Latest / Thinking Class / #116 - Lionel Shriver - A Better Life? Immigration, Demography, and Belonging In The West

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#116 - Lionel Shriver - A Better Life? Immigration, Demography, and Belonging In The West · Thinking Class

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm joined by Lionel Shriver.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Lionel is an author of 10 books, including A Better Life, Mania, and we need to talk about Kevin, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: She has a fortnightly column in The Spectator and is a contributor to the Times.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Her new novel, A Better Life, takes on one of the most contentious questions across the Western world, mass immigration, not from the immigrants' perspective, but from the receiving country's point of view.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, we explore why the host nation story is rarely told, what changes when immigration shifts from small scale to mass scale, why voters across Western democracies increasingly feel unheard, the moral complexity of the issue, and how a better life becomes an argument for open borders, the gaming of asylum systems, the strain on law and institutions, the gender divide in how societies process these questions, and what demographic decline does to a civilization's confidence in itself.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: As ever, Lionel is inimitable in her style and her approach to discussing the big issues of the day.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: And I always enjoy speaking to her, so I hope you enjoy this conversation too.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: And if you value serious, historically grounded conversations about culture, politics, and civilization, then you will be right at home with Thinking Class.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: You can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts and share it with others who want to think more deeply about what we have inherited and what we owe to the future.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: You can also find essays, reflections, and further reading on Substack.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Now for Lionel Shriver.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm delighted to know that you wouldn't miss it.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is going to be a good one.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: Our last conversation was a good one.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: It was certainly the first on my channel to get some traction.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And it was about you leaving Britain and how you felt about that.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, now we're going to be talking about the impact of immigration in the West, because across the West, mass immigration is no longer an abstract policy debate.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: It's reshaping our nations in ways that may be irreversible within decades, if not now.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Demographic transformation seems to be locked in, and institutional responses are increasingly contentious.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: Voters feel unheard, particularly when state resources are stretched and political elites appear indifferent.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: So you're one of the sharpest polemicists writing in English today, and you have a novel recently released, A Better Life, and that explores these questions through the unraveling of the Bonaventura family, who, led by their mother, enroll in a New York City initiative to house immigrants in their own home and paid by the state, and those immigrants hoping to gain asylum.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: So my first question, Lionel, is why did you choose to explore immigration through fiction rather than your usual polemical style in magazines and papers?
3:16
SPEAKER_03: Well, of course, I have written about immigration um perhaps to excess in my spectator column, um, because it is one of my favorite subjects.
3:28
SPEAKER_03: I I find its complexity compelling, uh, especially its moral complexity.
3:36
SPEAKER_03: I think you can make a case for mass immigration, and you can also make a a case against it.
3:45
SPEAKER_03: And um it's a it's a subject about which we're politically very divided.
3:53
SPEAKER_03: And I I especially feel that the the case against mass uncontrolled immigration does not get a fair hearing, not even in journalism, but certainly not in fiction.
4:11
SPEAKER_03: Um fiction has traditionally uh told the immigrant story from the perspective of the immigrant, and there are reasons for that.
4:20
SPEAKER_03: Um some of them good, narrative reasons, not just political ones.
4:25
SPEAKER_03: Um the the immigrant story I think is implicitly sympathetic.
4:31
SPEAKER_03: They the immigrant is on a journey, has a s uh uh his the his or her story has has direction, purpose.
4:41
SPEAKER_03: Um it you know that that story adheres to the traditional quest structure.
4:47
SPEAKER_03: Whereas the native-born doesn't seem to have a story, right?
4:57
SPEAKER_03: They're just a backdrop.
4:59
SPEAKER_03: Uh and to the extent that the experience of the receiving host country is portrayed at all, it's usually just as people who are are either welcoming or bigoted.
5:14
SPEAKER_03: But it's a it's a passive uh and and it's a passive perspective and it doesn't it doesn't seem to speak out for needing a voice.
5:27
SPEAKER_03: What's the story?
5:29
SPEAKER_03: Okay, but actually the it there is a story.
5:32
SPEAKER_03: When when your community is suddenly inundated with people from somewhere else, your life changes and not necessarily for the better.
5:44
SPEAKER_03: You know, um yes, you get interesting new ethnic restaurants, but there's also a uh uh the triggering of what I think is a a kind of basic and primitive human response um to very large numbers of people from somewhere else coming into your territory.
6:10
SPEAKER_03: And this is a human issue.
6:14
SPEAKER_03: It's not about white people, it's not about Westerners, it is about what people are like, you know, and when small numbers of strangers come into your vicinity, it can be interesting, it's it's enjoyable.
6:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh they have different stories to tell, they have different practices, it's um new ways of doing things.
6:41
SPEAKER_03: And and they're more more motivated, being few, to fit in and and to rather than expecting your culture to change around them, to to change themselves, to learn your language, to learn your practices, um make friends.
7:03
SPEAKER_03: Uh but when massive numbers of people come in from somewhere else, that inevitably triggers a certain resentment.
7:15
SPEAKER_03: And you know, resentment's not a pretty emotion, and it's uh but that doesn't mean it's not justifiable.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: I I'm I'm um I I have a one weakness, I'm I'm not on social media, but I do have a weakness for reading comments after articles.
