Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Sargon & Angela Nagle On Identity Politics

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 5, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

01:28:18

Sargon & Angela Nagle On Identity Politics

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Our first speaker is Carl Benjamin or Sargon of ACAD.
	He is a popular YouTuber with approximately one million followers or subscribers.
	He is a supporter of Brexit of Donald Trump and is now a member of the UK Independence Party.
	So, hand it off.
	All right, folks.
	So I didn't prepare any notes, so you saw me making them there.
	But the question is, is classical liberalism strong enough to rival the rise of identity politics?
	I don't know, frankly, and I don't think anyone else knows.
	And I think that's the reason that me and Angela are even here.
	We disagree on obviously many political topics, but not on the question of identity politics.
	And it's a really scary thing, just the amount of institutional power left-wing identity politics has in the modern West.
	It's something that's come up unbelievably quickly.
	I mean, I remember five years ago critiquing feminism, and the term intersectionality was never in any of the public-facing sort of proponents of feminism.
	And then within the last few years, it has just steamrolled every other kind of left-wing identitarian movement within that sort of milieu.
	And the way they do it is by obviously using identity politics against the people who are using identity politics, which disarms anyone who tries to fight them.
	Because all of this is the politics of grievance, the politics of victimhood.
	And I actually feel kind of bad for the TERFs, which is something I never thought I'd say.
	The raving man-haters have been sidelined as transphobic white feminists.
	Because being a white feminist is the worst thing you can be.
	It's interesting, isn't it?
	The question with identity politics is on what grounds do we object?
	Because the problem that we have when addressing it, and this is how they have achieved anything, is that the method of analysis isn't even incorrect.
	In a majority white society, you do tend to get more white men running things than any other type of person from the society.
	It's not an invalid observation.
	The question is, why are they there?
	And this is where the interpretation becomes just goes right off the reservation.
	They aren't there because they're white men.
	But there's no persuading someone who believes in intersectionality that's not the case, because as far as they're concerned, all politics is a discussion of group power between groups that are effectively unmalleable.
	So where normal people would engage in party politics based on their own personal interests.
	And these personal interests change over a lifetime.
	I used to be a Labour supporter and a bit of a socialist in my youth.
	Now I'm a member of the UK Independence Party.
	I've become an ardent liberal advocate.
	Your politics change.
	Unless your politics are entirely about an arbitrary characteristic and the raw numbers of those people in your society.
	There is no negotiation to be had there.
	And so the question is, well, who's the most aggrieved?
	Who feels most guilty about their place in society?
	And who feels entitled to something based on the way that they were born?
	How many straight white men think they deserve their place because they're straight white men?
	Not many.
	And that's why you're losing this battle.
	The problem, obviously, with identity politics, as the left is engaging in it, is obviously procedural.
	And this is, for some reason, something that we have failed to address in terms that have been, I guess, convincing enough to the general public.
	Liberalism is very concerned about procedure.
	The outcome is not as important as a fair procedure.
	And this is something that I think that liberals need to be far more focused on.
	For example, I don't believe it is a legitimate vector of analysis on someone's achievement in life to bring up their race or their gender, unless you had a particularly good reason.
	And I think generally you don't.
	I think one of the reasons that intersectionality has really come to prominence is because they came into an arena where people weren't really thinking with a fully formed political theory.
	I mean most people don't really think about gender or race all that much.
	And so when you have a group of ideologues who come along with a very detailed theory with 30 years of academic investigation behind it and they say, no, we've got these papers, we've got this, we've got moral certitude, the average person is almost defenseless.
	I mean what can they even say?
	And anything they do say, obviously, oh, that's because you're a man, that's because it's patriarchy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	So honestly, I don't know if anything at the moment is powerful enough to stop identity politics.
	I mean, at the moment, like in Scotland, the Scottish government is currently running an ad campaign in bus stations saying things like, we are phobic of your transphobia.
	And that's an incredible thing to me because that's a statement of ideological domination.
	You know, they're not saying something like, don't have any anti-white prejudice, as the old right might say.
	They're not speaking in favour of free speech, as a classical liberal might say.
	They're instead speaking purely on progressive identity politics.
	And they are attacking members of the public who they haven't even identified.
	They assume that out there are transphobes and Islamophobes and racists and all sorts.
	And this is being done by the very top of the society.
	I mean, I'm not sure there is a single magic bullet to any of this, but it's going to probably be that we're going to have to work in concert with people that we don't like.
	I don't see any other way.
	Thank you. Thanks very much.
	Our second speaker, Angela Nagel, used to lecture here in the Department of Sociology in Trinity, and she's also the author of the 2017 book, Kill All Normies.
	She's expecting the audience to be completely made up of classical liberal society people, so my talk is slightly aimed at those people.
	Maybe it's the wrong audience.
	So almost all politics could potentially be understood as identity politics.
	The nationalist revolution that gave rise to the republic we are in today was a product of a kind of identity politics.
	While colonial oppression was undoubtedly rooted in material and economic forces, not least the laissez-faire economics that produced the famine, the rebels understood, as all national liberation struggles have, that it was necessary to create a collective consciousness through which an oppressed people would see themselves as a distinct group, a group that would be willing to act in collective solidarity, to sacrifice for one another and to fight and struggle together.
	Even if we look at something like the civil rights movement, maybe the ultimate example of a universalist goal, an abstract kind of universalist goal that liberals would certainly approve of, which is the extension of rights to all, those movements really, I think, were only made possible by the ability of those movements to raise the collective group consciousness of the identity group that was excluded from the universal rights.
	So whatever you think about the question of the rights themselves that were at stake, the feeling, the poetry, the heart of a movement tends to often be much better captured by identity than it does abstract principles.
	But I think when we use the term identity politics today, it has really become a shorthand for a particular style of progressive cultural politics that has reached a peak in the last 10 years or so.
	Starting in the US, it has projected itself out to the world through social media and changed the culture all around the world with extraordinary levels of speed and success.
	At the risk of being sort of trying to be more woke than my woke critics, you know, McDonald's and Coca-Cola would envy the sheer speed of the cultural imperialism of this kind of style of politics going around to different countries talking about the book.
	It's like speaking to Americans all the time, even if you're in Norway or Slovenia, because everyone has the same talking points all the time.
	Everyone is incredibly angry all the time on social media about the same issue of the day.
	And you can fly pretty much anywhere in the world and find the same conversations going on, which is very worrying and kind of sad.
	But identity politics now also encapsulates an identity movement or set of identity movements on the right as a kind of a backlash identity politics.
	You've seen the rise of the alt-right, of white identity politics, of male identity politics.
	They're not always together, but certainly you could see them as a kind of a backlash identity politics.
	And they undoubtedly are identity politics because their view is we should fight fire with fire instead of doing what you guys do and try to stick to the abstract principles.
	They say, you know, the left-wing social justice warrior identitarians are going to kill us all and we have to have something similar to kind of fight back with.
	We have to have our own style of identity politics.
	So as an alternative to the right and left identity politics, we've seen the rise of a kind of a third way, which is a return to classical liberalism, an attempt to return to classical liberalism.
	Maybe the most famous person associated with this might be like Jordan Peterson or somebody like that, and a lot of those people who are a little bit older who are kind of writing about the culture wars the last time around maybe in the 90s, people like Christina Hoffsommers and so on.
	And their idea is that all identity politics is bad and so we can escape it through universalist principles by returning to a kind of an earlier version of liberalism.
	Put simply though, classical liberalism, as I understand it, advocates individual rights and economic freedom and opposes collectivism in all its forms.
	Within the moral system of classical liberalism, individuals should be free to maximize their economic freedom and should be guaranteed individual rights.
	I believe that this anti-collectivist classical liberal revival will fail to rival the rise of identity politics for a few reasons.
	Everything classical liberals hold dear is currently being destroyed by the products of its own ideology, which it often mistakes, identity politics, which it often mistakes as being a product of Marxism.
	Marxism is a very dogmatically materialist philosophy, which isn't a cultural philosophy and which is a theory of how history would unfold as a result of material forces.
	So even though I know what people mean when they say cultural Marxism, it drives me crazy because it doesn't make any sense.
