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BREAKING: A Note on Political Violence · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:03
  G'day humans.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
• 0:07
  I want to say a few things about how we talk about political violence and help us think it through because I'm in New York City where I have shed my fair share of tears over the past few days for a tragedy that's taken place in Australia.
• 0:25
  against a woman who I knew a bit, um, and admired a lot.
• 0:31
  Uh, Helen Haynes is an independent member of parliament.
• 0:35
  And, um, a couple of days ago, she was leaving her electorate office in a regional town or city in Victoria when, uh, a guy intentionally, it seems, uh, drove his, uh, vehicle into her and, uh, crushed her.
• 0:52
  And, um,
• 0:53
  apparently did it repeatedly and we don't know all the details yet, but seemed to get out of the vehicle with a knife and passers-by, wrestled the knife off him and detained him until police arrived.
• 1:03
  And Helen is fortunately in now a stable condition.
• 1:09
  She had to have one of her legs, her left leg amputated on Monday and earlier today she had her right leg amputated as well.
• 1:20
  I did an event with Helen earlier this year.
• 1:23
  My buddy Conrad, who is a very popular lefty political commentator on Instagram, the lovely guy, he goes by Punta's Politics, held a big soiree to try to satirize the role of money in politics down in Canberra.
• 1:41
  And I did a miniature, you know, short form panel conversation of uncomfortable conversations at that live dinner.
• 1:49
  And Helen was one of the guests, along with the other independent member of parliament, Allegra Spender, and the independent senator, David Pocock, and the national senator, Bridget McKenzie.
• 1:59
  And Helen just exudes this kind of...
• 2:04
  fabulous, fiery, defiant, but warm air of comedy and like, we can do this with a sort of we can do thisness that I find quite Australian and very endearing.
• 2:18
  She's a grandmother.
• 2:20
  She's a trailblazing member of parliament.
• 2:21
  She's a runner, which makes the amputation of her legs all more tragic.
• 2:27
  She was a nurse.
• 2:28
  Anyway,
• 2:29
  The thing that I really want to say is that since this tragedy has happened, there have been all of the usual expected predictable ejaculations from politicians about the importance of turning the volume down in our politics and ensuring the safety of parliamentarians.
• 2:49
  The Prime Minister was interviewed and said that we just have to turn the temperature down.
• 2:54
  Things are getting too hot.
• 2:56
  Of course he's right.
• 2:58
  And of course he's wrong that the correct way to do that is by telling people to.
• 3:03
  Because...
• 3:05
  The tricky thing about political extremism, and I will grant that the Prime Minister knows more about political campaigning than I do, but I would propose that I know more about communication and how to have people hear you across a chasm than he does.
• 3:23
  The problem with making points to people who are very unlikely to be on your side already is that
• 3:29
  A, you have to find a way to talk to them in a way that's going to resonate and going to be in the language of their side if they already think that you're a corrupt, feckless loser who is taking the country in the wrong direction.
• 3:42
  And B, nobody thinks of themselves as having their temperature too high.
• 3:50
  Nobody thinks of themselves as the villain.
• 3:54
  Nobody thinks of themselves as the problem.
• 3:59
  Turning the temperature down is something that you, by definition, encourage other people to do because other people's temperatures are too high.
• 4:06
  Other people drive too fast.
• 4:08
  Other people drive too slow.
• 4:10
  You drive at just the right speed, right?
• 4:14
  Telling people not to go fast is fine if they know that they're going fast.
• 4:18
  If they think that they're going at the perfect speed for the conditions, it doesn't get you anywhere.
• 4:24
  The actual problem is not that...
• 4:27
  people who know that their temperature should be turned down are not turning it down.
• 4:32
  It's that the people who are likely to be persuaded by the argument that the temperature needs to be turned down are the people who already think that the temperature needs to be turned down, not the people who will commit political violence.
• 4:46
  The people who commit political violence think that there are reasons for the temperature to be very, very hot.
• 4:53
  Now,
• 4:54
  I should add the usual caveat here that we don't know the motivations of the attacker yet.
• 5:00
  It seems that he has a neurological condition.
• 5:03
  He has now been charged.
• 5:05
  He claims to have had concussion as well.
• 5:09
  His father says that Helen Haynes is a friend of the family for a very long time.
• 5:12
  So this may have nothing to do with politics.
• 5:14
  This may be an entirely interpersonal thing.
• 5:16
  This may just be a mental health thing.
• 5:18
  But
• 5:18
  What I'm talking about is the fact that it has triggered a conversation in Australia about violence against politicians and about political polarization and political extremism.
• 5:25
  And so I'm addressing that conversation, not making assertions about the gentleman who allegedly did this.
• 5:33
  So people who will commit political violence do not see it as political violence, and they don't see themselves as needing to have the temperature turned down on.