7:39
SPEAKER_03: And I especially love reading the comments after articles about immigration.
7:44
SPEAKER_03: And I I uh I subscribe to at least four major newspapers, uh, so I get a wide range of opinions.
7:52
SPEAKER_03: But for the most part, it's especially in the Daily Telegraph, any articles about immigration, it will they they attract thousands of comments.
8:03
SPEAKER_03: And I just I it's it's like reaching out and touching the third rail.
8:12
SPEAKER_03: All right.
8:12
SPEAKER_03: I it's just astonishing the amount of rage that ordinary Britons are feeling about mass immigration in their country, and they do not feel heard, they keep voting for candidates and for and and for parties that promise that that you know this is gonna stop, this is gonna, you know, they're gonna have new standards, much more restrictive immigration never happens.
8:40
SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I I wanted to write a book about I wanted to write a book about immigration for a long time.
8:47
SPEAKER_03: It's a it's I I am fascinated by it.
8:50
SPEAKER_03: I always I have been for about 35 years.
8:53
SPEAKER_03: It's a natural outgrowth of my initial interest in demography.
8:58
SPEAKER_03: Um so I I I felt that the novel is is capable of making that experience of, well, what the hell?
9:11
SPEAKER_03: You know, where did all these people come from?
9:14
SPEAKER_03: And why does this no longer feel like my home?
9:17
SPEAKER_03: Uh uh making that uh making that real and making that a story.
9:26
SPEAKER_03: Uh and this is a story that isn't being told in fiction.
9:30
SPEAKER_03: And I think that fiction is capable of taking on complex issues in a way that you can't really in a column.
9:38
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you if if you spend all your time in a column, you know, uh on the one hand on the other, you you waste your wordage, you sound wishy-washy.
9:49
SPEAKER_03: Um whereas an a a novel can can express conflicting viewpoints uh at the same time through different characters.
10:04
SPEAKER_03: And also because I I am a literary novelist and I I don't just have little cartoon characters walking around, they're not they're not going to be walking uh perspectives, you know, they're not just stand-ins for opinions.
10:23
SPEAKER_03: They're people.
10:24
SPEAKER_03: And people have opinions for a reason and you know, sometimes for bad reasons.
10:31
SPEAKER_03: Um and opinions are caught up in your your life and your own story, and um they don't come out of nowhere, and there's no such thing as an unbiased person, which is what makes fiction interesting as a way of exploring something, because everyone in the book comes at the issue and the reality of immigration from an anything but neutral perspective.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: You know, I'm not it everyone brings baggage to this.
11:08
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I, for example, part of my baggage, I am an immigrant.
11:13
SPEAKER_03: I lived for 36 years in the UK as an immigrant.
11:18
SPEAKER_03: And um, in spite of being there that long, never really considered myself British, nor was I ever considered British.
11:27
SPEAKER_03: And had I become a citizen, that wouldn't have mattered.
11:30
SPEAKER_03: I still wouldn't have been considered British.
11:32
SPEAKER_03: And I accepted that.
11:34
SPEAKER_03: So that that's a big part of my story.
11:37
SPEAKER_03: I've immigrated to Portugal.
11:39
SPEAKER_03: That was incredibly difficult because I did it legally, and that involved huge amounts of paperwork and fees and lawyers.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: So again, I'm not neutral.
11:51
SPEAKER_03: I go back to New York, which is massively, you know, uh full of immigrants.
11:59
SPEAKER_03: And so I I have that I also have that experience.
12:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm going, I'm supposedly going home, but it doesn't really feel that much like home because it's changed fantastically in the last 20 years, just to just as London has.
12:17
SPEAKER_03: So it's it's the same phenomenon.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: But it's I mean, I just think, you know, first of all, I did come up with a good idea for for a book.
12:26
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's a story.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: I'm one of those rare literary authors who actually has a plot.
12:31
SPEAKER_03: So it's it's it's and I think it's fun to read.
12:35
SPEAKER_03: But it's also very politically charged, and um, and it it it um unembarrassedly takes on all uh uh the issues uh surrounding immigration.
12:49
SPEAKER_03: And um and I think it's it's a it's just a much more entertaining way to involve yourself in this than just reading another newspaper article.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, I certainly want to pick up on the themes of neutrality and human nature later.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh but let's start by unpacking some of the the characters and the plot without giving it all away.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: So as we mentioned, the Bonaventura family, led by their mother, takes in a Honduran migrant called Martin Delgado.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And the Bonaventura family is made up of a progressive liberal mother.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: There's an estranged father who is now remarried.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: They were once on the same political team but came to diverge.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: There were two adult daughters living uh post-family lives, one married without kids, the other with a dog without kids.
13:45
SPEAKER_00: And then there's a Gen Z son or Gen Z son at home, Nico, who I think is 26 at the time of writing.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what why why did you um create this dynamic?
13:57
SPEAKER_00: I think the other thing to to mention is that both of the daughters are also inclined politically like their mother.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: They are progressive liberals, they think it's a great idea to take someone in under this initiative, uh, whereas the boy is a skeptic.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: So what's uh what led you to to set it up this way?
