Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "What Hitchens Would Make of the Left" with Matt Johnson

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"What Hitchens Would Make of the Left" with Matt Johnson · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. And it wasn't always safe
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for the one on only Christopher Hitchens to express some of his more dangerous ideas.
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It was frequently quite hazardous. But express them nonetheless, he did. Ideas like
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the idea that one of the worst people ever to walk the face of the planet was Mother Theresa,
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the idea that former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger or to be behind bars in the international
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Court of Criminal Justice. These are ideas that he held so fervently, he even wrote books about
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each of them. In fact, they probably, they probably isn't a contrarian provocative idea that
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would get you uninvited or kicked out of polite dinner parties on both sides of the political aisle
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that Christopher Hitchens didn't at some point countenance. That's what made him so beloved and so
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loathed. If you're not familiar with Hitch, his books have been profoundly important on me. He
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was one of the most incredible fiery, passionate, articulate defenders of reason and smaller liberalism
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and indeed before that socialism that we've had. Literature young contrarian was an extraordinary
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book. God is not great. He's an extraordinary broadside against religion. And so many of his
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speeches and debates on YouTube that you can look up are just show this sparkling, fascinating
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mind. Today's guest Matt Johnson has written a terrific book about Hitchens' impact on the left
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and I suppose how sorely missed he is after a premature death in today's Culture War debates in
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particular. Matt today's guest writes of Hitchens in an article about him on the Bullwalk,
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which is a companion to this book, that Hitchens embraced the battle as an end in itself,
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not only to refine his own arguments, but also because as John Stuart Mill understood,
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the open exchange of ideas is the foundation of civil society. Can you think of a
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sentence that better describes my aspirations than the idea that the open exchange of ideas is
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the foundation of civil society and that the intellectual battle is an end in itself. Hitchens is
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often remembered as this booze-fueled hyper-erudite celebrity, a pugnacious provocateur in the words of
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Matt Johnson, my guest, and a contrarian, which is a word that he despised. But Matt Johnson's point
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here is that it's actually Hitchens' ideas and principles are what deserve attention today.
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He may have a reputation as a defector from the left as a neo-conservative because he supported
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the war in Iraq, but he was actually more faithfully committed to liberal principles than many people
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on the left are today, free expression, internationalism, individual rights. Look, I won't
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pre-judge this conversation. Matt is a very smart guy, he's a journalist, he's been published
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all over the place. This is his first book, it's called How Hitchens Can Save the Left,
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rediscovering fearless liberalism in an age of counter-enlightenment. Enjoy, Matt Johnson.
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This is the light reading, reading Hitchens long after he's passed away through at least
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through your prism of recollections of him. He's a person who everyone seems to want a piece of,
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everyone's claiming, I feel like Hitchens become a Roshak test for people. People want him on their
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side. Yeah, which is fair enough. Yeah, I mean, I want him on my side too, it's just I happen to be
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right about his being on my side. Okay, exactly. Let's start with the left maybe because whatever we
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talk about, whether it's workism or the intellectual dark web or liberalism or the cancel culture
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or the culture wars, it all kind of fundamentally comes down to like differences of opinion
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about what the left is and what the right is at the moment. What did Hitch think the left
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is? It's a good place to start just because, you know, I don't want people to read the title of my
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book and think it's some kind of broadside against the left. I am addressing the left because I
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consider myself on the left, although that probably means less today than it may have meant
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a few years ago. But, you know, to me, Hitchens just represents a fairly pure and consistent form
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of liberalism. So, you know, when it comes to issues like free speech, when it comes to
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opposition to identitarianism and a sort of fondness for individual rights as a counterpoint
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to identitarianism. And then, you know, a general sense of universalism, so just the idea that
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everyone's life has value and it doesn't matter where you live, you know, and these are like the
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general principles that I think drove Hitchens. And I think you can trace a pretty honorable and
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pretty clear left-wing lineage, which also embraces those principles. So I think we've gone
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astray in recent years. And Hitchens is a good way back toward those ideas and those principles
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on the left. Was he a small or liberal when he was younger? Well, was he a fiery kind of socialist
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simplifying workers of the world, a unite type? Well, he's definitely the latter. But at the same
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time, I think he had plenty of small ill liberal characteristics. So one debate I've been mentioning
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of weight is this one that he had, you can find it on C-SPAN. And it's just, I think that the prompt
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is socialism versus capitalism, which is the moral system. And Hitchens is making the case for
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socialism. This is in the mid-80s. But it was interesting to me because his core points,
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like his core definition of shows socialism at the beginning of the debate, just sound like
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liberal humanism to me. I mean, he talks about the importance of internationalism right out of the
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gate. He talks about secularism. And it just, he doesn't really get around to the principle
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of, you know, from each, according to his ability, to each, according to his need, until, you
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know, a few points into the introductory statement. So it was interesting. I never really bought
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of Hitchens' economic thinker worth engaging with, but more of more of, you know, someone who's
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oriented toward international affairs and toward liberalism more broadly. So that's just one
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example of how, even when he was a firebrand, I think he did have the sort of liberalism
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coursing through his thought. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I wonder whether he was, I wonder what
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he was meaning by socialism and capitalism in the 80s, anyway. I mean, if you're in a context of
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fature, then maybe socialism just means northern European democratic socialism, and he's not thinking
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of anything like what the American boogie man of socialism, which is sort of a synonym for communism is.
