Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / TALKBACK: Nuclear Energy, Men’s Violence & Gaza Protests

Transcript

TALKBACK: Nuclear Energy, Men’s Violence & Gaza Protests · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Get A Humans, welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas, today your ideas, your dangerous
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ideas, in conversation with me, Josh Sips, for a special episode of Uncomfortable Conversations
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where we're doing a live Zoom and you get to ask the questions yourself.
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I don't want this show to just be me talking with galaxy-brained individuals about some
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with the audience itself.
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I know lots of you have lots of interesting ideas, lots of interesting questions so let's
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Let's get stuck in, who have we got first, my trusty producer Dave is going to patch
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people through, so let's select somebody Dave and see how we go.
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If you're unmuted then that means go ahead, I think that's you run.
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Great, okay, I'll jump right into it, Josh I wanted to gather your reaction to a line
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that I've been hearing in regards to violence against women in Australia and I'm not going
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to color it with any of my commentary to begin with just to get your reaction and the
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line is the phrase that you see on placards and in the media is that men just need to do
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better, so that's a line and I'm just looking for your reaction on it.
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My initial reaction is laughter, sorry I don't mean to make light of it, for as background
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to this for people who might be listening or watching abroad there's currently a national
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conversation going on in Australia about domestic violence, the government will be holding
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a panel about this, the Prime Minister announced yesterday that he's committing almost a
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billion dollars in funding for people to leave domestic violence situations.
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You're going to be able to get I think a $5,000 grant if you don't have any money and if
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you're in an abusive relationship and they're also looking at cracking down on toxic
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masculinity online and age-gating places, social media sites so that you know that only
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grown-ups are seeing grown-up content.
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Yeah, it's tricky, isn't it, Ryan?
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I mean, I'm inclined to ask you what your thoughts are, is there a take buried in that
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innocuous question?
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I mean, it is, if I'm going to be honest and a bit flipping about it, it's now that I've
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heard that line that I just need to do better, I won't go home and murder my family and
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my children commit suicide.
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Yeah, yeah, it's good.
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I'm glad that we've had that clarified for us here because I wasn't aware.
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It reminds me a little bit of like some neighborhoods in Sydney, many of which are the most multicultural
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and least racist neighborhoods in the world have seen fit to use taxpayer funds to erect
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signs on the, like on the street signs saying, racism not welcome here as if racist are
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wandering around going, oh, I assumed that racism was okay, and then they see the sign
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and go, oh, okay, with racism is not welcome, then maybe I shouldn't be racist.
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I mean, domestic violence is a huge problem, like as the Prime Minister pointed out, every
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four days a woman is killed by someone she knows.
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One death is too many.
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We need better resources for people to escape abusive relationships when they can't.
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Yet like you, I do feel like you sort of want to win over the largest number of winnable
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people, don't you?
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So I mean, you want the bulk of men to feel like they're not being looped in with pathological
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maniacs who commit violence against women.
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I mean, it is, you know, you wouldn't know from the reporting that more than twice as
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many men are killed by men, like that's not a domestic violence question, but I think
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this conversation has spilled out well beyond domestic violence so that now we're talking
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just about, you know, what it's like to move through the world and I add all of the necessary
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caveats and the throat clearing that I don't know what it's like to move through the world
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as a person surrounded by potential sexual predators who are larger and stronger than me.
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That's something that I will not experience that women have to endure.
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But on the question of like breaking this down as if it were an easy cleavage between
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men and women where there are men who are aggressors and women who are victims, like
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the reality is that no demographic is more dangerous than young males, mostly young
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straight males.
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And part of the project of civilization is to curtail and constrain the instincts of
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young men and we only have to look at places where those constraints break down to see
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what happens.
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If you look at civil wars, it's always young men who are doing the worst shit and if you
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look at, you know, I mean places where law and order breaks down, it's always young men
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who are doing terrible things.
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The kind of structures of modern civilization provide enough context for young men to
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have those passions or even just if you look at, you know, all male boarding schools and
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things like that.
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The kind of, we've constructed systems in ways to try to contain that and it strikes
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me that those, that cohort of people are extremely dangerous to women and they're also extremely
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dangerous to other men.
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I mean, it's not a, it's not a what aboutism move.
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I don't think to say more than twice as many men are killed by men as women are killed
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by men.
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Therefore, the target should be the violent men, not the entire cohort of males.
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Like I don't, I understand the instinct to get men talking to other men in ways that
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are more constructive and making domestic violence taboo and that was probably a laudable
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goal in 1985.
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How many communities in 2024 of men are actually sitting around going, I just give her a bit
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of a slap about the face, she'll be all right.
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I don't know any men who speak that way, I'm maybe unlike detached and ivory tower,
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but I think we've all basically got the memo that it's not on.
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So the people who are still doing it are a cohort of misfits and deranged people and psychopaths
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or whatever they might be.
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So yeah, men need to do better.
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I mean, it's sort of obvious isn't it?
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Why don't you just say that murderers need to do better, murderers need to not murder unlike
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domestic violence?
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I think that's the problem Josh, like to your point, it paints this picture to people
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that men are on this sliding scale or spectrum from civilized man to somewhere between
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aggressive abuser and at worst, the bondized taboo, right?
