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June 13, 2021 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
59:46
Calvin Robinson
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Welcome to the DellingPod with me, James Dellingpaw.
And I know I always say I'm excited about this week's special guest, but Calvin, this is his second appearance on The Deling Pod, and I'm delighted to have him back.
Calvin Robinson, that is.
Calvin, the last time I had you on, I thought you were a schoolboy.
You do look ridiculously young, even though you're closer to my age than schoolboy age.
Thank you.
Don't give my secrets away.
I think you were fuzzier last time, I think.
I think my internet was even more bad last time than it was this time, so I think I can be semi-excused.
And you very kindly noticed how well-groomed I was looking.
We booked the time to start this podcast and I suddenly noticed I look like, I look like a terrorist.
I was completely, and I've got this sort of grizzled stubble now.
And so I had to rush upstairs and shave it off.
Cause I know that, you know, some of my, some of my gay fans and my female fans obviously love to see me looking kent.
Anyway.
How are you?
I'm very well, thank you.
It's good to see you this time.
Because you do a lot of media, don't you?
You're out there fighting the fight.
I do.
I did Good Morning Britain this morning, Talk Radio this morning.
I'm writing a piece for the Daily Mail as soon as I get off the phone for you.
So back to back, how I love it.
No time to get bored.
What's your piece for the Mail?
It's on this ridiculous, woke lot of students at Magdalene who've taken down the Queen's portraits.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it does seem like...
You've got the dream job, I mean, at the moment, in that it's such a target-rich environment for anyone whose job is speaking out against woke nonsense in the culture wars.
So that'll give us our topic.
Because a lot of my recent podcasts have not been about the culture wars.
As you probably know, the culture wars used to be very much my preoccupation too.
I think that that has been superseded by an even bigger war.
But I still think your theater is a more urgent war anyway.
Yeah, a more urgent war, I think.
I mean, for example, had you been a doctor, which you're not, had you been a mother, which you're not, I would be urging you right now to talk about this disastrous idea to give our children experimental gene therapy.
But actually, it's a nice break for me and for our listeners who want a bit of variety to go down the culture war rabbit hole instead.
We can define mother.
What is a mother these days, James?
Actually, very good point.
You've been very well trained.
You're there to spot any kind of... that's kind of... it's not a microaggression, that's different, but it's one of those kind of indicators that one isn't sound because, you know, it's an old... it's a word from the past that I think we should all learn to reject.
It's normal language.
So the Oxford thing, I just, I really feel, I've mentioned this before, I really feel embarrassed about having been to Oxford.
I used to think it was a big deal and now I feel like, what was I getting, what was I getting into?
What was I getting involved with that awful establishment?
Yeah, you're just agreeing with me.
I'm there right now reading theology, well not literally right now, I'm in London, but It's become entirely woke.
The student cohort are now the ones pushing this direction that used to come from the academics.
And the academics are like, whoa, what's going on?
They're even more woke than we are.
It's become, you know, device themes and everyone's meeting together to say, what's going on?
The students are cancelling each other and there's no platforming each other.
They're not engaging in debate.
And the students that are too busy virtue signaling are too busy trying to look good.
I'm just going to do something.
I'm going to lose you for a second because I suddenly realized that I've moved my decent internet onto my shit internet.
I'm just going to get back to my slightly less shit internet.
Wait a second.
That'll be better.
Are you there?
Recording?
Yeah.
Yeah, good.
That's good.
You say you're doing a postgrad in theology?
So I'm studying for Holy Orders at the moment, so when I come out of this I should, God willing, be ordained.
It's a bit different to what I'm used to doing, very challenging in lots of different ways, and of course I'm training within the Church of England, which is also a work institution at the moment, so that has its own different challenges.
That's good.
No, because I was, I was, I know you can talk about many things.
And I was just using my, my spider sense to try and work out what direction we're going to take this, this chat in.
Because we're good to go in any direction.
And now I know, we're going to go, go, we're going to talk about that.
But so you're at one of the religious colleges, I can't remember what they're called, St.
Bennett's, is it?
Or St.
I try not to talk about the actual college.
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Fair enough.
No, no.
Isn't that an indicator in itself of the problems that we face?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I'm brave, but I'm not that brave.
So, you're in London now, but do you hang out in Oxford?
I do occasionally, yeah.
I jump on the Oxford Tube back and forth as much as I can.
I'm actually in Reclaim's HQ at the moment, filming this, because we've got a nice office space.
But yeah, I hang out at Oxford.
It's full of students though, that's the problem.
Yeah, but there was... I'm sure there was a time when students would have been quite fun to hang around.
I mean, I don't think it's... it is written, is it, that students should be just, like, horrible little woke ticks.
I'm sure that... Had you been at Oxford in... Actually, would you have liked to have been there on Evening Wars Day?
You'd have... You'd have... You'd have... I probably would have been.
I probably would have.
But the thing is, students used to be radicals.
Students used to, you know, be anarchists.
They used to, you know, want to change the world, and now they just want the perception of changing the world, don't they?
Taking down a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen isn't that radical.
I honestly think putting, putting portraits up of Her Majesty the Queen these days is far more radical.
Get one put up in a college somewhere, that's more difficult.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just shocked that it should have happened so rapidly.
I mean, do you think it's got any purpose anymore, Oxford, really?
Because if all it's doing is reinforcing the woke agenda, and people aren't really discovering... Well, no, I think it does, because I think it's The difference is it's the student cohort that are entirely woke at Oxford, whereas at most universities, it's the dons as well.
I don't think the dons are entirely woke at Oxford.
Obviously, there are some, you know, the ones who try to tear down the Oriel Statue of Rhodes.
But I think quite a lot of them are still quite sound, are still interested in academic excellence.