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Oh, I would say in the 80s, he was a socialist that's traditionally defined. I mean, he always
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considered himself a Marxist or somebody who at least thought like a Marxist. That was a distinction
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he often made in his last two decades. But yeah, I think he was, he was a socialist who
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believed in the nationalization of certain industries was definitely not just the sort of milk
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social democrat that you'll see in Europe today. I mean, he was on the hard left. And you know,
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in this this this very hard line also applied to his use on foreign policy as well. You know, he was
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he was a very bitter and a serbic critic of US foreign policy. And you know, that led to projects
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like his campaign against Kissinger and just a ton of articles and harpers in the nation about
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the horrors of Reaganism and yeah, what have you. So he was definitely on the hard left. I wouldn't
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want to say just a bit for us because the the the hitchhands that looms large just from the past
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few decades of his life and that has been co-opted by neo conservatives and that people feel
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you know, repelled by if they're on the left is this semi hawkish pro Iraq war individual rights
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small little liberal yet there's this whole period of his life where I mean, he's writing
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entire books about how you know, Henry Kissinger should be in the Hague and should be in prison
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for war crimes and how Mother Teresa was a fraud and a fundamentalist and so you know, he starts
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he comes right out of the gate with these incredibly controversial far far far far outside of the
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mainstream opinions taking down sacred cows of on both on both sides. Can you plot us through
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that that portion of his biography. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's definitely overlap there too
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because his Kissinger book came out in 1999 I believe or 2000. You know, this is this is years
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after he was making a very forceful case for NATO intervention in Bosnia and then later in
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Kosovo. So the idea that U.S. foreign policy is just kind of like always and forever
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this rapacious imperial machine, which is sort of the Chomsky I view, wasn't one that he actually
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held by the time he published his book on Kissinger. So Hitchin's thought Kissinger was a distinctly
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noxious figure and I think that extends from his general hostility toward Cold War U.S. foreign
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policy and and the sort of railpolitik that that Kissinger practiced. So Hitchin's just thought that
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that Kissinger was indifferent to human rights. So, you know, on the Kissingerian view, the United
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States would do well to support Saddam Hussein and the Iran-a-Rock War because that that could
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balance power in the region. So the human cost wasn't a concern and I think that really
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disgusted him. And then when he saw some American policy makers and and others in the in the
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sort of international commentary it or whatever you want to call it, pushing for intervention in
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Bosnia, he thought there was something different happening. He thought this this was something that
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could be construed as a humanitarian intervention. And that's that's when he had a pretty dramatic
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shift and a pretty dramatic break from the left. So he was just as critical of the left, you know,
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unfortunately we have to use these words because it's kind of impossible to communicate without
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some measure of generalization. But he was really critical over many of his left-wing comrades
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over Bosnia. And he really sounded like he did after September 11th, even in the 90s. But then
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the Kissinger book came out later. So there, you know, I think it was difficult for Hitchin's
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to reconcile some of these ideas. And you can see that process taking place throughout the 90s.
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And then obviously after September 11th, that's when he became, you know, the forminating neo-con that
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people love to hate now. So was it difficult for him to reconcile those ideas though? Or was it
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perfectly consistent in his mind? I mean, the the through thread that you're sort of pointing to in
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his antagonism, his loathing of Kissinger and the American foreign policy establishment. And yet
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his susceptibility to ideals like Bosnia and even Iraq is that, I mean, I suppose from the most
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generous perspective to him is he he resents big powers strutting around and doing whatever they
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like because very important men with medals on their shirts and cigars, you know, say that this
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is the way that the world ought to be. And he just has an instinctive hatred of that kind of
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elitist posturing. And at the same time, he thinks that anytime you could, the left can get morally
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confused about who those assholes are and that Saddam Hussein was certainly one of those assholes
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too. And Slobodan Milosevic was certainly one of those assholes too. And so to the extent that we
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can use the might of the West to try to take those assholes down a peg, you know, you can't sort
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of universalize that American power is always good or always bad. You sort of have to pick your
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battles and figure out what is the aspiration that you're you're pursuing. So I don't know.
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Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You are pushing at an open door for sure. So one distinction worth
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making at the outset is it's just that there were some positions that were more difficult for
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Hitchens to hold later in life than others. And, you know, supporting the Iraq war as forcefully
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as he did had to be more difficult because he was such a strong opponent of the Gulf War.
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And you just can't square those two positions with one another. Saddam Hussein had just
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committed his most egregious crimes during the Gulf War, including the invasion of Kuwait.