14:19
SPEAKER_03: Deeper reasons well the whole story is seen through the eyes of the 26-year-old son.
14:27
SPEAKER_03: Uh and yes, he is more conservative in general.
14:31
SPEAKER_03: Uh I think that's pretty typical of Gen Z males.
14:37
SPEAKER_03: Um but they tend they tend to be a little more to the right uh than their female contemporaries.
14:44
SPEAKER_03: Um but Nico has a university education.
14:50
SPEAKER_03: He got a degree in engineering.
14:53
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but he hasn't done anything with it.
14:55
SPEAKER_03: In fact, he has an epiphany uh close to graduation that uh he doesn't want to be an engineer.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: And not only does he not want to be an engineer, but he doesn't want to be anything else either.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: He doesn't really want to be a grown-up.
15:16
SPEAKER_03: And so he goes back home and he's been there for four years, and he portrays himself to the reader as perfectly happy.
15:26
SPEAKER_03: And it you know, you can tell that he basically believes this.
15:30
SPEAKER_03: He's contented.
15:32
SPEAKER_03: He he likes, you know, nothing ever happens.
15:36
SPEAKER_03: Uh he doesn't have to do anything, he has no commitments, he's even deleted the calendar app on his phone.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: Um and it's wonderful.
15:48
SPEAKER_03: And actually I'm I'm sympathetic with him.
15:53
SPEAKER_03: One of the big s surprises early on in writing this book is is discovering that though I tend to be a Protestant work ethic type, really down on welfare dependency.
16:07
SPEAKER_03: Um But I thought, you know, he's got a point.
16:14
SPEAKER_03: If you can get away with it.
16:16
SPEAKER_03: Who wants to be an adult?
16:18
SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's almost all downside, especially if, you know, y you're you're living at home, it's a nice house, it's got lots of space, um, free Wi-Fi.
16:35
SPEAKER_03: It's like a giant Starbucks.
16:38
SPEAKER_03: Um w what's to gain from going out on your own and having to pay your own telecom bill, uh it in cramp digs that are overpriced and having to go for a job and all all the anxiety and difficulty that entails.
17:02
SPEAKER_03: Uh I I I s I see the attraction of all that stasis.
17:10
SPEAKER_03: It's restful.
17:12
SPEAKER_03: And of course, it doesn't threaten you with failure because you don't aim to achieve anything.
17:19
SPEAKER_03: You know, you just sit there.
17:22
SPEAKER_03: And so I chose this character very deliberately because this is not a simplistic book.
17:31
SPEAKER_03: And Nico is very hostile to the waves of hundreds of thousands of of immigrants coming in during the Biden administration to New York, partly because they they arrive as dependents and they expect to be taken care of.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: They expect to be put up by the city, and they are.
17:55
SPEAKER_03: They're given fr free uh three meals a day and daycare and free phones, etc.
18:07
SPEAKER_03: And and he thinks, you know, that's that's a kind of stealing.
18:13
SPEAKER_03: You know, they are they are taking uh from welfare systems to which they have never contributed.
18:21
SPEAKER_03: But Nico doesn't have a leg to stand on.
18:25
SPEAKER_03: You know?
18:26
SPEAKER_03: He's in he's a dependent.
18:28
SPEAKER_03: He's a mooch.
18:30
SPEAKER_03: He is not a taxpayer.
18:34
SPEAKER_03: He complains about you know that that these people are extracting from the New York taxpayer, but that's his mother, and he's extracting from his mother, the New York taxpayer.
18:47
SPEAKER_03: I mean, and you know, we start with that hypocrisy and the reader's awareness of that hypoc hypocrisy from literally page one.
18:58
SPEAKER_03: And and that is that is complicating, and it uh complicates his perspective and puts a little question mark over his opinions.
19:10
SPEAKER_03: Um and and and I I found that very very useful.
19:15
SPEAKER_03: It also is it it gives me a parallel story.
19:20
SPEAKER_03: So we're not only looking at what happens to the to the immigrant who moves in and examining who she is, but we're also looking at what happens to Nico.
19:34
SPEAKER_03: And ultimately, this is a story of my protagonist going from passivity to finally to action.
19:50
SPEAKER_03: And that is that is a good story, that is a very satisfying story.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, there are a few threads to pick on there which uh I think will be interesting to to pull on.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: So that passivity, the uh of by the person who spends lots of time on the internet, observing the migration patterns, understanding how the social contract for the uh average American is being subverted by the new arrivals, and indeed by those authorities who are paying out of the public purse for their arrival and their staying whilst they're awaiting for applications to be approved or or denied, comes out really uh engagingly within uh an exchange that takes place between he and the immigrant Martin Delgado.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: So she is seen as uh, as you write, having the sun shining out of her ass by uh the the women in the household.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh Nico is never afraid to tell her directly what he thinks of the whole thing.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: And anyway, they're left alone and they have this exchange, and in that he outlines the concerns you've said or you've described, which it are um these people not paying into the system, getting getting stuff out of it, and that he he wants to feel like he's still at home and things not changing.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Martine ends up challenging him in some ways, which is, Well, what are you doing to deserve the American dream?
