16
  steps on twitter and instagram for all the latest may your day be fruitful your mind humble your
• 1:09:22
  enemies generous and your conversations perfectly sparklingly delectably uncomfortable