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But the Iran or Iraq war was in fresh memory. The unfold campaign against the Kurds was also in
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fresh memory. So if you're going to oppose that war, it's inconsistent to later say, no,
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now is the time to oppose Saddam Hussein. So that that's one position where he did actually struggle
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and he ultimately admitted that he changed his mind. You know, Hitchens didn't frequently admit
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when he changed his mind and he didn't usually he didn't usually spend much time on the ways
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in which he changed his mind. But in that case, it was just too claring and inconsistency. So he
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had to. But no, you're absolutely right about that. And there's one interview that I've been
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calling people's attention to. And it was on C-SPAN when he was supporting the Kissinger book,
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a caller, you know, made all the familiar points about how the United States is essentially
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the great Satan and how we're worse than Hitler because of the sanctions on Saddam. And this
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is the sort of stuff that you run into on the self-satisfied anti-imperialist left. And Hitchens
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said he just kind of stopped the guy. And this was pre-September 11th. And he said, I just want
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you to know that Saddam Hussein is everything that is set of him. And he talked about sitting on
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an unexploded chemical bomb in Halabja. And he said that, you know, Saddam Hussein, if he
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would stop operating outside the bounds of international law and convention, he could feed the
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Iraqi people. And, you know, they didn't have to have hyper-hyperinflation in Iraq. And Saddam was
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riveting this whore on his people. So even when he was talking about Kissinger and discussing the,
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you know, the disgusting history of American foreign policy in Indochina, for example,
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he also bore in mind the fact that, you know, there are totalitarian forces on the planet who,
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who, you know, could, could, could damn well use a little bit of a American course correction. So
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yeah, yeah. And he was, he was a supporter of Operation Provide Comfort, you know, the NATO
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no-fly zone in northern Iraq. And then there was another no-fly zone established other southern
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Iraq, which operated throughout the 90s. He thought we were kind of in a state of low-grade warfare
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with, with Iraq in that entire period. Yeah, yeah. No, we were, I guess. I mean, it's so
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interesting because you're pointing to this sort of moral clarity that he had. Well, I'm not saying
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that it was necessarily moral or immoral, but he had a clarity of vision of, of what the right was
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that's, that wouldn't, that now smacks sort of a Western chauvinism, right? He accused of being
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too universalist, like not everyone in the world wants liberal democracy. It doesn't work everywhere,
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like some people want much more communitarian systems and small groups of, you know, conservative
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Muslims in the Highlands of Northwest Pakistan don't necessarily want, you know, Jeffersonian
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ideals, like, and that's actually fine for them to be slightly oppressive to individuals within
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their communities, if they want to construct their communities that way. And that sort of moral
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relativism infused the left during Hitchens' final hurrah during the Iraq War period, found expression
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on the right, I think, in the form of Donald Trump and the decline of, I guess, neo-conservative
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interventionist ideals, I guess we can park Ukraine for one second. But just on the question of,
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like, universal morals versus moral relativism, I can never quite figure out whether this current moment
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of hyper-aggressive passion on the left for social justice issues is a moment of moral arrogance
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and chauvinism, or a moment of moral relativism, because it seems to have features of both. Where are we?
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Yeah, that's a good way to frame it, you know, it's, okay, on identity politics, and on, I think,
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the direction in which the left was heading when Hitchens died. I can easily envision him being,
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you know, among the most ferocious critics of identitarianism in this illiberal turn that we've
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witnessed across much of the left today. I mean, you just can't get away from, you know, there's
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just an article in the Atlantic about the sort of DEI industry. And it's one of those,
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it's by Connor Freystorf, I can't phrase it, but it's just a tremendous take-down of what has
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become a very cynical and opportunistic enterprise. And there are a lot of, there are a lot of
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credulous people on the left who think that this sort of thing is sort of unambiguously good
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all the time. I mean, focusing on what divides people, focusing on racial division, you know,
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this is the sort of d'Angelo approach, or the Ibermexcendi approach, where you say, like these,
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these things are, you know, bigotry is so ingrained in us that there is no escape. I mean, we'll,
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we'll be saddled with identitarian conflict until the end of time. And I always think it's a very
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unhealthy psychological state to be in, to insist that, you know, these, these distinctions between
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people are the things that we should trump it as loudly as possible for as long as possible. And
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this, it just seems, it seems antithetical to the left-wing tradition that Hitchens emerged from,
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which was all about universalism. I mean, you know, say what you want about socialism,
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it was a universalist idea. I mean, Hitchens wanted to film it, revolution is broadly as possible.
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Right. He went some, some Cuban camp for young revolutionaries when he was a teenager.
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And he was just, he was just 100% behind the idea of international socialism. And I was really
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the driving force behind his politics. And that also applied to his view of cultural exchange.
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He would have thought, you know, the obsession with cultural appropriation now is very reductive.
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I mean, he actually wrote essays about Edward Saeed, in which he said that Saeed could have been
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a sort of negotiator and go between, between cultures. But instead, he decided to paint with a
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very broad brush and argue that, you know, any attempt to, well, I mean, this isn't, this isn't
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me saying this is my summary of Edward Saeed's work. But this and an article Hitchens wrote for
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the Atlantic, he said that Saeed essentially said that, you know, many of the attempts to study
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the East or to study the Orient were, were just ugly imperial enterprises. And he wasn't,
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he, he wasn't really looking at these things as positive some games. He was looking at it as,
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as Neo, or zero some games. So it's just, there's so much of that on the left now. And the
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anecdote I use in the book was this interview that Bernie Sanders did on Vermont Public Radio
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in 2020. So during the primary, he said, you know, we shouldn't judge candidates on the basis of
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the race or gender or age. We should judge them on the basis of their ideas and principles. And
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this is, you know, it's a very liberal and sensible mindset to have. And of course, he was attacked
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relentlessly for it, you know, Nira Tandon said something like saying age, age, or saying race
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and other forms of identity don't matter is just tone deaf. And it's just, you know, a slap in
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the face to all these marginalized communities. And so there's just like this, this instinctive
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revulsion and resistance to universalism. And yeah, I think Hitchens kind of comes from a tradition
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that, that plays up universalism rather than, than playing it down and viewing it as some sort of
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like some sort of smoke screen for bigotry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And I mean,
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in addition to his instinctive distaste for grouping ourselves into tribes and regarding ourselves
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as, you know, zero sum war of tribe against tribe, he would also just have an enormous distaste
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for the poor reasoning that goes on in some of the diversity, equity, inclusion, style,
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argumentation. I mean, the circular logic to it, it's extraordinary. I'm reading a book by a
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colleague of mine, because she's coming on the podcast shortly. And, you know, she does, she
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gets very, very angry when anyone says the N word or has ever said the N word in conversation,
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talking about how bad the N word is. And I was sort of trying to make the point in private to her
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that it wasn't always the case that that was universally regarded, even in just in conversation,
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about the existence of the word and how bad it is as a bad thing to say. And she says that anyone
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who makes that argument should examine where that argument's coming from, because that argument
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is probably coming from a place of racism. Well, I mean, Hitchens would spot the circularity of that
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logic before it even got out of bed and put its shoes on. Right. You know, we're having a conversation,
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we're having a conversation about, you know, a proposition. The proposition is that anyone
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who ever said the N word and actually said the actual word in any context was motivated by racism.
