Latest / Thinking Class / #101 - Nina Power - Beyond Deportations: The Restoration Of Britain's Soul

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#101 - Nina Power - Beyond Deportations: The Restoration Of Britain's Soul · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking to Nina Power.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nina is a philosopher, writer, and author of books, including What Do Men Want?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Masculinity and its discontents.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nina runs philosophy courses with Verderer and is also the author of the substack Nina Power, and she is also the host of the podcast The Lack.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Nina and I think out loud about whether the end of liberalism is real, whether post-liberalism is a dead end, why lots of English people keep invoking Tolkien and the scouring of the Shire, whether there's an England left to be saved, what a restoration of Britain would look like beyond deportations, the re-Christianising of Britain, the influence of the elites on how the masses think, why Britain needs to be clear and confident about its heritage in the face of challenges from foreign cultures and religions, how far the Overton window on acceptable political discourse will shift over the next decade, why societal collapse would see the death of ideology and the rise of violent factionalism, why therapy can only take you so far, and much, much more.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Classmates, this was one of my all-time favourite conversations, and I'll leave you to enjoy it.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy it through the audio issues.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: My mic is a little bit too loud, so touch muffly, but nothing major.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: As ever, like, subscribe, follow, and share Thinking Class on your podcast platform of choice, YouTube and Substat.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's grow the show together.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, thanks for inviting me, John.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's my pleasure to host you in this digital ethereal realm.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there are a few people who follow and watch the show that when I put the obligatory tweet out to say Nina Power confirmed on the show, that people were quite excited and said, Oh, this is going to be interesting as we at least unpack and talk about some of the strands, even though that's the wrong word to use, in the cultural zeitgeist out there.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you certainly always have interesting uh takes, as I was saying before we press record on things.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking forward to hearing what you've got to say on a few matters.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought we could begin with a um conversation which I know you have been a part of on previous podcasts and in your writings, but also as um bubbled back to the surface this week through the philosopher John Gray, and that's about what comes after liberalism if liberalism as we know it is indeed dead.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you you have uh um hypothesized about what might come after the individual, the age of the individual.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And John Gray says that he's not a post-liberal.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: He thinks the only thing that can save Britain is actually a Habesian liberalism where there's a strong state to reduce the tensions between competing groups, of which we have many now on across ethnic and religious and ideological lines, and doesn't believe that salvation lies in any of the post-liberal visions, whether it's the left converts conservative vision of Blue Labour or the SDP or Catholic integralism or Anglo-Futurism and all the rest of it.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: He says we're stuck with the individual, and in some senses he's he's right because the English, for as long as we know, and as anthropologists can say, there's always been a strong sense of the individual and liberty, and that was bolstered by the arrival of Christianity.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um I suppose uh if the universalized liberal coda like the one that has been exported uh across the world through empire and all the rest of it is done, uh where do we think we're going?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can we return back to the cultural traits of the English people and and and live as individuals without the individualism uh of consumer culture and all the rest of it?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um or are the big demographic changes, the tidal wave coming our way where there's a a a minority of English people in the country mean that that can't really happen.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: W where do you stand on that uh that that brain uh fog that I've just put out into the ether the no, no, I understand um exactly what you're saying.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I read the John Gray piece uh very carefully, as well as um Sebastian Milbank's response to it in the critic and also various takes on um criticisms of post-liberalism by uh Pimlico Journal, who I think are sort of um maybe a bit more uh younger kind of zoomer um thinkers.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I mean, it's I in a way, I think my position on this is sort of somewhat moderate, surprisingly, but it it I do think, I mean, I I am taken by some of the post-liberal diagnosis, and I see a lot of the post-liberal work as um uh an analysis and a diagnosis rather than necessarily any substantive plans, although it's also read like that.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes people use post-liberalism also just to mean whatever comes next, if you see what I mean, you know, and that that could be uh for good or ill.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I mean, so John Gray's position really is a kind of defense of a certain kind of liberal pluralism um that is predicated on the idea of a sort of strong state.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um but that yeah, he argues I think particularly the Anglo or the English are fundamentally individualistic or have been for a very long time.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a thesis also in Alan McFarlane's book from the late 70s, and that, you know, and it is borne out in terms of a certain national character, adventurism, exploration, you know, leaving the country, never looking back, um, you know, all of our great eccentrics and playwrights and and poets and so on, that there is this sort of uh perhaps eccentricity and all of those things that we would very much want to defend.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And in any case, I mean, John Gray is sort of saying, well, we can't really go back, you know, like the idea that we can all go and live in obscure Scottish fishing communities and live in a communitarian way is just not viable, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: We live in major cities, we live in the modern world, uh, and all of these things.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think in Sebastian Milbank's piece for the critic, he points out that actually, well, you can have uh liberal states that are economically liberal, um, like Singapore and Dubai, but they're actually extremely anti-liberal in other ways, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Restrictions on speech and and and very strict laws and so on and so forth.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: So you can obviously take the strains of liberalism uh and and do them in a particular way.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I think one of the roads not taken would have been a sort of defense, a robust defence of liberalism.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think the figure here for me is not actually a British person, but a Dutch one, some uh this guy, Pim Fortune, who you might remember, was assassinated like 20 years ago, um, who very much was saying, I mean, that, well, actually, look, the West has got to this point where we have um gay rights, we have feminism, we have a certain uh sort of commitment to these values and their specific liberal values for whatever set of reasons, post-Christian, um historical contingent developments, but like here we are, um, and that we we should defend those, and and that actually importing people who are very much opposed to those positions, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: Who think that by virtue of scripture or religious belief that those things are evils, in fact, they should be punished, is is potentially a really, really bad idea, uh, and that the West should defend those liberal values, qua liberal values.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and of course, he was he was killed for this uh position by a sort of deranged leftist who's animal rights activist, uh, and he was accused of being kind of neo-Nazi, right wing, and so on.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: But in retrospect, uh's position looks quite moderate, actually, uh, simply pointing out that there really are uh quite different uh belief systems, quite different worldviews, and that they are potentially incompatible.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this idea of pluralism, yes, I mean, in a way you could say, well, perhaps up to like the 90s uh or so around then that there was a process of assimilation, you know, there was a way in which in which you could bring in other people without diluting uh the national character, people could sort of join it and belong to it and embrace those values.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Indeed, I know many people who who have, and in a way are more British than some of the British in a way, by by by being kind of totally on board with the project.