As far as, you know, it's relative though, isn't it?
If we look at some of the polytechnics, they've completely gone bonkers, and they're teaching made-up courses of gender studies and race studies, and we've got Professor Kehinde Andrews, who I'm often debating, teaching black studies, whatever the hell that means.
So some universities are completely gone.
Oxford, I've still got hope for.
Okay, so there are a few dons there that can...
Because I had a chat with my old tutor about five years ago, and I said how much better things were in my day, you know, when he was teaching me.
And he said, James, even then I was the exception.
So, I don't know.
But as long as there are still those exceptions, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
You're taking holy orders in the sea of E. That's quite a bold move for somebody who believes in God.
Tell me how that works.
We have to make the church sound again.
That's the idea.
No, look, I'm with you.
As you know, on a previous podcast, I spoke to Jamie Franklin from the Irreverent Pod, and I think those boys are... Yeah, he's very good.
And I'm hoping to see the... I'm going down to Salcombe in a few weeks' time, and I'm hoping... I haven't told him yet, but I want to go and see the one who's got a church in Salcombe.
Um, but I'm kind of, while we're on the subject of the church, I'm kind of looking for a new, for a new church.
I don't think the C of E does it.
Well, what is that?
You know, for me, the importance is, of course, the first loyalty is to God, but then after that is queen and country.
And in the Church of England, I can be loyal to all three.
Any other church I join, I can only be loyal to one.
And I think as superficial as that sounds, it's important to me.
I like your patriotism and your... I'm not even... This is a terrible thing to say, but although I'm definitely with you on the first one, I'm not even sure I'm with you on the second and the third anymore.
I mean, obviously, not to the point of removing portraits of the Queen from my wall, not that I have one in the first place, but if I did, I wouldn't remove it for woke reasons.
But I'm afraid the Queen rather lost me when she got co-opted into the vaccine campaign.
I thought that was a really, really wrong thing to do.
I mean, a betrayal of her so-called subjects.
Yeah, but it's not the first time she's been coerced by government, isn't it?
You know, Tony Blair did a similar thing around Princess Diana's death.
You know, she is a human being.
She's susceptible to Coercion and persuasion as much as anyone else.
And to be honest, throughout her tenure of all of these years, she's been pretty staunch in not being political.
So for her to have fallen twice, I think that's forgivable, isn't it really?
And that's the thing that we have to preach from our side, forgiveness for making mistakes, because that's what the left and the woke lot never ever do.
Uh, yeah, you could forgive if... we can forgive them, but ultimately they've got to show repentance for what they've done, and I don't think she's ever going to repent.
And yet it's probably, I would say it's the single worst act of her monarchy, doing that.
Because she's participated, yeah, I think she's participated in the destruction of her country that she should be protecting.
She should not be playing the game of this horrible overarching agenda, which we're not going to talk about because we'd go down too many rabbit holes.
I'm afraid Queenie lost me on that one.
I don't have lordage to the monarchy anymore.
And you know, you look at the people who are going to replace her.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's it.
I think it matters that much, Calvin.
It's not just about the person, though, is it, James?
It's about what she stands for.
It's about the institution, you know, the crown, the sovereign.
And these are ideas, as much as they are people, that unite us.
And, you know, you look at other countries that don't have them, like America, what do they have?
They've got their flag.
I mean, it's a nice-looking flag, but it doesn't have the same essence behind it, does it, as an actual living, breathing person that we can all rally behind.
Yeah, the problem is I would have agreed with you totally two years ago.
I mean, you are as I was.
I doubt there was a cigarette papers between us, ideologically.
We agree on loads of things, but I've changed so much.
The one area where we've converged is on the religious thing, which I think is really important.
I mean, in a way it's the most important because ultimately it's about what happens after this, which is going to be a lot, lot longer, the next world, than this one.
Which is why when I heard you getting ordained, I didn't know that, and I seized on it, because this I find interesting.
I was thinking, if I became a priest today, I could never possibly cope being ordained, or what's it called when you get trained to be a priest?
What's the training program called?
Formed, we go through formation before we get all in.
Yeah, okay.
So when you get formed, you are surrounded by people, I'm guessing, who are, who represent everything that you and I despise.
They are woke, they are closer to being Gaia worshippers than God worshippers, that they have no kind of religious backbone.
They don't really believe in God as a real thing.
I don't think that's fair.
So I'm very fortunate.
The college that I go to is the last stalwart of Catholicity in the Church of England.
It is the most orthodox college for formation and training left.
And there we've got a good cohort We've got a good cohort of very sound individuals.
We've got a principal who's very sound politically and religiously.
It's fantastic.
The problem isn't where I'm training.
The problem is outside of it.
The problem is the hierarchy of the Church of England.
You know, I've never been more disappointed in my life than I was last year during the pandemic when there's this massive spiritual chasm.
You know, people have this void in their lives and it was the church's job to step in and be there for them pastorally, spiritually, and they weren't.
That was, that was a line for me that I almost, you know, had to discern what I'm doing in this church.
But I figure people like me, people like you, people like the people I'm training with, we have to remain in it in order to nudge it back in the right direction because it was almost unforgivable what the church even did last year.
Yeah, yes indeed.
I like that.
I like that almost unforgivable because of course I suppose as Christians we have to.
I think it's the toughest, I think it's the toughest part of being a Christian.
Having to, having to forgive.
It's the thing I go on about the most, because that is the core difference between us and the woke, because this whole cancel culture is literally about never forgiving.
You know, a footballer who treated something when he was an 18 year old idiot, putting puerile treats out there, Ten years later, he's matured, grown up, but still, we can't forgive him.
It's inexcusable what he did.
It's like, come on, is that really how you want to treat other people?