	On the free speech question, currently the deplatforming of Alex Jones and many other online figures on, let's say, the right broadly speaking, in recent months has shown that it won't be the state or marauding bands of social justice warriors who end free speech in the West, but the private corporations that now dominate the world and privately own our public arena.
	We've all, I think Mark Zuckerberg might have even said this, signed up to or signed away our rights, essentially.
	The classical liberals will of course respond that this isn't truly free market, this isn't the true free market because the social media companies are monopolies.
	But who breaks up monopolies?
	The state and international governmental organizations have to do it by force.
	And you also can't advocate that if you're a true inconsistent classical liberal.
	The kind of monopolistic plutocracy that we have now is the natural result of the globalized and financialized free market, not a contradiction of the market itself.
	Then on identity politics.
	Classical liberals don't understand why we have to constantly talk about race and gender and identity, for example.
	And they look on in horror as old statues get taken down and dead white men are being nudged one by one out of the literary canon taught in universities.
	If only we could all identify as individuals and we could simply make objective decisions about these things based on merit, who is the best writer and then they become part of the canon.
	But statues in the literary canon are an expression of national identity, whether you like it or not, usually rooted in a collective ethnic identity.
	Here in Ireland, if you study literature, unless something's really changed recently, if you study literature, you're going to read more Joyce and more Yeats and so on than if you study literature in the same English language in Canada.
	The canon isn't just an objective measure of literary value, otherwise, if it were, we would have the same statues and the same literary canon in every country in the world.
	It is in some sense an expression of the people.
	Why else did we here in Ireland take down the old British imperial statues after independence and replace them with our own or promote Irish national literature, sports and arts?
	We implicitly understood identity politics and the very deep and meaningful way in which people relate to identity.
	Many classical liberals in the free market think tanks defend, for example, open borders on the grounds of individual freedom or market rationality.
	They defend the right of individual migrants to be exploited in low-wage work in the West, but are outraged when the descendants of those migrants demand that their heritage and identity be honoured in national monuments, in the arts or in cultural institutions.
	Classical liberals also mischaracterize the social justice warrior identitarian left as Marxist.
	I would argue it is actually a product of liberalism itself.
	It is a kind of inevitable result of liberalism.
	France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 read, Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else.
	Doesn't this perfectly describe the strange sexual politics of the social justice warrior feminism that classical liberals dislike so much?
	It is the ultimate expression of individual self-actualization with its fixation on niche personalized identities and tastes.
	But more importantly, it holds only the harm principle or consent as the sole moral category to consider in matters of sexual morality.
	So on questions of abortion, on prostitution, on pornography and so on, all is good, but even a hand on the knee without consent today is treated almost as if it's an assault.
	It seems like a strange thing for those two things to coexist.
	Is it Puritanism or is it sexual liberation?
	And I think it only makes sense when you see that idea of liberty is actually central to it.
	The project of this new style of feminism, I think, is to resolve the old conflict between pro-sexual revolution feminists and those who are highly critical of the sexual revolution of pornography, prostitution and so on, by allowing absolute sexual freedom, but an extremely strict code when it comes to consent.
	Again, liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else.
	Some classical liberals try to hold on to social conservatism and economic liberalism at the same time.
	Their project is to me the most futile one of all.
	The permanent revolution of culture is a product of the permanent revolution of the economy through the force of global capitalism itself.
	You can see this clearly in the fact that both culture and economics have liberalized perfectly alongside one another.
	For example, a good way of measuring is since 1968.
	It was seen as a revolution of the left, but it was seen through to its next phase by Reagan and Thatcher, I would argue, the liberalization of the market.
	All of it is about the liberalization of the self.
	As any sociologist will tell you, the economic liberal revolution of the Reagan and Thatcher years did more to destabilize local communities and families than any gay liberation struggle.
	Today we live in the age of woke capitalism.
	International Women's Day, gay pride, and the celebration of diversity is now entirely central to corporate dogma and the liberalizing project of today's international capitalist class.
	They understand that liberalization and that market liberalization and cultural liberalization are part of the same project.
	Many classical liberals believe they can simply stop project in the cultural realm at a point at which they once felt comfortable.
	But progress doesn't stop, that's how it works.
	And liberalism is nothing if not the ideology of progress.
	So for classical liberals, everything you dislike is going to happen, and your ideology offers no way of stopping it.
	You will lose your freedom of speech.
	The statues of problematic white men will come down.
	The cultural and sexual realm will continue to get more radical and alienating in ways that you privately don't want.
	But as long as everyone is consenting, you will not be able to raise any criticisms without breaking the code of your own ideology.
	Social cooperation will continue to give way to selfish individualism, and it will be a never-ending culture war of all against all.
	So for example, while I saw recently you said that you felt the desire to step back from politics a little bit and the culture wars, the social justice warriors who you were battling are just getting started and will continue to win on every battleground through sheer force of will.
	Why?
	Because they are willing to use collectivist politics and strategies and to think collectively.
	You might say if liberalism is so weak, why has it triumphed globally against opponents, collectivist opponents in the past?
	It's a very common piece of dogma on the left where they say fascism is on the rise now, so therefore liberalism is too weak.
	We need socialism to combat it.
	But of course, liberalism, despite its weak appearance, defeated fascism and then defeated communism, which was, you know, the Red Army made the defeat of fascism possible, and then they defeated them too.
	And so they're the last ones standing, despite the appearance of weakness.
	Ironically, liberalism itself has maintained its global hegemony through the ultimate form of collectivism, which is national armies.
	In all of our lifetimes, multiple wars have been fought in the Middle East, allegedly to bring freedom, human rights, and liberal democracy to the world.
	This is one area where you often find classical liberalisms letting their prejudices slip.
	Many of them love to defend the rights of, for example, Muslim intellectuals to dissent from their collective identity group, and so they should, and I also do.
	But they never extend the same support to Jewish anti-Zionist intellectuals to dissent from their collective identity and to defend the rights of Palestinians.
	They always point out the illiberal collectivism of Muslim-majority countries, but never of Israel, even though it's a much more straightforward example of a collectivist and unapologetically racialist ethno-state.
	Why?
	I think they know that the collectivism of war ultimately decides what system prevails, and that we can discuss abstract principles in peace all day long at home, because liberalism has been waging wars for global dominance abroad.
	So you may be wondering, what is my alternative?
	For the purposes of this discussion tonight, I'm really here as a critic of liberalism.
	I see the problems with identity politics and what a poor, to me, tokenistic stand-in it is for the real radical economic change I would like to see.
	Though I fully support and hold out hope for the victories of figures like Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Melancholy and France, I think it's great.
	In general, right now, I'm a pessimist.
	Economic liberalization, globalization, financialization, and the deproletarianization of the West have changed our economies in ways that make it very difficult for the kind of left I want to see to really emerge again.
	Market liberalism under Reagan and Thatcher destroyed one of the only truly effective methods that ordinary people have been able to wield to have real collective power, collective being the only kind that actually matters, which is the trade unions.
	Without this strong collective bargaining power, what remains of the Anglo-American left has been left fighting the stuff that capital is happy to concede.
	Permanent revolution in the sphere of culture, sexuality, identity, diversity, and so on.
	I don't believe this kind of identity politics can bring about greater economic equality even for the people it claims to represent.
	And the fact that it is now so warmly embraced by Google and Twitter and so on should tell you just how much of a threat it actually is to power.
	I think in the short term the battle that will dominate all politics will be between collectivist forms of identity politics of the right and left.
	The left that could offer exactly the message of solidarity and collective struggle that we need will likely continue to be internally weakened by constant feuding over culture war disputes.
	An example of this might be the recent dispute in the Labour Party over anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn, but there's countless others.
	Anyone who's spent time in the left knows it's a non-stop source of conflict.
	I think those who follow, for example, Jordan Peterson and wish to stick in a rigid and principled way to the tenets of classical liberalism will continue, despite being principled and being admirable in many ways, to lose every battle to their social justice warrior enemies, while also getting mocked and bullied by the identitarians of the alt-right.
	Men and women will be in a state of perpetual war.
	Ethnic and racial tensions will continue to increase in America and where America goes today, the rest of us go tomorrow.
	I've watched Sargon debate the alt-right for several years and often very painfully making the case against the politics of race.
	But the media still reported him as a racist who sent a rape tweet or something like that.