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And the reason that you're giving me why, which you are expecting me to treat as a good proof,
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as a sound proof for that, is just directing me back to that very statement. That's the oldest
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philosophical canard in the book. I mean, he would just have no time for the kind of, you know,
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if you object to Ibrim Kendi or Robin D'Angelo's ideas, if you object to diversity, equity and
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inclusion, that means you need more diversity, equity and inclusion training to train you out of
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whatever bias is causing you to think that you don't need it. Yeah, that reminds me of
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after the 2020 election, you know, Biden trounced Trump, especially in terms of the popular vote,
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but there was an interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez where she said, you know, the share of white
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support for Trump was still very alarming to her. And she said, what we need to do is a lot of
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anti-racist, deep canvassing in this country. And I immediately thought, you know, it's anti-racism
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as you're presenting it, you know, not as somebody would have presented it 30 or 40 years ago
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as a part of the civil rights movement is one of the reasons we have Trump. I mean, it's this
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identitarian on the left, the identitarianism on the left that fuels the populist authoritarian
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right in so many ways. And I just thought like, and also, you know, there are just little details
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that your AOCs always seem to leave out of the calculus. I mean, for example, in Hispanic,
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a majority, or counties with large Hispanic populations across the country, Trump support
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actually increased for some reason between 2016 and 2020. There are reasons why Trump
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appeals to people beyond just their flagrant racism and bigotry. You know, and I think we need
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to try our best to get to the bottom of that instead of just, and that doesn't mean that there
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isn't bigotry among Trump supporters. I mean, there's plenty of it. You know, don't get me wrong.
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But yeah, you know, what you said earlier about how there's this relativism on the left,
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or, you know, some relativism that might insist, you know, let's just let people live the way they
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want to live, let's let other cultures function the way they want to culture, or the way they want
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to function, you know, it made me think of your conversation with Shotty Hamid recently,
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where you guys, you guys talked about how in some parts of the world, democratic systems will
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produce illiberal and undemocratic outcomes. And, you know, these societies have to figure out a
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way to deal with that and maintain popular sovereignty and, you know, respect the popular will,
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while simultaneously, you know, well, simultaneously trying to, I think people from the outside
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can condemn, you know, Islamism, for example, without saying, you know, it's okay for the United
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States not to call the coup in Egypt a coup. You know, when CC took power from Muslim Brotherhood,
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like that was something the United States refused to do for a while, because we didn't like the Muslim
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Brotherhood. Well, you know, if they are popularly elected, if Morsi was popularly elected,
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then you just have to accept that result. And the same thing applies in the United States, you know,
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sometimes popular strike wingers will take power. And, you know, you have to respect democracy
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as it functions. Yeah, that's interesting. The, on the question of the Hispanic support for Donald
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Trump, I did flag that for a very woke, lefty friend of mine, who then launched, he launched into
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a long explanation about why that still was actually racism, because if you break down the Hispanics
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into Hispanics of color and white Hispanics, it's mostly the white Hispanics who were going for Trump.
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So it's still white supremacy. Yeah. Well, there's always an excuse, you know, if African Americans
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go for Trump, then it'll be the white, the lighter skinned African Americans or the African
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Americans who come from Nigeria who are going for Trump, but actually the actual African Americans
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who are descended from slaves are not going for Trump. Therefore, oh, but hang on, well, the ones
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who are only two generations away from slaves are not going for Trump, I mean, they're going for Trump,
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but the ones who are four generations away from slaves. So, you know, you can carve it up, you can
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retroactively make whatever excuse you want to make your enemies always, always begets and racists.
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Yeah. Yeah. One of the interesting things in the title of the book that interested me or
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that took me back was the word counter enlightenment, the book's title is How Hitchens Can Save the Left,
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Rediscovering Fearless Liberalism in an Age of Counter Enlightenment. What do you mean by that?
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Yeah. So it's both of the sort of currents that you could witness on the populist right and
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the sort of illiberal left. So, you know, you have the emergence of people like Victor Orbán and
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Trump and, you know, for a time there was AFD in Germany that they've fallen by the wayside a
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little bit. Le Pen is performing much better in French elections than she once did and she's
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sort of successfully deodorizing her family name, you know, and then there's Trump, obviously,
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who just flavorantly rejects democracy is no friend of free speech. So you have all of that
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happening on the right and then, you know, as I noted earlier, you have these liberal trends on
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the left. So you have the DEI industry and you have people who write as if race and gender and
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sexuality are just about the only critical variables for political mobilization and action.
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And these are both very powerful anti-enlightenment currents, I would argue. And then there are all
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the spin-off issues that come from those. I mean, I think there's a new parochialism on the right,
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you know, at the very least you could say that the Neocons did have some sense of the rest of the
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world and they would occasionally couch their arguments in liberal-ish tones. They would say,
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defending democracy in Iraq is an important thing, you know, expanding the sphere of human
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rights and human dignity is important. And, you know, that's the sort of thing you'd get from
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some of the Neocons and some were more believable and more consistent on those issues than others.