Is that really how you want to be treated if someone finds something that you've said or done?
Because none of us are perfect, are we?
Well, I don't know, Calvin.
I think I'm actually approaching the Godhead.
I think I am pretty much, yeah, there.
Stay on now.
But yeah, no.
I mean, are you a cricket fan?
I don't really follow any sports, to be honest with you.
That's my bad side.
Ah, but I'm sure you can still talk about it, because I have to say I got very exercised by this.
I'm not a sporting fan either.
Indeed, I'd never heard of this Ollie Robinson character.
He's called Ollie Robinson?
Right.
He's no relation of yours?
Yeah, no relation.
So Ollie Robinson, as I understand it, is a fast bowler?
A bowler?
He plays the game of cricket.
He's obviously pretty good at cricket.
Did you read the emails for which he had his career suspended, possibly destroyed?
I saw some of his tweets.
They were immature.
They were attention-grabbing.
Typical teenage rubbish.
He wanted his mates to think he was cool.
I mean, I wonder whether we're not even then ascribing too much significance to them.
It's just kind of, you sort of splurge out on Twitter.
I don't think he even thought of it.
You know, most of us don't, do we?
And certainly, do you remember in that time?
I mean, we're talking what, say he's 26 now and he was 17 or 18 then.
So that's eight or nine years ago.
Twitter was a very different place then.
The world was a very different place.
That it was accepted.
I mean, that's how distant the age is, even though it was only a period of eight years.
It was accepted that you could just say crap and then it could be forgotten.
It wouldn't be dredged up and used against you.
And now here he is.
Well, it was part of the conversation, wasn't it?
And now it's an archive.
That's the problem.
Totally.
What are they called?
Offence archaeologists.
Going through people's... I mean, I wonder who it was who even decided to take the offence archaeologist role.
Why would anyone do that?
What's he done wrong?
We've all had that dilemma.
I'm sure you've had that.
I've had people dig in through my old tweets and say, do you still believe this?
Or what did you mean by that?
It's like, well, if you can't take from the context of the time what I meant by it, that's your business.
Nothing to do with me now.
People just want to cause trouble.
They want to find something to be offended by as well, don't they?
Yes, they do.
I can sort of forgive the really woke people whose identity is their wokeness.
Because obviously they've got very, if they're men, they've got exceptionally small penises.
They've probably got very low self-esteem, very poor intelligence.
And so to find meaning in their life, they've embraced woke fully with absolute zeal.
I'll be more charitable than that, James.
I would say what it is, is it's a lack of something in their life and they're looking for something to cling on to.
They're looking for, and what they don't know, is they're looking for faith, they're looking for spirituality.
And because, like I say, the church wasn't there to step in, wokeness has filled that void for them.
And that's why it's, you know, it's got a moral compass, it's got its own rituals, because they are a religion, essentially, for people that don't have a religion.
I think that's a very good analysis.
I think he's absolutely right that if Christianity or whatever the national faith is recedes, people aren't going to just live their lives without that spiritual void being filled by something else.
And it's going to be a creed, a credo that's going to be a lot more damaging than Christianity.
And that's what's happening.
It is more damaging.
And this is why we have so much cognitive dissonance with these woke lot.
I don't want to tread on old ground, but I often get racially abused by the left, by black people on the left, who are calling themselves anti-racist.
And they genuinely believe that they're fighting the good fight against racism, while at the same time hurling racial abuse at people like me.
And we saw today, John Bonds has received quite a lot of it.
It's like, they can't see the error of their ways because they're subscribed to a moral code that says, if you're not with us, you're against us and you're fair game.
You can't break it down.
Oh, totally.
Have you been on any of those marches we've had recently?
The London, you know, the rallies against the vaccine passports and all that?
Perhaps you haven't?
They're always when I'm stuck in Oxford, but I've seen you and Lawrence out there making some cool videos.
Yeah, yes, exactly.
Of course, yes, you share my love of the lozza.
So we've...
I really recommend you go on these marches, because unlike Black Lives Matter marches, which are virtually monocultural, they're pretty much all white people, aren't they?
Just kind of with the old sort of token black people to show, to remind us that it's about black lives.
But the anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine passport marches are just, you know, your proper melting pot, such as these woke people, It's supposed to be their dream.
And one thing that strikes me about the people who go on these anti-lockdown marches, anti-vaccine marches, is that nobody gives a flying F. I must stop myself swearing on this podcast because I know children like them.
Nobody gives a toss about whether somebody is black or white.
I'm not saying we don't notice each other's colours because I think it's part of what makes life interesting, but I don't think there's a shred of kind of race baiting or, you know, I don't think the black people on the march look at me and think that I should be checking my white privilege or anything like that.
I just think they see me as a fellow human being.
Whereas I think there is something genuinely racist within the woke community.
They're obsessed with it.
Yeah, there is.
But I think it comes from a place of good intention for the most part.
I think they genuinely believe that they're going to make the world a better place by fixing society in their own image.
And by saying that all these poor black people, we need to help them out.
It's patronizing and it is racist, but they don't see that because they think they're doing good.
And when we come back at them and say, well, no, actually, we're all people, we're all equal, we've all got disadvantages and privileges, and it doesn't matter what our skin color is, they'll be like, whoa, how dare you?
And it just challenges them on a level they can't accept, they can't see it.
I'm still struggling on how to break down this conversation to engage with these people, because it is, you know, they're walking through life with racial lenses on, and it's blinkering them from the reality of the world that is, it's not meritocratic, the society, we pretend it is, it's not really, but it's as meritocratic as the world has ever been.
How do you... I mean, I couldn't do what you do.
My head would explode.
I mean, going on Good Morning Britain, how do you... I know Piers Morgan isn't there anymore, but I bet you've done shows where he was there.