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And I think it's this idea that we're all in this spectrum as men and we're all white
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knuckling through this world not to hurt people.
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And I think that's the dangerous message I feel that it sets up, right?
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No, it's not always at that space and I support many things, but the people that really
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need to hear this message aren't going to be the ones that will listen to it because
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there are other systemic things going on, there are mental conditions that need to be sorted
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out, there's trauma.
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And so I think it's a little bit misguided and you end up alienating a lot of fuel would
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be advocates.
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Yeah.
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And yes, that's right.
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And that can also lead to more pernicious and toxic versions of masculinity becoming coming
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to the fore.
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Part of the problem is that, you know, I do think part of the rise of the Andrew Tates
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of the world and like this extreme online sexism and misogyny is a backlash or a reaction
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to a sense that some young, I mean, if you're a young guy who isn't very good at getting
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laid and isn't very good with social niceties and isn't a jock and doesn't know his place
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in the world, then receiving a barrage of criticism about your masculinity being inherently
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toxic or deranged and you being a beneficiary of thousands of years of white male hegemony
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is not terribly constructive and probably leaves you more vulnerable to being taken advantage
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of by toxic figures online.
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And I mean, part of my mission on this show is, you know, is like to try to create the
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largest possible sphere of mutual comprehension so that we'll feel like we're on the same
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team and that we're fighting the same enemies and the enemy is violence.
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The enemy is male violence.
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I mean, I'm happy to frame it that way.
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The enemy is the unleashing of male violence on other people.
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But if you want to carve that off and diminish it, it would strike me as wise to have as many
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men on your side as you can.
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I mean, I think the other point that I would make here, Ryan, is that the rise in anxiety
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and depression and fear among young women, which I think you can put down to social media
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as much as anything and to algorithms and to Instagram and so on, is something that
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is worth thinking about when we figure out how to talk about these issues as well.
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Because we're already freaked out.
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All of us have experiences of knowing people who walk through the world in a state of
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victimization and fear instead of in a state of power and possibility.
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And if you wanted to create a narrative that was as corrosive as possible to young women's
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sense of self-determination and power, it would be a narrative in which they're constantly
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being heranged and under threat of violence from a universal cohort of equally intrinsically
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violent males.
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I mean, that would not be a good world to walk through.
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And if we regard it as a bad thing for parents to be hysterical and overprotective of their
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children and constantly worried about whether or not their children are going to be snatched
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when they're walking along the road by a pedophile and a white van or something, and if we recognize
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that part of life is risk-taking, part of life is trying to moderate and conditionalize
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our credences, our possible beliefs against actual data and facts, then I'm reminded a little
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bit of the race riots in America in 2020 where you would cherry pick a single example of
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police brutality against a black person and then use that as a reason to essentially whip
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up media hysteria and instill fear in all black people, which is not to say that they're
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not disproportionately targets of violence they may well be, and it's not to say that
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women aren't disproportionately targets of domestic violence specifically, they are.
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But they're not disproportionately targets of male violence period, males are the disproportionate
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targets of male violence, and if we want young women to walk with their heads up high,
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then it's probably good for us all to have an actual understanding of how severe the
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threat is and how real the threat is versus one that's just whipped up by slogans and banners
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and placards saying men need to take responsibility because all men are violent and all women are
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living in constant danger.
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Like the statistics are bad, but they're also not that bad.
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I mean, I actually went back and looked at the, you could clip that and you say that
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I'm being some kind of men's rights, you know, fascist for saying that, but just going
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off the data, the number of women killed in the last financial year was a little up from
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the year before and there may be COVID reasons for that and whatever else, but it's the second
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lowest in 30 years.
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Like the 1989 to 1990 financial year was the last time, the last time that it was this
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quote unquote good.
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Now again, every single death is a tragedy, but if you're actually looking at the genuine
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risk that people face, if you're looking at police data and I can accept that there
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are also kinds of caveats around that because maybe police data is underestimating it,
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but it's certainly not underestimating it today more than it was underestimating it in
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1989 to 1990.
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The long-term trajectory is good.
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So how can we make it better and how can we have as many allies as possible in that project?
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I think it's a problem with hearts and minds, isn't it Josh, that you need this raw emotion
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to get people off their seat to capture them for the media to even pick things up?
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But the problem is, is when that anger and that frustration just attaches the wrong thing
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and not to take us off onto a tangent, but when it gets so bad that you can't even tell
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friend from foe, like the albo situation at the protest, I think that's a problem.
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Yeah, just like what we wanted to do.
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So albo is the prime minister of Australia and he was at a protest of women's march and
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just explained to people who didn't see it, what happened?
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Yeah, that's right.
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So the prime minister was contacted by the organizers of the women's protest to speak
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and initially the office said that he couldn't, but then he decided to walk and to march
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with the women to show support.
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And then there was a bit of a archibaggion whether he was able to talk at the time.
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And from what I saw on the recordings, there was a bit of, oh, should we let him talk?
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We'll ask the crowd.
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He got a little bit frustrated.
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So Anthony Albanese clearly got a bit frustrated at the situation.
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He said, you know, on the PM, do you want me to speak or not?
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And so finally when he came on the mic, he expressed that frustration and said that we
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wanted to talk.
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They wouldn't let us at which point the organizer was very frustrated said, that's a lie.
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I contacted you earlier.