	I've tried to use my writing to advocate for the kind of old-fashioned socialism without identity politics that I want to see.
	And in the end, they also call me alt-right.
	On one particular day, I remember being called a fascist by one side and a hysterical feminist social justice warrior by the other.
	And they can't all be true.
	I think the choice will soon come down once again to socialism or barbarism.
	And while I think classical liberalism will be crushed, I'm not entirely confident that the socialism I want will win out either.
	But when I think of the never-ending culture war that awaits us all, anything is worth a try.
	Thank you, Angela, as well for your presentation speech.
	Somewhat gloomy at times.
	But anyway, so now it's just an opportunity for the two of you to give points you want to raise with each other.
	I'm going to try to move back to get out of your way, so we'll take this on for a few minutes or whatever before rolling into the floor.
	Yeah, there are a few things there I want to address, if that's all right.
	If all politics are identity politics, what are we doing here now?
	Well, I think it's more that politics can operate on an abstract level and ultimately those principles are hugely important and are an ever-present component of movements too.
	But I think that I just think looking at history, I don't see evidence that people are moved by abstract principles in the same way.
	I think that collective struggles inspire people in a way that I don't believe individual struggles do.
	And so while a movement may not be identity politics in the sense that its goals may actually be abstract and universal, the kind of the spark that starts a movement, you know, like the causes, an oppressive situation can go on for centuries.
	So why, when you look at movements, I always think like, why then, why now?
	And it's usually because of something that ignited that kind of spirit of collective struggle in people that does really inspire people.
	And I also think, as I said, that a lot of politics really just comes down to just brute force.
	What is often, I think, mistakenly seen as the dominance of Western democracies because of their superior liberal system, I think that's being disproven by the fact that China is probably going to overtake America, for example, and by the fact that they needed basically constant war to maintain their power.
	Okay, I think that's interesting because I disagree completely.
	The very fact that we are all sat here, people of, and I'm going to hedge my bets that the audience is quite ideologically diverse as well.
	We're all in coalition against the identity politicians, whether we like it or not.
	I mean, the American Communist Party has recently been destroyed by identity politics.
	The Labour Party is getting destroyed by identity politics.
	Identity politics has effectively taken over our entire society and has put us all in a coalition of heretics.
	So, what we are actually talking about is not just identity politics, it's issue politics.
	We all have the same issue that's affecting us all that we all want to see dealt with.
	That's what we call party politics.
	So, I don't agree that all politics is identity politics.
	But I think more importantly, what I find very interesting is the fact that you're not here to defend anything.
	That's very interesting, isn't it?
	That's an admission that you've already failed.
	And so now you're looking to the classical liberals, and why aren't they winning as well?
	And I think the reason that the Marxist left has already failed is because of the language of collective solidarity.
	As soon as you start collectivizing things like this, you've already given the ground to the social justice warriors because they will say, Well, yes, that's exactly what we believe.
	And now, let's talk about white people.
	And you, as a white person, have no defense against that.
	So, either way, we have to change the paradigm that we're looking at this through.
	Because if we say, well, I mean, you know, liberalism is too weak to do anything.
	Well, okay, but socialism's already failed everywhere, and it's already failed, it's already failed against the social justice warriors.
	In fact, intersectionality is like a kind of, I don't know, some sort of spiral with lines shooting out of it.
	And every single line is a different facet of intersectionality.
	And they already have socialism as their economic access.
	They've got your movement.
	They own it.
	They're not going to give it back, and you're not going to be able to take it back from them.
	So, I mean, it's got to be something else.
	We've got to change the paradigm.
	And I think that liberalism is the only way to do that.
	Well, can I just say, I mean, I think there actually is hope that the left can be taken back.
	Really?
	Yeah, because, you know, if you look at just before we started doing the talks, we were talking about how there's always the worry that you've spent too much time in the internet and that you have come away with an unrealistic version of the world.
	And if you look at, you know, what is actually popular on the left, like around the time, for example, let's say in the American context, when Trump got elected and there was countless, probably hundreds of pieces written by people on the left saying populism is a disaster, it has to stop.
	Well, like Bernie Sanders was polling as the most popular figure in America at the time.
	And he, you know, is using, I mean, he's kind of conceding certain things on the identity stuff.
	I know that.
	But I mean, the central message of the whole, like, even the sort of granddad socialist style of him is very much like, I think it's actually younger people on the left are expressing through that what they don't want to actually say openly, which is that they actually long for an older style of socialism.
	And he kind of represents that.
	Okay, but what I'm saying is there's no way for you to divorce that from intersectionality.
	You mean in practical terms?
	In philosophical terms, moral terms, practical terms, any term you want.
	They own that.
	But why couldn't, I mean, if you look at, for example, the history of the labour movement, you know, I mean, it never had any connection.
	I mean, it was actually quite socially conservative in lots of ways.
	Yeah, because of the time and place it came from.
	Yeah, so this is so recent.
	So therefore, why is it unwhy can't we undo it if it's so recent?
	Because you've got no way of challenging their logic.
	It's the way you say collective solidarity, it's the promotion of the group over the individual.
	This is the language they use, this is the logic they use to get to their destination.
	And you're like, we'll travel down the same path.
	And it's not something you can separate.
	And I mean, do you have a way of separating it?
	Oh, I mean, I would say that, you know, one of the reasons I was sort of saying like lots of different types of politics are identity politics and so on, is that I think if you take the absolute definition like that and you follow it through, almost everything, you know, has some identitarian element to it.
	You could frame it in that way, but I don't think that's necessarily the impetus by deposition.
	Yeah, but so for example, like, I think that if you go down the road like you've just described, I think you could end up saying, you know, basically you have to be totally politically paralyzed because you can't organize with other people because that's collectivism.
	No, I don't know.
	You have to be able to organize in very large groups, and I don't see how that's possible unless in the individualist yeah.
	Okay, so I mean, this is something that the I mean, I'm genuinely amazed at the common misunderstanding of the term individualism.
	I mean, the term individualism necessitates a group.
	There must be a group to be individualist, because otherwise you're just talking about one person.
	It's the philosophy of the group.
	Is the group itself more important than the individual members?
	That's the question.
	I mean, you can have a group of 100 million individualists that all think the rights of the individual are more important than the rights of the group.
	It's just as simple as that.
	So there's no limit to the number of people who can be individualists.
	There's no limit to the amount they can cooperate and self-associate freely with one another.
	It's a false dichotomy to say, well, individualism means one person.
	That's not even false dichotomy.
	But don't they need to be able to, like, it does mean political paralysis because they have to, for a movement to really change history, you have to have large numbers of people who identify in some way in common cause.
	And so, I mean.
	Well, I mean, look, it's easy.
	I mean, you just have to have people who identify as people who have rights, for example.
	I mean, if there's no reason that a million people can't take to the streets tomorrow about free speech, because it's an individual right they all hold.
	The problem is, most people are too distracted by culture.
	You know, most people aren't on the receiving end of the lashing from the social justice warriors.
	But, I mean, my impression, even though, you know, I was honest about the fact that I don't, you know, I'm not sure that there are enough people like me within the left to change it, but you also seem to be saying the same thing.
	I'm not sure there are enough people like me in society who wants to-it's worrying how politically disengaged most people are.
	And I'm just as guilty as anyone of this.
	You know, I mean, it's only in my 30s where I really became properly politically engaged.
	And then I realized, holy crap, people probably shouldn't be voting.
	They don't know what they're voting for.
	And I mean, you know what I mean, right?
	So honestly, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	And the problem.
	It's interesting how you said liberalism will lose every battle, the identity politicians.
	They haven't lost a single battle.
	They're just losing the war.
	The identity politicians won't come on the field.
	And that's the problem.
	And I'm sure we've all been aware of this.
	You mean in the field of debate?
	Yes, in the field.
	But they don't need to, they just win anyway.
	Well, exactly.
	And how are they doing?
	That's the problem.
	The problem is they are brown-nosers.
	They're total bloody brown-noses.
	They are unbelievable institutionalists.
	And there is no amount of self-subjugation that they won't go through in order to advance themselves up a hierarchy, which is quite an impressive feat, given how they pathologically hate hierarchies.
	They've got no self-respect.
	But this is the problem.
	I mean, generally, who here wants to hold coats on a student union meeting on a Thursday evening?