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's obviously not the situation we find ourselves in now.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: That said, I I do think that, you know, I agree with Patrick Denine when he says things like in his work on liberalism that actually liberalism um failed because it succeeded, which is to say, well, actually, we went so far with this kind of liberal individualism that actually we might you you might end up thinking, well, actually the drug drug addict and the mad person are the most liberal subjects because they're the most uh individuated in some ways, right?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're following their desire, they're you know, they've got their their own position on the world.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, these are not good things, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: These are these are people who are fundamentally alone in the world, who who are uh sort of broken, that their their relation to the social is is torn.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I do think there's we've gone way too far down a certain kind of consumerist liberal individualism, if you want, that actually is heartbreaking in reality, that people do need families, communities, and and so on and so forth.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I and just personally, I've made an awful lot of efforts to um, I don't know, integrate myself into like my local community, my local church.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: I have a good relation with my family, you know, I've dealt with addiction issues and and so on and so forth.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this is I I think people do need to be sociable.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm very worried about people who are, if you like Hobbes is wolf, you know, and when when Hobbes talks about, you know, man is a wolf to man, homo homone lupossessed, he in many ways is talking about the melancholic, you know, the the the desocialized or the the asocial person who is outside of any feeling of belonging.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that might work for the odd extreme outlier adventurer who sees the world as a a place to to to I don't know to to live in this very autonomous way.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: But I actually don't think that works for most people.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think if you ask people what they care about, they'll say their family, their friends, where they live, their community, their hobbies, and and so on, you know.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: So somewhere in the middle.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: But I wouldn't want to stop like the the eccentric, you know.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think we should also love and encourage our eccentrics and not punish them.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh not not have a homogenous society in which everybody thinks the same and and and so on.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, I think without kind of religious and moral influence, um just a desire-based world is uh actually untenable.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's unlivable for most people.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I think you're absolutely right.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I've seen it personally uh in two levels, one with a close family member and one with myself, though to a much lesser extent, thankfully.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But with myself, I found right up until my late 20s, having been inculcated into this a historical worldview of the country and just had it, you know, all implanted in me.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: About I suppose there's the there's the guilt aspects, but also just a general bit of a bit of generalizing about the country, but also knowing very little about my local and regional background, and also being part of a family that was ridiculously nuclear, in that there was basically no extended family around.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until my late 20s that I actually managed to connect properly fully with the region that I was from, that I actually understood some of the key figures.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, we're talking about region builders, nation builders, religion builders, things to start feeling proud of, and also to find out about my own family connections, where I hailed from, all of those things, my heritage.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly I felt part of something having, I think looking back, I was able to say I just uh was was kind of moving around like this little atom by myself.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I know, given all of the bad decisions I made, that it was partly because I was just totally nihilistic.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was, you know, I was brought up uh without any kind of uh religious or moral or cultural ballast to hold on to, and certainly nothing there was no cultural belonging there either, which I think is hugely important.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then within my close family member, I I've also seen the very destructive angle to it where you've you've you've ran your career, uh, it's been all about ultimately providing for the family, which is great, but it's been moving through the checkposts of the career, but losing all of those connections along the way and in the end being left alone with none of those things that have been nurtured over time, and it's been totally destructive.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think besides the personal anecdotes, I think this is probably what's behind a lot of a lot of the mental health stuff we see, with the exception of you know, we know the technology is like an acid for our mind, but we also know that people just have way less people time, and um, even being English, knowing that we're highly individualistic, is in the past there was still civic society, you know, and there are remnants of it.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: We see the ghosts of it everywhere we walk around.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: We see old women's institutes, we see we see those churches which are converting into nice houses, we see um so many different uh elements of what was once a thriving civic society, Jubilee halls, which are now more houses and all the rest of it or holiday homes.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's uh it's to say that you can be both an individualistic culture whilst having a civic society and needing and needing one.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose on that basis, Nina, um let let's uh let's think about where we're at then as a country.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing I've I've noticed a lot entering the discourse, um, and maybe it's just because the internet circles that I'm operating in, but you notice lots of references to Lord of the Rings and how the sh there is a scouring of the Shire.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And often it's with regards to what we're seeing in the communities that were previously less affected by mass immigration or legal immigration.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about orcs being in the shires because of the the rapes and the murders and all the rest of it.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: But also when Labour came to power last year, I remember thinking, oh, this is the beginning of the scouring of the Shire.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But in reality, the the the Shire was already scoured, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: We we are have been obsessed with rules and modernism, we've become turned into a papers please country, we've, in Starmer's words, become an island of strangers because of demographic change, we're fatter, more dependent on the state, we're less well read, little historical memory, more heavily medicated.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: The list goes on, you know, we're more depressed.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so if we're even if we are able to stop all the immigration flows to make us stop uh to make us um or to stop us from becoming an island of strangers further, we are intellectually, morally, spiritually, culturally moribund, uh, I I think.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you can you can contest that, but what do you think we'd actually need to do to restore the nation beyond the let's deal with the demographics?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I mean I'm a bit more optimistic actually.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I just wrote a long piece on this for an American audience, uh Frontier magazine, and you know, responding to the kind of uh thing that one often sees online from Americans like, oh, England has fallen and uh and so on.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I I don't think that's true.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: I I think uh whilst I agree that all of those things are under attack, I grew up in Wiltshire, so I grew up in the Shire, you know, I am a hobbit, and um in many ways, although I did move to the to the city to study and stay there to work, and now I'm stuck here, uh at least for now.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: But um yeah, I mean I there and there is a concerted attempt to attack the farmers, to undermine country ways of life and so on.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the spreadsheet mentality of the managerial class just doesn't understand that there is a difference between the country and the city and sees everything in this technocratic way.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, the countryside is just a place to exploit people for tax and to take the land and do what we like.