Latest / Thinking Class / #149 - Bella d'Abrera - How Australia Became A Warning For Every Western Democracy

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#149 - Bella d'Abrera - How Australia Became A Warning For Every Western Democracy · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking to Bella Dabrera.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: Bella is the former director of the Foundations of Western Civilization program at the Institute of Public Affairs in Sydney, Australia, the co-founder of Wyborn Press, and the author of Mindless.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: In this conversation, Bella and I think out loud about Paolo Frere.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_03: He is the Brazilian Marxist most parents have never heard of, but whose ideas now run through every teacher's college in the Anglosphere.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_03: The deliberate destruction of the humanities in Western universities, the extraordinary and frightening story of Jeffrey Blaney, who is one of Australia's greatest historians, who had bombs placed outside of his home for questioning the pace of demographic change in Australia back in the 1980s, what modern Australia tells us about the future of Britain, and indeed the future of that country, and whether what is happening in education is a failure, or whether it is a project in its own right.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: This episode is brought to you by Aquinas Tuition, which provides bespoke academic tutoring informed by classical liberal arts principles.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_03: And whether your child needs support with GCSEs, A levels, or university entrance, Aquinas will pair every student with a tutor who cares about formation and not just grades, but they care about grades too.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Visit AquinasTuition.co.uk.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm also the founder of the Albion Institute.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: This is an institution for the formation of nationally minded leaders and an informed public through the preservation, transmission, and renewal of the intellectual and cultural inheritance of the English speaking people.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Lord Nigel Bigger has joined Albion as advisory board chair, and if you would like to learn more or register your interest, visit Albion Institute.org.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: And if you haven't already, go and watch The Call of England, my six-part documentary series following HV Morton's 1927 journey through England.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: The link is in the description.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: Enjoy the show, classmates, and now Baladabrera.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: Paulo Freya was a Brazilian Marxist who believed that education should not teach children to read and think, but to be resentful, to see themselves as oppressed.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: And these ideas now run through every teacher's college in the English-speaking world.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: And Bella D'Abrera, my guest today, has written a book titled Mindless that traces how entire generations of children were turned from students to activists.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: But if you think this is only about schools, she will tell you that you are wrong.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: The scale of the problem is much wider than that.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: Bella, welcome to Thinking Class.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me on.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's my pleasure.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: Let's begin with how you open the book.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_03: You quote the American intellectual, the African-American intellectual Thomas Sowell, who says the political bigotry of the left is not just an incidental defect, but a fundamental feature of their vision of the world.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: Why did you choose that as your epigraph?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I chose that because Seoul uh encapsulates everything that is wrong with the university system, the hypocrisy of the university system across the Anglosphere, in particular the US and Australia and UK, which I spent time looking at, which is this obsession, this this uh monomaical obsession with uh diversity of race and gender, um, and every other conceivable diversity, but not necessarily diversity of uh of opinion or or politics.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um he he's basically saying that political bigotry is is not a byproduct of the system.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes the system, this is how the system reproduces itself.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what we are seeing now in the entire education system across the West.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just universities, but it's the schools and it's the kindergartens, and it's um it's a it is the system now.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a byproduct of the system.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I chose that that uh that particular quote to start the book with, because we are dealing with something here that is so immense and so profound and so deeply entrenched um that that a casual sort of glance at what they're teaching in schools and syllabuses just just doesn't is is not sufficient now to to really tackle the problem what's going on in the education system.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: There's another quote of souls that you include in the book, and it's uh it is something that I grapple with quite a lot in the corporate world uh as I see diversity programs um spread and you hear about their objectives, but he writes, The next time some academic tells you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: And here in Britain, I think we've got something like this is based on the school teaching population, something like 7% of the teaching population voted for either the Conservatives or Reform at the last general election in 2024, with everyone else voting for one of the centre-left leftist parties.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh what do you think the impact of this is on wider society?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: So we know that the minds of the children will obviously just skew toward that of their teachers, but what what's the impact on wider society of just having this monoculture?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these students, these school students grow up and they get jobs in the bureaucracy.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um they get jobs uh making policies, they get jobs uh renaming paintings in uh the art galleries so that they're they're they're they're more appropriate.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um they get jobs in every single sector of society.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there is no institution now that is free from this because these uh uh uh university trained uh students who have completely absorbed the this this world view, know nothing else, and are and are full of the sort of um zealousness of of of what I sometimes think of as as converts who want to go out and change the world and transform the world.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where Freyr comes back in because that's how he transformed the the classroom through his idea that uh that that it's it's not about the transmission of knowledge.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, he called it the banking model, which I wonder if was a dig at capitalism as well, because he was a Marxist, but he rejected what he called the banking model of education, which was the just basically teaching children to know things, teaching them knowledge, teaching them facts, and instead you have to use the classroom as a uh as a as a vehicle of social transformation and that you have to make them aware of their political oppression.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's happened is that that that that mindset is passed on to the teachers.