Oh yeah, yeah.
And how do you cope?
Yeah, good fun.
Really?
Yeah, no, I love it.
I genuinely love it.
Having a debate with people that I disagree with and having an open conversation, it's all good fun.
The only time I've ever been upset is when Someone tried to tell me I couldn't have an opinion because of the color of my skin.
This is this Ken Hines chap.
He's, you know, he's been hanging around Sasha Johnson.
He's very close knit with Black Lives Matter.
And I was on talk radio and he said, you can't criticize Meghan Markle because she's one of yours.
You know, you need to, you need to look after your own.
And I was like, what do you mean my own?
I don't share anything in common with Meghan Markle.
I dislike her for lots of reasons, not because of the color of my skin or the color of her skin.
And it's just, I think that's the only time I've gone cross or lost my rag on it.
But generally speaking, people can attack my ideas as much as they like, because I'm not always 100% sure of my ideas.
I'm sure you're not.
I think I'm right, but I don't know I'm right.
I do, I do know, I do know, I'm right.
I think, you know, Calvin, you're going to make a much better vicar than I would, which is why I'm not about to become ordained.
You are definitely more tolerant.
For example, I've hardened my heart, if that's the right phrase, in the last 18 or so months.
I've become much less tolerant of people like Kehinde Andrews.
Because I think what they are talking is round, unvarnished bollocks.
And I think it is not just kind of misguided, I think it is wicked.
I think it is actually the product of a mindset which wants to destroy everything of value in our civilization and our culture.
It is about pure destruction.
There is no intellectual value in it at all.
Now, I would find it very difficult... You're right.
Yeah.
Tell me more.
Give me your view on Kehinde.
So, I just gave a charitable perspective of people that think they're changing the world for the better, but are wrong.
But then there are the other elements, the more malicious elements, like Professor Kehinde Andrews, who are genuinely causing division, stoking division, in order to sell books, in order to, you know, he's got his own course, Black Studies.
What does that mean?
You know, a made-up course that no other university ever taught before he suddenly started teaching it.
He's profiteering from division within our society that he's further perpetuating.
And you're right, that is wicked.
But we're never going to win over people like Professor Andrews.
So I'm happy to debate him publicly, never in the false idea.
I'm not naive or arrogant enough to think I could change his mind.
But every time I debate him, I open up other people's eyes to how toxic and divisive he is.
And they see, actually, that critical race theory that he's peddling It doesn't sound too good to me.
What's this other chap talking about?
Oh yeah, unity.
Much better option.
So that's why I go up against people like him, just to expose them for what they are.
Yes.
I mean, you represent a viewpoint on appearing on mainstream TV that I used to hold.
I used to think, yeah, it's my job to go and bat for the cause, even though I'm going to be Donoted by, you know, a leftist, a kind of an Islamist, you know, some kind of race baiting loon or whatever.
And my job is to be the far right gibbering loon that we're supposed to despise.
But now I'm thinking actually, Mainstream TV is so utterly tainted.
I mean, it's a bit like going on to Good Morning Britain is a bit like going to a sort of a Satan-worshipping ceremony on June the 21st and just in the hope that you might stop one person sacrificing a goat or whatever.
Do you not feel that?
You're spot on.
Yeah, so my family hate it when I go on Good Morning Britain.
They completely, they fret because I'm from the Midlands and, you know, my family up there, they all speak common sense.
They all, you know, say what they see and mean what they say.
They don't mess around with all this metropolitan liberal nonsense.
That's because I'm from the Midlands too, so I understand that.
They're just normal people, isn't it?
Yes.
And they know that when I go on a show like that, it's a trap.
And the show, the producers and the journalists, or the presenters, are looking for clickbait.
They're looking for you to say a soundbite that they can clip and paint you as a toxic right-winger, as you say, swivel-eyed loon, whatever.
So my family hate it, but I honestly think it's our duty to keep exposing the far left for what they are.
And if mainstream media are going to keep perpetuating this woke culture, we have to battle it in the public sphere.
Because if we just sit on the outskirts, they're winning.
Because then all people see is that social justice warrior nonsense 24 hours a day.
And they think that that's the main opinion.
And we know it's not.
We talk to normal people.
We know what normal people think.
But normal people feel oppressed at the moment.
They're not allowed to speak, or they feel like they're not allowed to speak.
And we have to keep standing up and saying, well, yeah, actually can.
Every time someone says you can't say that, it's like, why can't I?
Of course I can say that.
Yeah.
Yes.
Well, I mean, I suppose it helps your skin colour and you've got your afro.
Is it an afro, would you say?
Does it count as an afro?
Yeah, it's an afro.
Although that triggers them as well, because I'm mixed race, so I've got My mother's white, but she's got really thick hair, and my father's black, and he used to have an afro.
So this isn't actually the same type of afro that a fully black person would have.
It really triggers them, because black people tend to do their hair in certain styles, and I just grow mine out, I moisturise it in whatever way, comb it out.
But that is one of the biggest criticisms I get.
It's like, why is your Afro not done in XYZ style?
Why is it not this, this, this?
Like, as if I don't just have to have certain politics.
I don't just have to talk a certain way.
I have to do my hair a certain way in order to please the workloads.
Yeah, I like that.
I like that a lot.
I think if I were in your position, I too would be growing my Afro in as outrageous a way as I possibly could, as a kind of goading device, in the same way.
I'm not doing it to goad them though.
Oh yeah, well anyway, I like it.
I like the fact you've got one because it's, well apart from anything else, nostalgia reasons.
It's like those, you know, those 70s What are they called?
Blaxploitation films.
I mean, we don't see many afros around.
Right.
To be honest, it's just how my hair grows.