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You said no, obviously, albo was talking about right then and there.
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And she ended up getting real upset and crying.
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And there's been a huge backlash against Anthony Albanese for showing what has been
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described by the organizer as another example of male entitlement and exactly the problem.
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Right.
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Right.
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Right.
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Okay.
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So yeah, him being mildly bitter about whether or not he as the prime minister is entitled
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to speak at a woman's rally is the same category of problem in the minds of some people as
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a person murdering their family.
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It's all just male, it's all just men being men.
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I mean, yeah, give me a break.
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Although I do suspect that once your prime minister should probably not be bitter about
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stuff like that.
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You should probably just get up there and say you think it is no point as prime minister
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being, you know, having thin skin.
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Ryan, thanks for the question.
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It's great to talk to you.
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Take care.
15:30
Thanks Josh.
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Thanks.
15:32
Who have we got up next?
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Hi Josh.
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It's Tyrone here.
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Hey Tyrone.
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Hey Don.
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I love the podcast.
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Thank you.
15:39
Great to be here.
15:41
My question is in the world where we're becoming increasingly polarized, how do we have
15:47
uncomfort conversations about important issues like energy policy.
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So at the moment in Australia, there's two really big kind of shit fights happening
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around energy policy.
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One is nuclear energy and whether we need it in Australia or whether it should even
16:04
just be legal, it's currently illegal in Australia, yes, very crazy.
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And the other one is around environmental impacts of large scale renewable energy projects.
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So in Northern Queensland, the state that I live in, there's been a lot of pushback from
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environmentalists where remnant forest has been clear for these large wind projects.
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They're getting called fake environmentalists, they're a front group for the Liberal Party.
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And the same with nuclear, like I'm up in a Greens Labor voter, I ran against Peter
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Dutton as a Greens candidate in 2013.
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And every time I bring up nuclear energy, it's like, oh, you're a liberal shill, who's
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paying you, et cetera, et cetera.
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So yeah, interesting in your thoughts on how we have these conversations and doing better
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as a society.
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I mean, I don't know what the answer to the question about how we have the conversations
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is because I'm doing my bit up, but on the question of the ability to talk in a scientifically
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based way about energy policy, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
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I mean, the nuclear issue in the green space is fascinating, because when I talk to
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Greens now, and you can tell me if I'm, if this is your experience, mostly what I hear
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is actually, I look, it's too late for nuclear to be viable anyway because it takes 20 years
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to build a reactor, and by then renewables are going to be the only game in town.
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So there's no point in talking about it now, which I find to be a little bit of a dodge
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because if you're talking about the conversation, if you're having a meta conversation about
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the way that we have conversations about public policy and science, the response to that
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would be, well, where were you 20 years ago when we could have been building the nuclear
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reactors that would now be providing base load power and enable us to get rid of coal altogether?
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Like, so it's all very well to say it's too late now, but I mean, you would make, you
18:08
would be critical of a conservative who'd been stonewalling on action against climate
18:12
change, for example, for 30 or 40 years, and just now we're saying, oh, look, it's too
18:17
late for us to do anything about it. You'd say, well, yeah, but where were you, you were
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trying to block renewables in the 1990s when it would have been, when that was the time
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to do it. And similarly, the same criticism can be made of the left on nuclear. Like, it
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may be the case, I want to do a whole deep dive on nuclear really because I suspected
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it's probably the case that it is too late and that by the time you actually got the
18:39
reactors up in the 2040s and 2050s renewables are just going to be so good. And if we electrify
18:45
everything, if we go the kind of soil Griffith route and rapidly electrify our homes and have
18:53
as many solar panels as we can on roofs and have as much solar vehicle, I mean, electric vehicle
18:59
uptakers as we can, then it may be the case that solar and wind and storage energy storage,
19:08
like hydro storage or battery storage are good enough that you don't need nuclear to provide
19:13
base load power by the time you're in the 2040s and 2050s. But as I think you're alluding to,
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that should be a conversation that's had on its merits and that's had on the basis of the science
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and the cost per kilowatt hour and hour willingness to, you know, what risks we're willing to
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tolerate. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like the the it's too late argument is one that they're making
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the same argument. I'll take 10, 15 years is the same argument they're making 10, 15 years ago.
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We could have nuclear running right now. I just don't think that's a good enough argument to
19:50
maintain a band on clean energy. I also think that, you know, the future is long.
19:57
People think we've only got 10 years, but really we've got all of the remaining human
20:04
history that we need to provide clean energy for. So to to limit ourselves is potentially
20:14
problematic. The other thing Tyrone is like if you build it, then you can use it or not use it
20:19
as the case may be. It's not like you're it's not like you're required to use it forever just
20:23
because you've built it, but if you want to do now the things that you will want to have done
20:28
so that if you need them, you won't not have done them, then you might as well be doing all the
20:33
things now that you might want to have done by the time the 2040s or 2050s come around.
20:39
Yeah, so I don't know why, but when you say that that nuclear is banned, I mean, isn't that a bit of
20:43
a pejorative? You're putting spin on that. I mean, there are currently no licenses issue being
20:49
issued for nuclear power reactors to be. No, it's actually a legal job. I mean, energy is
20:54
going to be legal on top, isn't it? It's actually a legal in Australia. So we are trying to
21:01
build a nuclear reactor, but I'd need to get a permit to build a qualified power plant as well,
21:06
and that's just the fact that they would issue the permit potentially for the cost of the nuclear.