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: The teachers are as, as you know, are probably the the teaching edit the departments of education are the most extreme, I would say, uh departments of all universities when it comes to when it comes to this new orthodoxy.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Teachers then pass it on to the children.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Children grow up knowing nothing else, nothing else.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: They cannot cope with any other ideas, it's not a worldview.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: They get their jobs, they get jobs, and then they terrorize everyone in that particular work workplace.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: They move into HR, they become the CEO, and they they they want to make that institution um a replica of their own uh ideology.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's inescapable now.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely inescapable.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why the likes of you and I are finding that that a lot of the time we have to not say anything, or we we are we are um on the fringes a bit.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, if you're if you're in an institution now where there's a hierarchy, you really you really have to be very careful about what you say because uh because we are we are considered uh a a danger to to the system and a danger to the ideology in any of these institutions now.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it I it always it all goes back to the university, it goes back to the the train teacher training departments, it goes back to the gender studies departments.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's this joke that goes around that if you do a gender studies degree, it's useless, but it's not.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely not.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: These are these are the most important degrees now when it comes to um the the the woke uh uh employers who who do now see themselves as transformational as well.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's this idea that the institutions have lost sight of what they what their purpose is.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that's my long answer to your short question.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_03: Long answers welcomed.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_03: Agents of change, that's how they see themselves, and that's the kind of language you hear in the corporate world.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: You find lots of people at the moment they enter the the workplace wanting to make an impact.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Impact gets used quite a lot.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: And all of the the the terms that are taken as axiomatic, um diversity, equity, inclusion, all the rest of it, is uh is seen as an absolute must to correspond to even the most basic roles and responsibilities in a corporation.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: And what was quite interesting in your your your book was for anyone who's familiar with at least the minds of students and how they tend towards activism, it's not a surprise to read uh about unions of students in the English speaking world uh pushing activist ideals.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: But what was really interesting, particularly on one of the areas where you're writing about the the thrust of uh um certain groups that are not just students.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: So there was the the I think it was the head teachers union um or a union of head teachers in Britain that many years ago in the mid-naughties were effectively saying that the most important thing in education was starting to get people to be politically minded, politically activist.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: And um and I know you spent some time at Oxbridge, um and Paolo Freire, who we opened with and who we've just discussed, there's a statue of him in Cambridge.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so all of our elite go through these institutions, well not all of them, but a great many of them.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: And here's a man who has a statue gifted by a militant Marxist organization sitting in the heart of the establishment.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: And the establishment itself uh believes it is fighting bigotry, but really it's promulgating political bigotry against people who have pretty normal views usually.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: Uh what what what do what are your memories from spending time in those institutions?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was very fortunate.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was um I was there in 1998.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's when I started my um PhD, and I finished in around 2003.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I had an excellent supervisor, Professor David Abalafia, who you um I'm sure you know of, who um unfortunately passed away very suddenly a few uh maybe a year ago now, I think.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and but there were no political conversations taking place at any point around me in my entire time at Cambridge.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know if that's because I was doing a PhD and I was a little bit more isolated or um I was mixing with the wrong people.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wasn't at King's, so perhaps that's why I was I was I was protected from the the the most left-wing people.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean I think it really has descended into madness in the last t ten years.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean there's been there's more obvious uh problems on campus now than there were before.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly I I I quite I I spend quite a bit of time in the book talking about the Palestinian protest, the Palestine protests which which uh spread like wildfire across uh Western universities.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh but I think it's it's it's got to a point now where campuses are unrecognizable.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would absolutely hate to go to university now.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'd have to be very careful about where you went and um and what you studied.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly, the arts is off the off the list, off the agenda.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, I would I I I mean universities are unrecognizable now.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um in the case of Australia, at least there's you know, it's a small population and there's 43 to or 45 universities.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Completely, it's just a complete uh uh uh waste of people's time and money.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just uh you probably we probably need six universities at maximum that offer degrees to people who um who actually deserve to be there.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's the same thing in in the UK, it's just it's just an industry.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: But um the thing that I that I I I I found that was probably not at Cambridge at the time was um this DEI bureaucracy.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I mean no one was talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the 90s.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was just wasn't thing.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: But but now the bureaucracy is the the the problem with universities is a bloated bureaucracy that is also terrorizing the academics and terrorizing the students.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh um it's a it would be a dreadful place to be now.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_03: You you you trace in the book the capture of Western education to I'm not gonna say one man, I think a couple of men, or at least the the ideas that they they brought forward and when then taken as uh uh as as read.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: One of them, Paulo Freire, we've spoken about, Brazilian market Marxist, whose book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed became the most cited text in education globally, I think.