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So, you know, Wolf Woods versus Dick Cheney. But then at the same time,
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the right has really shifted toward this more insular kind of isolationist Tucker Carlson
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worldview. And I think that's a depressing shift in many ways because, you know, say again,
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say what you want about Neocons. They don't sound like Charles Lindbergh. You know, they're not
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producing endless streams of monologues about how an immigration act in the 60s pretty much
28:43
set the United States on a course for national destruction. And they don't sort of flirt with
28:50
really ugly, really ugly sort of retrograde ideas about like the character of the country
28:58
and how immigrants are undermining it and spoiling it. So, I just think that they're all using
29:03
possesses an honorable mention. Yeah, yeah, Carlson. I mean, he's just really, you know, people
29:10
would accuse Carlson of being a proponent of the great replacement theory. And then all these
29:15
people, you know, who defend him would say, oh, what nonsense is this? You know, Carlson's not
29:20
some fascist adjacent character. He's not some horrible 8-chan figure. And then I started
29:26
watching some of his monologues. And that's just exactly the argument that he's making. He's saying
29:31
that Democrats are importing immigrants into the country because they think that they're more
29:35
pliable and they think that they will be more compliant voters. And that's the very definition
29:41
of the great replacement theory where you're basically saying what's weed out all these white
29:45
folks and get these brown folks in here because they'll vote the way we want them to. And,
29:49
you know, this is a deeply noxious and really disgusting idea. And Carlson devoted monologue
29:55
after monologue to this. I spent a lot of time listening to Carlson because I write about him
30:00
fairly often. And it's just amazing to me that that wasn't the sort of thing that got him fired
30:06
from Fox News. He may have reached a put tipping point, right? There were proximate causes,
30:14
but, you know, clearly none of the proximate causes, the immediate causes were severe
30:18
enough to warrant firing him. So my sense is that the monologues must have been finding him
30:23
distasteful for quite some time to finally leap. I mean, just as an engine, the great replacement
30:30
theory, I wish that we on the left had mounted a better defense against it. I heard a
30:35
podcast. I think it was The New York Times daily podcast. It was some explanation of the
30:40
great replacement, or maybe it was an explanation of Tucker's firing. And it was so, it was such a
30:46
caricature of the great replacement theory for which I have no truck, I should say, that I
30:54
felt like if I, I mean, if I was on the left and I didn't, I wasn't a journal, so I wasn't
30:59
already investigating the kinds of things that French intellectuals behind the great replacement
31:04
theory were saying. I would just think that anyone who believed anything even remotely like it
31:10
was deranged. I mean, they were presenting it as if this comes back to like presenting the
31:17
worst version of your opponent's arguments, which in such a caricatured way that you never
31:21
actually understand what your opponent really thinks. Like the most generous interpretation
31:26
of a great replacement theory adjacent to type of argument is I suppose a sort of Douglas
31:33
Murray-esque kind of concern that there's been enormous demographic change, particularly in Europe
31:41
where it hasn't been integrated as well as it has in the United States and Australia,
31:46
where you've got suburbs of, you know, 90% all a foreign ethnicity and religion and language
31:55
and very, very high stubbornly high unemployment combined with sort of localized racism and a
32:02
sclerotic economic and labor market, which is causing problems of its own. And the idea is,
32:11
you know, is it, is a, is a person allowed to express some kind of demographic anxiety about
32:16
the changing face of the town that they grew up in or the suburbs that they grew up in or even the
32:21
city in the case of London that they grew up in, which has gone from being a white city 40 years ago
32:27
to multicultural, dynamic, international, cosmopolitan, global city. Like to some extent I just
32:35
feel like we're on the left to sort of own that that is actually what we like. We actually like
32:40
being international cosmopolitan global cities that have lots of different colors and lots of
32:44
different foods and religions and ethnicities. We can't, but what we're currently doing is sort of
32:50
gaslighting everyone by pretending almost that it's not happening or that anyone who notices that
32:54
there's been a massive demographic change is spouting the great replacement theory. Like I,
33:01
it's true that Tucker actually did take the extra step of saying Democrats are doing this to
33:06
get more voters. But if you just didn't take that extra step, you would still be accused of
33:12
peddling noxious racism. And I'm not sure that the most robust retort to that is to say,
33:19
there's actually nothing to see here because there is something to see here and it's something
33:23
I feel like we should be prouder of it in a way. We should be prouder of, yeah, we actually do
33:28
want to change the demography of the country from being all white and all the same to being a
33:35
melting pot. That is alcohol. Like where do you think that? Well, the question I would always have
33:41
for somebody who's really worried about demographic change is exactly what ways do you see
33:48
demographic change manifesting in cultural problems or political problems? In the United States
33:55
right now, for example, the most noxious political fact about the country is just strict polarization,
34:05
which is driven by a wide range of factors. It's been happening since the 90s, since the rise
34:13
conservative talk radio behemoths like Rush Limbaugh and since Congress stopped fraternizing as
34:19
much as they used to and they started appealing to more and more radical primary voters.
34:25
And this thing has just gotten worse and worse and worse. And I look at that and I say, well,
34:30
that's like one of the primary problems we have. And it doesn't seem like demographic change
34:34
has much to do with that. And if you look at jobs being taken by immigrants, to what extent is
34:42
that happening? How many jobs have been lost? How many jobs will be lost in the future?
34:50
I always want, and I actually read Douglas Murray's book, The Strange Death of Europe,
34:57
and I've read a lot of his work about immigration. And he just thinks that countries reach
35:03
this sort of carrying capacity where once they become sufficiently diverse or sufficiently sort
35:13
of stratified, they lose a sense of national identity and the whole thing kind of comes a part
35:18
of the same. And this is something that you're hearing more and more frequently on the right.
35:23
That's why there's been this resurgence of nationalism as a good thing, you know.
35:28
I read Yoram Hazone's book, The Virtue of Nationalism, and Rich Floury's book, The Case for
35:33
Nationalism when they both came out. And they're basically saying that, you know, these people who say
35:39
the United States is an idea or America is an idea are confused because it's a defined territory
35:44
with a specific history and a specific culture instead of traditions. And if we get away from all
35:50
of that, then what are we really? And will we be able to have national solidarity?