• 5:43
  The problem isn't that their temperature is too high as far as they see it.
• 5:46
  The problem is that people whose temperatures are not as high as theirs are feckless or corrupt, and they're leading the country into a ditch.
• 5:55
  And I think the best way, the most honest way, really, of grappling with the problem of political polarization and violence is to not wag our fingers and give advice to other people about how they should behave, but to be a little bit introspective and look at ourselves.
• 6:13
  In the future, in the universe of potential futures, the infinity of parallel universes in the metaverse that stretch ahead of you, in front of you, into the future,
• 6:26
  There are some, there is one, let's say, in which you physically harm somebody because of their actions.
• 6:42
  Even though their actions are not directly affecting you, and even though you're not acting in defense or preventing an immediate physical harm to another person.
• 6:55
  I'm phrasing it in that clunky way because political violence is something that everybody can say we don't like.
• 7:01
  But if you phrase it in the most broad possible terms, if we're really honest with ourselves, there are circumstances under which all of us
• 7:13
  would harm another person physically on the basis of that person's actions, even if we were not preventing that person from physically injuring another person right now.
• 7:28
  If you need to go all the way to like invoking Nazi examples here, be my guest.
• 7:33
  You know, like people will say, why didn't the Jews fight back against the Nazis?
• 7:38
  Well, unless you mean why didn't they actually fight back when the Nazis were literally shoving them with rifle butts into death camps, what you really mean is why didn't Jewish people and others who were being persecuted by Nazis commit political violence against Nazis and Nazi cops and Nazi politicians?
• 8:04
  And I think all of us would understand that that would have been acceptable.
• 8:07
  That would have been morally okay, even if it was illegal.
• 8:10
  So there is something at the extreme in all of us, which in sufficiently dire circumstances in the future could lead to one strand of the metaverse in which we commit what would commonly be known as political violence.
• 8:29
  And we wouldn't think of it as political violence.
• 8:33
  And we wouldn't be persuaded by a politician who we believed was deserving of political violence telling us to turn the temperature down.
• 8:48
  I cried in the shower this morning because... Why?
• 8:55
  I mean, I was thinking about Helen and I was just thinking about her family and I was thinking about how totally senseless and...
• 9:04
  needless and unjust it is that they're going to have to go through what they're going to have to go through.
• 9:12
  But I think I also felt a little bit of selfish fear about the possibility of this becoming the norm, or at least much more frequent.
• 9:32
  What would a person have to believe for me to think it was legitimate to harm them?
• 9:47
  What would a person have to believe for you to think it was legitimate to harm them?
• 9:54
  And don't say nothing.
• 9:58
  Because in the infinity of futures ahead of you, in the hundreds of millions of multiverse, multiverses, there's one.
• 10:05
  I mean, there has to be one.
• 10:11
  And I think the answer to that is to be found in whatever it is that riles you up the most.
• 10:16
  I mean, if I'm brutally honest with myself and I think, okay, what is the kind of behavior that I see in public life, whether from politicians or from activists or from colleagues, what is the behavior that really gets my goat?
• 10:30
  What is the thing that like I, because the only way we're going to reduce, you know, turn the temperature down, reduce the volume is not by telling other people to do so, but by understanding in us, what is the point?
• 10:43
  What is the thing that is
• 10:46
  And is there a way for us to be somewhat more empathic towards people who might behave that way?
• 10:52
  So here's a fun exercise for us.
• 10:55
  I'll do it first and then you can do it yourself after you finish listening to this.
• 11:01
  if I'm honest with myself, what gets my goat the most, what triggers me the most, is people who exhibit a kind of puritanical sense of certainty about something, which they're not necessarily deeply informed about, and crucially, with no curiosity about why a person might not believe what they do.
• 11:23
  So people who are
• 11:25
  sort of sanctimoniously self-certain and very strident about something without caring about why a person might disagree with that position.
• 11:34
  That, for me, is the most triggering form of behavior, pattern of behavior.
• 11:39
  And people who go through their lives...
• 11:42
  rah-rah-rah-ing and prosecuting particular positions, thinking that they're on the right side of history, believing with the kind of glassy-eyed certainty of a fundamentalist that they have the answers whilst remaining uncurious about people who disagree.
• 12:01
  And thus, thanks to their own curiosity about people who they disagree, they cannot help but demonize people who they disagree because if you don't understand why a person wouldn't think this thing that you find to be self-evident,
• 12:11
  The only possible explanation is that person is wrong.
• 12:15
  So if that person is a contemptible nitwit because you haven't done the work in trying to figure out why they might disagree with you and you're marching around holding your placards and chanting and tweeting and posting Instagram videos about how terribly important this thing that you care a lot about is, whilst strawmanning people who disagree with you, misunderstanding the nature of their actual objections and standing on your own high horse, then you are likely to be
• 12:47
  in my sights as somebody who is triggering to me.