21:34
SPEAKER_00: You don't seem to be doing anything to take advantage of it.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Here you are sitting at home, and so she challenges him, saying, Well, you're you're lazy, but at least I'm here trying my hardest.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: So she's effectively saying the way we see all of you is that you've become complacent, you've become um you've you're living lives of miserable ease, and your civilization.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Falling apart, and you don't seem to be wanting to do anything about it.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: So if you won't, I'll I'll come in and do something about it instead.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose what this brings to bear is Nico wants to be this flâneur, this observer, this neutral person who just says what's going on.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: But what comes out in the story is that land is never neutral.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: I read in an Eric Kaufman article that was posted on his Substack written by someone else that uh territory is never held by treaties or rational social contracts alone.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: It obeys the pure physics of the masses.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: So uh is it fair to say that that's the central anthropological thesis of the novel, I suppose, that what we're witnessing here is a transfer of land and resources to those who who want to stay and work and multiply?
22:52
SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, what we're watching is quite primitive.
22:55
SPEAKER_03: And it's an illustration of that aphorism about possession is nine-tenths of the law.
23:01
SPEAKER_03: Uh and the truth is that when you let people into your country, it's very hard to get rid of them.
23:08
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of um talk about re-migration now, right?
23:13
SPEAKER_03: Well, good luck with that.
23:14
SPEAKER_03: It's probably not going to happen.
23:16
SPEAKER_03: It's too hard.
23:18
SPEAKER_03: It's too physically hard, it's too socially hard, as well as being now politically hard.
23:24
SPEAKER_03: So letting people into your country is a drastic thing to do, and it is a one-way process.
23:32
SPEAKER_03: Um the conversation that you're remembering between Nico and Martine is one of my favorite sections of the book uh because I find Martine's perspective in that uh discussion very persuasive.
23:50
SPEAKER_03: She's basically saying, I make a better American than you do.
23:54
SPEAKER_03: You know, I have ambition.
23:57
SPEAKER_03: I'm willing to fight for something that I want.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: And in fact, I'm willing to go out and take it.
24:03
SPEAKER_03: And that's what illegal immigration is.
24:06
SPEAKER_03: It is it is a taking of something that this person wants.
24:11
SPEAKER_03: And unless you stop them, they're gonna get it.
24:15
SPEAKER_03: Right.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: And you know, that that causes consternation among the settled population, but it also shows a certain hoot spa, you know, get up and go, a a self-confidence, a determination to go get what they want.
24:38
SPEAKER_03: And actually, I just did a um a com for the for the for the spectator that's out this week, um that is uh assessing the the expression a better life, which is the title of the book.
24:56
SPEAKER_03: But it's taking it apart.
24:59
SPEAKER_03: And you know, you this is a s a standard explanation and excuse for illegal i illegal immigration.
25:07
SPEAKER_03: Oh, they're you know, they're only they're only seeking a better life.
25:13
SPEAKER_03: And it sounds so sympathetic because that's that is a normal human desire.
25:19
SPEAKER_03: And w how can you fault that?
25:22
SPEAKER_03: And it's often touted out as just a you know, a you can't an irrefutable uh excuse for for allowing immigration legal, i i illegal, legal, all these people just want a better life, so you really have no right to deny them that.
25:42
SPEAKER_03: But if you think about it, everything we do is to get a better life.
25:48
SPEAKER_03: Everything.
25:50
SPEAKER_03: Um you know, I I go out and get my dinner at the supermarket because my life's going to be better with having something to eat tonight.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: Right?
26:08
SPEAKER_03: Um, I brush my teeth because my my life's going to be better with clean teeth and without, you know, too many cavities and better breath.
26:18
SPEAKER_03: I mean it's that's just a w this in other words, that's just by way of saying, this is something I want.
26:26
SPEAKER_03: And that's what that's what wanting a b you're looking for a better life.
26:31
SPEAKER_03: Yes, of course, that just means you want it.
26:34
SPEAKER_03: But we don't necessarily tell people who want something, just because they want it, they get it.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: And that's what it the i this better life thing really is just saying if someone wants something, then they have to get it.
26:50
SPEAKER_03: You have to give it to them.
26:53
SPEAKER_03: You know, and it it's it's it's as it the same thing applied to um retail would make shoplifting legal.
27:04
SPEAKER_03: Because, well, my life is gonna be better with that radio, so I'm gonna go take it.
27:13
SPEAKER_03: It's the same reasoning.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: What's behind the better life thing is advocacy of open borders, because what what it means is you have no right to say no, you have no right to deny someone something that they want, especially something they want badly, because their life is going to be better.
27:37
SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, I do, I mean, in that passage we were talking about, I I do have respect for people who go out and get what they want, even if they're not supposed to have it, even you know, and who don't observe the law.
27:58
SPEAKER_03: I have observed immigration laws, and it's been a huge drag.
28:04
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's boring, it's tedious, it's expensive, and and you know, you're very documented and watched, and you're you're you then you end up paying taxes.
28:21
SPEAKER_03: Um and and and you know going in the back door is much more intelligent, it's more efficient, it's cheaper.