And, you know, it is a bit of anti-racism within me because as I was a child growing up in the Midlands, I was the only black kid in my school.
I would never have dreamed to have grown an afro.
I got bullied, you know, people call me all sorts of racist names.
So this is me reclaiming my own natural hairstyle.
And it's quite ironic that in me having an anti-racist stance, I get touched by the anti-racists Again, it's down to that cognitive dissonance.
My moral is, I never set out to trigger the libs.
And I know you do that quite a lot, and some of our mutual friends do, but I genuinely try to fight the good fight.
And if that triggers the libs, that's on them, but I don't set out to purposefully trigger them.
That's not my agenda.
Yeah, yeah.
But do you, do you, can you recall any greatest hit moments against Kehinde Andrews that I should be checking out on YouTube or whatever?
Yeah, so I was against him on What's Nicky Campbell's Show?
The big questions.
Yeah, yeah.
And I got him to say on air, I got him to admit on air that he calls other black people Coon, Uncle Tom and House Nigger for not subscribing to his worldview.
And it wasn't challenged at the time, but it's filmed, it's a clip, it's out there.
So, you know, openly admitting that he's racist.
I totally love that one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What is Black Studies anyway?
Have you worked it out?
I still don't know.
So I reviewed his book, actually.
Not that I'm obsessed with him, but it's just like, we have to challenge these ridiculous ideas.
Yeah, you've got a near enemy.
This book, it's fiction.
He rewrites history in order to, so I think black studies might be his perspective on history, but he said things like, you know, the reason that the Chinese government at the moment, I was like, oh, he's getting into the Chinese.
I like this.
Maybe we've got something in common.
And he was like, the reason the Chinese are taking over the world at the moment and, you know, in Africa and in the Caribbean and building infrastructure and building an empire, essentially.
I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, carry on.
He said, the reason is because they're emulating Westerners and they're copying white ways of building empire.
I'm like, wait a minute.
You do know that the Qing dynasty, you do know that the Chinese had empire a long time before we did.
They know how to build an empire, but no, it's all the white man's fault.
Everything in the world is the white man's fault in his eyes.
And I can't, I can't understand that.
It's just a position of pure hatred.
Have you, have you tried the, the Ashanti kingdom on him?
Because that hasn't got a very good record on the slavery element.
A whole kingdom built on slavery.
Well you can't argue with these people with facts because they just change the facts or they disregard them.
No, I went on this amazing press trip once to Ghana and do you know the Ghanaian handshake?
There's a special Garnet handshake they do where they feel the way to the last joint of your little finger and they flick it.
It sort of snaps like that.
And the reason is that when the Ashanti slave masters went into the African interior to bring slaves to trade in the slave ports like Takoradi, I think it is, they would chop off their the top joint of their little finger in order to show that they were slaves, not kind of Ashanti, you know, they couldn't be mistaken.
So if they tried to escape.
So what the symbols says, what the handshake says is you are not a slave.
Anyway.
Wow.
That is controversial.
Well, but it isn't controversial.
It's just kind of what history is really like and what life is like.
It's how people are.
It's rather than this kind of fabricated version of reality that people like Kehinde Andrews specialize in.
I couldn't do that anymore.
I would just... Also, the other problem is that you must have found this with Piers Morgan.
His technique, He abuses his position as the kind of presenter to really bully you and sort of force you in a particular direction, put you on the spot, unsettle you, which I think is very unhealthy.
Yeah.
I think he forgets sometimes that he's not always talking to someone in high office.
You know, it's quite OK to hold them to account.
But when you've got a member of the public or just a journalist on your show to question them in the way that he does, I don't think it's entirely appropriate.
Even when you're on his side of the argument, you know, he's still... Yeah, bullying is an appropriate word, I think.
The way he puts himself across sometimes, it's frustrating, because he used to be so good at this stuff, and I think he's gone off to the clickbait soundbite audience, unfortunately.
But now he's left GMB, hopefully he'll find his ways again.
Oh, stop that Christian forgiveness nonsense, Calvin.
He's awful.
He's going to... I'm sorry, but we can forgive him, but he's going to burn in hell.
There's no question of it.
Yeah.
There's always a question of it.
Yeah, I think if I had to put money on who's going to burn in hell, I think he'd be fairly high on the list.
It's not our job to judge.
No, no, that's it.
It's great.
God's going to do it and it's going to be fantastic.
It's going to be just awesome.
But, okay, so the other thing I wanted to point out, make about going on these, these TV programmes, and again, this is only what I've realised in the last year, say, thank you, is I can be, I'm better now, I've got a cup of tea.
Is it a cup or a mug?
It's a mug, I think.
It's a sort of a hybrid.
Oh, shame.
I don't like drinking out of thick-lipped things.
It needs to be drunk from China.
It doesn't have to be fine bone China.
It does have to be leaf tea.
This is a problem with our society.
We've become Americanized.
Everything's in mugs, everything's big and brass.
What happened to a nice civilized cup of tea?
The problem about, if we're going to go on the tea digression, the problem about the kind of tea you drink out of China is probably not the kind of tea I like drinking.
I like drinking Kenyan tea, mainly.
And you want to drink Kenyan tea with milk.
out of a mug.
When you're drinking out of China, you know how when you go to a hotel for afternoon tea and the tea's always really not quite up to scratch.
It's never quite strong enough.
They put it in a kind of funny little dispenser and you get leaves and even then the leaves, they don't please me.
I like Kenyan.
I love loose leaf tea.
Obviously you just have to brew it for a bit longer.
No, because... Five minutes for a black tea?
No, because I think you get too much tannin if you overbrew it.
I think it needs three minutes, max.
Three minutes for a green or a white, I'd say five for a black, but we digress.
It's good.