21:10
The Federal Environmental Minister can't legally approve a nuclear reactor. It's been in the
21:18
EPBC Act from 1998. So John Howard had to do a deal with the Democrats and the Greens to get
21:27
the Lucas Heights reactor built the current opal reactor, which provides medical isotopes for
21:34
cancer treatments. So as a deal to get that over the line in the late 90s, he slipped in this
21:42
amendment that he wouldn't approve nuclear power. So it's actually been illegal for the last
21:48
25 years. I see. So what you mean is there's actually a piece of legislation that says that even if
21:53
the government of the day wants to approve it, the executive branch can't do it, it would have to
21:58
go through that if the past had built one, do the other, the other law.
22:02
Yeah, that's right. And big energy companies are saying we're not even looking at nuclear energy
22:08
because why would we where our shareholders would not be happy if we were spending money on
22:15
investigating an energy source that's actually illegal? Yeah, right. So just lifting the ban
22:22
would allow us to have a conversation. And this is one of the arguments that groups like
22:28
the Climate Council are saying is, oh, it's illegal. I'm like, yeah, marriage equality used to
22:33
be illegal too, but it was stupid and unjust. So we changed the law. Just because something's illegal
22:40
doesn't mean that it's bad. So this is a really silly argument that a lot of green groups are
22:47
making, unfortunately. What do you make of the waste argument and the fact that you're basically
22:52
bequeathing to generations in 10,000 years who may be existing without our scientific knowledge.
22:59
They may we may have a societal collapse. You can imagine the civilizational collapse. You can
23:04
imagine like hunter-gatherers coming back and stumbling upon all this radioactive crap that we've
23:10
pushed out and buried. How do you communicate to civilizations tens of thousands of years in
23:17
the future that they should have touched this stuff? Yeah, that's a great question, Josh. And
23:24
I think if civilization collapse, we've got probably bigger issues on our hands,
23:28
than small amounts of radioactive material sitting around safely stored in concrete and
23:34
steel canisters. And also, it's not tens of thousands of years before this stuff is relatively benign.
23:43
You know, you're looking at between 500 and 1,000 years and this this stuff returns to a level
23:48
that's similar to the the background radiation, the mine that it came from. But better yet,
23:55
we can reprocess and recycle this stuff. So for instance, all the spent nuclear fuel sitting
24:01
around in the UK could be reprocessed and power the UK for 500 years. Just with what's been
24:09
already mined, so we wouldn't have to mine anything more. We just reprocessed this stuff.
24:13
Obviously, there's challenges to that as well, but I think, you know, there's there's solutions
24:19
available if we're willing to have the conversations about how we do these things. If you just shut it
24:25
down off, oh, it's a toxic mess, we're going to kill millions of people for 100,000 years, then you
24:31
don't allow yourself to ask these questions. And Tyrone is part of the is part of the breakdown
24:36
in conversation on the green side from your perspective, a result of like the kind of general
24:42
ideology of people who who place themselves in that in that movement, because like, you know,
24:49
you mentioned the wind farms and the chopping down of trees or like it strikes me that the way
24:55
where the way out of the easiest path out of the the climate crisis, the crisis of what I like to
25:02
call a climate chaos, which I think is just an easier way of articulating to people that it's
25:07
going to be really expensive and an enormous hassle to constantly be sitting on the tarmac while
25:12
your plane is delayed, because there are too many thunderstorms and for everything to always be
25:16
delayed and expensive and have to be there always to be ash in the air every summer because of
25:21
bushfires and for homes to have to move back from the water because the storm surge is a more frequent
25:26
like it's going to be a no at the very best case scenario is going to be really annoying and really
25:30
costly to live through the next half century or so and the easiest way out of that probably is
25:35
for us all to have a slightly techno utopian optimistic market oriented path out of this where we
25:45
can put in place things like carbon taxes and and ways to incorporate the negative externalities
25:51
of of climate gases into the economy as it stands rather than to do what many people on the green
25:59
left would like to do which I think is embrace an anti market mindset and anti growth mindset I
26:07
mean you're going to have a whole conversation about the sustainability of growth but for in the
26:10
here and now where we when we find ourselves in an emergency you use the tools that you've got
26:15
and the tools that we currently have ones that are based around market capitalism and social
26:21
democracy so is that is part of the the disconnect in having conversations about this that you're
26:28
talking with people who are fundamentally ideologically opposed to the system that we live in and
26:33
want bigger reform than just solving the climate crisis yeah that's a that's a good question Josh
26:39
I think some of it is just an opposition to capitalism and nuclear is seen as part of capitalism
26:47
certainly 10 years ago when I was advocating for a hundred percent renewable vision I didn't
26:54
really conceptualize in my head what that would look like in reality of wind turbines you know
27:02
plaster across every beautiful natural vista that we can we can think of and I you know I was
27:10
picturing this green utopia not an industrialization of our natural landscapes and I
27:20
I've come to oppose some of those projects because I know that there is this alternative that we
27:26
if we include nuclear energy we can have a smaller land use footprint and reduce some of the
27:32
environmental impacts of that you know one of the big pushbacks I get from the green movement
27:40
is that oh you know nuclear is just an excuse to continue mining and it's like well where do you
27:45
think the resources for wind and solar come from they're mined out of the ground as well you know
27:50
these things don't just fall like manner from heaven onto onto the landscape they're they're built in