	Oh, not many volunteers.
	But they do because they understand that to get to the top, you've got to work your way up.
	So, I mean, I went to a young humanists meet up in London, and the lady who is taking the coats was an SJW.
	Now, I didn't know this at first.
	It was only after I got deplatformed in the bar by her that I learned, I'm not joking, I was having a conversation with them, and they realized who I was, and they literally just walked away and stood where you are with their backs to me.
	And I was like, okay.
	But she was willing to spend her time in that evening taking coats for people she probably didn't like, just so next time the person organising it was ill, she'd have to organise it and work the way up the ladder.
	They are completely pro-institution in a way that you guys aren't, because you just want to get on with your lives and do things you find entertaining.
	This is what they find entertaining.
	This is why they win.
	Also, the fact that they've got a fully formed theory about a moral theory about something most people don't even think about, you know, being male or female or white or black.
	This is not something that generally burdens most people's minds.
	And they operate in packs that it becomes very difficult for anyone to resist them.
	It's a very, very, very dangerous way.
	It actually really reminds me of it's like fascism without the violence.
	That's what I find really interesting about it.
	It's the sort of gang tactics against people who aren't really prepared for it.
	But instead of using knives and knuckle dusters, they're using social media and weaponized shaming and getting people fired from their jobs.
	This is something we are going to have to become inured to.
	We're going to have to because I mean ultimately the only reason they have achieved anything is because we refuse to say no.
	When they say I demand you give me a position because I am a black woman of colour, you can say no.
	Or can you?
	Why can't you say no?
	It's because you feel ashamed, because you feel guilty.
	You think, oh god, other people are going to look at me.
	But where's the moral force of liberalism gone?
	That's the question.
	And that's one of the things that annoys me so much about the Conservative Party in my own country.
	They may as well call themselves alt Labour.
	I mean I've seen no proof that Theresa May doesn't vote for Jeremy Corbyn because she sounds like she does.
	No.
	She bloody sounds like she's not.
	No, she's the thing I actually agree with Peter Hitchens on this.
	The Conservatives are liberals.
	That's the problem with them.
	They're not socially conservative.
	I think they're progressives.
	I think that's the problem.
	Yeah, they are.
	So we started with a question from you, Tanjana.
	There's been a really interesting discussion on that.
	But do you want to is there anything else you want to put to Carla?
	I've got more things that we can talk about.
	Yeah, you go ahead, I can.
	I didn't have a thing prepared because I'm terrible.
	So I think the main problem that we have with the traditional left and their conception of class solidarity and collective bargaining power is that and I and I appreciate that it's not Marxism, at least traditional Marxism, but it is Marxism as filtered through the Frankfurt School.
	And Herbert Marcuse did say the idea of postmodernism, the sort of deconstructive nature of it, was in order to promote a certain spirit of Marxism.
	And I think what he's talking about there is the world view, the way of looking at life.
	And I mean, there are lots of philosophers that I speak to who think that this is because they were unhappy about the various failures of socialism.
	And they didn't want to become fascists, obviously, and so they had to think of something else.
	And so, I mean, you can say it's not Marxism, but it does operate exactly like Marxism in the social sphere.
	But see, I think you end up doing a kind of Dinesh D'Azouza thing there because everything looks like everything else at a certain point.
	And so, for example, there's simply no getting around the fact that Marxism is a philosophy of historical materialism.
	And so, therefore, the fact that some other philosophy has revolutionary intentions or involves groups having a grievance against more powerful groups is something that's simply stretching the definition to a point of absurdity.
	But also, a very important thing, which is rarely talked about, is that I would say, for years at this point, I've been trying to kind of think about what exactly are social justice warriors.
	What is it as a political phenomenon?
	Because I'm convinced that it isn't a part of the Marxist tradition.
	And I actually think that it's no coincidence that it's come from America, where the economic left, if you like, has been so thoroughly destroyed.
	And so it has to pour all its energy into culture.
	But also, the modern American left is not influenced by the Soviet Union.
	It's actually influenced by the Cold War left, which was not just, you know, it was actually CIA-funded to destroy support for the Soviet Union.
	It's an anti-Stalinist, in many ways, quite individualistic ideology, which is all about kind of transgression and imitating in some ways the feeling of Marxism or what the CIA feared that young people would be attracted to, but it was through sort of terrible art and stuff like that.
	See, I don't agree that that's where social justice, insectionalism, I think is the best way to call it.
	I don't think that's where it came from.
	I think it came from France.
	I think it came from the Frankfurt School and Foucault and all those sort of wacky intellectuals.
	But the big battle is the same thing.
	But it did go over to the United States.
	Yeah, but it was a root there, yeah.
	Yeah, but the big battle over postmodernism was back in the day was between the postmodernists and the Marxists.
	And all these people like, you know, David Harvey, Terry Eagleton, Gijek, even though he's sometimes accused of being a postmodernist, you know, were criticizing postmodernism or responding to postmodernism, the critics of them, as universalists, because the postmodernists said Marxism pretends to be a universalist ideology like liberalism, but it's actually just a white man's ideology.
	Actually, Marxist-Jewish.
	Marxism obviously is modernist, it's materialist, you know, obviously it's not postmodern, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a sort of, and this is why I like to focus on procedure, because this is why people say social justice looks like Marxism, because procedurally it is.
	It will do the same things to culture that the Marxists will do to economics.
	And this is why people say that's communism.
	It's cultural Marxism.
	That's why.
	And ultimately, I think we're kind of getting into the long grass here either way.
	It's this sort of thing that we're going to have to shelve because it doesn't really matter.
	Because at the end of the day, it is antithetical to how a liberal society should be operated.
	And it's only because of the social censure and moral shaming that they can get away with this.
	But they will.
	That's the point.
	I agree.
	I think your problem a lot of the time is that you're really, not just yours, but classical liberals in general, is that you're talking about what ought to be all the time.
	So even in the realm of Advocating for rights.
	When you say man has the right to this or that, and you don't believe in God, which is the point of origin of a lot of these things, what you're really saying is man ought to have the right to do these things.
	Or man gives himself.
	I mean, I'm rather blackpilled on the origin of rights at this point.
	Yeah, and the reality is if you exist in a modern state, the state gives you rights.
	You may not think that ought to be the case, but it just is the case.
	And also, you know, you may think that the identitarians ought to lose, but I think you seem to be almost agreeing with me that they will, the liberalism actually isn't strong enough to combat them.
	The problem isn't necessarily that liberalism isn't strong enough to combat them.
	The problem is the people who are operating in these systems don't have the moral backbone to be able to resist the moral attacks that are against them.
	Because all of these are based on moral grounds.
	This is all about, oh, the women are being oppressed by men.
	Black people are being oppressed by white people.
	Gay people are being oppressed by straight people.
	If you believe that's true, then you have no choice but to carry on doing what you're doing.
	And if you're being browbeaten by a group of very loud, very aggressive activists who apparently have professors and whatnot behind them, if you're just some guy who's basically a bureaucrat.
	An individual?
	Well, you're a bureaucrat.
	But you're on your own then, right?
	If you're an individual, you're on your own.
	You can't face them down.
	They will beat you.
	Okay, that's true.
	That's my argument, in fact.
	So you're saying it shouldn't be the case.
	Like it's not fair and that they're winning through unfair means, but it is the case.
	Well, no, they are absolutely winning by unfair means.
	But it's only because of the personal failings of the individual.
	This is why.
	All you have to do is say no to these people.
	That's their entire platform destroyed.
	But so why aren't people saying no?
	Because they're afraid.
	But why are they in your judgment of their judgment of judgment?
	Why are they afraid, though?
	It's because they're on their own.
	It's because they don't have a big gang of people behind them to back them up.
	They are very good at using what I suppose they would call Alinskyite tactics.
	Pick the target, personalise it, polarise it, and whatnot.
	And they're very good at that.
	And the only way that we can really fight this, unless we want to become neo-Nazis, is to be aware of these tactics and not respond to them collectively ourselves.
	So if you see this happening to someone else, you are obligated to come to their defense, whether you know them or not, whether you support them or not.
	Because at the end of the day, I mean, this is why I've had to defend Brett Kavanaugh.
	I mean, I looked through a bunch of his rulings, and I didn't like them at all.