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and also Jean-Paul Sartre, the French uh academic, who uh wrote or existentialist philosopher who who said that the purpose of education was to um uh was to transform uh the world.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it was it was innately political.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Uh in the case of Paolo Freire, I think most many people would have heard of Sartre.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: How did a man that most parents have probably never heard of come to shape what their children are taught?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Fre Fre's story is is fascinating.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was uh Marxist, he was a Brazilian Marxist, and he was actually arrested and um he was imprisoned for 70 days uh when the military coup uh this is in 1964, um th during a military coup, and he was expelled from Brazil um by the the the military for um they suspected that he was um causing a um that he was turning the peasants into communists, he was turning them into revolutionaries with his education programs.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and turns out they were right.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so they expelled him and he ended up in Chile, and that's he uh wrote his pedagogy of the press in 1968, exactly at the right time in terms of the the world revolutionary movement.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he had a uh a very strange uh connection with the Vatican as well, and he he was employed very briefly as a sort of um mouthpiece of of uh uh social justice.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this was the time of Vatican II, um, this was the time of the overturning of um the the Vatican I and the idea of traditional Catholicism and the the the introduction of the idea of social justice in the Novus Order.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: They used people like Fadofe.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um his ideas ended up in the universities at the same time that critical theory was entering the universities, it just and it was adopted by the education faculties with such enthusiasm because it gave them something so much more exciting than just being boring teachers.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's no longer uh the the E.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: D.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hirsch, you know, lists, list of facts and and you know, kings and queens and um, you know, capital cities.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're you have a an amazing opportunity to transform society, to create a new utopia.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're not just a uh a boring maths teacher, you know, you're you're a ch an agent of change, and I think that appeals to a lot of people.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a very um uh seductive uh uh way of of uh of appealing to to someone who who might think that perhaps being being a teacher isn't enough.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: As you and I know it's the most important thing in the world, it's a vocation.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Having a good teacher changes your life as a as a student, having a memory all member the best, the you know, the best of our teachers.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it it was it it is it is we talk about it being transformational, but it's transformed the idea of of what a teacher is and what their role is in the classroom.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it has the more um malign um aspect of it, which is which is politicizing the child, which is this idea that when they grow up, they will be revolutionaries, they'll be ready to go, they'll be ready to tear down the the the Western civilization, the existing order.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and certainly we're seeing that, we're we're seeing that in the streets.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: We see that in the art galleries when when these um misguided and and desperate young women mostly throw soup at a at a painting.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's it it and pulling down the statues.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: I there's a lot of that going on, obviously.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of you know, the poor old um Edward Coolston being thrown in in the river in in Bristol and and and so that they are being they are being prepared for a um a revolution which will never come.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they're not being given any um anything else in its place.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're just being turned into into very um uh disaffected, very ignorant, very illiterate, and very resentful and angry human beings who who only know the the language of decolonization and destruction and critical theory, and they know nothing about the civilization that they're being turned against, and that is one of the greatest tragedies of of this system that that is has been unleashed on on on children across the West.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: Well the tragedy that you just outlined, you wrote, this is uh some of your words from your book, that it may just be that after thousands of years, ours is the first civilization which is brought down by what is being taught in schools and universities.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: And my reflection on that as I was reading it and thinking about what's replaced it is the the discarding of a couple of thousand years of of intellectual progress, moral progress, uh high culture, uh indeed the um expression and finding of dignity amongst uh those of us in the lower orders too, and for what?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_03: What's it all being thrown away for?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: And uh as you said, we were s we're seeing the consequences in the streets, quite literally anti-civilisational stuff.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I know we're talking about the English-speaking world, but at least our br our our neighbours here in Britain and France are uh are suffering right now, though it could be b you know they've always been fond of a uh of a of a scuffle in the streets since the revolution, but this time it's taking a slightly different form.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: You've got quite literally communist flags flying in streets along with Palestine flags.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: You have um uh a great many of the former colonial subjects or descendants thereof that are um that are on the streets either in the name of Islam or in the name of against France, but they're also being joined by lots of um these revolutionary-minded French as well, who have taken on the pedagogy of the oppressed, who see those former colonial subjects who are tearing things up in the name of um a la or um flying Algerian flags as, yeah, you know, they've got every right, they've been oppressed, and uh we French are bad people.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: There was actually a video, quite a disturbing video, of a group of children um tearing um apart various um areas within one of the Catholic churches in the country, and they're all in their early teens, and they were singing a French rap song by I think a North African which um valorized um the Bataclan massacre and the words were being rapped along by the French kids.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um And it's when you see videos like that that you as well as schools burning that you realize that we're in serious we're in serious hot water here.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: You yourself are getting through Paris in a few weeks, so good luck with that.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um Thanks.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: As I said, I'm not getting out of the train, could it lock the doors?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I also know to try and strike some kind of hopeful message because there's always hope, optimism's fallacy, but always hope.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: I know you're also involved in in various initiatives with people who are at least trying to put forward a pr uh a positive case for Western civilization that are trying to re-enter the institutions, build parallel ones.