27:56
China where it's these huge coal power stations powering these big silicon plants that are making
28:05
the solar panels so I think there's a disconnect in people's minds about what it's really going to take
28:11
to do this clean energy transition and and what they they think that they want and I'll just also
28:18
say that within the green movement it's really interesting I speak to younger green party members
28:23
especially as they go yeah we know the policy on nuclear is done but if we were to change the policy
28:29
break the hearts of all that the older generation in the party who you know built this movement
28:35
off the back of the anti nuclear movement and they're the ones with all the money
28:39
we can't fist them off too much fascinating fascinating and they probably have understandable
28:44
emotional reasons for being opposed to the absolutely they live through an era of Chernobyl and
28:48
they live through an era of the Cold War and of the Cuban Missile Crisis maybe and whatever
28:53
yes absolutely if you were inheriting nuclear technology as it starts now and starting from a
28:58
base zero right now you'd probably evaluate it more favorably than you would if you're inheriting
29:02
all of that those those tragedies because the technology is better and because our political
29:07
systems are better. Tyrone thanks great great to talk to you thanks for chiming in thanks Josh have
29:13
a good one and just a reminder that if you want to be alluded to the next time we do one of these
29:18
that you can join us live substake.com slash uncomfortable conversations you can either have a
29:25
paid subscription or a free subscription either way you get to watch along and you get to be
29:28
alerted to to events like this and lots of other great stuff via email. Charles we've got you now
29:35
yeah hi Josh can you hear me okay mate yeah I can go for it fantastic thank you for doing such a
29:40
commendable job on your discussions on what's going on in Israel and Gaza and with that in mind
29:48
I wanted to ask the question understand your thoughts on what's going on with the first
29:55
of all the actual university campuses around the world that are staging these sit-ins and the
30:01
protests against the war and secondly having seen what happened currently in Colombia where
30:10
some of these protesters were arrested what do you think the backlash is going to be going
30:14
forward with all of this yeah I don't know I mean it's it's I mean the first thing I would say is
30:22
young people are allowed to be stupid and I was stupid when I was in university as well and
30:28
so I give a fairly wide birth to what's happening on campus in terms of the people who are doing
30:36
the protesting now of course there's going to be fringe elements there who are genuinely antisemitic
30:41
or who are genocidal even but I think the the general thrust of student protests is that there
30:50
that this is not just about Gaza and this is not just about Israel this is about justice this is
30:55
about colonialism this is about international politics this is you know they see this battle
31:01
rightly or wrongly I mean wrongly in my view as being tied up with broader
31:08
features of a world that has been ruled for too long by white men with bombs and you know not
31:16
by the people who who have a right to live freely in the places where their grandparents
31:23
came from now all of that is complicated and muddied and messy and many of these people lack
31:28
a proper historical context for why the Palestinian situation is as grave as it is many of them
31:36
absolve Arab states to freely many of them absolve you know basically anyone but the Jews for the
31:46
scenario that we find ourselves in but what do university campuses do I mean I guess the
31:54
the thing that's been infuriating about the response of universities so far really ever since
32:00
October 7th has been the double standard that they obviously have towards Jews I mean it reminds
32:05
me of David Badeel who I had on the podcast the English comment who's written a book called Jews
32:12
don't count and I'd encourage people to listen to that episode of the podcast because David's very
32:17
articulate and his point in Jews don't count is just that over the past decade or so we've had a
32:23
reckoning a social justice reckoning in which we now understand that minorities get to decide how
32:31
they want to be treated and how the majority gets to speak to them we don't get to use sexist
32:39
language to a woman and when she objects just say oh you're lighting up I wasn't I didn't mean
32:44
I was sexist I was just you know I was just making a joke love and we don't get to use racialized
32:49
language about black people and then say oh no no but I didn't use the N word or I wasn't actually
32:55
being you know being racist we we have to listen to the woman and we have to listen to the person
33:02
of color about the way that we speak about the microaggressions that they're feeling and that
33:08
overall is I think a welcome change it's made us more sensitive it can go too far but it's good
33:16
to be mindful of the impact that we're having Badeel's point is that the only minority who doesn't
33:20
get that right to talk about how they want to be treated and spoken about is the Jews the Jews
33:26
aren't a real minority they're too wealthy they're too conniving they're too slimy they're too
33:32
powerful they're too sniveling at the same time and so when you talk about how guards are just
33:40
goes to prove that there's a you know that the Zionists have a bloodlust and love the blood of
33:46
Palestinian babies if a Jew says sounds a little bit like historical anti-semitism it seems to be
33:54
totally fine for the protestor to say no no I'd use the word Zionist I didn't actually say
33:59
Jew so I'm not talking about Jews there's nothing anti-Semitic about it because some Jews are
34:02
also anti-Zionists therefore I've got to get out of jail free card and you can't criticize me for
34:06
it like in no other social justice scenario do we allow the majority group to say no I'm going
34:15
to I'm going to defend myself and blind myself to the concerns that I'm being told a persecuted
34:20
minority has because I assert that I didn't mean it in a way that was offensive and they're just
34:26
being oversensitive and so what I think the weird thing about the whole university uprising is that
34:32