35:55
And, you know, it's not as if that's an unintelligible argument. It's not as if I can't see the problem
36:03
with a lot of immigration in France, for example, sort of rendering people ghettoized and separating
36:09
communities. And, you know, you end up with higher crime rates in those communities and then
36:14
they're higher incarceration rates, which breeds anger, which could lead to violence. And, you know,
36:19
it's not as if these are all these arguments are falling on deaf ears.
36:23
But I just think historically, as countries have become more diverse, they tend to absorb people
36:31
fairly effectively. I mean, there was a time in the United States when people made those exact
36:36
same arguments about the Irish, when they made those arguments about Italians, you know,
36:41
and now the Irish and Italians, and they're just white. They just, you know, they check the white
36:46
box on the on the census. And we just kind of move on. And I just think that's like the general
36:52
state of our, we just seem fairly malleable in that sense. And I always just sort of,
36:59
the one thing that's also interesting to me is that the people who are making the argument
37:05
about there being a limited carrying capacity to immigration are also the kinds of people who
37:11
cause that, that limiting limited carrying capacity by complaining about migrants and the
37:16
impact that migrants have on the society. Like if, if, oh yeah, if ever, like, that's
37:21
to be from my perspective, because I'm perfectly happy. Well, I suppose there's some carrying
37:25
capacity in the sense that I wouldn't want to live in like a community, which was a fundamentalist
37:29
Muslim community suburb or something. But there's a very, very high carrying capacity from my point
37:34
of view, because I'm not the type of person who's going to write lots of hand-ranging books about
37:37
the carrying capacity of my culture. You know, it's sort of self-fulfilling. Right, right. Well,
37:44
that's a good point. And Hitchens was, was often very critical of people who seemed overly
37:52
concerned about demographic change. He would, he always distrusted people who'd start talking
37:58
ominously about birth rates. And he was, he was a big fan of the Italian journalist Ariana
38:03
Filacci. But he thought she had sort of fallen into this trap of saying, you know, there are
38:08
these immigrant communities coming into, into Europe. And they're, they're basically having too
38:13
many kids. And this, this is something he always found ugly. And he distrusted for what I believe
38:20
are good reasons. So there's just this, it's one of those issues where time is just going to have
38:27
to tell, you know, like I am generally in favor of more robust immigration. I think it's,
38:34
I think it's valuable. I think it generally adds value to a society. In some cases, I think we
38:39
actually owe a debt to people. I mean, for example, I think the United States should be taking many more
38:44
Afghan refugees than than it's taking. I think it's wonderful that so many European countries have
38:51
stepped up and absorbed Ukrainian refugees. So the, you know, the questions have worn in peace
38:57
and conflict aside. I just generally think that that immigration is good for society. And I just
39:05
haven't, I haven't seen, you know, I haven't seen the sort of cultural and social breakdown that
39:12
people are always predicting when it comes to mass immigration. You know, it's true that they're,
39:18
you know, you'll, you'll see, I mean, for example, one distinction you could make is between like
39:22
the Muslim community in France and the Muslim community in the United States. And I believe at
39:29
least last time I looked at these numbers, if you're a Muslim in France, you're, you're probably
39:34
in a lower socioeconomic bracket and you're probably disproportionately likely to commit crimes,
39:40
whereas in the United States, if you're a Muslim, you're disproportionately likely not to commit crimes.
39:45
If that's incorrect, you throw a note in the show notes or something. But there are good reasons
39:49
why this is so. And, you know, Muslims comprise a larger proportion of the French population. And
39:54
there have obviously been very, very high profile and horrifying attacks in Paris and in Nice and
40:00
other places in France. So, you know, anti-immigrant or like anti-Muslim sentiment there stems from,
40:07
from those things. But every country is different. And of course, there are many peace-loving
40:13
French Muslims who don't deserve to be lumped in with maniacs. And it's just, and there's just a,
40:20
yeah, it's just one of the most complex issues imaginable. But I tend to take this sort of a
40:26
Gen Z in line that internationalism is generally speaking, works in all a good thing. And that includes
40:33
high levels of immigration. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that you said in your, in your
40:38
communications with me in your email was that you had sort of lost, you'd become disillusioned
40:42
basically in a movement of sort of hit Gen Z in, which is a word that I just heard you calling,
40:49
which I like, heterodox, classical liberal people who had been pushing back against the craziness
40:56
on both sides. And that you momentarily found that bracing and have now much like myself, I guess,
41:05
lost that the sheen has come off that. Can you try to articulate the people who are as online as
41:09
we are, what that movement is or was, and why you, it's souring on you? Yeah, I can do my best.