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: Is is there hope?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, look, there certainly is, and I going back to my experience in the 90s of of of Cambridge, where there was no apparent um revolutionary spirit uh the or or protest movement as there is now, or disaffection amongst the students, it was fairly if everyone was there to s to study now because things have swung so far, the pendulum has swung so far the other the other way, and we are seeing this I saw the same footage of these students in the church, and it was just so horrifying.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um But I have encountered a great many remarkable young, young people, I hate calling young people, teenagers, you know, young adults, um, who have have responded to this extremism and this horror in the best way possible, and they have um um worked out very quick quickly what is at stake and uh what they need to do to to to bring us back from this this precipice which I believe that we're on at the moment and uh I think um my comments in the book that uh have been justified um following the this the the the images of from from France so there are some incredible um and and uh young adults who are um in their own way are going out going out and and and fighting this in their in their personal lives standing up in schools and being brave enough to argue with the teachers you know you hear this a lot you hear teachers losing their minds because because someone in the front row is actually is is answering back and um we have in Australia we have a new schools being started by um by some very well intentioned and um uh and very brave parents and and other people who have realized that the only thing they can do at this point is take their children out of the system.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's definitely a a fight back in America it's fantastic there's huge grassroots movements of parents who are who who are not stupid, who have seen what's going on.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think the thing that has triggered most parents has been the radical gender theory because that is just so overtly uh deranged that uh that that you just have to read one of the classroom one one classroom um lesson from you know from the sex education and just go, this is I'm out, I don't want my child learning this.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so there is there is a huge pushback going on.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's a huge rebellion um and and and it it gives me me great hope to when I talk to parents and and interestingly enough when I did my tour of Australia to promote mindless um I I realized that most of the people who are doing the educating now are grandparents.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the grandparents who have the knowledge they have the ancestral memory if you like of what education should be.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're not talking about you know a Charles Dickens scenario where they're they're s sitting in the darkness in in in and being being forced to to to uh to to to learn to rote learn but no actually being being taught um being introduced to to the great literature and art of Western civilization it wasn't that long ago.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so they are they are um now taking the role of the the parent and the and the teacher and they are taking the education of their um grandchildren very seriously so there's a new generation of very young children who are now being guided through this um this derangement by the older generations and um and there are a lot of uh materials around now there's obviously at the university level there's Hillsdale College there's the Peterson Academy there's um University of Austin Texas or is it University Texas in Oxford I always get it the wrong way round um there's a wonderful uh liberal arts college in uh Australia called Campion College which is a Catholic liberal arts college which produces the creme de la creme of graduates in Australia at the moment they are I I wish I'd had that education when I was 19 so there is a um you know there's for every reaction there's a counter reaction and and we're seeing it now so I do have hope.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: But then you know you have to weigh up how how many how many people I think the question is how many people need do we need to save civilization?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's never going to be the majority but will we have enough yes I think that is one of the key messages of hope in that actually maybe need about five to ten percent of people, maybe five percent of people that make it high status to care that actually they prove that it is um a m a a more um what's the right word it's it's a better way of living of governing institutions and oneself to turn away from the current establishment.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's the other thing is actually young people typically like to rebel.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_03: And actually if if the message can get across that right now you're not rebelling, you are the establishment that actually those who are trying to restore something, to recover something, to maintain, preserve something are actually the countercultural movement at this point.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: You know the people who think they are rebelling they are literally just bombing the rubble whilst whilst the the rebel the the the the rebellious ones are trying to rebuild whilst the bombs are still falling down.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yes so I I often wonder about this.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: I know Nietzsche writes about it where various of his um his idioms um uh where he um starts writing about um you must be careful when you change your mind in life not to become too extreme and then throw everything that you once believed under the uh under the bus.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_03: But furthermore, is we all know that children tend to rebel against their parents and parents right now are effectively the children of the rock and roll 1968 revolution that the John Lennon Imagine kind of the Paolo Freire pedagog Pedagogy of the oppressed era.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah so so you you can you can only hope that as children look at their parents who you know aren't comporting themselves in a certain way and they find all of the ideas to be embarrassing that perhaps they'll turn away um but of course there are a great many things going against us in including the institutions being so badly captured and of course demographic changes which um which will sort of put this at um to the test.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about dissent as well though because often what stops people from saying anything as we've talked about is the cost of dissent.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: And you you cite in your book um Jeffrey Blaney's treatment.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: He is a very famous probably the most eminent Australian historian in his 90s now and I had no idea about this I knew about Geoffrey Blaney and I knew that of course he wouldn't be accepted by the you're standing on stolen land crowd but I had no idea that he suffered bomb threats, credible bomb threats in the 1980s because he made public statements about being on the side of the Australian working class in the face of immigration from countries which uh the people of which would do the labour uh cheaper.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I had absolutely no idea that that happened and that it happened so long ago.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah tell us a little bit about the story of Jeffrey Blaney.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so um all this happened while I was while I was still at school so I you know I had to learn about it while I was writing the book as well.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I had a vague knowledge of that he'd been exp he he'd had to leave University of Melbourne under s under um less than um you know not very he had he he he resigned basically was forced to resign but Geoffrey Blaney um was the Dean of Arts at the time this is 1984.