• 12:55
  And that's a flaw in me, in this little, if we're sitting in a little circle and we're having cups of tea and cookies and we're sharing ourselves Oprah style, I confess to that flaw.
• 13:09
  And of course, there's a part of my brain which goes, I shouldn't have to confess to that flaw.
• 13:12
  I'm the one who's being the bigger person here.
• 13:15
  These people are stupid.
• 13:17
  It's not that hard to understand that our knowledge and our beliefs are fallible, that of course we are not.
• 13:24
  None of us is the font of all wisdom.
• 13:26
  None of us has arrived at the final truth about all matters.
• 13:30
  There are issues on which we will be wrong inevitably.
• 13:32
  Okay.
• 13:33
  There are reasons why other people believe what they believe that feel to those people just as strong as the reasons that we have for believing the things that we believe.
• 13:41
  So everything is subjective and contingent.
• 13:43
  We're all muddling through this and trying to do our best.
• 13:45
  And if you can't understand that, then as far as I'm concerned, you don't deserve me to give you the time of day.
• 13:52
  You don't deserve my consideration and my empathy because you're not extending that empathy to anybody else who disagrees with you.
• 13:57
  And that's all running in my brain.
• 13:59
  And all of that is legitimate.
• 14:00
  But I can just park that.
• 14:02
  for a moment and acknowledge that that is the chatterings of my mind.
• 14:08
  I am a primate.
• 14:09
  We are all primates.
• 14:11
  I am a mammal.
• 14:11
  We're all mammals.
• 14:13
  We all have the little reptilian part of our brain running on the back of our spinal cord that's going to get us fired up when we think that things that we hold dear are being threatened.
• 14:24
  or modes of behavior that we disagree with are being prosecuted, or systems that we are excluded from are being advocated.
• 14:36
  So I just try to acknowledge that I have all of those objections to my policy of extreme empathy here and extreme sort of self-interrogation.
• 14:48
  And I say, yes, all of those reasons can still exist.
• 14:51
  They can all be valid.
• 14:51
  They can all be running in the meat machine between my ears.
• 14:55
  And nonetheless, I'm going to choose to have the heart to interrogate myself and go, okay, this is a type of behavior
• 15:07
  that in all of the potential universes, in some of which I am a violent political agitator, the thing that is likeliest to get me into one of those terrible universes is that kind of behavior, is people doing too much of that thing.
• 15:33
  And it's going to be different for everyone, right?
• 15:37
  If you're a Christian conservative, then people who want to tear down the family and, you know, deconstruct all that is good and moral about a Christian life are probably the people who are likeliest to get you into a place where you lose control of your faculties and you think that there is some legitimate reason for exerting force against them or for punishing them physically.
• 16:02
  If you are a super-duper climate person, then I guess people involved in trashing and despoiling the environment or executives of big oil companies or something are likely to be the people who might push you over the edge.
• 16:17
  If you're Luigi Mangione, the alleged shooter of the US healthcare executive, then the injustice of the healthcare system is the main thing that is likely to, and in fact, we are living in the multiverse in which he did, commit political violence.
• 16:35
  Um, so I think rather than saying, you know, everyone else has to turn the temperature down, it's more constructed to say, we're all a little on edge at the moment.
• 16:46
  We're all finding it a bit hard to figure out what the world is all about and how to get along.
• 16:51
  So what are the ways in which I know that I am likely to get triggered beyond perhaps what is reasonable if my main objective were to sustain a coherent, cohesive, loving society and community?
• 17:09
  Yeah.
• 17:14
  So I would just invite you to do that, maybe.
• 17:16
  Like if everybody did that, and I'm not saying that that would change anything because there would still be crazy people and there would still be some level of violence.
• 17:25
  You know, this isn't a panacea.
• 17:27
  But I think as a heuristic about how we might move through the world, that's probably better than us going around telling people not to be violent.
• 17:36
  Because there are reasons why we would defend something.
• 17:42
  We all have something.
• 17:43
  There are different levels of, you know, all of us have a different thing that gets our goat and all of us have different temperaments in terms of how easily inflamed we are.
• 17:55
  But I'm convinced that given an unlimited, infinite potential number of outcomes...
• 18:03
  there is a point at which all of us, I mean, you would certainly hope there is a point at which you, if you lived in a Nazi fascist state, would subvert it in ways that would potentially inflict physical harm on the people who are involved in it, right?
• 18:18
  So, you know, once you've granted that, then we're just talking about, it's a quantity question instead of a quality question.
• 18:25
  We're talking about where is that line, right?
• 18:29
  I'll leave you with one final sort of meta thought about this, which is simply...