	But the way that he was being treated by the identitarian left in America is absolutely unconscionable.
	And so I, as a left-leaning liberal, have to defend like a far-right Republican on the grounds that the procedure in which they're attacking him is incorrect.
	It's unfair, it's unjust, and it has to be stopped.
	And if we allow them to win, then they will keep winning.
	And it's only because of our own moral cowardice that they can win.
	They don't threaten us with anything other than fear of what other people might think.
	I mean, but the problem, though, I think, is that the moral cowardice is a product of the individual isolation that is a necessary or innate part of individualists' kind of ideology.
	I'm not even going to say movements because you can't even have a movement if you're not going to be able to do that.
	Again, you're conflating the idea of individualism with the individual.
	Well, I mean, give an example of a movement that is really changing things today or is powerful today that you would consider to be not collectivist and that's individualist.
	Well, I would say Jordan Peterson and whatever, I mean, I guess the Petersonian movement.
	I don't know how we would describe it, but I think we can agree there is some kind of social force behind there.
	The people who agree with his ideas, and I mean, I'm one of these people.
	If we call this the classical liberal movement for ease of use, then yeah, I think we're actually getting out and doing things.
	I mean, you can say, well, you're amateurs, you're not doing this very well.
	I mean, you know, you don't have the kind of organisation that the social justice warriors do.
	True.
	That's all true.
	This is a war that was sprung on us without expectation.
	But that doesn't mean that we can't do anything.
	Well, can I just one thing before I go?
	So that I'm not speaking in sort of abstract, to give a particular example of where I think a collective struggle actually benefits people or where I think collective struggles will get results that other kinds of political activism won't.
	That is kind of why I talk about the trade union, the kind of weakening of trade unions so much.
	Is that, you know, for example, if you are like a precarious, you know, downwardly mobile young person today, why do you get involved in politics and what, you know, how do you actually go about trying to improve your life?
	Because those things have been shut down, it's almost like there's nothing left but identity politics.
	Because economic struggles are so difficult and so hard and so rarely actually win, because the left has lost so much on economic grounds, it's filtered all this energy into the identity stuff.
	Because, for example, if you are a female journalist and you show up at things to put up your hand and say there aren't enough women on this panel, everyone will, you know, you will eventually browbeat everyone into going along with what you're doing.
	It's really easy.
	Whereas if you want to, for example, if you look at the housing movement that's happening now in Ireland, which is really wonderful, but that's happening after years and years of just nothing being done and it just feels like an endless uphill struggle.
	And so I think that for those kind of movements to exist, they need their own form of collectivism.
	Okay, so just to quickly reply, sorry for that.
	Everything I'm suggesting is collective, like a group.
	Everything I'm suggesting is group activity and organization.
	It's just that the group itself is the ethos of it, the group itself is not more important than the people who make it up.
	That's the only difference, right?
	And secondly, are you saying that we live in a gynocentric society?
	Because you're right, we do.
	We absolutely do.
	Women are like some sacred class in the society.
	This is why they weaponise the term women.
	This is why they do it.
	They know it's such a weak spot for Western men.
	I have to respond to that.
	Do you mind?
	Okay.
	I think that's fair, but then we are going to respond quickly.
	You want to, then we'll lock it up.
	Okay, to me, the problem is, like, I'm often asked about the question of feminism because some of the things I say seem pro-feminist and some seem anti-feminist.
	I mean, I think it really does matter whether the political movements that you're involved in and the outcomes that they actually achieve are actually of benefit to the group that they claim to be.
	So, you know, I will probably always, until the day I die, have a kind of an identitarian, in a way, attachment to the idea that I want to see women flourish and do great things and so on.
	But the particular style of identity politics that is dominant in America and that's being exported all over the world, the style of feminism that's there, I think, is, you know, is absolutely terrible for women and is really turning women into just people who have nothing, nothing in their minds other than kind of like Jezebel.
	And, you know, and oftentimes, you know, when you want to talk to an interesting woman, she'll be from like Iran or somewhere where women actually read books.
	I'm also really talking about women themselves.
	I was talking about the sort of vector of the lights, otherwise it's not going to be able to see you.
	Okay, so just like to gather up, I'm going to take three questions at a time, okay?
	I'm just looking around pretty broadly.
	I will have plenty of time, so I will get to people.
	I'm going to cluster people close together, so I won't start here, but I will get you back, okay?
	So you first.
	So Dr. Nagel, during your opening statement, you said that you had people calling you both fascist and social justice worker on the same day.
	Have you ever considered this might be the horseshoe theory working?
	This might be the horseshoe theory.
	Oh yeah, it is.
	Oh, sorry.
	I'll beside you.
	Carl, I must, a lot of people on the identitarian right called yourself and Peterson are radical individualists.
	That you say group identity doesn't matter at all, that it's unimportant.
	I was wondering if you could address that criticism.
	Yeah.
	You know, we've heard a lot about what can be done to fight the progressive left, be it classical liberalism or traditional leftism.
	But what about the sort of new nationalism that's on the rise across Europe that borrows quite heavily from both the left, libertarianism, and sort of just the general populist ideas?
	Okay, so whichever things you want to respond to about.
	Angela, you want to go first?
	Oh, on the horseshoe theory thing, yeah, I mean, that's kind of what it is, I guess.
	But I think maybe what's really going on is that I think the people saying the social justice war, I think, just haven't read anything by me and they're just goofing.
	But the people who said the fascist thing, I think that is something that's happened on the left, and particularly as a product of social media, which is basically that anyone perceived to be even potentially having any dissenting thoughts of any kind is targeted more heavily than even they would target the far right itself.
	Because the idea is that you must keep everyone in line and they know that it actually, you know, it's not, they're not being irrational, they're actually being very tactically clever because they know that if they allow that little crack to open up, that the left itself will change and it's really a battle for the future of the left.
	So I just want to give one example.
	A good friend of mine, Connor Kilpatrick, wrote this piece and the title of it was It's Okay to Have Children, which is such a hilariously uncontroversial statement and if and I was trying to explain this to my parents and they were just baffled.
	They didn't understand why this could you know why this was controversial.
	But that article got hit so hard and got you know like responses were written about how it was forcing women at gunpoint to have children and this kind of thing.
	And the reason is it seems irrational, it seems crazy, but it's actually very clever because what they're doing is they're saying if we let this guy do this, other people will do the same.
	And before we know it we'll lose control of the left completely.
	And so that's what they're trying to avoid.
	Can I jump in on that?
	Because you're absolutely right.
	And this is I did quite a lot of reading about cults and this is it is cult behaviour.
	It's the prevention of obviously dissidents from speaking out.
	And it is exactly as you say.
	It's all maintained through pressure.
	And if one person can speak out, other people will see them speaking out and obviously the whole House of Cards collapses.
	With the horseshoe theory thing, I think again, like the problem is procedural.
	I think that people aren't necessarily addressing any of your views.
	They're seeing what you would propose to be a positive good or whatever you're describing.
	And they're looking at the procedure and assuming that's the procedure of a fascist.
	And I think that's a way that we should start trying to think about this more, because it's something that people tend to jump to the abstract principles when they say, oh, you're a fascist.
	I don't venerate the state.
	But what they're saying is in operation.
	So I think that's just a way of looking at it.
	Sorry, Karen.
	No, you go ahead.
	Oh, that was all I wanted to say, actually.
	I thought you covered it great.
	Okay, so what?
	Well, sorry, I just.
	Okay, just one other thing that we didn't address, which was the, I think, I assume you're thinking of like a five-star and stuff like that in AFP, et cetera, et cetera.
	Yeah, I think, oh, God, I'm going to get in so much trouble.
	So I think the thing is coalitions like that, one of the issue is the migration issue, right?
	Like it's the single issue that is kind of, people are terrified to touch upon it.
	And one of the problems is that the people who are willing to touch on it seem to be kind of almost like constitutionally incapable of addressing the subject without actually attacking migrants themselves.
	So I think that you can be a critic of open borders, for example, which Bernie Sanders was up until a couple of months ago, and you can say, you know, actually, there's nothing that morally great about bringing in massive numbers of people for the purpose of exploitation, who will, in many cases, not have the same rights as other people, and indeed going around and picking the trained professional class of the developing world to enrich your own country.