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, this is part of a bigger attack on the English working class, right?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Which I think has been going on for decades and the total destruction of people's way of life.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I and but I do I would say, look, English heritage and and British heritage is extraordinary, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: We have some of the most beautiful countryside, the most incredible prehistory.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up around Avery and Stonehenge and all of these places, and they're they're very, very powerful places, and and they're not um it'd be very hard to do to destroy them, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think we can uh pretend, you know, there's an ineradicable spirit of place, and there is a heritage, there is a history.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it's under siege, um, but it's still there, and all of these decisions around tax and immigration are political decisions, which also mean they can be different in the future, right?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the things we've seen, like raise the colours and the flags and people, you know, as you said, uh identifying, working out their ancestors, like the the modern modern people, like we're the only people who don't know where our ancestors are buried, you know.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: I think this is a great tragedy, like that that we're cut off from uh in the name of liberation, we're somehow cut off from these structures.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think it's a surprise that English people and Welsh and Scottish and Irish people have uh really started to to think about where they are, who they are as a people, what their history is.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it particularly it was always gonna happen, I think.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to see it as a backlash, I don't personally see it as a backlash, but if you say, well, everyone else is allowed to celebrate their culture and their identity and their religion, but not you guys, for reasons that are, you know, oh, because history, oh because you know, you're somehow guilty for for whatever, even though obviously the vast majority of people are working class and and recently peasants and so on, and nothing to do with these sort of elite decisions.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: And there is a always a class war within the country, like the elites treat the the white working classes like you know, fodder in war or people to be exploited and and to be demonized, you know, and ideologically we've seen that.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that the the reassertion of national identity and heritage and culture and all of those things is very, very positive.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: And it does tell us that we we actually do have all that still, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Even though it's clearly under attack, right?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't I don't agree that this this idea that England has fallen, you know, it's way too doompilled, it's way too uh depressing, and it's also not true, I think.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: There is resistance, there is, you know, okay, we're in a bad situation, um, you know, not just because of it of of mass immigration, but for many reasons, right?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's possible to to remember what it is that we're fighting for, right?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: What it is that we love about our country and our heritage and our fellow uh British people or English people or whatever we are.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I think it's sort of both at the same time, you know, to see to think about this destruction, but also what we actually have, which is uh enormous, right?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: And and priceless.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I'd agree, I'd agree.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um I will uh I will try to elucidate that I I um perhaps a little bit less blackpilled than my monologue might have suggested.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I think that the Shire has certainly there's been an attempted scouring by generations of the political class, and as you say, England endures, and we hope that it will continue to, and I it's my fervent hope that there are enough of us out there thinking about this and trying to do something about it that uh bes uh and and not just people in the political class, but as you say, there is this organic cultural tide swelling uh where there's clearly a hunger for the country to endure in some way, the people to endure.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I want to see that happen.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I I suppose it would be interesting to get your your thoughts on, for example, we've seen Restore Britain, a Rupert Lowe-led project, which now has lots of interesting people on the advisory board.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And effectively what they're trying to do is push the Overton window at the political class level to bring things on the agenda that otherwise wouldn't have been there.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we we're talking about the cessation of mass immigration, we're talking about deportations, but there are other things in there.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's energy, there's a whole bunch of other policy levers.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we've touched on it already.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of these things are policy-based, but clearly what we seem to be getting at here is there's a there's a there's a moral and cultural and spiritual thing, and and it so maybe a restoration, which is always a kind of a bringing back or a bringing back to the fore something that has really always been there, and we've tried something different which hasn't worked, is I don't think it's all about politics.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: policy there's there's clearly something else and so I I I used this analogy where um uh with a with a previous guest which is you know the the forging the forging of England um which happened a bit after Alfred the Great but he ultimately in his nation building after vanquishing the Danes got people to go look we're we're all we're all English now we're we're marching under this flag Dane and Saxon forget about it you're English and here is here are the things that everyone needs to know the things that are going to lead to a thriving civic environment and improved literacy and all the rest of it so we're all part of the same thing the same project as you've spoken about and I'm not really seeing much evidence of that at the moment I want to I want to know how the the moral the spiritual the cultural restoration might begin and not just the policy stuff which is important but it will only take us so far.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So what are you what are your thoughts on that?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I mean it's complicated I mean it obviously going back to the Reformation I mean but Britain is a is a pagan country it's a Christian country and it's a liberal country right but it's it's not a Muslim country let's let's make that clear um within the Christian side of um British history there is of course the Reformation um and the Protestantism and which we could argue has maybe led to some of these ways of thinking you know there's there's all kinds of deep intellectual discussions about in post-liberalism and elsewhere about how we got to where we are whether individualism and universalism sort of comes from Christianity or particular kind of Christianity.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very good friends with a lot of very traditional Catholics.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not myself Catholic I'm an Anglo-Catholic um I'm Anglo-Irish uh myself I think this is but I'm a recent convert relatively speaking you know a few years now um before that I was a liberal subject my parents were sort of atheistic I mean we're all still liberal subjects but you know what I mean I made a conscious decision to be become baptized and to join the church um and it's it is complicated uh there's no way around this um the Catholics I know uh think of uh England as a Catholic country they still do just despite the the Reformation obviously the Catholics have been persecuted uh over hundreds of years and particularly around that time the Church of England well this we could go into to what that what that was um but I think part of it is going to be a return to Christian values and Christianity of course the church particularly the Anglican church has left itself wide open to all kinds of ideological capture and I think one thing you see among young people who are becoming interested in Christianity um is a desperate desire for a way of life um and a set of beliefs that are at odds with the world and the ideology of the institutions that they are otherwise part of and sometimes there is a disappointment or a surprise when you go to a more liberal church and it just sounds like your university or it sounds like your workplace you know all the same sorts of um ideas being pushed and and I think it's very interesting this is also happening in France to note where people are especially young people are and especially young men are drawn to let's say more Orthodox either the Orthodox Church or traditional Catholicism rather than the more liberalized of Christianity so I think rechristianizing in one way or another is a is a part of this and and I would say that even the secular values of human rights and so on do have a Christian background even if they've dispensed with God and Christ and even if they uh you know it's gone somewhere else and I think that's also part of our history that people are coming to understand that that even the response to Christianity in the form that it takes is Christian because we are a Christian country.