• 18:38
  When we think about how we're all contributing to this world and to the conversations in it and to our culture... Now I'm going to allow myself to get a little bit more judgmental and less introspective.
• 18:52
  Anyone who devotes their time...
• 18:55
  or their public platform, or their social media activism, or just their encouragement of friends, to the mission of rallying the troops, metaphorically, of identifying a segment of society or politics that is betraying us, that needs to be thwarted.
• 19:19
  Anyone who spends their time identifying themselves and their cohort as the good guys
• 19:27
  who frames themselves as fighting for justice while white-anting hypocrites trying to get away with something that is nefarious or that offends our values.
• 19:44
  Anyone playing that game has blood on their hands in the context of political polarization and political violence.
• 19:58
  I don't think you can look at culture at the moment.
• 20:01
  I don't think you can look at the world at the moment.
• 20:03
  I don't think you can look at the MAGA movement, at Tucker Carlson, at the far right in Europe, the alternative for Deutschland, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage.
• 20:17
  What's that new further right party in the UK that's even further right than Farage?
• 20:21
  Restore.
• 20:24
  You can't look at Pauline Hanson.
• 20:25
  You can't look at climate activists.
• 20:27
  You can't look at wokeness.
• 20:36
  Without concluding that the problem is not a deficit of certainty.
• 20:47
  The problem is not a deficit of commitment to what is right.
• 20:56
  So if you spend all your time going out there and prosecuting what is right, rather than spending your time trying to understand why people who don't agree with you that it's right believe what they do, you are part of the problem.
• 21:17
  That runs counter to a lot of what we...
• 21:20
  take for granted.
• 21:21
  It runs counter to a lot of what a lot of people seem to think because we live inside algorithmically curated echo chambers.
• 21:29
  And we read a lot of clickbait and we see a lot of outlandish things.
• 21:33
  And it's very hard when you're seeing videos of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Officers shooting people and gas and babies dying and whatever else it might be, not to feel like it's time to do something.
• 21:50
  But the ultimate form of doing something, of prosecuting a case, of being truly committed to a cause, is political violence.
• 22:07
  It isn't always the best thing to do something, to take a stand, to draw a line in the sand, to say no more.
• 22:14
  We will not tolerate any more of this.
• 22:20
  Sometimes it is.
• 22:24
  In Germany in the 1930s it was.
• 22:27
  But I don't think Germany in the 1930s gets to be Germany in the 1930s if it had also had preceding decades of people working towards addressing the grievances of the German people in ways that provided a sustained sense of community.
• 22:52
  It's very, very difficult when you've got a Great Depression and you've got hyperinflation and you've got World War I and you've got, you know, the Treaty of Versailles.
• 23:05
  But we have to behave in ways that would be sustainable even if we were to succumb to such pressures, even if we were to face such challenges in the 21st century.
• 23:16
  Because we don't know what AI is going to look like and we don't know what climate chaos is going to look like and we don't know what the end of the liberal world order is going to look like and we don't know what China and Taiwan are going to look like and we don't know what Putin in an alliance with the Alternative for Deutschland in an alliance with Marine Le Pen looks like.
• 23:38
  So behave in ways that are the likeliest to increase understanding.
• 23:45
  Behave in ways that are the likeliest to have us all pulling in the same direction as a society and as a culture and as a polity, as a demos.
• 23:53
  And that is probably not taking up arms, chanting, marching, feeling fired up.
• 24:04
  Not now.
• 24:07
  it's probably trying to understand where other people are coming from.
• 24:10
  It doesn't mean being effete.
• 24:12
  It doesn't mean being milquetoast or sort of flaccidly centrist.
• 24:16
  It means being intellectually generous, intellectually humble, curious, and standing firm on the things that you know that you're well-informed about and where you understand why people object to them.
• 24:29
  That's all.
• 24:32
  So we're not going to solve anything by telling other people to turn the temperature down.
• 24:36
  We are going to solve something, I hope, by learning to practice, interrogating ourselves about the ways in which we might be a little bit biased, a little bit too easy to trigger, and then trying to create a cultural taboo against spending a whole lot of time bloviating about things that you're not deeply informed about because you have the fiery moral righteousness to stand up for what you believe in.
• 25:07
  Because you know who else has fiery moral righteousness?
• 25:11
  People who commit political violence.
• 25:17
  My thoughts go out to Helen Haynes' family.
• 25:19
  I know it sounds fatuous.
• 25:23
  I heard her husband say,
• 25:27
  saying that she may have lost both her legs, but what they always valued about Helen is her head and her heart.
• 25:36
  And so the good news is that, so far at least, she's in a stable condition and her head and her heart are just fine.
• 25:46
  Take care of yourselves.
• 25:48
  I'll see you next time.