41:18
So, you know, I will say this for myself, there are some figures who are part of what's
41:24
sometimes called the intellectual dark web, though nobody really uses that term anymore as far
41:29
as I can tell, like only the most online people who are like remembering those debates fondly or
41:35
not fondly or the ones who use it. But anyway, I have always been critical of Jordan Peterson
41:41
in print. My first ever article for Quillette was an attack on his religious views, which are
41:47
entirely opaque and impenetrable. You just can't really pin the guy down on what he actually
41:51
thinks. And then he always hits you with the standard canards like atheism is responsible for
41:56
all the crimes of the 20th century and blah, blah, blah. So, there are some, and, you know,
42:00
what bothered me was, even when I was more, more interested in the sort of heterodox sphere or space,
42:08
watching Peters and talk about gender pronouns on campus and insisting that, you know, this is
42:15
this is the sort of tactic that you see reprehensibly murderous people throughout history use,
42:21
you know, trying to control language. This is a clear path to Stalinism. And you'd use that word
42:28
Stalinism frequently. And I remember watching an interview or a conversation between Camille
42:34
Palia and Christina Hoffsommers, you know, and I was all for Christina Hoffsommers when people were
42:39
shouting her down at Oberlin College and calling her a fascist, which, you know, was just such
42:44
the egregious nonsense that it barely merits her response. But, you know, you just hear Camille
42:50
Palia saying the same thing, like these kids on campus, they're positively Soviet. I remember
42:54
that exact construction. Like Camille Palia was saying that? Yeah, she did. She said they were,
42:59
yeah, she did. I'll find, I'll send you the, I'll fish up the interview and send it to you
43:06
when we get done. But yeah, and then Christina Hoffsommers is kind of nodding along and it's just one of
43:10
those things where it's the exact equivalent of these idiot kids calling Christina Hoffsommers a
43:17
fascist as they go around and call these kids, you know, Stalinists. So I just find, I just found
43:24
that very suspicious and it made me think that maybe some of these people in the heterodox space
43:30
aren't exactly on the level. And they might be prone to the same hysteria and the same sort of
43:36
martyrdom god, the complex that some of these kids seem to have, you know, so in the years. I mean,
43:43
also like it's worth remembering university kids are going to be university kids like they're
43:48
going to do what university kids have always done. Uh, grown up intellectuals can have, I have a higher
43:54
expectation of them. It's like, you know, when if I see sometimes my, my dad would be shouting at my
44:01
two-year-old son and I'd be like, dad, if a grown-up is in an argument with a two-year-old, who's the
44:07
child? Really? Who's the child here if you're having an argument with a two-year-old? And similarly,
44:15
if you're, if you're in a shouting match and a, you know, a name-calling match with a blue-haired
44:20
19-year-old kid on a lefty campus, like who's the kid here? Like they're gonna, the problem,
44:28
the problem with compels, I suppose, to be as generous as possible to the Jordan Peterson's
44:33
and Camille Palleys of the world. The problem with the current moment is that there are genuinely,
44:39
I don't want to say, Stalinist, but genuinely kind of authoritarian adjacent
44:44
tendencies coming out of bureaucracies at some of these institutions and in corporate and in the
44:49
corporate world, which are too ready to jump at the, at shadows and to be terrified of social media
44:57
campaigns. And so we'll give in to the, the silliness, but attacking the kids themselves seems
45:04
penniless. Yeah, and I think that, you know, there are canaries squawking or peeping or whatever it
45:10
is that canaries do in the coal mine. You know, I mean, these are pretty, pretty authoritarian
45:16
habits that you see emerge on the left. It's like kids shouting fascist and, you know, step down
45:21
and all that stuff, but that is just kind of classic campus behavior. I mean, I remember when I was
45:26
I was in Seattle and I was at a bar and somebody had scrawled, you know, a fuck the Nazis on this
45:32
pool on this side of a pool table, which was already pissed me off because they were like,
45:37
they were defacing a pool table. And then it was, and it was like what you're storming the beaches
45:41
of Seattle now. Like it's just, it's so, yeah, we're stupid. But you do kind of get the sense that
45:47
some of that's got to be a phase. And I know I already, I can hear the retorts sort of getting
45:52
generated as I speak. I know that some of this stuff has made its way into the corporate world.
45:57
I know that some of these kids have graduated and they've gone on to sort of deranged our politics
46:02
in many ways and to produce a lot of really, really strange nonsense. I mean, especially after
46:08
the Floyd killing, which was obviously horrific, but it did leave to sort of pyroxism of
46:13
like, identitarian rage in many ways. And you'd have things, I mean, I remember Roxanne Gay,
46:18
wrote an article for the New York Times saying, basically, if you call, if you call the cops
46:22
on a black American, you're ordering a hit on that person. And I was like, this is really,
46:27
you're going to publish this in the New York Times. Are you kidding me? And so it's just that sort
46:31
of thing that just has to drive you crazy. Yeah. I mean, just so actually speaking, let's take
46:36
the total number of police encounters with Black people in America. And let's take the total
46:42
number of fatal police shootings with Black people in America. And let's see if they have the same
46:45
number, Roxanne. Yeah. I mean, right. I mean, there are millions of encounters, you know,
46:52
so it's, of course, of course, you're not ordering a hit. But it's like, this is just another one
46:56
of those completely mind, it's mind-ridden subject where if you just try to, if you try to suggest
47:04
that maybe, okay, so disproportionate crime rates are going to lead to disproportionate police
47:09
encounters, which will likely lead to disproportionate shootings. Okay, that's a fair thing to say.
47:15
But then you have to diagnose crime rates in the United States. It will wire their higher
47:18
crime rates among certain communities. It's, it's, it's, for obvious reasons, historical reasons,
47:23
socioeconomic reasons, systemic racism is definitely a real concept. Like that's one of those
47:28
concepts you'll hear bandied about on the left mindlessly in many cases. But, you know, the core idea
47:34
is, is perfectly reasonable. I actually just finished that this new Martin Luther King biography,
47:39
it's just called King Alive by Jonathan Eyck. And it's, it's just a masterpiece. And it's a good
47:44
reminder that King, really, he's really not the sort of fuzzy moderate that many people present
47:51
at us today. Like he was, he was much, much more radical than, than all of that, you know, and he
47:56
constantly attacks. Yeah, let me just, let me just, let me just ensure that people don't misunderstand
48:02
that statement. There are some, there are sometimes the King Wars where people try to, you know,
48:08
as they do with Hitchens as well, try to inherit and try to use King as, as their
48:13
plaything and try to put him on their side. He was never radical in tribalism and
48:18
identitarianism, right? I mean, he was never, he was never, he never diluted his message that the,
48:25
the future belongs to comedy between the races rather than antagonism between the races and
48:32
self-consciousness about race. Yeah. He was radical politically. He was radical in foreign
48:37
policy. He was radical economically. He was radical religiously. He wasn't radical in the central
48:42
tenet that puts him in stark contrast to the modern diversity equity and inclusion mantra.