these are bastions of that social justice orthodoxy of that dogma of that ethos and if it were the
34:38
case that these protesters were there and they were marga make America great again types who were
34:45
protesting against I don't know black lives matter does anyone doubt that they would have been
34:53
moved out on day one I mean it they wouldn't have been able to say oh our words aren't intended
34:59
to be genocide all against blacks therefore you should allow us to protest the university would
35:04
have seen that black people felt threatened by the presence of those protests and it wouldn't
35:10
become a free speech issue they would have just been moved along now if you have protesters against
35:16
Israel who are chanting from the river to the sea and they're dredging up very traditional old
35:24
anti-Jewish tropes and just to clarify for people who think there's something innocuous about
35:29
from the river to the sea many Jewish people feel that that is basically saying that there should
35:34
be an Arab Palestinian state on the land where Israel currently is not just in the occupied
35:40
territories but in actual Israel so the question of what happens to the Jews do they get put on
35:44
trains do they get shipped out on boats do they get slaughtered what do they get to live happily
35:49
as many Palestinian activists like to say happily alongside the Palestinians in this future Arab
35:54
state that's not going to be at all dysfunctional and will respect the rights of Jews and gays and
35:58
women like all those other great Arab majority Muslim majority states that we see around the world
36:05
so if there's a genocidal overtone or a slightly threatening tone or intent in
36:11
you know quasi violent protests that are chanting about Zionist blood lust and from the river to
36:16
the sea it's galling that university administrators don't see that as the same kind of intimidation
36:24
as they would immediately recognize if it was make America great again types talking about any
36:29
other minority coming back to Badeel's point Jews don't count as a minority Jews don't count as
36:34
a group of people who can have legitimate concerns even when it reaches the the stage as it did
36:39
in Colombia that Jewish students and teachers and professors were being told that they should stay
36:45
home because the police couldn't guarantee their safety you're still like quibbling about
36:51
how many angels fit on the head of a pin and what is free speech and how much free speech there
36:55
should be these are questions that would not arise where any other minority being demonized
37:02
and I just feel terribly sad that like world jury has been forced to hitch its wagon to a
37:09
noxious right wing government in Israel I don't think that what's going on in Gaza is morally
37:15
acceptable there has to be a better way there's responsibility and culpability on both sides here
37:22
I mean the extreme right wing provocations of the Netanyahu government for 15 plus years have
37:29
contributed to the situation that Israel finds itself in and I'm frankly resentful and furious
37:35
that we have to sit here like beholden as Jews to what the Israeli government does expected to
37:42
answer for it expected to be caught up as collateral damage in its intransigence and its aggression
37:50
but I don't see I mean that's a very long way of answering your question Charles but I mean
37:56
I don't see a way out of this until there is some kind of a long term resolution to
38:01
the problem of Palestine and Israel I just wish that people had cooler on karma heads and that
38:08
there was more consistency about the the way that we expect protests to be conducted and the
38:14
legitimacy of targeting individual minority groups thanks Charles good to talk to you
38:22
let's go on to our next guest on this live zoom I'm not sure I'm back I think just to provide
38:32
a bit of comedic relief okay good I'm always appreciate comedic relief so I've been actually
38:37
always very interested in things to do with race and ethnicity yeah and recently we've got the
38:43
whole family to do one of those DNA ethnicity tests oh yeah and I won't go into my one but
38:51
was very surprising too but my wife actually came back as 10% arcanazi Jew which was a total mystery
38:59
and my question to you is does that mean that we technically have the right to return to Israel
39:04
and more importantly to my kids after serving the idea that is don't worry I think I think you
39:12
find I think you're off the hook I believe that you have to have one grandparent to be able to go
39:16
to you one Jewish grandparent so if she's one tenth no she doesn't cut it maybe Hitler would still
39:22
kill her I don't know well what was the what were the rules back then so you might get you might
39:26
sneak through on that uh technicality but I don't think that's brown eyes yeah yeah she has brown eyes
39:32
actually what did she what ethnicity did she think she was um convex Australian right right
39:40
fascinate uh but um there was a lot in there but it rates as a hidden in that
39:44
story rates is a bigger question about um just what we think we are and we're obviously
39:50
a lot more diverse than we identify with and you know it really talks to this stuff around
39:58
even something like the voice to say what percentage of you does it have to reach this threshold
40:04
before you can identify as someone or you can choose to find your culture or whatever it may be
40:10
and it's fascinating to me yeah I mean there's been a dramatic increase in the number of Indigenous
40:14
Australians over the past decade or so which is interesting are people identifying as
40:19
that because I mean I guess it makes sense that if socially there's a group that is maligned
40:25
and disadvantaged then you wouldn't do much work in trying to figure out whether or not you
40:29
belong to that group that but then if that if the narrative flips and that group becomes
40:34
respected as a as a repository of all wisdom and uh and decency in a white supremacist world
40:43
in a post-colonial world then maybe you would like start digging around and go you know what I
40:47
think Aunt Bertha said that one of her great grandparents was uh slightly Indigenous therefore
40:53
I'm gonna find my power as a proud where I dream and or whatever it might be but yeah which is
40:59
not necessarily to diminish it I mean our our identities are always stitched together through a bunch
41:04