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been working at the university he'd been uh there for 23 years so this was his life he was the most preeminent uh historian then in the 80s um he uh was invited out by a rotary club to a town called Warnumbore which is uh a coastal city it's 285 300 kilometers away from Melbourne it's it's it's far um and he almost didn't go but he changed his mind at the last minute and because it was so far away they had to send a light plane to to um to fly him there because that's how that's how things work.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's no way he was going to get there in in time.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so he he stood up at this Rotary Club it was not even anything to do with university and gave a speech as you said in which he he he expressed the um concern about the rate of immigration in uh in into into Victoria into Australia during a time of high unemployment um pointing out that uh that uh this had been seen by many working class people as as a threat to their livelihoods that um and he mentioned that most of these new immigrants were from Asia and he also mentioned that it was there was a lot too quickly and that there there wasn't much time for for assimilation.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is in the 1980s.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he had actually made those comments before interestingly but there was a journalist at that event who then went back and reported it.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the next thing you know 24 of his colleagues who he'd been working with at the University of Melbourne for years wrote a uh a letter to the which they published in the the the newspaper of the um the the Victorian newspaper the age in which they they didn't call him a racist they they didn't go that far but they they they did say that they wanted to distance himself themselves from what he had said because it could cause um racial unrest.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: That it was wrong to talk about immigration in terms of race.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: That then led to um student protests it led to the police having to say to him you can't lecture on campus anymore because it's too dangerous.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: They had to buy um a some kind of machine to install in the post office so that they could go through all his mail you know I I mean this is the 1980s this is this is the Dean of Arts at the University of Melbourne wonderful man the loveliest man you can possibly imagine.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then as you mentioned someone planted a bomb on his on the on the front lawn of a Blaney but as I mentioned in the book they they got the wrong Blaney.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was another Blaney living near at another university so um you know it was it didn't go off but um but it was it was it was a it was a terrible uh uh reflection of the the the how angry people were even in the 1980s this the left this the left wing the mob the mob existed in the 80s and it was um poor old um jeffrey blaney then lasted another four years he had to go back to the department after having had um after having had a um the mob his his his former colleagues um shame him and humiliate him and turn against him in public and everybody knew about him um he lasted four more years at at at the University of Melbourne and then just couldn't couldn't continue um and and resigned and I think you know we see this now this is this is common this is this is uh this is what's happening to everybody it's there's the Noah the the the the the Kathleen stocks the Noah Carls the there's a there's a the the freedom the the uh free speech union exists for a reason and has a lot of clients from the universities for a reason but Australia it uh is not usually ahead of ahead of time in in in it is usually lagging behind but in this case it was um unfortunately it was uh forging new paths and uh um it was a very sad indictment on the uh the academia and it's just got worse ever since.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well y yeah uh a fourth forty years on I know you have premiers of states New South Wales basically enshrining in law hate speech which is to say don't say anything you can't say anything like Geoffrey Blaney would have once said because it's really unfair to refer to cultural change and impact and different cultural practices and uh anything of the sort and this is in an Australia that is vastly demographically transformed since then.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: I I can't help but think this is a an aside and this is something that that we English actually need to to grapple with and and you can see it in the anthropological record our relationship with with money um is that we and you can find it in Shakespeare and Milton Alan McFarlane the great anthropologist does lots of work on this where you can find this uh ambiguous relationship with money and the purposes that it can be used for the reason why I bring it up is I know that in Australia there have been various points before the 1980s even when it was being settled and it was it was becoming a country of its own that there were landowners that wanted to import cheap labour from abroad instead of relying on people from the uh Anglo-Celtic nations of which the the the country was founded on because they were they were cheaper that they could they could work them harder.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: And there were various uh interventions within parliament and in local politics to stop that from happening that that wouldn't be a good thing.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: And Britain today is going through that you you you need only look at the inducements that we provide to people who arrive from um Commonwealth countries.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know they can vote when they arrive they they can they don't have to pay national insurance some of them they obviously get paid less or at least they're at the the floor.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I do I do think that is something that we we we it it's fair to look around at establishment organizations and say there there are policies that are leading uh uh these nations to be transformed in such fantastic ways but it's also true that those of us uh of of the the English speaking world do have a kind of a cost-benefit utilitarian phenotype almost you know Jeremy Bentham his ideas were mad but at the same token it was kind of just the documentary evidence of one mode of English thinking so I it's like some of our our virtues the things that we used to create societies that were productive in the first place have ended up being our undoing and I don't really know how you get that back in the box and particularly not once you have opened the door to such massive demographic transformation that the cultural longtails of different civilizations and peoples will ultimately change the politics the culture and the laws over time uh how would you describe modern Australia well um if you were a multiculturalist and a globalist you'd describe it in glowing terms as a huge success.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you uh uh wanted a society that had no real um identity anymore then um you would be saying Australia is is is um has has been a wonderful experiment.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've now really got unlimited um uh immigration uh they we had a million Indians imported last year um again it's something that no one ever voted for um the the and when Australians do go out on the streets which they have been doing to to say that enough is enough um we are immediately cast as racist it's the usual thing it's it's exactly the the the same thing that's happening in the UK um the Australia that existed in the 90s uh has gone there there are pockets of it there are there are um little brief um memories of of what it was like but now we live in a society which is uh um incoherent divided um angry um and um not not the Australian that that once was that was a wonderful country where where there was true um sort of this idea of egalit egalitarianism and um and everyone and you you got a fair go and and it you know it was a a lucky country not in the Donald Horn sense but you you the the the migrants that came after the Second World War uh were were rescued by Australia.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: They came with nothing and um they all made a life for themselves.