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so partly that I think the there are certain norms around social and civic behaviour that we have seen eroding right just everyone notices things of people playing music on buses or whatever this is an a uh uh you know an everyday sort of example and there is a a great fatigue or tiredness with people not uh not understanding or not obeying those social norms and and that would also go for native British people as well you know just a sort of sense that what I want to do is the most important thing but I think this we've reached the limit we're we're many years decades after the sexual revolution surely we've gone as far as we can with that I mean I think it's really uh significant that Louise Perry's book for example Criticizing the Sexual Revolution was such a hit because she really tapped to this uh recognition actually that uh that sex and porn and and all of those things are actually not uh they're not the solution they don't tell you who you are actually like these are actually things that that we had social norms and religious uh ideas around those things for a good reason and I think Christianity is also an anthropology of course it's it tells us who we are uh it understands that we're all broken that we're all tempted that we all uh commit sin and that we're all capable of uh deciding not to right we can we can choose to change our behavior and how we are in the world and how we act through love and through our ties and our bonds and our duties to each other or we could just selfish you know atoms like you say and people have a choice and people I think increasingly want to make that choice whether they convert or whatever the word would be revert or vert to Christianity or not but it that there is uh I think a a desire for uh more social norms and and not to be imposed in an authoritarian way right I people sometimes worry about Catholic integralism as this sort of oh isn't this just Christian theocracy I don't think there is a way we can go back to a fusion of of church and state nor do I think that would be uh uh desirable necessarily so again it's sort of like a moderate clawing back of the things that are still there just about and that we do remember just about or that we can excavate um yeah well I'd like to riff off to at least two of the ideas that you've uh you you've put forward there and and one of them I suppose is the reclaiming some of the aspects that you've just um set out and I'm sure you'll be familiar with the idea that whether we like it or not culture is influenced and the direction of it is set by the elites and as we uh and and people may not always agree with that but clearly that's got a thing I mean we can see even just recently Trump 2.0 all of a sudden all of the policy changes that were turned on overnight changed things on uh approach to sustainability beyond other things right there are also lots of things happening pull this out of the classroom all that kind of stuff and you see people respond to it even if they didn't want to so there's clearly levers that can be pulled at the elite level um and I suppose if we're looking at the the roiling uh turbulence that we're seeing in Britain across the West because of the difference between the rule the rulers and the rules it's the uh global uh uh goods multicultural uh UDU non-judgmental culture and that's gotten us into a pickable no one particularly likes it but what's interesting is you'll see some people who I actually find common cause with and are right about certain things like James Marriott who writes for The Times he wrote an excellent article about being in a post-literate society and how who knows if civilization is going to survive this but he'll also mount a defense and say look I get that people don't like liberal elites but will miss them when they're gone I suppose my riff on your point Nina is the quality of the elite so the things that we're going to claim clearly need some elite direction because they're the ones who push the institutions that we all get formed through.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: My challenge to James would be is the liberal elites went a long time ago the ones that were of high quality that were were well read who understood the civilization they're gone.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean our prime minister doesn't dream he doesn't have a favourite poem he doesn't have a favourite book and you could argue that the rest of the government are broadly the same and these are the the the most important people in the land in some respect.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so what what prospects do we have of uh restoring a civilization when we have an elite class I suppose that almost have no concept of it and they've that they've been born in the the ashes of the new civilization you know the ashes of the revolution uh what what do you think of that?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: I I think there is a pendulum swing.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean I agree with your description and clearly we it's like a cacocracy like government by the worst and all of the best people and I I would say I if I could form a government in waiting of the people I know who are genuinely moral, uh intelligent um loving thoughtful conscientious people, I I I would do it immediately, right?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I think what's happened is that the the people who would be good at governing have gone into jobs that are secure and make money or they've left the country and we're seeing that especially among young people um and this isn't good.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: I I think we have to have uh a different way of understanding who uh we want in power I mean when I speak to some young politically motivated people men and women today like in their 20s a lot of them really do uh are give me a great hope right I don't want to be one of these middle-aged people who's like oh young people the hope but you know there is a sense that when I speak to them they're extremely realistic.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think people want a politics that's based in truth truth does not go very well with politics in general there are lots of things about the liberal order that that required a lot of lying about a lot of things and we know that the multicultural project was a god that required or seemed to require or demanded the sacrifice of white working class girls that was a sacrifice that certain elites were prepared to pay and as I say the the working class have been sacrificed over and over and over again by the elites for hundreds of years.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And in this sense I sort of probably still am in a strange way a kind of Marxist although I wouldn't define myself this way but you know that there is there is a class war uh that is being waged against uh normal people uh in this country on every level um I I don't think people want to be global citizens honestly I think people want to be local and national um and and to feel proud of their themselves their lives to have meaningful work and and loving relationships and and all of those sorts of things so globalism doesn't work uh either it works for a very small percentage of of people uh who are sort of taking all the money as they did during the lockdown as well you know this massive wealth transfer upward um and yeah so I mean the the question of how to how to train how to breed almost uh a good ruling class I mean is something that the Greeks uh talk about you know thousands of years ago at this point um it's it's of uh intense importance I know that there are projects like Civic Future and so on which are trying to do this um and to get people to to have a stake in the future um I think we'll probably see the emergence of those kind of figures and I have great respect for people like Danny Kruger for example who's who are outspoken who have now moved to reform um I have respect also for figures like Maurice Glassman uh in the Blue Labour project I don't think it's it's necessarily um uh feasible in some ways but I do uh it's important to have that like ideally you want a robust educated uh ruling elite that will disagree with each other that will shape each other right you don't we don't want I personally do not want a technocratic authoritarian global elite that is indifferent as Starmer is explicitly he says he cares more about Davos than uh Westminster uh more about whatever the the the the global elite than he does about his own country um we want people with with ties and a national feeling and I think I hope we will get it but it but the structure is not really there for very easily for people to move into those positions and that's something that has to to change I think I'd I'd agree as as you're talking uh it's becoming clear in my head that you're probably the closest the person with the worldview closest to my own that I've had on on the show it's quite interesting to hear you flipping between that um that kind of old left worldview frame which is still important whilst also uh nodding to um the kind of the reformers with the the the the kind of the populist side of things I suppose so um it's it's been interesting hearing you speak oh yeah here's someone who uh mine seems to work in a similar way um anyway the other strand that I wanted to pull on was um to do with re-christianising so I'm sure it wouldn't have escaped your attention as a very widely read person that um probably in the last year and a half or so when there's been a suggestion of wanting to re-Christianize is that there are some who flagged the alarm and said look it's it's it's uh this is fraught with difficulties and these are Christians who say it so Paul Kingsnorth very famous writer orthodox Christian and Elizabeth Oldfield she uh was also written and spoken similarly that they think there is a a danger in this idea of designing a Christian civilization which isn't what I'm saying you're you're positing and that effectively we all need to individually come to Christ and uh you can't force it upon people because it's going to turn into probably a theocracy.