No, it's good doing tea snoring.
People like that.
I think people like to know about us and our values.
So the second point I was going to make was that And Piers Morgan, or that awful, that awful breakfast TV program, which, you know, I mean, I can't even mention its name.
Well, good morning, Britain.
Who's got the appalling Dr. Schillery on it, pushing whatever government nonsense on the vaccines.
But that's that's that's by the by.
But what these programs do is they legitimize points of view that should never be legitimized.
So you've got, what's that other universally used by the BBC, etc., black girl, posh girl, went to Oxford, you know, child of complete bloody privilege, wants Nelson's column taken down.
Afua Hirsch.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Afua Hirsch.
By inviting these people... Look, you've got... Look at the kind of people who sit at home watching breakfast TV.
They are the brainwashed, aren't they?
These are the kind of people who wear masks in their car, on their own.
They're those kind of people.
They watch breakfast... Oh, I don't know.
I think we're stepping into woke territory here and sneering at the British public.
And also, we're getting very close to no-platforming and de-platforming.
This is the U-shape of politics, isn't it?
We're approaching the left right now.
What we need to be doing is celebrating these people having a platform, as long as we're up against them, debating them, and, like I say, exposing their ridiculous ideas for what they are.
We don't want to no-platform them and say they're too loony to get on TV, because every time they're on TV, people realise how loony they are.
And I have much more faith in the British public and the viewing public I think, you know, every time they see a stupid idea, they know it's a stupid idea.
No, I'm sorry.
I just, I just totally, you are, you are saying the kind of crap that I would have said two years ago.
And it's why we lose.
We're talking about, we're talking about the destruction of our culture here, the destruction of all, basically the destruction of Western civilization.
And part of that process is the use of the mainstream media of, of, of television programs, like, like that breakfast TV program, which probably has I don't know what audience it has, but it's quite a large one.
And it is introducing into the public realm tiny, tiny, tiny minority ideas.
You know, I mean, I might represent a point of view which says that, I don't know, everyone should have their left ear chopped off, I don't know, as a kind of, to feed my dragon god.
Well, I'd never get, I'd never get my minority stupid poisonous dragon god ear chopped off view on, on, on Breakfast TV.
But when it's something, something equally fatuous, like we must take down a monument to the guy who defeated, who defeated Napoleon, who was going to, who wanted to conquer England, conquer Britain and enslave us.
I mean, we were just going to be a kind of what sort of agricultural territory producing stuff for the French empire.
You know, he was bent on conquering our country.
The guy who defeated him at Trafalgar deserved that, that place on his column in Trafalgar Square.
Why should this imbecilic woman even be entertained for a millisecond?
Because what it does, you may say that you, Calvin Robinson, can go on Breakfast TV and articulately present the sensible person's case, but the point is that this outrageous viewpoint, which would never have been entertained in the public realm, is invited on as a kind of program of, ultimately, a leftist program of
Moving the Overton window leftwards and saying, here, viewers, is a valid viewpoint.
What is not?
Yeah.
No, you're onto something there, absolutely, in the shifting of the Overton window.
Yeah, we do have to have these debates, but not necessarily with the far, far left extremists, the hard left extremists, like the people we've talked about on the show so far.
If we could bring it back into the centre a little bit and have sensible people debating it, it would be a bit better.
But I don't think the morning show is the problem.
I think it's the entertainment shows, you know, when we talked about BBC before, we talked about, you know, shows that they're putting out, EastEnders or whatever, and even EastEnders had a whole skit around the vaccine, didn't they?
All of these mainstream entertainment shows now are pushing an agenda, whether it's woke or whether it's... It was that scene, wasn't it, in the bar where the man was...
The man who was anti-vaccine was obviously very stupid, and he was shown to be so by EastEnders.
But that's the issue, isn't it?
Because that's not challenged.
That's not an open debate.
There's no alternative viewpoint pushed across there.
That's where it's even more of a problem.
Yeah, where else do you think is the... I mean, okay, so you're talking about dramas.
You think that's where the most dangerous... You could be right.
I mean, that terrible thing with the lesbian serial killer.
That everyone loves.
Oh, Killing Eve?
Yeah.
Oh, even I enjoyed that one!
Yeah, you see, that's the... Calvin, you see, that's the problem.
If you're going to be a priest, you know, you should be making signs at the cross about that kind of thing.
Oh, and what about... Oh, you're absolutely right.
And the one... I tell you what, the one that really, I just... gave me the creeps so much.
The one where...
The woman out of the X-Files, Gillian Anderson, plays the detective who's producing the sexy, sexy serial killer who, even though he prays on women and murders them, but he's kind of sexy.
And there's a kind of sexual chemistry between Gillian Anderson and the serial killer guy, you know?
And it goes on for several seasons.
Do you know that one?
No, I haven't seen that one, but it sounds familiar.
It's a similar thing to what happened in Luthor and lots of these detective programs where the serial killer is, you know, you can emphasize with them because they've got traits that are relatable.
And it's humanizing sin.
It's humanizing evil, essentially.
You're right, I should be holding this hand across.
But we've become, it's normalized because, you know, society has become so degenerate at this point that everything is about sex and violence.
And if it doesn't have any sexual violence on TV, it doesn't get put out, it doesn't get aired anymore.
Where is John Betjeman's documentary on churches?
Where are the historic documentaries that educate, but don't necessarily entertain?
We don't see that stuff anymore, which is why I'm part of Defund the BBC, because these outlets have lost their way.
No, I think that's a very good cause.
You're definitely doing a good job there.
Yeah, that thing about Betjeman and churches.
I mean, it's... Or civilization.
Civilization, yeah.
Totally, totally.