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: And of course the difference that everyone keeps keeps talking about now is that the migrants who arrived in the Second World War loved Australia and were loyal to Australia and were grateful for the opportunity they were given and didn't come to to uh to to destroy the country came to to be part of it to assimilate and um and unfortunately you know the migration that is happening now is completely the opposite uh we have ghettos we have no go areas we have parts of Western Sydney where where it's just it's totally Islamic um we have towns we have areas of Melbourne and Sydney that that the the the respective state governments can keep naming Little India um we have all the politicians um cosplaying every time that there's a there's a a Hindu festival or a or or Ramadan or or the or a or a Coptic church they'll put the costume on and go and stand with the you know that what is what is Australia now what is Australia now?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: What what's an Australian?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And our uh our dreadful Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and I I I won't call him Albo because he doesn't deserve a nickname because he's a he's a communist who's ruining the country um basically said that um the Australian passport means nothing.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone can be Australian there's no such thing so that there's there's no there's no identity it's it's just it's it's become a vast airport at a rival's lounge.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: The c cosplaying point uh of the politicians I saw a most remarkable video I think it was the Victorian premier and I can't remember her name standing in a sports stadium with I which I think had a capacity of something like 60 to 80 thousand people in that ballpark and uh she was there with Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister and this the stadium was full of Indians and effectively it was just a huge love in um but she was quite literally joint campaigning with Modi, bringing Modi along both for uh a kind of look, I'm with you, but also helping him campaign and also Modi himself and I think you can find official documentation of this kind quite literally has an economic policy of exporting Indian diaspora across the world because the population's growing so quickly they are also going through elite overproduction through their universities.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: They can't give everyone jobs and so they know civil unrest might come and with an awful lot of people they can they can send lots of people out and remittances can be sent back.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: The inducements can be agreed with these countries who want cheap labour and I mean it's a it's a really quite cynical move but one that Western leaders seem to want to lap up left right and centre.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: And and as you were talking about your experience in Australia with immigration what what has been interesting is watching how the stolen land crowd of the progressives of a kind of white European Australian background who are like yeah this country shouldn't exist you know that they're more communist in their their leanings or or just more broadly progressive is has been taken on enthusiastically by some of the immigrant populations.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: There are countless videos of um East Asians and South Asians saying what are you talking about?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is stolen land you're not entitled to it's fascinating it's been a the most it's been a fascinating um um development in in the immigration debate it really has seeing this strange um this uh unholy alliance between a a recently arrived uh Pakistani and um and an and an Aboriginal Australian activist who's it it's it's extraordinary.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: But they both have the same enemy that you know they both hate uh the the Western civilization they hate the Western civilization that is actually providing with them with their their livelihoods.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the interesting thing back to to Modi is that that's the second time he's been to Australia and that was um that was uh Albanese was at that second at both events and he was at the one in Victoria and it was actually a a very um interesting moment in in Australia's to political to to look at our to to a snapshot of where we are as a country which was um Modi and Albo holding hands Albanese holding hands walking out into this big crowd and Albanese actually admitted in a a later conversation with um Kevin Rudd of uh the former um Prime Minister of Australia that uh this was the that he would only get a cheer that big from Indians he would never be cheered he would never get that kind of um adulation from Australians.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_03: He admitted that um and um and and all the politicians are standing there telling them that they don't have to be Australian they actually said you don't have to be Australian with regards to politics I don't really know whether the same rules apply as in Britain where people can arrive and quite literally stand for parliament straight away remarkable um but presumably judging by some of these um crystallized diasporas that are already there and they're obviously being added to each year with further influxes uh presumably the politics on the ground have become less about Australian issues.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: Is it following the same path as as Britain where people are are effectively um the Centering the interests of the mother country and mother country's politics rather than that of the Australian continent.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: Is that is that happening?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: And and are you seeing you know rivalries between people from, say, the subcontinent or or what have you?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: We we we haven't got to the level we haven't got to the sort of the Canada UK level yet.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but certainly that's where we'll be going.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um it it's inevitable if if we continue um in this particular direction.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's natural that that you will want to represent the interests of your people, especially if you're told that you are still Indian and you're not Australian, and therefore you have different priorities about what you want about the country that you're living in.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly we've had you know a lot of Indian students um students marching demanding citizenship from the government.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh they they feel that they're entitled to to these things.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if someone came along um and say was um was uh had a seat in parliament, they would naturally be expecting that person to lobby for them uh for their citizenship.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I can see that would be happening, um, if not already.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: But again, uh I I've I'm not active politically, you know, I'm just uh bystander.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: A bystander, thankfully, thankfully.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, uh I I I also just as I'm talking about sound bites in Australia, I saw a clip a few weeks ago.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: John Anderson was on a panel and he was surrounded by Australians of different stripes, and and one of them was a lady of Sudanese heritage, and she very much represented the decolonisation movement, uh and said that white people have no culture on on live television, I believe.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um well, there's much to be said about that, but what was remarkable was her background.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_03: I understand she was the daughter, perhaps, of Joseph Coney, the the Sudanese warlords, is why yes, she's a daughter of a warlord.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Did she not expect anyone to to do a little bit of background research?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the point.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: The ABC, I think it was on the ABC, which is just as bad as the BBC, didn't do any background research on this woman.