28:33
SPEAKER_03: And uh in both the UK and the US, you get all kinds of benefits and people taking care of you if you've broken the law.
28:42
SPEAKER_03: You don't get any of that if you come in legally.
28:45
SPEAKER_03: Nobody puts you in a free hotel if you come in legally, but if you come in illegally, I mean you get the hotel, you get the food, you get the free phones, and in i I gather in the UK you even get free Netflix subscriptions.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's it's remarkable uh really the um well, is it an inability to see or a refusal to see um the reality that we are not blank slates?
29:23
SPEAKER_00: So for example, you've talked about territory and the feeling of someone coming onto your territory, uh, the loss of belonging.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: These are things that in a society that supposedly values scientific endeavour has been shown to exist across the scientific record.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: So, for example, on the territory front, in Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate, he has a whole appendix talking about human universals, which uh came from an anthropologist called Donald Brown.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: And one of them is every human group, regardless of where they're at, really cares about defining their territory and defending it.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: And uh you can read any number of books about tribes who are, as some liberals would view them, noble savages, you know, they're not tainted by modernity, who one infraction on their land, and there's an arrow going through them.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Um on the other side, I suppose, besides the uh the territory side of things, there's cultural belonging.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh and you talked about how when we're thinking about immigration, we care a lot about the cultural belonging being felt by the new the newcomers, the incomers, but basically don't afford that same reality, even though it is a reality to those of us who are here already.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned the telegraph comment section, and similar to you, I'm I'm subscribed to it and some several others, one of them being the Times.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: And I always find it quite interesting when you read the comments pages, you've described the telegraph.
31:05
SPEAKER_00: In the Times, you you you kind of have this detached anywhere class that just dismisses any complaint about people arriving on our territory en masse or people complaining about how they're having other people's cultures promoted at the expense of their own as being beyond the pale, they're idiots, these are the ones who took us out of Europe.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, all of these things which feel like a caricature, but that's genuinely how they see it.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: They they caricature those who complain about these things, even though what they're doing is expressing an innate human need, which their opponents actually recognise exists, but only for the groups that they like.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: And I don't particularly know how much longer this is this is tenable for because the the experiment keeps on getting run, um but no one seems to want it, and yet it it comes anyway.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: So um I suppose thinking about the the the instincts then uh of the Bonaventura family, um is it fair to say that the welcoming instinct uh that the women display um and i i is this a uh a a kind of uh a gendered um response, I suppose?
32:30
SPEAKER_00: So are you uh are you effectively nodding to the inclusivity and fairness that women at a population level supposedly um exhibit in comparison to men who typically have that more territorial, suspicious attitude?
32:47
SPEAKER_00: Is that what you're trying to bring out on the book, or have I jumped the gun there?
32:50
SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, there's definitely a gender divide on this issue, and women are have been especially uh uh advocates of of immigrants and immigrants' rights, and that includes illegal immigrants.
33:07
SPEAKER_03: Um they're less interested in making that distinction uh between legal and i illegal.
33:15
SPEAKER_03: Um and I guess it's that, you know, it's w what Gad Sad calls uh suicidal empathy.
33:26
SPEAKER_03: I think that phrase is really caught on for a reason.
33:30
SPEAKER_03: Um and i what's a little perverse about the gender aspect of this is that uh you would think that women in particular, uh as the protectors of their young um would be uh sensitive to uh the incursions into home and hearth, that that you know they would be especially territorial, espe uh in in particular in relation to their own home.
34:04
SPEAKER_03: So that that makes the mother's invitation of a foreigner in literally into her house, uh a kind of anti-maternal.
34:16
SPEAKER_03: Uh Nico says something about uh his mother.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: She can seem a little um rigid and and and difficult uh to to people who don't know her, but he he says she's actually a very generous person.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: But the problem is that she's mostly nice to the people she has never met.
34:45
SPEAKER_03: And this is this is pretty standard for the progressive prototype, you know, that that that a lot of the emotion, the caring, the concern extends to an abstraction, but not, for example, members of their own family who disagree with them.
35:07
SPEAKER_03: Um and and I I've always found it an irony that this whole type, and it is a type, uh can be, you know, so deeply concerned for others um out there somewhere, but so vicious to real people right up in their face.
35:34
SPEAKER_03: You know, those women screaming at ICE officers at the top of their lungs, using as much profanity as they can get their hands on, spitting at them, um accusing them of murder and you know, whatever the the meanest thing they can think to say.
35:59
SPEAKER_03: It's just these people are often um aggressive, which isn't not very female, uh insulting and and frankly rather frightening.
36:15
SPEAKER_03: So it they you know, they're supposedly acting out of empathy, but that's not what they're expressing.
36:23
SPEAKER_03: And I find by the way, I find this standard i on the progressive end of things in general, a lot of emotional insincerity, one thing parading as another.
36:35
SPEAKER_03: And you know, they there's a lot of claiming of positive purpose and um uh and you to uh near utopianism and and all this concern for all these protected minorities.
36:50
SPEAKER_03: But the predominant emotions that exude from these people are negative.
36:59
SPEAKER_03: And they talk a lot about hatred, but they express it.