I think I've ranted about this before but it's worth mentioning again that one of the things that really pissed me off mightily about the whole lockdown thing was that if I'm passing a church, I like to go into the church and have a sniff around.
I mean, It seems to me it's a very important part of our culture, isn't it?
And you might see interesting effigies and things where you could do brass rubbings on and all sorts of historical details.
And the churches are all closed!
That, for me, is, like I said earlier, almost unforgivable.
It's a priest's job to die for Christ.
It's a priest's job.
A priest should be martyring themselves before they let the government say you have to close your church.
In fact, it wasn't even the government, it was the Church of England that took the government guidance a step further and said, well, we'll close so we're the same as every other secular organisation.
No!
It's the church's job to be there for people in a time of need and during a national pandemic or a global pandemic or even if you don't think it was real, whatever, it's a time of need for the people of the country and every single parish priest should have kept their church open for their parish congregation.
So they had a place that is not just a part of faith, it's a part of the community.
It's something that holds people together.
It's a safe space to use their own terminology against them.
And I'm really, really frustrated and angry that so many priests capitulated to the secular hierarchy of the Church of England.
So some didn't.
My priest was fantastic, kept his church open throughout and said, you know, I'm saying a private mass At this time, if you happen to be in church while I'm saying the Mass and you can receive, that's fine.
You know, get around the guidance with loopholes if you must, but you should die before you let someone close your church and keep your faithful away from the sacraments.
Yeah, no, I like your language there.
So you could be St Calvin Abbecket Robinson.
Oh goodness, no.
But, you know, people found ways, you know, some priests went round during the first lockdown when we took it all very seriously.
What was that?
I'm not watching this outside, you know, but Rebbing is in the middle of Mayfair.
During the first lockdown, we were talking quite seriously, Some priests went round from door to door giving out prayer books and guidance materials and stuff like that.
I think that's very wholesome and great.
But essentially your church is more than just a building.
It's surrounded by centuries of prayer and it's the place that people come together to worship together.
It has meaning and that's why churches are so beautiful as well because the beauty should and it's all about something bigger than ourselves.
So again, it's absolutely not okay that we closed them for so many people all around the country and left people, vulnerable people on their own.
You know, I know people that, quite elderly people, that church was the thing for them, that they got out of the house on a Sunday, they met up with the same people And after the lockdown, they're not the same anymore.
They've lost, you know, their, well, you know, their mental capacity is gone because the thing that they held on to, the thing that they're clinging on to, that community spirit has been taken away from them.
And that, that is unforgivable.
That is disgusting.
I tell you what what's been worrying me is that what happens something similar has happened to the National Trust actually what happens where when an organization Originally, it has an original purpose.
In the National Trust case, it's preserving historic properties and displaying them, you know, in a way that people, you know, enjoy.
Where it changes agenda to promoting wokeness, promoting, you know, discovering that this building was owned by a gay person once, and isn't that amazing?
And in the same way, the Church of England, Which should be doing all the things you've just mentioned.
It's instead having this, well, a bout of iconoclasm really, isn't it?
It's threatening to remove any statue or anything in the church architecture which relates to anything that is politically incorrect.
Yeah, so They're saying, you know, the church is giving out guidance on how to dispose of or remove monuments and statues that might cause offence in churches.
That in itself is worrying, but the document I read through it, and the document was steeped in critical race theory, you know, the document itself proclaims that this nation is systemically racist.
So I looked at what they referenced for proof of that, and they referenced a previous church report which actually stated that the Church of England is systemically racist.
So I looked at, well, where's the evidence for that?
And that report links to the Archbishop of Canterbury staying in synod and apologizing for the church being racist.
But that's it.
It's just statements.
It's rhetoric.
There's no evidence.
There's no research.
And it goes worse than that.
It goes worse than being woke because what they're doing is they are saying that racism is a sin, which of course it is, but then they're saying that it's because they're aligning with critical race theory, they're saying they want to remove white normativity and they want to address white theology and look at more black theology and liberal theologies.
And what they're saying by all this is that Racism is a sin that is only committed by white people therefore there is now a new sin that can only be committed by certain people and that is anti-christian.
That goes against all of church teachings.
So they're actually changing theology and changing doctrine in order to squeeze in critical race theory and I don't think they realize what they're doing with that because it is heresy.
You say that racism is a sin.
Would racism even have been a concept in Jesus's time?
I mean how do you know it's a sin?
So no, it wouldn't have been, you know, but he would have preached, you know, no Jews, no Greeks, you know, everyone is a person, everyone is unique and has their own different gifts and talents and all contribute to life in different ways.
But obviously race is a social construct, we know that, it's quite a modern idea.
But the sin is discriminating against people or prejudicing against people based on immutable characteristics and being hurtful or hateful to people based on something that they can't control.
That's the sin element of it.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't see how technically the church could be racist, the Christian church, because if it were, it wouldn't be Christian.
I mean, by definition, That you surely believe that we're all God's children and we're all made in his image.
Ergo, the moment you accuse this institution of being racist, it's not Christian either.
Which actually may be quite accurate given what's happened to the church under Welby, for example.
You referred to the Archbishop's report, was that Justin Welby that did that?
Yeah, it was indeed.
I've challenged him publicly about this.
But you're right in that you can't just accuse an institution of being racist unless you have proof to back it up.
And if you don't have proof to back it up, you're making a statement or an accusation and undermining all of the work that we're trying to do within the organization.
Of course, there will be individual elements of racism in individual churches, and that needs to be addressed wherever it occurs.
But that doesn't make the whole institution racist.
I don't even know.
I'm not driven by that.
I just think there's so much... You can reach the upper echelons of the church as a black man, so where's the racism?
No, well, quite.
Justin Welby is the equivalent of... you find his type across industry.