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um had they spent 10 minutes um uh uh looking into her, they probably they might not have invited her on the programme.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: But this is the point.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: She was she fit everything that they needed.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: She's a lawyer, she's black, she's outspoken, she's feisty, um, and um she she can tell the white men she what for, you know, um and and um and and do the the bidding of be the mouthpiece of of the the traitors who work for the ABC who who hate Australia as much as she does.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're just a little bit more polite about it.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: On a more philosophical note, but linked to what I don't really know how best to term it, but I think it's being termed as an anti-white posture.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um we've talked a little bit about um Jeffrey Blaney and bomb threats coming off the back of uh media articles, a kind of scapegoating by his colleagues.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's not anti-white per se, but it's linked to uh the immigration argument or just more socially conservative uh ideals.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um here in Britain, and I know you you cite him, we have uh Professor Cahinde Andrews, uh Black Studies Professor at the University of Birmingham, who refers to whiteness being a sickness.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um you would see the likes of Charlie Kurt being verbally abused, um, and of course written about in a very derogatory way in left-leading media, called a fascist.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: He was unshot dead.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um I and and I I think even here in Britain, what we see is the way even reform, you know, uh are spoken about a pretty normal centre-right party in uh in pretty much every respect, and yet you hear the word fascist being used even by members of the Labour government regarding their donors, you know, crypto fascists, uh uh Ann Whittackam murdered um with a hammer by a communist, uh had a whole hit list, and everyone on this hit list was a right-winger.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and if you look at the media, you look at the schools, you look at the universities, you look at people referring to whiteness being a sickness, uh what are your views that some of this might be tantamount to stochastic terrorism?
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: This idea that there's a there's almost like a do you know what?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: We we wouldn't do it ourselves, but it wouldn't be such a bad thing if there were fewer of these people on on the planet.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not trying to attach this to any particular name here that we might have spoken about, but do do you think that's a thing?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that people who have been so m marinated in this worldview, and then they've got those who are uh of uh in the elite class, so to speak, or they have some social status, and they're saying, yeah, these are really evil people, do you think that has something to do with the the the misfortune to say the least that some people who are right leaning are facing today?
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean I think that that the that we are we represent evil in their minds.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um we represent something that needs to be uh that needs that that will stop our our presence is an impediment to the uh attainment of utopia because we are inconvenient in the fact that we are refusing to um to uh buy into the um the idea of equality, diversity, and equity, this ridiculous uh new religion.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: We are, in fact, in terms of I suppose you could look at it in terms of religion, and I think many people have made this point that that this ideology has become a belief system and we are the new heretics and we need to be uh expunged from from this world in order to to get to this uh this this socialist, this perfect world where there is no suffering and no pain.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think they see us as as um um as as as a problem.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh they see us as as a problem that uh I I don't know what else to say.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's an extraordinary uh time of history, and it ha it's very difficult to explain such self-loathing and such hatred and such um such irrational irrational hatred of of of us based on on the colour of our skin.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: And of course of course the critical white studies and and and the critical race theory and everything that is being pushed on children is going to influence them.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but that for me doesn't explain that next step of actually wanting to to um to make sure that we're replaced.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I probably haven't answered that very question very well, but it's just it's um it's just such an immense and profound uh uh um turning that we're going through.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't even know how to express.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to ex- I don't have the words for what is happening in England at the moment with the the government literally giving um the these these men um a police escort.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I don't have the words, I don't know how to explain it, just as I don't know how to explain why it is that we have suddenly found ourselves on the end of on the on on the other end of such um vitriol.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's very disorienting time.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_03: It is sometimes you think you're grasping hold of the threads and you're able to put them together to something that looks like a hole, but then the next day of just totally disorienting, humiliate humiliating news comes, uh and I think the biggest worry is the creeping normalcy of it, that people just accept a l a little bit more of the humiliation each day.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh or or at least even if they don't see it as humiliation, just a totally abnormal state of affairs at any point in human history.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, unless, of course, in pre-democratic times, when quite literally people would just come, you know, would come in for your territory, the stronger ones would win, they would set up their own institutions.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_03: But of course, we believe that we are living in a democratic era.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: And yet no matter Which we're not anymore, are we, though?
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the problem.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we've all woke that's what we've all realized.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's been one of the the the the terrible realizations of the last few years that we are not this is so far from a democracy.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: We are not living in democracies.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the the vote means nothing.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: That one vote that we get every three or four years means nothing.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: None of us have asked for anything that is happening to us at the moment.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a complete lie.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a complete fiction, this this this world that we grow up in, thinking that that that this was the status quo and we all have these wonderful.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just been completely dismantled.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all these arguments about um the first world war and the second world war, all these discussions about that are now are now in the public sphere about whether we should have even gone to the first world.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: What should we have joined the first world?