	I think a lot of the time when I hear Trump or like Trump supporters talking about migration and they say kind of they're not sending their best, I always think, why should they?
	Like, why do you have the right to their best?
	So nobody should be sending anyone, basically.
	So I think that there has to be some way of addressing the obvious economic exploitation and injustice and kind of undermining the moral high ground that open borders people have without actually attacking migrants themselves.
	And it just seems to me the right is not able to ever do that.
	They always end up dehumanizing and going after, you know, there has to be, for example, a way of protecting migrants' rights in the workplace, like in Italy, for example.
	I was reading about one case where a guy tried to organize his people who he worked with, and they were all migrant workers, like third world migrant workers, and one detail, and it was like they were earning the equivalent, I think it was like three euros an hour, and they were working 12-hour days, and they were doing back-breaking agricultural labor and so on.
	I mean, is there not a way of left has to find a way of dealing with that and not just being mindless on this open border stuff while also actually defending and advocating for migrants themselves.
	Okay, do you mind if I just hammer through a few of these points because I think I've missed one as well.
	So the group identity doesn't matter.
	I've never said that.
	Identity is important.
	And that's if identity wasn't important, the postmodernists wouldn't be coming after your identities and trying to demonize you for them.
	They know that identity is a powerful force.
	It grounds you in the local community you're in.
	It gives you stability within the world and it makes you who you are.
	And so for someone coming after that, you've got to ask yourself what are their motives?
	Because I mean, who in here would try and take away someone else's identity?
	Their sense of self.
	Who would do that?
	It's a bloody low thing to do.
	And so it's not that identity doesn't matter.
	The problem is the politicization of identity against, and especially based on race or gender or whatever.
	It's a horrible, horrible vector because it gives the other person no out.
	You know, there's nothing you can do to stop yourself from being a white man.
	So now if we're going to punish all white men, you're fucked.
	To get to the nationalism point, honestly, we're all Bannonites now.
	I know you don't think so, I know you think, oh god, Steve Bannon, but you're with him and you don't even know it.
	Ironically, it's probably gonna be Donald Trump that saves liberalism from identity politics.
	I'm not joking either.
	I'm not joking.
	I'll go into that another time though.
	Although Bannon is an economic nationalist.
	He is, but he's not a free marketeer.
	He's not a neoliberal.
	That's the difference.
	But what Bannon is effectively saying, and I hate the term he uses because he's an American, and you know what the Americans like with the terminology, but he used the word nationalism.
	But what he really means is localism.
	What he really means is sort of like local communities, people who operate in their own lives, who want to be left alone.
	That's because when people say nationalism, you think triumph of the will, you know what I mean?
	It's chest-dumping nonsense.
	But that's not really what Bannon's talking about.
	Bannon's talking about like home defensiveness in a way, I think.
	And that ties into the migration and open borders thing.
	You're right, the left have absolutely got they're pathological about open borders, and the right have got no real defense against that because they seem to demonize migrants.
	And I agree, they're operating completely wrong way.
	So the the best way to do it is to point out like the harm to the NHS, the harm to the infrastructure of your country.
	But not just that.
	I think the social fabric of the country is something that matters.
	I mean, I'm a liberal.
	I agree that society is a thing.
	I'm not a neoliberal.
	I'm not a Thatcherite.
	So this is the question in Britain at the moment is that it's on everyone's lips, but nobody wants to talk about it.
	Should we ban the burqa?
	And that's a bloody good question.
	And then on one side, you've got the liberal perspective and you go, the government shouldn't be telling me what I can and can't wear.
	But they already do.
	So I'm going to cut you across there because we have three short questions but not three short answers.
	Sorry.
	It needs to be done in the idea of protecting what is already there.
	So I'm going to go to the back first to you.
	Can I just make a quick observation before I ask a question?
	You said you couldn't see how cultural Marxism and Marxism fit together.
	I encourage you to look at the work of Antonio Gramsci, particularly his prison diaries, and the Frankfurt School, Herbert Mercosa, and Theodore Dorno, and you can easily see the connection.
	They're very, very clearly connected.
	But in any case, my question is this.
	Some of us who believe in conservatism and liberalism believe that the individual should be the single unit of the state because we believe in individual rights.
	I don't understand how if you call yourself a social justice warrior or whatever you want to describe yourself as, how do you argue against those elements on the right?
	White nationalists, the alt-right, they're effectively simply the mirror image of the people on the left.
	And I can't understand how you can justify these desire for individual or group rights on the left and not argue that it's acceptable on the right as well.
	Okay.
	Yes, you sir?
	Me?
	I suppose it's for both.
	In what way is our individualism and collectivism compatible or incompatible?
	I suppose.
	Just a question for Dr Nigel. Nagel.
	She mentioned that social justice warriors should allow to do whatever they want because they're not necessarily affecting anyone negatively.
	But if we take for example, just for example, Justin Trudeau's political cabinet, he insisted that it should be 50% men and 50% women.
	No, but I was a man and I was more qu more qualified for that job, but I wasn't let in because of my sex and they needed to hire that woman to reach that 50-50 ratio.
	Is that not unjust or unfair?
	So again, three good short questions, but I'd have to ask you both to be a lot shorter in your responses, otherwise there's a lot more people who want to come in.
	Whichever way you want to go first.
	Okay, I'll give the right-wing identitarianism one, even though.
	Well, you're right.
	You're either playing the game of identity politics or you're not.
	And ultimately, where on earth do you think white people are going to go?
	And what's interesting is this week, Spike Magazine put out an article with data to show that the white male youth vote is leaving the Democratic Party.
	The Bernie Bros are leaving the Democrats.
	It's a damn good thing that the Republican Party doesn't play identity politics too, because otherwise the Republican Party would be the party of the alt-right.
	Instead, the right wing in the Western world has had no truck with racial collectivism like that.
	They have been the first to kick them out of their parties.
	You know, Richard Spencer isn't allowed in their meetings and all that.
	And it's honestly the moral failing of the left to allow this to proliferate.
	Sorry, well, on, I mean, of course, I'm very familiar with the Gramsci and also with Doro and the Frankfurt School.
	But, you know, just because they, you know, I mean, the Trotskyists who went on to become the neocons were technically Marxists as well.
	But it's not like just because they say so doesn't mean that I think they're actually, you know, that their synthesis or their adaptation is truthful to the ideas of Marxism.
	I mean, there is nothing, there is simply no, people are desperate.
	People on the right just love this idea and are desperate to try to make it work, but it just doesn't work.
	There is nothing in Marx that says through culture you can bring about radical economic change.
	It's not in there.
	Can I just say this?
	There isn't.
	No, really not.
	I'm a good publicist.
	I think there are a lot of people.
	There's a lot of people.
	There's a lot of people who want to talk, and I think the whole thing...
	Yeah, you're right.
	Sure.
	Sure, I agree with you.
	Okay, but move on to the other side.
	Right, but that still doesn't make them...
	That still doesn't make them marches.
	If I stop you, Mike, I can't let you continue responding to him, I think, as a fair amount.
	So, you, sir.
	Not behind you.
	You mentioned earlier to Angela that socialism won't be able to defeat identity.
	No, but if you're speaking, go ahead.
	Socialism won't be able to defeat identity politics because its rhetoric is inherent with that logic.
	But identity prophets have come to thrive in the last 10, 20 years in a time of unfounded capitalism.
	So why then, can you explain to me then why identity politics seems to fit so well with capitalism, not so sort of in the t-shirts?
	No, no.
	So, first let's make a very quick comment.
	Casey, I read 10 pages of detail.
	But see that neither of your positions are capable of defeating identity politics, which is the end code of stabilization, and both your ideologies are also about state morality.
	But for Naval Morseau, it seems to me that at one point your speech talked about status and coming down, we're going to have all sexual freedoms we want, but at the same time it seems to be saying that the only way socialism can succeed is basically if it takes up certain elements of the right, which is anti-immigration rhetoric, certain ways of freedom of social conservatism.
	And to be honest, people go to the old left so that they have some kind of left doubt if the left was a part of what were essentially marginalist nations.
	So One role in front of you, one to the right.
	Don and Egl, I was wondering if you could expand on your statement that Marxism is not a cultural philosophy, because while I understand your point that it is descriptive in the sense that Marx is offering a description of the direction that history is going in, the underlying logic of that direction seems to be entirely predicated on the idea that there are indelible differences between groups of people to the point where they can't even have say in a distinction or what they think.