37:02
SPEAKER_03: They seem to be deploring it, but they're at the same time expressing hatred for their political opponents even more than uh I get from the right-wing equivalent.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: A double-headed question.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh so it is said that the difference between how men and women discharge their aggression is that women can be relational and so they will uh typically this is due to strength and physical size and all the rest of it.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be openly confrontational with someone to their face, so you'll you'll work in league together and take people out that way.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: With men, it can be let's have a dust-up and you get back to normal, or it ends very badly, but it's direct and it's physical.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: Um the double the double side of this is I I'm sure it hasn't escaped your attention that there has been uh a conversation open up within the culture about the feminization of the culture.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh it seems to me as though the feminization of the culture extends obviously to the institutions because that's part of the culture too.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Uh do you think that this I suppose um pathologizing of those people who are expressing discontent to put a mild put it mildly on this mass immigration, this huge um example of inclusion and welcoming?
38:39
SPEAKER_00: Given what happens to these people if they are to dissent, they can they can lose jobs, they can do jail time, they can do whatever.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: Do you think this is a an expression of a feminization of the institutions and the response to it?
38:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, don't don't disagree here.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is meant to be a good thing, but we're gonna come down hard on you, or is that just the nature of the rule of law we've decided in this policy, and so we're we're we're pushing on with it regardless, and anyone who comes at it will hit you with hate speech laws and the like because this is what we're doing.
39:17
SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah, I mean there's definitely a female side to this.
39:21
SPEAKER_03: The uh those anti-ICE protests have been overwhelmingly uh middle-aged females.
39:30
SPEAKER_03: Um and I think that the policy itself of we should absorb others with no limit and with no concern for ourselves is a is a f female attitude.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: This kind of nurturing thing for you know, I would uh I think women are I I hate overgeneralizing, but I do it all the time anyway.
40:03
SPEAKER_03: Um women are a little less comfortable with self-interest and nakedly pursuing self-interest.
40:15
SPEAKER_03: They like to be seen to be doing things on behalf of others, even though they are as driven by their own, you know, their their own self-interest as anybody else, but they like to disguise it.
40:32
SPEAKER_03: And an awful lot of what goes on in the woke world is competition between people of who can be more righteous.
40:45
SPEAKER_03: And that's a very self-interested operation.
40:48
SPEAKER_03: But it's all, you know, but it's the performance will be over who who cares more, right?
40:58
SPEAKER_03: But what's motivating this is is status seeking.
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Let's flip it back to the start.
41:08
SPEAKER_03: I think men are more um comfortable with pursuing self-interest, and I want to see a more male immigration policy.
41:17
SPEAKER_03: That is, I think uh both the UK and the US and and Europe, the whole West, should stop using immigration as a as a means of expressing charity and start letting people in exclusively on the basis of who is going to uh improve your your country.
41:39
SPEAKER_03: You let people in because they're going to be, they're likely to be net contributors, uh, they bring various skills um that you can use, and they're likely to fit in.
41:52
SPEAKER_03: They'll probably uh learn your language if they don't already know it.
41:58
SPEAKER_03: Um they they expect to uh they expect to assimilate, they desire to assimilate, they want to be a part of things.
42:09
SPEAKER_03: Those are the people you want in your country.
42:12
SPEAKER_03: You do not want people who are, and you you know, we have the statistics, we know the nationalities um who are statistically likely to become dependent on the state, and at the very least, over their lifetimes, are going to extract more resources than they contribute.
42:30
SPEAKER_03: We know who they are, and why are we letting them in in quantity?
42:34
SPEAKER_03: And we also know, and these are many of the same nationalities who do not assimilate.
42:42
SPEAKER_03: Uh they are likely to, especially if you allow people in who are very different, and we know who about whom I am speaking.
42:52
SPEAKER_03: Um and and if you let them in in quantity, they're going to, like any normal human group, hang out with each other, right?
43:02
SPEAKER_03: Everyone prefers to be around people like them.
43:05
SPEAKER_03: This is a another one of those universals.
43:08
SPEAKER_03: So it's it's not that there's anything wrong with them, or that it's it's not a weakness, it's just totally normal.
43:16
SPEAKER_03: And people assimilate because they have to.
43:18
SPEAKER_03: It's it's it's not necessarily fun.
43:22
SPEAKER_03: It's it means learning new things, and learning new things is is hard.
43:26
SPEAKER_03: Uh it it means accommodating.
43:29
SPEAKER_03: It's much better, it's much more uh enjoyable to be accommodated.
43:34
SPEAKER_03: Okay, but you let people in in quantity who who are likely to not get with the program, not mix, you know, who are going to be remained separate.
43:50
SPEAKER_03: Uh well, this is not in your interest.
43:54
SPEAKER_03: This is a stupid policy.
43:56
SPEAKER_03: So I want to see a male policy, an honest.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: embarrassedly self-interested policy.
44:03
SPEAKER_03: No, we're not going to let you in because we know you come from a country of people who end up, you know, like I'm sorry, Somalis in Minneapolis scamming the system of billions of dollars.
44:20
SPEAKER_03: So no, you know, no more Somalis.