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: In some ways I can understand what they're saying because humans institutions power can often lead to large distortions and all the rest of it.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the nature of human institutions.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other side of things I think well much of what made Britain Britain and uh each of its constituent nations was the fact that it was Christianized initially by either missionaries from Rome or by um monks from Ulster uh and they um went out and won as many souls for Christ and over time institutions built and promulgated a classical Christian culture throughout the land which became a part of who we are it created our laws it created the uh all of our political institutions and so in many respects I feel like well Christian civilization has worked when directed from above and yes it's been an organic growth and maybe they're suggesting that we kind of need that to happen again but to me it feels like we have as you've mentioned all of the ingredients there it's just we need someone to come along and effectively say well no this is now part of uh I don't know the curriculum and what we do which is let's try to inculcate all of this stuff that we know and all the rest of it.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think a Christian civilization um directed by the elites can work or are you more of the Kings North Oldfield view of no no no that's just fraught with danger people need to come naturally to the faith to re-Christianize a nation I mean intuitively the second position in a way because that's right I mean it it it should come from below as it were and um of course you know the history of Christianity in Britain is also one of the persecution of different groups at different times generally the Catholics um but it's you know and you might say well this is ludicrous you're never going to get more than a few percent of people being actively Christian you know isn't uh it it on the wane and continues to decline.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think there are pockets as I say of of of reverting or converting um to Christianity which are very uh indicative and very hopeful I think and I went on pilgrimage with with the Latin Mass Society earlier this year and it was incredibly moving uh to see people in so immersed in their faith and to understand England in this way as a Christian country.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: And but but yes I mean but but something like the recognition I mean what we had up until relatively recently was the recognition that Britain was a Christian country.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean the monarch is is officially the head of the Church of England.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's still we're still a nominally Christian country actually um it's it even if the secularism is sort of expanded to fill almost the entirety of of what everybody does uh and all the institutions uh no longer pledging uh allegiance to God or or or or so on I mean I went to primary school a kind of normal primary school in in Wiltshire quite small and there was a residual Christianity in the in the assembly stories some of the parables I I was a brownie there was a residual Christianity in some of this uh but it was very gentle and already I think had been quite liberalized you know we used the Common Praise song book which also had songs from the Beatles and more sort of generic kind of let's be nice to each other uh rather than a kind of heavy emphasis on theology or anything like that and and it's funny in my middle age to now be be trying to get to grips with with theology and scripture that that otherwise other generations for hundreds of years would have known would have been taught and read at home and and so on.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: So there is something a little bit postmodern uh about being Christian in modernity uh I think um but that's not necessarily a a bad thing um it's so but I think to say even if we don't go down the kind of uh Christianity from above root it would be to to say well look at our history look at who we are this is we are the product of this and actually post-60s this is the blip perhaps you know that that that actually we are far more pagan and Christian we were pagan and Christian for a lot longer than we were liberal and if liberalism is somehow moving to something else or becoming a different version of itself um that's the short-lived thing and actually the reality of human existence and civilizations is religious fundamentally that we are that human beings are fundamentally religious and and if we say that we're not we immediately invent new religions or cults we we can't help it we're cultic we're religious and I some of the new cults are extremely dangerous and they they promulgate things that are simply false and not only false but dangerous and destructive and I would very much include the mutilation of children in the name of the fantasy that you can change sex.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: So this is a really obvious one that caused people a lot of problems to to defend over the last decade but I think we're seeing um even among people who kept their mouths shut for 10 years whilst others of us were severely punished for for stating uh the reality of sexual difference um and saying that this this is meaningful and and has uh should have consequences uh for the way that we collectively organize ourselves and it's ineradicable and we can't change these things instead we had a kind of cult of compassion or faux compassion I it's very difficult everyone's trying to give a history of the present at the moment we know always it's very difficult to give an account of the present it's but but but lots of things were going on people talk about suicidal empathy uh not sure it was empathy it there was all kinds of status games again this sort of elite discourse it's like how can you prove that your uh you know your loyalty oaths to your own class and the loyalty oaths that people were being required to to swear were mad and and horrible and wrong um but then if you noticed and if you pointed this out of course you were scapegoating You were sacrificed and accused of being hateful and awful and all kinds of things.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: So a realistic we need a realistic anthropology that is that informs our politics, I think.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's uh let's take it a little bit further.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's imagine a thought experiment in which uh we're seeing a a kind of uh re-christianising, whether it's making sure people are actually aware of history and heritage and all the rest of it, or whether we're going for the the full fat people are being dragged through to the services and learning the old school hymns and uh all the rest of it and the key figures.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we look at that in comparison to where we're at today, which is as I've already implied, there's a a non-n non-judgmental culture, but a morally relativistic culture.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we think we do the all religions thing, and uh we don't recognize theological differences.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, people will, in the name of inclusion, um, want to make Muslims feel welcome, and they will do it in all sorts of ways in the corporate world.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: They will allow in the lead up to Eid people to effectively evangelize on behalf of Islam, thinking, well, there's no harm with this.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all religions are the same, and we being the professional managerial class, don't really believe any of it's true anyway.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll just give everyone the chance to speak about it.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: We'll probably keep the Christians in the back, but Muslims can definitely have their day, we can have some with with uh we can do a little bit on Diwali because that's quite fun.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: We get a lot of colour being brought to the the day and all the rest of it, but don't really believe it.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: If we imagine a scenario where we're going, look, we're actually going to push on with uh we're rediscovering the heritage of the country, and as you said, that does not include the other religions, um, insofar as that's not what built the country.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think we actually need to start moving to a bit of a I'm sorry, but this is just the way it is?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: We recognize you have your religion, you can believe what you want, but we can't have a kind of muscling in on the public space from other religions.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you think other religions are in the name of kind of an ecumenical worldview, a kind of morally relativistic worldview, are afforded too much um space to shape the culture, and that if we're going to um actually rediscover the Christian heritage, that it needs to be a kind of bolder and prouder, this is what it is about, and you either take it or leave it.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because at the moment I don't see anyone wanting to actually grapple with the idea that Islam, for example, just immediately sucks in Judaism and Christianity.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: As by the way, just so you know, this is the one true religion, and everything that went before is either fake or was really just a lead up to this, and so there's a supremacy built in that.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think we're gonna have to start grappling with that and stop hiding behind it because it's not gonna go away?