of different things right it's not I don't think it's illegitimate to to go you know what I'm
41:10
actually a descendant of King Henry VII which I am and then maybe that maybe I focus a little bit
41:16
more on that than on the loser alcoholic ancestor who I might want to downplay so I think we
41:23
all play a bit of that game but yeah that's interesting did you find out anything interesting about
41:28
yourself I did actually my my whole life I've uh I've been told I come across very Eurasian so for
41:37
people listening I have Chinese heritage and Asian heritage rather and my test came back I was
41:45
expecting it to be 90% Asian ethnicity and maybe a splash of something else but it came back um
41:53
uh 50% Iberian so oh lay and I have no idea what that means whether I'm adopted or some um
42:00
baby did a bad thing but um yeah um it's just uh was there was there was there any Chinese
42:06
yeah the uh so it was about 50% Iberian which is Spanish and 10% South American and things
42:15
and Italian and then the rest was from the Asian culture interesting are fascinating I don't
42:22
forget the Portuguese you might be Portuguese there are Iberian as well uh well let's try the empire
42:27
right yeah exactly thanks thanks Ryan good to talk to you again uh Florian is it
42:33
yep sorry I mean this will say I'm a subscriber but I didn't really see anything till like 20
42:42
minutes ago so that's right there's actually probably live jumping uh yeah um this might have come
42:50
up earlier but like the ever question about respecting cultures so like the there's something kind
42:55
of like okay well we should respect this culture we should respect that culture but what is it
43:00
if cultures have some element that we kind of like fundamentally disagree with in a sense it
43:06
like that they're doing something that might kind of like be contrary to what we think is right
43:11
or wrong um I mean this goes very small I mean obviously this is not a huge kind of thing but like
43:16
the well eating dogs is but one culture might kind of say like fine that's perfectly fine and
43:22
other cultures like the yikes how out of can you do that or kind of like if you go high as like
43:26
polygamy it's like if you have that in or range marriage in one culture might be perceptible
43:32
you know the culture it is obviously not and so how do we if we are expected to kind of like
43:37
respect cultures um in kind of context then how do we deal with the fact that like that those
43:42
cultures might do something that is essentially commonly seen within a country as like like no
43:49
this is not right this is not what we should be doing so how do you how do you uh Florian whether or
43:55
or not the the act is to boo simply because we've decided it's to boo versus whether or not the
44:01
act is to boo because there are legitimate rational reasons for it's being taboo and in other
44:07
words it causes it causes actual harm to people so like you know the examples you gave eating dogs
44:15
I'm a big fan of eating dogs I think if you're going to eat a pig you should be able to eat a
44:19
dog I've eaten dog in Southeast Asia sorry Fido I respect vegans for their consistency I don't
44:26
really respect people who will think that there's something noble about not eating a dog but
44:30
will unthinkingly participate in the torture and slaughter of millions of other sentient creatures
44:36
right without a care in the world um so in that respect I'd be like you know okay go for it
44:42
you know eat your dogs if you're uh you know I'm happy with your feeding dogs it was just more like
44:47
kind of like probably it's like a cultural sentiment but I think we're I think where the where
44:52
your point where your question reaches it's it's it's most sort of controversial or provocative
44:57
endpoint which is worth talking about is like what if there is a deeply sexist or homophobic
45:04
subculture that's being imported right and you have communities where we as white people who are
45:14
hyper conscious and hyper sensitive of our own white privilege we have an instinct a laudable
45:21
instinct to try to be as inclusive as possible towards minority cultures especially if they're brown
45:28
skinned minority cultures coming from shittier places than we had the good fortune to be born into
45:33
then we try to sort of take a hands-off approach to to that and yet inside those subcultures
45:40
there can be brutalities that we would never accept if they were done on a widespread scale that
45:47
may be intense homophobia towards children who are trying to come out as gay it may be a woman's
45:53
place is in the home kind of highly regressive models of sexism uh it may be you know valing
46:00
women and we sort of struggle with okay you want to empower women for example in Muslim
46:06
Australian communities to feel like there's no taboo around wearing a burqa or a nikaab
46:13
if they want to they find empowerment in that freely chosen great go for it and yet it's hard to
46:19
disentangle that from the fact that they would probably face exclusion expulsion and total socio-cultural
46:29
annihilation from their peers and their husband and their parents if they declined to address
46:35
that way so how do we as the host society without being condescending or patronizing try to
46:41
empower the minority within the minority and you know the smallest minority is always the individual
46:48
how do we empower the individual and the sub minority to assert themselves against the the larger
46:54
minority so that we're not just playing a game of giving a microphone to the loudest spoken
47:01
representative of that community to tell us that everything's hunky-dory and there's nothing to see
47:06
here and nothing to worry about as they go about peddling uh norms that would not be acceptable in our
47:13
liberal democratic system um yeah i don't know the answer to that i i my instinct and my hope is that
47:21
it just fades away as generations evolve like the first generation of traumatized Lebanese refugees
47:28
who come from the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s behave a certain way but by the 2020s
47:34
their children and grandchildren are behaving differently um and you try to set up the norms of like
47:41
this is what we all have to agree to you don't have to agree not to eat dog and you don't have to
47:46
agree that there's no parental input into your choice of a partner if you come from a place where
47:52