44:23
SPEAKER_03: And um I know that this is a very unpopular policy proposal, especially in the United States.
44:34
SPEAKER_03: It's it's anti-progressive.
44:36
SPEAKER_03: It seems potentially racist, but it's not racist.
44:41
SPEAKER_03: It is you can put together the data that would defend that that kind of a policy.
44:49
SPEAKER_03: No, we're going to really limit immigration from this set of countries because we we now know statistically what's likely to happen.
45:00
SPEAKER_03: Now the trouble is that politically that kind of a policy is right now very difficult to get through.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: Well thinking about male policies and the likelihood of that happening let's think about manhoods, malehoods in general across the West.
45:19
SPEAKER_00: So I think you um do a really good job with Nico by contrasting him to some other characters that enter the fray.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: They come via Martin they're also Hondurans.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: One of them introduced as her brother and then a few of the guys that he hangs out with part of his crew end up spending a lot of time outside.
45:43
SPEAKER_00: Anyway they're all around Nico's age or a little bit older but they're all physically imposing.
45:51
SPEAKER_00: They clearly know how to handle themselves.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: And Nico feels basically like a boy in their company.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: He knows that even one-on-one he he doesn't stand a chance and I think he brings it up to his mum saying look I wouldn't be I know I'm the token male here but there's nothing I could do if they turn on me I wish I'd toughened up when I was younger.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: And she said oh well yeah but I wouldn't want you to be like that.
46:18
SPEAKER_00: I suppose do you think another reason why this has happened is that over recent decades men have been culturally disarmed.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: There has been an emasculation of them men themselves are not able to even muster the courage in which to try to push back against this and indeed enter politics and come up with those those more male coded policies you're talking about because we've pathologized male protectiveness and we've all just gotten used to the easy life.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: That he's this uh he's like this this microcosm of what's going on with men in the West in general and we don't stand a chance against these more vigorous hardy peoples yeah that's def that's definitely one of the themes of the novel uh that uh the guys who invade the house and this is ultimately a a home invasion story um they're real men right they're people who take what they want including somebody else's house or somebody else's credit card you know that not only do they invade the house but they demand the the mother's credit card to buy their booze and to buy all their dinners and and nobody's gonna stop them.
47:51
SPEAKER_03: It's I mean it's not an entirely attractive version of masculinity but it makes uh my protagonist Nico feel unmanned.
48:05
SPEAKER_03: It he feels comparatively weak and helpless and immature and in a lot of ways that's exactly what he is that's that is the life he has embraced this life of passivity is not masculine.
48:21
SPEAKER_03: Masculine masculinity is traditionally about action it's about and and the one of the things that pulls Nico out of his kind of feminized stupor is that his mother needs protecting and that is that is traditionally the role of a man and it's a role that women have almost systematically tried to take away from men and and you know the the so-called strong woman I think by implication does not need a man and does not need a man's protection.
49:04
SPEAKER_03: And and that leaves men without one of their most primitive roles which is the protection of the female and also the protection of the young um not that there are any young anymore.
49:19
SPEAKER_03: I mean that's the other that's the other theme in the book that um that one of the things that makes this family uh an an illegitimate heir to the United States is that they none of the children have had uh children of their own and and unless someone does something fast the family's going to disappear and that there will there the line will be truncated.
49:50
SPEAKER_03: And that's where m the immigrant Martine has a point.
49:56
SPEAKER_03: You know she says you know you haven't had any children uh how can how can you inherit this country?
50:04
SPEAKER_03: How can how can you how can you feel that this this place legitimately belongs to you if you haven't done the most primitive thing that one does to maintain territory.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: And that is you reproduce because you can't hold territory when you're dead you you do uh put a rather amusing line in there where Martin put Sister Nico and Nico said yeah great but I I want to feel like I'm at home so maybe you can have it all in 70 years or something but wait until I'm dead.
50:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah he said he says she can have the house in 70 years.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: I'll leave you some keys yeah it is it it's it's grimly amusing uh it's grimly amusing because as you know as someone who reads very deeply around demography you only need to look at the graphs of numbers incoming compared to native birth rates to know that it doesn't take very long before you end up with replacement migration and indeed that's obviously what my own country is certainly on course for uh by the 2060s minority white British and so at that point different different country and uh I suppose penultimate theme to touch on before I ask you the question I ask all of my guests is based around that so we're witnessing a demographic uh transformation uh which is um unprecedented I would say uh at the current scale and there are all sorts of pressures on our system so over many many centuries um birthed from at least in the case of your country the United States and mine birthed from my own country things like the rule of law common law um we've had these institutions that have stood firm for many centuries uh constitutions written and unwritten that guide our lives and we come to look at with reverence we abide by them as people who have inherited them even if we think of ourselves much less as inheritors these days because we just live in a perpetual present but that being said we respect them greatly and we live our lives around them and people of course deviate from them that's that's human nature but broadly it's kept bad things in check what comes through in this story is that you have besides the fact that the uh that those who arrive have arrived illegally they've already broken the law is that they're willing to learn the system of the rule of law and game it against you and there's basically nothing you can do once the law adjudicates in their favour or doesn't um have the defences built within it to stop people from gaming it.