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I know I realize that people don't want to do this because they're scared, and and nobody wants to be accused of being intolerant or racist, and and these words have been kind of thrown at people as a way of stopping this discussion for decades, right?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I first of all I want to say that I think the liberal atheist position, oh, it doesn't really matter, it's just a few people or whatever, is intensely disrespectful and actually racist.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's the racist position because it it disavows or it denies the fact that people actually have extremely different worldviews and that people take their religion and their um the way they see things very, very, very seriously.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it sort of pretends that they don't, or it or it seeks to ignore the fact that there are huge contradictions.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is why you can have like queers for Palestine, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's it there are there are deep differences in the way people see the world.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: We first of all we have to acknowledge that, and actually to give respect, if you like, to the fact that people are do see the world very differently, and trying to combine a post-sexual revolution liberal society with people who think that uh women should wear uh uh the the niqab or the chador um and think that homosexuals should be stoned to death uh is a problem.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: There is clearly a vast divide between those two outlooks.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: And um, secondarily, there are many Muslim countries, there are more than 50 Muslim countries in the world.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um Islam in particular is a as a war, a warlike uh colonizing religion by definition, right?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it it's that's that's what it is, that's how it sees itself.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um it has ideas about uh colonizing and the the caliphate and so on and the ummah, which are distinctly at odds with uh the preservation of Christian and Western cultures.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it uh these are these are sort of hard truths.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: I I I don't know what to say.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it unless we're gonna die of politeness and say, well, okay, we're well, you know, you do you, we'll just if you know carry on.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um it we're in trouble.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and we've seen this already.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: That the it leads to huge conflict, it leads to violence, it leads to um uh you know, extreme acts of terror uh and so on.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think that idea that we should accept that because we should feel guilty because of previous decisions made by governments around war, or that we should accept that because we're somehow ontologically evil because of colonialism, right?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think people are saying, absolutely not, we've had enough of this.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why should we be unsafe in our own country?
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, why should we be deferential um to other religions?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: You you you mentioned briefly that Christianity in Britain gets a raw deal, and I completely agree.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: I sit on a panel called CDAC, which is looking at the persecution of Christians in public life.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and many of the stories are not public.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: We know about various cases where people have been arrested for praying outside abortion clinics and so on.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there are many more stories that are private private, not public domain, um, where people have lost their jobs for expressing Christian uh beliefs, mainstream Christian beliefs in their workplace or online and have have lost their lost work and been ostracized and so on and so forth.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um and this is happening very asymmetrically towards Christians.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's almost like, well, you're allowed to laugh and mock Christians, you're allowed to sort of treat them badly, um, um, but you you can't do that to to Muslims or any other group, right?
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I personally would repeal all hate speech legislation.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think we uh have ended up in with terrible laws, uh, and I think a lot of the laws we have are are the problem because we can't then roll them back.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well well we can, but I mean we can't do anything as uh as they stand, if you see what I mean.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like we that everyone is operating within those laws or abusing them in some ways, but applying them.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um but they are fundamentally unfair and and um um and unjust, I would say.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um we should be able to criticize other religions, for example, um without fear of violence or persecution on the basis of hate speech and so on.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we've spoken quite a lot about distance between rulers and rules.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've we've spoken a lot about um people wanting to be attached to the local and the national, we've talked about heritage and history and how ultimately all of that is returning to the foreign somewhere, at least organically, people want it.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh whether they're getting it or not, uh, or whether they will get it or not, is probably the question we should ask.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if we start looking at how much the Overton window has shifted with regards to criticism of various things.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I think we can safely say that mass immigration, that overton window has been shattered, even though people are still trying containment in some way.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find a a Rory Stewart or whoever else saying that people see all these problems and they just come up with a really simple answer, fascism.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um they're they're still going down the smear approach, but the reality is no one's allowing it to stick anymore, but people just keep pushing, saying, no, we need to deal with that, we need to stop it.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing people talk openly, including members of the parliament, about uh a re-migration program of sorts.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you've spoken about how we've been under the technocratic spell for a long time, you know, this rule by uh kind of third parties, um, third-party organizations and a distant expert class who are ruling by spreadsheet.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose what the thought experiment I'll put with you, or not thought experiment, the question is do you envisage a future where we move past those things?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, do you envisage a future where our our political governance changes, where we do actually see the end of mass immigration, where we do actually see some kind of re migration, where we do actually see the end of technocracy?
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what would even that look like?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're so used to management by spreadsheet and management by committee and five-year plans and supranational bodies.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what if if you were to have a crystal ball, and I'm sorry for setting you up on the prediction front here, but where do you think we're going on any or all or other issues?
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think you know, all empires fall, right?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I I think probably what what's more likely from my perspective would be something like a collapse of some kind, probably economic, um, and that there would have to be by necessity a reform of the welfare state, because clearly that's untenable.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's unaffordable.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we we have like you know, huge debt and and almost, you know, virtually no growth and productivity and so on.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not a free market absolutist, uh, or and I'm not an economist, but um clearly there's something unsustainable uh about a world in a country or world in which people are um dependent upon other people making money uh whilst those people are being taxed more and more and more.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're just gonna leave, they are leaving.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think we'll probably see some kind of collapse.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I would personally rather live in a poorer but optimistic country that sees itself as part of a collective endeavor to rebuild itself.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm uh fully in favor of a sort of artisanal economy in many ways that we we we make things and and so on.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know about four but Larry and Jihad uh or a sort of Ted K solution to the to technology.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously everything depends upon electricity uh and so on and energy.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the sort of huge energy questions.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh again, not my not my area, but I think um I think there will be some collapse.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure about the civil war hypothesis.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is a thing that's sort of being circulated.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think we'll just see more and more skirmishes and horrible events and things like that.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think people will just, it will seem increasingly untenable.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I agree about the open window.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's clear that people are talking about things that even two years ago were the were the boat, and you'd get accused of being Hitler if you even noted them.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you'd be the one who sounded evil and mad uh and obsessed if you mentioned certain things.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and now I think that's shifting even at sort of fancy dinner parties.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think people can see the hypocrisy increasingly of the elites who are all like, oh, multiculturalism for thee, but not for me.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I live in my nice house in the middle of a white area, and and you know, what's your problem?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, why aren't you okay with like huge numbers of of uh sort of fighting age men in asylum centers in your small village?
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what's wrong with you?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I think people can see that kind of hypocrisy uh more and more, and they're pointing it out.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's it's it's almost I so I do think that there is a political solution.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be horrible either, right?
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, of course, there's gonna have to be some decisions made, but but things can be done carefully and gently, and I I don't see why it's not beyond the wit of collective humanity at the global scale, it's 2025, that we can't help countries rebuild, that people can't, you know, why can't people live in a nice way in places where their their ancestors and their culture um and and flourish there, right?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like why this idea that that the West or wherever needs to exhibit infinity charity to everyone else is is is also not possible.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not fair and it's not possible.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's not fair on people who live there, and it's and and you know, we've seen countries like Denmark, right?