	Okay, so three questions there.
	Again, brief responses.
	On the question of why identity politics and capitalism fit so well together, I mean, this is again why I see them both as a kind of perfect fit within the worldview of liberalism.
	I mean, right now, you know, I was writing a piece about this recently, but if you go to like Gay Pride in Dublin and it's like a tech parade, yeah.
	Because to them, you know, I mean, what about it would be a threat to them?
	There's actually no conflict there of any kind.
	It may slightly inconvenience them that they have to have, you know, they have to have like ally training among their staff or whatever, but they love it and they embrace it and it's no threat to them whatsoever.
	And that's kind of why I'm trying to push back against the cultural Marxist idea because it sort of misses the point that nothing that is the goal of Marxism could ever be achieved through culture.
	And the fact that capitalism itself has so embraced cultural radicalism, things that were considered radical in 1968 or whatever, you know, I think proves that.
	Oh yeah, the other question about Marx.
	I think I've slightly forgotten what your question is.
	Do you mind if I just think that why does social justice prosper under capitalism?
	It's a very interesting question.
	It's because, I mean, you are right.
	I mean, they're never going to bring about Marx's economic utopia, but they're not trying to.
	What they're trying to bring about is the social variant of Marx's economic utopia, which is again why this all fits together so nicely.
	I think the important thing to do is draw the distinction between the state and society.
	Society, the state is a discrete, unique legal entity.
	Society is the interchange and interplay of groups of people who are freely associating.
	And when people are freely associating, that means the individual who is associating is the one making the decisions.
	This includes in corporations, even though they may have their own rules and regulations and whatnot.
	This is the sphere in which social justice operates.
	And it operates like a pack of wolves.
	And this is what you were complaining about earlier.
	What does the individual do when they're beset by a group of ideological wolves that are intent on tearing them limb from limb if they don't give up the piece of meat they have?
	They have to.
	And we have to recognize these tactics and we have to resist them.
	And when you see someone being attacked in this way, it is incumbent on you as an individual to stand in solidarity with them.
	There's no other way we can do it because ultimately all of this is being done by free association.
	And they're weaponizing your own good intentions against you.
	And so you have to be strong to that.
	It's like that, or we demand the state starts regulating all of society in the way that we would personally like.
	And that's the jack in the box.
	As soon as we give the state those powers, who's going to be running for those offices?
	Who are the brown noses that are going to be getting up in the hierarchies then?
	It's best for us to be strong.
	I want to rule out questions about the correct interpretation of Marxism.
	Yes, so tremendous.
	This for both of you, I know very little about culture Marxism and all this stuff.
	I was just getting to left politics a few years ago and don't describe as much anymore because of being kicked out by so-called people who care about PLC because I said the wrong thing, I shared the wrong article, and that has made me, I told you, group me talk about moral cowardice because I'm just like, I'm just going back to my real world, don't need to be in this scene of toxic people moving on, because they may be really terrified.
	Like they were sharing pics of me and my address because I literally shared something that was transphobic.
	And I didn't know what that was at the time.
	So that would make a coward out of, well, it made a coward out of me, but I don't feel I am that cowardly.
	But I for me personally, I am looking for other people to go out there.
	Then I'm like, okay, it's safe to also say, hey, guys, this is really uncool the way you're treating people who actually want to be on your side.
	So I guess my question to you both is how do you combat your own personal individual moral cowardice when you can see them being bullied, when you can see your own friends being bullied by these people, whether it's on the left or the right.
	Yeah, that's what that's my question.
	So I just want to ask, we talked a lot today about social and political movements that are damaging and yet somehow hold on to power.
	But another thing I've noticed in parallel with that is that there are a lot of scientifically illiterate movements that sort of do the same thing in parallel, with an example being the sort of alternative medicine movement.
	What else?
	The anti-vax movement would be a great one with the HVV vaccine thing in Ireland.
	And also, I guess on top of that, sort of the organic anti-GMO movements.
	There are just some examples.
	So my question would be for sort of double barrel, do you think they're connected to the ongoing progressive culture war movements?
	And also do you think that either of your respective ideologies, classical socialism and classical liberalism, can deal with those problems, scientific illiteracy that's so prevalent in the political and social scene?
	I want to take two more questions about the arbitrary flouting of my own rules so you may edge.
	What hit me today was the pessimism was really clear from both of you.
	We spend a lot of time on the internet.
	It's not looking good.
	But it also isn't seen in the media.
	It's really present out there.
	Also in the context of books being written by Douglas Murray, The Strengthening of Europe, The Tyranny of Silence, and The Tyranny of Western Guilt.
	My question to both of you is, with this SJWs, it seems to be a critique on critique.
	They want to shoot down and forbid a form of critique.
	The West was built on it.
	And civilization itself is fragile.
	Also in the context of Islamism and terrorism in the background.
	What do you think will happen then going, how do you both see future playing in South Africa?
	And then final question, Mr. Mann.
	Andrew, you mentioned during the debate with Carl Fleets that you're a socialist and the kind of socialism you would like to see some of Bernie Sanders.
	But is Bernie Saunders really a socialist even?
	If he uses countries like Denmark as an example of socialism.
	Okay, I'll answer the last question first.
	You know, there is nowhere in existence a completely 100% free market or completely 100% socialist society.
	And so when we talk about, when we argue about the question of socialism, we're usually advocating greater or lesser degrees of private or public ownership.
	And so, you know, I think that sometimes in the discussion about socialism, the goalposts get moved in such a way that if you say, oh, well, look at all these, you know, Norway or whatever, people say, no, that's a social democracy.
	And then they say, but look at, you know, Jeremy Corbyn is a socialist if they don't like him.
	Or they'll say, look at Venezuela.
	But I mean, that's a social democracy by the same definition as well.
	There's no example, as I say, of 100% socialism.
	So I know what you're saying.
	Okay, so the idea of social democracy being that you tax and you redistribute wealth.
	But the thing is, there is public ownership in a lot of the countries that get called social democracies.
	It's not 100% public ownership, but it's significant.
	And so public ownership of the means of production is, even if you're using that strict definition, present in a lot of these examples of social democracies.
	So exactly at what point it becomes appropriate to describe it as socialism or social democracy, I don't use the very strict definition because I think normally most like another problem of course is that nominally social democratic parties have all become free marketeers now.
	So you can't actually use, you're talking about actually existing social democracy rather than what it was supposed to be.
	So I mean like for example just to be specific.
	Okay well please just very briefly.
	Okay so I would advocate a very high degree of public ownership of natural resources, of public services, of major industries.
	I don't have a plan for, as I say, 100% socialism where the state is making your perfume or whatever, but I think it's still a high degree of socialization of the economy and of the means of production.
	Quick question.
	How do you stop someone who wants that?
	What do you mean?
	How do you argue against someone who does want complete control of the means of production?
	Well, I mean, it's just a technical question.
	I'm open to it, by the way.
	Why should we not?
	If we're going to do this, I have no objection to it in principle.
	I don't think that that would be totalitarian or something like that.
	I would be fine with it if somebody could prove that it would be the best system.
	But I'm more in favour of a transition that would be using very tried and tested stuff.
	I mean, if you look at anything in the economy, to my mind, childcare, housing, education, you look, what's the best model in the world?
	To me, it's always a socialized model.
	So why couldn't we just put them all together?
	Yeah, but it's not a socialist model, is it?
	Well, I mean, as I say, if you have collective ownership of the major industries and you plow the money back into the economy, that is a socialist economy.
	Yeah, and they always fail.
	No, I think they do.
	They do.
	But let's go on to the next.
	Let's go to the next one.
	So the question, how do you stand up to bullies effectively about the social justice warriors?
	How does anyone stand up to a bully?
	It just takes moral fortitude.
	You've got to be the person who stands up and takes leads by example.
	Because I think that honestly, the SJWs are scared.
	I think they're scared of a lot of things.
	And one of the things they're scared of is one another.
	And if you can stand up to the leader of their little group, then I think the rest of them will melt away as long as you can hold your ground.
	But it's the eternal question there, isn't it?
	I think the answer is a large group of like-minded people.