53:04
SPEAKER_00: And so I suppose um my question to you is with all of this in mind do you think that whilst we all effectively worship the rule of law how long do you think that will hold up for?
53:21
SPEAKER_00: Because you don't only need to go and flick through some of the papers we have subscriptions to but we know people are gaming domestic and international law every day.
53:32
SPEAKER_03: So how long does that legitimacy hold out when we know about that well it's certainly true that uh the West is being due processed to death.
53:43
SPEAKER_03: Uh I think most immigrants know you know our immigration laws better than we do.
53:50
SPEAKER_03: And the systems are extremely easy to game.
53:54
SPEAKER_03: The entire asylum system is easy to game it i it's ill suited to its purpose.
54:02
SPEAKER_03: I I I I have written that I want to see the asylum system chopped.
54:09
SPEAKER_03: It is so misused now that it's a farce.
54:13
SPEAKER_03: It was supposed to be you know we let in people who are persecuted in their own countries give them safe haven.
54:23
SPEAKER_03: It is now just a fraudulent but very useful and almost always successful route to economic migration.
54:33
SPEAKER_03: And you know it's at least as bad in the UK uh all these people claiming asylum and then you immediately get all these these rights uh and the number of um appeals that uh that the UK allows I'm not even sure there is a limit.
55:02
SPEAKER_03: I've heard of of immigrants taking their uh taking their cases to a another appeal at least nine or ten times and you know that's expensive.
55:16
SPEAKER_03: I mean one of the one of the claims that illegal immigrants are making on the countries that they enter is on their judicial systems.
55:27
SPEAKER_03: And that's that's an that's an expensive claim and we allow them repeated uh re to repeatedly use our judicial systems if any if for nothing else for delay right and then once it's that that delay has dragged out for years they've got another they've got another good argument well I've made my life here um and if you're covered by the ECHR which the UK is it's like well I now have the right to family life I've had two kids while I've been here so you can't kick me out.
56:08
SPEAKER_03: And you know the UK basically kicks nobody out and the deportation figures are are farcical.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: Yes and then better life achieved at the expense of everyone else.
56:21
SPEAKER_00: Lionel I know you have a very very busy schedule uh similar interviews and a very exciting one tomorrow night which will have taken place by the time this broadcasts at the Manhattan Institute with Douglas Murray.
56:33
SPEAKER_00: So do enjoy yourself there.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it'll be uh much more energetic than than here on this digital ethereal realm.
56:40
SPEAKER_00: Before I let you go I'll ask you the question I ask all of my guests which I didn't ask at the time we we first spoke which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
56:50
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it was an absolute or maybe it was something of a more quotidian concern and what was it that made you think differently I changed my mind on a big thing uh and and and and on one of my biggest concerns earlier in my life uh I grew up at the tail end of the 60s it was during the period of uh Paul Ehrlich's population bomb um there was a lot of concern that we were going to overpopulate ourselves into oblivion and uh I was worried that like so many species of so many non-human species uh we would just keep reproducing um until we exhausted all of our resources and then there would be this mass die-off that's what happened that's what happens with populations of deer for example um there are still two parts of the world that continue to grow and have pretty high fertility rates the Middle East and Africa so that concern is not completely irrelevant but uh it is now more an issue that we have below replacement fertility it's really all over the world it's not only just western countries and it's been going on for decades in in most it in many instances um so what I I have changed uh from being someone who is obsessed with the prospect of overpopulation to uh what we call a pronatalist I am big on having children now that makes me a hypocrite I cheerfully volunteer because I did not have children I don't expressly personally regret that I think that was probably the right decision for me uh but it is not a good decision if that is generalized across the population it's self-destructive and so that when I meet younger people who are still of reproductive age I find myself encouraging them to consider having a family and of course very often they don't want kids you know that's that's and that didn't used to be the case when I was when I was a teenager say uh and I announced that I didn't want children people chuckled and and and said oh yeah well you'll you'll certainly change your mind about that no we don't say that anymore um and and it you know the norm has completely changed it is absolutely as normal to not want children as it is to want them that means something's gone wrong I mean I have to say that I think that the low replacement fertility rate in its persistence and in its in its continuing decrease suggests a culture that is senescent that is decadent and that does not believe in itself on that cheerful note yeah well let's uh introduce some some white pill which is but it's all a mindset so everyone get out of your decadence good go buy the book yeah exactly go and buy the book there's a there's a happy ending um Lionel it's been an absolute pleasure enjoy the rest of your book tour over in the States uh look forward to welcoming you back to Blighty fleetingly when you you come to promote it here uh it is going to be out on Friday the se not Friday that's not true it's going to be out on Tuesday the 17th of February so it'll be out by the time people are listening and watching this links in the show notes.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_00: But Lionel before I let you go I know you don't have a social media presence even if you are a sleuth on the comments sections and online papers what can we expect from you next other than your newspaper columns and spectator columns um that is not for discussion.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_00: Hmm okay cryptic well everyone likes a cliffhanger uh it makes people binge watch on Netflix so hopefully people will watch the next episode of thinking class thanks so much for joining me keep fighting the good fight and we'll speak again I hope we do excellent