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: So as far as I understand it, under a left-wing government, um they have um uh slowly and carefully uh re-migrated people and with the support of the the country.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, so things are possible.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's not um it's not impossible, and it wouldn't necessarily mean everyone.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I'm I'm friends with large numbers of of of assimilated people, if you like, people who are totally committed to British values and and work hard and all of that.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so of course you're gonna have to make sort of fine-grained distinctions, and of course, this is going to maybe look cruel to to the liberal whose heart is overflowing with their own desire to be thought of as a good person.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I I I admit I struggle with this.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_02: I struggled with thoughts that I was being cruel when I said human beings can't change sex.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_02: I thought for a year before I said anything, I thought, uh, am I being cruel?
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: Am I being unkind?
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think everybody has those those thoughts, but really there's a form of kindness which is much more cruel, actually, ultimately.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there is a there, you know, the road, the the the the sort of um, you know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I think there is a way of of making life livable for the greatest number of people.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a utilitarian by the way, but we can um with our collective wit and and uh sort of engineering skills and all those things, rebuild the world, um, put people who live here who come from here first, um, but it isn't our job.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's not possible to look after everybody.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: We can't do it.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's an unsustainable situation.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we'll we will see something like an economic collapse, which would then lead to tough political decisions around welfare.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I imagine we would have to leave the European Convention on Human Rights at some point, um and and and things like that.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: But it but it doesn't have to be horrible, you know.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be cruel.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: I hope.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, that's the that's definitely the fervent hope, but uh as far as I can see, the people who are actually working on things like deportation, remigration, whatever you want to call it, they're trying to follow that similar lead of the Danes and the Swiss and all the rest of it, which is it's humane.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's it's pulling on levers rather than sending in the crack squad and tearing people out and all the rest of it.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what is interesting about what you're saying, um is that should an economic collapse come, which it probably will given the state of things, as you've already pointed out, is that it's in those moments where the delusions of grandeur and the ideological projects die almost immediately amongst most who kind of tenuously believed in them.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I call to mind a book which I learned about through John Gray, funnily enough, I think he was on some other podcast, and he referenced it.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a book written, I can't remember by the journalist, I think his surname might have been Lyons, and it's not a pseudonym, but it was called The Assignment and Utopia, and it was him being previously uh very committed as a left-wing person, went over to uh the Soviet Union and saw the state of Ukraine and people cannibalizing one another, um, and effectively it being a little bit like that Hobbes state of nature, you know, all against all.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: And clearly, if you've got a whole bunch of people who are divided by um ethnic lines and divided in such a way that they're not committed to the same project, so they're placing their ethnic interests above others or religious lines or all the rest of it, that you can envisage a scenario if, you know, Bank of England goes kaput, government goes kaput, uh suddenly the city of London, which we've centralized everything to whilst getting rid of everything else, just continues to fail and sputter, and as I think someone referred to it online, just becomes a bit of a modern-day mogged issue.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can you could kind of see this happening, right?
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because people are already pointing at each other and and casting accusations from various angles about preferential treatment.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's only going to amplify when there are fewer resources to go after.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm um also with you, I'm not too sure about the civil war thing, though I I do see there being a bit of a South Africanization of the country, people retreating in their own little blocks and it just becoming an unworkable state.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Nina, clearly we could talk forever, but I want to be respectful of your time and and at least ask you what one of the questions uh that we have remaining, and maybe we can pick up another time because it'd be it'd be wonderful to do so.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the question is, which I ask all of my guests, is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was some absolute that you thought was unshakable, maybe it was something more day-to-day, but it felt consequential.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh what was it that made you change your mind?
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: I it was interesting.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_02: I like this question, and I you you you put a version of it in the email.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I saw I was thinking about it um ahead of this um discussion, and the thing that came to mind actually was I I suppose the the thing that I have changed my mind about is immediately believing people who tell you that they're very upset or that they are the victim.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is the thing that I've changed my mind on.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: I I was a a sort of pathological lefty uh for a long time, but but an old lefty.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I think we saw our enemy, if you like, as as parts of the state, the prisons and and so on.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was very involved in the student movement and defending protesters and the right to protest and so on.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: And our enemies were not each other, right?
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was the structure of punishment and other things where where people were being unfairly uh penalized for their views.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: And in that sense, it's it's interesting.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I've always wanted to defend freedom of expression and freedom of association, which are our rights, um, but now I I I defend them uh primarily for Christian belief.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but for me, there's a continuation in my defense of of these freedoms, actually, uh even though they might look different um uh sort of superficially.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I think one thing that that started to happen around 2013 or something, just in my my recollection, was uh this sort of sudden demand for of different groups, new groups often, for not just recognition, but kind of domination and and the idea that people must bow down to them.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_02: And there was a lot of cry bullying, a lot of you know, we're gonna punish you if you don't go along with this.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: And um I initially I thought, well, I thought, well, these people seem upset about something, they must have a reason to be upset, and and we obviously want to help people who are upset because they're having a bad time.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I I really had to get over this because it wasn't true.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's kind of self-victimizing or using supposed victimhood as a way of getting what you want is not it's not democratic, uh, it's not uh it's not fair and it's not true.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we all have to live together, and that means treating each other as adults.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's almost like everybody has to grow up, including myself.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a very immature person in many ways, and I I struggle with this all the time.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_02: I but I would say also to myself, to not give in to self-pity, victimhood, you know, trying to get what you want by saying I'm really upset or I'm offended or I'm being oppressed or whatever.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's the thing I I've changed my mind on in the broad sense.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh I I'm very trusting, I'm very open, this has caused me a lot of problems.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I'm not saying this to make myself sound good.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's actually a flaw, it's a failing of of character uh and has caused all kinds of issues.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_02: But I think to be pragmatic and to be realistic and to um to to get beyond emotivism.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Really, which is something that McIntyre diagnoses quite well as what is it coming down the pipeline in the early 80s.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_02: He's that, you know, our politics has basically become emotivism.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_02: People are just sort of shouting over each other for their feelings.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I feel this, therefore it's true.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm much more interested in what's true rather than um, even if that truth is painful.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of truth is is painful, it's uncomfortable, we don't like it, we seek to avoid it.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's that T.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: S.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: Eliot quote, mankind uh cannot bear very much reality.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the more we know, the more we'd suffer.