arranged marriages are perfectly normal and you're willing to to participate in that system
47:58
but when it comes to i don't know genital mutilation or you know the suppression of people's
48:04
sexuality or the denigration of people on the basis of their sex or gender then you draw a line
48:10
in the sand and say everybody in Australia or everybody in a western liberal society has to
48:14
subscribe to these core principles if you're gonna live here is that a distinction that
48:22
could i ask like the do you make a distinction between respecting a culture and tolerating a culture
48:28
like the essence and like the if i expect it to be respecting something i'm essentially
48:32
expecting to it be endorsing it like i said like the if i'm tolerating exactly i can think that
48:37
you're wrong as in like this is not something you should be doing but i can tolerate that you are
48:43
doing this what that you think this is right we might we might not allow you to do it here like if
48:48
you are basically in the culture but i can tolerate that you think that is what should be done
48:53
yeah that's interesting sometimes when i've said in the past that the that one of the principle one
48:58
of the key principles of a liberal democracy is tolerance people hear that as being pejorative
49:03
and say i don't want to merely tolerate people i want to like respect people and uplift them and
49:08
empower them i don't use tolerance to as it to mean i merely tolerate your existence grudgingly
49:14
i just use it as a neutral term to say i'm not going to get involved in your affairs and i think
49:19
you're right that like i shouldn't need to respect uh your silly religion or your you know
49:26
backward way of doing things from my perspective but i do regard it as being valuable and important
49:32
that i uh tolerate it not in a bad way of like oh i have to put up with it but in a in a
49:39
sort of meta respectful way of saying i'm drawing a line around what is private for me and what is
49:43
private for you and you can have your own existence and you can live that way and i don't need to
49:48
have to give it a moral valence one way or another as long as you're not breaking any laws or you
49:53
not suppressing anybody or causing harm to anybody um that's fine i'll you know yes i think
49:59
i think you're right that tolerance is the correct approach not phony respect
50:06
thanks yeah thanks fine uh okay we're getting to the end of an into an hour now so if there's
50:11
anyone else we can yeah let's let's see if there's one last person uh producer Dave
50:17
otherwise i'll uh otherwise i'll love you guys and leave you and thank you for all
50:22
beings such wonderful and supportive uh supportive audience members and i just give one
50:26
departing message to florian please run florian if your question is a polite way of saying should
50:31
you tolerate and i'll pick on my own race because uh asian culture should tolerate something that
50:37
is kind of rude or inconveniencing other people the answer is no don't don't fall into that trap
50:43
and i've been through many examples of running into that from asian culture we had a classic one the
50:50
other week of um an asian lady in our local shopping center holding a car park by standing in it
50:57
and i was talking lots of friends before my white friends and they're like oh no you've got to
51:02
be respectful because in china and other places this is fair game and she may not know and you
51:07
talk to all my asian family and friends and they're like oh she's being so rude she's no she's
51:11
being rude and she's taking advantage of people so i think when it comes to that's not racialized
51:17
at all Ryan i've seen so many white people do that i've seen so many so many fancy women in the
51:23
eastern suburbs of sydney in little skirts that are too short with their their their duck lips
51:30
full of lip filler and their Botoxed eyes like standing there on their phone in a car spot waiting
51:36
for somebody to come well the circles we run in josh but i think like for example in malaysia
51:42
it is um double there's a double parking culture so you can go nip into the shops and you get back
51:48
and you find out there's a car literally parked side by side and you have to just lean on the horn
51:54
so it's those kind of things those etiquette style things that i'm talking about
51:57
florian don't be don't be afraid to call those in it so well that's fine no it was more the background
52:03
was like the more like institutional priorities will like the if you have a setting will like
52:08
the institution says oh we are supposed to ring uh like what basically like the the institution
52:15
requires you to respect a culture um i mean it's like i don't want to go into too much
52:21
individual detail of like what it comes from at the moment bad you're gonna add yourself to
52:25
fire florian for uh you unwillingness to express it yeah i know i was like yeah probably get the
52:30
bomb out of that just gonna being forced to doggy by your employer uh but nobody was essentially
52:36
getting that kind of like setting where somebody says like you know where this is where the difference
52:40
between respected tolerance well like the imperfectly happy to like the if basically i'm expected
52:44
to tolerate other cultures but essentially it's like the uh war point does someone impose on you
52:50
something by saying like by respecting this culture you therefore have to agree to this this
52:55
and this kind of like obsession and that probably was more like but anyways it's like the yes no it
53:01
says uh and say like the yeah actually it's not quite really would like to try dog but i have
53:06
from never like had the opportunity i got to say reporting back from the fun lines uh i've had
53:11
better i've had better meets than dog uh thanks for uh thanks thanks ryan for uh for uh
53:16
conversing with uh with florian and actually getting it back and forth that's nice for for for
53:20
all of us to be able to talk to each other and have it not just be a one way street i'm gonna
53:23
love you and leave you and go and have some dog for lunch and i give florian i give you
53:28
permission to uh to be as racist as you want to towards any Chinese person who's
53:32
reserving a car spot uh unjustifiably uh that's uh that's a crime we don't tolerate here in this
53:38
civilized land of Australia uh thanks so much for being part of the conversation we'll see you next
53:42
time when i come to the conversation