I mean, Paul Polman, the guy who used to run Unilever, perhaps he still does, is again one of those.
So is that Canadian, he used to be the Bank of England, Carney, Mark Carney.
They're all part of that kind of...
Yeah, Tim Parker.
They're all part of this sort of effete globalist elite, which don't give a toss about the institutions that they... or the needs of the people that those institutions supposedly serve.
So how are you going to deal with that?
I mean, you've got basically a really, really crap... I mean, he's your boss and he's really crap.
He doesn't... he probably... I wonder if he even believes in God.
I have one boss.
Yeah but is that the deal in the Church of England?
Can you do that?
It's not a job is it?
It's a vocation.
I have a calling from God to serve the people of this country and I will do that to the best of my ability and of course I will obey my bishops and of course I will stick to the laws and canons of this land but that doesn't mean I can't challenge wokedom and anti-christian sentiment where I see it.
Yeah, but okay, what if a message comes from the Archbishop saying, well, I hope you get a nice parish, and you've got a lovely old church with this tomb of this chap who, he was so racist, he went to fight in the Crusades and killed lots of innocent Muslims.
And obviously I'm giving an extreme example here, but the church authorities decided that this offensive, racist monument must be removed.
I mean, You may say I serve God, but ultimately you're part of this kind of bureaucratic system as well.
Do you have the power to say no?
How much autonomy do you have over your church?
You have quite a bit.
Not as much as you used to when you used to be the freeholder, but you have quite a bit.
And it's up to the PCC, the Parish Church Council.
They can dictate what happens within the ground.
So you can make it democratic.
You can put a vote and say, you know, we should keep this statue in place, shouldn't we?
And most normal people would say, of course we should.
But I don't think anyone's going to come along and say, oh, we need to remove that offensive statue.
It's more the other way around.
It's more when people say, oh, let's look, that looks offensive.
And then they're, you know, they're pushing it from the other angle, which I obviously wouldn't do.
I'm conscious that you've got a mail article to write, so I'm not going to hold you up much longer because I know what it's like being a freelancer, but just can you answer, now I've got you, you can help answer a question that I agree with you, there needs to be a revolt from within the Church of England, if it's to have any meaning at all.
There's got to be a lot that's got to be clawed back.
But given how deep the rot is within the church, I mean, the Bishop of St David's, what did she say something the other day?
It was some really ghastly... Oh yeah, never, never, never trust a Tory.
I mean, she's right, but I'm not sure that... I'm not sure that... But she meant the congregation, and this is the problem.
These people, these bishops, they're so woke and they don't realize how toxic and divisive they're being.
She has a cure, a cure of souls.
She has a job to protect and serve the people within her diocese and she's clearly not doing that for all of them.
She doesn't trust half of all the majority of them, depending on how they voted.
But I think it's not, the drought isn't that deep because, you know, it's the cliche, but it is the church's guardian readers preaching to daily mail readers.
And all we have to do is get a few of those daily mail readers into the Hi, everyone.
We just need a clean sweep and we'll be all right, because the congregations, the people, the faithful are great.
They're wonderful people.
Yeah, but you've said yourself, you're at a theological college, which is sound.
You've got, it's a high Anglican, right?
It's going to be the proper, you know.
High church, high Tory.
The proper deal.
But how many other theological colleges have you got in the country churning out sort of woke, cappy, clappy, you know, you're outnumbered, mate.
I know, but it's about quality, not quantity.
But also you've got the hierarchy who are not going to let people like you through.
Are they?
You're right.
You're right.
Stop it.
It's so pessimistic.
Don't make me tell Blackpool.
But I honestly believe we have a fighting chance and we have to.
Otherwise, what's the point?
We can't let this great institution fall down on our watch.
That would not be okay.
I totally agree with the principle.
I just think about all these churches all around the country with these just amazing history and that they've got the essence of all the people who worshipped in them in the past and all their, you know, their special places and they've been, they are owned.
I mean, are they owned?
I don't know.
The Church of England owns every church, does it?
The Freehold?
No, the Church of England owns a lot of churches.
Some of the clergy owns some of the churches, some of the deities owns some of the churches.
It's a complicated system.
But that's what we need to take back.
We need to storm those churches and somehow get the ownership of them, because otherwise they're going to be in the hands of the enemy.
Yeah, absolutely.
We need to devolve the ownership of the churches down into the parish level all over the country.
Just like, you know, the same with the National Trust and all of these institutions.
We need to make sure that all the power, wherever possible, is in the hands of the local people.
Because local people, normal people, are the ones with common sense values.
It's these uppity, woke idiots that have high aspirations that think they're going to change the world for the better with their virtue signaling that are destroying this country.
We need to take the power away from them and give it back to the normal folks.
Well, there's your mission, mate.
Good luck.
Thank you.
We're on this mission together.
You can't skive out.
You've led the way for years.
I will give you what support I can, but just bear in mind that I don't have your tactfulness.
I don't have quite your spirit of forgiveness.
But I'll do what I can.
I'll do what I can.
So thank you very much, Calvin Robinson, for being my special guest and for tolerating all my outrageous questions.
And don't forget everyone... You know what, James?
Yes, tell me.
I love being on a podcast with someone more right-wing than me.
That never happens!
Yeah, I'm afraid to say that you are pretty gay.
You're basically a woolly liberal in my book.
Yeah.
But no, I'm glad you're out there fighting the fight.
And everyone, don't forget to support.
I never say this often enough.
Please support me on Patreon, Subscribestar and, you know, Delingpoleworld.com.
And Calvin, it's been great.
And come back again soon and tell me more about your adventures.
Thank you.
An absolute pleasure.
You need to come down to Reclaim HQ.
Let's film something down here.
Let's do that.
All right, mate.
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