	That's just the same problem in reverse.
	Well, you have to.
	It's the only way.
	It's the only thing that I can see that actually works.
	I mean, if you had gone through that and you had had a bunch of people back you up, right, that would have been better and it would have completely changed the whole conflict.
	And the people attacking you would have been afraid to do so.
	Yeah, but the thing is that you said that you didn't know what transphobia was at the time.
	In the only idea, I was just like sharing.
	I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But they're coming at you with a kind of attack that you're not familiar with.
	You haven't prepared yourself to resist this.
	But I think that a single person can resist this on their own, if they just know how to do it.
	Okay, do you have you think you've answered the other question?
	Yeah, no, well, what will happen, I think, is the interesting question.
	I can't remember who asked that.
	Man, I tell you what, it's a pretty scary future we're going into if they win, isn't it?
	I mean, like I said in my opening ramble, it's incredible the institutional power they will.
	Every university, every government, every corporation has a diversity hiring officer.
	And not one of these people will ever be held to account.
	The gender wage gap still exists, the racial wage gap still exists, and it will forever exist.
	And they will never be held to account for any of this.
	So it's the question, I mean, what will happen?
	I don't know.
	Some kind of social revolution.
	That's what I think.
	Positive or negative, you're not sure.
	It depends on your question.
	How much time do we have left?
	I say like five more minutes.
	Five more minutes.
	Okay.
	So I'll take a few more questions on expanding my edicts to rule out questions on the correct interpretation of any political theory.
	I want to pull the side that nobody else can get into unless they've read the words they're arguing about.
	Okay.
	So yeah, I'll go for you.
	This is primarily a view.
	So just even in relation to your last thing, so in relation to extremist radical ideologies, do you really believe, as you said earlier, that it's silly enough to say no to destroy the entire thought movement and destroy everything behind it?
	Because that's what I'm saying.
	What's an extremist radical ideology?
	And the question is endless.
	Sorry, behind you?
	Okay, yes, you.
	In 2016, in one of your videos entitled Fellow Nazi Super Shout Your Abortion, you referred to the contents of a pregnant woman's womb as an unborn child, which arguably incurs several things.
	Oh gosh, that affords me having the right to life etc by virtue of being a human being.
	Guess the question.
	Now you have in another video adopted no choice as well.
	So could you clarify that position about how demoralized?
	Okay, just to clarify, it was just an off-the-cuff statement when I was recording.
	I hadn't put any particular thought into it.
	Okay, that's that answer.
	Sorry.
	This one's a little bit of a question.
	I just have a quick question for Dominantly, for Carl, but also just for everybody.
	I'm just interested as to, have you ever had any, like, have you ever thought of any worry about the community that you have been creating and also people in the same genre as you online?
	And previously you were talking about, you know, oh, create a collectivist group and that's how you fight against people against you.
	And I kind of feel as though that's what I see happening, particularly where you mentioned Jordan Peterson, and he's a very specific one, sorry, for a second.
	Just you specifically mentioned the person's individualism, but I see him as creating a huge collective space.
	Okay, so personal immediately beside you.
	Yeah, just one bit, Adam, the question was just asked.
	There was a question earlier asked about the German collective system at the moment about the rise of far-right or right-wing political parties.
	And I just want to allow that that there's also a rise of left-wing political parties, and I think that's just a failing of the current political system we have.
	But the difference I see is that on the right-wing, it's particularly the media and the political institutions that kind of categorise and collectivize the right-wing that force them into one specific group without differentiating the different groups.
	Okay, so that's just a response to the question of the south pretty simple.
	Okay.
	Here, yes, you.
	It seems to me to me, Lisa, both of you seem to generally agree this is economically grounded.
	Would you believe maybe adopting a totally far economic system mutualism may throw them off key?
	Okay, and final question.
	You know, teachers.
	Sir, this is more of a general question, maybe more for Carl.
	Do you believe that the types of collectivism we're seeing in society today will have an impact on the implementation of the rule of law and civil order?
	And very quickly, by that, I mean, I can give two quick examples.
	We don't need the example.
	Just one example, and then you're talking.
	If you're talking about due procedure when it comes to following the rules and giving everyone equal treatment, I mean, we had a case in Belfast almost a year ago where there was a raid trial of rogue players.
	And even though the judgment was made that these men were cleared, we still see people collectivising and insisting that we must go against this and they should have been punished anyway.
	So there's that.
	Okay, so that's it in terms of questions.
	I'm really sorry for people I missed.
	It just isn't time to get to you and was entirely random.
	And I'd apologise for that.
	Okay, yeah, just to hear that rule of law, and that's actually a really good question.
	I've been thinking about a lot.
	I'm actually reading a book at the moment by an English judge called The Rule of Law.
	And the way he, it's a contentious thing to define, but the way he defines it is just that every individual under a sovereign system is subject to the same system of laws.
	And if that's the case, then identity politics is demonstrably against the rule of law.
	And we see this in the Rotherham Grooming Gang cases, where the police saw Muslims and thought these 13-year-old girls are in fact the perpetrators and these are the victims of these Muslims.
	The rule of law, they were deliberately flouting the rule of law.
	They would specifically not arrest them for fear of being labelled racist.
	It's demonstrable.
	It has to happen.
	It's inevitable.
	So yeah, this is another, and the protection of the rule of law is a very strong, in my opinion, argument against identity politics.
	The question, extremist ideologies, is it enough?
	Well, it depends what the extremist ideology is, isn't it?
	I mean, if they had groups of brown shirts or black shirts in the street shanking people with knives, then no, obviously saying no to them isn't good enough.
	But they don't have that.
	What they have is whiny, middle-class children who won't shut the fuck up because no one will tell them to shut the fuck up.
	But collectively, this is basically, we're going to have to tell them to grow up and get on with it.
	Just in Ireland, the market can attack.
	That's not going to happen.
	And if I can answer that young lady's question, do I worry about my own community?
	Yeah, that's why I spent so much time fighting the alt-right.
	I mean, there's nothing in it for me to fight the alt-right.
	I don't care if they win, it doesn't hurt me.
	I'm a white man.
	What difference does it make to me?
	It's just, well, no, so I'm not the victim.
	When the alt-right take over and the jack boots come from minorities and women and whoever else, I'm not the victim.
	But I spent ages demonstrably going against their ideology and their entire communities to try and separate them and disentangle them from my own.
	And I can see it in my stats where they, you know, a thousand people unsubscribe because I call the alt-right totalitarian or something.
	And that's fine, because I want them out of my community.
	I don't want them trying to recruit from my group.
	In fact, if anything, I try to recruit from theirs because I want to pull people away from them.
	But the Jordan Peterson point you made where they tend to parrot the same things, there's a meme going around at the moment, essentially calling these people NPCs.
	Doesn't that ring?
	Like, this is a problem you get in every political community where you get people interested in the subject, but they're fairly low-information activists, and so they only know the talking points.
	And they'll parrot the talking points like an NPC.
	And basically, you don't need to waste your time on them.
	They can't be persuaded because they don't.
	You don't need to waste your time on that.
	Well, yeah.
	I guess I'll just answer that question because a lot of them were addressed to you.
	Yeah, it seems like every time somebody even becomes well known online or becomes internet famous for standing out and having some kind of unusual position or unusual take, they then develop a fan base which becomes totally mindless, full of fan boys, and they just immediately go after anyone who criticizes their favourite person, Jordan Peterson or whoever.
	That may just be, you know, but again, like we were saying, if this lady had that, she wouldn't have had such a hard time.
	You know, so it's like, I don't know, it may just be a product of the internet that it just encourages very idiotic kind of group behaviour and we may just be stuck with it.
	Okay.
	So with that, I'd ask you to thank both the speakers.
	I mentioned earlier coffee and journalists.
	We just meet for a little bit for discussions.
	And we'd be happy to have you come along.
	Our colleagues just want to come up and say a few words because basically we'd just like to, on behalf of the fascination and all of us, give this little award for attending this event and being so kind to facilitate us to Sarbock a nice bottle of West Cork whiskey.
	Thank you very much.
	Now you'll have to excuse our use of objective statistics here, but we decided that it would be most likely that Dr. Nagel's prepared beverage would be a bottle of champagne.
	So I hope they'll not get it.

▲