48:49
Well, I, I do think that one of the weird habits that has sort of formed among many of the people
48:56
who are crusading for racial justice and equality today is this like, is this turn inward? Yeah,
49:04
again. So you do have people like DeAndalus saying what really needed to do is get people to
49:08
interrogate their own racism. You need to search your soul and fish out the bigotry that's buried
49:14
within it, you know, and you need to, I think King was so much more focused on concrete issues.
49:19
I mean, he was focused on poverty. His, his campaign expanded, it expanded from integration in
49:26
South to Chicago. And, you know, he, he went out to LA against the advice of many of his fellow
49:33
civil rights leaders, you know, when, when riots were happening there. And he, he was constantly
49:38
building this movement larger and larger. And I, I just don't think the thing that I find hard to
49:43
imagine is King's sort of urging people to be more introspective about the racism. You know,
49:48
I think what he'd say is why do we have higher, much higher carceration rates among black Americans
49:53
today? Why do we have lower levels of education, educational attainment? Why do we have way,
50:00
way lower levels of savings and, and just income levels? That's the sort of thing I imagine he
50:06
would be focused on. But all those things are still horrible inequities in the US. I mean,
50:11
they're all real disparities. And to get back to Hitchens, I think one of the valuable things about
50:16
Hitchens' legacy is that he was as unrelenting on just the reality of structural racism
50:25
as anyone should want him to be, as any of a hard-core lefty should want him to be. I mean,
50:29
he, there's a debate between him and Glenn Lowry that you can find on Seespan, where he's
50:34
making the case for reparations. And this is a celebrated black economist and academic
50:40
for people who don't know. And this is generally not work. So he would have been arguing against
50:45
reparations for African Americans, even though he himself is an African American. And what Hitchens
50:48
was taking the reparations side? Yeah. So that's, I just think that there's the way I put it
50:55
in the book was that Hitchens didn't just clear his throat with a couple of Burmides about how,
50:59
you know, it's important to, quality's important, racism is bad. But anyway, here are all the problems
51:05
with the woke left, you know, with the, with the illiberal left or the Stalinist, Stalinism on
51:11
campus or what have you. I just feel like that's so much of what you encounter today on the sort
51:16
of heterodox, right? And you used to get those throat clearance from somebody like Dave Rubin,
51:20
but now the guy's just on the right. I mean, he's just a right-wing pundit. And that's another
51:25
reason why I don't, I'm not terribly fond of the heterodox sphere is because I just feel like,
51:31
if you're going to obsess over how, like for example, the CDC, I think it was the CDC, but there
51:38
no, there were a bunch of public health officials in the United States who released a statement
51:43
during the George Floyd protests in 2020 where they said racism is a public health crisis too.
51:49
We should, we should allow these people to protest maskless or do whatever they want to do because
51:55
that, that takes precedence. And then a lot of people would cry foul and say, but you know, when,
51:58
when they were right-wingers protesting in Michigan, you said, oh, you're out there without masks
52:04
on, you're going to kill everybody. And they saw this. And that, that is a contradiction. And I
52:07
do think that that's, that's stupid and it's politically unattractive. But at the same time, the
52:13
people who get so incensed about that letter issued by public health professionals, I, I just feel
52:18
like they're not, they don't really seem to care about the core issues. Why are people in the streets?
52:23
You know, why, why, why is the United States still racked with, with racial animosity and still,
52:30
and still so, so incredibly deeply, horrifically unequal? You know, I just think if you're going to
52:35
go on this crusade, this anti-woke crusade, then you should have some, some bonafides that show that
52:41
you actually give a shit about, about black Americans and about other, other marginalized
52:47
communities in the country. And I just don't think, I just don't think a lot of these people do. I
52:50
just think they're entrepreneurs who are making, you know, they're getting a lot of sub-sac followers
52:54
and pissing a lot of people off on Twitter. And they don't, I don't think they actually care
52:58
all that much about racial inequality. I mean, that's cynical, but I think it's probably true.
53:03
Yeah, well, it depends who you're talking about, I suppose. Glenn Larry does. Yeah, right.
53:06
Oh, no, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't ever say that about Larry. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
53:12
Yes, it's, look, it's, it's fascinating stuff. I want to talk to you about, about, I mean,
53:16
so much we could talk about about Hitch, but I want to specifically talk about Brett Weinstein,
53:21
but and conspiracy theories and irrationalism because I think this is one area where we can,
53:29
you know, you can debate until the cows come home about how Hitchins might have felt about
53:36
diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but where absolutely certain how he would have felt
53:40
about conspiratorial thinking about fuzzy-headed misapplication of focus on, I suppose,
53:52
aspects of an argument that seemingly don't add up, but then cherry picking those aspects to
53:58
turn them into a whole narrative that doesn't accord with science. I'm going to say goodbye
54:06
to the, to the people who are listening to the free episode of the podcast, and this will,
54:09
this will be a bonus for, for our subscribers on substacks. So thanks for joining us if you're,
54:14
if you're enjoying the free, the free podcast, you can always subscribe at substack.
54:18
Matt, you wrote a piece about Brett entitled Brett Weinstein's COVID agenda. Brett sees himself
54:24
in a heroic struggle against demonetization and demonization, but what he's actually doing is
54:28
building a powerful, just asking questions, brand of conspiratorial.
54:33
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