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's also in the Bible.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, suffering bring uh knowledge brings kind of a suffering, uh kind of grief, uh, when we can no longer pretend that we don't know certain things.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I I think it I've changed my mind on uh emotion, perhaps.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I I've changed my mind on thinking that actually being mature and being a responsible person is actually a very good thing.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, we need an entire society uh built around responsible people doing normal things uh and and thinking of others um to have any kind of workable society.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_02: We cannot just have everyone running off and doing their own thing and then screaming when they don't get what they want.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I think I've I've I've changed my mind on maturity.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think maturity is a good thing, uh, and we shouldn't be immediately swayed uh by emotional appeals, I suppose.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's not to say that people don't suffer, by the way.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not I'm not sadist.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm I'm absolutely, you know, people suffer, uh, terrible things happen, but as we've seen, some victimhood is more important than others in the current ideological situation.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_02: And in fact, some of the people who've suffered the most have been um attacked, you know, or ignored or multiply punished, um, particularly around the rape gangs and so on, you know, just uh the these people have have been seen as a as a problem.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: The victims of these things have been seen as a problem, uh, when in fact they were uh really genuinely victims.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I I suspicion of the politics of victimhood.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_02: I could have said that in a much more succinct way.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, you don't ever ever have to uh apologise about a long, a long answer.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm the king of them.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it was uh it made me um it did make me make me reflect on something you said earlier about all empires must fall.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: And without wanting to set you off on a huge rabbit warren and and have you late for other appointments, is the empire of the mind that seems to have been built, which people have spotted, has been through the therapeutic culture, which you know Philip Reef wrote about and lots of other people have started to talk about, which is therapy talk is everywhere in the culture.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_00: And again, people suffer and people need help, and not dismissing that, but it is interesting to watch how, in just everyday conversation, that people now refer to themselves in very therapeutic terms and are always pathologizing everyday problems, and it does weaken them in some way, but also it totally removes agency from them.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that everyone of these kind of like has the ability to be some ubermensch who just has the ultimate agency over absolutely everything.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, we're connected to other people, you know, sociological things do exist and do impact us, but we do have agency, we can respond to things, we can live in accordance with uh whatever set of morals we want and virtue ethics or whatever you want to call it.
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wonder, do you do you do you see because the therapy culture is quite literally everywhere?
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you find it in the corporate world, you find it on TV, you find it wherever you look, it's there.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um the glossy mags on the you know the shelf and the news agents.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see society tiring of it in some way because of this of this kind of um blase navel gazing, or do you think we just can't get enough of uh of our own uh supposed troubles?
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_02: I yeah, I think it I agree about the dominance.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it is waning.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, largely because it doesn't work.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And and in fact, the more people think they're victims, the more they're trapped in uh uh thinking that, right?
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's very hard to get out of it if you somehow embrace it and you get stuck there, and there's an entire uh economy of keeping people stuck in that position, uh, which is the ultimate cruelty, actually.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is unbelievably cruel in the name of kindness, as I as I said already, but like we've created um unbelievable cruelties, things much worse, uh, you know, unimaginable cruelty, actually, um, to say to people, oh yes, you're a victim and you must always be a victim, and and so on.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_02: It this is um uh a terrible thing to do.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I think therapy is a god uh to replace Christianity, which which does say actually, you know, Christ is the only true victim, and your suffering, uh, whilst uh is uh meaningful and real, is must be put in the context of Christ's suffering, right?
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_02: We you know, we collectively as a mob, as a people, we we kill Christ, uh the the only uh man to have ever lived without sin, right?
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're all sinful, that's the other thing.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_02: And indeed, we it precisely do have agency, we we make decisions all the time.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and actually keeping people in the state of self-pity uh and victimhood uh is uh is disastrous.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think there are there are other models of of how to get out of that, and I I do this in my own life, I did this in my own life to get out of those uh that feeling in that position, which is ultimately very isolating.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_02: You feel incredibly alone, it's a horrible uh place to be.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um this isn't accurate, this is not anthropologically correct, it's not religiously correct, it's it's it does extreme damage, and and actually we do have a choice.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we can decide not to do the things that harm us and other people, and we can get help.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, getting help is is a good thing, right?
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: But it but it it's it can't be that you just stay there, right?
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_02: We want people to get better, we we want people to have meaning in their life, we want people to be able to help other people, and in order to help other people, you have to fix yourself first, you know, you cannot do really do anything.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_02: So so I think you know, if we want to say charity starts at home, yes, with your immediate uh family and and people around you and your community, but also with yourself, right?
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_02: It it's like and and actually what turns out to be charitable in that sense is not self-indulgence, but saying, I don't have to keep doing these things that are harmful.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's no inevitability about it, you know.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, here, here, here.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I uh um I I I I can't add anything else to it.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_00: I will end up just um just just playing back your own words to them, but but to you, but much less eloquently.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Nina, I've I've kept you uh an awfully long time before I let you go.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm rather computer I'm rather underemployed at the moment, so it's fine.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hopefully this opens up some new employment um uh opportunity for you somewhere along the line.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_02: I have all kinds of skills, I promise, probably.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, Lena, where where can people find you in the dark corners of the internet and what can we expect from you next?
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know you do quite a lot of interesting events and lecture series and all the rest of it.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tell people about your body of work and and what we're gonna expect from you.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I mean I really should be writing another book, but I will get to that eventually.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_02: But um I have a Substack, uh, it's just my name, I'm Onyx.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I do teach, I'm teaching a philosophy of history course at the moment uh in this very post-academic, para-academic world, which is very exciting, people doing things for themselves, reading books that you wouldn't find at university and that kind of thing.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, at Verderam, which is a place run by my friend Pierre in East London.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I would strongly recommend anyone who's sort of open-minded and and uh intellectually curious to come to some events there.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we put loads of different things on um talks and workshops and uh readings and and courses and stuff.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's very positive.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, I mean I write for lots of different places sometimes, and I'm around.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, you are certainly around.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage everyone to check out all of the places that they can find you on the internet.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I also notice you do relatively regular podcasts with Louise Perry, Maiden Mother Matriarch, excellent podcast.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you always get into very interesting discussions, and you also have your own podcast.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll make sure we link to all of those in the show notes.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: But Nina, thank you very, very much for coming on.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's been one of my most enjoyable conversations, and I hope we get to do it again.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, I wish you wish you all the best.
• 1:15:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, John.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.