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all these discussions.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't happening when you and I grow up, grew up.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a total um uh sort of um terrible wake-up for all of us about what we've assumed um and what we were taught at school about the first and second world wars and all these things.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's it's it's a it's a it's a very odd time and uh to in to be living where our own the stories that we've been told are are sort of crumbling before our eyes, and you have something like the um, you know, this this this what's going on in Portsmouth and Gosport and what's happening in the UK with with the government facilitating the the arrival of these men who are not who are not who are not moving to England to uh to open restaurants and open doctor surgeries.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's it's an astonishing time to to be living in, and I I think it's exciting, but also um very difficult, as you say, to stay to stay sane and to stay um focused on on what we need to do in this time.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because it because it's designed to demoralize as well.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: As you say, you wake up on this another piece of news that's humiliating, and that's the whole that's the whole point.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's it's it's it's very hard because you actually want the the democratic uh settlement to be true.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_03: You actually want it to be true.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: You actually um also want to feel like as you go into work every day and you're paying your taxes, collecting taxes on behalf of the government, that you might have some say as to how they might be distributed instead of paying for the you know the large S of uh people just arrived and all of the rest of it.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: But also not just that, you know, uh on on massive national debts because of governments just making ra uh reckless decisions.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, yeah everything I think in short is is quite literally up for contestation.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: And for those people who are um in across a wide range of institutions that are pushing the experiment and they just keep going, is I think not only is the demoralization happened, that they probably don't mind about that.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_03: But the fact that people are now going, is there even a political solution to any of this?
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: Shouldn't worry everyone, really, um particularly having been in the period of the the long peace, uh so to speak.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um Yes.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Bella, just before I let you go, you've been very generous with your time.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'll ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: And what was it that made you think differently?
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've changed my mind on the answer I was going to give you, actually, in this quiz.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: So that was quick.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was very quick.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've learned in the last ten minutes that um I've already covered the question I was going to the answer I was going to give, which is I think no, um I I think uh I am now I value our civilization now much more than I did when we were living in this these these halcyon days in the 1990s, um, which wasn't very long ago, um, where I assumed that that was the status quo, we would always have the the the kind of um um freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, um access to to to to I mean we still have access to the knowledge and the books and the art, but you know, going to a gallery these days, especially in Australia, is is a trial because everything's been decolonized.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you can't just look at a nice picture, you have to you have to read about how it was an invasion and you know uh this was a dreadful period of history in Australia.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think what's happened is that um this this new era of multiculturalism and has made me appreciate my culture much more than I would have had it not happened.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm probably fighting for it now um in a way that I wouldn't have in the nineties and the two thousands, because I I didn't appreciate it as I do now.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_03: It was the waters in which we swam, we didn't realise what it was took it for granted.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_03: Which is which is probably why people have come to convince themselves that Westerners generally have no culture, because the culture was all around us, and also it's transformed much of how the rest of the world lives, all of the institutions, whether that's the rule of law or the way that business is done over borders, is that's pretty much all Western confections, including hum uh human rights and all of those things.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_03: And so all we're doing is we don't we don't we don't have culture.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's like no, our culture globalized and people took on parts of it.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yes, I think we all do need to be alive to purposeful demoralization, uh, this idea that um you know no one of our forebears ever contributed anything of note, and uh we're all just rapacious pirates who uh took everything and didn't do anything good.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um yes, it's uh I I think I think uh the period of people always talk about time for an age of reconstruction after an age of deconstruction.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: Well, maybe it's time for an age of remoralization after a period of demoralization.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, um, just have to stand up um unapologetically, or at least in the light of the truth.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you do actually need to um atone for the things you've done wrong and recognize it.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: You can't you can't just think you are uh beyond reproach, but there's been far too much reproach and and not enough of the standing proud of the the good things and the contributions.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: So Well, I think you can you can um atone for your own your own sins, um but not the sins of your ancestors, before fathers.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's just especially when um uh a nation is forced to apologize over and over again, like Australia, and there is never um a an acceptance of that an apology and an end to the the the the permanent state of apology that we're in.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: So again, another um just a a brief point.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: But um but yes.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Bella, you produced you produce mindless, that is out.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_03: I will leave links in the show notes to it.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: Where can people find you and what can we expect from you next?
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um they can find me on uh well they find the book on Amazon, but you'll put the the link up.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they and I do I am on X.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I occasionally make comments about cultural matters, and um, and I'm on Instagram.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um I am starting on another book, and I'm hoping it's gonna be completed in the next year or so.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's Western Civ related, but it's much, much more optimistic than mindless.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, we'll put these as part of a series.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_03: This is the the black pill, and we'll have the white pill next time.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be the bomb, it's gonna be the bomb that we need, I tell you.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I look forward to it.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: Keep fighting the good fight.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_03: And until next time.